The Gates of Babylon (20 page)

“This is nuts.”

“You are the One Mighty and Strong.”

“No, I am not.”

“Exactly. You say you’re not. Other people say you are. The One Mighty and Strong will never make the claim for himself.”

“Guess what? I am also
not
a flying monkey. Is that good enough proof that I really am?”

“Don’t toy with me, Jacob! I’m standing over the pit of hell. They killed my wives.” His voice climbed an octave and he pointed back toward town. “My children are back there. I have to get them out.”

There was such anguish in Alfred’s voice and on his face that Jacob clawed back his own frustrations and fears. He rested a calming hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Okay, keep your voice down.”

Alfred took a deep breath. “We’re the ones who stayed behind when they evacuated Colorado City. We hid. I thought we’d wait it out. And then the bandits closed us in. A man rode through in a truck with a bullhorn—he said we’d be killed if we went into the dunes, or if we crossed the bridge. And he meant it! You have to help us. Please, I’m begging you.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Fifty-seven.”

Jacob let out his breath. “And you want help getting to the refugee camp?”

“No, we want to go to the final sanctuary. We want to join you in Blister Creek.”

As the two men picked their way back into town, figures ducked behind bushes, and a signal passed between roofs by a blinking flashlight. Once Jacob caught a glimpse of light glinting off a rifle barrel. Toward the center, Alfred had tipped over trucks and cars to block off side streets, stacked furniture and torn down fences to make barricades. To keep out infiltrators, he explained.

He whistled as they approached one of these barriers, and a flashlight blinked on their faces and then off again.

“This is our fortress,” Alfred said as they made their way around and past a lone gunman. “If they make it this deep, we’re dead.”

“Have they attacked you in town?”

“Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time. They have assault rifles, machine guns.”

“What are they, a rogue National Guard unit?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a uniform. Maybe they’re gunrunners. Smugglers. A few of them passed through… before. That’s when I knew things were bad, when you could call the sheriff about smugglers and they wouldn’t send anyone to patrol the road.”

“When did you lose phone service?”

“Cell, about six weeks ago. Landlines earlier. They cut Internet, phone, and electricity when they evacuated at the beginning of September.”

That was several weeks ago. Alfred and fifty-six other men, women, and children had been holed up without services, without so much as running water, based on the man’s body odor. Was this Blister Creek’s future? How long could modern people, softened by generations of plentiful food and warm homes, survive collapse and anarchy? About four weeks, from the looks of it.

They turned down a street blocked by a Winnebago with faded green trim, which unexpectedly fired up its engine and pulled into a driveway to open the street. When they passed, it rolled back to close the road again. Two intact houses sat shoulder to shoulder on the left side of the street, while burned-out cars, stacks of tires, broken furniture, and uprooted telephone poles blocked the other end of the street like a people’s barricade in some communist revolution. Two figures huddled behind the barricade with blankets pulled around their shoulders.

Jacob was surprised to see his trucks parked to the side of one of the two houses. No sign of his four companions.

Flashlights blinked in a window and deadbolts turned on the door when Jacob and Alfred came up the sidewalk onto the porch. A man appeared in the foyer and led them down darkened hallways to a staircase that descended into an unfinished basement, lit at the bottom by a pair of hissing kerosene lamps. Cots and sleeping bags packed the far end, while closer to the stairs, a couple of dozen women and children ate dinner from tin cans and snipped open vacuum bags of food storage.

Jacob’s companions sat in a glum semicircle on one side of the room, eating dried apples and what looked like venison jerky, washed down with water from dusty plastic cups. They gave weary sighs and shakes of the head when Alfred led Jacob over before tramping back up the stairs.

“These people are saying they need our help,” Krantz said. “Is that true, or are we prisoners of another doomsday cult?”

“Because if we are,” David said, “I’d just as soon get to the chanting and human sacrifice part of the evening—get it over with.”

