The Gorge Read online

  Castle looked past him to the second raft, which was making its way to shore. Farrengalli greeted the stranger as if he were an old frat brother whose name was lost in a hundred keg parties. “Yo, Otter Face, what’s the deal?”

  “I only need one boat,” Castle said.

  “Nothing personal, but I’m not sure you have the authority to seize private property. There’s a little matter of the Fourth Amendment.”

  “I’m invoking special powers as granted by my superiors.”

  Superiors. Bowie loathed that word. Or maybe he was just in denial and had never truly learned humility, even after causing the death of his wife.

  No, you didn’t cause her death. That’s second-hand and passive. You were active. You killed her as surely as if you had laced her coffee with arsenic.

  This wasn’t a time for dwelling on her death. No time was.

  “Are you after a terrorist?” Bowie asked. In the early twenty-first century, the umbrella of terrorism had given broad powers to a range of government agencies, from the National Security Agency’s secret wiretapping down to small-town cops whose uniforms had taken a turn toward the paramilitary with black jumpsuits and jackboots.

  “Could be,” Castle said. “But you’re wasting my time.”

  “Look, if you leave us here, we’re at risk of exposure and of running out of supplies. It’s a three-day hike to the closest road, assuming we don’t get lost.”

  Castle looked toward the sloping forest above, speculative, as if expecting a helicopter to swoop over the horizon. “You’ll be okay.”

  “Do you know how to handle white water?”

  Castle eyed the craft, which bobbed in the current. “Maybe.”

  Bowie’s primary responsibility was for the safety of the crew. He’d failed his wife, and he’d come close to failing himself, but he considered this his last big adventure run. He wouldn’t let it end this way. Especially with Dove giving him the look. “We’re experienced. We can get you there faster, safer, and drier than if you take the raft by yourself.”

  Lane, catching on and no doubt calculating the publicity advantages of assisting an “unsung hero,” added, “The ProVentures Muskrat is capable of solo maneuvering, but it’s designed as a tandem craft. We’ll be pushing the weight capacity, but I’m sure the engineers fudged it a little to the low side. You know how engineers are.”

  “No,” Castle said. “Not really.”

  Lane gave a nervous grin. “Neither do I.”

  Raintree, Farrengalli, and Dove Krueger eased their raft beside the one Bowie held. Farrengalli folded his arms and leaned back as if soaking up a sun that had hidden away. “The fuck,” he said. “You’re dicking with my bonus.”

  “The bonus applies to everyone,” Lane said. “We all have the same timetable.”

  “If Agent Castle here wants to join us, I guarantee we’ll make Babel Tower by sundown,” Bowie said. To Castle: “Where are you headed, anyway?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “Fucking fantastic,” Farrengalli said as Castle waded into the water and stepped into Bowie’s craft. Bowie looked at Dove. Her eyes were black pools, full of deep, cold water.

  Yeah. We’ll make it. And I don’t love you, okay?

  He didn’t need to speak. She knew him better than he himself did.

  Castle settled behind Bowie, who hollered, “Wagons, ho!” as he dipped his paddle into the water, turning the raft so it pointed downstream toward where all rivers collided into a great sea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “There’s one of them angels,” Ace said, pointing a thumb at the sky.

  Clara shivered in her damp bra and panties, her clothes spread on a rock to dry. She looked up to where the clouds had thickened and spread, gray mayonnaise smeared over the red and ochre treetops of the high cliffs.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said, wondering if that was the correct response. Perhaps Ace was having one of his visions, or maybe he was getting ready to launch into one of his fits.

  “Up there,” he said, leaning back. He had stripped completely, his skin as pale as the belly of a trout. The cool autumn air didn’t seem to affect him, though his penis was shriveled and beet-purple. She touched her stomach, wondering about the thing he had passed into her. But that was a wonder best left for later. Right now, she wanted to get away from the river, and eventually away from Ace. Maybe.

  She squinted against the filtered sun. Nothing, not even a bird. Too cold for mosquitoes. Dead air, except for the soft, whisking wind from the northwest.

  “Why did you leave me?” she said. “In the canoe?”

  Ace blinked and continued to stare at the sky. “It was in the Lord’s hands.”

  “The Lord wanted you to swim and me to sink?”

  “It ain’t that easy. You need to read more of the Good Book. Some of it’s plain, but other things you got to figure out. Sometimes good looks like evil, and sometimes words mean something else besides what they say.”

  She had once thought such pronouncements were the insight of an idiot savant, one who had been given the secret decoder ring for truth and spirituality. Now they sounded like the blather of a man who was desperately trying to make sense of a world that was beyond his comprehension. When she thought of the violent losers she had dated (her retroactive word for S amp; M encounters), even the ones who had thrilled her beyond measure, in the end they were all attempting to destroy the things they couldn’t understand. Often, she now realized, the main thing they couldn’t understand had been her.

  Funny how getting nearly killed, really killed, had opened her eyes.

  Or was it something else? Some creeping change at the cellular level, a biological signal that forced her to get past her selfish and self-destructive nihilism?

  The thing Ace had planted in her belly.

  “Reckon the Lord has a different plan now,” Ace said.

  Like what, drop down a golden ladder and let us climb? “I’m hungry.”

  “We’ll be all right, with the angels watching over us.” Ace rummaged in the backpack and pulled out its contents. Some type of explosive he’d double-packed in ziplock bags, along with an electronic detonator. His gun. A soggy bag of cereal. A dented apple. His King James Bible, ragged around the edges, pages stuck together, little more than a papier-mache brick.

  “Here.” He handed her the apple.

  She bit into the mealy flesh of the fruit, wondering if she’d be able to keep it down. Who would have thought pregnancy would arouse hunger and nausea at the same time?

  Ace ran a hand over her breast. “The cold’s making your nipples hard.”

  “That hurts.” Her breasts had swollen over the past few weeks. Ace hadn’t commented, but she could feel the difference. They were heavy and tender and strained against her dirty bra.

  “You like it hurt,” Ace said, putting his stubbled cheek against her chest and rasping her skin.

  Clara couldn’t explain that she had changed. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe whatever consumed Ace, the insanity, the delusions, the sheer blind fervor, had squirted through him and into her and she was now as crazed as he was. Maybe.

  Either way, Ace wasn’t stopping, hands busy, going lower. The head of his penis emerged from the wrinkled sheath of skin like a snake from a winter den.

  “I don’t feel like it,” she said, the apple bitter in her throat. She tried to move back on the rock, away from him, but he held her in place and eased her down on her back. Her skin chafed against the gritty surface, the rock’s weak warmth providing no comfort. Ace yanked aside one leg of her panties, tearing the elastic.

  “The Bible says a woman submits,” Ace said, climbing on top of her, crushing her against the stone, pressing his cruel hardness against her. He didn’t care if she was ready or not, had never once bothered to attend to her needs, and though maybe she had changedmaybe, baby, maybe — no way in Hell had Ace. He rammed inside her, rough and dry, and she had no choice but to submit like always.

>   She wrapped her arms around him, gripping the apple so hard her fingernails pierced its skin. His breath smelled of mud and reptiles, algae scum and raw meat.

  She gasped. “Oh, my God.”

  Ace gave her a rotten-toothed grin. “Good, huh?”

  Clara couldn’t answer, because past his shoulder and high in the sky soared three of Ace’s angels.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Test weight is good to one thousand pounds,” Travis Lane repeated, as if to hone his ProVentures sales pitch.

  “We’re close, then,” Bowie said. The raft was crowded, with Castle jammed up behind Bowie. Lane had completely given up on paddling due to the lack of elbow room. The waterline was within a foot of the bow, and each buck of the rapids tossed a few more tablespoons of water into the craft.

  The current had eased, and Bowie remembered this middle leg as one of the gentlest stretches of the river. In autumn, the river was generally at its lowest anyway, far removed from the torrential rains of summer and the snowmelt of early spring. But even the gentlest stretches had their occasional hair runs, moments when a lack of concentration could result in another spill or worse. And Castle had no PFD to float him to safety.

  “So they have you working alone?” Bowie shouted over his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Castle said.

  “There’s a lot of territory to cover out here,” Bowie said. He didn’t believe the agent, but accepted that the FBI had probably instilled some weird code of honor in Castle’s head. Loose lips sink ships, and all that. Still, Bowie felt it was fair to be forewarned of any potential danger. An armed federal agent in the middle of nowhere probably signaled “manhunt.”

  As a devout recluse, Bowie had willfully avoided newspapers and magazines, and his Montana property had been too isolated for cable television. He could have set up wireless Internet service and satellite TV, but it seemed counterproductive to let unwanted information into his cabin while he had spent so much energy keeping the real world at bay. Bowie couldn’t recall any sensational cases that might have triggered a serious federal manhunt, but he was sure not every crime was as high-profile as the 9/11 attacks, the Green River Killer, or the Unabomber case.

  McKay, at the rear of the raft, spoke up. “I saw on the news that abortion clinic bomber was supposed to be hiding out in the mountains of North Carolina. Is that the guy you’re after?”

  Bowie, focused on the upcoming swells, couldn’t see Jim Castle’s face, but he was willing to bet the man’s jaws were clenched. The agent hadn’t immediately responded, which hinted that McKay was close to the mark. Bowie hadn’t heard of the case, but figured some nut job was on the loose somewhere. Plenty of them to go around. But if this bomber was hiding in the Unegama Wilderness Area, it would take an army to smoke him out.

  “Yeah, the Bama Bomber,” Lane said. “Some kind of redneck mass murderer, right?”

  “Technically, he is both a mass murderer and a serial killer, if that is who I’m after,” Castle said.

  Cop-speak riddles. No wonder people got away with murder. But the best killers could move in different worlds, disguise themselves as plumbers, politicians, or pet shop owners.

  “He’s from North Dakota,” McKay called from the rear. “They just call him the Bama Bomber because it fit the headlines better.”

  “Mr. Castle, I need to know if my group will be in any danger,” Bowie said.

  “I promise you’ll be the first to know. If and when.”

  “I’ll just assume he’s considered armed and dangerous, then.”

  “Isn’t everybody these days?” Lane said.

  A budding J. Edgar Hoover or an explosive-packing member of the moron militia might be the least of their problems, Bowie thought. Clouds had pushed in and coalesced into a rumpled and smothering blanket. Bowie had studied the weather reports for the two weeks prior to the trip, and a warm front was predicted to push precipitation across the central states and possibly into the Northeast and Canada, completely dodging the South. From Bowie’s previous experience running the gorge, though, he knew weather in the mountains could change dramatically, the escarpment playing with wind patterns and sometimes swinging temperatures thirty degrees within a few hours.

  The Unegama River, with stretches ranked between Class III and Class VI when the river was at its safest, could quickly become a torrential storm drain. If the rain was more than just a passing shower, Bowie would have to decide between taking the rafts out and losing precious hours, or even a day, or sticking to schedule and ramping up the risk factor. With one raft already overloaded, he might have to ditch a couple of crew members.

  Farrengalli, maybe. The thought brought a smile to his lips. But Dove might volunteer to keep him company, reasoning that she had more hiking experience than the others. The smile tightened. He knew well what happened when Dove kept a man company in the woods.

  “How far do you expect to ride?” Bowie asked Castle.

  “As far as it takes.”

  Bowie glanced upriver, saw Dove working the paddle, and admired her strong but slender arms. He should have put her in the raft with him, but he had been determined to interact with her as little as possible. This morning had been a mistake, though the memory of it caused a warm and pleasant swelling in the crotch of his SealSkinz.

  “Your clothes are wet,” Lane said to the agent. “You’re in danger of exposure.”

  “I’ve been exposed before,” he said.

