The Gorge

by Scott Nicholson

  “What took so long?” Farrengalli asked, the trace of a taunt in his voice.

  “The important thing is getting here safely,” Bowie said, not mentioning that he’d slowed down so Castle could maintain surveillance against the flying nightmare. Or nightmares, if there were more than one, and Bowie was willing to bet there were. After all, God had commanded Noah to carry two of every species on the ark. “This rain will make the river even more dangerous.”

  “Should we make portage down to the bottom and then look for a campsite, or do the best with what we have here?” Dove asked him, in obvious deference as if to show the others that the decision was Bowie’s alone.

  “We need to push on,” Jim Castle said. The rain and river moisture hadn’t affected his hair a bit. The crew cut bristled up like the business end of a wire brush. “The suspects might be just ahead. They had to get out and walk, too, or else went over the brink and got smashed up.”

  “They mighta gotten munched.” Farrengalli squinted into the rain.

  “We haven’t seen any sign of the creature,” Bowie said. The word “creature” sounded odd on his tongue, as if naming it gave it more credence. He still wasn’t quite willing to accept what he’d seen. He’d assimilated it as just another danger, a natural hazard that could be handled with proper preparation and caution. Like the rain and the rising rapids.

  “I’m exhausted,” Lane said. “I think we should break here.”

  “This isn’t a democracy,” Bowie said. “ProVentures carries weight in the boardroom, but out here I call the shots.”

  “I say we move on,” Castle said.

  Bowie wondered if the agent would force them ahead with his gun. Or worse, split them up. He decided to exaggerate the potential danger in order to sway the doubters. It wasn’t much of a stretch.

  “Remember how I explained how the Unegama ranged from Class III to Class VI waters, with VI meaning there’s a risk of death? Well, when it’s raining like this, you can bump it up to Class VII.”

  “There is no Class VII,” Lane said.

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “I don’t want to wait around here and get my ass chewed off by a flying thing with no brains,” Farrengalli said.

  Bowie looked at Raintree, who, as usual, stood off to the side, meditative and stolid, almost spaced out. “What do you think, Raintree?”

  “Shit, why you always got to ask the redskin?” Farrengalli complained. “Like the rest of us don’t matter. Or do you just make a point of including minorities?”

  “Because he knows how to listen.”

  “Listen?” Farrengalli put his hand to his ear and made a theatrical tilt of his head. “Me hear-um call of nature. Oh, wait, that corn fart. You call it ‘maize.’”

  Raintree didn’t blink. The rain fell harder, the staccato fusillade rivaling the sound of the river. Bowie realized the others, even Farrengalli, were waiting for Raintree’s opinion. He didn’t know whether it was Raintree’s stony equanimity or his people’s ancestral link to the area that gave his opinion added weight.

  “What do you think of a compromise?” Like Dove, Raintree directed his remarks to Bowie, who was relieved to have at least two allies in case the dispute came down to a war of wills. Both Castle and Farrengalli appeared on the point of rebellion. “I think we all could use a rest. Maybe we could break until we see whether the rain keeps up, then make the trek to the bottom of the falls and set up camp for the night.”

  “Makes sense,” Lane said. “We couldn’t run her in this rain anyway, even though the Muskrat is designed to handle heavy swells.”

  “Just say maybe,” Farrengalli said, mocking the company’s slogan. Apparently, he had lost some of his loyalty when faced with the threat of attack by unidentified flying nightmares.

  Vampires. Chupacabra. Raven Mocker. The Appalachians are the land of legends, not fairy tales.

  “I can’t let you do that,” Castle said. “The subject is getting away. If we stop now, he’ll have a full day’s head start. Don’t forget, nobody else knows he’s here, so they won’t send backup.”

  “Don’t your higher-ups expect you to check in?” Dove asked.

  “We knew we couldn’t get a cell phone signal out here, and handheld radios don’t have the range to reach the field office in Asheville. We could have used shortwave radio or a satellite phone system, but the extra weight of the equipment was prohibitive. And, to be honest, nobody really expected Goodall and his partner to be here.”

