That is why they obey you. God chose the humble and malleable as your followers.
Yes, well humble and malleable was one thing, gullible, another. Or maybe Christopher, in his weakness, had gone down into the pit to sanctify Eliza down there, then been overpowered. But by two naked, starving girls? It was hard to imagine.
The Disciple lowered the ladder. Moments later, Christopher appeared, climbing with his good hand. His other arm dangled by his side and when he reached the top, the Disciple reached down, grabbed him by the waist of his pants and hauled him onto the ground.
Christopher lay panting for a moment, then rolled over and sat up. “You’re strong.”
“Of course I’m strong. I have the power of God within me. And because you’re with me, God will strengthen you, too. He will deliver the wicked into our hands. And then they will burn.”
“Yes, Master. They will all burn.”
The Disciple helped the other man to his feet. “Now, listen carefully. Eliza has poisoned their minds and we have to imagine they are turned against us. We have to show that God is in charge, not this girl.”
The Disciple bent and felt along the edge of the pile of garbage and tires behind the overturned fridge. His fingers closed around a piece of metal not much bigger around than his thumb. He dug it out of the garbage and discovered it was a piece of rebar, rough and slightly bent, maybe thirty inches long. He handed it to Christopher. “A rod, with which thou may correct thine enemies.”
Christopher hefted it in his good hand. “Good enough. What do you want me to do?”
“As soon as they come out, I expect Eliza to argue with me. When the moment is ready, I’ll say, ‘Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord.’ At that moment, you will attack. Strike her in the face first, then, when she is down, keep hitting her in the head until she stops moving. It will be messy, it will be terrible. Can you do it?”
“Of course I can, Master. But what about the others?”
“I shall command them while you fulfill God’s justice. None of them will lift a finger. And when she is dead, they shall all follow us. We shall call Wormwood to the earth. Now hurry, dawn is almost here.”
Chapter Twenty-four:
The voice outside the trailer was like one of the trumpets of Revelation, loud and brassy in the thin desert air. “The Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord is at hand! Come and let us separate the wicked from the righteous.”
Inside the trailer, all conversation stopped at once. People who had been arguing moments earlier stopped with mouths agape, or hands raised in midgesture. Eliza started at the sound, but as she glanced around the room, she could see stunned expressions on the faces of the others, glassy, terrified looks, as if they had just been shown a photograph of the exact moment of their death. It was that look of shared insanity that scared Eliza, not the braying of the self-proclaimed prophet outside.
The argument had raged through the trailer for the past two or three hours. Eliza was content to let Madeline and Kirk carry her side, that they should wait until dawn and then, if the Disciple hadn’t returned with the truck, gather water and walk out of the desert. These two, plus two others, reminded her of sleepwalkers, awakened from a nightmare, opening one door after another until they finally emerged from the dream. As they rubbed sleep from their eyes, they grew more and more alert until at last they realized just what had been done to them.
Others had remained locked in their nightmares. They defended the Disciple and shouted angrily whenever Madeline or Kirk suggested that the Disciple’s rants about the end of the world were pure fantasy. They grew even more angry when Eliza said, at one point, “Let’s call it what it is. The Disciple didn’t sanctify anyone. He raped them.”
A woman screamed, threw her shoe at Eliza and tried to storm out of the trailer. Kirk stopped her, ordered her to sit back down.
Eliza remembered the chilling story of a thirteen-year-old girl who’d been abducted from her home in Boise to be forced into polygamy by her kidnapper. The girl had several chances to escape and when she was in a mall, alone, about eighteen months later, an alert security guard had recognized her and asked her point blank if she was the missing girl he’d seen on TV. She’d denied it and when the guard tried to stop her, had run. They’d eventually found the girl, but Eliza and her brother Jacob had argued about why the girl hadn’t tried to escape.
Some of these people reminded her of the kidnapped girl. Were they blind? Couldn’t they see what the Disciple had done to them? But by the time he returned, these supporters had either come reluctantly to their side or fallen silent. They sat in the corners, wrapping their arms around their knees and listening with sullen expressions on their faces.
