Blood of the Faithful (18 page)

It was morning before he’d finished his work. He was less than satisfied with the results. He was saving his remaining 4-0 sutures for facial injuries, and so had stitched a woman’s palm with larger 3-0s, which would leave a noticeable scar. He’d set a fractured ulna in homemade plaster, judging the severity and manner of the break not by X-ray, but after painfully kneading at the poor kid’s arm. His X-ray machine had broken, and its repair had proven beyond his brother’s mechanical skills.

A bucket held the bloody tools of his trade, and he sent these off with Jessie Lyn to be washed and sterilized. Everything must be reused, even the blood-soaked gauze. He took off his mask, removed and folded up his gown to be washed, and scrubbed his hands in the sink with soap to get rid of the smell of latex that would otherwise cling to them for hours.

The clinic was mostly empty, but one of the children was still there, lying on the hospital bed next to the garage door, moaning while her mother dabbed at her forehead with a wet cloth. She was the kid with the broken arm.

Jacob turned away, frustrated he couldn’t give her more morphine. But he was running low on analgesics, and even when he’d seen the collapse coming, hadn’t thought to acquire seeds to cultivate his own poppies. One of several mistakes that were obvious in retrospect. What he wouldn’t give to send a message back in time a couple of years. He looked around the room, noting each and every deficit of his clinic.

Fernie wheeled into the room. Her eyes were bloodshot, and wisps of hair had come loose from her thick braid. But from her sympathetic look, he knew he must appear even more haggard. She glanced around his operating room and sighed.

“How many times will we suffer this?” she asked. “Will the Lord show us no mercy?”

It was an unusual statement of doubt from Fernie, who was usually the one comforting him, urging him to faith and patience, and not the other way around.

“Hundreds of millions are dead around the world. Maybe billions. We’re the lucky ones.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” she said. “I feel miserable.”

He gave her a hug. She leaned her head against his arm.

“Don’t give up faith,” he said.

“You’re one to talk. What faith do
you
have?”

“I have faith in our people. Our preparation, our community. The love we have for each other.”

“Jacob, that’s what I don’t understand. This attack came from our own people. Not gentiles, not outsiders. Our own people. Again. Why?”

“The scriptures say even the elect will be deceived.”

She looked up at him with a hopeful expression. “Do you believe that?”

“I do. I don’t know why or what it means, but people do terrible evil and claim they’re obeying the will of the Lord.”

Fernie kissed his hand. “Go up to bed. You look exhausted. I’ll handle things here.”

“The children are okay? The rest of the family?”

“Yes. Everyone else is accounted for. Nobody is missing across the entire valley.”

“I didn’t think they would be. It was clear we’d found our enemy. How about Ezekiel? Has he turned up?”

Fernie shook her head. “David and Miriam radioed from the bunker while you were in surgery. Ezekiel got away. And he apparently stopped at the bunker to steal the .50-caliber machine gun and the ammunition on his way out.”

Jacob rubbed his temples to relieve his throbbing headache. Of course the gun would be missing. By the time Ezekiel reached the cliffs, he’d have been able to look back and see that pursuit was lagging. That had given him time to loot the bunker. The .50-cal would end up guarding the squatter camp. Imagine trying to assault it now.

“I’ve got to go to the bunker,” he said.

“No, you don’t. Stephen Paul already drove up with the Humvee to replace the gun. He swung by the house about fifteen minutes ago, told me you didn’t need to worry.”

“It’s not just arming the bunker that has me worried. Miriam will be on the warpath.”

“You told her not to leave the valley. Everyone heard you say it.”

“All that was before we knew Ezekiel had stolen the machine gun. She’ll be itching to snatch it back or destroy it before the enemy has a chance to dig it into some fortified spot. Then Stephen Paul will show up with the Humvee. Gassed up and ready to go. Miriam, David, Stephen Paul—a full crew. She might see that as divine sanction.”

“Call her on the radio. Tell her.”

“You call her. Tell her I’m on my way and not to move a muscle until I arrive.”