Neither man kept his voice down and the women and children a few feet away stared. Officer Trost looked deeply troubled, even as he ate, and Miriam chewed on her venison with all the pleasure of a woman gnawing on fiberglass insulation. She didn’t make eye contact with the other women in the basement.

“Not prisoners,” Jacob said.

“I’m relieved,” David said, sounding anything but.

“How can we be sure they’re telling the truth?” Miriam asked.

Jacob told them about the swinging bodies of Alfred’s wives. The man had sent the women out to get help from Blister Creek
with the idea of seeking refuge in the valley. As Jacob explained, the expressions darkened on his companions’ faces.

“Who are these people?” David said. “Smugglers? That doesn’t sound likely.”

“I wonder if it’s our friend Alacrán again,” Jacob said.

“Could be,” Trost said. “He’s running guns to Mexico for the civil war, has probably passed this way many times.”

“What does he want here?”

“A base, maybe,” Krantz said. “Colorado City is even more isolated than Blister Creek. You could set yourself up like the damn Taliban.”

“How do you mean?”

“Like when I was in Afghanistan. They got these villages, and when we came looking, they’d hole up in the mountains until we got tired and left them alone. Desert, mountains, isolation—and complete indifference from the government.”

“Then why don’t they let Alfred and the rest of them leave? These people have guns. They’re desperate. Why take the risk?”

Trost and Krantz shook their heads, and David gave a bewildered shrug. Miriam looked more thoughtful.

“You’re thinking something,” Jacob told her. “Do you have an idea?”

“Me?” she said, looking up with surprise. “No, I’m wondering what it’s got to do with us, and why we don’t get the hell out.”

“I’m not sure we can.”

“Of course we can. It’s an empty desert. And flat too, at least in some directions. These guys can’t guard everywhere at once.”

“What about the trucks?” Jacob said.

“These smugglers aren’t dumb,” Miriam said. “They’re not going to waste fuel chasing us across the desert for the hell of it. We’ll use up some of our gas cans, make sure the trucks are filled up, then go. I’m ready as soon as you guys are.”

“Right across the bridge?”

“We’ll shoot at anything that blocks our path. Ten seconds and we’re through.”

“All they need is one gun,” Krantz said. “One strategically placed machine gun. That’s all it would take to cut us in two.”

“You got a better idea?” she said.

“If it were that easy,” Jacob said, “Alfred would have done it already. He’s armed too, and he knows the terrain a lot better than we do.”

“They’re mostly women and children,” Miriam said. “And they’re probably almost out of fuel. Assuming they’ve got enough running vehicles anyway.”

She looked like she was about to say something else, but footsteps sounded on the stairs. Alfred came down and sat on the rug next to them.

“What do you need us to do, Brother Jacob?” Alfred asked.

“Look, who exactly is in charge here?” Krantz asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think he means?” Miriam said with an edge in her voice. “You’ve been ordering us around and now you act like Jacob is running the show.”

“We’ll obey Brother Jacob,” Alfred said. “I sent my brother Miles to tell the others that—”

“So long as Jacob agrees to get you out of this sorry hole, right?” she interrupted.

“Well, yes,” Alfred said, as if this was self-evident.

“We’re already helping someone,” Miriam said. She hooked her thumb at Trost. “We’re helping this guy get his daughter out of Vegas.”

Eyes turned expectantly to Jacob, but he didn’t speak right away.

“This isn’t one person,” Alfred said. “We’ve got women, children. And we’re not gentiles, either,” he added with a glance at Trost, although with the man’s jacket buttoned up and his weathered skin and southern Utah accent, it was unclear how he’d guessed that Trost was an outsider.

“My brother is a good man,” David said. “He wants to help. I’m sure he
will
help. But not now. Now we have to look after ourselves and our own.”

Alfred didn’t look at David but addressed Jacob instead. “Brother, I’m desperate.”

