by Blake Crouch
“It doesn’t bother me,” Cole said.
“Good, but you be as careful as can be,” Jack said. “Na?”
“I’m fucking freaked.”
“I know it’s scary, but a little less profanity, angel.”
“I can’t do this, Jack. There’s no way.”
“Dee, you want to know something?”
“What?”
“We’re kicking ass. Think of all we’ve been through since—”
“This is the worst.”
“Worse than getting shot at? Than some of the things we’ve seen?”
“For me it is. I’ve had nightmares about this before. Being stuck on a cliff.”
“Well, we aren’t stuck, and we have to get over this mountain. That’s all there is to it.”
“My legs are shaking, Jack.”
“You can do this. You have to do this.”
They started to climb again, Jack hanging back, watching their progression, monitoring how comfortable Naomi and Cole looked on the rock, telling them how good they were doing and struggling to hide his own fear.
It was almost worse looking up the mountain. He couldn’t see the spires anymore, had no idea how close or far they were from the summit ridge. It was just cold, fissured rock and the deep blue sky above it all and a blinding cornice of sunshine.
He worked his way up a series of ledges in a wide dihedral, and it occurred to him as he climbed that even if they wanted to, going back down now would be an impossibility.
“We taking a rest?” he asked.
His family stood just above him on a grassy ledge and he climbed the last few feet to them.
“This is bad, Jack.”
“What?”
“This.” She patted the vertical rock. “It just got steeper.”
“There’s another way up,” he said. “Has to be.” He stepped around Naomi and followed the ledge along the rockface, which slimmed down after twenty feet to a lip barely sufficient to support the toes of his shoes.
He sidestepped back over to them. “That way’s no good,” he said, staring up the rock that Dee leaned against. Certainly steeper than anything they’d been on thus far, but the handholds and footholds were prominent, and twelve feet above, a wide crack opened.
“I think we can climb this,” he said.
“Are you crazy?”
“Watch.”
He reached up, slid his fingers into a crack, and pulled himself up. Jammed his foot into a ledge.
“There’s no way, Jack.”
“This really isn’t bad,” he said, though he could feel the threat of a tremor in his right leg, which at the moment, held all of his weight. He lifted his left foot onto a bulging rock and went for another handhold. Seven feet above the grassy ledge now and the world tilting, an ocean of open air underneath him.
Nothing to do but keep climbing.
The next move brought him to the crack and he squeezed into a space no larger than a coffin.
“Send the kids up,” he said.
“Jack, come on.”
“Just do it, Dee. Cole, can you climb to me, buddy?”
“If they fall—”
“No one’s going to fall. Don’t even put that thought in their head.”
“I can do it, Mom.”
Cole reached up, pulled himself onto the rock. “Spot him, Dee.”
“No, Cole.”
“You have to let him go.”
She cried as she raised her arms, said, “Move out of the way, Na, in case he slips. I don’t want him knocking you off the mountain. Cole, you be so careful, baby.”
The boy moved up the rock as if he had no concept of the price for falling. Jack on his knees in the nook, stretching his right arm down as the boy came within range.
“Cole, grab my hand, and I’ll pull you up.”
Cole reached.
Jack got a solid grasp on his wrist, heaved his boy up the rest of the way.
With the cumbersome pack and the shotgun tied to it, the two of them took up every square inch of the recess.
“Dee, you still have the Glock, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I have to get rid of this pack.”
“Jack, no, it has our tent, our sleeping bags, our—”
“I know, believe me. Last thing I want to do, but I can’t move in this crack with the pack on, and I’ve almost fallen twice because of it getting caught up.”
He unhooked the hip belt.
“Jack, please. Think about this.”
“I have.”
“We have to have a tent.”
He unclipped the chest strap.
“We’ll make do.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Look out, both of you.” He slid out of the shoulder straps and slung the pack hard enough to clear the ledge.
It fell uninterrupted for a hundred and fifty feet, then struck rock, then bounced through a series of echoing ricochets for another four hundred feet until it vanished in the upper realm of the boulder field, the delayed sound of its ongoing fall still audible.
“All right, Naomi,” Jack said, “it’s all you.”
She began to climb, either more careful or less sure of herself than Cole.
Halfway to the crack, she froze.
“I’m stuck,” she said.
“You’re not stuck. There’s a great handhold a couple feet up.”
