The Ascent

Chapter 9

1

THE VALLEY OF WALLS WAS JUST AS IT PRO-

claimed to be: a narrow tract of land flanked by the gradual slopes of jungle and the sheer stone of the foothills rising high above the trees.

The entranceway into the valley was defined by a rising crest of rock on either side of the stone path, like sphinxes bowing together to form an archway. The floor was comprised of busted shale slats and powdery white rock between which tall, spindly weeds sprouted. Immense boulders had come to rest at random, wreathed now in age-old moss and dressed in fallen garland, and what looked liked tombstones jutted up periodically from the earth. The valley itself had once been a river fed by a mountaintop glacier, but that had been many years ago before the glacier disappeared and the riverbed dried up.

We lit electric lanterns and followed Andrew. The walls seemed to narrow and close in on us until we were hiking single file down a sloping flume. As I passed one of the tombstone-like edifices, I swept my lantern across its face. Monastic prayers were carved into the stone.

“It’s a spiritual place,” Andrew said, his tone hushed and reverent. Somehow I’d found myself beside him at the front of the line. “The Yogis say there is always the scent of roasted barley.”

I inhaled deeply but could smell nothing except the alpine scent of the distant trees.

Ahead, the prayer stones grew increasingly large, positioned at seemingly intentional angles. Soon it was like traversing through a maze. In the light of our lanterns, our shadows grew to hideous size on the stone walls. I pressed my hand to one of the prayer stones—it towered several feet above my head and must have been about fifteen inches thick—and traced the intricate carvings. I’d first thought the “walls” were the rising foothills on either side of the valley. I realized now that I’d been wrong.

“It’s amazing,” I breathed.

“Few have been this far,” Andrew said. “I can only imagine what else is in store for us on this trip.”

“The guides,” I said. “They were afraid to come here.”

“Bad juju. Nothing to worry about. They saw your little accident at the bridge as an omen.”

“What if it was?”

Andrew merely glanced at me and kept moving.

In the distance, firelight flickered in the darkness. It was the Sherpas. They’d come from the neighboring village, hired by Andrew to set up camp in advance. As we approached, the frying electric smell of our lanterns was overpowered by the scents of stewed meats and boiled tea leaves. The four Sherpas were dressed in heavy maroon robes, their faces white and ageless in the firelight.

“It’s like the pilgrims meeting the Indians for the first time,” Chad mumbled and received Hollinger’s elbow in his ribs.

The Sherpas said nothing for the entire evening, though they made us very comfortable and brought us more food than we were prepared to eat. Exhausted, I set my gear down between Shotsky and Petras and peeled my sodden boots from my feet with relish. Rubbing the feeling back into my toes before the crackling fire, I could feel the events of the day already begin to drain from me.

Shotsky appeared with a steaming cup of tea and some bread. He folded himself neatly onto a straw mat and tore into the bread with vengeance.

“You doing all right?” I asked him.

“Sure. How about you? You almost bought the farm today. Good thing you thought about tying us all together like that.”

I winced, working a particularly painful knot out of the bottom of my foot. “Good thing you were nervous about crossing.”

Donald Shotsky smiled and nodded, his eyes reflecting the bonfire.

“You said something about needing this job,” I said after a few moments of silence. Around us, the stone walls laden with scripture cast rectangular shadows on the valley floor. “Back at the bridge. Remember?”

“I guess.”

“What did you mean?”

“I mean, I needed the money.” He tore at another piece of bread and washed it down with tea. “You think I’d be here otherwise?”

“Hold on. You’re getting paid to be here?”

Shotsky sensed my change in tone. He shot me a sideways glance. “Of course. Isn’t he paying you?”

“Andrew?”

“Who else?”

“How much?”

Shotsky seemed to consider whether or not this information should be shared. After too many drawn-out seconds, it looked like he was ready to self-combust. He said, “Twenty thousand dollars.”

“Motherfucker,” I whispered.

“Why else would I come? For the goddamn scenery?” Shotsky said. Then added, “Why would you come?”

“Probably because I’m a fucking idiot,” I groaned and pulled my socks back on.

Chad, Hollinger, and Curtis were playing cards beside a couple of lanterns when I walked past them twenty minutes later. Petras wastaking care of personal business in the nearby woods. The Sherpas had cautioned him to carry a knife in case a bear or wild cat came sniffing around. Petras only nodded. I noticed his pearl-handled hunting knife jutting from his belt.

