The Gorge

by Scott Nicholson

  “Looks like the rain’s easing up.”

  “We’ll be able to make better time.”

  “You were right,” Dove said, still panting from exertion.

  Raintree took his eyes from the slight heaving of her breasts. He leaned out a little and squinted against the drizzle, gauging the gray, quartz-veined cliff face. From below, he had mapped a likely route in his mind. But now, nearly midway, he was disoriented. The stuff in his system wasn’t helping.

  He’d need an extra oxycodone tablet, what he had taken to calling “Limbaugh lemon drops” after the drug-abusing conservative radio personality. And he’d definitely need to sharpen the edges of that buzz with an amphetamine.

  And don’t forget me, said one of his other round friends from the bottom of his medicine bag.

  Of course he wouldn’t. How could he ever forget that one?

  “You were right,” Dove said. “Down there. We should have waited.”

  “We’ll turn out okay.”

  In rock climbing, patience, caution, and precision were the buzzwords, but they had time for none of those. Climbing in the dark was nearly impossible, and Raintree had argued the climb should wait until the morning.

  Castle and Dove believed they wouldn’t live until morning. And Farrengalli had shrugged and said, “Whatever you think, Chief.”

  So Raintree thought he should make the climb by himself, but Dove put forth the reasonable argument that the climb would be safer with two people. The buddy system. They’d discussed the route, the dark triangular wedge halfway up that suggested a cave should they need cover, the method of working the ropes, with Raintree leading and setting the anchors. He’d tried to talk her out of coming along, but part of him, that sick part of him ruled by pills and bottomless hunger, wanted her off alone.

  Despite the danger.

  But danger was everywhere now, even by the river. The winged creatures could swoop down at any moment. Age-old demons from ancient visions, bad dreams brought to life. Bad medicine.

  The others probably thought Raintree was calm and fearless, even during the animal attacks, due to some sort of native spiritual makeup, an ancestral chemical that pumped through his genes that allowed him to switch from reflective shaman to blood-crazed warrior in an instant. Genetics could claim no credit, and neither could Raintree. His system pumped enough illicit prescription medications to stagger an elephant or stimulate a sloth.

  But he was balanced now, ready for action. Ready for anything.

  He bent to coil the primary line. It straightened and grew taut.

  “Hey, you guys, wait up,” shouted Farrengalli from below.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Derek Samford dreamed.

  He was weightless, hollow, but felt powerful despite it.

  The licking, nibbling, and sucking had ended some time ago. In this timeless dark vault, it might have been hours or centuries. The noises had faded, that soft scurrying like nails on stone. As he lay there in his strange half sleep, he dreamed his body was lifting in the darkness.

  Levitating a moment, he found he could perceive the boundaries of this prison. He couldn’t explain it. All psychological knowledge had left him, years of training and study washed down an invisible drain along with his soul. He didn’t need to explain it.

  He could hear the slanted walls, the rubble strewn on the subterranean cavern floor, stalagtites dangling overhead like icicles frozen in the slow melt of aeons. Hear in a way he had never known, with a deeper and more basic understanding of his surroundings. At Quantico, he’d practiced with infrared goggles and thermal imaging systems, and those advanced technologies offered a fresh and bizarre perspective. This backward evolutionary step had enriched him far more deeply than anything found in the federal armory.

  Samford, for the first time since his capture, realized he could move. Perhaps it was merely the freedom of dreaming. It didn’t matter. To his drained flesh and poisoned brain, movement meant flight.

  He could escape.

  While pursuing his master’s degree in behavioral psychology, he had encountered a theory suggesting the brain played tricks at the moment of death. Perhaps as a protective mechanism, certain portions of the brain took over, suppressing the frontal lobe, giving way to more primitive, reptilian emotions. Other electrical impulses created the illusion commonly referred to as “going toward the light” by those who had been pulled back from death’s door. According to the theory, this cushioning was nature’s way of easing the inevitable.

