The Gorge

by Scott Nicholson

  The woods had a rich, earthy smell, almost that of a corpse. The smell had grown stronger and more primal the further up the steep trail they’d hiked. The group had debarked at a popular scenic overlook, where rubbers and beer cans were the most significant signs of wildlife, but they hadn’t met any fellow hikers in the last two hours. The casual outdoors enthusiasts rarely ventured into this kind of terrain, which had made it all the more appealing to the ProVentures marketing department.

  “We’ll be at the falls in an hour,” Bowie said, not shouting but in a firm enough voice that everyone could hear, even Farrengalli. “Don’t worry about bonuses. We’ll all do fine once we make it out of here alive.”

  Raintree smiled to himself. The guide had said “once” instead of “if.” Raintree didn’t really expect anyone to die, but he knew ProVentures wanted to play the whole thing up like some kind of reality show, where a team of rugged individualists had to work together while simultaneously competing to see who was strongest. The company would be disappointed if there wasn’t at least a broken leg out of the trip, though they also wanted to prove the safety of their new inflatable rafts.

  Raintree had drawn short straw and a $2,000 bonus for being one of two lucky “contestants” to carry the raft. The Muskrat was surprisingly light, weighing only four pounds, and was made of a synthetic rubber blend that ProVentures claimed was “the ultimate evolution of the kayak.” Slogans, catchphrases, sucker language. This trip was all about the hype, and if Raintree had to play the “noble savage” yet one more time, that was okay, because this time he had his own agenda.

  He touched the medicine bag at his side. White magic, white medicine.

  He was only half Cherokee, but his father’s side was about as genetically pure as possible, given the tribe’s long and civilized association with the white settlers before President Jackson declared war. Most of the Cherokee that once populated the North Carolina, western Georgia, and eastern Tennessee regions had been rounded up and driven west in an infamous forced march fraught with disease, exhaustion, and death. The Trail of Tears led to a reservation in Oklahoma, which the Cherokee shared with a handful of other Native American tribes. The Cherokee were among the smartest and most adaptable tribes, the first to form a written language in an attempt to negotiate with the federal government. Wisdom and diplomacy didn’t fare well against the U.S. Army’s rifles, yet more proof that the pen was never mightier than the sword. However, not all were relocated, and scattered members of the tribe that called itself Aniyunwiya, “the real human beings,” managed to survive the settlement push.

  Over a century and a half later, the Cherokee still clung to a tiny reservation in western North Carolina, the debt for the tragedy paid in the form of a sparkling gambling casino. Raintree wasn’t bitter about such things. History had rolled over millions of victims, the human tide swept on, and the best one could hope for was to find personal peace. Which was his mission now.

  His Cherokee ancestors had trekked these mountains, had hunted the ridges in the summer, setting up seasonal camps along the river. For a young man, the trip was a challenge of courage, journeying alone for days at a time on a vision quest. Hunger and exhaustion may have contributed to the effect, but the male didn’t return until he had encountered the animal that would serve as his spirit guide. Raintree might never be a warrior, and he was already approaching middle age, but this trip offered him a final chance to follow the distant footsteps of his forefathers.

  Even if he walked with palefaces.

  “Pick up the pace, you guys,” Farrengalli shouted. Raintree hoped the Italian’s own vision quest included a skunk.

  “We’re ahead of schedule,” Bowie said, now some thirty feet behind Raintree but moving again. Dove Krueger was in front of Farrengalli, and Raintree figured the loudmouth was ogling her ass.

  “I want to get camp set up so I can munch some of these dee — licious ProVentures N-R-Gee Bars,” Farrengalli said.

  “‘Nature’s tasty boost,’” said the company man at the head of the group, quoting a television commercial that ran on a series of MTV extreme sports shows.

  “Plenty of time for a campfire, Farrengalli,” Bowie said. “Don’t get your Lycra in a twist.”

  Raintree walked on, wishing he were wearing moccasins instead of five-hundred-dollar custom boots.

  Something was out here, he knew. Call it his medicine, his vision, his destiny. In this forest that was older than his people, older than all people, something waited.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Rook returned minutes, or maybe centuries, later and knelt at the lip of the opening. “Here. I found this at Goodall’s campsite.”

