The Wicked (The Righteous)

by Michael Wallace

  Diego held each of their hands in an unrelenting grip. He still wasn’t talking, but there was nothing wrong with his appetite. He looked up at David with wide, unquestioning eyes. David felt something stir as he met the boy’s gaze.

  This was what a father felt, he thought. A fierce desire to protect his child from harm, to destroy anyone who would hurt that child. A part of him was glad those people had died. Especially Caleb Kimball and the other one—what was it?—Christopher. What kind of monster would starve a child, try to burn him alive?

  He looked up to see Miriam watching him. “They’ll take him away,” she said in a soft voice. “Look for his family. Diego has relatives somewhere. Everybody does.”

  “Maybe. But if not. . .”

  “If not, do you think they’ll let him stay with polygamists?”

  “I’m not a polygamist. You aren’t, either. Maybe together. . .”

  “David.”

  He said nothing, just waited for the inevitable. This was where she said something she couldn’t take back, where she pulled away. The moment was gone, she was just another follower of his brother, and if his instincts were right, she’d imagined herself the wife of a great leader. Why a woman with her strength and intelligence would want to be the second wife of any man—even Jacob—he couldn’t quite understand, but whatever else Miriam was, she was a believer.

  She cleared her throat, began again. “David, there’s something going on here, something around your brother. He’s gathering people. They find him, whether they are looking or not. Fernie, Eliza, me, and now you. Maybe even Diego. If the Lord wants it, he’ll stay with us.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I do. But I also know that many are called, but few are chosen. You’ve been called, but will you accept the calling? Or will you fall back into sin? If you regress, if you choose Satan, I won’t have anything to do with you.”

  “And if I accept the calling?”

  “Then I’ll go to Jacob and ask if I can be your wife.”

  David stared at her, then a smile spread across his face. “Isn’t that backwards? First the prophet, then the husband, and then the woman finds out? I don’t know about Jacob, but nobody has asked me yet.”

  Miriam blushed, her confident expression dropping for the first time he could remember. “That is, I mean, if you want, well, I didn’t mean to. . .”

  He came around, put his free hand on her cheek. Diego stood between them, looking up at each of them in turn. “I do want it, Sister Miriam. I want it more than anything, and that’s why I think I’ve got a chance to beat this addiction.”

  He wanted to kiss her, then, but knew she’d pull away. Not yet, she’d say. You need to prove it, first.

  David vowed not to disappoint her.

  Chapter Twenty-eight:

  They followed the footsteps through Witch’s Warts. After the first hundred feet or so, beyond where boys came to hunt lizards or carve their names in the sandstone with butter knives, there were few footsteps and it wasn’t difficult to find where the Disciple had come through with Diego. A pair of large prints, and a second pair, lightly pressing the sand. In the other direction, a single set of tracks.

  Jacob and Fernie went first, speaking in low tones. Miriam and David followed. They held Diego’s hand, one on either side. The boy still wasn’t talking, but he had warmed to Miriam and David, never leaving their side now that Madeline had returned to Oregon with her mother. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Child Protective Services came for him. Hopefully, they’d located one of the boy’s relatives, so he wouldn’t simply pass into foster care.

  Eliza lingered behind, caught up in memories. She’d done her share of exploring the fringes of the sandstone maze as a child, remembered one time when she was thirteen when a second cousin had led her to a sandstone arch, tried to kiss her. She’d pushed him away, laughing. His hurt look had been sweet, really. She wondered what had become of him. A Lost Boy, she thought.

  But the violence of her abduction at the hands of Gideon Kimball subsumed all other memories. Witch’s Warts had a sinister feel to it now. The whisper of the wind sounded like gossiping voices, the hoodoos were like silent sentinels, frowning down on the party. Water from last month’s rain still collected in sinkholes eaten into the rock, the dark sheen on their surfaces hiding unknown depths. Most would be a few inches deep, but she saw one at the convergence of so many rivulets it looked like it concealed a pit deep enough to drown in. It was a sinkhole much like the one where Gideon had murdered Jacob’s grandfather, where he’d then met his own death at Eliza’s hand. She looked away.

