Asura

by R P L Johnson

  ‘What’s going on?’ Khamas asked. ‘Is it a rescue party?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But we’re going to check.’

  ‘Take this,’ he said and handed her the flare pistol he’d carried through that afternoon’s sentry duty. ‘If it is a rescue just point it up and fire. It’s already loaded.’

  McCarthy thanked him and hurried after Carver into the storm.

  Darkness: black cold. Carver was nowhere to be seen. The blizzard cut visibility down to only a few yards. There was a real danger of getting disorientated in such conditions.

  Keeping one hand on the plane’s fuselage she made her way towards the tail. She found that if she kept low she could stay out of the worst of the wind. She crawled along in the plane’s wind shadow and almost fell over Carver who was hunkered down near the stub of the port wing.

  ‘Keep quiet!’ Carver hissed and dragged her down. In the shelter of the wing the air was still, but the cold was numbing. McCarthy didn’t think it was possible to be so cold without already having actually frozen to death. She felt an almost irresistible urge to go back inside. Even the chill interior of the cabin seemed like a balmy paradise when compared to the storm’s full fury. But Carver gripped her firmly by the jacket.

  ‘You were right,’ Carver said. ‘It’s not a rescue party.’

  She pointed past the end of the plane. McCarthy struggled to make out the details. She could just see the fire pit they had dug and filled with the shredded mass of the port tyre. Next to the pit she could make out the canister of aviation fuel they had saved to light their signal fire. Beyond that there was only the dim bulk of the crash victims’ burial mound. McCarthy could just make out some movement at the extremes of visibility. In the clear patches between snow flurries she saw it digging. The gusts of wind brought fragments of sound: something was scraping and tearing at the frozen dead.

  ‘What is it?’ McCarthy whispered.

  ‘It’s no rescue party, that’s for sure.’

  Carver was right. Whatever it was, it stayed low as if on all fours. But the way it moved: it was unlike anything she had ever seen! Its body was long and sinuous, more like a lizard than any of the big cats. The head on the end of the elongated neck was constantly on the move: swift and predatory, each movement precise. The finer details were lost to the blizzard, but the overall impression McCarthy got was of one of Khamas’s nagas. A serpent god trapped halfway between man and beast.

  With a flick of its long body, it was gone and they were along in the storm once more. They waited in silence for what felt like an eternity before the cold forced Carver into action.

  ‘You wait here: I’ll go and fix the wall,’ she said.

  ‘What if that thing’s still around?’

  ‘Well we can’t sit here all night. Just keep a lookout. If you see anything, shout and flap your arms. Try to scare it away.’

  Carver crept out from under the wing, heading towards the case that lay in the snow twenty feet away.

  McCarthy searched the shadows, looking for any sign of the mysterious creature. Carver was almost to the case, bending low into the wind. She pulled it from the snow and hefted the bag onto her shoulder. She took a couple of heavy steps towards the wall.

  McCarthy willed her forward. Her concentration blinding her to the grey shape that slunk out of the shadows behind her!

  It hit McCarthy hard: barrelling into her so that they were both flung, sprawling into the snow. Its hands were everywhere: long digits grasping, claws catching in her clothing and shredding cloth, eager to burrow into flesh.

  And its face! Dead, black eyes like those of a shark above a triangular, insectile maw ripe with needle-fine teeth.

  She screamed and beat at the creature, but to no avail. She felt the first claw tear through the last of her insulating layers to draw a line of fire across the exposed flesh of her belly.

  Then it was gone.

  She struggled to her feet to see Carver wrestling the beast. She was behind it and had its upper limbs locked in a full-nelson, but it was still fighting. As well as its spindly arms and powerful legs it had two extra limbs springing from the middle of its torso! The stubby, powerful limbs—neither arms nor legs but somewhere between—flailed as it tried to reach the woman on its back. It twisted with animal strength and almost succeeded in freeing itself, but just before it was able to break loose Carver lifted it bodily from the snow and flung it away. It tumbled, six limbs cart-wheeling, knocking over the can of av-gas and falling into the fire pit.

