The Yeti

by Mike Miller

  With swift and concise attacks, the monster threw its claws with a rhythmic cadence that would not relent. Jah ducked or deflected each strike, his staff cracking aside the angry daggers that were the fingertips of the Yeti.

  Jah tripped on the uneven ground and fell backwards to slide on his rear down a brief slope. The Yeti pounced up into the air to gain even greater velocity as he swung a crushing palm towards his fallen foe’s chest.

  Rolling aside quickly, Jah left one of his two half-staffs with its sharp end up as a souvenir for the next visitor. The monster hammered its own palm onto the spike, driving the wooden nail through the back of its hand.

  While the creature lamented this latest setback, Jah threw the other stick like a javelin. It harpooned the monster in the chest, though not enough to stick. The piece clattered onto the ground, but not before leaving another blackened smear of blue blood on the beast’s breast.

  With a roar that sent a foul zephyr though Jah, the monster now bled from several open gashes. Yet still it engaged in battle with voracious urgency. Its lunging strikes moved with even fiercer speed, and without any pieces of his stick to defend himself, the boy had to dodge each vicious attack.

  On one wild swing of the Yeti’s claws, Jah spun across the monster’s wrist with a cartwheel. With a free hand, he grabbed the staff already jammed in the creature and wrenched it free. The creature’s thick blood had drenched the wooden shaft, so Jah’s hand immediately singed with frost upon contact. Startled by the intense chill, he dropped the piece which rattled away on the ground as if it were alive and scurrying for safety.

  Distracted by his frostbitten palm, Jah was clubbed aside by another of the beast’s wild swings. The Yeti swatted Jah’s midriff and powerfully tossed him into the air. His body arched up into the ceiling where he hit his head on the hard rock before falling to the ground.

  With his belly emptied of oxygen, Jah’s muscles strained to obey his mind’s command to rise. The monster would not wait nor gloat. It scurried forward for the kill.

  Having been knocked over to a piece of his staff, Jah quickly retrieved it and hurled the short spear. It caught the onrushing beast in its eye.

  The shard popped up off the beast’s face as Jah hopped up onto the creature’s arm and clutched the monster’s horn. Hurling himself up over the monster, his open hand caught the staff on the rebound. With a looping swing, he plunged it right into the creature’s back, a mere few inches from the original wound Baxter had inflicted upon it.

  As the sharpened piece of staff sunk into the creature’s back, Jah angled his descent to yank himself viciously down on the exposed rod.

  The tactic worked as the staff broke again, leaving one half jammed in the monster while Jah swung the new piece to skewer the monster’s calf.

  The pair of blows hobbled the beast to his knees, permitting Jah to spring for another piece of staff lying on the cavern floor back behind them both.

  The Yeti barked angrily at the indignant intruder and loped after the nemesis. Though a barb of wood was still pricked into the beast’s leg, zealous anger propelled the monster in a vicious hobble.

  Jah grabbed the wooden shard on his way to leaping atop a small column of rock, before hopping back at the beast.

  The two were poised to collide as each rushed the other. With a thrust of the staff, Jah gouged at the monster’s eye. He missed as the sharpened points grazed the monster’s cheeks instead. Jah also paid for the mistake when he was caught upon the beast’s head.

  The galloping brute drove the lad back into a wall as both masses collided against the rock with such impact that the hardened stone broke in a cloud of debris and dust. The Yeti staggered aside from the headbutt, while Jah landed upon his stomach, instinctively wriggling towards his lost weapon.

  Muscles ached, his breath burned, and Jah reflected upon whether he had battled the beast for seconds or hours. While his devastated body threatened to fail him, his will refused to surrender. His hands clawed at the ground, his feet tripped over the rock, and he lurched himself to his knees.

  He tried to remember his father, a man almost as young as himself when he disappeared. But it was hard to summon the recollection, which only angered him. Jah reclaimed the piece of staff in his hand when suddenly a large claw wrapped around him.

  Yanked up off the ground by the Yeti, Jah was able to use the spinning momentum to plunge the staff into the monster’s shoulder. The staff sunk into the white flesh while a small geyser of black blood sprayed out in reciprocation.

