Scott Nicholson - The Gorge

Dove gave the doubled rope some slack until there was a loop at the end. Then she flipped it over the bat-beast’s head, yanking back as it dropped below the pointy chin.

She gave a violent lift of her arms, tightening the makeshift noose around the thing’s throat. Planting a knee in its back, she arched, straightening until she applied pressure with all her weight. Farrengalli expected the bat-beast to start bucking like a rodeo bronco, with Dove holding on for the ride of her life.

Wait a sec. Those fuckers don’t breathe. So you sure can’t choke one to death.

He’d heard Lane’s, Bowie Whitlock’s, and Dove’s theories on the nature of the beasts. Chupacabra, the goat-suckers. A lost species. A mutant strain of oversize bats. Even the Chief, who currently looked to be locked in a wrestling match tougher than anything the Olympics had thrown at him, had come up with the out-the-ass theory of the Raven Mocker.

The dumb redskin. These things didn’t have any feathers at all.

While Dove wrangled with the creature, Farrengalli freed his knife. He slashed sideways, opening a seam beneath the creature’s left eye. Soft drops of gray snot leaked out. The gray fluid spattered his jeans, and he wondered if skin contact would cause infection.

No time to worry about that now, because the creature went nuts. It flailed its claws at Farrengalli, coming way too close to his crotch, shredding his jeans down to the white threads. One of the thin, spindly fingertips broke through the cloth and jabbed him like a ten-penny nail.

“Hey, fucker, that hurt.”

“The head,” Dove said. “You have to mess with its motor controls.”

Farrengalli imagined some sort of radar equipment in the thing’s brain, tucked away in a chamber like the command helm of a submarine. Cut off the head, the body dies, someone had once said. Or maybe it went, “A fish rots from the head first.”

Either way, Farrengalli was ready to roll with it.

He swept the knife forward, the eight-inch blade digging into the creature’s eye socket. The eyeball plopped, oozing rancid buttermilk.

“The brain,” Dove said between clenched teeth. “Get the brain.”

Farrengalli didn’t think the bat-beasts had any brains. He’d watched the vampire movies, same as everybody, and to kill a vampire you drove a stake in its heart. Zombies were the things you killed with head wounds.

But Farrengalli figured he might as well play the odds and do both. As Dove held the skewered skull in place, he rammed forward until the Buck knife was buried to the hilt. He figured the thing deserved a good frontal lobotomy just for ruining his jeans. He twisted the knife handle back and forth, gouging.

The Jagger lips flapped, and Farrengalli wouldn’t have been surprised to hear “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” coming from them.

Its limbs slackened and it flopped forward, limp, across Farrengalli’s waist. He crab-crawled out from under it, giving it another kick for good measure. Dove whiplashed the rope, pulling it from the thing’s neck like floss from the tight gap in two rotted teeth.

Farrengalli went to his knees, raised the gory blade, and plunged it where he guessed the thing’s heart would be.

Tired, his limbs shaking, he shoved the creature to the edge of the rock shelf with his boot. With one last kick, the thing tumbled off and into the thick mist below. He didn’t hear it hit.

He turned to Dove. “That will teach those sons of-”

A wet, flexing snake brushed his shoulder and he dropped the knife, squealing in surprise.

“Don’t fill your drawers,” Dove said, snatching out with her hand. “It’s a rope.”

“Hurry up,” Raintree shouted from the dark notch above. “Before more of them come.”

“Better save the batteries,” Dove said.

Raintree, crouching at the lip of the cave, checked the bars on the cell phone again. Nothing. It was an inept tool, an artifact from an alien world that wouldn’t function in such a primitive environment. He felt silly holding it, like a Neanderthal pointing a laser weapon at a mastodon.

They had divided up the pitons, two each, as their only weapons. Farrengalli took the penlight, saying he wanted to explore the cave. Raintree hadn’t argued, even though, strategically, the group should stay together in case of another attack. In truth, he wanted to be alone with Dove.

“I’m not sure it will work even if we get to the top,” Raintree said, looking out over the dark valley. Though the rain had stopped, the clouds hung low and heavy over the gorge. The hidden moon provided some filtered backlight, but the sky was almost as black as the cave’s interior. The river was completely obscured by mist, and the drop might as well have been bottomless.

“The FBI agent believed it would.”

“Him. I think he was cracking up. Didn’t you hear him blurting out random sentences, like he was talking to somebody who wasn’t there?”

She glanced behind her, and then lowered her voice. She was close enough that he could feel her breath on his ear. “What do you think happened down there, with him and Farrengalli?”

“Who knows? I don’t trust either of them. I can see the agent pulling rank and taking the raft. Like I said, he’s going nuts.”

“He was hurt pretty badly.”

“Crazy people sometimes ignore their bodies.” And I’m star witness for the prosecution in that trial.

He tilted the cell phone for a moment, casting the green glow of its screen on her face. Her cheeks were dirty, hair tangled and greasy, and a long scratch stitched her forehead. But her brown eyes were unfazed, wide and beautiful and hopeful, pupils large in the darkness.

“Well, we’re here now. What choice do we have?” she asked.

“Two choices. Go up or go down.”

“Or stay here.”

“For how long? Even if the Bama Bomber makes it out of here, do you really think he’s going to send a rescue team? Do you think he’ll let Bowie live once they make it to the lake?”

He caught her sharp intake of breath, the wince of inner pain.

“Sorry,” he said. “We just have to be realistic. We have to keep it together if we want to get out of here alive.”

Like you’re one to talk about getting it together. Already, he was starting to itch, to feel the crab-crawl of addiction across his skin. The night was the worst, for some reason, as if his body didn’t want to shut down and his brain craved fuel and sedation at the same time.

“We should have already been dead,” Dove said. “You saved us.”

“We all saved us. I just got lucky.”

Luck, hell. He wanted to tell her how close he had come to falling after losing his grip. About that moment of desperation, the rush of fear that even modern pharmaceuticals couldn’t suppress. Not fear for his life, but fear of facing survival without his medicine bag. But the pine branch had held, the brain-skewered creature’s corpse dropped away, and he’d scrambled to the cave, set an anchor, and swung the line down to the ledge.

“We’re going to need a lot more luck.” She reached out and touched his hand. Though her fingers were calloused and ragged from the climb, they moved with a smooth, reptilian grace, up along his thumb. Raintree focused all his attention on the sensation, and he wasn’t sure whether it was the painkillers, the speed, or the tranquilizer, but something was pumping through his bloodstream with a full load of electricity. She hesitated a moment, squeezing his hand gently until the cell phone closed. “Better save the batteries.”

Her mouth was close to his cheek, her breath sweet despite the long day’s trauma. Raintree turned, wondering if their lips would meet, either accidentally or on purpose. As if there were ever any difference.