We trudged steadily north through the deep snow throughout the night. Sometimes we slid on our backsides down long, steep slopes, and at other times we had to move very slowly when the snow became loose and we were up to our waists. Snow began to fall, slowly at first, and then with yowling urgency. The drone of helicopters and single engine aircraft ceased in the wee hours, and just as dawn was about to break, we stumbled upon an abandoned vacation home, the roof caved in from years of long winters, the air heavy with mildew and decay. We risked a fire in a cast iron wood stove.
“I’m about sick of freezing to death with you,” Chilli said. He was melting snow in an old kettle to refill our canteens with water. “If we make it through this mess we should consider moving to Hawaii or something. Some untouched island paradise with smiling people and no ice. Of course, that’s probably a crater now.” The wind moaned outside and cut through the holes in the cabin.
“We need to get some rest,” I said. I felt delirious with fatigue.
“Agreed. I’ll take first watch. We can hole up here all day, hopefully, and sleep. If they come for us in numbers we’re done for no matter what we do. We got lucky with the blizzard; it should hide our tracks.” He gave me a searching stare. “Are you okay, brother?”
“Yeah. Exhausted. Worried about my family. And the fact that I just started a war.”
Chilli grunted. “You didn’t start it, and your family is fine. They’re probably drinking hot chocolate together around a roaring fire and worrying about you.”
I feared what might have happened to Grace since she had been taken, every thought a cold, wickedly curved blade probing my guts for new ways to inflict agony.
I found some canned food in a pantry and we ate gelatinous meat. In the sole bedroom, two desiccated corpses rested side by side, holding one another in a final embrace. Their bodies, covered with a light dusting of snow, had been unceremoniously scavenged by animals, and I wondered what the couple’s story was. How long did they last after the lights went out, and why did they decide to lie down and die? I threw myself onto the old leather couch next to the wood stove and I slept.
It was late morning when I woke, and I relieved Chilli. I heard no aircraft in the clear sky, and by mid-afternoon when he woke, we decided to risk moving again. We avoided open areas whenever we could and tried to follow the trees. Several days passed that were an endless whirlwind of snow and cold and wet, walking over wild mountainous terrain. We navigated by compass and we were out of food. Fatigue set in as the lack of sleep and nutrition took its toll on our bodies, combined with the stress of being constantly alert and on edge, wondering who or what was going to try to kill us next. Our bodies were eating themselves because we were expending so much energy hiking in the cold. Our rifles had been lost in the crash and we had only our side arms, so hunting for larger game was not a likely option. We heard, but did not see, jets in the distance one night. I wondered what was happening over the mountains.
On the fourth day we crossed a fresh horse trail and decided to follow it, and as night was descending we caught the smell of wood smoke.
We wound between two massive granite boulders on either side and emerged into a clearing. I saw a ten foot high chain link fence topped with razor wire and heard dogs barking.
“Don’t move!” shouted a voice from the snow, somewhere off to the left. I put my hands in the air.
“My partner’s got a machine gun on you,” said another man, stepping from a hole in a snow bank on the other side of the fence. He walked forward and opened a broad gate I had not seen. He came forward pointing a shotgun at us, stopped a few feet away, and squinted at me.
“What in God’s name are you boys doing out here?”
“Trying to get home,” I said.
“Where’s home?”
“Lamar Valley, but right now we’re going to The Hole.”
The man circled us warily, still keeping the weapon leveled at chest height. “You with that Colonel?”
Chilli chuckled. “Yes sir.”
“You’re a long way from home,” the man said. “You alone?”
“What does it look like?” I said.
Chilli cut his eyes at me. “Yes, I apologize. We’re alone and hungry.”
“Give me those pieces, nice and slow, butt first,” the man said.
I reached gingerly to my thigh holster and surrendered the Desert Eagle. I might have been able to disarm him, but could not risk it because I didn’t know what the other man would do.
“All right then,” the man said. “Name’s Bartholomew, but you can call me Bart. I guess we’ll feed you and you can tell me why you’re trekking around on our mountain.” He circled behind us. “Just walk forward through the gate and you’ll see the trail.” We went ahead and over a gentle rise. I saw a series of low buildings covered with cut pine branches and camouflage tarps. A pack of dogs bounded to greet us, barking and wagging and sniffing. I smelled meat cooking. On the slopes behind those buildings were smaller wooden cabins nestled under towering lodge pole pines. People began to emerge from doorways, pointing at us.
“It’s been a few years since we had visitors,” Bart said. “We like it that way.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said.
