Mountain of the Dead

by Jeremy Bates

  Carefully, Kolevatov manipulated Zolotaryov’s head and body to get the clothing on him. Zolotaryov screamed silently the entire time. Then, thank God, it was over.

  Kolevatov set Zolotaryov’s head back in the snow. “Sasha, what happened?” he tried again. “Where’s Igor? Zina? Rustem?”

  Zolotaryov moved his mouth.

  Kolevatov lowered his left ear to an inch of the soldier’s face, but he couldn’t hear anything other than wet, phlegmy breathing and a wood-saw rasp that now passed as Zolotaryov’s voice.

  “I can’t hear you, Sasha. You need to…”

  He didn’t finish. The light in Zolotaryov’s eyes had died out so they now mirrored Lyuda’s: glossed over and lifeless.

  In a daze, sick and weak with despair, Kolevatov crawled through the snow to the bed of fir branches. He shook Kolya’s shoulder, telling him to wake up, they needed to go, but one glance at his comrade’s face and it became clear he would never be going anywhere again.

  Kolevatov dropped his head into his hands and wept.

  Lyuda was dead.

  Zolotaryov, dead.

  Kolya, dead.

  Georgy and Doroshenko, dead.

  Igor, Zina, Rustem—all likely dead.

  A dozen questions flitted through his mind, but none of them seemed to matter right then. He knew he could take Kolya’s clothes, Zolotaryov’s and Lyuda’s too—there were more than enough now available to keep him warm until morning—but he didn’t. He didn’t want to see morning, he realized. He didn’t want to live. He had never felt so alone and terrified in his life, and he didn’t want to live.

  With slow, deliberate gestures, he unbuttoned his jacket until it hung wide open, allowing the freezing Arctic air to rush inside, though this didn’t bother him. His pain, his misery, his discomfort, it would all be over soon.

  He closed his eyes and prayed for the souls of his friends.

  Funeral procession in Sverdlovsk for four of the nine hikers

  CHAPTER 34

  We arrived at the campsite on the banks of the Lozva River to the cacophony of Fyodor’s barking dogs, which snapped at their tuglines to greet us.

  I had already taken the snowmobile key from my pocket and went straight to the sled. I straddled the seat and stuck the key in the ignition, certain the cold engine would refuse to turn over. It choked and caught and chugged to life.

  Olivia went to the dogs. They met her with yips and licks of joy as she passed their ranks.

  And then something happened.

  All at once they lost interest in her and faced the direction we had come. The lead dog lowered its snout to the ground and issued a low, rumbling growl, its hackles raised. The rest of the pack followed suit.

  “Olivia, it’s coming!” I shouted. “It’s coming!”

  She looked in the direction the dogs were looking.

  “Olivia!”

  The pack growled with more urgency.

  Olivia produced a knife from her pocket and completed her task: cutting the nylon rope that secured the dogs’ gangline to the trunk of a dwarf pine.

  In the next instance the male yeti burst from the trees into the clearing. It slowed to a stop and swiveled its upper torso back and forth to take in the scene, apparently unable to turn its muscled and stubby neck independent of its body. Even from this distance I could see its pugnacious face—the grayish skin, the beetle-black eyes, the powerful jaw and mouth that seemed to stretch from ear to ear, useful for crunching bones, no doubt.

  Barking war cries, the five dogs rushed it. The yeti caught a Labrador midflight as it leapt for its stomach. It snapped the dog’s neck and tossed the corpse aside with an astounding ease and nonchalance. It stomped on a shepherd cross, forcing its insides out through its mouth. With a long arm, it snagged yet another canine by the tail and used it, yelping, to club the other two away from its ankles.

  While this was happening, I looped back on the snowmobile to pick up Olivia. She leapt onto the padded bench behind me just as the lone surviving dog fled into the woods, tail between its hind legs, dragging its mangled brethren still attached to the gangling behind it.

