Page 93 of Badlands

“Shut her up!” cried Bromley.

They smacked her and kicked her as she lay on the ground, but she continued to fight and shriek, drowning out the chanting.

“Put her in the kiva!” Bromley yelled.

Now two of the figures dragged her once again to the rough, round opening and dumped her in, hands and feet still tied. She hit the dirt floor below with a violent impact, briefly stunning her. Then, almost against her will, she swam back into consciousness—as Skip’s cries and pleadings drifted down from above.

59

CORRIE WATCHED ASNora, screaming and fighting, was thrown into the kiva. Skip was now hanging above the pile of wood, trussed up like a deer about to be butchered. He’d stopped pleading and screaming, and she wondered if he’d passed out—mercifully—or if he was just too paralyzed with fear to make any further protest.

That was going to be her fate as well. They’d had a good plan, and they’d executed it well… but it had failed, and now there would be no getting out of this.

The wind had picked up tremendously, roaring and gusting down the canyon, tearing at the fire and sending embers streaming off into the darkness. If only she’d waited to make voice contact with Watts before heading out of cell range. If only she’d told Sharp about her plan.If only, if only. Even if she had—even if by some chance law enforcement had deduced where she was, deduced what dire straits they were all in—she felt certain no rescue chopper could fly in this weather.

Now two of the brutes approached Skip, wielding obsidian knives. Jesus Christ, she thought in horror, recalling theappearance of Edison Nash’s body before it was burnt.They’re going to flay him alive. One gripped his torso while the other sliced off his baggy shirt, tossing aside the pieces and exposing his pasty white chest. This roused Skip again, and he began shouting and twisting, pleading incoherently as he writhed.

Was this really happening? It felt like a dream—a ghastly, unreal nightmare. It had to be a nightmare—something this awful didn’t happen in real life. It was found in only the darkest recesses of subconsciousness…

With Skip’s shirt off, one of the cultists steadied the flailing body, gripping it hard in order to make the job easier, while the other ran a thumb along the edge of his knife, testing it for sharpness. Then he approached the upside-down figure, raising his knife hand and readying it for a cut down Skip’s back.

Corrie turned away, unable to watch such cruelty, such pure evil.

60

FROM TIME TOtime during his life, Watts had been plagued by a recurring nightmare: of being trapped in a fire, paralyzed and unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to cry out for help, as the flames crept closer… but this time, as he swam back into consciousness, he realized this was no nightmare: he was in a real fire and couldn’t move.

It came back to him in a rush: the turbulence, the sandstorm, the crash. And now, behind him, fed like a blast furnace by the wind, was the fire—and he was trapped. It was uncannily like the dream: no matter how he thrashed, he seemed to be bound up, paralyzed, unable to gain traction.

And then, as both consciousness and reason fully returned, he realized he was suspended in the air, hanging from straps and webbing. He stopped thrashing uselessly about and fumbled around for a buckle, found one, and unlatched it. But that wasn’t enough; he was still tangled up in webbing as the unbearable heat of the fire drew closer.

In desperation he felt around for the handle of his fixed-blade knife, pulled it out, and slashed at the webbing. He freed himself,falling to the padded metal beneath. He sat up and looked around through the smoke, gaining situational awareness. There was another person—Sharp—also caught up in the webbing. Watts crawled over and, with another swipe of his knife, released him from the nylon web. The man fell to the ground, conscious but dazed.

Choking on the acrid smoke, Watts seized Sharp under the shoulders and dragged him out of the wreckage, upwind, to a safe distance from the brutal heat of the fire. One of Sharp’s legs was twisted at an odd angle.

He left Sharp and went back into the wrecked chopper, which was lying on its side. He saw that the fire had started in the engine housing and was propagating fast in the blowtorch wind. At any moment it would reach the fuel tanks and the damn thing would explode. The pilot, still in the cockpit, was horribly mangled and clearly dead. What about the others? As he cast around, he saw a hulking figure stagger out of the smoke, walk several feet, then fall to his knees, coughing.

Watts turned his attention back to the wreckage. There were three others in there.

He rushed toward the billowing smoke and climbed in again, holding his breath. Glimpsing another figure through the swirls of ash, Watts freed her and dragged her outside, only to find that, like the pilot, she was mangled and clearly dead. He eased her body down, and as he turned to go back for another, there was a massivewhump, and a blast of heat and pressure threw him to the ground.

In a second, maybe two, the chopper changed from wreckage into a ball of fire. He could feel his own hair crisping as he shielded his face from the wave of heat, so hot that for a minute he thought he might catch fire himself. But the explosionsubsided as the wind shredded and whipped the fire downwind and away from him.

Watts rose, then fell back onto his knees, gasping for breath through a seared throat. He managed to get back to his feet and saw Sharp and the other survivor huddled in the lee of a rock, shielding themselves from the explosion. He managed to stagger over. Sharp was on the ground, wincing in pain.

“Think he’s got a broken leg,” said the man who’d managed to stagger out—before passing out.

“It’s fine,” said Sharp through gritted teeth. It clearly wasn’t fine. “You okay, Watts?”

“Yes.”

The two of them stared for a long, awful moment at the flaming wreckage.

“Son of a bitch,” said Sharp in a choked voice. “We just lost four good people.”

Watts had no words. He simply stared at the flaming wreckage. What a catastrophe. And Corrie… she and Nora were trapped in the canyon, probably with Skip and the other guy. Given the fact her cell phone had been deliberately destroyed, he had no illusions about her situation. Watts’s mind began, unbidden, to count off the doomsday cults he knew of—Jim Jones, Heaven’s Gate, the Branch Davidians. When they killed themselves, they inevitably took innocents with them.

He collapsed on his back, groaning, energy gone. The wind was screaming along the ground, gravel pelting and lacerating him like buckshot. He was forced to close his eyes and shield his face with his arm. He cursed out loud the crash, his helplessness, the loss of life, his fear for Corrie.

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