Yeti Unleashed Read online

  The group finished their dinner then adjourned to their respective dorm rooms for a night’s rest.

  Chapter 20

  Johnson and Falco had formed their friendship years earlier, while in prison, when each did time for burglary. They wound up as cellmates in the Delano prison. After their release, they bumped into each other one day in a San Francisco Chinatown strip club where Johnson worked as a bouncer. He managed to get Falco hired doing janitorial duties after the place closed. Late at night, the pair would smoke weed in Johnson’s tiny walkup apartment a few blocks from the club.

  One brilliant day, Johnson strolled the perimeter of Union Square, waiting for his marijuana contact to arrive, when he came upon a small rally of protestors, complete with signs and placards. It was a peaceful assembly of several dozen people, mostly men and women in their twenties and thirties who were listening to a woman speaking with the aid of a bullhorn. Curious, he sat on a nearby bench and listened. Something about animals being used for scientific research. From what he could discern, the rally was intended as a protest against universities using animals for this purpose and they had one school in their sights. Cal Pacific. The woman blamed the university for housing several large and strange animals at a facility in Nevada where all sorts of bizarre experiments were perpetrated on them. With this remark, the group hissed and booed. The speaker was quite animated and forceful. Intrigued, Johnson was immediately attracted to her.

  When the rally was over, he approached the woman. She shot him a curious glance as he neared. They were next to the Holiday Ice Rink.

  “I was listening from over there,” he said, pointing to the bench.

  “Oh?” the woman said, a frown wrinkling on her forehead.

  “Yeah. You seem all worked up about these animals.”

  “You don’t see anything wrong, Mr...”

  “Johnson.”

  “Mr. Johnson. You don’t find it appalling that these animals are being abused? That Cal Pacific’s doing horrible experiments on them?”

  Johnson shifted his weight awkwardly and ran a hand through his greasy hair. “What kind of experiments?”

  “They keep them locked up in small cages and there’s no telling what they’re actually doing up there.”

  “You said they were doing horrible experiments on them. What kind, exactly?”

  “Sticking needles in them, for one thing. Taking their blood. God knows what else. Maybe shooting electricity through them.”

  The woman waved an arm in the air and her voice had an intense quality to it.

  “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  “Norma.”

  “Glad to meet you, Norma,” Johnson said and held out a dirty hand. After a brief handshake he continued. “Maybe I’ll join your group. I think cruelty to animals is wrong.”

  “Well, Mr. Johnson,” Norma said, “we can always use more folks who care about the welfare of animals.”

  After the meeting in the park, Johnson and Norma became lovers, with her visiting his apartment several nights a week. One evening, he inquired about her marriage.

  “Bryan doesn’t know my needs,” Norma said, running a hand through his hair. “He spends all of his time consumed by his work, which leaves him precious little time for me. Once, I thought about divorcing him but realized I was addicted to his money.”

  Johnson raised an eyebrow then frowned.

  “Yes,” she said, “I suppose I know what that makes me. In this world, sweetheart, not all of one’s decisions can be made with moral certitude. I could never live as you, in a place such as this.”

  “Yet, you can lower your standards to come here?”

  “Not my standards, dear. Just because I like the finer things in life doesn’t mean I don’t value the way you make love to me.”

  “I could come to value the finer things as well,” Johnson said, kissing her neck as they lay on the bed.

  “Well, sweetie, if all goes well at the facility, maybe I could see to that.”

  They laughed together. Johnson brought Norma’s mouth to his.

  ***

  The sun just cleared the rim of the gorge when Lowell pushed the ore cart down the track into the cool dry air where he sat and watched Garby and Terkel load the packs with the ore. With morning just underway he was already bushed from the back-breaking work. They started well before dawn using lanterns to aid their labor, first with Lowell manning the pick, then Yarak. In the dark during breakfast, Garby mentioned to him the strange sounds he heard during the night and neither could figure what it was. As Lowell watched Garby and Terkel lug the gold ore down to the stream, he could hear Yarak working the pick deep inside the mine. It would to be tough, intensive labor but it was necessary if they were to exhume the fortune waiting down there. Not having mechanized equipment with which to work meant it would require sheer muscle to pluck the gold from the vein. The mountain wasn’t going to give up her treasures easily.

