Smoot dropped his eyes. “I apologize, brother.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” Jacob said. “If I could, I’d bring back my father. He would be more confident. He would march you into battle and, Lord willing, lead you to victory. I am not my father.”
“You are the man chosen by God,” Stephen Paul said. “That is enough for me.”
Jacob turned to his counselor. “You need a general. A prophet. I am a doctor and unqualified to lead. My faith is weak, maybe weaker than any other person’s in this room. So if you want someone who will lift his sword and call you to war with no doubts, with pure certainty in his righteous calling, you need another man.”
“You are Jacob Christianson, the favored son of Abraham Christianson,” Stephen Paul said in a calm tone. “He ordained you to step into his shoes. The Lord has confirmed that calling in my heart.”
“Mine too,” Elder Johnson said, his voice shaky with age. “When you spoke at your father’s funeral, I saw your father’s visage reflected in your countenance. My bosom burned with the spirit. I knew you were the prophet. I knew it.”
Murmurs of assent passed among the other men, including Smoot.
“You know my limitations,” Jacob said. “If you want me to lead, I will. But if that’s the case, you have to let me move at my own pace. We have a hard decision to make and I want to exhaust every possibility. Elder Young?”
Stephen Paul rose. “Yes, brother?”
“Have you and your wife had any luck with the shortwave?”
“Carol reached Durango this morning.”
“That sounds promising.”
“Colorado is under martial law, but Durango at least still has a mayor. They’re flooded with refugees from Green River, and there’s a typhoid outbreak. Denver is starving and they’re sending out refugees. Some of them are headed in this direction.”
“What about Utah?” Jacob asked.
“I raised Salt Lake again. They told me to shove off. Nothing from St. George or Cedar City.”
Even more discouraging. “Nevada?”
Stephen Paul shook his head. “We couldn’t get Mesquite or Henderson. Didn’t try Las Vegas. Whoever is in charge there, it seemed like a bad idea to remind them about Blister Creek.”
Jacob didn’t know what he’d been hoping. Maybe to find another town like Blister Creek still holding on. Even if it were a hundred miles away it might form a partnership against the collapse. Blister Creek could share its expertise and organization, and a larger town could provide manpower for a mutual defense. From there, an expanding circle of towns, farms, and ranches could form a core of stability as the global mess worked itself out. Hold on for two, three more years and the weather crisis would pass, the wars would die down, and civilization could reassert itself.
Was that a fantasy? What if there was nowhere left to go but down?
“Elder Smoot. Tell me about the south valley.”
“We rebuilt the bunker, gave it better earth sheltering. Installed a new machine gun. We’re going to mine the road between mile twelve and the old Gunderson ranch, but it will take a couple of weeks. Anyone comes up the highway, the mines will blow them to kingdom come.”
“Everyone hear that? Nobody use the road south of mile twelve.” Jacob turned back to Smoot. “Where is the new ammo dump?”
“It’s three hundred yards north of the bunker. We should have it dug out by Saturday. We’ll get about fifty crates in there, good and concealed. Enough to fight a battle or two.”
“Good. David? Recon report?”
Smoot sat down and David rose.
“Lillian and I used a few of our remaining batteries last night and infiltrated the reservoir camp with night vision goggles. There was a half-moon, but it was overcast, so I don’t think we were spotted.”
The other men leaned forward at this. Three days earlier, Jacob had sent a dozen riders into the Ghost Cliffs, only to be met by gunfire. The squatters hadn’t abandoned their camp at all, but had reinforced their position. And there seemed to be more of them. After a brief skirmish, the riders retreated to Blister Creek. This was the first new information since then.
“It’s bad,” David continued. “The camp has grown to several hundred tents, plus overturned carts, lean-tos, and other makeshift shelters. They’ve whacked up the hillside pretty bad, but they don’t seem to be using the trees for much else but firewood. Nobody is building anything with any permanence. They guard the perimeter with bonfires and several dozen armed men.”
“Bottom line?” Jacob asked. “How many are we talking?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say a couple of thousand people, maybe more.”
“We can’t leave them up there,” Smoot said.
“They’re not planning to stay,” David said. “If they were, they’d be building something more permanent.”
“That’s because they’re planning to occupy the valley,” Jacob said.
Angry mutters at this. Smoot gave Jacob a hard look and a curt nod.
See, that look said. There’s nothing to discuss. We drive them off or they overwhelm us.
Was Smoot right? Couldn’t Blister Creek maintain its vigil and prevent the mob from descending into town? The cliffs provided the most heavily guarded, easily defended entrance to the valley floor. Jacob had set up gun emplacements at six different locations along the switchbacks. There were two heavy machine guns, automatic and semiautomatic rifles for sniping, and caches of ammo. Whenever the enemy approached, drive them off. Meanwhile, the squatters had no farms, no food except what they could scavenge or hunt. And no shelter. Wait for winter and the problem would solve itself.
Except for those barrels of pesticide. All to kill a few fish. Or maybe the squatters were even deliberately poisoning the water supply. Then there were the latrines right up near the water line, filled to overflowing by a growing camp of sick and dying refugees. How long until cholera swept through Blister Creek?
