Whiteout II: 12 (The Devil at the Gates)

Before I launch into the next chapter I want you all to know that i have finished the book! Woot! I'm just behind on my posting. It weighs in at 50,443 words. We've got about 6 chapters left till the end, then I will resume writing on Death Co. and the other much more polished works I usually submit to this awesome website. Thank you all for bearing with me through this challenge and still reading my unedited filth!

--Mac

12. The Devil at the Gate

     The doors were hard wood, carved unlike anything I had ever seen. Scenes of blood and massacre adorned them. It was the war between the Gods and their creations. The woodwork seemed to go on forever, twisting and turning its way to smooth edges. The doors hung slightly ajar and a warm air blew from within them. Enticing us inward. For a brief moment things were calm. The cold wind from the mountain did not reach there, and the warm air was refreshing for all of us.

     The doors were inset into a cave with stalactites hanging from the ceiling making it look like a giant set of jaws. The further into the mountain it went, the longer they got. The cave continued past the gates in an offshoot, growing ever darker as it drew inward. We’ve done it. Shangri-La exists. It’s a real place. Relief swept over me in graceful arcs, calming the anxiety that had wracked me for days, and then one sound brought it all back to reality.

     BEEP. The creature. In my astonishment I had briefly forgotten about it. The beeping of the tracker brought it back to the front of our minds. “Defensive positions everyone!” I yelled, pulling the harpoon gun off of my back in one swift motion. I unclicked the compartment where I had hidden the liquid and pulled it out. “Lopsang, James, dip your arrows now!” I was in mid dip with the harpoon when the roar filled the den with immense noise.

     From above there came a loud crash and in a whirl of snow another one of Manchester’s men was gone. The creature tossed him off of the edge. As the snow cleared I got my first full picture of it. Long white fur draped over its face, parting to reveal two black eyes and a powerful jaw. Slobber dripped from its open mouth. Black gums gave way to bright, white teeth, two long fangs on the top and the bottom. Each tooth was sharpened like a razor.

     When the creature roared its whole body shook, revealing sinewy muscle. It had survived many years on the mountain and had grown strong. The white fur covered its entire body, matted and coarse. “Fire!” I yelled just as the creature charged me. Like a gorilla it put its front paws to the ground and ran at me on four legs. I managed to get the harpoon bolt off and stick it in the creature’s right shoulder. As I did so I rolled out of the way toward deeper portion of the cave.

     The creature crashed into the rock wall where I had just been standing, sending stones flying out in all directions. They skittered over the ground. After that chaos ensued. Manchester and his men began to open fire, which luckily for me distracted the creature. Where the bullets hit the skin they promptly fell moments later. The hide was too tough. As the creature ran the harpoon flipped lazily off its shoulder.

     It didn’t even graze it. The sound was worse than its roar. I ended up ducking behind a boulder as a good portion of the stray shots were coming my way. The cave was a cacophonus medley of death and destruction. I lifted my head briefly to see the yeti swipe one of the men’s guns away and pick him up.

     “No, please! Stop it! Someone kill it!” The creature grabbed him by both arms and ripped him in half, tossing one over the edge, and taking a grisly bite out of the other. The creature looked even more terrifying with fresh blood dripping down into its white fur. It was angry now. We had come into its layer and unsuccessfully tried to kill it, the worst scenario possible. I looked around and saw James and Lopsang reloading their crossbows and firing for no effect.

     When the beast was hit the shafts shattered to splinters, leaving nothing more than an annoying tap on the shoulder. “Quickly, through the gates! It’s our only chance!” Yelled Manchester. “Come, everyone through now! It can’t follow us through the gates. Quickly we followed him. The other man of his crew was not fast enough, and it was his screams that inspired us to run faster. One by one we slid through the gates, the last barely making it as the creature slashed for his leg. He got a good piece, but most of the man made it through.

     We rushed to shut the gates behind us and found that we were up against a stone wall that had not been there moments earlier. I listened for the thuds of the creature trying to get through but heard nothing. The air was warm and soft. I took off my oxygen mask and breathed it in, savoring the taste. The altitude wasn’t there anymore. Each breath brought with it a dizzying full load of oxygen. I tried to stand, but quickly sat back down to maintain balance.

     “We don’t need these in here.” I said wearily turning off my oxygen tank. The state of our team was awful. Everyone had bits of the others still clinging to them. One man lay dying in the corner. As it turned out, the piece that the creature had taken had managed to just graze his femoral artery, spilling his blood onto the ground below.

     “My man is dying here. Show some respect.” Said Manchester.

     That seems oddly hypocritical. I walked over to check on Lopsang and James. “Are you alright?” James did not say a word, he just continued to stare straight forward.

     “All these years I have wondered what dwelled on the mountain, and now I know. The stories are true. The yeti is real. I have seen it with my own eyes, watched what it can do. We will die in this place, now I am sure of it.”

     “The bolts didn’t even graze him…” Muttered James, shivering on the ground. “We can’t kill it, there’s no way.”

     “No, I’m beginning to think you’re right. Maybe if we could have pierced its hide, but that seems like an impossibility. There has to be a way out of this.” I said, trying to calm them down. On the inside I was panicked, wondering how long we had until the yeti figured out how to get to us. The air smelled sweet, almost sickly so, and I looked around at the room we were in.

