False Horizon

by Alex Archer

  She glanced toward the front of the cave. As much as she hated the idea that Tuk might actually have a point with his suggestion that Mike had gone out into the storm, she had to at least satisfy herself that he hadn’t.

  She looked at Tuk. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Outside.”

  Annja scooped up the jackets and tossed one to Tuk. “Put it on. I’m almost one hundred percent certain that he wouldn’t do this, but in his feverish state, who knows how his mind might operate.”

  She zipped up the parka and watched as Tuk did the same. “You ready?”

  He nodded. Annja held up her hand. “I’ll keep the flashlight, if you don’t mind.”

  Tuk nodded and watched as Annja swept the heavy beam over to the opening of the cave. “Here we go.”

  Tuk watched her scoot down through the thin opening. He followed her out into the storm.

  Annja gasped as the first punch of cold wind knocked her sideways. The air outside the cave couldn’t have been ten degrees. And the snow slapped her exposed skin like sharpened lead bullets.

  She flashed the light along the ground and saw nothing. No footprints led away from the cave. And there was no way Mike could have left the cave without leaving some sort of sign.

  Unless he happened to fly away.

  Annja shook her head and turned to Tuk, shouting to be heard over the storm. “He’s not out here.”

  Tuk nodded and gestured for them to return to the safety of the cave. He ducked back inside.

  Annja took another second to look around, shining the flashlight in all directions. But the snow and wind combined to make the beam of the flashlight ineffective even out to twenty yards.

  He’s not here, Annja thought. He’s got to be inside the cave.

  Somewhere.

  She ducked back through the opening and took a breath as she got herself out of the storm. Tuk had already ditched his coat and was jumping up and down to get his blood circulating.

  “No one would last in that weather for more than ten minutes,” he said a moment later.

  Annja clapped her hands to herself, trying to warm up. “Agreed. But that still leaves us with the question of where Mike could have gone. If he’s not outside, then logic demands that he’s somewhere inside.”

  Tuk frowned. “We’ve seen all of the cave, at least as far as I can tell. And from what we know, it is also impossible that Mike is in here with us.”

  Annja shook her head. “I don’t think he would have gone outside. But he’s somewhere. People don’t just disappear.”

  “I’m open to hearing your theories,” Tuk said. “I must admit I have none at the moment that could explain this.”

  “Neither do I,” Annja said.

  Tuk sat down on the blankets. “What if there is another way out of here that we don’t know about?”

  “That’s the only thing that makes any possible sense,” Annja said. “But where? We’re in the main cavern and then there’s that back portion. Beyond that, I don’t see any other spaces.”

  Tuk frowned. “Then there must be something that we have not noticed. Our perspective does not permit us to see what may be directly in front of our faces. Yet it would still exist.”

  “We have to search for it,” Annja said. “Mike’s life might well depend on it.”

  “Where do we start?” Tuk asked.

  Annja pointed to the back wall of the cavern. “At what looks to be the dead end. If there’s nothing there, then we’ll work back toward the cave opening. But somewhere, there’s got to be something. There has to be.”

  Tuk got to his feet. “And what happens if we search every bit of the cave and still don’t know where he is?”

  Annja bit her lip. “Then I’ll have to accept the possibility that Mike has vanished off the face of the earth.”

  Tuk took the flashlight from her and aimed it toward the back of the cave. “Well, we’re not there just yet. Let’s see if we can maybe find a logical explanation for his disappearance before we write him off entirely.”

  13

  Tuk set to check the back of the cave with Annja working over to his right side. He started pressing his hands into every inch of the rock, trying desperately to find some type of hidden spot that they couldn’t see with their naked eyes.

  He watched as Annja worked on her own section of the cave. She ran her hands up and along every bit of rock she could find. The worry on her face was apparent and Tuk frowned. He had to keep her focused but less frightened.

  “How long have you known Mike?”

  “Huh? Mike? I’ve known him for years. We did some graduate school work together. I always thought he wasn’t serious enough. You know, because he played football and always seemed to be much more interested in sports than in anything to do with science and history.”

  “You were mistaken?”

  “It’s like what you were saying about perspectives just now. Sometimes what’s right in front of our eyes can’t be seen simply because we look at it from only one perspective. Mike was like that. And when I stopped seeing him as a football player, and instead looked at him as someone interested in many of the same things that grabbed my attention, then all of a sudden he became a great friend.”

  “How many times have you worked together?”

  “On again and off again. It’s how it happens in archaeology. You get together with some people for one thing and others for something else. Mike’s teaching now and then takes long sabbaticals to go off and pursue those things he’s really interested in.”

  “Shangri-La being one of them,” Tuk said. He’d had no luck with any part of the cave so far. He ran his hands along the cave wall.

  “Shangri-La is really the thing that drives him hardest,” Annja said. “As long as I’ve known him he’s always had a thing for lost lands and places that seem to defy convention.”

