Brooks ducked under the vines and tattered prayer flags and ran toward the far side with the drumming of his boots on the decrepit planks, which shuddered beneath his weight.
He prayed Adrianne had already made it across. If she hadn’t, then he might as well have killed her himself.
He drew the ice axes from his belt and snapped the picks into place.
Five hundred feet.
The brown water called to him from so far down he could barely see it through the mist.
Four hundred fifty feet.
The wind hammered the bridge and swung it nearly sideways. He grabbed the rope railing. Slipped. Caught himself on his knees. Looked back.
A shadow emerged from the trees concealing the path.
He wasn’t going to make it.
He leapt to his feet and ran for everything he was worth.
Four hundred feet.
Three hundred fifty.
He prepared himself to hack at the ropes the moment he reached the far side. The picks were sharp enough to slice through several inches of ice. Surely they could make short work of a pair of ropes that had to be at least a century old and weakened by the elements.
But he needed to have time to pull it off.
He glanced back again.
The shadow stood silhouetted against the trees, its wet hair flagging on the breeze. Another stepped out of the forest behind it. They made no move to follow him out onto the bridge.
Maybe they recognized what he intended to do with the axes and were smart enough to realize they didn’t stand a chance against the river from this height.
Three hundred feet.
Halfway.
No, that wasn’t it. They were so fast that they could easily overtake him before he reached the far side, let alone hacked through the ropes. So why didn’t they?
He remembered the coordinated manner with which they’d hunted him earlier and suddenly understood.
Brooks stopped dead in his tracks and looked up toward the far end in time to see more shadows advance toward the bridge.
It was all over now.
Even if Adrianne had found the strength to cross, she had surely walked right into their trap.
He turned around and watched the predators start across the bridge toward him, then whirled around and saw the others do the same.
He’d never stood a chance.
He leaned over the rope and looked down at the river. If the fall didn’t kill him, the tree trunks firing down the current and the boulders hiding beneath the troughs surely would.
The wind faded and the bridge stood still beneath him. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky. The enormous raindrops beat down upon his face and shoulders and he experienced a moment of clarity. He knew what he had to do. It was the only thing he could do. The secrets of this valley could never be allowed to get out.
He lowered his face and felt the cold water run down his cheeks. He opened his eyes and stared first at the ice ax in his left hand, then at the one in his right. He raised them up to either side of his head and turned the picks outward.
The lightning reflected from the sharp tips and illuminated the hunters at either end of the bridge.
“What are you waiting for?” he shouted.
The echo of his voice was swallowed by a clap of thunder and the drumroll of running feet striking the bridge from both sides at once.
Forty-seven
Yarlung Tsangpo River Basin
Motuo County
Tibet Autonomous Region
People’s Republic of China
October 17th
Today
Brooks’s heart pounded. His hands trembled.
The bridge shook so hard beneath him he could barely maintain his balance.
They raced toward him from the east, grabbing the rope rails for leverage and hurling their lower bodies forward, faster and faster. He peeked over his shoulder. They were coming every bit as quickly from the west.
He adjusted his sweaty grip on the handles of the ice axes.
To the east, two hundred feet and closing. The same to the west.
He swallowed hard. Tried to regulate his breathing.
A hundred fifty feet and closing.
They’d passed the halfway mark. The point of no return.
He squared his shoulders to those barreling toward him from the west.
A hundred feet.
The long hair snapped from their heads like flames. He saw recessed eyes and savage, bared teeth.
Seventy-five feet.
He swung the picks down and struck the ropes.
The entire bridge lurched. He glanced to his right. The pick had cut halfway through the rope. The frayed edges retracted and started to unravel.
He looked back up.
Fifty feet.
Forty.
He took a deep breath in anticipation of submersion and swung the picks again.
The bridge dropped several feet. The ropes split and snapped back to either side. The vertical support ropes that had been attached to it fell straight down. The arched ropes to which the prayer flags had been tied drew tight.
Twenty-five feet.
Brooks fell to his knees. He’d expected the whole bridge to collapse when he cut the ropes. Without any supports underneath, the decrepit bridge should have immediately given way.
Twenty feet.
He watched his death approaching with both terror and awe. Their facial architecture and expressions were undeniably human. As were the musculature of their chests and the taper of their waists. Their legs were proportionate, and yet they moved more like apes, leaping and swinging rather than running. Their arms were long and hairy and he could see the claws on their fanned fingers.
Fifteen feet.
They were truly magnificent in every way.
Ten feet.
Brooks closed his eyes and tucked his chin to his chest. His hands fell limply to his sides, the picks clattering to the—
The ground dropped out from beneath him. He heard a resounding crack as if from far away as he fell. He opened his eyes and saw boards separating beneath him against the backdrop of the river.
He looked up as a hairy shape lunged for him. He spun away and its claws bit into the back of his jacket. He swung the ax toward the western half of the bridge. The pick struck between to horizontal planks even as the bridge fell away from him. He swung the other ax and buried it through another board.
