“That’s all,” she said. “It will have to be enough.”
Madeline panted at her side. “Well, at least we’re warm now.”
“Give it a minute, gather your strength. Then we’ll go for it.” Eliza reached out until she found the other woman’s arm. It was trembling. “See, you’re stronger than you thought.”
“I just hope it’s enough.”
“It’ll be enough.”
“What do you think they’re doing up there?” Madeline asked.
“No idea, but we can’t worry about that until we’re out of here.”
A couple of hours earlier, Madeline had hissed a warning. Eliza had been so engrossed in her work, scraping with a coiled spring around the edge of a boulder that she was trying to dislodge from the walls of the pit, that she hadn’t heard it at first. And then, from above, the sound of metal clanking, like two drums knocking against each other. Someone sat on or put something on the overturned refrigerator. She heard voices, a shouted argument between a man and a woman. Hard to say for sure, but the man sounded like Christopher. They’d waited until the noise passed before resuming the blind scraping, digging, stacking.
Together, the two women wrestled the first mattress into a standing position atop the mound of dirt and rocks. They’d only torn out a couple of the springs, and it still held most of its shape. They lifted the thinner mattress into place.
“You got it?” Eliza asked. “Here I go, don’t let me fall.”
She scaled the mattresses. They wobbled, but she didn’t need to go as high this time, since the hill of dirt and rocks gave her a critical boost. She reached the top, stretched her arm to get some leverage against the fridge that blocked the entrance. And stopped. Her hand felt dirt.
“No,” she said, in a low voice. “Please, no.”
“What is it?” came Madeline’s voice from the darkness below her.
She almost didn’t have the heart to share the crushing news. “We built the mound on the wrong side. This isn’t the opening. The fridge isn’t up here, it’s just dirt. Somehow, we must have got turned around when we brought the mattresses down and moved everything into the wrong place.”
“Then it’s over.” Madeline’s voice was flat, dead. “We tried and failed.”
Eliza slid back down, groped until she found the other woman’s shoulders, grabbed her to make her listen. “It’s not over, only a setback. We’ll move the dirt to the other side, that’s all.”
“I can’t do it. I’m wiped out.”
“An hour, tops, and we’ll be done. Think about it, the dirt is already loose, the rocks are dug out. All the hard work is done, it’s just a few minutes to loosen up our mound and then we’ll carry it over in scoops.”
“I gave everything I had,” Madeline said. “It’s all I can do to stand up.”
“You’ve got a little more.” Eliza fought to keep her voice from giving away her disappointment and her growing fear that the other woman was right, that they didn’t have enough left to make another attempt.
“And how can we be sure, anyway? There are four sides to this blasted pit and the fridge is only over one corner. What if we do it again?”
But Eliza had already worked that out. She groped in the mound until she found several small pebbles, then tossed them up, one by one, until she heard a plink instead of a thud. “Come stand over here. I’ll roll the big rock to you and then we can start.”
They worked in silence. Eliza was too tired and discouraged to offer much to her companion. The good news was that it seemed to take much less than an hour to move the pile to the other side, but unfortunately, the mound was shorter when they finished. It was either packed down more firmly or they’d lost some of the dirt transporting it across the pit. And so they spent another twenty minutes scraping more dirt from the walls of their prison, until Eliza felt satisfied with the height.
“Okay, let’s try again.”
But Madeline was too weak to be much help, and Eliza had to get the crates and the mattresses in place herself. When she finished, she said, “I know your tank is empty, but you’ve got to hold these in place while I climb.”
Madeline answered in a thin, quavering voice. “I don’t know if I can.”
“There’s got to be something left in there.” She kept her voice even, confident, and encouraging. “We’re almost out. You know that and you can do what it takes.”
“But Eliza, I—”
“No excuses. You’re not a child, Madeline, you’re a grown woman and you can find the strength.”
“As in, I am woman, hear me roar?” A scraping sound as Madeline regained her feet and groped her way over.
“Sorry, I have no idea what that means.”
