The Hole (34 page)

Elliot turned back to Evajean. “I don’t think they can see us,” he said. “Or, if they can, they just don’t care.

She shook her head. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where do you think they’re going?”

“I don’t know.”

They lay there until the flow of crazies diminished and then stopped. When Elliot could no longer see any of them, he stood up.

“Who’s do you think they were?” Evajean said, when they’d continued walking.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean who’s side. Yahweh’s or Moroni’s? I figure Moroni’s because I think that’s what most of them have been, but you can’t tell.”

“No,” Elliot said.

The sun had just begun to turn the sky behind them orange when they discovered where the crazies were going, and who’s they were.

“Jesus,” Elliot said.

“What are they
doing?
” Evajean said.

The salt lake spread out in front of them, its surface golden in the morning light. They stood on a raised stretch of highway running parallel to shore. Under them was the hard packed dirt of the Utah desert, the wind kicking it into clouds of dust. Elliot leaned against the bridge’s concrete railing and looked out at the madness beyond.

The crazies were raising a city. They’d begun along the muddy beach, but had built out a hundred feet or more into the water. The closer construction took the form of wooden and reed huts, held together with gravity and mud. Thousands of crazies ambled around these, some holding up logs or what appeared to be straw, while others reached into the water and came up with handfuls of thick mud, which they smeared along the seams of the buildings.

But it was not this that drew Evajean’s attention and Elliot’s exclamation. Rather, their focus was on the enormous structure rising from the gentle surface of the lake some hundred yards out. The four sided pyramid climbed over two-hundred feet into the sky, and its surface shimmered a sickly turquoise. Crazies swarmed its sides, carrying rocks or pulling ropes attached to carts. The top third of the pyramid remained uncompleted, and it was here the crazies brought their materials, moving carefully to finish construction.

“This is where they all went,” Elliot said.

Evajean just shook her head in bafflement.

Stretching out along the shore in both directions were countless more crazies, hundreds of thousands of them-maybe millions. They pushed over each other to get out onto the docks, straining to reach the pyramid and help in its building. Their number was so vast that it could easily account for every crazy not killed, for every person who hadn’t succumb to the disease but had instead survived the possession. All of them where here, building their city-building their temple. “To Moroni,” Elliot said. “It’s for their god.”

“It makes me feel sick,” Evajean said. “They’re like ants.”

Near the top of the pyramid, where the construction was most new, the stone hadn’t yet been painted. There, it shone through a deep red, the red of the Utah badlands. As they watched, a crazy on the pinnacle began screaming, waving her arms, and then she went stiff, standing tall, before falling backwards. At first it looked as if the nearby crazies were reaching out to catch her but their outstretched arms were not to help but to push and drag and then eventually to throw her over the edge, where she tumbled, kicked along by more crazies along the way. Her body rolled the full height of the pyramid before tumbling into the water. She floated, face down, out toward the middle of the lake.

“What’s it for?” Evajean asked. “Why would they build an entire city?”

“They’re colonizing,” Elliot said. “That’s the point of all this. They’re returning the world to the way it was, when Moroni’s people ruled. They’re preparing it for his reign.”

“Elliot…”

He looked at her. She was sitting, cross legged on the road. She stared up at him. “Elliot, how are we going to stop this? That’s what we were meant to do, right? The Mighty
and
the Strong? I guess I hadn’t really thought about what that meant, you know?”

He sat down next to her.

“I wish I had the dog,” she said. She hugged herself, rubbing her hands along her arms. “I’m terrified now, is what it is. It was all an adventure-we had it figured out and we were going to find this lake and do what we were meant to do. But, goddamn, Elliot, there are so many of them. How are we supposed to do anything? We don’t even know where Moroni is and, if we find him, we don’t know how to kill him.”

Elliot leaned against her. He smiled. “You remember how this all started? When we were sitting in my kitchen and you said you wanted to find the Hole?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I thought it was in Montana, you thought Colorado. Turns out we both were wrong. But the thing is, we found it, Evajean. We found the place where everyone was going. We did exactly what we set out to do. And there it is, right in front of us. Sure, I don’t have a clue what it is still, but you know what? No matter what happens from here, we found it.”

“We succeeded in our quest,” she said.

“We did.”

