Yeti Unleashed Read online

  Dr. Harry Olson, an American paleoanthropologist, and his wife, Dixie, have returned from the mountains of Mongolia with two live Yeti, a male and a female. A team of scientists in Harry’s anthropology department at California Pacific University are now trying to uncover a link between human and Yeti genetics. But when the Yeti escape, Harry’s in a race against time to recapture the animals, knowing only too well how terrible the consequences will be if the creatures make it off the desolate high-desert facility and reach a human city...

  KUDOS FOR YETI UNLEASHED

  In Yeti Unleashed by Richard Edde, Harry Olson and his wife Dixie have come back to the US from Mongolia with two live Yeti, a male and a female, which are being held at a secure facility in the high desert in Nevada. Scientists are studying their DNA, trying to find out how closely related the Yeti are to humans. But the Yeti escape, and Harry has to recapture them before they get closer to humans than they are supposed to be, and he ends up with a massacre. The story is well written with a lot of additional subplots and plenty of fast-paced action. It will keep you on your toes all the way through. ~ Taylor Jones, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy

  Yeti Unleashed by Richard Edde is the second book in his Yeti series. This time, Harry Olson and his assistant Dixie, who is now his wife, have brought two live Yeti back from Mongolia to be studied at a research compound in Nevada. While the facility is run “by the book,” accidents can always happen, and people make mistakes. Now the Yeti have escaped, and Harry is determined to recapture them before law enforcement can slaughter them--and before the Yeti can slaughter any humans they might encounter. Filled with fascinating science and mind-boggling possibilities, Yeti Unleashed tells a chilling tale of human misjudgment and the sometimes fatal consequences a mistake can have. ~ Regan Murphy, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy

  Yeti Unleashed

  Richard Edde

  A Black Opal Books Publication

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2017 by Richard Edde

  Cover Design by Jackson Cover Designs

  All cover art copyright © 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-626946-14-9

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  EXCERPT

  It was a scene right out of a horror movie, and Harry couldn’t believe it had really happened...

  The scene inside the unit was surreal. There was splattered blood everywhere. Both cage doors stood open and the Yeti were gone. The body of a man was askew on the floor, his limbs mangled, his face a mass of gore, and he lay in a large pool of dried, dark blood. Two men in khaki sheriff’s uniforms were in the unit, one bent over the body, the other took photographs. Papers and equipment were scattered in disarray throughout the unit. Harry’s stomach revolted and he pushed down the urge to vomit.

  “Oh my god,” exclaimed Dixie in a low groan. “What in god’s name happened here?”

  The man bent over the dead body looked up then stood. Dr. Radner stepped around an overturned stool.

  “Sheriff Calder, this is our departmental chairman, Dr. Harry Olson and his wife, also Dr. Olson.”

  Harry shook hands with Calder and Dixie smiled faintly at the man. Harry pointed to the body. “Who?”

  “Jimmy Winkleman,” Radner said, shaking his head. “So sad. I’m going to have to call his folks.”

  “Yes,” Dixie said. “I remember him from our previous trip.”

  “What happened in here?” Harry asked. “The place looks like a bomb went off.”

  His stomach reeled. The strong smell of iron permeated the unit, making his nausea even worse. His body felt light, as if floating, his head spinning. It was like the time he was coming out from under anesthesia after his appendectomy when he was in high school. He floated on a cloud, half-conscious of this world, half not.

  DEDICATION

  To My Parents

  Robert and Jeanne

  “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  “It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.” ~ H. P. Lovecraft

  “Things exist either because they have recently come into existence or because they have qualities that made them unlikely to be destroyed in the past.” ~ Richard Dawkins

  Prologue

  Deep in a recess on a remote salient of the Altai Mountains, a large, hairy creature sauntered to the opening of the cave in which it lived. Large snowflakes swirled as an angry blizzard howled and covered the ground in deep drifts. A blue-gray sky filtered through dense clouds, caused the landscape to appear as if viewed through a blue filter. Except for the wind screeching outside the cave, no other sound echoed in the mountains. The towering hulk stood in the opening and stared into the muted world beyond. A thick vapor belched from its maw while its eyes glowed deep red, flickering as it looked around.

  After a long moment, it stretched out its huge, muscular arms and shrieked a shattering growl. Then it stepped from the cave, ambled through the deep snow, and disappeared into the mist.

  ***

  In the small village of Tenduk, located atop a high plateau in the mountainous Altai region of Mongolia, the Buddhist monastery was the center of daily activities. Most of the village merchants earned their meager living by selling their wares to the monks who worked and prayed in the ancient cloister. Roofed with terra cotta tiles, the monastery was a large multi-storied affair with many smaller living quarters terraced around the main temple building. The buildings--interconnected through a series of steps and stairways made of rocks and a few rickety wooden bridges--enabled the monks to pass easily between the various levels. The main stone-and-mortar structure was in the form of a stepped pyramid of three rectangular stories, three circular terraces, and a central pagoda forming the summit.

