Hell's Fortress

by Michael Wallace

He used a funnel and the gas containers to refuel the bus, then helped Kemp fool around with the carburetor until they got the bus engine to turn over. The two men communicated in grunts and single-word sentences.

  When the bus was fully loaded, the last thing Jacob and David took from the truck was a locked trunk containing fully packed saddlebags for Eliza, Lillian, and Stephen Paul. Guns, ammo, food, water purification tablets, medicine, maps—everything to carry them across the western desert to California.

  Engine rumbling, the bus rolled onto the road while children piled aboard and men drove the mules and horses with their wagons into place to follow behind. A day of grazing and rest had done the animals good; they looked like they’d survive the trip to Lake Powell. Last came the mounts for the trio from Blister Creek, roped to the back of the caravan.

  When they were ready to depart, Stephen Paul suggested a prayer for Eliza and her companions. Couldn’t hurt. But there was no need to make it a spectacle, so Jacob called the saints to the shoulder of the road, apart from the refugees. Miriam watched from about twenty feet away, hands on her hips. Emotions churned on her face; no doubt she thought she should be going in Lillian’s place, new baby or not. Trost stood inside the bus, talking over the map with Kemp, who sat behind the wheel.

  Jacob folded his arms and bowed his head, but before he opened his mouth, someone shouted behind him. A rider was galloping bareback down the road toward them from the north. One hand gripped the mane and the other waved madly in the air.

  “Grover?” Miriam said. “What the devil is he doing?”

  Grover pounded up. “They’re here. Run! Hide!”

  A black speck of movement overhead caught Jacob’s eye. A turbofan engine whirred. A military drone dove from the sky like a giant, swooping bird of prey. Then came a flash of light and a hiss. A missile raced toward the ground.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Eliza stared in horror as the missile raced toward them. She barely had time to throw herself to the ground before the air split with a terrific explosion. A wave of heat and pressure rolled over the highway.

  She lay flat while flaming pieces of wood showered down. Her ears rang. For a moment she couldn’t move, as if a giant fist had punched her to the ground and knocked the air from her lungs. Her head swam, and it took a moment to regain her equilibrium. She struggled to her feet, thinking only to get off the road. Find a boulder or a gulley and cower until the attack was over.

  The two pickup trucks from Blister Creek blazed. One of the refugee wagons had simply disappeared, and dead and dying animals lay strewn across the road. A horse screamed. People called out. A few feet away, Stephen Paul lay on his belly, groaning, with what looked like a shard of wood sticking out of his back. Where was Jacob?

  The bus had avoided the destruction and now inched into motion. It was driving off, trying to escape.

  “Eliza, stop them!”

  It was Jacob, struggling to his knees behind her. His eyes looked glassy and dazed. Blood trickled from his nose.

  The missile. It must have been a warning shot.

  The drone had blown up one of the wagons and killed several animals. Destroyed the trucks. But no people. How easy to target people walking on the road. Or the school bus. Then it would have been a massacre.

  Somewhere, hundreds of miles away, a young drone pilot sat behind a video monitor, watching them, trying to decide whether to fire a second missile. Eliza had spent months thinking of those pilots, imagining what was going through their heads, what they would do in certain circumstances. Were they growing resentful of Blister Creek, of its peaceful, isolated location, its plentiful food, while their own hometowns fell apart? And hoping that Blister Creek would test the limits they’d imposed on it, so they’d have a chance to pull the trigger?

  She was suddenly certain that if the bus made a run for it, all those people would die. Trost was on board. Dozens of innocent refugees.

  Miriam had also regained her feet and seemed to understand Jacob’s warning at the same moment. Together, she and Eliza ran after the bus, crying for it to stop.

  Grover, still on his horse, galloped past the two women. The boy was unharmed; he must have been far enough away to avoid the attack entirely. The bus was heavily laden and accelerating sluggishly, but it had already picked up enough speed that Eliza and Miriam would never catch it. Only Grover had a chance.

