Blasphemy

delivered us from bondage out of Egypt. Blessed be the Lord!.”

His flock, a few dozen worshippers, thundered back: “Blessed be the Lord”

Eddy bent over the supine scientist, who opened his eyes, coming to.

“Stand him up,” Eddy said quietly. He pointed to Ford, Innes, and Cecchini. “Hold him tight.”

They reached down and, as gently as possible, raised Hazelius to his one good leg. Ford was astounded the man was still alive, let alone conscious.

Eddy turned to the crowd. “Look into his face—the face of the Antichrist.” He walked in a circle and his voice throbbed out, “‘And the Beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.’ ”

A muffled boom threw a distant ball of fire into the air, casting a lurid glow over the proceedings. Eddy’s gaunt face was briefly silhouetted by the orange light, which highlighted his blackened, hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes. “‘Rejoice, for God hath avenged you!’ ”

The crowd cheered but Eddy raised his hands. “Soldiers in Christ, this is a solemn moment. We have taken the Antichrist and his disciples, and now the judgment of God awaits all of us.”

Hazelius raised his head. To Ford’s surprise, the scientist fixed Eddy with a supercilious sneer—half grin, half grimace—and said, “Pardon my interruption, Preacher, but the Antichrist has a few anticlimactic words for your illustrious flock.”

Eddy held up his hands. “The Antichrist speaks.” He took a bold step closer. “What blasphemy comes from thy lips now, Antichrist?”

Hazelius raised his head, his voice strengthening. “Brace me,” he said to Ford. “Don’t let me slip.”

“I’m not sure this is wise,” Ford murmured in Hazelius’s ear.

“Why not?” Hazelius whispered grimly. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

“Listen, soldiers in Christ, to the words of the false prophet,” Eddy said, his voice tinged with irony.

74

FROM A PILE OF SANDSTONE BOULDERS, Begay scanned the darkened horizon with his binoculars. It was 2:30 A.M.

“There they are. Huddled up in that grassy flat, scared shitless.” The horses milled about, dark silhouettes against a red sky.

“Let’s go get ‘em,” said Becenti.

But Begay didn’t move. He had trained the glasses eastward. The eastern point of the mesa was gone— blown away. Below the blasted notch lay a huge scree slope of rubble, burning coal, tangled metal, and rivers of burning fluid that spread out and ran down the gullies like lava from a volcano. The entire eastern side of the mesa was on fire, smoke and flame pouring out of holes in the ground and leaping into the air. Once in a while a pinon tree or juniper would flare on top of the mesa, lighting up like a lone Christmas tree. Despite a wind blowing the smoke away from them, the fires were spreading rapidly in their direction. There were occasional explosions, with dust and flames shooting up, the ground sagging, then collapsing with an upwash of black dust and smoke. Nakai Valley itself had caught fire, the trading post and houses in flames, along with the beautiful grove of cottonwoods.

Before the explosion, at least a thousand people had gathered in that place. Now Begay, scanning the hellish mesa with his binoculars, could see only a few scattered people wandering shell-shocked among the smoke and flames, crying out, or simply stumbling about silently, like zombies. The flow of cars up the Dugway had ceased and some of the parked cars had caught on fire, the gas tanks exploding.

Willy shook his head. “Man, they did it. Old Bilagaana finally did it.”

They descended the rockpile, and Begay approached the horses, whistling for Winter. The horse pricked his ears and a moment later trotted over, the others following.

“Good boy, Winter.” Stroking his neck, Begay clipped a lead rope to his halter. Several of the horses had been saddled in preparation for departure, and Begay was glad to see they hadn’t shucked them. Switching his own saddle from the horse he was riding to Winter, he cinched it tight and swung up. Willy mounted his horse bareback, and they began hazing the nervous horses toward the Midnight Trail, which lay opposite the conflagration. They moved slowly, keeping them calm and on high ground where the footing was sure. As they topped a rise, Becenti, who was in the lead, paused.

“What the hell’s going on over there?”

Begay rode up beside him and raised his binoculars. A few hundred yards away, in a sandy area, a group of men had collected. They were filthy, like they had recently emerged from a caved-in area of ground, surrounding a group of what appeared to be ragged, dirty prisoners. Begay could hear jeering.

“Looks like a lynching,” said Becenti.

Begay examined the prisoners more closely with the field glasses. With a shock, he recognized the scientist who had visited him, Kate Mercer. And some distance from her was Wyman Ford, holding up what looked like an injured man.

“I don’t like it,” said Begay. He started to get off his horse.

“What are you doing? We got to get out of here.”

Begay tied the horse to a tree. “They might need our help, Willy.”

With a grin, Willy Becenti swung off his horse. “This is more like it.”

They crept up to the group, finding cover behind a screen of boulders. They were less than a hundred feet from the assembly and concealed by the darkness. Begay counted twenty-four men, with guns. Everyone was blackened with coal dust. Faces from hell.

Ford’s face was bloody and it looked like he’d been beaten up. The other prisoners he didn’t know, but he guessed they must also be scientists from the Isabella project, given the lab coats they wore. Ford held one of them up, the man’s arm slung over his shoulder. The man had a badly broken leg. The crowd was spitting at them, jeering and cursing. Finally, a man stepped forward and raised his hands, quieting the mob.

Begay could hardly believe his eyes: it was Pastor Eddy, from the mission down in Blue Gap—except the man was transformed. The Pastor Eddy he knew had been a confused, half-crazy loser who gave away old clothes and owed him sixty bucks. This Eddy had an air of cold command, and the crowd was responding to it.

Begay hunkered down and watched, Becenti next to him.

EDDY RAISED HIS HANDS. “ ‘AND THERE was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies!’ My Christian friends, the Antichrist will speak. Witness with me his blasphemy.”

Hazelius tried to speak. The burning of Isabella flickered in the background, the sheets and pillars of flame leaping up and spreading, and he was drowned out by a series of sharp explosions. He began again, his voice stronger.

“Pastor Eddy, I have only one comment to make. These people are not my disciples. Do what you want with me, but let them go.”

“Liar!” someone shouted from the crowd.

“Blasphemer!”

Eddy raised a forebearing hand and the crowd fell back into silence. “No one is innocent,” he shouted. “We’re all sinners in the hands of an angry God. Only by God’s grace are we saved.”

“Leave them alone, you demented bastard.”

Not much chance of that, thought Ford, looking around at Eddy’s flock, howling for Hazelius’s hide.

Hazelius weakened, his good leg buckling.

“Hold him up!” Eddy roared.

Kate came to Ford’s side and helped hold the scientist up.

Eddy turned. “The day of God’s wrath has arrived,” he thundered. “Take him!”

The crowd lunged at Hazelius, crowding around him, pushing him this way and that as if fighting over a rag doll. They struck him, shoved him, spat on him, beat him with sticks. One man slashed him with a piece of cholla cactus.

“Tie him to that tree.”

They dragged him toward a massive, gaunt, dead pinon, the crowd struggling with him like a clumsy, hundred-footed beast. They lashed one wrist, threw the rope end over a stout branch and pulled tight, did the same