The first hint of trouble had come when two girls had gone missing from Maesa, Vernal. Vague whisperings that they had been abducted by Messian’s cult members had circulated for a while around town but with no firm leads and no probable cause to enter the cult compound deep inside Black Dragon Canyon the police had been unable to obtain a warrant from the District Attorney to search the premises. Time had gone by, the two girls still missing despite television statements from their distraught families and concerned law enforcement officials, but then just two days ago the Sheriff’s Department received a call that changed everything.
A body had been found just north of the canyon, that of a thirteen–year–old girl. Robbie’s guts convulsed as he recalled that terrible day when he and four other officers had arrived at the scene to find the waif–like teenager’s remains slumped in a ravine. Although the desert scavengers had got to her body before the long–distance endurance runner who had stumbled upon the corpse while training in the blistering heat of the Utah wilderness, there had been more than sufficient biological material remaining to identify her as Lorraine Feyer, from Maeser, one of the missing girls. An autopsy confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted, and in a remarkable testimony to modern technology the coroner had been able to extract a small amount of foreign DNA from her loins that had been conclusively matched to one Warren Blaise, a member of Messian’s apocalyptic cult. Regardless of whether Blaise had acted alone or in concert with the cult, it was the break the Sheriff’s department had been waiting for.
Within eight hours of the autopsy report being filed the Sheriff’s team had been assembled, briefed and had drawn weapons from the armory, just in time for the DA to hurriedly sign the warrant that would allow them to finally smash their way into whatever house of horrors Messian had created amid the crumbling ruins of Dragon Canyon’s ghost town.
‘Three teams of four,’ Bolt announced, ‘one each at the front and back, the third acting as a sniper team up on the hills for top cover. We’ll go in the front and flush them out and the rear team can mop up anybody who tries to get out the back door. Any questions?’
All twelve officers shook their heads grimly, everybody wanting this over with and eager to liberate whoever was trapped inside the insane leader’s deranged cult. Robbie checked the magazine on his shotgun, loaded with shot specially designed for close range and minimum spread that would limit the chances of collateral damage. Like everyone else on the team, he knew that this would be close and dangerous. His bullet–proof vest was hot and heavy but he wore it without question: there were no television–style mavericks in real life police enforcement, and those that tried to be were soon either out of a career or lying dead in the street. Robbie wanted to get home to his family that night, and if he and his team did their jobs right perhaps at least one abducted girl might get home to hers too.
‘Let’s move out!’
Robbie hefted the shotgun into a prone position and followed Bolt’s team at a jog as they advanced up the desiccated canyon. There was little sound this early in the dawn and the air was refreshingly cool, so much so that it seemed hard to imagine that within an hour or two the sun would hammer down mercilessly on the desert and temperatures would soar to the high eighties before noon.
Messian’s cult hideout was located deep inside one of the canyon’s myriad washes that ran down from the high mesas. Although the area received little rainfall, when it did come it was typically torrential, provoking flash floods and dangerous conditions for the unwary. Plenty of folk had been drowned by water rushing down from rainstorms miles away that they may not even have seen or heard.
The sniper team broke off into a rugged gulley to the right and began the long climb to a ridge that overlooked the cult’s compound. Aerial photographs obtained by the local police from light aircraft and drones had given the team high resolution images with which to plan their assault, but the limited access to the area meant there was no way for a large force to make the initial attack. Instead, thirty more police and Sheriff’s department officers were stationed a short distance behind them at the mouth of the canyon, along with ambulances and fire teams on stand–by, waiting earnestly for news of the armed response team’s raid.
Robbie followed Bolt to an outcrop in the canyon where it turned sharply. He knew from memory that the compound was built on the slopes nearby, elevated from the canyon floor but in a good position both to conceal itself and also to collect water run–off. Messian had a strict code of living independently, “of the grid” as many of the prepper communities liked to call it. The compound was arrayed with solar panels built into the roof of a long, low two–storey building that looked somewhat like a ranch, and a small custom–built wind farm had been erected on a nearby ridge to take advantage of the brisk winds that moaned across the hot desert. Robbie knew from the briefing that the ranch itself contained at least twenty individual rooms and a large church in the center where Messian preached to his brainwashed followers of the imminent End of Days, which had of course been “imminent” for several thousand years.
‘Bravo Team in position.’
Bolt’s radio crackled and hissed, but the volume had already been turned down enough to prevent it from alerting any of the slumbering cult’s members to their presence.
‘Charlie Team in position.’
Bolt turned to Robbie and his two companions as they saw Bravo Team crouching amid dense foliage behind the compound, which was surrounded by gates and chain link fences topped with razor wire. Robbie could see the severed heads of poisonous desert snakes tied in their hundreds to the fences, bared fangs glistening in the dawn light and acting as a grim deterrent. Robbie knew that the cult’s members partook in something called “snake handling”, believing that their faith in Jesus was more powerful than the serpent’s bite. That alone had cost the cult a few members over the past four years, convincing the Sheriff’s office that some members must be partaking in the illegal practice and convincing Robbie that blind faith of any kind was a really bad idea.