  He pulled his horse alongside the front door of the bus, which still lay open, and grabbed for the side mirror. With an impressive feat of agility, he swung from the horse and into the bus. His mount veered away, tossing its head. Shouts came through the open windows, together with the sound of struggle. The bus slowed on the road.

  “Go,” Miriam said from behind Eliza.

  Eliza reached the open door and swung herself inside. Kemp was driving, the wheel in one hand and a pistol in the other. Grover struggled with him for the gun. Trost lay on the ground, wrestling with two men who fought to keep him from drawing his own weapon. Eliza reached over Grover and grabbed at Kemp’s wrist in an attempt to wrench away the gun.

  Miriam climbed in. “Put it down!”

  Kemp ignored the command. He kneed Grover back, who in turn fell into Eliza. She backed into Miriam and almost knocked her out of the bus.

  “Move!” Miriam told them as she righted herself. She lifted her gun.

  A woman sitting in the front row grabbed at Miriam’s arm as she fired at Kemp. The blast was deafening in the enclosed space. The shot went wild and smashed into the windshield. A snowflake pattern showed where it had hit.

  A teenage boy tackled Miriam. Moments later, she was mobbed by the refugees. They dragged Grover back too, but Eliza broke free before they could get her. She drew her own gun. They stopped, and she held them off as she stood in front of the door.

  “Stop the bus,” Eliza said. “The missile was a warning shot. They’re going to kill us if we run.”

  Kemp ignored her. Free of his attackers, he mashed his foot on the pedal. His free hand pointed the gun at Eliza. She aimed her own weapon back at him.

  From the road behind them came the telltale thump of the .50-caliber machine gun. What were they thinking? Was Bill Smoot shooting at the bus? But when Eliza glanced out the open door to see, tracer bullets were flashing skyward. Bill was trying to shoot down the drone. A terrible mistake.

  Before she could snap her gaze back to Kemp, the image of destruction on the road burned into her mind like a photograph of a single, awful moment of time. Jacob and Lillian were dragging Stephen Paul from the road, Smoot crawling after them on hands and knees. A mule with an open belly staggered down the center line, its guts spilling almost to the ground. Other animals fought to free themselves from the two remaining wagons to which they were yoked.

  Bill kept firing.

  She didn’t spot the second missile, only a flash of light followed an instant later by a concussive boom. She looked back again in time to see a fireball rolling from the bunker. When it dissipated, the bunker lay in smoking ruins.

  Bill Smoot.

  Eliza faced Kemp again. “Stop the bus,” she said. “It’s our only chance. Please, for mercy’s sake.”

  “The hell I will.”

  The bus was gaining speed. The carnage disappeared behind them, until she could see nothing of the attack or its survivors, only a column of smoke still drifting higher.

  The drone was still circling, she knew. Some carried two missiles. Others an array of missiles and guns. And it could always call backup. If another drone lurked over the reservoir on the north end of the valley it would reach them in moments. Eliza braced herself.

  But still the desert rolled by. A minute passed, then two. Five minutes, ten. Twenty. Still they cut south along Highway 89 at speeds Eliza hadn’t traveled in over a year. She glanced at the speedometer. Only fifty miles per hour. It felt much faster.

  “Put do
wn the gun,” Kemp told her.

  “Put yours down. Let my friends go.”

  “No. You first.”

  “Why, so you can shoot me?”

  “Believe what you want,” he said. “But sooner or later, one of us is going to grow tired and that’s how accidents happen.”

  “Don’t do it, Eliza,” Miriam said from the floor, where refugees kept her pinned. “He’s driving. You’re not.”

  The implication was clear: shoot him. Wait until his attention was diverted, then put a hole in his head.

  Eliza couldn’t do that. And so she handed over the gun to one of the men holding Trost on the floor. She prepared to be swarmed, but nobody moved against her. Kemp set the gun on his lap and drove. They traveled for nearly an hour before he stopped the bus in the middle of the road.

  “Get out.”

  “What, here?” Eliza asked.

  “This is it. Forty miles. What I promised your brother.”

