“They’ll be in sacrament meeting,” Aaron said.
“Exactly,” Taylor Junior said. “Most of the town will be sitting in the pews listening to the bishop, including the men. I’ll detonate the last two shells inside the church. You two will be outside with rifles, ready when the survivors flee. You will shoot every man and every boy over the age of twelve.”
His father groaned from the backseat at this last part. It was a hard thing, Taylor Junior knew, but necessary. At twelve, a boy received the Aaronic Priesthood, and he couldn’t take the chance that some of these boys might be infected with whatever had poisoned Abraham Christianson.
“When that’s done, we’ll gather the women and children and carry them into the wilderness. If a few escape or hide, that’s okay. We’ll come back for them later. So long as we get Eliza. We don’t leave town until I have her in my hands.”
If she survived the initial blasts. It was a risk, he knew.
“But what about our enemies?” Aaron asked. “What if Jacob and Abraham are still alive and still searching for us in the mountains?”
“They are dead. I can feel it, can’t you? But yes, there might be a survivor or two. It depends on who was standing there when our trap detonated on the cliff. That woman who was in the FBI, maybe. We don’t know about her. Maybe she died, too.”
“Sister Miriam,” Aaron said. “I don’t like her. I hope she dies.”
“And Abraham’s drug-addicted son. David. We don’t know about him. Maybe even your brother.” He shrugged. “Unless Stephen Paul dies with the others. But what can they do? Abraham and Jacob will be dead, Zarahemla destroyed. Blister Creek emptied. Any surviving men will be outcasts, and we will return later to finish them.”
His calm returned as he imagined how it would play out. It would have been easier with Eric Froud, but it was doable. He’d detonate one shell at the back door of the church building, another on the side. That would only leave one escape—the front door.
They reached Panguitch. Whenever he drove through the town, he took one of the handful of side streets instead of cutting through the center as Highway 89 turned into Main Street. There was a diner at the juncture of Main and Center that seemed popular with the highway patrol, and he didn’t want to take any chances this morning.
And so he happened to drive past the hospital. As he did, he saw a woman in a prairie dress and her three young children walking toward the hospital entrance. There were several vans in the parking lot, the ten- or twelve-seaters you saw so often in Blister Creek.
The hospital. Of course.
Fernie and Eliza Christianson had been in that car, together with Fernie’s children. There must have been injuries. Not Eliza—he’d seen her get out of the car—but what about Fernie? Had she been injured? Maybe the children, too. If the injuries were severe, Abraham’s wives would be here. They might have some of the older boys with them, maybe even husbands—cousins and in-laws of the Christianson clan.
He pulled the truck into the parking lot and parked next to one of the vans.
“What are you doing?” his father asked.
Taylor Junior didn’t answer right away. He watched the polygamist woman, thoughts roiling. “Look at that woman,” he said at last. “She’s a polygamist. Look at all those vans.”
“So they’re not all at the church,” his father said. “We can’t finish it today. We should go back, wait for a better opportunity.”
“Don’t be a fool, old man,” Aaron said. “It has to be today.” He turned to Taylor Junior. “Well?”
“We have to split up. Someone will take care of the hospital. Someone else Blister Creek.”
Taylor Junior considered their limitations, their remaining assets. Again, he wished they hadn’t lost Eric. “The two of you will take one shell and use it on the hospital. I’ll go to Blister Creek with the other shell.”
“Alone?” Aaron said. “How are you going to handle the men when they come out of the church?”
“Blister Creek doesn’t have as many men as it used to. Let’s say twenty or thirty at the church, maybe an equal number of older boys. Some will die in the attack. They’ll come out in ones and twos, herding their families. None of them will be armed. I will be.”
The frown deepened on Aaron’s face. It was doubt. “Even if you can, what if they flee out the back way? With only one shell…”
“I’ll enter the church from the back and detonate it there, then run around to the front, ready with the gun as they come out.”
“Too risky,” Aaron said. “Anyone can handle a bunch of women and hospital workers, but you need someone with you. At least take Elder Kimball.”