  “Are we looking for anything in particular?” Miriam asked. “Because we’re probably trashing a lot of evidence.”

  Jacob stopped. They stepped into the shade of a massive thrust of sandstone. Eliza shivered. The others would be enjoying the cooler air out of the sun. She’d just as soon stay in the open.

  “Nothing specific,” he said, “but I have some questions about Witch’s Warts. As far as I can tell, Caleb Kimball wasn’t a party to the original Lost Boy plot to take over the church, but he knew his way across. I don’t know if he entered Blister Creek at night, but he certainly left at night. How did he find his way through this maze in the dark? We didn’t see any flashlights.”

  Eliza said, “He said an angel led him.”

  “Not likely.”

  “A demon, then. Someone.”

  “I’m not ready to ascribe supernatural elements to Caleb’s delusions,” Jacob said. “Anyway, there’s something about this place that’s allowing enemies in and out of Blister Creek.”

  “We should just fence off the whole thing,” Eliza said. “Then it can never be used for that again.”

  “It’s eighteen square miles,” he said. “That’s a lot of fence. And this isn’t our land, anyway. Abraham Christianson is the prophet in Blister Creek.”

  “I don’t know about the rest of you,” Fernie said, “but I’m ready to go back to Zarahemla. That’s our home now. There’s too much scheming going on here, whether it’s Elder Christianson or the Lost Boys.”

  Jacob put a hand on her arm. “It’s not that easy. We’re intertwined with Blister Creek, and not just spiritually. I’ll bet ninety percent of the people at Zarahemla have cousins here, brothers, sisters, parents, children. We’re trying to provide a sanctuary for these people, and for those who’ve been driven out of their community. Remember what you said about being atomized?”

  “I remember,” Fernie said softly.

  “That’s our purpose.” He turned back to the others. “We’re gathering a community. The righteous, the wicked, the wanderers. Those who are lost and those who are found. I don’t know how many people we need to bring into our common cause, or even why, but I accept that now.”

  Eliza looked at Jacob with the others gathered around him. Somehow, they came to his side: Eliza, Fernie, Sister Miriam, and now David and even Diego, if it was the will of the Lord. Each one refined by fire, purified—she would reclaim that word from the Chosen Ones—and fiercely dedicated to Jacob’s cause.

  “An army of the righteous,” David said. A half-smile played at his lips. “And I suppose Eliza is your chief henchman. Bashing in the heads of the Kimball brothers, one by one, like so many zombies.”

  “Come on, be serious,” Eliza said.

  “I am serious. Well, not the zombie part. I don’t know what’s going on, I’m just glad to be on the right side of the conflict for once.”

  “Who is this Taylor Junior I’ve heard you talk about?” Sister Miriam interrupted. “He’s another Kimball brother?”

  Jacob nodded. “He disappeared after Gideon Kimball died and the FBI arrested the father, Elder Kimball. I got caught up in things for a few years, finishing school, my residency, then the events at Zarahemla, and almost forgot about him for a while.”

  “I never forgot about Taylor Junior,” Eliza said. “Father wanted me to marry him, the man tried to force himself
on me, you can bet I didn’t forget. And nobody ever caught the jerk. I bet he still plans to marry me and take his place as head of the church. To reclaim what he thinks is his.”

  “One more name and picture for the Book of the Lost,” Jacob said. “Taylor Kimball, Junior. And we’ll move him to the front of our search. I want to know where he is and what he’s doing.”

  “It might take a while,” Miriam said. “He could be anywhere.”

  David shook his head. “I don’t think so. He’s a Lost Boy. Either he’s busy destroying himself with drugs and alcohol, or he’s still scheming. He’ll have others. Lost Boys, maybe wives. And they’ll be in the desert. Always the desert.”

  “We’re desert dwellers, too,” Jacob said. “We’re more than a match for whatever they’ve got.”