Fernie started to protest, but he put a hand on her shoulder and cut her off. “I can’t risk that she’ll start more bloodshed. This clinic can’t handle it. This
doctor
can’t.”

Jacob was outside, blinking against the sharp morning light, before he remembered that Ezekiel had stolen his truck. Fortunately, several other vehicles were parked in the street in front of the house. Men stood around, discussing the evening’s events in animated terms. They were the ones who had driven around the valley looking for anyone who might be missing. Now they wanted information from him. He didn’t have anything to give them.

Instead, he commandeered a truck, resisted offers to ride with him, and drove off through the streets of Blister Creek. Soon, he was passing the chapel and temple on his way north toward the bunker.

Most of the Smoot family was gathered out front of the temple. People were crying, hugging. Few of them bothered to look up as Jacob drove past.

A figure lay on the grass in front of the temple. A bloody sheet covered it. Grover Smoot.

Jacob’s worries were assuaged when he arrived to find the Humvee parked in the road outside the bunker, while David and Stephen Paul were up top of the vehicle, unscrewing the machine gun from where it was fixed behind the gun shield.

It was a gorgeous morning across the valley. A brilliant sun rose in a blue sky unmarred by cloud or contrail. The mountain ranges rimming the valley to the east and west still had snow on their highest peaks, but in the valley itself, the fields had taken on a patchwork of various shades of green. The fields contrasted with the red sands of the desert and the vast swath of bare sandstone formations of Witch’s Warts that ran from the Ghost Cliffs down the center of the valley.

While the men worked, Miriam was scanning the cliffs above them with a pair of binoculars. A sniper rifle with scope jutted out of the bunker, but there didn’t appear to be anyone inside manning it. It looked like just these three plus Jacob.

Miriam lowered the binoculars as Jacob shut the truck door. “Fernie called. She seems to think you should be in bed.”

“We all should be. I’m inclined to radio and have different people sent up. Someone who actually got some sleep last night.”

“Can’t guess who that would be. Nobody slept much last night, I’ll bet.” She returned to studying the cliffs.

“Did surgery go okay?” David asked as he and Stephen Paul walked past carrying the machine gun and toolbox toward the bunker.

“I don’t know about okay, but everyone survived.” Jacob thought about the figure beneath the bloody sheet. “Except Grover Smoot.”

“Well,” Miriam said, when the other two men were inside the bunker with the gun and tools. “Grover served his purpose.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jacob demanded.

Miriam’s expression softened. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

“Grover did nothing to deserve this.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t mean it that way. Grover almost died on the road to Las Vegas last year. He was supposed to be manning that rifle to keep that sniper off our butt. Then Officer Trost took the gun out of his hands. And was killed. I was angry about that—Trost was more useful to our needs. It should have been Grover who died.”

Again, so little compassion in his sister-in-law. Was everyone a tool to Miriam?

“But later I started thinking,” she continued. “The Lord must have saved Grover for some purpose. Now he has served that purpose.”

“Please tell me you’re not claiming that Grover died so we’d know Ezekiel was a killer.”

“Of course not.” She gave Jacob a look. “I collared Elder Smoot after you went in to surgery. I thought he might have an idea of what Ezekiel was thinking. Smoot told me it was Grover who stood up to Ezekiel. That’s why he was killed.”

Miriam explained how Ezekiel had convinced his father that he’d retrieved the sword and breastplate from the Holy of Holies, that he’d been called as the new prophet. Only when Grover convinced his father to dig up the supposed relics had Smoot realized he’d been duped. The two brothers had struggled, and in killing Grover, Ezekiel seemed to lose his mind. He set off on a mad charge to the Christianson compound. Grover’s death had shocked Elder Smoot out of his stupor, and he raised the alarm.

“So you see,” she added, “Grover saved your life. That was why the Lord preserved him outside Las Vegas last year.”

“Grover had more purpose in life than to save me from an assassin.”

“Of course he did. That wasn’t his
only
purpose—I never claimed it was. And he’ll receive his reward in the world to come.”

“I sincerely hope so.” Jacob’s anger deflated. “But his death is still a tragedy in the here and now.”

