Chapter 10
Jake stood at the top of the ridge, bent over with his hands at his hips. His breath was coming in ragged gasps, and there was a sharp pain in his side as though he’d been stabbed. In front of him the tents were a bright jumble of colors, still covered in dew from the night before. There was no smoke from the fire, but he could smell it as he sucked in breath after breath, the sharp, acrid scent of the blackened embers. It was a welcome smell after the constant boggy odor of the river bottom. The rain clouds had not arrived yet, but he could see the front coming, a low bank of dark clouds scuttling in from the west.
Below and behind him, no more than the length of three football fields, the rest of his party was huddled on the rock pad. There were still several seams of mud from where the ground had opened up the day before. From up here it looked, if not peaceful, then at least unremarkable. If they had been unhurt, it would be just as easy for each of them to do what he had done, weave across the valley floor and up the slope, staying on rocks where possible, until the ground steepened and grew hard under his feet. Then up to this place, this wooded highland forest that was so much safer, so much more accommodating, than the muddy valley below.
A thought circled his mind, gaining traction with each breath.
Leave them.
There was nothing hostile in the thought. Other than Warren, he didn’t dislike any of the survivors below. They were all different people with different faults, none of them saints nor devils. It was not their fault that this, whatever this was, had happened. They had drilled into it, yes, but similar acts of intrusion the world over had been met with shrugging acceptance by the ground. Of course, those places were not Asiskiwiw.
He straightened and filled his lungs with the cool, pre-rain air. Asiskiwiw, the muddy valley, also known as Resurrection Valley. The former name had been around for a long, long time, ever since Jake’s father’s people had drifted south and east to this place, where the moose and caribou were thick and the rivers were full of fish. The other name, the English version, was newer, a reflection of the Christian religion that had infiltrated the region with the French, then later the British fur traders.
Below him a shout drifted up, cutting off his thoughts. One of the members of the party—he thought it was likely Warren—waved his arms over his head. Yes, it was Warren, and he could see Jake standing there on top of the ridge, above the panic and out of danger. The shout came again, undecipherable but the meaning was clear: Get your ass moving, Trueblood.
Leave them.
Turn and walk into the woods. Leave them with their drill rig and their wounded and dead bodies—let them clean up their own mess. It was early, barely autumn. He knew of several old trapper cabins that he could overwinter in, including one he had built himself, less than fifteen miles away. He had his rifle, and it would be a lean winter, with nothing but moose and rabbit, but he knew how to do it, which parts of the animal he had to eat to keep from starving, eyes and brains and internal organs, all the nutrients and fats socked away deep inside the animal. He could do it. Just disappear in the green, yawning maw of the woods, and let these people from the Department of Defense and the research laboratories fight their way out of the valley, then sort through the problems they had created.
Go, he thought again. Get your rifle out of the tent and go.
He had his breath back now, and he turned and walked to his tent. He paused outside the flap, studying the scuffs in the pine needles. He was not as good a tracker as others, but he could tell a day-old sign from an hours-old sign. He frowned and then stepped inside his tent.
His rifle was still there. The cartridges were untouched. He thumbed several rounds into his rifle, knowing it was foolish, that he could no more shoot his way out of this danger than he could sprout wings and fly away from it. He filled the Winchester’s magazine anyway; it made him feel better. Then he opened his pack and fished out his pills and swallowed them. His bota was still half full of water, and he drank deeply to wash down the pills. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was.
He lowered the bota, swished the remaining water around, and then took another drink. The rest of them would be very thirsty, and if he went back down he would need to grab the rest of the canteens and botas, perhaps some food as well.
Are you really going back down there?
No. He would make the call on the satellite phone himself. Once he was able to get them some help, he would walk away.