  The yeti, unbowed from the assault, bellowed in gladiatorial triumph, knees bent, arms at its side, head tilted toward the sky.

  I goosed the throttle, spiking the revs to redline, and sped toward the river, thin ice be damned.

  Olivia was yelling that the yeti was coming, that it was right behind us.

  I was yelling that I was going as fast as I could.

  Then we shot off the riverbank and sailed through the air and struck the ice with jarring force. Olivia screamed, but we didn’t break through the ice or topple over.

  I banked hard to the left. The yeti slid past the rear of the sled in an off-balanced slalom, its outstretched arm missing latching onto us by inches.

  The snowmobile spun around on its axis, doing several dizzying donuts, skis clattering. Once we were facing the correct direction again, I hit the gas. The deep-rutted tracks spun on the ice before finding purchase. We launched forward, spraying snow behind us like smoke.

  Olivia was still yelling, and I couldn’t understand whether it was in fear or relief.

  I glanced behind us.

  The yeti had fallen to its side and was struggling on the slippery surface to regain its feet.

  ⁂

  The icy wind blew in our faces. The coniferous forest blurred past us on both sides. The sun sank in the west, painting the sky a blood orange. And most importantly, nothing followed us in pursuit.

  Conflicting emotions rushed through me. Exultation that we had escaped, that we were heading back to civilization, that by tomorrow morning I would be in Yekaterinburg surrounded by steel and concrete and a million other people, a human refuge where monsters from nightmares were not permitted. Yet diametrically opposed to this high: heartbreaking sorrow. Disco was dead. His body was lying up in that cave. The male yeti would return and—

  I wouldn’t think of this. I couldn’t. Not now. Not if I wanted to keep my sanity.

  I tried to focus on what would happen when Olivia and I returned to Yekaterinburg. We’d have to go straight to the police. Only what did we tell them in regard to Vasily’s and Disco’s deaths? That a yeti killed them? Maybe if we had the video evidence of the creatures. Without this, however, they would not take us seriously.

  We could lie and say a bear savaged them. They would buy that. But their response would be proportional to the threat. They would send one, maybe two, police officers with me to show them the location of the bodies. They would bring a high-caliber rifle, and they would believe this to be adequate protection, and of course they would be wrong.

  I suppose I could pretend I didn’t remember the way back to the campsite, and consequently, the cave. Yet this would appear awfully suspicious. Olivia and I would likely become suspects in the four deaths. We might even get locked up.

  So it seemed we would have to tell the police the truth. We would have to convince them we were not crazy. And if we succeeded, and they investigated with appropriate force, what exactly would that appropriate force entail? A rapid-response unit armed with submachine guns? This would surely be a match for a yeti, but what if the unit encountered the female, not the male?

  This was too much to think about right then. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. I’d have to talk to Olivia about it later, see how she wanted to proceed.

  The evergreens continued to whisk past us, shadows blurring their trunks and boughs together, making them one. The blazing sun sank farther in the west, the oranges and corals deepening to reds and mauves.

  And the needle in the fuel gauge hovered near Empty.

  I had been watching it closely. The tank had only been a quarter full to begin with. Fyodor had brought a jerry can full of gasoline on his sled, but due to our madcap escape, there had been no time to grab it, let alone refill the snowmobile.

  So there was no way we would reach Ivdel on this tank. But that was okay, because we h
ad passed the spot where Disco had plunged through the ice a while back, which meant the Mansi village was not much farther ahead.

  There hadn’t been any snowmobiles parked in the village two days before. Nevertheless, I was betting they had a reserve of gasoline somewhere to fuel a chainsaw or generator or something.

  And if they didn’t?

  At least we would have a warm bed in which to sleep.

  ⁂

  We reached the village as the last of the day’s light faded from the tired sky. The fuel gauge indicated the tank was now virtually empty. In fact, we had probably driven the last mile on fumes.

  I parked the snowmobile along the bank, killed the engine, and waited for Olivia to get off.

