Blood of the Faithful Read online

  A bearded man stood in the hallway. He held a sword in his hand. No, not a sword. A machete. Blood gleamed along the edge of the blade. It soaked his hand and sleeve, and smeared across his denim shirt. More blood and sand plastered his face, as if he’d been rolling in it.

  It was Ezekiel Smoot, but he looked transformed. He stood staring down the hallway, eyes blazing with a violent intensity. Jacob had seen that look before. It was the look worn by Gideon Kimball. By the men who’d set off a violent confrontation with the FBI at the Zarahemla Compound. By Taylor Junior. By Jacob’s cousin, Alfred Christianson, just before he’d detonated a Winnebago filled with explosives and killed thirteen soldiers in a suicide bombing.

  That same look had gripped the church members at Tuesday’s prayer meeting. It was religious fervor, capable of turning any sane man or woman into a weapon ready to kill in the name of God. And now Jacob was staring into that abyss yet again.

  Will it never end?

  Ezekiel had pushed past Fernie and several other women as he’d entered, and violated the Christianson home. No enemy had ever done that before. Ezekiel spotted Jacob, and moved toward him.

  The women now came in from behind him, crying for children to run, warning people upstairs, shouting for help. Fernie wore a look of fierce determination as she rolled down the hallway in her chair, head lowered.

  Drawn by the tumult, one of Jacob’s young sisters came racing down the stairs, but stopped at the bottom when she came face to face with Ezekiel. Annalane was ten, slender with blond braids, looking just like Eliza had as a young girl. She took in the blood and the knife and her eyes widened in terror. She screamed, her high-pitched wail seeming to carry on forever, though some part of Jacob knew that the entire scene from when the man had opened the door to now had lasted no more than a few seconds.

  Ezekiel ignored the screaming child and stared at Jacob. Fernie slammed into him from behind. His knees buckled, and he braced himself. Fernie pounded at his back with her fists, but he paid her no attention. He lifted the machete and took another step toward Jacob.

  “Move!” Miriam cried behind Jacob’s shoulder.

  She had her gun out and was aiming past him, but Jacob blocked her. He wouldn’t stand aside and let her shoot. His wife was there, his sister, any number of other women and children in the hallway behind. And even if Miriam’s shot was true, other feet came pounding down the stairs. If one of them slammed into Annalane, she’d be knocked right into the path of the bullet.

  Ezekiel pulled back the machete and made as if to spring. The blade was ugly and caked with blood and sand. It had killed someone tonight already. The next blood spilled would be Jacob’s own.

  Jacob raised his right arm to the square. “Ezekiel Smoot!”

  Ezekiel stopped as if hit by a blow. He blinked, seemingly stunned.

  “In the name of Jesus Christ, drop that weapon!”

  Jacob’s voice didn’t sound like his own. It was too strong, too powerful. It sounded like his father’s. Righteous fury burned through his veins. For an instant he felt every inch a prophet of God.

  Every voice in the house died. People stared, gaping.

  Quickly, before the spell could break, Jacob stepped forward to disarm Ezekiel. But the movement seemed to shake the young man from his paralysis. He turned this way and that, looked past Jacob to Miriam, who would surely be standing over Jacob’s shoulder with her gun leveled. Then he turned on his heel.

  Ezekiel shoved past Fernie’s wheelchair as Jacob sprang after him. A crowd blocked the doorway. Ezekiel swung his machete to clear them. He hacked a woman across the arm and swung at a boy who fell back as the blade swished dangerously past his ear. Jacob fought to get through. Behind, Miriam barked orders. People moved out of her way.

  Outside, Ezekiel kept slashing and jabbing to open a passage through the gathered people. Another woman fell, an old man too, hit on the side of the head as Ezekiel hacked at them like they were troublesome brush blocking his path. People were racing up the street and sidewalks from the direction of the temple, shouting warnings. There was Stephen Paul. Elder Smoot too, almost as bloody as his son. Was that his blood on the machete? Couldn’t be—he was still on his feet.

  Many of the newcomers were armed, and they tried to aim rifles and shotguns at Ezekiel as he fought his way through. He had almost reached the street.