“I don’t want my father in Blister Creek.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror at his father, who sat with a numb expression. Maybe it would have been better if the older man had died instead of Eric. He’d become a dead weight on their operation. No, that wasn’t quite right. He could at least serve as a distraction. Maybe he would die. Maybe it was his time.
“Blister Creek is a spiritual sinkhole for him,” he said. “The closer we get, the more it saps his willpower. That won’t change until we cleanse it of the Christiansons.”
“Then bring me,” Aaron urged. “I’ll help you do it. And I can face my brother. If I see Stephen Paul—”
Taylor Junior cut him off. “No. I need you with my father, to help when his will fails him. Do what I command, no more arguing.”
He popped the glove compartment and handed them pistols, together with a box of ammo for each man. “Gather as many women and children as possible. Meet me on the east side of Witch’s Warts by two thirty this afternoon if you can. If not, I’ll see you either at the final sanctuary or on the other side of the veil.” He popped the trunk. “Now go.”
Aaron grabbed one of the packs from the back. As he pulled away, Taylor Junior caught a glimpse of his father’s face in the side mirror.
Elder Kimball’s expression was dull and expressionless, and suddenly Taylor Junior was certain of one thing.
My father is going to die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Fernie dreamed she could walk. In the dream she hurried through Zarahemla, pounding on doors, begging people to wake up, to get out. The compound was dark and silent. There was something in the air, some sort of sickly sweet smell, like a woman’s cloying perfume. Fernie was certain without understanding why—the mysterious way that one knows things in a dream—that it meant death to whoever smelled it. But nobody answered her cries.
She woke in the hospital bed, her clothes damp with sweat that chilled in the overly circulated air-conditioning. They’d strapped her down at the waist to keep her from rolling and injuring her spine.
The memory of the dream hung in front of her, damp and sticky, like a spiderweb, then began to break apart. She grabbed for the pieces to fix them in her memory, certain the nightmare meant something. She needed to warn people, but about what? She almost had it, but then the dream memories melted away and left her with a dark feeling of fading panic.
A nurse stood by her bedside, adjusting the IV drip. She looked over and smiled.
“The baby?” Fernie asked.
“Fine, no worries. His oxygen saturation is up, so we’ve got him out of the incubator. I’ll bring him down and see if you can nurse. How do you feel? Need a little more morphine?”
Fernie said she didn’t need another dose. The truth was she wanted to clear her head. She put a hand to her belly as the nurse left the room. It was sore, but not achingly so, where they’d cut her open and stitched her up again. When her contractions started, they’d tried to suppress labor, but when that didn’t work, they decided to go ahead with the delivery. With the spine injury, vaginal birth had been out of the question. Everything below the waist was numb, though she’d felt a twinge or two before the C-section.
Jacob, where are you?
She didn’t romanticize childbirth like women had in Salt Lake City. It was a job for mid
wives, mothers, and sister wives, not for husbands. But Jacob said it was important, and if it was important for him, it was important for her. So where was he?
And I need you.
Not to help with the baby. To help with the spine injury. Give her the medical scoop and buck up her spirits for the grueling rehabilitation. And not just to comfort her, to let her comfort him and wipe away the guilt that he’d let her down. I’m still the same person, she needed to tell him. It’s not my legs that matter.
And where was Eliza? Nobody had seen her since the car accident, two days earlier. Abraham Christianson hadn’t shown up to give Fernie a blessing. And what about Sister Miriam, or even David? How about Eliza’s friends in the FBI, wouldn’t they want to interview her to figure out how to track down their attackers? Something was going on, and Fernie was no idiot. She could guess. Her emotions flipped between anger that Jacob would abandon her and terror that he’d get himself killed.
Her stomach was hurting now. It felt like a too-tight rubber band cutting into her skin. Rather than wait for the nurse to return with her baby, Fernie stretched and grabbed the IV pole to pull it closer to the bed, then adjusted the port on the morphine bag, to add a small dosage to the saline drip. Enough to dull the pain without dulling her mind. There were advantages to being both the wife of a doctor and a close observer of human behavior.
