by Paul Draker
Then the world shredded apart in a chaos of noise, motion, rock, and flying metal.
CHAPTER 3
Lauren
August 6, 2007
Trango Tower, Karakoram Range, Pakistan
The metal piton whistled past, nearly hitting Lauren King in the head. She looked over her shoulder and watched it fall away. The four-inch angled steel spike drifted down alongside the planet’s tallest vertical rock face, shrinking until it was lost from sight, invisible against the white ice of the Baltoro Glacier six thousand feet below.
Reflexively, Lauren hugged the granite tighter. She glanced up at her companions, and her eyes narrowed. God damn it, Terry.
After five days on the wall, all three of them were tired and clumsy, but Terry was coming apart now. He was going too fast, fumbling and dropping gear.
Trango’s summit, a fang of orange rock, rose far above them. Too far. Lauren took a deep breath and turned to stare out at the ice-laden peaks around them, lit by dawn’s pink rays: Uli Biaho, K2, Gasherbrum IV, Cathedral. Across the empty gulf of thin air, the neighboring spires looked close enough to touch. A cascade of fog poured through Cathedral’s saddle like a silent waterfall, dissipating in midair a thousand feet down. They were on the roof of the world. No room for mistakes up here.
Her eyes dropped again to the glacier, over a mile below. Straight down. Terry shouldn’t be leading this pitch—or any pitch on Trango. She’d seen him get in trouble trying to solo the Nose on El Cap. Dumb-ass was going to earn himself a Darwin Award, trying to climb five-fourteen. Why hadn’t he said no to this trip?
Lauren knew damn well why Terry had come, though. She had caught his puppy-dog glances all summer in Yosemite’s Camp 4. She’d noticed the way his voice changed whenever he talked to her.
Christ, Terry, it was never going to happen.
She wasn’t sure what it was about her that attracted men, but even back in her suburban Danville high school, she had been a source of fascination for many. Maybe it was her mixed heritage—the contrast between her half-Chinese features and the long, muscular limbs that let her do more pull-ups than the male jocks she routinely humiliated. Or maybe the go-to-hell look in her eyes was a challenge they just couldn’t ignore. But whatever the reason, she knew Terry would have said yes to any trip she was going on, no matter where.
She gritted her teeth and let go with one hand, shaking her fingers to loosen them. By touch, she double-checked the figure-eight knot that tied the safety line into her harness loop, then slid her hand up the rope. Her fingers traced it past her belly, chest and shoulder, gauging the slack. A hundred thirty feet of 10.8-millimeter red and gold bi-pattern rope connected her climbing harness to Matt, who had led the pitch above her as they simulclimbed, and was now belaying both her and Terry above him.
Her gaze followed the line up the wall, counting Matt’s pro—his protection: the chocks, cams, and pins that he had set into the rock every twenty feet and tied into. Hardware secured the rope at four spots between Matt and Lauren, ready to catch Matt if he fell.
Far above her, Matt met her eyes. He shook his head, pointing up at the top of their line, where Terry clung eighty feet above him.
Lauren turned away. Don’t look at me, cowboy. This wasn’t my idea.
She dipped her fingers into the bag of climbing chalk hanging from the back of her waist harness, and reached for the next hold: a narrow flake of orange granite two feet above her head.
She looked at her hands, gripping the rock. Those large, square, unfeminine hands, with their knobby knuckles and strong fingers, were her deadbeat father’s. As a child, she had been ashamed of her hands. When Lauren was twelve, her mom had laid a dainty hand atop the back of Lauren’s own and nicknamed her “Mi-Go,” which meant “yeti”—the abominable snowman.
Those hands had gotten her in trouble, too—suspended in her sophomore year for breaking Sarah Calloway’s nose in the locker room. But Lauren wasn’t going to let a fucking cheerleader call her “Sasquatch” behind her back. Not after “Mi-Go.”
