The Gorge

by Scott Nicholson

  “Shit,” Bowie said. “Hold off, McKay, and let me turn it.”

  Bowie flipped his paddle and dug it hard off starboard, bracing his legs against the yielding, inflated walls of the watercraft. The resistance caused the raft to spin, and they were once again heading sideways down the river. An aberrant current pushed them toward the cliff on the left side, despite Bowie’s desire to stay on the swifter but smoother side of the river.

  “Hang on,” Bowie shouted as the raft smacked against the head wall and stuck, caught by the raging current that sought to shove the rubberized craft and its occupants through the unforgiving granite. Water spurted over the side of the raft, pooling in the bottom, chilling Bowie’s legs despite the SealSkinz. The Muskrat was designed to stay afloat even if fully flooded, but its handling ability would be severely diminished.

  “Shove off from the wall,” Bowie commanded. McKay dropped his paddle on the deck and pushed with his hands. Lane sat petrified, watching the white-tipped waves boiling over the rim of the boat. Bowie spied a crevice in the granite wall and wedged the tip of his paddle handle into the dark cleft. He used the paddle like a fulcrum, easing the boat downstream. His effort, combined with McKay’s, caused the boat to grate against the rough head wall, but it was moving. One more yank of the paddle and the Muskrat lurched free, still drifting sideways, half-submerged, but no longer being crushed between an insistent force and an unyielding mountain.

  Bowie let out a whoop of exhilaration. The thrill may be gone, baby, but the juice is still pumping.

  Then he remembered the trough that undoubtedly lay ahead, and knew they were in trouble after taking on so many gallons of water. Bowie drew little comfort knowing Raintree’s raft had made it past the treacherous channel. Raintree, with a keen sense of anticipation, had managed to direct his crew to keep right, skipping down a series of softer stairs to a gentle eddy a hundred yards downstream. Raintree, Dove, and Farrengalli pulled onto a sandbar and grounded out, waiting to see how the other raft fared.

  “Hair ahead,” Bowie shouted, using the slang for a “hair-raising” or “hairy” stretch of water. He didn’t have time to instruct Travis Lane on negotiating the trough, but he hoped McKay had enough experience and tenacity to hold the rear. Bowie would have had little trouble negotiating the rapids in a solo kayak, complete with spray skirt and double-paddled oar, but in truth, the Muskrat didn’t handle all that well. While an improvement over other white-water rafts, in the end the shortcoming was that it required experienced crew members who knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Bowie hadn’t been given time to mold the two crews into smoothly functioning units.

  The raft pulled to the left and Bowie jammed his paddle off starboard, braking by holding it still and letting the current push the end of the raft around. Too late, he noticed McKay was violently stroking on the port side, canceling out Bowie’s maneuver and sending the boat sideways again.

  “Fuck,” Bowie said. Lane had dropped his paddle in the flooded bottom of the boat and held onto the grab loops on each side.

  “Lean left, lean left,” Bowie said, hoping the combined weight of their upper bodies would help kill the spin. Bowie and McKay leaned until their shoulders touched the bow, but Lane sat upright, hunched and shivering. They hit the heart of the trough, rocks piling up on both sides of the boat.

  “Look out,” McKay said, but Bowie wasn’t sure which hazard he meant. Several awaited them, and all were dangerous.

  The raft banged sideways off a rounded gray rock, and Bowie noted a seam of crystal quartz scarring the length of the granite. The morning sun sparkled there like wet fire; then the raft was past the rock and riding a set of haystacks, water pushed over barely submerged rocks that created a deep sine wave of ripples. The raft leaped over the haystacks, briefly catching air despite the extra weight of the flooded deck. The raft set down each time with a shuddering splat before launching over the next stack.

  “Hole,” Bowie shouted. “Big fucking hole.”

  He glanced downstream, and saw Raintree watching with interest, Dove wading toward them-wading toward him — and Farrengalli standing on shore lighting a cigar.

