by Katie Berry
“You got it, Boss.” Trip checked that they were well-secured together and that the rope would still be easy to untie once the time came to transfer the survivor to the waiting truck below. With confidence, he said, “He’s not going anywhere now!”
“Awesome job! Now, if you could follow along behind us just in case I need a hand along the way.” Austin started his sled and turned it around.
“I’m on it, Boss.” Trip mounted his snowmobile and glanced toward the glacier as the brilliant, blue sky began fading toward the violet of twilight. The first waves of ice vapour began to curl off the top of the monolithic chunk of ice as he watched. Lawless was in for another grey, impenetrable evening once that settled on top of the inversion. He shook his head.
Austin revved his engine a couple of times. “All right! Let’s get moving before we have to spend the night out here ourselves!”
Trip heard relief heavy in his friend’s voice, and agreed, saying, “You got my vote, Boss!” He cranked his throttle, and a plume of snow kicked out from the sled’s track as he fell in line behind Austin and Jerry. His mind was awhirl with questions. What had attacked this man and his friends?. What was lurking out there in the local forests? What sort of creature was able to wreak such havoc on a group of armed men? And how did it get to be so huge? He suddenly realised he was dawdling and falling behind, and twisted his throttle hard to catch up to Austin and Jerry.
There was one thing that he knew for certain. When he arrived home to his little bungalow on the outskirts of town this evening, the Springfield 30-.06 he kept propped in his hall closet was going to get a thorough cleaning and then loaded up from a fresh box of hollow-point shells. Of that, he had no doubt.
CHAPTER NINE
Highway #4 curved its scenic way through most of the valley bottom. It ran parallel to the chunk of Kootenay goodness that Geraldine Gertzmyer called home for several kilometres. Christine Moon drove cautiously through the fog, spying numerous faded signs dotting the tops of decaying fence posts along the side of the road. The signs appeared every kilometre or so, popping out of the fog as she passed. ‘Private Property!’, ‘Keep Out!’ and ‘No Trespassing!’ were just a few of the many colourful greetings sitting atop a few of them. But it was the last one that had to be Christine’s favourite. A hand-painted sign with large red lettering cut right to the chase, reading, ‘No Hunting, No Fishing, No Nothing, Go Home!’ Obviously, Geraldine was a woman who liked to make sure her animals were safe and who enjoyed her privacy.
The turkeys on Geraldine’s acreage weren’t indigenous to the region. They had been introduced to the area by BC Fisheries and Wildlife many decades before. The population had thrived, despite living in a harsher climate. They were now a regular part of the spring and fall hunting season -- except around Geraldine’s property, apparently. On a final bend in the tree-lined lane just before the main house, a yellow caution sign proclaimed that section of the laneway to be a turkey crossing. Seeing no turkeys currently lined up to cross the road, Christine proceeded cautiously up the lane.
Pulling her truck around the circular entrance at the front of the house, Christine found Geraldine Gertzmeyer sitting on her veranda in a wingback wicker chair, waiting patiently. The elderly woman was bundled up in an oversized green parka and Sorel boots to keep warm, a thick quilt across her lap. Protecting her from the elements, a covered porch ran the entire length of the front of the house, wrapping around both sides. The petite, white-haired woman watched Christine emerge from her truck, and a surprised expression crossed her weathered face. “You’re not Carl!” she exclaimed as Christine approached. “He was a lot hairier!”
Christine smiled and nodded at the comment. “Yes, ma’am, I get that a lot.”
“I’m sorry, dearie, but when I talked to you on the phone, I thought you perhaps were a new secretary Carl had hired. Where is he, anyway? Couldn’t he make it?”
“Actually, I’m the new conservation officer for the region. Carl Kuehn is no longer with the service.” Slinging her work backpack over her left shoulder, she walked up three low steps and extended her hand to Geraldine, saying, “My name is Christine Moon.” The woman shook it lightly.
“Well, that’s too bad! I liked Carl!” The woman waited a beat, then added, “But I’m sure you’ll do just fine at the job, dearie! It’s nice to meet you!”
Christine noted that, although the senior’s hands were not gloved, they were very warm to the touch, which she found surprising for someone of Geraldine’s obviously advanced years -- the woman couldn’t possibly be a day under ninety-five.
“Thank you! Nice to meet you as well. And I’ll try my best,” Christine said, still smiling.
The woman's face became serious. “I hope Carl filled you in on my situation before he left?”
“Actually, no, he left rather abruptly. Perhaps you can fill in the blanks for me?”
“Sit down, dearie!” The woman gestured toward a wicker chair that matched hers, separated by a small, square table. Christine nodded and sat down, putting her pack on the floor beside the chair.
Before speaking, the woman wrapped her arthritic hands around a large, vat-sized mug. She took a delicate sip of the steaming beverage. The paper tag hanging off the side of her mug proudly proclaimed it to be a hot cup of Earl Grey tea. With her whistle whetted, Geraldine told Christine of how she and her late husband Norbert had raised unwanted and abandoned animals from all over the Kootenays during their life together. They especially loved the ones that had come from an abusive environment or could no longer be cared for by their owners for whatever reason. When they came to her acreage, she explained, they were well tended to the end of the days. That was, up until Norbert’s passing several years ago. Feeding and tending the animals on her own had been too much of a challenge for Geraldine after that. Though reluctant to do so, she’d been forced to give most of them away to good homes where she knew the owners weren’t going to abuse or harm them in any way.
