The Gates of Babylon (10 page)

“Sorry,” Eliza told them. “You’ll have to play horsie later.”

“Horsie?” Daniel said, as if it were the most preposterous thing in the world. “We were playing elephants!”

Eliza took Steve’s hand and they left the children to return to the front porch. She was not in a hurry to get back and took her time.

Steve patted his stomach. “Any more of your sister’s pie and they’ll have to start calling it ‘hippopotamus.’”

She laughed.

“Quick question,” he said. “What did Sister Nells mean at dinner about moving to Missouri?”

“She thinks the millennium is almost here and the Lord wants us to move to Missouri. That’s where the Garden of Eden was.”

“Missouri is the Garden of Eden? She’s never been to St. Louis.” He frowned. “Wait, we don’t actually believe that… do we?”

“Yeah, we kinda do. Joseph Smith taught that in the Last Days we’ll have to pack up and move back. The earth will be like Eden again.”

“I can’t imagine Jacob telling us all to load up and drive to Missouri,” Steve said.

“First you’ve got to get him to admit it’s the Last Days.”

“Good point.”

They returned to the porch to find the others in the Las Vegas party engaged in earnest conversation. Steve took a seat next to Trost and across from David and Miriam. Jacob looked up and studied Eliza with such an intense look that it was like he was peering into her head and plucking out her thoughts.

She cleared her throat, uncomfortable. “Well, you don’t need me around. I’m leaving you to your scheming and going to help Fernie clean up.”

Eliza put an arm on Steve’s large forearm as she headed for the front door, and tried to put a light note in her voice. “No army ranger heroics, right?”

“Don’t worry, Miriam will jump on the grenade first. And if she doesn’t, I’ll toss her on it.”

Miriam snorted. She had taken Eliza’s empty seat and sat back with her arms folded.

“I mean it,” Eliza said. “No shot-putting chemical munitions. No gas masks or spider holes in the desert. No rappelling into some doomsday compound.”

“Come on, would I do any of that stuff?”

“Not if you know what’s good for you, you wouldn’t. You’d come back and play horsie with your future nieces and nephews.”

Eliza leaned down to kiss him, but as she entered the house and heard their low conversation start up, her heart pounded in worry.

Jacob stared after his sister as she entered the house. Eliza would be okay, he told himself. It was only a few days, and a good way to train those dinosaurs in the quorum to defer to a woman. They’d tell themselves it would only be a few days, too, and when Jacob got back, maybe they’d start to think that it hadn’t been so bad. Next time, a little longer. Ease them into it.

Still, it was troubling to think the two women he counted on most—his wife and his sister—didn’t like the plan. Was he wrong? Not that he could see any choice. They needed those drugs and off-the-grid survival implements.

Krantz moved the folding table until it was directly beneath the porch light, and then Officer Trost spread a tristate road map and pointed down.

“What’s this highway like? Is it safe?”

Jacob pulled up his chair and looked at the spot Trost indicated on the map. “Safe enough, I’d guess. Some bandits here and here, but not too bad in the daytime. It’s mostly BLM land, so nobody to rob. The few who drive through are armed to their sharpened survivalist teeth.”

“And south of Orderville?” Trost asked.

“A few huffy ranchers,” David said. “The ones still hanging on are shoot first types. But wouldn’t that take us through Colorado City?”

“That’s a problem?” Trost asked.

David shrugged. “We don’t always get along.”

“What for?” Krantz asked. He had been looking over Miriam’s shoulder as she scribbled highway mileage of the proposed route in a notebook. “Aren’t the FLDS practically cousins?”

“More than practically in some cases,” Jacob said. “My cousin Alfred Christianson owns the hardware store in town.”

“That sounds promising,” Krantz said.

“Except they don’t like us much,” Jacob said. “My father gleefully took in FLDS women who fled abusive marriages. And found them new husbands, which was the real problem.”

Trost shook his head. “There’s something going on down there anyway. I heard the state tried to evacuate the town to the Green River camps and ran into opposition. They tried to send in St. George and Cedar City PD, but none of us would touch it. Highway 59 west of the town is infested with bandits.”