“Eliza will be devastated. She liked that kid.” Miriam looked sorrowful. “Come on, let’s get inside and out of the open.”

Jacob followed her toward the bunker. “Thanks for obeying. I was worried I’d get up here to discover you’d gone tearing off in the Humvee.”

“You gave me a direct order,” she said. “I’d never go against that. Besides, I’ve got a better idea now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The interior of the bunker still smelled vaguely of body odor. Jacob’s eye fell on Ezekiel’s sleeping bag where it lay partially unzipped in the middle of the floor. Boots had left their dusty prints on the glossy nylon surface.

Jacob knew he was lucky. If he’d come to the bunker alone, Ezekiel might have murdered him then and there. Maybe even with David at his side. But Miriam’s ruthless reputation was well known. He glanced at her as she opened the filing cabinet and realized he was lucky to have her on his side, and not as an enemy. His own destroying angel.

Stephen Paul and David had finished mounting the machine gun from the Humvee and were testing its range of motion. When they finished, David went out to retrieve cans of .50-caliber ammunition from the vehicle.

Miriam seemed to have found what she was looking for in the filing cabinet. She retrieved an unopened blister pack of batteries and set them onto the desk next to her night vision goggles.

“I thought you didn’t have batteries,” Jacob said.

“Not for personal use. We kept these up here as emergency backup for the flashlight. Don’t want to go stumbling around in the dark with one of those crappy LED flashlights you have to shake. They’ll work for the night vision.”

“Dammit, I left mine in the truck,” Jacob said. “Now Ezekiel has them.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” she said. “With any luck your batteries are almost dead. How long were they on?”

“Hard to say. I lost track of time out there.” He stopped. “What do you mean, stumbling in the dark?”

She shrugged. “It can’t be helped if he has them. I’ll have to take my chances.”

David came in carrying two of the heavy cans by their handles. “Take your chances? I don’t like the sound of that. Jacob, what is she talking about?”

“I have no idea,” Jacob said. Then, to Miriam, “Well?”

“We’re lucky Ezekiel didn’t get the batteries,” she said, which didn’t answer the question. “He must have come through here so fast he didn’t have time to grab everything. Or he forgot. That Son of Perdition had a lot on his mind.” Miriam reached into the cabinet and fished out some flares. “He could have used these too.” She pulled open a lower drawer. “And the grenades are still here too. That’s lucky.”

“What about these plans?” Jacob said. “What are you proposing we do?”

“You won’t do anything. The three of you will stay here and man the bunker. I’m going to infiltrate and reconnoiter. Alone.”

David straightened from feeding a belt of ammunition into the gun. He didn’t look happy. “I see no point in that.”

“You can bet things are exciting up there,” she said. “A polygamist shows up covered with blood, carrying a machine gun. That will get them riled up.”

“They already know him,” Stephen Paul pointed out. “He and Chambers have been handing over our food for who knows how long.”

Rather than argue with Miriam, Jacob pulled up a chair to listen.

She glanced at him, as if waiting to see if he’d contradict her, then turned back to the other two men. “They’ll be scared of us, for one. Are we angry? Are we going to attack them again? And what will they do if we don’t? Sit up there and starve now that we’ve cut them off?”

“Maybe they’ll pull out,” Stephen Paul said. “Give up.”

“Be about time,” David said.

“And go where?” she asked. “It was our stolen food that kept them alive. That’s all. They have no other options.”

That was true, and yet that same food had kept the peace for almost a year. What now that the supply was cut off?

“So they might come down demanding more food,” Miriam said. “Or try to take it by force.”

“I have to ask,” Jacob said, “if it took us so long to miss the stolen food, how critical was it, anyway?”

“Pretty damn critical,” David said. “Maybe not now, but soon.”

“You don’t know that,” Jacob said. “Last year we nearly fed ourselves with what we grew. Barely dipped into our stores at all. I’ll bet this year we pull it off. The weather seems almost normal again.”

“It’s the End of Days,” Stephen Paul said. “This is a lull.”

“We’re all agreed on that,” David said.