“Yes,” Chilli said. “Thanks, and we’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“You’re just in time for dinner,” Bart replied. He shouldered his weapon and led us to the largest of the buildings, a solidly built log structure with a sharply sloped tin roof. When he opened the heavy wooden door I was enveloped by the wonderful smell of bread and meat and the sound of children laughing. Women clad in long skirts and bonnets were setting long tables with various dishes which steamed and beckoned.
“I can get you some dry clothes first, if you want, or you can eat with us.”
“We’ll eat,” Chilli and I said at the same time.
“Thought you might say that,” Bart laughed. “We’ll get you fixed up after the meal.” He tossed me a loaf of corn bread. “Snack on that while we wait for the others.” Fortunately, we did not have to wait long, as people began to file into the room. Chilli and I took the seats we were offered on either side of the head of the table. A smiling, ancient wisp of a man with a flowing white beard walked to us and extended a shaky hand.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said softly. “My name is Samuel, and they let me think I’m still in charge around here.”
“I’m Chilli, and this is William Fox, and we thank you from the bottom of our souls.”
“Aha,” Samuel said. “So you’re the man who led the exodus from the East. I’ve heard a great deal about you.” His smile broadened. “None of it bad.” The room was full and everyone was standing.
“Let us pray,” Samuel said with a voice suddenly deep and commanding. We all joined hands.
“Lord, we thank you for this food and for thy many blessings. Bless this food to our use and us to thy service. Amen.”
I tore into the food with reckless abandon, answering Samuel’s many questions around mouthfuls of tender venison, explaining what had transpired in Salt Lake. Samuel told the story of his people, how their group of two hundred men, women and children had become largely self-sufficient in what had been a doomsday prepper’s compound.
“I knew of Gideon before The Great Sorrow,” Samuel said. “He was a young mover and shaker in the Latter Day Saints church.”
“I know a lot of Mormons,” I replied, “and he isn’t one anymore.”
“You hit that nail on the head,” Samuel said ruefully. “He got twisted after The Sorrow. It’s why we decided to leave. We severed all ties with the Temple and with Gideon. He thinks he’s John.”
“What do you mean?”
“John, the apostle, as in he wrote the book of Revelation on Patmos.”
“We knew he was crazy, but I thought he believed he was some kind of prophet.”
“He does. Not just any prophet. He believes he walked with Jesus. He’s charismatic and extremely intelligent. He got organized quickly after The Sorrow and provided food and shelter, filling the leadership void. People flocked to him in droves.”
“Do you think he actually believes these things, or is he just telling people what they want to hear?”
“That’s a very good question. I wish I knew. He got more zealous after the war with Mexico. After the victory, he ended up absorbing many of them, integrating them into the power structure and his new society. He’s making up a religion as he goes. It’s an abomination with elements of Catholic ritual, Mormon faith, and Old Testament wrath, all coming together with him at the center.”
“I don’t understand why people believe him.”
“The Great Sorrow shattered the faith of many. Gideon used that to his advantage. When people felt abandoned by God, Gideon explained it to them in terms they could understand.”
“By saying we deserved it.”
“Exactly. By telling people that he alone knew the will of the Almighty. Essentially, he has removed Jesus from the Bible as a passing footnote and placed himself where Jesus was. Jesus taught love and forgiveness. Gideon preaches punishment.”
“I can understand feeling abandoned by God. I’ve felt it,” I said.
“And yet here you are, surviving in a wrecked world,” Samuel replied. “There is good all around you, in spite of the evil.”
“I know. I try to remember that, to hold on to my faith. It’s harder at some times than others.”
“You’ve got to do more than hold on to your faith, son. You need to cherish it and protect it. Remember the times when you saw God’s hand in your life. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see. There have also been times when your faith has been rewarded, have there not?”
“Yes.”
“Cling to that in times of darkness.”
“Yes sir,” I agreed, feeling small. I realized that I had become somewhat complacent in my relationship with God, and had allowed a distance to come into my spirit. I vowed right then to try to mend things. That night, wrapped in warm blankets with a full belly, I felt optimistic again and I prayed in thanks.
*
After donning our dry uniforms and downing a dozen eggs for breakfast, Chilli and I left Samuel’s company on horses loaned generously by the old man. Chilli was able to contact Hawk on Samuel’s radio, and risking an old code, was eventually able to convey a suitable extraction point in a valley ten miles distant. Bart and his teenaged son Michael escorted us and returned home with the horses when we took off in a light helicopter.
