by Andy Lucas
Walking, sliding, rolling and sometimes having to climb down sheer faces of rock, she had travelled for several miles before darkness fell. The snow had fallen intermittently all day long but the green snowsuit she had stripped from the dead guard kept the worst of the chill away from her skin. As the light failed, her throat felt dry and she was developing a raging thirst that was only partially quenched by taking the occasional mouthful of snow and letting it melt inside her cheeks.
It had been dark for about half an hour when she heard the unmistakeable crack of a gunshot, shattering the quiet of the thickening forest all around her, snapping her from the monotony of repeated steps instantly. Alert, heart racing, she had stopped. The direction of the shot was over to her left, where the trees appeared to be a little thinner. With no sun or stars to guide her, she had no idea which compass heading that was on. But, she had reasoned, a gun meant people.
She had not heard a helicopter, which she was sure she would have done if the Chinook had been flying anywhere nearby. The likelihood of the shot coming from one of the archaeological team seemed remote so she had made the decision to head in its direction and see where it led her.
It had taken the best part of ten minutes to make her way downhill, still moving between a myriad of tree trunks but she suddenly found the trees opening up onto a narrow trail of pure white snow. It was moving quite steeply downhill, in exactly the direction of the shot, so Shilan made good progress for the next five minutes, where the trail ended at a wide expansive clearing. A single building stood in its centre, in total darkness.
Shelter, at last.
The last thing she expected, when testing the first set of old wooden shutters, was to find anybody at home. The place had clearly been deserted for a long time. She tried pulling them a couple of times; hearing the welcome sound of creaking wood as she pulled harder. A final tug and they had sprung open in her hands but her elation at the idea of being able to get inside instantly turned to shock when she had been grabbed by something in the darkness and pulled bodily inside.
That brought her right up to date; standing in the room with Pace, while the madman was shooting holes in the shutters that he had only closed a few moments earlier. Something had roared outside, true. Possibly a snow leopard or even a tiger; which she knew prowled these mountains. Shilan did not understand why he needed to shoot at all. Nothing would try and get inside; animals were not wired to act that way around human beings.
She was about to challenge him when she realised that his caution was horribly justified. Not one but three of the surrounding windows started to grunt and growl at them. Whatever Pace had been firing at was not alone. In the light of the Maglite, she caught his eye. His face was set rigidly with determination and acceptance.
Pace had feared that the creature might not be on its own. To so brazenly attack Hill, he'd wondered whether there might be a family to feed, lurking somewhere within the bosom of the forest. There was no time to ponder, or prepare. Pace had emptied the Mauser and had not yet had time to feed in another stripper clip of five bullets; several of which sat inside his backpack.
'Run!' he ordered, snatching up the rifle and slinging it over his shoulder before grabbing her by the hand. His other hand was still holding the Webley so he drew back one foot and kicked his backpack as hard as he could; pleased to see it skitter across the old wooden floor towards the stairs, falling over the lip and banging down to the ground floor below them. By the time Pace and Shilan reached the top step, all three windows exploded inwards in a simultaneous assault of splinters, teeth and muscle.
Not pausing to look back, they took the dusty stairs two at a time. The empty rifle stayed on his shoulder for now.
When they reached the final step, Shilan pulled her hand forcibly from Pace's grip and grabbed the Mauser's webbing strap, sliding it off Pace's shoulder before he could protest.
'Where are the bullets?'
Spinning on the spot at the base of the stairs, he raised his pistol, aiming back up the steps as he spoke. 'In my pack, somewhere.'
'Stripper clips,' Shilan stated knowledgably. 'Five shots per strip?' Pace nodded. 'Try to hold them off for a few seconds, whatever they are.'
'This is a powerful handgun but I don't think it's going to cut it,' admitted Pace, heart pounding but his shooting stance steady. From the upstairs, ear-splitting crashing told him that the creatures were now inside.
