by Alan Nayes
John grinned. “That crevasse was twenty yards east of where our camp is. You’ll sleep well tonight.”
“Promise?”
He hugged her. “I’ll only bother you a little.”
“How incredible!”
“I told you I’d show it to you. I just didn’t think we’d be camped above the Arctic Circle when I did.”
Shelby gazed up at the brilliant arcs and shifting curtains of light spreading across the entire northern sky from east to west, alternately folding and spreading in diffuse rays of changing patterns—reds, greens, blues, yellows, pinks—all blending together in vast sheets of multicolored cosmic displays.
Shelby ignored the subzero evening temperature, snapping photos and not feeling the least bit uncomfortable. “As in most things in life, pictures in a book or a video on television never do the real thing justice,” she commented. She could learn to like the far north, she decided.
John and Shelby stood side by side, each in their arctic polar parkas, and watched the aurora borealis put on a light show that had been playing nonstop high in earth’s atmosphere for millions of years.
Shelby scanned the far ridges and over the vast ice field, mesmerized by the silent beauty. Not even a lone wolf howling interrupted the mood. It was as if the entire world had stopped turning and life had taken a much needed break. Only for a moment, when she looked south, did she sense a sliver of unease that she and John weren’t alone, and in fact, they were being watched. This sensation was quickly followed by a second sliver of disquiet. What if she’d been way off base in all her assumptions about Goliath—that he considered this valley home, that he was intelligent enough to find his way back, and the biggest assumption of all—Goliath would allow himself to be seen even if he did survive the brutally cold trek north from Eagle Village. These doubts passed quickly, though, when John pulled her close.
They kissed passionately, a prelude to returning to the warmth of the tent.
“Shelby!”
Shelby jerked awake. John’s sleeping bag lay empty. Hell, she never even heard him get up. “I’m coming!” she called out, burying herself in thermals, Gore-Tex, and her parka. She laced up her boots and stepped outside. Not much new snow so she abandoned the snow shoes. “Shit,” she mumbled, tugging the ski mask down over her face. It had to be near minus twenty, and this morning the cold breeze felt like a sharp knife cutting through her thermals. Eight a.m. and the polar twilight was no less or more than when they’d turned in for the night. Civil twilight was still a few hours away.
John was standing a short distance from the tent by a rounded serac. He leaned over and kissed her good morning.
Self-conscious, she said, “I should brush my teeth first.”
He pointed to the packed snow. “This should wake you up.”
She looked down and her heart flipped against her ribs. She knelt down, tracing her gloved finger along the gargantuan print’s frozen ridges, all the previous night’s doubts evaporated. “He’s here, John.” She stood, staring out over the expanse of ice. “Goliath was outside our tent last night!”
CHAPTER 41
They ate a hurried breakfast of freeze-dried scrambled eggs, hash browns, and steaming hot coffee.
“I think we should wait here,” John was saying, stowing the gear after packing away some leftover food scraps. These waste bags would fly out with them when they departed. “He’ll be back.”
They’d eaten under the flap awning, suddenly not wanting to be where they couldn’t see their entire surroundings. Shelby didn’t even want to think about trying to sleep in the tent again tonight. Her anticipation meter hadn’t hit this level since initially witnessing Goliath emerge from the Copper River tunnel in Chitina. “I want to try to follow the tracks.”
John disagreed. “We can but not far. If you hadn’t noticed, there are a few snow flurries this morning. And I really believe it’s safer for him to come to us, if he chooses. Like you said, that’s his world out there.”
She’d seen the blowing snowflakes. “What’s the forecast?” all the while thinking, he showed! “I wish we had a bin of avocados we could put out.”
John snapped his light survival pack around his waist under his parka. “Guacamole and salsa sounds pretty damn good to me.” He looked her way. “Set?”
Shelby donned her ski mask. “Let’s go.” She watched John checking the clip to the semi-automatic rifle. She almost said “I hope that doesn’t become necessary,” but minced her words. There was no getting away from the reality Goliath had viciously slain nine men on Bear Island.
