Polar Yeti And The Beasts Of Prehistory

by Dennion, Matthew

  Rodgers started walking to edge of the snowmobiles closer to the wooly rhino. When he reached the end of the snowmobiles he pulled his rifle off his shoulder and dropped to one knee.

  He was taking aim at the animal when Henry shouted at him. “Rodgers, what the hell are you doing? That thing isn’t bothering us. Just leave it alone.”

  Rodgers shook his head. “That head of that thing alone will make me a millionaire. Then I won’t have to concern myself with whether or not you or your wife signs my checks.” Before Henry could respond, Rodgers lifted his rifle and fired at the beast. The shot rang out and echoed across the barren terrain. The bullet struck the rhino and ricocheted off its thick hide. The beast snorted, turned toward the snowmobiles, lowered its head, and charged the rescue team.

  The beast was moving with incredible speed for its size. Henry screamed, “Move people! Get the hell away from that thing!” Most of the rescue team jumped onto their snowmobiles. Dana climbed onto Gordon’s snowmobile and she wrapped her arms around the young hunter as they sped off. As everyone else was fleeing, Rodgers maintained his position and fired another shot at the rhino. The second shot caught the charging rhino in the shoulder and managed to penetrate its tough skin. The enraged beast snorted and continued to charge. Rodgers quickly realized that he would not be able to bring down the charging animal. He stood up and turned to run for his snowmobile. He took two steps and walked directly into the path of one of the oncoming snowmobiles. The team members veered to the right to avoid Rodgers and they crashed into a second snowmobile causing both vehicles to fall onto their sides and sending four team members tumbling through the snow.

  Rodgers took one look at the fallen people, then he ran to his snowmobile, and jumped onto to it. The hunter sped away as the unarmed graduate students tried desperately to lift up their snowmobiles. Henry was speeding away when Jun-Tuk tapped Henry on the shoulder and shouted for him to turn around. Henry looked over his shoulder to see the wooly rhino quickly closing in on the graduate students. Henry looked over at Gordon and shouted, “Gordon, we have people down!” He then turned his snowmobile around and started heading for the graduate students.

  Gordon didn’t waste time responding. He turned his snowmobile around and followed Henry back toward the graduate students with Dana holding tightly onto his waist. The wooly rhino had almost reached the graduate students when Gordon yanked his rifle off his shoulder and fired a desperate shot at the charging beast. The bullet struck the animal in the stomach, and while it managed to penetrate the animal’s hide, it didn’t slow down the charging monster. The wooly rhino slammed into the downed snowmobile with the force of a runaway train. The snowmobile went sliding across the snow as two of the students were trampled to death under the feet of the charging behemoth. Henry watched helplessly as his students were crushed into nothing more than a red and white pulp beneath the wooly rhino’s feet. The remaining two students were screaming in terror and running toward the snowmobile when the rhino turned to them and charged. The beast lowered his head and used his horn to toss one of the students into the air. The screaming young woman flew twenty feet in the air before landing on her head, instantly crushing her skull and breaking her spine. The last surviving student was roughly fifty feet from Henry when the wooly rhino’s massive horn entered her back and exploded out of her chest. The woman was screaming in agony until a gunshot sounded and her head exploded. Henry looked to his right to see Gordon holding his rifle in his hand. The hunter was frantically signaling Henry to turn around. Henry nodded and spun his snowmobile around less than ten feet from the wooly rhino. From the corner of his eye, Henry saw the wooly rhino shake his head to send the corpse of the graduate student flying off his horn and into the snow.

  Henry had just completed his turn when the wooly rhino charged his snowmobile. Gordon’s snowmobile was just ahead of Henry and the rest of the rescue team was in the distance far ahead of them and still speeding away. Henry was pushing his vehicle to the limit and even with that he could hear the monster gaining on him. He feared that at any second the beast would upend his snowmobile and end his life.