What was keeping the nurse? Fernie’s breasts had started aching as soon as the nurse mentioned feeding the baby, like getting into the car for a long drive and realizing she needed to pee. Just when Fernie thought she’d ring, the nurse wheeled in the cart. The baby snuggled into a blue receiving blanket with a blue stocking cap over his head. His eyes were open, blinking. Fernie felt an immediate swelling of love. When the nurse lifted him out and set him in Fernie’s arms, she thought she would burst. If only it had been Jacob handing her the baby.
The nurse bent over. “Let’s help you with that gown. No, don’t move, I’ve got it.”
Daniel and Leah had been strong nursers from the start. Nephi had needed time to get used to the idea, but once he started he didn’t want to stop for the next five months. This little guy—Fernie had started to think of him as Jacob, a name her husband didn’t like, saying that Jacob Junior reminded him of Taylor Junior—took to nursing right away. He started rooting for the nipple as soon as it brushed his cheek. Two turns of the head and then he’d latched on and was sucking hard.
Fernie looked up. “Have you seen my husband?”
“No, I’m sorry. Your mother was asking if she could come in. Maybe she knows. If not, I—” The nurse stopped and cocked her head.
Fernie listened. There was some commotion down the hall, a man shouting, and then the sound of someone running past in the hallway.
The nurse frowned and excused herself.
The woman had no sooner slipped out of the room when a huge, thumping explosion sounded somewhere in the building. Fernie’s bed shuddered. Her spare hand flew out and grabbed the railing around the bed. The other hand tightened around her infant, less than twelve hours old and tiny and vulnerable at her breast. Someone screamed. A gunshot.
The panic she’d felt after her nightmare now returned full force, and suddenly she understood. The dream hadn’t been about anyone else. It was a warning for herself.
Fernie punched at the call button, then closed her eyes to pray. “Dear Heavenly Father…”
The door swung open and a man burst in. Blood splattered his face and clung to his thick, dirty beard. He held a gun in his hand. Blisters climbed from his hands to his elbow, as if he’d burned himself.
Fernie’s heart felt as though it would leap out of her chest. She clutched her baby tighter.
“Fernie Kimball,” the man said.
She recognized him now. Aaron Young, Stephen Paul’s younger brother. She hadn’t seen him since that day several years earlier when he’d betrayed them in the temple, helped his brother Israel and Gideon Kimball murder Enoch in the Celestial Room. His hair was thinner, his beard thicker.
“That’s not my name. My name is Fernie Christianson.”
“By what authority? You were sealed to Elder Taylor Kimball for time and all eternity.”
“And the prophet dissolved the sealing. I’m not his wife.”
“The prophet? Oh, you mean Abraham Christianson? That apostate is dead. So is your so-called husband. Taylor Junior is the prophet now, and you’re Elder Kimball’s property.” He waved his gun. “Get out of bed. Let’s go.”
“No.”
“Get out of bed or I’ll drag you out. And then I’ll smash Jacob Christianson’s baby against the wall until its brains are bashed out. You like that?” He started toward her.
“Please, no.” Panic flooded her. “I can’t get up, don’t you see? I was injured in the car accident, I can’t walk. I’ll go with you, don’t hurt my baby. Get a wheelchair. You can find one in the hall or in the nurses’ station, just don’t…”
Her voice trailed off at the look in Aaron’s eyes. He stared at her and it wasn’t disbelief she saw, but a cold, calm understanding. He believed her, but he wasn’t going to get a wheelchair. That would take too long. Whatever was going on out there, he didn’t have time to waste on one crippled woman, Elder Kimball’s former wife or no.
So this is how it ends. This is the day that I meet my Savior.
Aaron Young lifted his gun.
* * *
Elder Kimball was in the parking lot loading screaming, hysterical women and children into vans when the black Crown Victoria flew into the lot and stopped with a screech of brakes.
Several men and women poured out of the car. Guns appeared, voices screamed at him to surrender.
