When the boat reached the shore, and Gina stepped back onto Antarctica, she almost felt as if she was home. Gina scanned the horizon and in the distance, she could see the mountain range that Jun-Tuk had spoken of. A thrill of excitement ran through Gina’s spine. In a few short hours, she would be the first person to see and document a tribe which had never been seen by a person born outside of Antarctica.
She looked back over her shoulder as the boat that had dropped her off turned and headed back to ship. It would take five more trips to and from the ship to unload the expedition members and small equipment. A larger motor boat would make several trips to bring the vehicles to shore.
Nearly three hours after Gina had first stepped ashore, the last of the large vehicles was finally unloaded from the larger motor boat. The team immediately went to work loading up the Sno-Cats. Gina climbed to the top of the lead Sno-Cat with her binoculars in hand. She called for Jun-Tuk to join her. Gina reached her hand down to help the old man up onto the Sno-Cat, when to Gina’s surprise, he climbed to the top of the machine even quicker than she had. She reminded herself that despite his age, the old man had singlehandedly rowed a canoe from here to South America. Gina took a look through her binoculars at a mountain range that for the most part until now had gone undocumented. There had been satellites which had caught the mountains on camera previously, but because of their remote location, no one had ever explored the polar mountain range. From where Gina was standing, it almost looked like two separate mountain ranges ran perpendicular to each other and came to a point at a sharp right angle. One mountain range seemed to run from east to west as far as she could see. The second mountain range ran north and south. This end of this mountains was also well out of the range of Gina’s binoculars to follow. At the point where the two ranges came together, Gina could see a small upward hill that led in between the two mountains at the tips of the respective ranges.
She looked over at Jun-Tuk and smiled. “I would guess that we can reach the path that leads into the valley in just under two hours. The question from there is, how do we find this Yeti of yours?”
Jun-Tuk turned and looked into Gina’s eyes with an icy cold stare. “The Yeti is a beast but it is a beast very much like a human. If there are humans nearby, the Yeti will sense us and he will come.” He placed his hand on Gina’s shoulder. “Shunu was injured badly. I do not know if the Yeti attained what he was looking to from his interaction with her. He will not come to the village if a woman dies, but with us being near him, he may decide to take one of the women from your team with him.”
While Gina understood the threat posed by a potentially hostile tribe, she was also confident that her team could scare off a group of people who were still ruled by superstitions. She smiled. “Don’t worry, Jun-Tuk, we will be prepared for the Yeti if he shows up.”
Jun-Tuk shook his head. “Nothing can prepare you for the Yeti.” The old man turned and climbed down off the Sno-Cat. Gina shrugged and called out to her team, “All right everyone load up! We are heading for the mountain range directly south of our current position!”
The trip went by quickly, and a little under a half an hour later, the expedition team had reached the mountain range. The mountain rang itself was huge; it could easily go on for hundreds of miles. The valley inside of the mountain range could easily have been as large as the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean in North America. Gina reassured herself that the tribe they were looking for would have to be near the pass that Jun-Tuk was taking them to or else they would not be able to make the trips that they regularly did to Jun-Tuk’s tribe. Gina had the team set up camp a half a mile from the entrance to the valley pass. She feared that the tribe she expected to find would be terrified if they saw the Sno-Cats and she wanted to study them in as natural a state as possible. This meant that she would need to keep the presence of her team hidden from the tribe as long as possible. She looked over the data that was streaming through the tablet in her Sno-Cat. A winter storm was heading directly for their current location. Snow had already begun to fall outside and it was covering the Sno-cats.
Most of her team members were busy setting up the camp but she wanted to take a quick look inside of the valley. She quickly gathered Henry, Jun-Tuk, Dana, Rodgers, and Gordon and told them that they would be taking a quick trip to scout the entrance to the pass ahead of the storm. They had about three hours until the storm hit. She figured that the hike to the entrance would take about a half hour. They had enough time to get an idea of what the valley looked like and document the area for an hour. They would then make the half hour hike back with an hour to spare ahead of the storm.
When her small team was fully prepped, they started hiking out to the valley pass with Jun-Tuk leading the way. Gordon and Rodgers both carried shotguns and Rodgers also kept his crossbow slung over his shoulder. The snow was starting to increase in volume and Gina began to wonder if the storm had not picked up speed. She kept a close eye on her watch and she was concerned when it took them nearly forty-five minutes to reach the pass. When they reached the pass, Gina made some mental notes on the pass itself. The pass was in actuality a small path that ran between the bases of two separate mountains. The pass itself was roughly forty-feet wide and had a slight upward sloped to it that ended at the entrance to the valley. The incline was dotted with large boulders that Gina surmised must have rolled down off the mountains over the centuries. Gina scaled the small incline to get a look at the valley but all that she could see was the falling snow. It was like staring out into a blizzard. The others were standing beside her and she could already hear Rodgers mumbling about a wasted trip. Gina was about to start shouting at him when a loud noise echoed over the landscape.
Everyone except Jun-Tuk had a surprised look on their faces. Henry looked at Gina. “What the heck was that? It didn’t come from camp. Whatever that was, it came from within the valley.”