  During the morning, they worked the right hand shaft and were about fifty yards from the Y where the main tunnel divided and branched into two diverging shafts. The shaft at this level was downright cold this early in the day, in addition to being dark and forbidding. Using only the light from two lanterns to see made it all the spookier. Lowell couldn’t understand how anyone did the job for very long--never seeing the light of day.

  When Garby and Terkel were on their way back up the trail to the mine entrance, Lowell pushed the cart down the tunnel to where Yarak plunged the pick into the vein. Without saying a word, he began picking up the rock pieces and threw them into the cart. The two lanterns gave off a soft golden glow that produced a glistening sheen to the walls and ceiling of the shaft. Each time the pick bit into the rock, it sent showers of small chips flying, the sound ricocheting down the shaft beyond the reach of the lantern’s light. When the cart was full of ore, Lowell pushed it out into the sunlight where his two assistants took the rock down to the stream. Over and over the process was repeated until by early afternoon the pile was as high as he was tall.

  The men had been working like this for three days. Late each afternoon, Lowell and Yarak worked the sluice, shoveling the sand and gravel brought down from the mine into it and using the stream’s current to filter out the heavier gold nuggets. The sluice box was like a long tray open at both ends with riffles, spaced evenly along the length of the sluice, every few inches, perpendicular to the length of the sluice. These riffles caused small barriers to the water flow that created eddies in the water, giving the heavier material, black sand and gold, a chance to drop to the bottom behind the riffles.

  Lowell noticed that Garby had taken to grumbling as he toted the bags of ore down to the stream with Terkel. Why this was so was a mystery to Lowell for he had treated Garby well, paid him a decent wage, even provided his transportation. He hired Garby after Yarak found him working on a railroad maintenance gang in California. Garby never talked much about his past but Lowell had learned through Terkel that the man was married once and arrested after his wife disappeared under mysterious circumstances. He was released but the woman never was found. Whether Garby had anything to do with his wife’s disappearance was never determined and the man certainly didn’t volunteer any new information. Garby’s personal habits, although no concern to Lowell, could be improved with better hygiene. The man didn’t bath often enough for Lowell’s tastes, and the week the men spent working the mine only made matters worse. He vowed to speak to Yarak and get Garby bathed in the stream.

  Lowell pushed the cart toward the mine entrance, trudging down the track toward the growing daylight outside. While doing so, he reflected on why he was here, forcing himself to labor away in a lost canyon in desolate Nevada. It was simple, he could see the results of his effort, unlike so many business deals where success was spelled out on the bottom line of a ledger--nothing concrete. Here, he could watch the piles of gold ore get bigger, the direct consequence of his work. It filled him with a sense of accomplishment and knowing that the ever
-growing pile of rock translated into money made his gratification sweeter.

  His girlfriend Julie had been the only person who didn’t make him feel self-conscious about his stature, and he worshiped her, showered her with expensive gifts, always over her protests. Didn’t need them, she always said, just wanted his company. She was a few inches taller then he with auburn hair, delicate features, and laughed at his jokes. Together, they seemed like the perfect couple, going to dinner, plays, sporting events. He planned a long life together. When she told him about the pregnancy, he was overjoyed for he never expected a family, never thought a woman as beautiful as Julie could love a man as unsightly as he.

  Then the accident happened. And it changed his life--for the worse. Julie’s death turned him into an embittered man, mourning his loss, isolating himself. He tried to have the drunk driver prosecuted but instead, the man was sentenced to time served and ordered to do community service.

