When they reached level ground and stopped for a breather, he finally identified the noise that was now so overbearing he would’ve had to shout to be heard.
He couldn’t see it in the oppressive, starless dark, but in the near distance, a waterfall was crashing into the ground. He could hear the main cascade pummeling rock with a constant, thudding splat, and his face was damp with mist.
The men were already moving on and he followed the glow of the lamp like a lifeline as they climbed into a dense pine wood.
There was no path that he could see.
The white noise of the falls slowly faded away until he heard nothing but the sound of his own respirations in the increasingly thin air.
He had been cold in the tunnel. Now he sweated.
And still they climbed.
Trees clustered so closely that only the faintest dusting of snow had found its way to the forest floor.
Ethan kept looking back down the hillside, straining to see the lights of Wayward Pines, but it was all as black as pitch.
Suddenly there was no place else for the woods to go.
The trees simply ended at a wall of rock.
The men didn’t stop, didn’t even pause, just walked on, right up the face of it.
Imming shouted back, “It’s steep but there’s a path. Just step exactly where we do, and be glad it’s dark.”
“Why?” Ethan asked.
The men just laughed.
The forest had been steep.
This was insane.
Imming hooked the lantern onto a leather strap and slung it over his shoulder so he could use all four appendages.
Because you needed them.
The mountain swept up well beyond the shit-yourself side of fifty degrees. A steel cable had been bolted into the rock and there was some semblance of a path running alongside it—small footholds and indentations in the rock that appeared to suggest a trail. Most were natural. Some looked man-made. It all looked suicidal.
Ethan clung to the rusted cable—it was life.
They ascended.
Nothing to see but the meager patch of lantern-lit rock in their immediate vicinity.
At the first switchback, the pitch steepened.
Ethan had no concept of how high they had climbed, but he had a terrifying sense that they were already above the forest.
The wind kicked up.
Without the protection of the trees below, the rock had collected a quarter inch of snow.
Now it was steep and slippery.
Even Imming and his men slowed their manic pace, everyone taking careful steps, making sure each foothold was sound.
Ethan’s hands grew stiff with cold.
At this height, the cable had been lacquered with snow, and each new step required Ethan to brush it off before proceeding.
Past the sixth switchback, the cliff abandoned all reason and went vertical.
Ethan was shivering now.
His legs had turned to jelly.
He couldn’t be sure, but it felt like the strain of climbing had ripped the stitches at his incision site, a trail of blood running down the back of his leg and into his boot.
He stopped to catch his breath and refortify his nerve.
When he looked up again, the lantern had vanished.
There was nothing above him, nothing below.
Just endless, swimming darkness.
“Sheriff!”
Imming’s voice.
Ethan looked up and down again—still nothing.
“Burke! Over here!”
He glanced across the cliff.
There was the light, twenty feet away, but they weren’t climbing anymore. They had somehow moved across the sheer face of the cliff.
“You coming or what?”
Ethan glanced down and saw it: one long step away, a single plank, six inches wide, had been bolted into the rock with a smaller cable running parallel above it.
“Let’s go!” Imming yelled.
Ethan stepped from the foothold, across two feet of emptiness, onto the six-inch plank. It was coated with slush and the back half of his cowboy boots hung off the edge.
He clutched the cable, went to move his right boot, but its smooth sole lost traction on the icy board.
His feet went out from under him.
The scream he heard was his own.
His chest slammed against the rock, one hand barely gripping the cable as his weight tugged him down, the twined metal biting into his fingers.
Imming was shouting at him, but Ethan didn’t comprehend the words.
He was zoned in on the cold, cutting steel as he felt his grip slowly dissolving and his boots beginning to slide off his feet.
He saw himself slipping, imagined the stunning lift in his stomach, his arms and legs flailing. Could there be anything worse than falling in total darkness? At least in the daylight, you’d see the ground rushing up to end you, have a chance, albeit fleeting, to prepare.
He pulled himself up by the cable until his boots touched the plank again.
Leaned into the rock.
Gasping.
Hand bleeding.
Legs shaking.
“Hey, ass**le! Try not to die, okay?”
The men laughed and their footsteps trailed away.
No time to regroup.
With meticulous sidesteps, he traversed the rock face.
After five minutes of terror, the lantern disappeared around a corner.
Ethan followed, and to his infinite relief, the trail widened.
No more cable or wooden planks.
Now they walked up a gently sloping ledge.
Maybe it was the exhaustion and the fading overload of adrenaline, but Ethan missed the transition entirely.
From outside to in.
The light of the lantern now shone on rock walls all around him, even overhead, and the air had spiked ten degrees.
Their footfalls made an echo.
They moved through a cavern.
Up ahead—a din of voices.
Music.
Ethan followed the men to the end of the passage.
The sudden onslaught of light burned his eyes.
His guides walked on, but Ethan stopped at the wide, open door.
Couldn’t quite grasp what he was seeing.
Couldn’t fit it into a previous point of reference.
The room was several thousand square feet—the footprint of a comfortable house. The ceiling dipped low at the corners, vaulted past twenty feet in the center. The rock walls glowed the color of adobe in the abundance of firelight. There were candles everywhere. Torches. Kerosene lamps dangling from wires in the ceiling. It was warm, the heat radiating from a large fireplace in a distant corner—a recess in the room that apparently vented smoke outside. There were people everywhere. Congregating in small groups. Dancing. Sitting in chairs around the fire. Nearby, a trio of musicians played on a makeshift stage—trumpet, stand-up bass, an upright piano that Ethan figured must have been disassembled and hauled up here in pieces. It was Hecter Gaither on the bench, leading the band in some moody jazz thing that would’ve sounded right at home in a club in New York City. Everyone was dressed to the nines in clothes that couldn’t have possibly made the trip Ethan had just endured.