'Try,' was all she managed to reply before she busied herself stepping over to where the pack lay, a few feet away from the bottom step. Upon reaching it, she knelt down and her fingers got to work rummaging inside for the ammunition.
Pace expected to see the beasts appear at the top of the stairs at any second so only spared her the briefest of glances. The light from his head torch, which he quickly flicked on, was no match for the powerful Maglite cable-tied to the Mauser's barrel but, as it swept back from Shilan to the stairs, something caught Pace's eye that sent a glimmer of hope lancing through the depressive gloom of impending death.
'Stop,' he shouted. 'Over there. Quickly, Shilan. Check it out!' He pointed the wavering beam of light back to a section of floor in the very centre of the dark room. Shilan spotted it immediately, nodded excitedly before bolting over to it like a gold-hungry Olympic athlete released from the starting blocks.
What the light had flashed up was what appeared to be a trap door, set into the floor. Only large enough for a single person; perhaps two feet across, a small metal ring was secured in its centre invitingly. The moment she reached it, her hands were stretching; the rifle and pack forgotten where she'd dropped them.
Strength flooded her, alongside a sense of calm; both driven by the desperate need to survive and the years of medical practise that had taught her the necessity of remaining cool under pressure. In the event, she tugged so hard that the trap door flew upwards with barely a squeak out of the wooden edges, revealing a deeper depth of blackness from the hole beneath it.
Pace heard them moving towards the stairs, seeing the solid old floorboards above his head sagging dangerously and disgorging showers of dust from between the boards with each thumping, crushing footstep. Two-handed, his hands steady and purposeful, the Webley waited in its master's grip, hungry for something to get its teeth into.
Thankfully, Shilan shouted out for him to come just before their unwelcome visitors came into sight. Sparing a head twist in her direction again, he was just in time to see her disappear down inside the hole.
'Come on!'
Pace did not need to be told twice. Salvation beckoned him but he also had no intention of leaving without the Mauser or backpack, which sat discarded where Shilan had been looking for the bullets. Some of the contents of the pack lay spread on the old floor where she had been hurrying but he was determined to salvage what he could.
He ran like a man possessed, on a curving trajectory, reaching the backpack and rifle just as the floor boards above gave way with a shriek of protest and the world above came crashing down on top of him. The massive weight of three huge animals was simply too much to bear for the old boards, which splintered in disgust.
Pace was stunned by the explosion of dust and dirt but he stayed focused on the trap door. He sensed the chaos all around, accompanied by an instant stench of rotting flesh and damp fur that made him want to gag but scooped up his belongings before flinging himself, head first, towards the hole.
The creatures were as surprised by a section of the floor giving way as Pace was, which was the only reason he made it, sliding the last few inches before falling down inside the hole, pulling the rifle and pack after him. Luckily, neither item got stuck to impede his fall, which was far greater than he'd expected. Tumbling eight feet, he crashed painfully onto compacted dirt at the bottom, the wildly dancing light from his head torch jigging around maniacally.
Winded, he felt female hands tugging him off to the left. Clawing his fingers into cold soil, Pace half crawled and was half dragged out from the bottom of the shaft,
into a side passageway barely wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders.
Shilan, who had dropped feet first down the hole, was in far better shape than he was. She had no idea where the passage led because she had no light source and had simply discovered it by feeling around with her hands. Now, with the benefit of Pace's torch, the subterranean detail was brought sharply into view.
Roughly dug, permeated with the stink of damp earth, the side tunnel cut away in a straight line for several metres before curving off to the right slightly. The tight confines meant they would need to move in single file.
Pace's breath was beginning to return, in laboured gasps. Pausing to slip off his head torch and pass it over to Shilan, he put the Webley back in its holster and took a second to secure the ties of his backpack.
Shilan slipped the head torch on and led the way down the tunnel, which curved several times but remained level. She had no idea where it went but that did not matter because they had managed to leave the danger well behind them. No sound permeated down the tunnel and the trap door was too small to allow a tiger or bear to follow them. She still had no idea what they had just escaped from.
