by Jeremy Bates
Igor didn’t respond.
“Igor?”
Nothing.
“Igor!” she shrieked, the terrible realization sinking in.
Zina rolled him over in the snow. His eyes were closed. Icicles depended from his eyebrows and nose. He’d been crawling forward on his arms when he’d taken his last breath, and his arms had frozen stiff in that position, only now, with him on his back, he almost appeared to be holding them up in front of his face, to defend himself against an invisible attacker.
“Oh no, Igor,” she moaned. How could this be? His intelligence and wit, his ambition and passion—all so abruptly snuffed out. “Igor, Igor, Igor. Oh Igor, please no.” She touched her forehead to his. “I love you so much, Igor. I love you with all my heart. Please come back. Igor? Igor! No no no no no no no.”
After what might have been either a minute or an hour, she kissed him on his frozen lips and resumed climbing the slope.
Searchers from left to right: Mikhail Sharavin, Vladamir Strelnikov, Boris Slobtsov, and Valeriy Khalezov
CHAPTER 30
The cavern wasn’t very big compared to the previous two, but it featured two new passageways, one six-by-six feet, the other half that size. We chose to follow the former.
It went straight for twenty yards before making a gentle right turn. Then, for the first time since we’d entered the warren of tunnels, we were ascending a slope, though with no sky or horizon line to judge our position, descent and ascend were nearly interchangeable terms underground.
The dirt floor was flat and littered with scattered bits of rock. The beam of the Maglite bounced over the multi-colored rock walls studded with the omnipresent shawls and flowstones. One calcite crystal formation we passed resembled clear melted candle wax that had dripped down the wall. The drippings had created several small stalagmites rising from the ground. The tallest was about two feet. Judging by the size of its base, it would have been three times that size but at some point the upper portion had snapped off.
“What are you doing?” Olivia asked, stopping next to me.
“That bit looks broken,” I said, aiming the light on the stalagmite in question.
“So?”
“Nothing. But…well…what broke it?”
“This isn’t the time to be scary, Corey.”
“Maybe it just broke,” Disco said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, though I didn’t point out the obvious.
Where was the missing length?
I pushed the concern from my mind, and we carried on. I knew little about caves and their inner workings. Maybe stalagmites broke apart on their own all the time. Maybe they shattered into small pieces and were reabsorbed into the ground.
The passage continued for another hundred feet or so. The walls became a uniform brown, then darkened to a rich chocolate. Nothing else much changed for the next five minutes until we came to a largish chamber. A round boulder sat in the center of it. So perfectly sculpted and placed, the boulder seemed…wrong. Even so, I told myself the formation was not completely adventitious. It had simply been polished smooth by water that had once run through this passageway, just as a pebble is polished by a flowing river.
We circumvented the obstruction and discovered another passage leading out of the room. At the exit I stopped to look back, crisscrossing the light along the walls and the ceiling.
“What’s up, Whitey?” Disco asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
I was about to continue on when a high-pitched sound emerged from the way we’d come.
The three of us froze.
“Tell me that was the wind,” Olivia said.
“That wasn’t the wind,” I said.
“Bon dieu,” Disco said. “I can’t take any more of this—”
The sound echoed up through the voracious darkness again, and this time its nature could not be mistaken: some kind of hideous scream.
For several moments I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t comprehend what we’d heard. A scream? But what made it? It didn’t sound like anything the yeti had issued.
“The other passage,” Olivia said in a harsh monotone.
“What?” I said, wondering why we weren’t running yet.
“The other passage! The small one!”
I knew what she meant. The yeti couldn’t have followed us down the slide or through the squeeze, but it could have circled about and come down the smaller tunnel in the previous chamber.
“I don’t think that’s—”
Another drilling scream, closer.
“Go!” I shouted, pushing Disco and Olivia ahead of me.
I only made it a few steps when—wham!
Whiteness. A stinging numbness. I dropped to my back as if clotheslined. Then the pain came. I felt as though someone had whacked me in the face with the bottom of a frying pan. I rolled onto my side. My fingers touched a viscid, slippery wound in the center of my forehead.
“Whitey!” It was Disco. I could feel his hands shaking my shoulders.
“What…?” I said. Had I run into some kind of overhang?
“It’s dark dark!”
I’d dropped the Maglite and it had turned off, plunging us into total blackness.
I rolled onto my side and probed the ground blindly.
“Got it!” Disco exclaimed. Click. Click, click, click.
“Turn it on!”
“Not working!”
How could this be happening?
I listened for the sounds of pursuit. All I could hear was our combined breathing and Olivia making a mmm-mmm noise, like she was trying to bite off sobs before they escaped her lips. Then a slapping noise, flesh on plastic. Then twisting, plastic on plastic. Disco fiddling with the Maglite, trying to get to the batteries.
“Turn it on!” Olivia cried.
“I’m trying!” Disco said.
That scream again, closer still, a glassy, pitiless caterwauling so debased it verged on the forbidden.
One hundred feet away? Less?
