Destroying Angel

by Michael Wallace

  Stephen Paul eyed the two boys and then clapped them on the shoulder in turn. “I’m always happy to have righteous young men at my side.”

  The “young men” in question were a pair of ten-year-old boys, but never mind. Daniel and Diego puffed their chests and nodded wisely. No doubt child soldiers had been doing the same thing for thousands of years when called on to defend their homes. And for thousands of years had died in pain and confusion as older, stronger men with hatred in their souls cut them down without mercy.

  “Boys, unload the blankets and sleeping bags. It’s going to be a long, cold night.”

  “They should be home with their mothers,” David said after they moved out of earshot. “Not out here in the line of fire.”

  “No kidding,” Stephen Paul muttered. “This is ugly business. I don’t like it one bit.”

  There would be a lot of boys in the line of fire before the night was out. The thought that he might have to explain to some mother—perhaps, heaven forbid, Fernie or Miriam—why her son had been killed in a gunfight made Jacob sick to his stomach.

  The three men and the two boys trudged up the road another forty or fifty yards until Jacob found a good place to set up the ambush. Here the road drew close to a rocky hill, and the Civilian Conservation Corps had blasted away the stone when it built the first paved road between Panguitch and Blister Creek in the 1930s. Over the decades, boulders the size of small cars had shivered from the vertical cut, and they made great cover along the side of the road.

  David tossed down sleeping bags for the boys in a sheltered place behind the largest boulder. “We’ve got a couple of hours, most likely,” Jacob told them. “Better get some rest, boys.”

  Daniel and Diego looked exhausted but frowned suspiciously at this, as if worried he meant them to sleep through some great adventure. If only that were true.

  Stephen Paul said, “Don’t worry, boys, my sister and her cousin are hiding on the road ahead of us. We’ll get a warning before the bad guys show up. You won’t miss anything, I promise.” He crossed the road with his flashlight to scout things out on the other side.

  “And you’re sure they’ll come this way?” David asked Jacob as the boys settled down.

  “Not sure at all, or I’d get fifty people here. They might come around from the south. It’s slower, but flatter terrain and easier to get into the valley. Or they might hike in from the east on foot.” He shrugged. “Or, if we’re lucky, they won’t come at all. Maybe they’re going out to intimidate someone else.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that.”

  “No, we’d better not.”

  “No way we can defeat them with what we’ve got,” David said. “You know that, right?”

  “We don’t have to. Snipe a man or two off the back, shoot out the tires. If they drive forward, they’ll hit the roadblock. Soon as they stop, we’ll toss flares around their vehicle, take cover, and radio for reinforcements. In an hour we’ll get half of Blister Creek up here, guns blazing. We wear them down, make them exhaust their ammo. Or they can try to drive off, but with their tires out, how far will they get before they break down? And if they make a run for it on foot, we’ll send men on horseback to hunt them down. There are a hundred ways this can play out in our favor.”

  “And a hundred ways it can go wrong.” David picked up his rifle and loaded a shell. “These guys are coming at us with military-level weapons. We’ve got deer rifles and handguns. Remember last time?”

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” Jacob said. “Last time they caught us by surprise. We were in Dark Canyon while they were down here, killing our people. This time we’ve got advance warning. They don’t know we’re here. They don’t know the whole valley is awake and thirsting for revenge.”

  “That’s true,” David said, his voice brightening. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Nothing’s a given, but I’d rather be us than them, that’s for sure.”

  Stephen Paul’s handheld radio squawked as he crossed the road from the other side under the light of his flashlight. “I know that,” he said into the radio with a touch of irritation in his voice. “I know, but the problem is—will you calm down and listen for a minute? Good. Now, we don’t know what direction they’ll come from…Yes, there too…I don’t know, take up position in the ditch or something.” He listened again and then said to Jacob, “Elder Johnson wants to know if we should throw down the spike strips now.”

  “Yeah, throw them down. Nobody coming through this time of night is up to any good.”

