The Gates of Babylon

by Michael Wallace

  Jacob pulled up his chair and looked at the spot Trost indicated on the map. “Safe enough, I’d guess. Some bandits here and here, but not too bad in the daytime. It’s mostly BLM land, so nobody to rob. The few who drive through are armed to their sharpened survivalist teeth.”

  “And south of Orderville?” Trost asked.

  “A few huffy ranchers,” David said. “The ones still hanging on are shoot first types. But wouldn’t that take us through Colorado City?”

  “That’s a problem?” Trost asked.

  David shrugged. “We don’t always get along.”

  “What for?” Krantz asked. He had been looking over Miriam’s shoulder as she scribbled highway mileage of the proposed route in a notebook. “Aren’t the FLDS practically cousins?”

  “More than practically in some cases,” Jacob said. “My cousin Alfred Christianson owns the hardware store in town.”

  “That sounds promising,” Krantz said.

  “Except they don’t like us much,” Jacob said. “My father gleefully took in FLDS women who fled abusive marriages. And found them new husbands, which was the real problem.”

  Trost shook his head. “There’s something going on down there anyway. I heard the state tried to evacuate the town to the Green River camps and ran into opposition. They tried to send in St. George and Cedar City PD, but none of us would touch it. Highway 59 west of the town is infested with bandits.”

  “Forget Colorado City,” Jacob said. “Why not cross over the mountains at Brian Head and drop into Cedar City, get right on the freeway, and take it all the way to Las Vegas?”

  “Have you been over Brian Head recently?” Trost asked.

  “Yes,” Jacob admitted with some hesitation. “There’s good deer hunting—well, may as well be honest about it. Good poaching. It’s not that I wanted to poach, but they canceled the hunt this year.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not with Fish and Game,” Trost said. “If such a thing still exists. But no, I don’t want to go that route. That’s not safe either.”

  “Heads up,” David said suddenly.

  The five of them looked down from the porch to see two men walking down the sidewalk, with M6 assault rifles slung over their shoulders. They wore green uniforms with the blue and green logo of the USDA. As they walked through the center of town and past the Christianson house, their pace slowed and they stared up at the porch with stony expressions. The men walked to the end of the street, crossed, then circled the block opposite and out of eyesight.

  “What the blue blazes was that about?” Trost asked.

  “It’s how they remind us who’s the boss,” Jacob said. “Every couple of hours Malloy sends a couple of guys patrolling through town, who then return to their barracks.”

  “How many men are we talking?” Trost asked.

  “Total? Fourteen.”

  “Only if you count the boss,” Miriam said. “Which I don’t. Chip Malloy is a clipboard guy with a bunch of guns.”

  “And these are the guys who stole all your food?” Trost asked.

  “Stole is not quite right,” Jacob said. “Bought. Or, buying, if they can ever get someone out to haul it off.”

  “Still,” Miriam said. “Maybe we should do our own patrols, couple dozen people with rifles, and show these idiots they’re here at our pleasure.”

  Jacob thought again about the grim satisfaction on her face when she’d detonated Mo Strafford’s tanker truck, and decided he didn’t want her anywhere near those armed men. She’d start a war.

  “Ah, forget them,” Krantz said. “We start parading around with weapons and we’re like those jerks in basic training who unzip their flies to see who’s got the biggest dick.”

  “But you say the food is still in town?” Trost asked.

  “Right,” Jacob said. “And until it leaves, I’m going to pretend the government sent armed guards to protect us from bandits.”

  “We don’t need protecting,” Miriam said.

  “Maybe not,” Trost said. “But the bandits don’t know that.” He pointed at the map. “And that’s the same thing I’m facing here.” He pointed to the road west of the FLDS community of Colorado City. “And here.” He pointed to the freeway south of Cedar City.

  “That doesn’t leave us much,” Jacob said.

  The officer traced a callused finger with chewed nails down 89 to Highway 9 where it cut west. “What if we go south from Blister Creek, then come over the mountains. We’ll head into Nevada by back roads.”

