by Andrew Gille
“It’s been about an hour, I think they’ve had plenty of time to come down and look for us. I don’t think they are coming.”
I felt confident enough that we were safe for the time being that I took out my Maglite.
“I’m going to have a look around this cave,” I told Colin, he did not object.
I turned the head of the Maglite, and its blinding xenon bulb pierced through the darkness. I nearly gasped when I saw what the cave contained.
An already extinguished fire, recently eaten bones along with massive hand and footprints embedded into the dirt floor of the cave. Whatever kind of beast had killed Anatoly, had used this cave for shelter at one time. I looked at the bones, they were unidentifiable, but I got the distinct feeling that they were the missing appendages of Colin's friend. I searched desperately for bits of clothing to confirm my suspicion, but I found nothing, probably burned away in the fire they’d used to cook him. A smattering of other small bones were in this cave as well, birds, a deer for sure, but the bones most recently eaten had a distinctly human look.
“Colin look,” I gasped, he turned to see what my Maglite illuminated.
A primitive mural was scratched into the wall. A massive bird fell from the sky killing men and animals as it hit the earth. There was a picture of mountains and a lake, almost like a map, then the river and I assumed what was our cave entrance. Below that, there was a row of smaller people next to the larger people and it appeared that the larger people were throwing spears at tigers in front of the smaller people. What any of this meant was unclear.
I shined the flashlight on the wall behind me and saw something peculiar. It showed a tiger eating a man, another group of men holding spears stab at the tiger and throw their spears at it. Strange writings labeled the drawings. I wasn’t sure what to make of this at the time, but I have thought a lot about this drawing since then. I wish I could go back and review it again, I wish I had kept my phone to take a picture. I think I know now what it meant, but I was too stupid to understand it then. It is the one thing I regret most about the trip.
We decided to sleep in shifts that night. I slept poorly, not entirely trusting that Colin would keep to his word to not fall asleep. I hadn’t gotten a good look at our pursuers, it was dark, and I was running away, not looking back.
Colin spent the night staring out of the mouth of the cave watching the snow fall into the river bed. I slept maybe 40 or 50 minutes of the four hours I was not on watch. When he woke me to take over, I noticed that he too, although silent, was not sleeping. This was quite disconcerting because it nullified any idea I had that he might be in on this whole thing. The idea that it was some kind of joke show and that the men playing the monsters would jump out of their suits and the cameramen would come out, and it would be revealed that we were 30 miles north of Boise the whole time. This was becoming less and less a plausible idea, and Colin's fear confirmed it. All of the conspiracies in which I’d taken solace were quickly growing unlikely and the most radical idea of all. That we were actually being pursued by yetis, seemed to have the most empirical evidence in favor of it.
The brief glimpses I’d gotten of them made me think about how to kill them. They had primitive weapons, spears, and relied on their strength and superhuman speed to chase us down and shred our weak bodies. They appeared to have both a spoken and written language and could communicate in pictograms and symbols. However, we were likely smarter than them. I’d seen a face on one of them, and the fur on it was smooth and thin, like the fur on a horse or a short haired dog, you could see the creases of their skin through the hair on their face and it lacked the twisted fibers of the fur on the rest of their bodies. We would have to shoot for their face, but with Colin's disabled scope this could prove to be very difficult. I was the only one who had a gun capable of making the kind of shot we needed to make without getting close to them. I didn’t trust my shooting that much and Colin had dragged me out into the woods before I’d had a chance to sight the Savage 99 in correctly. I was not confident of my ability to shoot that accurately with it. If only we had full metal jacket rounds. I too had brought only hunting ammunition.
I thought I heard a helicopter in the distance, but I never saw lights or any sign of it in the sky. Soon, the snow began to subside as a gray light began to appear in the east, and even the inside of the cave began to be illuminated. A light dusting sat over the banks of the river, just enough to cover our footprints from the night before.
I woke up Colin, and we packed up our belongings, we would head back down the river, and it should take us in the direction of the cabin.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Hermit
WE EMERGED FROM the cave and stepped out into the bright sunlight. The sun was already raising the temperature, but the winds had also increased causing an almost more significant decrease in the apparent cold we felt. Additionally, it was blowing straight into our faces and making walking more difficult.
We walked along the river bank for perhaps three miles, we made the decision not to climb back up the embankment we’d fallen down to avoid the chance of running into the snowmen. We assumed that the river would take us back to a general area where we could rejoin the trail, although now, the embankment seemed to just be growing higher and steeper.
As we came around a bend in the river, we noticed what I called a cabin. Colin informed me that the proper name for the dwelling was an “Izba.” We approached cautiously as we just weren’t sure who we were going to encounter anymore.