Taking another sip of tea, Geraldine continued, “The only thing I couldn’t give away was the gosh-darned wild turkeys! They just keep coming back, year after year, God bless ‘em! That’s probably because I keep feedin’ ‘em!” She cackled at her joke, then said with a wistful look in her eyes, “I adore their small, wrinkled, bald heads — they so remind me of Norbert! I just love seeing ‘em clucking and gobbling about the place. Makes me feel a little less lonely. Most years around here, I get a dozen or so of the little cuties. But last year was a real bumper crop of ‘em!”
“More than twelve?” Christine politely inquired.
“That’s right, dearie! One fine spring day, mama and papa turkey showed up with eighteen of the little gobblers wandering along behind ‘em! Can you believe it? Eighteen! Gotta be a record!” She beamed with obvious pride.
“Yes, ma’am, that might be one for Mr. Guinness,” Christine said, smiling encouragingly.
“They’d been all over this property up until yesterday. In fact, they usually nested in the pine trees just in back of the house.”
Christine nodded in agreement, knowing that the wild birds were likely to do so at night for safety reasons. The average citizen of Lawless would be quite surprised to learn of the large birds' nocturnal predilection. Most people operated under the impression that because the turkeys were usually seen going about their daily business in a more pedestrian mode, narrowly avoiding collisions with local cars and trucks as they gobbled their way about town, then they must be earthbound creatures and incapable of flight. But that was actually quite far from the truth. The reality was that they were more than capable of flight over short distances compared to their domesticated brethren, sometimes up to distances as far as half a kilometre.
Christine recalled hearing about an incident a few years back near Castlegar, an area of the Kootenays blessed with an overabundance of the tall, gawky creatures. This particular wild turkey decided to stretch its wings across a busy roadway, directly in front of a speeding pickup truck. Th
e fifteen-kilogram bird caved in the truck’s windshield, breaking the driver’s nose and so startling him that his turkey-tainted truck careened off the road into a mud-filled ditch. It severely damaged both the vehicle and the driver’s reputation, who also happened to be a very well-respected local outdoorsman. For many years after that, when hunting season came round, the man was forced to endure the nickname bestowed upon him by some of the more flippant locals in the area, ‘The Turkinator’.
Geraldine continued, “The little ones were just about old enough to be leavin’ their parents, but now they’re all gone!” Geraldine’s eyes welled with tears as she recalled the loss of her babies. Lifting a corner of her glasses, she swiped at the tears with one bony knuckle. “Here, let me show you what that horrible thing did to them.” The elderly woman pulled herself upright from the chair and grabbed a walker sitting next to it. She began slowly rolling toward the rear corner of the house, Christine at her side.
“Are you sure they just didn’t leave on their own,” Christine asked as they toddled merrily along.
“No, dearie, I’m pretty sure some bastardly thing ate ‘em!”
“All eighteen of them?”
“That’s right, all eighteen of my little Norberts as far as I know! Something horrible came through here last night and had a wild turkey dinner and gobbled ‘em all down!” She looked prepared to spit on the ground as she spoke, but apparently, decorum got the better of her at the last minute, and she cleared her throat instead.
Rounding the side of the house, the back of the acreage came into view. “Just see for yourself!” Geraldine said, taking one hand off her walker. She lifted her arms in a grand gesture, encompassing the scene of the massacre, just in case Christine missed something. Blood and feathers were smeared across various spots on the ground. The elderly woman finished, saying, “All of my babies, dead and gone! Eaten by some horrible creature!”
Christine looked about the yard. There were bones, blood and guts scattered everywhere, the remains of several birds to be sure, but not quite the eighteen that Geraldine espoused. Perhaps the ones that didn't get eaten may have literally flown the coop in their panicked attempts to flee the predator attacking them, and had fled the area permanently as a result.
“What do you mean, ma’am, when you say 'creature'? How do you know it wasn’t coyotes or perhaps a badger?” Christine asked.
“Look at the prints that the thing left behind on the ground!” Geraldine pointed to impressions in the earth amongst the blood and feathers. “There ain’t no way that’s a coyote or a badger!”
Christine walked down a small flight of steps to the back yard for a closer look, leaving Geraldine on the veranda. The impressions in the ground were larger than a coyote’s, that was certain. Bending down and looking closely at them, she thought they were large enough to be a match for her dismembered guest lying on the concrete floor back at her shop. Removing her gloves, she took her Canon out of its case and snapped numerous digital photos of the scene, especially from close-up. She wanted to have detailed shots of the spoor for Zelda at down at SFU. But a picture, despite being worth a thousand words, was not quite as verbose as a cast impression, she thought to herself with a smile.
