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  When he’d briefly met with Chance at the resort, the tipsy turd had given him a GPS receiver with the coordinates of the cavern already punched in for him. But no matter how hard Manny pressed, the tubby little tit wouldn’t tell him what was actually in the cavern and kept acting all cloak and dagger-like about the whole thing. The more Manny thought about it, the more curious he was to get up to the place and check things out.

  Despite his misgivings, at least the snowmobile Chance had lent him seemed to be top of the line. The Polaris 800 moved with assured traction and control as he worked his way up the fog-swathed mountainside. After several monotonous kilometres of following the GPS almost blindly, billions of needle-pricks of white starlight suddenly painted themselves across the inky-black canvas of the cloudless night sky. It was definitely not a sight he was used to seeing after living down on the coast. Down there, light pollution made it difficult to see anything in the sky at night, other than the moon on occasion. Manny grinned, pleased to finally be able to see where the hell he was going. Several kilometres later, he could go no further and cut the engine on the sled.

  A field of scree lay before him. Beyond it, the mountainside rose up almost vertically. At its top, the Kootenay Glacier loomed starkly over the valley. Freezing white mist poured off the lip of the glacier, flowing rapidly down to settle atop the moist cloud layer in the valley below. Oritz had been to Lawless several times before in the winter and knew of the weather they received at this time of year. When Chance told him on the phone that they were having another inversion and that the fog was thick as shit, it came as no big surprise. Oritz knew how depressing this area could be in the wintertime and wasn’t pleased to be back in it. Sitting for a moment longer in the crisp, clear air, he watched the lights of Lawless twinkle beneath its incessant, fluffy blanket. Yeah, tonight seemed like any other winter’s night in this depressing part of the world. Shaking his head, he removed a flashlight from a side pouch on his backpack. He turned it on, then slung the pack over his shoulders, securing the straps.

  Ray Chance said he was suspicious about what was happening up here. Two workers had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and he’d said he didn’t know how far he could trust his business partner, Mayor Bob Nichols. Plus, he was less than impressed with the calibre of people his handyman, Watkins, had been providing up to this point. He’d said he wanted someone that he could rely on to keep an eye on things.

  Oritz knew Chance’s trust in him was not misplaced, as he was a real stand-up guy, especially if the money was right. In keeping with that spirit, as soon as he’d gotten off the phone with Chance the day before, he’d contacted Bob Nichols. He was curious to see if he knew what Chance was up to. The Mayor obfuscated for a moment regarding the cavern, then proceeded to double what Chance was paying him. Nichols also asked Manny to keep him apprised of the situation up at the cavern. Not a problem, he’d said at the time. He smiled crookedly for a moment in recollection. Yeah, it looked like things were certainly going to be more than all right after all, especially if you worked both sides of the street at the same time as he did.

  Oritz stood at the bottom of a narrow path that sloped upward into the moisture-laden entrance. A waterfall gushed next to the opening, spraying into a steaming pool below. He shone his six-cell Maglite toward the veil of vapour obscuring the cavern’s opening but could see nothing of the interior. His light’s beam reflected off a thin layer of ice on the rock that sparkled like a million diamonds. The mist from the small waterfall was starting to coat the ledge’s narrow path, freezing to the rock as it cooled in the crisp evening. It was getting more than a little slick, and that was without any help from the ice fog, yet. He’d have to be careful later since he didn’t want to slip and fall into the steaming water below.

  As soon as he stepped inside the cavern, Manny realised the reason behind Chance’s reticence to talk about what treasures it contained. Through the swirling vapour, he spied a thick band of gold ore running along the cavern wall off to his left, disappearing into the dark, steamy depths of the cavern. Next to this wall was a small campsite. He made a cursory examination of the area, noting the damage to the tent. It looked like claw marks, but it was hard to say. On the ground near the cold campfire, an LED camping light lay on its side glowing dimly.

