Blood of the Faithful

by Michael Wallace

  “Ezekiel! Hello?”

  It was his brother Bill.

  Ezekiel almost wept with relief. When he could find his voice, he screamed back. “Over here! I’m over here! Bill!”

  Bill shouted something back and Ezekiel had to scream for him to repeat it.

  “I’m not moving!” Bill said. “Don’t want . . . lost. Come . . . voice.”

  “I’m coming!”

  Bill kept shouting while Ezekiel picked his way through the angled fins. For a few desperate minutes he thought he’d be forced deeper and deeper until he could no longer hear his brother’s voice, but then the labyrinth thinned in what he thought was the west. He was able to climb over the top of an enormous hump of slickrock, jump a narrow fissure—this one no more than two feet wide—and then slide-scramble down a steeper slope of slickrock, grabbing onto sagebrush clumps to keep from tumbling out of control. Moments later, he came around another fin to find Bill there with his hands cupped to his mouth, shouting.

  Ezekiel’s eyes watered up, and it was all he could do to keep from sobbing. He rushed at his brother to hug him, but Bill pushed him away, laughing.

  “Whoa, don’t be gay.” Nevertheless, he looked relieved. “What happened? Where’d you go?”

  Ezekiel told him, then asked where Gideon and Taylor Junior had gone.

  “The jerks had bikes in the cemetery. They jumped on and rode off to town. I knew when I didn’t see you that they’d done something and I’d better come back and find you or Dad would kill me.”

  Ezekiel started to shake. It was only the desert. Only rocks. Only a few miles from home. And Bill had known where he was. The town would have organized a massive search. He wouldn’t have been lost for more than a few hours. He hadn’t been in any real danger.

  “I hate them,” Ezekiel said. “I hope they die.”

  “Don’t worry about it. They’ll get their reward.”

  What Bill meant, Ezekiel thought all these many years later, as he led his father into Witch’s Warts behind the temple, was that everyone expected Gideon and Taylor Junior to end up as Lost Boys, denied wives and driven from the community. Bill surely hadn’t known that their “reward” would be a pair of violent deaths.

  Ezekiel studied the rock formations behind the temple and tried to pick out landmarks.

  Gideon had died a few minutes’ hike from here, killed by Eliza Christianson. He’d tried to abduct her as his wife, and she’d split his skull with a hunk of sandstone. And Taylor Junior had died even closer, maybe a hundred yards away. He was killed in a violent struggle with Brother Jacob.

  “I’m not going any farther until you tell me what this is about,” his father said.

  Ezekiel ignored him and used the thin light of the moon to search the clearing between two giant humps of sandstone. He took his shovel and poked tentatively at the sand. After five or six pokes, the tip clanked against metal. He shoveled away sand.

  Smoot came over. “What is that? What are you doing?”

  Ezekiel had cleared away the upper sand, but didn’t want to damage the contents of the hole, so he rammed the shovel into the pile he’d excavated and dropped to his knees. He scooped away handfuls of sand, tugging gently at the burlap sack to get first one side free, then the other. His father squatted next to him.

  “Stand back unless you want to die,” Ezekiel said in a sharp voice.

  “What are you talking about, let me—” Suddenly, Father stopped and scrambled back. “No! You didn’t.”

  Ezekiel rose, heaving out the burlap sack, which clanked, metal on metal. He set it on the pile of sand next to the shovel. Then he opened the mouth of the sack and reached inside. There was no need to wave his father back—the older man was a good dozen feet away now.

  Ezekiel’s fingers closed on a sword hilt. He eyed his father one last time, then drew the weapon out of the sack. He held it up and turned it so the older man could see the moonlight glint off the metal.

  “Father in heaven,” Smoot said, his voice pinched and terrified. “Forgive me. Do not smite me. Please, I beg thee for forgiveness.”

  “Why would He smite you?” Ezekiel asked. His confidence had increased even as his father seemed overcome with terror.

