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

sinister, giant ant hills. Ones that had been spawned by recent eruptions continued to belch black smoke from their tops. Older formations did nothing but erode at an imperceptible pace. Chhiri Tendi would catch an eruption out of the corner of his eye and witness lava pour down the steep slopes of Fumu. But again, the liquid would only make it a short distance before solidifying into black rock, and then snow would land on it, sticking in colder sections and melting in others. The surface of a distant planet would be more welcoming. Hostility and Volatility ruled here, utterly uncontested.

The pack weighed Chhiri Tendi down, yet he felt a lightness of step he could not explain. In no way should this lightness be confused with joy. He was in agony; much closer to dead than to vibrant. But he felt this lightness nonetheless, making his steps slightly easier even though his body was doing battle with other sorrows.

Clouds blocked his sight entirely. He had no idea where to go. He could not simply follow the ridge back down because the ridge no longer existed. The clouded top of the mountain did not have the luxury of such obvious features as ridges by which to judge location. The top was vague, impossible to map, visible but then disappearing too quickly to estimate coordinates. Even if you could get your bearings between cloudy gusts, the lava flow would change the shape of the landscape around you moment by moment. So really, in the cloud, there was no state for a living organism to be in other than lost.

“All I kept thinking was I was in the deepest of shit” Chhiri Tendi recalls. “This was really ridiculous. No money or sense of loyalty was worth this. Why did I continue to drag myself forward? I could have turned and at least tried to find my way out. I was pretty sure I would be dead from exposure to chaos within a few hours.”

But then all thoughts of that sort went away as the clouds cleared for a moment and he took in what was happening roughly forty feet ahead of him. In the short period of time Chhiri Tendi had to focus his eyes and survey his surroundings before the clouds obscured his sight again, he saw Junk had caught up with Hoyt. The two colossi were fighting at a pace hampered by their pains. Punches and kicks came painstakingly slowly. Kicks resulted in the kicker losing his balance and stumbling backward. Punches landed like sacks of potatoes placed gently on a kitchen counter by the lady of the house just returned from market.

But the brief sighting of the two men fighting was not the most fascinating thing to Chhiri Tendi. No, what was most fascinating was the two men’s odd relationship with the ground below them…

Chapter Eighteen: The Oculus Part II

During the day the cave was a deep, haunting blue and in fact quite lovely. At night it became the darkest place on God’s Earth. It seemed haunted. Wind blowing up from the massive hole in the middle of the cave made whistling sounds that were communications from the Dead who had shared a common Doom long ago.

River Leaf had set up her tent and shared it with McGee, the latter remaining mindful and respectful of her gender at all times. McGee spent his waking hours despondent, waiting for the end. River Leaf spent hers thinking, looking up at the Oculus, sizing up the walls, testing the integrity of the ice floor. She did not seem to have any plan, but she was not going to stop thinking until she did, or until death pre-empted her. “Why does she bother” McGee wrote. “With time thats [sic] left, she should do like me and think about good stuff from her life.” But McGee was probably not ruminating on the joys of his life as much as he claimed, for most of his entries from the cave are more of the “Oh my God, we are going to die” sort.

At one point during their imprisonment, McGee wondered aloud whether Junk might make it to the summit. River Leaf apparently did not even allow McGee to finish the thought before snapping “Who cares? He betrayed you.” McGee became angry. Just as he could not claim to understand her culture and her take on the world, so should she refrain from judging his relationship with Junk. He completely approved of his friend’s decision to press on to the top, so why shouldn’t she?

River Leaf may have intended to answer, but the answer was interrupted by four men falling through the Oculus one by one. The first tried to grip the edge of the Oculus while passing through it. That failed and he fell past McGee and River Leaf, screaming into the volcano’s dead mouth. The scream disappeared into the distance as the other three men individually landed in their turn on the lip of the mouth, only feet away from where McGee was sitting. One kept sliding right past McGee and made it far enough to slam into a wall of the cave. A shower of ice chunks and snow fell in after them. By the angle and location at which they landed, it seemed they had been moving at a very high speed when they hit the Oculus and dropped through it. Had they, like McGee, slid down the Icy Bellows from a great height and not arrested their fall? That scenario was rather likely.

All was quiet for several minutes. The three fallers moaned, thereby ensuring our heroes they were not dead. According to McGee’s notes, the one near the wall sat up first, but did not dare stand up too quickly. After a few more minutes the other two sat up as well, arms wrapped around bent legs. McGee and River Leaf recognized each one as they sat up. They were the dyspeptic Sherpa. But