The Yeti

by Mike Miller

  Again, Conrad weighed whether to abandon his gear to alleviate his weight and the force he would test upon his grappling line. But again, Conrad knew that without those meagre supplies, he would be just as dead anyways. He might as well plummet to his death below with a full set of rations in a more sudden and humane demise rather than make it back to the right part of the mountain only to freeze or starve in gradual agony.

  He shuffled into place with his gear firmly secured to his body. Both arms wrapped around the rope, which was also tied firmly around one arm.

  With a forbidding whoosh from afar, a large breeze swept over him and blew aside all the fog. He had not only a clear view of the pickaxe and its snout buried into a patch of small boulders, but Conrad could now also see the infinite depth of space which threatened any failure. “Bloody hell,” he groaned aloud, as he snapped his sight back onto the level target across from him before the dizzying effects of vertigo could disrupt his concentration.

  He slowed his racing heart with deep, measured breaths. Mentally he envisioned himself popping off the shelf and swinging across the gap. When he reached that far side, he would latch himself to that wall like a spider, then easily scramble up onto the ledge to freedom.

  “Here we go,” he reminded himself.

  Conrad’s legs shoved him as well as they could from his perch. He was stunned by the quickness of his sudden descent downwards once fully in the clutches of gravity. But the line held above him, and the explosive force of his downward fall began to arc inwards on an axis, pivoting him towards the opposite side he yearned to rejoin.

  Conrad was tempted to close his eyes, but knew he could not. So his gaze was brightly alert and attuned to the onrushing wall when he zoomed straight into it. At the final moment, he freed his grip to catch himself against the sheer surface. But rather than trying to wrap his fingers onto some handhold, his arms served only to defend his skull from bashing into the hard stone.

  With a heavy thud and concussive grunt, Conrad banged against the wall, then ricocheted off to gently drift out into space.

  The weightlessness was terrifying. While his arm was entangled in the line above him, Conrad flailed through the open air to fly away from the fall. His free left arm reached out for the wall, but it was inches away and only getting farther as he floated back into the chasm.

  The pickaxe above faltered in its hold, and Conrad was suddenly jerked downwards another few inches. But still the line held. He reached the far end of his swing at the same moment, and began to thankfully veer back towards the wall.

  A tiny tremor through the line indicated that the line would finally and fully fail in an instant. His free arm reached out again for the rock while his feet even angled forwards in anticipation that they would need to contribute to his survival.

  The pickaxe finally slipped away, and Conrad could only fall downwards without the tether above to suspend him aloft.

  But he was close enough to the rocky surface so that as he just began to drop, he flailed outwards and clawed his hands and feet into the rock. His right arm and legs were denied any footing, but his left hand gripped fiercely onto a tiny sliver of exposed rock. The bottoms of his boots scraped against the surface, and the toe of his right foot soon dug itself into the wall.

  He was now hanging onto the rock purely of his own volition as his two free limbs searched desperately for their own support.

  Looking up gratefully from his newfound perch, Conrad changed his view in just enough time to see the falling pickaxe falling towards his face. He ducked aside and shifted his weight, but the heavy head of the tool thudded painfully off of his right arm. When he realised that the instrument would continue its fall down, he braced himself for the inevitable yank to come as it was still connected to his wrist.

  The deadweight of the falling pickaxe tugged his right arm free when it reached its full length straight down, so his other appendages clung even more fiercely into their respective holds. He yelled in defiance as the heavy force threatened to fully dislodge him from the wall.

  As he clenched the stone surface, his former friend and now foe the pickaxe clanked softly against the ice-covered rock below in sullen defeat.

  Not exactly as planned, but victorious nonetheless for now, Conrad looked about for anywhere to reach his hand next. A small break in the rock presented itself overhead, and he clawed up the first small step towards the above ledge.

  A trying half hour later, he collapsed face first into the snow on flat land and fell instantly asleep from exhaustion.

