Yeti

Back on the ridge, Private Sorokin stood, trying to control his nausea as he stared over the edge of the cliff, into the dark maze of ice walls below.

Captain Nigmatullin reached the bottom.  The ceiling of the maze was a splotched carpet of sunlight which lit up the tops of the walls, but did nothing for the bottom of the chasm, seventy-five meters below.  He disconnected himself from the cable and turned the headlamp on, casting a murky white light about four meters in his field of vision.

He looked at the ground as he laboriously pulled the AKMS machine gun over his shoulders to free it from hanging on him.  The heavy jacket was warm but bulky, and it did not make for a good fighting garment.  But had he gone with the lighter jacket, he would have frozen in the pits.  The temperature at the floor of the ice labyrinth was about five degrees above zero.

As he looked at the thick snow covered ground he saw what he expected to see.  Nothing.

Nigmatullin called back on the radio, “Private.  There are no tracks here.  How far to the east do you think the man was when you saw him?”  As he spoke his breath shot out in sprinkles of frost.  His breathing seemed loud in the hollows of the pit.

A moment later the reply echoed in his skull through the radio headset.  “About twenty meters.”  The voice seemed so distant, so unattached in the belly of the maze.  Nigmatullin felt very alone in the dark.  His breathing was heavy.  The black was almost everywhere.  He looked up at the ceiling of thin light so far away.  Then he took a deep breath, was grateful for his speedy acclimation, and he looked back down.

The Captain looked in all directions.  The maze path ran along in front of him for about three meters.  Then it broke right to the east.  Behind him, the path ran into the choking blackness.

Nigmatullin stepped forward.  His feet crunched the snow loudly as he moved along the labyrinth bottom.  

He didn’t like listening to himself breath in the headset.  In the dark, it would be hard to tell if that was his, or someone else’s breath he heard.

Out on the ledge, Private Sorokin took in a sudden pull of air.  Not enough oxygen went in and he dropped back and fell down sitting on the hard ice of the ledge.     He slowly caught his breath and looked around.

Not a soul could be seen.  It was eerie and he didn’t like it alone, on top of the world, with the wind and the snow.  He was sweating.   He reached down and gathered some flakes onto his fingers.  He smeared the melting snow across his forehead.

The Captain’s light was a small circle that moved with him, so as he passed every point in the maze, it was immediately engulfed in the black again.  

He reached a three way intersection.  The corridor he was in continued south, but another joined it, going left to the east.  Nigmatullin hesitated at the intersection, looking at the ground for signs of tracks.  Nothing.

His jacket was loud as he stood back up.

He was trying to think of the way to go.  Probably needed to go straight, he thought.  See if this passage loops back towards the cable.

Then...

There was