Page 86 of Badlands

Now the guard handed Bromley an ancient clay beaker, which he in turn offered to Skip. In it was a vile-looking brown brew, with bits of beetle wings and insect bodies floating on the surface.

“Drink,” urged Bromley, holding the cup to his lips.

When Skip hesitated, the knife dug again into his throat; he felt its sting, sensed the trickle of blood. He drank the brew, swallowing it as fast as he could, made all the more difficult by the stone blade pressed into his throat.

Forcing down nausea, Skip watched as the guard lowered the knife and then put away the cup and the bowl. He returned a moment later, still holding the knife.

“Compared to all our years of study and preparation,” Bromley said to Skip, “doesn’t your own sacrifice seem small?”

He nodded and the guard approached, once more with the blade raised.

“Wait! No! Don’t do this—!”

“Tonight,” Bromley said, “we willseehim. We willexperiencehim.” Raising his voice like a camp-revival preacher, he cried, “Tonight, you will be the conduit through which we summon Xuçtúhla!”

The guard seized Skip and muscled him over to the ladder. Looping his arm under his shoulder, he hauled Skip up and outside, dragged him over to the base of the second tripod, and threw him to the ground. The white figure retreated.

Lying on his side, frozen with terror, Skip could hear around him the swelling of a breathy chant from the congregants. A formal ceremony of some sort seemed about to begin. He looked on with a dull sense of unreality. The humming chant continued, the white figure leading it with swaying motions and a dramatic swinging of his arms. Moans arose, and weird gestures filled the air. Occasionally, one or another of the cultists would fall to the ground and writhe. A pile of wood had been arranged beneath Edison, and now—at a shouted order from Bromley—the group began collecting kindling from a nearby heap and stacking it beneath the second, empty tripod.

It was all too obvious what they were planning to do.

Now Skip saw someone attach a thin steel cable to the straps tying his ankles. He stared at the tented pile of wood at the base of the empty tripod. He saw the other tripod, with Edison’s carcass still hanging from it. A strange lassitude came over him as two naked women, smeared in red ocher and holding burning torches, circled the pile of wood beneath Edison’s corpse and set fire to it.

Now the drugs, or poison, or whatever Skip had been given truly started taking hold. Colors became brighter, the hum of chanting drilled into his brain. The ground seemed to shift. And the dreamy sensation that suffused his brain began to quell his anxiety and fear, replacing them with a dull sensation of uncaring acceptance.

He heard a low, hissing chant slowly fill the air like steam. The flames leapt up and he saw the sparks, distorted and hallucinatory, begin to whirl into the night sky.

52

NORA CROUCHED BEHINDa fallen cottonwood, watching with rising panic the activity on the top of the mesa. She and Corrie had decided on a plan, split up, and gotten in position—but just as they were about to execute, Skip had unexpectedly been thrown down into the dark hole of what appeared to be an underground kiva.

Nora felt an excruciating anxiety: they might be killing him in the kiva as she and Corrie helplessly waited. Corrie, as per the plan, was in position on the other side of the mesa, and there was no way to contact her or alter their plan. All Nora could do—with bitter irony—was to hope the second tripod had been erected for Skip. Because that meant they’d have to bring him back up—alive. And when they did, she’d be ready.

She clutched Corrie’s Glock in her hand, the rubber grips slick with sweat. Like most people who had grown up on a ranch in the West, she’d fired many a gun, but she’d never fired a Glock. She reminded herself that the goal wasn’t to kill anyone, but to create a distraction and uproar that would allow Corrie to carry out her part of the plan.

She waited, heart thudding painfully. Full night had fallen.It was moonless, and an infinitude of stars covered the sky. She could hear the gurgle of the Gallina River, the summer frogs croaking, the crickets trilling. A rising wind was stirring the cottonwoods. All her senses were on full alert.

And then, to her enormous relief, she saw—through the flickering firelight—a figure haul Skip out of the kiva and throw him to the ground beside the second tripod. Her relief quickly turned to horror as she saw the fire being lit under the first tripod, tongues of flame leaping up almost immediately.

Now was the time to act. When Corrie heard her gunshots, she’d know what to do.

Nora ran at a crouch toward the base of the mesa, then started up the slope, scrambling with one hand through the rocks and brush while gripping the Glock in the other, moving as fast as she could. The chanting, and the gusting wind, covered any noise she made, but she had no light and the ground was pitch black. She fell once, slamming her knee into the dirt; got up; kept on at a limp; fell again. Her lungs were burning. But she ignored this, just as she ignored the pain in her knee: all her thoughts were on Skip and what they were about to do to him.

She slowed as she approached the lip of the mesa, taking cover behind a sandstone block and making a recon of the ritual or whatever the hell was taking place. She could hear more chanting and humming. The fire under Nash’s body was quickly mounting, being whipped back and forth in the rising wind and throwing off a yellow glow that flickered and danced over the ground. The figure in white had also reappeared, and she could see Skip lying on the ground, dazed, as a red-painted man strapped his ankles to a cable that had been flung over the second tripod. The bastards were about to hoist him up as well.

She couldn’t get any closer without revealing herself—but shewas close enough now. And if she managed to hit one, so much the better. She raised the gun, aimed it at the figure in red, decided he was too close to Skip, and turned instead to the figure in white. But he was a moving shadow on the far side of the firelight. Other figures were even farther away, but much closer to her was the litter that had been paraded around earlier. At this distance, it was a bizarre sight indeed: the withered corpse of a man, sitting cross-legged in a lotus position atop a plinth or platform.

Apparently, it was an object of veneration. Whatever the hell it was, it made a perfect target.

She aimed at the center of the figure, applied steady pressure to the trigger. The noise of the gunshot was incredibly loud, drowning out the low chanting and humming. There was an explosion of dust and the figure was knocked forward, the head snapping off the body like a dry stick and rolling off the plinth, leaving a trail of papery bits behind.

The effect on the cultists was instantaneous. They froze in place, alert, as the echoes of the shot reverberated about the canyon.

She aimed at the figure again and fired, this time striking its shoulder and sending up another cloud of dust and confetti-like streamers.

This second shot had the effect she and Corrie had hoped for: emerging from their shock, the cultists realized they were being fired upon, and they freaked out, running every which way, some falling to the ground in their eagerness to find cover.

Corrie had warned her she only had fifteen rounds in the magazine and to not shoot off the whole wad at once, but nevertheless she fired a third time, aiming at a figure that was fleeing in her direction. He spun around as the round hit him, then fell with a scream. This had a further galvanizing effect. And now she saw Corrie come up over the far side of the mesa, wearingthe night-vision goggles. Like a ghost in the flickering firelight, she raced over to where Skip was lying dazed and—using Nora’s knife—sliced the bindings from his ankles and hands, loosened the cable, and pulled him to his feet.

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