Blood of the Faithful (15 page)

“It always smells rough,” Jacob said. “But a little worse tonight, I think.”

“A lot worse,” Miriam said. “I noticed right away.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

“Because you keep hammering on me to play it cool. Didn’t seem to be any rush, and it would have been hard to prove, anyway.”

“Hmm.”

Jacob wasn’t buying it. So
now
she was turning cautious?

He stopped the truck when they reached the valley floor. “I’m trying to decide. Do I check out Yellow Flats or drive back up to confront the Smoots?”

“What would you do that for?” David asked.

“Yeah, let’s go back to town,” Miriam said. “Maybe something has turned up.”

Jacob shrugged. “Maybe something has turned up at Yellow Flats too.”

“There are only women out there,” she said.

“I’m not so sure. I haven’t been out there for a while. But you’re probably right.” Jacob shifted out of park and turned the truck around to head north again.

“What are you doing?” Miriam asked.

“I told you, I’m going to confront the Smoots.”

“Don’t do that. It’s dangerous.”

Jacob hadn’t yet started driving again and now he turned on the cab light so he could study Miriam’s face. “And you know this . . . how?”

“I don’t know anything more than you do. It’s a guess.”

“You’re lying,” Jacob said. “I know you think you’re good, but I’ve learned to catch you out. And I’m sure you’re hiding something.”

David looked back and forth between his wife and his brother, a confused expression growing on his face. “Will someone please explain?”

“And you,” Jacob said to David. “I thought I could trust you.”

“You can! I swear before all that is holy. I don’t know anything about this. Miriam, what is he talking about?”

“David doesn’t know,” Miriam said. Her voice was calm, all pretense stripped from her expressions.

“Know what?” David asked.

“Turn the truck around,” Miriam told Jacob. “They’re probably watching, and I don’t want them to think we’re going back up.”

“You’ll tell me?” Jacob asked.

“Not here. At the house.”

Jacob turned back toward Blister Creek, and soon they were entering town. People stood on porches and gathered at the chapel and in front of the temple. A man on horseback flagged them down, wanting to give and get information. Jacob kept it short. But others found him, needing instructions.

It took a good fifteen minutes before they were parking in front of the two Christianson houses again—Jacob’s larger one, inherited from his father, and David’s smaller, newer home next door, part of the roof still covered in tar paper from when they’d lost a source of roof shingles midconstruction. Jacob turned off the truck, but left the keys in the ignition. He climbed slowly out of the vehicle.

Fernie was on the porch in her wheelchair, and when he spotted her, he came up to tell her everything was okay, but to keep people out of the kitchen and dining room. David and Miriam followed him inside. There was plenty of creaking upstairs, voices of women and children from the hallway. He shut the door to the dining room and kitchen and pulled up a chair at the table.

David sat next to him, his movements weary. Miriam paced back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room two times before Jacob told her to knock it off and sit down. She sat next to David and patted his hand. David wouldn’t look at her.

“Tell me everything,” Jacob said, lighting a candle. “I’ll forgive any lies you told me before, but do not lie to me now.”

Miriam nodded slowly. “But before I do, there’s one thing I want to know.”

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever looked into the chest in the Holy of Holies?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Elder Smoot watched the lights of Jacob Christianson’s truck while Ezekiel paced back and forth across the bunker floor behind him. His son was biting at his fingernails and muttering to himself.

“Where are they now?” Ezekiel asked. “What are they doing?”

“They’ve stopped in the highway. Maybe they’re thinking about going to Yellow Flats. No, now they’re driving toward town.”

“Can you see Grover on the road yet?”

“I can’t, but it’s dark.”

“Dumb kid will be poking along like he’s got all the time in the world,” Ezekiel said. “I’ll probably catch up with him. Maybe I should go around. I’d rather he didn’t see where I’m going.”

Smoot’s mouth felt dry. “Does that mean . . .
tonight
?”

“I don’t have a choice. Should have brought the sword with me, then I’d have been able to do it here. I didn’t know it would be Jacob.”

That raised a good question. Why hadn’t Ezekiel had the sword with him when he’d come stumbling into the bunker? Wasn’t that the sort of thing that a divinely inspired assassin should have known? If the Lord truly meant for Ezekiel to hack off Jacob’s head, that was.

“No, that wouldn’t have worked,” Ezekiel said, as if to himself. “Too risky. Three of them, all armed. One was Sister Miriam. That lady doesn’t mess around.”

“And you still think David and Miriam are on our side? That they’ll magically come around after you kill Jacob?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t.” Ezekiel looked up. The light was dimming, the batteries already losing juice. It cast Ezekiel’s face in an eerie glow. “The Lord hasn’t shown me that part yet. One thing I do know. It’s too dangerous to wait. I have to move tonight.”

A shudder worked through Smoot’s body. “We should pray about this again. To be sure.”