  “That’s a slow route,” Jacob said. “It’ll burn a lot of fuel. Two tanks of fuel for both the flatbed and a pickup. We’re talking a hundred and fifty gallons of diesel. Say another fifty to be sure we don’t get stranded somewhere. We can haul a bunch of five-gallon jugs, assuming we can get the fuel.”

  “Hmm.” Trost leaned back and rested his hands over his large gut.

  “Can you get us some diesel?” Jacob asked.

  “You need me to get you fuel? What do you think I’m doing here, anyway?”

  “You tell us,” Miriam said. “We didn’t come to you, remember?”

  While Trost looked at Miriam, Jacob and David exchanged a glance. David gave a tiny shake of the head.

  No, don’t tell him.

  “We’re under the same rations as you,” Krantz said. “My car hasn’t left the garage in three weeks.”

  “And diesel’s even tougher to get,” Jacob said. “Anything they sell us we save for the tractors. We can’t burn it running errands across the desert.”

  “You’re getting paid,” Trost said. “It’s not charity.”

  “It’s not a question of payment,” Jacob said. “It’s a question of fuel rationing.”

  Trost pushed back his hat. “I’ve been honest with you, Christianson. I told you my daughter is trapped in Vegas, with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of silver coins. There’s plenty of chance for you to rip me off.”

  “That’s not my style,” Jacob said. “Which you already know.”

  “Right, and it’s not mine, either.”

  “What are you saying, that we’ve got a few oil wells and a refinery out here?”

  “No, but you’ve got food storage. And guns. And you’re trying to install your own electrical grid. Don’t deny it—I can see the windmills and solar panels with my own eyes. And what about those utility poles stacked up by Yellow Flats? Are you planning to put in your own hydro generator or something?”

  “Or something,” Jacob allowed.

  “And there’s no way you don’t have a few hundred gallons of fuel stashed out here somewhere. By hook or crook, you’ve got your hands on some. Am I wrong?”

  Jacob relaxed. A few hundred. The worry that Trost had gotten wind of his underground tanks and nine hundred thousand gallons of diesel fuel evaporated.

  “Supposing I did,” he said, as if with some reluctance. “I’d need to hang onto that unless it were a true emergency.”

  The irony of that didn’t escape him. Two days ago he’d sent up eight thousand gallons of it in a huge fuel bomb. All he had to show for it was a crummy, underpowered water turbine.

  “It’s an emergency to me,” Trost said.

  “I understand that,” Jacob said. “And I’m sympathetic. But I have to worry about my own people first.”

  A note of despair crept into the man’s voice. “I thought you agreed.”

  “I know I did, but I took stock of our situation, and…” Jacob shrugged. “You have to meet us halfway.”

  Trost took off his hat. “Please, Mr. Christianson. I’m begging you.”

  Any confidence he’d carried had dissolved, and now he looked like nothing more than a terrified father. Hat literally in hand, begging who? The prophet of a fundy cult? What kind of desperate times were these?

  “What about fifty gallons?” Jacob said. “Can you manage that?”

  “I can’t get the fuel!” Trost’s voice climbed in pitch. “I didn’t come to Blister Creek because you’re the
damn Boy Scouts. I’m desperate.”

  “Really?” David said. “We couldn’t tell.”

  “You know where my daughter is? She’s living like a rat in a storage unit, twenty-seven blocks from the Green Zone. She is living on canned ravioli and bottled water, and sleeping with her handgun under her pillow.”

  “And when the night came they slept upon their swords,” Miriam murmured, quoting from the Book of Mormon.

  “You see?” Trost said. “Gunfire every night. I can hear it when she calls, whispering. You know what they’ll do if they find her? Rob her. Rape her. Leave her for dead. Is that what you want? It is, isn’t it?”

  “Hold on,” Krantz said. “That’s not fair.”

  Jacob looked at his brother and affected a shrug. “What do you think? That’s a lot of fuel.”

  “It’s a lot of silver, too,” David said. “If we had it, I bet we could find someone to sell us more diesel.”

  “Miriam?” Jacob said.

