Castle fired again and the bullet hit the creature between its milky eyes. It went down without a sound, the miasma of its skull cavity spraying onto the wet leaves.
Nice shot, pard, The Rook said.
“Fuck you,” Castle replied.
Bowie, kneeling by Lane, looked up from the body and said, “You killed him.”
“A mercy shot.”
Bowie sprang up from the ground, fist curled in rage. Castle pointed the Glock at him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Robert Raintree, who still held the branch in a two-handed grip as if it were a baseball bat, nudged the hideous thing that lay on the ground like a knotted lump of wet rope. A dark, putrid fluid oozed from the holes in its leathery skin. The FBI agent’s final shot had blown out the back of the creature’s skull, but the oversize, wrinkled ears still twitched.
“Forget it,” Castle said to Bowie.
Dove went to Bowie’s side, gripped his arm, and pulled him away.
“Look at this,” Raintree said.
Farrengalli, who had fled into the woods when the shriek had first rattled the dying leaves, was now standing amid the group as if he’d been there all along. “The fucker’s fingers are still moving.”
Castle still held the pistol in business position, making Raintree uncomfortable. The agent’s eyes rolled around the perimeter of the surrounding treetops as if expecting more of the creatures to drop from the fog. But Raintree was afraid Castle was as likely to shoot humans as he was the creatures. He’d blurted out several nonsense phrases during the attack, as if he’d lost connection with reality.
Maybe they all had. As Farrengalli had noted, the long, knobby fingers hooked and then relaxed. The creature’s head was in ruins, and its nervous system must have been demolished. If it even had a nervous system. Raintree recalled how the one that had killed McKay had risen from the river with most of its head gone.
Raven Mocker. A shapeshifter, a harbinger of death. Something supernatural that could only be defeated with powerful magic. Raintree touched the soft suede of his medicine bag.
Wishing doesn’t make it so.
As a beginning wrestler in high school, competing in the 128-pound weight class, he’d dreamed of beating out Eddie Cucumber, conference champ the year before. In the week leading up to their face-off in the tournament, the freshman Raintree had practiced “positive visualization,” imagining himself on top of Cucumber, pressing his opponent’s shoulders to the mat as the ref slapped out a three count. Each night, he pictured Cucumber’s straining, panicked face and imagined the weighty brass of the championship trophy in his hands.
Cucumber beat him in a walk, 11 to 2, with Raintree’s only points coming on a spin move and reversal as he was about to be pinned. At least he lasted the full three rounds. Positive visualization had failed him then, but it was the last match he lost until college.
Now he faced a different kind of test, one that maybe his ancestors had faced before. If these creatures had existed for centuries, then the Cherokee must have encountered them at one time or another. Considering this was sacred territory, the land of vision quests, then who knows how many nightmares were brought back to camp by the young warriors who had ventured out in search of their spirit guides? And who knows how many had not returned at all, but instead had followed these demons back into whatever hell had coughed them out?
“Fucker’s going to get up and fly away like the other one,” Farrengalli said.
“No,” Bowie said. “It’s changing.”
Raintree poked it again with the tree branch. Bowie was right, the creature was quivering and trembling, its skin tone lightening. Curled in a fetal position, it shook like a rat in a paper sack.
“Stand back,” Castle said, leveling the Glock. He gave the strange head tilt again, attuned to something beyond the river and the rain. Maybe another creature?
Raintree held his breath and listened for the telltale shriek. Only water, ticking, rushing, splashing, giggling.
At his feet, the creature’s body shifted and swelled, as if soaking up water and taking on muscle mass. The skin was waxy, wrinkled, like something submerged in the river. Instead of ash-gray, the corpse was now as pink as a mouse’s ear.
“Cletus Christ on a clothesline,” Farrengalli said.
“It’s a person,” Dove said, an observation that was suggested by the evidence but by no means obvious.
“Fuck this,” Farrengalli said, stepping over Travis Lane’s cooling body and grabbing his backpack. “Bonus or not, I’m getting out of here.”
“Wait,” Bowie said. “We stick together.”
Farrengalli cradled one of the deflated rafts to his chest. “You want to stay here and get your head chewed off by these freaks, fine with me.” He glanced around the faces of the group, and then fixed on Dove. “You with me, babe? You and me, we get out of here alive, we’ll both be rich and famous.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Castle said, waving the pistol in the rain. “You’re the property of the federal government at the moment, by authority of the National Security Agency’s prime directive on terrorism.”
“I never heard of no prime directive.”
“Of course not. Top secret. But it gives me the power to requisition all available resources in order to do my duty. That means any equipment or personnel.”
“Bowie,” Farrengalli said. “Is he making this shit up?”
“He’s the one with the gun.”
The knotty-limbed, vicious creature that had swooped out of the mist and torn Travis Lane’s neck to shreds was now little more than a pile of slick cheese, its skeletal frame plainly visible beneath, the fibrous wings dissolving. The face might have been humanoid, but it had collapsed upon itself, the clabbered effluence draining down into the mouth and nasal cavities. In the yawning gap of skull, the remnants of the brain oozed out like Jell-O from a broken bowl. Where drops of rain hit the body, a nacreous substance spattered into the air. The corpse now lay in a puddle of muddy cream soup.