“Jacob was suspicious about Grover. He knew the kid was supposed to be here. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t risk that idiot blurting out that I’d just come down from the cliffs.”

“I still don’t see the rush.”

“What if Jacob goes to the house and arrives before Grover returns? Imagine Grover showing up to find them standing on the porch. He’s too stupid to tell a good story.”

Ezekiel was wrong about that. Grover’s problem wasn’t intelligence. If they could have trusted him to lie to the Christiansons, they wouldn’t have hidden him outside in the first place, with instructions to grab his horse from the shed and race for home the instant Jacob left.

Ezekiel pulled on his sweat-stained shirt and buttoned it up. “I’m going.” He grabbed a rifle from the rack and slung the strap over his shoulder. “When I get home, I’ll gas up the truck in the garage. Then I’ll find Jacob and finish the job.”

Smoot’s heart was hammering in his temple.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Ezekiel added. “I want you ready to go when I arrive.”

“Go where?”

“I saw it in a dream, Father. Things will be ugly for a few weeks. We’ll wait at the reservoir. That’s why I’ve been helping them. We’ll need a refuge.”

“This dream, you’re sure it comes from the Lord? It wasn’t . . . the
other
kind?”

Ezekiel grabbed him by the shoulders. Smoot’s son looked more confident now. “You saw the sword and breastplate. You know the truth. Now trust me.”

“Wait—” Smoot said, miserably.

But Ezekiel was already turning away. He shoved open the heavy metal door and let it slam behind him. Moments later Smoot heard the whinny of a horse from outside and hooves clomping down the road.

Smoot sank to the cool concrete floor. He thought about Jacob, no doubt settling in at home while people brought him reports from around the valley. Holding court at his dining room table. Jacob’s father, Brother Abraham, had met with his elders at that very table.

Smoot remembered something Abraham had said to him back during the Kimball attempts to seize control of the church.

“If anything happens to me, look after my son. Jacob needs a guiding hand.”

Smoot imagined his old friend glaring down from the heavens, eyes blazing with righteous fury. He pressed his fingers to his temples.

The door swung open and he looked up with alarm. It was his younger son, Grover, standing beneath the dimming lightbulb.

Smoot sprang to his feet. “What are you doing? You were supposed to ride back to town. What if Jacob shows up at the house?”

“Then Mother will confirm that I’m up here with you.”

“Damn you.”

“I’m not the one who will be damned, Father.”

There was something so grim in Grover’s voice, so uncharacteristic, that Smoot stopped the angry retort that was rising to his lips.

“How much did you hear?” Smoot asked.

“All of it. I hid my horse up the hillside and squatted below the gun ports while you and Ezekiel talked. I needed to know what was going on.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I heard him mention the sword and breastplate. Did Ezekiel go into the Holy of Holies and open the chest?”

“How do you know about the chest?”

“Everyone knows. It’s church lore. They talk.”

“Well, they shouldn’t. It’s sacred information, and should stay within the walls of the temple. Anyway, it’s more than lore. It’s gospel, it’s prophesy. When the forces of Satan mount their final assault on the saints, the One Mighty and Strong will strap on the breastplate. It will protect him from blade and bullet. The Sword of Laban will cut through anything. It will cleave the enemy and smite him unto death.”

“I know the story,” Grover said. “That doesn’t mean Ezekiel is the one to use them.”

“He already claimed them. If he weren’t the One Mighty and Strong, he would have died the instant he stretched out his hand.”

“And you saw the sword and breastplate with your own eyes?”

“Yes, I did. Well, mostly. It was dark.”

“Where were they, in the temple?”

“No, they—” Smoot stopped, scowled. “It’s none of your business. Your business is to stay out of this. When it’s over, I’ll tell you what to do.” He reached over and flicked off the light to conserve the batteries. “Now go home.”

“No.”

Smoot’s face flushed with heat. “What did you say?”

“You won’t tell me what to do,” Grover said. “You have fallen into sin and error and lost whatever moral authority you might have possessed.”

“I would be careful if I were you. You’re close, boy. Very, very close.”

“Close to what?” Grover laughed, his voice echoing hollowly in the bunker. “Are you going to excommunicate me and drive me from the valley? Listen to yourself. You’re colluding to murder the prophet. Then, when the church rises against you in righteous anger, you’ll flee town to hide at the squatter camp. Hide there until you have the force to come back and take control. And you have the gall to say that
I
am close? That
I
should be careful?”

Smoot didn’t respond. It sounded ugly when put that way.

“So my brother has befriended our enemies,” Grover said. “The ones who tried to slaughter our people. Ezekiel has a safe place among them. He has apparently been sneaking in and out of the valley, like a Gadianton Robber from The Book of Mormon, forming secret combinations. Making evil plans to overthrow the servants of God. And you—”

“Enough!” Smoot roared. An ugly feeling was squirming in his belly like a nest of snakes crawling from their burrow.

