Nevada Barr - Blind Descent

Ascenders were designed to allow climbers to use thighs and butts rather than relying on the weaker muscles of the upper body. Trying to bull her way up with her biceps to keep the weight off her strangled foot, Anna burned out arms and shoulders. Each pull became feebler. Aching was replaced by sharp stabs of pain.

Fifty steps. Maybe. Anna lost count. Tears streamed down her face. She would have been tempted to stop had hanging not been nearly as painful as climbing, and the thought of Laymon winning more painful than both.

"On-rope." Laymon. Whirring followed as he dropped easily into the pit.

Eyes squeezed against salt sting, teeth clamped, Anna stepped and stepped again. Rock grated over her knuckles. She jammed her feet into the rope noose and shoved.

"Off-rope." Laymon was down and free of the line. Had she been able to hear over the pounding of her heart, she knew there'd be the crunch of boots as he crossed the Lounge.

A reprieve was granted. "Rack and seat sling on-line. Pull it up." Laymon was carrying through the charade. Curt and Sondra were to be allowed to descend. It made sense. Had Laymon gone on, Curt would have known something was wrong. He could descend in a fraction of the time it would take Laymon to climb the other side. With an angry man messing with one's rope, a climb would be seriously compromised. Younger and stronger, Curt might even be able to catch him before he reached the top.

Dimly, Anna was aware of Sondra descending, of talk back and forth. These things meant little to her. She'd entered her own world of hard pain and harder work. Her life was fighting this rope, easing the breaking hold on her foot, accepting the searing across her ankles. Other lives, other people, diminished to a memory, a dream of another life.

"On-rope." Curt Schatz. His voice penetrated Anna's red fog. He was close, over her shoulder, on the opposite side of the Lounge. She must be nearly to the top. With a last burst of strength she pushed herself up. The line curved. Air was mashed from her lungs. Her belly scraped over the lip. Locked at the knees, her legs poked over the pit. Gear tied her belly-down on the ledge near the anchor. Pulling gloves off, she jerked the quick-release pin from her chest wheel and felt some give. The buckle beneath her arm was yanked open. The metal-and-web harness let go, freeing her upper body. Crumpled facedown on the ground, she welcomed the cooling water on her face. A drip puddle edged the drop, and she had crawled into it. So drenched was she in sweat she could not feel wetness, only coolness.

The need to lie still, to lick her wounds, was as powerful as a drug. Bankrupt of fuel, her body was shutting down. Forcing herself to a sitting position, she pulled the pin from the ascender on her knee and shook the rope out.

"On-rope." Laymon.

The rope jerked, dragging Anna toward the edge of the cliff. Water, so recently her friend, reduced friction, and she slid easily over the slick rock.

"What's the problem?" Curt's voice floated up.

"The rope is snagged on something," Laymon said.

"Let me give you a hand."

Anna lurched for her right foot where the rope held it out over the pit. Grasping the ascender's release, she yanked, desperate as a man pulling the pin of a hand grenade.

"Now."

Her leg yanked painfully down. Throwing herself back from the edge, she clung to the anchor. Another jerk and the rope tore free of her foot. She reeled the leg in. Systems weren't working, limbs rebelled. She'd gotten ahead of Laymon, between him and the flawed exit from Katie's Pigtail, but she was spent. In a wrestling match with a butterfly, she would have come out the loser.

The rope twitched: Laymon climbed. Shielding her light lest she lose the one playable card she held-surprise-Anna searched for a weapon. In a wonderland of rock there wasn't a stone to throw. Nothing bigger than a marble. His moment of greatest vulnerability would be when he floundered over the lip. She could kick him. Feet were bare and broken. Laymon's cranium was protected by a hard hat, his body secured to the rock face with rope and carabiner. All he'd have to do was catch hold of some part of her. A little leverage and she'd go over the edge like laundry down a chute.

Cupping her headlamp between her hands, she crawled away from the cliff. Tucked around a curtain of flowstone, behind the formation used as an anchor, she hid. Light off, she couldn't even tell if her eyes were tracking. She must catch her breath. Then she must think. The last of Sondra's water was sucked down, making her feel more alive. That was not necessarily a good thing.

Grating. Grunts. Laymon was up. Time had come to do something. Unable to think what, Anna stayed in her hole.

Metallic sounds followed. Laymon taking himself off-rope. He wouldn't bother to derig for the short journey through Razor Blade Run. The ascenders would be needed again to climb out of Lake Rapunzel. It no longer mattered that they could destroy a few million-year-old crystal formations in the Run. No one would ever know.

He was loose from the rope, but he said nothing to those below. Light flickered across the wall opposite Anna's niche. He was headed her direction. With more effort than it would have taken to lift a tractor, she eased to her feet. Leftover pride from watching Westerns as a child: die standing up. She wished she had her boots on.

Light winked out. Laymon had turned his back. On torn and bleeding feet, she stepped out. He was five or six feet away. Mesmerized, she watched as he took a Swiss Army knife from a nylon sheath on his belt. From below, Curt was calling his name. Wordlessly, Laymon began cutting the line.

The son of a bitch wasn't even going to say good-bye.

Anna lurched toward him. Her left foot buckled beneath her. A scream was stifled in her throat.

Laymon was turning.

Anna was stumbling, counting on momentum to do what strength could not.

Her shoulder caught him on the left hip. Light from his helmet fled erratically into the pit. A fist grazed Anna's jaw. Then he was gone. For a moment she lay in the cool of the water where he'd so recently stood, feeling it seeping into her eyes, mixing with tears and sweat. Muscles and mind in rebellion, she began shaking apart. Still there was something left to be done. For a long moment she tried to remember what. Finally it came to her.

Hanging her head over the drop, she called, "Off-rope."

Anna walked a mile in the dead man's shoes. Burdened with a greater sensibility, Curt was squeamish about robbing the corpse, but Anna's feet were killing her. Packed with extra socks, Laymon's boots served as both protection and splint. Still, much of the exodus was accomplished on hands and knees.

They were welcomed back in the park with something less than open arms, an age-old need to kill the messengers and a bureaucratic loathing of independent action. In the subsequent furor over the defection of George Laymon and the destruction of that glorious chamber, Anna escaped punitive action. She was, however, invited to leave Carlsbad Caverns on the next available flight, and it was hinted that the personnel department there would not be a good choice should she need letters of recommendation in the future.

At the insistence of Carlsbad's superintendent and Holden Tillman, drilling at the Blacktail was stopped, pending investigation. A warrant was obtained to search George Laymon's office and home, but no papers were found to indicate with whom on the Blacktail staff he'd been conspiring. If the law never figured it out, the gas drilling company probably had a good idea. After paying the American public for damages, they would be inspired to take the difference out of the perpetrator's hide, if only metaphorically.

Sondra recovered quickly. The adventure had not mellowed her. Twenty-four hours after she was brought out of Lechuguilla, she and Peter returned to St. Paul. Peter wore a beaten, hangdog look, and Zeddie one of long-suffering patience. The divorce, if there was to be a divorce, would be every bit as ugly as Sondra could make it.