The sound repeated again and Rodgers walked up between Gina and Gordon. “I have been on numerous safaris and if I didn’t know that we were near the South Pole, I would swear that was an elephant. What would you say, Gordon?”
The stoic hunter nodded. “It almost sounds like an elephant. The difference is that the trumpet sound that we just heard was louder and deeper than an elephant.”
Jun-Tuk walked up beside Gina. “We need to conceal ourselves now!”
Gina yelled to everyone, “Quick! Take cover behind the rocks!”
Gina, Henry, and Dana all hid behind one of the large boulders and Rodgers, Gordon, and Jun-Tuk behind another. Gina could see a large brown form moving through the falling snow. She tried to focus her eyes on the object when another trumpeting sound echoed through the valley pass. A collective gasp went through Gina’s team as a long, fur-covered trunk and two long, curved white tusks came into view. A massive shaggy head attached to a huge quadrupedal body came into view. Gina whispered to her husband and her best friend, “Please tell me that you see what I think I am seeing?”
Henry kept his eyes fixed on the creature. “If you think that you are seeing a wooly mammoth then yes.”
Gina nodded. “Okay, I was almost hoping that I was going crazy. That thing has to be, what, at least twenty-five feet tall at the shoulder?” No one answered her as several more mammoths began to wander into their view through the falling snow.
Rodgers waved from behind the rock to get their attention. Once Gina was looking at him, he talked as loudly as he thought was safe, “They’re migrating. That big one in the front is the alpha male. If he even thinks that we are a threat, they will charge us and these little pop guns won’t do anything but piss them off. We just need to stay where we are until they pass by.”
Gina nodded and then she continued to watch as an endless line of what was thought to be an extinct species continued to march by in front of them.
Chapter 5
Gina and Dana were sitting down having a warm cup of coffee. They had returned to the base camp and had infor
med everyone about what they had found inside of the valley. The obvious questions came up during their meeting with the staff: If there are wooly mammoths in the valley, could there be other prehistoric animals? How should we proceed with documenting these creatures and studying them? Both of those questions were valid. The mammoths and any other unusual creatures in the valley needed to be studied and documented. Therein was part of the problem. Gina’s team was primarily composed of anthropologists. A situation like this required zoologists and paleontologists to properly study these animals. Those issues aside, the main question that came from the team members was: If there are wooly mammoths in the valley, does that also mean that there is a Yeti in there as well?
The meeting as a whole had to be cut short so the team members could properly prepare themselves and their equipment for the coming storm. As such, Gina put most of the questions on hold until she had time to consider the options in front of her regarding their next step. Gina and Dana were enjoying this last coffee before retiring to their quarters themselves. Dana was looking at Gina and she knew exactly what she was thinking. Dana also knew that she was the one person who could ask Gina difficult questions without aggravating her.
Dana put her coffee down. “So what are we going to do? Do we stay and study the animals in the valley or do we head back home and report our findings to Princeton so that they can send a more qualified team to study those animals.”
Gina shook her head. “We know at least that the tribe Jun-Tuk is from is real and that it is here. We also know that they won’t let us study them unless if we can prove that the Yeti is not a god.” She took a deep breath. “We probably should head back to Princeton and report our findings. Going back to Princeton would be the safer and easier route to go. The problem with that is when the board weighs the find of woolly mammoths versus a lost tribe, they will put all of their resources into the valley. Our expedition will be dead in the water just as we had our first breakthrough in finding the lost tribe.” Gina bit her lower lip in thought for a moment and then she looked at her friend. “We are going to study and document the mammoths and anything else that we find in the valley. We may not be specialized in animals or extinct species, but the basic concepts or studying them are the same as studying a lost tribe. We will document them the same way that we would Jun-Tuk’s tribe. After we have enough information on the valley, and we can prove to Jun-Tuk’s tribe that the Yeti is not a god, we will complete our study of them as well. When all is said and done, we can return to Princeton with our study fully complete as well as an initial study of the valley. That way we finish what we came here for, become famous for finding a lost tribe and this valley, and Princeton can send a more qualified team to follow up on the valley after us.” Gina grinned. “If you have any interest, I am sure that the follow-up team will also need a team a doctor and an experienced young and handsome hunter.”
Dana was about to say something when a horrible wailing sound came from outside. Dana gave Gina a concerned look. “What in the hell was that? It sure didn’t sound like the mammoths did and it didn’t sound like it came from within the valley. That sounded a hell of a lot closer.”
The two women ran to the window of the barracks and they looked out into the dark blizzard that was taking place outside. At first, they couldn’t see anything and then Gina gasped when she saw to bright red orbs floating in the air and moving toward the camp. Gina thought the eyes had a blood red hue to them. As the red orbs continued to move toward the camp, something else started to come into view as well. It was difficult to see because it was white just like the snow that was falling onto it, but as it took a few more steps forward, the gargantuan form of the Yeti came into view. Dana screamed when she saw the creature but Gina kept her eyes fixed on it taking mental notes on everything that she was seeing.
