Unassigned Territory by Kem Nunn

Obadiah Wheeler believed in the fire next time and he was a man of little faith. He stared into the gloomy yard of the compound as Neil eased himself from the car, and thought about persecution.
    When he was young, Obadiah used to lie awake nights thinking of persecution. He had stood sweating in the musty aisles of the Pomona Public Library with a copy of Fox’s Book of Martyrs propped open before him on more occasions than he cared to remember. The book had come to have a certain hold on him, drawing him toward it whenever he entered the building. Surviving torture seemed unimaginable to him. What would you do, brother, when they put the blowtorch to your balls? He had always expected to crack immediately. When the brothers in Liberia had cracked they had become instant objects of derision among their tormentors—often faring more grimly than those who had stood firm. Watching Neil Davis pass through a gate, he found himself thinking of Harlan Low. Beatings and bad water. Days without sleep. His contemplation of Elder Low, however, was interrupted by Bianca Allen, who was leaning forward once more, her arms folded across the back of his seat, her elbow pressing against his shoulder blade.
    He watched as Neil crossed the yard and approached a trailer. The door was opened by a blond woman in a maroon bathrobe. The woman looked once in the direction of the car then quickly ushered Neil inside.
    “Friendly,” Panama said.
    Bianca made a peculiar snorting sound and Obadiah began to reflect upon what it might mean that the roofs of the trailers were skirted by a thin bead of red neon.
    Within five minutes brother Davis was back in the car, having learned firsthand what the red lights were all about. “So the guy at the station has had his little joke,” he said. He paused to punch the steering wheel with the butt of his hand. The wheel vibrated in the silence. “It’s a house of prostitution,” he said. “We’ve crossed the state line. This is Nevada. The nearest gas station is that way.” He jerked a thumb toward the desert in what appeared to be no direction in particular. “But the woman here says the road is bad and that we should wait until morning. There’s a workshed that way”—he jerked his other thumb in the opposite direction, toward the end of the trailers—“in which there may be a couple of gas cans.” He paused for a moment. “She says we’re welcome to it. She says that this place is pretty well known but that most people don’t drive in. They fly. There’s a strip over there on the other side of the trailers.” Neil stopped talking and, in the silence that followed, the drone of a distant engine grew out of the night. Neil seemed to find some small satisfaction in the sound. “See,” he said, “there is one.”
    They listened as the sound of the engine grew and a small plane did, in fact, set down somewhere on the other side of the trailers, after which they could hear the laughter of men.
    “Well,” Panama Allen asked, “how do you do?” Her words were followed by a burst of high-pitched, unpleasant laughter. “So where do we sleep?” Bianca wanted to know.
    “I guess we’ll have to sleep right here,” Neil Davis said. “We certainly can’t sleep in there.” He gestured toward the trailer. “I believe there are some blankets in the trunk.” The night had turned surprisingly chilly after the heat of the day. “I’ll get them.” They could hear him at the rear of the car, shifting weight, banging things around. At last he returned and sat down behind the wheel once more. “Damn,” he said. “Excuse my language, but I guess I took them out to make room for the literature.”
    Bianca jabbed at the back of Obadiah’s seat. “I don’t know about you all,” she said, “but I’ll sleep in there if they’ll let me.” Obadiah had no choice but to open the door and let her out. As he was doing so Neil spoke up at his side. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,