Gus had been right. Daniel could not afford his own memories.
'Daniel,' Abe whispered. He pulled the axe closer. Daniel resisted. Abe didn't know
what to say until he said it. 'I am saved,' he hissed.
Daniel froze.
Abe wasn't sure Daniel had understood him. And so he added, 'I don't need you
anymore.'
Still Daniel didn't move. He could have been listening to a ghost.
'I'll bring Kelly down with me,' Abe clarified. 'Go as far as you can go.'
Daniel exhaled with a groan and released the axe. He straightened from the pit and
stared down at Abe, then climbed to his feet.
'She wouldn't give up.' Daniel pointed at Kelly. He was visibly shaken by her faith
and intuition. For the first time it struck Abe that a blind woman had found him. 'Take
care of her,' Daniel shouted.
'I will,' Abe promised.
Daniel picked up the walkie-talkie and stuffed it into his parka. Then he staggered
off into the storm, half bent from his cracked ribs and bad back and other old injuries.
A minute later, Abe heard terrible screaming and knew that Gus was being lifted
and moved. It was going to be an ugly, brutal evacuation. There was no help for that.
The four of them had been lucky to survive the avalanche. Abe didn't pretend to
himself that their luck could hold.
Kelly had fallen asleep in the snow. Even as Abe chopped at the shroud covering
him, a thin layer of powder started to bury her. With his one free arm, Abe shoved
and cut at the snow. It was slow going. Another hour passed before he managed to sit.
Like a B-movie corpse wrestling up from the soil, he bulled his chest through the
snow.
Abe was exhausted. He wanted to rest, just for a minute or two, just to breathe, to
close his eyes and take a catnap, no more. It was the wrong thing to do, but he would
have done it anyway, if not for Kelly.
She was gone. The powder had drifted over her like a dune. 'Kelly,' Abe rasped. He
sat there, piled with debris, and called her name again. Fear won out over his fatigue.
Now that they were in full rout, the mountain was reclaiming its territory with a
vengeance. There were no prisoners up here. Those who lagged, died. If he hadn't
seen Kelly lie down, Abe would never have believed she was there. To the naked eye,
she had never existed.
Abe bucked at the snow and yanked at his legs. At last he was able to worm loose
from the pit. Panting, he rolled onto the surface and lay there. Snowflakes lit down
with astonishing weight. Abe knew he was under attack, yet the snow warmed and
coddled him. The snowflakes crashed into his face and melted and ran past his ears.
Abe commanded himself to get up.
'Kelly,' Abe whispered. He didn't suppose it would rouse her, but he needed the
reminder. Every muscle and joint ached from his subterranean struggles. He made
the pain work for him. It too was a reminder.
Teetering in the wind, Abe stepped toward the dune hiding Kelly. He plowed his
hands through the powder and grabbed her arms and lifted her into the storm light.
He brushed the snow from Kelly's face. She was mumbling and she turned her head
from the light. Saliva had frozen into her golden hair. Abe couldn't get over the fact
that, even blind, this woman had saved him. Abe bent to her. He kissed her.
It wasn't much of a kiss. His lips were scabbed and filthy and grown over with
beard. But some part of Kelly responded. She looped one arm around Abe's shoulder
and spoke his name.
'Help me,' Abe whispered.
'Rest,' Kelly invited him.
Abe shook her hard. When she wouldn't cooperate, he simply dragged her across the
snow.
There was nothing to fetch or bring down. They had lost everything in the
avalanche. Abe eyed the Yellow Band overhead. There was enough snow gathered up
there to wipe the face clean. Most of it would funnel straight down the Shoot. Anyone
caught out would get washed to the base of the mountain. He tried to hurry.
Before they could start down the rope, Abe had to find it. And before he could find it,
they had to cross the plateau. The whiteout was in full blow, though, and the snow had
piled hip deep. Daniel had slugged a path through, but that was hours ago. Fresh snow
had filled in behind him.
Abe wondered if he and Kelly were trapped after all. Every step cost him five or six
breaths. The snow gave way like quicksand. Gusts of whiteout cut visibility to a few
inches, only to be replaced by light so flat it killed all perspective. The closer they got
to the edge of the plateau, the greater their danger of walking right off the North Face.
Abe didn't give in. He dragged Kelly after him, keeping a sharp eye for the first rope.
The wind howled.
At last he reached the plateau's edge. It dropped away six thousand vertical feet. He
couldn't see the abyss – it was just more whiteness – but he did sense a change in the
wind. This new wind tasted different from the monsoon curling over the summit. It
was a Tibetan wind, blowing in from the north and sweeping straight up the immense
Kore Wall.
Abe had found the edge then, but there was no rope. For an hour, he hunted back
and forth along the lip of the wall. Without the rope they were marooned. Without the
rope there was nothing to do but go to sleep in each other's arms. Abe was just getting
used to that idea when the rope appeared.
It was checkered green and white. All Abe could see were the green dots, a long
chain of them. He grappled the line to the top of the snow, then went off to find Kelly.
She didn't want to wake up, but he bullied her. Then he lost the rope again. Finally he
located the chain of green dots and they could start down.
Their torturous descent reminded Abe of the childhood riddle about the cannibals
and the missionaries trying to cross a river. They had one rope, one blind climber and
one climber on the verge of surrender. He tried the various configurations, going down
first to check the anchor, going down last to make sure she descended and going down
side by side to describe what she could not see. At her best, Kelly ran the drill like a
sleepwalker, eyes closed, limbs wooden. She was at her best for only twenty or thirty
feet at a time.
Over and over, Abe reached the bottom of the rope to find Kelly hanging limp in the
wind. She had neither the hand coordination nor the vision to clip into the anchors,
which complicated Abe's own descent. After several hundred feet, he rigged a
separate line to lower Kelly himself. Like a sack of rocks, she knocked against the wall,
sometimes whimpering protests, mostly just dangling mute. The method bloodied her
nose and scraped holes in her clothing. But it was far quicker than waiting for a blind
woman to feel her way down the steepening ice and rock.
They were halfway to Four when the mountain tried for them again. Abe's feet were
planted square against the face, and there was no mistaking the earthquake this time.
The tremors traveled up the long bones of Abe's legs. His crampon teeth scratched
across the bare rock like a stylus gone wild.
