The Gorge

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

When the unearthly banshee wail split the sky, Castle reached toward his armpit for his Glock. At Quantico, he’d been one of the fastest on the draw at those after-hours, impromptu contests at the shooting range, where even the few female agents had to prove their prowess. Those parodies of Wild West street showdowns were a test of skill that no one thought would ever make a difference in the field. While quick reflexes might win you a beer in a bet, you never expected your life to depend on the split-second reach from holster to trigger.

Now, when it counted, Castle’s arm was a hundred-pound tube of soggy sausage, lifting in slow motion, fingers numb and bloated. He wasn’t even halfway into his draw when the creature burst from the mist. It was a flurry of wiry limbs, its bald head and pointy ears just as alien and chilling as those of the first two creatures he’d seen. This was larger than the one that had taken The Rook, and still had the top of its skull intact, so it wasn’t the same one that killed C.A. McKay and then rose from the river in a resurrection that would have made Lazarus jealous.

Castle’s fingers touched the cool plastic of the Glock’s handle just as the creature struck Travis Lane at full speed, knocking him sideways into the middle of the group. Lane’s helmet flew free and bounced off Farrengalli, the loudmouth, who, like the others, was stunned into a deep freeze by the suddenness of the attack.

The nightmarish beast was a little smaller than Lane, squatting atop his body as Lane struggled on his belly, trying to rise and crawl away. Bowie was the first to react, swinging his backpack at the creature. The blow was ineffective, but the creature turned to Bowie and flashed a vicious mockery of a human grin, sharp incisors slick with saliva, the dark tongue flapping against the roof of its mouth as it gave a rattlesnake hiss.

See what got me? The Rook’s voice filled Castle’s head, unbidden, unwanted, causing him to lose his grip on the Glock before he could pull it free from the holster.

The creature reached out a long, stringy arm toward Lane’s head, and Castle saw the creature had only two fingers and a stunted thumb that ended in sharp, tapered nails.

“Hey!” Raintree shouted, clapping his hands from where he knelt by the deflated raft.

Castle wasn’t sure whether the Cherokee was trying to divert the creature’s attention or snap the others out of their collective daze. He accomplished both. The creature paused, its menacing fingers poised and trembling inches from Lane’s flesh. Farrengalli stooped to grab one of the paddles, Dove perhaps instinctively raised her camera and twisted the lens into focus, Bowie yanked the backpack over his head for another blow, and Castle finally had the pistol free.

“Get away,” Castle yelled at the group.

The creature appeared confused by the eruption of movement around it. The ears twitched as the leathery head swiveled, the milky eyes blinking, Lane screaming like a rabbit in a hawk’s claws, Castle’s index finger caressing the groove of the trigger even before he brought the weapon to bear.

Head shot, The Rook commanded. You have to take out the brain. The hypothalamus. Basic hunger drive.

“Been there, done that,” Castle said. He was scared, not because a beast from beyond reason had invaded his world, but because he had no idea what a hypothalamus was, and could no longer tell himself that The Rook’s voice was a figment of his imagination.

A hurried and scared shot was a bad shot, he knew.

He tried to brace his shooting hand by grabbing the wrist with his left hand, but his left hand was quivering just as wildly. Rain on his eyelashes blurred his vision.

Lane slid forward a few feet, upsetting the creature’s perch. Now it straddled him, and Castle saw the creature had three toes that mimicked the structure of its hands, though the nails were blunt.

Quit with the catalog and get on with it, cowboy, The Rook said.

But this was the thing from under the bed, the sleep-killing nightmare that clicked the hardwood floor, that teased the fabric at the bottom of the mattress, that tugged the hem of the top sheet. It had stayed hidden for three decades, but all buried things eventually crawled into the light and demanded attention. The Rook could shrink him around the clock, chalk up the monster to childhood insecurities, a distant father, a recurring fever, the remnant of a late-night horror movie glimpsed from the obscurity of a parted door. In the high holy church of psychology, everything had an explanation and a root cause.

But explanations didn’t make the monster less real.

The creature stood on unsteady legs that bowed backward like those of a bird. No, not a bird. Like a bat.

If the monster under the bed could exist, why couldn’t a vampire?

If it was a vampire, you’d be hog-tied, pardner, The Rook said. You don’t have any crosses, garlic, silver bullets, or AIDS-contaminated blood. Throw out the comic-book bullshit and just pump the fucker’s head full of bullets. No mouth equals no biting.

