Scott Nicholson - The Gorge

“Keep an eye out for Goodall,” Castle said. “He might be waiting around to put another couple of scalps on his belt.”

“He’s gone,” Samford said. “I cleared the perimeter when I got the rope.”

“You’re the profile guy. You know he’s slicker than owl shit.”

“The assessment says he’s megalomaniacal but he’s not reckless. Hell, he’s a survivor. He’d rather laugh at us tomorrow than risk a showdown today. Every day he avoids capture is another day he achieves cult status in the eyes of his anarchist buddies.”

“They’re not anarchists anymore. We call them ‘terrorists,’ remember?”

“Yeah. That damned Bin Laden. He’s given a bad name to mass murderers. Now let’s get you out of there and regroup.”

Samford drew the line taut and Castle tried to draw his other leg from its subterranean snare. Castle thought of the title of an old Rod Stewart album, “Foot Loose and Fancy Free.” Rod, the rooster of rock, the scratchy-voiced poet of Castle’s teen years, going from Scotland plaid to peroxide blond in the blink of an eye. A generation later, Toby Keith gleefully spoke of putting a misogynistic boot in somebody’s ass. You kicked whatever way you could. But Castle couldn’t seem to kick the habit that clung to his shoe leather with all the invisible tenacity of a mutant octopus to an anchor.

“I’m hung up,” Castle said. He was more annoyed than worried, though he desperately wanted to be out of the hole by full dark. Crickets and other night insects had started their sonorous clicking and chirruping, a sound that was comforting when heard from the back porch, but oddly disturbing in the deep wilderness. Castle could probably reach his Glock if needed, but he’d have to free his right hand first.

“Let me tie off and maybe I can slide down and help.” Samford’s voice had grown softer, perhaps sensing his words would carry in the relative stillness of the forest. To Goodall’s ragged, off-center ears.

“You’ll bring a load of loose dirt down on the way. Better let me work it out myself.”

“Okay. I’ll do a quick reconnaissance.”

The Rook was Behavioral Sciences all the way, and though he’d undergone the same new agent training as Castle, he was not HRT-tested. Sure, he’d been in a talk-through in a couple of crisis situations, had worked mop-up on serial killer cases, and put in a couple of years twiddling his thumbs in the Department of Homeland Security’s clownfest. But he’d never drawn fire and had never pulled the trigger.

Castle, a SEALs vet, had gained a grudging respect for The Rook over the last few weeks. Enough respect that he didn’t want his partner to face Goodall alone. If The Rook died because Castle was nailed like a cheerleader on prom night, tripped up by his own stupid feet and carelessness, then it would add yet another shingle to Castle’s spot on the Quantico Wall of Shame. “I’ll be free in a second,” Castle said. “I’m not sure everything works right, so you better stick around.”

“I thought you said you weren’t hurt.”

“What did you expect me to say?”

“That you love me.”

“Hey, pard, this ain’t Brokeback Mountain.”

“Man, you’ve got no sense of humor anymore.”

“My second wife took it in the divorce settlement.”

“Okay, take your time. Goodall’s long gone, I’m telling you. Fits the assessment. Live to fight again another day.”

“Or to get another headline. Three hundred and twenty days and counting. Or is it twenty-one? I lost track.”

Castle rotated his ankle. Though more loose dirt and rocks had fallen in his attempt to scramble up the bank, there was space around his thigh. He couldn’t see into the inky darkness below. Whatever had snagged his boot still clung to it. He thought he heard faint scratching sounds against the leather heel.

The night plays strange tricks on the mind. Even the cavemen knew that. Why else would they huddle around the fire and tell stories? Because the monsters in their heads were worse than the real monsters outside, the ones that only wanted to eat them.

Castle flashed to one of his childhood memories, one so persistent it had outlasted the face of the first girl he’d ever kissed, the aluminum ding of his first tee-ball base hit, the smell of popcorn at the Titusville drive-in theater. The thing under the bed that scratched the dusty mattress frame, claw tips working idly back and forth. The thing, with arms as long as fire hoses. The thing, breath rasping as it chuckled, sausage-chub tongue playing over sharp, yellow teeth. The kind of teeth that ate little boys for a midnight snack, once those arms reached up, probed under the blankets, and clamped onto the nearest boy ankle. The kind of The boy may have cowered into the wee hours, balled so tightly in the blankets that even a flea would have found a meal difficult, but Jim Castle had put away childish things. A bout with testicular cancer, three bad marriages, a stint in the Navy SEALs, and an assignment with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had made sure of that. Faith and imagination had no more room on the stage. This wasn’t a world where monsters slithered out from shadowy crevices; in the twenty-first century, the monsters packed themselves with explosives and walked into a crowded market, carried automatic weapons into a post office, or put a torch to churches. Some of the worst monsters were fixtures on the nightly news, spewing their brand of poison as political ideology, letting others carry out their bloody work.

So the thing that had his foot wasn’t a monster. Though he and the Rook had ditched their backpacks while closing in on Goodall, Castle hadn’t forsaken all his gear. The small hatchet still hung in a leather holster on his hip. He disengaged his right hand from the rope, unsnapped the button, and freed the hatchet. The hole through which his leg dangled was too dark and cramped for him to hack blindly at whatever held his boot. At best, he could use the thick blade to probe around and maybe pry himself free. He rammed the hatchet head down beside his calf. It struck something soft and meaty.

From beneath him, a bleat arose, or maybe a chuckle the kind of sound that rolls off a sausage-chub tongue No, that was likely the last gasp of the radio he’d dropped, running down its NiCad battery in the dark. They’d limited communication to preserve batteries, and the FBI had not bothered to set up a command post in the area.

Because Goodall wasn’t supposed to be here.

He poked again, working the blunt blade around his boot. The chuckle turned into a slithering hiss, like that of an animal in pain. Castle pulled the blade up and in the gloaming half-light saw the edge was coated with a viscous liquid. Not blood, exactly, though the liquid was dark…

Castle yanked his foot with all the desperation of a five-year-old boy bundling blankets against the monster under the bed. This time it came free, accompanied by what sounded like fingernails on leather and a moan of disappointment.

“Pull me the fuck out of here,” Castle yelled, flinging the hatchet into the hole.

Samford gave no response, but Castle found now that his legs were free, he could scramble up the embankment with no problem. He gouged his boots into the loose dirt, sending rocks skittering down the slope. Castle hoped his actions would trigger enough of a landslide to bury whatever lay coiled in the deep recesses of the Earth with its long fire-hose arms as he worked the rope hand over hand, the slack curling around his legs. Dusk had gained a deeper hold, as if the hole below, now uncorked, had spilled its ink into the sky. He reached the raw lip of the bank, wondering why The Rook had gone silent, and hooked a knee up and planted it on solid ground. Then he wriggled his waist over, feeling more dirt give way below him in a damp avalanche.