“Give me the light,” Warren said, his words smoking out into the night air. “I’m coming with.”
“You leave me out there . . .”
Warren kept his hand extended.
Jake stared at him, but there was nothing to discern except the faint white of his eyes, the same intense but fundamentally calm expression. It would be difficult to carry Greer back alone and keep the light on the rocks. He placed the flashlight into Warren’s palm. “Let’s go.”
They stepped from rock to rock, Warren lighting the way behind him so that the flashlight beam cast long shadows from Jake’s legs out in front of them. Behind them they could hear Parkson rousing Rachel and Cameron, followed by Jaimie and Hans. Jake followed the flashlight beam from one rock to another, moving a few feet ahead of Warren. Moving this way reminded him of when he used to traverse the Little Glutton River in the summer with his friends, the rocks slimy and slippery at first when the river dropped, then crusting over. These rocks were slimy, too, and they weren’t very large. The rock pad was the only area large enough to serve as a haven. Once they freed Greer, there would be no place to rest until they made it back to the pad.
Just keep moving, he thought. It’s strong but it’s not fast. You’ll be back before it even knows something is moving.
“There he is,” Warren said, jabbing the flashlight beam. “My Christ.”
Greer was entombed in a nest of cobwebby filaments. He lay on his stomach with his arms outstretched and his head facing away from them. The filaments were much smaller than the tendrils they’d encountered earlier, no thicker than pencils and fuzzed over with a moldy growth. Thicker coils encircled his legs and torso. His neck and head were crusted over with a furry mat, creeping over the burnt skin on the back of his neck and into his heat-crinkled hair. His clothes were half burned off, and patches of heat-damaged skin showed through the holes, revealing more gray tentacles under his shirt.
Jake knelt down and gripped Greer’s shoulder, where the mold was not too thick, and shook him. There was no response. He scrambled around to the other side. Warren followed, stepping lightly from one rock to another and then training the beam directly on Greer’s face.
Jake recoiled. The mold had grown deep into Greer’s eye sockets and nostrils, and the flesh on his cheeks was dissolved, eaten away almost to the bone. A few stray hairs from his beard were encased in a jellylike substance. The muscle that remained was devoid of blood, almost translucent, as though he had been lying there decomposing for weeks instead of hours. Behind him, the flashlight beam went bobbing off into space as Warren made a series of retching noises.
“Greer?” Jake shook him lightly, peering closer in the sudden darkness. “Can you hear me?”
Warren spat several times behind Jake, and the flashlight beam came back, wavering over Greer’s ruined face. Greer lay there openmouthed, his tongue and teeth still intact, the rest of his face unrecognizable. Jake touched a finger to the side of Greer’s neck, where several larger tendrils were still pressed tightly into the wound in his throat. The flesh under his fingers was cold and still.
“He’s dead,” Warren said. “Let’s go, for Chrissakes.”
Jake withdrew his hand and wiped his fingers on his jeans. There was nobody else out here who could have called for help, and even if there was . . . it had been Greer’s voice, a gravelly baritone with a Southern accent, unmistakable, even in a whisper from death’s door.
Jake held out his hand for the light. Warren protested again but Jake did not respond, just remained there with his hand outstretched behind him. After a moment, Warren placed the flashlight into his open palm.
Jake passed the light over Greer’s chest. Two thick coils were looped under the smaller filaments, pressed tight against Greer’s ribs. Another tendril snaked inside the entrance wound in Greer’s throat. Jake saw Greer’s throat bob, and a wild thought raced through his mind, simultaneously filled with relief and horror:
Alive! He’s still alive!
Then the tendrils moved again, and he understood.
The two coils on Greer’s throat contracted, squeezing stale air out of his mouth. At the same time, the tendrils wound inside his throat flexed and twisted, making Greer’s pale throat bulge. A second later Greer’s mouth opened grotesquely, the mandible creaking. Without thinking, Jake brought the flashlight up and saw the tendrils working inside the back of Greer’s throat, spread out in his larynx like tiny, pale tentacles.
