Authors: Mark Nykanen
Lauren took a few more drinks too, but only after Kerry rose, extended her hand, and held her close. She quickly reached the point where the ratio of her need for water and her acrophobia fell firmly on the side of fear.
But then a storm broke over the mountains to the north, angry clouds, their huge muscles bursting in the purple glow of twilight, and Kerry said softly that they had to go.
“Why?” Lauren didn’t want to move. She wanted to root.
“This is probably the worst place in the world for us right now. If we don’t get off, we could get washed off.”
Lauren looked up. Grimly, she understood: When the thunder and lightning hit, the entire section of angled cliff above them would collect the rain and form a powerful cataract.
“How much time do you think we have?” Lauren didn’t want to stir or stand any sooner than absolutely necessary.
“None, really. There’s no telling how fast that storm’ll move. Can you imagine what it’s going to be like if we have to climb out of here with a lot of wind and rain whipping around, and—”
“Stop,” Lauren pleaded. It was painful enough to imagine climbing out at all, much less while knocked around by all the angry elements of this forbidding desert.
“You should go first,” Kerry said.
“Why me?” Lauren snapped, as if accused.
“Because if I’m behind you, I can help you.”
Lauren cringed over her cowardice, how it mistook generosity of spirit for its rude antithesis.
Kerry stood, and made a stirrup of her hands.
“I’ll give you a boost up. Then I’ll get under you, and with your feet on my shoulders you shouldn’t have any trouble climbing up there. There’s a tiny shelf on the bottom part of the cliff that you can hold on to.” She nodded at the lower edge.
“How tiny?”
“It’s a couple of inches. Enough.”
“Two inches?”
“That’s a lot when you’re climbing.”
“Maybe for you.”
“You can do it too, Lauren. You
have
to.”
“How are you going to get up?”
Lauren, still sitting, still clinging to the outcropping, had forgotten that Kerry had climbed up on her own during those sorrowful moments when she’d thought the girl had fallen silently to her death.
Kerry reminded her of this, then said, “I’m sure you could do it too, but if you go first I can help. Besides, getting up there won’t be the problem.”
“What’s going to be the problem?” But Lauren really didn’t need to ask. The problem would be scaling the steep rock slope that lay between the lower and upper edges of the cliff. Slowly, she pointed up. “That’s it, right? Once we get on the bottom part.”
“Well …” Kerry stalled. “I’m thinking it
should
be easier climbing up than it was going down.”
Christ, it better be.
“We’ll see,” she added cheerily.
We’ll see?
Lauren wanted better odds than that.
Kerry’s next few words proved no consolation whatsoever: “It’s not like we have a choice.”
Lauren stared at the trickle.
“You want another sip before we get started?” Kerry extended her hand again, and Lauren forced herself to stand one more time. She took a drink, then another.
“You ready now?” Kerry asked.
“I guess.”
Kerry braced herself just to the side of the slim stream. Lauren raised her left foot, and placed it in Kerry’s cupped hands.
“Don’t let your leg shake so much.”
“I’m trying,” Lauren pleaded.
“Because we don’t want to be doing this more than once. It’s a little risky, and the more we do it the more chances we’re taking that you could—”
“Stop! Don’t say it. I’ll do it, I promise.”
“Okay, cool. On three.”
Kerry counted off, and as Lauren felt herself lifted upward, she straightened her leg and tried with all her will to drive her hands to the two-inch shelf on the lower edge of the cliff. It meant trying to disregard all the open space behind her and to her sides. In effect, it also meant trying to transform herself in seconds into someone she’d never been—a woman whose palms didn’t turn sweaty from a mortal fear of heights.
She rose higher, higher—don’t look down,
don’t!
—groaning with real terror until her right hand grabbed the shelf. Then her left hand took hold, and she felt the endless weightless depth of the world behind her. She wanted to cry.
Kerry said she was going to let her go, but just for a minute, long enough to get her shoulders under Lauren’s feet.
“All right,” Lauren whispered.
She hung there with her breasts squashed against the wall, knowing that if she fell she’d be lucky not to go bouncing off the ledge to the rocks and river below.
