Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (21 page)

Still taking his time, Taylor Junior picked his way from his hiding place and made his way to the fissure in the sandstone. Another gunshot rolled through the canyon like a crack of lightning from a dry thunderstorm. He braced for a third. It didn’t come.

The camp was in an uproar when he arrived. They’d lit a bonfire. Eric Froud and Phillip Cobb—the latter still favoring his left arm from when Eliza had beaten him with a steel baton—heaped dead branches onto the fire. Women clutched their children or held each other. Taylor Junior’s father stood with his wife, Charity. They stared into the shadows beyond the fire.

Aaron Young was shouting. “Nobody moves until I say so. Nobody touches him. Did I say you could stop? Keep building that fire!” He waved a rifle at one of Taylor Junior’s wives. She looked momentarily defiant, then picked up another log and threw it on the fire. Flames licked six feet into the air.

As Taylor Junior’s eyes adjusted, he saw what everyone was staring at. Stanley Clawson slumped on the ground. Firelight played across his face, which contorted like the face of a damned soul trying to drag itself from a lake of fire. He clutched his shoulder, marked with a bloody hole.

Stanley was the first to spot Taylor Junior. The mask of pain dropped and triumph crossed his face. “Now you’ll see!” he cried to Aaron Young. “Now you’ll get what’s coming to you!”

Their eyes turned toward Taylor Junior, and Aaron lifted his gun. Eric Froud dropped the branch in his hand and reached for something.

“It’s just me,” Taylor Junior said in a calm voice. “I apologize for abandoning you, but I needed to consult with the Lord. Now I
know what to do.” He slid out of his backpack and let it drop at his feet, then held out his hands to show he was unarmed.

Aaron narrowed his eyes and didn’t lower the gun. Taylor Junior met his gaze.
I see what you’re doing. And I know why.

Eliminate the
why
and the
what
would disappear as well.

“What is that apron?” Aaron asked.

“It represents my powers and my priesthood. The time has come to anoint my counselors, and they shall get aprons, too. And then we move.”

“He shot me!” Stanley burst in.

“I gave you a warning shot,” Aaron said calmly. “It wasn’t enough.”

“He started ordering people around, and when I told him he wasn’t the prophet, he tried to kill me.”

“He didn’t try to kill you or you’d be dead,” Taylor Junior said. He looked around the circle, met the eyes of one of his wives, of his father, of his young son, then looked at Eric, Aaron, and Phillip, and many of the others of the nearly thirty people around the fire. He returned to Brother Stanley. “When the prophet leaves and the people murmur, it is up to his disciples to quiet them. Moses went to the mountain and Aaron needed to maintain order. Sometimes harsh measures are needed.”

“That’s not what happened!” Stanley protested, his voice shrill. “Not in the Bible and not here, either. Aren’t you listening to me? Aaron was trying to take over.”

“Eric, Aaron, get Brother Stanley to his feet. Phillip, get the gun.”

For a moment, they hesitated, and then Aaron set down the gun and moved to grab Stanley. Eric followed. Aaron was suddenly
efficient and ruthless in obeying Taylor Junior as if he hadn’t, in fact, been trying to take over.

Stanley cried out in pain as they got him up. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me?”

“Bring him to the bowl. Brother Jason, get a torch. You too, Father.”

Stanley shook his head. “What are you doing? What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you listen?”

The church body moved as one to the bowl. It was a sinkhole in the sandstone a quarter mile from the camp, maybe ten feet across and twenty feet deep. Every year a deep, cold pool of water formed from the spring runoff. The water lasted for weeks, growing brackish as the season wore on and filling with toad spawn and mosquito larvae until it evaporated. This spring had been dryer than last and the water was already gone. Half the bottom was sand, perfect for cushioning a body as it fell. Bare sandstone rose from the other side.

“Bring him to the edge,” Taylor Junior said. “No, on the other side, above the sandy part.” When they’d done so, he turned to Brother Stanley. “I’m afraid your time has come, Brother.”

Stanley’s eyes darted from person to person as if searching for someone to come to his defense. “Don’t do this to me,” he said. “I’ve been faithful. They shot me because I was on your side. I was arguing for you!”

