The Ascent(71)

“Jesus!” Hollinger bellowed, throwing his hands into the air. His eyes locked on Andrew, he backed against the wall, hugging himself.

Andrew went to his backpack and unsnapped the roll of tarpaulin from a set of straps. He unraveled the tarpaulin and carried it to what remained of Chad Nando and draped it over the corpse. Only Chad’s legs and boots protruded from the other side of the boulder, twisted at awkward, unnatural angles. It reminded me of Dorothy’s house falling on the witch in The Wizard of Oz. I half expected Chad’s feet to curl up like deflated party favors at any moment.

Sick to my stomach, I rolled over and spat into the snow. I wanted to vomit but couldn’t; there was nothing of substance in my stomach. A frothy string of mucus drooled from my lower lip and froze on the ice.

“You killed him,” Petras said. He’d scooted back against one of the ice walls after being sprayed in the face with Chad’s blood.

“It had to be done,” Andrew responded calmly. “You think he was going to walk out of here? You think he would have lasted more than ten minutes like that? And let’s not forget the pain—”

“It’s murder,” Petras said.

“And I’d hope any of you would do the same for me if it came down to it.”

Righting myself against a mound of snow, I grabbed fistfuls of snow and rubbed my hands together, desperate to get Chad’s blood off me.

Andrew threw his pack down at the mouth of the cave, mostly hidden in shadows, and unrolled his sleeping bag. He spoke to no one the rest of the night, which was fine by us.

6



“WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?” HOLLINGER WAIS-

pered in the dark. The only suggestion of light spilled from the window of ice above our heads—the milky, dreamlike glow of moonlight.

I hadn’t been asleep, but Hollinger’s voice startled me nonetheless. Staring at the disc of translucent ice above my head, I said, “We’re all going mad. Slowly but surely. All of us.”

Andrew was asleep on the other side of the antechamber; his snores echoed off the walls. Petras, Hollinger, and I had bedded down as far away from him as we could get. We huddled together like three rabbits caught in a snare.

“I keep seeing him bring it down into Chad’s head,” Hollinger went on. “I keep hearing the sound it made when he pulled it out. It was like that last bit of water gurgling down a tub drain.”

I closed my eyes. “Stop it.”

“Did you hear it?”

“Cut it out.”

“He’s lost his mind. Things are all f*cked up.”

“Go to sleep,” I told him.

“All f*cked up.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Go to hell.”

I grabbed Hollinger’s electric lantern and headed for the mouth of the tunnel. Andrew was sleeping at the foot of the entrance. I stepped over him and continued down the corridor, the lantern casting very little light beyond the small halo around itself. After a gradual bend in the tunnel, I could see the moonlight cast along the frozen tongue of ice that clung to the bottom lip of the cave’s opening. I set the lantern down and sighed, unzipping my fly and urinating into the wind. My stream seemed to freeze midway down the mountainside; I heard it shatter like glass on the rocks below.

Shaking off, I zipped up my pants and grabbed the lantern. I nearly ran into Andrew when I turned around, his face ghost white, his eyes colorless and void of feeling. I skidded on the tongue of ice and almost dropped the lantern.

“Boo,” he said quietly.

“Jesus Christ.” I brushed past him, knocking his shoulder with mine (though this wasn’t on purpose) and holding the lantern up to guide my way. “Tim.”

I paused, unsure if I wanted to turn around and look at him again.

“It had to be done,” he said to the back of my head.

“We’re through. Doesn’t matter how close we are, doesn’t matter what you want. We’re turning back tomorrow. With or without you.”

Andrew didn’t respond. We both stood there in the shimmer of a pale moon, half hidden in the darkness of the cave for several seconds without moving, without speaking another word.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Andrew said, “Do you blame yourself?”

I turned around, holding the lantern in his direction. His face was a mask of shadows. “Chad’s death was an accident, a horrible accident.

You were right—he was going to die anyway. I don’t blame anyone. Not even you.”

“I wasn’t talking about Chad,” he said.

I stared at him. There was a hot rumble in my guts. I knew what he was talking about. I knew it wasn’t Chad.

“Because I want you to blame yourself, Tim,” he said. “I want you to blame yourself.”

“You’re a sick bastard,” I told him. “If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never know how a woman like Hannah befriended a creep like you.”

The hint of a grin seemed to play across Andrew’s face.

I lowered the lantern and receded into the dark cover of the tunnel, walking backward and staring at Andrew Trumbauer’s silhouette poised at the mouth of the cave. He looked like the fleeting remnants of a nightmare.

7



IN THE MORNING. ANDREW WAS GONE. HE’D LEFT