John slung the rifle and followed her out on the ice, ensuring he’d not forgotten the radio and GPS. John guessed her thoughts because he said, “My gun control policy is carry one and never have to use it, rather than wish like hell you had one while standing there empty-handed.”
Shelby trusted his judgment. He could have shot Goliath outside the Chitina Copper River tunnel, but put the Siberian husky out of his misery instead. Shelby noticed he’d strapped both pair of snowshoes beside the rifle. She tested the snow surface with her boot. It felt much firmer than when they’d hiked in. “Snowshoes?” she wondered.
John stared toward the south ridge where the tracks’ trail pointed. “No, we won’t be going far. I have two pair of crampons and shoes in case conditions change.”
Shelby kept right behind John as he trekked across the hard white surface. Shelby easily followed the huge prints—one trail leading in, the other away—understanding why his foot pads were so much thicker than modern-day apes’. For protection from the cold. He lived during the Ice Age while gorillas called the steaming jungles of the Congo home. She gazed out into the blue-tinted polar twilight and for the first time began studying every raised ice hummock, serac, and drift much closer. Any of those could be Goliath!
John must have been thinking along similar lines when he commented, “Why does he have to be the color of snow?” After a few more steps he stopped, looking more closely at the rounded knolls of ice and snow. “He could be hunkered down anywhere out there and we might walk right past him.” He met Shelby’s gaze. “I’m still trying to figure out what we’re going to do when we find him.”
Not if, but when, she noticed him saying now. She was on the verge of replying when the sensation of being watched hit her so strongly she actually moved. “He’s close, John! I can feel it!”
John spun and gasped. Shelby watched him slowly unsling the 30.06. “Turn around, Shelby. Slowly.” He spoke in a controlled tone, yet she detected coiled springs of tension behind each word.
Shelby turned.
Not fifty yards away, between them and their tent, squatted the giant white primate.
He rose up bipedally and beat his chest, the shackle chain clinking loudly with each thrust of his right arm.
RRAAAUUUU!
Reflexively, Shelby leaped back. God, he’s one scary-looking primate, straight out of Hollywood’s horror monster central casting. The ghastly image of the giant beating his chest in the blue twilight was an image Shelby realized she would never forget.
John said, “He’s not stupid. He’s been watching us the entire time and circled around the south ridge. Well, girl, I have to admit I never saw this coming. You found him. All those man hours of searching and tracking, and it was you who found Alaska’s only living Abominable Snowman.”
“Goliath found us.” As many miles as he’d crossed without being sighted, Shelby realized they would never have seen him if the giant had chosen not to be seen.
She heard John raise the rifle. “Are you going to shoot him?”
John shook his head. “He’s not threatening us. Just checking him out with the scope.”
Shelby removed the ski mask. She was so pumped, she never felt the icy breeze or misting snow blowing on her skin.
She heard John ask, “What are you doing? Trying to get frostbite?”
Shelby shook out her hair. “I want hi
m to recognize me.”
“I’m sure he can pick up your scent.”
“What are you trying to say?”
This relieved the tension. John grinned. “You know what I mean.”
She watched Goliath squat back down. “Goliath!” she called out.
The albino giant only watched, remaining motionless on the glacier ice.
“He’s wounded. Badly,” John commented. He passed the rifle. “Check out his left shoulder just below the clavicle. Looks like he took a bullet or two.”
John helped Shelby position the 30.06. John was right. Shelby could see old dark blood caking the hair, and in spots appearing brighter, meaning he was still bleeding some. She observed, “He’s got a roaring infection. And that shackle restraint has wreaked havoc on his right wrist.”
