But this was different. It was like someone grinding glass on concrete. He put on his boots and his parka, tied the hood, and peered out suspiciously. He couldn't see much. The snowfall was building high drifts on the level shelf of the camp. On impulse he picked up his bow. He was sorry now that he had agreed to stay behind. He could have managed the climb if he used his oxygen. They should have drawn lots, he told himself.
He wasn't sure if the wind was playing tricks. It was impossible, but he thought he heard the mewing of a cat, ululant and insistent. How could an animal survive outside? Yet the sound gained resonance. His uneasiness grew. If only he could see it. He was trying to reach Bradford on the shortwave when he was interrupted by an unexpected movement against the tent. The walls were swaying, and he jumped back, crashing into the stove and upsetting the pot of coffee on it.
"What is it?" he shouted.
The wall of the tent was torn open; something with huge claws slashed at his stores. Cans burst open. He backed away, not knowing what to do. He threw down the crossbow and pulled out his Magnum. He began to fire, round after round, at the claws which groped out blindly. His radio was smashed; the tent collapsed.
Packard struggled to get outside and reloaded. Where was it? He saw a shadowy outline of something enormous. He opened his parka, located the plastic cord, and flung it at the shadow. The explosion threw off blocks of ice and stone. But whatever was out there had not stopped. Now it was thrashing the air in a frenzy.
He staggered back. Something took hold of him, and he shrieked. It began squeezing him; he felt his hand go limp; the pain was intolerable.
"God, God, please help me," he whined. He was lifted high into the air. The wind battered him; he flailed desperately. Something hot and as foul as an infection made him sick; he began to vomit uncontrollably. Then, for the first time since he was an infant, he felt himself void involuntarily.
He struggled away from the rows of spikelike teeth which gnashed so hard that sparks flew, illuminating the head of the Snowman.
He stared at the gleaming eyes; then he was inside those jaws. The teeth locked around his ribs. As he lost consciousness, he heard himself cry, then he began to choke in his own blood.
He was being eaten.
There was no sign of life as, belayed, they climbed up the mountain. They were on a stretch of difficult ice between ledges. The flanks of the pitch were almost vertical, part rock, part ice, seamed with snow-filled gullies which spilled onto the lower slopes. The mountain widened, and they found themselves on a small plateau.
Bradford was hunched over, gasping for breath. Exposed to the biting cold, the men giddily stumbled around. They would have to rest.
The storm was changing direction, traveling north; below him Bradford saw a raging ocean of snow. Above the plateau the sky had turned a hard Prussian blue. For the first time in hours the visibility had improved.
"Put on your oxygen masks," he said in a hoarse voice, choking on the words. The air was so dry that he could not swallow. He adjusted the oxygen nozzle and his lungs heaved. The oxygen was intoxicating; he felt his heart leap. When he had gained control of himself after a few moments, he walked out ahead of the group, examining the plateau with his binoculars. Beyond them were patches of fresh blood, forming a trail.
Pemba moved cautiously alongside him.
"Tracks."
"He's left the summit."
They walked ahead, leaving Jamie and Spider. As they approached the trail of blood, Pemba pointed to something on the ice. They halted uncertainly. Pemba stooped and with his ax touched the ice-crusted lump of raw, purplish flesh.
"It's a Kodiak's paw," he said. "A cub."
They followed the path of blood. They were now some distance from the other two men, who wearily tried to catch up. Ahead were gnarled cornices, overhanging masses of snow and ice which jutted out menacingly. It was difficult to hear in the gale winds which scoured the furrows of the summit, but still the unmistakable pitch of a roar carried down to them. They stopped and stood back to back, scanning the mountainside, until they could locate the source. They heard it again, a perverse growl distorted by large ice chimneys which acted as echo chambers.
"Let's go back, Dan."
"Not yet."
In the distance Spider's and Jamie's orange suits appeared as mere specks in the jungle of snow. They were, however, growing larger, closing in on them. Bradford held up his glasses and watched them running. Slithering behind them on all fours was a monstrously large Kodiak. Bradford rushed toward them. The Kodiak was closing the distance.
