The Gates of Babylon (33 page)

“I’m not a girl, I’m a woman,” she corrected. “And yes, I’m in charge. Be glad he did. If it had been one of those men, there’d be a battle right now.”

“Is that what they want? Think about it.” He gestured at the crowd. “Your people attack, it’s going to get ugly in a hurry. Try me and you’ll see.”

“General,” the other officer said, sounding uneasy.

Lacroix turned with a peeved expression. “Well?”

“Are you sure this is a good idea, sir?”

“When I want your opinion, Inez, I will ask for it. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have to get your men out of the temple,” Eliza said.

“It makes a good headquarters. Deal with it.”

“So you do want a battle. Because that’s what you’re going to get.”

“Good.” He turned back to Inez. “Radio that chopper. Tell ’em to give these bastards hell. And get two more birds in the air. This girl says we’re going to have a battle and I intend to give it to them. Kill every last one of them if we have to.”

“No, wait,” Eliza said.

“That’s better. No more bluffing, right?”

Bluffing? Was
he
bluffing about the helicopters, or did he mean Eliza? Because she wasn’t, not at all.

“Ready to tell your people to go home?” he asked, holding out the bullhorn.

Eliza didn’t take it, unsure what she would say. What
could
she
say? She couldn’t get the soldiers out of the temple, and her people would accept nothing less.

“I don’t want anyone to die,” she said. “Your people or mine. But mine are furious, and there’s nothing I can do if you don’t… if you don’t give me something.”

“I’m giving you nothing.”

“Can I
pretend
you’re giving me something?”

“You can pretend all you want.” He handed her the bullhorn then stood back with his arms folded.

Eliza lifted the bullhorn to her lips and chose her words carefully before speaking. “Listen to me!”

She didn’t have the kind of voice that could dominate a crowd, bullhorn or not, and it took a moment for everyone to quiet down enough so she could be heard.

“I have something to say. People will die if you don’t listen.” She waited until they quieted, then said, “This is only temporary. They’re searching the temple for contraband.”

Fresh howls of rage.

Eliza continued over the noise, ignoring the tears and protests.

The soldiers would be out by tomorrow evening, she lied. They would use Chip Malloy’s offices in the chapel as their headquarters, and billet their troops in the Belton and Davis compounds across the streets. Nobody would be harmed so long as they cooperated.

“Brother Jacob will be home tomorrow,” she finished. “He’ll know what to do. Until then, go home. Fast and pray for a peaceful solution.”

Lacroix took back the bullhorn and turned it off. “I meant what I said,” he told her. “You want peace, you keep them away. And we’re not going anywhere. Your temple is mine. You understand? If
I want to drive a tank down the hall and change my oil on your high altar—or whatever it is—I’ll do it.”

He handed his bullhorn to Inez, who looked away when Eliza tried to make eye contact, and then the two of them entered the temple. Several more men followed, carrying assault rifles over their shoulders and heavy bags and crates between them. It was obvious to anyone with eyes to see that this was no temporary search.

But Eliza’s lie had created enough uncertainty in the crowd that the rage was draining away by the time she got back to the helicopters that barricaded the road. People patted her on the shoulder or shook her hand, and she told more reassuring lies. She encouraged people to obey the soldiers clearing the street and soon had them beyond the barricades. Cooperating with their enemies made her stomach churn.

Calm them. Keep them alive.

She found Elder Smoot holding the reins of her horse and braced herself for another struggle. He nodded sagely when he saw her then turned back to a low, urgent conversation with Elder Johnson. The older man held an umbrella in gloved hands and wore a heavy overcoat that was too large for his diminished frame. His gray beard was tucked into a scarf wrapped around his neck. Two of Smoot’s sons stood a few yards away, pulling people back from the confrontation with the soldiers.

“You did the right thing,” Smoot told Eliza when she approached. “Attacking under those conditions would have killed hundreds. We might have taken them, but at a cost too great to bear.”

Eliza nodded, relieved at his conciliatory tone. “That’s what I thought. When Jacob gets back—”

“But we’ve seen their strength.” His lips thinned until they disappeared between his mustache and his beard. “It is enough to give a man pause. But our Lord is mightier than any weapon, our priesthood strong enough to turn aside bullets.”