The creature was bipedal and covered in a thick white fur. The beast’s ghastly face was accentuated by burning red eyes. The creature was very large. Gina guessed that it was between twenty and twenty-five feet tall, making it roughly as large as the mammoths that she had seen earlier. It had broad shoulders and slightly disproportionately long arms. The monster had primate like hands with a clearly opposable thumb. Its legs were thick and ended in feet that were also disproportionately large. Just by looking at it, Gina could see that the Yeti was extremely physically powerful. She could see its huge muscles shifting under its skin even with its thick white fur. The monster had a face that appeared almost human. It was dark and similar to a gorilla but with the visage of more intelligence than the great apes of Africa. The monster had long sharp fangs that protruded over both his upper and lower lips, and when he opened his mouth, Gina saw nothing but sharp teeth. She had no doubt that this beast was a carnivore and a predator. The last noteworthy feature was that the top of its head ended in a sharp dome.
As the Yeti entered the camp, it wailed again and started walking toward one of the barracks. As soon as Gina saw the Yeti making for the barracks, she sprang into action. She still had most of her outdoor gear on. All that she needed to do was to put on her coat, goggles, and boots. She flung the door open as she was getting dressed so that she could see what the Yeti was doing. When the door had opened fully, she could see the Yeti towering over one of the nearby barracks. The monster plunged his claw into the roof of the building and tore it off as it were made of cardboard. He tossed the roof aside and roared at the terrified people inside of it. Gina watched in horror as the Yeti reached into the opened barracks and lifted out a young man. The man was one of the interns. Gina recognized him as Eric Williams. The Yeti sniffed the man and then tossed him away. The young man screamed as he flew through the air then crashed into the snow.
Gina was fully dressed and about to run out at the Yeti when she saw Henry come sprinting out of one of the other barracks. He moved as quickly as he could through the thick snow to the nearest Sno-Cat. He climbed into the vehicle, turned its lights on, and spun it toward the Yeti. He then revved the machine up to full speed and aimed it at the beast. The Sno-Cat slammed into the Yeti as the monster was reaching into the opened barracks again. Gina was astounded that the Sno-Cat had collided with the Yeti and the two-ton vehicle did not move the creature an inch. She then watched in horror and disbelief as the Yeti lifted the several ton Sno-Cat, with Henry still in it, over its head. The Yeti roared and then threw the Sno-Cat nearly fifty feet from itself. The Sno-Cat landed upside down and Gina could see Henry squirming to get free from inside of the vehicle as the Yeti started walking toward it.
Gina moved faster than she ever would have thought possible. She grabbed two satellite radios, a transmitter, and a receiver from the supply closet. She tossed the receiver and one of the radios to Dana and then she sprinted out into the snow. As she was running, she turned on her radio and said, “Keep track of me but do not come for me unless I call for help. We can’t lose any more lives!” Gina then turned off the radio and stuffed both it and the transmitter into her pockets.
Dana heard what her friend said over the radio but she didn’t understand what she was talking about until she walked to the door and saw Gina running toward the Sno-Cat. The Yeti had almost reached the Sno-Cat, and her trapped husband, when Gina knelt down before the Yeti as had the young girl in Jun-Tuk’s story. The Yeti stared at Gina for a moment and then he reached down and picked her up. The Yeti sniffed Gina, and when he did so, the beast seemed to calm down somewhat. The monster turned and began walking out of the camp with Gina held firmly in his claw.
From with the monster’s grip, Gina could see Henry screaming in terror as the Yeti walked away with her. Gina held her gloved hands out in front of her and made the sign of a heart indicating to Henry that she loved him. She then looked up at the Yeti’s beast-like face. Part of her wanted to scream in terror at the horrible fate that awaited her. Panic was setting in when she reminded herself of two things. First, that Jun-Tuk had said that the women who placated the Yeti were returned to their people unharmed. The second thing
that she remembered was that she was a scientist. This thought more than anything else helped to calm her down and focus her. As a scientist, she owed it to the world to act in accordance with the standards of her profession. She was the first non-native to be taken by the Yeti and she needed to learn everything that she could about the creature and report back on her findings at the appropriate time. She was still terrified, but these thoughts helped her to focus on staying calm because she knew that staying calm would increase her chances of staying alive. She also knew that Henry was alive and that thought gave her comfort. Had Henry died, she would just have preferred that Yeti had devoured her as well. Henry was alive though and that thought gave Gina a reason to find a way to get back to him.
This thought had no sooner crossed her mind than she noticed that the Yeti was walking through the mountain pass and back into the valley. The blizzard was reaching its full intensity as they entered the valley. All that Gina could see around her was the blinding snow. She wondered to herself that if the valley held both mammoths and the Yeti what other “demons” as Jun-Tuk had called them also lived in the unexplored region?
Gordon and several of the other grad students ran over to the tossed Sno-Cat to try and help Henry. Henry was still screaming for his wife and trying desperately to free himself from the destroyed vehicle. Gordon kicked in the already-cracked windshield of the Sno-Cat and then he used his knife to cut Henry loose from his seatbelt.
Polar Yeti And The Beasts Of Prehistory Page 4