  “Everyone down!” Miriam shouted.

  Some people dropped to their bellies, but there was too much noise and most people hadn’t heard. Jacob took up the call. David too.

  Ezekiel swung open the door to Jacob’s truck. He jumped in and slammed the door shut. And then, to Jacob’s horror, the truck started up. He had left his keys in the ignition. Of course he had. Damn it!

  The truck peeled down the street, scattering people who had been crossing from the other side. If they hadn’t moved, no doubt Ezekiel would have run them down.

  Miriam stepped into the street and lowered her pistol at the back of the fleeing truck. She emptied her magazine. The glass exploded at the back of the cab. But the truck didn’t stop. Moments later, it disappeared around the corner.

  Elder Smoot came up beside Jacob. His face hung slack, his head drooping. “My son. My son.”

  “Who did Ezekiel attack?”

  “His own brother. Hacked Grover to pieces.”

  The words were like a slap. “Grover is dead?”

  Smoot tried to speak, but he couldn’t find his voice. He collapsed to his knees, sobbing.

  It was ugly news. But hearing it gave Jacob a twinge of hope that was followed by guilt. When he’d spotted the blood dripping off Ezekiel’s machete, his first, horrible fear was that one of his own family members had died. One of his wives or children. A brother or sister.

  People were sobbing and traumatized on the Christianson lawn. He scanned the crowd, noting injuries, his subconscious already plotting triage. He spotted David’s wife, Lillian, and pointed to the garage door. She nodded and ran toward the side of the house to get the door open and prep the clinic for surgery.

  Jacob looked down at Smoot. “Did he kill anyone else?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know. The reservoir, maybe.”

  Miriam and David stood a few feet away, having an animated discussion with Stephen Paul, who shortly sprinted back toward the chapel. Miriam was reloading her pistol as she came to Jacob’s side.

  “Stephen Paul went for his truck. We’re going after Ezekiel.”

  “Don’t kill him,” Elder Smoot said. “Please.”

  “Sit down and shut your mouth,” Jacob said.

  Miriam glared at Smoot as he obeyed. “We’ll do what it takes,” she said.

  A groan at Jacob’s back reminded him of his primary duty. Injured people lay across the grass, with family and friends down by them, crying, pressing hands to wounds to stop the bleeding. Ezekiel had cut at least six people as he hacked his way out of the house and through the crowd.

  “Is the bunker manned?” he asked Smoot.

  Smoot looked at his boots. “No.”

  “You’re in charge,” Jacob told Miriam and David. “The first thing is to man the bunker. Second, find Ezekiel and stop him.”

  “Like I said, we’ll do what it takes,” she said.

  “But don’t leave the valley.”

  “I’ll find that bastard wherever he’s gone.”

  “No. That’s an order. Do not go into the cliffs.”

  Miriam stared back, defiant. David reached for her arm, but she shrugged it off.

  Jacob hardened his voice. “Miriam Christianson, you will stay in the valley. If you leave, I will excommunicate you, do you understand?”

  Men and women had been gathering around him, trying to get his attention so he’d look to their injured family members. It wa
s all he could do to keep from running to help, but he couldn’t turn away until he had Miriam’s compliance.

  “Miriam,” he said. “You will not leave.”

  She clenched her teeth together. A vein pulsed at her temple. But at last she opened her mouth and said the words he needed to hear.

  “Thou sayest.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ezekiel was shaking so violently by the time the truck reached the base of the cliffs that it was all he could do to control the stolen vehicle. His hands were damp with sticky, coagulating blood. The machete sat like a black, malevolent thing on the passenger seat. The interior of the truck had a thick, metallic smell to it. That smell was Grover’s blood.

  Sweet heavens, I killed my own brother.

  In his mind he saw Grover’s outstretched hands imploring him not to do it. Heard the boy’s scream as the heavy blade hacked into his arm, shoulder, chest, head. Then the final, devastating blow.

  He closed his eyes against the horrific images and missed the curve of the switchback as the highway wrapped its way back around in its ascent. His tires went onto the shoulder, kicking up gravel. Ezekiel’s eyes flew open and he slammed on the brakes. He stopped a few feet short of the edge.