Something in his tone had shifted, in a way that reminded her of how her father used to speak before he pronounced judgment. Surely he didn’t mean to—

“They are too wicked to stand,” Smoot continued. “The Lord shall deliver His temple into our hands.” He waved over his son Bill. “Raise the alarm. Nobody goes home. I want every gun, every person who can hold a gun. Men and boys. Even women. Every gun, every bomb, every box of ammunition. Meet at the cemetery in half an hour.”

Eliza grabbed his arm. “Elder Smoot, do you know what you’re doing?”

“No, I do not.” He pulled free. “It is out of our hands, girl. Only the Lord knows. But He will tell me His will.”

“What are you talking about? What are you going to do? Elder Johnson, tell him.”

Johnson gave a sad shake of the head. “They have desecrated the temple, Sister Eliza, and there is only one punishment for that.” He paused, let those words hang in the air like an ax over a condemned man’s neck. “Tonight they shall be utterly destroyed, swept from the face of the earth. Their names shall be a hiss and byword, and they—”

She cut him off, in no mood for the pseudo-religious nonsense, delivered in stentorian tones. “You mean you’re going to attack?”

“We’ll start shooting,” Smoot said, “and keep at it until every one of those devils is dead.”

Eliza stared at the two men in horror. This was insane. If Jacob was here, he’d put a stop to it. Or Steve—why did he have to leave her behind in Blister Creek? He could tell her what to do to stop this.

As the two elders planned their attack, she studied the soldiers setting up machine guns and mortars around the temple. The helicopter passed overhead and cast them in a beam of light. Eliza imagined the chaos when men on horseback tried to shoot it down with deer rifles, while it showered bullets and missiles from its black underbelly.

Until every one of those devils is dead.

Oh, there would be dead people all right. Just not in the way Elder Smoot was planning.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“My name is Maggie,” Jackson’s mother told Fernie. “My son says we have thirty minutes before they strip that car and figure out what to do next. That’s time enough to get you warm and get food in your bellies.”

“Do we have that long?” Fernie asked.

The siren still wailed in the distance, together with the sound of motors that competed with the grunting, clanking men working to dismantle the government vehicle on the other side of the tar paper–covered plywood walls.

The woman wheeled Fernie in front of a wood-burning stove and unfolded metal chairs for the two boys. Maggie’s head bumped a single hanging lightbulb, and she went to a futon in the corner to retrieve blankets for the visitors. Jake and Daniel let her wrap them in blankets then held out their hands to collect warmth from the stove.

Maggie looked about sixty, with thin, graying hair, but her clothes were clean, which must have taken effort given the conditions, and the room was neatly swept. A dresser sat in one corner, topped by a vase with plastic flowers. Landscape paintings hung on two walls, the kind with pine trees and snow and paint as thick and bright as frosting.

Maggie fed sticks and pieces of scrap lumber into the fire. She went out the back door and returned with a cast-iron pot, which she set on top of the stove. She removed the lid and gave it a stir.

“Don’t look so good now,” the woman said, “but there’s meat on them bones, and a few veggies too. I’ll throw in a handful of barley when it gets good and hot.”

Fernie couldn’t see what must be a congealed mass inside the pot, but she imagined it would be edible at least, given the care taken to fix up the shack. She was hungry, but not underfed like these people. She didn’t want to eat into their limited food stocks.

Jackson came inside several minutes later. “We’re getting there. Another ten minutes and there’ll be nothing left.”

“And what about us?” Fernie asked. “Too many people have seen us down here. I don’t think we should stay.”

“Probably not.” He lifted the lid and took a speculative look inside. “Me and Snod are still working on a plan, but we’ll figure something out.”

“Now you leave that alone,” Maggie said. “Guests first, greedy sons last.” She shooed Jackson out the door with some comment about his friends working while he loafed around the warm stove.

“Really, it’s okay,” Fernie said. “I’m not that hungry. It’s the middle of the night and normally I’m asleep anyway.”

“The boys then.”

“I’ll nurse Jake if he gets hungry. But Daniel can eat a little,” she added as Maggie’s frown spread.

