Something leapt from the catwalk outside Lucy’s old cabin. It fell, and then a parachute blossomed above just as it drifted behind a peak to the west. The Wonderblimp became a small cloud, then a large eagle, then a hawk, then nothing but a speck against the great blue of the sky. She faded into the sky, moving fast against dark gray storm clouds coming our way. Then, a star broke into twilight, flared into a nova, and became a bright orange cloud.
“Yahoo!” Max yelled. “Yip-yip-yahoo!”
It strained my neck to stare so long and so high. A thick black cloud spread among the sky, and flaming shards tumbled to the earth. I thought of Lucy and I thought of Ruby and Bron and Doc North and even of Nike, as what had been left of the Wonderblimp fell to the earth. I scrunched my eyes together, felt an itching on my scalp, and tried to cry. But no tears came. The parachuting speck. The speck had to have been Lucy.
“Damn, that hydrogen makes a good fire!” Max yelled. “Did you see it burn. Sheeet!”
I closed my eyes shut, felt the twitching on my scalp again. I furrowed my brow hard, then not so hard, and felt the blue braid pop out of my hat.
“Benelux!” Max said. “She gave you her hair!”
“I think she’s on our side,” I said.
“Was!” He screamed, even though the wind was quiet in the bottom of the crater.
“She jumped,” I said. “I saw someone jump out and parachute down.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Max said. “Damn, did you see that thing blow?”
“Yeah. What happened?”
“My chest bomb,” Max said. “You know that little plastique I got at the trade fair, had rigged up for my chest bomb?”
“Right,” I said. Lucy had positioned it in Max. She would have known about it.
“I pulled it off, smeared it on the side of one of the topside hydrogen bags. Made a crude time bomb with an old watch I had.”
“You can’t tell time, Max.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked. “Big hand goes faster than the little hand, right? So when the little hand hit the big hand . . . Kaboom!”
“We still have the nuke to worry about,” I said.
“True,” Max said. “But I think this storm is going to get us before the nuke does,” he said. “Lucy give you anything else?”
I smiled, concentrated on the braid. I got it to twitch down in jerks and spasms to my parka pocket. It kind of snaked down inside the pocket. I kept my eyes open, twitched around, shut my eyes, then drew the braid up. Nothing.
“There’s a razor in my pocket, but I can’t see.”
Max stretched around the Zap bomb. “Lean forward,” he said. I squirmed around. “I can see the bulge,” he said. “Okay, move the braid to your left. Over, over, to your right, yeah, you’re right next to it. Open it up. Okay, over a hair— ahem—okay. You’re right on it. Close.”
I squinted, imagined the tip of the braid wrapping around the razor, then slowly eased it up.
“Christ, you’ve got it by the blade!” Max yelled.
I opened my eyes, and the razor fell out of my pocket. I heard it clink against the side of the bomb, then skitter across a rock.
“Damn,” I said. “You see it?”
“Yeah,” said Max. “It’s leaning against your toe. Let the braid fall.”
I relaxed my forehead, felt the braid whisk down my side and to my waist.
“Too short,” Max said. “Shit. Let’s see.” He looked up at the bomb. “Okay, I know. Let’s rock the bomb on its side.”
“Max . . .”
“It’s not going to blow,” he said. “Not yet.”
I turned to my left, and Max and I started rocking back and forth, trying to move the bomb onto its side. Max leaned against the bomb, pushed. I strained against the tape, hugged the bomb, tried to help him shove it. We got it rocking, back Max’s way, then to my right, left, right, and then the bomb tipped over, pinning my right arm against the bare rock. One of the big eyebolts on the side of the nuke kept it from crushing my arm.
“My arm’s pinned,” I said.
“Screw that,” Max said. “Where’s the razor?”
I looked, saw the razor pointing edge up, half an inch from my right eye. “I see it,” I said. “Noooo problem.”
“Good. Get the blade.”
I stared at the blade, relaxed, furrowed my brow until the braid danced—more like frog-hopped—over to the razor. I eased the tip over the handle, gently, gently, then squinted. “Got it,” I said. “But I can’t see around the bomb. You’re going to have to guide me again. Can you see it?”
