Mountain of the Dead

by Jeremy Bates

  “Corey!” Olivia called from behind me.

  “Whitey!” Disco said.

  Grimacing against the pain, I tried pulling my arm free. This proved impossible.

  I was as helpless as an infant.

  The yeti lifted me higher still so I now dangled in the air.

  The pain in my wrist reached an excruciating level, and the scream I’d been trying to keep inside me escaped in an agonized bellow.

  A boom shook the cave.

  Grunting loudly, the yeti released me. I landed on my feet and stumbled back toward the others.

  Vasily, standing in a shooter’s pose, was staring down the barrel of his rifle, which was aimed past me, at the yeti. Olivia was shouting at him not to shoot. I did the same.

  Another boom. The rifle kicked back. More smoke clouded the air.

  The yeti roared this time, a bloodcurdling sound, humanlike in tenor but much more ferocious

  I spun around, falling to my butt at Disco’s feet, and watched the juggernaut steam toward us impossibly fast.

  A third boom.

  The yeti barely slowed, and then it was lunging toward Vasily. He fired a fourth round. The thunder-crack of the gunshot rocked the cave. The yeti flinched as the bullet struck it somewhere in its upper body, point-blank, but then it had the barrel of the rifle in its hand.

  It flung the weapon across the chamber and seized Vasily by both biceps, hiking him several feet into the air so their faces were inches apart. Roaring, its spittle wet Vasily’s face while its breath caused his hair to quaver as if in fright.

  It launched the old man sideways.

  He landed fifteen feet away, his frail bones cracking audibly on impact, and then he was tumbling across the cave floor.

  The yeti went after him.

  “Run!” I shouted, shoving myself to my feet.

  Disco dashed past me toward the cave entrance, pulling Olivia behind him.

  I caught his wrist.

  Going outside would be pointless. The yeti would follow our tracks and find us as soon as it was done with Vasily. Going deeper into the cave, however, might offer us somewhere to hide, a fissure or alcove into which it couldn’t fit.

  There was no time to articulate any of this. The creature held Vasily upside down by the ankle now, no doubt in preparation of doing something horrendous to him.

  “That way,” I said, shoving Disco and Olivia in the opposite direction they’d been heading. Snatching the Maglite from the pile of rocks that had been keeping its beam directed at the ceiling, I raced after them.

  Behind us, Vasily screamed.

  CHAPTER 27

  NORTHERN URAL MOUNTAINS, USSR, 1959

  FIVE HOURS TO LIVE

  Zolotaryov cursed himself for not retrieving the flashlight after he’d dropped it on the mountain slope. He’d been too panicked at the time, not thinking clearly. Consequently, he could barely see where he stepped in the night, and several times already branches had raked his face, barely missing his eyes. His hope at finding shelter before they froze to death dwindled with each passing minute. This was like searching for a needle in a haystack—in the pitch dark.

  Still, they had to try. Zolotaryov had never been a quitter. He had not survived five years fighting in the bloodiest war in the history of warfare to simply sit down and wait to die.

  They just had to make it until morning, he told himself. The storm would have passed by then, at least the worst of it. They could return to the tent. The snowman would be gone; there would be no reason for it to stay so long. They would put on all of their clothing, heat the stove. They would be okay.

  Well, not all of them. Doroshenko and Georgy wouldn’t make it. In fact, they were likely already dead. Nobody could survive in this temperature in what they were wearing. Or, more precisely, not wearing. He should have grabbed extra jackets on his way out of the tent—

  No, he couldn’t blame himself. There had been no time for any of this. The snowman had been halfway inside the tent. Had it caught him, it could have crushed his skull in a single hand.

  Zolotaryov couldn’t believe it. A snowman! A monster from the pages of a children’s fairytale! It was real. It existed. They had seen it with their own eyes—

  Someone cried out suddenly, far to his right.

  “Kolya!” Igor said.

  Zolotaryov could see neither of them in the dark. He moved as quickly as he could in the direction of their voices.

  “He fell!” Kolevatov shouted. “He fell into a ravine!”