  Henry dared to take one last look over his shoulder to see the wooly rhino slowing down and then turning away from the fleeing snowmobiles. After moving at full speed for fifteen minutes, the rescue team finally came to a stop to regroup and assess their current situation. Henry could see Rodgers pulling his snowmobile to a stop in the group ahead of him. Henry pulled up alongside of Rodgers then he jumped off his snowmobile. The normally calm Henry grabbed Rodgers by the shoulder and then he punched the hunter in the jaw. Rodgers stumbled backward as Henry yelled at him. “Those kids are dead because of you! I told you to leave that rhino alone! If you hadn’t been thinking of making yourself rich, those kids would still be alive!”

  Rodgers sneered. “And if you hadn’t convinced Princeton to send you down here, your wife wouldn’t be in the clutches of a Yeti.”

  Henry went to strike the hunter again when Gordon stepped between the two men. “This isn’t helping. We need to decide what we are going to do and move on.”

  Henry nodded. “Okay, from now on, Gordon is in charge of making decisions when we come across the creatures in this valley.” He turned to Gordon. “Don’t fire on anything unless we have to in self-defense.”

  Gordon nodded at Henry as Dana walked up beside him. “Thank you for sparing that girl from a slow and painful death.”

  Gordon shrugged. “I couldn’t save her but the least that I could do was to end her suffering.”

  Dana hugged him. “You did the right thing.”

  As Dana was hugging Gordon, Henry climbed back onto his snowmobile and shouted, “Alright everyone, there is nothing else that we can do here. Let’s keep moving before some other monster comes along.”

  Chapter 9

  Gina had passed out as the Yeti continued to carry her farther south. She was still half asleep when she felt a warmth emanating from beside her. She opened her eyes slowly, and through blurred vision, she saw an orange color to her right. She blinked twice to focus her vision and the fire that was burning beside her came into view. Gina was disoriented from the cold and she tried to survey her surroundings to see where she was. She quickly realized that wherever she was, it was dark. The only available light was coming from the fire next to her. She looked up to make out several stalactite reaching down at her from above. She blinked her eyes several more times to realize that she was inside of another cave. Gina sat up and when she did so she was immediately hit by the smell of the Yeti. She stood up and looked to her left to see Yukon sleeping roughly sixty feet away from her. When she saw how far away from her that Yukon was sleeping, she realized the vast size of the cave that she was in. The gargantuan Yukon was sleeping a good distance away from her and she still could not determine where the opening to the cave was. By using the Yeti to scale, she could see that the twenty-five foot tall Yeti had plenty of head clearance in the cave. She could also see that the cave was at least three times as wide as Yukon was tall. At a quick assessment, she guessed that the area of the cave that she was in was at least forty-feet high and seventy-five feet wide. She couldn’t even begin to guess at the depth of the immense formation.

  Gina noticed that she was sweating and she thought that it was because she was next to the fire. As the thought of how hot she was crossed her mind, it immediately brought two other questions to the forefront of her concerns. The first concern was that it was far too hot in the cave for the small fire to be heating the vast cavern. Gina guessed that the cave they were in must be near some underground source of heat such as magma. The second question that had entered her mind was who exactly had started the fire? In her brief time with Yukon, she had learned that the monster was at least as intelligent as a gorilla or a chimpanzee, but she doubted that the beast had the ability to purposely build a fire. She briefly considered that perhaps, in her near frozen and exhausted state that she created the fire herself, but she quickly pushed the th
ought aside. Gina looked at the fire, and from what she could tell, the fire was being fueled by a mixture of bones and dung. She shook her head and spoke out loud, “I am pretty sure that I was in no condition to make a fire. I am also sure that even with as tired as I was that I would have remembered building a fire.”

  Gina started walking around the cave as she continued to talk to herself, “The only animal in the history of the planet that has ever been known to create fire is man.” As Gina spoke the words aloud, she stopped walking and her eyes opened wide. “That means that there are other people here.” Gina’s mind began racing as she considered the implications of her hypothesis. “That either means that there is another missing tribe that knowingly shares a cave with a Yeti or…” Gina stopped in mid-sentence. She couldn’t bring herself to say what she was thinking aloud. Her entire body shook as she realized the other possibility of why humans would be sharing a cave with a Yeti. Based on the wounds to Jun-Tuk’s daughter, and the saber-toothed cat attack that she had witnessed, Gina had assumed that the young women who Yukon had taken from Jun-Tuk’s tribe that he did not return had died. Gina had never considered that Yukon might have kept some of the women in his cave.