Removing her backpack, Christine knelt next to a particularly good, deep impression where the bloody slush was still frozen around the print. No blood or feathers were contaminating its clarity, and it looked to be a prime candidate. She pulled out a one-litre, stainless steel water bottle from her pack, along with a plastic bag labelled ‘dental stone’ and placed them on the ground near her feet. She recalled her first day in training, using dental stone to make an impression at the academy. Along with the rest of her class, she was surprised to learn that it was the same product that dentists and denturists used to create positive replicas from the alginate moulds they made of patient’s teeth. Crouching down, she smiled, thinking that day was now many hundreds of impressions ago.
Shaking her head at the memory, Christine took a small amount of the white powder in her hand and proceeded to scatter it about the depression left by the beast, lightly coating the entire surface of the print. Only a dusting of powder was needed at first to establish a ‘crust’ of the alginate inside the impression. Unlike casting a mould of a print in the dirt, she couldn’t just pour the mixed dental stone into the frozen impression all at once. The stone warmed slightly as it cured and it would have melted the snow, ruining the casting. Taking her bottle, she poured some of the water into the remaining stone in the bag and proceeded to knead it like it was dough until it reached the proper consistency. She then slowly poured the pancake batter-thick mixture into the powder-lined impression.
With just about a half an hour to kill while the casting firmed up, Christine had time to explore. She stood, turned around and saw Geraldine sitting patiently on the fold-down seat of her walker. Christine asked, “Do you mind if I poke around the property a little bit more while this casting dries?”
“You go right ahead, dearie! But be careful of that thing, whatever it is. I’m sure it likes to eat lovely young ladies like yourself, just as much as it likes wild turkeys!”
“Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ll make sure I’m very cautious.”
“All right, then. And when you’re done, you need to come in for a nice cup of tea to warm up. And stop calling me ma’am, my name is Geraldine!”
“That sounds nice, thank you, ma’am. I’m sorry, I mean Geraldine!”
“That’s better, dearie!” Geraldine said over her shoulder as she wobbled and rolled unsteadily toward her kitchen to make tea for her guest.
The back yard of the house really was a mess. Christine checked out the immediate scene of the carnage a bit further, then moved into the fog. A wide path resolved out the grey before her, and she followed it for about a kilometre, then stopped. A choice now stood before her as she tried to figure out from which direction the animal might have travelled.
The path branched in two. The wider of the two trails moved slightly downhill, leading toward the the acreage and a barn, if she had to guess, but couldn’t see anything for sure due to the limited visibility. The other path wound up the mountainside, disappearing into the fog. She nodded to herself, that looked like a more promising candidate.
Several sections of brush appeared partially trampled by something moving through it -- most likely her predator. Noting the direction of travel the creature took through the flora with her GPS unit, she thought about following it a bit farther but felt a damp tickle of anxiety along the back of her neck. Already aware that the fog was making her feel anxious and claustrophobic, she felt there was something else feeding her sense of disquiet.
With a flash of clarity, she realised the cause of her unease, and it was from two different sources. Firstly, she realised she was unsure if the creature that had killed the turkeys might have had a mate. There was no evidence to say that it did, but what if there was another? She looked around in the gloom and listened hard, straining to hear any sound that might be a threat. Hearing nothing, she remained on edge nonetheless.
The other cause of her disquiet just now was when she realised she was naked and that she’d traipsed into this shifting labyrinth of fog-shrouded trees unarmed. Her thirty-aught-six was resting comfortably in the gun rack in the back window of her pickup truck back at Geraldine’s house. How could she have been so stupid and forgotten it! She shook her head in disbelief, mentally chiding herself for forgetting something so important, especially in her current situation. That was a rookie mistake if ever there was, and one that could cost her her life.
Knowing she’d gotten lucky so far, Christine decided to hit the pause button on her little search operation and literally stick a pin in things for now. Activating her GPS, she grabbed a colourful, yellow, digital pin on the touch screen and dropped it onto her map for future reference. Though she was unable to see where she was thanks to the mist, if need be, she could at least find this spot again at a later date.
Fifteen tense minutes of navigating later, using only her GPS receiver as a guide, Christine was finally back at her truck. She opened the driver’s door and was relieved to see her Springfield, waiting faithfully for her in the gun rack. After a few seconds of mentally flogging herself one more time for forgetting the damned thing, she remembered there was one more task she wanted to complete at her truck before going inside for tea with Geraldine.
Pulling out her GPS unit once more, she quickly extrapolated the creature’s trajectory based on its current incident locations. She made sure to include the attack at the house as well as the site of the creature’s ultimate demise on the highway. The animal appeared to have come from the direction of Gold Ridge, and there was only one other property directly in line with Gold Ridge. It was situated on an acreage directly adjacent to Geraldine’s: The Golden Nugget Casino and Resort.
Shaking her head in wonder, she said, “First, giant exploding raccoons, now a wild turkey smorgasbord, and all within the vicinity of the resort. What next? Coyotes dealing Texas Holdem, while the deer and antelope play slots in the lounge?” She grinned slightly at her own joke, gazing into the fog. Her sense of disquiet returned. She uneasily turned her back to the forest and climbed the porch steps to see Geraldine and the cup of hot tea awaiting her inside.