“Give me ideas, brothers,” Jacob said. “Anything we can try that doesn’t involve bloodshed, I want to hear it.”
Nobody spoke.
“Please. I need suggestions. Even dumb ones. Anything.” More silence. “Fine, I’ll start. What if we sent riders to Green River? We’ll find out who is in charge of the army camp and beg them to take back their refugees.”
“Why would they do that?” David said. “The government wants the refugees to come here. That’s why they let it be known we have food.”
“We could pray for the Lord to send them away,” Elder Potts said. He’d been a large man not so long ago, but the creeping ravages of age had left him hunched over, his bones aching with arthritis and with no analgesics to ease the pain. “He will soften their hearts and make them forget about attacking us.”
“Is there a man in this room who hasn’t prayed for that already?” Stephen Paul said.
“Then we redouble our pleas,” Potts said.
“How about sending riders to Salt Lake?” Jacob suggested. “The state government still had a pulse, last we checked.”
“You’d ask the McKay brothers for help?” David said.
“We don’t know if they’re still in charge. Anyway, yes, I would.”
“The language the radio operator used when I called would not be fit for polite company,” Stephen Paul said. “If we send riders, they’ll be arrested or shot.”
“How about Cedar City?” Jacob said. “I know they didn’t answer the radio, but they were still alive last fall and we haven’t seen any refugees from that direction.”
“Except Joe Kemp and his crew,” David said.
“They didn’t pass through Cedar City, they cut across north of St. George.”
“Say we go,” Smoot said, twisting his hands on his cane. “What do we ask them to do? Take the refugees off our hands? That’s the only possible way they could help.
”
“Could be the army is in charge over there,” Jacob said. “Maybe a different division than the Green River people.”
“Could be,” Stephen Paul said. “We could send someone over the mountain by truck to see. That would take less than a day.”
“We’re mining the road,” Smoot reminded them. “And even then, we’d be admitting to people in Cedar City that we still have fuel enough to drive around town. Which raises the question, do we have fuel?” He shrugged, as if he didn’t want to know the answer. “Say we do. The army finds out we have fuel to burn and they’ll be far more interested in that than in helping with our refugee problem.”
“There’s one other option,” Jacob began. “Follow the example of Brigham Young.”
Scowls deepened. Jaws clenched.
“You mean flee into the wilderness?” Smoot said. “Abandon our farms, our homes, everything?”
“That’s right. Look for a sanctuary in the desert.”
“This is our sanctuary in the desert.” Smoot’s voice was as tight as a rubber band stretched to the breaking point.
“There are forty-two hundred people living in Blister Creek,” David added in a quieter tone. “This isn’t the Kimball cult. We can’t find a box canyon with a few Anasazi ruins and hide for the next five years.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And how would we feed them, anyway?” Stephen Paul asked.
“We’ll carry as much as we can. Plus seed to plant anew. And our herds. More than enough to live on while we find a new home, lay out homesteads, and clear fields.”
“This isn’t the Old West,” Smoot said. “There’s no undiscovered wilderness awaiting us.”
“Wherever we go,” Stephen Paul said, “we’ll simply provide a new target. Those squatters at the reservoir are locusts. They’ll come through Blister Creek after we’re gone, eat up everything, then look around until they find us.”
“Yes, I’m grasping,” Jacob said. “But there has to be something that doesn’t involve more bloodshed.”
“If you think of a solution,” David said, “I’m there. Tell me what it is. Convince me. This is the last thing I want.”
“The last thing any of us want,” Elder Johnson said.
“You can look, Brother Jacob, but you won’t find it,” Smoot said. “This is our home, this is where we make our stand. It’s the End of Days. We’re the only thing standing between the forces of Satan and the utter destruction of the earth.”
Jacob stared. There were ten million Americans in arms, backed by fighter jets, tanks, artillery, nuclear weapons, for heaven’s sake, but a few fools in the desert armed with rifles were going to hold the line?
What choice do I have?
“Anyone else? Please, anyone. Any ideas? Anything?”
None of the men answered. There were twelve men in the room, all waiting for him to lead.
The silence thickened until at last Jacob cleared his throat. “Two thousand squatters?”
David nodded. “So far. That’s my guess.”
“Elder Smoot, how many in the militia?”
“The Blister Creek Legion has two hundred men at arms. The Women’s Council offers four hundred more. I’d hold them in reserve, but those ladies know how to shoot if we need them.”
“Assuming they agree to the plan,” Jacob said.
“You are the prophet. Their priesthood leader. They have covenanted with the Lord to obey.”
Smoot had come a long way since last fall, when he’d balked at arming the women and subverted Eliza when Jacob left her in charge of Blister Creek. But he still spoke with absolute certainty of the rights and privileges any male priesthood leader held over any woman. Jacob did not intend to command the women, any more than he had come into this body of men and made demands. But he guessed Smoot was right and they would back him.
Jacob made his decision. He turned to his brother. “Six hundred saints. Is that enough?”
“More than enough,” David said. “It’s an unorganized mob. Fifty would be enough to drive them into the hills.”