  Gina’s mind was racing at the thought of women being held captive by Yukon in this hellish valley. She yelled out in ancient Incan, “Hello, is there anyone in here?” Her shout echoed through the cave several times before it finally died out. Then Gina heard two sounds in reply. The first sound confused her and the second sound terrified her. The first sound that Gina thought that she heard, was a crying baby that came from deeper in the cave. That sound was quickly drowned out by a terrifying roar that seemed to come from behind where Yukon was sleeping.

  Everything around Gina suddenly started moving in a blur. First, Yukon stood and roared, then a young woman who looked as if she was from the same tribe that Jun-Tuk was from, came running out from deeper in the cave. The woman ran up to Gina, and started pleading with her to be quiet. A second loud roar from what Gina guessed was the direction of the entrance to the cave echoed throughout the cavern. Yukon roared again then the massive Yeti started walking in the direction of the other roaring creature. Every sensible fiber of Gina’s being was urging her to run deeper into the cave and away from the new creature. Conversely, the scientist in her forced her to run over to the area where Yukon had been sleeping in order to see what manner of beast was threatening her and challenging the Yeti.

  Gina saw a large stalagmite that would hide her from the view of whatever it was that had made its way into the cave. She crouched down behind it as the woman from Jun-Tuk’s tribe continued to make arm motions for Gina to follower her. Gina was interested in hearing the woman’s story but currently she was much more fascinated in seeing what manner of creature would dare to challenge Yukon. The roar was too deep to have come from another saber-toothed cat. Whatever this creature was, it much larger than the cats that she had come across earlier. Gina peeked out from behind the stalagmite and she was finally able to see the entrance to the cave. She could see Yukon walking toward the entrance. See stuck her head out a little farther from behind the stalagmite to see a huge form lumber into the cave entrance. At first, all that Gina could see was that the animal walked on all fours but she was not able to make out any details that revealed exactly what type of creature the animal was. The beast that was entering the cave roared again and then it stood up on two feet. As the monster’s entire form was silhouetted by the sun light pouring in from behind it, Gina was finally able to make out what type of animal was making its way into the cave.

  Gina had seen several species of bear in her travels. She was very familiar with large members of the species, such as grizzly bears and polar bears. She had beheld the huge animals both in controlled settings like zoos and in the field while she was on various expeditions. While both grizzly bears and polar bears were large, the bear that was making its way into the cave would have dwarfed even the largest member of any known species of bear. When the bear was standing on its hind legs, it was taller than Yukon meaning that the beast was somewhere around thirty feet tall. Based on the other prehistoric animals that Gina had seen, she guessed that the animal must have been some species of large cave bear.

  The cave bear roared again, then it dropped back to all fours and began running toward Yukon. Yukon threw his arms out in front of himself and roared in return at the bear, both warning the attacking animal and accepting its challenge at the same time. The bear drove its head and shoulders into Yukon’s waist, knocking the Yeti into a sitting position. The cave bear quickly moved forward and attempted to use his body to pin Yukon to the ground. As the cave bear approached him, Yukon pulled his knees in and put his large feet against the cave bear’s chest. Yukon then pushed with his legs and sent the cave bear tumbling back toward the cave entrance.

  The bear quickly regained control of his momentum and once again the massive creature stood on its hind legs. It roared at Yukon again, but instead of returning the roar, the Yeti lowered his head and drove his shoulder into the cave bear’s midsection. The force of the impact sent the cave bear crashing into the wall of the cave. Before the cave bear could right himself, Yukon slammed his body into the body of the bear. Gina watched as Yukon hammered the bear with alternating blows from his fists. The Yeti had struck the bear four times before the cave bear was able to swipe Yukon across the face with his claw. The cave bear’s claw slash caused Yukon to cease his attack and take a step backward. The cave bear took a step forward, wrapped his arms around Yukon, and dug his claws into the Yeti’s back. The cave bear then bit down into the Yeti’s shoulder, causing even more red blood to soak Yukon’s white coat.