“No man knows the day nor hour,” Jacob reminded them. “That’s what the scriptures say.”

“You’re not going to convince us,” Miriam said. “We all know this is the end.”

She was right insofar as he wasn’t going to get anywhere arguing about the end of the world.

“So what then, you’ll sneak into camp, have a look around?” Jacob asked. “Or are you going after Ezekiel specifically?”

“Why not both? I can get into that camp easily enough, play my role. If I go at night, when it’s dark, I can pose as just another refugee. I’ll look around and see if they’re sheltering Ezekiel. Maybe they want nothing to do with him. Maybe he fled into the desert with whatever he could grab. But maybe he’s there. If he is, I’ll either drag him back if I can, or kill him if I can’t.”

“I don’t like it,” Jacob said.

He looked to David, sure that his brother wouldn’t let his wife do this crazy thing. But David was scratching at the stubble on his chin, the look in his eyes saying he was considering it.

“Are you serious?” Jacob asked him. “You want to leave your children without their mother?”

“That’s not going to happen,” Miriam said, confidently. “The Lord has a purpose for me.”

“Yeah, and He did for Grover too. Isn’t that what you were saying? His purpose was to die?”

“The Lord has protected her before,” David said. “He’ll protect her again, assuming she is following His will.”

“Ezekiel knows everything about Blister Creek,” Stephen Paul said. “We can’t leave him up there scheming with our enemies.”

Jacob cast around for some other possibility. “How about we offer to trade? They give us Ezekiel, and we give them food.”

“Haven’t they stolen enough?” Miriam said. “And you want to give them more?”

“It would be worth it.”

“Besides,” Stephen Paul said, “what if they don’t agree to the trade? What if they keep Ezekiel and demand food, anyway?”

“Then we put the gun back on the Humvee,” Jacob said, “wait for Eliza and Steve to return in the Methuselah tank, and mount another attack on the camp. We’ll take Ezekiel by force.”

“Only now they’re armed with the stolen machine gun,” David said. “And who knows what else. For all we know Ezekiel and Chambers had been sharing out our weapons for a long time. Instead of a few hunting rifles like last year, we might be facing fully automatic assault rifles, improvised explosives, and whatever else they’ve stolen from us.”

That was a good point.

“How about a compromise plan?” Miriam said.

“What kind of compromise?” Jacob said.

“I’ll infiltrate the camp tonight.” She held up a hand as he started to object that this wasn’t a compromise, it was the same plan. “Just to look, not to attack. If Ezekiel is gone, then no worries. We forget it. We assume he’s fled into the desert and there’s nothing we can do. In that case, I’ll reconnoiter, get a better idea of whether they have, in fact, stolen weapons from the valley. That information would be valuable in and of itself.”

“And if Ezekiel
is
there?” Jacob asked, warily. “What will you do?”

“Nothing. I’ll come back and tell you.” She shrugged. “That’s it. We’ll have another argument, but with better info.”

It was hard to argue with that. Her proposal was reasonable, in fact. Still dangerous, but at a level of danger that he could accept. And it didn’t involve more violence.

“What do you guys think?” he asked the men.

“Got to be fifteen hundred people up there,” Stephen Paul said. “How will you even find Ezekiel?”

“Easy,” she said. “I’ll look for Jacob’s truck. No way Ezekiel takes his eyes off it. It’s got three-quarters tank of gas, could get someone two hundred miles. Until he knows what’s what, he won’t leave it and risk someone stealing it. And if the truck is not there, it will be obvious he took off.”

“Unless they took it from Ezekiel by force,” Jacob said.

“In which case they’ll probably have him tied up somewhere. That should be easy enough to find out too.”

“That makes sense,” Stephen Paul said. “Sure, I think you should go.”

“David?” Jacob asked.

His brother hesitated a moment longer, gave a worried glance at his wife, then nodded. “I say we go for it. I trust the Lord will protect her.”

“Good,” Miriam said quickly, “then it’s settled.”

“Hold on,” Jacob said. “When will you go, tonight?”