  The plateau was part of a valley in the Altai Mountain range, its rugged, snow-capped peaks providing shelter from bitter winter storms. The steppe, as the plateau was called, formed part of the Mongolian-Manchurian grassland, covered over a quarter million square miles, and forged a crescent around the Gobi Desert. Its dominant flora consisted of medium to tall grasses, monopolized by feather grass. The steppe was where Mongolian nomads grazed their herds of camels, goats, and yaks, where they had done so for generations.

  The formation of Altai mountainous region began almost two hundred millions years ago. During this period, the earth’s crust was extremely unstable and fluid so the area formed the bottom of a deep sea where numerous layers of sediment accumulated. From about 150 million years ago the region experienced a process of denudation. As a result of the active tectonic processes which took place during the Paleozoic period and which were accompanied by violent volcanic activity, the sea disappeared from the area and the land rose in height. Mainly, the tectonic process, with its vault lifting, formed the modern structure of the Altai region. The most up-thrust occurred in central Altai with a maximum rise of three to four thousand meters.

  Traditional Mongols worshipped heaven or the clear blue sky and their ancestors. They followed ancient northern Asian practices of shamanism, where human intermed
iaries placed themselves in a trance then spoke to some of the numerous infinities of spirits responsible for human luck or misfortune. In 1578, Altan Khan, a Mongol military leader with ambitions to unite the Mongols and to emulate the career of Chinggis, invited the head of the rising Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism to a summit. They formed an alliance that gave Altan legitimacy and religious sanction for his imperial pretensions and that provided the Buddhist sect with protection and patronage. Altan gave the Tibetan leader the title of Dalai Lama, which his successors still hold. Altan died soon after, but in the next century the Yellow Sect spread throughout Mongolia, aided in part by the efforts of contending Mongol aristocrats to win religious sanction and mass support for their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to unite all Mongols in a single state. Monasteries were built across Mongolia, often sited at the juncture of trade and migration routes or at summer pastures, where large numbers of herders would congregate for shamanistic rituals and sacrifices. Buddhist monks carried out a protracted struggle with the indigenous shamans and succeeded, to some extent, in taking over their functions and fees as healers and diviners and in pushing the shamans to the religious and cultural fringes of Mongolian culture.

  ***

  Abbot Bo Zhing greeted the new day as he had for years--sitting in his favorite chair on a ledge, his face pointed toward the rising sun. A deep rugged valley dropped away from his perch, its vegetation dappled in hues of gold and yellow. It was a brisk morning, in spite of the sun’s warming rays on his kashaya, his brown robe of Tibetan origin. He sat under a small pagoda, arms folded, chanting his morning prayer.

  “I am a link in Lord Buddha’s golden chain of love

  that stretches around the world.

  I must keep my link bright and strong.

  I will try to be kind and gentle to every living thing,

  and protect all who are weaker than myself.

  I will try to think pure and beautiful thoughts,

  to say pure and beautiful words, and to do pure and

  beautiful deeds, knowing that on what

  I do now depends my happiness and misery.

  May every link in Lord Buddha’s golden chain

  of love become bright and strong

  and may we all attain perfect peace.”

  His prayers completed, Abbot Zhing rose and walked with measured steps to the small dining hall where he would greet his fellow monks. There was much excitement among the men the past few days for there had been a sighting of a strange beast higher in the mountains. Ever since the American scientific expedition earlier in the year, speculation mounted that a family of large creatures lived in the remote mountains near the monastery.

  Zhing remembered well the overcast day when a small group of scientists from the expedition arrived, their leader inquiring about an ancient skull they heard was kept there. The skull was an artifact that the monks had kept in a deep secure vault for generations. What it was, exactly, no one seemed to know. There were rumors, of course. Zhing had heard them during his many years as a monk in Tenduk. This part of Mongolia was rife with stories of strange creatures that roamed the mountains. Proof of their existence was always vague, inconsistent.

  Hesitant at first, Zhing finally acquiesced and showed the skull to the leader of the expedition, Dr. Harry Olson. The man and his small party said they were a team of scientists, digging for early human fossils in the Altai Mountains and had unearthed a group of bones that were neither human nor animal. He hoped the skull might shed light on the mystery. The doctor and his colleagues were very polite, took measurements of the skull, and left.

  Then tragedy struck.

  Four evil men, one with a long scar on his face, pursued the expedition team to the Tenduk monastery, demanding the whereabouts of the scientists. They murdered the senior abbot, Lama Yang. Why, Zhing did not know, but it was a brutal and senseless killing. Much later, he learned that one of the female scientists was taken captive by a large animal and dragged deep into its mountain lair. With the help of the Mongolian Police, it took the all the expedition could muster to effect her eventual rescue.