The bridge started to go vertical. Brooks pulled himself tightly against it a heartbeat before he was struck from above by a body that shrieked when it bounced from his shoulders and out over the nothingness.
Another blur streaked past to his right. It grabbed for him and he felt claws carve into the meat of his thigh before they disengaged at the side of his knee. It roared as it plummeted into the mist.
The bridge swung toward the granite wall. He watched it race toward him and braced for impact.
Another one cried out when it lost its grip on the planks. It struck his left shoulder and cartwheeled over the river.
Brooks lost his grip on the ax in his left hand when the bridge struck the escarpment.
The wood snapped and he fell. The pick in his right hand caught several feet down.
He grabbed the bungee on his left hip, reeled the ax up to his hand, and swung it at the bridge. It lodged in the wood with a thuck.
Weight on his back. Jerking him downward. Thrashing. He felt feet scrabbling against his legs as the beast attempted to gain enough traction to climb him.
A tearing sound and the creature lurched. Claws pierced his back where his coat had been. He felt the sharp tips inside of him, against his ribs near his spine.
Brooks bellowed in pain and looked up at his hands. They slid down to the very bottoms of the rubber grips.
More clawing against the backs of his legs. And then the claws disengaged from his ribs with a snap and the weight was gone.
An all-too-human scream grew farther and far
ther away until it was silenced by a splash.
Brooks didn’t look down. He focused everything he had left on his survival.
Blood poured down his back and saturated the waistband of his pants. His breathing became ragged, gasping, and he felt an acute tightness in his chest.
The top was so far up he could barely see it.
His arms shook as he pulled himself upward. Pried the ax from the wood. Swung it higher and impaled the wood. He did the same thing with the other ax. Over and over until he gained traction with the toes of his boots and secured the leverage he needed to climb.
Right hand, left hand.
The warmth of blood diffused across the backs of his thighs and rolled down his calves. His head became light and the world started to spin.
Higher.
Right hand, left hand.
The corners of his vision darkened. The wind swung what little remained of the bridge sideways, bouncing him against the granite.
He poured every last ounce of his strength into the climb. Pulled with his arms; pushed with his legs. He tasted blood in his mouth and knew he was almost out of time.
He heard the clatter of boards striking the rock wall below him and then splashing into the river.
The whole thing was coming apart.
Right hand, left hand.
He swung the ax overhand and met with no resistance. His forearm struck the rocky ledge. He braced his elbow on the level ground and pulled himself up with a grunt. His lungs felt like they collapsed in upon themselves and he had to open his mouth against the blood that rose from his chest.
Water flooded down the path. It ran over his arms and splashed him in the face.
He closed his eyes and struggled against the current, vying for purchase as it threatened to sweep him off. One final push with his legs and he crawled over the ledge between the support posts and collapsed onto his side.
Darkness closed around him. He gasped in an effort to inflate his punctured lungs. His body was cold. So cold. He was peripherally aware that he was losing too much blood, but his only conscious thoughts were of Adrianne.
He pushed himself up to all fours and crawled. Blood dribbled from his mouth and pattered the water flowing over his wrists. He’d told her to run as far as she could. If she’d left any prints, the runoff had already erased them.
The coldness spread to his brain and he could feel it shutting down, like someone walking through a house and flipping off the light switches.
The ground leveled off to a muddy plain spotted with rhododendrons and wild grasses. His arms gave out and dropped him face-first into the mud. He propped himself up on his elbows and dragged himself onward. The earth tilted beneath him and his vision blurred. He fell once more. When he raised his head he saw a footprint in the mud beside the impression of his face. The track was smaller than his and had the distinct tread marks of a hiking boot.
He laughed out loud and crawled faster.
She’d made it. Adrianne had crossed the bridge in time. Tears of happiness streamed from his eyes as his vision dimmed.
There was another footprint. And another.
He collapsed to his chest and clawed his way through the mud and weeds, dragging himself by sheer will alone until he saw the shoe that had left the prints lying on the ground behind a rhododendron. Closer he crawled. A wet sock hung from her foot. Her legs were muddy and cold, her skin a shade of pale bordering on translucence.
“No,” he whispered. Then louder, “No, no, no!”
He crawled onto her unresponsive body. She lay prone, one arm crumpled beneath her, the other sprawled out to the side. It looked like she’d made a beeline for the tree and simply collapsed upon reaching it.
The rain pattered her back, which showed no indication that she was even trying to breathe. Her head was turned partway to the side. The rain puddled in her ear.
His strength fled him and dropped him onto her. Her cheek against his was cold. He kissed the corner of her mouth.
The muscles in his neck gave out and his forehead struck the ground beside hers. The last thing he saw before the darkness became complete was the puddle of blood that had dripped from her mouth, its surface unperturbed by her breath.