Our pilot, a stern looking fiftyish man with close cut hair and a lean build had little to say. “I’ve been instructed to tell you that General Hawk will brief you once we reach the airfield in Jackson Hole,” he said. He seemed vaguely resentful of his mission. We flew just above the treetops and hugged the jagged ridges and finally Jackson Hole came into view when we crested the last foothill. The snow covered Teton Range touched the clouds off to our left, and the town of Jackson, sprawling in the shadow of the towering peaks, smoked and burned.
We dropped down to the airfield, which was pockmarked with craters and littered with the burned out husks of dead planes and helicopters. After Chilli and I debarked, soldiers sprinted out to refuel the helicopter and the pilot stepped out to inspect his aircraft. There was a palpable thrum of wrongness and tension in the air, which seemed to vibrate and buzz like a bass string with danger and discord, and I could feel it on the back of my neck.
Crystal walked very slowly from the flat roofed aluminum hanger, hugging herself, and I ran to her. When I got closer, I saw her bruised face, streaked with tears, the broken way she held her arms out to me, and anguish and fear sledgehammered my soul.
“William,” she sobbed, her voice constricted with grief. “She—”
“No. No.” I could not speak. I held her, and Crystal buried her face in my shoulder and wailed, a raw and mournful keening that I knew only mothers could make, and which I once prayed I would never really understand, for it was the sound of a heart breaking completely and irrevocably, the aching embodiment of loss and a sadness so deep that healing never really comes. Her small fists pounding at my smock, I wrapped my arms around her tightly, trying to take her pain from her somehow, to will it into myself and spare her, and I fell to my knees with my wife.
*
I understood, for the first time, why people give up on life and willingly decide to die. Evil had brushed against my family and then it reached out with cold, bony fingers and ripped the very light from my soul, leaving a ragged hole filled with a hungry darkness.
“Daddy!”
I choked when as Ryder joined me and Crystal on the tarmac, a family embrace missing one. Missing her forever.
Hawk was walking toward us and Chilli stood off to the side looking at his feet, but my whole world was in my arms.
“Let's sit down inside,” Hawk whispered, his hand on my shoulder.
I scooped Ryder up with one arm and Crystal leaned into me. We staggered to the hangar and collapsed together onto an old mildewed green sofa. Ryder kept looking at my face and I felt ashamed for my tears, felt that I should be able to tell him that everything was going to be sunshine and roses, but I did not have the lie in me, and it made both of us even more upset.
For almost a decade I had led a blessed life, and while I knew terrible things happened every day, I dared to hope that I could shield my family from a world gone mad. My illusion of security was shattered. Hawk was speaking, crouched down in front of me but he sounded far away.
“…nothing we could do,” he was saying. “We tried to make her comfortable, but she slipped into a coma and never woke up.”
“I don't understand,” I mumbled. “I'm sorry. I just… Tell me again.”
Hawk took a deep breath, his face full of sorrow and compassion. “Gideon intentionally infected her with a new strain of Tarantula, forced her to inhale the spores. Even though she had been vaccinated, we think she got such a heavy dose her immune system had no chance. She died early this morning.”
“Why…?” My voice trailed off, for I knew there was no real answer, no explaining the murder of a child. My useless question to the heavens had been asked by millions before me. I was a failure. Her last words for me would haunt me forever: “Daddy, no! Don't leave me.”
“He was clearly trying to force your hand. He believed that if your daughter was infected, you would give him the cure to save her.”
“I'd like to see her.”
Hawk's face was ashen. “I'm afraid that's not possible. William, I'm so sorry.”
“What do you mean?”
“They burned her,” Crystal sobbed.
I wanted to die.
“The doctors were scared,” Hawk said quietly. “They had her in the Tarantula isolation ward and followed protocol. They incinerated—”
It was too much. I'd been eating eggs while my baby drew her last breath. I would never see her perfect face again, never get those butterfly kisses from innocent eyelashes or hear her giggle and say “Daddy, let's snuggle.”
I flew at my friend, blinded by rage and the burning need to strike out at someone, something, anything. Chilli stopped me with a quick blow to my chest, and I crumpled without harming Hawk.
While I tried to breathe, Hawk looked down at me with tears in his eyes. “I didn't know, brother. They did it all so fast. There's a war going on.”
I felt a familiar shift deep down in my soul as darkness descended like a cloak upon me, shutting compassion and love, right and wrong. I embraced it, welcomed it like an old friend, for in that darkness was a kind of peace, a waking death bereft of any hope beyond vengeance, and with that lethal clarity there is power.
“Gideon says he knew Jesus,” I said, choking on hatred and bile. “But even God can't save him from me.”