  Chapter XLIII

  The Wrong Reunion

  Through the swirling fury of the driving snow, Baxter could barely discern the dark silhouette of Jah before him. The afternoon sun provided little illumination to see through the haze of the thick maelstrom.

  Jah’s black shadow continued nimbly ahead upon the rugged path with relative ease. However, Baxter was consistently surprised by the various obstacles that his predecessor had effortlessly conquered yet would now suddenly materialise to vex him. After watching Jah move swiftly through the snow, Baxter would discover that the boy had magically hurdled a massive boulder that now impeded his own progress. Conquering such nuisances required severe strength or concentration on his behalf to overcome, but seemed the merest trifle for his guide. So efficient was Jah’s scaling of the mountain, Baxter felt the child was part mountain goat.

  Thankfully the boy’s frequent interruptions in their journey to study some invisible clue prevented Baxter’s abandonment. The soldier arrived with mild panting from the rigorous pace, only to find the young man crouched low to the ground. Peering carefully at his pinched fingers, Jah looked at something so minute in his fingertips that it might as well have been an invisible piece of ether. Baxter asked, “Find anything?”

  To which Jah simply replied, “Yes.” But unlike other occasions where any discussion was nonexistent, and the boy’s resumed marching would suffice for any answer, this time he handed over the mysterious item. With the falling snow rushing by in torrents as thick as rope, Baxter reached carefully towards Jah’s hands. The Asian boy’s fingers pinched tightly together as if daintily gripping the handle of a tiny tea cup.

  Baxter was uncertain as to what he was reaching for, but his own two fingers squeezed together as close as possible beside Jah’s to assume ownership of the item. Whatever it was, Baxter brought it close to his face for the best inspection. The sun’s murky and clouded light barely provided enough illumination, but between the gales of snowflakes blasting past his eyes like a hurricane, Baxter’s sharp vision could finally discern the thin length of hair that danced from his fingertips in the wind like the streamer of a kite.

  How the Asian had magically discovered this artefact of the Yeti was beyond Baxter’s comprehension. By the time Baxter had raised his head to initiate further inquiries, the black robe was already hopping up a patch of round stones, prompting Baxter to hastily follow or risk abandonment again.

  Tucking the hair away in his cloak’s pocket, Baxter was undeniably pleased with the sign. Quietly he had prayed for an omen that this absurd decision to accompany the vengeance-driven lad was not for naught, and here he was in possession of this undeniable evidence. The hair was fine and straight, bending naturally with a firm flow and not subject to any wilts or breaks.

  Between Baxter’s recollection of the map and Jah’s knowledge of the mountain trails, the two had easily located the final site of the original transport. However, with everything in ruin, they now had to resort to tracking the monster’s trail of destruction. At first it was rather simple to follow the carnage as blood and debris marked the way like street signs. But as the winter storm surged in wrath to shelter the monster’s path, they were left in uncertainty of being able to locate the whereabouts of the beast.

  But with this latest discovery, Baxter was certain the boy was directing the two of them closer to the Yeti as the two ascended the mountain.

  A scream ambushed Baxter, though it was at
least of human origin. He readied his rifle in his hand, already loaded for such an occasion. Without any immediate signs of danger or distress from the origin of the sound, he moved his attention to alert Jah, only to discover that the monk was one step ahead as usual. Already perched on the precipice of a cliff, the lad was frozen still while leaning over the edge, as if all motion had been neutralised in order to strengthen his hearing. Like a keen hunting animal, his head was turned to the side in order to point his ear in the direction of the mysterious alarm.

  Another scream echoed out, this one much weaker, and filled with more sobbing despair. The wail slowly waned into silence as if bleeding into death.

  “Wait,” hissed Baxter, but Jah had already hurdled over the edge of the cliff, seemingly vanishing to his death. Baxter rushed to the edge of the cliff over which Jah had just jumped.

  Looking down below, the black cloak of the precocious lad hopped from one giant rock to the next like a toad. After only a moment’s hesitation to curse his luck, Baxter cautiously hung one leg over the side and then another to drop himself onto the lower level of the slope.