  While the creature howled angrily at yet another piercing strike, the beast did not release the Asian. Instead it angrily walloped him against the ground. With blood streaming down Jah’s skull, the Yeti was encouraged at the sight, and thrashed the boy down upon the stone twice more like a carpenter hammering a nail.

  Jah was finally allowed respite when the Yeti relented. His vision still swam in swirling blurs while his ears rang like a chorus of church bells. When his eyes finally managed some clarity, Jah found himself staring into the gaping black maw of the Yeti with its diamond rows of fangs.

  Chapter XLIX

  The Trove Discovered

  “Can you believe this?” said Conrad.

  Too stunned with disbelief, Baxter could not even answer no, though the astonishment was clear on his face were Conrad looking at it.

  The two men stood at the mouth of a vast chamber filled with strange, frozen bric-a-brac, a potpourri of possessions haphazardly collected and stacked like the swept-up remnants of a devastating hurricane. Piled to the ceiling in some places were broken relics of human civilisation. The menagerie of goods was all grossly worn and rotten, dark with age and neglect. But the scope of the hoard’s items was limitless: broken wagon wheels, shards of cloaks and tunics, rifles and pans, a weathered saddle ripped in half.

  Right by Baxter’s boot at the entrance was a sabre of middle-Eastern design, its crude blade and hilt marking it perhaps a few centuries old. When Baxter went to examine the artefact further, he found it rigidly fastened under a layer of ice.

  Conrad stepped into the sprawling mess and clawed at a corner of a blanket. He tugged at the cloth, but it was locked into the mass. Then the worn fabric ripped away to send Conrad teetering backwards. His feet clattered on some wood with a sharp racket.

  “What are you doing?” hissed Baxter.

  “I don’t know,” Conrad replied. His silly attention resumed its scrounging for anything of value. “But imagine what’s in here.”

  “Rubbish,” Baxter said. “Nothing. Now, we don’t have time for this.”

  “You’re right,” conceded Conrad, though still rummaging through the Yeti’s ramshackle collection of salvaged goods. “Why would it do this?”

  A piercing yell in the distance interrupted their conversation. Rather a pair of screams, two cries that oddly blended into a single, sustained wail. It was not just from the monster, but from a man as well.

  As Baxter instinctively bolted towards the source of the sound, Conrad caught his coat by the sleeve. “You can’t go. You’ll be killed.”

  “I would already be dead were it not for him,” Baxter snipped.

  “Listen, you fool,” Conrad said. “That’s the death cry of a dead man. Why the hurry to join him when you’ve already been miraculously saved? Don’t let him pass in vain.” Baxter contemplated the answers. The wailing had silenced, and now the stillness reignited a growing sense of dread.

  “I have to,” resolved Baxter, shrugging his arm out from Conrad’s protesting grip. “I must.”

  “No, you don’t, Bax. Sounds to me like they’re killing each other just fine.”

  Conrad could read the hesitation, and knew there was enough leverage to pry a turnabout on this foolhardy call to action. It only took a moment for Conrad to realise where to strike. “For God’s sake, think of your wife,” he pleaded softly.

  “I am,” said Baxter. “I always do. And that makes things simple. But don’t worry, you don’t have
to come. I wouldn’t think any less of you.”

  With a brave smile that still quivered with uncertainty, Baxter trotted back towards the sounds of the skirmish. Conrad could read well his friend’s doubt which betrayed his proclaimed sincerity. Left alone by himself now, Conrad threw his arms up in anguish. “Curse it,” he exclaimed loudly in frustration. He kicked at the air. “Would have been nice to have at least eaten first.”

  He reached down for the exposed hilt of a sword and tugged at it. “A last meal,” he grunted from the strain. While Conrad leaned back into the pull for maximum force, the weapon stubbornly refused to budge. With a long gasp of despair, Conrad surrendered. He quickly crawled around the dark cave, kicking at various objects with the toe of his boot.

  “Or a bloody weapon,” Conrad grumbled as he ran after his companion empty-handed.

