The Gorge

by Scott Nicholson

As the shot died away, an even louder thunder sounded. “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  Ace was trying those words in his head when the tail end of the gunshot’s echo changed pitch and gained altitude.

  No, it wasn’t a final echo.

  It was the trumpet blast of the angels, hidden somewhere high in the twilight mist.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “This is getting way past old,” Farrengalli said, but Raintree was already launching himself against the slick cliff wall.

  “The cave,” Raintree shouted. The lead rope, which he’d reeled up, lay in a coil around his shoulder, limiting his movements. But he scrambled like a monkey on an electric fence, moving to his right, taking him away from the planned route. But plans changed.

  The keening wail came from above and below simultaneously, and Raintree thought the sonic phenomenon was caused by the reverberant cliffs. Then he realized two of the creatures were swooping, one from above and one below.

  No time to set an anchor and drop a rope to the others. He’d be lucky to reach the cave. And he had no way to defend his back, because both hands were occupied with holding on for dear life.

  “Bad news,” Dove said from the ledge below, as if she also realized what the dual attack meant. The creatures were growing smarter, learning about their prey.

  Raintree wondered if he’d made a mistake, if they should have waited on the ledge with the others and tried to defend themselves with their backs to the wall. Too late to second-guess, because he was midway between the ledge and the cave, grabbing for the next handhold before he’d fully tested the most recent.

  The twin shrieks changed pitch, became lower and more guttural. If the creatures had discussed strategy through whatever strange means in which they communicated, then they’d want to separate their prey, culling out the weakest first.

  In this case, because he was by himself and exposed, Raintree was the evening’s choice entree.

  Both attackers went silent, which was even more disconcerting than their bloodcurdling sirens had been. Raintree knew from the previous encounters that silence meant they were preparing for touchdown, most likely with talons extended for his exposed back. He froze in place, attempting to merge with the granite, to become rock.

  “Find something to throw,” Dove yelled at Farrengalli.

  Raintree felt the whisper of air as the creature swept past. He didn’t know if the creature had lost track of his location or had merely been making a test run to size him up.

  Gripping an outcropping with one hand, the toes of his boots jammed into separate crevices, he fumbled toward his belt. His fingers touched the leather pouch and a hunger shot through him. If only he had taken that second amphetamine, he’d already have reached the cave. Of course, oxycodone wasn’t exactly known for its clarity-inducing powers, so there was more fog going on than just the stuff rising from the river.

  He might have time to chew and swallow a handful of oxy before the creature struck, but no way would the massive dose of pharmaceuticals beat the pain it was designed to suppress.

  He forced his fingers away from the pouch.

  To the cool, wet steel of the piton in his belt.

  The ProVentures Pocket Rocket, eighty millimeters of slender steel, was designed to be driven into rock or ice and left as a permanent climbing fixture. An eye at the broad end was used for attaching a carabiner or for threading a belay, and the piton tapered to a stiletto tip.

  Raintree hooked two fingers in the eye and gripped it like a serial killer, one who insisted on the ritualistic downward thrust made famous in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Raintree wasn’t sure he could get leverage for any style of thrust, much less one that could deliver a killing blow.

  “What the hell, are you some kind of cowgirl?” Farrengalli said.

  Raintree risked a downward glance and saw that Dove had the safety rope, shortened and doubled, and was swinging it overhead like a convoluted lasso. He understood her motive, even if Farrengalli was too thick. She was attempting to confuse the creatures’ radar.

  The first pass had been barely ten seconds ago, and that initial assailant was likely preparing for round two. Even if Raintree remained motionless, the odor of his sweat and fear would give him away.

  But where is the other one?

  As the first creature reached the apex of its arc, it let loose with the high-pitched cry again. The tonal quality had changed, this time suggesting not hunger but rage. Raintree was refreshing his handhold when Dove shouted a warning from below.

  Raintree flattened belly-first against the cliff, extended his right arm, and let the piton protrude like a sharpened coat hook. The second creature, who must have ridden in on the draft of the first, met the steel tip, slamming Raintree’s hand against granite.