  “Yeah,” Farrengalli said. “And you didn’t expect bloodsucking, bat-freak fuckers to drop from the sky, neither.”

  They listened to the rain for a moment, the walls of the gorge slowly becoming encased in fog. They were all aware the reduced visibility meant they wouldn’t be able to see the creatures descend for an attack.

  “Maybe we left them behind,” Dove said. “Maybe they’re territorial.”

  “Maybe,” Lane said. “But, assuming these things are an undiscovered, carnivorous species, they would need large game like bears, wolves, and deer. They would have to eat a lot of small animals to survive. And, of course, we have no idea how many of them there are.”

  “You saw its eyes,” Bowie said to Lane and Castle. “It was blind. Maybe it’s a subterranean species and it works like a bat, using radar or echolocation to find its prey.”

  “I told you about the bombs Goodall set off,” Castle said, his hand on the pistol holstered under his arm. “But it’s hard to believe these things have been hidden in a cave for who knows how many years without needing food.”

  “They would have attacked somebody before now,” Dove said. “The Unegama Wilderness Area is remote, but campers, hikers, and kayakers use it all the time.”

  “Maybe they have,” Raintree said. “The Cherokee told stories of those who got lost here. We have a legend about a man who was found so pale that at first he was believed to be a white man, back before even Daniel Boone walked these hills. The tribe was frightened, so they buried him under a pile of rocks at Attacoa, the high, sacred mountain above the river. When a young brave took his vision quest there, he found the rocks had been moved and the body was gone.”

  “Is this like the Raven Mocker bullshit?” Farrengalli said.

  Bowie noticed the group had drawn closer together under the trees, as if instinctively banding for protection against an unknown threat. “People go missing here all the time,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m ready to buy into any supernatural legends, but the gorge claims about one victim a year. You can drown, fall off a cliff in the dark, wander in circles until you starve to death. A couple of years ago, a man drove five hundred miles, walked the trails until he came to a campsite, and hacked a young couple to death with a hatchet. He didn’t know them, or even know why he came to the gorge. He later told police he just had to kill somebody.”

  Lane blinked into the encroaching mist. “Okay, I’m rested. What do you say we get the hell out of here?”

  Bowie checked his waterproof watch. “Six o’clock. Sunset is a quarter after seven but, with this cloud cover, it’ll be dark by the time we reach the base. Let’s deflate the rafts and get moving. I’m sure we’ll all feel better if we can get a fire going.”

  Raintree and Farrengalli hurried to the task, while Dove took her Nikon camera out of its protective case. She angled a long lens up the length of the gorge, where the mist, the river, and the slick rocks made a soft study in gray. “Creepy but beautiful,” she said.

  “If we get out of here alive, nobody’s going to give two shits about the Muskrat expedition,” Farrengalli said. “They’re going to want to know all about the bat-freak fuckers. Nightly news coverage, book and movie deals, chicks.” He sounded cheered by the prospect. “Hey, Dove, take a picture of me.”

  Bowie noticed she focused instead on Raintree. The wrestler was much more photogenic, projected a quiet dignity, and no doubt his dark coloring triggered some sort of primal tingle inside her.

  Let him h
ave her, Bowie thought. After all this is over, I’m heading back to Montana by myself anyway.

  Somehow, the thought of being alone in his cabin, except for whatever unknown creatures might be lurking in the mountains at the head of the Missouri Breaks, no longer offered security. “Safety in numbers” had never held much appeal to him, because “numbers” meant other people, and that meant responsibility. This trip had been plenty enough of a reminder that he no longer cared to have other people’s lives depending on him.

  Besides, security was a psychological state, not a physical state, and after witnessing what Farrengalli had coined “the bat-freak fucker” rip into McKay’s neck, Bowie couldn’t imagine a night when the creature wouldn’t swoop down from the high shadows of his dreams.

  Emitting that unforgettable, keening shriek that froze the blood and SkeeEEEEeeek.

