Polar Yeti And The Beasts Of Prehistory (13 page)

Chapter 17

Gordon had Dana wrapped around his waist as he continued to lead the remaining team members back to the valley pass. The sun was at its highest point and Gordon figured that it was roughly noon. He was pushing the remaining snowmobiles at full speed and he was sure that the vehicles would run out of gasoline shortly after they exited the valley pass. He figured that the team could hike back to campsite after they had made it out of the valley. The important thing right now was to get everyone out of the valley alive. Gordon was staying close to the base of the mountains when he saw movement along the mountain slope to his left. It was difficult to discern what he was seeing at first. When he took a closer look, the hunter quickly made out two camouflaged animals making their way down the side of mountain in the direction the snowmobiles were headed. Gordon yelled to Dana, “Reach up and grab the steering. Then slowly start having us move away from the base of the mountain. Move the snowmobile slow and steady, nothing sudden.” Gordon lifted his rifle up to his face. “There are some kind of predators stalking us along the mountainside. They are going to attack us when they cross our path in about thirty seconds.” He loaded his rifle. “I am going to try to shoot them before they attack us.” He took one more look at Dana. “No one else dies. Everyone still left breathing is going to get out of this valley alive.”

Dana took the controls and she started moving the snowmobile away from the base of the mountain in order to buy them a few extra seconds. Gordon looked through the scope of his rifle to see two snow white cats with incredibly long canine teeth sprinting down the side of the mountain. Like everything else in the valley the cats were huge. The saber-toothed cats dwarfed even the largest lions that Gordon had hunted in Africa. Gordon took aim at the first saber-toothed cat and he squeezed his trigger. Gordon watched as the cat’s body shuddered and blood spurted from its shoulder.

Gordon took aim once again at the injured saber-toothed cat as its hunting partner continued to make its way down the mountainside at a full sprint. Gordon quickly fired four more shots at the injured predator. The first two shots missed but the other two shots hit the beast in the neck and head instantly killing the cat. The second cat was only a few steps away from them and Gordon had its head in his sights. He went to pull the trigger but the snowmobile ran over a snow-covered rock which caused Gordon’s shot to go high over the cat’s head. The massive cat was only a few seconds away from reaching the snowmobile and sinking its long teeth into Dana’s back.

Gordon didn’t think. He just reacted. The hunter jumped at the same time that the saber-toothed cat pounced at the snowmobile. Gordon’s body slammed into the cat in mid-air. The impact of Gordon’s body managed to slow down the cat’s momentum enough that the monster missed Dana’s snowmobile. Gordon landed face first in the snow. He heard and felt the snowmobiles of his team members whipping by him. He then felt something warm and sticky sliding down the back of his neck. He rolled over to see the saber tooth cat standing above him and drooling.

The second that Dana saw Gordon jump off the snowmobile, she turned around. The young doctor saw the other team members coming toward her and she yelled, “Don’t stop! Keep heading north for the valley pass.”  Dana watched as Gordon tried to lift his rifle to shoot the cat but the monster growled and swatted the rifle out of Gordon’s hands. Dana reached into her pocket and pulled out one of the flares that she had grabbed earlier. She lit the flare and drove directly at Gordon and the saber-toothed cat.

Gordon looked up at the cat as it growled above him. In an act of desperation, Gordon reached down to his leg and pulled his hunting knife out of its sheath. The cat growled and then brought its teeth down toward Gordon. The hunter threw his forearm in front of himself. He was able to get his left forearm under the cat’s long saber-like canines but the animal still managed to close its teeth around Gordon’s forearm. Gordon screamed in pain as the cat’s jaws closed around his arm simultaneously tearing through his skin and breaking his forearm in several places. The cat shook Gordon’s arm then it lifted its claw off the ground as it prepared to eviscerate the young hunter.