  The fingers hooked in the eye kept him from dropping the Pocket Rocket as the creature winged past, screeching in what might have passed for complaint.

  A sudden shower erupted, cold as the river, and Raintree thought the storm had returned in force.

  He looked at his hand, at the piton jutting from it, and the slimy gray entrails that dangled from his wrist. The creature was cold blooded. Nearly ice blooded. If he could even call that stuff “blood.”

  He took advantage of the reprieve to scoot another five feet up the slope. The cave lay another eight feet above and to his left. Using the three free fingers of his right hand, he grabbed the trunk of a scraggly jack pine that sprouted from the wall of stone. It held, and he hooked a leg over it.

  Estimating the speed of the creature’s flight, and its cry from the top of its arc, and the subsequent lapse into silence, Raintree figured he had three seconds before It slammed into him, knocking the breath from his lungs and clacking his teeth together. Though the creature was barely the size of a large dog, it packed the weight of gravity and momentum behind the element of surprise.

  He was helpless, because he couldn’t let go or he’d fall. With no safety rope, and the ledge far to the left, the plunge would break every bone in his body and he’d probably burst open like a balloon full of soup.

  If there was any consolation in such a defeat, at least he’d be leaving little behind for the creatures to drink.

  Ears roaring with concussion, Raintree brought the piton around as claws raked his neck and face. The creature’s cold breath played over the base of his skull. Shouts sounded from a distance. Dove? He couldn’t tell. Counting on the jack pine to hold their combined weight, he locked his leg, reached back with his free hand, and grabbed at the creature. Its skin was rough but slick, like the chamois cloth rock collectors used to polish stones. The thing’s teeth nicked his neck, flaring double streaks of hurt. He felt along the creature’s bald head for its eyes.

  Here’s looking at ya, Count Chocula.

  He stabbed the piton over his shoulder, going for a point just above the bridge of the nose.

  Raintree had made more than a handful of serious climbs, and had hammered in his share of pitons and anchors, but none had ever felt as satisfying as this one. The steel tip found the center of the beast’s forehead. It entered the skull with a thwick.

  The creature’s cold tongue stopped wriggling and lay against his neck like a damp sock.

  He gave the piton a twist. Grue oozed from the wound like liver mush from a sausage grinder.

  The trunk of the jack pine cracked and sagged.

  Raintree tried to shrug the creature off his back, but whatever state it had entered upon death, it still clung to its victim with a fierce tenacity. Raintree was afraid to shake too hard. The jack pine might give way completely. He slid the piton from its gruesome sheath and worked it back into his belt, then jammed his fingertips into a slim crevice.

  Once he had a decent grip, he lifted, distributing his weight so he wouldn’t fall if the tree no longer supported him. With his left hand, he scrabbled for the creature’s neck, then up the bulge of the skull. He found one of the leathery, peaked ears and yanked it as if trying to pull a
rabbit out of a hat.

  The thing’s head lolled backward, though its talons still hooked his flesh.

  Raintree wondered how deeply his wounds ran. The oxycodone dulled the worst of the pain, but it merely masked symptoms and didn’t address the real damage.

  “Christ on a crutch,” Farrengalli shouted from the ledge below. “Get it off me.”

  Raintree shoved upward, sliding his knee to the base of the pine, then jabbing the tip of his boot into the nest of roots. Using the extra purchase, he tossed his shoulders and arched his back, and the creature slid down, its sharp claws snagging on his fanny pack. The creature’s weight was going to rip the pack free, taking the cell phone and their best hope of rescue with it.

  It dangled for a moment, his belt tightening, squeezing his guts.

  If the belt snapped, he would not only lose the cell phone.

  The medicine bag was attached to it.

  The bag that spoke with many tongues, that whispered its sweet, poisonous promises, that delivered what his hollow soul craved.

  The lifeline.

  His fingers lost their tenuous perch.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  SkeeEEEEeeek.