  Carver readied herself for the second round. The creature thrashed in the pit, trying to right itself amid the treacherous jumble of shredded rubber made slippery by the stinging fuel.

  McCarthy remembered Khamas’s gift.

  ‘Out of the way!’ she shouted and raised the flare pistol at the thrashing mass in the pit.

  The flare flew in a flat trajectory: a smoky, red star bursting against the chest of the creature as it tried to raise itself.

  The av-gas went up like napalm. The blue-tinged flames—far hotter than normal petroleum—instantly consumed the screeching creature. Rubber and flesh quickened and melted at its touch; snow flash-vaporised into a column of steam and was instantly whipped away by the wind. McCarthy watched, trembling, as the fire grew until its victim was no more than a black cinder that twitched impotently in the heart of the blaze.

  ‘Nice shot!’ Carver said. She walked over to the pit and held up her hands against the fire as if warming them over a brazier.

  McCarthy joined her. ‘What was that thing?’ she asked. ‘Did you see it? It had six legs for Christ’s sake!’

  Carver shrugged. ‘Who cares? The fucker’s kindling now. Enjoy it while it lasts.’

  McCarthy let the hot wind warm her face, but inside the encounter chilled her deeper than the cold night on the mountain ever could.

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘You don’t get it, do you, Scout?’

  They were sitting in a tea house in Gilgit, dark and claustrophobically crowded, but warm. The only light came from the open fire that blazed in a fire pit at the centre of the circular common room and a few oil lanterns that hung from the black timbers burning waxy smoke from the fuel of rendered yak blubber mixed with kerosene. The heat off the fire was phenomenal; Rose could feel it baking his cheek from halfway across the room.

  Low tables surrounded the fire pit. At each, a pair of men sat cross-legged on cushions playing checkers on boards carved into the tabletops.

  Outside, a gale howled through the town. The tea house creaked and shifted against the stronger gusts, setting the oil lanterns into a slow, pendulous oscillation. The old timbers leaned inwards under the weight of multiple layers of hay and plaster that was the local insulation against the Himalayan cold, almost as if they were listening in on the conversation.

  Miller was holding court again. The light from the fire burned his face into a half-moon satellite suspended in space, the other side lost in shadow. His eyes glittered as he talked and he seldom blinked as if he’d forgotten how, only remembering every few minutes as he closed his eyes with each long draught from the pewter tankard before him. His sharp, triangular nose seemed even more prominent than usual, half-lit and angular. His high forehead furrowed as he talked, as if he was struggling to express himself or else didn’t understand why they couldn’t grasp what, to him, seemed perfectly clear and nothing more than the natural order of the universe.

  ‘This is it,’ he continued, ‘…this is when you get to find out who you are. After you’ve left the rest of the world behind, after you’ve climbed above it all, climbed higher than the tallest building, left every car and TV set far below… climbed so high that even the air starts to give out on you and there is nothing—nothing at all—except for you and the mountain. That’s the only time you can see yourself without this cage of bullshit we build around ourselves. That’s when you get to find out: will you make it? Or at the very end, when the only thing left is you, will that not be enoug
h?’

  ‘You’ve been in the ‘Kush too long, Mate.’ Val’s speech was starting to slur, vowels greased by Jaand, the local cloudy beer, until they slid out of his mouth on top of one another. ‘All this finding yourself through adversity crap… I already know who I am, Mate. Anyone that feels the need to “find themselves” shouldn’t bother trying ‘cos they’re bound to be a disappointment to themselves.’

  Val settled back against the wooden back of the church-like bench as if that settled the matter.

  They had been in Gilgit for five days: three of them spent in virtual whiteout as a storm that had been predicted to blow over in an afternoon had, with typical Himalayan contrariness, settled over the town. With only a couple of weeks left in the season, the wait had been interminable.

  ‘What about you, Scout?’ Miller asked. ‘Why do you climb?’

  Rose thought about the question. The moment drew out but he knew Miller would wait. He climbed because he had always climbed; there was no more to it than that. He thought further back.

