Bad Yeti

by Carrie Harris

  The shock was so great that I barely registered the fact that my face was pillowed on a very soft, very comfortable part of Amethyst’s body. I released her and stood up, my hand going cautiously to the hilt of my sword. Either the Clan of Apples had just dressed up a gamer in a fur suit and tossed him over a cliff or this really was a yeti. Both options made me want to squeal.

  “Are you injured?” I asked the yeti, my words slow and deliberate.

  The yeti’s nose wrinkled in a very convincing way. Animatronic, maybe? Was this really happening? Then the creature rolled onto its claw-tipped feet in one smooth motion and bounded off into the woods without a backward glance.

  I had taken two steps after it when moaning from the ground caught my attention. Amethyst sat up with her hand clasped to her head.

  “What happened?” she mumbled.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. I didn’t see any blood, but beyond that, I had no idea what to do. Kate would have been very disappointed in me.

  “Yeah. I think,” she said.

  “Good. I’ll be right back.”

  I dashed into the woods after the beast, drawing my sword. “To arms!” I yelled, my heart galloping. Everything slowed to a crawl, and the adrenaline surging through my veins made me feel like I had to fight or fold under the pressure. I’d led charges in LARPs, and they always felt like this. Totally awesome.

  “Nightdark!” I heard Calamity’s rallying cry almost instantaneously, and where she was, Europa wouldn’t be far behind. It was too bad that the rest of the clan couldn’t join in the hunt, but I felt more than prepared with the three of us. We’d quested together a lot and hadn’t needed any resurrections in over a year now. Which was good, because I hadn’t yet found a resurrection charm that worked IRL. Not that I’d looked. Much.

  My character was a master-level tracker, and this wasn’t the first time I’d wished I could download his skills into my brain. I didn’t see the yeti anywhere in the thick trees, and the path ahead looked like just a stretch of dirt. My neck prickled with the threat of ambush, and I kept whipping my head around in an effort to watch my own back.

  When I saw Calamity and Europa crunching through the dead leaves toward me, I could have kissed them. More than usual, even.

  “What happened?” asked Europa, pitching her voice low.

  “Didn’t you see?” I hissed.

  “See what? Calamity forgot her peace tie. We had to go back to the girls’ cabin to get it in case the Apples called for a parley.”

  “Well,” I said, my eyes darting among the trees. “A yeti just fell on the command tent.” Calamity laughed, and I barely managed to keep my cool. They were gamers; they should have been more open to fantastic things than the average person. “Do I look like I’m kidding? Come see the damage for yourself.”

  Clearly, I’d need to come up with a plan if I wanted to find that yeti. But first, I needed backup. And no way would the girls believe me if they didn’t see it with their own eyes.

  “Look at this,” I said as we emerged into the clearing near the remains of my tent.

  I would have explained what had happened, but I was struck mute. Amethyst stood next to the rubble, her cloak and leather breastplate discarded on the ground. She was wearing only leggings and a thin tank top, which was molded even more tightly to her body by the leather straps that attached her wings to her torso. One of the straps had come loose, and she was twisting into pretzel shapes trying to reattach it.

  “Will you give me a hand here?” she asked, blowing a strand of ruby hair out of her face.

  “Sure!” I squeaked, forgetting all my Tal-endowed cool. I’d dreamed about situations like this, only I wished she was wearing a chain mail bikini. I’d heard a lot about them, and of course I’d seen pictures, but I still hadn’t managed to catch sight of one in the flesh. Or on the flesh, I guess.

  I fixed the strap and only then remembered Calamity and Europa. Uh-oh. I followed their gaze to Amethyst and realized I’d made a terrible miscalculation. They’d both been flirting with me ever since we’d met; they were definitely not immune to the charms of the zombie slayer. I’d always been careful not to show preference to either of them, because I honestly liked them both. But now that I’d brought Amethyst to the LARP, it probably felt like a slap in the face to them. They probably thought I’d been leading them on. I needed to fix this situation before it blew up, and fast.