“Helllp mee-eeee.”
Like a puppet, Jake thought, feeling blood draining from his face. Except the strings are on the inside.
“Helllp mee-eeee . . . plllleeeeassse . . .”
Now the tone seemed different, no longer pleading but sly, mocking, as though Jake were in on some great joke, an inside joke that only the two of them could fully appreciate. The mouth closed and opened, and it came again, the same plea, the coils around his chest squeezing out more air. No puffs of steam came from Greer. Dead man’s breath. Jake’s thoughts were wild and jumbled. Dead man’s breath and dead man’s words and my Christ it’s inside him and eating him and—
More life below. More life below than above, sometimes.
Warren’s hand was on his shoulder, jerking him back. Jake fell on his butt, and he saw one of the tendrils in the air where his face had been a second ago. The tentacle slithered back into the dark ground. Warren helped him up and they stumbled backward, their feet seeking purchase on the rocks. The flashlight beam swung crazily in the night air, and all Jake could think was get back, we need to get back—
Behind them, a scream cut through the night air. There was a thud and a grunt, and then another scream. It was Rachel’s voice.
“No! Oh my god, it’s got him!”
In front of them, Greer’s voice huffed out something that sounded like laughter.
The scream came again, and then Warren gave Jake a rough shove and they were running back toward the rock pad, to the sound of something being dragged very fast over the stones in front of them.
Chapter 6
Cameron and Rachel were gone.
Jaimie had a larger, more powerful LED flashlight, and she was painting the valley floor with brilliant white light. In the slanting beam the small boulders and rocks looked like irregularly spaced headstones. Warren was sweeping his own flashlight over the same area, still panting from their flight. Jake did a quick scan and saw Parkson and Hans standing next to Jaimie, the two injured men standing very close to her, as though for protection. Jaimie was screaming for the two missing people, her strong voice booming out over the valley.
“What . . .” Jake said, trying to catch his breath, “what happened?”
“Rachel!” Jaimie shouted over the top of the flashlight beam. “Cameron!”
Jake grabbed her shoulder. “What happened?”
She shrugged him off and pointed the flashlight beam to the right, toward the river. “There!”
Jake saw them for a split second. Cameron was lying flat on his back, feet pointing away from them. He was struggling to sit up even as he was being dragged, and as they watched, his feet jerked farther into the darkness and he slipped back down, his head banging against the ground. Rachel was bent over his feet, working desperately on something, her face set in concentration. In the flashlight beam her sweaty face was pale, colorless; the world had gone black and white. Then Cameron’s body jerked again and he disappeared into the darkness, Rachel scrambling after him.
“It’s got him,” Jaimie said. “We need a knife.”
Jake stepped away from her as she swung the flashlight to Parkson, then Hans. Neither one had a blade. She turned to Warren, who just shook his head and pointed at Jake.
Jaimie swung around to Jake. “Give it to me,” she said. “They need help.”
Hellllp mmmeeee, Jake thought.
“It’s a trap,” he said. “It’s trying to draw us off, one by one.”
“Give me the fucking knife!”
Jake placed a hand
over the hilt and took another step back. Jaimie’s eyes widened, flashing at him in the backsplash of dim light. He held up a hand as she advanced. “We go together,” he said. Jaimie stopped and cast an anxious look behind her, at the darkness where Cameron and Rachel had just been.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“All of us,” Jake said. “That way if one of us gets stuck the others can—”
“I can’t,” Hans said, his voice little more than a squeak. “I got a busted arm.”
“He’s right,” Warren said. “Parkson’s hurt, too.”
“They’re dying out there,” Jaimie said. It was almost a scream. “Give it to me now.”
Jake sized her up. The flashlight in her hands was the long-handled variety, and he supposed she wouldn’t be averse to swinging it to get what she wanted. She would not be trained and he could take her, almost certainly, but why? She was right; they couldn’t just leave Cameron and Rachel to fend for themselves. He wondered why in the hell it was taking him so long to go after them.
Hellllp mmmeeee.