Kerry eased her shoulders under Lauren’s cross-trainers, and the pressure on Lauren’s hands eased.
“Breathe,” Kerry ordered.
Lauren hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath.
“Now get up there,” the girl said.
With Kerry pushing, Lauren managed to jam her elbows up on the narrow shelf of the lower edge. She craned her neck until she could see all twenty feet of the rock wall rising above her. It seemed an unbridgeable distance.
In spite of that, she raised her belly up to the shelf by pressing down on her hands until her arms were fully extended. The edge now cut into her like a tight belt, but the pressure on her arms was far more grueling. To take her weight off them, she’d have to get her knees up on the shelf as soon as possible.
With a stomach-swirling wave of panic, she realized she was out of Kerry’s reach, and on her own a thousand feet above the river.
Her struggle turned utterly frantic as she raised her right leg, and wedged her knee onto the slender shelf shared by her hands. Now she had to get the other leg up. She reached high above her, plastering her face and arms to the wall. Consciously, she held her breath, balanced all of her weight on her right knee, and gingerly moved her left one into position.
Success left her kneeling, but trembling, on the tight lower lip of the cliff. Her arms were outstretched, and her fingers felt like claws. She noticed that her nails—the few that hadn’t snapped off on her unruly descent—were trying to scratch holes in the rock.
“Lauren, you’ve got to start climbing, or get over to the side so I can get up there.”
Both choices horrified her, but heading straight up sounded marginally safer because if she did fall, Kerry would be there to catch her. Right?
She clung to this tissuey illusion long enough to make her first move, which was to stand with her feet turned outward like a duck’s until the whole of her body pressed against the rock.
“Go!” Kerry urged. “It’s raining in the mountains. Can’t you smell it? This rock’ll be slicker than shit when it gets wet.”
Lauren nodded with her eyes closed, every bit of her trying to turn into glue, into any substance sticky enough to stay stuck to this rock. She tested the purchase she could get with her duck’s feet. Shockingly, it worked! She actually moved up the wall a few inches. Kerry offered immediate encouragement.
“Keep going. You’re doing great.”
Kerry spoke from right behind her. Lauren still did not dare look back, but she could tell from the sound of the girl’s voice that her head must have risen above that dangerous lower edge.
Lauren’s hand and feet found nicks and niches in the rock, and quarter-inch protrusions to clamp on to. In this unwieldy and fully terrorized fashion, she gained two more feet, constantly forcing herself to unfreeze from the fear of sliding backward into the great emptiness.
“Don’t freak,” Kerry said, “but I’m going to put my hands on your feet and push. Okay?”
Lauren nodded as Kerry, kneeling on the bottom edge, placed her palms against the bottom of her shoes and started pressing upward. Lauren rose quickly on the wall, her fingers combing every inch for holds. Then Kerry stood, and repeated the effort until she’d stretched to her limit. Lauren now found herself in a wholly petrified state—just out of Kerry’s reach, but still a good eight feet shy of the top. She was afraid she’d never gain another inch, that she would cling to this spot until her muscles gave in to the greater force of gravity.
“I’m going to climb around you,” Kerry said.
Lauren didn’t respond, convinced that any break in her concentration would send her tumbling to her death.
Kerry, using the same duck-footed stance, inched past Lauren on the right, never pausing to even look over. She kept her eyes trained on the surface directly ahead of her, studying the rock so intently that it appeared she might immolate the cliff with her gaze.
The girl climbed without pause until she reached up and clutched the top edge. Only then did she look down at Lauren.
“We’re going to make it.”
Lauren could hardly believe that Kerry had ever been her student, so indebted did she feel to her now.
In moments, she would feel an even deeper debt. Kerry pulled herself up, and then promptly pulled down her jeans. She hung the top third of her body down the slope, and lowered the pants to Lauren.
“Grab them. It’ll be easier than holding on to the rock.”
Lauren wrapped her hands around the legs, placing all of her faith in Kerry’s judgment. With the girl inching back and pulling hard, Lauren rose to the point where her hands could reach the top edge.
As she struggled to haul herself up the last two feet, Kerry gripped the back of her waist and dragged her to safety.
Both women were breathing hard. Kerry stood and pulled on her jeans. The wind ruffled her dark red hair.
