Jacob recovered. He got his knees up and shoved the man away. Kimball was an old man, and before he could recover, Jacob grabbed him and flipped him onto his back.
And now the rage came. It roared through Jacob’s veins like a waterfall, drowning and washing away everything else. He lifted back his fist to crush it into Kimball’s larynx. The man would be dead before the guards came through the doors. And nobody would touch Jacob—Kimball had instigated the attack. Self-defense.
No. Not like this.
He hesitated, arm trembling. And then he pulled away with a cry of frustration.
The door burst open and three guards charged in. Two of them came at Kimball, the first taking the man in a choke hold and the second wrenching his arms behind his back. Jacob held up his hands as the third guard came at him. The guard drew short with his hand on his gun, then relaxed and gave Jacob a curt nod.
The other two dragged Kimball to his feet. He turned as they pulled him toward the door. “Is that you, Christianson? Who sent you, the devil? I killed your father, you know. I did it, me. I made them shoot. I knew they’d hit him.” They had Kimball in the hall, but Jacob could still hear him as they took him away. “He was no prophet! God didn’t protect him. That’s how you’ll go, you hear me? Shot dead like an animal. Call to your master for help—he has bound you in his chains and leads you unto hell. Like a rabid coyote, do you hear me? Jacob!” A door clanked shut and silence returned.
Krantz and Fayer came into the room, shaking their heads. Fayer dismissed the remaining guard. Jacob stripped off the black apron. “Get me out of here.”
They left him alone in the surveillance room, where he changed out of the robe and into his regular clothing. When he was done, he sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. He remembered his father, lying on the pavement outside the hospital, the shock in his eyes as he realized he was dying.
Fayer came back without Krantz. She put a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “I owe you an apology.” Jacob looked up, questioning. She nodded. “I was too hard on you earlier, and I’m sorry. I want to catch this guy, you know that. There’s nothing I want more. Except maybe to get my partner back.”
Jacob wasn’t angry, not at her. “I know how it is. We’re the crazy cousins. The ones who make you guys look bad.”
“Anyway,” she said, “the stuff about the bones gives us something to work with. Good job.”
“You can thank Eliza. It was her idea.”
“You didn’t say that before.”
“That’s when you thought it was stupid. I figured it didn’t hurt to take credit for the dumb ideas.”
She laughed. “I thought it was a dangerous idea. There’s a difference. You get that, right?”
“I wouldn’t try it if we weren’t desperate.”
“I’ve gone after a lot of creeps. Taylor Junior is different. There’s something about him. Be careful, will you?”
“You too. Find him, bring him in. End this.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
They wouldn’t let Taylor Junior into the refuge. Each evening at dusk he cleared off the pile of tumbleweeds and rocks from the entrance and pounded on the metal door. His knocks boomed down the shaft, but there was never any answer. Had they grown tired of waiting and left? Were they afraid it wasn’t him, even though he used the knock—three short, three long—that he’d taught them? Or had they never made it to the second sanctuary?
On the third morning he ran out of water and took his canteen to refill it in the brackish pool he’d discovered a half mile or so distant. He arrived to discover a naked man floating facedown in the water.
Taylor Junior drew back. The skin on the dead man’s back was pale and rotting. A dead vulture floated a few feet away, and a coyote lay in the shallows, teeth pulled back in a rictus of death.
A pile of clothing lay heaped next to the pool. There was no backpack or any other gear, not even a canteen. The man must have come from somewhere close by, stripped his clothes to take a dip, and died. But why bathe in the water when there were dead animals?
Because the animals came later, he realized. The vulture flapped down to feast on the corpse and was overcome by whatever had killed the man. Maybe the coyote came for the same reason, waded into the water, and died.
Taylor Junior picked up the man’s pants and went through the pockets, but there was nothing to identify him, and with the man floating facedown, it was impossible to see his features. Taylor Junior had to know.
