The Wall (20 page)

“You have to let go of that,” he told her. “It’s over.”

“Tell her yourself.”

“I’m telling you, Cuba. You’re the one who hears her.”

“We didn’t ask to be part of this,” she said.

“Then let it go.”

“You don’t believe in sin?”

Augustine muttered something. Hugh felt squeezed between them. He was caught in the middle, but someone had to finish this business or they would fall to pieces.

“I believe in survival.” He spoke it loudly for Augustine’s benefit, and to halt her rambling. “That’s what this is all about. Survival.”

She smiled at his ignorance.

“It’s time to sleep,” he said.

“Come closer, Hugh.”

The breeze surfaced again, much stronger this time, a cold breeze. He thought she was running her fingers through his hair, but she wasn’t. The cotton flags snapped briskly, scattering prayers.

“Don’t leave me.” Her eyes were glazing over.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise.”

“I do.”

“I can’t be alone,” she whispered.

“I’m right here with you.”

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

They were getting nowhere with this. She was nodding off, but not fast enough. And the sweet nothings were a fraud. He wanted forward momentum. Closure. Exit.

“I brought a sleeping bag for her.” He unzipped the bag and laid it lengthwise on the platform.

“She doesn’t sleep.” A murmur.

“She needs to rest, Cuba. Let’s do this together. Help me.”

She allowed him to roll the body from her lap onto the opened bag. The platform rustled with the shifting weight. Guy lines and aluminum tubes squeaked. The flags beat back and forth. Below, at the tail end of their wreckage, the platform with the ripped floor skittered in the breeze.

In climbing, you live with a constant symphony of groaning pack straps and ropes bullwhipping and slings under stress, small notes to go with the rough and tumble of waterfalls and avalanches and geological violence. But up here, under this bottomless alcove, even the tiny squeaks and squeals sounded like a machine about to fly into pieces.

As Hugh moved the body from Cuba’s legs, he was startled to find a bright, wet fan of blood across her lap. His first thought was that the body must have bled onto her. But except for the broken neck, Andie showed no wounds.

Which left Cuba. The blood could only be coming from her. Had she ruptured something, or been gored by the spiky rock? She seemed not to notice the wound, wherever it was, and he didn’t point it out. One thing at a time. The platform was too crowded. Separate the dead from the living. Go from there.

Hugh zipped the bag shut. It was his sleeping bag, a Marmot, extra long. He’d bought it new in a Sherpa trek shop in Katmandu, on sight, no haggling. It was big and full, with extra inches to cover his head during cold nights. After this, he’d never use it again. Cuba wanted sacrifice. Here it was, his treasure of warmth.

The sleeping bag swallowed Andie’s slight body with room to spare, even with her long, stretched neck. He zipped it shut and crisscrossed a rope under and around the length of the bag, tying off the sorry sight and much of the smell. When he was done, it made a slender package.

“Everything will be better now,” he said.

The tranquilizer took over. After a week of demons, Cuba finally got her first real mercy. She slumped in her cobweb of ropes and slings. Her face softened. Behind that harpy mask lay a girl in a dream too big to be true.

“It’s done,”
Hugh announced.

“You got her?” Augustine said. His fingers appeared along the border.

It was Hugh’s border. That was what the rim of the platform had become for him, a boundary line. He required the separation. A little at a time, like it or not, this was becoming his territory. On this flat rectangle, he was creating an outpost of sanity and order. Beyond its perimeter hung the ruins and chaos and nothingness.

Augustine’s eyes surfaced at the far edge. It was safe for him now. The horror was sewn from sight. He rose higher.

“When does the litter arrive?” Hugh asked.

“They’re getting back to us on that.”

He’d heard Augustine arguing on the radio. It wasn’t hard to guess the concern. The sky was in motion.

Gusts of breeze were stirring vortexes in the smoke. As fast as they appeared, the vortexes flattened out from west to east, the direction of the wind, like riptides in the void. High above their sea of smog, clouds were building and blocking the sun. That explained the premature darkness. A storm was coming. What next, thought Hugh, frogs and famine?

“So you have the radio on,” Hugh said, knowing otherwise.

“I’m saving the juice.”

“How can they get back to us then?”

“We’ll get back to them.”

“Did you tell them we have a survivor?”

Augustine didn’t respond.

Hugh pressed. “They’re not coming, is that what I’m hearing?”

