Blood of the Faithful Read Online Free PDF Page A

march it into the cliffs. Just in case.”
    “I warned Elder Smoot we were going,” Jacob said, “and for exactly that reason. I told Sister Rebecca and the Griggs family too. Don’t need the alarmists riled up.”
    They pulled past the temple, gleaming in the morning sun, then drove up the highway along the edge of Witch’s Warts. It stretched toward the cliffs in a vast maze of red fins and knobby hoodoos that stood like rows of silent sentinels off the shoulder of the road. Soon they were in the open land with the cliffs looming ahead of them. The highway cut straight to their base, then became a twisting snake as it climbed a series of switchbacks to the top.
    Grover and Ezekiel Smoot were guarding the guns at the main bunker halfway up, and Jacob slowed as they approached. A pair of horses loafed in the shade of a lean-to shed on one side of the bunker.
    Ezekiel came out to Jacob’s rolled-down window, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The young man was in his midtwenties, with the same dark hair and intense gaze as his father. He had a short-cropped beard and thin lips. He wasn’t the most handsome man in town, but he carried himself with a confidence that Jacob respected.
    “Trouble?” Ezekiel asked.
    “Nothing to worry about. A little reconnaissance. Been a long time since I’ve been to the reservoir, and I want to make sure the squatters aren’t up to anything. Has it been quiet here?”
    “Dead,” Ezekiel said with a shrug. “Need me to come along? Grover can handle the .50-cal while I’m gone.”
    “Nah, we’re good. I’m not expecting trouble.”
    Ezekiel nodded. “We’ll listen for gunfire, just in case.”
    “Sure, if you hear anything send Grover to Yellow Flats and warn Sister Rebecca. But you stay at the machine gun.”
    “Got it,” Ezekiel said with a curt nod. “God be with you.”
    After they’d pulled away, Miriam spoke up from the back of the vehicle. “Hey, Jacob. Want to explain all this food?”
    “Nothing much to explain. It’s exactly what it looks like.”
    “Looks to me like a gift. Or a bribe. So I guess I have no idea, because it couldn’t be either of those things.”
    “It’s a gift,” he admitted. “We barely dipped into the food stores last year, and this year we’ve got a good crop planted and no late frosts.”
    “No late frosts yet, ” David said.
    “Yet,” Jacob conceded. “But you’ll have to admit the weather seems less . . . weird. I think we’ll get a solid harvest. We can spare some food.”
    “It’s not a question of whether or not we can spare it,” Eliza said. She sounded equally concerned. “You know that. We’re trying to shrink the squatter camp, not grow it. How many millions of hungry people are there in the world at this moment, ready to come running the instant they hear we’ve gone soft?”
    “That’s the whole point,” Jacob said. “We don’t have any idea. For all we know, the government has sorted out the food situation.”
    Some scoffing came from the others at this.
    “Anyway,” Jacob continued when they quieted down, “people can hardly come running across two hundred miles of desert. And they’re not going to do it for two barrels of flour, three buckets of powdered milk, and a few sacks of dried peas.”
    “I’d rather not find out for sure,” David said.
    Jacob didn’t say anything more, and it seemed that all the objections had been voiced.
    They reached the cliffs and the reservoir. It was quiet up here, the water lapping against the shore to their right. The floods had receded from the old picnic grounds, leaving behind a thick layer of mud and sticks. Scraps of clothing lay half-buried in the mud, and a single tent pole stood upright with a plastic garbage bag flapping against the side.
    A single cut tree blocked the highway, but there was no sign of gunmen hiding in the boulders that had rolled down from the hills to abut the road. They quickly winched the tree out of the way. David went up top to