Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (28 page)

The shell gave a little plink as it fell from Fayer’s hand. The coil snapped and the grenade pin—attached to a second piece of wire—popped out.

Fayer jerked back as the shell rolled from her hand and into the backpack. “Krantz!” she screamed.

He looked down, blinking. He didn’t understand, he hadn’t seen. “Wha—?”

“Grenade!” Jacob shouted at the same time. “The pin!”

We’re dead. We’re all gone.

Suddenly every beat of his heart seemed to take seconds. It was like ER surgery, standing over the cracked chest of a man with a gunshot wound. He would stare into the ruin of the man’s heart, take in everything at a glance—aorta, anterior vena cava, left atrium, right atrium, ventricles, valves, veins. See the wound. Decide what to do. He would reach for a severed artery, knowing that one slip, one fumble as he groped through the blood, and the thing would be over. And so everything moved in slow motion.

Even as these thoughts flashed through his mind between one heartbeat and the next, David was grabbing Miriam and Eliza and yanking them to the ground. No point. Not on the short, crowded ledge, with the canyon walls and the Anasazi ruins to focus the blast. They’d never know what a chemical burn felt like. The blast would vaporize them. He had to get it away. Over the edge, let it fall far enough and…

You’ll never get it over.

Ten pounds? Fifteen? Too heavy to throw far. If he heaved it over the edge, it would start to fall, but it wouldn’t go far enough. Not now. Too late. But if he grabbed it, shoved through the crowd, leaped over the edge of the cliff. Cradle the artillery shell with his body as he fell. Save the others.

Jacob dived for the shell.

But Krantz moved first. He grabbed the pack with his right hand and used his left to sweep people out of the way. Stephen Paul stumbled back and almost fell from the ledge, but Abraham grabbed his arm. Jacob saw it wouldn’t be enough. The others didn’t see, they didn’t understand what he was trying to do. Krantz couldn’t get through without knocking someone off the cliff.

“Everyone down!” Jacob screamed.

Krantz crouched into a hammer thrower stance, spun, and hurled the backpack. The others ducked, threw themselves to the ground. The pack launched over their heads and out of the alcove, flying faster and farther than seemed possible. For a long second there was nothing. And then the explosion.

It shattered the silence. A booming shock wave rolled through the canyon. It echoed and then echoed again as it bounced back and forth against the sandstone cliffs. And then there was no sound except for the ringing in Jacob’s ears and a crow somewhere, hollering in alarm.

Miriam recovered first, climbing to her feet, followed by the two FBI agents, both of whom looked stunned.

“I guess you
did
throw the hammer at USC,” Miriam said. She turned to Fayer. “I always wondered if that was just a story, didn’t you?”

“Sometimes.” Fayer was breathing hard and looked flushed. “He milks it enough.”

Krantz reached for his back with a wince as he helped Eliza up. “Good thing I’m not anymore,” he said, a tremor in his deep baritone voice. He licked his lips. “Anyone saw that technique, the only throwing would be Coach tossing me off the team.”

Stephen Paul and Jacob got up next. David and Abraham had somehow ended up jumbled together on the ground and now
extricated themselves, neither father nor son looking pleased at the contact. David said to Father, “I thought you weren’t going to duck in time. That would have knocked you to your death.”

“I’m not going to die before the Second Coming,” Father said. “I only ducked because I was worried about the rest of you.”

David and Eliza looked dumbfounded and Jacob blinked, but then he caught the upturned corner of Father’s mouth. David, Eliza, and Jacob all laughed at once, the tension broken.

It wouldn’t last.

* * *

It took another hour to get everyone to the top of the cliff where Charity Kimball waited. From there, they had to share information, then come to a consensus about pursuing Taylor Junior and the three other men—the counselors of his secret combination, Abraham called them. At last, with a good deal of bickering and recriminating comments, the entire group returned to the trail Eliza, Charity, and the FBI agents had followed into the mountains.

Jacob lingered behind. He wanted to be alone. Songbirds kept up a cheerful song that belied the gloomy, guilty feeling settling over him. He couldn’t sort through the confusion of the past two days. Fernie’s accident. Taylor Junior’s clever double trap. It had almost killed them all.

Eliza pulled back, and he could see from her scowl that she hadn’t come to chat about birds of the high desert. “You see what happened here, right?”

“What do
you
think happened?” he asked.

“Don’t be glib.”

“I’m not being glib, I’m trying to figure out why you look like you’re going to tear my head off. Why are you so angry?”

“I’m not angry, I’m surprised and disappointed.” She hesitated. “Yes, I guess I am angry. You let me down. You’ve never done that before.”

“That stings,” he said. And it did.

“Taylor Junior lured you into attacking his camp. He knew you were smart enough to find his hideout, but at the same time your mind would be dulled by thoughts of revenge. It was, and he almost killed you, not once, but twice. If you’d been thinking clearly, that wouldn’t have happened. You were lucky.”

“Is that it, you want to lecture me? I get enough of that from Father.”

“That’s hardly fair, Jacob. I saved your life.”

“You did,” he admitted. “I made a mistake. But Taylor Junior didn’t get what he wanted, either. I’m still alive. So is Father, so is everyone else. Yes, it was thanks to you, and yes, I let myself…I don’t know what happened to me. But it’s done now.”

“It’s not done, Jacob.” Eliza’s voice rose in pitch. “All that other stuff doesn’t matter. Taylor Junior is gone. You think that’s the only chemical warhead he has? What do you think he’s doing with the rest of them?”

Jacob felt hollow inside, as if he’d just given blood. He stared at his sister, unable to respond, because of course she was right.

“They’re going to murder people, that’s what,” Eliza continued. “
Our
people. And you? You managed to drag eight people—practically anyone who could stand up to Taylor Junior—into the wilderness where we can’t do a thing to stop it.”

Tonight I will die.

The thought came to Elder Kimball as he drove north along Highway 24. Once he gave this premonition conscious thought, it took hold in his imagination like a Joshua tree, spiky and uninviting above, with a taproot sunk thirty, forty feet into the ground, burrowing deep into his mind.

“I’m not ready,” he whispered, so as not to wake the others. His voice sounded loud in the dark, quiet interior of the truck, where the only sound for the past hour had been the rumble of the engine and the soft snores of the three other men. He continued his prayer in silence.
Please, Lord. I need more time. I need to repent, I need to get my affairs in order. Tell me what to do. I’ll obey thy will.

His muscles ached, from his calves to his shoulders, from the long scramble out of the mountains. They’d trekked half the night
and all day with their cursed loads, pushed to exhaustion by Taylor Junior. He was supposed to wake Aaron for a turn at the wheel when they reached Loa, but in spite of his exhaustion, he knew he’d never be able to fall asleep.

Tonight I will die.

Why couldn’t he be like Abraham Christianson? Abraham wouldn’t be afraid to die. He would know that his calling and election had been made sure, that he would rise on the morning of the First Resurrection and would stand on the right hand of the Lord. He knew it.

Elder Kimball knew no such thing.

Taylor Junior had tied the backpacks together to keep them from rolling around in the back, then wrapped the bundle in a wool blanket and strapped it into the truck bed with a bungee cord. He’d instructed the men to drive with cruise control on, exactly at the speed limit.

I can’t do this. It’s too horrific.

It didn’t matter if they were obeying the will of the Lord or not—he no longer cared. But whenever they’d stopped hiking to let the older man catch his breath, Kimball had remembered Brother Stanley crying for help as the Lewisite burned his skin and ate his lungs away. He imagined women and children screaming and tearing at their clothes. Only one thing scared him more: the fear that if he resisted, his son would turn him into one of the victims. That he might suffer the same fate as Brother Stanley. And so he had pushed himself to exhaustion.

But now, his thoughts vacillating between his own death and the deaths of hundreds of innocents, he decided to resist. Elder Kimball glanced at his son, asleep in the passenger seat, then
glanced in the rearview mirror at the two men in the backseat of the extended cab Ford F-150. Eric was still snoring, and Kimball hadn’t heard Aaron for more than an hour. All three men were asleep.

He let the truck veer into the wrong lane. Slowly he drifted back toward the middle, then across into his own lane. He slowed to forty-five, still weaving. Two cars came up behind him, hesitated as if wondering whether to risk passing, then swerved around, accelerating to get past as quickly as possible.

