The Gorge

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Bowie dragged the raft up the bank where Dove and the others waited under the trees. After giving McKay a shallow burial, Bowie had warned the group about the upcoming falls, a severe and impassable drop known as Little Flush to white-water enthusiasts, though on the official maps the stretch was called Echota. Bowie no longer fully trusted his memory of the river’s twists and turns because Hurricanes Katrina and Ivan had flooded the gorge and altered the channels. However, Little Flush was still just as severe as ever, and probably had been since the dinosaurs had died out. The only way down it was around it.

“What took so long?” Farrengalli asked, the trace of a taunt in his voice.

“The important thing is getting here safely,” Bowie said, not mentioning that he’d slowed down so Castle could maintain surveillance against the flying nightmare. Or nightmares, if there were more than one, and Bowie was willing to bet there were. After all, God had commanded Noah to carry two of every species on the ark. “This rain will make the river even more dangerous.”

“Should we make portage down to the bottom and then look for a campsite, or do the best with what we have here?” Dove asked him, in obvious deference as if to show the others that the decision was Bowie’s alone.

“We need to push on,” Jim Castle said. The rain and river moisture hadn’t affected his hair a bit. The crew cut bristled up like the business end of a wire brush. “The suspects might be just ahead. They had to get out and walk, too, or else went over the brink and got smashed up.”

“They mighta gotten munched.” Farrengalli squinted into the rain.

“We haven’t seen any sign of the creature,” Bowie said. The word “creature” sounded odd on his tongue, as if naming it gave it more credence. He still wasn’t quite willing to accept what he’d seen. He’d assimilated it as just another danger, a natural hazard that could be handled with proper preparation and caution. Like the rain and the rising rapids.

“I’m exhausted,” Lane said. “I think we should break here.”

“This isn’t a democracy,” Bowie said. “ProVentures carries weight in the boardroom, but out here I call the shots.”

“I say we move on,” Castle said.

Bowie wondered if the agent would force them ahead with his gun. Or worse, split them up. He decided to exaggerate the potential danger in order to sway the doubters. It wasn’t much of a stretch.

“Remember how I explained how the Unegama ranged from Class III to Class VI waters, with VI meaning there’s a risk of death? Well, when it’s raining like this, you can bump it up to Class VII.”

“There is no Class VII,” Lane said.

“That’s what I mean.”

“I don’t want to wait around here and get my ass chewed off by a flying thing with no brains,” Farrengalli said.

Bowie looked at Raintree, who, as usual, stood off to the side, meditative and stolid, almost spaced out. “What do you think, Raintree?”

“Shit, why you always got to ask the redskin?” Farrengalli complained. “Like the rest of us don’t matter. Or do you just make a point of including minorities?”

“Because he knows how to listen.”

“Listen?” Farrengalli put his hand to his ear and made a theatrical tilt of his head. “Me hear-um call of nature. Oh, wait, that corn fart. You call it ‘maize.’”

Raintree didn’t blink. The rain fell harder, the staccato fusillade rivaling the sound of the river. Bowie realized the others, even Farrengalli, were waiting for Raintree’s opinion. He didn’t know whether it was Raintree’s stony equanimity or his people’s ancestral link to the area that gave his opinion added weight.

“What do you think of a compromise?” Like Dove, Raintree directed his remarks to Bowie, who was relieved to have at least two allies in case the dispute came down to a war of wills. Both Castle and Farrengalli appeared on the point of rebellion. “I think we all could use a rest. Maybe we could break until we see whether the rain keeps up, then make the trek to the bottom of the falls and set up camp for the night.”

“Makes sense,” Lane said. “We couldn’t run her in this rain anyway, even though the Muskrat is designed to handle heavy swells.”

“Just say maybe,” Farrengalli said, mocking the company’s slogan. Apparently, he had lost some of his loyalty when faced with the threat of attack by unidentified flying nightmares.

Vampires. Chupacabra. Raven Mocker. The Appalachians are the land of legends, not fairy tales.

“I can’t let you do that,” Castle said. “The subject is getting away. If we stop now, he’ll have a full day’s head start. Don’t forget, nobody else knows he’s here, so they won’t send backup.”

“Don’t your higher-ups expect you to check in?” Dove asked.

