CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Bowie should have made a run for it. The woods were waiting, dark and dense enough to allow him to evade the creatures. Two full days of hiking, as long as he kept in one direction, and he’d eventually reach a highway, a house, or someone with a motorized camper. Springs would provide water, and some late berries were probably in season. He’d find safety, give directions, and wait until the whole chaotic mess died down, the government agencies and police and rescue squads sated, the creatures eradicated in the type of wide-scale military sweep that would rival the invasion of a small, troublesome dictatorship.
When the last bullet was fired and the last corpse collected, Bowie would be allowed to slink away to the Missouri Breaks, to a lone, thick-walled cabin in the hills, where he could add this freshest failure to his menagerie of memories. With exercise and a proper diet, he’d live another fifty years. Over eighteen thousand nights in which to lay his head down and endure its swirling stew of accusations and guilt. Nights when dreams, as they rose like rats from sewer holes, would pick at the torn meat and nibble down the long list that no longer had Connie alone at the top.
Yes, failure was an option. It had always been an option.
And he recognized that revenge against Ace Goodall, no matter how sweet, was not as spiritually fulfilling as saving Clara would be. And, since Clara was pregnant, maybe he’d get a two-fer in the eyes of God, wipe the slate clean for the loss of Connie and Dove, if not the rest of his group who had been slaughtered. So he’d bypassed the mesmerized and dazed Ace, who could have easily shot him in the back, and dashed toward the rhododendron, yelling and waving his arms, hoping to draw the attention of the two creatures. They ignored him, just as they had ignored Ace.
When Clara had been ripped from the thicket and carried across the night sky, Bowie had emerged from the woods and approached Ace. Bowie, the legendary tour guide, wasn’t even fit for prey, wasn’t good enough to serve as monster meat. A clean death would be a happy ending.
“They took my baby,” Ace said.
“Shoot me, you ugly son of a bitch.”
Ace lifted the Colt almost as an afterthought, the action of an absentminded mass murderer and serial killer. “I thought they was going to eat her.”
Bowie was calm. It would probably hurt like the Devil’s hot sauce for a split second, but the peace that followed would more than make amends. “A bullet, please.”
“God sent His angels, and they took her. Not me.”
“Maybe God left you here for a purpose. Maybe God needs you to kill me. Listen to Him.”
Ace actually cocked his head and put a hand to his ear, in what would have been considered a display of overacting if a movie camera had been rolling. “I don’t hear nothing. He used to talk to me, but now I don’t hear nothing.”
The clouds had thinned a little and the rain had stopped. The moonlight spread across the night sky in melodramatic purple wadding. The barrel of the pistol glinted, and its dark round eye looked into Bowie’s heart.
“He led me down by the still waters and left me there.” Ace glanced above, exposing the stubbly knot of his Adam’s apple.
“The waters don’t seem all that still to me,” Bowie said. “Class VI plus.”
“They took my baby. God took my baby.”
Ace, who had taken half-a-dozen lives without showing a shred of regret, and who had just lost his lover to an unknown and possibly supernatural species, harbored no room for self-reflection. It confirmed what Bowie had always heard about the most successful killers: They were sociopathic, lacking morality, possessing loose wires and corroded contacts where the higher-order brain housed its sense of right and wrong.
So, one more wouldn’t hurt, right? God wouldn’t hold it against his special little agent. If God were truly fair and merciful, Ace Goodall would even get an additional reward for eradicating one more cockroach in the Great Big Bug Motel. Maybe an extra string on the harp, or a golden-cross tattoo on one wing.
“Maybe God knows something we don’t,” Bowie said, stepping toward Ace, goading him.
Ace nodded as if Bowie had served up a sage’s helping of spiritual smoke. “Him that has the plan.”
“Right.”
Bowie was three feet away now, instinctively flinching in anticipation of the. 32-caliber bullet. But Ace let him come, until Bowie wrapped his hand around the pistol’s barrel and pulled it from Ace’s limp fingers.
