I told myself to get it together and tried to straighten my legs and kick. The snow pressed hard against the soles of my feet as I forced them upwards. At the same time I dug with my fingers and enlarged the space in front of my head. My legs had more room now too, and I continued to curl and kick. I worked both arms down to my stomach and began to push the snow away to either side of me, further enlarging the free space.
Gradually the snow-free area around me increased. I kicked, clawed, pushed, pressed; squirmed and contorted my body. Soon I was sweating. Rivulets of warm moisture poured down my face and under my arms. My breath came in gasps, hot and damp. I felt utterly exhausted, every little remnant of energy used up, spent.
At last I had enough room to turn around in. I bent my body like a knife blade and got it the right way, my head up and feet down. First goal achieved. Now I had to get to the surface, however far above me it might be. Then get to María. It was either that or both of us die.
I reached up above my head and started to pull down loose snow, using my sock-covered hands like tiny excavator buckets. When the snow worked its way down to my feet I stamped on it, creating a hard, secure base to stand on. As more snow became compressed, my base grew higher.
Slowly I tunnelled upwards through a narrow shaft barely wider than my body. My arms ached and several times I stopped and stood still, told myself I could go no further. Then an image of María’s face seared my mind and I started shuffling the snow down to my shoes again. By now my feet were completely numb and I soon lost all feeling below my knees. Every few minutes I took a little snow into my mouth, melted it and let it trickle out and down my chin, making sure that I was still working directly upwards and hadn’t veered off at a sideways angle.
I gouged the snow above me, hands and arms now numb as well, praying for a glimmer of moonlight to appear. There was only jet black darkness. My body cried out for rest and sleep. I tried to switch my mind off completely, become a digging machine, one that would keep going until the parts finally broke down, once and for all.
Keep moving, keep digging.
Slowly the minutes turned into . . . an hour? Two hours? I lost all track of time. I groped my way up through hell’s ice tunnel, my throat raw, my lungs burning, sick of the smell of snow in my nostrils.
And then my fuddled mind became aware of the change. The snow above me was dark gray, not pitch black. New energy surged up in me from somewhere unknown and I raised both arms, punched the ceiling like a madman, and a shower of snow rained down on my head, blinding my eyes. I wiped them clear and looked up.
I could see stars. A million of them, twinkling like tiny sparks of hope in a velvety, navy blue sky. I had never seen anything so wonderful.
And air; clean, fresh, unlimited. As much as I could ever want. I filled my lungs with it, over and over again. I had almost forgotten how good it felt.
I crawled out of my hole and sprawled face down on the surface. Uncontrollable, crazy laughter spilled out from deep inside me and I felt like howling at the moon. I was alive, I was free. Finally I could enjoy the rest I’d yearned for so long.
But what about María?
Chapter 27
I forced my stiff body to move one last time. The three-quarter moon illuminated the area all around and I crawled in the direction of the plane. From the ground I couldn’t see much so as I approached I forced myself to stand on shaky legs.
What I saw appalled me. The plane was almost completely covered with snow. The door I had flung open was buried and its exact location hidden. I would have to dig again.
Where the energy came from I’ll never know. It seemed that working right up at the edge of total physical collapse was the only way that I could keep terrible thoughts of María from driving me mad. I let burrowing occupy my complete attention. For the next few hours it became my raison d’être. Even when a stitch forced me to rest, my mind continued to urge myself forward.
Light was reflecting up from the east and the sun was rising when I finally found her. Or perhaps she found me. I had cut a passage to the plane; great white mounds piled high on either side. Now I was inside and I knew it could not be long. In the still dim light I saw a slim bare hand sticking out of the snow. Before I knew what I was doing I had clasped it, registered its hard coldness, its lifelessness. Tears tumbled down my grizzled cheeks. All my desperation was over now and I felt empty, purposeless, defeated. The one thing I had vowed to myself and to María was that I would not leave her, that I would be here for her. She and I would meet our fate together and in each other’s arms.
But when it counted most I had failed her, totally failed her.
I uncovered María and had just enough strength left to pull her out of the cabin and lay her outside on top of the snow. Then I lay down beside her and closed my eyes, still holding her hand. I prayed for another avalanche to bury us both.
I woke to the feeling of sun on my face, drying my clothes and warming my blood, encouraging it to circulate through bruised, weary muscles. From the position of the sun, now blinding my bare eyes, it was around noon. I had slept for several hours.
My first thought was a practical one. María remained as stiff as board, rigid like the mountain itself, but that would not continue for long. I would not subject her to the process of decay. Quickly I pulled her over to the shade beside the plane, burrowed a deep hollow in the snow and buried her. I packed additional snow on top and created a burial mound. Again I kept my mind blank, my hands moving automatically. At the end I tried to think of something to say, even just in my head, but there were no prayers left in me. Later I broke a piece of spar off the plane and marked her grave.
A little of the fuselage was still clear of snow and I propped myself against it. Forced some snow into my mouth and sucked it to liquid. My eyes closed of their own accord and I dozed fitfully.
