Rajaneeshee Revival

Jaina's shoulder pitched against the window as the Cessna dipped a wing. Her gaze fell to the pyramid roof of a fire-watchtower far below.

"That's Pisgah." Clyde let the steering yolk drift back to neutral and the plane righted itself. "Service doesn't man it no more. Spot fires from the air now."

"They don't man any of them anymore." Jaina's voice was wistful. "There was one up Applegate when I was a girl. My brothers and I would race our Hondas up to it. Sometimes the fire-watch, Toney, he'd let us up on deck. What a view. I loved it. I wanted to be him."

"Well, you're on the right track--" Clyde poked the Oregon Fish and Wildlife badge on the shoulder of her khaki shirt. "--and you're fresher than a new coat of paint. Plenty of time for the service to cook up some lonely backwoods post before you retire."

"He gave me a knife once. Not much more than a toy." She fished a pinkie sized tool from her pocket. "Said, 'No ranger should be without a knife.' I was twelve." She thumbed the worn, dark-wood hilt. Her voice faded. "Seems forever ago." Jaina shoved the blade back in her pocket.

"That's cool, but aren't y' supposed to be counting sheep?"

"California Bighorn. We're tryin' to decide if we can export any. California's wiped out their population with their no hunting policies, again."

"Okay, sure, but if you're going to count them, you'd better get that fancy equipment o' yours rolling. We'll be over Poison Spring soon. Seen a good few round there."

Jaina opened her laptop. The wide spectrum camera upon the underbelly of the plane blinked on. Virtual film rolled. Near red, far red and ultra-violet picked out details on her laptop for closer examination.

Jaina tapped the screen. "What's that?"

"What's what? I'm drivin'. Can't take time off t' be using electronics. What you want me to do, pull over and park?"

Jaina rolled her eyes. "What's that?" She pointed towards the lower right corner of the windshield. "Looks like a camp. Maybe a mine? Is there a mine at Poison Spring?"

"Not that I've heard of." The plane dipped. "Let's take a closer look."

"There's buildings. And four-wheelers. That's a sluice, I'm sure of it."

"Holy Hell! Is he--"

A stone on glass crack sounded. The windshield spider-webbed about a pebble sized hole. The plane fell into a steep dive. Pines, a picket of green spears, lanced up to challenge their return to Earth.

"What the hell? Clyde? Clyde!"

Clyde piled into the console. His eyes possessed that unnerving gelatin quality she'd first seen after she took her first buck. The hole in his forehead made for a gruesome beauty mark.

Jaina reached for the controls. Nothing happened. Terror opened its razored maw and swallowed her heart. Stretching as far as her harness would permit, Jaina hooked Clyde's steering yolk with her fingers.

The plane resisted correction. The cacophony of torn treetops joined her caterwaul scream. The steep plunging mountain-slope delayed Earth's stony embrace.

Only for a blink. A wall of sun baked grass and crumbled stone rose before her. The plane struggled through a desperate U but kissed the wall of the valley V on its upward climb.

A loud bang and the prop spun away. Rock roared. Metal screamed. Jaina's harness arrested her flight into the windshield and slammed her back with enough force to knock her silly. An explosion of glass etched bloody seams in exposed flesh. Sand, stone and gravel blasted through the vacated windshield space. The plane upended itself upon its nose but its forward momentum spent, it teetered for a frozen heartbeat and crashed to its belly.

Jaina's heart restarted. She spit dirt from her mouth and sucked in a ragged breath. Blood, thick with earth, eroded a path past one eye. Time distorted as her brain grappled with the reality that she was still alive.

Help. She needed help. Her fingers clawed through the dust choked air to the radio. The mic keyed up and squawked, proclaiming it too lived.

"Mayday." The word was a whisper. She wetted the dust caking her mouth and spit out the mud. "Mayday! Plane down--" A murky memory pulled at her sluggish mind. "--west of Poison Spring. I -- uh -- pilot deceased. Mayday!" Nothing but static responded.

State Police? Forest Service? Channels she'd once known by heart had all bled from her head. Klamath Air Force Station? Her eyes wandered the cabin as if expecting to see missing bits of gray matter splattered upon the ceiling. She let the radio seek.

Click. "Get up there and make sure there's no survivors." Squawk!

Click. "Survivors? No one sur--" Fuhzz. "Besides, what's it matter. They're goin' t' come lookin' for that plane anyhow. We need to get out o' here." Fuhzzz, click.

Click. "You questionin' orders? Get up there! Need to know how much time we have."

Click. "Gee, General, 'k'. On it." Click.

Adrenalin threw Jaina against her harness-restraints. Both buckles locked. Precious seconds bled by as she carved a strap open with the miniscule blade of her knife.