Pump it full. Castle took aim. Fired.

A hurried shot is a bad shot.

Lane, who had scrambled to his hands and knees beneath the creature and was posed absurdly like the bottom in a gay porn flick, let out a grunt. His left forearm spouted a geyser of blood and he moaned and collapsed onto his side. The creature must have smelled the fresh blood, because it dipped its head toward the wound, tongue hanging out like a filthy bag of baby snakes.

“Damn you,” Bowie shouted, and Castle didn’t know whether the words were directed at him or the monster.

The creature must have had no concept of firearms, because it ignored the threat of the pistol. Its radar-or whatever orientation system it used-was no doubt unable to detect the path of the whizzing bullet. Its tongue flicked at Lane’s gushing sauce of blood. Castle tried to steady for another shot, but he was afraid of hitting Lane again.

Another notch in your gun, pardner. First me, and now Lane. With a little more bad luck, you can be a mass murderer like Robert Wayne Goodall.

Bowie again swung the backpack at the creature and it made no attempt at evasion. Instead, without turning its head, it flicked a wrist, grabbed the backpack, and tugged. Bowie, holding onto a shoulder strap, was yanked off balance. The creature swiped at Bowie with filthy claws, but Bowie dodged his head back just in time.

Dove rushed forward, wielding a stippled tree branch. She chopped at the creature, hitting it across the shoulder blades. “Run, Bowie,” she shouted.

Now Castle had to worry about hitting Lane and the woman both. He should have emptied the clip at the first sign of the creature.

Indecision? What will the brass make of that? No soft inspector’s chair for you. No headlines, no citations of merit, no handshake from the President.

“Get the fuck out of my head,” Castle said, locking down on the trigger. The Glock spat a bullet that ripped through the backpack the creature still clutched. He plucked the semiautomatic again, this time striking the creature’s chest and ripping a ragged hole. Gray pus oozed from the entry wound, but the creature didn’t slow down. Castle had no sense of aiming as he squeezed off another round. The third bullet hit the creature’s sinewy thigh, causing another sewage-colored leak.

Lane gave a twist, crawling from the creature’s legs. The Indian, who had been tending the raft before the attack, circled the creature and took the branch from Dove, swinging it wildly. The wood bounced off the creature’s skull with a dull thwack. It twirled, unaffected by its wounds, but apparently confused by the chaotic movement around it. If it relied on echolocation rather than sight, it wouldn’t know where the next assault was coming from. But radar wasn’t the only sense that guided it; it lurched forward toward the scrabbling Lane and grabbed him by the shoulders, rearing back and then driving its open mouth toward the soft flesh of Lane’s neck.

Lane’s scream was muted by the falling rain, but it was no less horrifying in the otherwise-quiet wilderness. The barrel of Castle’s pistol veered unsteadily.

Shoot, urged The Rook, that invisible tormentor inside his head. It may be a private hell, but it’s the only hell you’ve got.

But whatever hell Castle was enduring, it couldn’t compare with Lane’s. The man’s scream descended into a low gargle as the creature’s fangs punctured his neck. Bowie grabbed Lane’s legs and tried to tug him free, but the creature had a headlock on Lane, its lips working as it dug into Lane’s flesh and took his blood. Unlike the creature that had killed the bicyclist, this one worked with intensity and purpose, as if its hunger had been roused by the battle.

A head shot, The Rook had said. Lane was in agony, eyes wide and staring beyond the world, his mouth a silent O of darkness. His throat was too torn to draw air for a scream.

Castle fired. Lane’s forehead exploded. Dove shouted, or maybe it was Bowie.

The creature lifted its mouth from Lane’s neck as if sensing the heart would pump no more blood. The blunt head swiveled in a mockery of indignant anger, lips peeled back in a sneer, a rivulet of Lane’s blood running down the pointed chin.

Castle fired again and the bullet hit the creature between its milky eyes. It went down without a sound, the miasma of its skull cavity spraying onto the wet leaves.

Nice shot, pard, The Rook said.

“Fuck you,” Castle replied.

Bowie, kneeling by Lane, looked up from the body and said, “You killed him.”

“A mercy shot.”

Bowie sprang up from the ground, fist curled in rage. Castle pointed the Glock at him.