by Katie Berry
There appeared to be the remains of several creatures that had been swept up by the glacier. Their skeletal remains now lay on this small lip of rock next to the lake, their transition from the ice into the water obviously not a successful one.
Christine reached down and put her hand into the water next to the glacier — it was nice and warm, but not scalding. She shone her light farther along, seeing the remains of some other creatures that had fallen from the ice as it moved past but hadn’t cleared the projection of rock. These unfortunate creatures, their skeletons forever resting along the edge of this nocturnal lake, had never made it into the welcoming warmth of the water so close to them, never able to find the rejuvenation they needed.
The lake looked to be well-circulated with no evidence of any build-up of decaying bio-matter clouding the water. It appeared that whatever was deposited into it would eventually be washed out of the pool elsewhere through some method of natural circulation, most likely flushing out into an underground river somewhere.
Farther along the jutting lip of rock, something rested that looked like about the size of a German Shepherd. It lay partially submerged in the water where the narrow ledge of rock dipped down to lake level.
Christine sidled toward the creature. Its head was lying on the rock lip at the edge of the pool, its back to her. The rest of its body still in the water as if it had recently crawled out and only gotten that far. She ran her hand along the glacier’s blue-frosted surface as she moved along the narrow rim of rock, approaching the thing from the lake with extreme caution.
Kneeling next to the animal, she saw it wasn't breathing, and it definitely was not a dog. Judging by the incisors and pointed snout, what she currently crouched next to was a giant rat!
“This is unbelievable!” Christine murmured, shuddering slightly. Sitting back on her haunches, she processed the information for a moment. Never had she seen a rat so large! As part of her training as a conservation officer, she was conversant on many types of wildlife indigenous to the province of BC. She knew there were no rodents of any kind as large as this anywhere in North America these days. There were, of course, exceedingly large rodents in South America, but this was definitely not one of them. The creature before her had a long striated tail, the trademark of the North American genus Rattus rattus.
“We're a very long way from South America, and you sure as hell aren’t a capybara!” She stood and stepped over to the other side of the creature for a better look, keeping her light trained on it.
Kneeling once more, Christine reached out hesitantly with one hand to touch the animal’s wet, matted fur. As her hand softly grazed its pelt, the creature jolted and spasmed, suddenly drawing air into its lungs, perhaps for the first time in over ten millennia. She jerked her hand away, choking back a scream of surprise at the same time. The rat opened its eyes and looked at her with fear and shock. It let loose the most God-awful discordant squeal she had ever heard and started dragging itself along the rocky lip of the pool to get away from her, moving directly toward the group of men.
“What in God’s name is that?” Chance shouted. “That looks like the biggest goddamned rat I’ve ever seen! Shoot the fucking thing, Reggie!”
Knowing the shotgun would be useless at the distance he was from the rodent, Reggie VanDusen stepped onto the edge of the rock ledge. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder, pulled out his 9mm service revolver and pumped four rounds into the shivering, quivering creature.
The rat shuddered and squealed as the bullets penetrated its body, giving up the new life it had so recently acquired.
“What are you doing?!” Christine shouted in surprise. “That could have been one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the century!”
“Now it’s the deadest scientific discovery of the century!” VanDusen shot back.
Shaking her head in disgust, Christine looked at the ground examining the other material ejected by the glacier. There were branches and rocks scattered here and there as well as skeletons of other assorted creatures that didn’t survive their flash freezing, forever basking nearby. She was unsure of what would have caused these creatures to become trapped in this glacier but suspected something catastrophic had happened to them all at once, landing them in this ice for almost one-hundred thousand years. What was bringing them back now, she wondered. It seemed there was much more to this body of water than met the eye. She moved back along the lip of rock, returning to the relative safety of the gold-crazed assholes.
As Christine steeped down off the ledge, a new noise came from the far corner of the underground lake. It was a low mewling sound as if a weak or scared animal was back there somewhere in the dark, injured and disoriented, crying out for help. The mewling sound came again, only this time it sounded more like a low, feral rumble, and it was much, much closer, and approaching them rapidly in the dark.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Piloting the public works Silverado up the serpentine road, Austin Murphy was blinded by the sun both coming and going. It alternated between glaring through the windshield as he rounded a curve going one way, then reflected in the rearview mirror and dazzled him when the road curved back the other way. Driving quickly and blindly into one of these craters with the sun in his eyes could be especially problematic, as they might not drive back out of it, or survive the drop if it were deep enough.
Daylight was always too brief in the mountain communities of British Columbia during the winter, and Lawless was no exception. Within minutes, the sun went from a half-circle of golden radiance dancing on the cusp of the amber-hued ridges to a fading memory of beauty silhouetted by rugged, snow-capped peaks. The first hints of twilight crept around the edges of the afternoon skies as they headed up toward the resort. The day's sudden return of the sun had been as short-lived as ever.