“Jeez, you really did lead a sheltered life. I guess it means that I’ll do my best.”
“I’ll take whatever you can give. Lean into it, I’m going up.”
Eliza’s own arms were exhausted and shaking from hours of work. Hunger made her lightheaded. But no way was she staying down here to die. She was too close.
She reached the midway point of the thinner mattress, then lifted her hand and was relieved to find the fridge overhead. Maneuvering so her lower foot wedged in the gap between the two mattresses and the toes of her upper foot curled around one of the oversized mattress buttons, she leaned her shoulder against the wall and dug her fingers under the edge of the fridge.
The mattresses wobbled, threatened to tip over. “Don’t let them fall!”
She heaved. Getting it to budge was the hardest, and then she got the fridge to slide a fraction of an inch. Cool, clean night air rushed in on her face. She stopped, tried to stabilize herself while giving her arms a rest and taking in gulps of the clean air. After a moment, she caught a whiff of diesel fuel, but couldn’t hear the generator running. Maybe when she got it open wider she could figure out what was going on.
“Are you okay up there?” Madeline asked.
“Yes. Going to give it another heave. Hang on.”
Eliza counted to three, then thrust her weight into the fridge. It slid out of the way, but her changing position on the mattresses threw off her balance. The mattresses bucked and Madeline grunted and struggled to keep them in place. Eliza grabbed for the top of the pit. Her hands caught the edge just as Madeline lost her struggle below and the mattresses fell. Pushing off the side with her toes, Eliza scrambled to get her arms up. Dirt and rocks crumbled from the side of the pit, but she didn’t let go.
A moment later she was squirming through the hole on her belly. It was night, with a full moon overhead, casting the tire mounds into dark shadow. A breeze prickled across her naked skin. It was the most wonderful thing she’d ever felt. Her spirits rose with every breath of fresh air. She could be at the overturned sofa, fishing out the cell phone, in two minutes. Call Jacob, tell him to send the police. But first, she had to get Madeline out. How was she going to do it? Maybe lower down tires until there were enough to climb out? Quickly, Eliza bent and put all her weight into sliding the refrigerator all the way off.
She bent over the hole. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”
“You’re not going to do anything, you filthy bitch,” a low voice said.
Eliza whirled around, heart pounding.
Christopher stood a few feet away. He carried the ladder and as he approached, she smelled diesel fuel, as if he’d spilled some on his clothes. He was a big man, and even in the moonlight she could see the crazed look on his face.
Eliza stood her ground. “Get away from me.”
“I should have done it before, should have done it first. I knew it. It’s the only thing that will teach you a lesson.”
Christopher swung the end of the ladder around, intending to catch her across the body and knock her down. She tried to back out of the way, but the fridge blocked her path to the rear.
“Get ready to be sanctified, bitch.”
Chapter Twenty-one:
The Disciple had found the shed without difficulty. It was in the same spot where he’d almost burned his brother Taylor Junior alive. His father had rebuilt it within a few weeks and there it had stood for the last fifteen years. Mocking him.
Be careful. Do not alert the enemy.
He sent Diego into the shed first, but that apparently wasn’t what the voices had been warning, because nobody was inside. Fortunately, the new owners used it for the same purpose as Taylor Kimball, as there were mowers, hedgers, and other tools. And a five-gallon can of gas. He heard the boy clanking around with the can, trying to get it to budge, then finally decided to go in and get it himself.
“No, you stay in here. You don’t want to get in the way. The rest of this I can do myself.”
The Disciple closed the door with Diego still in the shed, then reached to flip the latch and lock the boy inside. He opened the gas can—nearly full, as it turned out—and sloshed some on the door frame and around the foundation of the shed. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the book of matches from the Excalibur Hotel.
Not yet. The house, first.
And so he moved around the porch and the back edge of the house, spreading the rest of the gasoline. Tumbleweeds had piled against the house and the porch on the north side, and he made sure to soak these with gasoline.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, offsetting the occasional flash of light. No rain, just as he’d guessed. Between the thunder, he heard voices from the front porch. Someone said something about oxygen, but he couldn’t figure out what that could be about.