  Stephen Paul relayed this information and then listened again. “I don’t know, and I’m not bugging Brother Jacob about that now. Take initiative.” He hung up and shook his head. “Elder Johnson is panicking. I thought he’d be cool under fire. Guess I was wrong.”

  “One of his wives died last year at the chapel—I’m sure that has something to do with it.” Jacob gave it some thought. “He’s on the South Ranch Road? Who else is down there?”

  “Elder Peters and his wife.”

  “Doubt the enemy will come that way,” Jacob said, “but we’re in trouble if they do. They get past Johnson and Peters and they’re practically in town already. Call the church, tell Carol to send out two women with rifles.”

  Stephen Paul raised an eyebrow. “You sure that’s enough? Johnson has a son patrolling the edge of Witch’s Warts. Sixteen, seventeen years old. Good kid, and smart. What about him?”

  “No. We need people guarding Witch’s Warts too.”

  They needed people everywhere. Everything he’d told David was true, but what if Taylor Junior suspected a trap? A military Humvee could cross open country, like the flat desert expanse on the southern edge of the valley. Guess wrong, and the man would fall into one of their other traps, but there were several ways he could penetrate the heart of town without raising the alarm.

  And all to stop one Humvee and four men. What would Blister Creek do in a real attack? He thought the volcano would settle down and normal weather would return, but what if it didn’t?

  Jacob hadn’t spent his entire life listening to this end-of-the-world stuff without running through the scenarios. Starving people fleeing from Vegas and LA. Black UN helicopters. Federal martial law. Even a crack opening in the surface of the earth and demons pouring out of the underworld—okay, so this was a bit of a stretch, theologically, but it sounded pretty cool when he was twelve and read it in a graphic novel.

  Say the world ended, civilization collapsed, and they had to go it alone. If one Humvee with machine guns required the entire valley to fight it off, how would they defend Blister Creek from a serious outside threat? They needed military weapons, he decided. Illegal stuff. And militia training.

  Stephen Paul took another call on the radio and passed it to Jacob. It was Stephen Paul’s sister watching the road to Panguitch, north of their position above the valley. Nothing yet, but she wanted clarification that she was to remain hidden no matter what. That was right, Jacob told her. Radio a warning and nothing else. And then wait and watch, in case someone else came down the road later.

  Stephen Paul took back his radio. They tested Jacob’s to make sure he could take a call, and then he set off into the darkness again.

  David went to tell the boys to stop chattering and get some rest. When he came back, he said to Jacob, “You want me on the other side of the road?”

  “No, I’ll take that spot.” Jacob pocketed two boxes of ammo, tossed a blanket over his shoulder, and grabbed his rifle and a kerosene lamp. “I’ve got my radio. Use that from now on.”

  “You’ll be fine by yourself?”

  “Do me a favor. Call me on the radio every twenty minutes or so, to make sure I’m alert.”

  David gave him a look. “You’re not planning to take a nap over there, are you?”

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind. Somehow I missed Daniel’s sleepwalking right out of my bedroom earlier. Which reminds me. Whatever you do, don’t let him out of your sight.”


  “You got it.”

  Jacob lit the kerosene lamp and picked his way across the road. He walked north on the highway for about thirty feet before taking his position in a clump of brush, partially sheltered by rock. He turned the light down and cut branches to further shield it from the road. The only sound was the lapping of the reservoir at the shore fifteen or twenty feet behind him, and he figured he’d hear the Humvee before it arrived, even if for some reason the women up the road couldn’t give warning in time.

  Jacob’s thoughts turned inward. He touched the lump on his head. It still hurt, and the blood made his hair crusty. He was thinking more clearly now, but he still couldn’t figure out what his mind had been doing during that hour and a half when he lay unconscious on the desert floor in Witch’s Warts, wrestling in his imagination with an evil spirit.

  Jacob took out Grandma Cowley’s journal from his pocket. The book was heavy for its size, the leather worn smooth. Even in the open air he could smell the musty paper. He turned up the lantern until it cast a faint glow across the pages, then thumbed through until he found the entry for May 28, 1893.