  “I need a moment,” I said to Amethyst, tugging on her wingtip.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll head for the armory and see if I can’t get my breastplate fixed. And then you and I are going to have that talk.”

  “All right,” I responded quietly.

  I really wanted to see Lariat’s face when she entered the armory. He was my best friend; we rode the bus together, sat together at lunch, and played Roargan Kross online every night. His real name was Larry, but nobody called him that other than his parents and teachers. To the rest of us, he’d always be Lariat, the best weaponsmaster in the entire kingdom. He’d probably take one look at Amethyst and fall over unconscious. I would have liked to see that.

  But first I had a crisis to avert.

  CHAPTER 3

  Calamity and Europa turned their backs on me and stalked across the camp. I tried to tell myself that they had important things to do. But when I caught up to them, Europa was fussing with a plastic tent stake, and Calamity was poking the fire with a stick. Not exactly tops on the list of Things That Must Be Done.

  “Hey,” I said.

  They didn’t answer. Well, Calamity poked the fire a little harder, sending up a shower of sparks right into my face. That was answer enough.

  I didn’t know what to say. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I wanted to say, “I know you both like me and have been patiently waiting for me to make a move in one direction or the other, but please don’t be pissed that I’ve been putting you off and just made matters worse by bringing a hot half-wyvern to the LARP, because I didn’t know in advance how hot she was or I would have at least forewarned you.” But I was pretty sure that explanation would get me slapped.

  At times like this (meaning any situation in which a female is even remotely involved), I ask myself a very important question: What would Sir Talatien do? Tal was a Night elf ranger who had been orphaned at birth and raised by the Day elves. Now that he was of age, he’d started his own clan. But his status hadn’t gone to his head: when he wasn’t working, he could usually be found in the taverns of Tollenhall, downing mead with his friends and sucking up a lot of female attention.

  He had it really tough. Ish.

  I knew exactly what he would have done with Calamity and Europa, because I’d been playing him through two years, for three game systems and four expansion sets. I pulled out my sword and dropped to one knee before my wronged damsels. They gaped as I bowed my head and offered up my blade.

  Sure, it wasn’t really a blade, and they couldn’t have used it to take my head off, but it was important to me. Tal’s sword meant the world to him, and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t want to be just like him. He lived and died by an honorable warrior code. So would I.

  My heart hammered in my chest as I waited to see what they’d do. Europa didn’t worry me; her brown eyes were already welling with tears. But Calamity’s name suited her all too well. At school, she was a mousy sort of girl who never spoke above a whisper, took all honors classes, and played the flute in the chamber music trio. But once she put on her Roargan Kross costume, she became someone totally different. Calamity was one of the most decorated arena fighters in the kingdom, known for taking wild risks and flying off the handle. She’d once torn down Three Bards Inn with her bare hands because some poor noob had pinched her character’s butt. Sure, it had happened online in a virtual world, but you had to respect her for sticking up for herself.

  In short, there was a pretty decent chance that I was about to take a PVC strike to the head. It wouldn’t hurt anything except my ego,
but I’d still prefer to avoid it if I could.

  Calamity took the sword from my hands, testing its weight with a couple of experimental swings. I wanted to launch to my feet and explain to her how I’d whittled down a dowel and packed the PVC with cotton to get the weight just right, but I forced myself to stay put. I’d committed myself to her mercy, and I wasn’t going to get up until she gave the okay.

  She circled around me, and now I could barely sit still. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. If she killed my character, I wasn’t going to be able to LARP for the rest of the night. I had a regeneration charm, but it didn’t activate until sunup. Which meant I’d be stuck sitting on the sidelines while everyone else raided the Apple camp. And that would suck major suckables.

  But before Calamity could make a move, Amethyst came back out of the armory and walked toward us. “Hey,” she said, “what’s going on?”