There were still three women and maybe twice that many children outside the vans, resisting as he herded them in, and this saved him. They scattered or threw up their hands or went running toward the newcomers as if expecting to be saved.
Kimball ducked behind the van’s bumper, gun in hand. His mind, sluggish since Aaron murdered Eric, suddenly felt sharp and alert. Up to that point, he’d seen the attack on the hospital as if watching someone else commit the horrific deeds with his body. He couldn’t control it, he could only watch as he stormed into the building behind Aaron Young. Aaron pulled the pin on the chemical artillery shell and rolled it down the hallway past the nurses’ station. The two men threw themselves out the front door just as it detonated. Glass shattered. The concussion rolled over them. They regained their feet.
Moments later, screaming, injured people began pouring out of the hospital. Aaron grabbed an elderly man and shoved him to the pavement. It was Josiah Bird, Aaron’s first cousin, once removed, and Kimball’s second cousin through the Griggs line. He was over eighty, had never held a calling in the church higher than counselor in the bishopric, and had been suffering a degenerative eye condition for twenty years that left him nearly blind.
Aaron put his gun to the back of the man’s head and pulled the trigger. Blood and bone sprayed out the front of his skull, and he fell to the ground. Aaron turned and barked, “Grab that woman! She’s getting away.”
Elder Kimball let any gentiles go free, but grabbed any woman in a prairie dress and all the children with them and herded them roughly into a clump. An elderly nurse ran past, hands on her eyes, screaming.
Aaron pulled someone else from the crowd. It was a boy, one of the Peterson kids, Elder Kimball thought thirteen or fourteen. Kimball tried to force his way through, but Aaron already had him on the ground. Another shot to the head.
Suddenly, a male nurse was grabbing for Kimball’s gun. Aaron shot him too, then finally, a doctor who tried to run. Why he killed that man, it was hard to say—Aaron was letting other gentiles go free. They grabbed more people from Blister Creek. Elder Kimball searched the group, saw a few women he recognized, including Fernie’s mother. Blood streamed from her nose, and she clutched a teenage girl to her breast.
No Eliza, and even more surprisingly, no Fernie. He as
sumed that two of the children screaming and bleeding from cuts must have been his own offspring by his former wife, but it had been so many years since he’d seen the two kids—Leah and Daniel, he remembered with some effort—that he couldn’t recognize them to ask about their mother. Aaron pulled aside Fernie’s mother and threatened her with the gun.
After Kimball promised there would be no more killing, the terrified women gave up Fernie’s location, down the hall in the maternity wing. Aaron had disappeared around the side to bring her back while Kimball herded the women and remaining children toward the van. He threatened to send them back inside unless someone produced a key. A woman handed it over.
Some of the women were bleeding, others coughing and rubbing at their eyes. Contaminated. He didn’t touch them, imagined that in a few hours they’d be like Eric Froud, writhing in agony as chemical blisters spread along their bodies. Would Taylor Junior kill them, too? Toss them in a ditch to be picked over by crows?
He’d almost had them packed into the van, was just moments away from pulling around to the side, where he could pick up Aaron and Fernie and flee the scene, when the car pulled up and scattered the remaining women and children.
He crouched behind the bumper and fumbled off the safety on the gun.
“FBI! Come out with your hands up!” a woman shouted.
In answer, Kimball reached around and fired three times. Gunfire returned. Glass shattered on the van window. Inside, women and children screamed and cowered. Protected by the van, he made his way toward the driver’s-side door, thinking he could get in and make a run for it, but the enemy fire continued, this time at the tires. They burst and the van sagged on the far side.
Kimball leaned to shoot around the front bumper. Maybe he could convince them there were two gunmen, then use the chaos to get away. But when he stuck his head out, he saw two of his enemies coming around that way. The first was Sister Miriam, the FBI agent turned polygamist, and the second was Jacob Christianson. His heart leaped into his throat. They saw him and dropped behind a car, and then one of them snapped off shots. More gunfire came from the other direction.
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