Shit. What now?
“We got to save her,” Ace said.
“She’s probably dead by now.”
Ace dropped to his knees and grabbed his head, squeezing it between his hands like a rotten melon he was trying to smash.
“She ain’t dead,” he shouted, voice breaking and rising to an unsettling, keening pitch that roared back and forth across the gorge, so loud even the lapping, churning river couldn’t suppress it. Then he flopped forward in a quivering seizure, limbs twitching, fingers clawing at the coarse sand of the riverbank. The schizophrenic killer vomited a staccato rant of strange syllables.
Bowie could only stare transfixed, the Colt Python as heavy as a dead snake in his hand, as Ace spoke in tongues.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Nice.
In the temperate bowels of the cave, Raintree had perched the penlight on a rock shelf. Here, the cave angled down and the walls were worn smooth, as if the channel had once carried water. The rock contained striations of crystal that caught and reflected the battery-powered light. Other layers in the granite revealed sandstone, a crumbling, chalk-white rock, and even a vein of coal. But Raintree wasn’t here for a geology class. He’d already taken that one in college, the easy three-hour credit known around campus as “Rocks for Jocks.”
He’d gone at least a hundred yards, at one point squeezing through a narrow crevice that had filled him with claustrophobia. But now he was alone to seek the Spirit Guide.
Raintree thought the inner search should be conducted in the forest, at the primal moment of first light, when the nocturnal creatures shut their eyes and gave way to the day shift. But that was cheating. Many species of animals could be found in the forest, and it would be difficult to know which one was the chosen spirit. Raintree’s vision quest would follow a hard path, so that when the good medicine came, he would know it for what it was.
But first things first.
He rummaged in the medicine bag and came out with three vials. The oxycodone was half gone, but he still had a good palmful left. Enough to put a damper on his central nervous system, though probably not enough to kill him.
He had four amphetamines left, Black Beauties, strong enough to make his dark hair stand on end. The third vial contained diazepam, better known under the trade name Valium. About a dozen of those were left if he really needed sleep and tranquility.
Under perfect conditions, he would time his medication so he would ease between moods. Oxy in the morning to numb the edges, then a Black Beauty for a midday pick-me-up, then Valium to blend the afternoon into a smooth concoction. From there, the choices were nearly limitless. Well, actually, they were quite limited, but the choice between a balls-tingling, eyelid-quivering speed buzz and a thick-tongued ride down the Oxy Highway seemed like a no-lose opportunity.
But this was a special circumstance. The painkillers kept his muscles from screaming at their overtaxed state, and the Valium allowed his mind to entertain images of the Raven Mockers without succumbing to a fit of fear. He’d held off on the speed, figuring he’d need it in the morning to make it to the top of Attacoa, the stone chimney the white settlers called Babel Tower. But there was one special ingredient that spiced the stew of his vision quest.
He pinched down into the medicine bag and came up with a piece of tinfoil. Some Southwestern tribes had used peyote, belladonna, jimson weed, tobacco, or hemp blossoms in their spiritual ceremonies.
Raintree figured the Cherokee vision quest needed a serious upgrade. He pulled out the one-thousand-microgram dose of Mr. Natu
ral LSD, concocted in a Berkeley lab by a bald, bearded professor. The acid manufacturer had been a client in one of Raintree’s fitness gyms, and when the man had pulled a muscle doing dead lifts, Raintree offered him half an oxycodone tablet. The man traded for four, giving up an eighth of an ounce of sensimilla bud in return. A lasting and mutually rewarding friendship was born, with Raintree having a dozen doctors writing pill prescriptions and the professor cranking out an alphabet soup of illegal substances.
A tiny, sane part of Raintree’s mind, the one where the pills hadn’t shorted out the circuits, knew this was no time for an acid trip. But it was shouted down by the other part, the seeking part, the unhappy and selfish part. The part that had wanted this trip in the first place.