  ‘My brother,’ he said eventually. ‘He was a champion fell runner. I used to run with him when we were kids. Our Dad would drive us up into the Dales to go fishing, but we’d always leave him by the river and race each other up and down the hills. But he was two years older than me, always stronger, always faster. Eventually I stopped trying to keep up. But I still loved the Dales so I took up climbing. I guess I tried to get the better of my brother by always going higher.’

  ‘Now there’s a reason,’ Val said. He attempted to clink Rose’s tankard where it sat on the table, nearly pushing it into Rose’s lap. ‘Self-improvement through-‘ he punctuated his sentence with an impressive belch, ‘-competition.’

  ‘You know what your trouble is, Scout?’ said Miller.

  ‘I get the feeling you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘You can only see yourself through other people’s eyes: your brother, your friends. You need to forget about them and learn to see yourself for who you are not what you’ve done. If all you’re climbing for is to prove that you’ve got s bigger dick than the next guy then you’re just as bad as those sad, sea-level fuckers that judge themselves by the size of their plasma TVs and their wives’ fake tits. Learn to see past that, Scout. See yourself for who you really are.’

  ‘OK, Oprah. Enough of this self-help bullshit,’ Val slurred. ‘I thought that we were talking about climbing.’

  ‘What’s there to talk about? Just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you get to the top.’

  ‘Ha! That simple, eh?’

  ‘It’s that simple. But sometimes the simplest things are the hardest things in the world.’

  ◆◆◆

  Rose ran through a series of stretching exercises at the side of the parade ground. The previous night had been a whirlwind of introductions and briefings, equipment testing and brainstorming rescue scenarios. It had been well past midnight when he finally collapsed into his bunk for a few fitful hours of high-altitude sleep.

  Dawn glinted off the mountains and the helicopters were already running through their pre-flight checklists. Soon they would be airborne; streaking towards Nanga Parbat.

  The last time he had been above ten thousand feet he had trekked in: a two week journey on foot that had honed his physical fitness as well as giving his body time to acclimatise to the thin mountain air.

  This time two helicopter trips would take him fifteen thousand feet up the mountain in just a couple of days. He was soft and unprepared. His joints popped as he stretched and the straps of his new climbing harness bit into him. He was sure that the rest of the team’s ascent has been just as swift.

  Above eight thousand feet the safe rate of climb to avoid altitude sickness was about a thousand feet per day for an already acclimatised climber. Rest days were usually taken every fourth day and still people occasionally got sick. Even with the rescue team taking the Diamox tablets twice a day and carrying plenty of compressed O-two, they were still taking a hell of a risk.

  Fortunately the Diamox tablets he had taken seemed to be working for now. Despite their swift ascent, he couldn't detect any of the usual precursors to AMS. No headaches, shortness of breath or ataxia—loss of coordination, potentially deadly in the harsh environment on the slopes of Nanga Parbat.

  Rose watched the rest of the team as they went about their preparations. Frank Marinucci was everywhere: supervising the loading of the choppers; checking equipment; constantly shouting orders and curses in equal measure as he stormed around the site. Tej had joined Frank to act as his off-sider, interpreter and generally playing good-cop to Marinucci’s bad. Where Marinucci’s bluster failed, Tej charmed and between them they got results.

  As well as Marinucci there was a Canadian doctor and nurse that King had co-opted from a United Nations immunisation programme. Doctor Philip Keyes was a small man of slighter than average build. His sparse, dark hair was combed forward until his fringe brushed the thin-framed spectacles that perched above his sharp nose. His overall appearance was not as unappealing as it might have been, partly due to his steady and direct gaze. He had the air of a man that you wouldn’t befriend easily, but whom you could trust. Admirable qualities for a Doctor, Rose thought.

  The Doctor’s companion could not have been more different. Yvonne Gibbons was a vivacious young nurse from British Columbia. She had grown up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains and had years of experience climbing on the craggy boulders of the Cathedral Range and the icy slopes of Mount Huber and the President. Although not classically pretty, her natural athleticism gave her an unconscious, healthy grace that had won more than her fair share of admirers. She resisted Keyes’s caustic disposition with a zesty enthusiasm as if she was leading a high school pep-rally.