“We knew we couldn’t get a cell phone signal out here, and handheld radios don’t have the range to reach the field office in Asheville. We could have used shortwave radio or a satellite phone system, but the extra weight of the equipment was prohibitive. And, to be honest, nobody really expected Goodall and his partner to be here.”

“Yeah,” Farrengalli said. “And you didn’t expect bloodsucking, bat-freak fuckers to drop from the sky, neither.”

They listened to the rain for a moment, the walls of the gorge slowly becoming encased in fog. They were all aware the reduced visibility meant they wouldn’t be able to see the creatures descend for an attack.

“Maybe we left them behind,” Dove said. “Maybe they’re territorial.”

“Maybe,” Lane said. “But, assuming these things are an undiscovered, carnivorous species, they would need large game like bears, wolves, and deer. They would have to eat a lot of small animals to survive. And, of course, we have no idea how many of them there are.”

“You saw its eyes,” Bowie said to Lane and Castle. “It was blind. Maybe it’s a subterranean species and it works like a bat, using radar or echolocation to find its prey.”

“I told you about the bombs Goodall set off,” Castle said, his hand on the pistol holstered under his arm. “But it’s hard to believe these things have been hidden in a cave for who knows how many years without needing food.”

“They would have attacked somebody before now,” Dove said. “The Unegama Wilderness Area is remote, but campers, hikers, and kayakers use it all the time.”

“Maybe they have,” Raintree said. “The Cherokee told stories of those who got lost here. We have a legend about a man who was found so pale that at first he was believed to be a white man, back before even Daniel Boone walked these hills. The tribe was frightened, so they buried him under a pile of rocks at Attacoa, the high, sacred mountain above the river. When a young brave took his vision quest there, he found the rocks had been moved and the body was gone.”

“Is this like the Raven Mocker bullshit?” Farrengalli said.

Bowie noticed the group had drawn closer together under the trees, as if instinctively banding for protection against an unknown threat. “People go missing here all the time,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m ready to buy into any supernatural legends, but the gorge claims about one victim a year. You can drown, fall off a cliff in the dark, wander in circles until you starve to death. A couple of years ago, a man drove five hundred miles, walked the trails until he came to a campsite, and hacked a young couple to death with a hatchet. He didn’t know them, or even know why he came to the gorge. He later told police he just had to kill somebody.”

Lane blinked into the encroaching mist. “Okay, I’m rested. What do you say we get the hell out of here?”

Bowie checked his waterproof watch. “Six o’clock. Sunset is a quarter after seven but, with this cloud cover, it’ll be dark by the time we reach the base. Let’s deflate the rafts and get moving. I’m sure we’ll all feel better if we can get a fire going.”

Raintree and Farrengalli hurried to the task, while Dove took her Nikon camera out of its protective case. She angled a long lens up the length of the gorge, where the mist, the river, and the slick rocks made a soft study in gray. “Creepy but beautiful,” she said.

“If we get out of here alive, nobody’s going to give two shits about the Muskrat expedition,” Farrengalli said. “They’re going to want to know all about the bat-freak fuckers. Nightly news coverage, book and movie deals, chicks.” He sounded cheered by the prospect. “Hey, Dove, take a picture of me.”

Bowie noticed she focused instead on Raintree. The wrestler was much more photogenic, projected a quiet dignity, and no doubt his dark coloring triggered some sort of primal tingle inside her.

Let him have her, Bowie thought. After all this is over, I’m heading back to Montana by myself anyway.

Somehow, the thought of being alone in his cabin, except for whatever unknown creatures might be lurking in the mountains at the head of the Missouri Breaks, no longer offered security. “Safety in numbers” had never held much appeal to him, because “numbers” meant other people, and that meant responsibility. This trip had been plenty enough of a reminder that he no longer cared to have other people’s lives depending on him.

Besides, security was a psychological state, not a physical state, and after witnessing what Farrengalli had coined “the bat-freak fucker” rip into McKay’s neck, Bowie couldn’t imagine a night when the creature wouldn’t swoop down from the high shadows of his dreams.

Emitting that unforgettable, keening shriek that froze the blood and SkeeEEEEeeek.

It emerged from the mist at treetop altitude, a gray blur of sinewy limbs, ears peeled back, the glistening teeth in stark ivory contrast to the blackness of its open mouth.