One of the team cradled a solid metal ram under his arms as he looked at Lieutenant Bolt.
‘Ready?’ Bolt asked.
Robbie nodded, as did their two companions, and Bolt pressed the safety switch on his weapon to “off” as the other of Robbie’s fellow officers hefted a pair of steel croppers in his hands, ready to cut through the chain link fences.
‘Go, now!’
Robbie sprinted to the fence alongside his colleague, ready to give covering fire as the officer next to him slid to his knees in the dust and clipped through the fence, tearing a man–sized hole into it and then leaping back out of the way as Bolt and Robbie jumped through, their bullet–proof vests more than a match for the snake fangs. The other two men followed them inside the compound moments later and they ran together to the front of the building.
The officer with the ram dashed up onto the porch of the ranch and hit the front door at full speed, the ram smashing into the locks with a crack that echoed down the canyon like a gunshot. Robbie pinned himself against the wall as he heard shouts and cries of alarm from inside the compound as the ram smashed again and then a third time and the door’s locks were finally overcome and the door smashed inward.
‘Armed police, get on the ground!’ Bolt roared as the team plunged into the building.
Robbie followed Bolt closely and moved to the left as Bolt took the right side of the hall to give the rest of the team a clear line of sight. The interior of the ranch was dark and Robbie almost gagged as the stench of stale ammonia and faeces hit him.
‘This is a house of the Gods!’ a voice screamed.
Like a vision from hell Robbie saw a half–naked man stagger into the hall, his white bed–shirt undone, a shotgun held in both hands and his eyes wide with rage and terror as he aimed the weapon at the officers rushing toward him.
***
III
Robbie fired past Bolt without conscious thought, an instinctive response to the sight
of the rifle being brandished at them. The shotgun blasted with a brief flash of light and the shot hit the man in the chest and hurled him backwards as his own weapon clattered uselessly onto the wooden floorboards at his feet. From outside, Robbie heard the rest of the team open up with their loud–hailers, a deliberate attempt to make the occupants of the cult house believe that there were literally hundreds of officers outside.
‘Armed police, get on the ground!’
Bolt staggered to one side, the shot having gone off inches from his ears as Robbie rushed forward. His heart thumped in his chest and he barely noticed the dead man’s eyes still wide open, a bloodied wound across his chest as he turned left into a small room and saw two women cowering beneath stained sheets.
‘Easy,’ Robbie said as he skittered to a halt, his voice hoarse with tension as the rest of the team thundered past in the corridor behind him. ‘Show me your hands.’
The two women stared up at him and one of them dropped the sheets to reveal her hands. As Robbie looked at her, the other woman’s face collapsed into rage and she lunged at him with a blade that flickered in the weak light filtering through threadbare curtains.
Robbie reacted instinctively as his training took over and he flipped the shotgun over in his grasp. The butt of the weapon whipped up and smashed under the charging woman’s jaw before the blade could reach him, and in an instant of time he saw her face twisted with grotesque rage, her eyes wild. The butt cracked loudly as it impacted and the woman’s eyes rolled up into their sockets as she flipped over backwards and landed on the thin mattress at his boots, the knife falling from her grasp.
The other woman recoiled away from Robbie and the blade, the role of captor and abductee clear for him to see.
‘Stay where you are!’ Robbie snapped as he tried to inject some small measure of compassion into his voice.
The woman nodded frantically as Robbie grabbed the blade and then turned, hurrying back out into the corridor as he heard fresh shouts and cries competing with bellowed police orders to get down and stay down. Bolt and the team stormed out of sight into the darkened heart of the building, and Robbie was about to dash in pursuit when he stopped short and stared in amazement at the wall beside him.
Across its surface were lines and lines of what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics scrawled in a jagged, uneven hand as though the author of the works were unable to see quite where they were writing. Unlike the orderly patterns Robbie remembered seeing in text books at school, the hieroglyphics inside the ranch undulated up and down like the waves of some bizarre sea.
Robbie looked ahead into the darkness and saw nothing but shadows as he heard Bolt’s booming voice echo through the ranch.
‘Armed police, get down!’
‘This is a house of the Gods!’ another voice screamed in reply.
Then, Bolt’s voice once again. ‘Get on the ground, don’t do it!’
And then the dark heart of the building vanished into a haze of flame as a terrific blast ripped through the corridor and Robbie was hurled aside and slammed into the wall as a wave of heat washed over him and flames billowed across the ceiling above his head. The woman he had liberated screamed as she was thrown back into the room from which she had emerged and Robbie tumbled in behind her and crashed down onto his belly.
A thick pall of smoke billowed into the room, flames flickering like dancing demons in the corridor beyond as Robbie tried to stand upright. His legs felt weak and he could hear nothing but a ringing in his ears. He managed to get up on one knee and sucked in a lungful of air to try to clear his head, but all he got was thick smoke that scorched his throat.
He grabbed the terrified woman and pointed to the building’s entrance, where sunlight still penetrated the smoke boiling through the corridor.
‘Get out, now!’
