“The problem is, carrying him will slow us down. Igor is the strongest member of our team. Do we really want to weaken him unnecessarily? What if his strength becomes crucial to our survival? We might as well shoot ourselves in the foot before we leave. And the terrain is too steep to control a sled.”
“Carrying him will not weaken me. I am stronger than that.”
Nat waited, wondering if Steven would argue with the Russian about how strong he was. But even he appeared to realize that would be futile. Sighing, Steven melted snow for the packets of beef tips. “I’m done fighting with you people. I’ve tried my best to reason with you, but you didn’t believe Vasily and now you don’t believe me. Just know that if the worse comes to worst on this mountain tomorrow, you brought it on yourself.”
“What do you mean, we’re not listening to Vasily? We listened to Vasily.” Igor’s voice was angrier than Nat had ever heard it. Uh oh. She hoped Steven was smart enough to apologize and shut up before he got seriously hurt.
“You’re listening to Vasily now, now that Joe and Anubha are dead. But how many people believed him when he warned us about the hunting?”
Igor made a scoffing sound. “I wasn’t here when he talked about hunting. I was with Andrew and Nat.”
“You’re right.” Steven raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. I only meant that Anubha and Joe didn’t listen, and look what happened to them. They’re dead.”
“Can we please stop talking about that?” Lana’s voice cracked. “It’s bad enough knowing their bodies are right there without you constantly bringing it up.”
“Not to mention it’s pretty damn close to victim blaming,” Nat said, furious on her trappers’ behalf. “Joe and Anubha did not deserve what happened to them. They were only doing what I paid them to do. And I’m not going to fault them if they didn’t believe yetis ruled this mountain. That would be difficult for most people to wrap their heads around.”
Tearing open the packets of beef tips, Steven poured them into the boiling water, making a rich gravy that got Nat’s stomach growling.
“Are we really going to waste our precious food on a fabled snow creature, like some macabre version of leaving cookies for Santa?” Lana asked.
“Different cultures believe different things. The best way to survive is always to listen to the natives,” Steven said, stirring the mixture. “As weird as it may sound to us, we need to listen to Vasily. He knows how to survive on this mountain, while we clearly do not.”
“But we are listening to Vasily. We’re even listening to you. I just don’t want to leave Andrew—or anyone—behind.” Nat studied the Mansi, who had gone quiet again. She wondered if it was a natural reticence, or the difficulty of communicating in English. “What do they look like, Vasily?” When she received a puzzled expression in return, she clarified. “The snowmen, what do they look like? Do they really have long, white fur?”
The guide shrugged. “I do not know. Never got a close look. They wear these suits, like snowsuits with hoods, but made of animal skins. Many different types of animals, different types of fur. Maybe that is how the story began that they are covered with fur.”
Creatures wearing homemade snowsuits. Nat thought back to the story Steven had shared, about the creature in California wearing makeshift shoes. If the snowmen were capable of constructing their own clothing, they were highly intelligent. This went far beyond chimpanzees using sticks to scoop termites from a rotten log. The snowmen could be just as smart as humans, if not more so. God knows Nat had never believed their species had cornered the market on brains.
But if they couldn’t outwit them and couldn’t overpower them, what could they do? They didn’t even have weapons beyond Anubha’s crossbow, Joe’s knife, and Vasily’s old rifle.
“If these creatures exist, why has no one ever found a body?” Lana asked. It was an old question, one that had been put to cryptozoologists for years. Nat was curious to see if anyone in their group had an intelligent answer.
“Maybe they bury their dead. Or eat them. Or burn them,” Steven said. “Or maybe bodies have been found, but the government hushed it up. We know something was hinky with the Dyatlov investigation. There were always too many unanswered questions. And before you jump down my throat, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But I know, without a doubt, these creatures exist, or at least that something like them does. I’ve seen one.”
“Even then, you’d think someone would have found something. A bit of bone, a tooth. It’s almost impossible to get rid of a body entirely.” Nat’s obsession with true crime had told her as much. “An ordinary fire wouldn’t cut it.”
“Maybe people have found something, but didn’t recognize it as anything extraordinary. Or maybe they were afraid. Sightings of these creatures are always in remote areas—mountains, forests. Not places where there’s sophisticated technology or teams of scientists.”
Steven had a point, but she could tell the others struggled with the notion that yetis were real. For many, it was much easier to believe in ghosts, vampires, and UFOs. But why?
The group fell silent for a bit, the only sound the crackling and popping of their fire. Nat tilted her head back, amazed at the brightness of the stars. This place did have a stark beauty. If only her heart weren’t weighed down by fear and grief.
She thought of Lyudmila. Was this how the young skier had felt on the last night of her life? She must have known her friends were dead by the time she was killed. How had she ended up under the snow? Had the creatures buried her there?
“It’s ready. Where should I put it, Vasily?” Steven poured the contents of the cooking pot onto a plate. When the savory-smelling steam hit Nat’s nose, her stomach growled even louder. She pressed both hands against it.
“Over there.” The Mansi pointed toward the forest, far away from their tents, filling Nat with relief. “Away from us.”
“How do we know some other wild animal isn’t going to come along and eat it?” Lana asked. Nat had wondered the same.
“They wouldn’t dare. All creatures fear the snowmen,” Vasily said. “They will leave it.”
Nat wasn’t sure how a fox or wolf would know whom the food was intended for, but she was too tired to ask. In spite of her hunger, her overwhelming need was for sleep. She felt dead on her feet.
“Do you think this will work? Will they leave us alone?” Igor asked.
The Mansi shrugged. “It is impossible to say. I have never seen them angry before. My village is careful to stay on their good side.”
“So we have to wait and see if they’re going to come kill us? Well, that’s wonderful. Maybe we should make our way down to the second camp. Even in the dark, we’d probably be better off.”
Nat had to agree with Lana. If there was a good chance they were going to die anyway, it made sense to leave now, while they still could.
“I cannot carry Andrew in the dark. It’s too risky.” Igor frowned as he looked at her producer, who was still sleeping, his head resting against her shoulder. “We’ll have to wait until morning.”
“What if a couple of us went ahead, like we did last night? I could go with Steven, and you three could meet us in the morning,” Lana suggested.
In other words, you don’t care if we die, Nat thought. You’re only concerned about saving your own skin. She couldn’t judge the woman too harshly, though. If Nat didn’t have to stay behind with Andrew, she would probably already be on her way down the mountain herself. Even in the weak firelight, she could see Lana’s eyes were wide with fear.