New Year Island (3 page)

Fucking Matt. If it hadn’t been for his stupid bitching that she was slowing the pace, she’d have placed more of her own gear. A lot more.

Lauren gritted her teeth and ignored the scrabbling sounds and movements above her. Her breath came in shallow pants, leaving chuffs of icy vapor hanging in the still air.

Would her backup pro be enough to hold all three of them? If not, they would drop a vertical mile. Thirty seconds of free fall, conscious the whole way. Then they would crater into a pink smudge on the glacier.

Ignoring Matt’s panicked shouts, Lauren looked at her hands again. They had never failed her, the way other people always did. Maybe they could save her now.

If there was enough time, she could sink more gear, tie herself to the wall.

Letting go with her left hand, she groped amongst the nuts and cams hanging from her harness belt until her trembling fingers closed around a climber’s “friend.” She quickly wedged the safety device into the crack, and its opposing cams expanded to lock into place. She reached for another and jammed it right above the first. She frantically threaded her harness rope through both of them. Her fingers flew, tying a clove hitch one-handed. She needed more time.

But there was no time left. The lead rope slackened suddenly as Terry came off the wall high above her. Lauren pressed her cheek against the cold granite again, seeing the speckled rock in high relief. She listened hard but heard nothing other than the fear-monster’s roar, the sound of blood rushing in her ears.

Matt had gotten them into this because he couldn’t admit she was a better climber than he ever was.
That’s really why we’re up here, isn’t it, Matt?
She forced her fingers into motion again, and grabbed a fixed nut, still attached to her harness loop. She wedged the hex nut into the crack at her waist.

Slamming more hardware in as fast as she could, she strained to hear.

When the sound came, she felt it thrum through the rope: the high, innocuous
ping
of Terry’s first anchor pulling free from the rock. A couple seconds later, there came another metallic ping, followed almost immediately by a third. The lead rope was unzipping.

Her rope went taut and she was jerked up hard against the rock. Terry had torn Matt away from the face, too.

Terry plummeted past. He flashed by in Lauren’s peripheral vision in eerie silence. Her hands scrabbled for a final death grip on the granite.

So none of this is your fault, Lauren? Really?

She thrust the unwelcome thought away.

Ping! That’s four.

Ping! Five.

The thrums were coming through the rope faster now, the anchors tearing out more violently as gravity sucked her teammates toward the earth.

Ping!
Something sparked off the rock next to her face, sprinkling her chin with rock splinters. Part of an anchor cam.

Lauren’s eyes widened. They were shattering to pieces.

Matt plunged past, trailing the rope that connected them. His fingers almost touched her shoulder.

Ping! Last one.

She took a shuddering breath and locked every muscle rigid. She tried to melt herself into the rock, feeling her face contort into a tight mask of fear.

The rope through her harness ripped her away from the wall, yanking her downwards in a violent spray of broken cams and metal fragments, like she had been hit by a truck. Pain exploded through her chest and back as she tumbled head over heels into empty space.

Had she slowed them enough for the rest of her pro to catch them?

Her helmet struck the wall. She heard it fracture. A band of pain gripped her head. Sky and rock spun past over and over again. Her own self-belay rope looped thru the air behind her—when it snapped taut a hundred feet down, would her last two anchors hold?

I’m twenty-three.

She was dragged earthwards. Loose rope tangled her arms and legs.

I’ve barely done anything with my life.

The wall blurred past just out of reach.

I’ve never been in love.

Lauren gave herself fully to her terror.

I don’t want to die.

Brent

December 26, 2004

Ton Sai Bay, Koh Phi Phi Island, Thailand

T
he green waters rolled back, parting like a curtain to reveal a scene of utter devastation. Brent Wilson looked at his wife and son, standing on either side of him. He gripped their hands in his and held them tight as the three stood together on the fourth-floor hotel balcony, watching the waters recede.