The Sherpas huddled together in one tent, inking long swaths of parchment and murmuring to themselves. Their tent smelled of incense and burning grape leaves and exuded an intense heat, as if the under-the-breath praying generated physical energy.

Andrew was off in the distance by himself, secluded in shadows, meditating. As I approached, my boots crunched the stones to dust beneath my weight, but Andrew did not turn around. I stood there for several minutes, staring at the back of his head, watching the slow, dilatory rise and fall of his respiration, before I felt like a fool.

“Is this something new?” I said.

“What’s that?” he said, not turning to face me.

“This meditation thing. This praying. I thought you were agnostic.”

He dropped his head. After a moment, he stood and rolled his sleeves up his arms. His face looked almost see-through in the moonlight. The square cut of his jaw was dressed in three days’ beard growth.

“Did you pay Shotsky twenty thousand dollars to come on this trip?”

“Yes.” There was no hesitation, no emotion.

“Why?”

“Because he wouldn’t have come otherwise.”

“And why was it so important that he come?”

“Because,” he said casually, “that’s the point of this whole thing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t understand.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not necessary that you understand.”

“Did you pay anyone else?”

“No.”

“No one?”

“No one else. Just Donald.”

“So why is everyone else here?”

“The same reason you are.”

The thing was, I could no longer remember what my reason had been.

“Do you think this is a game, Tim?”

“I don’t know.”

Andrew smiled. “Neither do I.”

“Shotsky shouldn’t be here. He’s a fucking novice. He’s scared of heights for Christ’s sake.”

“Donald Shotsky nearly died on a crabbing boat in the Bering Sea,” Andrew said, his voice turned up a notch. “Since then he’s been living in a one-bedroom shithole apartment in Reno. Last I spoke with him, there were men looking for him because he owed them money. Bad men. So I offered him this job. He comes out here; he gets twenty thousand dollars. Enough to keep those bad men at bay for a bit longer.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“Why are you suddenly so accusatory?”

“Because something doesn’t feel right. Something doesn’t make sense.”

“I think maybe you hit your head hard on that fall from the bridge.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Andrew. I asked you a question. Shotsky gets the money; what do you get?”

“I,” he said, “get Shotsky.”

I shook my head. “What do you mean?”

Andrew sighed. He bent and gathered up the mat on which he’d been meditating and rolled it into a tube. “I didn’t save that man’s life on that boat so he could have it taken from him by a bunch of Vegas thugs. After that accident on the boat, if he was too much of a coward to go back to work, to work like a man, then I’m going to help him overcome that fear.” He grinned, and it was the old devilish Trumbauer grin. “I’m going to save his life again.” He tucked the mat under one

arm and stepped around me, heading back toward camp. “Then why am I here?” I called after him.

Andrew paused. I expected him to face me, but he didn’t. I didn’t need to look at his face to know he was still sporting that horrible grin. “Same reason,” he said and walked away.

2

IN MY DREAMS. I SHUTTLE THE MOTORCAR OVER

the sloping lawns of the Italian countryside. Hannah laughs from the passenger seat. She is not the Hannah from real life—not the woman I was married to a million years ago—but rather she is the Hannah from my dreams, my nightmares. Her hair is short, and she wears a lambskin jacket and pantsuit. I grip the steering wheel, a silk scarf flapping in the wind. I am David, the man Hannah fell in love with after she left me. Or perhaps the man she fell in love with while she was still with me, still my wife. None of that was ever clear.

I’m not going to mess things up, I shout over the engine, the wind. Yes, you are, she says, and she doesn’t need to shout. I’ve got a second chance, I say. I’m going to make things right. I’m going to fix things for us. You can’t, she tells me. Why not?

Because I’m dead, she says. And because we are flying. I imagine cliff diving with Andrew and how I soared naked through the air, suspended for a million eternities, before crashing down through the black, icy waters. Flying, flying … What do you mean we’re flying? I say.

Hannah—the Hannah from my dreams, the dakini, not the real Hannah—faces forward and says, Look.

I look and find the ground has vanished from beneath the motorcar. We are careening over a precipice, suspended in air, a pair of cliff divers,the engine groaning and the wheels spinning without traction, and the chrome headlamps glinting in the sun.

3

IN THE MORNING. THE PROXIMITY OF THE GODESH

Ridge was overwhelming. The Valley of Walls lay at the base of the range, the earthen path that was once a river carved straight through a pass where it disappeared. The Sherpas said the drop had once been a beautiful waterfall, something witnessed by generations long gone. It was dry as bone now.

