But he just fell and stopped. Miriam had pulled off the road and stopped the car before he threw himself out. He lay on the ground with his face pressed to the gravel. Pain shot through his body and he couldn’t control the convulsions that seized his limbs.
You cannot escape and you cannot hide.
And then Miriam had him and was lifting him to a sitting position on a curb. His vision returned. They were at the rest stop outside Mesquite. Street lights illuminated the parking lot and the half a dozen cars and a pair of idling rigs. The smell of diesel gradually replaced the sulfur and acid. The shaking slowed, but didn’t stop.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “Just fill the syringe and put me out of my misery.”
“You’re wrong. You can do this.”
The look of sorrow and compassion on her face surprised him. It was an about-face from the disdain she’d shown him at the house, hard as the steel on the end of her handgun and just as merciless.
“You were right. I’m worse than worthless, I’m a blight on the Earth and the sooner my soul flies to hell, the better for everyone. I deserve to roast for my sins.”
“First of all, I never said that,” Miriam said. “And I don’t believe it. The worth of every soul is great in the eyes of the Lord. Second, there’s no such place as hell, not like that, and you know it.”
“Outer Darkness, then.”
“Outer Darkness is for the elect who deny the holy spirit. You’re just a lost soul. And lost souls can be found. Listen to me.” She took his hand and her touch was gentle. “Jacob saw something in you. He sent Eliza to bring you back, he convinced your father to remove his edict. I believe there is something good in there somewhere, just like your brother. You even look a little like him.”
“Like a hollow caricature. A bad photocopy. I’m nothing like him, except for a nose and a chin.”
“David, please. I want to help, but you have to let me.”
“Can you get me something?” he asked
“Of course. What would you like? Water? A soda?”
“You know what I need.”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “David, you don’t have to do this. You can make it to Blister Creek without drugs.”
“No, you were right. I made it about to the state line, that’s all.”
“All that stuff I said at the house was an act,” she said. “I’m good at it, it’s how the FBI trained me and I was a natural. Don’t take it seriously, I was just trying to get you out of the house. Now that you’re out of the house, I want to help.”
“I don’t believe you were acting. I believe you are acting now.”
“You can do it, I’m telling you. For goodness sake, at least try. It’s only a couple more hours.”
“No.”
“An hour, then.”
“It’s no use, Miriam.”
“You can make it,” she said. “One hour, then I’ll pull over. Sixty minutes. I’m being sincere, I swear I am.”
“You might be sincere, but you don’t think I can make it. You know I can’t.” When she didn’t say anything, he added, “Help me get the syringe ready. Then I’ll be okay until we get to Blister Creek, you’ll see.”
A long moment of silence. “Okay, wait here.”
A few minutes later, sitting in a toilet stall with a syringe in hand and the veins on his foot exposed, he hesitated. The shakes were gone for the moment and the headache had subsided. He heard the flush of a toilet, the whirr of a hand dryer, smelled urine cakes and industrial-strength cleanser that only masked but didn’t eliminate the smell of piss and shit. But he felt better than he had in hours.
Except for the longing, the desire so deep it felt almost like the burning need to breathe when you’ve been holding your breath underwater. It was stronger than ever. He shoved the needle in and depressed the plunger.
Almost instantly, all of it was gone. The whispering demon, the pain, the shakes, the desire, simply vanished. In its place a rising tide of euphoria that swept aside all other emotions.
David Christianson closed his eyes and sighed.
Chapter Fourteen:
Eliza made them pay. She gouged eyes, bit, sent her knees and elbows flying. Her forehead smashed someone across the bridge of the nose. There was no crying out this time, no begging for mercy. She knew what they meant to do and knew that nobody would help her. And so she fought.
But eventually they had her arms pinned. Someone tore off her bra and someone else her pants. Soon she lay naked, exhausted, chest heaving, while they held her down. Christopher stood over her with a kerosene lamp, the Disciple in the shadows to his left.
“Sanctify her,” Christopher said. “Right here, in the dirt. Show her, do it.”
“You’d better get the rest of them,” Eliza said through clenched teeth. She tasted blood. It trickled down her lip. “You’ll need every one of them to hold me down. If you rape me, you’d better hold me every second or I’ll fight back.”
And when you let me go, I’ll come back in the night with a knife.
Her terror had gone. All that was left was a rage so pure that she knew that if she held a gun in her hands at that very moment, she’d shoot them all, one by one. Maybe even Benita, maybe even the boy, though Diego was nowhere to be seen. It was a filthy, unholy feeling that gripped her, unlike anything she’d ever felt.
The rest of them were already coming out, one by one. She saw Benita, Kirk, even Diego.
“Sanctify her,” Christopher said. He almost sounded pleading. “Do it, hurry.”
The Disciple started forward, then stopped. “No, she’s not ready.”
“What do you mean she’s not ready? Look at her, she needs it.”
“Be quiet!”
He shut up, and Eliza felt a wild hope rising in her chest. They were going to let her go, put it off until tomorrow. Well, there wouldn’t be a tomorrow, she would leave tonight, no matter what.