  “Because I am a fool. A blind, wicked fool. I told you not to enter the Holy of Holies. But I should have known. I should have guessed you’d do it anyway. As your father, I should have stopped you.”

  “I received a vision, Father. I was only obeying what I saw.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “And you wouldn’t have been able to stop me, because I have been called by the Lord. Not even the hosts of Satan could have stood in my way.”

  Ezekiel set aside the weapon and pulled out the other object. It was heavy and flat, with cords dangling off the end.

  “The breastplate of Laban,” his father whispered.

  “I woke at night,” Ezekiel said, after setting this object down too, “and I found myself barefoot walking up the steps to the temple doors. I passed through the dark halls of the temple without seeing, but led by the spirit every step of the way.”

  “Sweet heavens.”

  “Even then, I wasn’t sure I was not still dreaming until I stood in the Holy of Holies, my hands resting on the cedar chest. There were no electric lights, no candles. But the carved cherubim were glowing with a white heat, so bright I couldn’t stare at them. That’s when I came fully awake. I knew I had been led there, but in my fear worried that I’d been tricked by Satan. If I opened the chest, I would be destroyed. But what could I do?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “I had no choice.”

  Ezekiel had rehearsed these words in his head again and again. Like most of the men on the Quorum of the Twelve, Elder Smoot was more practical than mystical. But he must have thought about the sword and breastplate a thousand times. He must have wondered why Jacob didn’t wield them. Why, if Jacob were the One Mighty and Strong, he seemed so spiritually weak.

  “So you . . . took them?” Smoot asked. “And buried them here? Why?”

  “I cannot tell you the things I saw, the beings who spoke to me. But know this, the Lord has commanded me to take these things. The final battle is approaching. I will wield the sword and breastplate when the forces of Satan descend upon our valley for the final time. I will cast aside the enemy and the Lord will enter our midst in all His glory. And then I will lead the saints into the Millennium as their prophet.”

  Smoot drew in his breath. “Brother Jacob is our prophet.”

  “Jacob was our prophet,” Ezekiel corrected. He approached his father, who flinched. “Jacob was called. Of course he was. But he turned away when given difficult commandments. When ordered to repent, he hardened his heart against the Lord. And so the Lord chose someone more worthy. I’m not perfect—you’re my father, you know that. But I will obey the Lord, my God, and that is why He chose me. Because I will obey without question.”

  “I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”

  “Father, listen to me.” Ezekiel took the older man by the shoulders. “The spirit repelled Jacob. It literally pushed him out the doors. It’s terrible, it makes me weep, but you can’t deny it. Our leader is a fallen prophet. The blessing of the Lord has been taken from him.”

  “And you . . . ?”

  “I have strapped on the breastplate and not died. I have held the Sword of Laban in my hand and not been smitten by an angel. No other man may do this and live. No man but the One Mighty and Strong.”

  “I don’t . . . I can’t.”

  “Touch the sword if you doubt me. Pick up the breastplate. You know what will happen.”

  His father pulled away with a groan and put his fists to his temples. “I don’t understand. Jacob saved us. His people love him. What do we do? Tell him to step down?”

  “Father,
no,” Ezekiel said. His father’s anguish touched his heart. “You don’t ask a false prophet to step down. What if he refuses?”

  “Then what? Drive him from Blister Creek?” Smoot let out a harsh bark. “Send him into the world to take his chances?”

  “Our people are too soft-hearted, too loyal. They would never let him go. And his wives would fight for him, Miriam and David. His sister, Eliza, when she returns.”

  “You said Miriam and David were with us. Are you lying?”

  “They’re with us,” Ezekiel said. “But it’s one thing to ask them to stand aside while we force Jacob to stand down. Another thing for them to watch us drive Jacob out of Blister Creek. Their loyalty will blind them to the will of the Lord.”

  Ezekiel turned away from his father and walked slowly back toward the objects he’d dug out of the ground. He picked up the blade and turned it over in his hands, his heart heavy. He took no pleasure in any of this. He turned around to face his father.