The mountain itself was tremendous, twisting and bulging at its foothills like slaps of clay stacked atop one another to dry in the sun, its peak obscured by cloud cover. With the waning darkness still toward the west, two of the Sherpas led us through the arid pass, their sandal-clad feet kicking up tufts of white dust. They spoke perfect English when they wanted to, but mostly they kept to themselves.

Half a mile through the pass, I could see where the rutted, dried riverbed ended at a sharp drop. Far below stood the jagged pincers of exposed, sun-bleached rocks. I could easily imagine this as a waterfall, and the quarry below still held the shape of a basin, although filled with boulders and lush with plant life. While I watched, a flock of giant black birds took flight, calling shrilly to one another.

Our group continued along the base of the foothills, winding farther and farther away from the Valley of Walls, which was now situated directly below us. From this vantage, I could see all the stone walls and how the valley itself curled slightly like a monkey’s tail. From this distance, the arrangement of the walls seemed nearly prophetic, something akin to crop circles or the looming statue heads on Easter Island. I tried to derive sense from the pattern, but it meant nothing to me. And perhaps that was how it was supposed to be.

We trekked through a series of stone portals wreathed with lichen,constantly ascending at a gradual incline. There was very little to grab onto here for support, and as the incline grew steeper, my back strained and I leaned closer toward my knees. A few of us skidded in the dirt, launching cascades of tiny stones down the face of the mountain.

I couldn’t help but look up as I climbed. The clouds were wispy but in copious amount, and I still could not see beyond the first summit. It was impossible to judge the distance. Yet each time we wound around the passageways (once, even entering a cave which smelled of kerosene that emptied out on the opposite side of the foothill), a new plateau would appear closer and closer above us.

“You hear that?” Curtis said, appearing at my side. He started climbing slightly faster than me. “What’s that sound?”

I listened. “Sounds like … running water …”

We reached the first of many plateaus to see a waterfall clear across the valley spilling into a forested gorge. Through its mist a rainbow projected, and I could see more of those great black birds swooping down toward the water for food. If this were a movie, it would be the part where the orchestrated music would kick in while the director of photography panned the camera for the breathtaking panoramic. For us, we were content to pause in our ascent just to watch and take it all in. Even Andrew, who’d seemed to be in a bad mood all morning, leaned against the crags, arms folded, and observed the spectacle in absolute silence.

By lunch, we had crested a ridge of fir-lined rocks that overlooked the entire valley. No longer could I make out the Valley of Walls nor the tiny huts and pagodas of the villages through which we’d passed. Here, we were utterly alone. There could have been a thousand of us, and each one of us would have been alone.

The Sherpas distributed cuts of burlap on which they piled steamed rice, boiled leaves, and cubes of grayish meat. Andrew wolfed his food down, then vanished through the trees, either to take a leak or continue with his meditation. The Sherpas read books and

ate very little, though they continued to stoke the small fire.

I set my food down and trotted off toward the trees. After I’d urinated, I crept deeper through the firs until I made out Andrew’s shape on the other side of the brambles.

“Not much farther,” he commented as I approached. He was staring at the face of the mountain, running one palm along its surface. “We’ll set base camp on the next plateau and bed down for the night.”

“How far up is it?”

“Depends. If we keep spiraling along the path, it’ll take till nightfall. If we go straight up, we’d save some time.”

“It’s steep.”

“It’s doable. And there’ll be steeper along the way.”

“Are we in some kind of hurry? To save time, I mean.”

Andrew rubbed his forehead, then turned to me. I felt him scrutinize my entire body. “How’s your leg, the one you broke?”

“It’s holding up.”

“And your head?”

“Fine. Just a little ringing in the ears.”

“Listen,” he said, looking hard at my eyes, “I’m glad you came. Means a lot. I’m sorry I’ve been distant out here, but … well, there’s been a lot on my mind.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Not really. Not now, anyway. Maybe later.” He cast another glance toward the invisible mountaintop. “Let’s worry about setting up base camp first.”

After lunch, it was decided we would continue winding our way to the top by sticking to the path. Whether or not my brief conversation with Andrew had anything to do with his decision, I didn’t know. Only Chad suggested we climb straight up, but the Sherpas had no interest in scaling the vertical face of a mountain.

It took four hours to reach the summit. We were all exhausted. The air was much thinner and colder, searing my lungs as my inhalations grewdeeper and deeper. I dropped my gear in the fronds and pulled my shirt over my head. The cool air against my sweaty flesh felt exhilarating.

