Abominable

by Alan Nayes

  ABOMINABLE

  Alan Nayes

  Copyright © 2016 Alan Nayes

  Smashwords Edition

  Editor and Formatter: Heather Marie Adkins cyberwitchpress.com

  Cover Artist: Char Adlesperger wicked-art.wix.com/wicked-cover-designs

  Editor: Christine LePorte elance.com/s/edityourbook

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including recording, scanning, photocopying or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  BOOKS BY ALAN NAYES

  BARBARY POINT

  GARGOYLES ( Resurrection Trilogy, Book One)

  PLAGUE (Resurrection Trilogy, Book Two)

  RESURRECTION (Resurrection Trilogy, Book Three)

  THE UNNATURAL

  SMILODON

  GIRL BLUE

  RETURN TO UNDERLAND

  HEMLOCK POND

  THE LEARNER (Book One of the Learner Series)

  ST. CLAWS, A Holiday Novelette

  THREE LITTLE LOVE STORIES

  RESURRECTION TRILOGY BOXED SET

  ABOMINABLE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank the following persons, who generously lent their time and/or expertise to this book:

  Heather Marie Adkins

  Char Adlesperger

  Linda Mackey

  Christine LePorte

  Bev Alcorn

  Tara West

  Dedicated to the most well-known giant primate of all … King Kong!

  ABOMINABLE

  by

  Alan Nayes

  PART ONE

  OKPILAK GLACIER

  ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, ALASKA

  PROLOGUE

  From where he stood, the ice appeared to extend forever. Of course, he realized this was only an optical illusion. He was gazing upslope of the east fork of the remote alpine Okpilak Glacier, one of eleven existing glaciers settled between the Hulahula and Jago Rivers in the massive 30,000-square-mile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The glacial ice reflected the deep blue-gray of the mid-June afternoon sky and though the temperature hovered in the low forties, once the breeze died to almost nothing, the air became quite comfortable. John Stevens paused to let his partner catch up. While checking the GPS coordinates, he listened to Mark Homgrin’s crampons biting the icy surface as he approached.

  “How much farther?” The grating sound ceased as Mark stopped and adjusted his backpack.

  John gazed up, studying the lengthening shadows a moment. “Less than a mile. We’ll reach Little Okpilak before nightfall and set up camp.”

  Mark feigned a groan. “Good. I’m starved.”

  “You and me both.” John swatted at a lone mosquito. “Glad we’ll be done before the main hatch occurs. This entire river valley will be mosquito heaven in another two weeks.”

  “Yeah, heaven for the mosquitos.”

  Both smiled, knowing this pristine land was as beautiful as it was dangerous, yet neither would exchange places with the other residents back in Fairbanks. Their studies in glaciology and geology allowed for these university-funded treks into the great Alaskan wilderness twice a year, and in another semester Mark would be a candidate for obtaining his doctorate in glaciology. John was already a PhD in the science of glaciers and held a minor in geology. Many times, the rocks below and around a glacier could yield as much data about the earth’s past as the glacier itself.

  They resumed the trek up the smooth glacial plane. In another hour the shadows of the nearly nine-thousand-foot jagged peaks of the Brooks Range Romanzof Mountains which surrounded the Okpilak River valley would blanket the five-square-mile ice sheet in a hazy blue gloom, though this time of year sunlight lasted more than twenty hours a day. The two researchers from the University of Fairbanks were in the land of perpetual daylight—at least for the summer. The sounds of a few birds—mostly terns and songbirds—floated on the cool air, and running water from the numerous streams that sliced the crevasses and mostly treeless landscape echoed off the massive boulders bordering the glacier’s outermost reaches. Dall sheep could be spotted grazing the alpine ridges. Moose and caribou occasionally dotted the high slopes. No grizzlies yet, but they had seen a roaming pack of wolves. John carried his 30.06 but he had no plans to use it.