It had been a revelation to discover that her hands were perfectly designed for gripping and pinching and jamming invisible routes on rock that defied all other challengers. Her hands were the only thing she had ever been able to count on; people always disappointed her, sooner or later.
Lauren shifted a foot, smearing the smooth rubber of her climbing shoe against a granite nub, and pushed herself higher to bring her face level with Matt’s first piece of pro.
Her eyes widened.
The piton Matt had clipped their rope into was a dull, tarnished gray instead of green-painted chrome-moly steel like the ones dangling from Lauren’s own harness. She knew what that meant. Matt and Terry were both rushing. They were reusing old pro, tying into hardware the last team of climbers had left behind five years ago, instead of placing their own. Her chest tightened.
You know better than this, Matt. You taught me, remember?
After five seasons of water melting and freezing in the rock, expanding and contracting in all the little fissures, the old pro couldn’t be trusted.
Lauren braced herself against the rock face. She grabbed the carabiner clipping their rope to the piton’s eyehole, looped two fingers through the three-inch aluminum D-ring, and yanked. To her horror, the old pin pulled free from the crack, grating in the silence.
The piton dangled from her fingers, trailing the arc of limp rope. Three more pieces of hardware dotted the rock between her and Matt, and four between Matt and Terry. Lauren grimaced, knowing the rest of the pro above her was probably no good, either.
Nice going, team.
She looked up. High above her, Terry’s leg slipped, and her stomach clenched. He was losing it, which didn’t surprise her, but the bad pro meant that if he fell now, he would zipper the rope off the wall and take Matt with him. They would both drop, ripping out all seven pieces above her, and then the rope tied to Lauren’s harness would be the only thing connecting Matt and Terry to the face.
Her heart accelerated, thudding wildly in her chest. They would pull her off the wall, too.
Matt waved an arm, calling instructions down to her. His voice was bright with urgency, the words just senseless noise to her ears. Lauren shut him out and pressed her cheek against the cold orange rock. She could feel her teammates’ jerky movements vibrating down the rope. It felt like the first gentle trickles of snow that signaled the coming avalanche.
The moment she’d been dreading for days was finally here. But maybe they still had a chance of surviving this.
Matt had been impatient with her all morning, saying she was taking too long to clean the route and pull the gear behind them. What Lauren hadn’t told him was that she was trailing a second rope, looped through a Petzl GriGri as a self-belay. She was taking the time to sink her own anchors, sacrificing gear as they went. She was violating every principle of clean climbing because she had seen something like this coming.
But how much pro had she left in place below her right now?
Her eyes followed her self-belay rope down the granite wall. The loop dangled from her harness, hanging loosely for fifty feet to where she had threaded it through cams she’d placed in the rock. Another forty feet below that, the loop’s end was tied through angle pins she had worked into a Y-shaped crack. That was it. That was all of her pro, the climber’s protection supposed to catch her if she fell.
Fucking Matt. If it hadn’t been for his stupid bitching that she was slowing the pace, she’d have placed more of her own gear. A lot more.
Lauren gritted her teeth and ignored the scrabbling sounds and movements above her. Her breath came in shallow pants, leaving chuffs of icy vapor hanging in the still air.
Would her backup pro be enough to hold all three of them? If not, they would drop a vertical mile. Thirty seconds of free fall, conscious the whole way. Then they would crater into a pink smudge on the glacier.
Ignoring Matt’s panicked shouts, Lauren looked at her hands a
gain. They had never failed her, the way other people always did. Maybe they could save her now.
If there was enough time, she could sink more gear, tie herself to the wall.
Letting go with her left hand, she groped amongst the nuts and cams hanging from her harness belt until her trembling fingers closed around a climber’s “friend.” She quickly wedged the safety device into the crack, and its opposing cams expanded to lock into place. She reached for another and jammed it right above the first. She frantically threaded her harness rope through both of them. Her fingers flew, tying a clove hitch one-handed. She needed more time.
