Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned

by Michael Wallace

  “Lost sheep,” his father said. “So you’re defending child abusers and murderers now. I see.”

  “I’m not—” Jacob stopped himself. The conversation had slipped away from him. He glanced at Rebecca, who sat with her arms crossed and the hint of a smile at her lips. He took a deep breath, forced himself to remain calm. “Can you tell me this at least? How did you find Taylor Junior?”

  “I am the prophet. The Lord told me.”

  “You’ll forgive me, but I don’t find that answer satisfying.”

  “If the truth doesn’t satisfy you, I don’t know what to say,” Abraham said. “But I’m happy to clarify. My calling is prophet, seer, and revelator. A seer sees things with his spiritual eyes. I saw with my spiritual eyes that Taylor Junior was the Antichrist.”

  “Oh, come on. The Antichrist? No, never mind. Go on.”

  Abraham said, “And as a revelator, I prayed to the Lord to reveal hidden truths, and He showed me where to find Taylor Junior and his false church.”

  Jacob let the skepticism show on his face. “Really? This is all you’ve got?”

  Rebecca shrugged. “He’s simplifying months of investigation, but I’ll admit that your father had certain insights that led us to search the Dark Canyon Primitive Area.”

  “Will you please tell me who this person is?” Jacob asked, pointing at the woman.

  “I told you, my name is Rebecca,” she said. “I’m from Blister Creek.”

  “Really? I’ve never seen you here before.”

  “It has been a while.”

  “Are you living some kind of double life? Is that why you were wearing a sleeveless shirt when you came to Zarahemla a few weeks ago?”

  “Everyone leads a double life,” she said. “Multiple lives. Even you. You’re a father, a husband, a doubter, a spiritual leader. You help your friends and battle your enemies. And sometimes, you make alliances of convenience.”

  “I do? How is that?”

  “Like when you cooperate with the FBI.”

  “What are we talking about here?” Jacob asked. “Why you and my father are working together? Or why you want me to work with the two of you?”

  “Both,” Abraham said. “All three of us have different reasons, but we all want the same thing, and that is to destroy Taylor Junior and break up his growing church.”

  “I know my reason,” Jacob said, “and I can guess yours, but what about hers?”

  “Never mind that,” Rebecca said. “Think of it as a temporary alliance. We’ll work together for a few days. Me, your father, Stephen Paul Young from the Quorum. You, Sister Miriam, and David. The enemy has taken a fortified position in the heart of the wilderness, and it will take several trustworthy, ruthless people to root them out.”

  Jacob raised an eyebrow in suspicion. “What do you mean, ruthless?”

  Abraham said, “We’re going to kill Taylor Junior.”

  “Just like that,” Jacob said, flatly. “No arrest, no trial. Just kill him.”

  “Did Eliza give Gideon a trial before she dropped a stone on his head?” his father asked. “Did she try to arrest Caleb, or did she smash him with a hunk of concrete until he was dead?”

  “That’s different. She was defending herself, she was under attack.”

  “Wake up, Jacob. We’re under attack, too.”

  Jacob put his hand to his eye as if scanning the desert. “Really? Where? I don’t see anyone.” He dropped his hand. “If you mean we’re under spiritual attack, then sure. But Dad, we’re always under spiritual attack. That’s what life is, a never-ending spiritual war.”

  “Jacob,” Rebecca said. “This is the third time you’ve faced the Kimballs.”

  “The fourth,” Abraham broke in, “because Zarahemla wouldn’t exist if Elder Kimball hadn’t left half the church scattered and vulnerable to false prophets.”

  “That’s arguable,” Jacob said.

  “Nevertheless,” Rebecca said. “Each time, people died. They’ll die this time if we don’t act. You don’t have to believe that Taylor Junior is the Antichrist or has any special powers. He is your enemy and your father’s, he has sworn he will marry your sister Eliza, he is gathering followers, and he intends to attack and conquer Blister Creek. This is a man who will kill people.”

  “And since people will die anyway,” Abraham said, “the only possible solution is to take care of him before he causes harm. The man’s soul is damned already. Do the saints have to suffer to prove it?”

