The Abominable: A Novel

2.

Somehow we all managed to sleep a few hours before the gradual, gray brightening that passed for sunrise in the center of a cloud. Lobsang Sherpa had been put on continuous oxygen, low flow, and he slept the best. The rest of us had taken some snorts of English air when the cold—or in my case the coughing—grew bad enough. Lady Bromley-Montfort was allowed to pick a lavatory boulder first, and then the rest of us went out one by one or in groups of two. The good thing about being severely dehydrated above 25,000 feet was that one’s kidneys didn’t require much attention.

We didn’t try to fire up the Unna cooker, even though we had six more Meta fire bars. We’d make do with the two small thermoses left from what we’d filled the day before.

There was almost no talk as we got into our layers. The Deacon asked Lobsang a few questions about these “yeti” who supposedly attacked, but the Sherpa wasn’t making much sense, and the four of us “sahibs” didn’t believe in yeti anyway. The Deacon, who’d seen the “monster’s” tracks in both 1921 and ’22, was the biggest skeptic. He’d reminded us more than a few times how hot sunlight melts the tracks of a regular, run-of-the-mill quadruped into what looks to be a biped’s large footprints. I guess I could say that I was a skeptical agnostic on the whole yeti business in 1925, but I know I didn’t believe that some big two-legged beastie was eating our Sherpa porters.

All of us checked the tubes and valves of our oxygen sets as we stored them in the RBT—we fully planned to use those particular extra O₂ sets on our summit bid when we returned to Camp V—and then we filled our rucksacks with the few things we were taking down. All four of us had our Very pistols, and everyone but me had three flares left. I was the only one hauling two O₂ tanks in his rucksack—at the Deacon’s request.

“We don’t all have to go down,” I said when we were finally standing outside the tents in what was the perfect equivalent of a freezing London fog. “I can stay up here until the rest of you get things sorted out.”

“What would you do up here alone, Jake?” asked Jean-Claude.

“Bury Mallory.”

J.C. didn’t seem surprised by the answer. I knew he’d also felt bad about leaving the body there, exposed, on the slope where he’d died. But we both also knew that we’d done the right thing in following the Deacon’s orders to retreat to Camp V when we did. If we’d been caught out in yesterday evening’s wind and storm, there’d be more than one body to bury on the North Face of Everest this day.

“No, Jake,” said the Deacon. “Besides the fact that you probably wouldn’t even find George’s body in this cloud—especially given the fact that he’d be covered by fresh snow today—we need you to lead the descent to Camp Four.”

“Jean-Claude can lead,” I said. My last, lame protest.

“Jean-Claude will take over when we get to the snowfields and crevasses of the North Col,” said the Deacon with a climbing leader’s finality. “You lead us down the rock. You’re our rock man. That’s why we paid to bring you here to this mountain, my American friend.”

Instead of arguing, I turned my oxygen-tank regulator to the lower setting of 1.5 liters of flow, tugged my mask into place, and strapped it to my flying helmet—thinking of the similar bit of strap in George Mallory’s pocket as I did so—and shrugged into my heavy pack. I wasn’t carrying much besides the two oxygen tanks, my small Very pistol, the two remaining 12-gauge flare cartridges, and a chocolate bar.

Only the lead climber during the long descent was to be carrying and using the two oxygen bottles. We’d cached the other five full bottles left over from yesterday and their simple rigs there at Camp V, and between the Deacon on Sunday and J.C. on Monday, the Sherpas had portered up no fewer than six full backpacks of three tanks each, using none in their ascent. These were cached a little lower, at the level of the collapsed and rock-riddled tents, where we’d found Lobsang just last night. If we returned to these upper camps, those twenty-three tanks of English air should be more than enough to support both a search for Percy and a serious summit attempt for at least four of us. Perhaps even enough for summit attempts by two groups of three. That would be nice, I remember thinking, if we get six people on the summit.

Despite Lobsang’s obvious signs of terror, yeti weren’t even in my mind any longer.

“Two ropes going down today,” announced the Deacon without asking for our opinions or advice. “Jake will lead the first rope with Dr. Pasang following and Jean-Claude at anchor. Lady Bromley-Montfort will lead our second rope with Lobsang Sherpa coming next and me last. The fixed ropes may be partially buried, but Lobsang said that he’d found and pulled most of them free of the snow during his ascent last night, so that will help us in terms of time. Unless someone gets ill, no one will be using oxygen on the way down except Jake, who will pass it over to Jean-Claude when he takes the lead through the snowfields above Camp Four.”

J.C. started to protest that he wouldn’t need the oxygen, that he’d climbed most of the way to Camp V without it the day before, but the Deacon silenced all further talk simply by shaking his head once.

Before we all pulled balaclavas or heavy scarves over our faces, more or less effectively shutting off talk, Reggie said, “Lobsang is a bit non compos mentis. I wonder what we’ll find at Base Camp.”

“I suspect something real frightened the Sherpas, and they may have deserted the expedition,” said Dr. Pasang.

Lobsang Sherpa finally realized what we were talking about, although I was fairly sure that he hadn’t understood the Latin about his not being totally mentally capable. “No, no, no,” Lobsang Sherpa said in English. “Not frighten…not run off…all killed! Yetis killed them. All dead!”

“Were you there?” Pasang asked in English. “Did you see these yeti killing Sherpas?”

“No, no,” admitted Lobsang. “I also be dead if there. But cook Semchumbi and head of pack animals Nawang Bura see bodies. Everybody at Base Camp dead. Very terrible. Blood and heads and arms and legs everywhere. Yeti kill them!”

The Deacon patted him on the back and helped him make the correct knot for tying on to the same rope with Reggie and himself. “We’ll know soon,” he said. “Lady Bromley-Montfort, let’s remember that Lobsang Sherpa is the only one here with no crampons. We must be especially careful going down.”

I pulled away my mask for just a moment. “I only hope I can find the right bamboo markers and fixed lines in this cloud-fog,” I said. No one responded, so I tugged the mask back into place.

J.C. said, “We don’t need to wear the damned goggles in this dim light and fog today, do we?”

“No,” said the Deacon. “We’ll pull the goggles back into place only if it begins brightening. It’s most important we watch our footing during the descent.”

J.C. and I made sure that Dr. Pasang was tied on properly—we were leaving only about 30 feet of rope between climbers, a short length, to be sure, and dangerous in the sense that a fall by anyone wouldn’t give the next person on the rope much time to set himself (or herself) for belay—but I agreed with the Deacon’s unspoken suggestion that the lines between each of us should be short enough that we could keep the climber behind or in front of us in sight most of the time, no matter what the wind and weather might be like.

“All right, Jake,” called the Deacon from the far rear. “Start us down, please.”

Using my ice axe to pick my way carefully across the down-tilting snow and ice slabs, I started weaving my way down around boulders, past the battered lower section of Camp V, and then east a dozen yards or so back toward the spine of the North Ridge and the treacherous staircase there.