An Army of One Woman
By Gersheimer   gersheimer77@seznam.cz



edited by Michael-leonard

This is a work of fiction. It is inspired by an older story by Jim Priest
named "The Wild Woman of the Highlands" and shares its initial setting.
________ ________ ________

What follows is my account of a unique unforgettable experience I happened to
live through three years ago when I just finished my first year assignment as
a Junior Associate Professor of Anthropology and Paleo- Archeology at the
University of Glasgow.

I hadn't enjoyed much rest from my work that year, having spent most of the
summer break doing field research at a famous Ice-Age excavation site in
Gibraltar. Luckily a short examination period in the beginning of September
would be followed by a two-week break before the actual start of the winter
semester.

On Friday afternoon of that first September week, having just finished
examinations of the last students and now making some final cleaning of my
cabinet, my mind was already occupied with nothing else than my upcoming
planned vacations in the Highlands. I intended to clear my mind with a
two-week eastward solo crossing of the Caledonian mountains from sea to sea,
with all necessary camping equipment worn in a rucksack on my back. The
weather forecast was quite favourable, at least for the first few days, and I
couldn't wait to hop on an overnight bus and start my trek.

Suddenly, there was a knocking on my door. "Come in," I said loudly and turned
in my seat. The door opened and I was very surprised to see a mountain of a
man in military uniform enter. He was so tall that he had to duck slightly in
the standard 6-foot-8 door and his upper frame was so thick that he almost had
also to turn sideways to pass through the door.

"Arthur McCafferty, patrol commander, 23rd Air Regiment, SAS," he introduced
himself. "Joe Woodley, anthropologist at this University." I made my own
introduction and extended my hand that suddenly appeared to be in some kind of
a hydraulic press threatening to break most of its delicate bones. The
enormous soldier must have sensed it and eased the press of his enormous hand
with an excusing look.

I recovered after a few seconds enough to ask: "What brings you to me, Sir?"

"Well, I heard that you are finished with your work for now and, being quite
an adventurous person, you plan to spend some free time in the Highlands.
Regarding this, you might have heard or seen in the tabloids some rumours of a
"yeti or Bigfoot woman" spotted repeatedly in and around the Cairngorms
National Park in the last two weeks...?"

I had to hold fast as not to break into intense laughter. "Sorry, but it's not
even funny, it's outrageous! I mean the very idea that an unknown humanoid
could exist in our densely populated country without being noticed for ages
until some weeks ago! Surely it is either a pure hoax or a prankster
disguising himself with some kind of furry masquerade, like those guys in
Bigfoot costumes in California about thirty years ago. And there certainly is
no need to call an army unit into the mess; if the pranksters indeed made any
damage, let the local police find them and deal with them..."

"Hold your horses, Professor," said the soldier. "I was of the same opinion
before I was first called at the place where the creature, whatever it was,
made one of its first appearances. There I saw a lot of footprints with my own
eyes. Look at the photos I brought with me."

I looked at them and saw a chain of almost perfect prints of two bare feet in
thick mud. They looked quite natural, but then one photo zoomed one footprint
closer and there was a measuring tape stretched across it. According to it,
the footprint was almost 16 inches (40 centimeters) long from heel to the tip
of the big toe! On next picture there was a military boot set into a footprint
and there was room around the boot to spare on every side of it! "The boot on
the photo is mine and, being quite a big man, as you see, I wear a size 16,"
said my guest.

I was shocked but still held onto Occam's Razor in my mind. "Well, still it
has to be a prank. Some stilts bottomed by oversized cast copies of naked
human foot.?"

"We thought so as well at first," said my guest. "But in my patrol there is a
real ace in tracking ? Sergeant Joe "Sharp Eye" Carter. He's originally from
Canada, out of a family of traditional chiefs and scouting masters of
Blackfoot Indians. And he swears that these tracks were indeed made by a
normally walking person of an enormous height and weight. A person walking on
stilts would make different prints. No one would be able to walk on stilts in
such a thick mud anyway. And there were lots of those prints found on
different places many miles apart, made apparently in short sequence."

"Well, let's admit this possibility and think it through from an
anthropological point of view," I said, still a little bit dazed. "The feet
that made these prints in the mud do not seem arthritic nor deformed in any
way. They have the right length-to-width ratio, as well as a healthy high
arch, and in some places they were put down when running -- or even jumping,
as I see. According to anthropological tables, a person with bare feet 16
inches long would have to be at least... a full eight feet tall! While there
were some examples of people reaching such a height in recorded history, it
was almost always a result of an illness or an internal disorder, and those
persons had serious difficulties with simple walking..."

I took a breath and continued. "However, there seemed to be extremely
exceptional cases of "natural" giants who were a result of simple genetics ?
giant stature was held in their family line. The biggest specimens recorded in
history came, I believe, from Canada ? Angus McAskill, in case of men, and
Anna Swan in case of women. Both lived in the late nineteenth century and were
close to eight feet tall, if the reports are not exaggerated. They were also
known for an extreme strength ? Angus was reportedly able to heave and walk
with a ship's anchor weighing almost a ton, and Anna, at her own wedding, was
pictured as holding five bridesmaids on her shoulders and in her arms for over
an hour, without a move, while a painter had been painting the scene. But
still, even those two didn't live over their late thirties as such a body mass
was an overload for their hearts."

After a pause, I finally asked the soldier: "Well, this phenomenon piques my
curiosity very much, but what do you actually want from me? I do not know
where you learned it, but I was indeed about to travel to the Highlands to
undergo a solo trek across Scotland to take an active rest."

"Well, I spoke with the Dean, who is an old friend of my father's. He assured
us that you would not turn us down. I can offer you a ride, then, if you
agree. A Humvee is waiting outside with the rest of my patrol, and we could be
at the summer camp where the... person... was last seen in four hours. We have
all necessary equipment for camping in the wild as well as for tracking a
person there, including tranquilizer guns, a thermocamera and modern
communicating units. We will provide you with camping equipment much better
then you have here, and it will remain yours after we finish. We hope to be
able to track down and catch that person in maximum of three days. And on top
of that -- besides providing you with a man-hunting adventure rarely available
in present-day Europe, under protection of four of the best soldiers in Her
Majesty's armed forces -- you will get a decent paycheck for your
inconvenience after. And, please call me Arthur; I am the same age as you are,
Professor."

I didn't know how that man saw so well through me but he had surely struck
some adventurous vein in me. There was no way I could have refused, even if he
hadn't offered any benefits. I again gave him my hand (this time he was much
more gentle when pressing it) and asked him to call me Joe, feeling honoured
by the kind of respect showed by such a perfect specimen of masculinity. I
took my pre-prepared backpack, changed into hiking boots and clothes, locked
the cabinet and followed him outside to the Humvee.

The other three men in uniforms stepped out of it to greet me. First came
Sergeant Michael Mulcahey, a Scandinavian-type blonde man some three inches in
height below Arthur. