Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (30 page)

“Quiet, both of you,” Jacob said.

Fayer reached over and turned off the radio. “That’s enough.”

“Listen, lady,” Abraham said from the backseat, “you can’t control the radio.”

“If you’ll shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you.” Fayer let out her breath. “There’s been an attack at Zarahemla.”

“What kind of attack?” Jacob asked.

“Chemical weapons.”

The Lewisite. The geraniums. “How bad?”

“Multiple fatalities. Severe chemical burns. Unclear how many people. Dozens, maybe hundreds. I don’t know, but it’s bad. They’ve created a special ward at Sanpete Valley Hospital.”

A hand closed around Jacob’s heart. An image of the hospital flashed into his mind, filled with screaming women and children with their faces melted off. He closed his eyes and put his hands to his temples, fought the lightheaded, nauseous feeling that made him feel as though he would pass out.

Groans from the people in the backseat. Miriam made a sound far back in her throat, like the hitch of a sob that preceded an animal scream. But she swallowed it.

“Two explosions reported,” Fayer continued in a tight voice. “It appears that Taylor Junior’s band got away. They may still be armed, they may have more shells. I tried to tell them what we’d learned, but lost coverage. Pull over and turn the car—no, wait.”

Sister Miriam said, “Might not find coverage even if we turn around. Might be Hanksville before you get it again.”

Fayer gave a curt nod. “You’re right. Keep going, Kite. Hurry up.” But Sister Miriam had already stomped on the gas. They came up on a semi and Miriam blew by in the passing lane.

A sign announced the juncture with Route 12, approaching in three miles.

“Take the exit,” Agent Fayer announced. “We’ll cut them off in Blister Creek.”

“No way,” Miriam said. “We’re going to Zarahemla.”

“No, we’re not.” Agent Fayer spoke in a calm voice. She seemed to have regained control of her emotions. “We’re going to take Highway Twelve and cut them off at Blister Creek, before they kill more people.”

“There are people dying in Zarahemla right now! I’m not going to Blister Creek, and that’s final.” Miriam clenched the wheel.

A hard edge entered Fayer’s voice. “You will take Twelve or I will have you arrested. You’re driving FBI property and we’re on FBI business.”

“Don’t lecture me,” Miriam said. “I know what you’re trying to do—you’re trying to save your job by being a hero. Well forget that. We need to save some lives.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do? We can’t do anything in Zarahemla, but we can sure as hell get to Blister Creek in time to stop another attack. Now listen to me—”

“We don’t know that,” Miriam interrupted. “You have no clue if there will be another attack, you’re guessing.”

“Just do what the lady says,” Abraham said from the backseat. “Take us to Blister Creek.”

The raised voices howled in Jacob’s head like a dry storm off the Ghost Cliffs.
Calm down. Get a grip on your emotions. People are dying out there.

“Everyone settle down,” Jacob said. His voice sounded high and tight in his ears. They didn’t listen, but kept arguing and threatening.

He had to think like Taylor Junior. What would the man do? There was no time to talk it out. If they took Highway 12, they’d cut across Bryce Canyon and pass through Panguitch. It was closer to Blister Creek, but if they went that way and changed their minds, they’d lose at least an hour on the way to Zarahemla. It was one or the other, not both.

“Jacob,” Miriam said in a pleading voice. “Those are your people, you’re their leader. They need you in Zarahemla.”

“Please! Hold on, I need to think.”

But there was the exit, approaching fast. No time to mull it over.

“Take the exit!” Fayer shouted. “That’s an order!”

She reached across Jacob’s body for the wheel, but he blocked her, alarmed. “Stop that, you’ll get us killed!”

Abraham started to climb over from the backseat. David tried to pull him back. The car swerved as Abraham grabbed for Miriam’s arms. Suddenly, everything stopped at the sound of a gun hammer being cocked.

It was Agent Fayer. “Abraham, back in your seat. Kite, pull over here.”

Miriam hit the brakes. The car shuddered. It came to a stop in front of the sign where Highway 12 branched from Highway
24. In the back, Abraham sat with his arms folded, while Charity Kimball cringed in the corner. David sat with a stunned look.

“Fine,” Miriam said. “What now, are we going to fight and kill each other?”

“Go to Blister Creek,” Fayer said.