     From the ceiling exotic flowers dropped from an impossibly high height. Each bore a name on it. Each bloomed in its unique array of colors, stringing together to form a welcoming canopy. On one side of the room there was only a stone wall. The other had an archway, adorned by two depictions of gods with their arms outstretched. Both stared down at a diamond within a circle, just in front of the archway. In front of them lay stone books, engraved with messages in an a language I could not read.

     “Lopsang, what are those?” He rose from his seat and moved forward. The sadness left him for a moment as he looked up into the stone faces.

     “These are the ancient guardians of Shangri-La. They have been depicted in many ways, but these look similar to the Buddhist scriptures I used to read. Their arms are outstretched to welcome weary travelers, but also as a warning to outsiders. This is the real gate to the sacred land. What we passed through was the outer wall.”

     “What do the books say?”

     “I’m a little rusty with this language. It is old and hardly spoken by my people. They say: Welcome to all who would enter our kingdom, but heed this warning. This is a place of peace, and can only be entered as such.”

     “I thought Shangri-La had been mired in war for centuries.”

     “If you believe the stories, it used to be a place of refuge for the Buddhist monks during times of trouble. The problems began when the gods became too powerful and started creating creatures of their own. Divine power can bring with it divine consequences.”

     “What’s the other tablet say?”

     “It refers the door we just passed through. On the fall of the sun and the rise of the moon, this door will open, but only for a short time. Once through it will remain shut until the sun rises again.”

     “So we have until the sun sets before it opens and we have to deal with the creature again. Does it say anything about the creature there?”

     “No, nothing, that’s all.”

     “What about over here?” Manchester was on his feet again, examining the base of a large carving just like the one at the top of the spine. Once again the yeti was depicted with red wax flowing from its eyes and mouth, standing upon a pile of offerings.

     Even the creators make offerings to it. Lopsang hurried over to the plaque below it quickly.

     “This one isn’t scoured clean! It says here lies our greatest folly. We have created death through the yeti and have banished him to the place between our worlds. He will remain a vigilant guard over the gate until the end of time, assuring that it stay hidden. In exchange he will roam the realm of men unbidden throughout the winter snows.”

     “Well sounds like they made one hell of a bargain. Release their terror unto the world and get a free guard dog with the only expense being to the realm of men. I never have liked the logic of the gods.” I felt a bit nervous badmouthing deities, but I had just watched a man being ripped in half, so I was feeling saucy. “Well Lopsang, let me guess, it says absolutely nothing about how to kill it.”

     “That’s right.” He said.

     “Why don’t we just pass through the gates?” Asked Manchester. “We stand on the very doorstep of the end of our journey. If we pass through the gates the beast cannot follow us.”

     “If there’s a place that the gods would describe as war torn, I’m not all that inclined to go there.”

     “What if it’s your only chance at survival?”

     “I don’t believe in absolutes.” I said smiling, far more cheerfully than I should have. I find that I work best in times of absolute despair, when all else seems lost. “By all means Harvey, take what’s left of your team and go through. As far as I’m concerned this is the end of our journey. If that’s how you want to play it, then be my guest.” Manchester stood up and took a good look at the gate, admiring it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     “You mean to tell me that you stood on the very gates of Shangri-La and did not enter.”

     “I mean to tell you that I didn’t want to.”

     “So you did?”

     “I don’t know, did I? You seem so anxious to interrupt me!” The drinks taste like water now. I’m slurring my words, the end of the tale is near and I’ve never been good at telling it. The whole misadventure was painful, but it was that last hour, that last ditch effort that killed me. I drink greedily, wishing that it would burn to wash the taste of shame out of my mouth.

     “I’m sorry.” He says reproachfully. “It just seems silly that you would go all that way only to glimpse the gates and never pass through them.”

     “Let me ask you a question. If you knew there was a land, I mean had concrete proof, that could produce creatures that are unkillable slaughter machines, and you knew that place had produced more than one; Would you be anxious to get inside?” The question stymied him. “I’ll answer. No you wouldn’t. Shangri-La was nothing like we were meant to believe. All the stories, Paradise Lost, everything turned out to be a god damn lie. You know what the problem with deities is? They’re fucking violent, and they don’t much care for the realm of men. To them we’re just ants, and they’ve always got a magnifying glass.”

     I’ve since come to hate deities in a way that I cannot even describe. Cheeky fuckers. Always looking down at our suffering, but never lifting so much as an omnipotent finger to help us out of our misery. “We lie around in the mud while they wait in their ivory towers for us to die. One by one they watch, and do absolutely nothing.” The man is flabbergasted. Most people haven’t heard such a vehement hatred of gods before. It’s a rather uncommon opinion. Most people get on bended knee and ask them for forgiveness or good tidings. Me, I spit at their feet and ask them why?

     “What happened at the gates?”

     “So you do want to know then?”

     “Yes of course I want to know! I’m bloody paying you for the information.” Anger, that’s a new emotion. Looks like he’s about to blow his lid. Better simmer down a little bit.

     “Fine, but there’s a good chance you won’t believe me.”

     “I’ve listened thus far have I not?”

     “It gets weirder, trust me. Some of the secrets of the world are just better left under the rug, but you asked for it, so I’ll tell you. We were in quite the predicament, stuck in a cave with a ticking time bomb waiting outside. In short, we were pretty fucked. Things took an even darker turn when Manchester pulled out his gun…