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  CLAW

  Katie Berry

  Copyright © 2019 Katie Berry

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-9994112

  No portions of this book may be reproduced without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by Canadian copyright law.

  Published by Fuzzy Bean Books

  Cover Art Copyright 2019 Fiona Jayde Media

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For Frances Amelia, who always believed.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The towering bonfire crackled in the centre of the large clearing, the fresh-cut firewood drying out as it burned. Huge plumes of smoke billowed into the cold night air, blending with the thick fog that surrounded the camp, adding to the limited visibility. Every once in a while, a new pocket of resin in the unseasoned wood would explode, shooting out yet another red-hot ember seemingly in search of the first flammable thing it could find.

  Jerry Benson noted with frustration that he still seemed to be one of those flammable things and scooted his camp chair back from the blazing fire another metre. He cursed under his breath and brushed the remains of the latest smouldering, red fleck from his neon-blue parka, not wanting it to burn through the fabric and ruin his new winter-wear.

  “Hey, Jer! You look low! Incoming!” Tyler said, lobbing another beer. Jerry snapped out of fire suppression mode and deftly caught the canned beer in one hand. He placed it in the snow beside his chair, next to the other beer he’d barely touched.

  “Gotta keep up, bro! This booze isn’t going to drink itself!” Tyler took a large gulp from the huge bottle of bourbon he held. He placed it into the snow next to his chair and picked up a fresh can of beer that had been chilling in the snow next to his chair. Cracking it open, he washed the burning remnants of whiskey down his throat in a long, thirsty swallow. After a belch loud enough to shake the snow from the overburdened trees around them, Tyler smiled contentedly, closed his eyes for a moment, then took another small sip of beer, savouring his barley beverage.

  Jerry shook his head slightly in disbelief, saying, “Thanks, Ty, but I think I’m okay for now. I’m not in the mood tonight.”

  Tyler’s eyes popped back open, and he leaned drunkenly toward Jerry, almost falling out of his chair in the process. A look of incredulity crossed his face, and he said, “Not in the mood? We’re out here in the great Canadian outdoors, bombing around on our sleds, enjoying nature and getting drunk! How in the hell can you NOT be in the mood?”

  Jerry yawned. “Just tired, I guess. It was a long drive.”

  Tyler belched loudly at this news, then settled back into his chair once more.

  When Jerry had learned that his college brothers were heading out on a snowmobiling expedition into the Kootenay region of BC for their yearly vacation, he’d been all over it and jumped at the chance to join them. But his excitement this year wasn’t because he still enjoyed coming along on these annual booze-fests with the boys. No, it was for a different reason this year. After a decade and a half, he was tired of coming home from a week of drunken debauchery and feeling like Ray Milland from The Lost Weekend for several days afterward. This year was supposed to have been the year he told the guys he was done with the party animal thing.

  But it seemed as if fate was egging him along on this particular frat-brother vacation in spite of his reservations. The real reason he’d been excited this year was the fact that their destination just happened to be near the site of a recent seismic event in the interior. And this event was in a region with a rich history of gold strikes, making it an opportunity too good for him to pass up.

  As a Professor of Geology at The University Of British Columbia, Jerry Benson had been studying the Cascade Mountain Range for over a decade. The amount of gold mined from the area in the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth had been phenomenal. As a geologist, Jerry also knew there was still much more just waiting to be discovered in the region. Thanks to a significant earth tremor that occurred in the Cascadia subduction zone just after the new year, he hoped that it might have exposed some potential new sites in which to hunt for the valuable yellow metal.

  ***

  Earlier that afternoon, with camp set up, GPS unit in hand and a few other tools of the trade thrown into his backpack, Jerry had set out looking for the fault line at the epicentre of the recent earthquake on his rented snowmobile. The machine was equipped with an eye-poppingly bright paint job that seared the eyeballs on contact. He’d dubbed it the ‘Waspmobile’ as soon as he'd laid eyes upon it, thanks to its neon-yellow and black colour scheme along with its high-pitched, droning engine. Just looking at the damned thing made his temples throb.

  Departing much later than he’d wanted, Jerry knew he was operating under a time constraint — the hours of daylight left to explore were precious few. But he praised serendipity once more, when, only five and a half kilometres along, at the base of the Kootenay Glacier, he discovered the opening to a promising cavern in the cliffside. According to his GPS, it was centred almost directly over the new, quake-causing fault line.

  Gold Ridge was usually spared much of the fog and low cloud that had been socking-in the city of Lawless and the valley below for the last few weeks. Up until now, Jerry had enjoyed a beautifully clear afternoon as he’d searched for the source of the fault. But his delightful day came with a bit of a caveat: despite being located high above the valley cloud, quite often in late winter, just as the sun set behind the local mountains, rapidly dropping temperatures created a freezing ice fog. It crept down off the Kootenay Glacier, a pellucid presence that coated everything it touched in a slippery crystalline crust — any attempts at travel were a very difficult and dangerous time. The last thing Jerry wanted, was to be caught off-guard by the freezing frost. He knew he needed to leave enough time to get back safely to camp to avoid this hazard.