  Suspended in pitch blackness, flexing his thin fingers, Samford crafted a rival theory, one drenched in the morass of nightmares and ignited by the lightning that had sparked the zoological soup.

  Death was okay.

  Death felt goddamned good.

  But just as energy could be neither created nor destroyed, every natural transition had its price.

  The price of death, of newfound freedom, was hunger.

  He licked his lips and found he was no longer grinning. The persistent erection had lost its blood, along with the rest of his body, and his new sensory perception detected its flaccid wiggle between his naked legs. He spun like an acrobat on stunt rings, though he needed no safety net. In this new state of being, safety no longer mattered.

  All that mattered was instinct and the lulling whisper of the night.

  Not the night he now smelled seeping from a far crack in the cavern’s walls, but the truer night, the ultimate dark that feasted on the universe and would one day finish its meal, yet still suffer an endless ache for more.

  Samford shook his wiry, withered limbs, and despite his dearth of blood, a mockery of feeling returned. He stroked the air like a beginning swimmer in shallow water, tentative. After flailing in place for long moments, wasting a precious stretch of night, he finally relaxed, letting his body do its own bidding.

  He moved through the air, ragged wings fluttering behind him.

  He realized why he’d heard no more scratching sounds and endured no more bites.

  The others were gone, prowling for prey, sick with the same hunger he now endured.

  He wouldn’t be hungry for long.

  Beyond the opening in the mountain lay a world where Samford and his new kind had never really belonged. A world that had forgotten them, though the creatures themselves harbored an ancestral memory stronger than those who had thrived and populated the planet during their time of captivity.

  Samford drifted toward the fresh air that was rich with the smell of the river, teeming with movement, ripe with red possibilities.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Damned redskin thought he’d leave me in the dust and steal my thunder.

  Farrengalli worked his way up the rope. He was glad he’d reached the bottom of it before Raintree reeled it in. The first part of the climb had been easy, but a day of fast water and an afternoon of dodging bloodsucking Stephen King nightmares had worn him down a little. He was running on pure adrenaline now, and wondered what kinds of smells the creatures picked up on.

  Probably fear. Or blood. Wonder if Dove’s on the rag?

  One thing for certain. When they put the call in and the cavalry came swooping over the ridge in their black helicopters, Vincent Stefano Farrengalli was going to be in the spotlight taking credit. He’d propped Castle up in a nice little niche, a place where two boulders had fallen against each other. Castle was alert and seemed recovered from shock. In fact, he’d tried to talk Farrengalli into taking the raft, just the two of them.

  Farrengalli had half the same idea: He’d take the raft by himself. But he’d already seen the power of the flooded river, and he knew he couldn’t handle the raft by himself. If any of the bloodsuckers attacked, he wouldn’t be able to fend them off while keeping the raft on course. Castle would be useless, except as ballast. Even if Farrengalli completed the solo run, odds were better that Chief and the Babe would strike pay dirt with their little cell phone trick, leaving Farrengalli in the drink when the reporters started thei
r feeding frenzy.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Raintree said, peering over the ledge.

  “The Bat-climb,” Farrengalli said, bracing himself to rest his forearms. “You know, in the Batman TV show, when him and Robin would walk up the side of the building. Except, really, they just turned the camera sideways, because you can see the wires tugging their capes straight out.”

  “I ought to cut this rope and let you fall.”

  “You might need me. What if those things attack while you guys are playing bondage with your ropes?”

  “Where’s Castle?”

  “I went to get some firewood, figured it would help him get comfortable. And the son of a bitch stole the raft while I was gone. Can you believe that? A fucking federal agent.”

  Farrengalli renewed his assault on the slope, his sheer strength and size compensating where Dove had failed. He didn’t want to count on Raintree’s helping hand, as she had. He wasn’t sure how helpful it would be this time around.

  “Did he inflate the raft while you were gone?”

  Shit. Farrengalli hated being caught in a lie. It had always made him angry, but he also enjoyed the challenge. Honesty was for dumb-asses. Liars were smart, because they had to remember all their lies, whereas smart people only had to remember what really happened.