  “Must be running on those bunny batteries,” he said with a grin, kicking the light with the toe of his boot and watching it roll back toward the entrance. He explored a little farther back to see what else this amazing looking hole in the wall contained — perhaps the missing men, or even more gold? That’s what he was here to find out. He moved farther into the black recesses of the cavern.

  Chance told him he suspected he might be getting screwed over by his business partner, Bob Nichols. He’d said in retrospect how much he lamented having been stupid enough to bring the man in on the project in the first place. He’d told Oritz that if he found any evidence of subterfuge on the Mayor’s part, he wanted to know right away. Manny completely understood Chance’s point of view, due to his previous encounters with the Mayor. Nichols was one greedy son-of-a-bitch, and Manny wouldn’t put it past him to grab all of the gold for himself. Yes, he was truly was a man after his own heart. Oh well, as long as he got the rest of his money deposited in his account after he finished, he didn’t give a flying fuck one way or another who ripped off who - or was it whom? He shook his head for a moment as if to dispel the errant thought of grammatical correctness from his overloaded brain.

  With thick vapour coiling near his feet on the cavern floor, Manny’s vision was severely limited, and he moved slowly, watching his step. Nearing the back of the cavern, he found it quite challenging to traverse the uneven ground without falling into one of the numerous boiling pools of water that fed the cavern’s interior stream and waterfall. He knelt next to one, deciding to dip a finger in to test the temperature, only to pull it back out immediately, cursing under his breath. The water was searingly hot.

  “Not many people gonna soak in there for too long,” he muttered, sucking his overheated fingertip.

  There were additional hazards farther back, including gaping black holes in the cavern floor. Manny shone his light into several of them to gauge their depth. Though the beam of the light was extremely powerful and usually able to penetrate hundreds of metres into the darkness, it did nothing here. When he shone his torch into one of the larger ones, it was quickly devoured by the hole’s depths. There was nothing, just continuous inky blackness that ran all the way to the bottom, wherever that was. He had thrown a rock into several of the holes as he passed by but hadn’t heard any of them hit bottom. “I may never need to dig another hole,” he said, smirking to himself.

  Shining the light along the cavern walls proved to be very illuminating as well, as the beam reflected back more of the warm yellow glow from the thick veins of gold running through them. He shook his head as he marvelled at the wealth this cavern contained. It wasn’t surprising that Chance suspected Bob Nichols was up to some shenanigans, now that Manny knew how much wealth was up here.

  At the back of the cavern, there were numerous rounded tunnels in the ore-laden walls. These entrances ranged in height from over three metres for the largest, down to less than one metre for others. Manny shone the light into several of the smaller ones. The first one was a small nook, and he saw nothing of interest. The second tunnel wound off through the steam at a slight angle, descending into the bowels of the earth. But the leftmost entrance, which was also the largest one in this section, looked very promising. He spied another thick stripe of the precious yellow metal twisting off along the tunnel's walls into its depths, and whistled out loud. This vein seemed even more substantial than the one near the entrance. It went quite a ways inside, but there was a blockage he needed to get past, first. A rockfall appeared to have blocked the tunnel. It was squarely in the middle, so it looked like a no-go in that direction, but he was still curious.

  Oritz stepped forward and cast his fla
shlight’s beam into the depths of this new tunnel. He stopped for a moment before going any farther and sniffed the air, squinting his eyes at what he smelled. There was a rancid, rotten odour of spoiled meat coming from this tunnel. But something caught the corner of his eye, and he turned back.

  The rockfall had seemed juddered ever-so-slightly in his light’s circle of brightness. He blinked several times, thinking it must be a small bit of trickery caused by the sharp relief that the shadows cast against the tunnel walls as he threw the high-intensity beam about. Or maybe it was because he was just so goddamned tired after his flight in, coupled with the drive and snowmobiling afterwards. It had been a long day, and he figured his mind must have been playing tricks on him just now. Sighing loudly, he began turning to explore further when the boulder quivered again. This time, he leaned forward, straining to see through the steam. Once he saw what was really blocking the path, his eyes widened, and he began slowly backing up once he saw what was actually blocking his way. It was neither a deceit of the light nor his mind throwing his eyes a few capers and japes, just for yuks.

