by Mike Miller
The only difference was the fire. As the animal apparently did not emit any heat on its breath, perhaps it found the flame to be something new and harsh in its otherwise frozen climate. Maybe it was the light of the fire, not the temperature, which checked the beast.
With confidence in this theory, he slowly ventured away from the safety of his base fire and into the dark terrain the monster had last inhabited. Leaving the area of his campfire, Baxter found that his small torch only afforded a few feet of visibility into the night. Carefully he crept forward, his pistol ready in the other hand for the first signs of attack. He waved the blazing stick out before him like a weapon, sweeping it from side to side to establish his own defensive barrier should the monster be watching from the shadows.
Along the ground were still the ample signs of the day’s earlier battle, blood and bullets spread across the icy stone. The markings increased in intensity until Baxter found himself again at the pile of human remains and equipment. Except now it was no longer there. While the stone floor was completely canvassed with frozen black blood where the mass was once gathered, the bodies and gear had completely vanished. A few scattered items remained - a spare cap, a pistol, a knapsack - but everything else had entirely disappeared. The strange discovery filled Baxter with uncomfortable disorientation as if he had just woken from a bad nightmare, the mind now struggling to discern reality from imagination.
With his head reeling from the newest impossibility, he discerned a set of tracks in the ice. Now there were a series of paw prints each as long as his forearm ambling away from the scene along the path which fed up to the peak of the mountain. Baxter could not see very far before he could not see the trail at all.
It had been hours since he had eaten or drank last, and his wounded body needed rest too. But he felt that this site of the massacre could not provide adequate shelter. If the creature had appeared here twice now, it seemed an inevitability it would return for a third.
But now his supplies were gone. The beast had stolen, consumed or vanquished the party’s supplies which he had ransacked for his first stay. He had gorged on the only rations he had gathered and burned the only tent he had salvaged in making his torch. He had weapons, but nothing more vital to his survival like food and shelter.
So while Baxter was largely inclined to abandon the climb to retire down the mountain, he knew that direction was two days to simply get back around the bridge, then likely another two days to get to town since he would now be travelling without a mount.
Baxter had to go up the mountain. His only hope lay in regrouping with the original men where hopefully Conrad could rescue him. Douglas had boasted that scaling this cliff could save several hours on the trip. So as Baxter could never execute the same spelunking to save that same time, Baxter concluded he was at least half a day behind and would need to race to retake them. With but the vaguest recollection of the map of how the branching paths above would lead to the treasure, Baxter knew the only route to salvation lay up the alpine trail which the creature had just taken too.
Baxter gathered the only pack of equipment remaining and began trudging up the dark mountain in the wake of both his betrayers and the monster.
Chapter XXXIII
The Continued Pursuit of Wealth
After Conrad’s mad outburst and sudden departure, Douglas was now even more concerned with his old mate’s health. Watching the man wither to a strange husk of the once noble warrior over the last day was alarming. He could not have imagined that the loss of the African would have affected him so much, but there had to be more to his diminished capabilities, the weakness of his body and spirit. With every passing hour, Conrad presented himself more or a liability than an asset.
“Conrad!” Douglas called again into the night, but still there was no reply. Perhaps Molor and the coolies had no interest in the pursuit, but Douglas felt obliged to be sure that no man claim the prize before him, not even Conrad.
Though Conrad had seemed to waste away not only in mind but in body, his innate athleticism and burliness provided a distinct advantage in racing along the wavy mountain path. While Douglas tried to scamper along the route at a similar rate to Conrad, his lankier limbs kept stumbling on the bumps on the road, forcing him to slow his trot. While the half-insane Conrad may not have cared for the dark and disorienting world of ice and mist, Douglas found the gloomy atmosphere intimidating. The limited visibility made Douglas cautious not to inadvertently rush off the edge of path to his death.
Realising he was alone, his mind grew silly with wretched thoughts. He felt betrayed and lonely. He wondered if he was wrong. There was no treasure, and he was going to die.
