Year Zero by Jeff Long Page B

no strangulation cords around the neck, nothing to suggest ritual murder. Gently, as if pressing eggshells, he palpated her skull. There were no depressions, no evidence of an accidental fall or some shaman’s ax or club. If this were a burial they would have laid her flat, or folded or bound her limbs.
    He stood back and took it in. To all appearances, she had been alive when she came to this ledge. You could tell by the way she was seated, in a cup of stone, and protected from the wind. She had made herself comfortable. It struck him that she might have have chosen this place herself, then waited to die. But why here, why would she do such a thing? Was she a suicide? Had she sacrificed herself to some god? He felt mystery, then pleasure, then strangely hope.
    Far to the south, white monsoon clouds were rising like smoke over the Indian plains. Another half hour went by. Nearly noon. Still no Ochs or Rinchen.
    Ever since Jerusalem, he’d been searching for a way out, or a way back in. He’d come to see a quest as nothing more than burglary. Ochs had done that to him. He’d done it to himself. But he could undo it. Why not? He could do it right. He could go legitimate. In one fell swoop, he could restore his reputation. He could do real science, write her up, get his doctorate, come out of the shadows. The possibilities grew.
    His training took over, he let it return to him, he invited it. The site was everything. He began to treat the ledge like a crime scene, backing off, getting his camera from the pack. He changed the lens and shot two rolls of Fuji from every direction. Only then did he allow himself to approach.
    Nathan Lee ran his fingertips across the deep aboriginal furrows on her forehead. None of her teeth were missing or decayed or worn. She seemed healthy, no outward signs of injury or disease. This was no old woman abandoned by her tribe. She was a sturdy young woman in her prime.
    Ochs would never need to know. It was simple enough. Before Ochs and Rinchen got any closer, Nathan Lee could bury her under rocks and beat a retreat. He would remove his rope. Erase his tracks. Halt the search. In three months, he could return…free of the Ochs “franchise.”
    Nathan Lee scrambled to his knees. Not in years had he felt this absolutely clear. His gangster days were over. He began carefully stacking rocks over her legs. He worked quickly, piling them haphazardly. Another few minutes, that’s all he needed.
    “Good lord.”
    Nathan Lee lowered his rock.
    Ochs’s massive head and shoulders were perched at the edge of the ledge. He was a mess, his beard and chest ribboned with snot and drool. Bound to the back of his pack, the point of his ice axe stuck above his head like an exclamation point.
    “We were wrong,” said Nathan Lee. “It’s just another body. Some poor refugee.”
    “The hell,” Ochs croaked. Even in his hypoxic state, sucking for air like a beached fish, he recognized what this was. Instantly the spirit of the place felt fouled.
    “We have to go down,” Nathan Lee tried. “There’s a storm coming in.”
    The rope tugged. Rinchen arrived, quiet as a whisper. Eyes masked by ancient steel-rimmed glacier glasses, his mouth a round O, he looked like a deep-sea diver from Jules Verne. A goiter bulged at his throat. Long scars striped one cheek.
    Rinchen took one look at the dead woman and went very still. He looked stricken. Then his big, gnarled peasant hands came together, and he began to pray. Nathan Lee realized he wasn’t praying for the Neandertal woman. He was praying to her.
    “What a glorious bitch,” Ochs crowed. “The Ice Queen. That’s got a ring to it. Goddess of the Death Zone.” He patted her head.
    “Unh,” Rinchen grunted at the irreverent pat.
    Ochs was oblivious. He started pitching the heaped stones from the ledge, palming boulders that had taken Nathan Lee two hands to move. The rocks ricocheted downhill and disappeared into the glacier.
    A gust of wind licked