  Tumbling out of the cavern’s entrance was what appeared to be a geothermal aquifer. Jerry knew there were already several hot springs located around Lawless, making it a popular destination for people looking to soak away their aches and pains. This new hot spring would add to the Province of BC’s already impressive total, which boasted eighteen out of the twenty-one confirmed to be in Canada.

  Kneeling, Jerry measured the aquifer’s temperature. At just a hair under one-hundred degrees Celsius, it was an excellent example of the province’s true volcanic nature. It was far too hot for human use, and anyone unfortunate enough, or stupid enough, to try using this hot spring for skinny dipping would find their skin sloughing off like a blanched tomato before canning — definitely a ‘look but don’t touch’ situation.

  He took one last, quick look into the aquifer before entering the cavern and froze in his tracks. Glinting enticingly in the middle of the boiling stream was several of the largest looking gold nuggets he’d ever seen, some of them easily the size of golf balls. He grabbed a broken branch from the base of a nearby tree and fished a few of the nuggets out, examining them once they’d cooled enough.

  As a geologist, without even having to break the ore open, Jerry Benson knew that what he held in his hands wasn’t pyrite, but real gold. The rounded edges and corners of the nuggets in his hands were the telltale sign of authenticity as they had none of pyrite’s harder, more angular surfaces.

  Jerry was now officially more than a little bit intrigued as to what lay inside this cavern. Standing, he added the nuggets to a plastic sample bag, then placed them almost reverentially into his backpack. He adjusted the shoulder straps of the pack and prepared to enter the steaming black underworld
in the rock face before him.

  Suddenly, Jerry’s mind registered what his eyes picked up only moments before — the trees in the surrounding forest were casting lengthening shadows. Time had gotten away from him while he’d been examining this golden aquifer and the sun was now almost kissing the rim of the glacier -- the remaining daylight was growing short. Above, the first probing tendrils of ice fog began cascading off the ancient ice toward him. “Looks like I’ve overstayed my welcome.” He turned to face the cavern's entrance, saying, “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get your turn.”

  Several small rocks tumbled off the rock wall near the opening, as if to show it was paying attention to Jerry’s promise. They bounced along the narrow ledge leading up to the cavern’s entrance for a moment before tumbling with a splash into the sizzling stream below.

  In spite of his precautions, he’d been caught off guard by the rapid movement of the fog, and soon found himself enveloped in a swirling grey cloud. Carefully turning the snowmobile around, he sat in the icy mist a moment longer and pulled out his GPS unit. With a couple of quick button presses, he tagged the precise location of the cavern in the device’s memory. He smiled, knowing he could relax this evening with the boys, his GPS receiver assuring him he would have an easy trip back in the morning to explore the inside of this potentially valuable new find.

  ***

  Jerry yawned again and smiled sadly as he looked over toward Tyler. The man was now slumped sideways in his chair, temporarily unconscious due to too many trips to the watering trough over the last few hours. A small drift of aluminum beer cans was piled high next to Ty’s chair, a silent testament to his powerful thirst so far this evening. Over the years, Tyler had fancied himself as the de facto leader of the group, and when they were out on one of their yearly ‘Four Bros’ adventures, it seemed inevitable that he would make sure there was plenty of alcohol available. He constantly monitored everyone around him, making sure they were as well-lubricated as he was, and if they weren’t, he’d keep pestering them and pushing the booze on them until they were.

  This year, Jerry’s other college brother, Nick, had decided to buy a Texas Mickey-sized, three-litre bottle of Jack Daniels. It was the kind that came with a handle to help you steady the big jug on your shoulder, just like Granny did on the Beverly Hillbillies, while you sloshed some of Tennessee’s Finest, Old No.7 down your parched throat. Usually, Jerry knew Nick only brought along a forty pounder, but this year he’d decided to super-size it for some reason, most likely at Tyler’s behest.

  Jerry closed his eyes for a moment, but every time he did, visions of dollar signs danced behind his eyelids as he envisioned the golden nuggets he’d found. That was the other reason he wasn’t drinking tonight; he didn’t want to get smashed and then have to get up early tomorrow morning with a throbbing head and try to navigate the treacherous, ice-slicked path back to the cavern on his high-pitched, droning Wasp-mobile. Just the thought of spelunking around a cavern half-tanked was scary enough, but when you threw in the fact that it could easily have dormant lava tubes scattered throughout, some of them possibly dropping thousands of metres into the darkness below, it was just insane.

  No, stumbling drunkenly into one of those black holes was not an appealing idea. He knew he’d have to add the concept to the ever-growing list that comprised the bulk of his pet project, a book he planned on self-publishing later in the year called, “Darwin’s Herd Thinners” (working title only) — falling into a seemingly bottomless pit while inebriated would have to be at least death number two hundred and thirty-five according to his calculations. He’d have to check his notes to verify it when he finally got back near a cell tower and was able to access the cloud-saved data on his cell phone once more.

  Jerry loathed taking notes on his iPhone when his four thousand dollar laptop was just sitting at home, keeping warm and dry. But he wasn’t about to expose his MacBook Pro to the foggy, icy air he’d seen floating around Lawless recently, so home is where it was going to stay, and he knew he’d just have to suck it up. The last thing he needed was Tyler trying to play World of Warcraft on his laptop in the middle of sub-zero temperatures and have him bork his computer because of some condensation issue shorting-out the motherboard.

