“Better save the batteries,” Dove said.
Raintree, crouching at the lip of the cave, checked the bars on the cell phone again. Nothing. It was an inept tool, an artifact from an alien world that wouldn’t function in such a primitive environment. He felt silly holding it, like a Neanderthal pointing a laser weapon at a mastodon.
They had divided up the pitons, two each, as their only weapons. Farrengalli took the penlight, saying he wanted to explore the cave. Raintree hadn’t argued, even though, strategically, the group should stay together in case of another attack. In truth, he wanted to be alone with Dove.
“I’m not sure it will work even if we get to the top,” Raintree said, looking out over the dark valley. Though the rain had stopped, the clouds hung low and heavy over the gorge. The hidden moon provided some filtered backlight, but the sky was almost as black as the cave’s interior. The river was completely obscured by mist, and the drop might as well have been bottomless.
“The FBI agent believed it would.”
“Him. I think he was cracking up. Didn’t you hear him blurting out random sentences, like he was talking to somebody who wasn’t there?”
She glanced behind her, and then lowered her voice. She was close enough that he could feel her breath on his ear. “What do you think happened down there, with him and Farrengalli?”
“Who knows? I don’t trust either of them. I can see the agent pulling rank and taking the raft. Like I said, he’s going nuts.”
“He was hurt pretty badly.”
“Crazy people sometimes ignore their bodies.” And I’m star witness for the prosecution in that trial.
He tilted the cell phone for a moment, casting the green glow of its screen on her face. Her cheeks were dirty, hair tangled and greasy, and a long scratch stitched her forehead. But her brown eyes were unfazed, wide and beautiful and hopeful, pupils large in the darkness.
“Well, we’re here now. What choice do we have?” she asked.
“Two choices. Go up or go down.”
“Or stay here.”
“For how long? Even if the Bama Bomber makes it out of here, do you really think he’s going to send a rescue team? Do you think he’ll let Bowie live once they make it to the lake?”
He caught her sharp intake of breath, the wince of inner pain.
“Sorry,” he said. “We just have to be realistic. We have to keep it together if we want to get out of here alive.”
Like you’re one to talk about getting it together. Already, he was starting to itch, to feel the crab-crawl of addiction across his skin. The night was the worst, for some reason, as if his body didn’t want to shut down and his brain craved fuel and sedation at the same time.
“We should have already been dead,” Dove said. “You saved us.”
“We all saved us. I just got lucky.”
Luck, hell. He wanted to tell her how close he had come to falling after losing his grip. About that moment of desperation, the rush of fear that even modern pharmaceuticals couldn’t suppress. Not fear for his life, but fear of facing survival without his medicine bag. But the pine branch had held, the brain-skewered creature’s corpse dropped away, and he’d scrambled to the cave, set an anchor, and swung the line down to the ledge.
“We’re going to need a lot more luck.” She reached out and touched his hand. Though her fingers were calloused and ragged from the climb, they moved with a smooth, reptilian grace, up along his thumb. Raintree focused all his attention on the sensation, and he wasn’t sure whether it was the painkillers, the speed, or the tranquilizer, but something was pumping through his bloodstream with a full load of electricity. She hesitated a moment, squeezing his hand gently until the cell phone closed. “Better save the batteries.”
Her mouth was close to his cheek, her breath sweet despite the long day’s trauma. Raintree turned, wondering if their lips would meet, either accidentally or on purpose. As if there were ever any difference.
But she was already gone. She had eased back into the concealing ink of the cave.
Raintree looked out across the valley once more. Even in the dim, filtered light, he would be able to see the creatures if they made an aerial attack. He believed, based on their habits, that they wouldn’t attack unless the prey- odd to think of ourselves as such — was out in the open. He recognized, on a deeper, intellectual level where the drugs swam with lazy strokes, that he knew nothing about these creatures, and didn’t think they could ever be understood, even if the finest scientists on the planet had a crack at them.
He decided he and his companions should at least wait until morning, when they’d have a better chance of fending off attack. A little rest would help. They could take turns, one keeping watch while the other two slept. He thought of lying in the dark next to Dove, the two of them drawing close to one another for heat. He was letting his mind wander when the pinprick of light danced deep in the cave’s guts.
The light grew larger, brighter, and then cast a cone of bluish white that revealed Farrengalli’s arm. He joined them at the mouth of the cave, then flicked off the light. They stood there, silhouettes barely visible. “Nothing back thataway,” he said.
“How far did you go?” Dove asked.
“Hard to say. All looks the same after a while. Two hundred feet, maybe. Started branching off in places and I was afraid I’d get lost.”
“This changes things,” Raintree said.
“How so, Chief?”
“I thought we should rest for a while, try to get some sleep, and keep one person on watch at the mouth of the cave. But you heard what the FBI guy said. They had been trapped in a cave when an explosion set them free.”
“You think they live in caves, then? Like this one?”
“Who knows? The point is, we don’t know. So we’d have to keep two guards, one up front and one deeper in the cave.”
“Cletus Christ,” Farrengalli said. “You let me go in there knowing vampires might be waiting?”
“We don’t know anything,” Dove said. “He’s just trying to think ahead, consider all the options. Maybe if you kept your mouth shut once in a while, you’d think of something, too.”
They all fell silent for a moment. Somewhere below, an owl hooted. Such an ordinary, natural sound took on a plaintive note because it was from a sane, normal world they would never again experience. Their lives had been changed, and whether they lived another fifteen minutes or fifty years, they would never outrun the nightmares that would forever stay one step behind their dreams.
“Okay,” Raintree said. “I’ll watch the back end first shift. Give me the light.”
Farrengalli handed it to him without protest. “Guess that means I got to be a goddamned gentleman and let Dove sleep.”
“Here,” Dove said, unbuckling the band of her wristwatch and passing it to Raintree. “Two-hour shifts. In six hours, we can catch the dawn’s early light.”
Raintree pressed the button on the timepiece, and the tiny LED showed it was after 11 o’clock. Time flew when you were scared shitless.
“Okay.” He played the light inside the cave until he found a spot where aeons of sand and grit had swept into a passable mattress. “Here’s a bed,” he said. “Wish I had a midnight snack and a pillow to go with it.”
Dove sat on the sand and curled into a ball on her side. Two coils of rope lay beside her, along with a small pile of carabiners.
“Hell, if you’re going to play hero, I might as well mind my manners,” Farrengalli said, unbuttoning his shirt. He took off the garment and draped it over Dove, his sweaty muscles glinting in the weak light. Then he moved to the lip of the cave and sat on a large rock, looking over the valley like Rodin’s Thinker with a hangover.
Raintree aimed the thin beam of light in front of him and entered his own private hell.