  It emerged from the mist at treetop altitude, a gray blur of sinewy limbs, ears peeled back, the glistening teeth in stark ivory contrast to the blackness of its open mouth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  When the unearthly banshee wail split the sky, Castle reached toward his armpit for his Glock. At Quantico, he’d been one of the fastest on the draw at those after-hours, impromptu contests at the shooting range, where even the few female agents had to prove their prowess. Those parodies of Wild West street showdowns were a test of skill that no one thought would ever make a difference in the field. While quick reflexes might win you a beer in a bet, you never expected your life to depend on the split-second reach from holster to trigger.

  Now, when it counted, Castle’s arm was a hundred-pound tube of soggy sausage, lifting in slow motion, fingers numb and bloated. He wasn’t even halfway into his draw when the creature burst from the mist. It was a flurry of wiry limbs, its bald head and pointy ears just as alien and chilling as those of the first two creatures he’d seen. This was larger than the one that had taken The Rook, and still had the top of its skull intact, so it wasn’t the same one that killed C.A. McKay and then rose from the river in a resurrection that would have made Lazarus jealous.

  Castle’s fingers touched the cool plastic of the Glock’s handle just as the creature struck Travis Lane at full speed, knocking him sideways into the middle of the group. Lane’s helmet flew free and bounced off Farrengalli, the loudmouth, who, like the others, was stunned into a deep freeze by the suddenness of the attack.

  The nightmarish beast was a little smaller than Lane, squatting atop his body as Lane struggled on his belly, trying to rise and crawl away. Bowie was the first to react, swinging his backpack at the creature. The blow was ineffective, but the creature turned to Bowie and flashed a vicious mockery of a human grin, sharp incisors slick with saliva, the dark tongue flapping against the roof of its mouth as it gave a rattlesnake hiss.

  See what got me? The Rook’s voice filled Castle’s head, unbidden, unwanted, causing him to lose his grip on the Glock before he could pull it free from the holster.

  The creature reached out a long, stringy arm toward Lane’s head, and Castle saw the creature had only two fingers and a stunted thumb that ended in sharp, tapered nails.

  “Hey!” Raintree shouted, clapping his hands from where he knelt by the deflated raft.

  Castle wasn’t sure whether the Cherokee was trying to divert the creature’s attention or snap the others out of their collective daze. He accomplished both. The creature paused, its menacing fingers poised and trembling inches from Lane’s flesh. Farrengalli stooped to grab one of the paddles, Dove perhaps instinctively raised her camera and twisted the lens into focus, Bowie yanked the backpack over his head for another blow, and Castle finally had the pistol free.

  “Get away,” Castle yelled at the group.

  The creature appeared confused by the eruption of movement around it. The ears twitched as the leathery head swiveled, the milky eyes blinking, Lane screaming like a rabbit in a hawk’s claws, Castle’s index finger caressing the groove of the trigger even before he brought the weapon to bear.

  Head shot, The Rook commanded. You have to take out the brain. The hypothalamus. Basic hunger drive.

  “Been there, done that,” Castle said. He was scared, not because a beast from beyond reason had invaded his world, but because he had no idea what a hypothalamus was, and could no longer tell himself that The Rook’s voice was a figment of his imagination.

  A hurried and scared shot was a bad shot, he knew.

  He tried to brace his shooting hand by grabbing the wrist with his left hand, but his left hand was quivering just as wildly. Rain on his eyelashes blurred his vision.

  Lane slid forward a few feet, upsetting the creature’s perch. Now it straddled him, and Castle saw the creature had three toes that mimicked the structure of its hands, though the nails were blunt.

  Quit with the catalog and get on with it, cowboy, The Rook said.

  But this was the thing from under the bed, the sleep-killing nightmare that clicked the hardwood floor, that teased the fabric at the bottom of the mattress, that tugged the hem of the top sheet. It had stayed hidden for three decades, but all buried things eventually crawled into the light and demanded attention. The Rook could shrink him around the clock, chalk up the monster to childhood insecurities, a distant father, a recurring fever, the remnant of a late-night horror movie glimpsed from the obscurity of a parted door. In the high holy church of psychology, everything had an explanation and a root cause.

  But explanations didn’t make the monster less real.

  The creature stood on unsteady legs that bowed backward like those of a bird. No, not a bird. Like a bat.

  If the monster under the bed could exist, why couldn’t a vampire?

