Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (33 page)

The roof seemed to lift off the chapel and a column of smoke—first white, then yellow—rose from the center of the building. One of Taylor Junior’s chemical warheads.

“Sweet heaven,” Stephen Paul said in a low voice. Krantz let out his breath with a hiss.

They had arrived too late.

* * *

A deadly calm settled in Fernie’s stomach as Aaron Young pointed the gun at her chest. She heard everything: the screams from the hallway, her pulse pounding in her ears, the drip of liquid from her IV bag, the feet racing down the hall. She felt the tiny, warm life against her breast. The baby let out a whimper as it came loose from her nipple.

And then her attention focused on the snout of the gun. It was black and smooth, held in the man’s hand as casually as he might hold a child’s toy. And yet. It would end in an instant. A squeeze. A flash from the muzzle. He would do it, too. There was no pity or remorse in his eyes, only the hard look of a killer. He shifted his aim away from her chest and toward her head and tightened his grip.

“Did Taylor Junior tell you to kill babies?” she asked in a quiet voice.

A slight hesitation. “No. The men and older boys. And women who resist.”

“I’m not resisting, but if I have to die, I will go meekly. But let my baby live. He is innocent. You may raise him how you like.”

For a moment, she thought he would shoot her anyway, and then what? Carry out his grisly threat to crush her baby the way some men killed unwanted kittens? But then he nodded, holding out his left hand while keeping the gun trained on her with the right. “Hand him over.”

“I can’t. My spine is broken. I’m paralyzed on the right side, and my left only moves a little. I can’t lift him, not even a little. Please take him. Please.”

Aaron lowered the gun and came for the baby. He reached down and grabbed for it.

Meanwhile, Fernie’s left hand—not paralyzed at all—reached out and seized the metal IV pole where she’d left it next to the bed after adjusting her pain medication. Her grip tightened, and she jerked with all her strength. The pole slammed into Aaron’s temple. He fell back with a cry, hands going instinctively to his head. The gun fell to the ground.

Fernie wrenched herself in the opposite direction, lifted her baby, and let him fall to the carpet on the far side of the bed, opposite Aaron Young. The receiving blanket cushioned his fall. The baby hit the ground and wailed.

Aaron was on her in an instant, his hands at her throat. She whipped her head to the side and sank her teeth into the fleshy part of his hand. He tried to pull free, but she bit and tore. Her left hand grabbed for the wrist of his other hand, and her right hand groped for his face. She hooked his ear with her fingers and dug her thumb at his eyeball. He screamed.

He jerked back, wrestled his wrist free, and then smashed her across the jaw. She let go with her teeth and thumb. He stood back a step, panting, clutching at his eye with one hand. The other gushed blood from a jagged wound where she’d torn open the webbing between his thumb and index finger.

His good eye glared at her, and he said, “It could have been easy—it could have been a bullet. Now you’re going to learn what it means to die in an ugly way.”

She stared back, almost drowning in her fury. “Go to hell.” That kind of language had never crossed her lips before, but it felt delicious and poisonous, and not just figuratively, but literally true. For the first time in her life, she wished she were a man, so she could lift her arm to the square and condemn him with all the power of the priesthood.

Aaron came at her.

* * *

Jacob didn’t have a chance to lift the gun before it was over. Elder Kimball fired twice, and Fayer fired three times in response and Sister Miriam twice. He wanted to shout, “No, get down, let Miriam do it—she’s got the better angle.” He wanted to run forward and yank his father out of there, wanted to shoot Kimball in the head himself. He wanted to do a lot of things. He didn’t have time.

The two older men twisted as they slumped to the ground, and ended up on the pavement in a tangle of limbs. Jacob ran over while Fayer and Miriam moved in with greater caution, guns still drawn.

He dropped his gun to pull his father free, then fell back with the sick shock of recognition as he took in his father’s wounds. Abraham Christianson had taken a single gunshot—an entry wound over the left breast and an exit wound out the back. Just one, but in the wrong place.

He shoved his hands over the wound and blood oozed between his fingers. “I need a trauma cart! Someone—” he started, then glanced at the hospital and the people still coming out, the women and children screaming. Blood on faces, shocked expressions.

His father coughed and Jacob looked down. “They said I’d see the Second Coming,” Father said, his expression afraid.

