Desert Lost (9781615952229) Read Free Page B

upstairs from my office. Changing lifestyles was one thing, burning bridges was another.
    â€œNow remember, I’m picking you up at the office at three o’clock so we can take some measurements at the house. Beth will meet us there.”
    â€œYou don’t have to keep reminding me.”
    â€œCould have fooled me.”
    We talked for a little while longer, but when I hung up, Jimmy was giving me the Evil Eye.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œSay it.”
    â€œI’m smarter than that,” he muttered, turning back to his keyboard.
    Jimmy didn’t think Warren was right for me. Even worse, he thought I was wrong for Warren. Oil and water , he’d once said. Cactus and neon . On my good days, I believed Jimmy was just being petty; on bad days, I agreed with him. But this wasn’t the time to start worrying about relationship complications, so I dialed Rosella again. To my relief, she picked up.
    In a voice fogged with exhaustion, she said, “Jesus, woman. You coulda let me sleep. I didn’t get to bed ‘til after eight this morning.”
    â€œHave you seen the newspaper?”
    â€œBrought it in, didn’t look at it. Reading the comics isn’t on my to do list. Last night I delivered those Second Zion runaways to that safe house on the west side. Prophet Shupe was goin’ to give them to his four-hundred-pound uncle, and the kids were so grossed out they’d made a suicide pact. Hell, they already had the gun! I took it away from them, so now I’ve got another firearm for my collection. Now let me get back to sleep, okay? I had myself a pretty good dream goin’ there. Prophet Shupe dead, with a stake through his heart.”
    A good dream by any sane person’s standards. Since inheriting leadership of Second Zion from his father, Hiram Shupe—who just happened to be Rosella’s ex-husband—had issued increasingly bizarre prophecies, most of them concerning the End of Days. Six times he’d led his followers out into the desert after convincing them he knew the exact day and minute God would “rapture” them up to Heaven. Each time God let him down, and Shupe herded his dehydrated flock back to Second Zion. Following God’s continued no-shows, Shupe arrived at the conclusion that the inhabitants of Second Zion were too sinful for rapture. After several months of pondering the problem, he discovered a novel way to cleanse his followers’ souls. Their chief sin, he’d decided, was idolatry. His followers cared too much for each other and not enough for him. After all, wasn’t he, Prophet Hiram Shupe, The Living Presence of God on Earth, the only rightful object of anyone’s affection?
    So several years ago, Shupe, The Living Presence of God on Earth, began breaking up families. He moved the women and children into dormitories, and the men into smaller bachelors’ quarters. Breeding rights changed, too. Brother James now had sex with Brother Silas’ harem, and Brother Silas took on Brother Peter’s women, so on and so on, until every family unit in the compound had been dissolved. There had been some grumbling, but on the whole, Shupe’s brainwashed followers obeyed. Those that didn’t were never seen again.
    When God still didn’t rapture Second Zion up to Heaven, Shupe discovered yet another solution. He ordered the compound’s pets—puppies, kittens, hamsters, goldfish, whatever—killed. God had told him, he claimed, that the children used their pets as false idols, giving them the devotion that was rightfully due The Living Presence of God on Earth. After the roar of guns stopped, my informants told me, the only sounds you could hear were children sobbing.
    But I didn’t see how Prophet Shupe, crazy as he might be, could have anything to do with the dead woman, Second Zion being three hundred-plus miles north of Scottsdale.
    Rosella might have heard