But there was no time left. The lead rope slackened suddenly as Terry came off the wall high above her. Lauren pressed her cheek against the cold granite again, seeing the speckled rock in high relief. She listened hard but heard nothing other than the fear-monster’s roar, the sound of blood rushing in her ears.
Matt had gotten them into this because he couldn’t admit she was a better climber than he ever was. That’s really why we’re up here, isn’t it, Matt? She forced her fingers into motion again, and grabbed a fixed nut, still attached to her harness loop. She wedged the hex nut into the crack at her waist.
Slamming more hardware in as fast as she could, she strained to hear.
When the sound came, she felt it thrum through the rope: the high, innocuous ping of Terry’s first anchor pulling free from the rock. A couple seconds later, there came another metallic ping, followed almost immediately by a third. The lead rope was unzipping.
Her rope went taut and she was jerked up hard against the rock. Terry had torn Matt away from the face, too.
Terry plummeted past. He flashed by in Lauren’s peripheral vision in eerie silence. Her hands scrabbled for a final death grip on the granite.
So none of this is your fault, Lauren? Really?
She thrust the unwelcome thought away.
Ping! That’s four.
Ping! Five.
The thrums were coming through the rope faster now, the anchors tearing out more violently as gravity sucked her teammates toward the earth.
Ping! Something sparked off the rock next to her face, sprinkling her chin with rock splinters. Part of an anchor cam.
Lauren’s eyes widened. They were shattering to pieces.
Matt plunged past, trailing the rope that connected them. His fingers almost touched her shoulder.
Ping! Last one.
She took a shuddering breath and locked every muscle rigid. She tried to melt herself into the rock, feeling her face contort into a tight mask of fear.
The rope through her harness ripped her away from the wall, yanking her downwards in a violent spray of broken cams and metal fragments, like she had been hit by a truck. Pain exploded through her chest and back as she tumbled head over heels into empty space.
Had she slowed them enough for the rest of her pro to catch them?
Her helmet struck the wall. She heard it fracture. A band of pain gripped her head. Sky and rock spun past over and over again. Her own self-belay rope looped thru the air behind her—when it snapped taut a hundred feet down, would her last two anchors hold?
I’m twenty-three.
She was dragged earthwards. Loose rope tangled her arms and legs.
I’ve barely done anything with my life.
The wall blurred past just out of reach.
I’ve never been in love.
Lauren gave herself fully to her terror.
I don’t want to die.
CHAPTER 4
Brent
December 26, 2004
Ton Sai Bay, Koh Phi Phi Island, Thailand
The green waters rolled back, parting like a curtain to reveal a scene of utter devastation. Brent Wilson looked at his wife and son, standing on either side of him. He gripped their hands in his and held them tight as the three stood together on the fourth-floor hotel balcony, watching the waters recede.
The sea drained away from the narrow isthmus, pouring down the beaches on both sides. The churning waves drew wreckage in their wake: capsized long-tail boats, bamboo roofs, lounge chairs, beach umbrellas. And people. Hundreds of bodies swirled amid the flotsam—men, women, children—some struggling, but most limp and still.
Brent closed his eyes for a moment. So many dead.
Tourists and Thai villagers alike had been swept along when the tsunami’s twin waves surged up the crescent-shaped beaches that lined either side of the island. The two waves had come together in the crowded strip of palm trees between the two beaches, where Ton Sai village’s shops and restaurants clustered thickest. Most of the structures were gone now, dismantled by the crushing weight of water.
There had been no warning.
“Dad, the people that were on the beach—why didn’t they run away?”
Brent heard his son’s voice crack. They had booked this family trip months ago, to celebrate Brent’s fiftieth birthday. He put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and hugged him tight. In the face of the tragedy below, he seemed so young, so vulnerable. Fifteen—almost an adult, but in so many ways still a child. Had Brent been the same way at his age?