  He tossed a rope into the hole and it bounced off Castle’s shoulder. The rope was about the thickness of a clothesline, but made of threaded nylon and strong. The Rook belayed the rope against a nearby tree trunk and said, “Get a grip, partner.”

  Castle wrapped the rope a couple of times around his palms. At the first tug, the rope tightened and burned his flesh. Castle bit back a grunt of pain. Samford dug his heels into the ground and yanked again. This time Castle wriggled his waist and felt the soil and rocks loosen around him. He slid up a few inches, but more dirt trickled down from the raw slope above. Castle wasn’t sure whether Samford could pull him free before the whole rim of the opening collapsed.

  His boot was hung. He kicked it free, wondering if a tree root had fallen in the hole before he had. He pictured his bootlaces tangled in the wormy white roots. Samford tugged the line again, and hot curls of pain peeled from Castle’s shoulder sockets. This time, he moved upward a good six inches, and now he could move his hips enough to wriggle free.

  “You’re getting there, Rook,” Castle said. Above him, Samford tied off the distance he’d gained, then dug in again and leaned back. Castle eased upward, incongruously imagining he was being squirted from the womb. Only this womb was the cold belly of the Earth, and its progeny was thirty-five years old, a sick sack of blood, bone, and skin. Not old enough yet for day diapers, too young to walk on its own.

  Castle felt himself drop as the rope suddenly went slack. He popped back into his previous position like a cork rammed into the neck of a wine bottle.

  “Damn,” Samford said. “Did you see that?”

  Castle’s breath stalled between his lungs and throat. “Goodall?”

  “Some kind of giant bird.”

  “Well, get me out of here and maybe we can roast its ass for dinner.”

  Samford restored the tension on the rope and once again worked Castle free. A stone the size of a fist tumbled down and bounced off Castle’s chest, dinging the edge of a rib bone. Darkness had taken a bigger bite of the sky, and the air seemed heavier with the deepening night. Castle shivered, wishing he was sitting around the campfire and talking shop with The Rook, going over Goodall’s assessment, planning strategy. Castle was experienced enough to know once a deal started going down, even the most carefully arranged plan gave way to improvisation. That meant instinct and cunning always trumped intelligence, which was probably why Goodall had managed to escape capture so long.

  We’ll see about that, once I get my sorry ass out of this bottleneck.

  Castle’s thighs emerged from the narrow gap that had attempted to suck him underground. He fought to find purchase with his feet, the rope cutting into the soft meat above his wrists. He got one knee out and lodged himself against the moist soil so he wouldn’t slip back into the hole.

  “Keep an eye out for Goodall,” Castle said. “He might be waiting around to put another couple of scalps on his belt.”

  “He’s gone,” Samford said. “I cleared the perimeter when I got the rope.”

  “You’re the profile guy. You know he’s slicker than owl shit.”

  “The assessment says he’s megalomaniacal but he’s not reckless. Hell, he’s a survivor. He’d rather laugh at us tomorrow than risk a showdown today. Every day he avoids capture is another day he achieves cult status i
n the eyes of his anarchist buddies.”

  “They’re not anarchists anymore. We call them ‘terrorists,’ remember?”

  “Yeah. That damned Bin Laden. He’s given a bad name to mass murderers. Now let’s get you out of there and regroup.”

  Samford drew the line taut and Castle tried to draw his other leg from its subterranean snare. Castle thought of the title of an old Rod Stewart album, “Foot Loose and Fancy Free.” Rod, the rooster of rock, the scratchy-voiced poet of Castle’s teen years, going from Scotland plaid to peroxide blond in the blink of an eye. A generation later, Toby Keith gleefully spoke of putting a misogynistic boot in somebody’s ass. You kicked whatever way you could. But Castle couldn’t seem to kick the habit that clung to his shoe leather with all the invisible tenacity of a mutant octopus to an anchor.

  “I’m hung up,” Castle said. He was more annoyed than worried, though he desperately wanted to be out of the hole by full dark. Crickets and other night insects had started their sonorous clicking and chirruping, a sound that was comforting when heard from the back porch, but oddly disturbing in the deep wilderness. Castle could probably reach his Glock if needed, but he’d have to free his right hand first.