  There was nothing Lowell’s money could do to change the outcome. He bought her parents a house--in part, he knew, to assuage the guilt he felt for not dying with her and the baby. Time, however, was a great healer, at least on the surface, the face he showed the public. The scars on his psyche betrayed a deeper, hidden wound that never seemed to heal. Her parents were understanding but were mourning themselves, so it wasn’t long until they had drifted apart, with Lowell seeing them less and less. Eventually, they sold the house, wrote him a cordial letter, and moved to Florida. He never heard from them after that.

  With Julie gone, he threw himself into his work and prided himself in the wealth he accumulated. He had no close friends until he met Yarak.

  Yarak wanted a break and fresh air so he left Lowell in the shaft. Alone in the dimly lit tunnel, Lowell leaned against the ore cart and rested his aching back.

  Something caught his attention deeper in the mine.

  Beyond the reaches of the lantern light he thought he heard something, as if there was movement in the dark. He listened.

  Yes, there it was--a shuffling sound as if someone or something was prowling around in the dark. It sounded like walking.

  Then it stopped.

  Ears and mind on alert, he listened. But there was nothing. The noise stopped.

  He turned on his floodlight and it pierced the darkness of the mineshaft, its walls coming alive in brilliant relief.

  Nothing.

  The eerie silence in the shaft engulfed him and, without Yarak’s company, Lowell felt the walls closing around him. Being somewhat claustrophobic, he felt uneasy alone. He shined his light deep into the mineshaft but again saw nothing unusual, nothing to account for the sound he heard. Must be my imagination in the dark, he thought.

  Yarak returned and came to Lowell’s side. “What is it?” he said.

  “I guess nothing,” Lowell said, switching off his floodlight. “I thought I heard a noise down there. Like walking. Have you heard it?”

  “Nope. You can’t hear much over this pick axe banging away in the rock.”

  “Damn imagination,” Lowell said. “It gets spooky down here.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts or goblins, boss. But small animals might be living in these old shafts. But I think we would have run them out by now.”

  Yarak returned to banging away at the vein with his pick leaving Lowell to fill the cart once more. And so it continued the rest of the day.

  ***

  The Bell Yankee helicopter pilot began startup procedures, the chopper’s turbine engine whining in the still morning air. Sheriff Calder and Sergeant Jessup stood next to the command post, studying a map of the area that included the town of Grant. It was a cloudless day, the sun just beginning to make its appearance.

  “Here’s where they were last spotted,” Calder said, pointing to a spot on the map. If you can get the chopper up there and begin a systematic search of the area, we’ll follow in the jeeps. You can ride with me. My two deputies will take the other one.”

  “Fine, Sheriff. They can radio us if they see anything.”

  “No one kills these animals until I’m present,” Calder said. “Understand?”

  “Of course, Sheriff. This is your case. We’re just here to help.”

  Calder wasn’t sure he believed the sergeant and the thought struck him it might have been a mistake to call in the state police but now he had to make the best of it. Once the chopper was in the air, Calder, Jessup, Ben, and Louis climbed into their jeeps and followed in a northwest direction at a distance behind the aircraft. It disappeared into the haze created by the rising desert heat.

  As they rumbled over dunes of sand and mesquite, they rolled by ridges of rock and boulder outcroppings forming a rough and lonely landscape. Besides the mesquite and Joshua trees, there were shrubs of desert peach with their pink flowers, rubber rabbitbrush, mountain mahogany, and buckwheat. When Calder pushed the jeep through the gate indicating the Primate Research Facility property line, Jessup motioned back toward Cinder Mountain.

  “Has the animal facility been up there long?” he said. “I never heard of it before this crisis.”

  “A few years that I know of. It didn’t get any notoriety until those large animals, Yeti they call them, from Mongolia, arrived. They do some sort of research on them, I don’t know what. They have other animals there as well.”

  “It was once government land, right?”

  “Yeah,” Calder said. “Don’t know why they sold it, though.”

  “You know, Sheriff, these escaped animals are going to have to be destroyed. Whether you do it or it’s us, they have to go.”

