by Rick Chesler
This year the mountain had taken them all. The guides Lenard Skinner and Miguel Ruiz. The sirdar Tashi and at least four other Sherpas, including her favorite, Norbu. The clients, some of whom didn’t belong in the Himalayas in the first place. Particularly the young Jimmy and the Italian, Francesca Corsi.
There had been no communication with any of the climbers since yesterday afternoon, when Zack Hitchens told Ian he was on the summit. That evening, Simon from the Scottish team confirmed that no one from the Himalayan Skies expedition had returned to Camp IV on the South Col. It was all over. Everyone was lost, including their legendary expedition leader who had died of a heart attack in the communications tent at Base Camp.
Ian, she thought. She pictured him sitting next to her on the tiny Twin Otter, asking her for her compact. She shuddered as she remembered him sitting up nights in his tent at Base Camp studying his precious weather reports.
“The bloody weather is the only way this mountain can fuck with me,” she once heard him say, “the only way the bugger can push me around. Well, I’m not going to bloody well let it.”
Patty summoned her strength and stepped outside the tent, the wind instantly stinging her face. Through narrowed slits she saw Aasif standing a few feet away, a haggard look in his eyes.
He motioned over his shoulder at the rabble of folks with cameras and microphones making their way up the glacier toward Base Camp.
“They’re almost here, Patty.”
* * *
From his armchair in Tiverton, Rhode Island, Marvin Combs muted the television as he watched events unfold on CNN. Tragedy Returns to Everest, the banner headline read. The cable news network flashed on file photos from 1996 and 2014, because that was all they had, at least for the moment. Side-by-side pictures of late expedition leaders Rob Hall and Scott Fischer popped up on screen every fifteen minutes or so.
Marvin closed his eyes as the station mercifully went to commercial. He wished he could sleep. Glancing at the phone, he wondered how long it would be before he received the next call from Arnold Peavy, asking after the fate of Zack Hitchens. “Any word yet from Base Camp?” Peavy had said just twenty minutes ago.
“No,” Marvin said, before disconnecting the call.
What was I thinking? Marvin again asked himself. Sending that young man into the mountains...
Marvin knew now that he’d never forgive himself. He’d just learned the most painful lesson of his life: What worked for one man won’t necessarily work for another. One man’s paradise, and all that jazz.
Back when Nadia died in that horrible wreck, Marvin had been so damned sure of himself. So arrogant. He’d been so certain he could help Zack just as Zack helped him years ago. He thought back to those days now.
Marvin had been accused of sexually harassing a young teacher’s aide. The accusation was bullshit, but it had been made by a prominent student, the daughter of an alumnus who donated an annual fortune to the university. One of the campus buildings bore his, and her, family name. It didn’t help, even in those days, that he was black and she was white. Everyone at the college bought her story. No one for a long while but young Zack Hitchens believed him. Zack remained on Marvin’s side while the rest of the faculty, even Arnold Peavy, abandoned him.
This young white biology professor stuck with Marvin, whom he barely knew, through thick and thin. When Marvin was all but ready to resign to avoid the hassle, Zack Hitchens talked him out of it. Told him to fight. Assured him that the truth would come out.
Zack’s advice had reminded Marvin of a talk he’d had with the head lama at Tengboche Monastery years before. “There are three things that cannot be long hidden,” the Abbott had said. “The sun, the moon, and the truth.”
And the truth, like the sun and the moon, did eventually come out. A friend of the female teacher’s aide eventually folded under questioning. Admitted the young woman had had a crush on Marvin Combs from the very start, and was infuriated when he rejected her advances.
The hell of it was, Marvin had never even realized the young teacher’s aide had been making romantic advances. He thought she was merely friendly. But after completing the Seven Summits, he’d seen everything through a truer lens. Ironic. While the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents took literally thousands of lives, they had combined to save his.
Marvin’s journey had started in Tanzania, and he had originally thought that was where it would end. But it was there at Mount Kilimanjaro that Marvin met the man who would ultimately change his life, the British mountaineer Ian Furst.
