“I didn’t disobey, I—”
“I’m not interested in excuses. I’m only interested in knowing whether you will obey me with exactitude. That when I tell you what to do, you will do it immediately, with no questions. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master.”
“And will you?”
“Yes, Master. I’ll do anything you ask. Immediately, and without hesitation.”
“Very good. Are you injured?”
“My elbow. It’s broken, or maybe dislocated. So I don’t have any use of my left arm.”
The Disciple frowned. “Two girls did this? You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”
Still, Christopher appeared clear-headed, in spite of his injury. And dead to the pain.
“Please, Master, get me out of here. It won’t happen again.”
“It’s odd,” the Disciple said. “All this time and you’ve never once been purified. Others have gone down three, four times, sometimes for as long as a week. You haven’t even eaten one head of lettuce.”
“I can’t stand it anymore. It’s the stench, it’s going to drive me crazy.”
“Maybe it was God who put you down there, He saw my oversight and decided to put you in the pit to be purified. I wonder what would happen if Wormwood fell and you were still in the pit. Would the fire sweep over the earth and leave you alive down there? You’ve got a few dozen heads of lettuce and plenty of water. You might live on for several weeks.”
“No, not that. I’d rather die.”
“You might still do that, too,” the Disciple said. “Only God knows what will happen this day.”
“Please, forgive me. I was weak, I made a mistake. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Your path to repentance will be difficult. You must obey me exactly.”
“I’ll do anything!”
The Disciple looked around for a way to get the man out of the pit and stumbled over the ladder. He tried to imagine how they’d lured Christopher to the pit with the ladder, then somehow broken his arm, climbed out and fished the ladder out before the man could challenge them. What a fool.
That is why they obey you. God chose the humble and malleable as your followers.
Yes, well humble and malleable was one thing, gullible, another. Or maybe Christopher, in his weakness, had gone down into the pit to sanctify Eliza down there, then been overpowered. But by two naked, starving girls? It was hard to imagine.
The Disciple lowered the ladder. Moments later, Christopher appeared, climbing with his good hand. His other arm dangled by his side and when he reached the top, the Disciple reached down, grabbed him by the waist of his pants and hauled him onto the ground.
Christopher lay panting for a moment, then rolled over and sat up. “You’re strong.”
“Of course I’m strong. I have the power of God within me. And because you’re with me, God will strengthen you, too. He will deliver the wicked into our hands. And then they will burn.”
“Yes, Master. They will all burn.”
The Disciple helped the other man to his feet. “Now, listen carefully. Eliza has poisoned their minds and we have to imagine they are turned against us. We have to show that God is in charge, not this girl.”
The Disciple bent and felt along the edge of the pile of garbage and tires behind the overturned fridge. His fingers closed around a piece of metal not much bigger around than his thumb. He dug it out of the garbage and discovered it was a piece of rebar, rough and slightly bent, maybe thirty inches long. He handed it to Christopher. “A rod, with which thou may correct thine enemies.”
Christopher hefted it in his good hand. “Good enough. What do you want me to do?”
“As soon as they come out, I expect Eliza to argue with me. When the moment is ready, I’ll say, ‘Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord.’ At that moment, you will attack. Strike her in the face first, then, when she is down, keep hitting her in the head until she stops moving. It will be messy, it will be terrible. Can you do it?”
“Of course I can, Master. But what about the others?”
“I shall command them while you fulfill God’s justice. None of them will lift a finger. And when she is dead, they shall all follow us. We shall call Wormwood to the earth. Now hurry, dawn is almost here.”
Chapter Twenty-four:
The voice outside the trailer was like one of the trumpets of Revelation, loud and brassy in the thin desert air. “The Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord is at hand! Come and let us separate the wicked from the righteous.”
Inside the trailer, all conversation stopped at once. People who had been arguing moments earlier stopped with mouths agape, or hands raised in midgesture. Eliza started at the sound, but as she glanced around the room, she could see stunned expressions on the faces of the others, glassy, terrified looks, as if they had just been shown a photograph of the exact moment of their death. It was that look of shared insanity that scared Eliza, not the braying of the self-proclaimed prophet outside.
