Claw

by Katie Berry

  When his eyes snapped open this time, instead of a bare, white room to greet him, he found a man standing at the foot of his bed. He was a tall, angular man with a greying goatee, holding a plastic 7-11 shopping bag in one hand. He looked vaguely familiar.

  “Hi there,” Jerry said hoarsely. “Don’t I know you?”

  “Sort of,” the man said, smiling slightly. He approached the bed, extending his hand. “I’m Austin Murphy, one of the guys that pulled you up from the edge of that cliff you went over.”

  “Hi, it’s great to meet you,” Jerry said, smiling weakly as he shook Austin’s hand. The meaning of what Austin said took a couple of seconds to percolate through to Jerry’s pain-killer addled brain, and he stopped in mid-shake. “Hold on, could you back that up a second? Did you say a cliff?”

  “Yup, when you went airborne, if you hadn’t fallen off your sled and landed on the ledge where you did, you would have ended up at the valley bottom, about six hundred metres down, along with your snowmobile.”

  “Holy shit!” Jerry’s eyes went wide.

  “Holy shit, indeed.” Austin smiled, nodding slightly.

  “Well, thanks for the rescue.”

  “You’re welcome. You just got lucky, actually. I was checking the avalanche conditions from the forest lookout. From what I could see, it looked like there’d been some major problems at your camp, so my friend and I decided to investigate. When we followed the snowmobile tracks, we found you, semi-conscious on the ledge.”

  “I am in your debt,” Jerry said gravely.

  “No worries.”

  “Thanks for coming by to see me. I wanted to talk to someone about what happened to me out there.” He nodded toward the mountains visible through the small white-curtained window.

  “Haven’t the police been by to talk to you since you woke up?”

  “Not yet. I don’t know if they’ve been informed. But I suppose they’ll want me to give a statement.”

  “That is strange... Well, maybe I can help you. First of all, do you want to tell me what happened?”

  Jerry pushed himself up in bed a bit more before speaking, then cleared his throat, “Yeah, thanks. Long story short, I’m a geologist by trade and my buddies, and I usually have a winter getaway each year to someplace or another around the world. We’ve been doing it for the last fifteen years or so since we graduated college. Anyway, this year, it was decided that snowmobiling was the way to go. When I heard my buddies were coming up here, I was all gung-ho, since the recent seismic activity that you had a few weeks ago was very, very interesting, from a geologic standpoint.”

  “Well, thanks. That quake caused quite a bit of havoc on the roads with avalanches and rock slides.”

  “I was surprised that you hadn’t had any more activity since then.”

  “No, should we be expecting more?”

  “Well, there’s a major new fault line running through the north end of this valley. According to the data that my colleagues and I've correlated, you could have another at any time now, and a major one to boot. The last one only caused a small amount of slippage in the fault, but from the data we have, it looks like you might be in line for another one, only this time, much, much bigger.”

  “That’s not exactly comforting news.”

  “That’s only one of the things I wanted to talk about.”

  “What’s the other?” Austin asked, pulling up a small wooden chair next to the bed and sitting down.

  “Well, we got up there just after noon and set up camp. I told the guys I’d be off exploring some of the rock formations near the ridges to see if I could what new layers of strata had been revealed, and also to try and ascertain the state of the fault.” Now that he was talking about something he was passionate about, Jerry shifted into teaching mode. “This area has been a real hotbed of fossil finds over the last couple of decades. As the glacier has melted, whenever there’s been a significant seismic event, there’s usually fresh fossil evidence due to the backscatter effect -- all sorts of interesting things coming to the surface from deep down below. In fact, a community much further north of here with a similar geographic layout had a similar occurrence, and they found the remains of a woolly mammoth almost one hundred percent intact! So you can imagine my excitement to be able to check out your area after what happened here. I was hoping to find something similarly exciting.”

  “Well, you at least you were right about the exciting part.”

  “Yes, but the wrong kind, unfortunately. That kind of excitement ate all of my friends.” His paused, his chest heaving as he choked back a sob. After a moment, he continued, “I honestly don’t know if there’ll be any of them left to bury. Has any trace of them been found?”

  “We didn’t find any bodies anywhere, just a lot of blood.”

  “I think that’s because that goddamn thing ate every last bit of them. It’s a fucking monster!” Jerry’s face flooded red with anger as he talked about the beast.

  “I know, I’ve seen it! And we’ve had other attacks since we rescued you, as well.”

  “No! How many?”

  “At least two that we know of. We just had one last night at a local pub out near the highway.”

  “Frostbite Fred’s?”

  “Yup, that’s the place. You know it?”