  It had a certain logic. If only Krantz hadn’t balked. Jacob would be happy to see the FBI go in with their night-vision goggles and their sniper rifles. With any luck, the FBI would take Taylor Junior without violence, but if he resisted, and they shot him, it would be a relief.

  “We’ll hit them hard and fast,” Abraham continued. “Like clearing out a nest of rattlers. Kill the big ones and scatter the rest.”

  “Wait, so you’re planning to kill other people, too?” Jacob asked.

  “Elder Kimball is beyond redemption, and he’s the father of all these false prophets: Gideon, Caleb, and now Taylor Junior. Stanley Clawson is a child abuser. You X-rayed his kid—you told me yourself.”

  “I didn’t expect you to beat him and run him out of town,” Jacob said.

  “Didn’t you?” his father asked. “I find myself wondering about that.”

  “Stanley is a sad, twisted man,” Rebecca said. “Maybe he deserves to die, maybe not. But what about Aaron Young? He helped murder Enoch in the temple.”

  “Yes,” Abraham said. “Aaron Young, too.”

  “So you’ll kill four men,” Jacob said. “Elder Kimball, Taylor Junior, Stanley Clawson, and Aaron Young.”

  Abraham nodded. “For a start. There are some evil men in that group. Eric Froud—I’m convinced he was with Gideon and Israel when they murdered Enoch. Then there’s Elmo Griggs, Phillip Cobb. Maybe a couple more.”

  Maybe a couple more? Good Lord, where would it end?

  Jacob rose to his feet. “I’ve heard enough. No, I won’t be a part of this. I’m a doctor. My job is to heal people, not kill them. You two can carry on without me. I’m going inside to wash up. My wife is on her way, and this whole conversation has left me feeling dirtier than ever.”

  “Fine, you’re a doctor,” Abraham said as Jacob turned to go. “But you don’t heal cancer, you destroy it. That’s what this is, a malignancy. We cut out one tumor when Eliza killed Gideon, but it has metastasized. First Caleb, now this. The big threat, this is it.”

  “Your father and I don’t agree about a lot of things,” Rebecca said, “but we’re in harmony about this.”

  Jacob turned back with a frown. He was opening his mouth to ask how, exactly, she was connected to his father and the Church of the Anointing, and again about why she’d pretended to be Allison Caliari to lure Eliza into Caleb Kimball’s cult, when a screech of tires interrupted his thoughts.

  A green Taurus tore down the road from the direction of town. It was still accelerating as it flew past the house. It raced to the end of the street, then screeched again as it took a sharp right, heading toward the highway leading into the Ghost Cliffs.

  Abraham frowned, rose to his feet, and stepped down from the porch to watch the car disappear.

  Jacob followed his father down the stairs. “Who was that?”

  “That was Stanley Clawson’s car. What’s he doing back?”

  Jacob hadn’t gotten a clear view of the car, but it had been enough. “That wasn’t Stanley behind the wheel.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Eliza couldn’t shake the truck as they emerged from the Ghost Cliffs.

  The highway bisected a sagebrush- and rock-strewn foothill. They were still high enough to see the entire valley spread before them. The red gash of Witch’s Warts stretched from the cliffs to the center of the valley. She could see the white spire of the temple, the cottonwood trees that lined the grid-like pattern of streets downtown, and the dirt roads that twisted out from the center like a
rms of an octopus to reach the ranches and farms on the outskirts of town. If they could reach the center of town, she’d have one turn and then she’d be at her father’s house. They wouldn’t dare follow her there.

  At last they reached the irrigated green patchwork of the Blister Creek Valley. The road stretched smooth and flat for several miles. Eliza punched the accelerator. Her jaw clenched.

  Fernie gripped the door handle. “Be careful!” She turned to look in the backseat. “Daniel, for heaven’s sake, fix your seat belt.”

  “I’ve dealt with these jerks before,” Eliza said. “They just want to scare me.”

  “Don’t let them scare you right off the road.”

  “We’ll be in town soon, and then they’ll run and hide. You’ll see.”