  The truck headlights thrust into the empty sky over the edge. There was a hundred-foot drop below. A split second longer and he’d have gone over.

  For a moment he thought he heard a deep, chuckling voice in his head. The owner of the voice had distracted him and nearly sent him to his death. And then thrust his soul into the depths of hell.

  Save me, it’s the destroying angel!

  But as quickly as the impression came, it faded away. He was no Kimball; he was not insane. Ezekiel backed slowly onto the highway.

  He beat the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Get a grip.”

  Down on the valley floor, he could still see plenty of lights in the center of town, even vehicles moving around, but to his surprise, no vehicles racing up the highway after him. Not yet. When he realized why, he almost laughed.

  Jacob, that pathetic weakling. Instead of immediately commandeering another vehicle and sending an armed party after him, he had no doubt been distracted by all the wounds left by Ezekiel’s machete-waving flight from the Christianson house. Jacob would be more concerned about stopping bleeding and stitching wounds than stopping his enemy.

  Ezekiel hadn’t cut down all those people to delay pursuit. He’d done it simply to escape. He’d burst into the Christianson house hoping to find Jacob alone or maybe with one of his wives, but instead, the house had been full of women and children, some of whom tried to stop him. Ezekiel was already shaken from his plan when Jacob came out with Miriam behind him, armed. And all Ezekiel had was a machete. He’d had to flee and then cut his way through a dozen innocents to get to Jacob’s truck.

  Miriam. That bitch. What a mistake to call her out to Yellow Flats the other day. She was as treacherous as a snake. She’d already killed Chambers and would have more murder in her heart after seeing all those injured people. She’d forced Ezekiel to cut past them—didn’t she see that? Of course not; she’d only blame him.

  Miriam would come after him, he knew. But as he waited and no pursuit materialized, he guessed that Jacob must have stopped her, at least temporarily.

  “There,” he said, feeling calmer. “You see, you have time.”

  But not if he sat here idling in the truck like an idiot. He got back onto the road and continued up the switchbacks. Moments later he came upon the bunker, empty since they’d abandoned it earlier in the night. He was starting to grow worried about the reaction of the gentiles at the reservoir upon his arrival. Earlier in the evening, after riding the supply elevator up, he’d been speaking with McQueen when gunfire sounded at the base of the cliffs.

  The gunfire meant Chambers was in trouble down there, and McQueen’s men were filling the barrel with ballast to send Ezekiel back down when someone sawed the rope. The counterweight gone, the barrel had plummeted to the bottom. No doubt it was Miriam. She must have killed Chambers.

  As soon as the elevator was cut, McQueen and his men went crazy. They fired down at the base of the cliffs until they’d wasted their ammunition on hand. Then they’d turned on Ezekiel and angrily insisted he go down and keep the food coming.

  Ezekiel had been only too happy to get the hell out of there. He’d been an uneasy partner in the alliance from the beginning. Giving the squatters Blister Creek’s precious food was no different than feeding rats. They were vermin; they would only multiply if fed.

  A few weeks ago, after he’d infiltrated the Holy of Holies to search for the sword and breastplate, he’d been troubled by the ramifications. They were missing, and the Lord had ordered Ezekiel to replace Jacob at the head of the church, but He had not provided any way for him to do so.

  It must be known to all that Ezekiel had done the killing. If he secretly cut Jacob’s throat, the leadership would simply fall to the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve, Stephen Paul Young. Ezekiel was not even a member of the Quorum, let alone in line to assume the mantle of prophet. But if Ezekiel tried to assemble a collection of allies first, an alternate power structure, he’d be denounced and attacked. The Kimballs had attempted that strategy, and it had led to their death and disgrace.

  A few nights after his entry into the temple, he’d gone outside at night, confused and unable to sleep. There had been a full moon, and it cast the ranch in a pale, ghostly light. He walked past the barn, listening to the lowing cows before continuing down the trail toward the tool shed, several hundred yards from the house, and midway to the grain silos. There, he came across a wheelbarrow filled with tools that someone had carelessly left outside. Probably one of Ezekiel’s lazy brothers.

