relationship with ProVentures, his contract for the Muskrat run was clear: He was only along for promotional considerations. He assumed the others had received the same contract, though he had no doubt the payments varied, depending. Bowie would earn the most, probably twice what the others made. Travis Lane, already on the payroll, would probably get a bonus and maybe some stock benefits, while Vincent Farrengalli had probably signed for minimum wage and a date with a hair stylist.
But nowhere had the contract covered the possibility of being ripped to shreds by bloodsucking creatures.
“We finish the mission,” Raintree told Dove. It was the sort of thing Bowie would say. What she would expect to hear.
“Did you see that fucker?” Farrengalli said, working his paddle at a feverish pace, dipping off starboard and hurrying back to port, arms not resting. “I mean, I know I don’t have no imagination, so I couldn’t dream up nothing like that. Fucking doo-dah-day.”
“I wish I had photographed it,” Dove said.
“Did you see it fly off and leave its brains behind?”
“Maybe we should have collected some of the flesh,” Raintree said. “For later analysis.”
“Would you touch that shit?” Farrengalli was talking even faster than usual. “No telling what kind of alien AIDS that thing carried. You saw the way it ripped into Golden Boy’s neck.”
“A search team will have to come back for his body,” Dove said.
“Let the FBI worry about it,” Raintree said. “Castle acts like he’s seen it all before.”
“He seems a little unstable to me,” she replied, her voice barely audible over the incessant wash of the river.
“You kidding? He’s a fucking nutter,” Farrengalli said. “Talking to himself all the time. I can’t believe none of us brought a gun.”
“Why would we need a gun?” Raintree asked. “Nobody expected something like this to happen, even ProVentures.”
“Expect the unexpected, dude. Isn’t that what Bowie Boy says?”
“That’s not helping any,” Dove said. “Bowie knows this gorge better than any of us. Maybe better than anybody.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t know about the bat-freak fuckers.”
The reminder of the horror they had witnessed chilled Raintree even more than the dampness that had seeped beneath his SealSkinz. He took his attention from the river and scanned the sky overhead. A drop of rain hit him in the eye, causing him to blink. The cloud ceiling had descended, and he wondered if they’d have time to react if another of the creatures swooped down to attack.
As if sharing an unspoken dread, the three of them paddled with urgency. The falls Bowie had warned them about were somewhere ahead, and below that was the fabled Attacoa, the high, flat stone peak where the Cherokee had held sacred rituals and where shamans asked the Great Spirits for signs and portents. The white settlers had named the peak Babel Tower in tribute to the Biblical edifice that was built so high into the clouds that the workers lost their ability to communicate with one another. Raintree saw little metaphorical connection between a man-made construct and a natural wonder, but the white names for many things often stripped away their inherent magic.
“We should wait for Bowie’s raft to catch up,” Dove said.
“Fuck that.” Farrengalli worked the paddle like a whip-driven galley slave, grunting with each word. “Let’s put some distance between us and those bloodsuckers.”
A soft fog rose from the river, the sun filtered by the gray gauze overhead. The rain was steady but not yet heavy, and drops ticked off the sides of the raft. An inch of water had collected in the bottom of the boat, but it hadn’t affected navigation. This slow stretch of the river was deeper than the previous runs, posing little danger of grounding the watercraft. But the current was picking up speed, the rocky banks narrowing.
In the distance, Raintree imagined he could make out Attacoa, though the fog limited visibility to less than a half mile. He strained his ears for the thundering gush of the falls, but all he could hear was the lapping water and the thrashing made by the three paddles.
Dove touched his shoulder again, on the soft skin just beyond the collar of his life jacket. He enjoyed her touch, though it made him shiver.
She rasped in a half whisper. “If anything happens to Bowie-”
“What’s the big secret?” Farrengalli bellowed. “This isn’t no ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ operation. Leave that to the Fed.”
“Farrengalli?” Raintree didn’t like saying the man’s name. Everything about him was disgusting, from his hairy forearms to his two-day growth of stubble to his oily black hair. And the way his eyes roamed over Dove’s body, as if he’d like to club her over the head and drag her off to a dark cave somewhere “Yeah, Chief?”
“When we get out of here, I’ve got a job for you.”
“Serious?”
“I need a spokesman for my fitness gyms. I’m ready to get out of the spotlight.”
“I’ll be on TV?”
“Regional cable. Probably a hundred thousand households.”
“Fuck-a-reeno, my friend. I’m you’re guy.”
“So let’s make sure we get out of here alive.”
Raintree didn’t need to turn his head to know Farrengalli had cast a worried glance at the mottled, bruised, and leaking sky.
That will shut him up for a few minutes.
And a few minutes might be all he needed, because the first eternal rumble of the falls sounded ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The rain began as a soft, subtle invasion from above. The first drops were barely more than coagulated mist, settling on Clara’s skin with a gentle tickle. The water was warmer than that of the river, though cooler than air temperature. Her clothes were still a little moist from jumping out of the canoe, but she no longer wanted to be naked in front of Ace. The lust and sick pride of ownership she’d enjoyed in his gaze (first seen by the dashboard lights of his pickup, later by campfire, cheap motel fluorescents, and, once, by candlelight when they’d spent the night with one of Ace’s militia buddies, the men taking turns with her) now disgusted her more than flattered her. She figured he was breaking several of the commandments Moses had brought down from Mount Sinai, but Ace said those rules only applied to kikes, yet another of his intellectual contradictions.
She guessed it was somewhere between three and six o’clock, though time had lost most of its meaning as the sky had settled into a persistent twilight. Ace had stretched a thin, tattered vinyl canopy over a rhododendron stand, and they huddled among the tangled branches and long, waxy leaves, waiting. Waiting for what, she wasn’t sure, and she was pretty sure Ace didn’t know, either. She was afraid to ask.
Actually, she knew his answer already: Waiting for the Lord to give us a sign.
They were slightly above the Unegama, and massive hemlocks grew all the way down to the water, their roots hugging the thick black soil where the current lapped at them. The branches were brown halfway up their trunks, afflicted with blight or pest infestation. Higher up the slopes on this side of the river, hardwoods dominated the forest, though the undergrowth was thick with laurel, briars, stunted pines, and crippled dogwood. Hiking through the greenery would be like tackling a boot camp obstacle course.
The opposite shore was an unforgiving tumble of rocks that time had taken from the high cliffs. The rocks were a mixture of square, chalky slabs and rounded granite, evidence of the different geologic layers that had facilitated the erosion. Clara would have found the scientific puzzle fascinating if she had been here camping with one of her college lovers, smoking dope, drinking wine, and laughing about God’s seemingly random ditch. Since Ace, God was no longer a laughing matter.
Neither were the angels.
Ace was curled in a fetal position, turned away from her, lying on his side on the leafy loam. He wore only a