Perhaps he had already entered a purgatory where he was destined to amble down this forlorn road forever. The same scenery repeated itself with each footfall. There was no sign of the men he abandoned behind or the one he was chasing.
The information he had been provided about this trip was a lie. The map he had carved out of that bastard was wrong. His old friend Corporal Conrad Murray was a raving loon and not to be trusted. Now he had been sent to his doom, to befittingly die a horrific and penniless death.
He felt a slight and inadvertent whimper helplessly bubble from his mouth in the manner of a child scared of the dark.
But on the ground he saw something. With his vision shaking from the run, Douglas could tell little about the dark, mysterious clump before him. On one hand it was a sign that he was not stuck in a purgatory, that the landscape was permuting. But maybe it was an omen that things were growing worse.
Instead of stopping to inspect the oddity, he quickened his pace to separate himself from it. The terrain began to swell with similar marks of destruction, a scarred world filling with discarded clothes, broken tools. He saw the severed leg of a horse.
The white world became black and red with telltale signs of death. By climbing this mountain, Douglas felt he had somehow descended into his inevitable destination of hell. Running faster to get through this dark stretch only made the scenery dissolve into a more nightmarish portrait of torment and misery.
Douglas heard the strange new sound of feral laughter howling beneath the elements. The torturous sound grew to overtake and dominate all the other noises.
Soon the ground he was running on was covered in blood.
On the road in front of him, he encountered a strange mass of quivering brown fur, obstructing Douglas’ progress enough to force him to come to a sudden halt. The large mound was laughing, and Douglas realised it was but a man on his knees whose back was turned to him. It was Conrad, huddled under his cloak.
Douglas’ spiralling madness crashed back into reality, so glad that he had found his friend merrily laughing, though it was in the midst of the inhuman death surrounding them. If all these ruins were the remains of the old expedition, then they had found their spoils. A wide smile of rotten teeth surfaced on Douglas as he clapped his hand down on Conrad’s back.
Conrad looked up while continuing his bawdy guffawing, and Douglas could see the tears from his eyes freezing into thin streams on his whiskered face.
Douglas smiled triumphantly back, then looked past Douglas to the large mound before them. A set of broken wheels lay at the corners of a crashed carriage. Most of the wood and metal was missing, but enough remained for the mind to fill in the gaps as to what the complete assembly once was. Placed at the centre of the carriage’s bed was a shattered crate, loosely draped in broken links of iron chains. Its austere position in the caravan and the colourful markings painted on the remaining slats of wood all indicated that this was the beloved treasure which they had sought.
Douglas climbed over some of the carriage’s wreckage to get at the box. He ripped back a fistful of the remaining slivers of wood to unwrap the gift.
Conrad’s peculiar hysterics erupted at a louder volume again, briefly distracting Douglas from his query. But foraging through the remnants of the crate, Douglas found it empty but for white snow.
His brow furrowed in confusion while his eyes scanned about for indications to the contrary. He sank a hand down into the snow to his elbow, blindly fishing through the wreckage and ice. The other arm joined the foray, both scrambling now to find anything of value.
Douglas frantically returned his attention to Conrad for an explanation, though the corporal was still caught in spasms of chuckling that shivered through his body.
Conrad shook his head in a no with his smiling mouth open wide. “There’s nothing.”
“Nothing,” spat Douglas dismissively. “What do you mean, nothing? There must be something.” He maintained hope though his scavenging still proving fruitless.
Then his fingertips scraped against something. Douglas carefully pulled it from the snow and he displayed a small black brick in his hands like it was a delicate bit of jewellery.
“Well, mate,” said Douglas cockily. “It’s not all gone.”
Douglas’ happiness helped to sober Conrad from his deranged despair. But Douglas quickly stashed the object into his coat pocket, then dashed to Conrad to confide in him. “Don’t you see? We did it, man! Now all we have to do is kill all the others, and we’ll be rich till the end of our days.”