Austin saw none of the afternoon’s beauty-- his attention was focussed solely on the cracked and broken road ahead of him. Some sections dropped several centimetres, while others by several metres. Despite the valley’s current absence of fog, he could not go as fast as he would have liked. He needed to monitor both his speed and the road ahead very carefully, in order to avoid these new, earthquake-created depressions in the road.
Fallen trees also lay across the asphalt in many places, forcing them to stop on more than one occasion to cut a path through the timber blocking the road. Some sections of highway were almost completely impassable. Detouring onto the narrow shoulder became a necessity as there was no other way around. But that put them at risk of sliding off the road and plummeting down the steep mountainside. Apart from a couple of hair-raisingly close calls, their sure-footed four-wheel-drive was able to overcome all obstacles with mountain goat-like aplomb.
His concern growing as he manoeuvred along the curving, narrow road, Austin glanced at the sky through the windshield. The sun was now fully behind the snow-capped horizon -- daylight was wasting. When night fell, the ice fog would roll in and screw everything up royally, as if things weren’t screwed up badly enough already.
They rounded the final corner to the casino's entrance. With the lack of fog, Trip happy to see that the Sphinx did not scare the crap out of him this time around, unlike his previous encounter.
But it seemed that the quake today had created a problem at the Eiffel Tower. All the shaking had apparently compromised the ten-metre high structure's foundation. Now, France’s most iconic structure leaned drunkenly, resting its tower on the head of the Sphinx across the lane, as if unable to remain upright any longer due to one glass of wine too many. The Sphinx did not look happy about this and Trip did not blame it. As the truck rolled toward the casino’s gaudy, flashing entrance, he said, “Looks like Ray is going to have to do a few repairs around the ol’ cantina. He won’t be happy about that!”
Austin grinned. “You’ve got that right. Whenever anything costs him some money, even regular maintenance, that’s never a good thing.” As if to prove his point, the truck hit an unsanded patch of ice a
nd slipped sideways a bit, and Austin smoothly corrected the truck’s course. Doing his best shrill-voiced Ray Chance impression, he said, ‘Goddamned piece of iron from France is humping my friggin’ Nile cat!’” Trip laughed lightly next to him.
“I’m sure he’ll be able to find some way to claim it on his insurance,” Trip reasoned.
“No doubt,” Austin agreed.
Alex pulled his concentration from the colourful video game scrolling across his cell phones screen, and glanced toward the resort’s main entrance as they passed. He said, “At least the power’s still on up here!” His eyes drank in the multitude of coloured, flashing lights as they drove by.
Austin smiled, as always, when they came up to the resort. Alex loved the massive sign with the plethora of lights flashing, blinking and strobing away over the high, covered entrance. Austin promised himself that someday he’d take his son to Las Vegas to show him how a REAL light show looked.
“Yup, they have their own generator up here that kicks in when the local power grid goes down,” Trip concurred.
“You’d better believe that’s happened on more than one occasion over the years,” Austin added.
“That way, they don’t have to worry about interrupting a customer’s losing streak, if the power goes out,” Jerry interjected.
“Now you’re getting it,” Austin agreed.
As the truck pulled around the corner of the building, Jerry noticed only a handful of vehicles parked in the icy lot near the kitchen service area. An early eighties Trans-Am stood out to him for some reason, its rust-covered paint job looking particularly deep and vibrant in the lengthening twilight.
The only other vehicle of note was the brightly-coloured ‘Golden Castle Retirement Home Adventure Bus’. It appeared that the recreation supervisor of the home was currently allowing its residents the adventure of flushing their money away on the casino’s slots and Texas Holdem tables. The minibus, a bright yellow and blue Mercedes, sat near a large snowbank on the far side of the lot, parked out of the way in back after the seniors had vacated it at the resort’s gaudy entrance. Shaking his head as he nodded toward the bus, Jerry said, “I’m surprised anyone would still be up here with that monster somewhere in the area.”
Trip leaned around, putting his left arm onto the console between the front seats, saying, “Jerry, buddy, you would be amazed at what it takes to disrupt a dedicated gambler’s concentration sometimes. I swear you’d almost have to throw a bucket of ice water on some of them to get them away from these damned machines!”
“You got that right, my friend,” Austin concurred.
“Yeah, I can believe that,” Jerry said, looking into the sky. He noted the blue was much deeper now and craned his neck to look up toward the top of Gold Ridge and the mountain beyond. With the last of the sun now gone, he saw something that made his heart drop, and he closed his eyes for a moment.
Ice fog was beginning to descend from the top of the glacier, just like it had the day of the massacre at the campsite. He knew from experience how quickly the ice fog moved and that it would only be a matter of a few more minutes before they were inundated in a sea of icy greyness once more. Behind his closed eyelids, he saw nothing but quick flashes of teeth, blood and fire. When he could no longer endure any more of the Grand Guignol’s Greatest Hits playing on the high-def holodeck at the back of his mind, his eyelids flew open, and he looked through tear-blurred lashes at the road ahead.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Benson?” Alex inquired, seeing Jerry’s glistening, wide-open eyes.