  “Shouldn’t we drive it into the village?” she said, still holding me around the waist, unwilling to relinquish my body heat. “Hide it?”

  “Hide it?” I said, turning to face her.

  “The yeti could be following us.”

  “You’re frozen,” I said. “You need to get in front of a fire.”

  “We need to hide the snowmobile.”

  “The yeti’s not following us, Olivia. Why would it go to such lengths? We never did anything to it.”

  “I shot it.”

  “In self-defense.”

  “I want to hide the snowmobile.”

  “Hopefully they’ll have gas. We won’t be here longer than it takes for you to warm up.”

  “But if they don’t?”

  Shrugging—it couldn’t hurt to be cautious—I turned the key in the ignition. The engine coughed but didn’t kick over. I tried a few more times and got the same result.

  The machine wasn’t going anywhere.

  ⁂

  Light glowed through the windows of all eight sturdy log houses. We went to Raya Anyamov’s and knocked on the door. After a brief wait it opened a crack. The old, weathered woman peered out. She wore the same pink frock and embroidered headscarf. She eyed us up and down, taking in our dirty and torn snowsuits, the rifle slung over Olivia’s shoulder. She frowned suspiciously.

  Olivia spoke quickly yet monotonously in Russian, her arms folded across her chest, her body shivering. Raya Anyamov’s face remained impassive while she listened, and then she shook her head.

  “Shit!” I said. “They don’t have any?”

  “She says they don’t.”

  “Ask her if we can stay the night. We’ll leave at first light. We’ll walk to Ivdel, I guess.”

  Olivia spoke again in Russian—and Raya Anyamov again shook her head. She tried to shut the door.

  Incredulous, I braced it open with my arm.

  “What the hell?” I said, glaring at the old woman but speaking to Olivia. “Didn’t you tell her what we’ve been through?”

  “I told her an almasty attacked us.”

  “Tell her we’re freezing to death! We need a place to sleep—”

  Cutting me off, Raya Anyamov spoke loudly and harshly, making inarticulate gestures with her hand.

  “She says we have to go,” Olivia said. “She says we’ll bring the almasty to her village.”

  “Bring the fucking almasty! We’re going to die out here! Doesn’t she understand that? We’re going to fucking die out here!”

  The old woman threw her shoulder into the door with surprising strength. It slammed shut, followed by the sound of a bolt sliding solidly into place.

  ⁂

  Standing bewildered in the cold night, I looked at the other houses—and discovered the previously lit windows were now all dark. Olivia and I went from one residence to the next, banging on each door, pleading for someone to let us in.

  No one did.

  Fuming with anger, I said, “They can’t do this.”

  A gust of wind blasted icy tremors through my body.

  “I’m so cold,” Olivia said, still shivering.

  “Fuck it,” I said. “I’m going to break into one.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll go through a window.”

  I marched back toward Raya Anyamov’s home.

  Before I was halfway there the door flung open. The old woman stood on the threshold, a stout pink lollipop, aiming an old-fashioned hunting rifle at me.

  I froze.

  She shouted something.

  Olivia hurried next to me, tugged my arm.

  “We have to go,” she said.

  “Go where?” I demanded. “There’s nowhere to go.”

  “She’s giving you ten seconds before she shoots.”

  The old woman shouted again.

  “Five seconds,” Olivia said, tugging frantically now.

  We fled pell-mell into the forest.

  ⁂

  After some time wandering around in the dark we stopped where two trees had fallen at the base of a tall fir, the three trunks creating a natural shelter from the wind. While Olivia worked to dig out the snow inside the nook, I collected kindling and deadwood and reindeer moss from the surrounding scrub. Back in the nook I produced my box of matches and got a small fire going with little trouble. We’d been in the cold for several hours since fleeing the cave in the Mountain of the Dead, and the warmth from the fire was heavenly. We removed our mitts and gloves and held our hands to within inches of the flames. Thankfully we could both move our fingers and thumbs, and although they were numb and stiff and a little discolored, we didn’t think they were too badly frostbitten. Next we took off our boots and warmed our toes while massaging circulation back into them.