“I understand, Brother. You’ve done your best—it’s not your fault you are a weak and miserable soul.” He pushed Aaron and Eric to the side and took the older man by the wrist. “There’s a reason the Lord brought you to our church. Brother Abraham didn’t realize he was doing the Lord’s will by driving you out. Well, not
in the way he thought. This is your purpose, your mission in this mortal world. The Lord will reward you for your faithfulness.”

Brother Stanley didn’t struggle, but hung limp on Taylor Junior’s arm, so weak the younger man had to hold him up. The man’s blood made Taylor Junior’s palm slick, and he shifted his grip.

He despised this man. It was Stanley’s weakness, the way he sniveled for his life instead of demanding justice. There was too much of the old Taylor Junior in the older man. This is what he would have become if he’d remained under his brother Gideon’s tyranny.

“No,” Stanley whispered. “I’ll do whatever you want. I wasn’t the one—I didn’t do it.”

Technically, that was true. Aaron had been in the midst of a coup when Taylor Junior arrived, of that there was no doubt. But it wasn’t because of Aaron’s own strength, it was because of his leader’s weakness, or perceived weakness. Time to change that perception.

Taylor Junior set down the backpack and lifted his right arm to the square. “Brother Stanley, in the name of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, I seal thee unto death. Go now, and plead with thy maker for His forgiveness. Amen.”

“Thou sayest,” Aaron murmured.

Taylor Junior pushed.

Brother Stanley windmilled his arms, then lost his balance. He screamed as he fell. There was a thud, and then he shrieked in pain. Taylor Junior grabbed a flaming, pitchy branch from Eric’s hand and held it over the pit to cast light into the shadows. Stanley
had landed on the sandy part. He tried to regain his feet, but one leg buckled underneath him.

He cried out again, then seemed to regain control. “I’m sorry. Let me out, please. I’ve learned my lesson—it won’t happen again.”

The others looked to Taylor Junior. He waved them back. “Move away, all of you.”

He put on the gloves, then removed the artillery shell wrapped in plastic bags from the backpack. Holding his breath, he unrolled the bags and picked his way to the other side of the dark hole. Stanley moaned from the pit below him. A murmur passed through the group, and someone’s baby began to cry.

“What is that, what are you doing?” Aaron asked.

“Stay back or you will die.”

Taylor Junior tilted the bags upside down over the rocky part of the hole. The shell slipped out the end, the weight gone suddenly from his hands. He flinched from the pit, even though that was pointless. If the shell hit in the wrong way and detonated, he’d die. So would everyone else.

It clanked off the rock, but didn’t explode. For several seconds there was nothing.

“What’s that smell, what is that?” Stanley asked, voice pinched and frightened. And then, a moment later, he screamed. “Ahh! Get it off me! Help me!”

His words faded and turned to screaming, coughing, retching. It was too dark to see what was happening in the pit. The crowd was quiet for several seconds while Brother Stanley screamed, and then children started to bawl. Mothers dragged them away. Taylor Junior turned to see his father watching, face pale and trembling in the dying light of a burning branch. Aaron stared at Taylor Junior,
eyes wide. His own branch had died to a glowing tip with a trickle of flame not much bigger than a lit match head.

Taylor Junior raised his voice. “Someone bring us some light!” Eric Froud returned with another burning branch. Taylor Junior snatched it and held it over the sandstone bowl.

He didn’t want to look. He wanted to turn away, to fix his gaze anywhere but down at the man in the pit. Brother Stanley’s fate was sealed, there was no way to save him, so why do it?

He looked.

Stanley writhed at the bottom of the bowl. He tore at his face and clothing, flailing and bucking like a live snake thrown onto a skillet. Desperate to get away. To escape the torment. There was something on his skin that gleamed in the torchlight, but Taylor Junior couldn’t tell if it was the poison itself or the blood where his nails gouged at his face.

Aaron looked down, face grim. Eric took one look and staggered back with his hand over his mouth. He made sounds like he was going to be sick, but didn’t throw up.

“He’s suffering,” Taylor Junior said.

“What?” Aaron asked. “Of course he’s suffering. Look at him.”

“It could last for hours. He has been sealed unto death.” He gave Aaron a hard look. “You started it. Now you finish it.”

Aaron lifted his rifle. He aimed and fired. Stanley’s head snapped back and he collapsed, then lay still. Aaron lowered the weapon and studied it.

“Now you see,” Taylor Junior said in a low voice. “You shouldn’t have doubted me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am in charge.”