“Put the gun away, please,” Jacob said as calmly as he could manage.

“You’re not in charge here,” Fayer said.

“No, I’m not. But you’re not going to get anywhere by waving that thing around. And there are other guns in the car.”

Fayer lowered the weapon, but she glared at Jacob with a hostile expression. “You either do what I’m telling you or you’ll go to prison.”

“Doubtful,” Jacob said. “Because then it would get out that Sister Miriam was driving your car and that you allowed armed civilians into the vehicle. Nobody will care that the circumstances justified some panic. I think we can all agree that at the end of the day, we’ll have to come up with a story to spin the events of the last twenty-four hours. Part of that will involve scrubbing this unfortunate argument from memory.”

“Stop threatening me, Jacob, I mean it.”

“I’m not threatening you! I’m trying to defuse the situation, can’t you see the difference? I’m trying to settle them down. Until I do…” When she gave no sign of interrupting, he nodded. “Good. Now the rest of you, listen to me. Please!”

They shut up. He turned it over again in his mind, knowing what to do, but needing to be sure. Once they decided, there would be no turning back. “Agent Fayer is right. We’re going to Blister Creek.”

“Jacob!” Miriam said.

“We can’t do anything at Zarahemla. The place will be swarming with law enforcement by the time we get there. They’ll have a hazmat team on site. If we go there, Fayer will go to work, but if the rest of us approach, we’ll be arrested.”

“Only if you get in the way,” Miriam said. “Jacob, our people need the priesthood. You can give them blessings and heal them.”

“Miriam, be real for a second.”

“Call on the Lord for help,” she said. “You’re the prophet. Your father can help. Between the two of you and the power of the priesthood—”

“I’m not the prophet!”

“Fine, so give up your spiritual responsibilities. Of course you would, why should I expect anything different? Why did I ever put my faith in you?” She stopped, breathing heavily for a moment before turning on him again. “Don’t you see? I had nothing before Zarahemla. I was nobody, I was dead spiritually. They brought me—I mean, they gave me…Jacob! You’re still a doctor. You can treat the burns.”

“Miriam,” David murmured.

“You’ll take his side?”

“There’s nothing special I can do,” Jacob said. “They’ll evacuate Zarahemla. Every hospital from Ogden to the Nevada border will be on this. Sure, they’ll press me into service. In the meanwhile, my family is unguarded at the hospital in Panguitch. And what about Blister Creek? Those are our people, too.”

Miriam said nothing, just stared at him with a look of crushing disappointment. If it had been Eliza looking at him like that,
he wouldn’t have been able to stand up to her. Or worse, Fernie. What would he have told her?

“I’ve got to get to my wife,” he pleaded. “And my kids. I can’t—” He stopped, unable to continue for a moment. “I can’t leave them alone. Not while Taylor Junior is still out there.”

And they wouldn’t be, if you hadn’t stormed off and left them alone.
That’s what Eliza would have said. He choked off that thought before it chewed him up. He couldn’t change his poor decision. He could only make a better choice going forward.

“Agent Kite,” Fayer said, “I know you feel obligated to these people, but for heaven’s sake, you’re alone.” Now, of course, she sounded reasonable and accommodating. Now that the prevailing wind had turned in her favor.

Without another word, Sister Miriam shifted into gear, turned the car left, accelerated, and sped toward Panguitch and Blister Creek as she’d been told.

Fayer’s phone rang moments later. She glanced at the number. “It’s Agent Krantz.” She picked up. “Yes, yes, I know…yes, I got the news already. Will you shut up and listen to me before we lose coverage again? Good. We can’t do anything about that now. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Eric Froud began to scratch at his neck an hour after leaving Zarahemla. Within another thirty minutes he took off his shirt, then found a rag beneath the seat and used it to wipe his bloodshot, watering eyes. Elder Kimball also sat in the backseat of the extended cab and pressed himself against the far door to get as far from the man as possible. He caught Taylor Junior looking through the rearview mirror with a frown, and more than once Aaron gave a quick glance over his shoulder as well.

They stopped at the rainwater cisterns before leaving Zarahemla, where they opened the spigots and spent several precious minutes rinsing Eric and his clothing before rushing back to the truck. The water, apparently, had not cleaned off all the Lewisite. Maybe it hadn’t done any good at all. Who knew how the stuff worked?

