“What are you talking about? What are you going to do? Elder Johnson, tell him.”
Johnson gave a sad shake of the head. “They have desecrated the temple, Sister Eliza, and there is only one punishment for that.” He paused, let those words hang in the air like an ax over a condemned man’s neck. “Tonight they shall be utterly destroyed, swept from the face of the earth. Their names shall be a hiss and byword, and they—”
She cut him off, in no mood for the pseudo-religious nonsense, delivered in stentorian tones. “You mean you’re going to attack?”
“We’ll start shooting,” Smoot said, “and keep at it until every one of those devils is dead.”
Eliza stared at the two men in horror. This was insane. If Jacob was here, he’d put a stop to it. Or Steve—why did he have to leave her behind in Blister Creek? He could tell her what to do to stop this.
As the two elders planned their attack, she studied the soldiers setting up machine guns and mortars around the temple. The helicopter passed overhead and cast them in a beam of light. Eliza imagined the chaos when men on horseback tried to shoot it down with deer rifles, while it showered bullets and missiles from its black underbelly.
Until every one of those devils is dead.
Oh, there would be dead people all right. Just not in the way Elder Smoot was planning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“My name is Maggie,” Jackson’s mother told Fernie. “My son says we have thirty minutes before they strip that car and figure out what to do next. That’s time enough to get you warm and get food in your bellies.”
“Do we have that long?” Fernie asked.
The siren still wailed in the distance, together with the sound of motors that competed with the grunting, clanking men working to dismantle the government vehicle on the other side of the tar paper–covered plywood walls.
The woman wheeled Fernie in front of a wood-burning stove and unfolded metal chairs for the two boys. Maggie’s head bumped a single hanging lightbulb, and she went to a futon in the corner to retrieve blankets for the visitors. Jake and Daniel let her wrap them in blankets then held out their hands to collect warmth from the stove.
Maggie looked about sixty, with thin, graying hair, but her clothes were clean, which must have taken effort given the conditions, and the room was neatly swept. A dresser sat in one corner, topped by a vase with plastic flowers. Landscape paintings hung on two walls, the kind with pine trees and snow and paint as thick and bright as frosting.
Maggie fed sticks and pieces of scrap lumber into the fire. She went out the back door and returned with a cast-iron pot, which she set on top of the stove. She removed the lid and gave it a stir.
“Don’t look so good now,” the woman said, “but there’s meat on them bones, and a few veggies too. I’ll throw in a handful of barley when it gets good and hot.”
Fernie couldn’t see what must be a congealed mass inside the pot, but she imagined it would be edible at least, given the care taken to fix up the shack. She was hungry, but not underfed like these people. She didn’t want to eat into their limited food stocks.
Jackson came inside several minutes later. “We’re getting there. Another ten minutes and there’ll be nothing left.”
“And what about us?” Fernie asked. “Too many people have seen us down here. I don’t think we should stay.”
“Probably not.” He lifted the lid and took a speculative look inside. “Me and Snod are still working on a plan, but we’ll figure something out.”
“Now you leave that alone,” Maggie said. “Guests first, greedy sons last.” She shooed Jackson out the door with some comment about his friends working while he loafed around the warm stove.
“Really, it’s okay,” Fernie said. “I’m not that hungry. It’s the middle of the night and normally I’m asleep anyway.”
“The boys then.”
“I’ll nurse Jake if he gets hungry. But Daniel can eat a little,” she added as Maggie’s frown spread.
The woman looked mollified by this last bit and stirred the pot, which was starting to steam. She added more distilled water from the jug then poured a cup for Fernie to share with the boys. Fernie took it gratefully.
As the minutes passed and the clanking continued outside, a deep unease hit her. It came on like a bout of morning sickness. One moment you felt fine, the next a twinge in the gut, and the next you were bent over a toilet that smelled of bleach, gagging up your eggs and toast.
Something was wrong.