  “I guess Shangri-La is all of that. How long has he been searching for it?” Tuk asked.

  “When we were in school, he wrote a thesis on its existence, which promptly got him laughed out of the first board. It taught him a valuable lesson about his passion.”

  “And what was that?”

  “That sometimes people don’t care how much you love something. If it doesn’t look right or sound like something they want to hear, you may as well be the village idiot. There tends to be an acute lack of respect for passion in our society these days.” Annja paused. “Well, unless it makes money.”

  Tuk nodded. “I think people fear their passion.”

  Annja looked at him. “Do you?”

  He nodded. “Certainly. Passion for something means you don’t care what anyone else thinks about it. You know in your heart that it’s right and that’s all that really matters. You’re unstoppable in your love for something. Not a lot of people are confident or comfortable enough in their own skin to even acknowledge that emotion.”

  Annja smiled. “You’re an interesting guy, Tuk.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I never thanked you properly for saving our lives earlier,” she said.

  Tuk held up his hand. “Don’t mention it. If I hadn’t found this place, we’d all be in the same situation.”

  Annja turned back to the cave wall and kept pressing at the rock. Tuk watched her for another moment before doing the same. As the edges ran under his skin, he wondered what they could possibly be looking for. A hidden doorway? A trap floor compartment? There had to be something. As Annja said, Mike couldn’t just simply disappear.

  Tuk thought about the phone in his pocket and had the sudden desire to call the man who had hired him. He could let him know about their situation. Perhaps he had some ideas of his own about where Mike might have gone.

  He frowned. That was foolish. How in the world would the man know anything about Mike’s condition aside from what Tuk had told him earlier.

  No, the time to talk to him would be in the morning. Hopefully when he was confirming that he
was arranging the rescue for them.

  “Annja?” Tuk asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Am I right in saying that a missile brought the plane down this afternoon?”

  Annja nodded. “Sure seems to have been a missile. Yeah.”

  “But who would have fired it? I mean, why bother with us at all? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Annja shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Tuk. All I know is the first missile barely missed us and then the second one took off our wing and we crashed as a result.”

  “But there’s something else I don’t understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whoever shot us down doesn’t seem to be around here.”

  Annja stopped and looked at Tuk. “What are you getting at?”

  “Don’t you see? We were shot down. Presumably because someone wanted us dead. Well, you and Mike, anyway. But then as soon as we went down, there was no follow-up.”

  Annja frowned. “You mean no one came to see that the job was done?”

  Tuk nodded. “It’s not like they didn’t have time to do it. The weather hadn’t gotten that bad yet. And unless we went down far away from where the missile was fired, they should have been able to get to us easily.”

  “And they would have killed us,” Annja said.

  “Exactly my point. Why didn’t they follow up?”

  “Maybe they didn’t know where we went down.” Annja shook her head. “I don’t know that I have an answer for that one, Tuk. Except to say that we’re obviously several times lucky today.”

  “Just strange, is all,” Tuk said. “Sort of a half-finished job. It doesn’t make much sense to me, but then again, it’s probably beyond me.”

  Annja laughed. “If it makes you feel any better, it’s seeming a bit beyond me, as well.”

  “You find anything?” Tuk asked.

  “Not a damned thing.”

  Tuk looked back at the cave wall. He’d worked his way around to the left and was now about ten feet from where he’d started. He ran his hands from the floor to the ceiling and back again. But he found nothing of interest. And there seemed absolutely no way for someone to have passed through the wall to whatever lay beyond.

  Annja had also moved farther from her starting point, and she was roughly in line with Tuk as they worked their way toward the front of the cave.

  Tuk could still hear the storm raging outside. He wondered how much snow would fall and a brief worry gripped him. “I hope all that snow doesn’t bury us in here.”

  Annja stopped working again. “You mean by covering the entrance?”

  “Yes. If enough of it falls, we could get sealed up in here. It would become our tomb.”

  “Now you’re making me worried. Please stop.”

  “Sorry.”

  Tuk went back to examining the wall. Where could Mike have wandered off to?

  He had a sudden alarming thought. What if Mike hadn’t wandered off at all?

  What if someone or something had grabbed Mike?

  Tuk glanced at Annja. She didn’t seem to be in the mood for theorizing anymore. She intently scanned the rock in front of her and kept pressing her hands into every crevice, searching for something that would give them some sort of clue as to Mike’s whereabouts.

  Tuk wasn’t sure what to think anymore.

  He felt a breeze on the back of his neck and shivered. Even though they were working fifty feet from the front of the cave, the wind could reach inside and touch them. It was a reminder of how utterly harsh and merciless nature could be. Tuk shook his head and gave a silent prayer of thanks for finding the cave.

  He wondered what would make the Americans come over to Nepal, so intent on finding a place such as Shangri-La. Why would they leave the comfort of their lives in order to look for something that might not even exist in the first place? What was the point?