He slung his rifle over his shoulder and went into Warren’s tent. The plastic box containing the two satellite phones was in the corner of his tent. Jake took them outside and snapped the locks open. The phones were a matching pair of Motorolas, each one fitted with a small, thick antenna. He didn’t know what number to call, but he supposed they would have a few numbers programmed into the internal memory, like a normal cell phone. He pressed the power button, then pressed it again. He frowned, then held the button down for a few seconds. The screen still didn’t light up. He tried the other one, with similar results.
A security function? He flipped the phone over, inspected the back, then turned it over again. He felt like a clueless backwoods jerk, unable to operate a piece of modern technology. He would have to bring it down to them, watch them do something simple, like press the power button twice . . .
He thumbed the on/off button twice, then three times. He held it down for five seconds, then ten, then punched it in quickly and released it. There was nothing from the phone, almost as though the batteries were completely—
He flipped the phone over in his hand, unscrewed the tab for the batteries, and pried the cover loose with his thumbnail. The battery compartment was empty except for the connecting wire and terminal connections. He quickly unscrewed the other phone and saw its battery was gone, too. He slid a finger under the foam of the phone case, wondering where the batteries could be. Perhaps Warren had been charging them with the small solar panel.
He went back into Warren’s tent. The solar panel was in the corner, still wrapped in the thick cardboard Warren had used to protect it on the way in, the charging cord wrapped in neat coils. No batteries. He searched around the tent, pawing through Warren’s clothes and sleeping bag. There was no way Warren had forgotten the batteries; Jake had watched him call in their progress to his boss, or bosses, the afternoon they had arrived on site.
He stood at the threshold of the tent, staring at the ground. He had trampled on whatever sign there might be here. Had the ground outside Warren’s tent looked disturbed before he entered the first time? He thought maybe it had. He went to Greer’s tent, a light purple job, more colorful than the rest. Yes, there were footprints there, too, the impression of a heel. Hard to tell how fresh, but Greer wore sandals when not working so as not to track dirt from his work boots into his tent. Jake went to Parkson’s tent next, which was pitched on harder ground. There were no footprints outside his tent.
He left us, Jake remembered Hans had said. Just snuck off in the night without saying a word.
You son of a bitch.
He circled the camp, but he saw no sign on the hard ground. If Warren had taken the batteries, they were either with him or hidden somewhere in the woods. Jake could spend days searching for them, and unless they were someplace obvious, it would be fruitless. What would make a man do something like this? To venture, in the dark, through that lethal labyrinth of tendrils and mucky ground, only to remove their ability to save themselves? Jake could understand part of Warren’s motive. Greer was dead. Four of them had disappeared into the night, and the other two on the rock pad with him were injured. If Warren was responsible for the group’s safety, he would have a lot to answer for when he made that call. And any help would come from the air, which would be problematic; it would alert the natives to their presence. Jake had no illusions about their supposed permission to be here; this was a clandestine operation, carried out by foreign government agents.
But Warren had gone back down, which meant that there was something down there worth severing their one link to the outside world for, something worth the risk to his own life and those of the others—something he couldn’t get to in the dark, but would likely try for as soon as he had a chance.
The samples.
Jake started back down the valley slope.
* * *
“Batteries are dead.”
“They’re what?” Parkson said. “Jesus Christ.”
Jake stood on the rock pad, feeling the hostility of the group growing, centering on him, the bearer of bad news. They had been trapped on the same piece of rocky real estate for the past eighteen hours. In that time they had seen Greer die, his body infested, and then witnessed Cameron being dragged off. Jamie was gone. They wanted help, and they wanted it delivered. Jake didn’t blame them, especially Parkson, with his injured right ankle. It would take Parkson a half hour to make it to the top of the valley, perhaps an hour.
“You’re sure the batteries are dead?” Rachel said.
“No,” Jake said. “But the phones wouldn’t turn on, no matter what I tried.”
He waited. The group looked at him, then Warren. Nobody spoke. Jake made a concentrated effort to not look at Warren, to simply survey the ground between the rock pad and their tents.
