The Gorge

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Raven Mocker.

Robert Raintree couldn’t believe he’d even mentioned the legend. Raised in the Qualla Boundary, less than two hundred miles from the Unegama Wilderness Area, he knew better. The Cherokee reservation had been the home of alcoholism, violence, and poverty during his childhood, until his grandfather had whisked him off to Oklahoma. In Qualla, the best job you could hope for was to pose in ceremonial headdress and buckskins beside a stuffed, moth-eaten black bear while sweaty white people took your picture. Or, if you had patience, you might work your way into a cashier’s job at a shop that sold rubber tomahawks and Confederate license plates.

All that changed with the coming of Harrah’s Casino, federally approved gambling that offered belated reparations for the White Man’s long-ago massacre. A tiny portion of the profits were distributed to anyone who was at least one-sixteenth Cherokee. Not a bad deal, all the way around. The U.S. government shed the public’s collective guilt, and the average Qualla resident graduated from drinking Boone’s Farm Kountry Kwencher to Crown Royal, though white people ran the casino and managed to gain a majority interest in nearby hotels and restaurants.

Raintree invested his gambling proceeds in his fitness gyms, and now he was a partner in another White Man project. One that now had a body on its hands. He wasn’t sure he liked the way Bowie had ordered them to haul it to the edge of the woods and cover it with stones.

It wasn’t an it. It was a person. C.A. McKay was a celebrity to some people, those who followed cycling. A man was dead, torn up by a creature that wasn’t a vision and wasn’t a Raven Mocker because the Cherokee spirits were too weak “What you thinking, Chief?” Farrengalli called from the rear of the raft.

He was thinking of the painkiller he’d taken while on burial duty, and how it was seeping softly through his bloodstream. Raintree made a powerful dip with his paddle, sending the raft shooting ahead of Bowie’s. A drop of rain hammered off his nose. “I think we’re going to get wet.”

Dove touched his shoulder, her fingers gentle and warm. The first warmth he’d felt in a long time. “You have to talk to him.”

Him. Raintree wasn’t in any position to challenge Bowie Whitlock. Though Raintree had a formal business relationship with ProVentures, his contract for the Muskrat run was clear: He was only along for promotional considerations. He assumed the others had received the same contract, though he had no doubt the payments varied, depending. Bowie would earn the most, probably twice what the others made. Travis Lane, already on the payroll, would probably get a bonus and maybe some stock benefits, while Vincent Farrengalli had probably signed for minimum wage and a date with a hair stylist.

But nowhere had the contract covered the possibility of being ripped to shreds by bloodsucking creatures.

“We finish the mission,” Raintree told Dove. It was the sort of thing Bowie would say. What she would expect to hear.

“Did you see that fucker?” Farrengalli said, working his paddle at a feverish pace, dipping off starboard and hurrying back to port, arms not resting. “I mean, I know I don’t have no imagination, so I couldn’t dream up nothing like that. Fucking doo-dah-day.”

“I wish I had photographed it,” Dove said.

“Did you see it fly off and leave its brains behind?”

“Maybe we should have collected some of the flesh,” Raintree said. “For later analysis.”

“Would you touch that shit?” Farrengalli was talking even faster than usual. “No telling what kind of alien AIDS that thing carried. You saw the way it ripped into Golden Boy’s neck.”

“A search team will have to come back for his body,” Dove said.

“Let the FBI worry about it,” Raintree said. “Castle acts like he’s seen it all before.”

“He seems a little unstable to me,” she replied, her voice barely audible over the incessant wash of the river.

“You kidding? He’s a fucking nutter,” Farrengalli said. “Talking to himself all the time. I can’t believe none of us brought a gun.”

“Why would we need a gun?” Raintree asked. “Nobody expected something like this to happen, even ProVentures.”

“Expect the unexpected, dude. Isn’t that what Bowie Boy says?”

“That’s not helping any,” Dove said. “Bowie knows this gorge better than any of us. Maybe better than anybody.”

“Yeah, well, he didn’t know about the bat-freak fuckers.”

The reminder of the horror they had witnessed chilled Raintree even more than the dampness that had seeped beneath his SealSkinz. He took his attention from the river and scanned the sky overhead. A drop of rain hit him in the eye, causing him to blink. The cloud ceiling had descended, and he wondered if they’d have time to react if another of the creatures swooped down to attack.

As if sharing an unspoken dread, the three of them paddled with urgency. The falls Bowie had warned them about were somewhere ahead, and below that was the fabled Attacoa, the high, flat stone peak where the Cherokee had held sacred rituals and where shamans asked the Great Spirits for signs and portents. The white settlers had named the peak Babel Tower in tribute to the Biblical edifice that was built so high into the clouds that the workers lost their ability to communicate with one another. Raintree saw little metaphorical connection between a man-made construct and a natural wonder, but the white names for many things often stripped away their inherent magic.

“We should wait for Bowie’s raft to catch up,” Dove said.

“Fuck that.” Farrengalli worked the paddle like a whip-driven galley slave, grunting with each word. “Let’s put some distance between us and those bloodsuckers.”

A soft fog rose from the river, the sun filtered by the gray gauze overhead. The rain was steady but not yet heavy, and drops ticked off the sides of the raft. An inch of water had collected in the bottom of the boat, but it hadn’t affected navigation. This slow stretch of the river was deeper than the previous runs, posing little danger of grounding the watercraft. But the current was picking up speed, the rocky banks narrowing.

In the distance, Raintree imagined he could make out Attacoa, though the fog limited visibility to less than a half mile. He strained his ears for the thundering gush of the falls, but all he could hear was the lapping water and the thrashing made by the three paddles.

Dove touched his shoulder again, on the soft skin just beyond the collar of his life jacket. He enjoyed her touch, though it made him shiver.

She rasped in a half whisper. “If anything happens to Bowie-”

“What’s the big secret?” Farrengalli bellowed. “This isn’t no ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ operation. Leave that to the Fed.”

“Farrengalli?” Raintree didn’t like saying the man’s name. Everything about him was disgusting, from his hairy forearms to his two-day growth of stubble to his oily black hair. And the way his eyes roamed over Dove’s body, as if he’d like to club her over the head and drag her off to a dark cave somewhere “Yeah, Chief?”

“When we get out of here, I’ve got a job for you.”

“Serious?”

“I need a spokesman for my fitness gyms. I’m ready to get out of the spotlight.”

“I’ll be on TV?”

“Regional cable. Probably a hundred thousand households.”

“Fuck-a-reeno, my friend. I’m you’re guy.”

“So let’s make sure we get out of here alive.”

Raintree didn’t need to turn his head to know Farrengalli had cast a worried glance at the mottled, bruised, and leaking sky.

That will shut him up for a few minutes.

And a few minutes might be all he needed, because the first eternal rumble of the falls sounded ahead.