Helplessly, disbelievingly, I watched James lash out with the ice ax. The flat of the heavy adze portion struck Steven full in the mouth, and the chin that was so square and strong a moment before was suddenly collapsed and formless, like the face of a plastic doll trodden on by a child. A dull, doglike whine came from Jocelyn. Steven's eyes rolled up under his lids and he fell forward, blindly wrapping his arms around James while he slid to his knees, his arms loosely around James's legs, his ruined mouth leaving a long, bright smear of blood on James's trousers.
Whether from jealousy or horror, murderous revenge or simple blood lust—certainly not from fear of the thickly moaning, virtually insensible Steven—James raised the ice ax with the unmistakable, appalling intention of bringing it down on the lolling head at his knees.
'James!” I cried, floundering to my feet, and launched myself at him. But the distance was too great, the time too short. Before my flailing arms could stop him, the awful weapon moved in its brief, flashing arc, deeply burying its point in Steven's head in a scene so horrible it is beyond my power, and my desire as well, to set it down in detail. Suffice it to say that the blow ended Steven's young life beyond any possibility of doubt.
Jocelyn and I stared at each other, unable to speak. Steven lay crumpled at James's feet, the awful pick still imbedded in its gruesome wound. Oddly, it was James at whom I could not bring myself to look.
'James—,” I finally croaked, and then stopped, not knowing what I intended to say.
It was then that I felt the first vibrations in my legs and imagined that I was trembling. It would hardly have been surprising, considering what had just happened. But no, I told myself, I wasn't going to give way under the strain. It was up to me to remain cool and rational. I shifted my feet and willed the shuddering to stop. My boots crunched on the ice. The trembling continued.
'James,” I said again, “I want you to—'
At that moment the sound struck: a metallic, shearing, impossible noise, as if a giant bridge were being wrenched apart behind me. Jocelyn's eyes, focused dazedly on me until then, sprang open as she stared slack-jawed over my shoulder. I whirled around just in time to see the immense, striated lobe of dirty-gray ice detach itself from the overhanging cornice atop Tlingit Ridge three-quarters of a mile to the southeast, crack into three gigantic segments, and begin to slip down.
I was unable to tear my eyes away from the grim, apocalyptic vision. An ice avalanche is not like a snow avalanche. There is no long, graceful, white cascade into the valley below; no thick, creamy tendrils spewing clouds of white, powdery snow as they flow majestically downhill. Ninety million tons of ice falls very much like ninety million tons of rock, plummeting gracelessly in a titanic, closely packed mass, with a force beyond comprehension.
I was still staring when the ice beneath my boots dropped two feet, wobbling my knees, then rebounded, flinging me sideways into the air as if I were standing on a blanket flicked by some playful giant. I skittered drunkenly over the surface of the glacier, grabbing at boulders, feeling that I might be flung off the very planet itself if I didn't catch hold. Twisting, I landed heavily on my right shoulder. My arm must have gone dead instantly, but I was too shocked by what was happening around me to notice.
In all directions the rough surface of the ice was splitting into jagged crevasses, snapping and banging, and emitting puffs of white as it cracked open. Underneath, the ground pitched, tossing like a rubber raft on the open sea. With my left hand I held convulsively to an icy outcropping, dazed and unable to get up.
As if in a dream I saw Jocelyn sliding by me, spinning like a top on the seat of her pants, down a slope that hadn't been there a few seconds before, toward a crevasse that was even then splitting open to receive her like a dreadful mouth. I tried to reach for her but to my astonishment my arm wouldn't work, and I couldn't loosen the hold of my other hand or I would go sliding after her.
Desperately I kicked out for her with my feet. “Get hold of my legs!” I shouted (I could not hear my voice over the roar), but she only stared back, blank-eyed and dumb with shock or terror, and I had to watch, stupefied and powerless, as she slipped smoothly over the edge of the great crack and simply disappeared. A second later Steven's body slithered heavily down the same slope, the handle of the ice ax jutting up from his skull, bobbing hideously. Dogging her in death as in life, he too flopped over the brink a moment before the ice convulsed again, and the sides of the crevasse shifted, grinding back against each other with a ragged screech that sealed these two tragic lovers—what was left of them—together for eternity.
And while this was happening I could see James on the other side of the crevasse, desperately fighting for his balance on the shifting, splintering ice; falling, then stumbling to his feet, only to be knocked down again by the incredible upheaval. For an instant his panicked eyes locked with mine, and then he was lost to sight, driven headfirst, despite his frenzied scuttling, into a jumble of sharp black boulders and broken ice.
A sharp wind spattered my face from the direction of the avalanche and I lifted my head to see an almost spherical gray cloud already blotting out the mountains and expanding in every direction, like a motion picture of an atomic-bomb blast. Caught up in this exploding cloud, chunks of ice the size of trucks were hurtling toward me, bouncing in mesmerizing, slow parabolas of two and three hundred feet.
A second later the vanguard of the blast was on me, howling and strafing my face with freezing, burning grit. I shut my eyes to it just as a spate of ice spicules were driven into my face. I could feel them sticking out of my cheeks like nails. A sharp piece of ice or rock struck my knee and I screamed with pain. Something hit my wrist, and something far larger crashed and squealed along the ice a few yards away. The wind was terrific, screaming in my ears, rasping my bloodied face, tearing at my handhold.