It was impossible to tell—
My stomach heaved, and I nearly gagged on the stench that had suddenly infiltrated the passageway. It was the most repellent smell I have ever experienced, what Death might smell like if Death could die and rot.
Either Disco or Olivia was vomiting. I could hear the disgorged contents of a stomach splashing the ground wetly next to me—
Whump, whump, whump.
My heart seemed to stop in my chest.
Whump, whump, WHUMP.
Wings? That was what it sounded like. Huge butterfly wings in the boulder room a scant dozen feet away from us.
A new sound, right in front of me. Polypropylene tearing. A second later a snap—and light!
Olivia clenched a glo-stick in her fist. She must have been carrying it in her jacket, along with her mandatory matches and knife.
We had matches. I’d completely forgotten. Then again, I was shaking so violently I doubted I’d be able to spark one right then.
Olivia raised the glo-stick. An anemic green light illuminated her terror-stricken face. She cocked her arm at the elbow, hesitated, then tossed the tube of luminescent chemicals into the boulder room.
In its brief moment of flight, movement darted above it accompanied by a loud whoosh.
The glo-stick struck the boulder and dropped to the ground.
“I saw something!” Olivia whisper-screamed. She had another glo-stick in her hand. She tore off the plastic packaging, snapped the stick, and made to throw it too.
“Keep it!” I said, grabbing her wrist. “And run!”
She stared at me, her eyes vacant, a woman who had lost her mind
“Run!” I shouted.
She took off and I followed, hunched over so I didn’t smack my head on any more overhangs. The passage continued straight for twenty feet before bending to the left. I glanced back. Disco remained way behind.
“Wait!” I called to Olivia.
She kept fleeing.
�
��Olivia!”
She and her green aura dwindled in size.
I turned around.
“Disco!”
A sudden streak of yellow appeared, much brighter than the glow-stick.
He got the Maglite working!
A moment later, that scream.
Demonic and savage, a rage-filled lamentation.
The light shone in my direction. Blinded, I squinted as it grew larger and brighter.
I heard Disco before I saw him chugging toward me. Shouting, “Allons! Allons! Allons!” he caught me by the shoulder and thrust me forward.
We ran.
⁂
Superstitious terror ripped through my bowels. I didn’t know whether that thing was pursuing us or not. I didn’t know what it was. But on both points I expected the worst. Yes, it was right behind us, and God-forbid, it was something straight out of hell.
We were never getting out of this alive.
Our chances had been slim when the yeti was chasing us.
Now this thing?
This abomination—?
I tripped. My hands slammed the cave floor. An electric shock shot through my arms and shoulders. I nearly fainted but somehow regained my feet.
And caught a whiff of that awful stench.
It was pursuing us.
The passageway narrowed and lowered. Soon Disco and I were scrambling on all fours, smacking every inch of our battered bodies.
Disco dropped away before me. My hands sank through air and I followed, falling a few feet and landing hard on my right shoulder.
I looked around but couldn’t see anything. The flashlight had gone out again.
I could hear Disco moaning next to me and—
“Corey?” It was Olivia.
A snap, that green glow.
Olivia stood a few yards away, small and fragile, limed in the light of the glo-stick, which she’d raised protectively, as if it were a crucifix capable of warding off evil spirits.
A scream scythed the darkness, a keening shriek, accompanied by scampering and scraping.
The thing was coming through the crawl.
I found the flashlight, turned it on.
Two passages led away from the room. One ventured down a chain of shallow pits. The other ascended a slope.
I didn’t want to go any deeper, so I chose up.
⁂
Neither my rugged boots nor bulky snowsuit were made for running, and I soon found myself beyond exhaustion, functioning on stolen energy. My thighs and calves stung, my lungs pleaded for a rest, and I didn’t know how much longer I could keep this up. But we couldn’t stop because our pursuer was right behind us. Its screams continued to punctuate the darkness, sounding so close I feared if I turned to look back I would see it clawing and chomping the air in anticipation of its next meal.
Then, in the distance, light!
The walls and ceiling tapered into a funnel that rounded out to match the dimensions of a hallway in a house. This ended at a chokehold shaped like an hourglass.
Issuing wretched, frightened noises in our distress, the three of us shoved through the chokehold one after the other and emerged in a cavern the size of a city block. Amazingly, pine trees and shrubs covered much of the ground and clung precipitously to the walls. The daylight that had given them life streamed through rents in a giant sinkhole in the ceiling that must have formed when the roof collapsed.
My awe at this unexpected development lasted no longer than a heartbeat, because we were screwed. I’d thought—hoped—the light had meant the passageway would deposit us outside, where the cave-dwelling blasphemy might not follow. But this chamber, as magnificent as it might be, was little better than the dark tunnels. Without knowing our way around it, we had nowhere to run or hide—
Olivia shrieked as something huge and hairy burst from the nearby vegetation. Bypassing us, it went straight to the chokehold, gripped the margins with both hands, as if it might widen the crack to accommodate its size with brute strength alone, stuck its head into the darkness, and let loose an earsplitting roar.
The unholy scream responded with such rage and hunger my skin broke out in goosebumps.
