Dan Simmons - The Abominable - A Novel

“Down,” I said. “Direct hit in the chest.”

Two of the other three Germans turned to run, forgetting that they were roped together and still tethered to the man who’d just been shot. The bloody body of the dead German was dragged some yards east behind the running men. The Keystone Kops aspect of the scene might almost have seemed funny to me if absolutely everything else right then hadn’t been so fucking sad.

Then two of the running Germans tripped and went down in a pile while the third man, still standing, whirled our way, took a pistol from his anorak pocket—I couldn’t tell if it was a Luger or some other sort of gun—and began blazing away in our direction. I heard one distant bee buzz, but other than that, nothing came near us. The sound of his shots was almost lost in the wind.

The Deacon took another breath, held it, and shot that German in the face. I saw the explosion of blood, flesh, and skull fragments all too well through my wavering binoculars. The pistol fell out of his dead hand, and he dropped and lay on the snow and rock, his long legs still twitching from random nerve impulses. But through my binoculars, I could see the lumpy gray stream of his brains fanned out behind his leather-helmeted head.

“Dead,” I said. “Head shot.” I didn’t know if such announcements were part of a spotter’s job, but I’d have done anything right then to help the Deacon.

The other two men struggled to get to their feet. One was still looking toward us, his head cocked back to see us on the top of the Second Step; suddenly the German thrust both arms and hands in the air in the universal sign of surrender.

The Deacon shot him twice, both times in the chest above the heart. Watching through the glasses, I realized that my spread hand would have covered the tight cluster of the bloody death wounds on that man’s chest.

The last man simply threw back his hood and tugged down his oxygen mask and balaclava—showing a bare face that looked very German and very young indeed, not even any chin stubble visible through my glasses—and appeared to be weeping while crouching on all fours. I wanted to say He’s not much older than a boy!

I didn’t say a word. Kurt Meyer had not been much older than a boy.

The Deacon shot him three times, once before the man in the white combat anorak tumbled over and twice more until he stopped wriggling.

Nothing and no one was moving on that part of the North East Ridge now, other than the occasional flap of torn fabric in the wind.

Reggie and Pasang stood behind us, looking down at the ridge. No one said anything. As if motivated by a single, shared thought, we all turned and took the few steps to the south, stopping well short of the collapsed cornice. The glacier so far below still seemed empty.

“Fuck,” the Deacon said very softly.

“Yes,” whispered Reggie.

We stepped back from the edge and moved around to sit on our rucksacks on the leeward side of the low bench—now littered with seven empty brass cartridges that the Deacon policed out of habit, picking them up and setting them in one of his outer pockets—and, the remaining four of us all hunkering lower from the wind, we started talking over what we were going to do next.

23.

We huddled low on the east side of the bench rock at the top of the face in order to talk, but first we all indulged in five or eight minutes of English air, on full flow. It helped a little, and I didn’t cough anything else up while inhaling or exhaling.

Finally we put down our masks and got down to business.

“I can’t believe that Jean-Claude is gone,” Reggie said. We leaned closer to hear her, but the high winds seemed to be moderating somewhat, as if Everest were allowing us a brief moment for remembrance of our friend.

But despite that lull in the wind, no one else said anything for a long minute or two. “It’s decision time,” said the Deacon.

I didn’t understand. “What decision? A dozen Germans, including Sigl, are dead, including the one Reggie shot with her flare pistol and the ones who fell from the ladder on the North Col. There’s nothing stopping us from going back down the mountain, back to what’s left of Base Camp, and then getting the hell out of here. Back to Darjeeling.” That was a long speech for a man with such a sore throat, and I was sorry my three friends had been forced to hear the rasp and scrape of it.

“I think Herr Sigl came in force this year,” said the Deacon. “A dozen of them may be dead, but I’d be surprised if someone with Sigl’s cunning didn’t leave one or two on the glacier, in the Trough, or down by Base Camp. Just to make sure none of us get away.”

“We have to get those photographs and negatives back to London,” said Reggie. “That’s our highest priority. That is what Jean-Claude and all our Sherpas died for, whether our Sherpa friends knew it or not.”

The Deacon nodded and then nodded some more but then shook his head. Then he looked up, over the top of my head to the west, and said, “I want to climb the mountain. But I’ve never abandoned a fellow climber in need and I won’t start now, Jake.”

I was stunned at this. “If you want to keep climbing, I’m fit to come with you,” I lied. It felt like the bloody trilobite I’d coughed up had eaten out my insides—the way the goraks had got at Mallory and hollowed him out.

“No, Mr. Perry, you are not fit to go with him,” Pasang said quietly.

I blinked angrily at him. Who was he to deny me my life’s dream?

A doctor, responded the oxygen-supplied remnant of my brain.

“The summit should be about two hours’ climbing from here—maybe two and a half with slow going and breaking trail in deep snow on the Summit Pyramid,” said the Deacon. “But we have oxygen for the entire round-trip.”

“No, we don’t,” I rasped, confused again. “We’ve barely one full tank apiece.”

“Jake, didn’t you notice the tanks on Sigl and the other Germans we just shot?” said the Deacon. “They’re our rigs— Jean-Claude’s rigs. The Germans must have looted them from our reserve cache at Base Camp. They probably didn’t use more than two full tanks each in their climb to the North East Ridge…that should leave at least eight extra tanks for us. Full tanks.”

I understood then that we were in a unique position to try for the summit—a far stronger chance than Mallory and Irvine’s on their last day. They’d had to climb all the way from Camp VI at 27,000 feet on two or three tanks each. And their carrying rigs were much heavier. We were already above the Second Step—two hours away from the summit and only about 800 vertical feet below it. And we had not only a surfeit of oxygen rigs but also Reggie’s Big Tent, which we’d hauled up with us…something we could use if we were forced by sudden bad weather to bivouac up here. For every expedition before ours, a bivouac above 27,000 feet meant certain death. For our expedition, with Reggie’s tent, our goose down clothing, and ample tanks of English air, it would be just another first. One of many for the Deacon-Bromley-Montfort-Pasang-Perry-Clairoux Expedition.

The thought of J.C.’s name and the memory of his joyous drive to climb this damned hill made tears freeze on my lashes.

“I want to go, too,” I rasped. “We’ll all go. Step onto the summit at the same time.”

“No,” said Pasang. “Mr. Perry—you must excuse me, sir—you didn’t bleed too much when you coughed up the frozen mucous membrane to your larynx. But further climbing, more hours or even days at altitude, might cause a pulmonary embolism at the very least. Another night at this altitude would almost certainly be fatal.”

“I’ll risk it,” I rasped. But already I felt the lethargy trying to pull me down onto the snowy rock.