The cat was about to swipe its claw across Gordon’s stomach when Dana drove up to the beast and threw the lit flare directly into its eyes. The beast growled and released its grip on Gordon’s arm. The hunter didn’t waste time waiting for the monster to recover. He brought his knife up and used it to slash the saber toothed cat’s throat open. The ancient predator shook its head and backed up as its blood poured into its lungs, causing the monster to choke. Gordon crawled through the waterfall of blood that was pouring out of the cat’s throat as he moved away from the predator. Dana pulled her snowmobile to a stop next Gordon. She helped the hunter to climb onto the back of the snowmobile and she shouted, “Hold on to me! We are only about twenty minutes from the valley pass!”

Gordon nodded and he wrapped his good arm around Dana’s waist. She could tell how badly injured he was by the fact that the hunter’s normally strong grip was as weak as a child’s. Dana sent the snowmobile into high speed. First, she yelled to Gordon, “Try to keep your injured arm as elevated as possible. It will help to slow the bleeding!” She then did her best to continue steering the snowmobile while at the same time fishing the radio out of her pocket. When she finally found the radio, she turned it on and shouted, “Come in, base camp! This is Doctor Dana Summers. I am about fifteen minutes from exiting the valley. I need a Sno-Cat to meet us as close to the valley pass as possible with an emergency medical kit! Tony Gordon has been severely injured.” Dana stopping talking for a minute. She had feared that the mountains around her might be blocking her radio signal. She shouted into the radio again, “I repeat, this is Doctor Dana Summers and I need a Sno-Cat with an emergency medical kit to meet us at the entrance to the valley pass. Do you copy?”

Dana was quite for a moment as she heard mainly static coming through the radio. She started to tear up in fear for Gordon’s life when she heard a broken transmission come back through the radio. The signal was too weak for Dana to make out what the person on the other end of the transmission was saying. It could have been anything from
Message received, we will meet you at the pass
to
We can’t hear you. Your transmission is breaking up.
She heard Gordon groan behind her and she could also feel his already light grip lessening around her waist. Dana gripped onto her lover as the exit to the valley pass finally came into view. She could see the remaining team members ahead of her making for the pass. Several minutes later, she saw the snowmobiles ahead of her exit the valley. She yelled to Gordon, “Tony, the rest of the team members made it out of the valley. We didn’t lose anyone else.”

She listened for some sort of reply but she didn’t hear anything. She reached down and grabbed Gordon’s wrist. She was relieved when she could still feel his pulse. Gordon was alive but he had passed out and he was still losing blood quickly. She was less than a hundred yards from the exit to the valley pass when the snowmobile started to sputter. The machine coughed a few times and then its engine stopped. Dana held onto Gordon and she steered the sliding snowmobile as far as she could before it finally came to a stop roughly fifty yards from the valley pass. Dana climbed off the snowmobile then she put Gordon’s uninjured arm over her shoulder. She spoke to Gordon as gently as she could, “Come on, Tony, help me. You are too heavy for me to carry.” Gordon’s head lolled from side to side in an attempt to nod. He then started walking and bearing some of his weight. Dana had helped Gordon walk to within forty yards of the valley pass when the shadow of a gigantic bird fell over them.

In an instant, Dana assessed her situation; Gordon was too heavy for her to pick up and run with, she had no weapons, and she was still roughly thirty yards from exiting the valley. The shadow was growing larger, meaning that the teratorn was directly above them and descending quickly. When the teratorn’s shadow had completely covered them Dana threw herself and Gordon to the left and to the ground. The teratorn’s claws tore away a huge chunk of snow in the spot where the young lovers were only a moment before. The bird stood in the snow and then it turned to look at Dana and the unconscious Gordon. Dana closed her eyes and held onto Gordon as the teratorn lumbered toward them.

Dana was prepared to die when she heard shouting behind her. She looked to the valley pass to see the students who had just exited the valley running back through the pass. The team members had lit the remaining flares and they were holding them in their hands. The team members ran forward and hurled the burning flares at the teratorn. The bird squawked as the burning flares struck it. The teratorn took a step back and then it took to the air. Two of the male team members picked up Gordon and carried him to the valley pass while a young female helped Dana to her feet. Dana looked behind her and she saw the teratorn circle back around through the sky and then head straight for them. Dana yelled, “Run!” The team members all sprinted as fast as they could toward the valley pass while the teratorn quickly closed on them. Dana could see the teratorn’s shadow over her as she entered the pass and then the shadow peeled off. The doctor felt a rush of wind across her face and she knew that she had reached the naturally occurring wind gusts that kept the teratorns from leaving the valley.