  The stainless steel crampons prevented them from slipping. Up they went. The Okpilak was small—just under six miles in length and approximately a half mile wide at its thickest—when compared to the massive ice floes in southern Alaska, and the ice tributary they were searching for was smaller still. Although this icy “offshoot,” christened Little Okpilak, had been picked up by satellite images before the proposed glaciological field excursion to document with photos and measurements whether it was receding at the same pace as the main glacier, both researchers eagerly jumped at the prospect of witnessing the mile-long frozen tributary firsthand. From Fairbanks, they’d flown in to Arctic Village and from there a bush pilot had dropped them off on a flat tundra plain where they hiked across the semi-frozen permafrost toward the headwaters of the Okpilak River until they reached the glacial terminus. The Little Okpilak offshoot was located well up the main Okpilak away from where the glacier drained into the Arctic Ocean.

  Based on imagery, the Little Okpilak extended east at an elevation of 6,500 feet as it filled the base of a narrow quarter-mile-wide cirque gorge, a theater-like valley formed by glacial erosion. Its terminus seemingly ended at the base of a cliff—but over the past several months, accelerating as spring encroached upon the desolate landscape, a gap had formed between the rock face and glacier terminus. This “gap” was the researchers’ destination. As a glacier forms, rocks, boulders, and whatever else lies in its path are pushed forward. Once ablation and melt ensues, the ground up rock and earth are left behind—the glacier moraine. By studying the moraine, details can emerge about the glacier’s “life”, both recent and ancient past.

  The scientists picked up the pace. Anticipation built as they neared the Little Okpilak offshoot. Both forgot their hunger as they crisscrossed tangentially over the ice, avoiding small but deep crevasses. At this point, John estimated the Okpilak to be over a hundred feet thick but would thin as they neared the firn—the intermediate stage between packed snow and glacier ice. The glacial origin.

  “Listen,” John said between breaths. A dull continuous rumble echoed off the steep indigenous granite rock slopes on either side.

  Mark nodded. “A glacial fed stream. Hopefully it’s narrow and shallow enough to cross. Too late in the day to have to backtrack.”

  John checked the GPS. “If it’s running parallel to the offshoot, we’ll be fine.”

  Thirty minutes later, they could feel their crampons sinking deeper into the ice. The Okpilak was softening. They were nearing the smaller glacier offshoot. High on the ridges the wind whistled, sounding very similar to an approaching train. The temperature dipped with the advancing dusk. The songbirds grew silent. All they could hear was the raging water. It had become a thunderous roar.

  “That doesn’t sound promising,” Mark wagered.

  “We’ll be fine…I think,” John added. He stole a quick glance at the sky. Clear, no clouds. “At least the weather’s holding. Must be run-off from last week’s storm. No rain or snow in the forecast either. Let’s go find Little Okpilak.”

  On the Okpilak’s east side, the high ridge suddenly seemed to stop and both men could see a blue-white sheet of ice disappearing around a steep bluff. Running parallel to this bluff a second ridge well
over three hundred feet high coursed eastward. Little Okpilak filled the narrow gorge between the pair of jagged escarpments.

  The researchers exchanged high-fives. They hunkered down in the increasing wind and traversed diagonally across the Okpilak to find a suitable place to make camp.

  All evening the water raged, but by breakfast, the rushing tributary had lessened to only a loud din. The men finished a quick meal of dehydrated eggs, some granola, raisins, and hot coffee. The temperature had dropped below freezing soon after dinner but was already creeping past the mid-thirties by the time they’d dressed and strapped on the crampons. The high that day was predicted to reach fifty. Perfect.

  “We’re in luck,” John commented, leading the way off the main glacier onto the Little Okpilak ice tributary. “Feel the ice?”

  Mark stomped a few times. “Much firmer.” They were traversing dense glacier ice, no longer firn, the lesser packed accumulation of granular snow.

  “That should make for faster traveling.” Walking in firm sand expended less energy and was easier to accommodate than soft sand. It was no different with glacial ice. John updated their location coordinates into the GPS. “The terminus should be three-quarters mile ahead. You can see the ridgeline that blocks any further egress of the glacier from here. And steer clear of any patches of snow. I don’t want to have to carry you out if you bust a leg slipping into a hidden crevasse,” he added half joking, knowing full well both hikers’ experience should prevent any mishaps, but only if they maintained their guard. Traversing a glacier field was no time to relax. John knew this firsthand.