The sea drained away from the narrow isthmus, pouring down the beaches on both sides. The churning waves drew wreckage in their wake: capsized long-tail boats, bamboo roofs, lounge chairs, beach umbrellas. And people. Hundreds of bodies swirled amid the flotsam—men, women, children—some struggling, but most limp and still.

Brent closed his eyes for a moment. So many dead.

Tourists and Thai villagers alike had been swept along when the tsunami’s twin waves surged up the crescent-shaped beaches that lined either side of the island. The two waves had come together in the crowded strip of palm trees between the two beaches, where Ton Sai village’s shops and restaurants clustered thickest. Most of the structures were gone now, dismantled by the crushing weight of water.

There had been no warning.

“Dad, the people that were on the beach—why didn’t they run away?”

Brent heard his son’s voice crack. They had booked this family trip months ago, to celebrate Brent’s fiftieth birthday. He put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and hugged him tight. In the face of the tragedy below, he seemed so young, so vulnerable. Fifteen—almost an adult, but in so many ways still a child. Had Brent been the same way at his age?

“I was watching them, Dad. When the bay emptied and all the boats beached, some of them actually ran closer—chasing the waterline out. Why would they do that? Didn’t they know the water would come rushing back? I saw a woman pulling her kids forward. Didn’t she realize they were going to die?”

Brent shared a glance with Mary. After twenty-four years of marriage, he could read the question behind her troubled look.
Will he be all right?
her eyes asked.
How badly will this scar our son?

He took a deep breath. That was part of the problem, of course: she sheltered their son too much. But there were things he would soon have to face. They all would. He released the boy and tried to answer his question.

“It’s human nature, son. Evolution. Most of us aren’t wired for survival anymore.”

“I don’t understand. They weren’t panicking or anything. They just stood there.”

Brent laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. “That happens. It’s what nine out of ten people do in an emergency. They get confused, freeze up. I see it all the time as a doctor.”

The boy nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from the carnage down below.

Brent looked over at Mary again. She was holding his black medical bag.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Grab as many blankets and sheets as you can carry. I’ll help with triage.”

He smiled. His face felt tight. He stepped over and hugged his wife, taking the bag from her. “I love you, Mary.”

He knew she was strong, and she would need to be—but for a different reason than what they now faced today.

“I keep thinking of that family with the flower shop.” Mary stripped the blankets from the bed and bundled them in her arms. “They were so nice to us. All these people are. I hope they’re all right.”

“Come on.” Brent turned to his son. “We’ve got work to do.”

Mary stiffened. “No. He should stay here. It’ll be bad…”

He put a hand on her arm. “It’s better if we do this as a family.”

• • •

The first floor of the hotel was awash with sodden debris. The expansive lobby on the second floor had been converted to a field hospital. The injured lay in rows, covered by blankets and sheets. Next door, they had set up a makeshift morgue in the shell of a restaurant. Outside, seabirds split the air with raucous cries, swooping down to feast on the bounty of stranded fish that flopped amid the wet wreckage. Urgency distorted the shouts of rescuers, lending a grim cadence to the singsong Thai voices. Rescue parties brought a steady stream of casualties to both buildings.

The other doctors and volunteers deferred automatically to Brent, because of his ER experience and silver hair but also because his height and stocky shoulders cut an imposing figure among the shorter, slighter Thai. He had taken charge, directing the emergency treatment and rescue efforts.

The morgue was filling fast as well.

Brent finished stabilizing his current patient, a Thai man with two broken legs. Many of the injured had lower-extremity lacerations and breaks caused by wave-borne debris. The less fortunate had been struck higher on their bodies or crushed in the grinding wreckage. He could hear helicopters outside, ferrying the worst injured to the mainland.

He stood up and tucked his hands into his vest pockets. They had done some good here. He looked around for his son and spotted him by the window. He looked pale. He was doing fine, though, helping where he could. Brent’s chest swelled in a burst of bittersweet pride. He walked over and surprised the boy with a heartfelt hug.

“Where’s your mom?”

