Claw

by Katie Berry

  Jerry had swivelled his head back and forth, watching this exchange between Austin and the now-departed Trip in disbelief. He momentarily forgot his fear. In its place, he found his sense of incredulity and said, “Who do you guys think you are, the Green Hornet and Kato?”

  “What do you mean?” Alex asked Jerry.

  “Your dad and his buddy there seem to think they’re the Marines, Cavalry and Dudley Do-Right, all rolled into one.”

  “That’s not fair,” Alex said, defending his dad. “They’re trying to help save some lives here since nobody can drive in to help us with the road being blocked from the avalanche. We’re on our own here! The only other way in or out is by air, and that’s not going to happen either, not with the ice fog on the way!” Alex pointed over Jerry’s shoulder toward the Kootenay Glacier.

  Jerry turned and saw a thick wall of fog drifting down the hillside from above, preparing to coat the resort and valley below in a fresh crystalline blanket. He’d almost forgotten about the fog and was taken aback by the intensity of the boy’s speech as he spoke in defence of his father’s actions. “Sorry, kid, you’re right. My emotions got the better of me there. We need to do everything we can.”

  “Thanks, Mr.Benson.” Alex nodded, satisfied. “What about me, Dad?” The boy sounded eager to help.

  Austin appreciated his son’s standing up for him, once more marvelling at this kid of his. “Alex, you can come with me to help make sure everybody is safe and secure!”

  “Awesome! I’m on it, Dad. You know me!” Alex said, high-fiving his father, this time with no reluctance.

  Returning the palm slap, Austin said, “I know, thanks, son.” He turned to Jerry. “Okay, so we’re heading into the casino now to warn everyone we can find that the bear is coming their way and could attack at any moment.”

  “So we’re just going to warn everyone inside about the bear, and that’s all?” Jerry inquired. The plan seemed pretty straightforward.

  “Not quite,” Austin said. “We’re also going to piss Angus off — and then encourage him to follow us and eat us instead! It’s simple, see? So let’s go!” He pushed the kitchen door open and barrelled inside with Alex close on his heels.

  “I’m pretty sure that thing won’t need too much encouragement to eat you,” he aloud said to the kitchen door as it clicked closed in his face. “One human tastes pretty much the same as the next, I’m sure -- just like chicken.” He smiled grimly as he took a final look up the lane toward the bear’s last known position, but was unable to see anything. The glittering white bank of fog flowed down the slope toward the resort, the last of the fading twilight glinting off its top layer, giving it an ethereal look. Everything it touched received a glittering, frosty coating as if an ice queen were enchanting the land and redecorating it to her whim. With a sigh, Jerry hoped that this was one fairy tale he would not have to be part of for very much longer. He turned and hurried inside the kitchen.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  “Now what in the hell is that?” VanDusen said, shining the light attached to the end of his shotgun toward the sound. The Maglite offered several brightness levels and beam sizes. The chief currently had it set to wide-angle, floodlight mode, in an effort to spotlight whatever was rapidly approaching their location.

  Christine shone Nichols’ flashlight about but could see nothing, yet.

  Growling louder, the animal sounded much nearer now and thoroughly menacing. Just beyond where the beams of the flashlights could reach, another low rumble emanated from the throat of the creature.

  As one, the group stepped backward, their inborn self-preservation skills unconsciously kicking in as the thing in the darkness came closer and closer.

  Listening carefully, Christine thought she recognised the sound from somewhere, but couldn’t quite place it.

  “Just shoot into the darkness, Reggie!” Chance shouted shrilly in VanDusen’s left ear.

  “Just shut the fuck up, Ray and let me concentrate!” VanDusen shouted, shouldering Chance aside and taking the safety off the Versa Max.

  “Don’t waste any of your ammunition until you have something to shoot at,” Christine admonished in a low voice from his right.

  “Way ahead of you, bitch,” VanDusen said. He pumped the slide, putting a round into the shotgun's chamber.