After a moment, the Disciple said, “She’s not ready because she hasn’t been sufficiently purified. Once she has been purified, she’ll be ready to submit to God’s will, and then we’ll sanctify her. Get her up. You and you, help.”
They started to lift her up, but she jerked free and rose by herself. She stood naked in front of them. Eliza had grown up in an environment of modesty where a woman didn’t show her shoulders, where her mother shook her head at the thought of women wearing pants because then “you can see where their legs come together,” which was her euphemism for “crotch.” Eliza still felt uncomfortable with anything that didn’t go to the ankle and the wrist.
But she refused to cover herself or act ashamed. Instead she stood defiantly, with her hands on her hips. “I won’t be purified or sanctified or anything else. Give me back my clothing. I’m leaving.”
The Disciple looked through the group before his eyes settled on Benita. “Bring me thirty heads of lettuce.”
Benita’s eyes widened. “Thirty?”
“She’s strong. She’ll survive, if God wills it.”
“Even Madeline only got twenty.”
“Thirty!”
They dragged Eliza into the darkness of the abandoned dump. She fought back again, but by now she was exhausted and couldn’t inflict the same damage she had earlier. Christopher set down the lantern, then pushed aside an overturned fridge, grunting and muttering. A black pit opened in the ground. A dank, foul smell oozed out, like an exposed cesspool, or something dead.
And a moan, a thin voice from the darkness. “Please. I can’t take it anymore. Please.”
#
They lowered a ladder into the darkness. Immediately someone started to climb from below, but Christopher gave the ladder a shake and shouted down. “Get off there.”
Two people dragged Eliza to the edge. She was shivering from the thin night air and her stomach twisted with fear and the stench wafting up from below.
“You don’t have to do this. Any of you. It’s wrong and you know it.” Eliza fixed Benita with her gaze, but the g
irl looked away. She found Kirk, the one she thought might have been trying to help her, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes, so she looked at the others, one by one. Some stared back in defiance, while others looked at their feet or let the darkness hide their faces. “You say you’re following Jesus, but these are the tactics of the enemy. Listen, I made a mistake coming here, I thought you were something else. Now I just want to leave and never come back.”
“It’s too late for that,” the Disciple said. “The only thing is to find out if you’re strong enough to survive, if you’re one of us.”
“I’m not one of you, and I don’t care about your rites. Do the right thing and let me go.”
“You’re broken, Eliza, like the rest of us. A sinner. You deserve to die. God, in His mercy, has given you this one chance. Soon—maybe even before you come back from purification—fire will sweep over the Earth. And then you’ll see this is a kindness. It’s your only chance.”
“No, you’re wrong.”
“The world hates us. They persecute us, Satan has penetrated their hearts. They wish to tear us apart, stick their needles in us, tie us to machinery and send electricity through our bodies. Only God has led us here and none of us will leave until the flames have passed, until it has purified the whole world with holy fire. But first, we need to purify you.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m the Disciple. My word is the word of the Lord.”
She fought them as they took her to the edge, but when she saw that she’d either have to be thrown down or take the ladder, she finally relented. She climbed down, holding one hand over her mouth against the smell. When she got to the bottom, she looked up at the light overhead, fuming.
Someone bent down with the box Benita had brought from the trailers. “Here, take your lettuce.” It was Christopher.
“Go to hell.”
“You’ll be sorry if you don’t,” the Disciple said from the darkness at his back.
She wanted to tell them to choke on their lettuce, but if she wanted any hope of surviving, she had to take even the smallest advantage. And so she grabbed the box of lettuce and brought it down. The fridge scraped across the opening and she was plunged into darkness.
Eliza stood on something springy and as she sank down, she felt it was a mattress. It smelled of human waste and body odor.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice asked from the darkness.
“Madeline?”
“Benita, is that you?” the woman asked.
“No. I’m not Benita.” Compared to the flat, dead sound of her companion, Eliza’s own voice sounded a defiant note. “My name is Eliza Christianson. Are you Madeline Caliari?”
“I am.” A pause. “Do I know you?”
“Your mother sent me to find you.”
A sharp intake of breath, then a sob. “My mother? How…how is she?”
“Worried sick. She’s been doing nothing but search for you.”
Madeline broke down, sobbing. Eliza was too caught up in her own despair to think about going over to comfort her. She fought the horrid, sinking feeling of self-doubt, knowing she’d made a mistake, that she shouldn’t have come here, that she’d underestimated them. And now she was going to die in a pit in the desert. It took a few minutes to give herself the mental slap needed to get her out of that destructive line of thinking. By then, Madeline’s crying had faded to sniffles.
“Are you sure?” The voice edged closer in the darkness. “She’s still looking for me? Are you sure?”
“Why is that surprising?” Eliza asked. “She loves you, and you’re her only child. Of course she’s going to keep searching. She was desperate. She even managed to convince me I could find you and get you out.”
“How did she know where to find me? Nobody knows where we are.”
“There’s a group of parents who are sharing information and searching. She was watching some of you, eating garbage, and then she tracked you to Las Vegas.”
“Really? You’re sure?”
