The Yeti: A Novel

by Rick Chesler

  “You all right, Zack?” Dustin asked.

  Zack looked down. His arm with the ice ax was down at his side just as it should have been. “I’m fine.”

  Again came the violent howl.

  “I’m no expert,” Zack said, squinting through the gloom, “but to me, that doesn’t sound anything like an avalanche.”

  The clouds had grown thick once more.

  “That’s because it’s not,” Dustin said. “Now let’s keep moving.”

  Chapter 17

  Advance Base Camp

  “You all right, buddy?” Dustin said.

  From his knees, Zack groggily lifted his head. At its highest point, Zack’s body had reached a new low. No words could describe ABC but pure hell, cast in blinding white. At 21,300 feet, Camp II - known to climbers as Advance Base Camp or ABC - was a rocky wasteland, made up of dozens of nylon tents scattered haphazardly across a hilly, windswept expanse of ice and snow.

  And the cold wasn’t the worst of it. In fact, compared to the searing headache, the overwhelming nausea, and Zack’s increasing inability to sleep, the freezing temps at altitude were mere nuisance - nothing but a petty discomfort, even were they to lead to frostbite and the amputation of fingers and toes.

  “I think...” Zack choked back warm phlegm. “I think this is the end of the line for me.”

  Zack tried to push himself to his feet. There was no escaping this agony so long as he remained at this elevation, which according to Ian’s itinerary meant a full two days. Then another three at the end of the week, and another two early the week following. Impossible, he thought. He’d never make it. This was as far as he’d get. If he somehow survived the night, tomorrow he’d have to descend.

  “You just need some more time to acclimatize,” Dustin said, helping Zack to his feet. “Have you eaten anything?”

  Food was the furthest thing from Zack’s mind even though he knew he had to eat.

  Climbers lost on average between fifteen and thirty pounds climbing Everest, Dr. Kapoor had said. Virtually all of it muscle mass from the shoulders, back and legs. Each climber was therefore required to consume upwards of six thousand calories a day, three times what Zack normally ingested at sea level.

  “I can’t keep anything down,” Zack said.

  But here on the mountain it was imperative. In the Death Zone, the body devoured its own muscle to stay alive. Fifteen thousand calories would be burned on summit day alone. Run out of muscle high on the mountain, and the human body simply collapsed and died.

  Zack glanced around, surprised not to find the lean purple climbing suit clinging to Dustin’s side. “Where’s Francesca?” he said.

  Dustin sighed. “In her tent sulking. She’d planned on taking another group shot here at ABC, but no one’s cooperating.”

  Zack bowed his head, thinking back to the photo the expedition had posed for when they first arrived at Base Camp. Before he and Francesca argued, before Vergé and Ruiz, Skinner and Jimmy, and Egger and Dustin had all almost come to blows. Now the camp was split into factions: Egger and Jimmy hanging out by themselves; Skinner speaking only to give direction; Ruiz praying alone; Vergé off by himself, brooding.

  And everyone looked so damned different than they had only two weeks ago: Dustin sewed together like Victor Frankenstein’s monster, Francesca’s cheeks sunken in and ghoulishly pale. And Zack... Well, Zack could no longer bear to look at himself in the mirror. Last time he did was just to stare at the kata still draped around his thinning neck.

  “Anyway,” Dustin said, “the Sherpas aren’t even here. Wouldn’t be much of a picture without them.”

  Tashi, Norbu and the other Himalayan Supermen were setting up higher camps. Each carried almost half their own body weight, including a half dozen full oxygen bottles at a time. Even in the Death Zone. Their hearts were more efficient than Westerners’, their blood capable of holding more oxygen. In some real sense, Zack thought, the Sherpas weren’t quite human; they had evolved in order to survive up high.

  Still, Zack wondered what possessed these men to risk their lives. Sure, the Sherpas were paid well for their excruciating work on the mountain. In a season, a good climbing Sherpa would earn thousands of dollars - a fortune compared to the average Nepali income of just a few hundred. But of course this line of work often proved deadly. Dozens of Sherpas had already died on Everest, and each season, with an increasing number of climbers on the mountain, that number became more likely to grow.

