The Gorge

CHAPTER FIFTY

The babe can dish it out, Farrengalli noted with admiration. Chief up there, stuck to the side of the mountain with one of the bloodsuckers on his back, didn’t have half the balls of Dove Krueger. Come to think of it, she was probably a dyke. Going around without a bra in the middle of a pack of men. Only a rug-muncher would tease them like that.

Lesbian or not, she could bring it. And right now she was bringing it against the head of the second bloodsucker. It had its arms around Farrengalli’s legs, trying to climb him like a monkey up a coconut tree. Its teeth ripped the fabric of his jeans, and he was glad he’d changed out of the SealSkinz before the climb, or he’d be catching vampire herpes and whatever other shit the things carried.

Farrengalli reached for the Buck knife in his thigh holster, but the thing’s ugly mouth was closing in. Farrengalli had avoided contact with the creatures so far, through luck and cunning, but now that the thing was staring him in the face (it was blind, but those balls of sour milk had a hypnotizing power all the same). It was butt-fucking-ugly, the nostrils flared, nose and forehead wrinkled, deep pouches of loose skin around the sightless eyes. The lips were a parody of those sported by geezer rock star Mick Jagger, bloated and sneering, punctuated by two long, slightly curving, and yellowed fangs.

The mouth was open, filled with blackness deeper than any night, and Farrengalli could imagine the bottomless void beyond, a belly that housed an endless hunger. But damned if you’re chomping into this Italian white boy.

He raised a boot and drove its rubber heel into the creature’s face. Something gave, bone or cartilage or whatever hid beneath that lizardlike skin. Dove whipped the doubled rope across its back, striking several times in quick succession. The creature didn’t seem to acknowledge the blows. Instead, its Jaggeresque lips, now drooling a slick strand of gray fluid, worked along Farrengalli’s thigh.

“Get it off me,” he yelled again. The thin but corded arms wrapped around his legs again. He couldn’t kick free.

The falling darkness, the rising mist, the stink of the river, all combined to confuse him. This is a hell of a way to get a book deal, but keep your eyes on the prize.

Dove gave the doubled rope some slack until there was a loop at the end. Then she flipped it over the bat-beast’s head, yanking back as it dropped below the pointy chin.

She gave a violent lift of her arms, tightening the makeshift noose around the thing’s throat. Planting a knee in its back, she arched, straightening until she applied pressure with all her weight. Farrengalli expected the bat-beast to start bucking like a rodeo bronco, with Dove holding on for the ride of her life.

Wait a sec. Those fuckers don’t breathe. So you sure can’t choke one to death.

He’d heard Lane’s, Bowie Whitlock’s, and Dove’s theories on the nature of the beasts. Chupacabra, the goat-suckers. A lost species. A mutant strain of oversize bats. Even the Chief, who currently looked to be locked in a wrestling match tougher than anything the Olympics had thrown at him, had come up with the out-the-ass theory of the Raven Mocker.

The dumb redskin. These things didn’t have any feathers at all.

While Dove wrangled with the creature, Farrengalli freed his knife. He slashed sideways, opening a seam beneath the creature’s left eye. Soft drops of gray snot leaked out. The gray fluid spattered his jeans, and he wondered if skin contact would cause infection.

No time to worry about that now, because the creature went nuts. It flailed its claws at Farrengalli, coming way too close to his crotch, shredding his jeans down to the white threads. One of the thin, spindly fingertips broke through the cloth and jabbed him like a ten-penny nail.

“Hey, fucker, that hurt.”

“The head,” Dove said. “You have to mess with its motor controls.”

Farrengalli imagined some sort of radar equipment in the thing’s brain, tucked away in a chamber like the command helm of a submarine. Cut off the head, the body dies, someone had once said. Or maybe it went, “A fish rots from the head first.”

Either way, Farrengalli was ready to roll with it.

He swept the knife forward, the eight-inch blade digging into the creature’s eye socket. The eyeball plopped, oozing rancid buttermilk.

“The brain,” Dove said between clenched teeth. “Get the brain.”

Farrengalli didn’t think the bat-beasts had any brains. He’d watched the vampire movies, same as everybody, and to kill a vampire you drove a stake in its heart. Zombies were the things you killed with head wounds.

But Farrengalli figured he might as well play the odds and do both. As Dove held the skewered skull in place, he rammed forward until the Buck knife was buried to the hilt. He figured the thing deserved a good frontal lobotomy just for ruining his jeans. He twisted the knife handle back and forth, gouging.

The Jagger lips flapped, and Farrengalli wouldn’t have been surprised to hear “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” coming from them.

Its limbs slackened and it flopped forward, limp, across Farrengalli’s waist. He crab-crawled out from under it, giving it another kick for good measure. Dove whiplashed the rope, pulling it from the thing’s neck like floss from the tight gap in two rotted teeth.

Farrengalli went to his knees, raised the gory blade, and plunged it where he guessed the thing’s heart would be.

Tired, his limbs shaking, he shoved the creature to the edge of the rock shelf with his boot. With one last kick, the thing tumbled off and into the thick mist below. He didn’t hear it hit.

He turned to Dove. “That will teach those sons of-”

A wet, flexing snake brushed his shoulder and he dropped the knife, squealing in surprise.

“Don’t fill your drawers,” Dove said, snatching out with her hand. “It’s a rope.”

“Hurry up,” Raintree shouted from the dark notch above. “Before more of them come.”