  “Madre de Dios!” His voice was strained and ragged as he stumbled backward.

  The grey mass in the tunnel turned toward him. This was no rockfall; this was something much, much worse. His mind went into survival mode and he quickly back-pedalled, dodging into the smaller tunnel to his right. He had to duck to enter, and hoped against hope that the abomination that had been emerging from the darkness of the other tunnel couldn’t follow.

  The monster roared and tried to ram its head through, gnashing teeth like razors less than a metre from his face. Its enormous girth blocked it from entering the small nook into which he’d squeezed. The beast’s jaws snapped and cracked, spewing thick cords of saliva into his sweat-slicked face. Wave after wave of fetid breath washed over him as his eyes watered from the stench.

  With little success bulldozing its way in, the beast changed tactics and reached in with one of its paws trying to hook Manny with its scimitar-like claws and drag him out like some two-legged, man-sized salmon. The massive size of the predator’s muscular shoulder made it impossible for it to stretch its paw in as far as it would like, thwarting its attempts at snagging its prey. The beast’s hunger seemed to feed its rage and frustration, and it redoubled its efforts to reach him. Its roars and shrieks ripped at his eardrums as the thing swiped at him with sickle-like claws. Oritz pushed as far back as he could into the hole in the wall he was currently occupying. He strained with all his might as he pressed himself back into the uneven cavern wall, the sharp rock jabbing into his spine. It was as if his subconscious mind were trying to embed his physical body into the rock face at a molecular level to get away from the creature stalking him.

  Eventually, the beast recognized things weren’t going its way, and it backed out of the small nook, moving away, perhaps to look for prey elsewhere that had easier access. Drenched in sweat, Manny wheezed in relief, his breath coming in short, panting gasps. He felt as if he might collapse from the overdose of adrenaline that was currently coursing through his body, his heart racing like a hummingbird’s. After several more minutes — or maybe it was hours, he wasn’t sure anymore, he decided it was make or break time. “It’s now or never, amigo,” he said quietly to himself.

  He poked his head out of the small sub cavern, peering into the darkness. With no sign of the beast in the immediate vicinity, he ventured into the swirling vapour. Up ahead, glowing brightly, his flashlight lay where he’d dropped it earlier, its heavy-duty batteries keeping it energized.

  “Yes!” he hissed with excitement. Picking up the torch, he briefly shone it about, then clicked it off immediately when he realised what he had just done. The light was so goddamned bright! He realised as he picked the torch up that he’d basically just broadcast his whereabouts to the predator if it were still nearby. He stuffed it back into his pack. Yes, his stupidity had undoubtedly made life much easier for whatever the fuck was lurking around out there in this grey, steamy Hell trying to eat him.

  Despite his reservations about light, he knew he had no choice and pulled out his cell phone and turned on the screen to use it as a torch, turning the brightness level down as low as it would go. He couldn’t walk blindly forward because of the gaping pits in the ground, not to mention the pools of superheated water. With the toes of his boots, he slowly felt his way along the rough terrain, the dim glow from the phone’s light doing little to illuminate the hazardous way ahead.

  Pausing for a moment, he tried to get his bearings in the steam. It looked like he was about halfway through the labyrinth of pools now, just a little past the series of gaping holes in the cavern floor, if his memory served correctly. Ever so slowly, he edged closer to the front of the cavern, a few centimetres at a time. He listened desperately for any sound from the predator, but the only thing he could hear was his blood roaring in his ears.

  His foot suddenly brushed into a small pile of rocks near the edge of one of the pools. The rocks clattered and bounced along the lip for a moment before falling into the scalding water with several wet plops.