Shelby handed the rifle back. “He’s dying,” was all she could say. Anyone could see that. Traveling over such distances, foraging for food, fighting infection, all had taken a heavy toll. The giant, though still imposing, appeared to have dropped ten percent of his body weight at least, maybe more. Now when she looked, she could see his massive musculature had shrunk and she thought from where they stood, she could even pick out rib outlines. “I need to get to the tent,” she said.
“Why? Let’s give him some time. See what he does.”
Shelby took a step nearer. “I have something for Goliath.”
“Shelby, he’s closer to the tent than he is to us. There’s nothing more dangerous or unpredictable to a hunter than a wounded grizzly, and I’m sure that goes for giant prehistoric primates as well.”
Shelby circled out. “I’m going to come up behind him. Cover me.”
John cursed under his breath. “Hell, I’m going with you.”
Shelby waved him off. “Goliath knows me. He’ll let me in the tent. Trust me on this.” She didn’t hear John’s response and figured he had the giant in his sights if things turned south. She slogged through the snow and ice, never taking her eyes from the huge primate, and his never leaving hers. She heard him growl several times as she cut back in for the tent, and he swiveled on his haunches, but each time she called out his name, “Goliath,” he appeared to calm. The nearer she got, the more she could see just how ravaged and festering the old untreated bullet wound was. A part of her wanted to shout Ahmen and his men got what was coming to them, but she silenced herself. What was done was done.
She made the tent without incident and ducked inside, leaving the giant watching her from twenty yards away. She moved quickly for the padded pack. She unzipped it, checking inside. The juvenile skull and a piece of rib from Goliath’s mate’s skeleton sat undamaged. Outside she heard John shout her name twice. “Shelby! Shelby!”
She didn’t answer. She’d be out in a sec. She lifted the pack and stepped outside.
Goliath squatted directly in front of her not two feet away!
I’m dead! was her first thought. John was directly behind the primate so he couldn’t shoot without risking hitting her if the slug passed completely through. Shelby stared at the huge squatting giant, his nostrils working the breeze. She forced herself to smile. “Goliath,” she said gently.
“Shelby!” John called out. She could see him working his way diagonal to their position, working for a clean shot.
Shelby continued watching the primate’s expression. He canted his head and seemed to study her. She thought he almost looked confused or puzzled. Like he was expecting to find someone else here? Slowly, making no fast moves, she held out the pack. “I brought these for you.” He hesitated as if unsure, but when he did move, she allowed his massive hand to reach out, taking the remains. “They belong to you, Goliath. I’m sorry for what whoever they were did to you and your family.”
As soon as he sniffed inside the pack and made that weak mewling noise he’d made back in Los Angeles when he’d first recognized his offspring’s skull, she knew she would be fine. He looked inside again, longer this time, before gazing up at her. She hoped John wouldn’t shoot but didn’t want to risk a loud yell. She thought she saw moisture in the giant’s eyes and when she reached out and placed her hand on his left temporal area, Goliath never flinched. Over the intervening months, his white hair had completely regrown over the prior surgical site.
For a long while neither she nor the primate moved, until Goliath clutched the pack against his still massive chest and backed away. He knuckle-walked out thirty yards and squatted next to a shallow ice hummock.
Shelby watched the giant gazing at the pack, occasionally sniffing inside. Then he suddenly dropped down in the snow as if all his energy had suddenly leaked out of the unhealed wound in his shoulder.
John snuck in beside her. “After all the trouble to recover them, I can’t believe you brought those old bones back to Little Okpilak.”
Shelby watched the giant primate. “They’re Goliath’s. They were his family.”
Four hours later, Goliath was dead.
Four hours after that his massive form froze solid.
After twenty-eight thousand years, Goliath was home.
EPILOGUE
Shelby handed John her luggage so he could stow it in the back seat of the Jeep Commander. Though the weather had begun to turn for the worse as they departed Arctic Village, it had held long enough to make it back to Fairbanks on schedule. Today, though, she wondered if her return flight to Los Angeles would be delayed. The snow was dropping heavily in big wet flakes, piling up on the lawn and street, and freezing quickly. John had already placed chains on the tires. If the blizzard had arrived a week earlier, they never would have made it back to Little Okpilak. Oddly, the freezing cold did not bother her. Maybe she was getting used to subzero weather conditions. Even the downheartedness she’d felt back on Okpilak Glacier was finally lessening.