He slipped out of his backpack, then dropped to his knees at the edge of the water and reached for the dead man’s ankle. His fingers brushed the cool, rubbery flesh, but he couldn’t get a grip. He leaned forward again, farther this time. A little more and he could get his fingers around the ankle and tug it toward shore. But the pressure of Taylor Junior’s fingers sent the body floating away. He made a final lunge and lost his balance.
He fell into the water with a plop. It was cold and deep. He flailed his way to the surface in a whirl of panic, came up spewing water and clawing at the muddy lip of the pond. When he got himself clear he scrambled away from the edge on all fours, shivering and spitting. The water had that flat, sand-filtered taste you found in desert water holes, but with a hint of something foul underneath—the dead man and animals, he supposed. But it didn’t taste poisonous.
Ripples crawled back and forth across the surface of the pool and sent the man, the vulture, and the coyote drifting away until they bumped against the pale green weeds that sprouted along the far edge. Heart still pounding, Taylor Junior made his way around the pond, well clear of the edge.
He reached—more cautiously this time—and pulled the dead man in by the hair. When he had the body close enough, he grabbed it beneath the armpits, heaved it out of the water, and flipped it over. Glassy eyeballs stared back at him.
It was Phillip Cobb. The last time Taylor Junior had seen him—almost a year now—he’d been nursing his arm where Eliza had bashed it with a steel baton.
So his people had come.
And now they’re dead.
That’s why they wouldn’t answer when he knocked. Like Phillip Cobb, they’d ventured out one by one, and something or someone had killed them.
The ground shuddered. The pool of water bubbled like cold soda poured into a hot glass. He caught a whiff of something strange on the air, like a rotten duck egg. Taylor Junior slapped his hand over his mouth and scrambled away from the spring. His wet boots sloshed as he sprinted across the hardpan. The ground rolled beneath him as the earthquake gathered strength, and he careened like a drunk man as he ran. After a hundred yards or so he stopped and stood heaving for breath. The earth shuddered once more and then fell still.
What was going on here? He had a feeling it was something important. Like the snow falling on the plain the other day when he’d hid beneath the rotting cattle. It was June. Why was it snowing? Why had the pond turned poisonous? Why was the ground shaking?
“The world is dying,” a voice said behind him.
He whirled, his heart jackhammering in his chest. The angel stood a few feet away, barefoot, his robe open at the chest. He stood beneath a bright desert sun, and yet there was something dark about him, as if he’d brought his own shadows.
The angel stepped toward him. “It is too dangerous out here. I told you to enter the sanctuary, and yet I return to discover that you’ve disobeyed me once again. Why?” He’d dropped the formal tone and the archaic pronouns, but the dangerous edge to his voice remained.
Taylor Junior backed away. “I can’t get in. I knock and pound and nobody opens it. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re afraid it’s a trick. Or maybe they’re dead.”
“They’re not dead. One man left. I destroyed him before he could tell the enemy where you hid.”
“You did that?” Taylor Junior said. “You poisoned the water?”
“I sent him to the pool. The water is poisoned because the world is coming to an end. The day draws close. Soon winter comes, and it will
not end until the earth is cleansed. Only one man stands in our way now. One man and his remnant.”
“He’s finished,” Taylor Junior said. “We decimated his followers, we killed his wife and father and—”
“You did nothing. His wife is alive. His community is larger and stronger than ever.” The angel kept walking toward him even as Taylor Junior took one step after another to keep his distance. “Wipe away Jacob and the Lord will give you his followers, his children. His sister.”
“I don’t want her.”
“Yes, you do.”
Of course he did. It was the thing that sustained him all those weeks at the bottom of that filthy pit. When he could no longer stand brooding about Jacob Christianson, he dreamed about Eliza. He imagined running his fingers through her silky hair, imagined his hands beneath her shirt, or climbing the flesh inside her thigh. She would resist at first, beg him to leave her alone, even struggle. But then she would succumb to his touch. She would arch her back and moan when he rubbed his fingers between her legs, and when he took her—
“Gather your followers,” the angel said. “They’ve grown soft and cowardly. They know the enemy searches for them, that he will wipe them from the earth, and so they hide. But they have no leader.”