  “The Lord told me what to do,” Ezekiel said sadly. “The Lord commanded me to find Jacob Christianson and cut off his head.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Miriam listened for Jacob as he moved through the darkness west along the base of the Ghost Cliffs. When she could no longer hear him, she picked her way slowly to the east. There was just enough light that her straining eyes could pick out the forms of the larger boulders to her left. To the right lay the inky blackness of Witch’s Warts.

  Periodically, she put on her night vision goggles and climbed one of the boulders or sandstone fins to see how far her view carried.

  The best spot was on a hump of rock shaped like a two-story loaf of bread. It took a few minutes to find a way to climb the thing, but when she got up top, she knew she’d chosen the right place. The rock offered the perfect combination of height and isolation that would allow her an expansive view both east and west. Too bad she didn’t have the rifle; she could have propped it right over her backpack and enjoyed a wide range of fire.

  But Jacob had insisted on taking the rifle with him. She understood, she got it. He didn’t trust her, and probably with good reason. She wasn’t here to screw around. She was here to stop Chambers.

  The stone was warm, but the breeze picking up from the cliffs already had a bite to it, so she zipped up her jacket and made sure she knew how to get to the solar blanket if it kept growing colder. She checked her pistol ammunition by feel, then ate some beef jerky, even though she wasn’t hungry.

  Miriam turned on the goggles. The black turned to pale green and cast stones into sharp relief. The eyes of an animal glowed up at her from the sand below. A jackrabbit. She scanned the cliffs, both above and below. Nothing unusual caught her eye, but it was early yet.

  There was probably some overlap with Jacob’s position to the west, so she mostly looked east. Every twenty or thirty minutes an animal would pass along the desert floor below her. Some she recognized—a coyote, a mule deer—but some of the smaller animals were furtive, creeping shapes that she couldn’t identify.

  It had been several years since Miriam had sat on an extended stakeout, but she found her emotions following the same pattern as the hours crawled by. At first her attention was sharpened like a knife drawing back and forth across a whetstone, until it was well honed.

  But the edge dulled as time crawled by. First, her mind started to wander, thinking about her baby, her husband. Then thinking about her parents and her brother and wondering if they’d survived the war on the West Coast. She hadn’t heard from them for years, not since her mother and father tried to stage that ridiculous intervention to get her out of Blister Creek, believing she’d joined a cult. Right, like Miriam was that weak-minded. But surely her parents would think about her on occasion, wonder what had happened to their daughter. It filled her with an unexpected longing. Not regret for her path in life, exactly, but the sense of something lost.

  Miriam yawned and forced her attention back to the business at hand. One difference between tonight and the old FBI stakeouts was that she’d have had a gallon of black coffee on hand. The Word of Wisdom prevented hot drinks, but a little caffeine would surely come in handy about now.

  She was growing drowsy again when a high-pitched whine caught her ears. She was instantly alert. A few seconds passed before the whine cut out. She couldn’t pick it up again, no matter how she strained. But she was certain of what she’d heard. It was the same ATV as last night.

  No, there it was again. Definitely to the southeast this time. Faint, but clear. She looked, but couldn’t see anything through the tumble of Witch’s Warts.

  Could Jacob hear it too? Probably not; he was a mile or so to her west. Her hand went automatically to her backpack, where she found the radio and turned it on. After a moment of hesitation, she turned it off again.

  “Can’t risk it,” she said aloud. Even in a whisper, her voice startled her. Strange thing to voice the words instead of thinking them. “Chambers knows what frequency we use. What if he’s listening?”

  Don’t lie to yourself. You know what you’re doing.

  Well, yes. She knew. She wasn’t worried about Chambers listening in on a radio. The truth was that she didn’t want Jacob to know she’d heard the ATV. She wanted to handle Chambers on her own.

  A flashlight appeared on the edge of her vision, flaring white in her night vision goggles like a miniature sun. Miriam’s heart took a leap like a startled rabbit.