  As they retraced their steps, Fernie took Eliza’s arm and held her back. “You see what’s happening, don’t you?”

  “Jacob is starting to believe.”

  “Not all of it. There’s just a crack in his armor, caused by what happened when he gave David a blessing.”

  “But he’s starting to believe there’s a higher purpose,” Eliza said. “That we’re doing something here.”

  “And he’s gathering his followers. You, me, Miriam, and now David. Smart, capable people. We can repair a car engine, grow our own food, shoot firearms. We live in a walled compound.”

  “You believe it, don’t you?” Eliza said. “You think he’s the One Mighty and Strong, and you think the world is coming to an end.”

  Fernie fell silent, then slowed Eliza down again, until they walked a good fifty feet behind the others. “You know I’m a dreamer, right? That sometimes my dreams tell me what I should do, or seem to hint at bad things before they happen.”

  “What did you dream this time?”

  “I was walking through Salt Lake City and the streets were empty. Huge snowflakes fell from the sky and then I realized they were flakes of cold ash. They coated the streets. The windows had blown out on the office towers and I could smell sulfur. I heard Jacob calling my name. He came walking beneath the Eagle Gate, his boots leaving footprints in the ash. I started to run toward him. And then I saw someone or something following him. It was a shadow that slipped from building to building. I felt a lump of ice in my stomach and I couldn’t open my mouth to scream a warning.” She hesitated. “I woke up just when the shadow had reached his side.”

  Eliza licked her lips. The skin on the back of her neck prickled and she shivered, even though it had to be eighty-five degrees. “Sometimes a dream is just a dream.”

  “Or just a nightmare, in this case. I know,” Fernie added. “But this dream faded slowly. I can still smell that sulfur, if I think about it.”

  “Does it mean something?”

  “Maybe,” Fernie said. “I think it might be the something.”

  “What do you mean, do you think the end is coming?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “People have been predicting the end of the world for a long time,” Eliza said. “Probably started about five minutes after they figured out how the world began. They’ve all been wrong so far.”

  “Everyone is wrong about the world ending until it does end.” Fernie hesitated. “Are you staying with us this time?”

  Eliza thought it over. She planned to return with them to Zarahemla, then go back to Salt Lake, register for classes, look for a job. And yet she felt the pull of her own family and people. In spite of everything, even knowing her father would try dirty tricks to get her into a polygamist marriage with one of the members of his quorum, she couldn’t deny she felt some of the same things that bound Fernie to the lifestyle.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do know. I think you’re planning to go back to Salt Lake, am I right?”

  “Yes,” she said, with some hesitation. “It’s the right place for me now.”

  “We’ll support you, of course. But be careful.”

  Eliza remembered the men who’d approached her at Red Butte Gardens. She hadn’t thought about them since getting swept up in Caleb Kimball’s cult. Those men knew where she worked, and while they weren’t guilty of anything beyond weird behavior, it was enough to give her pause. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

  They were emerging from Witch’s Warts, just to the side of the temple. A glint caught the angel Moroni on the main tower and hit her eye. Her thoughts were a jumble of images: burning tires, Benita staring out from the window, the glassy look in Caleb’s eyes when she’d crushed in his skull. She’d seen that look on Gideon Kimball’s face, too. Two brothers dead, the more dangerous one still alive.

  Taylor Junior, where are you?

  Epilogue:

  With the FBI back in Blister Creek, Abraham Christianson decided that the Ghost Cliffs were too dangerous a meeting spot. His blood simmered whenever he saw their Lincoln driving around town. They sat in the diner, munching burgers and coming out to sit on the hood of their car and eat creemies, just watching people pass. Brother Peterson refused to serve them at first and Brother Wentworth at the gas station wouldn’t pump their gas, until Abraham intervened and told the town to cooperate. But his blood simmered when he saw Agent Krantz smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk near the chapel.