  Nichols stood slightly behind Christine and VanDusen. If it came down to brass tacks, he meant to use the woman as a human shield to save himself from whatever was out there. Sorry, my dear, he thought, it’s just self-preservation. Christine had her back to Nichols, focussing on what was approaching, apparently unaware of how close he stood.

  They were all frozen in place, listening for another sound. The chief slowly tracked his gun back and forth, ready to squeeze the trigger should anything come at them.

  Chance turned to VanDusen and barked once more, “I still say you should just pump a few rounds into the darkness and see if you can scare it…” Chance never finished. With lightning speed, a shape streaked from the edge of darkness at them. It was frighteningly quick, blurring through both the Chief’s and Christine's light beams as it rocketed toward their location. Whatever was coming at them was now moving so fast that neither of them could track it as it approached.

  The beast launched itself out of the darkness, seeming to fly through the air in a well-timed leap. It slammed into Ray Chance, knocking him backward by several metres into the darkness. Chance made a huge, almost comical ‘oof’ as the air was knocked out of him.

  The members of the party scattered. Nichols shrieked and grabbed for Christine, but she lept sideways, away from his grasping hands, doing a quick commando roll along the ground then regaining to her feet with cat-like agility. She’d been more than aware of the Mayor’s clumsy attempts to casually sidle up behind her earlier and had figured out the reason why. Despite looking otherwise, she had most definitely been paying close attention to His Highness, and she’d been ready to move. Nichols swore as he stumbled forward, now grasping only at empty air, instead of the woman he wanted to hide behind.

  Seeming to come out from his trance of shock, VanDusen brought the Remington’s to bear on the animal. The sharp, white brilliance of the Maglite cast the scene before him in stark detail. He pulled the trigger.

  An empty metallic click came from the gun -- it was jammed. “Shit!” VanDusen swore. His panicked fingers attempted to clear the jam, feeling large and ungainly as he fumbled to clear the shotgun.

  The creature tore into Chance. Fangs like swords sliced into his throat and face, shredding him to ribbons. His startled screams devolved into a series of wet gurgles within seconds. Blood flowed from his lacerated body, his hands batting weakly and ineffectually against the beast’s muscular chest. With a quick jerk of its thick, muscular neck, the animal tore Chance’s head from his body.

  “Jesus Christ! What the hell is that?” Nichols screamed, backpedalling and tripping over his feet. He went down hard on his ass in a jolt of pain and scuttled away from the repugnance on display before him.

  VanDusen gaped in horror. Tendons, pumping arteries and slabs of fat splayed out from where Ray Chance's head used to be. The stump of his neck looked for all the world like reheated spaghetti with way too much Ragu sauce that he’d wolfed down for a late breakfast that morning. Reggie thought he might blow chunks, but knew that now was not the time to act like a queasy rookie. And yet, he could have sworn he’d just heard someone who sounded an awful lot like him screaming like a little girl. His fingers finally unknotted, freeing the jam in the Versa Max, and he pumped round after round into the creature ravaging Chance.

  Christine knew what the beast was and had no desire to stick around to see if VanDusen could exterminate it. As soon as she’d seen it, she’d known she needed to get as far away from their current location as possible. She ran toward the entrance of the ante-chamber, disbelief crowding her mind, her thoughts awhirl. It couldn’t be, but it was -- Ray Chance was getting eaten alive by a sabre-toothed tiger!


  What was the hell going on around here? First, it was a giant raccoon, then a monster bear, and now a man-eating feline from the Flintstones. It was as if the veil of one-hundred thousand years that separated humankind from these prehistoric terrors no longer existed and its complacent position at the top of the food chain was no longer assured, at least not inside this cavern.

  The sound of crunching feet on gravel came from behind Christine, and she looked back. Mayor Bob Nichols was hot on her heels, moving admirably fast for a man of his advancing years. He’d been following the beam of her flashlight as she’d fled. She picked up her pace, bolting through the steam-shrouded exit and into the lava tube tunnels.

