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 picked 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.”

This time the silence was longer, and then he heard movement. When Rachel spoke again her voice was clearer, and he could tell she was standing up. “Okay, I’m coming.”

Shit.

“No,” Jake said. “Don’t move.”

He heard the scrabble of feet on rock, the voice now close by. “Who is that? Jake?”

“It’s me,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear. “Don’t move.”

“You have to help us,” she said. “It has Cameron in a choke hold and I can’t”—she grunted, and the chopping sound came again—“I can’t get him free. He’s not breathing, and Jaimie’s out there somewhere and she sounds hurt—”

“Listen,” Jake said. “Whatever has a hold on Cameron has Jaimie, too. It wants all of us.”

A strained breath, another chop. “If I could just—”

“Rachel.” His voice was not much more than a whisper, but firm. “Move to high ground—now. Trust me.”

“High . . . high ground?”

“The tallest rock you can climb.”

“What about Cameron?”

“I’ll take care of him.”

A pause. “I’ll help.”

“Rachel—”

“I’m not leaving him. His face . . . purple.”

Jake picked his way forward, moving through the stones, many as tall as he was. The ground between them kept changing from hard to soft, sometimes from one step to the next. It was like wading the Hellshair Creek for brook trout, never knowing what the next step would bring—gravel, sand, or simply a crevice between two rocks, all of it hidden by the frothing, swirling water. One misstep and you were stuck in the freezing water, pinched between two boulders or mired in quicksand. He always fished the Hellshair alone, and there was nobody to help free him if he became trapped. Well. They were very big trout.

C’mon Jake, concentrate.

“What?” Rachel said.

He had not realized he’d spoken aloud. He looked up from his careful surveying of his path and saw her outline ahead of him. Her head was steaming from exertion, and she held a rock the size of an ax-head in her right hand. All around her were more man-sized boulders, the jagged peaks like crude teeth encircling her. There was a human shape huddled at her feet, one foot twitching. One of the tallest rocks also had the flattest pitch, ending in a rounded point. There was a small ledge halfway up, and he motioned her toward it, unsure if she could see him. It was the only haven he could see.

“Get up on that rock while I cut him free.”

“I’m not leaving him.”

“Get up there,” he said. “It’s going to do something when I cut it. It’s going to react, and you need to be out of the way.”

She stared down at Cameron for a second, made as though to toss the rock she held, and instead kept it in her grip. She turned and scrambled up the side of the boulder, coming to a rest with her feet on the small ledge, her arms wrapped around the peak. The sanctuary would be of little help if one of the tendrils—some of which seemed to be hundreds of feet long—decided to reach up and pluck her off of her perch, but it was better than standing on top of them.

Jake stepped, heel-to-toe, over to Cameron. Cameron’s face was dark purple, his teeth bright in the starlight as he fought for breath. Somehow, he still wore his glasses, although the frames were bent and mangled, and one earpiece hung down his cheek. The lenses were intact, however, and behind them his eyes were very wide. The tendrils had him at the throat and the ankles, but nowhere else that Jake could see, the coil around his neck just loose enough so that Cameron could draw in meager breath. This tendril was dented and bruised, but the places where Rachel had struck it seemed to have scabbed over, the gray mold he had noticed before filling in over the damaged tissue. Jake knelt down. Feet or throat first? He thought of Greer as he lay under the burning drill rig, the way the tendrils had crushed him when Jake had tried to take their prize away. They seemed to be growing stronger, and their ability to drag a full-grown man hundreds of yards spoke to their size and power. It would only take one contraction and the powerful tendril would snap Cameron’s neck. The length around his feet was even thicker, leading off into the darkness. It flexed and loosened, as though it were taunting Jake, or waiting for him to make his decision.

“You son of a bitch,” Jake breathed.

The tendril around Cameron’s throat constricted again, harder this time, and Cameron’s eyes bugged out in pain. Jake brought the knife down, severing the tendril wrapped around his neck. It fell away, and Cameron managed one deep inhalation before he was jerked, screaming, out of the rock circle by the tendril around his ankles.

Jake raced after him, shouting at Rachel to stay where she was. Cameron was only a few feet in front of him, turned on his side, his hands reaching out for Jake. His body was sluicing through the mud, slaloming off boulders as he careened through the narrow openings. He started to pull away and Jake leapt for him, his left hand extended. His fingers slipped over Cameron’s chest, grazing over his shoulders and neck, then down one trailing arm as Cameron was pulled out from underneath him—

Cameron’s hand encircled Jake’s wrist. They went skidding along the wet, hard ground together, the pace never slowing despite Jake’s added weight and friction. They hit a low rock and Cameron grunted with pain, and a second later Jake collided with it and felt a searing pain along his ribs. Cameron’s grip held but Jake could already feel it weakening; there was no way he could maintain his hold, and Jake would never catch him again. He couldn’t get close to Cameron’s ankles to cut him free, and there were only a few seconds left before his grip would fail—and another moment after that before Cameron would be dragged, alone, into the darkness.

Jake brought his knife hand up and over, rotating the grip slightly as he positioned it over Cameron. He tapped Cameron’s chest with the flat side of the blade.

“Take it.”

Cameron’s free hand closed over the hilt. A second later they hit another boulder and Cameron’s grip loosened, his fingers breaking contact with Jake’s fingers one by one. They were hooked, index finger to index finger, for a moment. Jake’s tendon felt like it might pop. Then the last connection broke and Jake fell onto the wet ground.

Cameron, no longer screaming, disappeared into the night, Jake’s knife held tightly in his hand.