Its legs moved.
“I’m out of here,” Farrengalli said. To Castle, he said, “Go ahead, shoot me in the back.”
Dove, who was snapping off some photos as the creature decomposed, said, “I don’t want to be around when this thing does whatever it’s going to do.”
“If it stands up,” Bowie said, “the meat’s going to slide right off its bones.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine that twisted, long-fingered skeleton flying through the air like some kind of Halloween lawn decoration strung from a tree. Raintree threw down the branch and retrieved the other raft. “Bowie?”
“Let’s go,” Bowie said. “We’ll make camp at the foot of the waterfall.”
“And crawl into our sleeping bags like nothing ever happened?” Farrengalli said. “I don’t know if I’ll sleep another wink as long as I live.”
“With the water up, it’s too risky to raft, and it’s going to be dark soon.”
“Aren’t you going to bury him?” Dove asked. Raintree wasn’t sure whether she meant the creature or Travis Lane.
“We’d better get away as fast as we can,” Bowie said. “We don’t know what kind of communication system those things employ. They could work off their olfactory sense as well as echolocation. And if they smell the blood… ”
They. No one doubted there were more of the creatures, lurking somewhere in the high cliffs or hovering in the mists. Maybe a flock.
“Leave him,” Castle said. “It might slow them down if they stop to feed on his corpse.”
Raintree noted how the quality of the group’s mercy had become strained as the nightmare shifted deeper and deeper into reality. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before Castle was leaving behind live bait. As if these deadly creatures were somehow a less significant threat than a single paranoid bomber.
Bowie had already headed down a narrow trail between two looming, mossy stones, Farrengalli right behind him. Castle, apparently intending to keep a
close eye on his “resources,” lagged behind, watching as the creature tried to rise. The head, now little more than a curved and broken plate of bone with patches of rot attached to it, rotated as if trying to orient itself.
Raintree helped Dove slide her backpack into position. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll watch out for you.”
Wet tendrils of hair framed her tired smile. “I think from here on out it’s every man for himself. Even for the women.”
Castle leveled his Glock at the thing as if debating a final round. But he must have decided there was no kill shot for something too stubborn to die.
“Yeah, Rook,” Castle said. “All pigeons eventually come home to roost.”
Raintree gave Dove a knowing look and slung the deflated raft over his shoulder. They followed the path blazed by Bowie, Castle bringing up the rear and whistling an off-key tune.
Raintree, holding Dove’s arm as she nearly slipped on the slick rocks, recognized the song: “Singing in the Rain.” Among the threats they were facing, the river, the bomber, and the beasts, Raintree was beginning to believe the worst enemy might be walking not in their shadows, but in their footsteps.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“Halle-fucking-lu- yah!” Ace couldn’t help shouting toward heaven.
God had sent more than a sign this time; He’d sent an angel to the rescue. Watching the gray creature flit out of the fog and launch itself into the group of rafters, Ace knew God was doing one of those mystery moves that kept the believers strong and made the doubters wonder.
Though the angel appeared down for the count, nothing lasted forever, and Ace knew the creature would be back at Rapture, when the forces of good and evil would stage the final battle. The only battle that mattered. For now, it had served God’s purpose.
The group gathered its equipment and the two deflated rafts and the people now scurried down the slick rocks beside the waterfall. The rain killed visibility, but the blaze orange of the five life vests moved across the landscape like bugs in a computer game.
Ace scooped their supplies into the backpack. Clara was sluggish and sleepy under the makeshift vinyl shelter. Figured. Whenever a man was ready to do great works, a woman was along to slow him down.
He slung the backpack over one shoulder, gripping his pistol. “Come on. This is our ticket out of here.”
“You said that last time, with the canoe.”
“That was just luck. This is a blessing.”
“What’s the difference?”
Getting more and more uppity each fucking day. Once we get out of these woods, I’m going to have to set the bitch straight about the facts of life.
“Stay here if you want.” He set off through the undergrowth, his damp clothes taking on more water until they were soaked and sagging around his body. He’d be dry soon enough, once they made it to the lake. Clara could hang around at the gas station, beg for money by saying their car had broken down. If that failed, he could always let her screw for money. Fifty bucks a pop, and she’d probably enjoy it. Either way, they’d soon have bus fare for Kentucky.
In Kentucky, a man known among militia groups only as “Dredder” had extended a personal invitation for Ace to stay in his cabin as long as necessary. Dredder lived somewhere beyond the depleted coal mines of Whitesville. He had no street address, but instead had sent a strange, coded set of directions. Ace had set them to memory and burned the piece of paper Dredder had mailed general delivery, care of “Ted Rudolph,” to a Birmingham post office. Ace himself had chosen the name in tribute to the Unabomber and his most recent role model, Eric Rudolph, who had eluded capture in the remote mountains of North Carolina for nearly three years despite a nationwide manhunt.
“Ace! Wait!”