  Zolotaryov reached them a minute later. Igor grabbed his arm to halt him. With his other he pointed a few feet ahead to a black crevice where snow should have been.

  Kolevatov knelt on his hands and knees at the edge of it, peering down.

  “How deep is it?” Zolotaryov asked. “What can you see?”

  “Nothing! I can’t see anything.”

  “We need to get down there.”

  Zolotaryov started along the margin of the precipice until he came to a breakdown of talus rock, which they navigated to the bottom. They backtracked to where Kolya had fallen and found him sprawled on his chest.

  Igor ran the final few steps to his friend and dropped to his knees. “Kolya?” he said, easing him onto his back. “Kolya, can you hear me?” He felt for a pulse. “He’s alive!”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Kolevatov said. “Did he hit his head?”

  “I don’t know—” Igor cut himself off.

  “What is it?” Zolotaryov asked, crouching next to him.

  “His neck. It’s… I don’t know, it feels…not right.”

  “Not right?” Kolevatov said.

  “Deformed.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Igor, stay with him,” Zolotaryov said resolutely. “Alex and I will fetch some branches. We’ll make a bed, get him off the rocks. Then we’ll get the others.” He pushed himself to his feet with effort, the cold already burrowed deep into his joints, aging them fifty years. “It’s okay,” he added. “We have our shelter now. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  ⁂

  Rustem stood at the base of the cedar. Igor had already cut off all the lower branches, but the pulpy stems remained protruding from the trunk. He could use those as foot- and handholds to climb the tree and reach the higher limbs. After all, he didn’t have a choice, did he? They’d made a mistake earlier by building the fire atop the snow, which had naturally melted, causing the fire to sink. To prevent it from extinguishing, they burned more and more branches, exhausting their stockpile. It had been a foolish mistake, something they would never have done under normal circumstances. But they were scared and cold and weren’t thinking clearly.

  Rustem started up the tree. His joints and tendons, especially those in his shoulders and knees, ached with each movement. His hands and feet felt like unresponsive blocks of ice. He could barely see anything in the dark. Thankfully, however, he didn’t have far to go, two meters or so, and then he was pulling himself up onto an intact branch. Holding onto the trunk for support, he systematically sawed through all the boughs he could reach with his pocket knife. They fell to the ground one after another until none remained to cut.

  “Is that all?” Zina asked. She and Lyuda had been breaking the ones on the ground into smaller pieces.

  “The others are too high,” he replied.

  “Can’t you climb higher?”

  “Don’t we have enough?”

  A pause. “More would be better.”

  “I can’t go higher. I’ll fall.”

  “Okay, come down.”

  Easier said than done, he thought as he gingerly lowered himself to his butt, so he now sat on the branch he had been standing on. Although it wasn’t far to the ground, he couldn’t jump. Rocks hid beneath the snow. He could break an ankle, or a leg.

  Instead, he shimmied his body from the branch to the trunk, which he hugged with his arms and legs. He felt with his feet for a stem to stand on. His right foot found one. He transferred his wei
ght to it—and heard a sharp crack.

  Arms flaying, he fell backward and struck the ground a moment later. Pain lanced through his head and then everything went black. When he opened his eyes Zina and Lyuda were crouched over him, their eyes wide with concern, their voices sounding strangely muffled.

  He sat up with effort and said, “I’m okay.” His voice also sounded odd, distant, and he realized his ears were ringing.

  “You hit your head,” Lyuda said. “It’s cut.”

  He reached a hand to the back of his skull and tapped it gently, though he didn’t feel anything. The cold made a good anesthetic.

  “I’m okay,” he repeated.

  Together Lyuda and Zina eased him to his feet and guided him back to the fire, where he sat down across from Georgy and Doroshenko, who both appeared to be sleeping.

  Lyuda said, “We’ll finish breaking the branches and bring them over. Keep an eye on—”

  “Yuri!” Zina said. “Are you awake?”

  Doroshenko nodded.

  “Georgy?”

  An even smaller nod.

