Kachina

by Rada, J. R.

  He ran down the passageway and jumped over Lou’s body. He scrambled on his hands and knees up the mountain of boulders. Halfway up, he slipped and slid back three feet among a small avalanche of boulders. Part of the mountain exploded above him and he held his hands up to his face to protect it from flying shards of rock.

  He rolled to his side to go around the side of the mountain. As he did, his flashlight shined briefly on the two pale men at the entrance to the chamber. One of them fired another lightning bolt at him as he rolled around the side.

  CHAPTER 48

  Sarah kissed David goodbye at the door to his apartment. It was their first kiss and it was as exciting as if it had been her first kiss. It was almost like she thought everything would work out somehow. Wouldn’t they? Sarah wished she could be certain. She was sorry that the evening was ending, she and David had talked almost constantly on the long trip back to Blanding. However, once he passed by the sipapu, David fell uncomfortably silent.

  “Don’t worry,” Sarah said when she pulled away. “We’ll find a way to convince Sheriff Harding.”

  He still looked exhausted from the long trip back from Oraibi, and she knew she was tired. Because she had had to watch her grandfather’s body, her sleep schedule was totally fouled up. She needed to get back on a regular sleep pattern so that she could think straight.

  David smiled and kissed her again. “You’re not going to sleep next to the highway again, are you?”

  “Yes, but it’s all right. I’ll be all right.”

  David took out his credit card and handed it to her. “Go to a hotel and just sign the credit card slip ‘Mrs. David Purcell.’“

  Sarah handed the card back to him. “I don’t need a hotel room. I’ve got a tent and blanket, and I know how to make a fire. What else do I need?” It wasn’t that she actually wanted to sleep out in the desert, but she didn’t want to feel indebted to David at least not until she was certain how things would work out.

  “You need a locked door to help keep the Bow Clan away from you if they decide to finish what they started last week. You can’t stay out there alone. If you don’t want a hotel, you can stay here.” Sarah stiffened and pulled away from him. “I don’t mean...I’ll sleep on the couch. I just don’t think it’s safe for you to be out in the open with the Bow Clan running around.”

  Sarah sighed and leaned forward and kissed him again. Then she took the credit card. “I’ll stay in a hotel.”

  David watched Sarah walk down the stairs to the driveway. She paused at the door and turned back to wave to him. He waved back, then closed his door.

  Sarah headed for David’s car, which was parked on the street. As she reached into her pocket for David’s car key, she heard someone running toward her. For a moment, she thought it might be David rushing to tell her something she had forgotten. She turned and thought she was seeing a ghost, but it was a man. A very pale-white man in a black-and-red tunic. He had his hands outstretched and was reaching for her throat.

  Sarah’s swung her fist holding the keys sticking out between the fingers. The charging man ran right into her fist. As she swung, the keys tore into the man’s cheek. She hadn’t lived in the white man’s world without learning a few tricks about defending herself. She saw blood on the pale man’s face. At least it was red blood and not some odd shade of pink.

  The Bow Clansman screamed and grabbed his face. His momentum carried him right past her and he fell into a gardenia bush at the corner of the driveway and the sidewalk. Sarah started running toward she car as fast as she could.

  She fumbled with the lock on the Corolla’s door trying to unlock it. The Bow Clansman ran toward her again.

  Sarah got the car door open and jumped into the driver’s seat. She tried to close the door, but the pale man pulled at it from the outside. If she let go of the door and tried to scramble out the other side, the Bow Clansman would pull open the door and grab her before she could get out the other side.

  “Help!” she screamed.

  She hoped David would hear her, but she would have been happy to see anyone at that moment.

  The pale man yanked the door hard and wrenched it from her grip.

  “Someone help!” Sarah screamed again as she tried to scramble into the passenger’s seat and get out the other door.

  The Bow Clansman reached into the car and grabbed Sarah by her calf and began to pull her back across the seats. Sarah kicked at him, but her kicks didn’t seem to hurt him.

  Then suddenly the pale men screamed and fell in between the open door and front windshield. He staggered, then regained his balance and turned to see what had struck him.

  Sarah saw David through the window holding a bat and waving it at the Bow Clansman.

  “Get back to the Third World, you devil!” David yelled in Hopi.

  The Bow Clansman backed away from the car with David following him.

  “Go back to Hell where you came from!”

  David swung the bat. The pale man ducked and the bat smashed into the back window of a nearby pickup truck. As the bat passed over the man’s head, he rushed at David and tackled him. David dropped the bat and grabbed at the man. Their hands were locked around each other’s throats with each man trying to choke the other. The pale man lifted David’s head off the ground and repeatedly slammed it back against the ground. David tried to push him away, but he wasn’t strong enough.

  The Bow Clansman let go of David and Sarah screamed when she saw David lying still on the ground. The Bow Clansman approached her cautiously. She was too terrified to try to run anymore. Besides, what good would it do? David was dead. Her grandfather was dead. There was nothing to hold her in either the white man’s world or the Hopi’s world.

  The Bow Clansman grabbed her with his left hand. With his right hand, he touched his bleeding cheek. Then he backhanded her across the face.