Chapter XXXIV
The Delirium of Dying
Baxter’s legs were afire with exhaustion after scaling so many unending hills, but he was too afraid to rest. If there were any safe haven from the dire and relentless snowfall, he would have gladly taken it. But the scenery refused to oblige him with any comfortable solace, as every step he had tread since departing the site of the bridge was totally exposed to the wrath of the weather. Since igniting his tent for a torch, he was bereft of any other protection from the cold but his blanket and the coats on his back. While he regretted the decision to burn his shelter, it was perhaps the manoeuvre that allowed him to even live to regret it.
From his expansive career of campaigning, he knew the familiar, telltale signs that his body was trying to quit altogether on him. While he had thankfully never explored those situations to their absolute finality, Baxter knew that if he stopped now, then he would die. Any slumbering in this sort of cold with but a measly blanket would leave him to be buried under the snow for good.
The climate seemed to agree with his faltering body, sending a hail of snow down from the heavens to further beat him into submission. Divine will thought he had suffered enough and was now finishing the charade. Or perhaps, as always, it was another test of his mettle.
He shook off the latest layer of snow that was covering him in white, then huddled the blanket about himself and continued to march forward.
His torch had long expired, and he had been too intent on maintaining momentum to pause and start another. Besides, he had little left to burn.
If there was any single merciful element to his surroundings, it was that the world of snow and ice provided ample water to drink. But on an empty stomach again, the ice-cold water could almost work to kill him from within by expediting the chilling of his intestines. Baxter gasped as he gargled down another handful of slush, spitting out the dirt and some small stones, but too tired to not swallow a few pebbles.
With his body set on a mechanical course to trudge along the path, Baxter’s mind yearned for a distraction. Concentrating on the imminent doom would have only resulted in suicidal madness, so instead he opted for a blissful sort of delusional insanity. Knowing full well that his vivid imagination was an early hallmark of insanity, he nonetheless pretended that he was not atop a frozen wasteland, but rather strolling through the lush, golden fields of his native Sierra Leone.
There the reeds were tall, the sun warm, the atmosphere replete with the wet humidity indigenous to his world. At the end of his path stood his beloved, the most beautiful woman in the world. Her dark curls wafted in the warm and gentle winds, her white eyes were bright with happiness at her husband’s return. The purple mountains in the distance, the red and pink hues of the sunset, the golden fields leading up to their modest cottage, even the doorway around her, all seemed to perfectly frame the masterpiece of this woman.
Growing weary, Baxter stumbled and fell but would not stop, not so close to his wife. He crept forward on hands and knees, fighting through the thick growth of the fields. His wife stretched her arms open to welcome him home. Her beautiful face was further encouragement to endure the agonising final feet of this journey.
Baxter reached for her, but she could not come closer. His arms collapsed, and he fell on his stomach. But still he slid forward with his belly scraping the ground.
While his wife remained steadfastly stuck in the doorway, Baxter could not move any further either. Summoning all of his energy and focus, he extended his arm towards her while wrestling with the weight of his own skull. Despite the pain in his head, he would keep his head facing her beauty. Their fingers were close, but could not touch. But still he could feel her warmth.
“My love,” Baxter groaned wearily. Then he collapsed lifelessly into the ground.
Chapter XXXV
The Next Betrayal
“We can’t betray the rest. Why, we don’t even have the numbers. Are you mad?” By the time Conrad even asked the question, he already knew the answer. The swirling pools of green in Douglas’ wild eyes looked as if the elements had breached his skull, where the ice had crept through the bone and infecting his brain.
Douglas chuckled in an off-key note like a fist hammering a piano’s keys. “Of course, I am.” He wiped at his mouth with the back of his left sleeve. “I’m mad as blue blazes that there ain’t going to be enough treasure to go around for the lot of us.”