After crawling for ten metres, the narrow tunnel ended at the base of another constricting, vertical shaft. Shilan stood up but Pace had to remain in the side tunnel; there was no room for them both.
'What is it?' called Pace. 'What can you see?'
'Another trap door,' she explained. 'A couple of feet above my head. No ladder or rope,' she added, 'but if you give me a lift, I can reach it easily.'
'Must be another building,' Pace reasoned. 'One of the smaller houses.'
'More houses?' Shilan had only seen the hall when she'd entered the clearing. The exposed patches of sunken rooftops had not registered with her at the time.
Not wanting to explain himself at that moment, Pace pushed his way as far out into the shaft as he could, on all fours, allowing Shilan to manoeuvre her feet up onto his back. With a bit of huffing and puffing, Pace made it completely out of the side tunnel. Reaching up, Shilan's fingertips brushed the underside of the trap door but she needed more height to push it open.
Moving from all fours, to kneeling up, they worked as a fluid team; no words needed. As soon as Pace's shoulders lifted, Shilan moved her feet from his back on to them, bracing herself by pressing her hands against the dirt walls of the shaft as he rose up onto his feet in a single, powerful motion.
He was six feet tall, so Pace had to pause in a half stoop to stop Shilan's head smashing into the underside of the door. She felt surprisingly heavy but Pace did not have to remain in this uncomfortable position for too long, luckily.
Wasting no time, Shilan transferred her hands from the wall to the wood and heaved with all of her might. The trap door sprang open, crashing down into the unseen world above and she stood up on his shoulders, neatly stepping up onto the floor level above.
Standing up, Pace judged the distance to the lip of the trap door, bent down and tossed up first the backpack and then, more carefully, handed up the Mauser to Shilan, who knelt beside the opening and reached down for it.
Eager to get out of the shaft and its uncanny sense of being inside a freshly dug grave, Pace flexed his knees a little and then sprang upwards, clamping his hands firmly over the edge. A swift pull up movement of his arms and he was able to haul himself out to find Shilan seated nearby, studying their destination. She did not need to move her head to light up the entire space, even with the weaker head torch beam.
They were in a square room; as dank and musty as the inside of the hall, no larger than three metres across. The underside of its rusting corrugated iron roof, single shuttered window and battered looking wooden door, made up from slatted planks, was all that broke the monotony. The floor of this tiny house had a wooden floor exactly like the larger hall but it appeared more rotten, with patches of green moss and yellowish lichen eating away at it in places where the roof clearly leaked during the warmer months of the year.
'I did not notice any other buildings,' Shilan stood up and dusted her self down. 'They're all buried under the snow, am I correct in thinking?' Pace eyed her for a moment before nodding. She had performed amazingly well during the attack; too well for a run-of-the-mill hospital surgeon.
'There are a dozen or so dotted around this flat area,' he explained, standing up to join her. 'I came here with an archaeologist named Hill. He had a map in his pack showing where they all should be.'
'He's dead?' Again Pace nodded, sombrely this time. 'How? Was it the same bears that just tried to kill us, or were they tigers?'
Pace regarded her thoughtfully. There was no rush to leave the tiny house. Buried to its roof, undisturbed for a century, the Yeti would have no reason to start digging around to try and find them and their scent would be well masked. The tunnels had clearly been cut as a way to travel for one person only, perhaps for when the snow became too heavy to move on the surface? It was just a guess but it made sense.
'Not bears and not tigers,' he said. 'Believe it or not, they were Yeti. Hungry, ferocious, mythical, shouldn't-exist-but-they-do, Abominable Snowmen.'
Shilan's eyes widened with incredulity but she did not immediately respond. Pace had no reason to lie to her about anything, that she could think of. He clearly knew about her part in robbing Deborah of her womb and ovaries, for implantation into Josephine Roche, but why would making such an absurd statement help him?