In my dream María came to me. I was sitting in the same place, my back against the plane, and looked up. There she was, completely well, walking towards me. Smiling her big broad grin, long black hair framing her perfect oval face, long legs moving easily in tight denim. We had both been smothered in snow but had survived. She had been somewhere else entirely so it had been easier for her, just a little bit of snow to shrug off. You know these things in dreams. Now she was returning to me.
There was a low rumble. It took me long seconds to figure it out. Then I did. But I was paralyzed to the spot. Dream was turning to nightmare.
A second avalanche rained down from behind me. It swept over the plane, an unstoppable white wall of death. María was gathered up, enveloped, swept away. I fought to get up and still couldn’t move. I opened my mouth, screamed “María!” and felt my heart pounding like a hammer. Then the mountain of snow fell on me too and I was buried for the last time.
I stirred and awoke. The light was fading and the night setting in. I shivered and rose, crawled into the plane. It was still possible to stretch out in here and would be a little less cold than outside. I no longer had the seat covers or the towels for extra warmth.
Now that it was time to sleep I couldn’t do it. My sunglasses were buried where I’d put them last, under the pilot’s seat. I dug them out and found them broken at the nose bridge. The sheets of aluminium and the two water bottles were still on the front passenger seat. I cleaned the snow off them and they were fine. The Swiss Army knife was safe in my coat pocket. With nothing else to do I closed my eyes and tried to drift off but my mind was too active.
The night was endless and in my hollowed out cavity the air became ever more stale and stuffy. The temperature plummeted. Eventually I sat up and wriggled my fingers and toes, rubbed my face with my hands to keep warm. The frantic activity of the past twenty-four hours that had so exhausted me had at least staved off pangs of starvation and my deep longing for food. Now the hunger rats were back and gobbled relentlessly at the inside of my gut.
Through lidded eyes I watched the damp blackness inside the plane slowly give way to the pale light of daw
n. Around eight in the morning I crawled outside. It was darker than usual with an overcast sky and flurries of snow swirling around me. A niggling wind blew snow into my bare eyes and stung my face.
The blizzard continued throughout the morning. I scooped up the thin layer of fresh snow and used it to quench my thirst; broke off harder lumps of snow to numb the gnawing in my belly. My thoughts flittered back and forth from María to what I would do next. I had survived the worst the mountains could throw at me. But it wouldn’t do me any good. I would now grow weaker all the faster and die a slow death with no-one to bury me. If the storm really were to cause another avalanche, I knew that this time I would have neither will nor strength to fight it.
In the middle of the afternoon the blizzard died right down as fast as it had appeared, leaving an eerie silence. No second avalanche after all. The sun came out from behind clouds and I hastily set out the tin foil and water bottles. My hands worked away, carrying out the necessary actions, despite my head saying no. I realised my survival instinct would never stop while I still drew breath.
And poor María, isn’t this what she would have wanted me to do? My thoughts turned again to her. I expected tears but instead my mind tugged in a different direction. Something had nagged at me since the minute I’d found her. I’d chased it away but now, for the first time, I allowed my thoughts to go where they wanted. María had given me a way out, a way to survive and get off the mountain. But dare I take it? Did I even want to take it?
Chapter 28
The rats gnawed relentlessly at my gut but they talked good sense too. There was only one way for me to keep alive. Eat. And there was only one thing to eat.
María.
Or, as I would have to think of it from now on if I were to remain sane, the corpse that had once been María.
It was a ghastly prospect but it was reality and it revolved over and over in my thoughts. María’s body would be preserved in the intense cold of the snow in which I’d buried it. But the thought of even touching it, never mind undressing it and cutting it up, was totally repugnant to me. The mound where my eyes kept wandering was a shrine, a holy place. Her grave, for God’s sake.
I dismissed the idea but it kept coming back, it wouldn’t leave me alone. Sometimes emotion won and then, always, the rats bit harder and logic held sway. Since the crash, my body had been surviving on its reserves but the tank was nearly empty. Every time I moved, even to go take a leak or fetch a water bottle, I used up some of the very little juice that remained. Without some kind of nutrition soon, some fuel intake, I was doomed. The corpse that used to be María was the only edible thing I had.
As my hunger became increasingly visceral, expediency became almost impossible to argue against. Then I began arguing to myself that I had a moral duty to stay alive too, by any means whatsoever, including this one. That’s what my María would have wanted, right?
It’s only meat. That’s all it is. María’s soul has gone to heaven to be with God.
So I told myself. There was no longer a human being here; all that was left was a carcass. I’ve eaten other carcasses all my life – why not this one?
I had to, it was my duty, she would have wanted it, and if I was to get off this mountain and survive I had to do it. In the thin air it already took me so much effort just to walk a hundred feet. I thought how much more it would take to climb to the top of the nearest mountain to the west and then down the other side. What lay in that mound was pure energy. The truth of it was uncontestable.
Eat it or die. María would have wanted me to do it for my sake. Would God hate me? If there was a God and he was watching then he surely understood, and he wanted me to live too. Virtue lay in survival and perhaps this was God’s way to provide . . .