“We’ll set up base camp here,” Andrew said. There was a smear of dirt across his right cheek. “We’ve got twenty-four hours before we start the ascent of the south face.”

“I can’t see the top,” Chad marveled, looking up with one hand shielding the sun from his eyes despite the fact he was wearing sunglasses. “There’s a mist hanging low on the next ridge. Cloud cover’s heavy over the first buttress, too. Looks like rain.”

I poured a splash of water from one of the plastic water bottles into a cupped hand, then lathered my bare skin—arms, chest, stomach, shoulders.

“You still jonesing?” Chad asked me.

“You starting up again with this?”

“Don’t be so quick to jump down my throat, Shakes. I’m offering to share with you.”

“Share what? You got a bottle of bourbon in that pack?”

“Not quite.” He withdrew a cigar vial from his belt and unscrewed the cap. A joint the width of a thumb slid partway out into the palm of his hand.

“I take it that’s not a Swisher Sweet,” I commented.

Chad grinned. “One toke and it’ll feel like someone put your head on backward.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You sure? I’m lighting this fat fucker up as soon as the sun’s down and the fire’s going.”

“I’m sure.”

Chad shook the joint back into the vial and replaced the cap. “Anyway, you’re welcome, Overleigh,” he muttered and strode away, his heavy boots crunching the gravel.

The Sherpas coaxed a sizable bonfire from a nest of branches at the center of camp, while the rest of us set up the large canvas tentthat would serve as our communal shelter. It was approximately the size of a carport with reinforced plastic sheathing for windows and a floor of double-ply tarpaulin. It was hardly tall enough to permit any of us to stand without stooping over, and we quickly ran out of corners to stash our personal gear.

By nightfall the Sherpas had prepared a fine meal of hot vegetable broth, freshly baked bread, and boiling green tea, which we all devoured in silent reverie. With the darkness came the cold; while the tent kept the wind at bay, the most heat was generated outside by the large bonfire. I took a seat on the ground, sipping my third cup of hot tea, to warm my feet at the base of the fire. Petras’s looming shadow fell across me, followed by Curtis’s, and they both sat on either side of me.

“Cheers, boys,” I said, raising my cup and taking a sip.

“Not to tell tales out of school,” Curtis said, “but you guys catch the way old Shotsky was huffin’ and puffin’ coming up the ridge today? I thought the poor bastard was going to keel over at one point.”

“He won’t make it,” Hollinger opined, coming up behind us. “There’s no way.”

Curtis slid a slender black finger beneath his nose and turned his gaze toward the fire. “What’s he doing here, anyway? He’s not a climber. He’s a goddamn greenhorn. Should be hoisting crab pots onto a boat in the Arctic.”

“Let him be,” Petras said. “He’s here for his own reasons. Just like we are.”

I thought about telling the guys that Andrew had paid Shotsky to be here. In fact, I opened my mouth but decided against it at the last minute.

No one except Petras noticed; his eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. After a moment, he turned and looked at the fire.

Curtis’s face soured. “You can be as polite as you want to, Petras, but fact is fact. And fact just might be someone’ll have to hike backdown to base camp when the poor bastard cramps up or suffers a heart attack or stroke or something.”

“Men will surprise you,” Petras said.

“Shit,” said Curtis. “I know that’s true.”

As if summoned by the sheer mention of his name, Donald Shotsky materialized on the other side of the bonfire. His face glowing in the flames and shadows dancing across his features, he grinned a big, stupid grin and raised a hand at us. “Hey, guys.”

We mumbled and nodded at him.

He came over, followed by Chad. God knew how long he’d been lingering close by in the shadows.

Chad slid his cigar vial off his belt and unscrewed the cap. “I feel—,” he began but was interrupted by a growl of thunder.

We all looked up, mouths agape. In the distance, above the cover of low-hanging clouds, bleached blue light flared and resonated in the filaments of our retinas.

Chad summoned an even wider grin and proffered the fat joint. “As I was saying, I feel the need to perform an age-old unifying ritual with you boys, passed down from generation to generation, going back all the way to the first huddle of stinking cavemen who sat in mud up to their balls, pissing on their feet.”

“Look at the size of that thing.” Hollinger laughed.

“It’s primo, all right.” Chad produced a Zippo and ran the flame around the twisted tip. Then he popped the other end into his mouth, lit the joint, and inhaled with gusto. The bonfire was not strong enough to mask the smell of the marijuana.