He emptied the rest of the can at a spot where the end of the porch connected with the house. The spruce railing had started to split and paint flaked from the shingles on the side of the house. In the dry air of the Colorado Plateau, both the porch and the shingles would be dry as kindling. He pulled out a match and lit it. The wind blew it out.
Stay focused. You are almost done, and then you can return to Nevada for the falling of Wormwood and the end of the world.
He turned his back to the desert and sheltered the matchbook between his body and the house. This time it stayed lit. He touched it to the railing and a tongue of fire licked along the top where he’d poured the gasoline, up to the edge of the house. The heat and smell radiated toward him and he had to resist the urge to reach out and bathe his hand in the flames.
Quickly now, he hurried to the pile of tumbleweed around back and lit that on fire, then permitted himself a moment to watch the tumbleweeds ignite. They burst into flames all at once, like marshmallows thrust too far into a campfire. The Disciple turned to go. One more task and then he would be done. The shed. It had to burn.
But as he crossed back toward the shed, he stumbled across a path of crushed stone. In the dark, he hadn’t seen it, and couldn’t remember there having been a path on this side of the house, just hard-packed dirt. In fact, he was sure there hadn’t been one. There wasn’t enough light cast off from the porch to differentiate the path, and when he tried to cross, he found instead that he was following its course. His feet crunched again. He could see the shadow of the shed to his left, and presumably the path curved toward it. It took several more steps across the crushed rock before he found his way off the path.
The Disciple heard the voices again, but there was a sudden change in their tone. A flashlight cut through the night, waving in his direction.
The voices all clamored at once.
Go! Now!
He ran.
#
For one moment, David had felt a peaceful wave flow over him.
That feeling was nothing like the euphoria of the too-heavy dose of heroin Miriam had given him. That was a sedating feeling, like floating above his body. In the moment when the drug had him in its claws, he lost all feeling for the world, cared about nothing. The others could have taken hacksaws to his legs and he would have sat there with a vacant smile.
But when Jacob spoke the words, “David, thou art healed. Rise and cast out the demon from thy soul. Thus sayeth the Lord,” it was over. He was instantly alert. Like pulling a stopper, the euphoria of the drug swirled around the drain and was gone. Without the drug, he expected the shakes to return, to hear the demon howling for him to shoot up again, for his veins to catch fire.
Only this time it was different. He felt his soul, a thinning of the veil, with angels and the Lord on the other side. He felt a connection to the others on the porch, and an outpouring of love from his own dry, withered heart that brought tears to his eyes. These people: his brother, Sister Miriam, even his father, they seemed to him the most wonderful people he’d ever known, and hope radiated from them.
You are home, brother. Take this chance, it is a miracle.
David stood up, ready to tell them that he was healed, that it was over, that he would never touch drugs again. Jacob looked stunned. Normally, he wore a mask of confidence, an intelligence and charisma that other people could only envy. But that was stripped away. In its place, confusion and self-doubt. It was apparent to David that Jacob had not prepared those words, had even tried to fight them as they came out of his mouth.
And then a flash of lightning and when the rumble stopped, he heard crunching feet on the gravel. He’d heard it at the beginning of the prayer, still semi-catatonic from the heroin. A dark warning passed through his soul.
“We have an intruder.”
Sister Miriam and Father moved at once. Sister Miriam stiffened, reached across her body to a spot just under her left armpit, as if expecting to find a gun in a shoulder holster. But she wore a prairie dress and there was nothing there. She turned toward the door.
Father grabbed for something behind the other Adirondack chairs on the porch and came up with a flashlight. He swung it back and forth over the yard. More crunching. The light caught a figure, running toward the shed.
It took Jacob a moment longer, but then he said, “I smell a fire.”
David could smell it too. There was a hint of campfire, but also a chemical tang, like burning plastic or paint. “Father, you need to wake up the house.”
“But what about the intruder?”
Jacob took the flashlight. “We’ll take care of him, you get people out.”