"Don't fall, goddamn it, don't fall!" he shouted.
He lifted the crossbow off his right shoulder and peeled off his top layer of gloves so he could move his hands. The silk gloves he wore underneath were warm with sweat; he was able to flex his fingers. He took out an armed arrow and fitted it into the cable, then lined up the bear in the telescopic sight. He pressed the zoom button bringing the bear into close-up. The gradations on the lens indicated that the bear was a hundred and fifty yards away.
"The fucker's out of range," he cried. "Keep coming, baby."
Saliva and mucus dripped from the Kodiak's mouth as its face loomed larger in the sight. The bestial rage was horrifying, and it lashed out with its claws at Jamie's back as he slowed up, winded by the pursuit. Bradford moved in. The bear was closing . . .
"One fifteen, one-oh-five," he said, aiming at the deep barrel chest.
He released the automatic trigger, and there was a whip sound which jarred him. Suddenly the Kodiak stopped, numbed by the shock, and the men turned as the air was filled with great masses of bleeding flesh. Bradford watched with amazement.
"It's disintegrating!" he shouted to Pemba.
"I see."
"Shit, it really works!"
The ice was filled with a misshapen bloody patch; nothing remained of the Kodiak. Bradford approached the men, who had fallen face down. The blood was being absorbed by the fresh snow, and only an outline was evident. No tissue, skin, or fur was left. Spider struggled to his knees and pressed his hands together in a gesture of supplication.
"Man, I wanna go home."
"Never saw anything like it," Jamie said. "We should have had these when we were fighting the U.S. Cavalry."
"Then the niggers and the Indians would have inherited the earth," Spider said, rejoicing. "Shit, Dan, that Snowman was enormous!" he added.
Pemba had a quizzical expression. "Snowman?"
"What then?"
"A Kodiak bear."
"No, don't tell me we've got more on our asses."
"It was a female whose cub was killed by the Snowman"
"How do you know that?" Jamie asked with alarm.
"We found part of another bear up ahead."
They spent the next hour attempting to contact Packard. The channel was clear, but he did not respond.
The crevasse they had crossed earlier continued to widen. The Snowman inched along the platform for almost a quarter of a mile, until he found a gap that was narrow enough for him to straddle. He listened to the movement of the men on the plateau and strode up the side of the bergschrund, following the guy ropes they had left.
The snowstorm had begun again, and he blended in perfectly with the ice and rock. At a depression in the mountainside he stopped; he had heard some vibrations which indicated an ice weakness in a wave of snow nearby. When the sounds weakened, he thrashed at a cornice which was in danger of falling. He dislodged it and found an opening which would lead him to the plateau. He was now directly beneath the men. His claws bored into the side of the mountain, as he burrowed through the ice, forming a deep, undulating channel.
Chapter Nineteen
Darkness came unexpectedly. Bradford led his struggling band under the arch of a solid sérac. They huddled together and ate dry rations. The moment of triumph they had shared at the success of the weapon was forgotten. Bradford was troubled by Spider's silence. He and Jamie seemed to have lost their spirit;
he knew how dangerous that was, for without it, the instinct for survival would go. He had seen men in this state before; invariably they were lost. But he was determined not to allow the Snowman to claim any more sacrifices.
It was impossible to sleep, but he decided to withhold sleeping pills. An attack might come at any time.
Pemba whispered to him, "Something's moving."
"Where?"
He pointed to a dull glow emanating from under the ice. It was a diffuse beam that covered a small area.
"Under the ice."
"It could be the radiation from the warhead."
Pemba shook his head doubtfully. "I think we ought to go on ahead."
"If we leave them, they'll panic."
"Dan, I don't think we've got any choice."
Bradford located his flashlight in his pack and checked the batteries. All that remained was a half-life. He stalked out on the ice with Pemba without explaining to the others what he was doing, but neither Spider nor Jamie had the energy to follow; they just stared, haunted and cowed.