Meanwhile, Kimball’s own hands began to itch, and something crawled along his back, like a scorpion beneath his shirt, its feet creeping up his spine. At first he thought it was psychosomatic—watching Eric struggle with his burns made him hypersensitive to every itch or tickle. But then the scorpion started to sting.

He looked down at his hands and under the bright light of morning saw raised red welts along his palms. Had those been there a few minutes earlier? Panic rose in his throat like a dust storm on the desert.

“My hands are itching,” Aaron announced as they left Circleville.

“Oh yeah?” Eric said. “My whole goddamned body is burning!”

“Do not take the name of the Lord in vain,” Taylor Junior said in a calm voice.

“What does that matter? I’m burning! We’re contaminated. Our clothes, this truck, everything. You have to get us to the hospital or we’re all going to die.”

In a pinched, tight voice, Elder Kimball said, “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but my own hands are starting to itch and there’s something along my back.”

“That’s normal,” Taylor Junior said. “There’s some leakage. The shells jostled around during our hike and some leaked through the backpack and onto your shirt.”

“But what about the bleach and the cotton?” Kimball asked.

“Only partially effective, I discovered. And the gloves don’t do much to stop it, either. The good news is—”

“Good news?” Kimball asked. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s not fatal in small doses. I’ve been contaminated several times, and believe me, it’s not like a rattlesnake bite or anything. More like wasp stings. Apart from a few blisters—”

“A few blisters?” Eric shouted. “Fine, great. Wonderful. What about me? It blew up all over me. What about that? What’s going to happen to me?”

Aaron turned, his eyes flaring. “Yeah, you idiot. It blew up all over you because you screwed up. So you’re going to suffer for it. Serves you right. Now shut up, you’re making it worse for the rest of us.”

“Everyone sit back and be still,” Taylor Junior said. “We’ll be in Panguitch soon and we’ll have plenty to take our minds off a little bit of itching.”

But it quickly became clear that Eric’s exposure amounted to more than itching. Soon, he was moaning. He tore off the rest of his clothes, first down to his undergarments, and then he stripped those off, too. The moans turned to screams and bursts of profanity. The red splotches spread from Eric’s face—all the way to his eyes, Elder Kimball noted with horror—down his neck on the right side, to his shoulder and armpit, and then across his chest and to his abdomen and upper thighs. Even his groin looked red and painful, with blisters spreading from his crotch across his waist toward his buttocks.

Aaron turned around with a disgusted look. “That’s nasty. Put your clothes back on.”

“It’s burning me alive, you idiot. Just look at me!” Eric glared back, defiant through eyes that were now weeping, puffing up, soon to be closed entirely. His lips had swollen to twice their size, and the red splotches had started to swell.

They fell silent for a few minutes, and then Eric started up again. “God damn it! Damn you all to hell. You shit, you motherfu—”

“Quiet!” Taylor Junior roared.

Eric stopped the profanity, but the groaning and crying continued. One by one, the red splotches on his body bulged into blisters. Some were the size of dimes or quarters, others two inches across. Soon, they pressed against each other until his skin looked like it would slough off. His face looked like melting, bubbling wax. He stopped touching his skin and sat in the corner, shaking and moaning and begging for help.

“This isn’t going to work,” Aaron said at last.

Elder Kimball seized upon the opportunity. “He’s right. We’ll have to abort until Eric is ready. Get him to the hospital. The rest of us, too. Just in case, you know.”

“We’re not aborting,” Taylor Junior said. “This is our one, best chance. After today, the apostates will come after us. Either we take them out or they destroy us.”

“We did it already,” Kimball said. “We cut the head off the snake.”

“It’s not enough. We have to eliminate all the Christianson allies. We have to do it today.”

“And then what?” Kimball said. “When we’ve killed all these people, what then?”

“Then we take our own people, we take Eliza and any other women and children from Blister Creek who survive our attack, and we flee into the wilderness to hide from the FBI.”

You’re out of your mind,
Kimball thought. The more people they killed, the more the gentiles would turn their attention to hunting
their band of fugitives to extinction. But Taylor Junior and Aaron Young were beyond such thoughts. He could see it on their faces.

“Still,” Aaron said. “Eric is no good to us.” He shot another glance to the backseat. “Not like this.”