Scott Nicholson - The Gorge

The helmet. She tugged at the restraint strap with fingers like cold snakes.

Once the helmet was free, she laid it beside her on the stone. The air was alive with rustling wings and the skee, skee, skee of creatures soaring above her. She shifted and wriggled her sodden sandbag flesh until she was at the rim of the stone. She fumbled for the flashlight switch, flicked it on, and rolled off the stone and face-first into the shocking swirl of water.

The chill revived her, shaking the lethargy inflicted by the creatures’ infectious hands and tongues. She drew air and submerged, her skin tightening, her limbs aching to the bone. But a golden warmth emanated from her center, in the place where promise was born.

Ace was right. Unborn life was life after all, and still sacred.

Maybe not worth killing for, but worth living for.

Clara gripped the large stone, letting her feet dangle until they touched bottom. She lifted her head from the water, expecting one of the creatures to yank her out by the hair. The flashlight, its bulb weak, revealed little about the space, and offered only the slightest shifting of shadows above. She didn’t know in which direction to swim.

Okay, Ace Jr., Mom’s going to have to pick a horse and ride it. Eeny-meeny-miney “Clara,” Ace called, causing the creatures to scurry in frantic arcs overhead.

Bowie checked the bullets in the revolver. Four left.

Two for the creatures and, when worse came to worst, one for Clara. And one for himself.

That would be okay. Finishing on a high note, the perfect ending to an American success story.

Going out with a bang, all sins redeemed, all failures washed away in blood.

Ace could fend for himself. Maybe God would reach a soft white hand down from heaven and scoop up the sociopathic killer. Sit the Bama Bomber on the left side of the golden throne, where they could laugh together about good times and share murderous memories until Kingdom Come.

He followed Ace into the cave, hand sweating around the butt of the Python. He had to admit, religious mania had its good points. Ace had a cocksure strut, as if walking into the lion’s den was a stroll in the park. Ace held the backpack to his chest, a sacrament carried into a high temple. Bowie was pretty sure the man didn’t have an extra pistol stashed away. Maybe he’d finally gone off the deep end, thinking he was entering the hall of angels.

The cave was inky black, the air damp and stifling, but Bowie could swear a glow emanated from the depths, like a match head flaring at the bottom of a rank well. Behind him, the sky drummed a million silver bullets into the world.

He ducked low, though he doubted subterfuge would provide any deception against creatures whose senses had been honed in this sightless, cramped environment. Besides, Ace was giving away the game, marching with heavy feet, onward Christian soldier, hallelujah.

Best-case scenario: the dozens of creatures swooping down on Ace and surrounding him like sharks hitting a chum slick, while Bowie danced in like Fred Astaire on steroids, located Clara in the dark, and carried her to safety.

Well, relative safety. Once out of the cave, they’d still be exposed and vulnerable, sirloin on the hoof, walking bags of V-8.

Plan A and Plan B were both a little melodramatic. He wished there were a Plan C, but the stink of the cave disrupted his concentration. He kicked over a clattering stack of something, knelt, and felt the roughened knobs and smooth lengths.

Bones.

Whether they had belonged to people or to animals, he couldn’t tell in the smothering darkness.

Probably not people. They wouldn’t be so lucky.

He shuddered, recalling the wizened, altered form of C.A. McKay floating, flocking, as mindless in its flight as the others. Just another creature. Now other, the beast inside finally revealed.

Maybe they were all monsters inside.

All that had risen from the cosmic spark that spawned this world, from bacteria to bugs to flippered fish determined to taste the mud.

That’s crazy thinking. Leave those sorts of delusions to Ace.

But Bowie wasn’t sure there was any kind of way to think except crazily. He was walking into a vampires’ den with the tactical equivalent of a squirt gun. He didn’t even have any holy water or garlic, much less a stake or silver cross. Hell, he couldn’t even cobble together a decent prayer.

“Clara.” Ace said it with clear conviction, a command, the word echoing in the enclosure.

Bowie flinched, expecting a flurry of fang and wing and claw.

Instead, he heard only a soft rustling deeper in the cave. And a gurgle. Maybe his stomach was churning from fear.

The glow deepened, and he saw it was coming from a point barely twenty feet in front of him. The blackness had distorted his depth perception. The cavern floor appeared to slope downward. Clara’s rafting helmet lay on a flat stone shelf, its attached Maglite dim from low batteries. Her clothes lay like rumpled pelts beside her.

They must have killed her already. Would she be coming out of the darkness, back from the dead like McKay?

He recalled what Ace had said about the demons wanting the baby. Why?

The creatures had exhibited signs of intelligent behavior, a basic social order, a survival instinct that belied their fierce aggression. Were they smart enough to set a trap, expecting Ace and Bowie to walk right in and hop into the frying pan?

No. The creatures could have easily taken both of them by the river. Something else was at work here.

And I hope to hell it isn’t God. Not the God who killed Connie, who failed those who prayed to him, who put my people on a river and plucked them one by one like daisy petals in a sick game of they-love-me, they-love-me-not.

A rumbling arouse from the hidden depths, a liquid burp. The cavern floor vibrated beneath Bowie’s feet.

“I got one for you,” Ace said. “I got one for the baby-killers. Don’t you fuckers read the papers?”

Movement in the shadows beyond the orange globe of the flashlight.

Bowie lifted the Python, not knowing in which direction to point it. They were probably behind him now, cutting off their escape route. If he even managed to find Clara, the best he could hope for would be a clean mercy shot.

Being dead don’t get you off the hook. A bit of Ace wisdom that made sense. Even if Bowie killed Clara and then turned the gun on himself, they would both end up shriveled and transformed, infected with whatever craving possessed these creatures. Whether of natural or supernatural origin, in the end there was no difference. Bottom line, being a vampire would suck.

“Come on out and play,” Ace said. “I won’t bite.”

More scurrying. Restless sighs, moist flutters.

“I walked through the valley and, lo, it was righteous,” Ace said. He was near the flat stone now, and in the weak pumpkin-colored glow, Bowie could see him unzipping the knapsack. “Deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom.”

He pulled out a jangled heap of wires, cylinders, and shiny metal. It looked like an orgy of alarm clocks and telephone cable.

“Clara, reckon your time ain’t come yet,” Ace said, calm, moving deeper into the cave and standing at the head of the flat stone. Like a heathen priest at an altar.

Clara rose from darkness behind the stone, her hair wet. The dying light made an orange fright mask of her face.

“This way,” Bowie whispered, throat dry. The cave was as cold as the river had been, as if the darkness and the thundering water sprang from the same source.

“They want the baby, Ace. Our baby.” Clara’s voice was small and frightened. Bowie hadn’t realized just how young she was. Just a dumb kid making a bad choice. Bowie knew all about bad choices.