  “What about my companions? The other two are still back in the valley.”

  “Now you have three to keep you company.”

  “They’re not the same people. And we don’t have our horses.”

  “Not my problem. Walk back to Blister Creek and get them.”

  The refugees released Miriam, Grover, and Trost. The former police officer sported a darkening goose egg in the middle of his forehead. Grover was pale and shaking. Miriam looked ready to tear out someone’s throat with her bare hands.

  “What about our supplies?” Eliza asked.

  “Since you’re returning home, I figure you don’t need them.”

  Miriam tensed. Eliza seized her wrist to restrain her. “Forty miles—that’s going to take us three days on foot. We’re not leaving without the contents of that trunk.”

  “I could kill you all,” Kemp said. “It’s what you deserve.”

  “In cold blood? After we gave you food and medicine?”

  “My mother is dead. Her body was in one of those wagons. What’s left of her now?” His voice caught. When he spoke again, the leaden tone had dropped, replaced by barely restrained fury. “This is all your doing. Your fault.”

  “So you will kill us?”

  She’d said all of this in a voice loud enough to reach the back of the bus. People were muttering, and she knew that some, at least, would be thinking this over. Desperate or not, it was a tough thing to rob and murder four people.

  “Bring up the trunk,” he said.

  They dragged it down the center aisle. Of course it was too big to carry on the road, but Eliza had planned to abandon it all along. It was only meant to keep the saddlebags safely locked away until Kemp had smuggled them out of the valley.

  When it was up front, Kemp pointed at Eliza. “You have the key. Open it.”

  “Outside.”

  “No, here.”

  “So you can rob us?”

  “I’ll get it open with or without you. Use a crowbar if I have to. Open it now and I’ll share out what I find.”

  “And steal the rest.”

  He shrugged.

  Eliza glanced at her companions, but they would be no help. Trost looked like he was suffering a concussion. Miriam would take the hardest line possible. Grover looked on the verge of puking. She fished the key from her pocket.

  When it was open, Kemp and two other men rummaged through the saddlebags. Most of the goods disappeared into the back of the bus: their rifles and ammunition, bandages, pills for sterilizing water, bedrolls, silver bullion coins, binoculars, matches, and most of the food. In the end, all that was left was a single cook set, a single box of matches, two full canteens, and enough food for maybe two meals. Eliza looked on in dismay.

  “We’ll never make it three days on that.”

  “It will take you two days, tops. And the food is a courtesy. My thanks for your so-called assistance. You could make do without.”

  “How are we supposed to defend ourselves?”

  “Try not to get in any gunfights. Now take your crap and get off my bus.”

  Miriam was shaking with fury by the time the four companions from Blister Creek stood on the pavement. Eliza fought down her own anger and tried to feel grateful. They were alive.

  The doors closed on the school bus. It rolled forward, slower this time now that the refugees weren’t fleeing for their lives. Traveling at no more than ten miles an hour, it took a few minutes until it disappeared onto the shimmering horizon. The four of them watched until it was gone.

  “They will burn when the Lord returns in his glory,” Miriam said.

  “They were trying to survive. So are we.” Eliza let out a long sigh. “Officer Trost, are you badly hurt?”

  “My head is killing me. But I think . . . think I’ll be okay.”

  She looked into his eyes, trying to remember what her brother had said about concussions. Were his pupils dilated? Yes, she thought so.

  “Grover?”

  “It blew up,” the boy said. “Sweet heaven, my brother. Bill.”

  Eliza squeezed his wrist. “You were brave, the way you rode after the bus.”

  “They killed him.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It could have been me. I was at the bunker—I only just left. Bill sent me to warn you. I didn’t know—” He stopped, swallowed hard. “My dad, is he—?”

  “He’s alive. I saw him crawling off the road. Jacob is with him. He’s a doctor.”

  A shuddering sob worked its way up in Grover’s chest. For a moment he looked twelve years old, not eighteen.

  “Hold it together,” Miriam said. She scanned the sky.

  “Have a little compassion,” Eliza urged. “He just lost his brother.”