  And unfortunately, Sherpas still didn’t earn nearly as much as guides, even though their work was just as difficult, their risk just as great. Miguel Ruiz, in an initial interview with Francesca, claimed he’d be taking home twenty-two thousand Euros this season on the mountain. Skinner, the chief guide, nearly twice as much.

  Now, as the sun set over ABC, the Kiwi approached, his hands buried in the pockets of his bright green climbing suit.

  “Bit of a change in plans tonight, mates,” Skinner said. “Zack, you’ve got yourself a single. Dustin, I’m afraid you’re gonna be bunking with me.”

  Dustin frowned. “And why’s that?”

  “Ian’s orders, mate.”

  Dustin shook his head. “Look, Skinner, I’m already settled with Zack. And I promise you, I’m not going anywhere. Let me just stay where I am for now. Ian will never know.”

  Skinner shot a look across camp at Ruiz, who was now huddled with Egger and Jimmy sipping tea. “Sorry, mate. Not with the Second Coming around. I need this job. I can ill afford to lose it right now.”

  “Fine,” Dustin finally said. “I’ll join you in a couple of hours.”

  Skinner grimaced. “Afraid that won’t fly either, mate.”

  Zack looked on as Dustin’s paste pale face turned slowly red. “What the hell do you mean, Skinner?”

  “Thing is, mate,” Skinner said, his face a beacon of indifference, “Ian’s gone and put you on curfew as well.”

  * * *

  Dustin threw the last of his things onto the floor of Skinner’s tent, then tossed himself like a log onto his sleeping bag. He bit his thumb in an effort to calm himself down. He had no choice but to jump through Ian’s hoops. He’d come too far to turn back now.

  It seemed as though years had passed since Dustin first arrived in Tibet. But in reality, it had been only this past December. Just a few months before he met Zack and Francesca at the airport in Kathmandu.

  His first trip to the Himalayas was a journey long overdue.

  For the past two decades Dustin had scoured America’s Pacific Northwest for the legendary Bigfoot with little success. In addition, he’d twice traveled to the Kerinci region of southwestern Sumatra in search of the Orang Pendek. There, on his first expedition, still early in his career, he’d experienced his first cryptid sighting: a startling, human-like primate up in a tree, a creature which so closely resembled artistic reconstructions he’d seen of the Java Man, also known as Homo erectus. He thought back to that thrilling day now, needing to rekindle the feelings of success in order to push himself forward.

  In the jungle, the creature clung motionless, at first seemingly unaware it had been spotted. Dustin casually turned ninety degrees, setting down his pack and lifting the camera that hung around his neck. Using his peripheral vision, he tried to determine the best angle. He estimated the distance and adjusted his camera’s technical settings. Then in one swift motion, he turned and shot.

  Before Dustin’s finger even left the button the creature was on him, knocking him down, shrieking and driving Dustin’s head into the moist, leaf-littered ground. Driving it over and over and over again.

  Before losing consciousness, Dustin was able to get a good look at his attacker, was able to see into its eyes, even in all the chaos. More man than any animal, he’d thought, as the beast slammed its forehead against his nose, headbutting him like a hairy, steroid-abusing WWE reject.

  When Dustin finally came to, he was drenched in his own blood from a broken nose. Probably a concussion, to
o. Still, he was grateful just to be alive, to have survived an attack from an actual Orang Pendek.

  It was an Orang Pendek after all; he’d never been so sure of anything in his life. The creature was clearly an unknown primate, one that dwelled in the trees and very possibly walked upright.

  Despite his injuries, Dustin was downright giddy. Even more so after he lifted his weary body from the ground and examined the tracks left behind by the beast. Now there was no doubt. The bastard was bipedal.

  Dustin had discovered an unknown species, a species directly related to humans.