  One of the tools was a machete that made him think of the sword he’d been searching for in the temple. He picked it up and felt the heft of it in his hand. For a long moment he stood there with the weapon and imagined what it would be like to kill Jacob. It wasn’t the Sword of Laban, but it would serve the same purpose.

  He was returning the machete to the wheelbarrow when the sound of a distant engine caught his ear. He stopped, frowning. The engine was somewhere to the east on their own grazing lands. Who the devil would be out at this hour? He started walking toward the sound when it quit.

  But by now his curiosity was raging. And his suspicion. There was nothing in that direction but the silos and open desert beyond. He followed the ranch road to the silos, where he crouched in an old, weed-infested irrigation ditch to wait. Soon enough, Larry Chambers appeared, the former FBI agent quite visible in the full light of the moon. He’d come to steal grain.

  Ezekiel simply watched and waited instead of confronting the man. It couldn’t be an accident that Ezekiel had been outside, unable to sleep, turning over the problem of Jacob, when Chambers appeared with his cart and shovel. There had to be meaning to it.

  And then it hit him. This was the solution to his problem.

  The next day Ezekiel rode out to Chambers’s cabin. He carried several quarts of near-pure grain liquor in his saddlebags. Normally it was distilled for fuel, but he figured it would be a valuable trade good for the vermin at the reservoir. Like most gentiles, they’d be drunks and alcoholics, no doubt.

  Once at the cabin, Ezekiel made his proposal to the suspicious FBI agent: He’d help Chambers and the squatters get everything from the valley they needed to survive. In return, Ezekiel needed to make contact with the camp. He needed to arrange for sanctuary for when he’d killed Jacob Christianson. Chambers agreed. Rather quickly, in fact.

  Ezekiel wasn’t stupid; Chambers was playing his own game. The man was currying favor with the squatters—he was a gentile, like them, and a natural enemy of the church. Maybe he meant to weaken Blister Creek from within. Maybe the ultimate plan was to let the squatters flood into the valley and overwhelm the sain
ts. Drive them off, enslave them, kill them. Murder the men and take their women as sexual slaves. Some evil or other. The exact manner of that evil wasn’t important.

  Once Ezekiel was prophet, he would do what Jacob had been too soft to do: kill every last man, woman, and child in the squatter camp. Only then would the threat be eliminated. Meanwhile, he would use Chambers as their motives overlapped.

  Ezekiel was still convinced that the plan would have worked if Miriam hadn’t shot Chambers at the base of the cliffs. A few more weeks to gather the faithful, convince important people that Jacob was a fallen prophet. All that had been thrown in chaos the moment the gunshots sounded and Miriam cut the rope to the makeshift elevator.

  But even after Ezekiel descended from the reservoir to the bunker where his father and brother waited, he’d believed there was still time. He could come into the valley before Jacob had organized, finish the ugly business, then flee with enough weapons and food supplies to buy off McQueen’s camp. Later, when Miriam and the rest quieted down, he’d return to Blister Creek and take over. They’d be desperate for a leader. Only now he was doing the fleeing, Jacob was still alive, and he had nothing to trade. He needed something or McQueen would turn him away in rage.

  So when Ezekiel reached the abandoned bunker, he stopped the truck and ran inside. He hauled out the spare guns and ammo cans first, then returned from the truck with a toolbox he’d found in the back. He unbolted the .50-caliber machine gun that was mounted at the gun slits, slung it over his shoulder, and hauled it back to the truck, where he put it in the back with the other weapons.

  Now he was set. He had a machine gun, several other weapons, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. That should satisfy McQueen.

  When he climbed into the truck, he eyed the dark, bloodstained machete on the seat next to him. It had an ugly, malevolent air to it. When swinging it earlier, it had been easy to pretend that it really was the Sword of Laban and not a sharpened ranch tool. Now it looked like neither, but some horrible weapon wielded by a murderer. He couldn’t stand to look at it anymore, so he shoved it under the seat. As soon as it was out of sight he felt better.