“Jake,” Rachel said. “Why didn’t you bring the phones down here? One of us might have been able to get them to work.”
“I didn’t want to lose them,” he said, “in case I, you know. Got trapped.”
She closed her eyes, bit her lower lip. “You could have brought one down.”
He feigned a look of self-disgust. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” He brightened. “But we can make it back up there, try to get them working.”
“What?” Hans said.
“We walk up,” Jake said. He felt the first splatters of rain and turned his face to the sky. The clouds were a light gray above him, darker just to the west, the colder air being sucked into the low-pressure system. “Slow and steady.” He motioned at the ground. “It’s either asleep or it’s full. We stay on the same path, we have a good chance of getting out of here.”
“Full?” Parkson said.
Nobody answered him. They were silent for a minute, all of them looking where Jake was looking, at the top of the ridge. The ground between was littered with rocks. Warren tensed, seemed about to speak, when Rachel cried out.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Look!”
A hundred yards to the south, a lone figure was stumbling toward them. She weaved through the rocks, banging her shins on the larger rocks. Her head was hanging down, her jaw slack. It was Jaimie, moving with a curious shambling gait, as though she were trying to run with legs that had fallen asleep. As they watched, she banged into a large rock, almost fell, then straightened and kept coming on. Even from this distance they could see there was something wrong with her face.
“Jake?” Rachel asked. “That is Jaimie . . . right?”
“Stay here,” Jake said. He stepped down from the rock pad and called out. She came toward him, head hanging down, wheeling as though trying to avoid the raindrops. Jake went out to meet her, stopping when she was twenty feet away. She had lost her shoes, and her socks were worn away to her ankles, the tattered wool stained with blood. Her toenails were splintered and torn, and Jake winced as he watched her step on a sharp rock. Jaimie herself didn’t flinch, just left a red, smeared footprint on the stone and took her next step.
“Jaimie?”
She stopped but did not look up. Her arms hung limply at her sides, and there were bits of twigs and lichens in her hair. She was bleeding from both ears, and her crotch was stained dark. He could smell her even from a distance; a musty, coppery smell.
“Jaimie?”
She mumbled something, then took another step forward, like a scared child finally fessing up to some infraction. Or maybe . . .
Maybe...
Maybe that’s what she wants me to think. Just a harmless child seeing the error of her ways.
He couldn’t banish the thought, the feeling that she wanted him to come to her, to wrap his arms around her. “Jaimie, what happened?” He stepped closer, his nose wrinkling. “Jaimie, can you talk?”
She whispered something at the ground.
“You what?”
“I ran with it,” she said, her voice muffled. She looked up, and there were streaks of blood coming from her eyes, the sclera marked with burst blood vessels. She had stuffed some moss in her mouth, and her tongue moved around it as she talked. “It was in my head. I ran with it.”
“With what?” Jake asked, the question popping out before he had time to wish it back in.
She looked at him, her crimson eyes crinkling as though he were in on some joke with her. Then she grimaced and pushed a broken tooth out of her mouth with her tongue. She let it drop to the ground, the enamel stained pink. Jake looked from the tooth to her mangled feet and back to the tooth. He didn’t want to look at her face again.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
She didn’t respond, and when Jake started back toward the pad she stayed where she was, motionless except for the movement of her tongue in her moss-filled mouth. “Come on, Jaimie,” he said.
She was singing. The words were very soft, muffled and indecipherable. It was some sort of nursery song, a child’s song. He felt his neck and arms break out in gooseflesh. The air seemed darker, and not just from the approaching clouds. Her matted and dirty hair swung as she sang, the words chuffing out. Her voice rose as the song went along. Now Jake could make it out:
Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetops.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all.
She paused, then crooned the same five awful lines again. Blood and spit dripped from her mouth as she sang, and she had begun to wobble as the pitch of her voice climbed. A gob of bloody moss tumbled out of her mouth and she stuffed it back in, almost greedily. She started on the first verse again, pausing on in the treetops.