  The smoke and fog parted momentarily, and Jerry saw Nick sitting across the roaring fire, looking a little green around the gills. Nick wobbled back and forth in his chair for a moment, then looked down in disgust at something in his lap, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Jerry worried that when he wasn’t paying attention to Nick at some point, perhaps during a moment of limited visibility due to the smoke and fog, his friend might choose that time to ooze off of his camp chair and roll into the blazing bonfire like a large, drunken log. If something so unfortunate came to pass, he figured it would be death number two hundred and thirty-six for his new book. Nick had been doing his wobbling routine next to the flames for the last half hour now. So far, every time he'd wobbled, he’d wake up just enough to stabilise himself, then take another gulp of beer from the can jammed between his thick legs, and also maybe a chug of bourbon if the bottle of Jack were nearby. After a few minutes, his buddy would begin to doze off again, wavering back and forth in his seat near the fire as he swam in and out of consciousness, threatening to immolate himself accidentally once more.

  Mostly with Tyler’s help and a half dozen or so of the aforementioned beers, Nick had downed almost a third of the bottle of whiskey over the last couple of hours. Now, when he wasn’t perched precariously on the precipice of passing out, he was constantly getting up and staggering through the shortcut that lead to the forest behind his chair. Each time he disappeared, he’d invariably hollered out that he was, “Unrenting some more beer!” When Nick was coherent and sober, he usually said, almost sagely, “You can never truly buy beer, you can only rent it.”

  Looking across the fire at Nick, it appeared to Jerry that some of the beer and whiskey might have come back out the wrong end of Nick and found their way onto his lap. He shouted over the colossal blaze to Nick, “You doing okay, buddy? It looks like you’re having some issues!” Nick’s head snapped up. He looked through the smoke and haze for a moment at Jerry with bleary eyes, as if considering an answer, then leaned forward and puked into the campfire. It hissed and sputtered as the vomit vaporised in its searing heat as if Nick’s stomach spew was an affront to its blazing dignity.

  From his vantage point at the head of the fire, Tyler saw this latest occurrence and hooted with delight, tossing another can of beer toward Nick, saying, “Glad to see you made more room brother, here’s another!”

  With red-rimmed eyes, Nick watched the beer roll through the brown-coloured slush. It came to rest against the side of the air mattress of Jerry’s other college brother, Matt. Already sound asleep, Matt was stretched out on top of his air mattress near the campfire, basking in its warmth. He’d taken several hits off of Nick’s bottle of JD, in addition to a couple of the ‘special’ medicinal cigarettes he’d also brought along. Jerry glanced at his watch and saw that it had been at least fifteen minutes since his friend had last been vertically oriented. With his purple toque pulled down over his eyes, Matt was using his backpack as a pillow. His long, dark, dreadlocked hair spilled out over the pack’s sides like a dead octopus on a rock.

  To aid in their camping experience, when the Bro-Squad (Tyler’s idea) had first arrived at the clearing that afternoon, they’d driven the snowmobiles back and forth across the clearing several times. Ty's plan was to flatten down the snow so that they would have a relatively level spot in which to camp and not have to slog back and forth as they traversed the site. When they were done, Ty told them to make sure they all backed their sleds in, so that they were all facing skis-out and ready to go for the next day's activities. That way they’d be able to blast out into the snow in the morning without wasting any of their valuable time jockeying them around.

  Jerry yawned and glanced over his shoulder
with longing toward the tent where his sleeping bag lay, but couldn’t see it through the heavy fog. They’d erected the six-man structure at the backside of the clearing, safely away from the bonfire’s shooting embers, next to where they’d parked the snowmobiles. At Tyler’s back, the trail the four sleds made on their way into camp that afternoon disappeared and reappeared like a mirage, occasionally obscured by the smoke and fog that rose in serpentine coils into the night air. Wide and spacious, the trail was almost like a road in the snow, easily marking their progress into the centre of the clearing. Off to Jerry’s right, through the undulating mist, he caught the occasional glimpse of his own, single snowmobile trail, coming in from the direction of the forest that backed onto the campfire.

  Trying to get comfortable, Jerry felt something lumpy digging into his side. He reached into the large, outer pocket of his jacket and probed around for a moment, then pulled out his GPS receiver. Surprised to see that he’d left it on, he checked the battery level indicator and was relieved to see its charge still appeared to be almost full. He turned the unit over in his hands, marvelling at the technology. Though he had GPS on his cell phone, it wasn’t the same as this device. His cell phone used Assisted GPS, not true GPS like the unit he was holding. At any given time, this GPS receiver linked directly to a minimum of four Global Positioning Satellites circling the planet. His cell phone, on the other hand, relied on cellular repeater towers to assist its location-tracking capabilities with no direct link to any satellites. Out here, without a single cell tower in sight, the phone now acted as nothing more than a glorified camera, alarm clock and flashlight combination. If something happened to one of them while they were out here, in the middle of nowhere, they were on their own.