  “We drove by it on our way up to the campsite. Tyler said he loved their ribs. He’d been here a few years back in the summer and was raving about them. Said he wanted to swing by there on the way out of town to get some for the road.” Jerry’s face dropped for a moment as he recalled his dead friend.

  “It looks like it’ll be a while before they’re back in business, there was quite a bit of damage when the creature tried to get into the bar to snack on the patrons.”

  “Jesus!” Jerry shuddered at the thought, then had another. “But there was something else I should mention.”

  “About what happened at camp?”

  “Sort of. While I was away exploring the ridge, I came across something very interesting at the source of the fault.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I found a cavern. I believe it’s only been recently exposed because of the quake.”

  “Okay, and?” Austin leaned in to hear Jerry, whose voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “I think I found a major new vein of gold up there.”

  “Really? But it’s not too surprising, given the history of this area.”

  “I know, but there’s something else that I have been thinking about, and it may be linked to that beast killing people down here.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I think I led that monster back to my camp and then it killed my friends. When I was at the cavern, there was something that didn’t register at the time. But it has since then, now that I’ve had time to think about it.” Jerry paused again.

  “And?”

  “And it was something I noticed on one of the trees near the cavern just as the sun was going down before the ice fog hit.”

  “What was that?”

  “Claw marks. But they were so high up, I almost didn’t see them at first, and even then, they didn’t really register. I thought at the time, how could something claw so high, right? So anyway, I dismissed them. Now with everything replaying through my mind once as I lay here, I finally remembered them. I thought that it might be important, so that’s why I asked to talk to you. I thought it might help you track it down.”

  “Thank you. Any information we can get at this point is helpful.” Austin suddenly remembered he had a bag in his hand. “Oh, and before I forget, this is for you.” He held out the shopping bag to Jerry.

  “What’s this?” Jerry took the bag and opened it, peeking inside.

  “A few things to make your stay here a little more pleasant.”

  Jerry smiled as he pulled out the contents. “Thanks, that should help pass the time.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank my son, it was his idea.”

  “Well, then, pleas
e thank him for me.”

  Austin looked at this wristwatch. “I’ll do that. Well, I’ve got to run now and make sure we get more bear warning signs planted. Maybe we can find this thing, now that the weather’s cleared. Take care.”

  “I will!” Jerry suddenly felt exhausted once more and lay the shopping bag at his side.

  Almost as an afterthought, Austin turned back toward Jerry, pulling his wallet out of his pants pocket as he spoke. “And if you think of anything else, here’s my card. Give me a call,” Austin handed a business card to Jerry and tucked his wallet away once more. He nodded to Jerry briefly, then turned and left the room.

  “Thanks again,” Jerry said, turning the card over in his hands as Austin Murphy walked down the gleaming, white corridor. Jerry looked up as Murphy turned a corner, wondering if that would be the man to bring about a resolution to the horror that stalked the local mountains. He examined the card more closely and discovered it had printing on both sides. Apparently, the man wore two hats in this town. One side of the white card informed the reader that he was Austin Murphy, Head of Public Works, City of Lawless, BC. At the bottom were his office and cell phone numbers. The reverse side had the same phone numbers listed, but at the top, it read: Austin Murphy, Head of Animal Control, City of Lawless, BC.

  Jerry Benson smiled slightly as he muttered to himself, “I hope he’s going to be able to control that thing out in the forest.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Austin exhaled, a cloud of vapour jetting from his mouth and dissipating into the crisp morning air. He stood for a moment under the porte-cochère entrance, checking his messages. It seemed Christine was awake already and wanting to see him. He sent a quick reply, telling her that he was at the hospital and going to call Trip to come and pick him up. She replied not to bother Trip at the moment as she would swing by and give him a ride adding she had something she wanted to show him.

  Marvelling about the joys of living in a small town, less than two minutes later, Austin watched Christine’s Dodge Ram pull up under the covered entrance. The vehicle’s thick, studded tires crunched on the frozen slush as it slowed to a stop.

  Reaching across and pushing open the passenger side door, Christine said, “Morning, Austin!”

  “Hey there, Christine! How was your sleep?” Austin asked, stepping into the pickup.

  “Not long enough.” She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.

  “I know how you feel. What did you get? About four hours downtime?”

  “Three and a half.”

  “Ow! That’s not enough.”

  Glancing upward out of the windshield at the dazzling day overhead, Christine said, “Tell me about it. But what about this weather, though? It’s amazing, isn’t it? It’s so nice to see the fog gone!” She sounded as giddy as a schoolgirl on her first day of summer vacation.