  Calamity leaned close, whispering in my ear. “This conversation isn’t over. Take your stupid sword.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” I said, returning the sword to its sheath. “I’m sorry, Cal.” But she ignored me and walked away, her jaw tight with tension. Europa gave me a helpless shrug, and I smiled at her a little.

  “Hello?” Amethyst walked up and waved her hands in front of my face. “Did some alien virus strike all males in the area completely mute? The guy at the armory just stared at me until I finally gave up and left.”

  “Don’t mind Lariat. He’s just shy. But Goldnar, the sentry, will try and sneak a peek at you in the shower if you don’t buddy up,” said Europa, extending a hand. “Hi. I’m Europa of Goldenrod.”

  “Amethyst.” They shook hands. “And thanks for the warning.”

  I turned to look at Europa. “Why didn’t you tell me about Goldnar?” I asked, my grip tightening on the hilt of my sword. “I would have taken care of it.”

  Europa and Calamity exchanged guilty glances. Then they both cracked up.

  “I handled it,” said Calamity. “I’m not totally incompetent.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that!” I exclaimed. Some days it was hard to be chivalrous without coming off like a total ass.

  “So what happened with the tent?” Amethyst said, and if I didn’t want to snuggle up to her before, I did now. The change of subject was very much appreciated.

  “A yeti fell on it. Like, out of the sky.” I waved my arms around excitedly as I surveyed the damage. “It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and I’ve seen zombies!”

  I’d spent two nights setting up all my gear just the way I wanted it. Now it was in shambles. The central support pole was splintered, and the heavy-duty tarp sported a couple of giant holes. My storage chest looked intact, but the folding table and chairs were twisted into metal origami shapes. It was going to cost me a lot of snow-shoveling money to replace all of it, but I couldn’t help grinning every time I thought about the beast plummeting out of the sky. He could have fallen onto anybody’s tent, but he had fallen on mine.

  Finally, I tore my eyes away from the mess to find all three girls staring at me.

  “You need to get out more,” Amethyst said. “Seriously.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Everything okay?” A chaperone came lurching into the camp, sweat plastering his wispy hair to his head. He set a carton of bottled water down on the ground with a huff of effort. “Looks like your tent died, Jonah.”

  “Yeah.” I tried to look embarrassed, which isn’t easy when you’re bouncing on the inside and making a loud EEEEEEEE sound in your head. “Structural deficiency, I guess. We’ll clean it up.”

  “I know you will.” He turned away, totally uninterested. On one hand, it was a little insulting that our chaperones had no gaming chops whatsoever. On the other, it could also be very convenient. We got away with the occasional bending of the rules because they quite simply didn’t care what we did. They just showed up because the Bayview Community Center paid them.

  “What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” muttered Calamity.

  “We can’t make him clean this up all by himself,” Europa said. “Come on, Cal. That’s totally uncool.”

  “I’ll take any help I can get,” I said. “But I was hoping you’d at least stick around so I could pick your brains. I think between the four of us, we could have a nice strategy council going on here.”

  “What are we strategizing?” Amethyst pulled a chair out of the rubble. One of its legs was bent into a curlicue. “Anybody have duct tape?”

  Calamity snorted. “Duct tape won’t fix that.”

  My words came out in unison with Amethyst’s: “Duct tape will fix anything.” We grinned at each other, until I noticed Calamity’s scowl and figured I should stop.

  “So I need ideas on how to track the yeti,” I said, dragging my chest out of the mess and retrieving the tape. “We need to know once and for all if we’re dealing with a real cryptozoological creature or if it’s just some LARPer.”

  “Crypto-whatsit?” Europa asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “Cryptozoological,” Amethyst interjected before I could answer. “Legendary animals like the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot and the chupacabra.”

  “Which are all awesome,” I said.

  “I don’t believe in any of that stuff,” Amethyst said, tossing her hair.

  “You should.” Europa started to duct-tape the tent pole back together. “Jonah and his sister just took on a bunch of zombies. He lost the tip of his pinky finger and everything.” She gave me the Look, the one that made me feel all mushy. “He’s really brave.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, E.” I grabbed the tape and started tearing off pieces. Turning to Amethyst, I said, “But if you want to believe that it’s some idiot in disguise, I don’t mind. Just help me find it.”