The light had spread over a wide area by the time Bradford and Pemba reached a pitch running alongside the ridge. The ice was illuminated, sparkling like glass, when the light struck a prism, rainbows appeared, which added to the eerieness of this possessed mountain.
"He's penetrated the glacier," Bradford said fearfully. "He's been tracking us," he added. "It must be a combination of sound waves and smell that rouses him."
Odd animalistic sounds echoed beneath their feet, but there was no sign of the Snowman. It almost seemed as if, having entrapped them, the monster was now toying with them.
It would be suicidal to fire an arrow into the glacier to draw him out. The mountain would fracture; there would be no way to escape an ice avalanche. They continued along the perimeter of the ridge in an attempt to find the source of the light. As they trod the precipitous path, Bradford could not overcome the conviction that a snare was being laid for them. The light flashed on and off as though some form of primeval code was being used, almost as if the Snowman was attempting to communicate with them. When they left the shelter of the spur, the wind churned, flinging darts of ice in their faces. The pursuit was hopeless; they turned back.
It was an interminable night. Bradford's eyes were raw, and he had difficulty adjusting to the corruscating reflections of sunlight at daybreak. Ice caps mirrored the light; as they climbed the vertical face leading to the summit, they had to pause every few feet because they were blinded.
The terrain was intractable, the progress frustratingly slow. At every bitter, bone-crunching step, the mountain presented new obstacles. Bradford drove his ax into the ice and hacked his way to the upper rim. At the summit he would have an overview of the mountain, be able to detect any movement by the Snowman. At least, that was his hope. But somehow the Snowman had cut them off from Packard. Bradford could not establish radio contact with him. He was worried. A lone man on a mountain had only to slip and twist his ankle outside his tent and he would freeze to death in a matter of minutes.
Heavy, leaden clouds like vultures massing for a carcass hung over the summit. The men stopped below it to adjust their oxygen canisters. Bradford surveyed the assault route to the top. He removed some étriers from his backpack. They would have to use these short rope ladders, anchored by a steel spike, to climb the sharply angled face.
As he and Pemba drove in the spikes and joined ladders, his attention was caught by the wind blowing down a mound of loose stones from a scree. The mountain under him rumbled, and then the air was permeated by a series of violent roars.
"Jamie!" he shouted helplessly as the young Indian reacted sluggishly, dazed by the sudden crash of an ice wall. Bradford saw him struggling.
Moving from behind him was a huge male Kodiak. Jamie's exposure as the last man was precarious. The vertical drop beneath him was over five thousand feet. He grasped hold of the étriers, but the bear plucked him off the ladder and viciously flung him onto the ice. Jamie's shrieks were muffled by the enraged bear, which savaged him with his claws. The Kodiak lifted Jamie off the ground and tore at his face and throat. Jamie was stripped of his oxygen mask. Blood spurted from a wound in his throat. Pemba and Bradford were immobilized on the ladder and could not free themselves to fire their crossbows.
"Spider! Spider, help him!" Pemba cried out in desperation as he clung to the ladder.
They lost Jamie for a moment, and when they struggled down, Spider was crouched over with the crossbow in his hand. They leaned over the precipice and saw that Jamie was too far below them, splayed across the ice.
"My hands are frozen," Spider said, boggle-eyed.
Bradford took the bow, and as he set himself to fire the mountain seemed to burst open, blocking his view. Thrusting upward through the thick ice platform was the hand of the Snowman. The arm became visible, and the Kodiak lunged at it. Its teeth dug into the Snowman's hand and broke into splinters. In an instant the Snowman shattered the ice, which flew in a shower of hail. He towered over the Kodiak, and as the two beasts struggled, Jamie slipped off the ice. His body floated crazily thousands of feet down an infinite abyss. The Snowman's hands tore through the belly of the Kodiak and a torrent of blood gushed on the ice. The Kodiak groaned and was lifted off its feet and brought to the mouth of the Snowman. The cavernous mouth opened, and in a single echoing crunch the bear was decapitated. The still-writhing trunk was flung against an arete below.
