Amber

Chapter 25

“Pretty big area, but mostly flat.” Maddock brought the binoculars to his eyes and began scanning their surroundings. “Not a lot of rocks, but the tall grass could be concealing something. Let’s take a look around.”

They fanned out and began exploring the grassy summit, Bones taking pleasure in diving into the tallest grass and rooting through it to see what he could turn up, which turned out not to be much. After a few minutes of looking around he had found nothing. No concealed tunnel entrances, no hidden treasure chests; only grassy earth.

Maddock gravitated toward the rocky clumps, checking to see if they were ruptures in the summit floor that led down into the tunnel system or caves beneath, but he, too, discovered nothing interesting.

Leopov wandered toward the downward slope to see how difficult it would be to make the return trip that way versus climbing back down the rock face. The vast distances she observed were not encouraging.

Willis and Professor, meanwhile, opted to walk about the plateau to see what they might come across. They worked at opposite ends of the summit. Professor would stop occasionally to pick up a rock and turn it over in his hands, scrutinizing it as if its very nature held clues that could tell him about the history of this rarely visited place. Willis, on the other hand, favored walking swiftly to a particular area, digging around to examine it, and then moving rapidly again to another area some distance away.

Regardless of their different methods, none of them discovered anything conclusive, or anything at all, for that matter. They converged near the middle of the summit’s plateau, trading accounts of what they had and had not seen. Maddock was relaying his account when they heard a piercing howl, and not all that far off.

Bones held a hand up, asking for silence so that he may identify the sound. A few seconds after the vocalization stopped, Bones’ eyes widened. “Wolf.”

As soon as he said it, the wolf began to howl again, and then, causing all of their heads to turn, a second animal brayed from somewhere nearby.

“Two of them!” Professor observed.

“Sounds like they’re somewhere on the summit with us, too.” Willis looked around nervously, head on a swivel.

“You don’t suppose… ” Leopov trailed off as she tried to see over a rocky outcropping.

“Suppose what?” Maddock prompted, taking a step away from the group and starting to look around carefully.

“Suppose that these wolves might be of the same variety we came across before?”

“You mean the frickin’ giant Nazi mad scientist type?” Bones turned his head to one side, listening in a particular direction, not for howls, but for footfalls. He didn’t hear any, but the howling continued, and from more dogs.

Professor eyed Maddock. “It sounds like there are at least four of them. If they are those big ones, we really ought to think about—“

“There!” Bones pointed off to their left, where an oversized wolf was charging over a grassy knoll and headed their way. Bones’ knife now rode in his right hand, but even that didn’t give him much confidence. “It’s a big one. Real big.”

“We didn’t see anything up here, so let’s head back into the tunnels.” Professor said.

“Where’s the entrance?” Leopov whirled around, confused. The rock outcroppings dotting the plateau all looked the same, and the opening into the tunnel system was in the middle of one of them. Maddock pointed at it, but as soon as he did a second massive wolf appeared perhaps fifty yards beyond it, also running towards them.

“Number three coming over there!” Professor pointed to another lupine interloper, the animal growling as it advanced, nose low to the ground, the hair on its tail standing on end.

“Hurry!” Leopov started to run, galvanizing the rest of them to action. They sprinted for the entrance to the tunnels that Maddock had pointed out. Willis stumbled on his injured leg and fell into a stand of tall grass. Bones stopped to pick him up, eyeing a wolf barreling at them, closing the distance fast.

“These things are fast, Willis, let’s move it.” He received no argument, and in seconds the two were running again across the summit, glancing left and right and seeing wolves coming at them each time they looked.

Maddock reached the tunnel entrance before the others, but he didn’t drop in first. He stood guard, small knife in one hand as he spun in circles, monitoring the advancing beasts. “Go, go, go!” he encouraged, waving them on. “Don’t look back, just run,” he aimed at Professor in particular, who couldn’t keep from looking over his shoulder every few steps.

Leopov made it to him first. The grappling hook and rope were already set up and Maddock urged her down into the tunnel. She jumped into the hole, barely touching the rope as she slid down into the tunnel. Bones was next to arrive, with Willis close behind him. Bones looked Maddock in the eye.

“Want me to hang out, just in case… ” He waved his knife. Maddock shook his head. “Just get down there, Bones. We’re not going to beat these things in a fight. We’ve got to get away from this open space.”

“See you down there.” Bones slid down the rope into the tunnel.

Then Willis stepped up to the entrance and dropped down, followed by Professor, glancing over his shoulder one last time as he hurtled himself into the pit.

The closest wolf was mere feet from Maddock now. It would be on him in seconds, but as terrifying as the creature was, Maddock couldn’t help but marvel at it. A gigantic, majestic animal with a flowing mane and bright white teeth, running through the Alps. He forced himself to shake off his wonderment and drop down into the tunnel, joining the rest of the team.

He found them huddled next to the drop zone, switching on their flashlights… He moved to join them but Bones pointed behind him. “Get my grapple, will you? We might need it.”

Maddock turned to do just that but when he looked up at the hook what he saw stopped him cold in his tracks. A colossal wolf head nearly blocked all light from entering the tunnel shaft. Maddock wiped his eyes as he felt warm saliva drop onto him from the canine’s barking mouth. The wolf barked ferociously, incessantly, putting its entire body into it, front paws sticking out over the pit while the rest of its body behind the head was not visible.

He wouldn’t be able to get the grapple back. That much was for certain. But, even as he turned around to run back to the group so that they could get out of here, that wasn’t what now nagged at his consciousness. It was the wolf, what it was doing.