“Problem is, you Americans are too bloody comfortable,” Ian had said.
Marvin had dropped his jaw. This after Marvin had just lost his beloved wife.
“Most bloody Yanks are afraid to adventure too far from the homeland,” Ian continued, “afraid to cross a fucking border. Hell, most Americans think they have to die within fifty miles of where they were born. But you, mate, you already crossed the border by coming here to Africa. Why not cross a few more?”
Marvin had simply stood in the Tanzanian heat and listened while Ian offered him a guided tour of the Seven Summits.
“In the States,” Ian said, “you’re brainwashed into thinking that life’s greatest journey takes place sometime between death and some bloody afterlife. I don’t know about you, mate, but being eaten from the inside out by armies of bloody maggots doesn’t sound like a smashing good time to me.”
Marvin had smirked. “But climbing mountains, risking your life, does?”
“What is life, Professor,” Ian asked, “but a collection of experiences? What true life enthusiast, then, would pass up such an opportunity to add to their collection the set of experiences I’m offering you?”
And Ian had been right. The Seven Summits changed Marvin’s life for the better. Even after he returned from Antarctica without his toes, Marvin never once regretted following Ian’s advice. So it seemed so clear to him that when Nadia Hitchens died, Zack should follow in Marvin’s footsteps to regain his footing on life.
The muted CNN anchor now returned with the red banner, Breaking News. A new file photo appeared, this one of “Legendary British Mountaineer” Ian Furst.
Taking a deep breath, Marvin picked up the remote and turned on the closed captioning.
...Leader of the Himalayan Skies Expedition has reportedly died at Everest Base Camp in Nepal as a result of a probable myocardial infarction, which is essentially...
“A heart attack,” Marvin whispered to the empty room. “Jesus Christ.”
Marvin’s eyes welled up, a sinking feeling swelling in his gut. He turned off the television and pushed himself out of his chair. He unplugged his landline and turned his cell phone ringer to silent.
I’m so sorry, Zachary, he thought as he headed up the stairs to his bedroom. Marvin never felt so helpless in all his life. Because from Tiverton, Rhode Island, there was nothing more Marvin Combs could do but mourn.
* * *
She died doing something she loved, Zack kept telling himself. Is that so unhappy?
Unfortunately on the mountain, there was no time to grieve. Daylight had broken night, but nothing had broken the storm. Now the three of them - Zack, Dustin and Tashi - faced a falling wall of white that blocked their exit out of the Death Zone.
“Leave me,” Tashi pleaded, as the three men huddled together. Even shouting, they were barely able to hear each other over the winds. “Leave me. I’m blind!”
“Hate to break it to you, Tashi,” Dustin hollered. “But we’re all blind now. Not one of us can see a damn thing in this storm.”
Unbroken snow dropped from an overcast sky onto snow-covered ground, creating a whiteout. Under any other circumstances, the climbers would be ground to a halt, ordered not to move down the mountain. In a whiteout, climbers lost all sense of depth and orientation. They could become lost on the mountain or easily walk off a ledge. But here in the Death Zone, Zack knew they had no choice.
It was nearly four
thousand feet from here to the North Col. Four thousand feet down in a hurricane-force storm. But they had to try. It would take just another hour or two in the oxygen-starved Death Zone, then one-by-one they would begin to die.
The wind sounded like a shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral.
“This mountain’s mood swings are only a little less intense than my ex-wife’s,” Dustin yelled, trying to lighten the mood.
Zack tried to laugh. “She was that bad?”
“You heard of bipolar?” Dustin shouted. “Well, my ex-wife suffers from bi-TCH. And all the drugs in the world can’t cure it.”
Zack watched Dustin return his rucksack to his back and thought of Francesca and everything they were leaving behind.
Zack had covered Francesca’s body as best he could, though the storm had done most of the work. He had also placed a large rock by her head and carved the initials FC into it with his ice ax.