“I should have been patient.”

“You did what you had to,” Taylor Junior said. “All is forgiven.” He raised his voice. “I want everyone up the hillside. We’re leaving the camp. Abraham Christianson is coming. If we stay, we’ll die. We have to reach the second sanctuary before he arrives. Jason and Phillip, load up guns and ammunition. Charity, get the women and children ready to move. Aaron and Eric, come over here. You too, Father. The rest of you return to camp and wait for instructions. Father, I said come here!”

Elder Kimball crept over like a whipped puppy, shaking with fear. Taylor Junior stared with disgust. “Hurry up, I’m not going to push you.”

“Why did you do that? Why did you—”

“Quiet!” Taylor Junior took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “No more questions. Do what I say.”

When he opened his eyes, he saw Charity Kimball standing a few paces away, still watching him. The other women had already left, taking the children with them. He turned his gaze on her and stared until she turned away.

Taylor Junior led the remaining men up the hillside, away from the sinkhole. They stayed on his heels as if anxious to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the horror in the pit. He said, “We’ve set the wheels in motion. No more games. The time has come to destroy the apostates.”

“They’re ready for us now,” Aaron said. “They’ll be in an uproar, too.”

“Abraham doesn’t sit still when someone threatens his community,” Elder Kimball said. “He has no choice. We attacked him in Blister Creek. His daughter and stepdaughter were in the car,
his grandchildren. He’ll be gathering weapons. And then he’ll come looking for us. How long until he finds us?”

“He might know already,” Taylor Junior said. “Satan is whispering in his ear.”

“And what about Jacob?” Aaron asked.

“I don’t know,” Taylor Junior admitted.

Abraham was easier to understand. A jealous, temperamental leader. But Jacob? Try as he might, he couldn’t shine a light into the sinkhole of Jacob’s mind.

He said, “We didn’t kill Fernie, but she might have been injured. He might join his father. Or he might go to the police. He won’t get anywhere if he does that. Not in time.”

“He’ll join his father,” Elder Kimball said. “He won’t have a choice. They’ll come here, and if we flee deeper into the wilderness, they’ll track us.”

“We could take cover and let them stumble into an ambush,” Eric Froud said.

Aaron frowned. “Are we strong enough? We’ve got ten men and a few rifles.” He looked back over his shoulder, toward the pit, hidden in the darkness on the hillside below them. “
Nine
men.”

“We’re not waiting for them to attack us,” Taylor Junior said. “And we have more than a few rifles. The Lord has delivered a weapon into my hands.”

“Is that what that was?” Elder Kimball asked. “Whatever it was that you dropped into the pit?”

“Yes, in part.”

“What is it?” his father asked.

“Something to wipe our enemies from the face of the earth.”

Eliza left the hospital in Panguitch and arrived in Blister Creek no more than forty-five minutes behind her brother. She expected to find him on the porch, arguing with Father over the best way to approach Taylor Junior’s wilderness camp. Jacob wouldn’t let Father direct the attack, would he?

But they weren’t at the big house, and when she drove out to Stephen Paul Young’s home east of town, his senior wife, Carol, said that the men had driven up in a haste a half hour earlier, thrown some boxes from the shed into the back of the truck, and then tore off again a few minutes later. She was alarmed and wanted to know if Eliza knew what was going on. Eliza didn’t have time to get into specifics and claimed ignorance.

Jacob still wasn’t picking up his cell phone. She sent him a text message, but he didn’t answer that, either. She tried Father,
too, but got nothing. In mounting frustration, she drove back into town. Brother Simon at the gas station confirmed that her father had filled up his truck no more than an hour earlier. Father hadn’t been alone, but Brother Simon hadn’t been observant enough to confirm that the others had been Jacob and Stephen Paul.

At last she went back to the Christianson house and texted an update to Agent Krantz. She spent the next few hours putting together camping and hiking gear and then tried to get a few fitful hours of sleep in the guest room.

Krantz and Fayer arrived at the house at 5:48 the next morning. They stumbled out of the black Crown Victoria, stretching and yawning. Fayer managed to look both bleary-eyed and alert at the same time. And annoyed.

Eliza had been waiting on the porch since receiving Krantz’s call twenty minutes earlier, saying they were descending from the Ghost Cliffs. She gave him a hug.