  “Don’t let them go to sleep.”

  Once she and Lyuda left, Rustem closed his eyes. His eyelids were so heavy, encased in cement. And the cold—he had never experienced such cold. It penetrated deep inside him, freezing him from the inside out. It was as if his veins were not pumping hot blood but ice water.

  How could he survive this? How could he last until morning? He was too tired to check his wristwatch for the time, but he knew dawn was still several hours away—

  He smelled something. It smelled good. Food? Was someone cooking?

  He opened his eyes and looked torpidly at the faltering fire. Nothing cooking. He looked at Georgy and Doroshenko. They were both slumped forward now.

  Sleeping? Zina had told him to make sure they didn’t go to sleep. But what was wrong with sleep? It would be a reprieve from the cold.

  He was about to close his eyes when he saw that Doroshenko’s hand had fallen into the fire. The skin had already turned black and blistered in places.

  Rustem didn’t immediately do anything. He just stared at Doroshenko’s burning hand as a voice in his head said, We’re going to die here. no question about it now. Because Doroshenko’s hand is cooking in the fire, really crisping up, and he doesn’t even know it, and you can’t sit there watching your friend’s hand roast and think everything is going to turn out fine, so we’re going to die, maybe Doroshenko’s already dead—

  That snapped him out of his stupor. He leapt forward, yanking Doroshenko’s hand out of the flames and driving it into the snow.

  Doroshenko slumped onto his side with terribly limp form.

  “Yuri?” Rustem said. He touched his friend’s cheek, which was as cold and hard as iced fish. “Yuri?” He peeled open a closed eyelid and flinched in horror at the glazed, sightless eyeball staring back at him.

  ⁂

  Igor, Zolotaryov, and Kolevatov arranged the smattering of fir branches they’d gathered into a bed of sorts, then as gently as they could they lifted Kolya onto it. Thankfully he was dressed warmly, due to the fact he had just finished his watch when the snowman appeared, and he had not yet removed any layers of clothing.

  Zolotaryov looked at Kolevatov. “Igor and I are going to return to the cedar to get the others. We’ll be back soon. You’ll be okay?”

  Kolevatov nodded, his eyes wide and gray-white in the overwhelming darkness.

  Zolotaryov clapped him on the shoulder reassuringly and turned to leave when a shrill, feminine scream cut through the Arctic stillness.

  ⁂

  Zina shook Doroshenko so hard his head flopped back and forth on a neck that now seemed made of rubber. Then Rustem was pulling her away, and she screamed at him to let her go, and then she screamed again, the way some people cry, an almost inhuman caterwauling drenched in anguish.

  Doroshenko, dead.

  Her lover, dead.

  How could this be? He was so strong, so brave, so implacably solid.

  He couldn’t be dead.

  It was just his birthday two days ago!

  His twenty-first birthday…

  Rustem was still pulling her away.

  She flailed and kicked and screamed over and over and over.

  The Dyatlov group’s tent one day after it was discovered

  CHAPTER 28

  Fear herded us down the passageway at the back of the cave. Abruptly Disco skidded to a halt while spreading his arms, clutching the crevice walls. Olivia smacked into his backside. I stopped behind her.

  “Go!” I shouted, terror swelling my chest so I could barely speak. I wanted to look over my shoulder, but I was too afraid by what I might see.

  “Can’t!” Disco replied. “Look!”

  I aimed the Maglite past him. The glow illuminated a rocky wall.

  A dead end!

  I was wondering whether we still had time to turn around and head outside when Disco collapsed to his knees and leaned forward. I thought he might be vomiting before I noticed the ground in front of him fell away into an abyss.

  Disco was looking into it.

  “There’s a ledge!” he said. “We can jump!”

  Without a word, Olivia slipped over the lip of the hole, hung by her arms for a moment, then let go. She landed with an oomph.

  Only a few moments had passed since we’d fled from the yeti, yet it felt as though we were moving much too slow. I was certain powerful hands would heft me into the air at any moment. I still couldn’t bring myself to look back, but I heard Vasily making grunting-whimpering noises that chilled my soul—and in concomitance with this, something louder, what I believed to be bones breaking.