Taylor Junior glanced over his shoulder, alarmed. He’d backed halfway to the pool again. The rotten-duck-egg smell hung in the air. It tasted poisonous in his mouth. But the water had stopped bubbling. Whatever poison boiled from the bowels of the earth had stopped.
“They won’t open the hatches when I knock.”
The angel stepped up until it stood nose to nose with Taylor Junior, who trembled in terror. “You’ll need to find another way in. Now drink something—you’re dehydrated. The water itself isn’t poisoned.” A smile played across his lips. “Perhaps flavored of Phillip Cobb’s rotting flesh, but safe to drink.”
“What other way?” Taylor Junior asked. “How do I get in?” He felt sick to his stomach and knew he should get to higher ground, away from the pool.
“Think. There has to be something.”
“You don’t know?”
But then Taylor Junior’s attention faltered, or perhaps he looked away for an instant, and the angel was gone. He looked around, bewildered. He was alone.
Taylor Junior found the entrance the next morning.
He’d slept for two nights with his back next to a rocky ridge east of the second sanctuary, on higher ground where the air smelled better. There were no animals on the dead plain—no living animals, that is—and the nights were eerily quiet. No skunks snuffled through camp. No coyotes yipped over a carcass. Not even toads came out to croak.
But he felt better protected by the rocky overhang, and so he sat every night with his back to the wall and a fire in front of him. He woke throughout the night to feed branches into the fire.
Taylor Junior reached for his pile of sticks on the third morning to stoke his fire awake and discovered that he’d burned all his wood. He was down to his last can of beans but didn’t relish the thought of eating them cold, so he cast about for something to burn. He’d gathered every scrap of fallen wood, but the juniper trees growing against the rocky ledge still had a few dead branches he hadn’t collected. He snapped off one branch and discovered a ventilation shaft.
It was cleverly disguised, really, painted tan like the hillside and hidden behind the juniper trees. And a good hundred yards from the main entrance.
Taylor Junior had a wrench in his backpack, generally used to get at his caches of food hidden in the desert, kept in sealed drums to keep out rodents. He used the wrench to loosen the bolts that held the protective shield over the shaft opening, then pried off the metal screen that was meant to keep out animals. He stuck his head into the shaft. A distant throb sounded in his ears.
Taylor Junior tucked his gun into his pocket, together with the wrench, then slung the canteen with the dead Phillip Cobb–tasting water in it over his shoulder by the strap. He left the backpack behind. The shaft was just wide enough to worm through with his arms outstretched in front of him. His body blocked the sunlight at his rear.
The abandoned military base his followers cowered in sank deep into the ground, and this shaft had to reach them. It might snake around a bit at first, but it would eventually have to drop straight down. What if he fell? Or what if the shaft narrowed and he got wedged inside? There were other ways this could go wrong—so many ways—but he pushed them from his mind.
About twenty feet in, a pant leg caught on a rivet where one section of metal piping fastened poorly to another, and he spent several minutes squirming his way back and forth until he got it free. His shoulders ached. His breathing came in shallow gasps, and he felt the terrifying sensation of being squeezed like a rat through the belly of a snake. Every few feet he battled a fresh wave of fear that the shaft was growing narrower.
And then he reached the drop. There was no warning, no breeze, only a hollow void where his shaft dumped into a larger one that fell straight into the bowels of the complex. He paused above the hole for several seconds, felt around the edge to reassure himself of its dimensions, and then started down into the darkness.
The wider opening relieved the pressure on his shoulders and arms from forcing himself through the narrow passageway, and the crushing claustrophobia eased. But in the wider shaft he had to wedge his feet against one side and his shoulders against the other. Lose his grip, and he’d fall. He crept down foot by agonizing foot until his muscles trembled with exhaustion. He must be seventy feet down now, maybe a hundred. How much more?
