by Melissa Good
“If there was another route he’d have found it,” Amy stated flatly.
“If you know so much, how come you didn’t climb up there to help him?” Rich shot back. “If Dar could climb that rope, I’m sure you coulda.”
Kerry took a breath to do a subject change, but subsided when Amy just shrugged, then turned her hands upmost and displayed them, showing palms bruised and scraped, and broken nails.
“I tried,” she said. “I only made it part way up and couldn’t go any farther.” Amy glanced at Dar. “You’re pretty gonzo for a computer geek.”
Kerry scratched the bridge of her nose, then glanced up at Dar’s face, which had a blandly amused expression. “Well, we’re going to have to figure it all out so we might as well get everything else settled.” She put her hand on the rock face, which was damp and cold under her touch.
Dar hooked her arm through Kerry’s and guided her back over to where the rest of the group was milling around, PJ and Cheryl talking animatedly with Ira.
“They surprised me,” Kerry muttered in an undertone. “I didn’t expect all of them to come.”
Dar regarded the group. “Peer pressure. Once you kick started their consciences, to stay back would have been jackass.”
“Do I get a cookie for that?”
“Sure. If I had cookies I’d give you all of them. But know what I want?” Dar sat down on a rock and patted the spot next to her, which was cold and damp but Kerry sat on it anyway. “I want one of those Star Trek transporters.”
“Mmm.”
“I want to just call up someone and have them beam us from here to our house.”
Kerry considered that. “I’d settle for our RV.” She braced her hands on the rock and extended her legs out, wiggling her hiking boots back and forth a little. “Cause if they had to beam our dogs home, they’d end up with poop in their transporters, let me tell ya that.”
Dar chuckled silently.
The soft crunch of boots against gravel made them look up to find Don and Marcia dusting their hands off as they came over to join them. “Hi.”
“Hello there, ladies.” Don sat down on the ground, and leaned his back against the wall. Marcia was about to join him but Kerry stood up and offered her seat up instead and the older woman took it with a grateful smile.
“I’m going to see how the fire’s going.” Kerry patted Dar on the shoulder and walked past her.
Dar leaned back against the wall and stifled a yawn, then she turned her head on hearing the rattle and scrape of rocks falling, hastily getting to her feet as several bounced down the wall and hit them. “What the hell?”
“Whole damn trip’s been one big””what the hell.” Don sighed, as he hoisted himself up and they both went around the angle of the wall to see Rich partway up it, paused in contemplation. “Oh my lord, what is that boy doing?”
Amy had a flashlight played on the rock ahead of him. “To the side there, yeah.” She directed. “That’s the shelf he went onto.”
Rich glanced down. “Just want to make sure he’s okay,” he called down. “Not going all the way up.” He carefully inched his way farther, fitting his fingers into the cracks between the rocks and moving very slowly in a more horizontal than vertical path.
He had the rope that Dar had climbed looped around his body, and he paused with his knees pressed against the rock to take the piton on the end of it and wedge it into a cleft, using a piece of rock taken from his cargo pants pocket to hammer it into place.
Kerry came over and joined Dar, head tilted. “Oh for cripes sake.”
Rich got a hitch up, then his boots slid on the wet rock wall and he swung sideways with a little yelp.
That caused another scattering of pebbles to tumble down, and as one, the group watching took a step back. “This is nuts,” Don said, in an undertone. “Be careful!” He added, in a louder tone. “Don’t need you laid up too!”
Rich waved at him, then he snugged the rope a bit tighter around his body and inspected the rocks, looking for another handhold. “Don’t worry! Just wanted to show my skills.”
Kerry looked over at Amy, who avoided her eyes and stared up at the cliff instead. “That little bitch,” she said, in an undertone. “She conned him into that.”
Dar patted her back. “He let her.”
THE WEATHER STAYED calm after that. Rich only made it halfway up, enough to exchange a few words with Todd, most of which were curses. Now he, Dave, Sally, and her sister were under one opened up sleeping bag, against the rock wall.