“Enough? There isn’t any.” Conrad motioned his hand at the blank ground, covered only with patches of snow and gravel. “Was there ever even a treasure in the first place?” The conversation was growing insane, arguing over whether to steal imaginary booty from their friends.
Douglas tracked onto a source, a beacon in the space that drew him towards it. His steps wavered, his head jerked back and forth, but finally he found his query. With a smile wrinkling around his black and jagged teeth, he stooped over and lifted a small stone from the earth, tenderly raising the specimen like cradling a newborn babe. Douglas brought both of his gloves around to cup the rock, his thumbs rubbing against the bumpy surface. After warming the stone in his hands, Douglas firmly but gently pressed his thumb into the material, leaving a small depression in the surface like a tiny crater. From the deranged smile on Douglas’ face, Conrad knew immediately what it was.
As dismayed as Conrad became at the confirmation of the item’s identity, Douglas countered that sullen disappointment with his own madcap glee. “Here it is,” he said, breathlessly happy with the find. Noticing Conrad’s lack of enthusiasm, he said, “Do you not know what this is?” Douglas held the dull, black rock higher aloft and closer as if Conrad needed a better look.
“I do,” he sighed while scratching his temple for another elaboration on the statement. “I think I do. Hope it’s not,” he muttered to himself.
Douglas cackled with stupendous satisfaction at the find while dancing a drunken jig, the stone now tumbling in his hands as a conduit for all the man’s excess energy. “Oh, it is,” cooed Douglas. “This here is black gold, some of the finest opium ever made. Why, do you know how much easier this shall be to transport and sell than an actual box of gold?” Douglas enjoyed the thrill of the truth, and bore no guilt about his deception. “Sir, we are rolling in the stuff and are now ludicrously rich.” Conrad saw no more pieces on the ground.
Douglas stashed the dark brown debris into his coat pocket and retrieved another sample. This piece was a far smaller piece than the first, only a tenth in size but still the girth of a plump grape.
When Douglas displayed the miniature chunk with a proud and joyful grin, Conrad’s exhaustion fuelled his ire. “But there’s nothing here.”
Douglas chuckled. “Oh, there most certainly is. You just ain’t looking hard enough, only believing wha
t your dumb eyes can see. Why, this piece right here could fetch at least 10 pounds.”
Conrad groaned, “Fantastic. So I can break even on the boots I bought for this cursed mission.”
Douglas giggled. “Oh, Connie, you old hoot.” Douglas walked over and leisurely kicked at the crate’s lone piece of upright wood that remained as evidence. It flopped onto the ground silently in the white powder.
“What you see before you is just the remnants of but one of the Trading Company’s crates. They had brought with them five of these.”
“And now they’re all gone!” cried Conrad.
“From here, maybe, yes,” replied Douglas with a tone of mysterious agreeability. “But from the earth? I say no. They are out there, and we can still claim them. The ignorant hill bandits who stole the loot couldn’t have left a more obvious trail.” Douglas ushered towards the ground and the trail of blood and debris that vanished up the path. He then noticed some more precious cargo lying upon the ground, so he squatted to harvest another few pebbles of the drug from the ground to his pocket.
“So, yes, Conrad, if you strike up with me now, together we can take down the rest, especially with the jump on them. We won’t be needing as much help to carry the load.”
While one hand stashed the second stone into a pouch at his side, the other drew his pistol. Flipping the firing cylinder out with a snap of the wrist, Douglas was content with the inspection. He prepared the weapon with another crack of the wrist that locked the chamber back into place.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Conrad said, raising both hands as if halting a carriage at a busy intersection. Douglas’ pistol jerked slightly in his direction like a blind man’s head reacting to a sudden sound. This reaction did not go unnoticed by the battle-tested corporal. Conrad’s hand moved towards his gun in preparation to retaliate. “We are all in this together, Dougie.” He hoped the cute nickname might stir some friendlier sentiments.