And now Caleb Kimball was outside, shouting. “Come out, one and all. Face the judgment of the Lord!”
Benita sprang to her feet. Eliza grabbed for her hand but didn’t get her before she reached the door. Kirk was closer and could have stopped her, but he looked as stunned as anyone else. By the time he moved, it was too late, and Benita was throwing the door open. Others followed.
“Wait!” Eliza said. “Not yet, we need to—”
But nobody was listening. They spilled out of the trailer and down the cinder block stairs. The Disciple stood in front of the trailer, his robe open, his eyes wild, arms outstretched. Behind him, the horizon glowed with the fire of a coming dawn. Christopher stood to one side. A dark expression clouded his face. There was a gash on one cheek and he tucked in his left arm, which bent the wrong way at the elbow.
The people pouring out of the trailer dropped to their knees in front of the Disciple, or grabbed his robes or hands. One of the last holdouts from inside buried her face in his robes and wept. A young man begged for forgiveness.
“Stop, all of you!” Eliza cried.
Madeline and Kirk stopped a few feet away, visibly torn between following the others and the arguments of the past few hours. Eliza grabbed their arms and they turned, and she could see them shake off whatever strange compulsion had taken hold of them.
The Disciple lifted his arms. “Wormwood is falling from the sky. Before the sun rises this day the burning shall come. The wicked shall perish. But you! You are the Chosen Ones. Those who stand by my side shall survive to see the coming of the Lord.”
“Listen to me, all of you,” Eliza said. “It’s a trick, it’s just a voice and flowery Biblical crap.” A few faces turned toward her. “The world isn’t going to end today. If you want, you can stay here and find out. The rest of us are going into Las Vegas. Now who else is coming with me?”
A smile lifted the Disciple’s face and he said, “Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord.” Christopher stepped forward. The dark expression had become something twisted and evil. “Do it now,” the Disciple said in a low voice. “Cleanse Eliza Christianson from the earth.”
He lifted his right arm and now she saw that it carried a length of rebar. She’d been distracted by his broken arm and the rants of the Disciple. He stepped toward her with the rebar pulled back like a club. By the time she saw him coming, it was too late to react, only to lift her hands against the blow.
Kirk stepped between them, grabbed for his arm. “No! Not like this.”
Christopher swung the rebar at Kirk’s arm. The other man cried out and fell back. Christopher pulled back and swung again, this time at Kirk’s head.
Eliza regained her senses by the time the second blow fell. She lowered her shoulder and rammed it into Christopher to knock him off balance. She didn’t make it in time. The rebar slammed into the side of Kirk’s head, just above the ear. He fell face down. Eliza knocked into Christopher. He snarled and turned on her.
As he pulled back the rebar, she grabbed with both hands for his bad arm. She seized him by the wrist and wrenched his arm around. Christopher screamed and flipped himself over to escape the pain, moving as easily as if he were a puppet in her hands. He fell to the ground next to Kirk. The first young man didn’t move, but lay face down and limp.
Before Christopher could recover, she bent and wrenched the rebar free from his hands.
“Someone, grab her,” the Disciple said. He was trying to push through the people crowding him, but they weren’t moving quickly enough.
She waved the rebar in front of her. “Nobody touch me!”
The Disciple was at the point of freeing himself, and Christopher rolled over and struggled to his feet. Eliza dropped the rebar, grabbed Madeline, and ran. To her surprise, Benita came with them, while the others watched in a stupor.
Eliza was disoriented by the darkness, by the violence of the last few moment, by the way Kirk lay face down, by the force with which the rebar had struck him on the side of the head. That blow had caved in the man’s head. It had been meant for her. If Kirk hadn’t stepped in front, Christopher would have bludgeoned her to death.
In her confusion, she ran the wrong direction. Instead of fleeing toward the road, she found herself farther back in the dump, ducking between piles of tires. By the time she realized her mistake, she was turned about, with mounds of tires all around her. She wished she hadn’t dropped the rebar.