The woman looked mollified by this last bit and stirred the pot, which was starting to steam. She added more distilled water from the jug then poured a cup for Fernie to share with the boys. Fernie took it gratefully.

As the minutes passed and the clanking continued outside, a deep unease hit her. It came on like a bout of morning sickness. One moment you felt fine, the next a twinge in the gut, and the next you were bent over a toilet that smelled of bleach, gagging up your eggs and toast.

Something was wrong.

If Jacob had been there, he would have come up with a natural explanation. Maybe he would tell her that she was picking up the increasing traffic from the street outside the alley. That she knew on some subconscious level that the search was widening, that it would only be minutes before someone came down the alley looking for her.

Fernie knew better. It was a warning from the Holy Ghost. Alerting her that something was wrong and telling her that now was the time to act. But without any indication of why or how.

She would obey. No matter how little she wanted to leave this warm, secure-feeling place, how little she wanted to drag a young boy and a toddler back into the cold and snow, while she struggled with her wheelchair.

Maggie ladled a Styrofoam cup with the soup, found a spoon on a makeshift shelf behind the stove, and handed it to Daniel. “Careful, it’s hot now.”

“Don’t take that,” Fernie said. “No, I’m sorry,” she added at Maggie’s confused expression. “We have to leave. Now. Jake, come here. Climb on Mama’s lap. That’s a good boy.”

“What’s wrong, where are you going?”

“I can’t explain. Is this the back door?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Can the boys keep their blankets? They only have light jackets, and it’s so cold outside.”

Maggie looked uncertain. “We don’t have extras. I don’t know—I guess if you feel you need them… but where are you going? You’re in a wheelchair!”

“Boys, give back the blankets. We’ll manage.”

The feeling had grown to a roar in her ears.

Get out!

Fernie had never felt anything like it before, except giving birth, at the moment when her body insisted she push, that it was time to bring her baby into the world, and nothing at all, no doctor or midwife, could have told her to stop.

Her hands dropped to the wheels of their own accord. She maneuvered around the stove with Jake on her lap and Daniel running ahead to push open the door. Maggie kept protesting behind them.

Fernie found herself in a tight, garbage-strewn alley. Reflected light from the camp and the snow cast everything in a hazy gray. Flakes fell heavily now, no more of that slushy mix, but it didn’t fully mask the stench of oily rags and human waste. A pile of broken crates and scrap wood climbed to the height of the corrugated
metal roofs to her left, while shoulder-high piles of tires to her right held sheets of plastic, punctured by a stovepipe from which smoke dribbled. Someone lived under there.

“How do we get out?” Daniel asked, eying the refuse.

“Go ahead, pull that stuff out of the way. Can you move the tire?” she added, pointing to the most formidable of the objects that kept her from wheeling forward.

Daniel kicked at the tire to clear it of snow then grabbed it with bare hands and heaved. It was frozen to the ground and didn’t budge. After a moment of struggling and gasping, he got one end up, but by then he was wincing at the cold and trying not to cry when he touched the frozen rubber. Fernie clenched her teeth in frustration. It was too low to the ground for her to reach, but maybe if she got out of the chair… but then how would she get back up again?

The door banged open behind her. It was Jackson and he was holding the blankets. “You’re still here?”

“They’re coming, aren’t they?”

“Afraid so. We hacked that car down to size, and it’s out of sight, out of mind. But they must have tracked the tire tracks before the snow covered them, and now there are cops and soldiers going door to door. They’ll be down our street any minute now. I was going to tell you to come back and we’d hide you behind the dresser. Cover you in blankets.”

“No good. I’ve got to get out of here.”

He didn’t argue, perhaps hearing the terror in her voice. Or maybe he was relieved to see her go. The longer she stuck around, the more danger she put him in.

“Want me to clear the alley for you?”

“Please,” she begged.

Jackson dropped the blankets on her lap then grabbed the frozen tire. While he jerked back and forth, trying to dislodge it and cursing under his breath, Fernie took Daniel’s icy hands and rubbed them with her own. He sniffled and she could tell his eyes were filling with tears, but he didn’t cry out.

“My brave boys,” she said. “Daddy will be so proud when he hears.”