The girl who had helped Dana hugged her. “The snowmobiles all ran out of gas shortly after we got out of the valley. When we noticed that you and Mr. Gordon were not with us, we ran back to get you. There was no way that we were leaving the two of you in that valley.”

Dana hugged her back. “Thank you.” She turned to the two men holding Gordon. “Thank you all.” She pointed at Gordon, “We have to get him back to camp before he bleeds to death.” The two men nodded and then they started hiking back in the direction of camp. The crew had hiked for nearly ten minutes until they heard a noise ahead of them. Dana looked up to see one of the Sno-Cats coming toward them. They all cheered and Dana ran up to vehicle. She yelled at the men carrying Gordon, “Get him on board! I am going to perform emergency surgery on him on the way back to camp!”

The door to the Sno-Cat flew open and the driver said, “We got your message, Doctor Summers. We have an emergency med kit in the back of the cat.”

The two men carried Gordon into the back of the Sno-Cat and placed him on the large floor used to carry supplies. Dana immediately tore Gordon’s coat off. She then tied a tunicate around the upper part of his arm. Next, the doctor injected Gordon with a sedative to make sure that he stayed asleep. Then she quickly cleaned out his arm with an antiseptic. Once his arm was clean, she began resetting it and stapling his wounds shut. When she was finished, she sat back and took a deep breath.

One of the men who had helped carry Gordon into the Sno-Cat walked over to Dana. “Is he going to make it?”

She smiled. “I think so but I need to get him back to the ship for a blood transfusion.” She ran up to the driver of the Sno-Cat. “We need to start getting everyone back to the ship and I want myself and this man on the first boat. We are all evacuating this area ASAP.” She paused for a minute as she remembered what else Henry had said. “The only people that I want working on something other than the evacuation are the demolitions experts. I want them rigging the sides of the valley pass to blow. We need to create an avalanche to seal that pass off forever.”

The driver shook his head. “I can radio to have the demolition experts in place but the evacuation is not going to happen, ma’am.”

Dana shook her head. “What do you mean that the evacuation is not going to happen? Radio the crew on the ship and have them start sending the transport boats to shore.”

The driver shrugged. “They couldn’t send the boats even if they wanted to.”

Dana screamed, “Why is that!”

They had reached the campsite and the driver pointed out the window. “See for yourself.”

Dana looked out the window at the beach to see hundreds if not thousands of seals moving frantically around on the beach with the ship in the distance behind them. The animals covered the beach for as far as she could see leaving no place for the boats to land. She couldn’t understand why the seals were all on shore and so disturbed. Then she noticed the dozens of long black fins moving along the surface of the water. She whispered, “The orcas.”

The driver pulled the Sno-Cat to a stop as they arrived in camp. “The orcas have driven the seals onto the only stretch of beach that is not too rocky for the transport boats to land. The orcas will wait until the seals are hungry enough to try and venture out into the surf for fish. Then the orcas will rush the beach and grab as many of the seals as they can. This standoff could take hours, and in the meantime, there are too many damn seals for the boats to land. Even if they tried to force their way through the seals, the damn things would tear up the boats’ propellers and then we would really be stuck here.” The driver shrugged. “We aren’t going anywhere for a while.”

Chapter 18

The torch that Gina held was starting to flicker out and Thu-Ca was crying. Gina shook her head knowing that those two factors were only going to increase the likelihood that they were going to run into some monster in the dark tunnels. Henry ran in front of Gina and Jun-Tuk was behind her as the two men did their best to protect both her and the baby. Still, all three people knew that their prospects of survival were almost nonexistent. The tunnel that they were running through was still massive. It was easily wide enough and had a high enough ceiling for Yukon or any other of the monsters to run through it at full speed.