  Christine ran as fast as she dared towards the main cavern. Since abominations from the past had compromised the exit she was hoping for at the rear of the water-filled cavern; it seemed her only choice now was to head back toward the entrance. And seeing as she didn’t want Nichols following her to the front of the cavern, she needed to draw his attention away from the direction she was travelling. Her hope was Nichols could provide some sort of diversion for the creature, should it get past Vandusen’s shotgun and come looking for more tasty treats. Hell, even if VanDusen finally killed the cat, judging by what she’d seen so far, there were probably plenty of other primaeval nightmares already stalking around back there, defrosted in the primordial soup of the underground lake. No doubt something else would come looking to have either one, or all of them as a tasty, after-thaw snack. Yes, the more she thought about it, the more the ‘Honourable’ Bob Nichols, Mayor of Lawless, seemed like an excellent diversion.

  After a quick burst of speed, she was far enough in front of the Mayor so that he'd lost sight of her as she jogged around a gradual curve in the tunnel. There was a fork ahead, and Christine paused for a moment. She knew she needed to bear right, but instead turned toward the leftmost tunnel and tossed the flashlight several metres in that direction. It was one they hadn’t explored on their way into this steamy hell, and she hoped that it would lead to more boiling springs and cavernous drop-offs to nowhere. She was hoping against hope that Nichols would be stupid enough to take the torch and run with it in that direction, buying her more time to make good the escape she had devised. She trotted down the tunnel that branched to the right and peered back around the corner.

  As if right on cue, the hopefully soon-to-be-ex Mayor of Lawless came scampering around the corner of the tunnel, breathing hard as he stumbled after her in the dark. He spotted the flashlight on the ground a little ways down the tunnel to the left and trotted over to pick it up. He paused, a slight wheeze of laughter escaping his lips as he marvelled at his good fortune in finding the light. Still breathing heavily, he stood, bent over slightly, one hand on his knee as he swept the light back and forth between the tunnels, looking unsure which way to go. He was no doubt wondering what the hell had happened to Christine. After hesitating a moment longer, he chose a path.

  Christine smiled as she watched the flashlight’s beam bobbing up and down the unexplored lava tube to the left, disappearing into the darkness. Bob Nichols's fate was now up to whatever he found down at the end of that dark, lonely tunnel. Or whatever ended up finding HIM down at the end of that dark, lonely tunnel, which she thought seemed more likely.

  Moving a little farther around the bend from the branching tunnel, Christine pulled out the iPhone she’d found earlier, turning it on to use its screen as a meagre light. As she’d fled, inspiration struck, and she’d remembered the natural vent she’d seen earlier near the tent inside the main cavern. Maybe, just maybe, that vertical shaft was wide enough for her to shimmy up. She’d done it before. Having grown up climbing some of the West Coast’s more challenging, rocky wonders with her father, she knew how to climb a chimney with the best of them.

  Christine Moon ran up the tunnel toward the front of the cavern, an ember of new hope glowing brightly in her chest.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Edna O'Toole sat in the smoking section of the Golden Nugget Casino bar. She watched the latest cloud from her nicotine vaporizer get sucked up into the room’s ventilation system. The smoking section (or vaping section on some days it seemed) was a bit of a misnomer as it wasn’t actually a section located inside the casino but instead accessed through a breezeway that connected it to the main building. Thanks to a decision several years back by the provincial government, there was now no smoking of anything, anywhere in any public building in the Province of BC, including within three metres of any door or window.

  This separate ‘smokehouse’, as her fellow nicotine addicts affectionately called it, was usually quite busy, but this afternoon, Edna had the room to herself. It appeared the scare with the bear had thinned out the crop of regular gamblers and most of the visitors as well.

  Then there was that damned earthquake. She’d just settled into the smokehouse for a delicious after-lunch vape when it struck; then all hell broke loose. The shaking had been quite substantial, at least out in the smokehouse.