He wished the cave harbored an underground spring, because the speed, the climb, and the assault had made him thirsty. But the cave, at least this far down into the mountain, was only moist, where water seeped between layers of stone and didn’t collect enough for drinking.
He unwrapped the foil and raised the dose of acid to his mouth. He paused, wondering what sort of ritual was required. A tribal chant, an improvised parody of old ghost dances, or maybe a paean to the buffalo spirit.
The Cherokee, who lived in houses and had a written language at the time of their forced removal from the Southern Appalachians, would have been better off as savages. All the written word had done was allow contracts between the tribe and the U.S. government. Those promises were as broken as their spirits on a thousand-mile walk where disease, famine, and exhaustion took them by the hundreds. No wonder many of the Cherokee had abandoned their Great Spirit, left it behind in the territory now owned by the White Man. They deserved each other.
In the thin shaft of the flashlight’s beam, he examined the scratches and runnels on his forearms. Even now, some sort of infection or contamination could be racing through his system, poisoning his brain. Raintree wanted his own brand of poison.
The acid was soaked into a tiny square of paper, waiting to form a mushroom cloud in the user’s head. Lysergic acid diethylamide was known to scramble serotonin levels, distort perception, and confound the DEA. Raintree wasn’t a chronic acid head. After a brief love affair with the drug, like most space cadets, he’d found the experience was best when saved for a special occasion.
Like a date with his spirit guide.
He put the dose to his tongue and swallowed. He wouldn’t sleep tonight, though he could probably ramp down on the amphetamine doses and turn up the volume on the Valium. For the next twelve hours, he wouldn’t be able to fully trust his senses. The discipline and self-control that had made him a wrestling champion would be given up to uncertainty, confusion, and a golden, illuminated doorway to the Other.
On an intellectual level, he knew any encounter with a spirit guide would be a hallucination. The goal of a vision quest, as least in the original form, was to push yourself to the limits of endurance, exhaustion, and hunger, then fall into a stupor of delirium. In the twenty-first century, vision quests were chartered field trips run by corporations that provided satellite television, refrigeration, and catered dinners so the customers could experience their inner selves in comfort and style.
Raintree switched off the light and listened. A low moan ran through the dark beyond. The wind. The night breeze finding cracks in the ancient stone.
He was well aware that he might die while tripping. Some LSD users flipped out, developed schizophrenic delusions, and went into psychotic fugues. In such a state, Raintree would be helpless against the attacking creatures. He touched the pitons in his belt and smiled.
Somehow, he didn’t figure it that way.
He recalled the surge of fear, the struggle on the cliff wall, the creature clinging to his back. And his thrusting of the steel spike into the creature’s head.
That was power. That was a vision worth pursuing and celebrating.
The trip of life and death.
Did God have bones?
The wind changed pitch and became a whale’s submarine song.
Salamanders became oil in these mountains.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat in the dark. The blackness pressed against him, snug as SealSkinz. He checked the watch. A quarter after twelve. Half an hour had passed since ingestion. His feet were balloons, his hands were sand. They seeped toward the flashlight.
He flicked it on. He couldn’t tell which way to go. Both directions looked the same, and either could be the throat of Hell.
He sat for another ten minutes. Ten minutes according to the watch. In real time, as marked by his malfeasant synapses, he was still in the Now.
Shit. Maybe tripping wasn’t such a good idea. Vision quests were for the birds, man.
He giggled. Hawks, falcons, and other birds of prey were popular manifestations of the warrior spirit. But since authentic vision quests had been the domain of aspiring warriors, that wasn’t surprising. What Cherokee brave wanted to slink back into camp and report seeing the bluebird of happiness?
That brought another giggle, and his voice sounded much too loud in the stifling space. Echoes were like footsteps on the gritty cavern floor. Like footsteps…
He thumbed the piton and slid it from his belt.
The footsteps were in tune with his breathing, with the beating of his pulse in his ears. His skin itched. He cut the light and listened to the oceanic roar of his lungs. Listened.