Augustine touched the cocoon holding Andie.

Sharply now. “Damn it, stay with me. We have to get out of here.”

Augustine jerked. “They said to wait.”

“We can’t wait. She’s bleeding,” Hugh said.

Augustine pushed Cuba’s legs apart. He smelled. “Menstrual blood. She’s having her period.” He wiped his fingers on her pants.

Hugh felt foolish. Suddenly, among all the primitive smells—the wood smoke, the body odors, the smell of this granite cathedral—the scent of Cuba’s ripeness was potent, practically a lure to him.

“See what I mean about her?” Augustine pointed at the woman’s wrists.

Hugh had seen the tattoos, but not asked Cuba about them. They ran down across the back of her hand to the middle finger, like the henna patterns Annie had learned from her Arab dancers.

“Celtic slave bracelets,” Augustine said. “Like she was the priestess of the woods.”

Augustine’s eyes strayed back to Andie. She mesmerized him. Hugh was tempted to dump the body overboard. Clear the man’s mind. But then he might dive after the corpse, radio and all.

“The weather’s changing,” Hugh said. “Something’s going on out there.”

“It’s the front’s rolling in,” Augustine said. Like it was old news.

“I thought we were working together,” Hugh said.

“Absolutely.”

“What fucking front, then?”

“You were there. I thought you heard.”

During the radio communication yesterday, Augustine had argued with his chief about something. Now Hugh realized they had been warning Augustine to retreat. “What have you gotten us into?” he demanded.

“It’s a delay, that’s all. And we couldn’t ask for a better place. We have a roof over our heads. We’ll be out of the rain. Then they’ll come for us.” His eyes went back to Andie.

Hugh trimmed his emotions. Just the facts. He reasoned it out. The coming storm was big enough to show on their Doppler screen, big enough that Augustine had known to keep it secret. They should have rapped off, not pressed on. Now the rescue team on the summit was balking. Things were getting epic.

“When are they coming?” Hugh asked.

“Probably not tomorrow.”

A big mother, Hugh guessed.

Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of one more night on El Cap, especially not in this dismal cul-de-sac. There were no reference points in here, no sky, no high noon, no north. And no retreat. Even if their bridge of ropes back to the Ark was still in one piece, they didn’t have a prayer of getting down, not with Cuba tranquilized and the body to lower and Augustine half out of it. The Eye was closing in around them.

“Is the team still on top?” asked Hugh.

“They were.”

“Give me that radio.”

“I told you what they said.”

“You told me what you wanted. You put me on the sharp end and kept me climbing, and now there’s trouble rolling in.” Hugh tilted the cocoon partway off the edge. He let the rope slip an inch.

Augustine croaked his alarm. “Careful.”

“The radio,” said Hugh. Ransoming a corpse, the dead for the living. He let the rope slip a few inches more. He hated this, the lowness of it, bargaining with one lost soul over another in this open graveyard. But they were at war now, with each other, with time, with the elements.

“All right,” Augustine said. “Just…easy with her.” He ducked from view.

“First item,” Hugh instructed him, thinking out loud, “pass up the med kit.” The last thing he needed to worry about was Augustine’s arsenal of needles pricking through the floor. “And the haul bag, too.” Now was the time to raid the larder. Once he surrendered the body, there would be no more bargaining chips.

Without a word, Augustine handed him the med kit, and the haul bag, and the radio. Hugh never even saw his hand. The supplies and gear came to him like salvage bobbing up in a fog.

“Now take her.” Hugh lowered the body quickly, eager to keep Augustine down below, at bay. Crowded by the haul bag, pressed against Cuba, he was in no mood for more company.

Andie weighed little more than a child in the Gore-Tex shroud. Hugh paid out rope until the line went slack. Augustine took possession of her.

Hugh switched on the radio. The dispatcher was right there. When he identified himself, she sounded relieved it was him, not Augustine.

“We need an evacuation today,” Hugh said.

“I hear you, Hugh.” She was calm. She used his name the way he’d used Cuba’s, as a sedative. They were afraid he was on the edge of losing it, too.

Fine, he thought, let them be afraid.

“There’s a major weather system heading our way,” she said. “You need to dig in, Hugh. You can do that, can’t you?” As if he were a child.

“You want her to die?” he said.

That changed her tune. As he’d suspected, Augustine had said nothing about Cuba’s survival. The dispatcher started over. “Report your situation, please.”