  King had put together a good team, but in the four members of the team gathered together in the lee of one of the choppers, he had really hit the jackpot. Rose watched as the quartet laughed at some shared joke. They were a tight-knit bunch; King had found them through his contacts in the Red Cross. They were all experienced climbers and volunteer members of the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Service. Although they were on the ready-list of the Red Cross’ emergency service personnel, they were actually in the area to prepare for an attempt on the south face of the Thalle La tower in southern Baltistan. They had arrived in Kashmir only four days earlier. Little did they know that their skills would be called upon quite so soon.

  Rose was glad they were part of the team. They would be used to working together and thinking on their feet in a survival situation. Most importantly, they could be counted on not to panic. No matter how good a climber you were, and how much experience you had, you never knew how some people would react in a crisis. Rose felt better knowing that these guys had seen their fair share of drama, and must have come through it okay or else they wouldn't have been there.

  Alan Frazier was the obvious leader. He was a small, tough looking fellow with a large blond moustache that made Rose think of the character Asterix, from the French comic. He had been involved in the planning discussions of the previous night and had made several valuable contributions.

  The three other men—Mark Campbell, Dave Patterson and Alex Hill—had kept to themselves. There hadn’t been much time for introductions and Rose wasn’t even sure he could match the names to the faces of Frazier’s companions. The only exception was Mark Campbell, he was easily identifiable: a giant of a man, at six feet five inches he towered over Frazier.

  Rose finished his stretching and walked over to Marinucci. The Australian engineer was completing the final checks to one of the two all-terrain vehicles that they would be taking up the mountain. The All Terrain Mobility Platform, or 'Supacat' as it was otherwise known, was a pocket-sized powerhouse used by the army for a multitude of tasks from resupplying fighting vehicles to evacuating wounded to scouting and radio rebroadcasting. The supacat was about three metres long and two wide. The cab was open with only a single roll bar behind the two b
ucket seats and a control yoke similar to a motorcycle or quad-bike. The two litre turbocharged diesel engine could drive the vehicle over almost any obstacle with up to a tonne of supplies on its rear pallet, and its six baloon tyres meant that it had extremely low ground pressure—ideal for muddy terrain or hard snow.

  ‘Anything I can do to help?’ he asked.

  ‘Typical bloody Pom.’ Marinucci replied—only half joking, ‘—only shows up once the work’s done.’ He tossed Rose a backpack from the back of the supacat. ‘You can finish packing your own kit,’ he said. ‘But keep it light. We’ve got weight limits here. These choppers don’t fly worth a damn at this altitude.’

  Rose examined the rucksack. It was super-lightweight, tall and thin to keep the arms free for climbing. There was a toggle on the shoulder strap: a bright yellow, plastic handle similar to the rip-chord of a parachute.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘That there’s your last resort,’ Marinucci replied. He reached over and pulled down smartly on the toggle. The sides of the backpack exploded outwards as two airbags suddenly inflated and burst from concealed pockets.

  ‘Avalanche protection,’ Marinucci explained. ‘It’s still pretty early in the season. There’s a lot of winter snow up there just waiting for a reason to come crashing down the mountain. We’re right in the middle of avalanche season and if the worst happens, you’ll be glad you’ve got one of these babies on your back.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘When that much snow is coming down the mountain, it acts more like a liquid than a solid mass. If you keep your wits about you, you can actually swim in the snow as if it was surf. You won’t win any prizes for style but if you’re lucky you’ll be able to keep yourself on top of the mass.’

  ‘So this think acts like a life jacket?’

  ‘Give that man a cee-gar... Exactly! Do you know what causes most of the fatalities in avalanche victims? It’s not crushing, not even hypothermia—but suffocation. The initial impact knocks ‘em out and then they get buried under the snow. They asphyxiate in a cloud of their own exhaled carbon dioxide before anyone has a chance to find them and dig ‘em out. The avalanche bag will stop that. Even if you’re unconscious this thing will keep you on top of the snow.’