“Just having a moment is all, thanks, kid. I saw that damned ice fog starting to roll off the glacier and remembered what happened the other day to my friends."
“Sorry about that again, Mr. Benson. I sure do know how it feels when you lose someone close to you.”
Jerry sensed the sincerity of the boy’s word’s as he spoke, and it moved him. He decided that he was glad to be here, helping these earnest people rescue their friend from the same monstrosity that had killed his. Smiling sadly, he said, “Thanks, kid.”
Alex nodded. “And the ice fog sucks big time, too!”
“I agree,” Jerry said with another smile, this one a little bit brighter, thanks to the boy’s enthusiasm and humour.
Austin piloted the truck around a final bend in the lane toward the maintenance area where the snowmobiles were stored.
Alex glanced up from his phone once more. He looked to the access road that led to the now-defunct ski hill and Gold Ridge beyond. As he turned back to his dad and Trip, trying to catch the train of their conversation, something in the corner of his sharp young eyes caught his attention. “Holy shit! What’s that?” Alex shouted, making Jerry jump slightly in his seat beside him.
There had seemed something strange about one of the massive boulders situated along the back edge of the casino grounds. Located almost a kilometre away, they’d been put there by Ray Chance as a line of demarcation to separate the resort and casino from the now abandoned ski hill.
“Alex! What’s the problem?” Austin asked.
“There! Up the road to the old ski runs we just went by!” He pointed back the way they’d just come. “It looked like something big was moving near the boulders.”
Austin stomped on the brake pedal, bringing the truck to a juddering halt on the frozen ground. He threw it in reverse and backed down the lane around the corner, skidding to a halt once more. All four men looked up the hillside. In the distance, with the last of the daylight fading away behind the mountain, they watched as one of the resort’s huge ‘boulders’ moved slowly down the hillside on four large legs, directly toward the casino.
“Jesus Christ! That thing’s even bigger in daylight!” Jerry said.
“We’ve got to warn the people in the resort!” Austin said. Dropping the truck out of four-wheel-drive mode, he cranked the steering wheel and tromped on the accelerator, spinning the truck around one-hundred and eighty degrees. The truck rocketed forward, throwing the occupants back into their seats. Ice and gravel shot out from the rear tires of the truck, striking its undercarriage like hail on a tin roof. The noise caught the attention of the enormous predator descending the mountain toward them as well, and it paused, looking their way.
Alex, his face pressed to the window, watched the colossal bruin. It moved slowly and confidently like it had all the time in the world. The beast’s head tracked their movement as they sped around the corner of the building, never once breaking its line of sight with the vehicle, locking them into its predator’s vision.
“I think I have an idea,” Austin said. Driving at breakneck speed down the remaining half kilometre toward the resort, he slammed on the brakes just before careening into the wall next to the kitchen. Piling out of the truck, Jerry and Alex looked nervously over their shoulders up the lane, but there was no sign of the bear, yet.
“Trip, you, get this,” Austin said, reaching into the truck and grabbing the Springfield .30-06 from the gun rack. He tossed it to his co-worker. More than once, Trip had used that rifle to bring down an unnaturally aggressive coyote at the dump or to scare off other scavenging wildlife in the area. Austin knew that particular rifle and Trip were old friends.
“What about me?” Jerry asked, hopefully eyeing the T-Rex rifle slung over Austin’s shoulder.
“Right! Sorry, I don’t want to leave you out, Jerry. Here you go,” Austin said, reaching toward the high-powered rifle.
Jerry’s grinned, his excitement level soaring as he prepared to accept the T-Rex from Murphy.
Austin reached past the rifle’s strap to the utility case on his belt. He unclipped a leather holster attached there and reverentially handed it over to Jerry.
Jerry looked down at the object in his hands and opened the case, unfolding the ten-centimetre lock-blade contained inside. He looked up at Austin, “Gee, thanks... I guess.”
“Sorry, it's the best I can do at the moment,” Austin sympathised.
“It’s a good kn
ife, Mr. Benson! I gave it to my dad for Christmas just last year!” Alex exclaimed.
Jerry smiled, not wanting to hurt the kid’s feelings. “It is a good-looking knife, kid,” he feigned, holding it up in front of his face. “I suppose I can always poke the bastard in the eye with it if I can get close enough.”
“That’s a great idea!” Alex enthused.
Austin said to Trip, “So here’s the plan. I’m heading inside to round everyone up and make sure they’re in a safe location somewhere inside.”
“Wherever that is,” Jerry interjected.
Ignoring Jerry’s quip, Austin said, “Trip, I want you to take the truck.”
“Got it. Where am I going, Boss?”
“The maintenance shed. It’s time to change somebody’s diapers,” Austin said, cryptically.
“I’m on it, Boss!” Trip climbed behind the wheel of the pickup. He floored the Chevy, and in a flurry of dust and gravel, skidded around the corner out of sight.