We had nothing to fear from the owner of the home, as we approached, a distinct smell grew more powerful. As we approached a flock of the peculiar looking crows that lived here in Siberia, ascended into the sky angrily leaving their meal. Their absence revealed the body of the owner, lying face down in the snow about 40 yards from his house. He was dead and putrefying.
I used my boot to turn him over, and he flipped with a hard but squishy flop. What was left of the arm that was bent beneath him, was frozen in place. He teetered disconcertingly as his feet had frozen into the snow and he did not wholly flip but instead rocked back and forth with his stiff, twisted legs acting as a spring. His face, which was mostly missing was rigor mortised into a shocking expression of fear. It was clear from the gnawed appendages and the violence of his wounds that he had been eaten while alive.
I looked around the man’s camp. Of course, I saw the massive footprints of our adversaries, the telltale sign that they’d been here and eaten this poor hermit. They’d probably surprised him a few days ago while hunting from the cave. His murder had been sudden and terrifying for him. I saw a pair of massive puncture wounds in his skull as well, no doubt from the large spears they carried. They’d obviously knocked him down and violently jabbed at him, creating the two gaping head wounds, why else would you stab a man in the skull twice when your first spear strike would have killed him?
“We should bury him,” I said to Colin.
“Sure, why don’t we look in his cabin first,” Colin suggested.
“I’d like to get him underground, so he isn’t being pecked by these birds. It's undignified,” I said.
“Birds gotta eat same as worms,” Colin said, without a hint of irony. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was quoting the movie “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” not just being an insensitive prick. But he was also being an insensitive prick.
Colin went up to the door of the cabin and kicked it, it didn’t budge, he kicked it again.
“Hey Colin,” I shouted.
He turned to me as he was about to kick the door again. I walked up to the door and turned the knob, it opened, and I swung it into the pitch black interior of the cabin.
Retrieving my MagLite, I shined it into the cabin. A table sat in the back left of the building, a small stove and icebox were to the immediate left. A wood stove that still felt slightly warm to the touch sat in the middle of the room. A ladder near it led to an upper floor of the cabin. A gas lamp was nailed to a post
in the middle of the room which acted as a support beam. A book of matches sat on the table. I used them to light the gas lamp, and a warm glow brightened the room making my MagLite unnecessary.
I turned around and saw that the back right of the cabin held a workbench. On the workbench was what I recognized as reloading equipment. Another gas lamp sat above the workbench. I lit it as well and saw that the bench contained a bullet press, measuring apparatus for powder and a box containing a die set to reload 7.62x39mm ammunition. A box containing 40 or 50 7.62 rounds that had recently been pressed sat on the bench with gleaming copper tips. I frantically searched the table for the actual bullets, but I couldn’t find any. Then I looked in the trash and saw a box that resembled the type of box in which reloading bullets came, I saw that it said 7.62x39 on it with a bunch of the Cyrillic Russian characters that might as well have been Chinese to me. I asked Colin to translate it.
“7.62x39 millimeter ammunition. 123 grain, full metal jacket,” he read.
“Really?” I said excitedly.
“Yeah, that’s what it says,” he said.
“Is there an AK-47 or an SKS around here?”
We looked around the small cabin, I hurriedly turned on my MagLite and flashed it around.
“They’d be in there,” Colin said pointing into the darkness, his younger eyes must have been able to see it better than mine. I flashed my MagLite in the direction he pointed. There sat a small gun safe.
Colin ran up to it, “Don’t touch it!” I shouted.
Colin stopped in his tracks, and I approached the safe. I didn’t want him to bump the dial, I thought that if we were lucky, the owner had dialed in the combination and left it so that it opened without unlocking it. That, however, was not our luck. I tried to turn the handle of the safe, and it would not budge. The safe was thick and secure, we would have needed a cutting torch to get into it, not a luxury we had right now.
Colin aimed his SCAR at the lock, I quickly grabbed the barrel and pushed his gun down before he had a chance to take it off of safe. He looked at me indignantly.
“Do you see any powder over there?” I asked him.
He glanced to his right and shook his head.
“I’m thinking he might store them in there with his guns. Not a good idea to put powder in a safe but, I’ll bet that’s where it is. If your bullet does go through that safe, you’ll create a massive bomb depending on how much is in there,” I said.
“Shit, what are we going to do?” Colin said defeatedly, “Like the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’”
“Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink?” I said, quoting the poem.
“Yeah, we have enough full metal jacket rounds right there to kill all those things, but nothing to fire them with.”
I didn’t reply for a moment as I thought, “Actually…” I said.
I looked on the bench at the tools available to us, then I saw exactly what I was looking for. I reached for the pliers and used it to pull one of the bullets from the cartridge.
“There’s our answer,” I said, holding the copper bullet in my fingers.