But Grover continued. “And you are a part of it. Have you seen the sword and breastplate? It was dark. You saw nothing. They do not exist. You have been deceived.”

The dark feeling had spread until Smoot’s limbs felt like jelly, his knees buckling. He now doubted everything.

Had he been deceived? Or was he being deceived now?

Smoot and his son rode Grover’s mare down from the switchbacks, Grover in front, and the father in back. The horse snorted complaints at having two people up on her saddle. It was a tight fit, but they pushed her to a trot and made decent time. About a mile out of town she began to tire from the pace, and they hopped off and abandoned the horse to continue the rest of the journey on foot. Grover was young, and Smoot had a hard time keeping up with his jog.

They slowed to a walk only when they reached the straight, gridded streets of town. Smoot’s breath whistled, his lungs burning. The past few years had hardened his body, and he was in better shape than he’d been since his twenties, but there was no denying that age had dug its bony fingers into his body. In two months he would turn sixty.

He watched Grover striding along, breathing heavily but not gasping. Only nineteen and strong. Smoot had underestimated his son. This one had moral courage to match his youth. When had that happened?

People were coming and going, riding horses, zipping past on bicycles. A car hurried down the street, its beams blinding them as it rounded the corner. A large crowd had gathered in the chapel parking lot that abutted the side of the temple. There were flashlights and lanterns, and if the Smoots approached too closely, he worried someone would recognize them and call them over.

So Smoot nudged Grover’s shoulder and led him back up the street to the vacant lot on the north side of the temple. Here they crossed through the sagebrush and broken hunks of sandstone until they were behind the building.

It had been only a few hours since Smoot had been here with his other son, but it still took a few minutes to find Ezekiel’s clearing, then another careful search to locate the disturbed ground. Father and son scooped at the sand like a pair of badgers digging for prairie dogs. A minute later, Smoot’s hand touched something hard and he fell back as if he’d been stung.

His stomach turned over. He’d half expected to find the hole empty.

“You’re still alive,” Grover said. He climbed to his feet and brushed sand from his knees. “Pull it out.”

“Why don’t
you
do it if you’re so cocky?”

“You brought this upon yourself.”

“I saw something,” Smoot insisted. “A sword, a breastplate. If you’re wrong, if they’re real, I will die.”

“And if you’re wrong, Jacob will be murdered in cold blood, innocent before man and God. Wouldn’t you risk your life to save the prophet?”

“Of course.”

“And your soul?”

“Grover, why don’t you pick them up? You’re sure, I’m not.”

His son faltered. “I—I’m not sure. Not completely.”

“Then what are we doing here?”

“You’re an Elder of Israel. An apostle in Zion. On the way into town you admitted a dark feeling, said you thought it was wrong what Ezekiel was planning.”

“That could mean anything. Maybe you’re the one leading me astray, not Ezekiel. I haven’t seen an angel, haven’t had a vision. I don’t know what any of this means.” Smoot clenched his hands, torn with confusion and fear. “Why don’t I know what to do?”

“Trust your conscience, Father. And trust the Lord. Would He smite you for doubting the word of a man who tells you to kill the prophet?”

“That man is my son.”

“All the more reason to prove his words for yourself.”

Smoot turned back to the hole. The crescent moon was right overhead, and it gave enough light to see the mound of sand they’d excavated and the hole, a darker shade than the surrounding desert.

It felt like weights were dragging on Smoot’s feet as he returned to it. He dropped to his knees and thrust his hands into the hole, closing his eyes as he did so. He grabbed the edge of burlap and dragged the bundle, clanking, out of the hole, then left it on top of the mound of sand.

“Now open it,” Grover said.

Smoot breathed heavily. His eyes were open now, staring hard at that dark bundle. His heart felt like it would explode from his chest. Trembling fingers found the mouth of the sack and opened it.

Now is the moment of thy destruction, when the destroying angel appears to smite thee for thy wickedness. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God.

But when his fingers closed around the flat, cold metal of the blade, nothing happened. He drew the weapon out and let it fall. Then he took out the breastplate. It too fell from his grasp.

“Nothing happened,” Grover said. “You see. Now what are they?”

Wondering, still lightheaded, Smoot lifted up the breastplate—or what he’d thought was the breastplate. He held it up to the moonlight, then passed it to Grover.

“It’s a metal bucket, sawed in two,” Grover said. He laughed. “The shape of a breastplate, nothing more, with holes punched in it and leather strips tied off to look like straps. What about the sword? A plow blade?”

“No, not that.” Smoot picked it up by the handle and turned it over. It was sharp, but only on one side. “A machete. One of the ones we use for hacking scrub oak around the watering hole.”

“So my brother lied,” Grover said. “That settles it.”

“Now you know my secret,” Ezekiel’s voice said from the darkness behind them. He stood a few yards distant, one hand resting on the stone fin to his right, where he had apparently been listening to the others scheme.

The man stepped into the moonlight toward his father and brother. He was armed.