  “Let me tie off and maybe I can slide down and help.” Samford’s voice had grown softer, perhaps sensing his words would carry in the relative stillness of the forest. To Goodall’s ragged, off-center ears.

  “You’ll bring a load of loose dirt down on the way. Better let me work it out myself.”

  “Okay. I’ll do a quick reconnaissance.”

  The Rook was Behavioral Sciences all the way, and though he’d undergone the same new agent training as Castle, he was not HRT-tested. Sure, he’d been in a talk-through in a couple of crisis situations, had worked mop-up on serial killer cases, and put in a couple of years twiddling his thumbs in the Department of Homeland Security’s clownfest. But he’d never drawn fire and had never pulled the trigger.

  Castle, a SEALs vet, had gained a grudging respect for The Rook over the last few weeks. Enough respect that he didn’t want his partner to face Goodall alone. If The Rook died because Castle was nailed like a cheerleader on prom night, tripped up by his own stupid feet and carelessness, then it would add yet another shingle to Castle’s spot on the Quantico Wall of Shame. “I’ll be free in a second,” Castle said. “I’m not sure everything works right, so you better stick around.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t hurt.”

  “What did you expect me to say?”

  “That you love me.”

  “Hey, pard, this ain’t Brokeback Mountain.”

  “Man, you’ve got no sense of humor anymore.”

  “My second wife took it in the divorce settlement.”

  “Okay, take your time. Goodall’s long gone, I’m telling you. Fits the assessment. Live to fight again another day.”

  “Or to get another headline. Three hundred and twenty days and counting. Or is it twenty-one? I lost track.”

  Castle rotated his ankle. Though more loose dirt and rocks had fallen in his attempt to scramble up the bank, there was space around his thigh. He couldn’t see into the inky darkness below. Whatever had snagged his boot still clung to it. He thought he heard faint scratching sounds against the leather heel.

  The night plays strange tricks on the mind. Even the cavemen knew that. Why else would they huddle around the fire and tell stories? Because the monsters in their heads were worse than the real monsters outside, the ones that only wanted to eat them.

  Castle flashed to one of his childhood memories, one so persistent it had outlasted the face of the first girl he’d ever kissed, the aluminum ding of his first tee-ball base hit, the smell of popcorn at the Titusville drive-in theater. The thing under the bed that scratched the dusty mattress frame, claw tips working idly back and forth. The thing, with arms as long as fire hoses. The thing, breath rasping as it chuckled, sausage-chub tongue playing over sharp, yellow teeth. The kind of teeth that ate little boys for a midnight snack, once those arms reached up, probed under the blankets, and clamped onto the nearest boy ankle. The kind of The boy may have cowered into the wee hours, balled so tightly in the blankets that even a flea would have found a meal difficult, but Jim Castle had put away childish things. A bout with testicular cancer, three bad marriages, a stint in the Navy SEALs, and an assignment with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had made sure of that. Faith and imagination had no more room on the stage. This wasn’t a world where monsters slithered out from shadowy crevices; in the twenty-first century, the monsters packed themselves with explosives and walked into a crowded market, carried automatic weapons into a post office, or put a torch to churches. Some of the worst monsters were fixtures on the nightly news, spewing their brand of poison as political ideology, letting others carry out their bloody work.

  So the thing that had his foot wasn’t a monster. Though he and the Rook had ditched their backpacks while closing in on Goodall, Castle hadn’t forsaken all his gear. The small hatchet still hung in a leather holster on his hip. He disengaged his right hand from the rope, unsnapped the button, and freed the hatchet. The hole through which his leg dangled was too dark and cramped for him to hack blindly at whatever held his boot. At best, he could use the thick blade to probe around and maybe pry himself free. He rammed the hatchet head down beside his calf. It struck something soft and meaty.

  From beneath him, a bleat arose, or maybe a chuckle the kind of sound that rolls off a sausage-chub tongue No, that was likely the last gasp of the radio he’d dropped, running down its NiCad battery in the dark. They’d limited communication to preserve batteries, and the FBI had not bothered to set up a command post in the area.