When they first entered the tunnels, Gina had asked the two men how much ammunition they each had left. Henry had about six bullets left and Jun-Tuk was not in a much better position. The old man had only eight arrows left for his crossbow. Gina figured that they had enough ammunition to fight off one of the giant rats that she had seen Yukon battle or a couple of the giant millipedes that Henry had briefly described to her. She had no idea if they had enough ammunition to deal with the third form of
crawling demon
that Wen-Ku had described. Gina had no doubt that if Yukon found them that they did not have anywhere near the firepower to kill the Yeti.

Their journey was made even more difficult by the fact that they were running through the heated tunnels in their arctic clothing. They were all sweating profusely and Gina worried that dehydration could set in on them at any moment. In addition to the crying baby, the heat, their dying lights, and limited ammunition they could only hope that they were following the tunnels in a northern direction. Gina was sure that their initial turn to the right was taking them back in the direction of the valley pass but the tunnel system had already taken a few subtle turns. She was still fairly confident that they were moving in the right direction. She also told herself that taking a chance in the tunnels was a better choice than facing certain death, which is what would have happened if they had tried to run past Yukon and the dire wolves.

They had been moving at a fast walk for over forty minutes when they heard a blood-curdling roar echo throughout the tunnels. The group stopped moving and simultaneously the torch that Gina was holding burned out. The tunnel became darker as Henry and Jun-Tuk’s torches also continued to flicker. The roar echoed through the tunnel again and Gina looked at Henry. “That’s Yukon. He must have defeated the dire wolves. From the sound of that roar, he is in the tunnel and coming after us. Between our scent and Thu-Ca’s screaming, he will be able to find us without much difficulty.”

Gina’s heart began to race at the thought of Yukon killing Henry and Jun-Tuk and then carrying her back to his cave. Gina pulled Henry’s arm. “Come on, we have to keep moving.” The group ran through the tunnel and as they did so, one by one their torches started to burn out. Jun-Tuk had suggested that they keep the torches when they burned out because holding a club constructed of bone was better than having no weapon at all. Henry was holding the last torch as it slowly burned out. When the flame finally extinguished itself, Henry reached into his bag and pulled out one of the flares that Dana had grabbed during the millipede attack. He snapped the flare open and lit it. The flare cast a fluorescent orange glow throughout the large tunnel.

Gina looked at Henry. “How many more of those things do we have?”

Henry took a quick look in his supply bag, “Looks like we have two more after this. They each burn for about fifteen minutes. It took us about forty-five minutes to get from the area where the other snowmobiles are to here. We have been moving for a little over a half an hour on foot. If we don’t take too many turns and we pick up the pace, we might just have enough flares to get us through this underground hell and back out into the light.”

There was another roar behind them that sounded much closer than the last set of roars they had heard. Gina turned and broke into a full sprint away from the roar. Henry and Jun-Tuk found themselves behind Gina and they took off after her as quickly as they could. Henry could feel his legs burning as he did his best to stay close enough to his wife to give her enough light to avoid running face first into a wall.

Gina was running as fast as she could with the bright red glow of the burning flare illuminating the tunnel a few feet in front of her. She saw a flash of white in front of her and she skidded to a stop. Henry and Jun-Tuk also came to a stop behind her and Henry lifted his flare in front of him to see a huge interwoven lattice of some form of thick white rope. Gina looked around the tunnel to see that the white rope covered the entire tunnel. At a quick glance, she estimated that the tunnel was at least thirty feet wide and fifty feet high. Henry moved his light around and then Gina saw the dead form of a giant rat stuck in the top of the interwoven rope. The rat’s body was nothing more than a dried out husk. The rat’s corpse looked as if all of its bodily fluids had been drained out of it. Gina looked at the face of the dead giant rat and she immediately winced from the look of complete terror on the creature’s face.

Gina gasped when it dawned on her exactly what they were looking at. She whispered to Henry. “Move the flare around so that it lights up the tunnel ceiling. Keep a close eye on the dark corners of this stuff.” Henry slowly waved his flare above his head and all three people gasped when the light reflected off two sets of multi-faceted eyes. A massive hair-covered body with long legs jointed in the shape an arch came into view. A huge tarantula-like spider was watching the three humans from the upper most corner of its web. Henry shifted his flare to get a better look at the monster. When the light hit it the colossal arachnid that was curled up in a corner of the ceiling condensed its body even more at the sight of the bright light of the flare. Gina whispered, “The crawling demon that has legs like poles and lives in a net. A giant spider.”  A loud roar echoed behind the group and Gina could tell that Yukon was quickly closing on them. She took a look around the web and up at the spider. “That thing has to be, what, thirty to thirty five feet long?”

