The Gorge

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Bowie should have made a run for it. The woods were waiting, dark and dense enough to allow him to evade the creatures. Two full days of hiking, as long as he kept in one direction, and he’d eventually reach a highway, a house, or someone with a motorized camper. Springs would provide water, and some late berries were probably in season. He’d find safety, give directions, and wait until the whole chaotic mess died down, the government agencies and police and rescue squads sated, the creatures eradicated in the type of wide-scale military sweep that would rival the invasion of a small, troublesome dictatorship.

When the last bullet was fired and the last corpse collected, Bowie would be allowed to slink away to the Missouri Breaks, to a lone, thick-walled cabin in the hills, where he could add this freshest failure to his menagerie of memories. With exercise and a proper diet, he’d live another fifty years. Over eighteen thousand nights in which to lay his head down and endure its swirling stew of accusations and guilt. Nights when dreams, as they rose like rats from sewer holes, would pick at the torn meat and nibble down the long list that no longer had Connie alone at the top.

Yes, failure was an option. It had always been an option.

And he recognized that revenge against Ace Goodall, no matter how sweet, was not as spiritually fulfilling as saving Clara would be. And, since Clara was pregnant, maybe he’d get a two-fer in the eyes of God, wipe the slate clean for the loss of Connie and Dove, if not the rest of his group who had been slaughtered. So he’d bypassed the mesmerized and dazed Ace, who could have easily shot him in the back, and dashed toward the rhododendron, yelling and waving his arms, hoping to draw the attention of the two creatures. They ignored him, just as they had ignored Ace.

When Clara had been ripped from the thicket and carried across the night sky, Bowie had emerged from the woods and approached Ace. Bowie, the legendary tour guide, wasn’t even fit for prey, wasn’t good enough to serve as monster meat. A clean death would be a happy ending.

“They took my baby,” Ace said.

“Shoot me, you ugly son of a bitch.”

Ace lifted the Colt almost as an afterthought, the action of an absentminded mass murderer and serial killer. “I thought they was going to eat her.”

Bowie was calm. It would probably hurt like the Devil’s hot sauce for a split second, but the peace that followed would more than make amends. “A bullet, please.”

“God sent His angels, and they took her. Not me.”

“Maybe God left you here for a purpose. Maybe God needs you to kill me. Listen to Him.”

Ace actually cocked his head and put a hand to his ear, in what would have been considered a display of overacting if a movie camera had been rolling. “I don’t hear nothing. He used to talk to me, but now I don’t hear nothing.”

The clouds had thinned a little and the rain had stopped. The moonlight spread across the night sky in melodramatic purple wadding. The barrel of the pistol glinted, and its dark round eye looked into Bowie’s heart.

“He led me down by the still waters and left me there.” Ace glanced above, exposing the stubbly knot of his Adam’s apple.

“The waters don’t seem all that still to me,” Bowie said. “Class VI plus.”

“They took my baby. God took my baby.”

Ace, who had taken half-a-dozen lives without showing a shred of regret, and who had just lost his lover to an unknown and possibly supernatural species, harbored no room for self-reflection. It confirmed what Bowie had always heard about the most successful killers: They were sociopathic, lacking morality, possessing loose wires and corroded contacts where the higher-order brain housed its sense of right and wrong.

So, one more wouldn’t hurt, right? God wouldn’t hold it against his special little agent. If God were truly fair and merciful, Ace Goodall would even get an additional reward for eradicating one more cockroach in the Great Big Bug Motel. Maybe an extra string on the harp, or a golden-cross tattoo on one wing.

“Maybe God knows something we don’t,” Bowie said, stepping toward Ace, goading him.

Ace nodded as if Bowie had served up a sage’s helping of spiritual smoke. “Him that has the plan.”

“Right.”

Bowie was three feet away now, instinctively flinching in anticipation of the. 32-caliber bullet. But Ace let him come, until Bowie wrapped his hand around the pistol’s barrel and pulled it from Ace’s limp fingers.

Shit. What now?

“We got to save her,” Ace said.

“She’s probably dead by now.”

Ace dropped to his knees and grabbed his head, squeezing it between his hands like a rotten melon he was trying to smash.

“She ain’t dead,” he shouted, voice breaking and rising to an unsettling, keening pitch that roared back and forth across the gorge, so loud even the lapping, churning river couldn’t suppress it. Then he flopped forward in a quivering seizure, limbs twitching, fingers clawing at the coarse sand of the riverbank. The schizophrenic killer vomited a staccato rant of strange syllables.

Bowie could only stare transfixed, the Colt Python as heavy as a dead snake in his hand, as Ace spoke in tongues.