  Visions of the five-foot tall creature covered in dark, thick, shaggy hair were soon replaced with images of himself on television describing his find. Relating in great detail how the being--an aggressive male--attacked him, how it leapt from a tree and drove him to the ground. How its brown, hairless face was mere centimeters from his, its hot stinking breath making his eyes water, even as it bared its teeth, large and yellow and threatening to rip the flesh from his nose. How, with massive man-like hands, it gripped Dustin’s head and repeatedly smacked it against the hard ground until he lost consciousness. How he came to and found himself alone, the only evidence of the attack his wounds, the creature’s prints, and a lone photo that could rewrite the books on evolution.

  Still dizzy, the jungle spinning all around him, Dustin plopped down in a sitting position and grabbed at his chest. Panic set in. He felt around his body then clutched at the dirt and grass searching for his camera. He slithered on his elbows toward the tree in which he’d first spotted the creature. He surveyed the ground.

  The camera was nowhere to be found.

  * * *

  Zack faded in and out of consciousness so many times he could no longer distinguish dream from thought. He twisted and turned, pressed his hands against his ears, the vicious wind smacking against his tent like a madman trying to tear in, the strange shrieking cry growing louder, sounding ever closer to camp. Zack’s eyes remained closed; he squeezed them tight.

  Suddenly the tent’s nylon flap flew open, a burst of biting wind blowing in.

  Zack shot up, his hands clutched to the kata around his neck. Even in the arctic air, the kata was drenched with sweat.

  “So sorry,” Tashi said, poking his head in. He seemed agitated. “Just want to see if everyone all right.”

  Zack slowly nodded as the Sherpa stepped inside, the sirdar’s eyes darting around the tent.

  Finally his stricken gaze settled on Zack. “You wear,” Tashi said, pointing at the kata. “Good for protection. Chomolungma, the mountain, she is very, very angry this year.”

  Outside, another long echoing shriek sounded from somewhere nearby.

  “It cries,” Tashi said, suddenly trembling, his head turned toward the roof of the tent. “The Mother Goddess does not wish us to stay.”

  Zack awaited an explanation. But the Sherpa only turned, opened the flap and abruptly exited the tent.

  * * *

  “Can’t sleep either?” Zack found Francesca hugging herself in a tight purple ball outside her tent. The only light emanated from Zack’s dying headlamp.

  She looked up at him, her eyes red either from crying or the brutal cold. Maybe both. The wind had died down but the air was still bitter. “I am so tired,” she whispered.

  Zack extinguished his headlamp and sat next to her on a long nylon strip. He gazed up at the stars, thinking Francesca didn’t look like she belonged on a mountain. Then again, neither had Nadia.

  “Sorry if I sounded insensitive the other day,” he started. “You’re right. There’s nothing at all selfish about risking your life for something you love. In fact, I’ve always admired people who were able to.”

  Francesca smiled, her perfect teeth barely visible in the moonlight. “Admired? Or envied?”

  Zack returned the gesture, confident she couldn’t see his dimple in the darkness. “A bit of both, I guess.”

  She turned her head away from him and spoke to the wind. “It’s funny, I became indignant because I have always told myself that that was how my mother died, doing something she loved.”

  “Did she?” he said.

  Zack could hear the material of her climbing suit lift in a shrug.

  “I do not know. She died taking pictures.”

  “Pictures? She was a journalist, like you?”

  “No, not like me. Nothing like me. She took beautiful photographs, of flowers and landscapes and birds and insects. She was an artist, not a journalist.”

  Zack lowered his voice. “How did she die?”

  “When I was twelve, she, my father and I were on holiday in Lisbon. She was snapping photos of the tide. My father and I, we were off fishing.” A long pause, then finally: “A rogue wave, it came up and snatched her right off the rocks. She drowned. Her body, it was never recovered.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It is why I feel such sympathy for you, Zack. My father, he was never the same after he lost his wife. He became so depressed he was no longer able to work, to feed us. My aunt and uncle were made to pick up the slack. But they had four children of their own, all much younger than me. I spent time with my pets--a dog and three cats. That is why I so love animals.” She hesitated. “And I suppose that is why I feel so ambitious today.”