  As Christine expressed her glee, Austin was struck once more by the musicality in her voice. She smiled broadly as she looked up into the luminous morning. He looked up as well, thinking that the brilliant blue sky reflected in her mirrored sunglasses was no competition for the piercing blue eyes that sparkled beneath. He said, “I agree, absolutely! It’s the first sunlight we’ve seen down here in weeks. Enjoy it while you can, though, because unfortunately, it’s not supposed to last.”

  “What?” Christine put the truck in gear and slowly pulled away from the hospital entrance, heading toward the conservation office.

  “I just double-checked with Sam at the weather office before you got here. He said the fog is supposed to pour into the valley again tonight. But with the cold air here now, that means it’ll be an ice fog instead of that soggy stuff we had before.”

  “Ice fog?”

  “Didn’t Carl leave you any notes about regional quirks and quarks?”

  “No, as I think I mentioned, he left rather abruptly a few weeks back.” Christine shrugged.

  “Yeah. I know it was kind of strange. He’d been talking about his upcoming retirement for months. Trip said, a few weeks back, Carl was telling him about this great new hotspring at this cavern he’d found and saved in his GPS, and how he would be dragging Trip up to it for some exercise in the near future. Then, he just packs it all in and disappears in a puff of smoke! Trip swung by to check on him, and his fifth wheel was gone like he’d bugged out without telling anyone and just blew town! Nobody's seen or heard from him since.”

  “I was kind of surprised to get the call myself. I knew I was lined up to replace him, but not as quickly as this, so I really had to scramble to get up here in time from the coast. But I don’t regret the move; it’s such a beautiful area.” She glanced up at the sky again. “I can’t believe we’re going to get more fog. Ice fog this time, you say?”

  “Yessum. It’s usually constrained to the glacier area. But sometimes, once the inversion clears and the temperature drops, it can come flooding down into the valley below in the evening.”

  “It creates a lot of problems, does it?” Her brow knitted in concern.

  “Well, if it hits tonight like Sam figures, the ground, the buildings, the cars and everything else outside will all be covered in a layer of thick frost by tomorrow morning.”

  “Sounds slippery.”

  “You don’t know the half of it! It makes travel extremely dangerous.”

  “It’ll probably happen, then. Murphy’s Law and all, you know…” Christine said distractedly, as she pulled the truck into the back of the conservation compound.

  Looking across the yard from where they parked, Austin spotted two cylindrical metal bear traps on the lot, both empty at the moment. He said, “So, on a different note, are you going to try to capture Angus if we can find him?”

  Still sitting behind the wheel of her truck, Christine looked over at Austin. She said nothing, but tilted her head slightly, a smile tracing the corners of her lips, as if to say, you poor, poor, tetched little thing you.

  Seeing this expression, Austin added, a smile of his own forming on his face, “But I don’t suppose you have a trap big enough, huh?”

  With a laugh, Christine said, “Nope, so unless you’re going to throw gas grenades at it like King Kong, I think trapping it is out of the question. We need to put that predator down before it causes any more deaths.”

  “So what are you going to use to stop it? Trip said the shotgun he and Greg used only pissed it off.”

  As they walked through the door into the shop at the back of the building, Christine said, “That’s not surprising. According to Zelda, the hide on Angus probably has a layer of subcutaneous fat at least a half dozen centimetres thick. There’s no way a shotgun could penetrate that, not from the distance that Trip said they fired the buckshot from. A shot with a 30-.06 might do it, but you’d have to be very precise. Which brings us to the reason that I was I was up so early, I got a call from one of our local courier services with a special delivery, and I had the boogie down here to the office to meet him.”

  “Did you have something come in from Amazon?”

  “I don’t think you’ll ever get one of these from Amazon,” Christine said, walking toward the gun storage locker on the far side of the workshop. She grabbed a set of keys from a desk drawer next to it and unlocked the tall, black gun safe.

  “My headquarters was kind enough to ship some extra equipment up to me that I requested.” She pulled open the door to the safe. “Meet the Hannibal .577 Tyrannosaur rifle.”

  Next to Christine’s Remington .30-06, a massive rifle sat locked down in the second slot of the storage locker. It didn’t look much longer than the Remington, but as Christine removed the gun, Austin could see that the barrel was huge and it that it looked much more substantial than your average rifle. He whistled and said, “A Tyrannosaur rifle? As in Rex? It has to be since the bore of that barrel is huge!”

  “Yes, at seven hundred and fifty metres per second, the shells generate almost fourteen thousand kilojoules of muzzle energy.”

  “Wow, that's i
mpressive!”

  “Thanks, I got that from the sales brochure.” Christine beamed him a smile, continuing, “This rifle was designed to stop charging rhinos, hippos, elephants and the like. The manufacturer named it the Tyrannosaur, or T-Rex, because it’s the only rifle that would be capable of stopping something as large as that dinosaur, were it to exist in our world today.