  Sarah’s vision blurred and then went black as she passed out.

  CHAPTER 49

  The first thing that David realized when he regained consciousness was that his throat hurt. Every time he breathed in, he felt a pain that encircled his entire neck. He got his hands underneath himself and pushed himself to his knees. He swayed unsteadily, but he didn’t fall.

  He wondered why no one on the street. The street had been crowded with people when Terrie was killed and she had lived on the edge of Blanding. David lived near the center of Monticello.

  The Bow Clansman was gone at least. Had something scared him off? Why hadn’t he killed David?

  “Sarah,” David called in barely more than a whisper.

  He staggered to his feet and looked around. The door to his new car was open, but Sarah was nowhere to be seen.

  The Bow Clansman had taken her!

  David staggered to his car and climbed in. As he sat down inside, he saw Sarah. At first, he thought she had simply appeared from a hiding place and was coming toward him, but then David realized he was seeing through the eyes of the Bow Clansman again.

  Sarah was alive, but she looked terrified as the Bow Clansman dragged her toward a hole in the ground. He was taking her to Kuskurza to serve as a breeder since there were very few women with the Bow Clan any longer. And David was the reason why. He was the one who had convinced Ma´saw to raid the breeding chambers and recapture the women.

  David had to get to Sarah before the Bow Clansman took her to the central temple. Once there, he would never be able to get her out. She would be at the mercy of the dark kachinas.

  David started his car and roared down the road heading for the entrance to the cave on Highway 191. He hoped he would be in time.

  CHAPTER 50

  Gary paused in his run through the cave and doused his flashlight beam. Had he heard them, whoever they were, pursuing him? A flashlight beam illuminated the wall near him and he ducked back. How had they gotten in front of him?

  He heard a woman grunting. Had there been a woman among the group that attacked his friends? He couldn’t remember, but he thought
they had all been men.

  Maybe it was Christine. He shook his head. No, there was no way Christine could have gotten in front of him. And besides, this woman’s voice was deeper than Christine’s.

  Gary stayed hidden between two stalacites. As long as they didn’t see him, he was happy.

  He waited for the noises to pass, then he continued on trying to make as little noise as possible. In another two miles, he entered the main passages; the ones he was most familiar with. He ran as hard as he could from chamber four to chamber one. He hadn’t run so hard since his high school days when he had been on the track team. He didn’t even worry about tripping in some small hole. He just ran.

  Gary jumped onto the nylon ladder and was scurrying up it before it even stopped swaying. His feet slipped off the rungs three times because he was so tired, but he managed to hold on long enough to regain his footing. Gary prayed the pale men wouldn’t catch him on the ladder. He’d be a sitting duck for those lightning bolts they shot.

  He pulled himself onto the ground outside the caverns. He was out of breath, but he couldn’t stop to rest. Pushing the button on the front of the truck, the winch began rolling in the nylon rope. Gary ran back to the edge of the hole and began pulling up the ladder as fast as he could. He had only pulled up a few feet of the ladder when he felt a sharp increase in weight that would have jerked him back into the hole if he hadn’t let go of the rung he was holding.

  Gary didn’t even have to look into the hole to know what had happened. One of the pale men was on the ladder and climbing toward him. They must have doubled back and found the path he had taken.

  Gary pulled out his knife and began sawing at the nylon. A yellow bolt of lightning flew out of the hole. Gary kept sawing. As a second bolt struck the edge of the hole, Gary cut through one of the two nylon ropes of the ladder. He immediately began cutting at the second nylon rope. A third yellow bolt flew from the hole as Gary cut the final cord.

  The three feet of ladder that showed above the hole quickly disappeared. He fell back on the ground and tried to catch his breath. He hoped he was having a nightmare that he would wake up from soon.

  “Mr. Morse?”

  Gary rolled away from the sound of the voice. He rolled himself into a crouch and he held the knife ready to charge whoever had startled him. Then he saw who it was. David Purcell.

  “What are you doing here?” Gary shook his head. “Never mind. I’ve got to grab my gun and get back down there. Christine may be in trouble.”

  David stepped closer to Gary and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Calm down. I know what’s going on down there. I think we can help each other if you calm down.”

  Gary took a deep breath. “What do you mean you know what’s going on down there? I saw it and I don’t even know what’s going on.”

  “I remembered what happened to me when I was lost down there.”

  Gary spoke quickly, his voice bordering on the edge of hysteria. “Two pale-skinned men came out of the water by the sump. They killed Jared. Billy Joe, Ryan, and Lou are dead, too. They were dead when Jared and I got to the sump, but Christine is still down there.”

  “The men who killed your friends are part of a group called the Bow Clan. They attacked me at my apartment a little while ago and kidnapped Sarah,” David told the caver.

  Gary gasped. “Then it was a female I heard.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I heard a woman trying to scream in the caves, but I thought she was one of the people who killed my friends so I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know it was your girlfriend.”

  “I need you to show me where the pale-skinned men came out of the water. I’ve got to get Sarah away from them before they get her to the central temple.”