She wedged the gift back in her pocket and wiggled her battered body from confines of the second restraint. Heels to door bust open the exit. She tumbled from the plane, wrest the survival pack under her seat free and crawled beyond the wreck.

Jaina's eyes scanned for cover but not even a deer could've hid upon the east facing slopes of the Ochoco Badlands. It was nothing but sparse, desert grass and broken stone. Down and up again there were pines however a motor-cross whine announced itself from that direction. Uphill defeated her battered body within three strides so she scrambled, slipped and slid north, side-hilling the steep ravine.

Jaina made it no more than a few hundred paces when the arrival of predators was announced by an engine scream and rooster-tail of scree. A man kneeled on the handlebars of his four-wheeler to prevent his ride from rolling on its back. A motor-cross bike came into view on his far side.

She dropped to her breast amongst the porcupine grass and prayed her dirt foundation would hide her.

The men disembarked by the wreckage. Jaina bit her lip to cap the terror whimper that pressured up within her when one of the men unslung a low caliber semi-automatic of the kind designed to punch a lot of holes in a person.

"General was right. There was a second narc." The speaker stood. His gaze trailed from the busted cabin door, to the up-slope scuff marks and back down to the path she'd taken. The loose earth upon the desert slope proclaimed every mark of her struggled passage.

Her nerves sparked with the fight not to take flight.

"Looks like they called for help, too."

"Fuck, how can you tell that?"

"Paw prints on the CB. We'd better call the General."

The tracker took a pace towards her, his eyes scanning. "You do that. I've got a rabbit to run down." He broke off his hunt and strode for his four-wheeler.

Jaina scrambled to her knees and tore the contents from the survival pack. She snatched up the flare gun and pack of shells.

"There he is!" A gunfire echo sounded throughout the valley. Dust kicked up a few paces in front of her. Hot pain in her bladder elicited a yelp.

"He's a she!" There was laughter in that man's voice. "Goin' t' run the bitch down." The four-wheeler's engine roared and he charged.

Jaina sprinted straight downhill. Her arms windmilled as she flew off the top of stone outcroppings. She landed twenty, sometimes thirty, paces downslope. Her terrain aided terror was such that only bullets could overtake her.

Near the bottom of the slope, she leapt from a cliff a few strides high. The abrupt disruption of momentum upon slamming to the ravine floor drove Jaina to her knees and brought her jaws together with stone crumbling force.

A bullet drilled the creek-bed but a stride from where she kneeled. She dove back into the shelter of the cliff and tore at the package of flairs. Fusees scattered at her feet. The four-wheeling predator tore around the uphill end of the cliff. She slammed a shell into the breach of her plastic pistol. She fired.

The magnesium missile burnt a blinding trail past the man's shoulder.

He flinched-- "Fuck!" --and bore down on the throttle.

Jaina slammed a second shell into the smoking breach and leveled her gun. She cycled an unsteady breath.

The man raised his sidearm.

Jaina's finger jerked. The explosion of force blew the militiaman off his ride. Rabid with pain, he screamed and raked his flesh where the molten projectile burnt into his chest.

"That wasn't very nice, girlie," a voice said from above.

Jaina looked up and took a boot in the face. A man-weight slammed her chin first into the dead creek. She jammed a hand in her pocket as a knee planted in her spine. Her assailant's fist tangled in her ponytail and he ripped her head off the ground. Cold metal pressed into her temple.

"Fight, and I'll blow your brains out."

Terror pissed what remained of her strength from her frame.

"Yes, that's the way."

He let go. Her face slapped into the dirt and gravel bit he cheeks. Her hand was ripped from her pocket and bound to its mirror with something that cut like fishing leader. A whimpered cry escaped her lips.

"Quite you." He kicked her as he stood. He strode over to his prone companion. "Damn. You killed him."

"You--" A ragged gasp interrupted her. "--killed Clyde."

"The pilot? That was General Rod," the bearded predator said. He came back to her and wrest her to her feet. "I get your drift though, but your Clyde, he weren't a believer." He wrestled her onto the still idling four-wheeler. He threw the dead-man in her lap.

Bile rose in her throat as the miasma of barbequed flesh assaulted her nose. She thrust backwards off her seat. The barrel of a gun planted itself in the back of her head.

"Get on there and hold him."

"My hands are tied!" Tears cut a muddy trail alongside her blood. "Behind my back!"

"If Shawn falls off, so do you. You won't be getting' up."

A burble, burp, cauldron, miasma horror burnt her throat. Her face twisted, she sidled back onto the four-wheeler.

Her captor shoved the corpse back in her lap. He saddled up tight behind her. "No funny business." He pushed the throttle up to a labored crawl towards the trees.