The argument had raged through the trailer for the past two or three hours. Eliza was content to let Madeline and Kirk carry her side, that they should wait until dawn and then, if the Disciple hadn’t returned with the truck, gather water and walk out of the desert. These two, plus two others, reminded her of sleepwalkers, awakened from a nightmare, opening one door after another until they finally emerged from the dream. As they rubbed sleep from their eyes, they grew more and more alert until at last they realized just what had been done to them.
Others had remained locked in their nightmares. They defended the Disciple and shouted angrily whenever Madeline or Kirk suggested that the Disciple’s rants about the end of the world were pure fantasy. They grew even more angry when Eliza said, at one point, “Let’s call it what it is. The Disciple didn’t
sanctify
anyone. He raped them.”
A woman screamed, threw her shoe at Eliza and tried to storm out of the trailer. Kirk stopped her, ordered her to sit back down.
Eliza remembered the chilling story of a thirteen-year-old girl who’d been abducted from her home in Boise to be forced into polygamy by her kidnapper. The girl had several chances to escape and when she was in a mall, alone, about eighteen months later, an alert security guard had recognized her and asked her point blank if she was the missing girl he’d seen on TV. She’d denied it and when the guard tried to stop her, had run. They’d eventually found the girl, but Eliza and her brother Jacob had argued about why the girl hadn’t tried to escape.
Some of these people reminded her of the kidnapped girl. Were they blind? Couldn’t they see what the Disciple had done to them? But by the time he returned, these supporters had either come reluctantly to their side or fallen silent. They sat in the corners, wrapping their arms around their knees and listening with sullen expressions on their faces.
And now Caleb Kimball was outside, shouting. “Come out, one and all. Face the judgment of the Lord!”
Benita sprang to her feet. Eliza grabbed for her hand but didn’t get her before she reached the door. Kirk was closer and could have stopped her, but he looked as stunned as anyone else. By the time he moved, it was too late, and Benita was throwing the door open. Others followed.
“Wait!” Eliza said. “Not yet, we need to—”
But nobody was listening. They spilled out of the trailer and down the cinder block stairs. The Disciple stood in front of the trailer, his robe open, his eyes wild, arms outstretched. Behind him, the horizon glowed with the fire of a coming dawn. Christopher stood to one side. A dark expression clouded his face. There was a gash on one cheek and he tucked in his left arm, which bent the wrong way at the elbow.
The people pouring out of the trailer dropped to their knees in front of the Disciple, or grabbed his robes or hands. One of the last holdouts from inside buried her face in his robes and wept. A young man begged for forgiveness.
“Stop, all of you!” Eliza cried.
Madeline and Kirk stopped a few feet away, visibly torn between following the others and the arguments of the past few hours. Eliza grabbed their arms and they turned, and she could see them shake off whatever strange compulsion had taken hold of them.
The Disciple lifted his arms. “Wormwood is falling from the sky. Before the sun rises this day the burning shall come. The wicked shall perish. But you! You are the Chosen Ones. Those who stand by my side shall survive to see the coming of the Lord.”
“Listen to me, all of you,” Eliza said. “It’s a trick, it’s just a voice and flowery Biblical crap.” A few faces turned toward her. “The world isn’t going to end today. If you want, you can stay here and find out. The rest of us are going into Las Vegas. Now who else is coming with me?”
A smile lifted the Disciple’s face and he said, “Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord.” Christopher stepped forward. The dark expression had become something twisted and evil. “Do it now,” the Disciple said in a low voice. “Cleanse Eliza Christianson from the earth.”
He lifted his right arm and now she saw that it carried a length of rebar. She’d been distracted by his broken arm and the rants of the Disciple. He stepped toward her with the rebar pulled back like a club. By the time she saw him coming, it was too late to react, only to lift her hands against the blow.
Kirk stepped between them, grabbed for his arm. “No! Not like this.”
Christopher swung the rebar at Kirk’s arm. The other man cried out and fell back. Christopher pulled back and swung again, this time at Kirk’s head.