Henry stammered. “Yes. As soon as that thing makes a move, we are dead.”

Gina shook her head and spoke quickly. “No, don’t you see? That thing is exactly what we need!” She pointed up at the giant spider. “Look at that spider. It’s terrified of the light from the flare. Also, most spiders will only attack things that disturb their webs.” She pointed to the foot thick web that connected to the tunnel wall in front of them. “Use the flare to burn through these three strands of web here. We will be able to slip through and keep going. We will leave Yukon to run face first into the web and then to deal with the spider while we continue to push ahead.”  There was another roar and all three people knew that Yukon would be upon them any second. Henry took his flare and he started burning through the web in front of them. The giant spider took a few steps out onto its web but it stopped when it saw the bright light of the flare. Jun-Tuk pointed his crossbow at the spider and Gina instructed him in his own language, “If it takes another step, shoot it in the eye.” Jun-Tuk nodded and kept his weapon aimed at the spider.

Henry had burned through two of the pieces of web and he was working on the third strand when Yukon stormed around the corner. The Yeti roared and Wen-Ku screamed, “Stop! You are the bride of the Yeti god! You and the children must return to the cave with us!”

The flare finally burnt through the last strand of web and Henry screamed, “We are through. Let’s move!” Henry moved through the opening first followed by Gina and Jun-Tuk. The three people sprinted farther down the tunnel and Yukon ran after them only to be stopped when he became caught in the giant web. The Yeti dropped Wen-Ku and when she hit the cave floor, her torch rolled away from her, leaving only a few strands of light illuminating the tunnel. Yukon roared then he started to pull the web off himself. The web had slowed down Yukon but the Yeti’s strength was more than enough to tear the trap to pieces. Yukon ripped a large section of webbing off himself just as the giant spider crawled down what remained of the web and jumped on to Yukon. The Yeti was caught off balance and the weight of the spider forced him to the floor.

Yukon was laying on his back with the spider standing over him. The Yeti looked up to see the spider’s fangs above him. Yukon’s arm shot out and he grabbed the spider where its head connected to its body. The spider tried to force its head down but the strength of the Yeti was far greater than that of the spider. Yukon tossed the spider to his left. The arachnid stumbled to the side of the cave and Yukon used the opportunity to stand. Before the Yeti could renew his pursuit of Gina, the spider darted across the cave and attacked Yukon once more.

Yukon saw the spider charging him and he grabbed the spider’s front legs immediately stopping its forward motion. The Yeti roared at the spider then he pulled it to him and stepped to the side so that the arachnid slammed into the wall. The spider quickly crawled up the side of the wall and over the top of Yukon. Yukon looked up just in time to see the spider dropping on top of him once more. The spider’s weight slammed into Yukon and forced him to the ground again. Yukon was lying on his back with the spider over him again, preparing to inject him with its venom. Yukon moved in flash of white fur, and before the spider could strike him, the Yeti used his sharp claws to slice open the giant spider’s underbelly. A thick yellow ichor poured out of the spider’s mid-section as the monster backed away from the Yeti. The spider crawled to the cave wall and it was starting to scale it when Yukon threw his shoulder into the spider’s back. The strength and weight of Yukon crushed the spider against the unforgiving cave wall and the arachnid burst like a child’s water balloon. Yellow ichor sprayed across the tunnel and Yukon as the force from the Yeti’s attack sent the bodily fluids of the giant spider flying in all directions.

Yukon shook himself once then he turned to see Wen-Ku holding her slowly dying torch. She was bloodied and bruised from her tumble onto the cave floor. Despite her injures, she smiled at her god/husband and said, “Well done. Now let us continue the pursuit of our children.” Yukon reached down and picked up Wen-Ku then he started running farther through the massive tunnel system after what he perceived as his family.