The Ascent(76)

“It’s awfully suspicious.”

Again I turned my gaze on the tarpaulin. The snow had soaked up much of Chad’s blood.

“Maybe it’s a game,” Petras went on. “Maybe it’s for some other reason. You said Andrew was going to give Shotsky twenty thousand dollars to come here, that he wanted to help him be a better man or some such shit. But what does that really mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“What better way to get rid of six people without suspicion than to bring them out here?”

I stared at the rope in Petras’s hands. The partially frayed end appeared to have been cut too perfectly, halfway through the line, just to weaken it enough …

“But there are easier ways to do it,” I suggested. “It’s tedious and dangerous cutting ropes and breaking cams. Why not take a gun out here and blow our brains out? Or poison our food, for Christ’s sake?”

Petras’s eyebrows arched. “The missing food. The food we were convinced we left back in the valley, remember?”

“Yes …”

“Maybe he’d planned to do just that. He gets up in the middle of the night and collects our food, poisons it, puts it back. Only he didn’t get a chance to put it back—”

“Because Shotsky interrupted him. Shotsky woke up early that morning, wanted to go back to base camp.”

“So maybe Andrew ditches the food, tosses it down a ravine or something. Pretends we left it in the valley.”

“Jesus Christ.” Something had just occurred to me. A tacky sweat broke out along my forehead.

“What is it?”

“Maybe he only had enough time to put something in just some of the food.” I added, “Shotsky died of a heart attack.”

“Yeah …?”

“What happened to me the other day—my heart racing, sweating and delirious …”

“What about it?”

Swallowing a hard lump in my throat, I said, “After Shotsky died, we went through his gear, and I took some of his food. I’ve been eating his food.”

Petras exhaled sour breath. His lips were peeling, and his cheeks were flaking with dried skin. He wound the rope back up and stowed it inside his backpack. “Given all this,” he said after a moment, “the question is—why would Andrew do it?”

“I know why,” I said. I thought of what Andrew had said to me last night when I’d gone to take a piss and he’d startled me by sneaking up on me in the tunnel. Because I want you to blame yourself, Tim, he’d said. I want you to blame yourself.

“Tell me,” Petras said.

“Because we’ve all done something to hurt him,” I said. “We’ve all done something he feels we need to be punished for.”

Petras could only stare at me. Looking at him for too long, I got dizzy.

“You ready for more bad news?” Petras said.

“What’s that?”

“The rest of our food,” he said. “It’s gone.” “Shit.”

“Could have happened while we slept, could have happened when we were stumbling through the cave looking for Hollinger.” He rolled his big shoulders. “Doesn’t much matter when it happened. Outcome’s the same.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“It’s okay.” I kicked the sleeping bags off me. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

“Your fever’s back.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“You’re going to have to sound more convincing than that.”

I managed a weak, spiritless smile … which quickly faded as the reality of our predicament settled around me. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. What the hell are we gonna do, man?”





Chapter 15


1



BEFORE LEAVING THE HALL OF MIRRORS, I REMEM-

bered Chad’s Zippo lighter and went over to the display of blue tarp at the base of the frozen pillar.

Dropping to one knee, I lifted a corner of the tarp to reveal a rigid paw, fingers curled like the petals of some exotic plant, the tips of each finger an unnatural purple gray. I rummaged through the pockets of his coat for the lighter. I could feel the frozen solidness of his body within his clothes.

Twice, I closed my eyes and counted backward from ten until the rolling wave of nausea subsided. Then I leaned over to dig through his other pockets. In the process, I accidentally brushed the tarpaulin from his face. What was revealed was a darkening, bloodless scowl, the eyes already dried to crystals, the lips split and receded from the bloodstained teeth. The gash at the top of Chad’s head was ringed with frozen red crystals, the bone dusted in a frosty film.

In one pocket, my fingers closed around the lighter. I pulled it out, jostling Chad’s body which rocked like a hollow log, and scuttled backward in the snow.

I flicked the flint and watched the kick of blue flame leap from

the wick. “We’re going to have to make it last,” I told Petras.

Like ancient explorers guided solely by the stars, Petras and I descended the hundred-yard drop to the snow-covered quarry below, leaving the Hall of Mirrors and the Canyon of Souls behind. While we’d packed our gear in preparation for our escape, I’d briefly considered mentioning to Petras about how I’d found the Canyon of Souls. But at the last minute, I decided against it. To speak of it, I thought, would be to cheapen it. If there was one thing of beauty I would remember from this trip, I wanted it to be that and to keep it selfishly to myself.