The Snowman was climbing into range. His gray body was blood-spattered, and his maddened eyes were directed at the men.
"I've got him in the sight!" Bradford cried. In a moment he released the trigger, and the arrow adhered to the Snowman's arm. The air was suddenly filled with a foul-smelling black siltlike mucus. The arm began to dissolve. The mountain came alive with a frenzy of sound—one moment a mountain lion, then the roar of a bear as the Snowman lurched from one side to the other. Bradford and Pemba were poised for the next shot, but the Snowman had crawled beneath a sérac, using it as a shield. The ice was blackened by the outline of tissue and ganglia.
"You got the bastard," Spider said softly. Then his triumph gave way to hysteria, and he keened, "Jamie. Jamie. Oh, my God!"
They could not stay on the platform, which took the brunt of a shrill crosswind. Bradford's mind was slowing; he recognized the danger signals. He was beginning to freeze. They had to get to a sheltered area. He placed Spider in the middle, and they climbed lethargically up the rungs of the étriers until they came to a sangar molded into a cliff edge.
They could still hear the reverberations of the Snowman's maddened howl.
As the storm subsided, Bradford noticed the blackened ice being raised. The tissue embedded in the ice was giving off tremendous heat, fissuring the mountain, cutting a livid scar into the granite layers below the ice; flames burst through the ice. Fumaroles which heated the hot springs released sprays of acid-charged boiling water. Hummocks of black basalt leaped into the air from the underground gas jets. The ice below them dissolved into a bubbling white-hot bed of lava which gashed the mountain, then descended to the lower slopes.
Bradford staggered back and crouched against the wall with Spider.
"Where's Pemba?"
"He says the weather's getting worse. He's gone ahead to look for shelter. If we stay here we'll freeze to death," Spider replied with resignation.
Bradford groped for his thermometer and altimeter. They were just under eighteen thousand feet; the temperature had dropped to forty below zero. He could see the clouds at the summit, driven by the wind. The storm was gaining power; by late afternoon it would be a full-scale blizzard. He saw sheets of snow flung up from the névé, the source snowfield at the terminus of the glacier. They were trapped between currents of air from above and below; the storm would envelop them if they stayed where they were.
Bradford wondered now whether he actually cared about living or dying on the mountain. Would it really matter? He felt lost and confused. Jamie's death ha
d shocked him, made him relive the scene on Lhotse. If Packard was also gone, the three of them would surely be claimed by the mountain. His mind focused on the word "Sierra." A chain of mountains with serrated edges. Yes, they were like sharpened, blazing knives raised against him.
It would be better if the mountain took him, he told himself, because he could not live with the thought of failing again. He had come after the Snowman this time to reclaim that part of him which had died. Now he no longer had the strength. He slumped onto his side, opening his arms, waiting for the blizzard to embrace him, to relieve him of the agony of confronting the Snowman another time.
On the other side of the sangar he saw a fleck of orange. It gradually grew larger, until he realized that it was Pemba. He had girdled the cirque below the summit. He moved agilely along the circle of cliffs contorted by the glacier.
Bradford's eyes were closed when he heard the voice. "Thik hai?" the voice called out.
Was he all right? What a question.
He was shaken, then yanked to his feet.
"Dan, you've got to move."
Pemba brushed the snow off his suit, then adjusted the mixture on Spider's oxygen nozzle to enrich the flow.
"I found a cave beyond the cirque."
Bradford's legs wobbled, and he supported himself on the sangar wall.
"Where are the Dexedrine tablets?" Pemba asked. Bradford indicated his pack; the Sherpa stuck his hand inside and found the medical bag. He broke out the tablets, swallowed one without water, and then undid Spider's oxygen mask and forced one down Spider's throat along with some new snow. Spider reeled drunkenly without the oxygen. His mouth hung open, and he was almost overcome by anoxia. Still weak and despondent, Bradford helped Pemba replace the mask. Spider began to breathe too rapidly.
"Slow down," Pemba ordered him. "Try to keep your breathing in a rhythm."
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