  Stumbling along on unsteady feet, she’d panicked, worried about the seniors and bolted into the casino. Amazingly, none of the Golden Castle residents appeared in any way concerned about their current predicament. They all just sat there, staring into their machines, and pressing the buttons again and again, as if all stimuli from the outside world were no longer worthy of their attention, superseded by the colourful graphics on the slot’s screens and mindless music blaring from their speakers. Apparently, these hypnotic homewreckers drove all conscious thought of self-preservation from their minds as well as their wallets.

  Edna had screamed at the seniors to take cover as the room shook around them.

  There was no response. They kept feeding credit after credit into their insatiable one-armed overlords, pulling their levers and pressing their buttons, utterly oblivious to their current jeopardy. And then, just when Edna had been getting ready to start physically hauling the old farts into doorways and other locations of safety, the quake had ended.

  She’d stood there, looking around in disbelief. Stanley Skrill had just been wheeling himself over to another slot machine when she called out to him, saying, “Why didn’t you run for cover when the earthquake struck? Didn’t you hear me shouting, Stanley? Didn’t you feel the earth move?”

  With a tone of aged disbelief, he said, “Earthquake? What earthquake? I thought my goddamned Parkinson’s was acting up again!”

  Thankfully, the resort's renovation at the turn of the millennium had been a quality job as the damage to the building appeared to be minimal. The power had been unaffected, and the slot machines kept on taking money.

  Edna shook her head as she thought about it. Then shook it some more as she thought of the call she’d just gotten from Jacquie, manager of the Golden Castle Retirement Home back in Lawless. Along with her narcoleptic bus driver, Skip Buffer and her gaggle of golden-age gamblers, she was going to have to hang tight at the hotel for the foreseeable future. The road into town was impassable in places at the moment, to a minibus at least, and nobody knew when it would be open again. So now she had to get a room for the night for each of her geriatric wards. She fumed as she vaped, puffing away on her vaporiser every few seconds. The thought of stepping out into the subzero temperatures to give Skip the bad news was something to which she was not looking forward.

  Edna looked into the lobby from the smokehouse window. She sighed. This afternoon, apart from herself and the residents of the retirement home (or inmates, as she called them), the place was as dead as most of her clients would be in the next few years.

  The afternoon had gone well, initially. Everyone ate their prepared lunch meal in the dining room of the restaurant, and afterwards segued into the casino proper for several hours of wild gambling abandon -- or as much gambling abandon as seventeen cranky octogenarians could muster. Unlike most patrons of the Bonanza Buffet Restaurant at the casino, they did not get to choose their own meals at the smorgasbord. Needing two hands to work
a walker or roll a wheelchair and carry a plate of food at the same time was something far beyond the capabilities of most of the residents of the home. They were allowed to choose between two delicious options: the chicken or the fish.

  Before the quake, this afternoon’s ‘Excursion’ as the home called it, had gone off fairly smoothly. Edna liked to think of these excursions in more dramatic terms, however -- something more along the lines of ‘Adventures In Babysitting 2: Seniors Strike Back’ would be more appropriate to this afternoon's excursion.

  Things had been going swimmingly until Stanley Scrill decided to sample some of the french fries off of Patsy Barrington’s clubhouse sandwich plate. Patsy responded to Stanley’s digital incursion into her crispy pan-fries by giving him a sound whack of his knuckles with the edge of her butterknife, causing Stanley to let out the most god-awful wail Edna had ever heard. After that, she’d made sure to separate them, and the rest of the lunch had gone relatively smoothly.

  With the meal over, she and Skip had wheeled the inmates that couldn’t walk into the slot machine section of the casino. The other, more sentient seniors, or ‘Walkers’, usually wandered around the casino section on their own when they were done, partaking of whatever game they pleased. However, in Edna’s experience, it was the Walkers that were the ones that had to be watched the closest. If you didn’t constantly keep checking up on them, sure enough, every once in awhile, one of them would wander out the front door into the shivering cold for another winter walkabout, like some Australian Bushman adolescent on their quest for manhood.