“Forget Colorado City,” Jacob said. “Why not cross over the mountains at Brian Head and drop into Cedar City, get right on the freeway, and take it all the way to Las Vegas?”

“Have you been over Brian Head recently?” Trost asked.

“Yes,” Jacob admitted with some hesitation. “There’s good deer hunting—well, may as well be honest about it. Good poaching. It’s not that I wanted to poach, but they canceled the hunt this year.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not with Fish and Game,” Trost said. “If such a thing still exists. But no, I don’t want to go that route. That’s not safe either.”

“Heads up,” David said suddenly.

The five of them looked down from the porch to see two men walking down the sidewalk, with M6 assault rifles slung over their shoulders. They wore green uniforms with the blue and green logo of the USDA. As they walked through the center of town and past the Christianson house, their pace slowed and they stared up at the porch with stony expressions. The men walked to the end of the street, crossed, then circled the block opposite and out of eyesight.

“What the blue blazes was that about?” Trost asked.

“It’s how they remind us who’s the boss,” Jacob said. “Every couple of hours Malloy sends a couple of guys patrolling through town, who then return to their barracks.”

“How many men are we talking?” Trost asked.

“Total? Fourteen.”

“Only if you count the boss,” Miriam said. “Which I don’t. Chip Malloy is a clipboard guy with a bunch of guns.”

“And these are the guys who stole all your food?” Trost asked.

“Stole is not quite right,” Jacob said. “Bought. Or, buying, if they can ever get someone out to haul it off.”

“Still,” Miriam said. “Maybe we should do our own patrols, couple dozen people with rifles, and show these idiots they’re here at our pleasure.”

Jacob thought again about the grim satisfaction on her face when she’d detonated Mo Strafford’s tanker truck, and decided he didn’t want her anywhere near those armed men. She’d start a war.

“Ah, forget them,” Krantz said. “We start parading around with weapons and we’re like those jerks in basic training who unzip their flies to see who’s got the biggest dick.”

“But you say the food is still in town?” Trost asked.

“Right,” Jacob said. “And until it leaves, I’m going to pretend the government sent armed guards to protect us from bandits.”

“We don’t need protecting,” Miriam said.

“Maybe not,” Trost said. “But the bandits don’t know that.” He pointed at the map. “And that’s the same thing I’m facing here.” He pointed to the road west of the FLDS community of Colorado City. “And here.” He pointed to the freeway south of Cedar City.

“That doesn’t leave us much,” Jacob said.

The officer traced a callused finger with chewed nails down 89 to Highway 9 where it cut west. “What if we go south from Blister Creek, then come over the mountains. We’ll head into Nevada by back roads.”

“That’s a slow route,” Jacob said. “It’ll burn a lot of fuel. Two tanks of fuel for both the flatbed and a pickup. We’re talking a hundred and fifty gallons of diesel. Say another fifty to be sure we don’t get stranded somewhere. We can haul a bunch of five-gallon jugs, assuming we can get the fuel.”

“Hmm.” Trost leaned back and rested his hands over his large gut.

“Can you get us some diesel?” Jacob asked.

“You need
me
to get you fuel? What do you think I’m doing here, anyway?”

“You tell us,” Miriam said. “We didn’t come to you, remember?”

While Trost looked at Miriam, Jacob and David exchanged a glance. David gave a tiny shake of the head.

No, don’t tell him.

“We’re under the same rations as you,” Krantz said. “My car hasn’t left the garage in three weeks.”

“And diesel’s even tougher to get,” Jacob said. “Anything they sell us we save for the tractors. We can’t burn it running errands across the desert.”

“You’re getting paid,” Trost said. “It’s not charity.”

“It’s not a question of payment,” Jacob said. “It’s a question of fuel rationing.”

Trost pushed back his hat. “I’ve been honest with you, Christianson. I told you my daughter is trapped in Vegas, with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of silver coins. There’s plenty of chance for you to rip me off.”

“That’s not my style,” Jacob said. “Which you already know.”

“Right, and it’s not mine, either.”

