Snowman (13 page)

"Are we going up to the summit?" Jamie asked.

"Not if we can help it," Pemba answered. "We located the contour line of the glacier, and there're bound to be cleavages running along it."

"What's the approximate angle?" Packard asked, leaning over the map.

"About sixty degrees at the snout, which means that it'll become more acute—possibly thirty degrees—at the top, where it'll form a bowl." Bradford ran his pen along the glacier line. "Once we get over the bowl the mountain'll be too steep to contain the glacier. We'll encounter bergschrunds beyond, because stationary snowfields have to form at the terminus of a glacier. How wide they'll be is anybody's guess. On the Khumbu glacier in the Himalayas they sometimes run a city block and we had to go around them, which meant a longer climb. But there's no reason to anticipate anything of that size. Still, we'll have to be on our guard for concealed moats when we pass the schrunds. They can stretch as far down as the glacier snout."

Monte abruptly asked: "When do you think you can start?"

"Aren't you getting your money's worth, boss?" Spider asked.

"What the hell do you think we're doing?" Jamie, usually reserved, burst out. "Man, you don't just start up a mountain in midwinter without planning. Once we're up there, we've got more than any monster to worry about. One careless step and it's over for us."

The phone rang. Monte picked it up and said to Bradford, "Carlos, for you."

Bradford listened attentively, and when he frowned, the men began to talk nervously among themselves.

"No, we can't wait till next week. We can't move until you've delivered them." He held the receiver and turned to Monte. "Can you send your plane to San Diego for him?" Monte nodded. "Ten o'clock."

"What's the matter?" Packard asked.

"That's my problem," Bradford said brusquely.

The air of secrecy disturbed them, and Bradford knew he had lost their attention. He recognized the signs of jitters.

"Dan, are you holding out on us?" Spider insisted. "Shit, man, if we're in trouble already we ought to know about it."

"Let me do the worrying."

"When it's my ass, I've got a right to be concerned," Packard said. "Fact is"—he huddled with Spider—"these bows'll never work. You couldn't hunt deer with them."

"Any time you want to get back to your ranch, just say the word and you're on your way."

Packard lurched drunkenly toward him.

"Don't make me drop you, Pack."

Spider pulled him away and the two of them returned to the bottle of Jack Daniel's.

This bunch had grown wobbly before they'd started. In a dangerous situation on the face of the mountain, when the leader's word was law, they might panic and turn on him. He had to do something to pull them together.

"Listen, the two of you fought in one of the dirtiest wars—"

"Right!" Packard slammed the table. "The politicians fucked us around. We were numbers. Garbage that no one gave a whore's twat for. And we don't want to go through the same thing again. Don't you understand? Sure, we all need the money—and we want it, goddamn it. But the deeper we get sucked in, the less we know. Thing was, you were somebody I believed wouldn't buddy-fuck me, but Christ almighty, you spook us, Dan. Why are you doing this? What's in it for you?" He flung the bottle of Jack Daniel's into the fire, and it exploded like a bomb, throwing off shards of glass around the room.

"I don't want to die either, and I care about all of you," Bradford said quietly. "I was attacked by the Snowman and I lost my whole party."

"How many?" Spider asked, as though the number of casualties would provide him with a touchstone by which to measure his own chances of survival.

"Nineteen," Pemba said regretfully. "Only Dan and I got away."

Unexpectedly, Packard began to laugh, a crazy highpitched squall.

"Numbers," he said again. "We had lost most of our brigade by the time we got to Cambodia. But at least we had the satisfaction of fragging plenty of dinks along the way."

"How many were kids?"

"I lost count," Packard said indifferently. "When somebody points a gun at me, I don't ask for a birth certificate."

Bradford turned to Spider. "Would
you
do it again?"

"Sure," Spider said. "I believed in what it was about when I enlisted. And after all the friends I lost, I'd go back."

"Well, maybe my reasons won't be so hard to understand. How many times in a lifetime do you get a chance for revenge? This is my shot."