“Where are you going?” Madeline asked.
“I was trying to go toward the road.”
“It’s that way,” Benita said.
“I know that now.” She’d spotted the horizon and reoriented herself. “You should have said something.”
“I thought you knew what you were doing,” Madeline said.
The three women squatted behind a pile of tires, panting, trying to catch their breath. From the direction of the trailers came shouts, a man screaming. More shouting, a woman screaming this time. A crack, like a two-by-four snapping in two. Eliza’s stomach clenched. The Disciple was violently reasserting his control of the cult; more people were suffering because she’d convinced them to resist.
“Eliza?” Madeline asked. “What are we doing?”
“Hold on, I’m trying to think. I don’t know that we’d be any better off on the road, not unless Caleb left the key in the truck and I don’t think he’d be that dumb.”
“Caleb?”
“The Disciple. If we ran down the road, they could hunt us down in the truck. And it’s so flat, that even if we got off the road, they could see us, at least until we got to the dry wash. They’ll have water, they’ll catch up with us before long. We might be better off here.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Benita said in a flat voice. “There’s no escape either direction.”
“We’re not finished yet.”
“Yes, we’re finished. We’ve made our choice and now we’ll be burned with the wicked.”
Eliza took Benita’s face in her hands. She had no time to be gentle. “Listen to me. Either strap on a spine and do something to keep yourself alive, or go back there and take your chances with the sheep. What’s it going to be?” Benita said nothing, and Eliza continued, “Good. Now, we’re not going to let them win, right? If anyone dies, it’s not going to be us. I don’t care if we’re three girls. Caleb Kimball—I’m not going to call him the Disciple again, because he’s not a disciple of anything, he’s a nutcase, that’s all—isn’t going to lift a finger. He’s going to stand back and order his minions to do the dirty work. But they’re weak in the mind, they showed that just now. They can’t do anything.”
She had to dismiss the others, she had to make Madeline and Benita strong enough to stand up for themselves. Whether it was true or not, she needed these two to believe it.
“What about Christopher?” Madeline asked.
“He’s one man. He’s half a man. You saw his broken arm. I gave it one pull and he was on his knees, crying like a baby.”
“You caught him by surprise,” Madeline said. “You can’t count on that again.”
“So what? He still only has one good arm. We’re three people. If he tries to stop us, we’ll come at him from three sides. Now let’s look around for something to defend ourselves with. We’re going to arm ourselves and then we’re going to walk out of here with our heads held high.”
Again, Eliza wished she could trust her own words, could trust these two to be strong in a fight. Madeline was starved from her time in the pit, Benita stronger physically, but weaker mentally. When it came down to it, if Christopher attacked again, they might be no more than a distraction.
It was still too dark to see well, so they groped around the edge of the pile of tires. Eliza’s hands found nothing useful: torn bags of garbage, rusting cans, a doll missing its arms, what may have once been a sack of dirty diapers but had dried into hard plastic lumps in the sun. She was about to suggest they continue further into the dump to look for a more fertile pile of garbage, when she stopped.
The shouting had stopped from the direction of the trailer. She strained to hear any voice or movement, but all she heard was the sigh of a light breeze. There was something in the air, an acrid smell.
The other two women had stopped as well, and then Benita whispered, “It’s Wormwood. It is about to fall from the sky.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When the third angel sounds his trumpet, a great star will fall from the heavens and—”
“I know the Book of Revelation,” Eliza interrupted. “That’s not what I mean.”
She caught a stronger whiff. Like diesel fuel and burning plastic. Whatever it was, there was no star falling, even though she caught herself checking the sky, half-expecting to see a meteor streaking across the heavens. It was something from the dump itself, someone burning something nasty. She could taste it in her mouth when she breathed.
“Eliza Christianson,” a voice cried out. Caleb Kimball. He sounded maybe twenty yards away, among the piles of tires to her left.
