Fragment

9:45 P.M.

Dante tugged off the swim fins. He dragged the raft up the beach toward the rocks. Ditching his fins on a high rock and stashing the raft sideways between two boulders, he dragged the duffel bag of climbing gear up the beach and over the rock outpouring to the edge of the crevasse.

He opened the bag, stepped into his harness, attached the pre-strung loops of gear, and slipped on a new pair of his favorite Five Ten climbing shoes. Then he zippered the bag, slung it over his back, and bouldered up into the crack.

About seventy feet in, Dante spotted an ascent route on the left face. He glanced warily into the rock-strewn canyon ahead, weighing his options. He poured some chalk on his hands from a small bag strapped around his waist. Then he felt the cliff-face, carefully examining the surface.

The rock was abundantly pitted with pockets and cracks for nuts and cams. He decided he could climb this face clean, without using the rock hammer or the pitons, and he felt a surge of confidence. It would be a perfect solo climb.

Dante visualized the first line of holds in the moonlight, then he donned his gear and tested his balance. Carrying the heavy gear disturbed his center of gravity-and the camera on his chest would prevent him from hugging the rock. He decided to strap the camera on the backpack instead-it made the center of gravity worse, but at least it was not in his way.

He looked up. A hundred-foot vertical face rose above him to a perfect ramp, a diagonal crack that stretched almost to the top of the 230-meter face. The tricky part would be an overhang on the last thirty feet.

He hoped to climb two-thirds of the way to the summit, find a ledge, and sleep until dawn. Then he would contact Cynthea and film his remaining ascent, transmitting the first live images of Henders Island to the world.

So much for Zero.

Stacking six connected rope coils on a flat rock at the base of the cliff, he tied the end of the rope to a cam, and hooked the cam to his chest harness. He felt the adrenaline pump inside him as he jumped up and grabbed the first hold, pulling the end of the rope with him.

Suddenly, a sound like a Mack truck air horn blasted him from behind, nearly stopping his heart in the deep silence of the night.

He leaped upward instinctively, “smearing” his feet in a mad scramble over the rocky surface.

“What the fuck!” he shouted, clinging to the rock and twisting to look below him. What he saw resembled a giant spider the size of a Chevy Suburban, covered with stripes of glowing fur, crashing into the rock wall below Dante’s feet.

A black spike reached up from the spider. It gouged the cliff beside his right leg, clawing a groove down the hard rock face. Dante sprang six vertical feet in a single terrified lunge, to grab the next set of holds with his chalked hands.

Amped with adrenaline, he chimneyed backwards off a wrinkle and climbed the next fifty feet faster than he’d ever scaled a rock in his life. Pausing for breath at a ledge, he leaned out to look down the face. Three large shapes prowled like phosphorescent tigers below. “Please tell me you can’t climb,” he whispered, panting.

He reached both hands into the chalk bag, dusted them together, and resumed the climb, casting an occasional nervous glance downward at the shrinking forms below. The ramp was another fifty feet above him.

His hand fell on a strange smooth texture, and he momentarily recoiled from what looked like a serving-tray-sized, boomerang-headed cockroach. But it was motionless, and he quickly realized it was just a fossil. He saw others around him, dark and glossy on the moon-washed rock face.

When he reached the ramp he set another cam rigged with a gri-gri, for protection, then he crawled forward to the corner and looked down into the crevasse.

Farther up the crack he saw the cornucopia-like tunnel of jungle growth, its glowing outline etched by the swirling sparks of a million flying bugs. He decided to stay out of its line of sight as much as possible to avoid being detected by anything.

Around the corner, he chimneyed backwards to a bucket of stone that emerged from the cliff like a sharp-edged bowsprit of rock. He set another cam there and marked his elevation- about two hundred feet up. He faced a waving vertical climb of about seventy feet, in the open, until another ramp of rock would take him to the crux.

He chalked his hands again and started up.

The moonlight glint of another fossil caught his eye, so he climbed toward it to have a look.

It leaped off the rock and snapped its jaws at his face- devouring a glowing bug that whizzed past his ear.

Startled, hands slipping and scrabbling, Dante lost his grip.

He fell.

The cam he had set expanded in the crack as his weight tightened the gri-gri. He swung beneath the stone bucket-he had fallen about thirty feet, but the protection held.

Now, shuddering, he got a good look at the creature skittering down the cliff face, moving like a huge beetle welded to a flying fish.

Dante pulled himself up the rope to the hold point and dangled there, watching as more of these living fossils darted around him, snapping up the flying insects that were now buzzing past him.