Eliza regained her senses by the time the second blow fell. She lowered her shoulder and rammed it into Christopher to knock him off balance. She didn’t make it in time. The rebar slammed into the side of Kirk’s head, just above the ear. He fell face down. Eliza knocked into Christopher. He snarled and turned on her.
As he pulled back the rebar, she grabbed with both hands for his bad arm. She seized him by the wrist and wrenched his arm around. Christopher screamed and flipped himself over to escape the pain, moving as easily as if he were a puppet in her hands. He fell to the ground next to Kirk. The first young man didn’t move, but lay face down and limp.
Before Christopher could recover, she bent and wrenched the rebar free from his hands.
“Someone, grab her,” the Disciple said. He was trying to push through the people crowding him, but they weren’t moving quickly enough.
She waved the rebar in front of her. “Nobody touch me!”
The Disciple was at the point of freeing himself, and Christopher rolled over and struggled to his feet. Eliza dropped the rebar, grabbed Madeline, and ran. To her surprise, Benita came with them, while the others watched in a stupor.
Eliza was disoriented by the darkness, by the violence of the last few moment, by the way Kirk lay face down, by the force with which the rebar had struck him on the side of the head. That blow had caved in the man’s head. It had been meant for her. If Kirk hadn’t stepped in front, Christopher would have bludgeoned her to death.
In her confusion, she ran the wrong direction. Instead of fleeing toward the road, she found herself farther back in the dump, ducking between piles of tires. By the time she realized her mistake, she was turned about, with mounds of tires all around her. She wished she hadn’t dropped the rebar.
“Where are you going?” Madeline asked.
“I was trying to go toward the road.”
“It’s that way,” Benita said.
“I know that now.” She’d spotted the horizon and reoriented herself. “You should have said something.”
“I thought you knew what you were doing,” Madeline said.
The three women squatted behind a pile of tires, panting, trying to catch their breath. From the direction of the trailers came shouts, a man screaming. More shouting, a woman screaming this time. A crack, like a two-by-four snapping in two. Eliza’s stomach clenched. The Disciple was violently reasserting his control of the cult; more people were suffering because she’d convinced them to resist.
“Eliza?” Madeline asked. “What are we doing?”
“Hold on, I’m trying to think. I don’t know that we’d be any better off on the road, not unless Caleb left the key in the truck and I don’t think he’d be that dumb.”
“Caleb?”
“The Disciple. If we ran down the road, they could hunt us down in the truck. And it’s so flat, that even if we got off the road, they could see us, at least until we got to the dry wash. They’ll have water, they’ll catch up with us before long. We might be better off here.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Benita said in a flat voice. “There’s no escape either direction.”
“We’re not finished yet.”
“Yes, we’re finished. We’ve made our choice and now we’ll be burned with the wicked.”
Eliza took Benita’s face in her hands. She had no time to be gentle. “Listen to me. Either strap on a spine and do something to keep yourself alive, or go back there and take your chances with the sheep. What’s it going to be?” Benita said nothing, and Eliza continued, “Good. Now, we’re not going to let them win, right? If anyone dies, it’s not going to be us. I don’t care if we’re three girls. Caleb Kimball—I’m not going to call him the Disciple again, because he’s not a disciple of anything, he’s a nutcase, that’s all—isn’t going to lift a finger. He’s going to stand back and order his minions to do the dirty work. But they’re weak in the mind, they showed that just now. They can’t do anything.”
She had to dismiss the others, she had to make Madeline and Benita strong enough to stand up for themselves. Whether it was true or not, she needed these two to believe it.
“What about Christopher?” Madeline asked.
“He’s one man. He’s
half
a man. You saw his broken arm. I gave it one pull and he was on his knees, crying like a baby.”
“You caught him by surprise,” Madeline said. “You can’t count on that again.”
“So what? He still only has one good arm. We’re three people. If he tries to stop us, we’ll come at him from three sides. Now let’s look around for something to defend ourselves with. We’re going to arm ourselves and then we’re going to walk out of here with our heads held high.”
Again, Eliza wished she could trust her own words, could trust these two to be strong in a fight. Madeline was starved from her time in the pit, Benita stronger physically, but weaker mentally. When it came down to it, if Christopher attacked again, they might be no more than a distraction.