It was not just the risk of dying that was paralyzing him; it was the dread of infestation. His father’s people were adamant that the bodies of the dead remain intact, no autopsies, no burials. Jake had never felt strongly about it one way or another, but now he understood. It was one thing to be dead. It was another thing to be relegated to a piece of meat, a medium for others to poke and prod at, to remove the last shreds of dignity from the temple. And he knew that death waited for him out there in the darkness, had known it since he had looked inside Greer’s mouth, had heard that sly, crackling whisper. Death, followed by the greatest horror of all, infestation.
Hellllp mmmeeee.
“Watch your feet,” he mumbled.
“What?” Jaimie said. “Speak up!”
Jake cleared his throat. “When we find them, don’t forget to keep an eye on your feet. It likes to distract you.”
Jaimie regarded him for a second, and then the flashlight, which had been halfway raised, went down. Then she pivoted and swung the beam back to where it had been. There was a flash of movement behind one of the boulders, and then she was off, sparing one backward glance to make sure Jake followed. He ran after her, hand still on the hilt of his knife.
The ground grew wetter as they neared the river. There were several long furrows, and mud had splashed up against the boulders where Cameron had been dragged. Rachel’s boot prints dotted the area at crazy angles, as though she had been doing some bizarre dance. Jake tugged at Jaimie’s shoulder and motioned for her to shine the light on the ground. Jake leaned down, trying to discern something from the jumble of blurred footprints. In the middle there was a long, shallow depression, which must have been made by Cameron’s body. The depression led farther west, paralleling the river.
“That way,” Jake said, putting a hand on the flashlight and guiding it to the west. The rocks had grown larger closer to the river, but they were spaced farther apart. The flashlight beam went between two large, jutting boulders. In the LED light, the mud sprayed along one of the boulders was plainly visible. Beyond it, hidden somewhere behind the boulders, they could hear someone grunting with effort. Jaimie started to move toward the noise, and Jake grabbed her shoulder again.
“What?” she asked.
“Slow,” Jake said. “Careful.”
She waved a hand at him and took off, her boots squelching in the mud. Jake followed, calling after her to slow down. Jaimie kept going, casting the flashlight beam across the broken ground, bellowing for Rachel and Cameron. There was no answer. The ground grew soggier, yet he could see the trail plainly now through the boulders; a shallow rut pockmarked with footprints and the long grooves where Cameron’s fingers had sought purchase in the mud. Jaimie stopped for a moment and trained the flashlight on the ground, letting Jake catch up to her. There was a splotch of red splashed across one of the boulders. Perched on top of the rock, at the terminus of the short crimson trail, was a fingernail, the base splintered and bloody.
Something wet and pale was wiggling out of the ground, stretching up toward its bloody prize.
Jaimie bolted forward, now in a full-fledged run, still bellowing. Jake followed, but she was long-legged and was quickly outstripping him, the flashlight beam bouncing farther and farther ahead. The little bit of light it cast behind Jaimie diminished. He dug in, tried to find another gear. He went a few more steps before his foot caught on an unseen boulder and he pitched forward, arms thrown out in front of his face. He landed on the soft ground with a splat, the cold mud enveloping his face and torso. He scrambled onto one of the boulders, kicking his boots hard against the ground like he was still playing fullback on the JV team, his coach hollering at him to pick up his goddamn feet. There was nothing there, no tendrils, just mud and rock. He took a deep breath and looked out over the valley.
Jaimie was invisible, but the flashlight beam showed intermittently between the rocks, already a hundred yards or more ahead. Jake balanced atop his tenuous perch, straining to see what direction she was headed. He heard someone call out in the darkness and Jaimie’s bellowing reply. Something brushed against his boot, and he kicked it away, shuffling to the other side of the boulder. It was not much of a sanctuary, barely large enough for his size eleven boots.
“Over here!”
This time Rachel’s voice was clear, but there was no answer from Jaimie. Jake closed his eyes against the meager starlight and took several deep breaths. Something rasped against the side of the rock, scraping along the surface as it crept upward.