She caught John watching her. “Ready?” he said. “We better get going. Want to leave plenty of time for you to catch your flight.”
John settled behind the wheel.
Shelby climbed in. “Thank you. I know it was crazy, and risky, flying up there like that, but I’m glad we did this. I would have hated never knowing.” She asked, “What will happen to Goliath, I mean in the spring?”
John slid the key in the ignition. “Depends on how much snow the glacier gets this winter. More than likely, though, his remains will be visible by May or June. Last June, I would have seen something that obvious. Unless the wolves get to him.”
Eeeck. “I guess we’ll never know what happened to him back during the Ice Age, who killed his mate and offspring, or why.”
“Or why they left him there in the UCO,” John commented philosophically. “It’s your story. Your guess is as good as or better than anyone’s. I like the alien scenario though.”
“I think I do, too.” Shelby didn’t even bring up Max Bonds’ “dimension jumping” theory. She added, “But that means extraterrestrials are really not so different than us. Alien beings from all over do similar things.”
“How so?”
“They come in, conquer, kill, imprison, then leave.”
“Yeah, putting it that way, I see your point. Goliath was imprisoned twenty-eight thousand years ago, and here we did it to him again.”
Shelby thought glumly. “Then killed him. Things never change, it seems.” She reached for John’s arm. “I’m not really sure what would have been worse—knowing Goliath is dead or being left to wonder if he were still alive and searching for his kind, knowing that he would never find them. I would have hated contemplating his loneliness and isolation.” She shrugged. “It was a no win either way. One thing I am sure of—I don’t want him eaten by wolves.”
“No one but us knows he’s there. It’s your call. We can arrange to collect the remains in the spring. Would make a nice display. You’d be in the news again.”
“Wonderful,” she retorted cynically. “I have five months to decide.”
He cast a quick glance her way. “I overheard
you speaking to Reddic.”
Shelby smiled weakly. “He knows I took the juvenile skull. He’s not real pleased. The young female was supposed to be in the Center’s main prehistoric display with Ms. Goliath.”
“Now it can’t?”
Shelby couldn’t hold back a tiny chuckle. “Can’t very well display a headless skeleton.”
John laughed out loud, too, and turned the ignition.
Shelby reached over and turned it off.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “We’re going to be late for your flight.”
“I was thinking,” she said, watching him. “Christmas is less than six days.”
John turned, facing her. “I was thinking, too.”
“You first.”
John shook his head. “No, you were thinking first.”
Shelby gazed back out the windshield, which was virtually a whiteout. “Well, I was thinking, I’ve never seen a white Christmas, except on a couple ski trips when I was younger…” Abruptly she looked back at John. “Your turn.”
John removed the key from the ignition. “I was thinking, ‘You know John, Shelby, having lived and grown up in Southern California, probably has never seen an Alaskan white Christmas.’”
“So…?”
“So… I’m thinking we probably should go back in the house…and think about it some more.”
Shelby smiled and leaned over the console and kissed him. “You made that so easy for me, babe. Thank you. How about we go inside and get real warm instead!”
THE END
Alan Nayes’ prehistoric giant cat thriller is now available. Read an excerpt from Smilodon.
Jason Bristol, ex-prize fighter and expert animal tracker, and part-time drunk, teams up with beautiful wildlife biologist Norah Phelps as they pursue a man-eating predator that threatens to derail her father’s prize real estate development project in north central Idaho.
Against the majestic pristine backdrop of Idaho’s Bitterroot Wilderness Area, the adventure unfolds. Jason, with Norah’s assistance, soon discovers the ghosts of his past are nothing compared to the battle he’s undertaken.