“Perfect,” Max said, hanging from the top of the nuke now. “Work the razor up. Get my bonds first. Up. Can you feel the braid on your arm?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Never mind. A few more inches. Good. The edge is right on the tape by my hand. Can you saw it back and forth?”
“Let me think.” I strained my forehead, heard the razor make a thwick sound across the tape.
“Good,” Max said. “Again.”
I relaxed, concentrated. The blade sliced across the tape. Thwick.
“Again,” he said. Relax, concentrate. Thwick. “Again. Again. Ah.” Max grunted, then I heard the beautiful sound of the tape ripping. “Ah. Ah-hah.”
I opened my eyes all the way, turned my head. I saw Max on top of the drum, razor in his hand, cutting himself free. “Woo-hoo,” I said. “Take care of Suz.”
“Right.”
Max sawed the tape on his legs, stomped off, then stomped back. My right arm felt numb from being pinned, but also numb from the cold. Night was coming, and with it the faint warmth of the day faded. The wind whined louder, and thick dark clouds, like a squadron of blimps, moved overhead. Max came back and worked on the tape binding my hands. I felt my arms part, and my right arm fell away. I still hugged the bomb, trying to keep it from rolling on top of my arm again.
“How’s Suz?” I asked.
“She passed out, but she’ll be okay,” he said. “A few more cuts . . . There.” Max stood up, gently eased the Zap bomb off of me. I crawled out from under the nuke, stood up. My right arm throbbed, but with the weight of the nuke off it, felt better. The cable still poked out from under my parka. I held onto it, walked around to the other side of the nuke, where Max had been.
“What’ll happen if I yank this cable out?” I asked Max.
He shrugged. “I already yanked mine loose. Nothing happened. Do it. Can’t hurt.”
I pulled the cable loose and nothing did happen. I reached down to the sphere, slid the plate back over the knapsack nuke, read the readout on the handle: 09:43:34. Plenty of time.
“Let’s get Suz on the sled and get the hell out of here,” Max said.
“I’ve got to disarm it,” I said.
“Holmes,” Max said, “Think. We’re not attached. The Wonderblimp blew up. It is disarmed.”
“No,” I said. “Not yet.” I looked at the base of the Zap bomb, found a large panel, slid it back. Inside was a maze of wiring, some funny spheres about the size of baseballs, and a battered canvas pack. I pulled the pack out, threw it onto the snow, then looked at the maze of wires. A picture of the wires formed in my mind and merged with the wiring I stared at. They looked the same, except for one little wire attached to a terminal in the back. I reached to connect it, then remembered, and smiled.
No need. Max was right. She was disarmed. I slid the large panel closed and picked up the canvas pack.
I went over to Suz, lying on her back, quiet, unconscious in the snow. Max’s sled was next to her, and Max had Alice out of the sled and attached in harness to the front. Max pulled out two sleeping bags, a tent, a shovel, a cheap plastic Nissan survival rifle, a bag of food, two long chains, and other stuff, set them down in the snow. He opened one of the sleeping bags, and I helped him get Suz inside it. She groaned when we touched her back. We lifted her gently on the sled, then put the gear back in around her, and tied the sled bag around her. Max kept the chains and rifle out.
“I don’t know,” I said. I opened it and looked. There was a heavy parka, a box of some weird sort of food, a pair of brown boots, and a tattered journal. On the inside page someone had written, “Denali Climbing Log, Holmes Weatherby, III.” I picked up the boots, remembering Rei’s message:
That which is hidden
Will be found when feet unshod
Meet shoes of dull brown.
Turning the first page of the journal, I began to read, then stopped. I knew enough. Enough. I knew who I had been; the details didn’t matter. I put the boots and the journal back in the green canvas bag, threw the bag off into the snow, and handed the box of food and the parka to Max.
“Just some food,” I said. “Maybe Suz could use the parka.”
He picked up the book Lucy had tossed out after me. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know. Put it in the sled bag.”
I walked up the edge of the crater, looked down the north face of the peak. The side of Denali fell away in a steep cliff. About 6,000 feet below was a broad basin. Lucy had said we should get about 1,000 feet away from the nuke. I had an idea. I slid back down the crater. Max was wrapping chains around the runners of the sled and Alice laid calmly in front, licking her paws.