The yeti roared again, longer and louder, challenging.
This time the only reply was silence.
⁂
Craning my neck to look up at the yeti’s face, I recognized its physiognomy right away: the bone-white fur, the flesh-colored skin, the penny-colored eyes, even the shape of the flattened nose and thick lips.
It was the female, and while this was certainly preferable to it being the male, I nevertheless remained paralyzed with fear. Vasily had shot her mate, presumably in her home, if that’s what this cave system was to her. She might want to tear us apart on the spot.
As the seconds ticked by and no harm came to us, however, the unreality of the situation waned, the reptilian part of my brain relinquished control, and my wits returned.
“Thank you,” I croaked, my voice thick.
The yeti couldn’t understand me, of course. I was hoping my tone would relay what my words could not: we meant no harm.
Abruptly and spectacularly, the creature made for the forest with her confident loping stride. She stopped next to a crooked pine, turned back to us, and chuffed.
Did she want us to follow her?
She chuffed again.
“Okay,” I said, walking forward.
“Corey!”
I looked back. Olivia and Disco stood as stiff as fence posts, their engorged eyes darting between the yeti and me. I’d been so focused on the creature I’d forgotten about them.
“It’s okay,” I said reassuringly. “She’s the one I gave chocolate to.”
⁂
We remained a respectful distance behind the female yeti. I could scarcely take my eyes off her rippling musculature: her broad backside, her powerful shoulders and elongated arms, her lean buttocks, her bulging thighs and calves as well-shaped as an Olympic sprinter’s, only much, much larger.
Despite her size, she moved with an improbable grace through the vegetation, barely stirring the foliage or making any sound whatsoever. The same couldn’t be said for Disco, Olivia, and myself. We were breathing heavily and rustling branches and snapping sticks beneath our booted footfalls.
Although the shafts of daylight streaming through the cracked ceiling alleviated the overwhelming darkness, creating a gloomy yet enchanted interplay of light and shadows, they were not powerful or numerous enough to foster anything more than an unnatural twilight. Still, they provided enough illumination to see by, and I turned off the Maglite to save what remained of its batteries.
Everywhere I looked giant stalactites stretched ten stories to the ground to form thick columns swaged in flowstones. The limestone walls, scalloped and fluted by eons of drip-water, glistened like petrified waterfalls. Along part of one wall, mirror-smooth water overflowed terraces of ribbed pools, an algae-skinned maze that descended to a small lake fifty feet below, while nearby a skylight shone down on a formation of massive boulders that towered above the surrounding cavescape like an Arthurian castle on a knoll.
I’d heard of that mammoth cave in Vietnam, reportedly the world’s largest, which boasted its own ecosystem including a jungle, waterfall, and river. It had been discovered in the early nineties by a local farmer, but it hadn’t been explored until a group of British spelunkers rappelled into its depths nearly twenty years later.
This subterranean wonderland wasn’t on that scale, yet it was magical and humbling nonetheless, imbued with an overwhelming solemnity made more so by the fact that we, presumably, were the first people on the planet to set foot in it.
Disco, walking beside me, mumbled something. His face was pale, and he seemed to be shaking.
“You okay?” I asked him inanely.
He ignored me.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he replied.
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
I swallowed, tried to work out how to phrase my question. “You saw it?”
“I wanna go home.”
“We’ll get home.”
“I wanna go now.”
“What did you see? What was it?”
No answer.
I became more concerned than ever for him, but there was nothing I could do right then. I assumed he was in a kind of shock, as Olivia had been in earlier.
It seemed to be the regular state of mind down here.
⁂
A short distance later the female yeti stopped in a small glade. I stopped next to her and immediately spotted movement in the verdant vegetation across the clearing.
In nearly the same instant a creature burst from a patch of greenery and charged toward me.
⁂
What do you do when you come face to face with a trumpeting baby yeti?
Startled by its audacity, I could think of nothing else but to crouch and extend my hand. The creature, all small limbs and hairy shoulders, pulled up short some five feet away. It studied me with clear, unblinking eyes. Ignoring my hand, it clambered and tumbled about, twirling and making playful noises and chest-thumping.
“Amazing,” Olivia whispered, crouching next to me. “And look over there, another one,” she added, pointing to a yeti at the edge of the clearing, sitting in the midst of a patch of ferns, holding stalks of a plant in its fist. It was an adult, though not the male that had chased us. It was older and frail—as frail as a yeti could appear. It was looking in our direction, though its face was inked in shadows, and I couldn’t see its eyes.
The female yeti snapped off a nearby branch and sat down with its meal of sprigs, while the baby continued to revel in our attention.
“What should we do?” I whispered.
“Sit down?” Olivia said.
“Seriously?”
“Why not? The yeti led us here. She obviously doesn’t mind our presence.”
“I mean—we can’t stay here. That thing in the tunnels—”
“Is afraid of her. It’s gone.” She sat down cross-legged.
I looked at Disco, expecting him to want to keep moving too. But he simply slumped to the ground. He was exhausted, I realized. Mentally and physically. We all were.