“Sure, tonight. I’ll stay right here until then. We won’t want to leave the bunker short-handed, anyway. Why don’t you go home, look in on your patients, and get some rest. We’ll come find you when I’ve returned.”

He tried to decide if she was attempting to deceive him. He’d have a hard time telling if she were. What if he drove down to the valley only to learn later that she’d waited until he was gone, remounted the machine gun, and talked Stephen Paul and David into rushing the squatter camp? He couldn’t risk it.

“I think I’ll stay here. None of my patients have life-threatening injuries. Lillian is there to render post-op care. I’ll radio town later to make sure everything is okay.”

“What about sleep?” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re not exhausted.”

“No more exhausted than the rest of you.”

“Sure you are,” she insisted. “None of us spent half the night in surgery.”

“You seem to be trying awfully hard to get rid of me.”

“Fine, then. Do what you want,” Miriam said. “I figured you had more important things to do than guard duty. But stay or go, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Jacob held her gaze. “Thanks, I will.”

They decided to alternate keeping watch and resting. Nobody wanted to touch Ezekiel’s sleeping bag, but fortunately David had thought to grab a couple of bags from the house before he’d left. He hauled Ezekiel’s out to the truck and unrolled the other two on the floor, unzipping them to open flat, since it would shortly be too warm to climb inside.

In truth, Jacob was exhausted, and happily accepted the first sleep shift. David flopped onto the second bag and yanked off his boots. Miriam and Stephen Paul handled gun and watch duty while the brothers napped.

It was still cool lying on top of the sleeping bag where it touched the cold concrete, and Jacob pulled the edge of the unzipped bag over his legs. His mind was racing. If only he could get an hour or two of sleep, he’d have a much better time of it tonight. Gradually, his mind calmed.

Some time had passed when he woke up, and the light cut a different angle across the floor. He was sweating from the heat that had invaded the tight quarters as the sun pounded down on the bunker roof overhead. Outside, insects buzzed from the dry brush that grew on the hillside around them. David and Stephen Paul sat near the gun slits, speaking in low voices about the amount of grain and beans needed to sustain all those squatters. Miriam was gone, but he was so fuzzy-headed that this didn’t register fully at first.

Jacob climbed to his feet. His mouth felt like cotton. Stephen Paul handed him a sweating canteen, which he gratefully accepted. David acknowledged him with a nod, then picked up his binoculars and looked through the bunker slit up at the cliffs.

“How long was I out?”

“Four, five hours,” Stephen Paul said. “It’s still early afternoon.”

Jacob looked around. “Where’s Miriam?”

“Don’t worry,” David said. “She went back to town is all.”

Jacob was suspicious about this, but David showed him that the Humvee was still parked outside, though the pickup truck was missing. She wouldn’t have taken the lighter pickup to the reservoir.

“They radioed from home,” David explained. “I guess the kids are upset, so Miriam went back to check in with the family. Then I figured she may as well sleep in her own bed for a few hours while she was down there. Better there than the hard floor.”

Jacob yawned and rubbed at his neck. “Floor’s not so hard if you’re tired enough.”

“You were out of it,” David said. “Snoring like a pig.”

Stephen Paul had picked up on the yawn and made it his own, and Jacob remembered that his counselor hadn’t slept yet. He told the man to take his turn getting some rest, then got on the radio to check in with Blister Creek.

Ostensibly, it was to tell Lillian—the one who picked up on the other end—to send up food to the bunker with Miriam, but really to verify that Miriam was where David claimed she was. Lillian said she was asleep in her own bed.

David watched him with raised eyebrows when he got off the radio. “Did you think I was lying?”

“She’s a free spirit, David. She follows her own counsel.”

“Don’t I know it. But she’s also a mother and a wife. She was worried about her family.”

“You’ve got to have misgivings about this scheme of hers.”

“A little,” David admitted. “But she seems to live a charmed life. Or a protected one.”

“Everyone alive could say the same thing.” Jacob glanced at Stephen Paul. The man was already asleep. “It takes a lot of luck to survive war and famine. Every survivor everywhere has a charmed life, right up until they’re killed like everyone else.”