Dar was seated on her and Kerry’s’ tattered sleeping bag, with Kerry cuddled against her, the two of them warming each other in as much meager comfort as was going to be had.
It was dark outside, and quiet. Dar pulled Kerry tight against her, feeling Kerry’s steady breathing as she slept.
At least one of them was getting some rest. Dar was just uncomfortable enough, and not exhausted enough to be able to sleep. So she’d spent an hour or so running a programming problem through her head.
She heard the sound of something flying outside and listened hard, but the sounds drifted off into the distance and silence once again fell.
Far off, something howled.
She thought she heard a plane in the distance.
Finally it was sunrise. Dar walked out from under their shelter and looked up at the sky, thankfully free of clouds.
The air was dry and cool, and she pulled on the one dry shirt she had left. She rubbed the skin of her arms to dispel the imaginary dampness she was convinced she still felt.
She heard steps behind her and turned to find Ira ambling over, reviewing the sky with a satisfied nod. “That’s better,” he said. “Now we can maybe get somewhere.” He turned and looked up at the wall, where Todd’s body was visible, now wedged in a different position in a corner of the rock.
Rich and Dave emerged, and a moment later, Don was with them, and then Sally as well. They gathered under where Todd was hanging and Dar and Ira joined them.
“We gotta get him down,” Rich said. “So I figure I climb up, we get the ropes rearranged and then we belay him.”
“Let get going,” Dave said. “Sooner the better.”
“Nothing else to do anyway,” Rich said. “I don’t want any more of that bark tea. Made me piss all night.” He felt the surface of the rock, grunting in approval. “Drying out.”
Amy appeared. She pulled her hair back and put it in a tail as Rich lifted himself up onto one of the boulders embedded in the wall about waist level.
The sun peeked over the rim of the canyon and lit up the wall. Rich got a rope fastened around him, flexed his hands and started moving up, duplicating his path from the previous night.
Kerry emerged from the shelter with an armful of cloth. She moved out across the ground to where there were several sunlit rocks to drape the wet fabric over. The sun crept across the canyon floor and she held her hands out to it in relief as it warmed her face.
Janet limped out to join her, but stood in silence for a moment. “We should have called into main base yesterday,” she said finally. “Someone’ll be looking for us.”
Kerry folded her arms and regarded the trip leader. “No matter if we find a way to signal or not.”
“Right,” Janet said. “With the sun up, it won’t take them long to find us.” She licked her lips. “That’s why I convinced the rest of them to come down out of the slot canyon. We can at least have them winch us out of here.”
Kerry felt a sense of relief. “So we’re just really listening for the sound of the chopper while they get Todd down.”
Janet nodded confidently. Then she looked around. “Please don’t repeat that to the rest of them, though. The way this trip’s gone it’ll start raining again.”
“And Godzilla will appear over the horizon. Got it,” Kerry said. “I won’t say a word.”
Janet wandered off and Kerry remained where she was, leaning one shoulder against the rock wall as she just enjoyed the sun final
ly warming her. Though they’d had a fire the night before the persistent damp, and the long days of chill, had left her cold at her core. Now she closed her eyes and savored the sensation.
She almost imagined she heard the sound of a helicopter. But after a moment’s focus, it was just a cicada rattling away nearby in the desert grass. She opened her eyes and hunted around the area, searching the ground for anything else that might be of use.
It was strange, and yet familiar. Kerry knew there was in no way anything here she’d had her privileged WASP behind involved in doing before, but there was still something about the self-sufficiency that made her smile.
She heard a faint thump and looked over to find a rabbit there, frozen in mid motion, staring at her.
Kerry looked around quickly, then put her finger to her lips. “Shh.”
The rabbit flicked it’s ears, then hopped off rapidly, heading for a hole nearby that it disappeared down. Kerry tiptoed back around the rock and resumed her scrounging, stifling a rueful laugh. “Hope I don’t regret that,” she mused to herself.