There was a town a few miles ahead—Kimball assumed that there was cell phone service and one of the two cars would be calling the highway patrol to tell them about the drunk driver swerving back and forth on the highway. He could only hope.

There were no other cars on the road for the next five minutes, and then he saw a pair of headlights coming toward him, fast. Utah Highway Patrol? The Wayne County Sheriff? He let the truck drift back into the far lane. The other car laid on its horn, swerved onto the shoulder, and flew past, horn still blaring with a falling pitch as it receded in the rearview mirror.

Taylor Junior jolted upright. “What the devil?” He grabbed for the steering wheel and yanked it back into the right lane.

But by now, Elder Kimball was already pulling the wheel and they overcorrected. They hit the shoulder. The tires spit up gravel, the truck shimmied, and Kimball slammed on the brakes. They came to a stop on the side of the road.

“What are you thinking?” Taylor Junior demanded.

Sweat poured down Kimball’s face. “I…I don’t know. I fell asleep,” he lied. “I—”

“Get out!” Taylor Junior grabbed his father’s shirt as they met in front of the headlights and gave him a shake. “I told you to you wake me up if you started to fall asleep.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. I just—”

“Shut up and get in the truck.”

Back in the truck, Elder Kimball caught a glimpse of Aaron and Eric glaring from the backseat before he shut the door and plunged them into darkness again. Taylor Junior accelerated rapidly and nobody spoke.

Taylor Junior slowed to thirty-five as they passed the hotel, restaurant, and gas station before entering Capitol Reef, then accelerated back to fifty-five as they entered the national park itself. Inside the park, they slowed twice for mule deer stopping in the road to stare at the car lights, bewildered, before the animals turned and bounded into the darkness.

A set of headlights came up behind them. Taylor Junior didn’t speed up, and the car didn’t pass. It followed them until Loa, where streetlights lined Main Street. Taylor Junior let out his breath in a hiss.

“What is it?” Aaron asked.

“Don’t turn around and look.” He came to a full stop at the stop sign and then pulled slowly across the intersection.

Elder Kimball let his glance slide to the side mirror. The white car had a black metal bumper rail, lights, and a beehive in the middle of the license plate. Utah Highway Patrol.

Taylor Junior said, “I don’t know if it’s coincidence or that damn fool way you almost got us killed. Someone might have reported a drunk driver. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you did it on purpose.”

“But what are we going to do?” Kimball asked his son, perhaps a little too quickly.

“We’re almost out of town. If he flips his lights, we’ll keep going a block or two like we didn’t see him, then pull over. When I hand him my license and registration, you’ll shoot him.”

“Me?” Kimball asked.

“I’ll do it,” Aaron said. “I’ve got a gun under the seat. I’ll just reach around and shoot him in the face.”

“We can’t do that,” Elder Kimball protested. “Then we’ll have half the state looking for us. Everyone act normal—he’ll check the license, see we haven’t been drinking, and let us go.”

His mind was racing. What had he been thinking? Of course they’d want to kill the trooper. What, did he think they’d sit still and let themselves be handcuffed? He had to pass the man a warning somehow, then hope he called in backup. Then, even if Aaron killed the man, they’d send out more troopers.

Taylor Junior said, “There are four chemical warheads in the back. He’ll ask what’s under the blanket. He won’t like the answer, and he’ll take a look.”

“The cops can’t search our truck,” Kimball said. “They have to get a warrant or something.”

“We can’t take that chance. Aaron, if he stops us, kill him. We’ll throw him in the back. Eric, you’ll drive the cop car until we find a place to ditch it. Look, we’re out of town. Everyone get ready to go.”

But then the trooper stopped his car and made a U-turn back into town, apparently deciding the newer truck, driving at perfect speed, following all laws, and not deviating from a straight line, was no threat. The tension evaporated.

“Even better,” Taylor Junior said, voice calm. He glanced at the dashboard. “Two thirty now. Eric, call your brother. Tell him we’ll be at Zarahemla in two hours and we’ll need the ladder. Do you understand, the ladder? Not the gates. The gates must remain closed.”

“I got it.” A light glowed from the backseat as Eric powered up his cell phone. “Anything else?”

“Yes. Tell him to get his wife and children out or they will die with everyone else.”