“In the treetops,” she sang, her voice rising in an awful mixture of elation and horror. “In the treetops, in the treetops!”
Then her voice trailed off and she pitched to the ground, her head striking the edge of one of the boulders. Still Jake stood where he was, watching her chest heave and fall. She was unconscious, her blood-filled eyes mercifully closed.
“Jake?” Rachel asked from behind him. She moved up next to him, watching Jaimie breathe. “The spores,” she said. “They’re causing her to hallucinate.”
“Yes,” Jake said. “Has to be.”
“What is it?” she asked, her hand on his arm. “You know something, don’t you?”
He looked at Rachel, then back to Jaimie. Old stories, the kind they used to tell each other when they were kids, flickered through his mind, an evil far worse than what promethium might or might not do. Stories of the monster that lurked in the deepest part of the forest, in the most wild of places. A monster that might eat you, or might instead compel you to run with it, to course over the ground so fast and so far that you were lifted up. Jake’s eyes traveled down to Jaimie’s battered feet. The monster might make you run with it until your feet felt like they were on fire. Run with it above the treetops.
They were old stories. He compared them to the new story, the one Rachel told of some rare element, one that infused non-sentient life forms with the properties of animate creatures. An element that saturated the valley’s sediments, something so valuable that it made it worthwhile for Warren to put himself back into this desperate situation.
“We need to get out of here.”
“You said that already,” Rachel said.
“I know,” Jake said. “But I really, really mean it this time.”
He went over to Jaimie and hooked his arms under her arms. Rachel lifted Jaimie’s legs, gripping her at the knees and avoiding her damaged feet. Jaimie smelled very bad, and there was something more than the odor of old blood, some thicker smell. It reminded Jake of a wolverine den he had found once when he was a kid, the rank smell that stuck to his clothes for weeks afterward. It was a smell of wildness, not the good smell of the pines or sweet crushed grass, but the low smell of the swamp, the smell of scavenger’s breath.
They hauled her over to the others, breathing in the awful odor. They reached the rock pad and set Jaimie down. Everyone was looking down, staring at her ruined feet, which were actually in worse shape than her face . . . but only when her eyes were closed. When they were open, Jake thought . . . or when she sang . . .
“One way or another”—Jake said, trying to breathe through his mouth. He leaned down and picked Jaimie up again—“we’re getting the hell out of this valley.”
* * *
They were halfway across the open stretch, just below the start of the slope and the beginnings of the trees, when the wind stopped. The sky rumbled above them, and for a brief moment, nothing moved, the leaves on the saplings on the side slopes above them not even fluttering. Then the wind returned, the sky cracked open with a jagged bolt of lightning, and the downpour began.
The rain came down in fat drops, icy cold, the first taste of the winter that would soon turn this country white. Jake repositioned his hold on Jaimie’s arms, and in front of him Warren did the same with her legs. They staggered forward, boots sinking into the ground. The soil was still wet from the day before, and the rain pooled on top of the surface, quickly turning what had been a passable stretch into a morass. They slogged forward, Rachel supporting Parkson. Hans scurried after them, holding his injured arm tight against his body.
Thunder cracked above them again, coming faster and faster until it was a near-constant cadence. The rain poured down, harder than Jake had ever seen. Thunderstorms were rare this far north; the air usually lacked the necessary energy to do much more than drizzle rain. He could hear the big drops slapping the river’s surface far behind them, spattering against the rocks in the boulder field they had just left. They moved forward one step at a time, Jaimie’s butt bouncing and sliding across the muck and scattered rocks. They were slowing with every step, the soft ground between the rocks coming up to their ankles. Warren called back something over his shoulder, his words lost in the thunder and pouring rain.
“What?”
“Drag her!” Warren shouted.