  Yukon roared in pain then the Yeti wrapped his powerful arms around the lower part of the cave bear’s ribcage. The two beasts were locked in a test of strength. As Gina watched the two monsters, she recalled the awesome display of power and the intelligent use of leverage that Yukon had exhibited when he had toppled the wooly mammoth. As she thought about how Yukon had forced the mammoth to the ground, she had no doubt that the Yeti would overpower the cave bear as well. Gina’s prediction quickly came to fruition as Yukon shifted his left leg backward and pushed down with his right arm in a move that caused the cave bear to slam into the cave floor. Yukon roared then he began stomping on the neck and shoulder of the invading cave bear.

  Gina was transfixed by the battle to the point where she did not notice that the other woman in the cave had crept up behind her. The woman placed her hand on Gina’s shoulder and Gina screamed in surprise. She turned around to see the woman who said to her in ancient Incan, “Come with me, please! If the cave bear wins this battle, he will kill us if we stay in the open.” Gina’s scream had also caught Yukon’s attention and caused the Yeti to stop stomping on the cave bear in order to see if Gina was in need of his assistance. The cave bear took full advantage of the Yeti’s momentary lack of focus on the battle. The cave bear bit into Yukon’s calf and pulled on it, causing the Yeti to once more fall to the ground. Gina watched Yukon’s skull bounced off the cave floor when the creature hit the ground. The Yeti was stunned and reached up with his hands to grab his head.

  The cave bear once again quickly moved forward in another attempt to pin Yukon beneath his body. The disoriented Yukon was unable to use his feet to catch the cave bear and the animal’s entire weight pressed down onto the Yeti. The cave bear opened his jaws and he went to tear out the Yeti’s throat when Yukon’s hands reached out and grabbed onto the bear’s throat. Gina could see Yukon’s sharp claws digging into the bear’s neck and she knew she was witnessing the end of this clash of the titans. The bear continued to try and reach Yukon’s throat as the Yeti squeezed the cave bear’s neck. Yukon’s entire body was shaking as he fought to both keep the bear from killing him and at the same time strangling the beast.

  Just as Yukon had done when the mammoth had him pinned to the ground, the Yeti was once more fighting his way back to his feet. Yukon’s incredi
ble strength was slowly forcing the head and body of the cave bear away from his throat. After a few seconds, Yukon had managed to fully extend his arms. Blood was spurting from the cave bear’s neck as Yukon continued to force his claws deeper into the monster’s throat. When the majority of the cave bear’s weight was pushed off him, Yukon stood up and released his grip. The exhausted bear shook his head and Gina was sure that the creature was choking on his own blood. The damage that Yukon had wrought on the bear had caused its own blood pour into its lungs. The cave bear was on all fours and it started to stagger away from Yukon and toward the cave entrance. Yukon stepped forward and kicked the fleeing cave bear causing the dying creature to fall flat on its face in front of the cave entrance. The cave bear was taking its last breaths at the entrance to the cave when Yukon walked over to the beast. The Yeti reached down and grabbed the bear. In another show of tremendous strength, Yukon lifted the cave bear over his head as he stepped out of the cave. The Yeti roared then he threw the cave bear down the steep slope that led up to the cave entrance.

  Yukon threw his arms out in front of himself and roared proclaiming his victory to the world. Gina and the woman from the cave were still watching from behind the stalactite when Gina asked aloud in English, “Why did he throw the bear out of the cave? He could have just left it there to die.”

  The woman from the cave asked Gina what she meant in ancient Incan. Gina repeated the question in the woman’s native language. The woman from the cave shook her head. “The Yeti god knows not to leave dead things in the cave because it will attract the crawling demons.”

  Gina gave the woman a puzzled look. “You mean the saber-toothed cats?”