  The soldier could have pursued the lead much quicker if he wasn’t forced to repeatedly check on his headstrong guide for direction. In the din of the drifting snow, finding the boy became increasingly difficult, and Baxter was forced to rely upon the magnification of his scope to spy the enthusiastic kid when he disappeared over another crest in the stone. With nothing else to watch, Baxter concentrated on scampering down the broken crags as fast as possible in pursuit.

  When Baxter finally rounded the corner to which Jah had vanished, he was surprised to see the black cloak paused in another crouch. If it were not for the wind tussling the cuffs and bottom of the outfit, the form would have been completely immobile, almost as if frozen by the elements into ice. Given Jah’s silent stillness, Baxter approached cautiously to his side. The soldier’s appearance failed to faze the Asian, whose stoic face was locked on a different target in the distance.

  Down another slope of smooth snow, a small fire smouldered in the centre of a pack of mysterious people. The vision startled Baxter, causing him to wonder if the entire apparition was not fictional. The darkened characters roamed restlessly in the periphery of the flames, the shadows stretching into elongated and deformed figures that drifted their black shadows along the white walls.

  Another sound came from the pack, this time it was a long, howling groan. It lacked the piercing volume of the earlier screams as it was weak and anguished.

  At this latest call, Jah interpreted it as an invitation to join the party. He boldly got up from his otherwise shielded position, and calmly began to trot down the wintery slope towards the party.

  “Wait,” hissed Baxter to no avail. Wary of the strangers’ intentions, Baxter shouldered his long rifle to better see the assortment of strangers. The first person he spied in amplified form through the glass lens was instantly recognisable, stunning him into removing his sight from his face. The gaunt, humourless face belonged to old commanding officer Sergeant Finnegan.

  With his eyes locked in grim concern on Jah’s inevitable confrontation with the remnants of his former troop, Baxter eagerly hunted for some appropriate cover to which he could launch his own supporting assault from above.

  One of the soldiers said, “Look,” pointing at the stranger approaching their camp. Colonel Snider rose from his crouch and turned to face the intruder. A slender young lad dressed all in black approached from above, a long staff in his right hand and a dour expression of utter seriousness on his face.

  “Welcome,” Snider said mirthlessly, “whoever the hell you are. Please leave all of your possessions with us and vamoose immediately.”

  “Especially your food,” chimed in one of the supporters in a voice that was half laugh and half cough. Jah was not intimidated as he steadily approached the group.

  Baxter continued to hop down the incline, each leap landing him knee-high in the heavy snow. He was certain that the group of his former comrades in arms could not detect him so high and far away in this mist, so with every lunging bound, he enhanced his view of their camp.

  Perhaps it was an illusion played by the flickering campfire, but Baxter was struck by how pale each of the men was. Their already white skin had now been bleached to match their snow-covered surroundings. Only their eerily staunched faces poked out of their warm wrappings, which now sagged and wilted. While their bodies were thinner and more emaciated than last Baxter saw them, their wretched, broken postures contributed more so to their ghastly appearances. Their eyes were red and haunted, wrapped in brows that were opened excessively wide and did not blink.

  The men’s mirth faded as Jah continued unabated towards them.

  “I’m not exactly sure who you are,” Snider said, drawing a pistol from his belt and training the barrel onto Jah, a target increasing in ease and size with every advancing step. “But we are trained soldiers.” The other men chuckled at the joke, their chorus of wheezing laughter accompanying the unsheathing of their weapons. “So who are you?” Snider asked with a taunting sneer typical of his hubris.

  Jah twirled his staff in a full circle, nimbly rolling the rod over his wrist. “I am the killer of killers,” he replied.

  Snider scoffed at the insolent retort, the surprisingly sophisticated English also startling him.

  He squeezed down on the trigger. In the silence of the storm, the firearm exploded with enough force to loosen teeth.

  Yet as the plume of fire and smoke extended out from the barrel like an abrupt exhale of tobacco, the agile boy had already stepped aside, leaving the ball of iron to collide into the snowbank behind him with its own puff of white smoke.