  Worse was when they came to the house. He’d been forced to sit with them in his den, while they subjected him to an array of tedious interviews. Agent Fayer had grilled him again last night, reminded him of his promises to the federal prosecutors during the last investigation. She was LDS—Salt Lake Mormon—and with her Mormon background knew all the right questions to ask. Did you know Caleb Kimball? When was the last time you saw him? Has he had any contact with his father in prison? How about Taylor Junior, know anything about him?

  Abraham told the truth as often as he could, lied when that was impossible. Some of their questions drew uncomfortably close to facts that he would just as soon keep concealed. Other questions were clearly designed to trap him in a lie. He saw these traps and sidestepped them.

  Agent Fayer kept after him relentlessly, coming back to questions, digging deeper and persisting when he tried to deflect her onto less fruitful avenues. She occasionally tried to force his temper. He only just managed to hold his emotions in check.

  One time, she rose to her feet just as Agent Krantz entered, carrying a beverage in a thermos, which he insisted was hot chocolate. No doubt it was coffee. He’d have thrown the man out for that, if he thought he could get away with it. Fayer gave Krantz an exaggerated shrug as the two agents passed at the entrance to his den. She leaned forward and whispered in Krantz’s ears, then the two of them glanced back at Abraham Christianson.

  Krantz leaned back in the chair recently vacated by his partner. It groaned a protest at his extra weight. “I want to apologize for my partner. She can be zealous at times. I know that you want to cooperate and I promise, we won’t carry on with this any longer than necessary. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Caleb Kimball’s troubled childhood. I think you were saying something about the time he poured gasoline on a dog and set it on fire.”

  “I’m tired, Agent Krantz. I know that exchange with Agent Fayer was theater for my benefit. And I know the tag-teaming is designed to wear me down, and that you might take turns playing good cop, bad cop. I’ve got a ranch to run, and another one in Canada to worry about, as well as a church to shepherd. Perhaps if you told me what you’re looking for, we could save each other a lot of time.”

  “I’m looking for Taylor Kimball, Junior.”

  “You are? Whatever for?”

  He was surprised in more ways than one. And alarmed. For a moment, he thought that Krantz had been speaking to the woman, that he’d figured out what Abraham was doing in pointing Eliza toward the desert compound outside Vegas.

  “You mean apart from bringing him to justice on charges of fraud, conspiracy, attempted murder, and accessory to murder? Isn’t that enough?”

  “But why now? It has been se
veral years. I can see why he’d be on a most wanted list somewhere, but is this really an active investigation?”

  “There are a few loose ends that are. . .troubling, to say the least. We know how the conspiracies work among the Lost Boys. So now we have a Lost Boy—another Kimball son, no less—at the heart of a doomsday cult. They made a suicide pact and there are few survivors. We’re trying to piece together if this is more like Heaven’s Gate or Jonestown.”

  “I’m not sure I see the difference,” Abraham said.

  “The Heaven’s Gate cult killed themselves with little warning. In March of 1997 thirty-nine people destroyed themselves, believing it was the only way to exit their human bodies and join the spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.”

  “How could anyone believe such a thing?”

  “Indeed,” Krantz said, dryly. “People believe the craziest things.” He cleared his throat. “Jonestown is more horrific, of course, with over nine hundred people dead at their compound in the South American jungle, including children murdered by their own parents.”

  “Yes, I know all about drinking the Kool-Aid.”

  “Flavor Aid, actually, but that’s close enough. They’d murdered a congressman and felt the walls closing in. The cult leaders decided that now was the time for everyone to die, but it might not have happened if not for outside pressures. Is that what happened here? Your daughter came and upset the balance and so they all burned themselves alive, afraid the authorities would soon be moving in?”

  “Please, don’t say that to Eliza. She’s going to blame herself enough as it is.”

  “I won’t. And I don’t believe it, anyway. These people wanted the end to come. And even if Eliza sped up the timeline, they are responsible for their own actions. She did nothing but try to help people leave the cult. But that doesn’t answer the question of what was going through the feverish minds of this so-called Disciple and his followers.”