  Bowie knew this hole, but the current had changed since his last run here eleven years ago. He cursed himself for his overconfidence. Rule number one was “Know the river.” Rule number two was copped from Clint Eastwood: A man’s got to know his limitations.

  Bowie had broken both rules. The hole lay at the bottom of a shelf of rock, but an eight-foot drop awaited first. The last haystack led to a short run of quiet but fast river as the current squirted them toward the waterfall. “Hold onto your asses, gentleman,” Bowie said, as calm as any Titanic officer.

  “Only fucking natural,” McKay said in mockery of Farrengalli.

  “Shit,” was all Lane said as the raft slid over the slick rock and dumped itself toward the hole. Bowie had released his paddle and Lane’s caught water, flipped up, and banged off Bowie’s helmet. He sucked in a moist piece of air and braced himself for impact. They were airborne for what seemed like full seconds, and the spray dancing in the sun was like a rain of soft jewels. Then all was tumble and roar as the bow met the spinning current below and pulled the craft and its occupants underwater.

  Once submerged, Bowie let go of the grab loop. The cold punched him like a hundred fists of ice. Millions of years of erosion had cut a deep groove at the base of the waterfall, causing the current to swirl like a washing machine’s spin cycle. With luck, it would kick them all out to the quieter water, but it could just as easily suck them down and continue drumming thousands of gallons of water onto them.

  Despite his PFD, Bowie felt as if were wearing cement clothes. He opened his eyes and saw the dim gleam of the sun on the surface of the river six feet above. Not much in a swimming pool, maybe, but the river was hungry today.

  One foot touched bottom and he used the contact to push off, this time cupping his hands and stroking. Against the pressure of a river, a swimmer’s stroke was nearly useless. Bowie was determined not to go gentle into the river’s belly. But now he needed air. His lungs were hot bricks in the oven of his chest. The book on river suction was to relax your body and let the current push you to safety instead of trying to fight it. But instinct required a struggle.

  Eyes closed, he touched something soft and yielding, realized it was the raft, and felt along the bow for the grab loop. He should have held onto the raft in the first place, but he hadn’t yet developed faith in the Muskrat. He doubted even Lane would bet his life on the latest ProVentures design if it came down to it.

  Finally, his head broke surface and he drew in a breath that tasted of pine, fish, and mud. Farrengalli shouted something from the shore, but Bowie couldn’t make it out because of the foam crackling in his ears. He shook his wet hair from his eyes. Lane bobbed ten feet away, head hanging limply to one side. McKay was nowhere in sight.

  Go down for McKay or check on Lane? Triage-who’s in the most immediate danger?

  Though McKay was fit and had some white-water experience, he might have underestimated the suction of the hole.

  No, YOU’RE the one that did the underestimating, asshole. Already trying to duck responsibility?

  Raintree swam toward Lane, with Dove right behind him, so Bowie fought around the lip of the hole, where the current was less powerful, until he was upstream of the waterfall. Then he eased along the base of the rock shelf until he was under the wet sheet of water. The filtered light gave the cavelike space a gray, funereal quality.

  McKay clung to the rock face, grinning. He shouted over the continuous liquid thunder. “Some ride, huh, Captain?”

  “This isn’t a game. I thought you were under.”

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “You’ll probably get worse, before this one’s over.”

  “I just thought I’d rest here a second. Too much peace and quiet will drive you batty.”

  “Lane may be hurt.”

  “Screw him. Leave him for
the buzzards. What do you think of Dove Krueger? I think Farrengalli’s working her.”

  “I hadn’t noticed. Come on. We’ve got to regroup.”

  McKay smirked. “Aye, aye, Captain. It’s only fucking natural.”

  “Look, you want to play kissy-face with death, go for it. Just don’t do it on my time.” Bowie hugged the base of the rock a moment, then dog-paddled along the edge of the current into the sunshine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  According to the maps that Jim Castle had recovered from The Rook’s backpack, only one major trail wound along the northern shore of the Unegama River. With daylight, he was better able to orient himself, and upon reaching the river’s edge he was faced with a decision. Ace Goodall and his companion either had forded the river to reach the trail system on the other side, or had followed the water downstream. If they had crossed, Castle would have little chance of finding them, because the trails branched off toward a number of peaks and scenic overlooks. The pair (and he now fully believed Ace had a partner, willing or not-after all, why else would he carry a condom?) could evade detection for days or weeks on the south side of the river.

