Operation: Yukon

- 14 -

The cap wasn’t kidding about the snow. By the time we all piled into the back of the truck it was coming down hard. We had the truck turned so that the wind wouldn’t blow in when we opened the door but even then the cab rocked and rolled as the storm ramped up.

Davies got out the wee black boxes and went back to work on getting them rigged for electroshock.

“Quarter of an hour, no more,” he said. “Then all four will be ready.”

The rest of us settled into a routine of coffee, smokes and three card-brag. The sheriff proved all my suspicions about her card playing skills right by rooking us for most of our fags while the storm ramped up and night fell. When the banter stopped the only sound was the whistle of the wind and the whisper of snow against the cab windows, beyond which there was nothing to see but snowflakes whirling in the blackness.

The cap hadn’t had his mind on the game and was the first to get cleared out. Now he sat by the door that was cracked open by quarter of an inch to let air in and smoke out as he chain-smoked in silence. I knew he was mulling over our situation; I’d been doing the same to little avail. After I lost the last of my fags, I shifted over to sit by him.

“Any thoughts you want to share, Cap?”

“I was thinking about Jennings,” he said. “I should have done better by that lad.”

He had unwittingly echoed my own thoughts.

“He showed balls at the end there,” I said. “I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“None of us did. And there’s the problem. There will be another young corporal joining us when we get home. We, you and I, need to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We’re supposed to look after our own, not leave them lying in a hut in a body bag.”

I couldn’t find anything to disagree with, joke about or deflect, so I merely nodded, took one of his smokes and joined him on the opposite side of the door in quiet reverie. It was only broken when the sheriff rose from the game.

“I don’t mean to be indelicate but you lads drink far too much coffee and this old dame needs to pay a visit to the ladies room. Watch my back.”

She hauled open the door, letting in a flurry of snow and stepped out, hunkering down to one side of the doorway. I stood above her, weapon raised, peering out into the storm and hoping nothing was there, just out of sight. I almost yelped when she shouted out.

“Hey, get down here. There’s something you need to see.”

I dropped down beside her while the cap took my place in the doorway. She was pointing at her feet. I had to switch on my gun light to see it properly, but it was obvious what it was—a footprint, more than a foot long, eight inches wide and with five toes clearly delineated, the big toe appearing to be almost as big as a clenched fist.

“It was right here,” she said. “The bastard thing was standing near the door, checking us out.”

“Sure looks that way,” I said, and panned my light another couple of feet to the side, showing another print there and, in the gloom beyond, what looked like a third.

They looked to be heading towards the cabin.

“I’ll go and have a look,” I said, but the cap denied me.

“Nope. We all go,” he said. “Splitting us up just makes us more vulnerable to ambush, and I don’t trust these things, not after Siberia.”

None of us were overly keen on leaving the relative comfort of the cab, but the sight of the footprints heading straight for the cabin quickly strengthened everybody’s resolve and we headed at speed back to the steps; they were only a few yards away, yet invisible in the whirling storm. It was only when I reached the bottom step that I could see that the cabin door was open at the top and there were more of the huge footprints in the snow on the steps where the snow was disturbed, almost as if the thing had stood there and stomped around.

I was first in, ready to shoot should there be even the slightest movement.

The room was empty. The vault door was open, as we had left it, but the place sat eerily quiet, and the musky animal odor coming up from below didn’t seem as intense as previously. I had a feeling I knew what I was going to see at the bottom as I headed down to the cells. My suspicions were confirmed; all three of the previously occupied cells were now empty, the cell doors either hanging loose on their settings or, in the case of the one where the pregnant female had been, lying flat on the floor. The only other sign there had been an occupant was a thin, watery, pool of blood at the cell entrance, and now that I was looking for it, droplets of spilled blood on the stairwell. The pregnant one was leaving a trail.

I pointed it out to the cap.

“Do we follow?”

“In this storm? Risky.”

“But if we don’t, the snow will have their tracks covered in half an hour,” the sheriff said. “Trust me, I know this weather.”

As usual, it only took the cap seconds to make a decision, and once it was made, he put a hundred percent into it.

“Okay. We follow, but we stick together, nobody moves out of touching range of anybody else, and if anything moves that isn’t us, we take it down hard and fast. Move out. Wiggo, you’re on point. If the trail disappears on us, we head back for the trucks pronto; I’m not about to have us floundering about out there in this weather.”

We did what we were told and moved out.

I realized when I got back up top and out to the steps why the snow looked more disturbed; it had been a sign that all of the Alma had left this way, and two large spots of blood to the right of the bottom step confirmed that for me. The trail of blood continued to go right then turned behind the cabin. My heart sank when I realized where they must be headed and was proved right again when I was led directly to the hut where we’d stored the bodies of Jennings and Watkins. The hut doors had been forced inwards with brute strength, the bodies were gone and all I could think about was that the sheriff had been right earlier: we’d been using the wrong kind of bait.

To make matters worse we lost the trail soon afterward; it led directly into the forest north of the station, into another deer trail then under the canopy where it was too dark and the snow too thick to allow us to follow.

“Back to the truck,” the cap said. “There’s fuck all we can do here until daylight and better weather.”

Nothing attacked us as we retraced our steps, although the thought that the Alma might be too busy eating provided me with no comfort at all. I guessed that everyone was thinking the same thing but nobody mentioned it back in the truck. Wilko brewed up some coffee, I mooched some smokes back from the sheriff and nobody spoke for a while, all of us lost in our own thoughts while the storm continued outside.

Cap was first to break the silence and he addressed the sheriff.

“You know these woods,” he said. “Where will the best place be to look for them once the storm abates a tad?”

“I’ve been thinking about that myself,” she said. “If they’re primates like you say, and given what Wiggo told me about Siberia, they’ll be after shelter. The nearest thing we have to a cave system round here is the old McMillan silver mine. That’s up in the hills to the north; same direction as they were going when we lost the trail. Ain’t been up there myself since I was a youngster but I’ve heard of hunters using them for shelter if caught in bad weather. There’s our best chance, if I was to bet all the smokes I took off your lads here.”

“Is there a road up to the mine?”

“Road, no. But there should be a track to follow if I can find the starting point. As you said though, that’ll have to wait for daylight and better weather.”

“Hunker down, lads,” the cap said, “I’ll take first watch. Wiggo, you can spell me in three hours. Try to get some kip. Looks like we might have a climb and a fight waiting at the end of it for us in the morning.”