  “Well, he ordered me to pump it up. Wanted the two of us to make a run for it.”

  “ Ordered you? Without a gun?” Dove said, her head now poking over the ledge beside Raintree’s. In the growing darkness, he could barely make out the teeth inside her grimace.

  “He’s got a badge. What did you want me to do?”

  “I thought we decided-oh, screw it.” Raintree tossed down a second line. “Here’s a backup if you need it.”

  “Preesh, my man.” Though Farrengalli had no intention of putting his weight on any line that Raintree hadn’t tried first. Besides, eight more feet of busting his balls and he’d be within reach of the ledge. Raintree wouldn’t try anything funny in front of Dove.

  He’d slid the carabiner through his belt, the way they’d taught him on the reality show. But it felt a little bit faggy, like some goofy body jewelry or something. Safety was for sissies, anyway. What was the point of looking both ways to cross the street when God was probably dropping a fucking piano on your ass?

  Faith, man, that’s the ticket. You got to believe in your own fucking self.

  He propelled forward, hand over hand, water squirting from the rope as he gripped it. Dove and Raintree barely had time to move away before he launched himself up and over the rock edge. The ledge was about ten feet wide, with a few scrub pines and patches of moss clinging where dirt had collected over the centuries.

  Farrengalli managed to disguise his exertion. “So, you guys going to have a picnic, or should we get our candy asses up sugar mountain?”

  “What really happened down there?” Dove said. Chief stood a few feet away, arms folded. One good shove away from a fifty-foot drop. But that could wait for later. Right now, he needed Raintree to help get them to the top. Like he’d needed Bowie at first. And he needed Dove for the photographs, the promise of fame stored on negatives, in the backpack he’d left with Castle along with the words “Guard this with your life.”

  “Like I said, he stole the raft.”

  “He was wounded and in shock.”

  “You know how those Feds are. They’re messed up in the head. All this duty and courage and toughness bullshit.”

  “I think we’re the ones getting the bullshit,” Raintree said.

  The red bastard’s forearms were pretty big. Farrengalli would have to be careful getting rid of this one. “He had this cockamamie idea that he still could catch the Bama Bomber. Said he owed it to his partner.”

  “We’re losing daylight,” Dove said. “We can sort this out later.”

  Not a whole lot of daylight left to lose. “All I know is we’re all here and, on this little piece of rock, we’re like deviled eggs on a plate for whenever those bloodsuckers get hungry.”

  “Okay,” Raintree said, working on threading the safety line through its anchor. “I’m lead. I’ll go up a little bit, set the lines, and drop one down.”

  Dove put a hand on Raintree’s forearm. “Let me go first this time.”

  Farrengalli had to choke down a laugh. Touchy-feely P.C. horse crap. And Raintree will have to say “I’m more experienced.”

  “Now you’re the one that’s bullshitting. We both saw how your safety anchor wasn’t secure.”

  “Remember when you said I’d have to be the leader if anything happened to Bowie?”

  Farrengalli’s ears pricked up. Not at this little tidbit of revelation, but because of the banshee wails bouncing off the walls of the gorge a couple of miles downstream.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  “It’s getting dark,” Clara shouted over the churning water. She knew she was stating the obvious, just as she knew Ace would ignore the obvious.

  Ace, behind her in the aft position, worked the paddle from side to side, splashing her shoulders with each stroke. She no longer felt the chill; her body had passed into a numbness that matched the deadening of her spirit.

  The only warm spot was in the center of her belly, where a sick miracle of biology was taking place, cells divided and growing, mass forming.

  Maybe she’d name it Wayne. It was boy, she knew. She’d always heard “A woman knows,” and she’d always thought it was bullshit, same as “Jesus loves the little children” and “You can trust the government.” But now that she had a cluster of living cells squirming inside her, she thought it was magic of the highest order. The connection went beyond mere extrasensory perception. She now had a religion, a nest egg, and a deepest fear all rolled into one.