  If it was a vampire, you’d be hog-tied, pardner, The Rook said. You don’t have any crosses, garlic, silver bullets, or AIDS-contaminated blood. Throw out the comic-book bullshit and just pump the fucker’s head full of bullets. No mouth equals no biting.

  Pump it full. Castle took aim. Fired.

  A hurried shot is a bad shot.

  Lane, who had scrambled to his hands and knees beneath the creature and was posed absurdly like the bottom in a gay porn flick, let out a grunt. His left forearm spouted a geyser of blood and he moaned and collapsed onto his side. The creature must have smelled the fresh blood, because it dipped its head toward the wound, tongue hanging out like a filthy bag of baby snakes.

  “Damn you,” Bowie shouted, and Castle didn’t know whether the words were directed at him or the monster.

  The creature must have had no concept of firearms, because it ignored the threat of the pistol. Its radar-or whatever orientation system it used-was no doubt unable to detect the path of the whizzing bullet. Its tongue flicked at Lane’s gushing sauce of blood. Castle tried to steady for another shot, but he was afraid of hitting Lane again.

  Another notch in your gun, pardner. First me, and now Lane. With a little more bad luck, you can be a mass murderer like Robert Wayne Goodall.

  Bowie again swung the backpack at the creature and it made no attempt at evasion. Instead, without turning its head, it flicked a wrist, grabbed the backpack, and tugged. Bowie, holding onto a shoulder strap, was yanked off balance. The creature swiped at Bowie with filthy claws, but Bowie dodged his head back just in time.

  Dove rushed forward, wielding a stippled tree branch. She chopped at the creature, hitting it across the shoulder blades. “Run, Bowie,” she shouted.

  Now Castle had to worry about hitting Lane and the woman both. He should have emptied the clip at the first sign of the creature.

  Indecision? What will the brass make of that? No soft inspector’s chair for you. No headlines, no citations of merit, no handshake from the President.

  “Get the fuck out of my head,” Castle said, locking down on the trigger. The Glock spat a bullet that ripped through the backpack the creature still clutched. He plucked the semiautomatic again, this time striking the creature’s chest and ripping a ragged hole. Gray pus oozed from the entry wound, but
the creature didn’t slow down. Castle had no sense of aiming as he squeezed off another round. The third bullet hit the creature’s sinewy thigh, causing another sewage-colored leak.

  Lane gave a twist, crawling from the creature’s legs. The Indian, who had been tending the raft before the attack, circled the creature and took the branch from Dove, swinging it wildly. The wood bounced off the creature’s skull with a dull thwack. It twirled, unaffected by its wounds, but apparently confused by the chaotic movement around it. If it relied on echolocation rather than sight, it wouldn’t know where the next assault was coming from. But radar wasn’t the only sense that guided it; it lurched forward toward the scrabbling Lane and grabbed him by the shoulders, rearing back and then driving its open mouth toward the soft flesh of Lane’s neck.

  Lane’s scream was muted by the falling rain, but it was no less horrifying in the otherwise-quiet wilderness. The barrel of Castle’s pistol veered unsteadily.

  Shoot, urged The Rook, that invisible tormentor inside his head. It may be a private hell, but it’s the only hell you’ve got.

  But whatever hell Castle was enduring, it couldn’t compare with Lane’s. The man’s scream descended into a low gargle as the creature’s fangs punctured his neck. Bowie grabbed Lane’s legs and tried to tug him free, but the creature had a headlock on Lane, its lips working as it dug into Lane’s flesh and took his blood. Unlike the creature that had killed the bicyclist, this one worked with intensity and purpose, as if its hunger had been roused by the battle.

  A head shot, The Rook had said. Lane was in agony, eyes wide and staring beyond the world, his mouth a silent O of darkness. His throat was too torn to draw air for a scream.

  Castle fired. Lane’s forehead exploded. Dove shouted, or maybe it was Bowie.

  The creature lifted its mouth from Lane’s neck as if sensing the heart would pump no more blood. The blunt head swiveled in a mockery of indignant anger, lips peeled back in a sneer, a rivulet of Lane’s blood running down the pointed chin.