  Bowie released the grab loop when he heard the shriek, diving into the shallow water. Even though the current was weak, it pushed him downstream. He didn’t fight it, but instead let his body go limp, exhaling so he didn’t float immediately to the surface, grateful now that he wasn’t wearing a PFD.

  The choice between getting shot and being eaten alive had been no choice at all. Like most choices in his life, the real decision had been yanked out of his grasp. Or so he’d always believed.

  This time, as the actor Ed Harris once said, failure was not an option.

  Which is odd, he thought, as his lungs burned with emptiness. Because there’s nobody left for me to fail. They’re all either dead or abandoned.

  Maybe this time, he was kicking for himself.

  Bowie scraped his elbow on a rock, igniting one of the wounds he’d suffered in the earlier attack. The pain allowed him a little extra stamina, as if fear wasn’t enough. Fear had never been enough. Bowie had swallowed it and swallowed it over the years, and instead of getting fat, he’d wasted away. On the inside. No chance to break the diet now, but maybe he’d sample the wares a little before the buffet table closed.

  He broke surface thirty feet downstream from the raft, rising from the water just in time to see the creature swooping toward Clara. The Bama Bomber stood transfixed, in ankle-deep water, his gun held out like a lollipop he was offering a child.

  Bowie should have shouted a warning, but the creature’s clarion call had done the job. Clara ran for the cover of the dense vegetation that sprouted from the black mud of the island. But she was too slow.

  Any human would be too slow. You can’t outrun bad luck.

  And you can’t beat fear.

  Bowie should have dived back into the water, hit the deeper current, and allowed himself to be swept downstream. The turgid water, if it didn’t kill him, would carry him to safety. If safety existed anywhere in these raw, remote mountains.

  But that would mean failing another person. Even if she probably deserved it. And he still harbored some shred of chivalry, despite his casual abuse of Dove’s affection.

  He fought his way back toward shore, the dark water lapping and licking at him, wanting to swallow him. His boot slipped once, and he was almost gone to the safety he’d considered, but then he was knee-deep and thrashing, then on sandy soil and rocks, then in the island mud.

  As he ran, the gray creature flew past the stock-still Ace.

  Why didn’t it attack him? What sort of predator passes up easy prey?

  Maybe one that enjoyed the hunt.

  Bowie didn’t like that idea, so as his legs worked and his lungs pumped, water falling from his head and shoulders, he latched onto a more soothing one: Because Ace had not moved, the creature’s primary sense hadn’t detected him. No doubt it could smell and taste and hear, as the flared nostrils, long tongue, and oversize, peaked ears would indicate, but it seemed to mostly operate by radar.

  Theory confirmed, for all the good it would do them.

  The creature was forty feet from the woman, and Bowie was twenty. The creature was three times as fast.

  Just before it struck, the woman reached a bristle of rhododendron, fighting her way through the slick, reptilian branches.

  Bowie remembered Dove’s trick from earlier. He stooped, slowing only a little, and came up with a rock the size of a cantaloupe. He hurled it through the air, not taking time to get his feet set for an accurate throw. He didn’t care if he hit the creature. He just wanted to distract it.

  The rock did better than distract it. The creature changed course in midair, gliding toward the rock as if it were fast-moving prey. It closed on the rock, raising its claws as if to seize it and drag it to the ground for feeding; then other senses must have kicked in and warned the creature away.

  By the time it wheeled and homed in again on the woman, she was nestled inside the protective branches. Bowie couldn’t see her in the gloom, only the thin beacon of her Maglite, but knew the creature would be able to smell her if it came near. Though she’d stopped moving, the rattling, rain-dripping leaves gave away her position. The creature lifted its head, ears standing erect, and sniffed.

  “Shit fire,” Ace said. “I reckon she wasn’t good enough after all.”

  The creature turned its ugly head in Ace’s direction, but didn’t attack.

  Bowie, who thought the turbulent water might help disguise his scent and movements, crept along the shoreline toward Ace. He wanted to tell the crazed bomber to shoot the thing, but figured Ace would rather shoot him than a beast he thought was a messenger of God.