  And he started to read.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Eliza was relieved to get back to the ATVs. She’d started working on Krantz on the hike back and had convinced him to let her drive one of the vehicles and Miriam the other, even though the distribution of weight would be less than ideal. On the way out, they’d put Krantz on one and Miriam and Eliza on the other, but that was during the day, and even then his inexperience had shown. Once, he nearly rolled the vehicle coming down an embankment when one of the tires broke through hardpan and the ATV started to slide.

  Meanwhile, Eliza couldn’t remember her first time driving an off-road vehicle, she’d learned so young, and Miriam had spent hours patrolling the southern edge of the Christianson ranch in the past year. It made sense for the two women, with miles to go and anxious to get back to Blister Creek, to drive in the wasteland at night.

  The ATVs were waiting where they’d been left, untouched. Miriam thought they could make up time on their enemies if they took a more rugged, direct path than the one they’d followed to get there.

  “We’re also likely to come up against an impassable stretch of hills or ravines,” Krantz said. He strapped the duffel bag with the SCBA gear to Miriam’s luggage rack with a pair of bungee cords. “What do you think?” he asked, climbing behind Eliza as she started the engine.

  “It’s the only chance we’ve got,” Eliza said.

  “All right, let’s do it.”

  Left unspoken was the awful realization that it had been more than an hour since Taylor Junior and his men rolled by in the Humvee. Shortcut or safer, longer way, it didn’t matter, they’d never make it in time. She wondered if instead they should turn around and look for the entrance to the underground base while Taylor Junior and his henchmen were away.

  Miriam set off on her ATV, with Eliza following. Their lights cut a pair of beams across the desert.

  Another tremor shook the ground. The machine bucked beneath them, and Krantz grabbed Eliza around the waist, as if afraid she’d tumble off.

  Miriam’s ATV kicked up dust as she jerked to a halt. The landscape vibrated through the headlamps of Eliza’s ATV as the ground pitched and trembled.

  “That was a big one,” Krantz said when the ground fell silent. “Feels like California out here.” He relaxed his grip around Eliza’s waist and reached back to grab the rack where they’d tied down their gear.

  “If it makes you feel safer,” Eliza said, “you can wrap your arms around me as long as you need.”

  “Are you teasing me, or is that your way of saying you liked it?”

  “A little of both.” She drove forward.

  Miriam waited until they caught up, and the three of them continued across the desert. Miriam took the lead, her headlights bouncing over the terrain. Their tires kicked up sand as they crossed a dry ravine, and then Miriam jerked to one side to get around a boulder that loomed suddenly in front of her. A moment later, they climbed a steep pitch to get out of a particularly rocky, sagebrush-strewn stretch.

  “She’s going to get us killed,” Krantz said in Eliza’s ear over the roar of the wind and the ATVs.

  It wasn’t just Miriam’s aggressive driving that left them behind—the 250cc engine struggled to carry Eliza’s and Krantz’s combined weight, while Miriam’s raced ahead, unencumbered. The former hammer thrower must have weighed 250 pounds or more, and Eliza guessed her own weight at around 130.

  They reached a flat, broken stretch of pavement—what was left of the old military road—and Miriam increased her advantage. Maybe she didn’t see, or maybe she didn’t realize, that Eliza couldn’t follow the exact same path, not without the risk of bogging down in the sand or ripping out the undercarriage whenever a dry wash cut across the road with little warning. Eliza flashed her lights, but Miriam didn’t slow. Soon she was at least a half mile ahead.

  And then a gunshot punctured the night air. Miriam’s ATV veered off the road and slowed down. Eliza’s heart leaped in fear.

  Krantz fumbled at his belt, retrieved his gun, and pointed it over Eliza’s shoulder. “Go!”

  She revved the engine. Miriam’s ATV drifted across the desert, and as Eliza intersected its path, she was afraid she’d see her sister-in-law slumped over the handlebars, only the dead weight of her foot keeping the vehicle in motion.

  But Miriam had out her handgun. She waved it at something ahead of her. “Get around!” she shouted to Eliza. “Flank him!”