  Chapter L

  To Kill the Yeti

  Jah was doomed. With one arm pinned to his side by the monster’s powerful grip, Jah’s other hand was helpless to wrest himself to freedom. As the Yeti was raising the boy into its vicious jaws, the fiend’s breath was so cold and grotesque that it stung not just Jah’s nose, but the skin on his face. The rank stench of carrion was so foul that it burned his eyes, forcing Jah to avert his gaze away from the impending death inside the jaws of the creature.

  Then he noticed a small opening in the centre of the creature’s chest from one of his earlier strikes. Without any proper consideration, Jah plunged his left hand into the shallow wound.

  Thrusting with as much desperate force as possible under his constrained position, Jah’s pointed fingers sank up to their knuckles in the beast’s chest. The surprise tactic succeeded in giving pause to the Yeti’s planned feast. The creature’s tiny white pupils withered with shock, encouraging Jah to push his hand harder into the wound.

  With a heaving grunt, Jah forced his fist deeper into the behemoth’s body. As his entire palm edged into the beast, the rippling pangs of cold shivered through his wrist, up his arm. It was the familiar discomfort from the onset of frostbite, yet the extended agony of hours was now painfully condensed into seconds. Though he could feel his skin instantly mottle and die, he shoved it onward towards the monster’s heart.

  Realising the valiant efforts of the diminutive Asian were succeeding, the Yeti moved to toss the Asian away. But Jah’s previously captured right hand freed itself during the monster’s throw. It quickly lashed out and clung to the curled left horn of the beast. Jah now secured himself enough to dig deeper into the monster’s chest.

  The Yeti reversed direction, now using Jah’s own strength to shift the warrior back towards its jaws and finish the boy with a bite. Yet Jah realised this strategy, so he flung his legs out to brace himself from budging with a well-planted foot atop the creature’s chest and another knee on its lip.

  With a vexed growl, the creature swiped a claw for the boy’s body. But with a twist of the abdomen, Jah darted above the blow, then wrapped a leg around the monster’s index finger to further entangle himself with the monster.

  A mighty push made Jah’s arm disappear deeper into the Yeti’s body. His arm was now sunk inches above its wrist, which also helped him to remain tethered to the thing.

  With grunts and shouts, the two wrestled against the other. The monster haltingly stumbled about the chamber, thrashing its head about though Jah spryly hopped from one horn to the other to keep himself braced against the monster’s head yet inches away from the snapping jaws.

  The Yeti smashed its head onto the ground to dislodge the assailant. Then it butted it’s brow against a wall. But as the rock and ice burst in clouds of debris from the collisions, Jah avoided any impact more than the monster could.

  In a desperate bid, the creature howled and threw itself onto the ground, rolling over the rough floor to shred Jah from his grip. But throughout the frenzied tumbling, the boy prevailed and remained steadfastly affixed to the demon’s horned head, even managing to burrow his arm another inch into monster’s thick hide.

  The Yeti grew weaker, its tired fits becoming more languid. Jah could feel himself dying too, a heavy darkness threatening his awareness as the world dimmed from view.

  In a moment of clarity, Jah remembered who he was and what he came to do. As he swelled with one more burst of reinvigorated rage, the Yeti’s eyes almost implored the madman for mercy and forgiveness.

  Summoning all his remaining strength, Jah twisted his hips for a final thrust. Breaking through the resistance of the animal’s ribcage, his arm quickly sank deep into the Yeti’s heart almost to the elbow. His near numb fingers felt the consistency change in the surrounding flesh, now sensing organs softer and squishier than the hard, grating shell of the exterior skin and bone.

  But the slow pain from before exploded into a torrent of torment. It shot up his arm and encompassed his whole body. Jah screamed at the unequivocal torture.

  The Yeti too suffered anew. It toppled to one knee while simultaneously unleashing its own agonised shriek of despair.

  The two combatants cried out in grating harmony, the arm of one locked inside the heart of the other. Both creatures were killing and dying together.

  Strength and will sapping from creature, it collapsed onto the cold, hard ground with a thud. Its scream leaked away into a small whimper, then became a wheezing rasp. The monster’s black eyes became unfocused and opaque.

