The Gates of Babylon Read Online Free PDF Page A

that kept Blister Creek under virtual occupation. All for nothing.
    Sister Miriam came out of the darkness from the hotel carport. Moments later, Jacob’s sister Eliza and her fiancé, Steve Krantz, crossed the parking lot from opposite directions of each other, sniper rifles in one hand and tripods in the other.
    Before he could call out a greeting, headlights flared on the side of the parking lot and he twisted to see Mo accelerating in the tanker truck on the far end of the hotel. He barreled through the parking lot and toward the highway.
    “That idiot,” David said. “What is he thinking? Oh, tell me he isn’t… he
is,
the bastard.”
    All except for Jacob ran for the road to watch Mo jackknife his rig west, after Scorpion’s departing crew. Jacob scrambled into the flatbed truck, turned it on, and headed after them. As he approached the highway, the others jumped into the truck or onto the back. All except Miriam, who had reached the road and held out her hand for Jacob to stop.
    Scorpion’s pickup trucks waited down the road a stretch, and when Mo passed in his tanker of stolen diesel fuel, they pulled in behind as protection. Mo Strafford. He’d been working with the other side all along. No wonder he’d been so jumpy, the traitor.
    A sick feeling sank into Jacob’s gut. Disgusted with himself, he shifted to park and climbed out, stepping into the driving sleet again, to watch the enemy departing with all their fuel.
    The others came around to stand glumly at his side, all except Miriam, who walked forward several yards on the highway and stared after the departing lights as they disappeared across the desert.
    Krantz clapped Jacob on the shoulder. “Sorry, buddy,” he said in his low, rumbling growl. “At least we’re alive.”
    Miriam called back over her shoulder. “Next time, shoot to kill.”
    “I was following orders,” Krantz said tersely.
    “Orders didn’t tell you to shut off your brain. They were robbing us, anyone could see that.”
    “No,” Jacob said. “He did the right thing. Our lives weren’t at risk. Not really.”
    “They will be at risk, if we can’t stop this kind of thing,” Stephen Paul said.
    “It was my idea,” Jacob said, “and my responsibility.” His sister tried to say something, but he didn’t need Eliza giving him meaningless encouragement. “No, he’s right. Everyone was right. We can’t make this mistake again. It’s just that we need so many things and have no way to get them.”
    Nobody responded. And why would they? They’d all voiced their misgivings in one way or another, as had plenty of other members of the community.
    The grid is still working, what do we need to make our own electricity for?
    It’s dumb to let criminals know we have fuel.
    You want to prepare for the collapse? Why don’t you figure out how to get our stolen grain back from the government?
    And Jacob’s favorite, proclaimed by older members of the Quorum of the Twelve, and whispered even in his own home:
The world is ending in fire, so what’s the point?
    Miriam still stood at the edge of the lot, looking down the road. “Stephen Paul is right about one thing, though. Nobody gets away with ripping us off. Even if it makes us look like a crazy cult.”
    “Come on,” Jacob said. “They’re gone.”
    “How far would you say they are down the road by now?” she asked.
    “A mile, maybe two, tops. You’re not still thinking we’ll go after them, are you? Even if we caught up, they’ve got all those guns.”
    “No, that’s not what I’m thinking.”
    There was something odd in her voice, and David must have heard it too. “Miriam?” he said, tone suspicious. “What are you doing?”
    She pulled out something from her jacket pocket that powered up with an LCD-lit screen. It looked like a cell phone.
    Jacob suddenly remembered all that walking around the tanker truck back in the valley, and again, here in the lot. His suspicion bloomed into sudden