"What you going to do with me?"

"Me? Nothing. Maybe have a little fun. Rod, he'll convert or kill you."

"I've done nothing!"

"You killed Shawn."

"In self-defense!"

"Won't matter. Shawn was a true believer."

"Believer in what?" Alternating tremors of terror and anger wracked her body.

"Rajneeshee Revival."

"Rajneeshee. As in The Rajneesh? From the eighties?"

"That's him. You Oregon assholes drove us out of this country once before. This time we won't be leaving. The prophet's son has returned. "

"Oh fuck! You bastards are warped!"

"Save it for the General. Speaking of the General, looks like he's waiting for you."

They'd ridden into a mine camp staffed by more than two dozen men. They all turned their rabid gazes upon her. A ball of earthworms came to life in her stomach. The demon rage in the gaze of the man standing by the sole, ramshackle cabin brought those worms climbing up her throat. He had to be the General.

Her captor shoved her from their ride at the General's feet. With her hands tied, she belly-flopped. She just managed to avoid slamming her face into the handlebars of a laid-over, Honda CR250.

The General grabbed a fistful of her hair, dragged her screaming to her feet and threw her though the door of the cabin.

She slammed breast to floor. She kicked over and crab scrambled from the advancing terror until her back pitched up against a wall. General Rod drew his side arm and pointed at her forehead.

"A life for a life."

"No! Please! It was self-defense!" Terrible, dark despair drown her lungs and flooded her eyes. "Our -- our Father..."

Aircraft thunder, low overhead, stayed the executioner. The muzzle of the General's gun drifted towards the ceiling.

Without his devil-fire eyes cowing her, fight flooded her veins. Touch-dead fingers pried open the blade in her fist. Skin and fishing-leader separated. The stab of renewed circulation sliced her hands. She panted with pain.

With her gasp, the General's attention snapped back to Jaina. He clicked off the safety at the same time her boot drove into his balls. She rolled to her feet and bull-rushed him into the wall. Her teeth sank into his forearm and he bellowed. His Browning released into her hand.

Jaina's four-wheeling captor lunged from his place guarding the exit and took five bullets. She body slammed his still falling corpse as she dodged out the door. The CR250 came off the ground with a yank and kicked alive on the first try. The rear wheel tore a furrow in the earth as she launched up-slope.

Men roared, engines screamed and guns barked in her wake. She wove a desperate, breakneck thread from pine to face lashing pine. She pinned her leg hard up against a log, took a bullet to her gas tank but launched the bike in a parallel path before pursuit arrived. She mounted Mt. Pisga with a thirty stride lead over her closest pursuer.

As she crested the mountain, Jaina's bike launched into the air. She leapt from her motor-cross straight up to the first landing of the watch-tower. She pitched up against the hand rail and sprinted up the next flight of stairs. Jaina burst through the upper gate.

An African skinned man, bald but bearded with tight white curls, half rose from his seat upon the deck.

"My, my, what is this ruckus? What can I help you with, girlie?"

A lightning-bolt jolt momentarily locked Jaina's mind in an infinite loop. The whine of off-road vehicles and a hard mental reset brought her back to the reality.

"Toney. Toney! Rajneeshee Revival--" She waved her gun. "--they're back! They killed Clyde! Radio help!"

Toney pushed shells into the breach of the over-under upon his lap. "Who's Clyde?"

"My pilot." The sounds of pursuit grew louder. She trained her pistol on the trees bristling from the west slope of the mountain. "They're coming! Toney, now! Call for help."

"'Fraid I can't do that, Jaina."

She spun around. He leveled his shotgun on her head. They locked eyes and she wilted.

"No." Her utterance was lost in a four-wheeler growl as it tore up to the base of the stair. A Cessna buzzed by in the air and then bore off towards a dust cloud, backlit with blue and red, racing the road from the east.

"Sorry 'bout this. Shouldn't hurt none. Tell God, Toney made it quick." Sirens, megaphone voices and the clatter of boots upon stairs nearly drown him out.

Tears streamed down Jaina's face. A gun bellowed.

Toney staggered back. Jaina pulled the trigger of the General's Browning until it elicited an empty click. Four shots, four holes in Toney's heart.

A Revival Militiaman burst through the gate. "Fuck! Shawn, Ron, Toney! I'm going to blast you a new hole, bitch!"

His semi-automatic came up. Jaina ducked behind her hands. Below, a rifle bellowed. The militia man pitched to the floor beside her.

More weapons barked. Bullets salted patrol cars and four-wheelers alike. The Revival held for a one gasp war. When silence reigned, Jaina tripped down the stairs and gave herself up to the welcome custody of the Oregon State Police.