While the drawing was in progress, Willie led the group of children through the deserted kitchen. Cooling on the counters were dozens of turkeys which were to be served at the free lunch the lodge was providing its potential customers for Thanksgiving. He located a large plastic bag, seized a whole bird, and carried it out the back door.

"We're going to have a picnic in the sky," he announced grandly. "Anyone who wants a taste has to come with me."

The children, thrilled by his craft and sheer audacity, excitedly agreed. They found their parkas in the lobby and joined their leader outside.

"Where're we going?" a young girl asked.

"For a ride."

A fine, powdery snow was falling. On the way the boys packed snowballs and threw them wildly at cars. A sense of elation and release from parental restrictions spread through the five boys and three girls.

Julie, a nine-year-old, fell back with Lori, her ten-year-old friend.

"He's crazy," Julie said.

"But isn't it fun?" Lori said, running a few steps for fear of being left behind.

They followed Willie blindly as he glissaded on slick downhill patches of ice. When they reached the gondola shed he switched on the light and said, "Now let's see how this damn thing works."

A plump boy wearing a hat with earmuffs under his parka hood said, "I always wanted to be an engineer."

In the lodge the musicians were playing nerve-rending chords on their electric guitars and Cathy was calling for quiet. When she had the attention of the mob, she placed her hand on the drum.

"The winner of Great Northern's drawing will receive our Chamonix town home, which has one bedroom and a loft. It is valued at thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Your chalet will be completely furnished by Rose's Interiors of Sierra." She waited as a buzz of expectation rippled through the crowd. Women clutched their tickets and gazed lovingly at their husbands.

Cathy spotted Bradford at the back of the room, surrounded by his group of men. She spun the barrel.

It was just a matter of turning the power switch, nothing more complicated than that, Willie discovered as the engine plant in the gondola shed roared into life. Greased pulleys turned on metal belts, and the cable on an overhead T-track moved the gondolas as though they were robots. The children jammed into a single car, and Willie brushed up against Julie. They were all giggling and shouting.

"Keep quiet till we move past the lodge," Willie ordered them. "Sound carries, and we don't want to get caught."

The gondola moved sluggishly over the ski-school slope, and the children pressed against the glass as the lights below became dim and opaque. Moving higher, the car began to sway in a crosscurrent of wind. Julie noticed that the snow was heavier. It lashed the window, and whining eerie noises troubled her.

In the back of the car, Willie put the turkey on a seat and started to tear the bird apart.

Cathy put her hand into the barrel, and there were nervous shouts and moans from women who encircled her. She picked up a ticket.

"The winner is the William Stevenson family! Congratulations!"

The bearded man and his red-nosed wife snuffling into a ragged Kleenex burst through the crowd. The man hollered, "That's us!"

"Willie, where's Willie?" the woman cried out. "Wait'll he hears!"

It had to be this pair who won, Cathy thought, remembering the monstrous boy they had brought forth. She smiled, and was forcibly kissed by both when she presented the keys to the condo. A table had been reserved in the bar for the winners, and Monte ordered champagne for them. She found herself carried along, unable to break away and join Bradford and his men at a corner of the bar.

The gondola passed over the beginners' slope and was now three thousand four hundred and eighty-one feet up the mountain. It shuddered from side to side. The snowfall was heavier as it moved higher. Inside the children huddled in a corner, unable to stand up. The wind velocity increased, lashing the car. Thick granules of sleet caromed off the windows like machine-gun fire, and Julie whispered tearfully to her friend, "We're going to die." The floor of the car was littered with turkey bones, and the carcass and greasy skin made her sick to her stomach.

"I'm scared," one of the boys said.

"Well, if you want to get off, chicken, don't let me stop you," Willie replied angrily. He too was frightened by the shaking cable, but he was determined to bluff it out. "Ladies and gentlemen, we're experiencing some temporary turbulence. Please fasten your seat belts and extinguish all cigarettes."

"You're horrible," Lori said. "This is crazy."

No one contradicted her, and she peered out of the fogged window. She blew on it, then wiped it with the back of her glove. They were above a pine forest. The trees were so high that the gondola seemed to skirt over their branches. The snow below was blinding. Caught in the insurgent eddying winds, it thrashed the forest.