  With an outswept arm poised like a commanding prophet, Jah hurled his staff through the air to ricochet off one of the men’s jaws, snapping his head back with small bits of blood and teeth popping upwards from his broken lip.

  Jah dashed forward behind his staff, leaping upwards and airborne to land a flying kick on the face of another foe. Then he twirled about to land his other foot on still another man’s unsuspecting face before falling to earth.

  By now the staff had begun to descend back downwards, but before it could touch the ground, Jah caught the weapon by its tail end. He then swirled the length around in a broad circumference that rapped across three more advancing men, landing upon each set of their teeth with a series of concussive thwacks that struck in precise, syncopated rhythm. The whirling blows stopped the men in their assault as they each flailed to the ground, grabbing at their split faces in debilitating pain.

  But as Jah’s blow finished its circle, the manoeuvre opened him up to a flanking tackle from Private Finnegan. Though withered in size from his usual gait, the still burly Irishman easily dwarfed the tiny Asian, bowling him aside with devastating force.

  Baxter raced towards the combatants and could now see how much his ex-bunkmates had changed. Finnegan’s once fluffy red hair was now matted and dark, and his complexion was blanched to a sickly extreme. His freckles were like dark holes though his skin.

  Now sitting atop Jah, Finnegan reared back over his toppled pray with a dagger clenched in his raised fist.

  “No,” Baxter implored, but Finnegan smashed the knife down onto Jah’s head.

  The boy ducked aside so that the point of the weapon clinked off the stones beside his ear.

  With his right hand, Jah clutched Finnegan’s wrist while also writhing his way out from beneath his legs. While pulling the arm along with him, Jah first forced his foe to fall face-first onto the ground. He then dragged the soldier downwards beneath the man’s own legs to flop him into a summersault onto his own back. Throughout the tumble, Jah maintained his clench on the arm and now stood triumphantly over his humbled foe. Finnegan’s limp hand still wielded the dagger as the Asian forced the appendage the man to grip his own weapon.

  “Stop!” Baxter cried, now stopping in his tracks to shoulder his firearm. Looking through the magn
ifying scope of his weapon afforded him a close view of the murderous glare in his compatriot’s eyes.

  A quick snap of Jah’s wrist snapped Finnegan’s wrist. The Irishman let out a howling cry that was especially pathetic in its high, whimpering tone. Then falling to one knee, Jah forced Finnegan’s limp arm to stab its owner in the chest. The blow into the sternum was like opening a new vent in Finnegan’s body, his yowl of pain becoming a wheezing groan of death.

  While still holding the lifeless wrist, Jah then jerked the hand and the blade out of the bleeding ribcage. In a single backhanded flip of the arm like a puppeteer, Jah made the dead man’s hand fling the knife through the air to sink itself into the shoulder of Snider. The colonel fell onto his hind from the hit and screeched in pain.

  With all of his enemies fallen, Jah could now leisurely approach their suffering commandeer.

  Snider’s offhand quickly worked to remove the dagger from his body. He screamed aloud as he twisted the knife out of his soiled uniform, a black smear of blood like a shoulder pad quickly covered his upper body.

  Seeing the young boy calmly approaching him and now just paces away, Snider sneered at the menacing youth, then threw the blade back at Jah with all the force he could muster. Without any hesitation, Jah plucked the weapon from the air as if picking fruit from a branch.

  Holding Finnegan’s dagger by its bloody tip, Jah held the blade aloft over his shoulder as he prepared to hurl it into his target for the final time.

  A patch of rock exploded at Jah’s feet in a puff of dust, accompanied by a violently loud gunshot. The interruption demanded Jah’s attention who found Baxter hastily working to reload his rifle back on the hill behind the camp. “Don’t,” Baxter cautioned as he fumbled with the ammo.

  Finding Baxter no immediate threat, Jah returned his glower upon Snider who was still huffing with rage though his eyes betrayed his fierce expression with a tiny, frightened plea for mercy.