The Abominable: A Novel

“But it’s as solid and spiky as a crab,” said the Deacon.

“It’s been frostbitten for days,” said Dr. Pasang. “Frozen solid. Filling his throat and esophagus more and more as it expanded until it completely blocked his airway.”

“Can he live without it?” asked the Deacon. To my ear, he sounded only mildly curious. I made a mental note to ask him about that later.

“Of course,” said Pasang, smiling. “It will be painful breathing for some days for Mr. Perry, and we’ll have to get him down to thicker air soon, but he should be fine.”

It bothered me that they were talking about me as if I weren’t even there; as if I’d died after all. With only a little help, I struggled to my feet. God Almighty, my friends’ goggled faces and the amazing Summit Pyramid and deep, deep blue sky behind them and the white peaks and amazing curve of the earth beyond that were beautiful. I almost wept with joy.

“Do not move,” said Bruno Sigl from just six or eight feet behind us. I glanced over my shoulder just long enough to see the black pistol aimed at us, the Luger held steady in his right hand and the Lee-Enfield rifle slung over his left shoulder. He stood atop the limestone bench where I’d tied off the climbing ropes, his legs apart, his body perfectly balanced, too far away for us to try rushing him, towering over us with the Luger held steady. Victorious.

“If anyone moves the slightest bit,” said Sigl, “I will at once shoot all of you. I do not need any of you alive any longer. And thank you, Herr Perry, for the helpful fixed rope up this interesting Second Step.”

22.

The wind shoved at our backs. We stood now roughly in a line atop the rock of the Second Step, all facing Bruno Sigl, our hands raised as ordered.

The Deacon still has Bachner’s Luger, was my frantic thought. And so he did. But he’d fired both shots and the pistol was empty now. Sigl’s Luger, on the other hand, was almost certainly fully loaded. How many rounds had the Deacon said a Luger held in the box magazine in its pistol grip? Eight? Enough to shoot all of us, reload quickly, and apply any coups de grace that were necessary.

We’d come a long, long way for this absurd and pathetic ending. And all because my choking fit distracted everyone from pulling up the 100-foot belay line that was still anchored to the limestone bench there atop the Second Step. My mind flitted like a crazed moth from one possible trick to another; none would work.

“Please tell me where the photographs are,” said Sigl. “To save me the time and effort of searching your bodies and rucksacks.”

“What photos?” asked Jean-Claude.

Sigl shot him. The report seemed very loud, despite the wind. J.C. dropped to the snowy rock. I could see blood flowing from his right side, but it didn’t seem to be geysering…didn’t seem to be arterial. But what did I know? Other than the Himalayan climber’s hard-earned certainty that any serious injury or illness at this altitude meant death?

We all started toward the fallen J.C., but stopped at a wave of the Luger, our hands going back up. Pasang said, “May I look at him and treat him, Herr Sigl? I am a doctor.”

Sigl laughed. “No, you may not. You’re an Indian nigger and your hands should never touch Aryan flesh… even that of a dead Frenchman.”

I ground my molars. But I did not move. I did not lunge for my rucksack eight feet away to dig for my pathetic, unloaded Very pistol. I did not lower my hands. Even if only for just a few more minutes, I found that I very much wanted to live.

“I watched through my field glasses while you took the photographs from the bodies,” said the German. “Five envelopes. Do not insult my intelligence again.”

“Herr Sigl,” I rasped. “May I spit?”

“What?” He aimed the Luger at my face.

“Blood, Herr Sigl. I’m ill. May I spit this blood out of my mouth before it makes me sick?”

The German said nothing so I turned sideways, careful that the wind would not carry it toward Sigl or anyone else, and spat out a glob of blood that had been building up in my ravaged throat. “Thank you,” I said to Sigl. Thank you for not shooting me, sir. Pathetic.

“That does not look good, Herr Perry,” said Sigl with another laugh. “You might be suffering a pulmonary embolism.” He waggled the pistol at us. “Everyone strip naked, please. Drop your clothes at your feet, then step away. Do nothing stupidly heroic or you all die now.”

“I’ll start,” said Reggie, taking a single step forward. In a few seconds she had set down her rucksack—out of her easy reach—and had pulled off her anorak and Finch duvet and goose down trousers, holding them in place with her foot as the wind at her back blew hard on her. In another fifteen seconds, she was down to a wool blouse over what looked to be silken underwear. Sigl was watching her and chuckling, but he also never took his eyes off the rest of us, the Luger steady. If it had been Reggie’s plan to distract Sigl to give the Deacon or me a chance to rush him, the plan wasn’t working. The distance was still too great to cover without being shot. None of us was in front of another, blocking the German’s shot, so Sigl had us all covered with that ugly pistol.

Reggie dropped her shirt, kept it from blowing away with a quick stab of her booted foot back onto the growing pile of garments. She pulled off the cotton and silk layers beneath that shirt. Now she was in wool knickerbockers from the waist down, and nude except for her brassiere on top. She reached around and undid the brassiere.

I felt like weeping. Delicate parts of Reggie would be frostbitten within minutes, more probably within seconds. Jean-Claude continued to writhe on the snowy rock, the blood continuing to spread.

“I’m sorry, Frau Bromley-Montfort,” laughed Bruno Sigl, “but I’ve seen English women’s tits before. Sogar die Titten von englischen Madchen! And larger. But when you are naked, I will kill you last…perhaps leave you for my men to look at and play with while you are still alive.” His face seemed to transform into something beastlike then and he snarled, “Where are the photographs, you English cunt?”

“In my rucksack,” began Reggie. “I can get them if…”

Sigl started shaking his head.

Then Jean-Claude catapulted to his feet, not even holding his bloodied, wounded side, and rushed Sigl.

The German took half a step back and fired twice. Both slugs hit home somewhere in J.C.’s chest or gut. Jean-Claude kept staggering closer.

Sigl took two steps to his left, toward the South Face but still yards from the rotten snow cornice there, and fired twice more. The fourth 9-millimeter slug tore out through J.C.’s back, passing through the oxygen tank still in his rucksack and sending a hissing stream of English air up and out into the wind, enveloping both men in a hissing fog of ice crystals.

We all moved now, but it was Jean-Claude who had his arms around Sigl in a bear hug, forcing the larger man back one step, then two, then four…

“Nein, nein, nein!” screamed Sigl, hammering at Jean-Claude’s head with the black steel of the Luger’s grip. They both staggered another three steps back onto the snow at the cornice.

“Batard boche!” gasped Jean-Claude, coughing great amounts of blood all over the chest of Sigl’s pristine white anorak. Even with five bullets through him and oxygen hissing white and freezing in the air around them, J.C. continued flailing away with his bloody right hand at Bruno Sigl’s left side.

The cornice broke beneath them. They both dropped out of sight through the hole in the snow. Everyone but Reggie rushed as far to the south edge of the Second Step as we could. Sigl was screaming for a very long time, the scream Dopplering away from us as the two entangled men fell and tumbled over and over and then fell and then fell some more. No miracle crags to break their fall as one had with Percival and Meyer, and Sigl and J.C. weren’t roped together anyway—just bound by the iron vise of Jean-Claude’s one-armed bear hug. Eventually they were both lost to sight, dots and then less than dots disappearing against the background of the Kangshung Glacier 10,000 feet below.

I heard not a single scream from Jean-Claude. I believed then and choose to believe to this day that he was