"Something's moving on the mountain!" Lori shouted tearfully. It was gone as soon as she spoke.

"Next time stay home and play with your dolls," Willie said.

The temperature inside had dropped to ten below zero, and when Lori rubbed her eyes she discovered that her tears were frozen to the lashes and her face was becoming numb. She began to breath rapidly, and she thought her lungs would explode. She heard some of the boys sobbing in the back of the car.

Following the gondola on the intermediate slope was the Snowman. The car moved slower than he did, but it changed direction unexpectedly. His hand flailed the air, slashing across the trunks of heavy pines and felling them. The mountainside was littered with trees. He slithered across a giant mogul, then waited for the object to pass within his reach.

"Hey, there's a light on the mountain," Willie said, startled.

"You're nuts," one of the boys cheeped weakly. He staggered to the rear window.

"It's a lighthouse beam," Willie insisted, pointing at the image. But then the light was gone, and he wondered if it had been his imagination, or perhaps the light of the moon reflecting off the ice. There was a thunderous sound of ice smashing, and a huge block flew past the window. Willie was now too terrified to speak, and he sank to the floor, howling, infantile, and without hope. All around him the children he had led on this insane expedition gasped for breath and writhed as though stricken by some poison gas.

A sharp reverberating whine which sounded like some form of giant cat was heard. The children began to scream. Julie struggled to her feet. She was stepping on a body. The gondola was nearing the experts' run, and through the gales of snow there were brief intervals of visibility when the wind knifed through, dividing the snow into a series of unsupported walls. A large shadow loomed beneath them. Her stomach turned, and her chest was on fire as her body throbbed in short spasms of dry heaves. The cat sound now mysteriously turned into a frenzied roar which echoed through the mountain depression. She sank once again to the floor.

It's following us, she thought, powerless to move.

The cable of the gondola was jarred, and the vibrations shook the car. The children, mute with terror, came to life again and broke into a gagging dirge. The gondola started its descent, breaking into snarling headwinds which struck it with the force of a hammer.

The Snowman groped along a narrow arête. The ridge caved in, and he lost his balance. He dug into the side of an ice chimney; his claws gave him the traction to right himself. He saw the moving black line, and he stretched up once again to tear at it. A blanket of snow covered him, and he hacked at the icefall, fracturing a large mass; then he descended into the sérac below him.

"Finally . . . I thought this circus would never end," Cathy said. She and Bradford walked arm in arm down past the lodge.

He stopped and turned his head, and she leaned her head on his shoulder, expecting him to kiss her. The new snow was falling heavily, but the moon was not obscured at ground level.

"Do you hear that?"

It was a faint whirring of machinery.

"Could be a car turning over."

"No, it's a lift."

They jogged toward the T-bars, which were closer than the lifts or gondolas.

"Are they crazy, using the gondolas at night?"

Above them empty cars rattled on the overhead track.

"Maybe they're being tested."

"Not in this wind. They can be derailed."

They climbed the steps into the shed. The lights were on, and the pulleys rotated smoothly.

"Can I borrow your lipstick?"

Puzzled, she reached into her bag and found it.

"What're you going to do?"

He marked an X across a gondola about to leave the platform.

"If this one comes down again we'll know nobody's inside any of the others," he explained. "Otherwise, I switch off the power someone might be trapped in one."

They waited apprehensively as a number of empty cars passed them. Somewhere outside the shed there was a gabble of voices carried by the wind. It grew closer, and now the sounds were shrieks of panic. The gondola reached them, and Bradford opened the door. The children were massed on the floor, crying and groaning. Cathy and Willie exchanged an angry look; then the boy lowered his eyes and began to bawl.

"Whose crazy idea was this?" Bradford asked.

Cathy knew there was no need for an answer. She pulled Willie out onto the platform. "Is there anybody else up there?"

"No . . . just us."

They escorted the children back to the lodge, to be claimed by their parents. Willie said in a faltering voice, "There's something up there. The girls saw it too."