  Castle placed his bet on Goodall’s desperation. No doubt The Rook would have said desperation didn’t fit the assessment, not after all the cold-blooded attacks the man had committed. But The Rook’s education and behavioral interpretations hadn’t done him a bit of good. After all, The Rook had been plucked into the sky by a creature that Freud wouldn’t have acknowledged in any mortal nightmare, much less in the real world. Castle was coming to believe the real world no longer existed; in his exhaustion, the Unegama and the surrounding cliffs and forest had become an illusory landscape that had little use for humans and their philosophy.

  Goodall would head downstream, seeking the straightest and surest escape route. Despite the Biblical clues the mass murderer had dropped during his eighteen-month reign of terror, the Bama Bomber wasn’t seeking persecution, and clearly wasn’t ready to lie down spread-eagled and allow the nails to be driven into his palms and feet. No, Goodall’s survival instinct was as strong as that of any rodent or cockroach. The Rook’s textbooks had no chapters that spoke in plain language, but Castle was sure the bomber was as shallow as the lowest car thief or child molester.

  Take the easier, softer way, the path of least resistance.

  Shit, Castle had been doing it for years. He could have been a senior agent by now, behind a desk somewhere and building political capital, remaining neutral until a group from either political party got a hammerlock. Then he could have slid into their envelope, turned up in the right filing cabinet, and then sat around polishing his brass and assigning blame for the rest of his career. Now, he had no one to blame but himself, because Goodall had tricked him and nature had yanked his underwear into the crack of his ass, he had a hangover without the benefit of Scotch, and he was pulling a blind tail on one of the country’s ten most wanted.

  “Hello?”

  Castle was so deep into his own ruminations that he thought at first the voice was that of The Rook, who had been a disconcerting presence in his head for the last few hours. “Shut up, Rook.”

  “Oh, no. He’s one of them, Pete.”

  The Rook speaking in a female voice? Castle looked up from the damp, stone-pocked sand of the shore. A man and a woman stood among the gold-dappled shrubs of the forest edge. Castle had his Glock raised before he realized the man wasn’t Goodall.

  “Hey,” the man, Pete, said. “Don’t shoot. We don’t have anything to steal.”

  Castle gave them a subtle, trained scrutiny. The man was paunchy and balding, not the kind to be in the wilderness at all, much less parked by the river with no gear. The woman was clearly annoyed at something. Probably a number of things. Castle had a stock appraisal of women with tiny upper lips and pinched eyes, and his decision to avoid them had so far always been proven correct. Sometimes belatedly. She reminded him of his first wife.

  He hadn’t realized he’d been carrying the Glock in his fist. Too late to pretend to be just another hiker, but no need to blow his cover yet. He tucked his weapon behind his back. “You folks okay?”

  Pete kept his eye on the arm that held the gun. “So far. But we have nothing left to steal.”

  “Who would be dumb enough to rob people in the middle of nowhere?”

  Pete and Jenny exchanged glances. “You’re not with them?” the woman asked.

  “I’m not with anybody.” Because a mythical monster carried off my partner last night.

  “We’d feel better if you put that away,” Pete said. “If you don’t mind, that is.”

  “What is it with hikers and guns?” the woman whined. “Christ, it’s not like there’s anything to shoot out here besides squirrels.”

  “Seen anything strange?” Like maybe a man-sized flying thing that had no wings?

  Pete opened his mouth but the woman beat him to it. “If by ‘strange,’ you mean having a gun stuck in our faces and our canoe taken away, yeah. If that doesn’t count, then we’re just sitting here waiting for the bus.”

  “Will you stop with the mouth a minute?” Pete said to her. “If he wanted to hurt us, he would have done it already.”

  Which wasn’t necessarily true. Castle had worked support on a California case in which the killer had befriended a family at a campground, spent several days sightseeing with them, shared a barbecue of hot wings, and then had cleaved the four of them into pieces with a hatchet. Most psychos didn’t want to kill strangers. That wasn’t much fun. Exceptions like Ace were driven by other motives, and The Rook could have recited a laundry list of them if he were still around. But he wasn’t.

  Castle eased the gun under his armpit, into the shoulder holster. “Didn’t mean to scare you. It pays to be paranoid, that’s all.”

  “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?” Jenny said.

  Castle nodded. “Who was with him?”

  “A girl,” Pete said. “A looker. Lean legs, decent tan, like she was on spring break from college.”

  “She wasn’t that pretty,” Jenny said. “You didn’t look above her chest.”

  “Stop with the mouth. This man’s a cop. I can smell them a mile away.”

  “Why were you scared, then? He’s a little closer than a mile and you stink so bad you can’t smell nothing much.”

  “Stop with it.”

  Jenny was reminding Castle more and more of his ex-wife. He cut in. “You said he took the canoe?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  Castle glanced at his wristwatch. It was nearly 11 a.m. If Goodall and his companion had any paddling skill at all, they were probably two or three miles downriver by now. “Do you have a trail map?”

  “No,” Pete said. “We thought we were sticking to the river.”

  He didn’t have much chance of catching up with Goodall. Guiding the couple to safety would take the rest of the day, but at least it would be a form of public service. He hadn’t served much of anybody since entering the Unegama Wilderness Area, and had one big red mark in his ledger. And he should probably warn them that a weird gray flying monster might grab them.

  But monsters aren’t real. They’re just shadows under the bed. And it looks like they’re plenty scared enough already.

  Castle set down his backpack, knelt, and rummaged until he found one of the maps. He gave it to Pete, but Jenny promptly snatched it away. “You couldn’t find your ass with both hands and a flashlight,” she said.

  “There’s only one major trail on the north side,” Castle said, looking at a point between them, where a large balsam pine towered over the rocky outcropping, its gnarled roots gripping the soil of the bank as if afraid of being set adrift. “Do you have a compass?”

  Pete shook his head, and Jenny ran out her lower lip as if wondering what else he’d forgotten. She unfolded the map and said, “Straight north on foot and we’ll be in Atlantic City just in time to retire.”

  “You can’t miss the trail. The
sun’s heading west, so stay ninety degrees from its path across the sky and you’ll be okay.”

  Pete cast a dubious glance overhead. “But the sun’s nearly straight up.”

  Castle pointed north. “Just go that way, then.”

  “‘Go that way,’ he says, Mr. Big Shot Cop,” Jenny said. “And if we don’t, are you going to write us a ticket?”

  “Stop with it,” Pete said.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go,” Castle said. It was always possible that Goodall could have had an accident or spilled the canoe. If his traveling companion were a fraction as annoying as Jenny, then the Bama Bomber might have a short fuse already. Or had pushed her overboard.

  “Thanks for the map,” Pete said. “This guy who robbed us? Is he big trouble?”

  “Let’s just say, with any luck, you might be called as a witness in one of the biggest federal trials since the DC snipers. Assuming we all make it out of here alive.”

  “The man’s an optimist,” Jenny said to Pete. “You should pay attention, you might learn something.”

  Castle was already heading downstream, following the shore, watching the slick, wet stones at his feet, when he wondered if he should warn the couple about giant flying creatures with dishrag wings that could swoop down and carry them away. Nope. That was nuts.

  Not “nuts,” said The Rook, who was apparently determined to ride mental shotgun for the duration of the journey. You’re just a person of psychological difference. A momentary case of schism, a delusional-disorder poster child, a shrink’s wet dream. Nothing to worry about.

  “I’m beginning to worry about you,” Castle replied aloud. “Because you sound crazier than I am. And you’re probably dead.”

  Why would you go and hold a little thing like that against me?

  “Because I have a feeling I might be joining you soon.”