  The speed limit was fifty-five, but she reached seventy-five without trouble. There was no other traffic and the road was good, except for a few bone-rattling potholes.

  The truck edged into the passing lane until it drew even with her back bumper. Eliza looked in the side mirror and caught a glimpse of the other driver. It was a young man, his face set in a grim mask. He drove with his left hand. He held his right arm funny—was that a sling?

  Eliza gave a start. It was the man she’d bashed with the steel baton. She accelerated.

  The truck swerved into her lane. It scraped her back bumper and the car shimmied. Heart pounding, Eliza fought to straighten out.

  “He tried to run us off the road!” Fernie shouted. She craned her neck around. “You said they wanted to scare you!”

  “I was wrong.”

  Daniel and Leah made worried comments about their speed, and Nephi started to fuss. For a moment, she thought she’d escape, but the truck had straightened out after the near collision and was gaining on them again. She could go faster—not much, but a little—but every bump sent them flying. One pothole, one patch where the wind had blown sand across the road, and she’d lose control. The speedometer edged past ninety, then hit ninety-five. The car shivered violently.

  And still the truck crept closer. It was back in the opposite lane, edging up on her right bumper, no more than twenty feet back. If it caught up, no more than a nudge could send her spinning off the road. She pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor. They hit another bump, and the children screamed in the backseat. The speedometer was flirting with a hundred, and the car felt like it would shake itself apart.

  But at last the truck stopped gaining. It held its distance, even began to fall back a few feet.

  Fernie was breathing heavily. She had her hands on her swollen abdomen and was clenching her eyes shut. When she opened them, she glanced at Eliza and gave a weak shake of the head.

  “Are you okay?” Eliza asked. “You’re not in labor, are you?”

  “I’m fine. No contractions. Just holding on for dear life, I—” She stopped and picked up her phone. “I’ve got service!”

  They were only a few miles out of town now and starting to come upon some of the ranch houses on the outskirts. If she’d had time to slow down without getting rammed, Eliza would have pulled onto one of the dirt side roads, driven up to a house.

  Fernie had the phone at her ear. “Jacob! We’re almost there, we—shut up and listen! Someone is trying to run us off the road. We’re coming in from the Ghost Cliffs. Yes, I’m sure. Black pickup truck. I have no idea, we—Eliza, look out!”

  A green car barreled down the road toward them. At first Eliza reached for the lights, thinking she could warn the other car about their speed, maybe even let the driver know she was in trouble. But the car was out of its lane. It flew down the center of the road, approaching with startling speed.

  Eliza gripped the steering wheel so hard it felt like she’d tear it off. Suddenly, she felt a jerk to the rear of the car. The truck was up on her bumper, having closed the distance as she eased up on the gas. She stomped the accelerator and straightened out, pulled away from the truck again. The green car hurtled toward them. The distance closed in a flash.

  She veered left, tried to hug the shoulder and jerk free from the truck at the same time. For an instant she thought she’d fly by on the left and the other two vehicles would slam into each other. But then they corrected. The green car flew past, braking hard, wheels screaming on the pavement. Eliza’s tires caught the gravel, spun. She wrestled with the shimmying steering wheel. Almost had it.

  And then the truck bumped her, hard. Suddenly, the car was spinning, then off the road and rolling. Children screaming. A woman’s voice, high, terrified. Eliza couldn’t tell if it was her own or Fernie’s. Or maybe the shrieking of metal.

  The car flipped again and again. Eliza’s head whipped back and forth. They landed with a terrific crash. The car lay on its side for a long moment, then thumped down with a final, bone-jarring crunch. The airbag had deployed—she couldn’t say when. She fought it down.

  The children screamed in the backseat, but when Eliza turned, she saw them flailing and trying to get free and knew they were okay. Eliza felt her face. Blood streamed from her nose. She had a gash on one arm, but couldn’t feel it yet. The car smelled like burning chalk, and there was a noxious powder in the air. From the deployed airbag, she guessed. The horn blared. Fernie groaned behind her own airbag.