  Because Goodall wasn’t supposed to be here.

  He poked again, working the blunt blade around his boot. The chuckle turned into a slithering hiss, like that of an animal in pain. Castle pulled the blade up and in the gloaming half-light saw the edge was coated with a viscous liquid. Not blood, exactly, though the liquid was dark…

  Castle yanked his foot with all the desperation of a five-year-old boy bundling blankets against the monster under the bed. This time it came free, accompanied by what sounded like fingernails on leather and a moan of disappointment.

  “Pull me the fuck out of here,” Castle yelled, flinging the hatchet into the hole.

  Samford gave no response, but Castle found now that his legs were free, he could scramble up the embankment with no problem. He gouged his boots into the loose dirt, sending rocks skittering down the slope. Castle hoped his actions would trigger enough of a landslide to bury whatever lay coiled in the deep recesses of the Earth with its long fire-hose arms as he worked the rope hand over hand, the slack curling around his legs. Dusk had gained a deeper hold, as if the hole below, now uncorked, had spilled its ink into the sky. He reached the raw lip of the bank, wondering why The Rook had gone silent, and hooked a knee up and planted it on solid ground. Then he wriggled his waist over, feeling more dirt give way below him in a damp avalanche.

  “Samford,” he grunted, angry and a little scared. What if Ace Goodall had taken advantage of the shadows and crept up on his partner? He’d heard no gunfire, but Ace no doubt carried a hunting knife. Castle fumbled for his Glock as he wriggled the lower part of his body onto terra firma. He rolled, the pistol in his hand, forcing himself not to look down into the hole at the creature lurking inside Not a creature, just an old root, not a set of long, curling claws but a brittle branch The yell ripped the fabric of the night. It came from Castle’s left, maybe twenty feet away. At first Castle thought the sound had come from the woman believed to accompany Goodall.

  Then: SkeeEEEEeeek.

  The shriek phased in an arc overhead, like the stereophonic knob twiddling of a stoned-out rock guitarist or the rusty creaking of a giant coffin lid. Castle lifted the Glock and tracked the sound with the barrel, as if it were another Hogan’s Alley test in Quantico. At the FBI academy in Virginia, trainees were taught the basics of h
ostage negotiation, trigger jitters, and the kill shot. But Castle couldn’t recall any of those field exercises that had gone airborne.

  Against the black sails of the sky, the shape was tangled and awkward, like a broken biplane. Or, he realized, an oversized bird with a healthy hunk of prey.

  Like the bird he’d seen earlier.

  Too large, too obscene, too out of place in this ancient but hushed wilderness.

  A sick, soaring thing.

  On clumsy, stunted wings, as if first learning to fly.

  The soft moon on the mountaintops gave the creature a silhouette, and Castle’s finger tightened on the trigger. Not enough to squeeze off nine rounds, but enough to scare him. He’d almost broken the Hogan’s Alley code. Don’t shoot until you identified the target.

  Because Castle recognized something in the disappearing jumble of wings, limbs, and limp meat.

  The Rook’s wrist compass, blaze orange, torn and bobbing in the light of the quarter moon.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Gotta find the stupid bitch before the Feds do.

  Ace Goodall plowed through the underbrush, all five-foot-six inches of him, as the branches and brambles plucked at his camou jacket. He figured the highfalutin bitch had turned on him, somehow signaled the agents and given away his position. Thinking back, he realized that bit with the campfire was obvious. She had probably been plotting against him for weeks, just waiting for her chance to betray him. Eve, Delilah, Jezebel. The Bible warned against such things. But God had put a little nub of weakness between each man’s legs.

  But God in his infinite wisdom and mercy had also sent help from above. As Ace had watched from the shadows of the forest, debating whether or not to throw down on the pair of Haircuts, the fucked-up bat-thing had come to the rescue, swept down and scooped up the younger one, dragging it across the sky. Ace could have sworn a soft rain of blood had trailed from the struggling agent as the broken angel fluttered against the dusk. Ace could have easily taken the other one, the one who had fallen into the hole, but Ace figured maybe that was part of God’s plan, too. As if the Guy Upstairs had opened up the Earth to drag the Haircut straight to hell.