“Now let’s get the hell off this rock,” Zack said, grabbing Tashi firmly by the arm.
As Tashi took his first tentative steps, Zack slowly turned back to Francesca’s headstone and silently said his goodbye.
* * *
At Base Camp, Patty fielded the questions from reporters as best she could.
“How many on your expedition are confirmed dead?”
Patty drew a breath. “We’re not at liberty to confirm fatalities on the mountain until all climbers’ families have been notified.”
“But some families have already been notified, correct?”
Patty bowed her head. “The parents of Jimmy Melonakos have been notified that their son has been missing on the mountain for several days and is therefore presumed dead.”
“Have you lost any other clients in this tragedy?”
Patty stared directly into one of the cameras. “It is likely that other clients on our expedition have been lost.”
“Can you tell us their names?”
“No, I cannot.”
“Is there any ongoing attempt at a rescue?”
Patty solemnly shook her head. “Current conditions on the mountain prohibit any search and rescue attempt at the moment. We are closely monitoring all weather reports and will make an effort to recover any and all survivors as soon as possible.”
“Now that expedition leader Ian Furst is deceased, who is in charge?”
Patty swallowed hard. “I suppose that would be me.”
“Are you personally then taking any steps to–”
Patty cut the male reporter off. She’d learned that trick from Ian. “I’m sorry,” she said, motioning to the rear of the throng. “You in the back there, it’s time you got your say. You’ve been waiting very patiently. What’s your question?”
A dainty Swiss reporter stepped to the forefront. “Is it true that one of your guides was discovered murdered on the South Col of the mountain?”
The chatter of the crowd rose immensely. Patty attempted to draw in another breath, but it burned from nose to stomach. “There are, um, some questionable circumstances surrounding the death of one of our guides. Next ques–”
“A source on the mountain tells me that a man was found decapitated at Camp Four. I’d say those were more than ‘questionable circumstances.’” The dainty Swiss reporter, it seemed, was not going to let up. “Is it true that members of your expedition believe that guide was murdered with an ice ax by one of your clients?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny–”
“Locals in surrounding villages say there was a murder in Pangboche this past December, that a man was mauled in a manner much like your guide–”
Patty shook her head, breathing hard. “I have no information on that incident whatsoever.”
“But you can confirm, can you not, that during your expedition’s trek from Lukla to Base Camp, a number of your yaks were slaughtered in an outdoor pen at Namche Bazaar?”
Patty tried to force a smile. She looked around for other waving hands, but all the other reporters were now silent, listening intently for her answer. “I’m, um, sorry, I don’t quite know what you’re getting at here?”
“What I’m getting at, Ms. Davenport, is that there have been reports from locals in the surrounding villages that your expedition has not merely been hit with bad luck here in the Himalayas, but that your party is responsible for bringing something, shall I say, out of the forests, and that this thing has been committing atrocities throughout the Khumbu and may well now be on the mountain killing innocent climbers.”
Patty laughed nervously. “I’m sorry, Miss, but you sound mad.”
“Do I?” she said. “Well, then can you tell me why your sirdar, Tashi Sherpa, radioed down to Base Camp multiple times, warning of an abominable smell, of a horrifying shriek, of a beast twice the size of a man up high on the mountain?”
Patty’s eyes became slits in the cold. “Exactly what are you asking me?”
“I’m asking you, Ms. Davenport, if you have any credible evidence of the existence of the legendary creature that is said to haunt this valley? I’m asking you, Miss Patty, is there a yeti roaming Everest?”
Chapter 35
North Col
Zack doubled over and rested his hands on his knees, trying like hell to breathe.
“No time!” Dustin shouted.
“No choice,” Zack retorted.
It had taken the better part of the day to reach the North Col from Camp V on the north side, the three men pushing against bone-crushing winds, practically blind and without a single breath of bottled oxygen left in their now-abandoned tanks. The storm had finally let up somewhere on the North Ridge, but that was when the real horror began, when the monster first reared its head and roared, when the beast showed them they’d have to contend with more than just the mountain, much more than just the storm.