  “What happens at the temple?” Gary wanted to know.

  “She’ll either be raped by the Bow Clan or killed by the dark kachinas. I hope it will be neither if I’m quick enough.”

  Gary didn’t know what a kachina was, but he could tell by David’s tone it wasn’t anything good.

  “If they’ve got Christine, they’ll do the same thing to her, won’t they?” Gary asked.

  David nodded. Gary turned and ran towards the RV.

  “If we’re going down there, we’ll need some protection, and you’ll need to wear something heavier than that T-shirt. There’s some clothes in here. Get changed into a pair of coveralls fast. I’ll gather the other things we’ll need,” Gary said as he seemed to regain his senses.

  “Pack some food, too. It takes a long time to get where we’re going,” David advised him.

  “How long?” Gary wanted to know.

  “About a week.”

  Gary’s mouth fell open. He didn’t know why he was surprised. He had always suspected the caves might be the longest in the world, but one week! That was unimaginable, even for him.

  While David changed into coveralls and boots, Gary quickly packed two backpacks. He filled one with light sticks, two pistols, a box of ammunition, a detonator, and five pounds of plastic explosives, they used to seal dangerous caverns. Into the second, he dumped canned and dried food along with some Milky Way bars for energy.

  David saw what the first backpack was filled with and said, “It looks like we’re preparing for a war.”

  “Aren’t we? I saw what they shot Jared with. I don’t want to be caught off guard. And if this central temple is as bad as it sounds, I don’t want it left standing when we leave.”

  Gary was so angry he could barely keep from screaming. All his friends were dead. He had led them here for an adventure, and they had wound up getting killed. He wanted revenge, but more importantly, if Christine was alive, he wanted to get her out of there. If he could do that, he would never go back down in a cave again.

  “We don’t really have a choice. Things would only be worse if we blow it up,” David said.

  He shouldered his pack and shoved the pistol into one of his pockets. Gary carried his pack outside and David followed. He lowered David into the caverns on the winch rope. Then he slid down the rope controlling his speed through leg pressure on the nylon rope and using a hand-over-hand grip.

  “They were right behind me a few minutes ago,” Gary said when he let go of the rope. “They may still be nearby. You had better keep your pistol ready. We may need it.”

  Hang on, Christine. I’m coming for you.

  CHAPTER 51

  When the Bow Clansmen came to take Christine from her small room, Christine knew she would not return to the stone room that had served as her cell for the past few hours. Christine could see it in the eyes of the other women as they watched the two Bow Clansmen lead her away. She walked between the two men and watched as a few of the women cried. Others simply looked at her then looked away as if she didn’t exist.

  Christine had expected something like this would happen to her. She considered it a blessing because she would gladly die so long as she didn’t have to stay in this hell any longer. Six hours was already too long. She couldn’t even understand the language of these people. They spoke like Indians, but they looked like albinos with their white skin and white hair. And this gigantic chamber they lived in resembled the Mayan cities in Mexico near the center and the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi at the edges.

  It was an anthropologist’s dream nightmare at the same time.

  The men that had captured her had taken her directly to one of four small pyramids near the center of the chamber. They had carried her down a hallway lined with doors. The men had ripped her coveralls off of her, and she thought she was about to be raped. Instead, one of the men had opened a door and she had been thrown into a small room about the size a bathroom. Except for the small opening in the door, there were no windows, and the walls were made of stone, which was especially cold on her bare skin. A globe that looked like an electric light dimly lit the room. The room was empty except for a thin mattress lying on the floor.

  Only a few minutes after Christine had been thro
wn into the room, the door was unlocked and a man stepped inside. Christine covered herself with her hands as the man looked up and down her body. When he took off his clothes, Christine started screaming. She fought him as hard as she could. She hadn’t worried about being hurt or killed because she knew she was never going to see the sun again. She had scratched and bit the man, but in the end, he had succeeded in raping her. When he finished, he stood up and left without ever having said a word.

  A few minutes later, another man came, and the whole scene repeated itself. And again, a short time later. Christine fought them every time they came. At times, she told herself to stop fighting. It wasn’t worth the trouble and the extra pain it caused her, but then she told herself it was either a lot of pain now or less pain stretched over a number of years. It wasn’t a hard decision for her to reach.

  She would not allow herself to become a slave, and so her captors had quickly decided to take her away to wherever they took those people who resisted. She didn’t struggle when they came to take her from her cell. It didn’t matter where they were taking her.

  She was glad it was nearly over.

  The first Bow Clansman opened a large door at the end of a hallway within the largest pyramid. The two men leading Christine stopped walking and pushed her into the dark room. She managed to maintain her balance to keep from falling. She turned as the doors closed but did not try to rush toward them. They obviously meant to leave her in here.

  With the doors closed, the room was absolutely dark like a cave. At least her cell had had a little light. Judging from the size of the door, she guessed the room was large. It had to be as large as the doors and they had been larger than her cell. She turned around in a slow circle wondering what was supposed to

  happen to her here. Were there other people in the room with her? Other people who had resisted becoming slaves?