Daniel seemed disoriented by her answer. He looked almost shattered by the news.
'We've got to hurry,' Daniel shouted. 'There's more coming.'
Dear God, thought Abe, more avalanches. His serenity crumbled. He tired to yell
and beg and pray, but his vocal cords had done all they could. All over again he fought
his lost battle with the snow binding his limbs. Snowflakes fell from the sky and bit at
his eyes.
'Please,' Abe hissed at Daniel. By whispering, he got the word out.
'Keep it together. We've got you now.' Daniel was talking at him, not to him. It was
rescue rap, the kind of chatter you used to keep a bleeder from going under. Abe
didn't feel any wounds. But Daniel seemed repulsed by him, and for the first time Abe
wondered how badly injured he might be.
Daniel dropped to his knees beside Kelly, practically knocking her to one side.
Without a word, he grabbed her ice axe and began chopping and scraping at the snow
with the adze. He worked desperately.
'How long was I gone?' Abe whispered.
Daniel pawed at his sleeve and mitten. 'It's nine-fifteen,' he said, and went back to
work. Abe had been under for more than three hours. Avalanche victims rarely lasted
over thirty minutes. After an hour you quit digging. But these people had not quit.
'Thank you,' Abe whispered.
'Don't thank me,' Daniel said, and kept digging. He was angry.
'I'm sorry,' Abe said.
Daniel paused, panting for air. His mood seemed closer to guilt than anger now. It
was guilt, of course. He had nearly left another partner to die. Daniel resumed the
task of resurrection. His pace was furious.
For the most part, Kelly lay hunched against a pile of snow. Now and then she
summoned the strength to crawl forward on her knees and scoop away snow, but her
efforts were feeble and only put her in range of Daniel's axe strokes. 'Move away,'
Daniel ordered her and she obeyed.
Daniel freed Abe's head first. That let Abe look around at the devastation. The
avalanche had scythed across the slope and chunks of slab snow and raw limestone lay
everywhere. It was a miracle any of them had managed to claw their way from the
jumbled debris. Their tent had ruptured like a balloon and been churned under by the
slide. Orange tatters flashed in the air.
Overhead, the band of yellow limestone was fat with snow. Even the portions that
had emptied onto them were rapidly accumulating a new white covering. A long,
heavy bosom of snow hung immediately above, menacing them. Daniel was right to
work with such desperation. They had to leave this area or stay forever.
Daniel widened the pit, unearthing more of Abe's body. Abe's ice axe turned up,
then Daniel found the radio, but it was broken. Grimly he placed these relics to one
side and went on digging. Abe understood that they were in grave danger, but he
could not understand Daniel's severity and gloom. The man didn't speak. He didn't
smile. In Daniel's place, Abe would have been rejoicing to discover a friend alive. Abe
felt strangely unwelcome.
Then the screaming started. It was a keening almost too high to hear. Abe decided it
couldn't be screaming. The wind must have found a sharp stone to whistle on. But it
came again. This time he caught the animal note in it and there was only one kind of
animal up here. It was human. It was a woman.
'Gus,' Abe whispered. No one answered.
Again the banshee squealing laced the wind.
Eyes squeezed shut against the gray light, Kelly bared her teeth. She clenched her
jaw and aimed her head away from the sound. Daniel was equally callous. He didn't
say anything, just kept chopping and slashing at the snow. The axe hit chunks of
limestone. Sparks flew among the the falling snowflakes.
Daniel freed Abe's right arm all the way to the shoulder. 'Lift it,' he told Abe. 'Bend
it. Move it.' Then he worked lower to excavate a leg.
'What's wrong with Gus?' Abe demanded.
'You better be whole,' Daniel stated. 'We can't afford more broken bones.'
Now Abe saw the blood on their cherry red parkas. It smeared pink on the white
avalanche debris.
Abe grew alarmed. 'What happened?'
But Daniel wouldn't say any more. Kelly seemed close to hysteria.
It wasn't hard to answer his own question. The avalanche had mauled Gus badly.
Judging by the blood and Daniel's remark, she had sustained at least one compound
fracture. They had found her and then packaged her for the descent. And just as
Daniel was preparing to go, Kelly had discovered Abe. Daniel had been forced to leave
Gus screaming in the snow and dig Abe out. Don't thank me.
Abe waited for one of Daniel's downstrokes and caught at the axe shaft with his free
hand. Daniel tried to pull away, but Abe hung on. 'Start down,' Abe whispered up at
him from the bottom of the pit. 'I can do this alone.'
'I wasn't leaving you,' Daniel exploded at him. But he had been leaving, that was
plain to see. Until this moment Abe hadn't known how utterly wrecked the man was.
Gus had been right. Daniel could not afford his own memories.
'Daniel,' Abe whispered. He pulled the axe closer. Daniel resisted. Abe didn't know
what to say until he said it. 'I am saved,' he hissed.
Daniel froze.
Abe wasn't sure Daniel had understood him. And so he added, 'I don't need you
anymore.'
Still Daniel didn't move. He could have been listening to a ghost.
'I'll bring Kelly down with me,' Abe clarified. 'Go as far as you can go.'
Daniel exhaled with a groan and released the axe. He straightened from the pit and
stared down at Abe, then climbed to his feet.
'She wouldn't give up.' Daniel pointed at Kelly. He was visibly shaken by her faith
and intuition. For the first time it struck Abe that a blind woman had found him. 'Take
care of her,' Daniel shouted.
'I will,' Abe promised.
Daniel picked up the walkie-talkie and stuffed it into his parka. Then he staggered
off into the storm, half bent from his cracked ribs and bad back and other old injuries.
A minute later, Abe heard terrible screaming and knew that Gus was being lifted
and moved. It was going to be an ugly, brutal evacuation. There was no help for that.
The four of them had been lucky to survive the avalanche. Abe didn't pretend to
himself that their luck could hold.
Kelly had fallen asleep in the snow. Even as Abe chopped at the shroud covering
him, a thin layer of powder started to bury her. With his one free arm, Abe shoved
and cut at the snow. It was slow going. Another hour passed before he managed to sit.
Like a B-movie corpse wrestling up from the soil, he bulled his chest through the
snow.
Abe was exhausted. He wanted to rest, just for a minute or two, just to breathe, to
close his eyes and take a catnap, no more. It was the wrong thing to do, but he would
have done it anyway, if not for Kelly.
She was gone. The powder had drifted over her like a dune. 'Kelly,' Abe rasped. He
sat there, piled with debris, and called her name again. Fear won out over his fatigue.
Now that they were in full rout, the mountain was reclaiming its territory with a
vengeance. There were no prisoners up here. Those who lagged, died. If he hadn't
seen Kelly lie down, Abe would never have believed she was there. To the naked eye,
she had never existed.
Abe bucked at the snow and yanked at his legs. At last he was able to worm loose