He reached under his jacket and checked for broken or loose bones. There seemed to be none. Just blood on the palm of his right hand from a superficial wound.
I’m fucking lucky.
He pulled his legs up under him and shouted, “Help!”
Then realized that his voice would barely reach the surface.
He was a good thirty to forty yards down. The camp was another two hundred yards away. He squatted, embarrassed that he’d made such a stupid mistake. And hoped that sooner or later, Davis, Akil, Edyta, or one of the Germans would notice that he was missing. If the wind didn’t kick up again, they’d be able to follow his footsteps and they’d find him-if he didn’t pass out from exposure first.
Even though he was wearing only a light down jacket, it didn’t feel terribly cold yet. But that could change quickly.
Chasing away an impulse to panic, he looked for a way out.
The icy bridge he rested on was barely four feet wide, and slick. Carefully holding on to a crease in the wall, he climbed to his feet and, using the light on his helmet, surveyed the crevasse above.
It glittered back like an ice jewel, with dozens of various-sized stalactites and columns sticking out at different angles.
As amazing as it looked, there appeared to be no chance of climbing out without crampons and an ice axe. The former were back in the tent, and he had lost the latter in the fall.
So he slid the backpack under him and curled up in a ball, calculating that he had five hours at most until the others awoke, hoping he could survive that long in the clothing he was wearing. At least he was protected from the wind.
Thinking: How ironic that I abandoned my mother when she was dying, and now that I’m in danger it feels like she’s with me. Warm and loving. Nothing had mattered more to her than her husband and children.
Crocker bit his lip and willed himself to think of something else.
He tried to recall the names and faces of all the people he’d grown up with. Kids he’d played baseball with, boys he’d gone fishing with, first grade, second, third. The names of his teachers. Miss Moore. Mrs. Murray. Miss Hastings, who told him he’d never amount to anything.
He remembered them more vividly than he had in years. Incidents, facial features, jokes, shards of stories. Like the time he and his cousin Jake had buried a dead crow in his backyard. Marked the place carefully. When they dug up the grave two days later, the bird was gone.
Crocker felt the cold creeping into his body and fought off the urge to close his eyes and sleep.
Not now!
He remembered running with his biker friends. The names of girlfriends. The first girl he kissed and the color of the sweater she was wearing: pink with white piping around the neck.
He was furiously going back through names. Making a list of his favorite people. His father, his mother, Holly, his daughter…
His favorite songs: “My Way” sung by Frank Sinatra and Sid Vicious, “Gimme Shelter” and “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Stones, “Sky Pilot” by the Animals, AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”
That’s when he thought he heard a voice. “Tom!” It sounded like a woman’s.
“Mom? Is that you?”
She had told him once that she believed in spirits and ghosts.
“Mom, I’m down here!”
No response. Maybe the wind was playing tricks on him. Maybe it had been his imagination.
Favorite movies: Pulp Fiction, The Deer Hunter, Dances with Wolves, Apocalypse Now, Platoon. The Godfather at the top of the list.
Minutes passed before he heard the voice again, faintly: “Tom. Tom. Where are you?”
“I’m down here! Down here!”
A column of cold wind found its way into the crevasse and spun in a circle, chasing itself. A chill rattled up his spine.
Crocker thought: The worst thing that could happen is that I start to lose my mind.
Extreme conditions could do that. He knew from experience. He had hallucinated several times during multiday nonstop treks. Like once, in the Iraqi desert after almost a week of sleep deprivation, he thought he saw strange objects flying overhead.
Crocker hugged himself into a tighter ball. His mom felt close.
Feelings of mortality started to creep into his head, along with a numbness that moved through his feet, up into his ankles.
He shivered three times in succession. His teeth started to rattle.
Fuck…
His muscles were frozen, and there was no room to move. Not that he wanted to risk slipping off the narrow ice bridge and falling deeper.
So he focused on the sun. And understood why ancient people had gotten on their knees to worship it each morning. Without the sun, there would be no trees, no birds, no life. Modern man paid homage by going on vacation and lying on the beach. He preferred a soft sand run or a swim. He’d done so all over the world: Panama, Vietnam, Florida, Maine, Virginia, the south of France.
Suddenly Crocker felt the slightest warmth, and smiled to himself. The power of suggestion.
He heard something stir. “Mom?”
Looking up, he saw a light at the top of the crevasse, then heard a familiar voice.
“Crocker! Are you down there?”
There definitely was a light.
“Akil!”
“Boss!”
“What the hell took you so long? I’m fucking freezing.”
“I had better things to do.”
No doubt. The testosterone-loaded SEAL and the East European climber had been going at it practically nonstop since they’d met two and a half days ago.
“What are you doing down there, boss?”
“I was looking for a quiet place to take a shit.”
As they continued talking, Akil lowered a rope. Crocker didn’t take his eyes off it as it snaked down the icy blue wall.
When the yellow line reached him, he grabbed it.
Using a small cord he had in his pocket, he tied two emergency Prusik knots on the line and started to pull himself out.
The ice wall made foot placements almost impossible, but the farther he climbed, the better he got. Yard by yard. His heart pounding.
The pressure on his arms and shoulders was so intense that his muscles started to spasm as he reached the top.
“Another couple of yards!” Akil shouted, offering a gloved hand.
Crocker tightened his grip on the rope, his right foot clinging to a little ridge in the ice. He took a moment to reach down deep, through all his experience and training, to the ball of fire that burned inside him.
With a last burst of energy, he got to the top and held on. Akil’s sure hands helped him out.
“Thanks!”
“You must have antifreeze in your blood.”
“I won’t forget this, buddy.”
Then, acknowledging his mother, Crocker looked up to the stars spinning in the neon blue sky and passed out.
Chapter Eight
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.
– H. G. Wells
Crocker dreamt he was a boy looking at a birthday cake, waiting for his opportunity to blow out the candles. The electric lights were off. Familiar voices were singing in a range of octaves. Most beautifully, one slightly off-key. He turned to look for the face it belonged to. Saw a cascade of beautiful strawberry blond hair, then awoke.
Who does that hair belong to? Not my sister.
His tent was suffused with a warm reddish light. He lay zipped into a sleeping bag, a woolen hat pulled over his head. When he sat up, his right side barked, from his shoulder to his knee.
Which made him remember the ice crevasse of the night before. The eerie blue light.
No more wandering out at night alone.
Pulling on his boots, he returned to the warm image of the cascade of strawberry blond hair and wondered where he’d seen it before. Didn’t it belong to the missing Norwegian girl Mikael Klausen had shown him on his laptop, back at the camp in Urdukas?