“What are you saying, that we’ve got a few oil wells and a refinery out here?”

“No, but you’ve got food storage. And guns. And you’re trying to install your own electrical grid. Don’t deny it—I can see the windmills and solar panels with my own eyes. And what about
those utility poles stacked up by Yellow Flats? Are you planning to put in your own hydro generator or something?”

“Or something,” Jacob allowed.

“And there’s no way you don’t have a few hundred gallons of fuel stashed out here somewhere. By hook or crook, you’ve got your hands on some. Am I wrong?”

Jacob relaxed. A few hundred. The worry that Trost had gotten wind of his underground tanks and nine hundred thousand gallons of diesel fuel evaporated.

“Supposing I did,” he said, as if with some reluctance. “I’d need to hang onto that unless it were a true emergency.”

The irony of that didn’t escape him. Two days ago he’d sent up eight thousand gallons of it in a huge fuel bomb. All he had to show for it was a crummy, underpowered water turbine.

“It’s an emergency to me,” Trost said.

“I understand that,” Jacob said. “And I’m sympathetic. But I have to worry about my own people first.”

A note of despair crept into the man’s voice. “I thought you agreed.”

“I know I did, but I took stock of our situation, and…” Jacob shrugged. “You have to meet us halfway.”

Trost took off his hat. “Please, Mr. Christianson. I’m begging you.”

Any confidence he’d carried had dissolved, and now he looked like nothing more than a terrified father. Hat literally in hand, begging who? The prophet of a fundy cult? What kind of desperate times were these?

“What about fifty gallons?” Jacob said. “Can you manage that?”

“I can’t get the fuel!” Trost’s voice climbed in pitch. “I didn’t come to Blister Creek because you’re the damn Boy Scouts. I’m desperate.”

“Really?” David said. “We couldn’t tell.”

“You know where my daughter is? She’s living like a rat in a storage unit, twenty-seven blocks from the Green Zone. She is living on canned ravioli and bottled water, and sleeping with her handgun under her pillow.”

“And when the night came they slept upon their swords,” Miriam murmured, quoting from the Book of Mormon.

“You see?” Trost said. “Gunfire every night. I can hear it when she calls, whispering. You know what they’ll do if they find her? Rob her. Rape her. Leave her for dead. Is that what you want? It is, isn’t it?”

“Hold on,” Krantz said. “That’s not fair.”

Jacob looked at his brother and affected a shrug. “What do you think? That’s a lot of fuel.”

“It’s a lot of silver, too,” David said. “If we had it, I bet we could find someone to sell us more diesel.”

“Miriam?” Jacob said.

“Frankly, I don’t care about his daughter. What’s a pawnshop doing in Vegas, anyway? It’s there to feed an addiction to gambling and prostitution. These places prey on the spiritually dead.”

“Jennifer is not like that,” Trost said.

“If you say so,” Miriam said. “But she’s not one of us, anyway.”

“Neither were you at one time,” Krantz said. “Or me.”

“Or me, for that matter,” David said. “My father kicked me out and told me never to come back. I went into those same pawnshops more than once. Only I was feeding a drug addiction.”

“It’s not that sort of place,” Trost insisted.

Jacob shook his head. “It doesn’t matter to me if it is or isn’t—she’s not the one asking for help, anyway. What matters is what kind of person
you
are. And,” he added, “you’ve been a friend. And you’re right, you’re not begging. You’re making an offer.”

“That’s right,” Trost said eagerly. “You wouldn’t walk away over a few gallons of fuel.”

At last Jacob sighed. “Okay. We’ll put up the diesel.”

In spite of his reluctance about the fuel, this was working out perfectly. At the end of the day he’d have silver bullion, useful, virtually unobtainable gear like saddles and old-fashioned machinery, and his urgently needed medical supplies. Plus, it occurred to him, he’d have made an important ally outside the valley.

And for what? A couple of days away from Blister Creek and a home for Officer Trost’s daughter.

It was such an opportunity that he wondered for a moment if he were being set up. Not by Trost—that desperation about his daughter was real, Jacob was sure of it—but by some other agent.