The Chain(84)

“Don’t worry, Rach. There’s not going to be any trouble today. This is a scouting mission. We’ll get the info and call the feds.”

They walk along a trail into the swampy terrain near Choate. Despite the rain and the cold, it’s surprisingly insect-ridden. The land on either side of the path is choked and overgrown, dense and claustrophobic. Here and there they get glimpses of the Inn River, thick and sludgy under a layer of brown algae. The Inn is a tributary of the Miskatonic River, which curves through the mire somewhere to the north. The whole marsh seems to be caving inward, leaning toward some hidden center of mass. Something like Spanish moss is hanging from the trees; birds screech in the upper branches, and winter hasn’t had its usual culling effect on the biting flies.

Rachel’s spooked. They’re getting close. She can feel it.

The dreams and song lines and nightmares are leading here.

They have been warned off probing into The Chain, and here she is following The Chain backward along Ariadne’s thread.

But the labyrinth is not going to give up its secrets so easily.

They search the swamps and bogs on Choate for the next three freezing, filthy hours and come up with nothing.

No cell-phone tower.

No cell-phone relay station.

Barely any sign of civilization at all.

They stop at a little clearing and drink from their water bottles and then they start out again. More frustrating hours of this. By dusk, they are utterly soaked and exhausted and bitten raw by bugs. Rachel isn’t sure if they are on Choate Island or back on the mainland or on a different island in a different river system completely. They have crossed a hundred little streams and trails. She’s beat. Chemotherapy patients do not go trekking through bogs in December.

She gasps for air.

She’s dying right here, right now, out in the swamp. Pete can’t know this.

She looks at the threatening sky overhead. Towering gray-black clouds looming over the marshes to the west. “Didn’t the weather forecast say snow?” she says.

“Possibly, yeah. And we definitely do not want to be out here in the snow.”

“If you were going to build a cell-phone tower, where would you put it?” Rachel asks him. “You’re the engineer.”

“On the high ground,” Pete says.

“Is there any high ground?”

“What about that hill over there?” Pete says.

It’s a very little hill, maybe thirty feet above sea level. It’s five hundred yards away through the thicket.

“Why not?”

They are two-thirds of the way up it when they begin to see the outline of the cell-phone tower. It has fallen over, or perhaps it partially sank and tipped into the ground.

They reach the top of the hill, their breathing ragged.

From up here, you can see the whole Inn River system stretching to the west. The sickly green alluvial plain is vast, fetid, and unholy, as if it’s covering up a lost corsair city waiting to be exhumed from its own sewers.

Rachel’s heart sinks.

Erik’s plan had been what, exactly? What did he expect them to do after they found the cell-phone tower closest to where The Chain’s calls had come from?

“Now what?” she asks Pete.

Pete looks at the clouds and checks his watch. It’s five. They’ve been hiking all day. They’re cold and very wet and he doesn’t want Rachel to be in the swamps at night. Not without proper equipment and with a snowstorm coming.

And he has other issues. He messed up this morning with that two-thirds-dose bullshit. His skin is starting to crawl. His eyes are dry. He’s getting the sweats real bad. It hasn’t fully hit yet, but it will.

He needs the fix.

Soon.

“Do you think we should call it a day?” he asks.

Rachel shakes her head. They’re so close. She has to find them before they come back for her. They won’t get another chance at this. It has to be now.

“Call it a day?” Pete asks again.

“And then what?” Rachel asks.

“Go to the feds? Tell them everything. Let them search for the house.”

“We’ll go to jail.”

“The Dunleavys might not cooperate with the cops,” Pete says.

Rachel shakes her head again. “They’ll help us only if they know The Chain is finished.”

Pete nods.

“What’s that over there by the river to the north?” Rachel asks, taking Pete’s binoculars. “Is that a cabin?”

She scans the structure.

It’s about three-quarters of a mile ahead. A big old house with a deck that goes all the way around the outside. And it’s on a direct vector with the cell-phone tower.

“It’s definitely worth a closer look,” Pete says. “But we’re going to have to wade another stream or two. It’s actually over on the mainland, I think.”

They hike through an icy stream that comes up to their thighs and then up through a sparse little wood to within a few hundred yards of the cabin.

It’s a large dwelling built partially on stilts near a river. It’s next to a couple of derelict farm buildings sinking back into the marsh to the east. Several vehicles are parked under the veranda on the north side of the structure.

The hairs on the back of Rachel’s neck are standing up.