  Staying low, leaning against her backpack, she slid the goggles to her forehead to have a look. Her naked eyes took several seconds to adjust to the darkness. The light was nothing but a small penlight, a good two hundred yards away. It disappeared behind rocks, only to appear again.

  Miriam put on the goggles and dialed down the intensity so she could see the man behind the light. Only it wasn’t one man, it was two. One man had the flashlight; the other was pulling the cart through the soft sand. The cart was heaped with bulging sacks.

  Two men? There was a second traitor?

  The light kept coming toward her along the cliffs until it was about fifty yards away. Then it blinked out for good.

  Miriam turned up the goggles. The two people stood by the cart, discussing something in voices too low to hear. Without taking her eyes from them, Miriam touched a hand to her pistol holster, then to the knife sheathed at her side. She crawled backward in the darkness, looking for the rainwater fissure that had helped her scale the rock.

  She climbed down to the sandy valley floor and walked slowly through the darkness, pressed against the stone, the goggles still on. The men weren’t looking at her, instead turning their gaze up the cliff, but she still took no chances in her approach. Kick a pebble, stumble into sagebrush, and they’d whirl around and turn on the flashlight.

  She moved from boulder to boulder until she was about forty feet away, where she squatted behind a rock not much bigger than an overturned garbage can. Both men wore sidearms, but that only mattered if they could get their guns out and locate her in the darkness. She eased the pistol from its holster. From this distance, with this much time to aim, she could hardly miss. Two shots. They’d go down, one after the other.

  But who was that second person? Definitely a man; he had a beard and a masculine posture and height. But through the green glow of night vision, she couldn’t tell any more than that.

  It could be anyone.

  Anyone? Even David? Would she shoot her own husband if she thought he were smuggling food out of the valley? Of course not, most especially because he’d have a damn good reason for doing . . . well, whatever he was doing. Anyway, it wasn’t David. She felt ashamed that the thought would even cross her mind.

  Beyond that, who? Maybe one of the squatters, who’d infiltrated and was helping Chambers steal their food. Miriam had to find out who and why before she killed the man.

  “There it is,” one of them said. It sounded l
ike Chambers. “Get the rock.”

  The two men grabbed one of the large rocks at their feet and wrestled with it until they got it turned on its edge. There was a rope tied around it, which Miriam had missed in her earlier search. One of the men tugged on the rope, which she could now see stretched up the cliff into the darkness. So Jacob had been right about the rope, although she couldn’t figure out why the men didn’t untie it from the rock. Then suddenly, and to her surprise, the rock heaved off the ground. It soared up into the darkness until she lost sight of it.

  A minute later, a wooden barrel came dropping silently from above. When it reached the ground, the two men tossed out skull-sized chunks of rock from the barrel until it was half-empty, then they heaved it on its side to empty out the rest of the rocks. When that was done, the men filled it with sacks of what she presumed were foodstuffs from the cart.

  The thing was a primitive elevator. Instead of relying on brute strength to lift the food several hundred feet, there would be a pulley above, working by sending down a counterweight that would provide most of the lifting power for the barrel. Lift the rock to lower the barrel, or lower the rock to lift the barrel. A little extra muscle power would even out any difference in the weight of the two objects.

  Miriam was still turning this over in her head when the men stopped loading. They’d tossed in roughly half the sacks of food, and at first she wondered why they didn’t top off the barrel. Then, to her surprise, one of the men helped the other climb into the barrel on top of the sacks of grain.

  “You good to go?” Chambers asked. No question now it was him.

  “Yup,” the other man said in a low voice.

  Only one word; it wasn’t enough to identify the man.

  Chambers jerked twice on the rope. A second later, the barrel inched off the ground, before it began to rise at a more rapid pace. Miriam watched, fascinated and alarmed, until the barrel disappeared out of sight. A minute or two passed, and the rock reappeared from above and settled on the ground.

  The elevator system was crude, but effective enough to move thousands of pounds of food out of the valley. The limiting factor was the pace of theft from the silos and the transport to this spot.