  Victorious from the monster’s surrender, Jah went to retract his hand out of the deep vein it had hollowed out in the beast. But his hand was stuck. Pulling at the attached limb, he could no longer feel his fingers, just the frozen tendons of his wrist ignorantly affixed to the dead hand. He grunted with effort, placing his free hand and feet beside the stuck appendage so that his entire body could work to withdraw the limb.

  Jah smiled, and shook his head in disbelief.

  Grit teeth and sweat worked to no avail. Even an anguished yell refused to help budge his arm. Instead, a wave of queasiness shuddered through his body. His eyes rolled up into their sockets so that only a milky white remained in his two orbs. Then Jah’s body wilted and relaxed into a mound of immobile bone and blood with his arm still buried in the beast.

  The chamber became quiet without any sounds of struggle. Only a hefty breeze made any noise as it whispered through the caves.

  Footsteps ran closer. The rapid patter of running echoed through the hall, the ricocheting noises reverberated like a battalion stampeding to the rescue.

  It was Baxter. When he saw the beast lying on the floor, he paused in his charge and drew the rifle. While his feet instinctively paced backwards to space himself from the danger, Baxter noticed that the beast was motionless. Without any movement or sound, he then cautiously advanced.

  Getting closer to the fallen beast, he found another more curious discovery. The young Jah was bound in the Yeti’s arms, as if the giant thing was embracing the lad to its hairy chest. The strange sight instantly alarmed Baxter who steadied his weapon to fire at any outburst. But the boy too lay still. Numerous cuts and scars decorated the two to the point where some of the long gashes seemed to run from one body and onto the other.

  “Whoa!” a voice cried from behind, and the jittery African whirled about to train his weapon on Conrad running into the chamber behind him. “Whoa,” Conrad offered up an open palm that gently patted down the air, like a lion-tamer training a critter to heel. The trick worked, and Baxter lowered his gun.

  “What…?” said Conrad in awe, also surmising that the Yeti was dead. “Good job, old boy,” said Conrad. “I didn’t even hear a shot. How did you do it, just sneeze on the thing?” Conrad’s scraggly beard parted to reveal his white teeth aligned in a broad smile.

  “No, I…” Baxter’s voice trailed off as he decided to forgo an explanation and simply study the situation further. Looking back at Jah and the Yeti, he saw the boy’s eyes were awake and staring directly at him. Baxter whimpered weakly and hopped away at the ghastly unexpectedness.

  The bo
y’s mouth moved feebly like a babe trying to nurse. His breaths came in intermittent bursts. “Good Lord,” Conrad said, understanding the entirety of the situation. “Is he trying to speak?”

  Baxter knelt low to put a hand on the boy in reassurance. The boy’s short pants grew in loudness, and while his face conveyed no merriment at the predicament, the sounds were unmistakably a fit of laughter.

  “He’s mad,” marvelled Conrad.

  Seeing the beast’s long gray fingers clenching the boy about the waist, Baxter began to pry each finger free. “Help me,” the African grunted, and Conrad quickly joined in the effort.

  Once they pulled aside the final thick finger, Baxter carefully cushioned the lad’s head then hooked the other arm under the patient’s armpit. With his head he motioned for Conrad to handle the feet, also instructing, “Gently now.”

  The two soldiers carefully lifted their wounded third in a medical regiment well-rehearsed from their time on the fields of battle. But after transporting the boy a few inches, resistance was encountered. Something jerked the boy backwards, and the lad’s weakened whimpers became a hearty scream of agony. The two men now noticed that the boy’s left arm was entombed in the chest of the monster.

  Baxter’s eyes bulged with disbelief, as if the harder he stared, then perhaps a truer version of the sight would reveal itself, one that made rational sense. “What the deuce?” gasped Conrad in astonishment.

  “Back down, quick,” Baxter instructed. Conrad almost dropped Jah’s feet onto the ground in the frantic scramble. “Careful,” hissed Baxter.

  “The lad punched a hole into the creature’s chest,” surmised Conrad. By now the boy’s yell had faded into an extended moan. Feverish and delirious, the boy writhed about awkwardly, still cradled in Baxter’s arms.