The Gorge

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

“This is getting way past old,” Farrengalli said, but Raintree was already launching himself against the slick cliff wall.

“The cave,” Raintree shouted. The lead rope, which he’d reeled up, lay in a coil around his shoulder, limiting his movements. But he scrambled like a monkey on an electric fence, moving to his right, taking him away from the planned route. But plans changed.

The keening wail came from above and below simultaneously, and Raintree thought the sonic phenomenon was caused by the reverberant cliffs. Then he realized two of the creatures were swooping, one from above and one below.

No time to set an anchor and drop a rope to the others. He’d be lucky to reach the cave. And he had no way to defend his back, because both hands were occupied with holding on for dear life.

“Bad news,” Dove said from the ledge below, as if she also realized what the dual attack meant. The creatures were growing smarter, learning about their prey.

Raintree wondered if he’d made a mistake, if they should have waited on the ledge with the others and tried to defend themselves with their backs to the wall. Too late to second-guess, because he was midway between the ledge and the cave, grabbing for the next handhold before he’d fully tested the most recent.

The twin shrieks changed pitch, became lower and more guttural. If the creatures had discussed strategy through whatever strange means in which they communicated, then they’d want to separate their prey, culling out the weakest first.

In this case, because he was by himself and exposed, Raintree was the evening’s choice entree.

Both attackers went silent, which was even more disconcerting than their bloodcurdling sirens had been. Raintree knew from the previous encounters that silence meant they were preparing for touchdown, most likely with talons extended for his exposed back. He froze in place, attempting to merge with the granite, to become rock.

“Find something to throw,” Dove yelled at Farrengalli.

Raintree felt the whisper of air as the creature swept past. He didn’t know if the creature had lost track of his location or had merely been making a test run to size him up.

Gripping an outcropping with one hand, the toes of his boots jammed into separate crevices, he fumbled toward his belt. His fingers touched the leather pouch and a hunger shot through him. If only he had taken that second amphetamine, he’d already have reached the cave. Of course, oxycodone wasn’t exactly known for its clarity-inducing powers, so there was more fog going on than just the stuff rising from the river.

He might have time to chew and swallow a handful of oxy before the creature struck, but no way would the massive dose of pharmaceuticals beat the pain it was designed to suppress.

He forced his fingers away from the pouch.

To the cool, wet steel of the piton in his belt.

The ProVentures Pocket Rocket, eighty millimeters of slender steel, was designed to be driven into rock or ice and left as a permanent climbing fixture. An eye at the broad end was used for attaching a carabiner or for threading a belay, and the piton tapered to a stiletto tip.

Raintree hooked two fingers in the eye and gripped it like a serial killer, one who insisted on the ritualistic downward thrust made famous in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Raintree wasn’t sure he could get leverage for any style of thrust, much less one that could deliver a killing blow.

“What the hell, are you some kind of cowgirl?” Farrengalli said.

Raintree risked a downward glance and saw that Dove had the safety rope, shortened and doubled, and was swinging it overhead like a convoluted lasso. He understood her motive, even if Farrengalli was too thick. She was attempting to confuse the creatures’ radar.

The first pass had been barely ten seconds ago, and that initial assailant was likely preparing for round two. Even if Raintree remained motionless, the odor of his sweat and fear would give him away.

But where is the other one?

As the first creature reached the apex of its arc, it let loose with the high-pitched cry again. The tonal quality had changed, this time suggesting not hunger but rage. Raintree was refreshing his handhold when Dove shouted a warning from below.

Raintree flattened belly-first against the cliff, extended his right arm, and let the piton protrude like a sharpened coat hook. The second creature, who must have ridden in on the draft of the first, met the steel tip, slamming Raintree’s hand against granite.

The fingers hooked in the eye kept him from dropping the Pocket Rocket as the creature winged past, screeching in what might have passed for complaint.

A sudden shower erupted, cold as the river, and Raintree thought the storm had returned in force.

He looked at his hand, at the piton jutting from it, and the slimy gray entrails that dangled from his wrist. The creature was cold blooded. Nearly ice blooded. If he could even call that stuff “blood.”

He took advantage of the reprieve to scoot another five feet up the slope. The cave lay another eight feet above and to his left. Using the three free fingers of his right hand, he grabbed the trunk of a scraggly jack pine that sprouted from the wall of stone. It held, and he hooked a leg over it.

Estimating the speed of the creature’s flight, and its cry from the top of its arc, and the subsequent lapse into silence, Raintree figured he had three seconds before It slammed into him, knocking the breath from his lungs and clacking his teeth together. Though the creature was barely the size of a large dog, it packed the weight of gravity and momentum behind the element of surprise.

He was helpless, because he couldn’t let go or he’d fall. With no safety rope, and the ledge far to the left, the plunge would break every bone in his body and he’d probably burst open like a balloon full of soup.

If there was any consolation in such a defeat, at least he’d be leaving little behind for the creatures to drink.

Ears roaring with concussion, Raintree brought the piton around as claws raked his neck and face. The creature’s cold breath played over the base of his skull. Shouts sounded from a distance. Dove? He couldn’t tell. Counting on the jack pine to hold their combined weight, he locked his leg, reached back with his free hand, and grabbed at the creature. Its skin was rough but slick, like the chamois cloth rock collectors used to polish stones. The thing’s teeth nicked his neck, flaring double streaks of hurt. He felt along the creature’s bald head for its eyes.

Here’s looking at ya, Count Chocula.

He stabbed the piton over his shoulder, going for a point just above the bridge of the nose.

Raintree had made more than a handful of serious climbs, and had hammered in his share of pitons and anchors, but none had ever felt as satisfying as this one. The steel tip found the center of the beast’s forehead. It entered the skull with a thwick.

The creature’s cold tongue stopped wriggling and lay against his neck like a damp sock.

He gave the piton a twist. Grue oozed from the wound like liver mush from a sausage grinder.

The trunk of the jack pine cracked and sagged.

Raintree tried to shrug the creature off his back, but whatever state it had entered upon death, it still clung to its victim with a fierce tenacity. Raintree was afraid to shake too hard. The jack pine might give way completely. He slid the piton from its gruesome sheath and worked it back into his belt, then jammed his fingertips into a slim crevice.

Once he had a decent grip, he lifted, distributing his weight so he wouldn’t fall if the tree no longer supported him. With his left hand, he scrabbled for the creature’s neck, then up the bulge of the skull. He found one of the leathery, peaked ears and yanked it as if trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

The thing’s head lolled backward, though its talons still hooked his flesh.

Raintree wondered how deeply his wounds ran. The oxycodone dulled the worst of the pain, but it merely masked symptoms and didn’t address the real damage.

“Christ on a crutch,” Farrengalli shouted from the ledge below. “Get it off me.”

Raintree shoved upward, sliding his knee to the base of the pine, then jabbing the tip of his boot into the nest of roots. Using the extra purchase, he tossed his shoulders and arched his back, and the creature slid down, its sharp claws snagging on his fanny pack. The creature’s weight was going to rip the pack free, taking the cell phone and their best hope of rescue with it.

It dangled for a moment, his belt tightening, squeezing his guts.

If the belt snapped, he would not only lose the cell phone.

The medicine bag was attached to it.

The bag that spoke with many tongues, that whispered its sweet, poisonous promises, that delivered what his hollow soul craved.

The lifeline.

His fingers lost their tenuous perch.