  “Shit!” he swore under his breath. Manny froze in place, listening intently and praying the beast hadn’t heard his life-endangering clumsiness. Apart from the trickle of water from the streams and pools nearby, there was no other sound except the rapid staccato of his heartbeat. He remained frozen to the spot, cell phone light off, not moving for several minutes as he imitated a stalagmite, not daring to make a sound. Keeping the light shielded and as low as the brightness level would go, he carried cautiously forward, still feeling amped by the recent adrenaline rush of the beast’s attack.

  A glowing ember of hope grew into a burning flame of salvation inside his chest as he suddenly saw the faint glow from the camping lantern. It was still near the entrance next to the small tent lying where he’d kicked it. It seemed with the beast no longer anywhere in sight that escape might now be a possibility. Maybe it had gone on the prowl into the forest, looking for a meal that was easier to get at. If that were the case then, Manny knew if he made it out of here alive, he’d be on a plane back to Barcelona faster than he could say, ‘Adios maple syrup!’

  Oritz began walking faster, a half-smile formed on his face, and he became heedless of the uneven stones scattered across the floor, not caring if he kicked them about by accident. He moved faster through the steam, the small LED camp lantern’s glow providing a tantalising hint of escape, just up ahead.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” A faint hint of sweet hope grew in his chest. He could just discern the silhouette of the entrance, the starlit darkness outside not quite as deep as that of the steamy blackness inside. Fear propelled his leg muscles forward, their fibres burning as they re-awoke to the concept of flight instead of fight as a possibility for survival for the first time ever in Oritz’s life.

  Up ahead, there was a sudden eclipse of the faint lantern light as something moved across the entrance, blotting out all hope of escape.

  Manny whipped the Maglite from one pocket, and the Glock 17 from the other. He turned the light on, and his mind turned off, unable to accept what it saw standing before him. “Mierda!”

  The predator had been lying in wait just outside of the illumination of the lamplight as if it knew Manny would be using the light as a beacon to aid in his escape. It reared up and roared, towering above him, its grotesque, grey head scraping the stalactites, five metres up.

  “Puta Madre!” Oritz screamed, unloading the Glock in the direction of the beast. He lunged to the right, then changed directions at the last moment as the creature came down onto its forepaws and charged toward him. He had effectively faked the creature out and was now running past it. A renewed sense of hope flowed through his burning leg muscles as he sprinted toward the entrance.

  Urgency had distracted him from his prognosticative abilities; they had been spot on, he discovered, as he bolted into the freezing night air, his footwear only making tentative contact with the ice-slicke
d rock surface. The combination of vapour from the waterfall as well as the ice fog had worked their magic on the sloping ledge, making his route of escape into something that was far more dangerous than anything he could have ever anticipated.

  “Shit!” He tried to keep his balance, hoping to slide along the frozen surface like a childing finding their first frozen puddle of winter. But his boot-clad feet wouldn’t cooperate and slid out from beneath him as their aggressive tread lost traction on the fresh coating of satin-like ice. His haste had made him blind to the hazard, and he cursed his stupidity as he fell.

  “Son of a bitch!” he shrieked as he landed hard on his back, knocking the air out of himself. His momentum now carried him down the slippery slope at an alarming rate. The bottom of the ledge dog-legged to the right lining him up perfectly for a fall into the superheated stream below and he knew he had to do something.

  Seemingly with wild abandon, he began casting his hands and feet about, trying to snag onto something. But the ice thwarted his attempts at deceleration, its surface being far too slick for him to gain any purchase, and his complimentary ride on the cavern’s latest attraction, ‘The Afterlife Express’ continued.

  In a last-ditch effort for salvation, his hand hooked onto a small outcrop of rock not covered by ice, a reflexive grasping motion that stopped his rapid descent with a sudden arm-wrenching tug. Panting in relief much like a small dog on a hot day, Manny dangled over the deadly drop. He prepared a list of options in his mind to help him deal with his current situation. After only a brief moment, he realised he was fucked six ways from Sunday, no matter which way he sliced this avocado.