If Jacob had been there, he would have come up with a natural explanation. Maybe he would tell her that she was picking up the increasing traffic from the street outside the alley. That she knew on some subconscious level that the search was widening, that it would only be minutes before someone came down the alley looking for her.
Fernie knew better. It was a warning from the Holy Ghost. Alerting her that something was wrong and telling her that now was the time to act. But without any indication of why or how.
She would obey. No matter how little she wanted to leave this warm, secure-feeling place, how little she wanted to drag a young boy and a toddler back into the cold and snow, while she struggled with her wheelchair.
Maggie ladled a Styrofoam cup with the soup, found a spoon on a makeshift shelf behind the stove, and handed it to Daniel. “Careful, it’s hot now.”
“Don’t take that,” Fernie said. “No, I’m sorry,” she added at Maggie’s confused expression. “We have to leave. Now. Jake, come here. Climb on Mama’s lap. That’s a good boy.”
“What’s wrong, where are you going?”
“I can’t explain. Is this the back door?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Can the boys keep their blankets? They only have light jackets, and it’s so cold outside.”
Maggie looked uncertain. “We don’t have extras. I don’t know—I guess if you feel you need them… but where are you going? You’re in a wheelchair!”
“Boys, give back the blankets. We’ll manage.”
The feeling had grown to a roar in her ears.
Get out!
Fernie had never felt anything like it before, except giving birth, at the moment when her body insisted she push, that it was time to bring her baby into the world, and nothing at all, no doctor or midwife, could have told her to stop.
Her hands dropped to the wheels of their own accord. She maneuvered around the stove with Jake on her lap and Daniel running ahead to push open the door. Maggie kept protesting behind them.
Fernie found herself in a tight, garbage-strewn alley. Reflected light from the camp and the snow cast everything in a hazy gray. Flakes fell heavily now, no more of that slushy mix, but it didn’t fully mask the stench of oily rags and human waste. A pile of broken crates and scrap wood climbed to the height of the corrugated metal roofs to her left, while shoulder-high piles of tires to her right held sheets of plastic, punctured by a stovepipe from which smoke dribbled. Someone lived under there.
“How do we get out?” Daniel asked, eying the refuse.
“Go ahead, pull that stuff out of the way. Can you move the tire?” she added, pointing to the most formidable of the objects that kept her from wheeling forward.
Daniel kicked at the tire to clear it of snow then grabbed it with bare hands and heaved. It was frozen to the ground and didn’t budge. After a moment of struggling and gasping, he got one end up, but by then he was wincing at the cold and trying not to cry when he touched the frozen rubber. Fernie clenched her teeth in frustration. It was too low to the ground for her to reach, but maybe if she got out of the chair… but then how would she get back up again?
The door banged open behind her. It was Jackson and he was holding the blankets. “You’re still here?”
“They’re coming, aren’t they?”
“Afraid so. We hacked that car down to size, and it’s out of sight, out of mind. But they must have tracked the tire tracks before the snow covered them, and now there are cops
and soldiers going door to door. They’ll be down our street any minute now. I was going to tell you to come back and we’d hide you behind the dresser. Cover you in blankets.”
“No good. I’ve got to get out of here.”
He didn’t argue, perhaps hearing the terror in her voice. Or maybe he was relieved to see her go. The longer she stuck around, the more danger she put him in.
“Want me to clear the alley for you?”
“Please,” she begged.
Jackson dropped the blankets on her lap then grabbed the frozen tire. While he jerked back and forth, trying to dislodge it and cursing under his breath, Fernie took Daniel’s icy hands and rubbed them with her own. He sniffled and she could tell his eyes were filling with tears, but he didn’t cry out.
“My brave boys,” she said. “Daddy will be so proud when he hears.”
Jackson got the tire loose. He tossed it to one side then moved ahead of her, kicking and dragging aside pallets and hunks of scrap metal, broken chairs, and soggy sofa cushions. He led her into the alley.