  “You work for a news organization?”

  “Actually, I write books.”

  Zack nodded, though he knew she couldn’t see him. “In Italian, I guess?”

  “In fact, just about all my writings are in English. I was schooled at Oxford.”

  “Really?” Zack said. “Anything I might have seen on the shelves?”

  “Doubtful,” she said, and left it at that. “And you? You enjoy teaching at university?”

  The question took Zack by surprise. Bristol University was half a world away, and it felt as though it’d been years since he last stepped foot on its campus. Nothing had changed - he’d be returning there this summer - yet it was difficult now, here on the mountain, to imagine himself ever going back.

  “It’s very fulfilling,” was allhe said.

  They both fell quiet, the sounds of the night replacing their words.

  Finally, Francesca spoke. “So, have you decided? Is Advance Base Camp your final stop?”

  “If I feel like this here,” he said, “what chance do I have higher up? Even if I make it to Camp Three, I’ll never be able to sleep.”

  “At Camp Three, we can sleep on supplemental oxygen,” she said. “Besides, we will have plenty of time to acclimatize between now and next week.”

  Zack nodded. “How about you? Do you have any doubt you’ll make the top?”

  “Of course,” she said, chuckling. “I have never been higher than the summit of the Matterhorn at less than fifteen thousand feet.”

  Zack was surprised to hear this. She’d seemed so confident, he’d just assumed Francesca was a seasoned mountaineer. “I remember not too long ago when I hadn’t been much higher than the summit of the Matterhorn rollercoaster at Disneyland.”

  She chuckled with a smile.“If I do not make it to the top, I will certainly be disappointed, but it will not be the end of the world. I will still be a happy Italian girl.”

  With a kiss on Zack’s cheek, she rose to her feet and dusted herself off, adding: “Just so long as I get my story.”

  Chapter 18

  Lhotse Face

  With his gloved right hand, Zack slid his jumar up the fixed rope again, careful not to look up. He suspected the sheer enormity of the glacial blue wall would be enough to convince him to give up. And he couldn’t give up here. Not with Dustin and Francesca just below him.

  He’d made the mistake of gazing skyward a few times before and the view from this angle was dizzying, far worse than hanging upside down from a harness over a four hundred foot-deep crevasse. After all, falling headfirst into a chasm would have been easy. Ascending the hellish and seemingly endless Lhotse Face was anything but.

  In fact, the wester
n flank of Lhotse seemed insurmountable. They’d been climbing three straight hours already and weren’t even close. Camp III lay in the heavens - halfway up the Face, positioned somewhere along the merciless slope, still out of sight.

  Zack breathed in as much thin air as he could, then dug his right crampon into the ice. He took another fruitless breath then raised his left foot to meet the right. He stamped his left crampon into the ice. He greedily sucked in another lungful of frosty air, then slowly slid his jumar north again.

  “One of the most challenging parts of the mountain,” Ian told the team just days ago during a respite at Base Camp, “is the barbarous Lhotse Face. Due in no small part to the fact that you still won’t be on bottled oxygen when you begin climbing it. In other words, it’s the highest part of the mountain you’ll climb without breathing bottled gas.”

  Ian shook his head as though he were disgusted at his team for even trying it. “The air’s so bloody thin up there, you’ll barely want to pay attention to the Face itself. It’ll be all you can bloody well do just to breathe. But each of you must figure a way to focus on climbing. The Lhotse Face is over eleven hundred meters tall - that’s thirty-seven hundred feet for you Yanks - and it rises at forty- and fifty-degree pitches with the occasional eighty-degree bulge. The Face doesn’t require much skill, mind you. Just the ability to ascend a fixed rope. But if you’re ever untied and you somehow manage to fall, well... Let’s just say, you’d better hope your affairs back home are in order.”

  Zack wanted so badly to draw one full, clean breath. Amazing, he thought, how at sea level we take breathing for granted. This was far worse than any common cold he’d ever experienced, worse than any flu or sinus infection. It felt as though his entire respiratory system had suddenly shut down, froze up.