“Hold on, Dad. You’ll be okay.”

“Jacob, I have the taste of death in my mouth.”

Jacob had spent too many shifts in the ER as a resident, dealing with trauma—gunshot wounds, car accidents, drownings, falls. He knew the look of a man about to die. Arterial pressure dropping to zero, blood draining from the brain. Loss of consciousness in seconds, death moments after that.

All the hardness had left his father’s face, all the responsibilities and concern. Father was a man who held himself to the same exacting standards that he demanded of everyone else, but all that was gone now. Father opened his mouth to say something else, and Jacob thought it would be one final admonition to find his testimony, or maybe some word about Eliza. Maybe even an order for what Jacob should do about all the wives and children. But instead a smile passed over his face and he whispered, “Grandma Cowley. That’s who.”

“What?”

And then Father was gone. Moments earlier he’d been alive, striding through life, confident as only God’s prophet can be. The next, eyes glazed and lifeless. It was the look—as they said in the church—of a man whose spirit has left his body. Medically, Jacob should keep fighting, get that trauma team here, get him to the ER to patch the gaping wound in his heart, to get blood in his veins, to do all the required, useless things necessary before declaring the inevitable. But it was over.

Jacob let out an anguished cry and rose to his feet. His father’s blood covered his hands. His face was wet, too, but when he wiped it with his sleeve he realized there were tears flowing down his cheeks.

Women and children from Blister Creek gathered around their fallen prophet. One of these was Eliza and Fernie’s mother, who threw herself onto her husband’s chest, weeping.

“Help me,” a voice said. “Jacob, you’re a doctor—tell them.”

It was Elder Kimball. Somehow, medical training be damned, Jacob had overlooked the second patient. Fayer turned him onto his stomach—none too gently, either—and Miriam wrenched his
arms behind his back. Kimball had three gunshot wounds to his rival’s one. But those wounds were in the thigh, the shoulder, and one in the chest that might have matched Abraham Christianson’s except it was on the other side of the body, the side without the heart, and higher, toward the shoulder. With medical attention, Elder Kimball would live. Jacob looked away in disgust.

Someone pulled on his arm. He turned, ready to tell Miriam or Agent Fayer that they could find someone else to save Kimball’s worthless life. But it was his brother, his face drawn, drained of blood.

“The women,” David said in a faltering voice, “they’re saying Aaron Young is still inside, killing people. And Fernie is in there, too.”

Jacob grabbed his father’s gun and sprinted toward the hospital. David ran after him.

But the brothers drew short at the front entrance. The explosion had shattered the doors, and he smelled a hint of the floral scent that had permeated the cliff dwelling in the Dark Canyon wilderness. “No good,” Jacob said. “Contaminated. Over here.”

They ran around the side of the building where they found a door into the administration wing hanging open. Jacob couldn’t remember the specific layout of Garfield Memorial, but all these rural hospitals were organized the same way. He stepped inside and glanced up and down the empty hallway. “This way.”

They found Fernie’s room by the screaming baby. They burst through the doors.

Aaron Young stood over the bed, his hands closed around Fernie’s throat. Jacob couldn’t see the baby, but its wail was the only sound in the room except for Aaron’s grunts as he choked
Jacob’s wife to death. Fernie’s hands lay limply by her side, and her face was blue, her eyes open and motionless. She hadn’t gone down quietly. Aaron’s hands and face bled from scratches and cuts. A sharp metal trocar—a device attached to an IV line to thread it into the vein—stuck out of his shoulder, vibrating with Aaron’s pulse. Fernie must have pulled it from her arm and stabbed Aaron with it. He didn’t seem to notice.

David got there first. He slammed his shoulder into Aaron and knocked him to the ground. Aaron swung his arm around and grabbed David’s shirt as he fell. For a moment the two men tangled on the floor, and then David, trying to scramble out of the way, mule-kicked Aaron in the face and got free. Aaron grabbed for something. A gun. Jacob fired.

The gunshot hit Aaron in the head. A burst of blood and brains exploded out the back of his skull. Aaron slumped to the ground without a sound or twitch.

Jacob turned to Fernie, who wasn’t moving. The glazed look on her face matched the one his father had worn minutes earlier.