Jake nodded, and Warren dropped her feet and joined Jake. They each hooked an arm under one of her armpits and started pulling, sluicing Jaimie’s limp body across the open ground. They let Rachel and Parkson go out a few yards ahead of them, scouting for the best ground. Hans took their cue, hopping from rock to rock. It was raining so hard it was difficult to see more than a few yards ahead, and the ground was almost completely covered in water. Even the slopes of the valley appeared to be spread over with sheets of water, draining acres of runoff into the valley.
Ahead of them, Hans tripped and pitched headfirst into the water. Jake saw him go down and waited for him to come back up.
“Come on!” he shouted at Warren. Overhead, lightning cracked across the gray clouds.
They charged forward, Jaimie’s battered heels leaving twin furrows behind them. Rachel and Parkson had stopped a few yards ahead, and they almost ran into them. In front of them, a yawning fissure had opened in the ground. The muddy water was pouring into it, clumps of sod breaking off and tumbling down. Hans was deep inside the crevasse, twisting and rolling as he tried to free himself from the writhing mass of tendrils that lined the sidewalls. The ground continued to separate in front of them, opening and deepening. Hans slipped deeper into the hole, his mouth covered with mud as he flailed, only managing to work himself deeper into the cut. The tendrils seemed to be passing Hans’s body downward, transferring him further into the earth.
Jake stood at the edge, feeling his boots starting to slide into the hole. One of Hans’s hands broke free from the writhing nest, a glint of gold from his wedding ring. A tendril snaked out from the sidewall and wrapped around his hand, yanking it downward. The little circle of gold disappeared. Hans was five feet deep. Ten. Water continued to slosh and froth into the crevasse, cascading over the twisting and seeking tendrils. Then Hans was gone, just a vague shape underneath the muddy latticework of the tendrils.
“Get back!” Warren shouted as the earth started to slip away under their feet. “Jesus, man, come on!”
They yanked Jaimie around and stumbled after Rachel and Parkson, who were retreating to the north. They only went a few yards before stopping again. The same fissure that had swallowed Hans was curving around them, blocking their path to the top of the valley. Jake dropped Jaimie and spun around. All around them, the fissure was opening up, the water pouring into it, the rocks and boulders tumbling down in a series of small and large splashes. He saw tendrils pushing at the opposite sides of the opening, widening the gap even as it extended its length.
Rachel pointed to the northeast and shouted something. There was a narrow path near a section of rocky ground, the bedrock forming a slender bridge back toward the river.
“Go!” Jake shouted.
She sprinted for it. Parkson thrashed his way after her, his foot below his injured ankle wobbling and flopping. Jake and Warren followed, holding Jaimie’s wrists and yanking her roughly along the ground. Her weight increased suddenly and their forward momentum slowed, then stopped. They turned. Jaimie had slipped down into the chasm at their heels, and her legs were snared by several tendrils. She had regained consciousness at some point, and the addled expression she’d possessed earlier, that strange combination of confusion and cunning, had disappeared. It was Jaimie, really Jaimie, her bloodshot eyes opening in fear and then pain as a large tendril snaked out of the earth and wrapped around her waist.
Then Jake was falling, the ground giving way under him, Warren flailing for balance at his side. Jake sensed rather than saw something coming at him through the slimy ground. His boot kicked out into the air and found something solid to push off, one thought searing across his mind—God, please let that not have been Jaimie’s forehead. He kicked himself away from the chasm, back up and over the edge. Whiplike lengths fell on his back, his sides. One of them clutched briefly at his ankle, then slid off, the mud too slick to allow it to gain purchase. Then he was up and out of the collapsing hole, scrambling forward, first on all fours and then straightening and sprinting, Warren splashing after him. They could see Rachel ahead, the standing water over her ankles, Parkson flailing badly behind her.