So my mind and belly worked, continuing to justify what I so much wanted to do anyway. I still shrank from the decision. If only I had even a small hope of rescue, but in reality there was none.
My survival instinct was winning even though the thought of eating human meat was horrific, especially this particular flesh. It was a social taboo for good reason. I reminded myself that there was no society up here, there was only live or die.
The mental turmoil tired me out and I slept for the rest of the day, blessedly free of anguish, doubt and the never-ending gnawing of the hunger rats. When I awoke the sky was dim and I barely had time to gather up the bottles and foil and bring them inside. I glugged one bottle down thirstily and had to force myself to leave the other one aside for morning. The water filled my belly and satisfied the gnawers for a little while.
I lay down and listened to the silence of the mountains. The sleep had done me good and at last my head was clear. I knew I must act tomorrow or not at all. Any longer and I’d be too weak to do it even if I wanted. I took out my Swiss Army knife and ran my thumb along the largest blade. In the morning I would use it.
Chapter 29
I rose and went over to the mound, did what was necessary to uncover . . . the carcass. One last time, I asked María for her forgiveness. The words cut like daggers inside me. I cleared my throat and asked God too, but there was only silence.
Her hips . . . I quickly determined to change ‘her’ to ‘the’ from here on. The hips, buttocks, whatever, were now exposed and protruded from the snow. I knelt, bared the skin further and dug into the flesh with my knife. It was frozen hard and difficult to cut but I persisted now that I’d finally begun. Eventually I cut away about a dozen small slivers, each about the size of a cigarette. I stood up, carried them around the plane and placed them carefully on the exposed part of the roof to thaw in the warming sun.
I sat beside the plane, rested for about an hour, thinking the same guilty thoughts I’d mulled over a million times already. For once I was too agitated to drift into sleep. I became aware that I was stalling again, trying even now to avoid the inevitable. Expelling a low grunt of annoyance at myself, I hauled up onto my feet and resolved to finish what I’d started.
The sun had dried the slivers a bit. I closed my eyes and tried to pray one last time. Begged for help from above to do what I had to do, what I knew deep down was right – knew at least some of the time. Again there was no reply. Just a terrible stillness and the void.
My hand reached out and took one of the strips down. Then hesitated. Even with my mind firmly set, the horror of what I was about to do, had in fact already done, paralysed me. My hand wouldn’t move; I could neither lift it to my mouth nor let it fall to my side.
A churning revulsion stirred in my shrivelled guts like rancid bile. Repugnance fought with necessity, my emotions with my belly.
Me pica el bagre, me pica el bagre, me pica el bagre. Her voice echoed through my head like a half-forgotten mantra, accusing me.
“Me pica el bagre,” I said out loud. And then in English; “I’m hungry.”
“God wants me to survive,” I told myself.
“And there’s only one way,” I continued, gazing into the distance.
I nodded my head. Yes, yes, yes, only one way. The mountain in the west loomed large and formidable. I lowered my eyes, stared at the hand and set my will firm. Do it. Just do it.
I set my will rock hard and it prevailed. The hand rose at last and pushed the shiny raw meat down into my mouth.
I gagged once then forced myself to swallow down the slimy sliver; scooped a handful of snow to wash it down.
Guilty? No. I felt triumphant.
Later, already feeling a little stronger, I dug out the rest of our belongings. In my travel bag I had a couple of pens and a notebook. That evening, before it got dark, I wrote to María;
My dear María,
In an hour or so it will be sunset and it will be too cold to write this. You will never read it but I want to write it anyway. I am sorry I never said these things to you while I had the chance. María, you can have no idea how much I’ve thought about you. I did not know you for very long but if things had been different I sensed we would have been together forever.
I can’t describe how you made me feel, in Mendoza and even here in this snowy hell.
For you, sweet lady, it is over. I am only sorry that I was swept so far away from you at the very last. I hope you were asleep when it happened and never woke up.
Today is my tenth day here and would have been yours too. The weather was wonderful and the sun very bright. I drank melted snow water till my swollen belly could hold no more. I have small cuts and bruises all over my body from the avalanche but they will heal.
Of course, it was also a very depressing day as well. You know all about that, I’m sure. Perhaps your spirit is here with me still, in the breeze, and I don’t even know it. If that’s so, then I pray you looked away when I did what I had to do.
Afterwards I expected, indeed yearned for a wave of guilt and shame to overwhelm me. Instead, it felt like a sacrament, the holiest I have ever taken. Like one is supposed to feel when doing something holy, I felt blessed, triumphant.
My head told me I had just overcome a primitive, irrational taboo. My belly told me I might soon be able to walk away from here and survive.
Why then does my heart tell me I’ve committed an unforgiveable sin?
María, you probably understand all this better than I do. You know that from the bottom of my heart I wish it were different but there was nothing else for me to do. I had to decide, and I have done what I have done with whatever little courage and faith I could find. I must now continue to do it, there is no going back. If I am wrong, I beg for your forgiveness.
Whichever way I am judged, I am glad that you are now free of all pain and suffering. Your soul is with your Maker. I try to believe that as best I can.
Shadow of a Killer Page 9