From here Zack knew it was pretty much a straight shot down the East Rongbuk Glacier, a harrowing downward trek over unstable ice and loose rock that somewhat resembled the treacherous Khumbu Icefall.
“G-go. T-take Tashi,” Zack said, unable to catch his breath. “You’re gonna have to go on without me.”
The North Col was an exposed pass that connected Mount Everest to Changtse. It was where climbers attempting Everest from the Tibetan side would normally fix their first camp. But with the north side this year closed by the Chinese, the North Col was empty, just a snow-blanketed expanse with nowhere to hide.
“We’re not leaving without you,” Dustin shouted at Zack.
Zack could understand Dustin’s unwillingness to leave him behind. Zack had shown the same resolve with regard to Tashi. But Zack simply couldn’t go on. Not without further endangering Dustin’s and Tashi’s lives.
He’d already lost Francesca. Picturing her now, her face a pale emaciated replica of what it had been, Zack felt deathly ill again. Still, the image froze in his mind: Francesca buried in a crude snow trench, her once-warm body frozen and rigid, a pink froth bubbling from her nose and mouth. He wanted to scream out.
Zack remembered a psychologist he’d seen once on the Discovery Channel, suggesting that legends such as Bigfoot and yeti were mere representations of man’s animal desires, the primitive instinctual drives buried deeply in every individual’s personality. He thought he felt that drive now, thought he could rage out like a feral animal and kill anyone or anything that got in his path.
“You will not be punished for your anger,” the Abbot had said at Tengboche, “you will be punished by your anger.”
To hell with that, Zack thought now. He could tear Todd Mercer’s throat from his neck and rip the yeti’s heart from its chest, and he would feel nothing but pure pleasure.
Zack couldn’t give up. He had to go on.
But suddenly he was struck by something hard and heavy in the small of his back. Zack’s first thought as he dropped face first into the snow was that he’d been struck with a bullet. A searing pain exploded outward from his spine and the wind was completely knocked out of him.
; His face buried in an ice cold white, Zack thought he would finally allow himself to slip into an endless unconsciousness. He thought of Melinda Peavy’s bottle of prescription Ambien and of how he was willing to let himself go even then.
But even as he drifted, Zack felt a strong set of arms lifting him by his climbing suit. He opened his eyes and realized Dustin was guiding him hurriedly behind a giant boulder. For the second time on the mountain, Dustin Blaisdell was saving his life.
“Stay here,” Dustin shouted. “I’m going back for Tashi.”
In a daze, Zack’s eyes fluttered until he spotted the large grey rock that lay where he fell. He reached for the center of his back and groaned in pain.
Then another huge rock rained down on the col from above, barely missing Dustin as he pulled Tashi toward the boulder.
“The fucking thing is hurling rocks at us,” Dustin shouted once he and the Sherpa were safely behind the large stone.
Zack didn’t need to be told. “He’s got the high ground,” he said, as another massive rock whizzed just over their heads. “We’ll never get away as long he’s there. He’ll crush us as soon as we lift our heads.”
Dustin set his jaw. Slowly clenched his fists. “Zack, our only chance is to kill it.”
Zack quickly shook his head. “Impossible. There’s no way we can get close enough without getting killed ourselves.” Zack felt his chest tighten, felt adrenaline sweep through his body as he had on the suspension bridge over the Imja Khola river and several times since. “You get Tashi to safety,” he shouted, “and I’ll bolt across the col and distract it.”
“Forget it,” Dustin shouted back. “The fucker wants me. If anyone is gonna escape with their lives it’s gonna be you and Tashi. I’m the one who has to distract him.”
Zack grabbed Dustin by the front of his climbing suit. “The yeti killed Skinner and probably Jimmy, and who the hell knows who else. Its quarrel isn’t with you anymore, Dustin; its quarrel is with mankind.”