  Suddenly I became aware of my hunger; I could almost feel the acid burning the lining of my empty stomach. We hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast more than twenty-four hours ago—Fyodor’s venison and Disco’s famous grits, I thought, and this filled me with an inconsolable sadness. Disco was gone. He wasn’t coming back. I would never see him again. Death was a simple notion—now you’re here, now you’re not; it took more than a hundred thousand people across the globe every day and affected millions more—yet, as had been the case with Denise, I could scarcely accept it happening to someone I had known so well.

  I scooped some snow into my mouth, let it melt on my tongue, and swallowed.

  Olivia watched me.

  “You should eat some too,” I said.

  “I’m scared, Corey.”

  “We’ll start walking at first light. We’ll stay on the river. It might take us all day, but we’ll get to Ivdel before nightfall.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “What do you want to do when we get back to Yekaterinburg?”

  She blinked. “Huh?”

  “We have to go to the police. Tell them what happened.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, they’re probably not going to believe us. Not without proof. You have the scat and hair, right?”

  “That won’t convince them of anything.”

  “They can run DNA tests.”

  “That takes a long time.”

  “But showing them it might make them believe enough to go search the cave.”

  “Search the cave?”

  “For Vasily and Disco, for…” Their remains.

  “Oh.”

  “Otherwise they might blame us.”

  “Blame us?”

  “For their deaths.”

  “Why would they blame us?”

  “Because we were the last people to see them alive, Olivia.” I studied her. She didn’t seem to be listening to me—hearing me, yes, but not listening. She was distracted, and I suppose rightly so. “We should try to sleep,” I added.

  “Those skulls in that room,” she said. “I don’t think they were ritualistic offerings.” She paused a long moment. “I think they were leftovers.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “You saw Vasily. The yeti ate him. It ate him to the skeleton. But it didn’t touch his head.”

  I forced myself to say, “It ate his brain.”

  “But it left the rest of his head. Like it was done with it.”
>
  “There were no skeletons in that room,” I reminded her. “Only skulls.”

  “Maybe the yeti wasn’t done with Vasily’s. Nature doesn’t like waste. There are a lot of nutrients and protein in a skeleton.”

  “You think the yeti was going to eat Vasily’s skeleton?” I said, disgusted by the possibility.

  “A lot of animals eat skeletons. And aside from maybe snakes, they often leave the skull. It’s too big to fit in their mouths. Too difficult to break into bite size pieces.”

  Could she be right? Was the creature back in the cave now, munching down on Vasily’s bones? On Disco’s? Sucking the marrow from them the way you suck the meat from the claw of a crab?

  The horror and injustice of this imagery made me nauseated.

  “We should get some sleep,” I said.

  ⁂

  A gunshot broke my rest.

  It was dark. Only a few smoldering sticks remained of the fire.

  And in the distance, bedlam.

  Screams, a whole bunch of them.

  Another gunshot.

  A different scream—a monstrous, inhuman one I knew too well.

  “It’s here!” Olivia said in a sibilant whisper.

  I started at her voice in the darkness. Then I kicked snow over the smoldering fire.

  Heart pounding, I shot to my feet.

  How the hell had the yeti followed us? And why the hell had it followed us?

  What the fuck was its problem?

  I looked around in utter despair.

  What could we do?

  Where could we go?

  As soon as the yeti realized we weren’t in the village, it would find our tracks and come after us. We couldn’t outrun it on foot. We were doomed.

  I glanced at the rifle leaning against the trunk of the tree.

  “Is that loaded?” I asked.

  “It won’t stop—”

  “How many bullets do you have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know!” She stuck her hand in her pocket and withdrew three cartridges.

  We had to make a stand. It was our only chance.