  Disco was now hanging from the lip. I tucked the Maglite into the throat of my jacket and swung over the lip to join him. We let go at the same time and hit the small ledge together.

  I stumbled, falling backward, arms pin-wheeling. Then I was in freefall. Air rushing past me. Nothing beneath me. My entire body tensed in anticipation of a crushing landing, even though a calm and rational part of my brain told me the best thing I could do was to remain relaxed—

  I slammed the ground. The impact fired bolts of pain through my back. I bit my tongue and tasted gushing blood.

  But I was okay. It was only a ten-foot drop into some kind of pit.

  Disco landed on his feet a short distance away.

  “Light, Whitey!” he said.

  I yanked the Maglite free, the beam wagging as I struggled to my feet. The pit, I saw, stretched a dozen feet in diameter. Sharp-looking rocks lined the sheer walls.

  “A tunnel!” Disco said, dashing to a jagged crevice in one wall.

  Olivia simply stared after him.

  “Go!” I told her, pushing her forward, almost knocking her over in my panic. She regained her footing and jogged forward—jogged—as though she were out for a leisurely jaunt around the block. She was dazed, in shock most likely. Yet while shock might be an evolutionary ace up the sleeve to temporarily protect you from losing your mind in the face of unbearable horror, it wasn’t helping anybody now. It would get us killed.

  “Go!” I shouted, pushing her again. Go seemed to be the only word I could articulate.

  The roughly hewn passage was six feet high and half that in width. Chunks of rocks littered the ground. Broken off the ceiling by the hunched shoulders of the yeti?

  Vasily screamed.

  The gut-wrenching sound bounced off the walls behind us. It wasn’t a short burst of pain like the previous one. It went on and on. Warbling. The sound you would make if someone was carving out your eyeballs with a blunt knife. It climbed octave after octave to a soul-shattering soprano of prolonged agony—which, at the end, one-eightied into a crescendo of blistering rage.

  Then nothing except our rapid footsteps and our pants of fear.

  ⁂

  Disco ran straight off another drop. Whether on purpose, I didn’t know, but it was only four feet to the next level. He landed like
a maladroit gymnast entering a somersault before springing back to his feet. I would have leapt recklessly after him, but Olivia slowed and stopped. She lowered herself to her butt and hopped down, how you might enter the water from the end of a dock. I hopped down behind her.

  “Where’s that thing at?” Disco said between gasping breaths, his eyes as wide as I’d ever seen them.

  I was breathing just as hard, my chest heaving, my lungs burning. “Coming,” I told him. At least I assumed that to be the case.

  Vasily was dead, and now the yeti was coming for us.

  Without another word, we continued down the passageway.

  Olivia, thank God, seemed to have come back to herself, because now she was motoring, as much as you can in bulky snow gear and boots.

  After fifty or so feet the portal emptied into a natural cavern scattered with boulders and other terrestrial debris. It must have been the size of the nave of a small church. Buttery stalactites hung from the domed ceiling like gothic chandeliers, though some extended their sinewy tendrils all the way to the ground, and I didn’t know whether you’d classify those as stalactites or stalagmites. My grade ten geography teacher popped into my mind. I could see him as clearly as if it were yesterday, standing at the front of the classroom by the blackboard, chalk in one hand, telling the class the mnemonic, “Stalactite has a ‘c’ for ceiling, and stalagmite a ‘g’ for ground.”

  The chamber split into five new passages. Two to our left, three straight ahead, and one to the right. The latter was the largest by far. Its arched opening must have been twelve feet tall.

  “Which way?” Disco asked, swinging his head from side to side.

  “I don’t know!” I said, frozen with uncertainty. I made a reflex decision, something akin to a heartbeat. “That one!” I pointed toward the tunnel immediately to our left. It was the smallest, and right then smaller seemed better.

  Disco and I had to duck our heads, while Olivia could run erect. Rock scraped my back and shoulders. I hardly noticed or cared.