  “That’s easy,” Amethyst said. “My dad’s been taking me hunting since I was ten.”

  “You kill Bambi?” Europa looked ready to cry.

  “Nah. Ducks, mostly. I took down a wild turkey once too. But deer are too cute to shoot.”

  “So you can help me track it, then?” I asked.

  “I should be able to run down something as big as a yeti. How tall did you say it was?”

  “Seven feet or so. I didn’t exactly measure it.”

  “Like I said, easy.”

  We all stood there and watched as Calamity strong-armed the curlicue chair back into shape. I honestly didn’t know how she managed because she was built like a string bean. Maybe the chairs were really flimsy. I decided I’d try it myself sometime when I didn’t have an audience.

  “Well?” she grumbled, tossing the chair to the ground. “What are we waiting for?”

  I glanced around the tent. It didn’t look anywhere near as cool as it had, but I didn’t think any of the chaperones would be tempted to rope it off as unsafe, if they even noticed the disrepair at all. That was good enough for me. Who wanted to spend time redecorating when there was a yeti to hunt?

  “Nothing,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  #

  We followed Amethyst into the woods, weapons at the ready. The tip of my sword trembled. Europa noticed, and she rubbed my shoulder soothingly. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t fear so much as excitement that was making me shake. Well, maybe a little fear, but that was okay. But then I realized it was pretty dumb to argue with her—as a healer, caretaking was just in her nature.

  I walked in the middle of the group, which seemed backward to me. As the lone guy, shouldn’t I have been protecting the women? I felt like I should have been bringing up the rear, but Calamity had claimed that spot and I knew she was equal to it. Maybe someone would attack us and she could take her frustrations out on them. I’d just have to resist the urge to shout a battle cry and leap to her rescue.

  I spent so long overanalyzing the situation that when I looked up, I had no idea where we were. Which may have had something to do with the fact that I’d never been a Boy Scout, and o
ne tree looked disturbingly like another—unless they were digitized, in which case I could have spotted a lazy programmer with a blindfold on.

  We were in a clearing. I was fairly certain we were still in the same state, since we’d only been walking for about five minutes and hadn’t hit a highway. Then a familiar rock caught my eye. Lariat and I had laughed about it when we’d set up our ambush; if you were to paint it yellow, it would have looked exactly like Pikachu. Too bad I hadn’t noticed it a millisecond sooner.

  “Amethyst, stop!” I shouted just as her foot hit the tripwire buried in the leaves around the rock.

  She half turned to face me as the catapults started firing. The air filled with Grade A extra-large eggs. The first one took Amethyst on the arm, followed by four body shots in quick succession. The other girls tried to duck and cover, squealing, but it was no use as a second volley of ovoid ammunition flew through the air. One egg splatted on my tunic; another took me on the side of the head and oozed a cold trail toward my eardrum. I covered my face with my hands and waited for the ambush to end.

  The eggs finally stopped flying, but I didn’t move. It would have been useless anyway; we’d made sure to set up our trap so that it would catch the Apples if they tried to flee. I heard a muffled whoomph as the tarps released the mountain of chicken feathers we’d stashed overhead. The downy feathers fell onto our shoulders like snow.

  When I opened my eyes, the ground was white. The girls looked like chickens with leprosy, because the feathers had only stuck to their eggy bits. Which actually made it even more hilarious than if we’d been completely covered.

  I started to snicker quietly to myself, when Calamity said, “I am going to kill those Apples,” in a voice that assured us she was not kidding at all. Something told me it would be wise to let the Apples take the blame for this one, at least for now. I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to hold in the giggles, because I wanted to live long enough to prove that the yeti was real, that I’d discovered it, and that if it hadn’t been for my superior tent-building skills, it would probably be dead. After that, I’d own up to placing the trap.