“We have one injured survivor,” Hugh said. “We have one dead. Plus Augustine.” He let that final implication hang in the air.

“Say again, Hugh, you have a survivor?”

“Her name is Cuba,” Hugh said. “She’s alive, but bleeding and unconscious.” He didn’t share that the blood was menses nor describe Augustine’s sneak attack with the Haldol. Let them think the worst. Whatever it took to get them down here. “She may have other injuries. I haven’t assessed her yet. She’s still fouled in the ropes. Before they fell, the women made a hanging bivvy, but it’s mostly destroyed.”

“Hold please. Don’t go anywhere, Hugh.”

He heard shouting in the background. As he’d hoped, the news was galvanizing a second judgment.

“Where is the blood coming from, Hugh?”

“I can’t tell. Her groin area.” He added, “Something abdominal.” He knew from Lewis that emergency workers’ worst dread was the word “abdominal.”

“Did Augustine get Cuba’s vital signs?”

“No. Negative. He’s…” Hugh searched for a neutral word, something besides shock or breakdown. Because Augustine was down there, listening.

“Stressed?” the dispatcher suggested.

They knew. They’d been tracking Augustine for days. “Profoundly,” Hugh said.

“Loud and clear, Hugh. The summit crew is discussing options. Please hold.”

“There’s only one option,” Hugh said. He put a hint of panic in his voice.

“Understood, Hugh. Can you get a pulse for me?”

“I don’t have a watch.”

“Do you know how to take a blood pressure reading?”

He did. And the stethoscope and blood pressure cuffs were right there in the med kit. But Hugh didn’t make a move for them. All in all, Cuba looked pretty strong, considering her ordeal. And the whole idea was to keep the gun at their head.

“We need a ride out of here,” he repeated.

“You’re doing fine, Hugh.” She was buying time. He was the proverbial passenger in the cockpit. They were trying to figure out how to land him safely. “Is her airway clear?”

“Yes.”

“Has the bleeding stopped?”

“I can’t tell.”

Another voice broke in, deep and male. He introduced himself as the operations chief in charge of staging the actual rescue. Hugh’s hopes rose.

“We’ve been listening in,” he said. “Here’s the deal. It’s going on night. The storm is a concern. Our rescue team has broken down the summit anchor and they’re halfway back to the valley floor. I know you’re in trouble. But I want you to take a deep breath. Assess your situation. Can you stabilize the victim? Can you weatherproof your camp? Can you outlast the storm?”

“How long are we talking?”

“I won’t shit you. It could be two days before we reach you. It could be three.”

“What about a helicopter?” Hugh asked.

“In this soup? We’ve got zero visibility. The good news is, the storm will clear the smoke. The bad news is, they can’t fly in a storm. That makes this a land operation. It puts my people at risk. Do you understand? I need to know, can you wait?”

Hugh understood perfectly well. They wanted him to gut it out. Under different circumstances, he would have bunkered in without a qualm. But in fact he felt real danger here. It was more than all the weirdness hounding the climb. The Eye really did have bad juju. El Cap had them in its iron sights. He’d never sensed it so acutely on any wall or mountain. He was being watched.

“Negative,” he said. “We’re a sinking ship.”

There was silence. Static. He knew they weren’t going to John Wayne a rescue. Nobody was going to commit suicide getting here. They had a window, and it wasn’t closed yet, or else they wouldn’t be on the radio with him asking him if he could or could not hang tough.

The voice returned. “We’ve got a volunteer to descend with the litter. The team is on its way back to the summit. This will require some prep time. Keep your radio on. We will be advising you during the operation.” He signed off.

Hugh holstered the radio in a chest harness and clipped it to the wall. “They’re coming for us,” he said to Augustine. There was no response. All Hugh heard below were broken aluminum tubes piping in the wind.

He glanced over the edge, and it was like peeking over the wall of an asylum. Augustine was weaving a long nest of rope to bind Andie’s body to the wall. He looked like a spider clambering back and forth, quietly placing cams and nuts and tying knots everywhere.

A chill shot through Hugh. This was Cuba’s same paranoia in action. The man was duplicating her mindless anchor. He was bracing for monsters.

“Did you hear me?” Hugh said to him. “They’re coming.”

Augustine barely glanced up. “It’s getting windy,” he said, and went back to work.