And then his shirt caught on another rivet. It wasn’t much, only a little snag. But it caught him high on his shirt, near the collar, and there was no way to relieve his weight from the rivet and unhook the snag. His back, arms, and legs were too exhausted to crawl back up the ventilation shaft. He spent a few minutes trying to free himself, more terrified with every moment.
“Help me,” he said. His voice made a hollow echo up and down the pipe. “I’m going to die in here. Please!”
He strained his eyes against the blackness, as desperate to see the angel now as he’d been to avoid it earlier. But the angel didn’t appear.
And then the solution came to him. It was so simple that he laughed out loud in a release of nervous tension. Take the weight off it, then either get it free or leave it behind. He unbuttoned his shirt, wriggled his arms out one after the other. The rivet hadn’t hooked his undergarment, which was good, since it was a single piece that went all the way from the wrists to the ankles.
But when he got his second arm free, the canteen strap fell off his shoulder. His fingers clutched for it, but it slid off. He expected it to fall and fall, booming against the sides of the shaft all the way to the bottom. But it clattered to a stop only ten feet or so below him. He let out a shuddering gasp of relief.
With his weight off the shirt, it was easy to get it free. He reached the bottom of the shaft moments later and squirmed back into his shirt in the cramped space, then crept along again on his belly. A gray light came to his eyes. He rounded a corner and there it was, a metal screen opening in the ceiling of a small, brightly lit room. He kicked out the screen and dropped to the floor.
He found himself in the rear lounge. There were three women in the room. One was nursing a baby, another changed a toddler’s diaper. A third woman wore only her undergarments and was getting ready to put on a dress.
A small refrigerator hummed in the corner. The carpet was twenty years old by style, but clean and barely worn. The couch and lounge chairs looked like something from a hotel lobby. The room held the faint scent of air freshener. A television played the news, some droning broadcast about food riots in the Philippines. After so many months outdoors, the scene assaulted Taylor Junior’s senses more than any number of noxious smells, animal bones, or dead bodies ever could.
Upon his appearance, the three women gasped and the undressed woman threw a hand over her crotch and an arm across
her breasts. Two of these women were Aaron’s widows, and the third had belonged to Eric Froud. They were his now.
Taylor Junior pulled the plug on the TV, then turned back to face the dumbfounded women. “Who is in charge? If he doesn’t have a good explanation, I will kill him.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
From the personal journal of Henrietta Cowley.
Laura and Maude joined me to confront Sister Annabelle about the angel. We found her in Witch’s Warts, her bare feet buried in the cool sand beneath a sandstone arch. Two boys had discovered the arch stretching between a pair of sandstone fins, and when the weather turned exceeding hot, kids would come in after finishing the chores, scale the arch, and leap into the sand, laughing as they tumbled down the hill. But it was the middle of the day, and even the children were working.
Annabelle looked up. “You’ve got counselors now, is that it?” She fixed Maude with a hard look. “And you’ve started in on my sister wives too, I see. Turning them against me, poisoning their minds.”
“We’re worried about you,” Maude said.
“Can we give you a blessing?” I asked.
“A blessing? Hah!” Her voice came out like a crow’s jeering caw. “What, have you given yourself the priesthood now?”
“It’s no different than the initiatory.”
“This isn’t the temple, so yes, it’s completely different. You have no right, no authority. It is blasphemy. An abomination.”
“Annabelle, we have no men. We’re on our own.” I nodded at Laura and Maude. “There are three of us. We’re no men, but maybe, if we all have faith, we can call down the power of heaven. The priesthood would be better, yes, but surely the Lord will hear our cries. We’ll cast this thing from our midst.”
“You’re a fool. You can’t get rid of him. He lives here, this is his home.”
“Whose home? Who are you talking about?” When she said nothing, I pressed. “What is this thing? An evil spirit?”
“An angel,” she said at length. “A destroying angel.”
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