“Do you think the two of us could roll the nuke up the crater wall?” I asked Max.
He kicked a leg of the nuke; it bent back, so he kicked all four of them until they were collapsed on the side. “Yeah,” he said. “But if those safety ropes are still up on the ridge, we could pull it up more easily.”
I looked to my right, saw some of the stakes I’d pounded the day before. Carefully working my way to the nearest stake, I probed in the snow with my gloved hand, felt a rope, pulled it loose. “Got it!” I yelled back to Max, throwing the end of the rope down to him.
Max took the rope, wrapped it twice around the barrel, then dragged the loose end back up to the top of the crater. We heaved on the rope, taking up slack, and each time we pulled, the nuke rolled, wrapping another stretch of rope around it. We used the barrel shape of the nuke as a pulley, and even though the two big eyebolts and the collapsed legs kept it from rolling completely, we were able to get it to the top. I felt clammy under my longjohns, and I was getting short of breath.
“Okay,” I said, panting. “Untie the sucker.” We pulled the rope off of the nuke, held it on the crater lip. “All right. Roll it that away—” I pointed to the south.
Max nodded, stepped around. The Zap Bomb rested on one of the hooks. We leaned into the bomb, rocked it, back and forth, getting momentum up.
“On three,” I said. “One. Two. Three. Now!”
We shoved, and the nuke rolled, ka-thunk, ka-thunk, hitting the eyebolts and the legs, but it had the momentum. Max and I stood up, watched the Zap bomb, the EMP bomb, whirl over and over, picking up speed, ka-thunking down the north face of the mountain. Steel glinted in the fading light, and then it disappeared in the darkness of a flat bowl far below.
“Far enough?” Max asked.
“Lucy said a thousand feet,” I said. “Look’s right. But if it blows . . . I don’t think it will be far enough.”
“Let’s try to get down the south side,” Max said. “Put some mountain between us and the nuke.”
I coughed a little. “You feeling faint?” Max nodded. “Got to lose some altitude. Mountain sickness.” I pointed at a pass between the two peaks of Denali. “Let’s try to make it there.” A bank of dark clouds moved fast toward the mountain. “Looks like a storm, too. We can hole up for the night.”
* * *
Max stood on the runners of the sled, and I trailed behind, the cleats on my boots—I remembered they were called crampons—and a rope holding me to the sled. Max stood on the brake, and I dug my feet in if he got going too fast, sometimes getting dragged behind him when I lost my balance. Alice pulled ahead, guiding us around crevasses, finding a good trail. Fortunately, the deep snow slowed us down, so we didn’t descend too fast.
When we were well down the mountain we stopped. I’d set my watch to do a countdown, and we still had four hours left before the bomb blew. We stopped at a broad plateau and dug in for the night. If the nuke came, at least we’d be warm.
Max dug a small cave in the side of a drift, big enough to crawl in out of the wind and set up a tent inside. We had to work by the light of a candle lantern that kept flickering out, but we got the tent set up, some of our gear hauled inside, and Suz into the tent. Max turned the sled on its side, and we used it as sort of a door to block the tunnel. Alice curled up inside the tunnel, out of the wind. A small air tunnel whistled overhead as the wind sucked our bad air out and pumped good air in. We got a stove going and melted some snow, fed Alice some broth, and made tea for us. Max and I shared the second sleeping bag, left Suz in her bag.
Suz woke up briefly, pretty groggy. I’d checked her dressings, couldn’t tell how they were holding up, but didn’t feel any blood; they would have to do until later. Suz smiled when she saw me kneeling over her, when she saw her hands were unbound.
“You got away from the nuke.”
I nodded, held up Lucy’s razor. “Lucy left me this. And this.” I whipped the braid out from under my cap; I was getting pretty good at controlling it. “I cut Max loose. We’re safe for a while.”
“Where’s the nuke?”
“We rolled it down the north face of the mountain,” Max said.
“Is Nike going to blow Holmes up?”
Max shook his head. “The blimp blew up. It’s a long story.”
“How long until the other nuke goes?”