  The men adjusted their packs and dipped down a shallow declivity leading them further along the Little Okpilak Glacier tributary. Any breeze was minimal and the air smelled of wet tundra and sediment, a musky fresh scent, and not unpleasant. The songbirds had returned and high in the sky John spotted a bald eagle riding the air currents. He experienced a rise in his pulse rate not only from the exertion but from a sense of excitement. If the decades-old satellite images were any indication, the two researchers would be the first humans in thousands of years to view the naked bedrock where the Little Okpilak receded—perhaps the only humans. At one time in the distant past a lake could have filled the cirque the glacier now occupied, but until John collected core samples from the moraine he would be unable to say with any certainty just how old this offshoot was. He knew some areas of bedrock in the region were tens of millions of years old. By collecting samples of earth frozen in the glacier matrix, a much more accurate estimation could be deduced using radio isotopic decay models. He guessed the Little Okpilak was anywhere between twelve and fifty thousand years old.

  John pointed to the craggy surrounding ridges. “Mostly granite and shale. We’ll find schistose quartzite, slate, and ground up limestone in the earth where the ice has receded.”

  Mark nodded. “No oil.”

  Continuing onward, John shook his head, admiring the pristine beauty. “Not a bad thing.”

  The rushing water grew louder and both men moved nearer the north ridge wall for a better view. As they’d suspected, the glacial stream ran parallel along a lateral moraine until it dipped past the northern border of the glacier which abutted the rock face. They would not have to backtrack or ford the fifteen-foot-wide channel. This close they could pick up the sharp cracking sounds of rocks impacting each other in the whitewater turbulence. But another problem would not be so easily avoided.

  Mark stopped suddenly. “Whoa! Look at that baby. A death trap just waiting…”

  John cautiously approached the wide transverse rift in the ice sheet, careful not to risk a fall. Five years ago he fractured his right ankle when he’d stepped through a hidden ice bridge on Matanuska Glacier north of Anchorage. He’d walked with a minor limp since. He stared down over the sharp crevasse edge into the blue depths of ice. A cold breeze wafted upward. “Damn, how deep is this thing?” He removed a flashlight from his pack and aimed the powerful LED beam into the icy maw. No bottom, only darkness. He sensed a prickly sensation crawl across the nape of his neck. This didn’t make sense. The main Okpilak Glacier was at the most a couple a hundred feet thick. And they were down glacier on a tributary offshoot. Little Okpilak should have been thirty feet thick or fifty at the most this near the offshoot terminus, which was less than a football field away. Yet this glacial sheet was deep, really deep.

  “I don’t recall this being on the satellite images.” Mark drifted north along the edge, his flashlight in hand, too, peering into the icy depths.

  “It wasn’t and the latest image is only several weeks old.” John wondered if last week’s storm could have triggered this fresh glacial event. His eyes roamed the massive transverse fissure. Amazingly, the crack extended across the entire one-eighth-mile width of the slab of ice. The energy required to create such a huge rift would have been tremendous. He imagined the sound of the glacier splitting could have been heard for miles. “See any place to cross without having to rappel or construct a bridge? And don’t step too near the edge,” he cautioned.

  No reply. John found Mark thirty yards away, his beam aimed down into the crevasse. “Mark?”

  The PhD candidate remained motionless. “We got something here, John.”

  John started his way. “What’d you find?”

  Mark was slowly shaking his head. “You better come take a look at this.”

  It resembled a large gray cylinder, that’s the only way John could describe it. The color of dirty alabaster with rocky debris caked to the surface, the curved surface appeared free of the ice.

  “It looks like a piece of thick sewer pipe,” Mark commented. “But it’s only a segment.”