“What?” Colin asked, “We don’t have a 7.62 rifle.”
“No, but I have a .300 Savage.”
“You’re going to try to fire a 7.62 round with a .300 Savage.”
“Yes, I can pull the bullets from my .300s and reload them with these full metal jacket rounds,” I explained.
“But 7.62 is actually a .310 round, won’t it blow up the gun?” Colin asked me.
“Nope, copper is soft, it’ll be no problem. I know a guy who got a bunch of old 7.62 junk rounds, pulled them and shoot them through a .300 Blackout. Especially since we’re hopefully only going to have to shoot three or four rounds, the mag capacity is only five, and we’ll never get a chance to reload.”
“Okay, but you can shoot that thing, I need my hands for a lot longer than you will,” Colin said, making an obvious remark about the difference between the number of years we had left.
“Not a problem, I’m a better shot anyway,” I said.
I pulled the bullet from the .300 Savage cartridge taking care not to spill any of the powder. Some spilled anyway, and I tried to pack it back into the round. I had to wedge the cartridge into the 7.62x39 die but I got it in. I set the bullet on the cartridge and brought the lever of the press down to set it.
Pulling the bullet off the press, I could feel that there was wobble and it was only loosely fitted into the cartridge. I’d need to crimp the case down. Luckily the hermit had just the tool I needed as this was often necessary when reloading 7.62 ammo. 7.62x39mm was not a caliber that was commonly reloaded, it was much more cost effective to just buy the ammo in bulk from Russia. The AK or SKS were not guns that you shot for accuracy which was one of the benefits of reloading. However, I had been into reloading for a while, and a guy at my gun club swore by the Kalashnikov platform and begged me to reload some ammunition for his guns. He bought me the dies, and we made 7.62 ammunition at varying powers. I’m not sure it ever made him more accurate with the flawed rifle, however, it was an interesting experience, and it had prepared me for this moment.
I brought the press down a second time with the crimper in place. Now the bullet sat tight in the cartridge. I made ten more rounds this way. Then I loaded five of them into the Savage 99’s drum magazine.
“We just went back to the top of the food chain,” Colin remarked.
“It’s time to hunt again,” I said nodding as I cocked the lever of the Savage 99 putting a bullet into its chamber.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hunting Again
WE ATE SOME canned foods after checking to find that expiration dates were well into the future. The hermit had fresh supplies and even water, so we loaded up, taking care not to overeat so that we hindered our ability to move. We could stay here for the night and eat again after we killed these human-eating predators.
I dug a shallow grave for the hermit who had provided us with the tools we needed to kill our adversaries. I was hampered by hard permafrost only a few feet down, and at best, his grave was only two and a half feet deep. I hoped that the animals wouldn’t dig him up and I said a prayer and crossed myself after marking his grave by stacking large rocks that lay near the cabin.
We followed the large human-like footprints from the place where his body had laid out into the forest. The snowmen had run from the cabin, and they’d done so in a single file.
I then saw something peculiar, a massive paw print, it was not like a human or primate foot at all. It had a pad and large claws. I thought at first it was a giant wolf track, but it was far too big, and on closer inspection, it was a feline track, not a canine track. It had to be one of the tigers we’d seen the first day, the one’s Anatoly said did not belong here. I thought perhaps that the cat had shown up after the men had killed the hermit and gave chase to them to get them away from an easy meal. I hadn’t seen feline tracks in the camp, however. There were so many of the hominid tracks that maybe they’d covered any sign that the tiger had been there? For a second I thought about how that would indicate that they’d arrived, however. I didn’t have time to ruminate on the significance of this at the time, and I just followed the hominid tracks, sporadically finding a feline track amidst them.
We’d walked well over three miles from the cabin before we said anything to each other. I noticed that the sun was now going down and I realized that in our eagerness to kill our enemies, we’d put ourselves far away from a viable and safe shelter and doomed ourselves to walk back in the dark.
“They’ve gone too far, we’ll never find them without abandoning the camp,” Colin said, “Let’s head back to the hermit’s cabin and in the morning continue on back to the cabins we started at, we’re probably only one or two days away now,” he reasoned.
I wanted to kill these things now that we had the means, I wanted to avenge Anatoly and The Hermit, but Colin was right, it was time to head back, build a fire and fill our bellies with
the canned goods the hermit kept in his cupboards. Colin read the cans to me as they had no pictures and there was a can of what Colin had called “Tushonka,” or stewed beef, it sounded delicious and I salivated at the thought of cooking it on the wood burning stove and eating it with a glass of the Stolichnaya vodka I’d seen in the icebox. The cabin’s walls and door were thick and sturdy and the door bolted with a large 4x4, we’d be safe and secure tonight, and we could revive ourselves for the next day’s journey.