  Zhing knew it was the Yeti of his youth.

  Before the scientists left Mongolia, Zhing talked by phone with the expedition leader, Dr. Olson. He promised the scientist to notify him if and when he or his fellow monks came by any information of creatures lurking in the mountains. The scientist needed the information for his research, and Zhing liked the man’s easy manner, his seemingly genuine pursuit of knowledge.

  For decades there had been rumors and supposed sightings of the famous Yeti, a large, hairy, shy beast that roamed the remote regions of the Altai. According to legend, the animals lived in caves in the high altitudes and ventured to the lower altitudes in search of food, mostly vegetation growing in the valleys. Through the years, sightings were common but the physical evidence of such a creature was never found.

  The Yeti were reputed to be six-foot-tall, bipedal creatures, covered in reddish brown fur, with anthropomorphic facial features, including pronounced brow ridges, flat noses, and no chin. And, unlike the Himalayan Abominable Snowman, their behavior was considered far more human than ape-like. They were said to inhabit the mountains of central Asia and the Altai Mountains of southern Mongolia. Modern accounts documenting footprints, as well as native traditions dating back hundreds of years, attested to the existence of the Yeti, including the exchange of trade goods between remote Mongolian villages and the creatures. Drawings of Yeti also appeared in an ancient Tibetan apothecary handbook, with the following comment:

  The book contains thousands of illustrations of various classes of animals including reptiles, mammals and amphibia, but not one single mythological animal, like its medieval European counterparts, which often listed many fantastic animals in its medical books. Being that every creature in the Tibetan medicinal book are well-documented actual species, with the exception of the Yeti, gives some validity to the creature’s existence.

  Speculation that Yeti may be something other than legendary creatures was based on purported eyewitness accounts, alleged footprint finds, and interpretations of long-standing native traditions, which had been anthropologically collected.

  Now, there was talk. Excited talk. Even whispers among the monks. Zhing needed to know if this talk could be substantiated with sightings and facts or was all just idle chatter. Today in the dining hall he would find out.

  Hopefully.

  He strolled into a large, brightly lit room filled with wooden tables and straight back chairs. The buzz from the monks gradually diminished at their seeing him standing at the head of the tables.

  “Namasta, my brothers,” Zhing said.

  “Namasta,” was the uniform reply from the men seated at their tables.

  “Brothers,” Zhing began, “I have heard talk recently of the Yeti. I am here to learn if the talk is founded in fact. Have any of you actually seen such a creature?”

  No one ventured a raised hand.

  “Have any of you talked with someone who claims having seen such an animal?”

  The dining hall erupted in one continuous buzz, everyone speaking at once and raising hands.

  Zhing spent the better part of an hour listening to his brother monks describe their experiences and, in the end, decided that there was enough credible evidence to call Dr. Olson. Later, he walked down to the village butcher shop to use the region’s only phone.

  Chapter 1

  Dixie was near panic. Sobbing, her tears mixing with the dust caked on her face, turned the mess into a dried-mud facial. It was difficult to open her mouth with the dried mud, and the dust choked her--breathing was difficult. It was surreal being in this place. Like a dream. No, a nightmare.

  She knew she was going to die.

  At first, when the large creature grabbed her and carried her off, she put up a fight, but its strength easily overpowered her. Its hot, fetid breath, smelling of rotten garbage, quickly overwhelmed her senses, while its eyes, piercing, red, g
lowing, were like embers in a dying campfire. Most of all, she remembered its fangs, long, pointed, and stained yellow and brown.

  At first, she waited in fear for the beast to sink those long canines into her neck and was surprised when the monster only dragged her to a cave and deposited her in a small room. Later, it tied her to the wall, using crude straps made of dried vines, and there she hung, like a piece of crude art. The monster knew what it was doing, acting almost human.

  Imprisoned and in a state of exhaustion, she watched the creature and its comrades...was that the right word?...come and go in silence. Was it a hallucination that they seemed to be an extended family? One male creature appeared dominant over the others, acting as their leader, while a smaller female was never far from his side. In her tortured mind, she thought they completed a family unit, although the exact nature she could not say. But they did appear to be some sort of primate unit, for they knew each other and worked together. They grunted some sort of language that only they understood and, to her surprise, seemed to show affection for each other. At one time, she thought she saw the male caress his mate.

  The creatures came and went without paying her much attention. They seemed content to have her confined and helpless, hanging there. They gave her no food or water. As the hours dragged on, she weakened to the point of losing consciousness, and it was as if she were in a dream, looking down upon her body. But then, one of the hairy beasts would amble into the little room, shove its ugly face into hers, and snarl, its hot breath smelling of rancid meat. But not one of them harmed her. It was as if they were studying her, like in the movie, Planet Of The Apes. Or, maybe, she was just a piece of art, stuck on the wall for them to enjoy.