  Heeding his own advice, John carefully moved nearer the edge to get a better view. He couldn’t disagree entirely with Mark’s brief analysis. A conduit left behind from the oil industry? The object was approximately twelve feet in length and close to six in diameter. It sat angled a third of the way down in the crevasse. This close to the north side ridge, John could pick up where the east and west sides of the huge fissure met at the bottom—a hundred feet or so down—not near as deep as in the offshoot’s center. The odd truncated cylinder rested perhaps thirty feet down, wedged in the clear blue icy walls, though portions still appeared to be buried in the glacier.

  “Looks old,” Mark commented.

  John was thinking how can you tell, yet if this thing had been locked in the glacier’s icy grip until the recent crevasse freed it, it would be quite old indeed. Which made absolutely no sense at all as the object certainly had not been created naturally. John sensed that same prickly sensation touch his neck. His eyes picked up some smaller stick-like objects floating in the icy matrix very near the cylinder, just above where it exited the glacier wall. He gazed closer. “See those…branches?”

  Mark had spotted them too. “Since when do branches have fur?”

  His companion was correct. Tree limbs encased in ice did not have fur. Bones did. John picked out what could have been a skull.

  They were looking at a partially disarticulated frozen skeleton. And it appeared human!

  CHAPTER 1

  Shelby Hollister leaned back from the microscope and rested her eyes. The paleoprimatologist shook the fatigue from her shoulders and neck. Past seven in the evening and she still wasn’t done. Rising, she walked to the thermostat mounted on the wall of the lab and turned it up a few degrees. And to think only last week she’d been sweating her skin off near Maropeng, a small village an hour from Johannesburg, South Africa, digging in the hot arid earth amongst the olive trees and shrub grasses, searching for ancient primate fossils. She heard the heater compressor kick in. Nice. In a few minutes she would warm up. Fairbanks, Alaska, was not the plains of Africa and never would be, even in late June.

  She returned to the scope, her anticipation edging up with the lab’s ambient air temp. She wanted to be sure of her conclusion before calling Dr. Reddic, her colleague, mentor, and the
chairman of the renowned Los Angeles Center of Primatology, one of the foremost institutions in the world when it came to studying and classifying both extant and extinct primate species. Both she and Dr. Reddic held staff teaching positions in the UCLA department of anthropology and primatology. She’d flown into Fairbanks two days ago at his bequest, as he’d been in the midst of a teaching conference and was unable to get away on short notice. And after examining the photos sent to Dr. Reddic by the researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, she’d been only too eager to make the three-thousand-mile trip to the nation’s northernmost state. The bones had been retrieved two weeks ago from a glacier in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Okpilak Glacier, or rather a tributary of the Okpilak. They’d been removed from the icy tomb at the same time as a strange cylinder had been dug up. She hadn’t seen the cylinder yet, but she’d been told it was being stored in a hangar at Eielson Air Force Base just outside of Fairbanks. Why the military base she wasn’t told, and most of the prevailing opinion was the bones retrieved near the cylinder were only coincidental. She tended to agree, though the glaciologist, Dr. John Stevens, who had initially thought they were human, was convinced both items—the bones and the cylinder—had been entombed at approximately the same time, give or take a thousand years. The age of each had yet to be determined. She’d only spoken on the phone with Dr. Stevens a few times since arriving, mostly to ensure the collection process had been done correctly and all the permits obtained—removing “hominid” bones required that certain procedures be followed. He assured her the Protection of Archeological Resources codes had all been adhered to.

  She leaned forward and adjusted the glass slide holding the specially prepared fragment of fur, as everyone had been alluding to the “fuzzy stuff” adhering to the bones. She’d already determined this was not fur, but hair. The shafts were too old to accurately determine color so she studied the hair follicles in more detail. Based on the scale pattern, density of the shaft, and medulla—Homo sapiens’ hair medullas were narrow and the pigment was concentrated along the periphery—she’d also determined something else. This hair did not come from a human but from a lower primate. Possibly an ape or chimpanzee-type extinct species. She thought ape first because of the size of the bone this sample had come from. It was a radius, one of the pair of bones in the forearm, and because the epiphyseal plates had yet to fuse, in all likelihood a young child ape. Yet it had been huge compared to present-day great primates—gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees.