Scott Nicholson - The Gorge

“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.

“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.