In the dark, the Great Spirit came to him. Not as a predator, not as a bat, not as an animal long extinct in the Southern Appalachians, like an elk or red wolf.
No, this was a rabbit. It came up from the cold, clammy darkness with its own luminescence, eyes casting a green, milky light. The thing was blind, because it kept bumping into stones. It paused near Raintree’s feet, sniffing the air with its ears laid back against its neck. Then it parted its lips-showing two sharpened incisors. The bunny faded to gray, then to black, its eyes dousing themselves. The teeth were the last to disappear.
Then Raintree realized he’d been staring at the LED readout on the watch.
The numbers were upside down, disembodied characters floating in the ether. He took a Valium, chewing it so it would race through his stomach lining unencumbered. He checked the watch again. Nearly one o’clock. His shift would be over in less than an hour. He’d let Farrengalli sleep, and then he and Dove could What if Farrengalli had fallen asleep already?
What if the creatures had come into the cave and taken Dove?
He stood, swiveling his head, looking for the lesser darkness that would indicate the mouth of the cave.
That way. Fifty-fifty chance.
He cut the light, but kept it in his left hand, a piton in the right. Ready for anything. Bending, tiptoeing, ears alert for any rustle of wings. A Bugs Bunny cartoon came to mind, the classic episode where Elmer Fudd stopped in his sneaking and told the viewing audience, “Shhh. We-ah hunting wabbits.” Raintree didn’t laugh.
“Follow the light,” preached the New Age sages, those who sold remote-control crystal power for a limited time only, $19.95 plus shipping and handling.
Raintree followed the light, the bluish thread that seemed so small against the oppressive onyx. He expected the beam to be snuffed out at any moment. Behind him, hopping, hopping, hopping. Whiskers whispering. Wabbits walking.
Must be going the wrong way.
He checked the watch again. He’d only been walking for two minutes.
The beam reflected a silver flash on the floor of the cave. Raintree retrieved the wrapper of a granola bar, a ProVentures Plenty, containing whole wheat, oats, and “pure dehydrated cane juice.” The fancy, feel-good name for sugar. Farrengalli was holding out on them. He must have taken all the rations they’d left by the river for the wounded FBI agent.
Raintree played the light behind him, saw no fierce lepine fangs, no menacing, erect ears. He rushed on, sweat breaking out under his arms, soaking his bare chest and shoulders. Even his sense of smell was distorted. The stink of his
body resembled rotted roses.
Harsh breathing, whimpers of pain, suppressed grunts. He heard them before he reached the wider opening of the cave’s mouth.
They had been attacked.
While Raintree was on his goofy trip, searching for a Great Spirit who had packed his travois and headed West long ago. He broke into a run, stumbled, fell to his knees, touched the medicine bag as if it were a Catholic’s rosary beads.
Rising, he plunged forward, tossing the light aside, gripping the piton so hard his fingers ached.
He braced himself. If he had wanted a vision, a hell of an opportunity awaited: He imagined the red, ripped flesh, the creatures perched on the bodies of his traveling companions while their heat faded and their blood filled unnatural cavities. He would kill them all, make them pay, use revenge as the Higher Power that had never been strong enough to pull him from the well of addiction. Rage would be his new drug.
Not that he gave a damn about Farrengalli, but Dove didn’t deserve As he entered the gray spill of leaking moonlight, it took his acid-drenched cerebrum a long second, a big stretch of Now, to make sense of what he was seeing.
No creatures.
Farrengalli, naked, sweating, and grunting, toiling over the struggling, whimpering and equally naked Dove.
Raintree gave a war whoop and went for the kill.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Red.
The river running red, cliffs on fire, sky filled with flickering orange.
Trumpets and screams, lava gouging a rut deep into the Earth, hot electricity sparking in the air.
Ace’s belly boiled, his head clanged with the din of Armageddon. This was Revelation’s promise made good, the seventh seal broken, the whore of Babylon rising.
The intensity of the vision sliced at him like knives at an altar, torturing a sacrificial lamb in anger over its innocence.
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