Forty-eight
Excerpt from the journal of
Hermann G. Wolff
Courtesy of Johann Brandt, Private Collection
Chicago, Illinois
(Translated from original handwritten German text)
November 1956
I emerged from the Tibetan wilds to find a world at war. Everything had changed since last I was in civilization. The reunification of the Germanic peoples was well underway. The Führer had invaded Poland and in response France and Great Britain declared war. The British had sealed off the gateway to Lhasa and would let no one pass, least of all anyone of Germanic descent, which I kept to myself when I joined the flood of Tibetan refugees across the border into India. It took three months to cross the whole wretched country, but I eventually reached the Bay of Bengal.
The whole of Calcutta was abuzz with British Indian Troops preparing for the hostilities that would soon be at their doorstep. The German consulates had all closed under pressure from the host nation and its ambassadors had been shipped back to the Fatherland. It took seven weeks to work my way back through the Suez Canal and across the Mediterranean, where I first saw U-boats performing maneuvers out in the open in preparation for the campaign to come.
The pomp and circumstance of the Nazi Party back home had been replaced by a well-oiled machine geared for fighting the war. No longer were the streets filled with revelers and the signs of prosperity, but rather rubble and signs declaring that Jews were no longer welcome. Storefronts had been smashed and burned without any effort to rebuild them. The outpouring of nationalism had been channeled into aggressive imperialism. No longer did the cities abound with hope, but rather the promise of destruction. The world of discovery and enlightenment I left behind had become one of bloodshed and suffering. Where once there had been opportunity, there was now the irresistible pull of the call to arms.
My countrymen no longer cared about the superiority of their Aryan roots and instead seemed hell-bent on proving it by any and all means. I found the quest upon which I embarked one nobody cared about, if indeed they ever had. It was just one of many keys the Reich inserted into the backs of the men and boys they wound up like tin soldiers and loosed upon an unprepared world. The days of enlightenment had been just another illusion cast by a villainous empire like any and every other, not one with the best interests of its people at heart, but one fueled by hatred and motivated by revenge. Our communal vision to prove we would not be kept down had mutated into a desire to grind our former oppressors beneath our hobnailed boots.
And yet within that dark time of depression and horror, I found opportunity of a kind I never anticipated.
By the time I reached Berlin, the Office of the Ahnenerbe had been dissolved and incorporated into the General Ranks of the SS. The country needed soldiers more than it needed men willing to run around the globe on the whim of the Reichsführer-SS. His pet projects had been relegated to the scrap heap, or so they said. Filmmakers were no longer sent directly to the Ministry of Propaganda, but rather to the front lines where it would be their honor to fight and die beside their fellow Germans. Scientists, however…there were special assignments waiting for men with vision and an unwavering devotion to both their field and their Führer. Fortunately, that was exactly what I was. Or so I convinced them, as anyone capable of giving lie to my claim had left Berlin to heed the call of war long ago. I was an anthropologist by the name of Johann Brandt, an orphan who had risen from the dust to a position of prominence in Himmler’s Ahnenerbe, an academic who was issued new identification and credentials after losing his—along with the remainder of his expedition—in Tibet, a scientist who was free to ply his trade without oversight on a population of subjects who had no choice but to let him.
Maybe there was a
point when I believed the cost of the knowledge we gained was simply too high, yet every day I went to work with a smile on my face and a song in my heart as I opened books made of flesh and absorbed every last bit of knowledge they contained. And when I feared for the forfeiture of my soul, all I had to do was look at the mask I had cast from the mutated face of my friend Kurt Eberhardt to realize that what I was doing was of monumental importance. So I catalogued every minute physical detail of every race and set about correlating the similarities and differences, and then conducted experiments to see if I could change them.
By the time the tides of war turned, I had amassed the kind of knowledge that made me invaluable. As they say, to the victor belong the spoils. In our case, it was the scientists and their research the Allied forces were desperate to secure. Their hands were clean of the so-called atrocities we committed, so they felt justified in claiming the fruits of our labors as their own. And in exchange for our full cooperation and allegiance, which we all offered willingly, we were pardoned for our complicity in any wrongdoing and granted not only full citizenship in the Land of the Free, but positions from which we could continue our research unmolested, if not unsupervised.
For my part, I was content to blend into the shadows while others of my kind stepped into the limelight by founding NASA and taking high-ranking posts within the Federal Government. Somewhere out there were people who might recognize me for who I truly was or for the imposter I had become, if they hadn’t all been killed during the war. So I pursued my calling overseas, as far away from my posting at the University of Chicago—an honor arranged my David Rockefeller himself—as I could get. I followed the lead of scientists like Raymond Dart, Louis Leakey, and Robert Broom and sought to find my place in the field. I traveled the world with my spade and the inexhaustible financial resources of the Rockefeller Foundation. I unearthed the partial skull of Paranthropus robustus in South Africa and Paranthropus boisei in the Great Rift Valley and published my first scholarly piece on the accuracy of Charles Darwin’s predictions in The Descent of Man, in which he speculated the earliest humans and their progenitors would ultimately be found on the Dark Continent, as it encompasses the totality of the range of mankind’s nearest living relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas.
Fearful Symmetry: A Thriller Page 30