  The front of the car looked like a crushed aluminum can, but the interior cab was intact. Front and back windshields had given way in the crash, and two of the four side windows were gone, including the one on the driver’s side. Water reached halfway up the tires. They’d come to rest in an irrigation canal. Eliza was shaken, but at the same time relief surged through her when she realized they were all alive.

  During the crash, the car had spun around until it sat parallel with the road, and now she looked back up from the canal and froze in shock. The black truck had come to a stop on the road above them, and a man was stepping out. The green car backed up on the shoulder and jerked to a halt next to the truck, and two more men climbed out. The men from the car scrambled down the hillside toward Eliza and Fernie’s wrecked car. One man clenched a tire iron in his hands. The other man held a gun.

  “Fernie! Get the kids out.”

  Fernie moaned. She feebly pushed at the deflating airbag.

  Eliza unbuckled her belt. Quite suddenly, she hurt all over, her shoulder aching, her nose throbbing and still bleeding, and the gash on her arm throbbing to make its presence known. But everything seemed to be working, nothing broken or torn. A glance out the window. The men were almost on her. She remembered her steel baton, groped for the glove compartment around Fernie’s deflating airbag, and fished it out. Eliza opened the car door, fell into the water, which rushed past her, and then struggled to her feet. She flicked open the baton.

  The two men drew short at the edge of the canal, surprise on their faces. The man with the tire iron was Aaron Young, who had attacked her in Salt Lake. She almost didn’t recognize the man holding the gun.

  Taylor Kimball Jr.

  He was older than when she’d seen him last, thinner, his skin tanned to leather, his hair bleached by the sun. And something was altered in his expression. After that initial look of shock, his face hardened. She recognized that look. It was like Jacob’s, but with an added measure of arrogance. This was not the bully and coward Eliza remembered, who’d tried to rape her, then cowered under Jacob’s fury.

  It was the desert. She could see it in his face and body. He’d entered the wilderness and come out a different man. A harder, more dangerous man. And the expression on his face was frighteningly sane. Calculating. Measuring her strength with a glance.

  “Eliza Christianson,” he said with a nod. “It has been a few years.” His tone was calm, possessive.

  It had been several years, but she felt a chill as she remembered the time he’d told her she had good hips for bearing children. The words were different, but the tone was the same, like that of a man who is talking about his cow or his land. His possessions. Taylor Junior looked over Eliza’s shoulder to t
he wrecked car. An infuriating smile crept across his face.

  Blood dripped from her nose onto her hands, and her dress was torn, arm gashed. Her entire body ached, but she held her head high and met his gaze. She drew back the steel baton. “Don’t come any closer, I’m warning you.”

  “Or what? I’m not Philip Cobb. You won’t stop me with a metal stick.”

  “Try it and you’ll see.”

  He started toward her. Aaron moved to flank her left side. She saw it now. The rest of it, all that business in Salt Lake, had been a feint. Scouting her, testing her weaknesses. This was the time. She might get one blow, but the other man would knock her down and then it would be over. These lean, hardened men would drag her into the desert. They would beat her, abuse her. Break her. Eliza waved the baton, determined to make at least one of them pay. Dimly, as if from a distance, she heard Fernie’s children crying for help, the car horn wailing.

  Suddenly, Taylor Junior cocked his head. The whine of an engine sounded across the valley, tone rising in pitch. A car flying down the long, straight highway, coming toward them.

  A man appeared on the hillside, waving one arm. “Hey! They’re coming.”

  A wild hope leaped in Eliza’s chest. Hurry! Whoever you are, for heaven’s sake, hurry up.

  “Take her,” Aaron urged. “Grab her and bring her with us.”

  “No time. And she’s not why we came.” Taylor Junior glanced at the wrecked car in the canal. “We’re done. The girl later.”

  He grabbed Aaron by the shoulder and physically pulled him back. Aaron struggled, growling like an animal, but Taylor Junior spun him around. “No!”

  For a moment Eliza thought the two men would come to blows, but then Aaron turned away. The two men scrambled up the hillside toward the road. Eliza stared after them. Her relief bloomed into rage. She opened her mouth to shout her defiance, but a moan from the car drew her short.