It was barely wide enough to hold her wheelchair, and as Fernie crunched over snow, voices penetrated the thin walls on either side: a couple arguing about someone named Benny or Betty, a child crying for her mother, the drone of a radio, and then, something that congealed the blood in her veins.
“… in a wheelchair,” a man’s voice said. “With two kids.”
“I told you already,” a woman answered. Her articulation was clear, her tone disdainful, like someone educated who was not used to submitting to authority and was irritated at being awakened. “I haven’t seen anyone, and I wouldn’t tell you if I had.”
“Five thousand dollars reward. And your name at the top of preferential housing.”
“And I told you—” the woman began again, sounding even more irritated, before her voice faded, replaced by the sound of snoring to Fernie’s right as she continued.
Fernie would have expected the man to sound more demanding, like an agent from a police state. She imagined the government maintained its grip by controlling food, power, even housing if they decided people should move for a new military base. But maybe they were intimidated by the mass of hungry, desperate people already on edge after—what was the general’s name? La Crow?—had shot several people in a riot, according to Jackson and Snod.
And she was heartened by the woman’s resistance. Maybe it wouldn’t be so easy to find Fernie after all. Except for that reward. And preferential housing, which must mean one of the trailers on the edge of camp. Money and warm housing would sound pretty good to these people.
Jackson stopped at the end of the alley. It opened onto a narrow street. He leaned out, looked both ways, and then beckoned her forward. He held a finger to his lips. She nodded, passed the sign to both of her boys, then held out the blankets with a question on her face.
Jackson gave a dismissive wave of the hand. Take them, he was saying.
Grateful, and trying to show thanks with her eyes, Fernie wrapped one blanket around Daniel and tucked the other around her shoulders and her hips, enclosing Jake on her lap with only his head poking out the top. Jackson squeezed past and continued in brisk footsteps back up the alley toward his home. Fernie was alone with her children.
She poked her head out of the alley and froze when lights swept past the mouth of the lane. The car continued but stopped before it was out of earshot, where it sat idling. A man shouted somewhere, and all around people were moving, talking, arguing behind walls. The whole neighborhood was awake. Good heavens, she had to get out of here.
“What should I do?” she whispered.
But the voice that had pushed her out into the snowy night had fallen silent as the stones of the desert. No going back now, and the lane in front of her was a dead end as well. That left going out into the main road. Where they’d catch her at once.
Unless… there! On the opposite side of the lane she spotted a darker shadow on an otherwise unbroken wall of plywood sheets covered in plastic and tar paper. Another alley? It couldn’t be very wide. Would it hold the wheelchair?
Fernie crossed the lane. The snow was thicker now, sticky, and her wheels caught in ruts, hit hidden rocks. She brought the chair up to the entrance of the alley, glanced into the darkness, then beckoned for Daniel to follow. He ran across.
The new alley was no wider than the hallway from Fernie and Jacob’s bedroom to the bathroom, and not much longer, either. She’d hoped to find more back doors, like the one leading out of Jackson’s house, but was dismayed to discover that it ended in piles of plastic garbage bags, stacked precariously to the roofs of the surrounding houses, twelve, fifteen feet high. There was no way through, unless she could sprout wings and fly out with a boy under each arm.
“What do we do?” Daniel asked.
“Shh.”
Could they hide in here? No, not really. The alley was so shallow that a flashlight would catch them. And she didn’t dare touch or move those garbage sacks. They were stacked so high they’d likely come crashing down with enough noise to alert half the camp, if not smother the three fugitives in a garbage landslide.
Fernie turned around, praying feverishly for help, anything. A prompting, a plan.
Tell me what to do!
No answer. Not a whisper, not a hint. It was a horrible, lonely feeling, and as her confusion spread she wondered if this hollow sensation was what Jacob faced on a daily basis when he needed help. If so, who could blame him for his doubts?
Fernie returned to the lane. And froze. Men’s voices. Shadows in front of her, a flashlight sweeping back and forth.
“Look, Governor,” the man with the flashlight said. He squatted to the ground.