I glanced at my watch. “Two hours.”
“Bye, guys.” Suz drifted back into sleep.
“Good idea, Holmes,” Max said.
“Yeah.”
Somewhere in the middle of the night I felt the ground shake, then quit. I woke up, nudged Max. “Hear that?”
“Yeah,” he said, groaning. “Avalanche.”
“Yeah,” I said, and rolled over. I fell asleep and dreamed that a wave of fire washed over my body and turned me into a puddle of gold.
CHAPTER 20
A cylinder of light about the diameter of a penny stabbed down into the snow cave. I exhaled, watched the mist of my breath whirl around in the column of sunlight. The light fell on Suz’s face. She breathed calmly, deeply, a slight smile on her lips. I liked that smile.
I wriggled out of the sleeping bag, quickly slipped my feet into my bunny boots. Max stirred next to me, rolled over. My bladder throbbed slightly. I crawled down into the tunnel, shoving Alice aside, then had to dig up to an opaque blot of light at the end of the tunnel. I came to the sled, moved it over, and emerged into the world.
The storm had dumped what seemed like 300 feet of fresh powder on Denali. Our tracks from the day before had been covered and blown away. Bright sun made the mountains blaze. The clear blue sky reminded me of Lucy’s eyes, deep blue that seemed to go on to eternity. To the north was a slight wisp of cloud, but the rest of the sky was entirely devoid of storm.
I stomped a few yards away from the entrance to our cave, unzipped my fly, and pissed into the snow. My urine was dark yellow, and as it bored down into the snow pack, the air steamed. I must have peed until I hit bottom. I zipped my fly back up, wincing as the cold hit my penis. I sighed, glanced at my watch. A wonderful thought hit me.
I was alive. The nuke hadn’t gone off.
“Max!” I yelled. “Max!”
I scrambled back into the snow cave, down the tunnel, poked my head into the tent, yanked on Max’s feet.
“Max!” I screamed again. “We’re alive!”
“What?” he groaned. “Yeah, so what?”
“Max, we’re alive.”
His eyes flickered open, like a moose had just kicked him in the back. “Son of a bitch, it didn’t go off.”
Suz rolled over, awareness dawning on her face. “Hi, guys, what’s all the noise?”
> “We’re alive!” we yelled.
“Huh?” She squinted at us, chewed on that for a moment. “No nuke?”
“No nuke,” I said.
“Hallelujah,” she said, and rolled back to sleep.
* * *
“Something blew in the night,” I told Max. “That quaking.”
“Avalanche,” he said.
“I don’t think so. Maybe the nuke?”
“Maybe.”
We were sitting around a small charcoal stove, boiling snow for soup. There were a few old pre-Zap War packets of powered soup mix—said so right on the packet—in Max’s pack on the sled. Suz kept sleeping inside the snow cave; we didn’t want to move her until we had to.
“Maybe we should take a look,” Max said.
I licked a finger, held it to the wind. “Wind’s blowing north. If the nuke blew, and the mountain kept us from the blast, the fallout would be downwind.
“Check it out?”
“Yeah,” I said.
The south peak of Denali rose maybe 3,000 feet above us. We had camped just below the notch of the ridge between the north and south peaks. The massif of the mountain spread before us for thousands of acres. On foot the mountain looked a lot bigger. It would be a long hike down. Max and I had collected the safety rope and stakes from the day before. We staked one end of the rope by the snow cave, then Max tied the other end to me. He’d stay with Suz, and if I didn’t come back in two hours—I left him the watch and showed him how to tell when two hours had passed—he would go down alone with Suz.
I decided to walk an even route, staying at the same altitude until I came over the south ridge and could see down into the basin where we had pushed the Zap bomb. Max lent me his crampons, and I used a spare tent pole as a staff and probe. It was less than a mile to the ridge from our camp.
Snow had drifted over the north lip of the ridge to form a cornice. K-2 had said that cornices could be unsteady, so I kept my distance from the edge. But I was near enough to see down into the basin. Nothing. There was no black crater, no blast, no fused rock, nothing but drifted snow. I squinted, stared, tried to remember where the Zap bomb had tumbled to a stop.
After the Zap Page 26