The woman staggered away toward the light as Robbie hauled himself to his feet and stumbled out of the room, then turned and headed deeper into the building.
The interior of the ranch had been scorched by the ferocity of the blast, flames roaring in twisting vortexes as though alive and reaching out for him. Heat billowed in heavy clouds toward him, blocking the way to the interior and his colleagues. Massive pillars and timbers collapsed in clouds of spiralling embers riding black waves of smoke as Robbie’s eyes filled with tears from the pain and the heat. He staggered backwards against the wall and was about to flee when he heard the crying.
Robbie turned, yanked a kerchief from the pocket of his fatigues and wrapped it around his face as he tried to draw a breath. The flames were rising higher, fuelled by the hot air from outside being drawn in through the funnel of the entrance corridor, the flames reaching out for him like searing fingers that hissed as they wound their way closer.
Robbie felt panic rise up inside him but he mastered his fear and stumbled further into the blazing ranch to see the shattered remnants of what looked like some kind of church, an altar at one end burning furiously. To his horror, amid the collapsed timbers and scattered chairs were countless corpses, the bodies of Messian’s followers and fallen police officers, arms twisted and broken, uniforms and robes burning in furious pyres. Robbie moved toward the closest officer but he knew that he could not help any of them, that the blast had done its terrible work in an instant.
The crying attracted his attention again and he turned to see a cage of some kind set into a revetment in one wall, and within it the form of a young girl. Her head was bowed, her hands covering her face as she screamed at the floor, her voice rising desperately above the flames.
‘..el….me..’
Robbie turned toward the cage and stumbled toward it, flames dancing around him and up through the shattered roof above as pillars of black smoke soared into patches of blue sky visible between burning rafters as Robbie heard the girl scream again.
‘…Ro… me…’
He staggered over the corpse of a young woman, half of her face burned off, the other staring wide–eyed into oblivion. Robbie clambered over the gruesome remains and stumbled on weak legs to the cage, and then he heard the girl’s screams clearly for the first time.
‘Rob…bie!’
Robbie froze in place, almost superstitious with awe as the young girl’s scream reached his ear. For a brief moment in time he wondered how on earth she could have known his name and then a hand reached out of the cage with shocking speed and grabbed his wrist. Robbie looked down at the girl, barely visible in the smoke and the darkness, no more than fourteen years of age, her grip vice–like on his arm as she spoke to him.
‘Release me!’
Robbie placed one gloved hand atop hers. ‘It’s going to be fine honey, just stay there and…’
‘Get down!’ the girl screamed at him as she yanked her hand away.
Robbie dropped as though his life depended upon it, and as he did so a massive beam crashed down behind him and slammed into the floor, clouds of burning debris and smoke smothering them both. Robbie reached for the cage door, saw the thick padlock keeping the girl entrapped within, and he aimed his shotgun at it.
‘Get back!’
The girl cowered in one corner of her cage as Robbie fired twice. The rounds smashed the padlock and he yanked the cage open, the metal warm to the touch. The young girl within launched herself at him and flung her arms about his neck with enough force to almost knock him over, her waif–like legs about his waist.
Robbie caught her and held onto her as he turned and desperately sought a way out of the burning ranch, jerking the shotgun up and down in his grip to pump a fresh round into the chamber. Thick smoke obscured the building around him and he realized that he could not see a way out. To his amazement, above the roaring flames he heard the girl’s voice in his ear.
‘Follow the star.’
Robbie stared about him in disbelief, wondering what she was talking about. Then to his right he saw a corridor, above which was a five–pointed Star of David etched into the wood itself. Robbie hurried toward it, hoping aga
inst hope that he wouldn’t break a leg on the debris inside the ranch as he ran with his eyes almost closed against the heat and the smoke, crouching down as much as he could with the girl clinging to him as they plunged into the corridor.
The smoke thinned out, the air a little clearer but the heat still stifling as Robbie followed the corridor through the darkness. He could hear timbers above creaking as they were weakened by flames, could smell the smoke following him as the inferno intensified behind them.
The girl’s voice whispered to him as though from a dream.
‘Gun, your left.’
Robbie reacted instantly, bringing his shotgun up as a figure lunged out of the blackness toward him from a doorway to his left, a pistol in their hands and a wild gleam in their eye as they aimed the weapon at him.
‘This is a house of the…’
Robbie fired, the shot hitting the gunman in his chest. The light of life vanished from his eyes and he collapsed onto his knees, leaning against the wall and staring into the darkness as though he were waiting for somebody, his heart still pumping blood from his wound.
Robbie pushed past the corpse and ran down the corridor, sliding the shotgun through his grasp and pumping a fresh round into the chamber as he moved. Ahead he could see a thin, bright rectangle of light beaming past the jam of a door that must lead out of the ranch and to the rear of the building. He was almost there when the girl’s voice whispered into his ear.
‘Behind you!’
Robbie whirled and saw in the corridor Abraham Messian, his robes aflame as he staggered toward them with a shotgun in his grasp, his wild hair burning and his skin blistering from countless burns and lesions.
The Genesis Cypher (Warner & Lopez Book 6) Page 2