“We made it just in time. Look at that.”
After crawling a few feet farther from the cliff, Lauren worked up enough courage to glance back. Lightning continued to flash over the La Sal Mountains. Together, they counted, an odd chorus of whispered numbers, but when the thunder finally broke, it spoke in the lowest tones.
Lauren looked up at Kerry. “I want to thank you. You saved my life.”
“Come on, we’re not even close to being even. You saved me twice today. You got me out of that goddamn cage, and then when I wanted to roll up and die out here, you wouldn’t let me. So I still owe you, prof.”
“No, you don’t.”
Kerry pulled her to her feet. Now they faced the crucial decision to continue along the cliff till it eventually descended to the desert, which lay about nine or ten miles away, or to double back toward the compound.
“I know which way I want to go,” Kerry said. “He went that way.” She pointed along the cliff toward the desert. “So I want to go thataway.” Her finger revolved like a tank turret back to the direction they’d come.
“He
might
have gone that way, or he might have turned back, figuring we’d already done the same thing. It’s been over an hour since we heard him.”
“Let’s hope it’s the last time we ever hear him.” Kerry cast an uneasy eye over the dimming landscape that enveloped them on three sides. Not that it was likely either one of them would spot Ashley Stassler, not if he’d hidden among the boulders, or down in the valleys between the gently rising swells of rock.
“I think we should head back,” Lauren said. “Not to the compound. We’ll just use it as a reference point so we can hike out toward the highway and flag someone down. It’s shorter, and if we do go the other way and get down to the river, we still have to hike out. I don’t know where it goes. Do you?” She’d seen nothing but desert from the helicopter.
Kerry shook her head, and eyed the storm clouds gathering across the chasm.
“Even if he does go back,” Lauren continued, “I’m thinking we might beat him there, and I’m also thinking Ry might be at the compound by now. If he is, he could help us; but if we don’t see his car, then we stay away and head for the highway. I told him I’d make sure to be back before dark.”
“Lauren, it’s just getting dark now.”
“I know, but by the time we get there it’s going to be real dark. Maybe he’ll even call the sheriff.”
The thought of the sheriff, of rescue, sealed their decision. They started down the smooth rock they’d climbed hours before. Miles of it spread out before them.
Thunder rose from the north, growling louder with each burst. They expected the storm to overtake them any minute. Lauren figured they’d find cover when it hit. For now, they hurried. Not running, not exactly, but moving quickly up and down the rocky slopes, past balls of tumbleweed and boulders the size of trucks.
Lauren felt the rain on her arm first, then the back of her neck. A crack of lightning struck so close that they both fell to their knees. They smelled the burned edge of earth, and heard the thunder roar a second later.
“Whoa,” Kerry said.
They spied a corner between a boulder and the smooth rock that they were scampering down. They sprinted for it, and huddled as another bolt broke about a hundred feet behind them, so close they heard the electricity singe the moist rock, smelled it again too, a startling mix of moist wool and sulfur, and all the hot points of a campfire all at once. An overwhelming odor.
“Shit!” Lauren said.
Kerry nudged her. “Don’t worry. It’ll probably pass in a few minutes.”
“No,” Lauren gasped. “Him!” She pointed to Stassler moving toward them, seemingly oblivious to the storm that raged all around him.
“Let’s go,” Kerry sputtered.
Both of them started running for the first time, much more frightened of him than the storm. It might have been Lauren’s imagination, but the footsteps she heard were not her own or Kerry’s, and they pounded like the thunder itself.
They scrambled up and down the rocky swells, tripping, stumbling, banging their arms and elbows; but they kept moving, two fit women using their last reserves of energy, surviving mostly on the sudden strength of adrenaline.
Lightning stunned the slope they were crossing, and both of them dove like soldiers launched into the air by a mortar attack. But these two were not riddled with shrapnel, maimed and unmoving. Lauren was already rising to her feet, looking back, seeing Stassler loom ever larger. He was gaining on them, a hundred feet away, maybe less. She spotted the gun in his hand.
“We’ve got to split up,” she shouted to Kerry. “He can’t go after both of us at the same time.”