Ronald Malfi - The Ascent

“Catchin’ up to you, big man,” I called, laughing.

“No chance, white boy!”

“Shake your ass, Booker—I’m on your tail.”

On the other side of the canyon, Chad pumped a hand in the air, egging us on.

“You on vacation up here, Booker?” I chided. “You planning to hang around here all day?”

“Yeah … sure …” He was running out of breath.

“Yeah …” I was running out of breath now, too.

“If you think—,” Curtis began. Then there sounded a metallic thunk, and one of Curtis’s hands fell away from the camming device. A second after that, gravity pulled him straight down. He did notmake a sound; the only sound was the whir of the safety line gathering slack as Curtis dropped.

“Curtis!”

When the slack ran out, Curtis’s falling body jerked at the end of the line, his arms still flailing. He should have stopped right there, dangling like bait at the end of the line, but then there was a second sound —twink !—as the safety line snapped. The release sent Curtis into a spiral, cartwheeling down, down, down.

Mesmerized, I watched him plummet, his arms and legs suddenly still. He shuttled down until he was a tiny smear in midair, no different than an imperfection on a photograph. A moment later, he was swallowed up by the icefall.

And he was gone …

“Curtis!” someone shouted from the other side of the canyon. “Curtis! Curtis, you—”

The only remnant of Curtis was the small, wallet-sized photograph of his daughter that had somehow come loose during the fall and now fluttered like a butterfly out over the abyss until that, too, disappeared.

For a moment, I felt as though I’d blinked out of existence. One minute I was dangling from beneath the stone arch, and the next I was floating in some cottony, colorless orbit. Sound was nonexistent. I could see nothing, nothing at all. Everything was white; everything was black. The only feeling was the needling prick of heat shooting up through my body.

Curtis was dead. Curtis was—

“Shut up!” Petras shouted from across the reach. “We’ve still got a man out there!”

I clung with both hands to the single cam above my head, staring at the roiling channels of ice at the bottom of the canyon. Curtis was gone, completely disappeared …

Petras called out to me, “You’ve got to get your head back in the game, man! Come on! Forget what you just saw! Climb to me, Tim!

Climb to me!”

I managed to pull my gaze from the spot where I’d last seen Curtis Booker and to the opposite side of the canyon. The others were there, their bodies smeared as my vision refused to clear. But I hardly saw them. What I saw was the loose end of the safety line that had snapped and now whipped in the wind.

Which meant I had no safety line …

“Come on, Tim!” Petras hollered. The others joined him. “Come on, man! Get your fucking head in the game!”

Head in the game, head in the game, head in the game …

I blinked several times, trying to focus not on the dangling section of rope but on Petras, Andrew, Chad, and Hollinger. Holding my breath, I reached for the next cam. I crossed without difficulty. But when I reached for the next one, I found it wasn’t fully there: the spiked base was still fixed to the rock but the head was missing, the titanium having snapped off in Curtis’s hand. There was no way for me to grab hold of it; it was just a mere glint of metal jutting from the underside of the arch. And the cam beyond that was four feet away.

“Come on!” Petras urged.

“I can’t!” I shouted. “The cam’s gone!”

“Grab the next one!”

“It’s too far!”

“Tim,” Andrew interrupted, “swing out and grab the next cam. You can do it. It’s not too far.”

“It’s too far!” I cried. My feet suddenly felt like they weighed fifty pounds each.

“It’s not!” Petras added. “You can do it! It’s just an arm’s length away.”

I strained, trying to reach past the broken cam to the next one in line. It was too damn far. An impossibility. The only possible way would be to start a momentum, to swing out and grab it. But if I missed, the strain on my other arm would be too much. I’d surely suffer the same fate as Curtis.

“Stop! Wait! Don’t fucking move, Shakes! Don’t fucking move!” Chad hooked himself up to a fresh line, intent on climbing out toward me with a safe line he had looped around his shoulder. “I’m coming! Hang on!”

“Too … dangerous,” I called, but I doubt anyone heard me. My voice was no louder than a child’s sob. And my goddamn feet were weighing me down. I closed my eyes and thought of the comic books I used to read as a kid, the ones with Plastic Man who could stretch to preternatural lengths.

“Tim—”

When I opened my eyes, I saw Chad hanging from beneath the stone arch facing me, no more than four feet away. He hung from one camming device while harnessed to a series of ropes. He shook the wound safe line off his shoulder, down his arm, and into his hand.

“Here,” he said. “You gotta fuckin’ catch this, dude.”

“I’m … a horrible … shortstop,” I responded.

Chad actually chuckled, and had we been on solid land I would have wrapped my arms around him and kissed him right on the goddamn lips.

“You’re a wiseass, Shakes,” he said and tossed the rope.

I didn’t so much as catch it as it got tangled around my arm. Nonetheless, I snatched it, worked it through the karabiners, and cinched it at my waist. The strain in my other hand from hanging from the spring-loaded camming device was causing numbness throughout my whole arm.

“Let go,” Chad said.

“No, man. Let me … reach for the … the goddamn …”

“Just fucking let go, Shakes. The rope’ll hold.”

“I think I can—”

“Do it!”

I closed my eyes and let go. My stomach lurched as I felt myself drop and swing in an arc at the end of Chad’s line. I couldn’t tell when I stopped swinging, and I wouldn’t open my eyes. I wouldn’t.

The line strained, sounding like someone twisting a leather wallet in big hands. Open your fucking eyes, coward , I thought and opened my eyes. I was turned on my side, twisting horizontally in midair, as the safe line held me suspended over the abyss.

“You’re still alive,” Chad said.

“I’m gonna puke.”

“Climb up.”

I was beginning to hyperventilate. My exhalations burned my throat. Suddenly I was positive I was going to die out here. But unlike that day in the cave, lying in the dark with my bone jutting from my leg, I did not want to die. You might have come out here not caring whether you lived or died , a small voice spoke up in my head, but you care now, and you’re not going to die. Do you hear me, Overleigh? You’re not going to die .

I rolled over and gripped the safe line. A single tug sent me vertical. Hand over hand, I climbed up until the bottoms of Chad’s boots thumped against my helmet. I climbed higher, so intent on Chad’s pant legs I could make out the individual fibers woven together in the fabric. When I’d climbed high enough, Chad grabbed my shoulder.

Petras shouted something incomprehensible. He could have been shouting from another planet, for all it mattered to me.

“Up, up,” Chad urged. He was running out of breath. “Grab onto me if you have to. Just climb up and grab the cam above your head. Come on, Shakes. You can do it.”

Somehow I managed to do it. Using Chad’s body for extra support, I climbed the rope until I was able to hook back into the network of cams that ran the length of the arch. I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet, and I had serious doubts as to what strength remained in me to climb the rest of the way, but the outcome was suddenly looking much better.