  The creature rose in the half light, slick-scaled body repelling the soft rain. It hovered over the rhododendron thicket as if searching for a way through the tangled canopy. To her credit, Clara hadn’t screamed since the initial attack. Or maybe she was so frightened that the only sound she could make was mouselike squeaks.

  Ace was mesmerized by the creature. His revolver dangled from one limp arm, touching his hip.

  Stooped low to avoid the creature’s echolocation, Bowie eased toward the killer. No doubt Ace had seen him come out of the river, but he seemed to have lost interest.

  The raft.

  Ace must have released it after Bowie submerged. Bowie’s spirits fell. Even if he somehow managed to subdue Ace and take his gun away, kill or ward off the creature, and rescue Clara, they’d have no real means of escape. They’d either have to hike out or hole up and wait for rescue.

  First things first.

  The creature swooped over the thicket, nostrils flaring as it sought its prey. Bowie wondered why it was focused on the woman while two other pieces of warm-blooded meat were readily available. Maybe the creatures had senses beyond those near-supernatural ones the group had already attributed to them.

  Or maybe the creatures functioned on a plane that was above that of simple feeding machines.

  Maybe they were the product of intelligent design, the spawns of higher or lower powers.

  Bullshit. If God existed, Connie would still be alive. So would McKay and Lane. And Dove…

  He tried not to think about the fate of those left upstream, the ones for whom he bore responsibility.

  Just as Agent Jim Castle had become single-minded in his pursuit of his subjects, just as the creature was intent on sucking the life from Clara, Bowie was determined to kill Ace.

  Kill.

  As he eased along the licking, lapping, muddy river, he collected a couple of fist-sized stones.

  “You wasn’t good enough, Clara,” Ace shouted. “Not in the eyes of Him who sees all!”

  Keep preaching, you son of a bitch. Bowie was within ten feet of the target now, but he didn’t want to throw the stones. Not because he feared missing and getting shot, but because he wanted his revenge warm and raw a
nd red. He wanted to feel the pulse of Ace Goodall’s carotid artery fade beneath his fingers.

  He wanted Skeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.

  The shriek came from above, in the shroud of mist. Another creature plummeted from the heavens.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The babe can dish it out, Farrengalli noted with admiration. Chief up there, stuck to the side of the mountain with one of the bloodsuckers on his back, didn’t have half the balls of Dove Krueger. Come to think of it, she was probably a dyke. Going around without a bra in the middle of a pack of men. Only a rug-muncher would tease them like that.

  Lesbian or not, she could bring it. And right now she was bringing it against the head of the second bloodsucker. It had its arms around Farrengalli’s legs, trying to climb him like a monkey up a coconut tree. Its teeth ripped the fabric of his jeans, and he was glad he’d changed out of the SealSkinz before the climb, or he’d be catching vampire herpes and whatever other shit the things carried.

  Farrengalli reached for the Buck knife in his thigh holster, but the thing’s ugly mouth was closing in. Farrengalli had avoided contact with the creatures so far, through luck and cunning, but now that the thing was staring him in the face (it was blind, but those balls of sour milk had a hypnotizing power all the same). It was butt-fucking-ugly, the nostrils flared, nose and forehead wrinkled, deep pouches of loose skin around the sightless eyes. The lips were a parody of those sported by geezer rock star Mick Jagger, bloated and sneering, punctuated by two long, slightly curving, and yellowed fangs.

  The mouth was open, filled with blackness deeper than any night, and Farrengalli could imagine the bottomless void beyond, a belly that housed an endless hunger. But damned if you’re chomping into this Italian white boy.

  He raised a boot and drove its rubber heel into the creature’s face. Something gave, bone or cartilage or whatever hid beneath that lizardlike skin. Dove whipped the doubled rope across its back, striking several times in quick succession. The creature didn’t seem to acknowledge the blows. Instead, its Jaggeresque lips, now drooling a slick strand of gray fluid, worked along Farrengalli’s thigh.