Miriam looked disgusted. “Really? We’d have never guessed.”

“And this is the answer to my prayers,” Alfred said. “I begged the Lord to send help, and here you are. Armed. Trucks with fuel. My brother overheard these ones talking. A police officer. Two former FBI agents. Are you telling me that’s a coincidence? If it is, it’s the most amazing luck ever.”

“Amazing luck for you,” Jacob said. “But I’m sure you can see how it looks like piss-poor timing from my end.” When Alfred didn’t respond, he added, “How many are there anyway?”

“I don’t know for certain. Well over twenty men. The real problem is that we’re armed with deer rifles and the enemy carries assault rifles and machine guns.”

“Lovely,” Miriam muttered.

“But led by a prophet of God,” Alfred continued, his gaze sharpening on Jacob, “even the legions of hell shall scatter before us.”

Jacob looked at his companions in turn: David, Officer Trost, Krantz, and finally Miriam, who was studying him with that hard edge on her face again. The look she’d worn when she pushed the button that blew Mo Strafford sky-high on a fireball of stolen diesel. Or when she’d almost gone after Chip Malloy’s USDA agents at the roadblock outside Blister Creek. What had gotten into her?

“Make the call,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I can see what you’re thinking. I’ll do it. Give me the word and I’ll make it happen.”

Miriam was Jacob’s loaded weapon, safety off, aimed forward at all times. All he had to do was apply the slightest pressure on the trigger and she’d go off.

David’s expression darkened, and he leaned toward his wife. “Miriam, no. I can’t let you do it.”

“You’re not making the call,” she said.

“Think about our son. And the baby.”

“I’m barely even showing—it won’t slow me down.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” David said. “Jacob, tell her.”

Krantz cleared his throat. “I’ll go with her. We’ll take the sniper rifle. Together, we’ll get the job done.”

“And you’ll do what, exactly?” Jacob asked, afraid he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Clear those bastards from the road,” Miriam said. “If this guy can point us to the bridge,” she added, hooking her finger at
Alfred, “I’ll keep it open long enough to get everyone to the other side.”

“For how long?” Alfred said. “We have no fuel, and only two horses.”

Once again the others turned to Jacob.

“What if we go back up the canyon and through the dunes instead?” he said.

“I’m not turning back now,” Trost said. “My daughter is in Las Vegas, and that’s where I’m going, if I have to do it alone.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Miriam said. “You’d never make it.”

“I’m not sure it’s safer going back anyway,” Krantz said. “A million places to snipe at us from the rocks and dunes. Plenty of spots up that canyon to block the road, too. But the way forward is flat. We can make a run for it.”

“Assuming we can get over that bridge,” Jacob said.

“There is that,” Krantz agreed.

Jacob thought about their diesel, lashed together in five-gallon gas cans and hidden beneath the tarp on the flatbed. Could they spare a couple of cans? Fifty-seven people. The pickup could hold six or eight in the bed, the flatbed twice that many, clinging to ropes. And the Winnebago that blocked the street had enough fuel to turn over and roll back and forth—gassed up, it could hold the rest, crammed shoulder to shoulder until they escaped Colorado City. Then a straight shot across the desert to Las Vegas. He could either leave the refugees there or figure out some other way to get them back to Blister Creek.

Miriam must have seen the decision crossing his face, because she shrugged off the blanket and rose to her feet without waiting for the answer. She nodded at Krantz.

“Hold on,” Jacob said. “ ‘Clear those bastards from the road’ is a goal, not a plan. You can’t snipe them all.” He looked to Krantz. “Can you?”

Krantz shrugged. “Something has to flush them out.”

“Exactly,” Miriam said.

“And how are you going to do that?” Jacob asked.

She unzipped her jacket and removed the Beretta from its shoulder holster. She checked the clip and knocked it back in place with a definitive snap. Her eyes met Jacob’s.

“There,” she said. “Is that answer enough for you?”