If it can fit down here… And then, with a sickening realization, he flashed on the piles of bones in the cliff caves and it hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. He had no time to fully explain so he just expressed his thoughts aloud, as he was thinking them.

“Those wolves can get in here! They roam around in here and bring their kills in here… ”

“They can fit?” Professor’s voice was doubtful but also edged with worry.

Maddock opened his mouth to answer in the affirmative but the sound of nails scraping on rock behind them meant that he didn’t have to. Without saying another word, they all took off running down the tunnel as fast as they could manage.

Fortunately the passageway was long and without branches, meaning it wasn’t possible to get lost and wander aimlessly. But that same advantage was also a disadvantage when it came to being chased by angry wolves. The big canine rocketed down the straightaway, still barking, apparently not concerned about stealth, but instead preferring the intimidation factor. Figures, Maddock thought, as his feet pounded the tunnel floor. Bred by Hitler’s scientists. Instilling fear would be second nature to them.

By the time the team merged with the tunnel that led to Professor’s cave, they could hear a second wolf not far behind the first, barking, sending a message of violence as it pursued them. All five of the human prey were breathless now as they moved through the tunnel as fast as they dared, taking numerous bumps into low-hanging ceiling irregularities or protruding rock slabs. But still they kept on moving, the sound of the slavering canines steadily closing the distance between them as they progressed through the tunnels.

They dropped into Professor’s cave and Maddock started to head for the tunnel that led to the next cave over, the one they had all come to except for Professor, when he paused. Leopov was looking over the side, near the edge. “Should we climb from here instead?”

Maddock looked to Bones, who shook his head. “Already have the belay rope set up in the other cave. No time to set up a new one.” As if to emphasize this point, the first wolf emerged from the tunnel and wasted no time in leaping down into Professor’s cave. Leopov screamed, a piercing shriek that outcompeted the wolves’ barking and yelping.

Maddock grabbed her by the arm and headed for the tunnel that would lead to the first cave. Bones and Willis were already entering it, and Professor waited for Maddock and Leopov to run inside before following. “Three wolves in the cave!” he warned.

They ran as quickly as they could in the hunched over position that was dictated by the tunnel’s low ceiling. Maddock hoped against hope that the wolves would decide that it was too much trouble to pursue them into this tunnel, or that they wouldn’t even fit, but a lively howling that reverberated throughout the tubular space told him otherwise. Maddock urged them on through the space’s remaining yards. He didn’t need any of them giving up now, and in this narrow natural structure, were one of them to collapse or give up, those behind would not be able to pass.

The wolves provided all the encouragement anyone needed, however, and by the time the passageway was a noise chamber of echoing wolf cries, all five of them were pouring out into the cave through which they had come in. Bones immediately ran over to the edge, checking the safety rope setup. He was reaching down to test the integrity of the piton he’d hammered when Maddock yelled at him.

“Bones, remember the snipers!”

He was too close to the edge, offering too high of a silhouetted profile. But as the first gigantic wolf leapt into the room, they all knew that they had a choice to make: Stay here and soon be engaged in multiple direct animal attacks, or rappel down the cliff face the way they had come and be subject to possible additional sniper fire.

As the second engineered predator entered the rear of the cave, they opted for the latter. Bones waved them over to the edge. “No time to rig a harness for everybody, but I can hammer in another piton to beef it up. Just grab the rope—hold on—and get down.”

No one liked it but they liked the notion of being consumed alive by humongous wolves even less. Bones scrambled for his hammer and another piton from his pack while Leopov got first in line to descend. A third wolf dropped into the cave, the first one now making its way across the floor to them, slowing as it moved in for the kill.

“Remember, no safety harness—hold onto the rope all the way down! No room for error!” Bones shouted his parting words to Leopov over both the hammering of the backup piton and the braying of the canine predators now cornering their victims. The noise meant that he couldn’t listen for snipers, though, but there was no time to do anything about that.

Willis grabbed the safety line and began sliding down, quicker than Leopov, pushing off the wall with his feet every twenty feet or so on the way down. Bones knew that if he caught up to Leopov he would have to wait for her. He mentally kicked himself for not making her go last, but what was done was done. Hopefully she would increase her pace as she warmed to the rappel.

Professor went over the side as he cast a terrified glance over his shoulder. And then Maddock walked over to the edge. “C’mon Bones! No time. We’re both going.”

Bones looked up from the pitons, which he was fortifying to be able to handle the simultaneous weight of the entire team, when Maddock, safety line running through one of his hands, literally scooped him off the ground and fell over the edge with him. Bones watched as a kaleidoscopic mishmash of jaws, paws and bloody fur jumbled together just beyond his reach. And then they fell away, Bones not even in contact with the only available rope, but clutching Maddock’s midsection, who wrangled them into position as soon as they had dropped below the reach of the slavering beasts.

They paused on the wall about twenty feet down and carefully separated, Bones taking hold of the safety line on his own, just below Maddock, who took the opportunity to look down at the others. One… two… three, good! All still there, still moving down. He supposed enough time had elapsed that the sniper team had given up for the time being. Or perhaps they had even chosen to send a squad the long way to the summit, around the other side. Above them the wolves howled, venting their frustration into the high altitude winds. At first he feared they might be frenzied enough to jump over the edge of the cliff after them, like mindless, predatory lemmings, but they remained right at the edge.

The team descended all the way to the ground, where Maddock quickly reminded them that the sniper threat could return at any moment, that they needed to keep moving. The shaken warriors moved off down the path that led from the base of the cliff back into the lakeside woods.