They scrambled across the ridge of bedrock after them, the soil falling away on either side. Rachel was running back down into the valley toward the river, now swollen and discolored. Jake glanced behind him. The entire length of the bottomland was split open, split lengthwise with the yawning fissure. The ridge of bedrock they had just crossed extended all the way to the thick rim of cattails that flanked the river. The same spine seemed to extend underneath the river to the far side, where a fan-shaped series of ledges in the bluff spread out in a sunrise pattern before narrowing to a single razorback, which led up at an angle through the otherwise vertical bluffs.
Jake ran, his boots slipping and sliding on the rain-slickened rocks. The ground continued to fall away on either side, and tendrils reached out of the earth, brushing against his feet, his shins.
Rachel plunged through the cattails and splashed into the river. It had risen almost a foot in the past ten minutes, the surface cratered by the huge raindrops. Parkson blundered after her, screaming with pain, his foot flopping from one side to the other. Rachel made it through the cattails, and seconds later her arms were cleaving through the muddy water as she swam for the far side. Parkson seemed foundered in the cattails, the seed heads erupting in clouds of white above him. They coated his muddy body as he thrashed forward, pitching to his knees.
A large tendril lay across the ridge of rock ahead of Jake. He leapt over it, his rifle rising up on its strap and banging down against his shoulder blades. Ahead of him, Parkson gained his feet and stumbled forward into the river.
Jake plunged into the cattails, coughing and hacking from inhaling the cattail fluff. Normally the river was narrow, just forty yards across, with little current. Now it was closer to sixty yards, and the current was up.
He lifted one boot out of the water, severing the laces with his knife. He pulled the boot off, then did the same with his other foot. Warren waded past him and dove into the stained water, swimming toward the far shore with powerful strokes.
Behind them, something slithered through the cattail stalks.
Jake yanked a piece of shoelace free from the eyelets and used it to tie the boots together. He swung the tethered boots over his neck and started dog-paddling.
The rain was still coming down very hard, the water splashing up into Jake’s eyes and nose. Rachel was nearly to the other side. Parkson was halfway across, swimming awkwardly, his body tilted to one side as he favored his good leg. Warren moved through the water with ease, overtaking Parkson, already closing in on the far shore. Jake continued his dog-paddle. He fought to control his breathing, to let his lungs fill with buoyant air.
Ahead of him, Rachel had reached shallow water on the far side, the water up to her hips. Parkson warbled something to her, some desperate entreaty Jake couldn’t hear but didn’t need to. Parkson was drowning, or he thought he was. Rachel shouted something at Warren, who was just getting his feet under him. Warren ignored her, staggering onto the rocky shore and collapsing against the side of the rock bluff.
Rachel dove back in. She reached Parkson and positioned herself behind him, one arm looping over his left shoulder. Parkson clawed at her, pushing himself up by pushing her down. Rachel tried to slide away, and Parkson reached out, wrapping his hand in her hair, and pulled her in close. They both went under, and then Parkson’s head emerged, sputtering, his hands pushing down in the water. Jake swam harder.
When he reached them, Rachel was still underwater, her legs and arms flailing under the surface. Parkson was only barely above the surface. When he saw Jake he reached out, hands spread like claws. Jake hit him in the face, once, twice, three times, and Parkson let go of Rachel. Jake pulled her up, going under himself with the effort. His boots banged against the back of his neck, the cord tight against it.
Rachel’s fist struck the top of Jake’s head. He saw a thumb coming at him and turned away, taking it high on the cheek instead of his eye. He parried another blow.
“Rachel!”
She blinked, caught herself from throwing another punch. She retched up a mouthful of river water.
“Shore,” she said.
“Go,” he said. “Right . . . behind you.”
Parkson was a few yards away, thrashing at the surface but not making any progress toward shore, his breath coming in whimpers. Jake dog-paddled closer and caught his eye, white with panic. Jake held out his hand. Parkson reached out tentatively, then his eyes widened even more. Jake spun clumsily in the water to see what had alarmed Parkson.