“Didn’t Trumbauer say something about keeping us pure?” Curtis said, accepting the joint from Chad. “No liquor, no cigarettes, no fatty foods.”

“Technically,” Chad offered, “this is none of the above.”

Curtis exposed his very white teeth. “Technically.” He pulled a long drag, holding the smoke between his forefinger and thumb like an old pro.

“Where is Andrew?” I asked.

“On the other side of the far hill,” Shotsky said. “He’s mediating or something. Wanted to be alone. I didn’t realize he was such a religious son of a bitch.”

“Had a dream last night,” Hollinger said. The joint was pinched between two of his fingers now. “I was alone and stumbling around in the dark. We’d gotten separated in a system of caves halfway through the mountain. I could hear the lot of you talking through the walls, but your voices echoed all over, and I couldn’t pin you down. And every time I went in the direction where I thought one of you blokes might be, I walked smack into a wall of stone. So I kept feeling around the walls, thinking that if I ran my hands along the wall, I’d eventually follow it out into the open. But I realized I was in a tiny enclosed chamber made of icy cold stone, and there was no way in and no way out. As if I’d just appeared in a bubble of rock.”

“It’s a Freudian sex dream,” Chad chimed in. “Means you’re shooting blanks.”

“Go to hell.”

“I’m serious, mate,” Chad insisted, executing a fairly decent Australian accent. “Means the old skin boat ain’t shuttling passengers to Tuna Town.”

The joint made its way to me. I considered it, then declined. I was expecting grief from the others, but no one said anything. Petras took the joint from me and examined it with the scrutiny of a Philatelist holding an old postage stamp up to the light. Then he leaned forward and handed the joint to Chad.

“Well,” Curtis said, “my daughter told me not to come.”

“Oh yeah?” Shotsky said. “How old is she?”

Curtis took a worn leather wallet from his BDUs and fished out what appeared to be a school photograph of a young girl with frizzy braids and two missing front teeth. “There’s my baby girl,” he said, passing the photograph to the rest of the crew.

“Adorable,” Petras said, nodding.

“Her mother still in the picture?” Chad wanted to know.

“She is but not with me. Lucinda lives with her mother in Utah most of the year. I get her every other holiday and two weeks in the summer.”

“Bummer, man,” said Shotsky. “She’s a cutie.”

“And a handful.” The picture returned to Curtis. He held it close to his face, smiling warmly at his daughter who was currently on the other side of the world. Then he kissed the photograph and slid it back into his wallet. “G’night, baby girl.”

Lightning once again blossomed beyond the veil of clouds overhead, followed by a peal of thunder so close I could feel it in my bones. A second later, we were caught in a thunderous downpour. The rain hammered down in sheets, striking like icy spears. We scrambled to our feet and quickly grabbed what gear remained scattered around the drowning bonfire and tossed it into the tent in assembly-line fashion.

I heaved a backpack toward Petras and glanced behind me over the craggy hillock. The Sherpas pulled hoods over their heads and vanished like ghosts into their own shelter.

“Where’s Andrew?” I shouted. The rain plastered my hair over my eyes and pooled into my mouth. “Petras! Petras!”

Another whip crack of thunder and the entire mountain illuminated like a pillar of fire. The storm had snuck up on us out of nowhere. I glanced up, shielding my eyes from the needling rain. The clouds above were black as roofing tar and slowly drifting counterclockwise in a vague circular shape.

I turned and cupped my mouth with both hands. “Andrew! Andrew!”

A shape darted across the campsite: Chad. I could make out his bright neon parka even in the dark. He trampled the steaming, blackened heap that had moments ago been the bonfire and sprinted toward the hillock. I followed, cognizant of Petras shouting my name as I ran.

“Where is he?” I huffed, skidding to a muddy halt beside Chad.

“Don’t see him.” Chad was farther up a gradual incline, peering over the ridge to the cupped pool of rocks below.

I waited for the next lightning strike, hoping it would reveal Andrew below, unharmed.

“I don’t think—no, wait. Wait—” Chad took a step forward, and the crest of the ridge broke apart. His arms pinwheeled, and he bowed backward. Then he pitched forward as his feet fell away beneath him.

I grabbed a fistful of his parka just as a mudslide broke across the ground quick as a serpent. “Chad!”