Then she spotted a twisted bristlecone pine and went over to it. She found several pinecones, along with a handful of the needles the tree had sparsely along its branches, the scent of them rising to her nose and making her think briefly of Christmas.
Or a car air freshener. She chuckled and collected a few more pine cones.
RICH WAS VISIBLY sweating. “Okay, I’m going to try that way,” He yelled down. He got a hesitant grip into a crack in the rocks and crouched a little, then pushed upward with both feet. He shoved himself sideways along the rock to another slight protrusion.
His feet slipped and he scrabbled for a foothold for a moment until he found one, testing it carefully and then slowly shifting his hands. “Shit.”
Todd’s foot was about six feet over his head. If he looked down he would see the whole group of them, gathered in utter uselessness at the foot of the cliff. If he fell, he’d probably kill half of them and now he was fiercely regretting volunteering to climb.
He hadn’t lied. He knew how to do it. The fact he was where he was up on the wall testified to that, but it had been a long time, and he hadn’t really conditioned himself for this when he’d expected just to be riding on his butt on a boat down a river.
He looked down again and spotted Dar Robert’s tall figure coming to the wall, one hand falling to rest on the rocks. From this perspective he could see the breadth of her shoulders and the length of her arms and wished it was her up here and him watching.
Why hadn’t he stepped back and let her do it?
With a sigh, he got another handhold and paused, then shifted. There was another crack but it was far enough over his head that he’d have to jump for it and he had slim confidence he’d get a firm grip. If he did, then he could pull his feet up and get almost to where he could do something useful, but if he missed he might end up hanging from the piton.
He looked up, to find Todd looking down at him, haggard and serious of face, with none of the mocking attitude he’d become used to. “Hang on.” He steeled himself, and then jumped for it, getting his hands into the crack and grimacing as his weight came onto his fingers.
With a lot of effort he hauled his feet up, and with a sense of relief, felt his toes catch onto the crack he’d had his hands on. He straightened up and his head was even with Todd’s knees.
“Nice,” Todd rasped. “That last one.”
“Thanks.” Rich let the shaking work its way out of his limbs. “How are you doing?”
“Sux,” Todd said. “Got my arm strapped up. Can’t do nothing with it” He indicated the limb tucked close into his body with his shirt fastened over it. “Fuck it hurts.”
“Bet it does.” Rich debated punching his shoulder, to get a bit back of Pete’s torture, but he sighed instead “Okay, how much rope ya got up here,” he asked instead.
“Long length in my pack.” Todd shifted a little, lifting himself up with a grip on the line over his head and turning to expose his back to Rich. “Maybe it’ll reach.”
“Let’s find out.” Rich released one hand and undid the fastening.
Chapter Thirteen
DAR GAVE THE second rope an experimental tug and then leaned back and pulled hard on it. Rich had just set the piton, and she jumped into the air and let her weight come down on the line, tensed to react if it released.
It didn’t.
She turned and looked at the group. “Anyone want to have a turn?”
“Long past my days of that,” Don said, with a tone of regret. “Sorry.”
“Afraid of heights,” Sally said. “And I can’t climb a rope anyway.”
“Me either,” Tracey said, with a more authentic tone of regret. “I’ve done some rappelling, but not the other way around.”
“Not with this hand,” Dave said, holding it up.
The rest of the group was busy foraging, so Dar gave a little shrug and turned, pausing to rub her hands on her pants and then take a grip on the rope. She paused, then she crouched and jumped and was dangling, feeling her spine stretch out as she coiled up her legs around the rope and took some of the weight off her arms.
She started up, the feeling of hemp crisp and hard under her grip. She shifted her hands upward and climbed, her body scraping against the stone wall. As the last time, it didn’t take her long to get up to the level Rich and Todd were at. She locked her boots around the rope and paused as she came even with them.
“Get on that ledge there,” Rich said. “Need some help setting the belay.”