“I was watching them, Dad. When the bay emptied and all the boats beached, some of them actually ran closer—chasing the waterline out. Why would they do that? Didn’t they know the water would come rushing back? I saw a woman pulling her kids forward. Didn’t she realize they were going to die?”
Brent shared a glance with Mary. After twenty-four years of marriage, he could read the question behind her troubled look. Will he be all right? her eyes asked. How badly will this scar our son?
He took a deep breath. That was part of the problem, of course: she sheltered their son too much. But there were things he would soon have to face. They all would. He released the boy and tried to answer his question.
“It’s human nature, son. Evolution. Most of us aren’t wired for survival anymore.”
“I don’t understand. They weren’t panicking or anything. They just stood there.”
Brent laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. “That happens. It’s what nine out of ten people do in an emergency. They get confused, freeze up. I see it all the time as a doctor.”
The boy nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from the carnage down below.
Brent looked over at Mary again. She was holding his black medical bag.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Grab as many blankets and sheets as you can carry. I’ll help with triage.”
He smiled. His face felt tight. He stepped over and hugged his wife, taking the bag from her. “I love you, Mary.”
He knew she was strong, and she would need to be—but for a different reason than what they now faced today.
“I keep thinking of that family with the flower shop.” Mary stripped the blankets from the bed and bundled them in her arms. “They were so nice to us. All these people are. I hope they’re all right.”
“Come on.” Brent turned to his son. “We’ve got work to do.”
Mary stiffened. “No. He should stay here. It’ll be bad…”
He put a hand on her arm. “It’s better if we do this as a family.”
• • •
The first floor of the hotel was awash with sodden debris. The expansive lobby on the second floor had been converted to a field hospital. The injured lay in rows, covered by blankets and sheets. Next door, they had set up a makeshift morgue in the shell of a restaurant. Outside, seabirds split the air with raucous cries, swooping down to feast on the bounty of stranded fish that flopped amid the wet wreckage. Urgency distorted the shouts of rescuers, lending a grim cadence to the singsong Thai voices. Rescue parties brought a steady stream of casualties to both buildings.
The other doctors and volunteers deferred automatically to Brent, because of his ER experience and silver hair but also because his height and stocky shoulders cut an imposing figure among the shorter, slighter Thai. He had taken charge, directing the emergency treatment and rescue efforts.
The morgue was filling fast as well.
Brent finished stabilizing his current patient, a Thai man with two broken legs. Many of the injured had lower-extremity lacerations and breaks caused by wave-borne debris. The less fortunate had been struck higher on their bodies or crushed in the grinding wreckage. He could hear helicopters outside, ferrying the worst injured to the mainland.
He stood up and tucked his hands into his vest pockets. They had done some good here. He looked around for his son and spotted him by the window. He looked pale. He was doing fine, though, helping where he could. Brent’s chest swelled in a burst of bittersweet pride. He walked over and surprised the boy with a heartfelt hug.
“Where’s your mom?”
“She’s trying to track down some antibiotics. We ran out.” The boy suddenly pointed out the window. “Look, that guy over there in the orange baseball cap, helping search. When the water started going out, I saw him, Dad. Everyone else just stood there, but he climbed up in that big mango tree.”
“A survivor-type.” He looked at the man his son had indicated: a short Thai with skinny arms and bad teeth. Nothing noteworthy about the man’s appearance. Brent observed him closely. “About one out of ten people is an instinctive survivor, who somehow always seems to beat the odds. This guy… well, we can learn a lot from people like that.”
“What makes survivors different?”
“Nobody really knows.” He continued to watch the man in the baseball cap with rapt attention. “Genetics, upbringing—these things are certainly factors. But there’s no test for it, other than a real life-or-death situation like this.”
“Sa-was-dee krup, Doctor Brent.” The hotel manager stood nearby. He dipped his head in a respectful half bow. “We found a young girl. She is in very bad shape. Please, maybe you can save her.”
Brent followed the hotel manager out. He glanced back at his son, a silhouette standing by the window. The boy looked insubstantial.