Evajean laughed. It was a quiet sound, but it was authentic. “Now we just have to slay the dragon,” she said.

“We do,” Elliot said. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but if all this stuff we’ve learned so far-about who we are and what we were put here for-if all of it is true, then I think we will know when the time comes.”

“Henry wouldn’t have made it futile,” Evajean said. “He loved me. Whatever he might have been up to, taking us to Virginia, being part of Smith’s conspiracy, I know he loved me and he wouldn’t get me into something there wasn’t any way for me to get out of.”

Elliot didn’t necessarily believe that. With the stakes so high, sacrificing them for even the chance of success was probably the smart thing to do. But then he thought of Clarine, and her involvement in all this, too. She’d been part of Smith’s conspiracy and she’d brought him to Virginia, where he’d find Evajean, his counterpart, whether Mighty or Strong. Clarine loved him, too, and he loved her-and she’d given him Callie.

“Tell me about Nahom,” Evajean said. “When I killed the crazies.”

Elliot thought back. “Those weren’t these crazies,” he said. “At least I don’t think so. The villagers were Mormons, fundamentalist ones like you see on TV. That would put them in Moroni’s camp. So the crazies attacking them must have been Yahweh’s.”

“But tell me about what happened,” Evajean said.

“It’s like it’s always been. They were all closing in on us. You held the box, the book, over your head, said some strange stuff about leaving this way point-which makes more sense now than it did then, I suppose-and then there was this pulse. It shot out from the box and knocked all the crazies flat. Then you passed out.”

“I think I could do it again.”

That caught Elliot by surprise. “What do you mean? Do you remembering doing it, remember how you did it?”

She shook her head. “It’s a feeling. In the back of my head. Like there’s energy there. I hadn’t noticed it before, with everything that was going on, but now that we’re sitting here-and I guess now that I’m calming down-it’s there and I think I need to release it.”

Elliot saw her in Nahom, the crazies closing in, the box held high. That terrible burst and the carnage it brought, and then the thought of that same thing happening again, here, with a million more corpses-it was awful, but he also knew, terribly, that the power to do it was in her. And he wanted her to use it. If these crazies, if these Nephites, were Moroni’s legion, then they deserved it for all the damage they’d caused. Callie and Clarine and Henry-and everyone else who’d died or been driven from their heads by these possessing hordes. Evajean could slaughter them all.

He looked at her. These thoughts had suddenly plunged doubt into him. “If you can do it, you should,” he said. “But what’s my part in this? We’re the Mighty and the Strong.”

Evajean shook her head. “You’ve saved me. More than once.”

“Yeah,” Elliot said. He wasn’t jealous. In fact, he’d have been perfectly happy to lack a role entirely. Instead, his concern was only that, without a part to play, there wasn’t much likelihood he’d make it through what was to come. He’d be killed.

“No one told how to do this, how to do any of it,” Evajean said. “It just happened. That’s how it’ll be down there. It will just happen. So let’s go. Let’s get it over with.”

“You’re sure?” Elliot said.

Evajean nodded.

“Okay,” he said. He took her hand. “We’ll go when you’re ready.”

“Now,” Evajean said. “Let’s go now.” She began walking, pulling on his hand, and Elliot followed. They stayed in the middle of the road, walking on the yellow line that curved toward the shore of the Great Salt Lake.

The first of the crazies noticed them when they were half way down the ramp. A little girl, reminiscent of the one Elliot had chased through the woods outside of Nahom, looked up from the chunk of broken road barrier she was trying to pick up, and stared at them. She remained bent over, hands on the concrete, but her eyes fixed on Elliot, then drifted to Evajean. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again. Finally, and with an expression of total disinterest, she shrugged and resumed her task. “Why do you think-” Elliot began, but Evajean was a step ahead of him.

“She doesn’t know she’s supposed to care about us,” Evajean said. “She doesn’t know what we’re here to do. We’re protected.”

“Somehow,” Elliot said. They both kept their voice low, unwilling to draw attention even after the girl’s behavior.

“Yeah,” Evajean said.