  “Frankly, I don’t care about his daughter. What’s a pawnshop doing in Vegas, anyway? It’s there to feed an addiction to gambling and prostitution. These places prey on the spiritually dead.”

  “Jennifer is not like that,” Trost said.

  “If you say so,” Miriam said. “But she’s not one of us, anyway.”

  “Neither were you at one time,” Krantz said. “Or me.”

  “Or me, for that matter,” David said. “My father kicked me out and told me never to come back. I went into those same pawnshops more than once. Only I was feeding a drug addiction.”

  “It’s not that sort of place,” Trost insisted.

  Jacob shook his head. “It doesn’t matter to me if it is or isn’t—she’s not the one asking for help, anyway. What matters is what kind of person you are. And,” he added, “you’ve been a friend. And you’re right, you’re not begging. You’re making an offer.”

  “That’s right,” Trost said eagerly. “You wouldn’t walk away over a few gallons of fuel.”

  At last Jacob sighed. “Okay. We’ll put up the diesel.”

  In spite of his reluctance about the fuel, this was working out perfectly. At the end of the day he’d have silver bullion, useful, virtually unobtainable gear like saddles and old-fashioned machinery, and his urgently needed medical supplies. Plus, it occurred to him, he’d have made an important ally outside the valley.

  And for what? A couple of days away from Blister Creek and a home for Officer Trost’s daughter.

  It was such an opportunity that he wondered for a moment if he were being set up. Not by Trost—that desperation about his daughter was real, Jacob was sure of it—but by some other agent.

  Lucifer, Father would have said. He is always trying to destroy the church. Never forget it.

  No, that was silly. Pure superstition.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Eliza woke when she heard the truck engine turn over in the driveway. She’d slept fitfully all night, waking any time the floorboards creaked or the wind rattled the windowpanes, any time she heard footsteps in the hall. Every time she thought it was Jacob, sneaking out. When the sound died, she would lie back down and drift into unsettled dreams.

  But when she heard the engine, she was sure. She made her way to the window and looked down at the driveway where Jacob had parked the extended cab pickup. Three figures made their way from the house on the other side of the Christianson compound. Miriam and David, and she supposed the third must be Officer Trost. They climbed in, one up front, and two in the back. Jacob would be the one behind the wheel.

  Why me? Why am I the one who has to stay behind?

  Jacob had to go—she understood about the medical supplies—and Miriam and Steve were both former FBI agents. Of course they would go. What about David? Let him stay. He was Jacob’s counselor, he could keep the quorum in line. And Eliza could go instead. With Jacob, where she belonged. With Steve, to keep him safe.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Quit whining, she told herself. Suck it up and do your duty.

  The truck crunched slowly over gravel as it backed into the street. From there it swung south, lights still off. Jacob meant to skirt the temple and the chapel on his way to meet Steve in the flatbed truck on the far edge of the valley. In a moment they had disappeared.

  “Are they gone?” a voice asked from the other bed in the room.

  Eliza turned, startled. A lamp came on and Lillian propped herself on her pillows. Her long, corn-silk braids draped over her slender bosoms and she looked so young in the light, almost like one of Eliza’s teenage sisters, even though she was only two years younger than Eliza herself. And if you added the abuse she’d suffered in the Kimball cult, forced to be the polygamist wife of one of Taylor Junior’s henchmen—dead now, and may he rot in hell—it was a wonder she still carried such a fresh, youthful look.

  “Yes, they’re gone,” Eliza said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Turn off the light, get some sleep.”

  Lillian looked at the old windup clock on the nightstand, with its glowing hands. “Twenty to six. I need to get up in a few minutes anyway to gather eggs and feed the chickens. Milk the cows. And then I thought I’d practice shooting the M99.”

  “Before breakfast? People will love that.”

  “You okay?”

  Eliza sighed. Lillian propped herself higher in the bed and studied her. After a moment, she patted the side of her bed.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I know what you’re going through,” Lillian said.

  “I don’t think you do. Anyway, if I talk, I’ll complain. I hate complaining. I’ll do what I have to.”