  Every time Bowie glanced at Castle, the man’s eyes were scanning the sky as if expecting a strafing run from a formation of jet fighters. Though the eyes never stayed fixed on anything for more than three seconds (nothing like Serpico when played by Pacino, who could beat a mirror in a staring contest), Bowie had seen enough to wonder if the man might just possibly be some kind of nut job himself. What if Castle was the suspect and had somehow obtained a federal badge, possibly from one of his victims?

  Bowie guided the lead raft to the right, into the shallow shoals, so the other raft could catch up. He was about to ram his paddle into the sandy bottom when the piercing shriek erupted from above and fell like a meteor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Castle recognized the shriek instantly.

  It was the same sound that had accompanied the swooping attack on The Rook. One of them, the flying things, monsters that had once lived under his bed but now inhabited the granite cliffs above the Unegama. The high-pitched noise was the combination of a bat’s squeak, a dying woman’s wail, and the death gargle of a hanging victim.

  The sound swelled and then the raft rocked. Lane, the man behind him, slammed into his back, causing him to topple like a fleshy domino, and likewise he bumped into Bowie. The sudden impact was accompanied by a wet spray as the raft was pushed into the water by the force of the blow.

  At the rear of the raft, the blond man screamed.

  “What the fuck?” Farrengalli shouted from the other raft.

  “Bowie!” the lone woman in the group shouted.

  Castle turned to see the creature latched onto the blond man’s back, bony fingers grappling against the man’s dry suit. Unlike the one that had carried off The Rook, this one had a gray, leathery hide and thin arms that bore the suggestion of loose skin. The face was humanoid, but the bald, blunt dome of skull descended to a sharp, bony chin. The eyes were large and milky, with no pupils, as if the creature had no use for vision. All those features made only fleeting impressions on Castle, because his attention was drawn to the two glistening incisors that dug into the blond’s neck above the collar of his life jacket.

  Castle struggled for his Glock, trying to push Lane out of the way. Lane crawled onto the inflated bulge of the bow, arms flailing, moaning as if he were the one being attacked. “Oh, Jesus, dear sweet oh-my-Christ Jesus, dear goddamned Jesus,” he muttered in a loose and profane litany.

  Bowie jumped out of the raft and let it glide past him; then he raised his paddle and swung the end against the creature. The flat end of the
paddle thwacked against the creature’s hunched back, but it didn’t pause in its assault. It lifted its head, and twin drops of blood dangled at the end of the incisors. The lips were parted in a frenzied sneer. Castle raised the Glock, but with the rocking of the boat and the blond’s jerking attempts to throw the thing off his back, he couldn’t get a clear shot.

  “Get it off me,” McKay shouted, reaching behind to grab at the oblate, wizened head. No doubt he hadn’t seen his attacker, or he would have been even more frantic to escape.

  Lane was now sprawled fully across the bow, his legs in the air, and Castle tipped him face-first into the river to get him out of the line of fire. Bowie chopped again with the paddle, and the vinyl blade broke against the creature’s neck. It turned its head in Bowie’s direction and sniffed the air with cavernous nostrils.

  It can’t see. Castle tried once more to draw a bead on the creature, figuring the kill shot would have to go to the skull, because its limbs were entwined around the blond’s body as if they were fiercely fornicating lovers.

  The raft spun slowly, leaving a drenched Lane splashing upstream. Bowie waded after the raft, jabbing the broken end of his paddle at the creature, penetrating a few inches through the wrinkled flesh. The creature’s mouth opened, but no sound issued forth, only the strained rasp of its flapping tongue. Its head swiveled wildly, as if not understanding the source of its pain- if it even felt pain, Castle thought-but then its lips settled once more onto the wound in the man’s neck. Blood spotted the front of the blond’s life jacket.

  Castle decided the safest shot would be from a stationary position. “Grab the line,” he shouted at Bowie before rolling over the bow into the river.

  He kept the Glock above water. The river was colder than he’d realized, the chill shocking him and causing his breath to hesitate in his lungs. The water was knee-deep in the shoals, which allowed him to quickly regain his balance. Bowie gripped the thin nylon rope that girdled the raft’s bow, holding it in place, though it still bobbed up and down with the current.