“I’ve never been so sober in my life.”
She grinned, he grunted. I tried to be offended, couldn’t pull it off. I hooked my thumbs in the straps of my pack and pulled it forward. The bar for back support dug into my ass. That pack wasn’t put together for me, it was set for someone taller, broader, I wasn’t supposed to be here.
We cleared the tree line of three fingered Jack. The North face, for me, I was not a climber. My only skill was being alive; I hadn’t trained much for being alive. The rocks looked stark. The clouds were thick with ash. I got even more sober. He tested a rock, it held.
“Follow me.”
She touched the nape of my neck, I flinched a bit, embarrassed. My hair was matted and the fine ash mixed with sweat made mud of all my exposed skin. I tried not to think how much of the ash had been people; people on buses, standing in line at the coffee cart, thumping cantaloupes at the market for freshness.
So we followed him. Twenty yards from the summit he stopped, held up a hand. She held the bar of my pack as though I didn’t know, as though I was as green as --- I was. He threw a flare into the cave and stood stoic and grim looking down for a long time. His face was lit like a jack-o-lantern, even more pronounced by the low hanging bloated gray. I hadn’t seen the sun in a week.
He held up a hand again, sinking a crampon and, a foot behind, a talon. He tied off, looped the rope through carabiners, and the cave swallowed him. A few minutes later the rope danced.
She offered me a harness. I shook my head, whatever pride I had was gone, if I was too green I’d never make it, and anyhow the harness was weight. I rappelled down. She wasn’t far behind, when the rope went slack she yanked the crampon and talon, free climbed down maybe eight yards and sunk a crampon the color of rock, obscuring our fortress against --- whatever.
“Stay close to the wall” he said.
We walked back blind. I could feel the abyss I just couldn’t see it. We came to an open place and he turned on an LED lantern. Cots, dried goods, clothing. It wasn’t supposed to be me. She found me under a hummer. They argued. She won.
I didn’t ask about the guy I wasn’t. We hadn’t talked about all the people who weren’t and, I suspect, we won’t. Hard enough with the weight of the dead impregnating the sky itself, giving them names would be surrender.
He glared at her.
She kissed me, watching him the whole time. I was wrong, there were deeper levels of sobriety, there’s the kind of sobriety that feels the weight of the knife on your hip, even the gleaming of the blade. We were here for the duration. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be fine ash in the air.
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