  “You know I ran that place for six months?” Lillian said. “After my husband died and before Taylor Junior came back to that pit in the desert—the men left behind were worthless. Someone had to keep people alive.”

  Eliza studied Lillian’s face. No, Lillian hadn’t faced the same thing. She’d faced worse. And not a bit of—what would you call it?—post-traumatic stress disorder. How did some people manage? Eliza still dreamed about the horrible things she’d seen: Taylor Junior with his skull bashed in, people covered in chemical burns. Women, children, suffocating in an underground bunker. Father’s glassy stare as they dressed him in his temple robes for burial. And worse, the fear that she would lose the other people she loved.

  Yet here was Lillian, an innocent, almost naïve look on her face that belied the horrors she had suffered. Eliza didn’t resent it so much as feel an aching envy that she couldn’t do the same.

  Reluctantly, she came and sat next to Lillian on the bed. The younger woman took her hand and squeezed it. “You can do it.”

  “I know. But I don’t want to.”

  “We should both be with them,” Lillian said.

  “You wanted to go too?”

  “I’m not following Miriam around the desert for the fresh air. She works me like a dog. The only thing that makes it tolerable is that she works herself like a dog, too.”

  “Assuming dogs carried grenades and M99 sniper rifles, yes.”

  “I was so tired last week and so sick of reading that stupid explosives manual that I almost packed it up, quit, and moved back in with my father.”

  Eliza raised an eyebrow. “Now that sounds like true desperation.”

  Lillian’s father was Elder Smoot in the Quorum of the Twelve, Father’s cousin, and made of the same material too. Smoot had pushed his daughter into a first, disastrous marriage and would no doubt attempt more of the same if she moved back home. At the least, Eliza thought Lillian would find it intolerable to get a taste of freedom, only to fall beneath the patriarchal thumb again.

  “I’d decided to quit,” Lillian continued, “when Miriam congratulated me on my shooting. She said I was a better shot than Krantz.”

  “That’s quite a compliment. Steve could trim a coyote’s whiskers at twelve hundred yards.”

  “I didn’t say it,” Lillian said.

  “If Miriam said
it, it meant something. She doesn’t dish out compliments very often.”

  “She said she was sorry for riding me so hard.”

  “Or apologies,” Eliza said.

  “She said she was pushing me because I’m a lot like her a few years ago and she wants me to reach my potential. Hearing that felt pretty good. Next day, we went on a ten-mile run around the edge of Witch’s Warts. In pouring rain. That didn’t feel so great.”

  “That’s what you get with Miriam,” Eliza said. “One step back, two whip cracks forward.”

  “So she’s always been like this?”

  “More or less. Worse now that she’s convinced the end is here.”

  “Are you sure it’s not?”

  “You have to admit they’ve been telling us that all our lives,” Eliza said.

  “Yeah, but this is different. This time it seems real. Don’t you think?”

  “Things do seem to be falling apart,” she admitted.

  “Or coming together,” Lillian said. “Depending on your point of view. Wars and rumors of wars. Strange weather, famine.”

  “What about signs in the heavens?” Eliza asked. “I haven’t seen any stars falling from the sky.”

  “Have you seen the sunset? Last night, the moon looked like blood. How do you explain that?”

  “Volcanic ash.”

  Lillian raised an eyebrow then glanced toward the window. “Do you think they’re safe out there?”

  “I do,” Eliza said. “Jacob knows what he’s doing. Steve and Miriam have the FBI background, and Trost is a police officer, and David… well, there’s always room for comic relief.”

  Lillian laughed.

  “David is growing up,” Eliza said, more seriously. “If he’s not ready yet, he will be soon. Jacob managed with me, and I’m sure he can do the same for David.”

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “I am,” Eliza said, a little surprised. “Thanks.”

  She started to rise, thinking she would get an early start and shower before every toilet in the house flushed at the same time and killed water pressure to a trickle. But Lillian didn’t let go of her hand.

  “One second,” the younger woman said. “Can I ask you something before you go?”