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.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
SkeeEEEEeeek.
Bowie released the grab loop when he heard the shriek, diving into the shallow water. Even though the current was weak, it pushed him downstream. He didn’t fight it, but instead let his body go limp, exhaling so he didn’t float immediately to the surface, grateful now that he wasn’t wearing a PFD.
The choice between getting shot and being eaten alive had been no choice at all. Like most choices in his life, the real decision had been yanked out of his grasp. Or so he’d always believed.
This time, as the actor Ed Harris once said, failure was not an option.
Which is odd, he thought, as his lungs burned with emptiness. Because there’s nobody left for me to fail. They’re all either dead or abandoned.
Maybe this time, he was kicking for himself.
Bowie scraped his elbow on a rock, igniting one of the wounds he’d suffered in the earlier attack. The pain allowed him a little extra stamina, as if fear wasn’t enough. Fear had never been enough. Bowie had swallowed it and swallowed it over the years, and instead of getting fat, he’d wasted away. On the inside. No chance to break the diet now, but maybe he’d sample the wares a little before the buffet table closed.
He broke surface thirty feet downstream from the raft, rising from the water just in time to see the creature swooping toward Clara. The Bama Bomber stood transfixed, in ankle-deep water, his gun held out like a lollipop he was offering a child.
Bowie should have shouted a warning, but the creature’s clarion call had done the job. Clara ran for the cover of the dense vegetation that sprouted from the black mud of the island. But she was too slow.
Any human would be too slow. You can’t outrun bad luck.
And you can’t beat fear.
Bowie should have dived back into the water, hit the deeper current, and allowed himself to be swept downstream. The turgid water, if it didn’t kill him, would carry him to safety. If safety existed anywhere in these raw, remote mountains.
But that would mean failing another person. Even if she probably deserved it. And he still harbored some shred of chivalry, despite his casual abuse of Dove’s affection.
He fought his way back toward shore, the dark water lapping and licking at him, wanting to swallow him. His boot slipped once, and he was almost gone to the safety he’d considered, but then he was knee-deep and thrashing, then on sandy soil and rocks, then in the island mud.
As he ran, the gray creature flew past the stock-still Ace.
Why didn’t it attack him? What sort of predator passes up easy prey?
Maybe one that enjoyed the hunt.
Bowie didn’t like that idea, so as his legs worked and his lungs pumped, water falling from his head and shoulders, he latched onto a more soothing one: Because Ace had not moved, the creature’s primary sense hadn’t detected him. No doubt it could smell and taste and hear, as the flared nostrils, long tongue, and oversize, peaked ears would indicate, but it seemed to mostly operate by radar.
Theory confirmed, for all the good it would do them.
The creature was forty feet from the woman, and Bowie was twenty. The creature was three times as fast.
Just before it struck, the woman reached a bristle of rhododendron, fighting her way through the slick, reptilian branches.
Bowie remembered Dove’s trick from earlier. He stooped, slowing only a little, and came up with a rock the size of a cantaloupe. He hurled it through the air, not taking time to get his feet set for an accurate throw. He didn’t care if he hit the creature. He just wanted to distract it.
The rock did better than distract it. The creature changed course in midair, gliding toward the rock as if it were fast-moving prey. It closed on the rock, raising its claws as if to seize it and drag it to the ground for feeding; then other senses must have kicked in and warned the creature away.
By the time it wheeled and homed in again on the woman, she was nestled inside the protective branches. Bowie couldn’t see her in the gloom, only the thin beacon of her Maglite, but knew the creature would be able to smell her if it came near. Though she’d stopped moving, the rattling, rain-dripping leaves gave away her position. The creature lifted its head, ears standing erect, and sniffed.
“Shit fire,” Ace said. “I reckon she wasn’t good enough after all.”
The creature turned its ugly head in Ace’s direction, but didn’t attack.
Bowie, who thought the turbulent water might help disguise his scent and movements, crept along the shoreline toward Ace. He wanted to tell the crazed bomber to shoot the thing, but figured Ace would rather shoot him than a beast he thought was a messenger of God.
The creature rose in the half light, slick-scaled body repelling the soft rain. It hovered over the rhododendron thicket as if searching for a way through the tangled canopy. To her credit, Clara hadn’t screamed since the initial attack. Or maybe she was so frightened that the only sound she could make was mouselike squeaks.