  “There will be time to mourn later. Right now, we’ve got to get off the road. For all we know, that thing is still up there. This is a crappy place to hide.”

  Miriam was right. They’d lost elevation as the bus tore south, and were now in the heart of the desert. Whatever crazy weather patterns had sent the monsoonal clouds spilling over the mountains the past year and a half hadn’t greened this stretch of desert. Cover was spotty—sagebrush and spiny plants, with sandstone boulders dropped here and there like a giant’s marbles.

  A sea of sand dunes lay to the south, with clumps of grass and brush struggling to anchor the edges. Snowcapped mountains of the Paunsaugunt Plateau glimmered twenty or thirty miles to the east, with white and coral sandstone bluffs and mesas like a broken tabletop between the mountains and the highway. West lay the mountains of the Markagunt Plateau, the highest peaks of the Grand Staircase that led all the way south to the Grand Canyon. Cedar City lay on the other side of those mountains. A bent speed limit sign hummed in the wind.

  They traveled west from the highway for several minutes until they found a sandstone outcrop to take shelter and assess their situation. A brown and tan gopher snake, resting in the shade, puffed itself, hissed, and vibrated its tail. Eliza started, then, seeing it wasn’t a rattler, ignored it until it slithered off.

  Trost touched the lump on his forehead. He looked stronger. “Sonofabitch pistol-whipped me.” He looked at Eliza, his eyes clearer than they’d been. “So what, wait here until dark and then make for home?”

  “The drones have infrared,” Miriam said. “Daylight, darkness, it doesn’t matter. If they’re watching the highway, it won’t matter how or when we return.”

  “So why did you tell us to leave the road?” Eliza asked.

  “Because you have a decision to make.”

  Trost’s scowl spread as he kept rubbing the lump. Grover also frowned, but his expression spoke of confusion.

  Eliza met Miriam’s gaze. “You have a baby waiting for you.”

  “There’s no shortage of wet nurses in the valley. She’ll be okay.” Miriam said it casually, but her
voice was tight and Eliza knew she’d struck a nerve.

  “And Diego too,” Eliza added. Miriam and David’s adopted son had just turned twelve, young enough that he’d miss his mother when she was gone, but old enough to suffer grownup worries about her safety. “That’s two kids who need their mother. And what about David? He must be sick with worry.”

  “Getting murdered by a drone won’t help anyone feel any better. Heading west is safer.”

  “You know what you’re saying, right? Is this what you want?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I want or not. We can’t get home right now. So how do we make the best of it?”

  “That’s crazy,” Grover said. “We have to find a way back. What choice do we have?”

  “A big choice,” Trost said. He leaned back against the eroded sandstone. “We can take our chances walking home, or we can help Eliza.”

  “You mean go to California to look for her boyfriend? That’s crazy. The Lord is raining destruction upon the wicked. I’m not going out there. No way.”

  “If you go back, you do it alone,” Miriam told him. “The rest of us are sticking with Eliza. Right, Brother Trost?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Eliza told the man. “Miriam, that isn’t fair. To any of you and least of all to Grover.”

  “If you have objections,” Miriam said, “take them up with the Lord. It was His decision. He chose this company. Jacob made his vote, and God overrode him.”

  “That’s nonsense, and you know it. Trost, tell her.”

  “Oh, now you want him to speak up. Yes, Trost, tell me. Tell us all.”

  “I’m not telling anyone anything,” he said. “I’ve had one pistol-whipping and I don’t need another.”

  Miriam turned back to Eliza. “You don’t want to find Steve?”

  “Of course I do. But we have no supplies. No weapons. Grover is a kid. Trost didn’t ask to do this.”

  Miriam turned to him. “Trost, no more equivocating. Are you in or not?”

  He dropped his hand from his head and rubbed instead at his walrus mustache. He looked steadily at Eliza. “Jacob rescued my daughter from Las Vegas. He gave us a home in Blister Creek. You know I don’t believe in your church, but I respect your brother. And I owe him one. It’s your call.”