  A figure stumbled across the desert, fleeing Miriam’s ATV. The gunshot, Eliza guessed, was a warning from Miriam. It hadn’t worked. The man staggered, fell, then picked himself up and ran. He wasn’t armed—Eliza could see empty hands pumping as she brought her ATV in line with Miriam’s—but he wore a backpack that may have contained a weapon.

  Eliza pulled ahead of Miriam while Krantz prepared to jump. The figure glanced over one shoulder as they drew alongside, and Eliza got a shock. The runner had a ponytail and no beard. It was a woman wearing jeans.

  Krantz launched himself from the ATV. He slammed into the woman and knocked her to the ground. Miriam and Eliza pulled to a stop on either side and jumped down to help, but the struggle was already over. Krantz got the backpack free and flung it clear, then pinned the woman’s arms down.

  “Let me go!” she screamed.

  Eliza jumped down from the ATV. “Stop fighting.”

  The woman wasn’t getting anywhere against Krantz’s strength anyway, and she stopped struggling. Her chest heaved. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “We’re not going to kill you,” Eliza said. “What are you doing out here? Why are you running?”

  The woman squinted against the light from the ATVs. “Eliza, is that you? Tell him not to hurt me.”

  “Lillian?” Eliza said. It was one of her cousins, Lillian Young.

  Eliza hadn’t seen Lillian in years, not since her husband Aaron disappeared after that nightmarish day in the temple when the Lost Boys killed Eliza’s brother Enoch. She was still young and slender, with corn silk braids and a face that would have been pretty if not for a gash across one cheek, clotted with dried blood.

  Krantz lifted her to her feet. “You’re not going to take off if I let go, right? We’ll run you down again.”

  She shook her head and looked from Krantz to Miriam, who still held her gun at the ready, and finally to Eliza. “What are you doing out here?”

  “We came looking for you and the rest of them.”

  “Then you’re headed in the wrong direction.”

  “You mean away from your hideout?” Eliza said. “Why didn’t you stop when Miriam told you to?” When Lillian didn’t answer, she said, “You’re not helping, Lillian. What are you doing? I need answers, and I don’t have time to play games.”

  “I was going to warn your brother,” Lillian said. She licked her lips. “Do you have water?”

 
Miriam grabbed a bottle from the ATV, handed it to Lillian, and watched without comment as the other woman took a long, gulping drink.

  When she was done, Eliza said, “Okay, good. Now, are you going to help us? We’re trying to save people—you know that, right?”

  Lillian nodded, took one more swallow, and handed back the bottle. She told her story. Taylor Junior had been away since last year, and Lillian had formed some sort of women’s presidency to run things while he was gone. It worked well until Taylor Junior came back and bullied the community into submission. Lillian ran for her life, afraid of being raped or killed as punishment for usurping leadership. She had been on her way to Blister Creek, where she would ask Jacob for help.

  “I don’t believe it,” Miriam said when Lillian had finished.

  Lillian blinked. “You don’t?”

  “You weren’t headed down the road toward the highway, you were going back in the direction of the compound when I spotted you.”

  “I was trying to hide. I thought you were Taylor Junior. There’s a ravine back that way, and I thought I could duck down and wait until you drove past. I was backtracking, that’s all. Please believe me.”

  Eliza glanced behind her into the darkness and thought about the last few minutes of their ride. “There’s no ravine that way. We came from that direction, remember? Why are you lying?”

  “I did think you were Taylor Junior,” Lillian said, a defiant note in her voice. “I’ve been running for hours and hours. I knew he was following me. I set up traps for him. Get me my pack and I’ll show you.” She made as if to disappear into the darkness to search for it.

  Miriam waved her gun. “Nice try. Get back here.”

  “Look at my face!” Lillian pointed to the dried blood on her cheek. “He did that to me.”

  Krantz took Lillian’s arm and said to Eliza, “We don’t have time to find out if she’s lying. Miriam, cuff her to the ATV. We’ll take her back to Blister Creek and question her there.”