They were at the bottom of the ramp now and the Nephite crazies were denser packed. A few glanced their way, but their reactions were the same as the girl’s: complete indifference. Evajean squeezed his hand as they drew closer to the fringe of the crowd. Elliot squeezed back and looked over her, smiling reassuringly. The grin fell away, however, when he saw the light surrounding her, then surrounding them, and he gripped her hand tighter. He didn’t say anything about the light, knowing that she knew, that words weren’t necessary. Whatever it was the two of them had been meant to do, had been created to accomplish, had begun.

The light spread and intensified as they approached the Nephites. The crazies fell back, pushed away in a twenty foot radius, those closest to the edge throwing up their arms. Some screamed. Elliot could only barely hear them. Sounds coming through the light were muffled and had the warble of traveling in water. Beyond the crowd, the point of the temple rose, shimmering and still crawling with Moroni’s followers. He could hear himself breathing, could hear his heart beating and the crunch of his shoes on gravel. He could feel the warmth of Evajean’s hand. Elliot closed his eyes and let her lead him onward.

A time later-his sense of the passing minutes had become fluid-he opened his eyes. Ahead he could see a dock built out from the beach and into the water. As the Nephites cleared, he saw that it stretched the full distance to the temple. This was the path they’d take to enter Moroni’s domain. When his foot first landed on the wood, he realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out and concentrated on walking.

The crazies milled about at the perimeter of the light, stretching their arms toward Elliot and Evajean, calling out to them, pleading. Elliot wondered if they knew what was happening, if they were aware that these two people had come to destroy their god. He thought so, but he felt no pity. They had ended his world and now he was going to end theirs.

Half way along the dock, Elliot noticed a hump rising in the water. As he watched, it settled back beneath the surface, only to return a distance away. Elliot’s attention felt slow in shifting, his skin pleasantly warmed by the light from Evajean. But he was able to focus on the thing out in the water and, after a moment, he saw it breach. It was one of the creatures, the same as those that’d chased them in the truck and had eaten Melvin. They were swimming in the Salt Lake, doing laps around Moroni’s temple. This is where they had come from, then. They were beings from the same realm as the mad king.

The crazies had dropped away as they progressed along the dock. A few swam along side, but most remained on the shore. Those on the temple kept their distance, too, jumping into the water as the sphere of light approached. Soon the path between Elliot and Evajean and the steps leading to the top of the temple was entirely clear. At the top of the pyramid, hovering above the apex, was a purple ball of light, no bigger than a man. Elliot could barely make out a flow of energy coming from this, erupting up into the sky. He looked up and saw it spread away into the distance in all directions. The clouds above shimmered. The temple was the source of the creatures and, it seemed, the barrier as well.

Evajean stopped walking. They were within only paces of the temple’s stone steps. The light no longer came from her but, instead, from all around them. Elliot could feel it inside his body, shedding heat as it burst forth. Evajean whispered and, over the sound of the water and the calls of the crazies, he heard her.

“We’re nearly done,” she said.

There was a moment, the briefest of flashes, when Elliot wanted to turn and run, to return to Virginia and let the world end without him. He could still save Evajean, even as he’d failed to save Callie and Clarine. But the moment passed, so quickly he barely remembered it. He turned and put his arms around Evajean, squeezing her against his chest, smelling her hair and the dust in her clothes. Her jacket smelled of Hope, too, the dog’s scent rubbed deeply in by all the times she’d cradled him close to her.

“Then we finish it,” he said into her ear.

She nodded and pulled away. She looked up into his face and smiled. “I think we already have,” she said. “It’s over. He just doesn’t know it yet.” She tilted her head in the direction of the temple’s peak.

Elliot looked-and would have fallen back except for the supreme calm that had washed over him earlier. Moroni climbed from his fortress, a beast easily matching the horrors he had wrought.

Arms clawed up the sides of the temple, dozens of them, twisting and loose like tentacles but with recognizable joints and huge hands. These were covered in fingers, grey and slick and hooking out in all directions, like a carnival freak in a jar. The arms pulled the mad king’s weight out of the water, a semicircle of toothy flesh that surrounded the pyramid on three sides. It was like a hood unveiling, as if the temple being prepared for rain or protected with shade. This slid upward until it had reached the temple’s height and then came forward and down, smothering the stone and steps. The arms continued all across its surface, groping bristles of vaguely human appendages. The palm of each opened into a black hole, not a mouth, but an empty cavity, out of which came a thousand screeching babbles, the calls of the crazies, but terribly magnified and shrill.