“I can’t hold on much longer. My fingers are—”
“Listen to me, Na. Reach above you and pull yourself up. If you get to that point, I can grab you.”
She looked up at him, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes and so much fear, her entire body trembling, knuckles blanching from the sheer strain of clutching the rock.
“I’m slipping, Daddy.”
“Naomi. Reach up right now or you’re going to fall.”
She lunged for the handhold, and Jack saw her miss it, fingers dancing across smooth rock. He reached so far down he nearly fell out of the nook, catching her wrist as she came off the mountain, her feet dangling over the ledge, one hundred and five pounds slowly tugging Jack’s shoulder out of socket and dragging him off the nook.
“Oh my God, Jack.”
“I’ve got her. Get your feet on the rock, Na.”
“I’m trying.”
“Don’t try. Do it.” She found purchase and Jack pulled with everything he had, walking her up the rock and then over the ledge, all three of them crammed into the nook and Naomi crying hysterically.
“Have a nice life, guys,” Dee said, “because there is no fucking way.”
“Come on, sweetheart. Get up here. It’s cake from here on out.”
“Honestly?”
“Maybe cake is too strong a word. It’s shortbread. How’s that?”
“I hate you so much.”
But she started to climb.
Moving up the crack proved easier, if only because of the illusion of safety—boxed in on three sides and plenty of handholds. They climbed all morning, blisters forming on Jack’s fingertips, and he kept wondering how close it was to midday, the adrenaline rush having skewed his perception of time. Doubted their morale could withstand another night on this mountain.
Thirty feet above, Cole hollered.
Jack’s heart stopped. He looked up, the sun burning down, couldn’t see a thing through its cutting-torch glare.
He shouted, “Everyone okay?”
Dee yelled back, “We’re at the top.”
Jack stood on the ridge, bracing against the wind and staring east. The mountain fell away beneath them toward pine-covered foothills that downsloped into high desert. Several miles out and one vertical mile below, a highway ran north.
“There it is,” Jack said. “I don’t see any cars on it.”
“Backside of this mountain doesn’t look too awful,” Dee said.
“No, just long as hell.”
Dee lowered herself off the ridge.
“Ready to get off this roc
k, huh?”
“Like you can’t even imagine.”
They descended the east slope—a steep boulder field streaked with last year’s snow that was hard as asphalt—and evening was coming on by the time they stumbled out of it into the spruce. After two full days on nothing but rock, the moist dirt floor felt like sponge under Jack’s feet. He was too tired and sore to register hunger, but his thirst verged on desperation.
“Should we stop?” Dee asked as they hiked through the darkening woods. “I mean, it’s not like we need to find the perfect spot for our tent or anything. Any old piece of ground will do.”
“A stream would be nice,” he said.
Jack stopped four times so they could hush and listen for the sound of running water, but they never heard it, and exhaustion finally won out.
Jack climbed under a huge spruce tree and broke off as many lower limbs as his strength would allow. His family joined him under the overhanging branches, and they all lay huddled together on the forest floor.
Dee reached over, held Jack’s hand.
Cole already asleep.
Hardly any light left in the sky, and what little there was struggled to pass through the spiderweb of branches. Jack wanted to say something to Dee and Naomi before they drifted off, something about how proud he was of them, but he made the mistake of closing his eyes while he tried to think of what he should say.
He woke once in the middle of the night. Pitch black and the patter of rainfall all around them. The branches thick enough over where they slept to keep them dry. Jack’s body was cold but he could still feel the glow of the sunburn in his face. Brightness when he shut his eyes. Thinking, water is falling out there. Water. But thirsty as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to move.
THE woods smelled of last night’s rainfall and everything still dripped. They could’ve laid there all day under the tree watching the light spill through the branches, but he made them get up. Two full days since their last sip of water at that high lake on the other side of the mountain, and he fought a raging headache.
They left while it was still early. No trail to follow but the path of least resistance, slowly winding their way down through the spruce. Cole couldn’t walk, so Jack carried him on his shoulders. He felt dizzy, his legs cramping, thinking he should have dragged them all out from under the tree last night and made a catch for the rain. They were dying of thirst, and he’d let a shot at water pass them by.
Midafternoon and stumbling through the woods like zombies. Back down into pine trees, descending toward desert and the heat of it and the tang of dry sage in the upslope wind.
They would’ve missed it but for Cole.