  “It’s darkest nigh on before dawn,” Ace said, as if offering up some bit of Biblical wisdom.

  “You think that cop is dead?”

  “Don’t matter none. He had it coming, sooner or later.”

  Somehow, his shooting of the FBI agent was more horrifying than the abortion clinic bombings. She certainly had no special place in her heart for cops, mostly because the guys she’d dated thought of them as The Establishment. She’d never dealt with them much; despite the drugs and the violent boyfriends, she had a clean record. Now, her jacket was pretty crowded, assuming she ever got caught.

  She didn’t want to think about how that would affect Wayne Jr.’s future.

  “How much farther?” Ace shouted over her shoulder to Bowie, who bent over the front of the raft, body tense as he fended off rocks and guided by the graying plumes of foam. The beam of the flashlight on her helmet cut blue lines across his back, failing to illuminate their path. Clara noticed for the first time that his shirt was ripped. His arms were marked by a series of long, shallow wounds.

  “Depends on how much longer you want to live,” the haggard guide said.

  “Eternal life is already mine,” Ace said, his voice booming like a tent evangelist’s.

  “In that case,” Bowie said, pausing to spear his paddle against an outcropping of rocks, “there’s not much incentive in sticking to calm water.”

  “He leadeth me to lay down by still waters,” Ace said, mangling one of the psalms. “Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of evil, I will fear no death.”

  Valley of evil. Clara thought the dividing line between good and evil was nearly invisible, and probably depended on which side of the line you were standing. Ace’s angels had already killed people, yet Ace had been spared. So far. Maybe the Lord really was on his side.

  But what about Clara, and the formative soul inside her? Would God show the same mercy to them?

  The raft lurched, skidding up onto a shelf of rock that must have been lurking inches beneath the surface. A side current skirled against the port side, throwing the three occupants against the inflated bow. Clara clung desperately to the grab loop as Ace lost his balance and plunged forward against Bowie. The to
ur guide recovered and swung his paddle hard, catching Ace on the back of the neck.

  Ace sprawled, semiconscious, his eyelids fluttering. One of his guns popped free of his belt and bounced around in the bottom of the raft, coming to a stop at Clara’s feet.

  She picked it up.

  All she knew about guns was what she’d seen in the movies. And in the movies, women always got it wrong. They either had tiny pistols that were as effective as a mosquito, or they were dames with mustaches who used their guns as surrogate dicks. Which told her nothing.

  She pointed it.

  The raft bucked and swayed, Ace and Bowie tangled liked clothed lovers, both looking at her. The flashlight’s dots glinted in their eyes.

  “Shoot the son of a bitch,” Ace shouted, his words squeaky because of Bowie’s grip on his neck.

  Which one is the son of a bitch?

  She figured the pistol’s safety switch, if it had one, was off. Ace liked to walk locked and loaded. Half-cocked. In more ways than one.

  She could be a heroine. She could get her name in the papers, probably be forgiven for her past crimes. All she had to do was pull the trigger. She could blame it all on him.

  It was his fault. Of course it was. He was the man. What judge or jury would ever blame her?

  Shoot him, and she was free, no matter how the journey ended. And if she were free, life would be easier for little Bobbie Wayne in her womb. With luck, she might even get a little money out of the deal. Go on Oprah or Montel or Jerry Springer.

  All those guys who’d fucked her at Radford would see her and remember. All the pain she had sought and endured would disappear-however briefly.

  She held a loaded gun. At this moment, for the first time in years, she was at the delivery end of pain instead of the receiving end. And it felt damned good.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Jim Castle was groggy, his side like a small volcano spouting red heat. The woman, Dove, had done a fine job of trussing him up. The mistake had been in leaving Farrengalli behind as his bodyguard. The loudmouth was obviously scared, hiding in the woods as Ace Goodall hijacked the rafting expedition, running at the first warning shriek of vampire attack.