Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain by Jonathan Bloom (freenovel24 .TXT) 📕

“That is how I found him,” said Chhiri Tendi.

“I was climbing down the slope and then he passed me going up, not under his own power mind you, but dragged unconscious over broken seracs and rubble by a parachute caught in the crazy wind. I turned tail and began to follow him back up. I was wracked with pain from my throbbing head to my frostbitten toes. I couldn’t see much of anything through the snow even though morning was breaking. And I was following a meat marionette. ‘Is this some bizarre spirit guiding me to the Land of the Dead?’ I thought to myself. The world could not have gotten stranger or bleaker.”

Chhiri Tendi finally caught up to Hoyt, grabbed him by the legs and stopped him. They lay for some moments in that pose, not moving at all and becoming buried in fresh snow. Fumu’s summit raged above them, making an ungodly racket and belching glowing red disagreement into the skies.

Once Chhiri Tendi had enough strength and will to look up, he could not believe his eyes. In the increasing light, he spotted a lone tent peg inches from his face. With a shift of focus, he saw tins of food scattered among the dirty ice and snow. A tent, collapsed and covered in snow but otherwise in tact, lay just to the right of his feet. There was equipment everywhere. More was likely buried under the snow. Either by luck or by the grace of God, they were lying in the middle of the remnants of Camp Three, the ill-fated outpost that had fallen victim to the collapsed maw.

With new-found energy Chhiri Tendi set up the tent. He came across an oxygen mask and tank while sifting through the flotsam and affixed them to Hoyt. When the tent was completed, he pulled Hoyt inside and shoved food into his mouth. “I didn’t know at that point he had had access to water so I also tried to hydrate him” recalls Chhiri Tendi. He had found a sleeping bag and took some time shoving Hoyt into it. After he had boiled tea and drank it down like a shot of brandy, Chhiri Tendi slipped into his own sleeping bag.

“Yuudai’s gone,” Hoyt mumbled from inside the bag. Chhiri Tendi registered this and then slipped into a dreamless sleep.

When they awoke, the entire day had passed and now darkness was coming. The weather had abated somewhat. Still the sky was overcast but the wind was calm and the snow had stopped falling. Hoyt was awake before Chhiri Tendi. He had fallen asleep with his mask on. When the oxygen in the tank was used up, his own gasps wakened him. A night of air had also revived him. “I’m ready,” he said. “Let us sally forth!”

Chhiri Tendi was more than happy to do so. They ate, got dressed, and ventured out into the cold dusk. At last, the expedition would be a single team again, reunited at Camp Four near the Eastern Ridge. But they would be one man short. “I will speak well of him to the others” Hoyt wrote that morning. “And by way of a letter passed to the mercenaries in Calcutta assigned to pick up Yuudai, I will let his father know of his selfless act.”

Chhiri Tendi and Hoyt hiked with newfound vigor. Their bodies had sustained permanent damage, including frostbite and ghastly bruises from falls on the maw’s uneven remains. But these unpleasantries were drowned out by adrenaline coursing not just through their veins but through their very souls. Ear-damaging explosions were heard from the top of the mountain. Like trumpet blasts on a battle field. One of these blasts was followed by a coda of black rocks rolling down the slope behind them. “The rock hissed. Smoked,” Hoyt wrote. The noise from on high became so disconcerting the two men took wads of toilet paper from their packs and stuck them in their ears.

Before it was completely dark, Hoyt and Chhiri Tendi came upon Camp Four. Any relief they had felt must have been quickly replaced by horror and nausea. Camp Three had been ruined, but Camp Four and its inhabitants had been utterly annihilated. What greeted them was a composition done in blood, snow, marrow, and tent canvas - a scene so abhorrent the likes could only be found in an old penny dreadful or the Grand Guignol. It was impossible to obtain a body count unless one was willing to deal in fractions.

Chapter Fifteen: The Oculus Part I

River Leaf peered down into the darkness. If the night around her was pitch black, then the hole beneath her was even more so. When she lit her torch, it did not help. She could only lean over the hole and aim the beam for so long before having to back away. The arctic wind emanating from the Oculus was simply too much for a person to bear even in small allotments, especially a woman. The wind shot out of the ground with the aggression of the Conqueror Worm itself.

She tried calling down to him, but the noise of blasting wind and the eruptions miles above her overwhelmed all other sound. The weather was bitter here at the bottom of the Icy Bellows and River Leaf knew her time to act was limited. Snow had begun to fall at that point, and this only served to add to the bite of the wind. She would have to set up a tent soon. So she decided sending a flare into the Oculus was the right course of action. Such an act might provide a glimpse of the scene below. If she were to see McGee alive in the glow, then it would alert him to her presence and she would press on in her attempt to rescue him. If the light presented her with no sign of him,