She pulled the others down, made a quieting motion. It was light enough now that she could see the wide look of terror in Benita’s eyes. The other woman’s fingernails traced the scars on her left forearm. Madeline grabbed her wrist and squeezed, shook her head. Benita closed her eyes and nodded.
“I know you’re in there,” Caleb yelled. “I’m not going to pretend to forgive you, say that if you give up, everything will be okay. You are beyond forgiveness, now there’s only justice and the burning of the wicked. But God says the other two can go free. Send them to me and I will bless them and send them to wait with the other Chosen Ones.”
“He’s lying,” Eliza said. “Christopher is with him and he’ll kill us all.”
“You said Christopher would be alone,” Madeline whispered. “You didn’t say we’d have to face the Disciple.”
“Caleb Kimball is only a voice. Remember what I said about Christopher. Grab his arm and yank like you’re trying to pull it off.”
“We need weapons.”
“Come on. This way.”
She urged the other two to their feet and they made to run at a crouch toward the next pile of tires to their rear. Eliza planned to get around back and search again for a weapon of some kind. But just as they moved, the Disciple stepped around the pile and they froze.
To Eliza’s surprise, Caleb Kimball stood alone, without any other Chosen Ones, or even Christopher. Soot smudged his forehead and the back of one of his hands had a red burn. The sky was brightening quickly now; the morning light caught and amplified the wild gleam in his eyes. He held the rebar in his hands and Eliza could see bits of hair and blood clinging to the edges, where it had crushed Kirk’s skull and perhaps someone else’s as well.
He saw her looking at the rebar and grinned. “And now, Eliza, it is your turn to die.”
Chapter Twenty-five:
As the sun rose over the Spring Mountains, a black column of smoke curled into the sky northwest of Las Vegas. Jacob took the car at a bone-rattling pace over the road, seeming to catch every rut, pothole, and patch of drifting sand. A pair of tumbleweeds had snagged against the bumper when they found the ranch road fifteen minutes ago and these clung to the bumper, pieces occasionally breaking off and flying over the windshield. He
kept having to spray and wipe to clear away the film of dirt.
David and Miriam studied the map pages as best they could from their jarring place in the back seat. David had to stop and close his eyes every few minutes to fight against the nausea. Hard to tell if it was the withdrawal or motion sickness, or some combination of the two.
The road started to curve away from the smoke, and Jacob asked in a worried tone, “Are you sure this is the right road?”
“It has to be,” David said. He squinted through the window in the direction of the rising sun to try to find the edge of the ghost subdivision where he lived. He thought he could pick out the pink stucco of an abandoned McMansion at the edge of his cul-de-sac.
A few minutes later, they cut across the dry wash and he was sure. Miriam told Jacob to stop the car, jumped out and inspected the sand in the wash before they continued. “Footprints,” she said. “They go back toward the city, then end here. This has to be it.” Sure enough, the road cut left again and soon they were clattering directly toward the growing pillar of smoke.
The smoke had become something biblical. It was a column that twisted and curved into the sky, like the burning of Gomorrah. Curls of fire climbed the column like the fiery hands of the damned trying to claw their way out of hell. The acrid smell of burning plastic came in through the air conditioning. David lifted his shirt to cover his mouth and nose.
The fire would be visible from the city; no doubt someone had already noticed and called it in. But how long would it take fire trucks to come out here from the city, or even a helicopter to lift up and fly over to investigate? By then it would be too late.
“I think we’ve found our firebug,” Miriam said in a low voice.
“Either that, or the end of the world,” David said.
“It might be the end of somebody’s world,” Jacob said.
His hands gripped the steering wheel and his face was grim. David was worried enough about Eliza, he could only imagine what Jacob was thinking. No doubt blaming himself, for a start. How had he been fooled into thinking Eliza could handle these nutcases on her own? Their sister had matured into a young woman with confidence, strength, and intelligence. A beautiful young woman, too. In fact, she might have a brighter future than Jacob if she could find her way in the wider world outside of Blister Creek and Zarahemla. She didn’t seem to be wracked with the same self-doubts that troubled Jacob.
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