The Ascent(70)

A meager grin broke out across Michael Hollinger’s bearded face. It was the first semblance of a smile he’d sported in days. “‘Australians all let us rejoice,’“ he sang in a low voice, “‘for we are young and free! We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil, our home is girt by sea!’“

Chad groaned and said, “The hell is ‘girt’?”

As he sang, Hollinger flapped the flag like a matador would flap his cape and set it down unfurled on the ground. He saluted it and continued singing, while Petras and I chuckled.

Then Petras joined Hollinger, both of them grinning like fiends, and I sidled up between them, saluting. Not knowing the words to the Australian national anthem, Petras and I hummed quietly along to Hollinger’s off-key, low-pitched singing.

“Yeah, sure, you guys play your games while I make history.” Chad hefted the pickax and dragged it across the snow to the ice wall, staring up at the ledge and the partially hidden ice cave above it. “Guess we’ll see how easy these walls are to climb,” he said, raising the pickax over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. You fools keep singing.”

He swung the pickax into the mirrored wall of ice. The sound was like a gunshot going off in close quarters, reverberating throughout the antechamber.

From his spot on the ground, Andrew opened his eyes.

A sound like splitting wood came from above.

The three of us stopped singing and gaped upward in time to see a jagged boulder of packed snow and ice roughly the size of a love seat drop from the ceiling. It whistled like a missile as it fell.

Chad screamed, bringing his hands up, not quick enough to jump out of its path. It pounded him to the ground in a spray of ice particles, the sound like two automobiles colliding on the highway. The entire antechamber vibrated—the vibrations raced up my legs and rattled my lungs—and Chad bucked once beneath the weight of the boulder. A gout of blood erupted from his mouth and instantly sprayed the snow around him. His head slammed against the ground as the boulder, driven vertical into the ground, leaned back with a deafening creak and slammed against the ice wall, coming to rest at an angle.

The force of it hitting the ice wall caused a minor avalanche of smaller boulders, and spears of ice planted themselves all around us, upright in the snow.

I tripped over my feet rushing to Chad’s side. Unbelievably, he was still alive. His eyes had a distant look to them, and his lips were frothed with blood. He tried to raise his head and speak as I knelt over him.

“Don’t talk,” I said.

The boulder had landed on his pelvis, no doubt shattering the bone and driving him straight into the frozen ground. There was surprisingly little blood … but as I sat there gripping his hand, a deepening red stain spread from beneath him and soaked into the snow.

Petras appeared at Chad’s other side. He placed one hand against the boulder. We’d never be able to move it in a million years. And even if we could …

“Jesus,” Hollinger muttered from across the cave. He was still standing beside his flag. “Jesus, oh, Jesus … Jesus …”

“Hurts,” Chad managed. A fresh gout of blood burped from his mouth, dribbled down his neck, and pooled at the base of his throat.

“Shhh,” I told him. “Don’t f*cking talk, Chad. Don’t talk.”

“ … urrrr …,” he gurgled.

Petras’s eyes locked with mine. There was no denying what he was thinking.

“Jesus,” Hollinger whimpered. “Oh … oh … Christ …”

“ … urrrrrr …”

I could hear the wet gurgle of blood at the back of Chad’s throat—

Andrew stood and negotiated around the fallen chunks of ice to arrive behind me. He said nothing as he stared at Chad. One of his hands rested on my shoulder in a gesture I initially mistook as camaraderie. But then he pushed me aside.

I scrambled backward on my ass, the seat of my pants soaking in Chad’s blood. I glanced down at my hands and saw my palms were sticky and red.

“ … urrrrrr …”

Without expression, Andrew grabbed the pickax Chad had dropped only two seconds before the boulder pinned him to the ground. He raised it above his head—

“No!” Hollinger shouted.

—and drove the spiked end into Chad’s head.

Chad’s fingers dug into the snow, and one of his legs kicked. Blood sprayed across Petras’s face, but he looked too stunned to flinch.

Coming to one knee, Andrew steadied what remained of Chad’s skull with one hand and pried out the pickax with the other. There was a wet, sucking sound as the spike pulled free of Chad’s head. It was a sound I feared would haunt me until my dying day.

“Are you f*cking crazy?” Hollinger screamed. “Are you a f*cking animal?”

Andrew stood and tossed the dripping pickax into the snow. He was frighteningly calm. There was a faint constellation of blood across the front of his coat.

“What did you do?”

Andrew slowly turned his head in Hollinger’s direction. “Keep your voice down.”

“You’re f*cking mad!” Hollinger cried. “You hear me, Trumbauer? You’re f*cking mad!”

“I said keep your voice down. The last thing we want is more shit to fall from the ceiling.”