  Were they that unhappy in their lives that they craved something exciting and mysterious like this? Tuk sniffed and remembered that his own life until recently had been pretty unhappy, as well.

  Better not to make judgments on people who sought excitement, he thought. Just let them do what they feel they need to do in order to be happy.

  He thought about his own life and the retirement he was looking forward to getting under way. With the promise of the man’s money, Tuk would be able to relax and enjoy his own life.

  He wondered what that would be like. He’d spent so many years scraping a living together, hoarding his money and never living beyond his means.

  But what was happiness to him, anyway? Tuk frowned. He wasn’t even sure he would recognize it if it happened upon him.

  And that felt pretty sad, he decided.

  If we get out of here, he thought, I’m going to change that. I’m going to make sure I appreciate everything and go after what I want.

  “How are you doing?” Annja asked.

  Tuk realized several minutes had passed without either of them saying anything to the other. He cleared his throat. “Pretty much the same as you, Annja. Nothing.”

  Annja stopped working and turned around. “What are we missing here?”

  “What do you mean? We’re trying to do everything we can to find Mike and make sure he’s safe.”

  Annja pointed at the wall. “We’re missing it, I just know it. I can feel it. There’s something here and we aren’t seeing it. We could keep doing this all night and all day forever and we’d never find it, simply because we’re not looking at it the right way.”

  Tuk frowned. “I’m not sure how else I can look at this. I’m trying to see it from every possible angle. It’s not helping.”

  Annja nodded. “And yet…” Her voice trailed off and she suddenly frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you smell that?”

  Tuk started to speak but stopped. He caught a whiff of something on the breeze that seemed to circulate through the small cave.

  Perfume? How could that be?

  He shook his head and looked at Annja. The flashlight battery seemed to be waning and he could scarcely make her out, standing across the cave from him. “What is that?”

  “It smells like perfume,” Annja said. “Floral.” She paused. “Gardenias?”

  Tuk shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know my flowers so I can’t say.”

  He heard something.

  Annja heard it, too.

  And then Tuk saw something he didn’t expect to see. There appeared in Annja’s hands a sword that glowed and cast off a dull glow in the cave’s interior. Tuk gasped. It was the same sword that cleanly sliced through the fuselage of the airplane earlier when Tuk tumbled out of the back compartment.

  “What in the world is that?” he asked.

  Annja held up her hand. “Stand behind me, Tuk.”

  “What for?”

  “Because that smell doesn’t belong here. We would have noticed it earlier. That means there’s something else in the cave with us.”

  Tuk moved behind Annja and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Can you see it?”

  Annja shook her head. “No. Not yet. But I can feel something. Something is in the cave with us.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could it be Mike?”

  Annja shook her head. “I don’t think so. Mike doesn’t wear perfume.”

  Tuk felt her suddenly move forward to the front of the cave. She was headed toward the opening.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he whispered.

  “I’m not sure of anything anymore, Tuk.”

  Tuk felt himself drawn along. At least Annja had the sword. But how well would it work in the close confines of the cave? Tuk had to ask himself another question. If they really were in danger and couldn’t fight, where could they run?

  They were trapped.

  14

  With the sword held aloft in front of her, Annja could see several shapes now in the cave itself. That was the good
news. The bad news was they were large. Very large. In fact, to Annja’s perception, they could have barely fit inside the cave at all, let alone come through the narrow opening. This puzzled her. If they hadn’t entered that way, then where had they come from?

  She and Tuk had been working at the only part of the cave that might conceal something. But now it looked like they had missed entirely another possibility up near the cave’s entrance.

  Something had been, in effect, hidden in plain sight.

  Annja flexed her muscles as the energy from the sword ran throughout her body. It felt good to have it back in her hands again. It warmed her and energized her at the same time.

  She could sense Tuk behind her and he didn’t seem overly panicked. She marveled at the little man and what he’d been able to accomplish. If he hadn’t been afraid then, she doubted he would fear much now.

  But the question still remained. Who or what were these things in the cave with them? And where did that floral smell come from?

  She drew closer to the shapes in front of her. They appeared to be large shambling figures that vaguely resembled human beings. But large humans. A thought poked into her mind and Annja frowned.

  They were, after all, in the land of the yeti. Could there be a pair of abominable snowmen in the cave with them right now?

  If that was the case, would they be friendly or hostile? Annja didn’t relish the idea of having to cut them down in order to protect herself and Tuk. But if she had to, she would. She still had to find Mike. His injury needed some serious help if he wasn’t already dead by now.

  She moved ever closer to the cave’s entrance. The smell of the perfume, wherever it was coming from, was intoxicating. It seemed heavier toward the front of the cave.

  Annja pressed on. It was now possible to see a lot better as she approached the cave entrance where the snow made everything brighter.

  There was no mistaking the appearance of the two creatures. They were large and covered from head to foot in a coarse brown fur that hung long and matted about their bodies.

  Yeti.