“She’s tall, right? Maybe five nine with heels. Brown hair with highlights, slender and athletic.”
“What? No, that’s not my mom.”
Eliza frowned. “What do you mean? I met her myself, talked to her about you and she told us how to find you.”
“Did you say glamorous?” She sniffled. “I don’t think so. My mom looks like someone with three kids and a minivan. A little frumpy. And her hair is darker, definitely no highlights. I guess she could have changed that part. But not the slender and athletic stuff. And she’s maybe five-five. She wears pumps. You’re just messing with me, aren’t you? You don’t know anything about her.”
“I’m not messing with you.” Eliza didn’t know what to think. She had definite memories of Allison Caliari. She’d looked so out of place among the other women at Zarahemla, she may as well have been a model straight off the runway in Paris. There was no way Eliza had misremembered those details. “A woman found me, said she was Allison Caliari and needed help finding her daughter. She looked through some pictures we had, and we figured out you had to be out here. So I found you.”
“Did she sound like she was from New Jersey?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“My parents moved to the Northwest from Jersey about twenty years ago. You can still hear it in Mom’s voice, it’s pretty obvious. I don’t know who that woman is, but she isn’t my mother.”
“That doesn’t make sense. My brother Jacob dug around online and found this group of parents who are sharing information about the Chosen Ones. They really exist. Your mother is really the head, so I don’t…well, it doesn’t matter,” Eliza said, though she was sure that it did matter, somehow. Who was that woman, then, and how had she known so much? What did she want? And her story about Madeline’s descent into the cult had been detailed and told with emotion.
There was a moment, though. When Allison Caliari warned her to be careful, when Eliza had gotten the impression of hearing the voice of an actress speaking offstage in an unguarded moment. Who was that woman?
“But you really came out here just to find me?” Madeline asked.
“That’s exactly what I did. I tracked down the cult just to get you out.”
“It’s not a cult.”
“Fine, your religious movement,” Eliza said. “The problem is, my sheltered life, with all its religious weirdness, still wasn’t enough to prepare me for this.”
“What do you mean by that?” Madeline asked.
“Usually, they’re more subtle when they try to subject you in the name of the Lord.” Eliza fought a choking sense of panic, tried to force a glib tone that she didn’t feel to keep from breaking down. “I didn’t expect them to toss me down and try to publicly rape me. Seems kind of dumb now, but I thought I’d stroll in, find you, and get you out of here. I guess you could say oops.”
Madeline said nothing. Eliza felt around the room while she tried to catch her breath. She had to get working, do something. Two mattresses on the floor, once of which was covered with gallon jugs. Water, she guessed, or maybe Madeline’s waste. Dirt walls let a seeping chill into the room. A second box with wilting lettuce. Her hand found Madeline’s arm and the girl flinched.
“Sorry,” Eliza said. “Just getting my bearings.”
“It’s okay, you startled me, is all. It has been so long since anyone touched me.”
“Not much down here, is there?”
“No. It’s a hole in the desert. Water, a couple of scavenged mattresses, lettuce, and your own filth. It’s a taste of hell, except it’s cold. I’ve got seventeen more days to go. How about you?”
“Thirty.”
Madeline drew in her breath. “Thirty? Nobody can live thirty days without food. You’ll die.”
Eliza wanted to grab the other woman and shake her. Don’t you think I know that? Wake up, we’re both going to die!
She forced calm into her voice. “Madeline, I’m not going to die, not like this. And I’m not going
to stay down here starving to death only so they can drag me up and rape me when I’m too weak to fight back.”
“Does that mean the Disciple already sanctified you?”
“He tried,” Eliza said. “He won’t get another chance. I’m going to find a way out.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’ll figure out something. And if I don’t, it won’t be because I sat here doing nothing. Can you help me?” When Madeline didn’t answer, Eliza added, “Or are you going to sit there waiting to die?”
“Could you reach out your hand again? Just touch my arm like you did?”
Eliza touched Madeline on the arm and the other woman grabbed her and held on. Eliza moved over to her side and held her. She was naked, her shoulders sharp and bony. She began to sob again.
“I’m sorry,” Eliza said. “I’m afraid and angry and I didn’t mean to take it out on you.” She stroked Madeline’s face, then her arm. Thin, parallel lines marked her forearm.
“Don’t touch my scars.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s no use, is it?”
“You’ve got to have faith that we’ll find a way out.”
“I don’t think so,” Madeline said between sniffles. “No way to escape, and they won’t relent until we’re purified. And even if I could, it would be wrong. I need to be purified. The Disciple said so.”
“He’s no disciple. He’s a nutcase, that’s all. Whatever possessed you to join them?”
“They’re not crazy.”
“You’re wrong. They’re crazy and they’re evil.”
“They’re not evil!”
“Madeline, they raped you, they threw you in a pit to starve to death.”
“That’s for my own good. Seriously, don’t you understand? I’m unclean, I’m a filthy sinner and I need to be purified and sanctified.”
“Stop using pretty words. Purified means starved and sanctified means raped. That’s all. What have you done, what could you possibly do that would make you deserve all of this?”
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