  “I don’t know, Sergeant. Maybe Dr. Olson was right. We could call the vet. He could tranquilize them and get them returned to the facility. That’s beginning to sound reasonable to me.”

  “There’s always the possibility of them escaping again. And besides, these beasts have killed people. The public demands they be exterminated. It’s justice.”

  “Justice?” Calder said. “How can there be justice here?”

  The sheriff liked to think of himself as a reasonable man and, as such, he pondered Harry’s admonition against killing the Yeti when they caught up with them. Maybe the doctor was right--science would suffer if they were destroyed. If the facility beefed up its security, maybe it would be possible to return them. He was beginning to see things differently.

  After leaving the research facility property, the road turned to asphalt and curved back north then northwest. When Grant appeared on the horizon Calder heard the helicopter circling overhead some distance to the east. They pushed past the town and into thinner scrub, where plants were few and far between. The day was turning into a scorcher.

  They saw nothing.

  At a dry streambed, they found tracks of a large animal. They looked like tracks of a huge human. Jessup put his foot into one of them with much to spare, half again bigger than his shoe size. Calder shifted the jeep into four-wheel drive and turned off the road following the tracks, while Ben walked in front, leading the way. Calder didn’t think the tracks looked like they belonged to an animal as big as the Yeti but he pushed on for a mile or so until they gave out. Then he gunned the engine and ran up the side of the arroyo heading south.

  “Nothing out here but coyotes and sagebrush,” Jessup complained. “Stop for a minute, Sheriff.”

  Calder shut the jeep down. Jessup climbed out and scanned the horizon with binoculars. Low ridges punctuated the landscape and, off to the west, distant mountains punched skyward from the desert floor.

  “See anything?” Calder said.

  “Naw, nothing. A few jackrabbits and a lone coyote.”

  “If the Yeti aren’t around Grant, I don’t know where they could have disappeared to. We can see for miles out here.”

  Jessup climbed back into the jeep as Ben and Louis drove up. He retrieved the handheld radio from the dashboard and pushed the TALK button.

  “Chopper One, this is Able Leader. Come in, Chopper One,” he said.

  There w
as static then a click. “This is Chopper One. Go ahead, Able Leader.”

  “See anything up there, guys?”

  “Nothing, Sarge. Not a damn thing.”

  “Chopper One, bring the bird back home to the command post. We’re calling it a day.”

  More static.

  “Roger, Able Leader. Heading home.”

  The static went quiet and Jessup replaced the radio on the dash.

  “Okay, Sheriff,” he said. “Let’s head back. We can decide on tomorrow’s search area.”

  On the way back to the command post, Calder heard the helicopter off in the distance. Its drone got louder and louder until out of nowhere it zoomed overhead. It arced skyward and turned in a graceful curve toward Cinder Mountain.

  Chapter 21

  The region now occupied by the Sierra Nevada Mountains once lay beneath the sea, receiving sediment from the North American continent to the east. Through the process of plate tectonics, the Pacific Plate crashed into the North American Plate and was subducted beneath it. The incredible force of the crash caused the sediment to melt, forming an enormous magma chamber that eventually cooled to form granite. In addition, these forces caused the uplift of the land, forming enormous mountains. The process of erosion had since removed the sediment layer above the granite, exposing the sierra that we see today. Continuous movement of the plates caused additional uplift, melting and folding that produced a mix of sedimentary, metamorphic, and volcanic rock.

  About thirty million years ago, an era of volcanism of massive proportions began in the Sierras. During this era, the Sierra began uplifting again to form many parallel faults. The area to the west rose, while the area to the east, now Carson Valley, dropped. The Tahoe Basin, like Carson Valley, had dropped between two uplifted blocks--the Sierra Crest on the west and the Carson Range to the east. Volcanic activity occurred frequently just north of the lake, and a lava flow eventually crossed over the Carson River. This dammed the valley and formed Lake Tahoe.