Come on, he thought, trying to pinpoint the location of the voice. He closed his eyes. One more time.
There was no sound except the scrape of the unseen tendril, climbing higher on his perch, and the faint sigh of the breeze, carrying with it the sour smell of the river. And then, less than a hundred yards off, he heard Rachel’s voice again. He turned toward the sound and opened his eyes. It was very dark, but his night vision had been calibrated against the back of his eyelids and he could see, faintly, the boulders and the muddy ground between them. Rachel and Cameron were now far to the south; whatever was dragging them along had not followed a linear path. It had taken a left turn, curving away from the river.
Jake kicked at the tendril that was nestling against his boot and leapt down from his rock perch. He trotted for a bit, then slowed into his still-hunting gait; neither fast nor slow, a steady heel-to-toe walk that produced minimal vibration and sound. He had used it with success on deer, on moose and caribou. Once on a sleeping black bear on the side of a greening valley in late April, the bear enjoying the sunshine that bathed the lush valley, its belly full of the fresh greens. Its exhalations were coming out in something close to snores, paws stretched out in front of it, claws retracted. It was too early for mosquitoes or blackflies, and the bear was dead to the world, winter-skinny but with a full belly. Jake had been just as quiet when he slipped away, the sound of the bear’s snores making him grin for days afterward.
Something swung over him in the night, very low. He hunched his shoulders instinctively and looked up. It was a large owl, winging through the constellations and swinging low over him, its head swiveling, perhaps the same owl they had heard earlier. The owl was gone as quickly as it had appeared, its head still casting back and forth, in the exact same direction Jake was headed.
He paused, thinking. Then he turned and started down a different path, one that would bring him to the left of where he had heard Rachel’s voice. His own nonlinear route.
In a few minutes, he heard noise ahead of him and slowed again, then stopped. Rachel was panting, her breaths interspersed with a chopping noise. He was almost even with her position, roughly 180 degrees from the angle Jaimie had approached. The ground was harder here, and in the starlight he could see he was on a wide outcropping of stone tilting out of the ground at a gradual angle so that he was now several feet above the ground. The surface under him was jagged and uneven, and he picke
d his way across the fissured rock, careful to avoid a fall. The urge to call out to Rachel was very strong, but he remained silent. Jake had known some old trappers from Highbanks who would drag a lure-soaked piece of rabbit skin behind their snowmobiles, a scent trail that eventually led to the prize, the bloody flesh inside the wooden box cubby, the entrance guarded with cold steel. This situation reminded him of that trick, pulling the unwitting pursuer into a deadly little cul-de-sac.He peered into the darkness, Rachel some unseen yards ahead of him, panting and chopping, Jaimie quiet, either in her own stealth mode or off the trail.
He worked to steady his breathing, steady his thoughts. The animals that always gave those old trappers fits were the fishers and wolverines, the smart ones that attacked the back of the fortlike cubby. They knew the front entrance was too good to be true.
He waited. A meteorite carved a brilliant yellow slash across the firmament. Some time later another meteorite flashed, the arc shorter and furiously bright, blasting straight into the atmosphere instead of following the oblique angle its brethren had taken. Jake was motionless, his breath smoking in front of him. In the light of the second meteorite he had seen the landscape in front of him clearly, marked by numerous rock formations, jagged triangles and smooth domes. The chopping continued but was slowing, the sounds echoing faintly inside the labyrinth of stones. Rachel’s breathing had grown ragged, desperate. Above Jake the night sky was scratched by lesser lights, the tail end of the Perseids.
Wait, he thought. Wait.
The chopping stopped suddenly. “Jaimie?” Rachel’s voice was wheezy. “Where are you?”
She was closer than Jake had thought, but he could tell from the projection of her voice that she was facing away from him. He turned his head and saw the thin white cloud of her breath rising above a jumble of stones.
“Jaimie? Please say something.”
From the darkness came a wheezing reply, indecipherable. Rachel began to sob. “Jaimie, is that you? I . . . I can’t tell.”
Resurrection Pass Page 10
