Flash Fiction Feature - The Third Man

The following is excerpted from John Long’s collection of flash fiction, Rogue’s Atlas.

By the time I staggered back down to the Bottleneck, the sky had greyed over and gusts were blowing me sideways. Dozens had died right here, pinned down by storms while descending from the summit. Like I was. I had to get lower down the mountain to have a chance. I hadn’t stopped in nineteen hours and my legs kept buckling every few steps.

I post-holed down through the Bottleneck and traversed left below a headwall of ice, which formed a windbreak—and I saw the natty old North Face tent, tucked into an alcove of black rock, set on an icy pedestal they’d dug out decades before. Warming temperatures had melted the snow that for years had buried the tent, which we’d spotted on the way up, but gave a wide berth because the late, great British alpinist Allan Bancroft was still inside it—and had been for twenty-seven years.

The tent flap was thrown open and I saw, or thought I saw, a hooded figure, waving a gloved hand and yelling, “Come on. Get over here!”

I was worse off than I thought. Seeing and hearing things.

“Don’t get in here soon, you’re finished…”

That got my boots moving. I was too far gone to question the figure, waving from Bancroft’s old tent. I kneeled at the entrance.

“Get in and zip the bleeding flap, will you?”

I slithered through the small entrance and closed the flap behind me. That barely left enough room inside to sit upright with my legs outstretched, snugged up against the stranger who was lying flat in a sleeping bag, rimed in hoarfrost and cinched up around his chin. My eyes were so bleary I couldn’t focus on anything.

“Drink. You gotta drink.”

I still had a thirty-two-ounce hydration bladder of water strapped to my side, under my parka and close to my skin, which wasn’t frozen. After all that time above the death zone (26,000 feet), I felt dry as a rock. But the first sip caught in my throat because I was still sucking air. I got a couple swallows down, and my convulsive shivers eased off.

“Where’s your partners?”

It took many reedy gasps to say how Selma and Dan, my partners for the summit push, faded at the Bottleneck, around three that afternoon, and descended back to Camp 4.

“And you pushed on?”

I felt OK at the Bottleneck and was hell-bent on bagging K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth. I was only thinking this, in fragments—that if I had to solo up and down the 1,000-foot ramp to top out, I would. And did. That made our expedition successful.

“Not till you get down,” he said. “And you never do if this tent isn’t here. You did a daft thing. And I should know.”

I coughed out a few words.

“—Keep drinking. You don’t rehydrate, you die right here. Have any gel packs?”

I did. A dozen little packets of energy gel, stuffed into pockets.

“Keep that water coming or you’ll gag on that shit,” said the stranger.

I got several packs down, with little sips from the bladder. My head started clearing but my eyes kept closing. Then a cold hand smacked the back of my neck.

“Wake up!”

I snapped back. It was dark now. Wind lashed the tent. I could see my breath, but little more.

“No sleeping till you finish that bladder.”

I was god-awful thirsty but my throat felt raw and every sip burned going down. Then a poke to my ribs.

“Finish the gel.”

That went down a little easier. I managed another two packets. “Keep drinking! You’re getting off this thing, mate. Don’t forget Joshua Tree. And Christmas in Zermatt.”

Joshua Tree was my happy place. And no way could I forget Zermatt for Christmas. Rhonda already bought the tickets. No idea how he knew that.

“Keep drinking,” he said. “You got plans.”

This back-and-forth kept on, with occasional ministrations from the stranger, till I’d almost killed the bladder. I don’t remember passing out, only waking up at first light. I unzipped the fly and stuck my head out. A cloud draped the upper massif. Light snow fell, but otherwise dead calm. Selma and Dan’s tracks were still visible, next to fixed ropes snaking down into the mist.

I sucked down my last two gel packs with a few sips of water. Several inches of rime had settled over the stranger, still lying flat in his sleeping bag and not moving. I pressed a gloved hand against the bag, wanting to give thanks, but the body inside was frozen solid. I wormed over and looked down at the figure, the sleeping bag cinched around his face— Allan Bancroft’s face, white as marble, lips shrunken back in a yellow-toothed rictus, his glossy eyes wide open, staring at forever.

I bolted down to the tents at Camp 4, at 25,000 feet. Selma and Dan were waiting with soup and hot tea. Both were alert but spent. We needed to get off the mountain before the next storm hit. I passed out for an hour, then the three of us tromped down to Camp 2 and we bivouacked there. We made it back to Base Camp late the next day.

We had a big mess tent and the cook made pizza and we celebrated. All the others—especially our Pakistani liaison officer, Colonel Kahn—were dying to know how I’d survived the night out in the open, at 27,000 feet in a storm.

“With difficulty,” is all I said. I never climbed again.

A decade later, work took me to London and I bought a big marzipan pineapple and planned to drop it off to Bancroft’s widow, having no idea what I’d say. But I learned she’d remarried and moved to Austria, so I ate the pineapple myself—and kept the water coming to get it all down.

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