Something was rushing toward them just under the surface of the water, its length extending all the way back to the shore. The water bulged above it as it closed in on them, twenty yards away, then fifteen. The surging water was three feet high, falling away to reveal a massive tentacle, larger than any they’d seen, washed pale gray by the river. Ten yards away now, and Jake could see the tip of it undulating just under the surface, like a hound dog casting its head back and forth for a scent. Jake was directly between the tentacle and Parkson, both of them still dog-paddling to stay afloat, staring.
Five yards. The tendril was slowing as it got farther out from shore, losing some momentum, but still moving faster than either of them could swim.
Three yards.
Jake let his arms and legs go still. He sank, drifting in the current. The tentacle brushed against his back. He drifted a few more feet, motionless, down and downstream, the tentacle a giant wedge-shaped shadow above him. Wait, wait. No movement, not a twitch. Be the rabbit in the briar, the whitetail buck in the thicket. Finally the need for breath overrode all other thoughts, and he kicked for the surface.
He broke the surface and spun around. Parkson was perfectly still, his hands pressed down hard against something that was not moving. He locked eyes with Jake, lips pressed into a thin gray line, and then he was yanked under the surface in a massive swirl.
Jake put his head down and swam toward shore, no longer dog-paddling, his head under water more than it was above. He breathed in sips of air mixed with water, fighting the urge to hack it back out. Eventually his feet kicked against gravel, and he scrambled onto the bank. Rachel grabbed his hand and pulled him up, toward the hogback ridge and away from the narrow cobble beach. Warren was already ten feet above them, and he reached down to help Rachel onto the thin shelf of rock where he had stopped. Both of them pulled Jake up, his rifle clanging against the rock.
He coughed out water, looking at the river through bleary eyes.
Something was twisting and turning at mid-river, leaving a trail of swirling wakes on the surface. Parkson’s hand broke the surface, then part of his shoulder and neck. A second later his shoulder disappeared and the water went still.
Jake pushed himself up on one elbow. “Is he—”
Parkson’s head emerged out of the water, eyes blank. He slowly settled into the water, pausing when his mouth was at the water’s surface. A trail of bubbles blew from his mouth, then another.
“He’s breathing,” Warren said. “It looks like he’s trying to say something.”
“We have to go back in,” Rachel said.
Jake reached up to his shoulder and unslung the Winchester. His boots were gone. He brought the gun up, ignoring Rachel’s cry, then slapping her hand when she tried to push the barrel away. He swung the barrel back over and lined up the shot, the front sight a small bronzed point of light, nestling down into the rear notch. He squeezed the trigger, the gun bucking under him as the water exploded two inches to the right of Parkson’s ear. River water fountained down on Parkson’s face with the raindrops, splashing into his open eyes.
“What are you doing?”
Jake turned to Rachel. “He didn’t blink.”
“What do you mean?” Warren said. He was looking at Jake’s gun as though he had just recognized it as more than a chunk of steel and wood.
“You know what I mean,” Jake said. “It wants us to go in and save him. Just like Greer.”
And Jake heard Greer’s words again, his larynx flexing and twisting under that awful manipulation: Helllp meeeeeee . . .
“So now what?” Warren was talking to Jake, but he was looking at the far side of the valley, at the epicenter of the split and muddy ground encircling the crumpled remains of the tarp lean-to containing the samples of promethium. Jake gazed up the length of the hogback ridge. It ran at a forty-degree angle for almost a mile, ending in a notch at the top that reminded him of the gap in the Winchester’s sights. There was a Resurrection Valley, and there was also, high up on this far side, a Resurrection Pass. The spine of rock that led to the pass was folded up and out of the bedrock like hands steepled in prayer, a knife’s-edge of granite thrust out of the earth by subterranean forces unimaginable.
He looked down at his stocking feet, then up to Rachel. She nodded, motioned him forward. Above them, more lightning crackled across the gray sky.