But there was a difference between a man bleeding out from a gunshot wound, arterial blood pressure dropping to zero, and a woman with all her systems intact and a recent loss of blood pressure to the brain. He found the baby. It looked uninjured, and he scooped it up and passed it to his brother, who tucked the baby into the cart.

Jacob turned to Fernie. She wasn’t breathing, but she had a weak, fluttering carotid pulse. He yanked aside the pillows and blankets, tilted her head back, pinched her nostrils shut, and put his mouth over hers. Fernie’s lips were still warm. He filled her lungs with his breath and followed them with chest compressions.

“Is there something I can do?” David asked when Jacob came up for air the second time.

“I need a trauma cart. Go into—”

Suddenly Fernie coughed and took in a deep, ragged breath. Jacob stepped back, flooded with relief. The cold medical professional fell away like a suit of clothes. He grabbed the railing on the bed to keep from falling and almost burst out sobbing in relief. It took a moment to recover his balance.

David picked up his baby and handed it to him. Instinctively, Jacob rocked the child, while he watched Fernie breathing heavily, her eyes opening, a grimace spreading across her face. She reached for her neck and winced, and Jacob knew, without further examination, that she was okay.

He looked at his baby, its face red from crying. Nausea washed over him as he thought about leaving his wife and baby in the hands of Aaron Young.

“My baby,” she said, and held out her hands. She took it and cradled it against her breast. “Where is Aaron?”

Jacob didn’t look down at the body on the floor, but David must have, because she dragged her gaze to the side, then looked away. A moment later, she looked back at Jacob with a sharp look. “I don’t know whether to hug you or slap you.”

“You can do both if you’d like.”

“You left me alone.”

“I know.”

“I was scared and hurt—I needed a C-section. And you left.”

“Please, Fernie. I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“But why did you do that? What were you thinking?”

“They broke your back. Your legs are paralyzed. I didn’t think, I mean, I couldn’t—”

“Jacob, what does that matter? What if I can’t walk, if I have to get around in a wheelchair? Are you going to love me any less?”

“Of course not. I made a mistake. I should have stayed.”

“You wanted revenge, that’s what happened. You acted like your father, or worse, like my ex-husband. You’re a better man than they are, you know that, right? What made you forget?” She stopped and frowned, perhaps noticing the stricken look on his face. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“My father is dead.”

She dropped her eyes to his hands, as if noticing the blood on them for the first time. He told her what had happened to his father, and fresh tears welled in his eyes.

Jacob and David whirled as a figure burst into the room. It was Sister Miriam. She took in the scene with a glance, relief showing when she saw David. She gave Aaron a look of disgust and anger, then put away her gun and grabbed David in a fierce hug. “You scared me.”

Jacob grabbed a blanket and threw it over Aaron’s body. “What’s going on out there?”

“The hospital is clear,” Miriam said. “Fayer is talking to the cops. Make that cop, singular. He’s trying to raise the other guy. The Garfield Sheriff’s Department is on its way. I’m going to Blister Creek.”

“I’m coming with you,” David said.

Jacob started to move as well, but Fernie put a hand on his arm. “You stay here.”

“But Taylor Junior is still loose,” he said. “And Liz is down there.”

“Let Sister Miriam and David go. You’re a doctor and you’re in a hospital. Do what you do best.”

* * *

Eliza saw at once that Agent Krantz didn’t mean to take Taylor Junior prisoner. He and Stephen Paul strode across the parking lot, guns out, neither man saying a word. She followed. They pushed through the mob of screaming women and children. Some of them grabbed at the two men, begging their help, but Krantz and Stephen Paul pushed them aside, unable to stop and give assistance.

Meanwhile, Taylor Junior stood by the front doors of the meeting house, roughly fifty feet away, killing men and boys as they fled from the chapel. Two old men lay at his feet already, a boy a few feet away, clutching his gut and trying to crawl away from the madman at the doors. Taylor Junior ignored him and shoved aside two women to get at another man just exiting the building. He shot the man in the face.

Krantz and Stephen Paul were still trying to get a clear shot when Taylor Junior turned and saw them coming. The two men tried to lean around the crowd to shoot, but there were too many people in the way. Eliza didn’t have a gun, but she had her steel baton. She’d taken it from her pack and now opened it to help her push through the mob when they crowded her too close for movement.