Ace smiled and slowed only slightly. His boots slid in the leaves, carving up long scars of black dirt. Among the taller trees, he’d lost sight of the group, but there was only one point from which they could emerge: the flat stretch of sand at the base of the falls.
“Ace!”
She sounded a little panicky, the exhaustion gone. Just goes to show every woman needs a little nudge. You don’t challenge her, she thinks she’s the one with control.
Control. God was the one in control, but all the rest of the world was fair game for Ace’s special brand of chaos. God knew the winning numbers, but let human beings roll the dice. Shit fire, that was half the fun. They made their own choices, followed their own roads to salvation or eternal hellfire.
And she was choosing to follow him.
Just as she’d chosen to get into his truck on that dark emergency lane in Georgia. Just as she’d chosen to submit to him and take his seed. Just as she’d chosen to run when the FBI showed up. Just as she had chosen to be found again.
As he scrambled down the mossy embankment, through ferns, briars, and the twisted limbs of rhododendron and laurel, the sky cleared a little. The chimney of boulders, stacked like fat, mottled-gray pancakes, was visible, a few stunted pines bristling from cracks in the rock. Under other circumstances, it would have made a great sniper’s post, where he could have held off a hundred cops. But he lacked the ordnance. He was down to a handful of plastic explosives and the Colt Python.
He moved faster, the footing treacherous. The roar of the falls swelled louder, like the pissed-off sigh of God. A branch snagged his arm, running a shallow furrow in his skin. He shook free and skidded down a slanted, leaf-covered rock face, and he was on the sandy shore.
Ace eased back into the concealment of the undergrowth, wondering if Clara had gotten lost. He wanted to take the group by surprise. Since the rafters had been attacked by the angel, they were on edge. But they’d be looking to the sky, not the woods.
Though Ace was pretty sure they wouldn’t understand the meaning of it all. Even most religious people, who claimed to believe that God worked among them each day, were quick to deny the real miracles in their own lives.
“Ace!”
Damn. She was faster than he’d figured. He smiled. She must really love him.
But she’d best shut her apple-biting, back-talking mouth or she’d give away the game.
No big deal. The rumble of the river would muffle her voice. And it would take the group at least ten more minutes to make it down the embankment along the falls.
The pistol felt good in his hand, the rod and the staff that comforted. An instrument of God. Like the detonators he’d wired for the clinic bombs.
All it took was a steady hand and a little faith.
If only the rain would stop.
He lifted his face to the sky, precipitation on his cheeks like cold tears. The rain turned red. It fell from the bruised and beaten clouds like pellets of hellfire. A glow arose from the water, shimmering in waves of yellow and orange. The river was molten lava, sluicing between the rocks and pounding down the stony channel, burning its way deeper into the earth. Here and there among the flowing heat, creatures poked pathetic, singed limbs above the surface, attempting to crawl from the fluid damnation.
Creatures with scarred human faces, charred lips peeled back in eternal, soundless screams.
Ace smiled.
This vision was sweet. He was one lucky son of a bitch.
“Hey,” he shouted at Clara. “You should come see this.”
Like it was a blooper on America’s Funniest Home Videos. As if she’d be able to see it, or understand its significance.
“Ace? Where are you.”
Right where the Lord put me. Where I’m fucking supposed to be. Like always.
He leaned against a tree, oblivious to the water tickling down the back of his neck. The show was about to begin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Bowie led the group down the portage trail, one he had traversed a couple of times in his early career as a white-water guide. However, like the river, which had been shifted and rerouted by floods, the trail had changed in the years since Bowie’s last visit to the Unegama. Moss grew on the boulders, ferns and mus
hrooms sprouted from the rotten brown leaves, and a thicket of laurel huddled at the base of looming hemlock trees. The landscape had changed, the trail branching off into narrow animal traces before coming together again in a steep, muddy thread.
There were plenty of other differences since Bowie’s last jaunt. For instance, bloodsucking freaks, an armed FBI agent, and a mass murderer. A woman he’d once almost loved. And lots more money waiting at the end of the run.
But the biggest change was in Bowie himself. He could hardly remember the muscular, confident young man who had given orders with the sharpness of a drill sergeant while at the same time commanding the respect usually reserved for preachers and sages. Too much had happened. The weight of failure and isolation colored him, and he labored in the shadow of a death he’d been running from for five years.
Now he had two more deaths in his ledger.
“Are we going to make it, Bowie?” Dove had slipped up behind him while he was lost in thought. He shuddered because he should have been planning ahead, watching out for attacks from above, expecting the unexpected. Instead, his head was firmly up the sphincter of Bowie Whitlock, the tightening ring cutting off the oxygen to his brain.
“Sure.”
In the semi-darkness, she caught up with him, leaned her head against his shoulder, and took his hand. Her damp hair tickled the skin of his upper arm. “I didn’t mean to say those things this morning.”
“That was this morning. Forget it.”
“I was being mean.”
“Well, you learned it from me.”
“Do you think we have a chance?”
“Sure. All we have to do is make it to the foot of the falls, raft eight miles in Class VI rapids in the dark, and avoid getting our necks ripped open by creatures that have no right to walk the face of the Earth.”
“No, I mean you and me.”
“Oh. That.”
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