He went over the edge, dragging me forward. My chest slammed against the rock as the cascade of mud pooled into the cuffs of my cargo pants and washed over my body. My arm seesawed over the broken crest of the ridge, the sharp rock slicing my flesh. I groaned and sat up, mud splattered and freezing, and grabbed a second handful of Chad’s parka. He was heavy as hell; I could feel the tendons straining in my arms.

“Tim! Tim!” It was Petras, his voice nearly in my ear. I felt his hands slide beneath my armpits and wrap around my chest, his hands coming together in a death grip. My breath was squeezed out of me as Petras pulled me against his chest.

“Don’t let go,” I moaned, not sure if I’d actually managed to speak the words or not.

In a flash of lightning, I caught a glimpse of Chad’s terrified eyes staring at me from over the ridge. He seized my arms with both hands, but the rainwater made it impossible for him to get a secure grip. His cheeks were quivering. For one horrifying second, as another bolt of lightning lashed out overhead, I thought I could see his skull through his skin.

“Come on!” I cried, trying to pull him up. “Come on, Chad!”

“Don’t fucking drop me, Shakes,” he said, his voice quavering.

“Don’t you fucking drop me.”

“Won’t happen,” I promised. “Get one of your feet up.”

The pain ratcheted in my arms and shoulders as he swung toward the face of the cliff and tried to dig his boots into the rock. But like a cartoon character, his legs only cycled wildly in the air, pushing him farther from the face of the cliff and back out over the abyss.

Hollinger and Curtis were suddenly at my side, feeding a length of rope down to Chad over the jagged ridge.

“Watch your footing, guys,” I cautioned them, my breath coming in gasps and wheezes. “The ground’s turned to mud.”

Hollinger pointed to the rope and shouted to Curtis, “Don’t let the rope floss the rock, mate! It’ll rupture.”

Curtis dived forward and grasped the rope in gloved hands, his head two inches away from my own. I could see the deep trenches in the mud that his knees had made as he slid across the incline. The trenches quickly filled with water.

“Grab the rope!” Curtis shouted to Chad.

“He’s slipping,” I said through clenched teeth. I couldn’t tell if anyone had heard me. “I’m losing him …”

“Come on, Chad!” Curtis continued. “There! There! It’s in front of your face, man!”

“Use your feet,” Hollinger yelled.

My hands were numb; I could no longer tell if I was still holding on to Chad’s parka. I closed my eyes, my teeth chattering, my arms quaking. My chest was going to burst at any second. The breath whistling up my throat was the breath of a volcano.

The rope went taut.

“Here—here—” Curtis pitched forward as the top of Chad’s sopping head appeared over the crest of the ridge. “Gimme your hand—”

One of Chad’s hands swung around and clamped down on Curtis’s elbow.

Curtis grabbed Chad by the seat of his pants.

How the hell is Curtis not falling? How is he not toppling right over the ridge?

“Heave!” Curtis hollered.

A moment later, Chad sprawled on top of him, both of them covered from head to toe in black mud. There was a second rope tied around Curtis’s waist. I trailed it with my eyes toward a forked tree where Donald Shotsky still held the other end of the rope, both his feet planted against the bifurcated tree trunk.

Petras loosened his grip but didn’t let go. He yanked me away from the edge of the cliff, as if to simply release me would send me shooting like a rocket out of the abyss … and given the adrenaline burning through my body, I might have done just that.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” I huffed.

Petras released me fully as Hollinger patted the top of my head like I was a child.

“Me, too,” Chad wheezed, pulling himself off Curtis. His pale face was streaked with mud, his eyes blinking away the rainwater. Somewhat unsteadily he got up on his knees and gripped his hips with jittery hands. “Saved my life, Shakes.”

I nodded like a fool. I didn’t know what I wanted to say.

“Come on,” Petras said, clapping me on the back. He caught one of my elbows and helped me to my feet. “Before the whole lot of us catch pneumonia.”

Soaking wet and freezing, I wiped the hair out of my eyes. Lightning struck again, followed by the locomotive clang of thunder, but it was creeping over the valley and away from the mountain. The rain was beginning to let up now, too.

Andrew appeared in the lightning flash. He was perched on the crest of the ridge no more than twenty feet away, his eyes like hollowed black pits, his mouth a lipless slash. I could tell he was looking straight at me. I thought about going over and shoving him and asking where the hell he’d been when Chad nearly plummeted off the side of the

mountain, but something in the way he just sat there staring in the darkness stopped me.

Petras shook my arm. “Come on. Let’s get in the goddamn tent.” I followed him, feeling Andrew’s eyes on my back the entire time.