The River at Night(42)

Her words echoed back at us. A stillness before the chorus of insects charged up again.

“I wonder who they are,” Pia said quietly. “What they’re doing out here.”

“Well, they couldn’t have come from the lodge. It’s just too far,” Rachel said.

“Maybe there’s another lodge around here,” Pia said.

“I don’t know, Pia.” I thought of Rory’s map, as well as his comment that the closest town was thirty miles away.

“Maybe they’re lost too, whoever they are,” Sandra said.

“I vote we go up there in the morning,” I said, a sick worry in my gut.

“I vote we go up there now,” Rachel said. “What if they’re gone by morning?”

“I’m with you, Rachel,” Pia said. “This could be our only chance.”





26


My foreboding only grew as we climbed toward the smell of the fire, which had begun to mix with the smoky tang of cooking meat—what kind, I had no idea. We fumbled blindly and painfully over rocks, roots, and fallen trees, wearing the soft-soled water shoes that never seemed to dry. Branches whipped at us. Blackflies hummed in our ears and hung at our eyes and mouths. Partially blind, Rachel gripped the waist strap of my vest to guide her, keeping us both at a crawl. Sandra kept pace with Pia, whose white T-shirt glowed in the darkness. Their silver helmets bobbed ahead of us like beacons as we made our way ever higher; the light on the mountain growing brighter with every step.

Pia stopped short at the lip of a rain-swollen stream that flowed down to the river. We stumbled up behind her, but she shushed us hard, so we did what she said, then followed with our eyes her pale fingers as they pointed into the forest beyond the stream.

Just yards away, a dark figure crouched over a fire pit in the earth that glowed orange and red. Flames leapt up, licking at the sooty forms of rodent-looking creatures skewered nose to anus on a stick wedged between stacked stones. Fat dripped down, spitting and popping. The smell was gamy, but the heart of it was meat—food—and it reminded me of my animal hunger.

The figure—a small man or a large boy, it was hard to tell—got to his feet and watched the fire. Shoulder-length black hair hung down in mats. Haggard and ropy, almost Neanderthal in the slope of his shoulders, he paced alongside his catch, stopping now and then to lift his chin, to listen. To what, us?

We stood motionless, watching. A tortured energy came from him, something bottled and ferocious. Dark rags—the memory of a shirt—hung off his wasted frame; a whip of a belt cinched what might once have been pants but were now shreds of fabric turned leathery with filth. His face always in shadow, he reached over and turned the stick that held the trussed game, releasing more juices that smoked and rose to the stars, then grabbed the body of one of the things cooking over the fire with a bare hand—somehow impervious to its heat—and ripped off a scrawny leg with the other. He devoured it in seconds, throwing the small, clawlike bones into the fire.

Seemingly sated for the moment, he picked up a long, straight stick and something shining—a piece of metal?—a knife?—I couldn’t make it out—and began to whittle at the stick, shaving one end to a point.

Our eyes flashed at each other across the gloom. Sandra had been taking a giant step across the stream when Pia halted us and she balanced there still, straddling it awkwardly. Pia put her finger against her lips for silence. We obeyed. My breath roared in my ears. We had no plan. Still the creature huddled over his stick, slicing away at it, stopping only to stroke its smoothness with sensual appreciation, as if he were petting a cat.

I saw it all too late: Sandra beginning to teeter before reaching back for me with a wild look in her eye, but I couldn’t grab her in time. Her balance gone, she toppled over sideways, crashing down into the stream, and with a cry of pain landed on her shoulder and knee, up to her waist in rushing water. We threw ourselves over her and pulled her to her feet before staggering back into the clutter of trees and branches.

But we were too late. Like an agile shadow, the man leapt up and came at us, the stick in his hand a weapon held high.





27


I smelled him—sweat, rotted cloth, putrid breath—before I saw him. He seized my upper arm, then whipped me around to face him. Brown eyes, bloodshot and fierce, bored into mine. We stared at each other like two wildly different animals that had crossed paths in the forest and simply couldn’t comprehend the other, whether to fight or fuck or flee, deadlocked in some bizarre pas de deux. Finally I tore my eyes from his face—blackened and lined with filth, knotted hair hanging down—to his other hand, which gripped the sharp stick.

His eyes followed mine. He opened his hand; the stick fell to the ground. We locked eyes again. I realized the others had turned to run but had stopped and were staring back at us. With my entire being, I yearned to turn and face them, but I could sense that was a bad idea. He grasped my arm with inhumanly strong fingers but gazed at us one by one with a wild joy in his eyes before turning back to me.

Pia’s voice came from the shadows. “Let her go.”

“Don’t hurt her,” Sandra said.

His grip tightened. A scream bloomed in my throat; I suppressed it. The woods hummed with night song as we five stood in thrall.

“Dean? Where are you? Dean!” A female voice from near the fire, low and growling.