Pace moved away from her and started unpacking the backpack. The first job as to find the stripper clips, which he located swiftly. Once the Mauser had been reloaded, he propped it up against the closed door and turned his attention to checking the state of their provisions. Equally distributed between his back and Hill's, he ended up with a fairly poor tally. Two days of fresh water and the same in vacuum-sealed survival meals, supplemented by a few packets of biscuits and a couple of Mars bars. Water was not a problem; they were surrounded by snow, but their food was.
Shilan realised it as soon as she saw it. The food was easily recognisable as Wayfayrer from the packaging; one of the world's most popular producers of pre-cooked meals for adventurers and explorers. She had eaten her fair share of this type of food in her time, as had Pace. Safe to eat hot, or cold, you normally threw the whole pouch into a pot of boiling water and heated it for about ten minutes. Packed with calories and surprisingly tasty, she would normally have been delighted to see them. Especially given how ravenously hungry she suddenly felt.
'We won't be able to heat them up,' she commented. 'We can eat this stuff cold but…'
'But,' Pace interrupted her, 'this kind of food will give off a strong smell, even cold. It would bring every predator within half a mile sniffing around until they dug us out.'
'I know,' she agreed sadly. 'Before we can eat a hot meal, we will need to get far away from this place.'
'That isn't going to be easy. Those creatures back there are clearly apex predators in this forest. Why they're here, and hungry for human prey, I have no idea but we have to assume they know we're still around somewhere. They're not going to give up and just wander away, not for a while at least.'
'So you're saying we're stuck here?'
'For now, yes. Hopefully they will keep looking for us until daylight and then head off to sleep, assuming they're nocturnal, of course. They still have Hill's body which they haven't had time to eat yet.'
'Let's say, for a moment, that I believe your story about gigantic, killer apes. What makes you think they want to eat a human corpse? Maybe your friend was killed because he encroached upon their territory. Very few primates eat flesh,' she punctuated the idea with this powerful fact.
'Does it matter?' Pace threw back at her. 'They've killed before, according to history and they've killed today.' He drew in a deep breath of the stale, musty air. 'There is an old adage in law which states that previous behaviour is an accepted indicator of future behaviour. If they decide to chew on our bones, or not, they're still going to kill us.'
>
Shilan found no fault with his logic. 'If you can put aside your anger with me about Deborah,' she began, seeing his face hardened at the mention of the journalist's name, 'I would really like to hear the details of what happened to you and Hill. As you say, it doesn't look like we'll be going anywhere for at least a few hours.'
Pace did not want to be near her, or even speak to her because of what she'd done, but they were together, like it or not, and a bit of human conversation would at least help to pass the time. With his disinterest in speaking to Rachel Crown the day before, he was not doing too well forging new friendships with women, he mused. His main reason for deciding to talk to her came down to the fact that she had been close to Josephine Roche and might well know where she was hiding.
That information was priceless to him so they spent the next hour sitting on the floor, sipping at a bottle of water each, while he regaled her with the gory details.
At the end, Shilan had no doubt that Pace had just told her the awful, sickening truth.
Yeti did exist and they hunted people.
26
They passed the remainder of the night, and the morning of the next day, inside the buried house before judging it worth the risk to try and leave. With no hope of exiting through the door or window, Pace was able to reach up and comfortably push at the corner of the corrugated roof, which immediately separated from its rotting wooden peg fasteners. This building was one of those completely buried in snow so it took some effort to put enough strength into his labours without making any noise at the same time.
It took a few minutes but, eventually, he worked enough of the roof free from its snow cover and peered out. The daylight hurt his eyeballs; searing from a brilliant yellow orb sitting within a vividly azure sky. Not a single cloud interrupted a gorgeous view of the snow-capped peaks. The surrounding forest lay peaceful and would not have been out of place on the front cover of a sky holiday brochure; appearing idyllic.