Dar spotted the ledge and swung over to it, getting a firm foothold. Then she wrapped the rope around her and tied it off. “Now what?”
“Okay, so we got this.” Rich sidled up next to her and showed her a long spike with a wheel on it. “We can get this in here, like this. “He pointed at a deep cleft. “Then get that rope on it, and if those guys down there keep hold, he can get down.”
Dar inspected the rope. “Going to take all of them,” she told Todd. “You’re a big boy.”
His face, scraped and raw from the wind, crinkled just a little bit into a grimace that might have been a smile. “You’re a fucking monkey,” he said. “Where’d you learn to climb like that?”
Dar ignored him. “Let’s get this going,” she told Rich. “I don’t want to temp the weather fate.”
“Too right,” Rich said. He positioned the belaying rig in place and shoved it into the cleft, using his rock to pound it down as far as it would go. That left the wheel exposed. He untied one of the ropes Todd had been using and threaded it through the pulley, letting it dangle down to the ground. “Okay.”
Todd reached out and clipped the end of the rope to his climbing harness and shifted over.
“Grab hold of that!” Rich yelled downward, then he looked at Dar. “Help me get him turned around facing the rock.” He glanced down again. “Hold it tight, you all! He’s heavy!”
Dar shortened up her rope until it was holding her to the wall, and then she released both hands and pushed Todd away from the wall and toward Rich. His weight came onto the dangling rope and he slipped down a little, and a yell came from the ground.
“Don’t be pussies! Grab the damn rope!” Rich bellowed. “Jesus, these people!”
“Augh.” Todd slammed against the rock and tried to steady himself as he skidded down the wall thumping his injured shoulder against it.
“Hold on!” Rich yelled. “Pull!”
Dar had hold of Todd’s belt and she leaned back until the pulley went taut and the rope was taking his weight. She released her hold cautiously, then she ran the rope she was on through his harness then back over her shoulders and braced herself. “G’wan.”
Rich gave a tug on his rope and eased himself down. “Little at a time,” he said. “Grab hold here.”
Todd used his good hand to take hold, and they started downward. Dar stayed braced on her ledge, slowly letting out the rope as the two men retreated down the cliff
wall. The sun splashed over them all and the sedate blue sky stretched overhead as though the past few days of weather had never happened.
Dar started to be just a little bit optimistic that the worst was over, then she immediately squashed the thought and pictured a hailstorm instead.
Just in case.
“A LITTLE MORE!” Rich had one hand in a hold, and one hand around the rope circling Todd’s body. “Pull left!” He was braced against an outcropping, his hand clenched around his own rope. “Left!”
Don and Dave were anchoring, and they shifted hastily.
Rich pushed to his right and got a grip on Todd’s belt. “Got to get you around this point.”
“Shut up, I know that. Get the fuck out of my way and let go of me!” Todd got his boots wedged and crossed his good hand over his body and curled his fingers into a cleft, pushing outward and pulling sideways at the same time as he hauled himself around a corner of the rock.
Rich let him go and backed away. “Whatever you say, dude.”
Todd’s momentum spun him around and a moment later he slammed his shoulder into the wall and lost his footing, making Dave yell in alarm and both Tracey and Janet jump to the line to help keep him from sliding downward. “Fuck!” He let out an agonized moan.
“Stop being a jackass!” Dar yelled from above.
“Ow ow ow,” Todd yelped, as his body twisted.
“Jesus Christ.” Rich exhaled in frustration. “Swear to God you’ve got the brains of a sewer rat.” He grabbed hold of Todd’s belt again and pulled back, easing him away from the wall. “Lower!” He called down to the rope handlers. “C’mon.”
They got around the boulder and then they were sliding down the last part of the wall to the ground. Rich grimaced as he tried to keep his balance and hold onto Todd at the same time, and he abruptly lost his footing at the last moment, with only his climbing rope clenched in one hand holding him up.
Kerry scrambled up onto the ground littered boulders and reached up to grab his legs. “Hang on!”