Governor? Of Utah? Was this Governor Jim McKay? Who, together with his brother, the attorney general, had run Fernie and her children from their home in Salt Lake, and Jacob from his job at the hospital? She’d expected the army, or maybe even the USDA, under Malloy or whoever had replaced him. But the governor himself?
The first man ran his flashlight down the length of parallel lines in the snow to show them to the second man, who bent to look. The tracks crossed the lane at an angle.
Fernie caught her breath. It was the double track of her wheelchair, clear as a flashing neon arrow from one alley to the next. All they had to do was look up, turn the light against the gap in the wall, and they’d have her.
“That’s a wheelchair all right,” the second man said. It was Governor McKay.
Slowly, the two men lifted their gaze toward the alley. Toward Fernie and her boys.
She closed her eyes. A prayer from Psalms came to her mind.
Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies. I flee unto thee to hide me. For thy righteousness’ sake, bring my soul out of trouble.
A shout sounded from the street. She opened her eyes.
“There he is!” someone cried.
The flashlight crossed Fernie’s face, but it was on its way to the front of the lane and didn’t pause. Several men gathered where the alley met the road.
A miracle! By the mercy of the Lord, they had not spotted her.
“Go home,” an angry voice shouted, “before you get what’s coming to you.”
More people gathered behind the angry man, some in jackets, others with blankets around their shoulders. Men, women, teenagers.
“Now listen, you people,” McKay said.
His voice wavered. The sound of a frightened man.
Something pricked Fernie’s conscience. The answer to her prayer had brought danger to someone else. But she only managed a twinge of worry for the two men now facing down an angry, shouting mob. What little she felt was overpowered by a wave of relief as she pushed Daniel aside and wheeled her chair back into the shadows to hide until it played out.
Another prayer formed in her mind. One filled with gratitude.
But this time, an answer came at once. It was not “you’re welcome.” It was another call to action.
CHAPTER THI
RTY-TWO
I’m going to die, Jim thought as he faced down the mob pressing into the narrow lane.
It was in their eyes. Education, class, civilization itself stripped away. Any and all restraint, gone. All that was left was rage, frustration, and hatred. One man waved a bloody shirt. A woman screamed with spittle flying from her lips. A teenage boy let out an incoherent, feral scream, while girls on either side of him bared their teeth like animals.
The man at Jim’s side, a state police officer named Killicut who’d grown up in Green River, the son of watermelon farmers, with a wife and child still living in town, drew his gun and waved it at the menacing figures in front of them. The officer’s hand shook, and his voice came out in a squeak, like that of a boy going through puberty. The crowd kept growing. Pushing closer.
How had this happened? Five minutes earlier Jim had felt a sense of invulnerability. At the gates, the MPs gave him twenty men and four cars for the search. Green River sent eight highway patrol officers and the entire police force of eleven men. Word went out to seal the camp, to find the missing USDA car, and to arrest the occupants.
As the search spread from the warehouses, clues came in. Most people questioned were sullen, even hostile when roused from their ramshackle homes or refugee tents, but others spoke up, especially when offered increased rations or other rewards for their cooperation. The car had been spotted going down a certain street. A man said he’d seen a woman with two children—yes, she may have been in a wheelchair—going into a certain house.
The people in the home acted suspicious, and an officer spotted disturbances in the snow leading out the back entrance. Jim was heading a group of seven men at the time and split them up to seal off adjacent alleys and streets. Ten minutes later he was alone with Killicut searching this lane, listening to the man babble on about his daughter’s teething problems, when Jim spotted the wheelchair tracks himself.
There was shouting in the street, and Jim had been dimly aware that the neighborhood was rousing itself in anger at the late-night search. And several people they’d questioned already knew about Lacroix’s men shooting the unarmed protesters earlier that evening. Add hunger, cold, poverty. The army’s abusive attitude. The camp was a lit fuse at the end of a very large stick of dynamite. And maybe if Jim had spent five minutes in the camp before this evening he’d have seen it.
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