The boy said, “Look.” Pointed toward a boulder a little ways off in the trees with a dark streak running down its face that glimmered where the sun struck it.
Jack lifted his son off his shoulders and set him down and ran for it, hurdling two logs and sliding to a stop on his knees in the wet mud at the base.
A steady trickle the width of a string ran off the lip of the rock. He bent down and took a sip, just one to make sure it tasted safe, the water down his throat so cold and sweet he had to physically tear himself away from it.
“How is it?” Dee said. “Safe to drink?”
“Like nothing you ever tasted.” Jack stood, traced the stream to where it disappeared into rock. “It’s a spring,” he said. “Come here, Cole.” He helped his son down onto the wet mud and held his mouth under the stream for thirty seconds.
“All right, buddy, let’s give sister a shot.”
They each got a half minute under the trickle, and then, beginning with Cole, took turns, each as long as they wanted, drinking their fill.
It was torture watching his children gulp down mouthful after mouthful, so Jack wandered away from the boulder to look for a place for them to sleep. Came upon it almost instantly—a stretch of dirt underneath an overhang that would probably keep them dry unless a wild storm blew in. He picked out all of the rocks from the dirt and found some patches of moss nearby which he peeled off the ground and spread out like plush moist carpeting. He sat down on the moss in the shade of the overhang and stared at the sky through the tops of the trees. Didn’t have his watch but he bet it was four or five in the afternoon. The light getting long and the clouds dissipating. The chill coming.
While his family slept, Jack lay under the trickle of water. It took fourteen seconds for his mouth to fill, and then he’d swallow and open again. Laid there forty minutes watching the sky darken, drinking until his stomach bloated and sloshed.
Their wet clothes froze during the night and they lay shivering under the overhang while the moon lifted above the desert. Jack got up and wandered out into the woods and broke off as many limbs as he could find. All pine—the needles densely clustered. Carried an armful back to their pitiful camp and laid the branches over the tangle of bodies that comprised his family.
He stood watching them.
Looked back toward the west, the mountain they’d scaled looming in the dark.
Broken granite shining in the moonlight.
And he felt something like a drug enter his bloodstream—several heartbeats of pride coursing through him, only it wasn’t really pride. Just knowledge. Clarity. A brief window passing through his field of vision. He saw himself objectively, what he’d done, how with his hands and his brain and his handling of fear, he’d kept his family alive this far, a realization surfacing, and it was this: a part of him needed this, loved this, loved being strong for them, going hungry and thirsty for them, even killing for them. He knew he would do it again and without a moment’s hesitation. Hell, a part of him might even welcome it. There was simply nothing in his experience that even compared with the thrill of killing to protect his family. In this moment, it was the purpose of his existence.
He felt, possibly for the first time in his life, like a fucking man.
At last, he crawled under the branches and wrapped his arms around his son.
Cole’s teeth chattered. “I’m cold,” the boy said.
“You’ll warm up.”
“When?”
“In a minute.”
“Can you die of cold?”
“Yeah, but that’s not going to happen to you.”
“I’m still not warm.”
“Be patient. It’s coming.”
JACK woke at dawn and laid his hands upon his children.
“They’re breathing,” Dee whispered.
“You sleep?”
“Not much.”
“We stink,” he said.
“Speak for yourself.”
“No, I think I can safely speak for you, too.”
He looked at his wife just to look at her. First time he’d done that in days.
Her cheeks smeared with dirt. Lips cracked. Sunburned all to hell.
“You’ve got a few dreadlocks starting there,” he said.
“I’m hideous, aren’t I?”
“Maybe a tad.”
“You smoothtalker.” She reached across the kids, touched his hand. “We can’t keep doing this,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“We’re almost out of these mountains, Dee. It’s going to get better then.”
“Or worse.”
“Do you believe we’re headed for someplace safe, where we can survive? Maybe get back what we lost?”
“I don’t know, Jack.”
“I think you need to believe that’s what’s going to happen.”
“It’s just so hard. I’m so tired. I’m hungry. And then I look at them and know they’re suffering even more.”
“We could be dead, Dee. All of us or some of us. But we’re not. We’re together. You have to hold onto that. Let it carry you.”
They came out of the woods in the late morning onto a bare hill that sloped down to a river, and several hundred yards past, a paved road. Beyond it all to the east lay miles of badlands—pale, dry country, rippled and treeless.