“She’s trying to track down some antibiotics. We ran out.” The boy suddenly pointed out the window. “Look, that guy over there in the orange baseball cap, helping search. When the water started going out, I saw him, Dad. Everyone else just stood there, but he climbed up in that big mango tree.”

“A survivor-type.” He looked at the man his son had indicated: a short Thai with skinny arms and bad teeth. Nothing noteworthy about the man’s appearance. Brent observed him closely. “About one out of ten people is an instinctive survivor, who somehow always seems to beat the odds. This guy… well, we can learn a lot from people like that.”

“What makes survivors different?”

“Nobody really knows.” He continued to watch the man in the baseball cap with rapt attention. “Genetics, upbringing—these things are certainly factors. But there’s no test for it, other than a real life-or-death situation like this.”

“
Sa-was-dee krup,
Doctor Brent.” The hotel manager stood nearby. He dipped his head in a respectful half bow. “We found a young girl. She is in very bad shape. Please, maybe you can save her.”

Brent followed the hotel manager out. He glanced back at his son, a silhouette standing by the window. The boy looked insubstantial.

Son, I don’t know what it takes to be a survivor.
But I’m afraid I’m going to need to learn.

The icy ball of fear shifted in the pit of Brent’s stomach again. It had become his constant companion lately. He hadn’t told them yet. He had actually planned to break the news today, but nature had had other plans. He would have to wait a few more days now.

Brent thought about the moment, three weeks ago, when he and the fear had first become inseparable. Steve, the radiologist, had been unusually quiet, making none of his jokes. He had brought the CAT scan up on the screen, and Brent had seen the unmistakable signs: the irregular lumps and winding white tendrils where there should only be gray. The icy ball had rooted itself in his abdomen then, although his outward reaction had been angry and immediate.

“There’s some sort of mistake. You fucked this up somehow.” Brent had heard the irrationality of his own reasoning even as he spoke. “That can’t be me, Steve. I’m a
doctor
.”

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Friday: December 21, 2012

December 21, 2012

PIXAR Animation Studios, Emeryville, California

“I
asked us all here so we can present a very special award, to show our appreciation for someone who, I’m sure you all will agree, is a huge part of the reason for our record-setting success.”

Reuben Sasaki, the Head of Studios, lowered the wireless microphone he held and grinned at Camilla Becker. She shook her head in astonishment. Other faces were turning toward her, too. Smiling. Everyone, it seemed, knew he was talking about her. This was an ambush.

Her face flushed with embarrassed happiness. She had said no yesterday, in Reuben’s office, but it seemed he had overruled her and done it anyway.

“Coming up with the right award was difficult,” Reuben said. “What Camilla does here defies easy categorization. Her official title of associate producer doesn’t even begin to capture all the ways she helps each of us deliver our best.”

She strode past her smiling colleagues, toward the front of the auditorium, where Reuben stood at the podium, dwarfed by banner-size character art—a wide-eyed cowboy, a snarling grasshopper, a red race car—from the studio’s animated movie hits. To one side of the spacious room, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on the sunlit central quad of the studio’s tree-lined brick-and-glass campus.

“Every person in this room had something nice to say about you, Camilla,” Reuben said. “When we’re stuck, you help us crack the toughest problems. When egos flare up, you’re the one who gets us calmed down and working together again.”

He acknowledged her with a welcoming nod and stepped aside to make room for her at the podium. “Whether it’s story, art, technology, animation, or sound, you see the possibilities that elevate our movies from the merely great to the amazing. You make our team greater than the sum of its parts, and push us to find excellence in ourselves and each other. You care what everyone has to say. You believe in all of us—”

Laughing, she grabbed the microphone from Reuben. “Give me that, you sneak.” She poked him in the chest with a finger. “I’m mad at you for this.”

She turned and looked out at her team—sixty of the most talented people in the industry.

“I’m mad at the rest of you, too,” she said. “Couldn’t any of you have warned me?”