“No,” Jacob said. “If we’re going to do it, this time we don’t mess around. They had a warning. This is different. This time we hit them with everything we’ve got.” He raised his voice. “And we don’t stop until they are dead or driven from our lands.”
Smoot banged his cane to the ground. “Yes!”
And with that, the room erupted in shouts and cries.
Men yelled their frustrations, exclaimed their gratitude. Shouted their joy that the Lord had sent them a prophet. That He would smite their enemies. Elder Heaps raised his arms and babbled in tongues. Tears streamed down his cheeks. David and Stephen Paul clenched their fists and joined in the roar.
Jacob left the room, unable to listen to them carrying on. He shut the door to the Holy of Holies behind him and walked down the hallway, his footsteps heavy and his stomach filled with sand.
It was time to tell his wife of their murderous purpose. The Women’s Council would look for peaceful solutions, but in the end what choice would they have? All of Blister Creek must unite or be destroyed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kemp had found a receptive audience in Cedar City with Andrew La Salle’s body slung over his saddle and a story about polygamists in the mountains. The polygamists were wanted horse thieves. A posse had already chased the four into the western desert before giving up. They were too afraid of bandits, of the army, of the desert itself. The thought of more polygamists in the mountains left them terrified. Cedar City moved to fortify the canyon.
And when Kemp offered to go after the four who’d escaped into the desert, Hank Gibson, the self-proclaimed mayor, police chief, and governor, was eager to help. Gibson swapped him fresh horses in exchange for his tired pair, restocked him with food and ammo, and provided him with an excellent set of maps.
And that’s when Kemp got a break. Following his enemies’ escape route on the map, he realized that the polygamists had traveled too far north. If Kemp hurried, he had an opportunity to cut them off. So he raced across the western desert, entered Nevada at the Clover Mountains, then took position on a volcanic hillock to wait. It was the perfect spot for an ambush.
The next day the polygamists came down the road, just as expected. Kemp held his fire, waiting for them to enter a flat stretch without cover. Take his time and he could pick them off one by one, in the open.
Suddenly, one of the women shouted and the four threw themselves from their horses. He fired, hit one of the animals. His enemies reached the safety of the ditch on the far side of the highway.
Dammit. How had he been spotted?
Kemp expected the polygamists to wait for nightfall, then slip away. Instead, they came after him. One person shot from behind a blind of rocks on the edge of the highway, while two others cleverly crossed through a culvert and took refuge behind a boulder at the base of Kemp’s hill. He’d spotted the two women running from the culvert, but had resisted the bait. Instead, he’d waited patiently, aiming always at the rifleman, and was rewarded with a glimpse of sandy-gray hair. By then one of the women was charging up the hill with a pistol in hand. He fired a single shot at the rifleman, scooped up his gun, and ran for the horses. By the time the woman reached his position and fired her pistol down the highway after him, he was too far away to hit.
Kemp’s horses were already tired and he didn’t think he could outrun his enemies, who had been traveling at a slower pace. So he waited for the first opportunity to jump off the road and set up a second ambush. Take advantage of their aggression. But they never showed. He thought about doubling back to search for them, but instead decided to ride on and look for another likely ambush spot.
After consulting the maps, he found one. A ranch road. If the enemies had a map, they might use it to try to loop around him. If not, they’d have to come down
the highway itself. So he set up at the junction of the ranch road and the highway. There had been a battle at the spot, and among the wreckage of burned-out, bullet-riddled cars, he found a sedan half-buried in the sand on the shoulder, with its trunk facing up the highway. He hid his horses some distance off. Then he cracked the car trunk, yanked out the backseat so he could stretch out in its interior, and waited with his rifle aimed up the highway. The inside of the burned-out vehicle baked with the heat.
The polygamists never appeared.
Kemp waited until evening before giving up. He packed his gun, retrieved his horses, and set off warily down the highway. A continuous low rumble came from the southwest. He knew that sound from Iran. It was a distant artillery bombardment. A reddish glow stained the horizon—Vegas, burning. When the wind blew from the north, it carried clean desert air. When it stopped, the smell of ash and burning plastic stung his nose and mouth.
For a time he was at a loss. All he knew was that his enemies traveled toward California, probably via Las Vegas, which lay directly to the south. His only hope was to skirt the city and trap them on the other side.
He was exhausted and looking for a secure spot to bed down for the night when he caught a glimpse of reflected firelight maybe a quarter of a mile from the highway. He crept through the darkness until he gained the hillside above what turned out to be a small camp. Three figures stood around a fire, hands out to warm themselves. They had hunkered in a sheltered spot between the hillside and some boulders. There was tall grass for their animals, maybe even a spring.
It would have been a good spot to hide from prying eyes, except the camp was too close to the highway and they hadn’t properly shielded their firelight. And now Kemp was in perfect position to kill them all. Easy.
So easy, in fact, that it made him suspicious.
It had taken two days of hard riding to reach Cedar City, followed by six days and a hundred and fifty miles across the deserts of Utah and Nevada in pursuit of his quarry. Kemp was hopeful that he’d killed the older man with his sniper rifle, but the other three had evaded his attempted ambushes since then. Could they really be sitting here in front of him, ready to die?
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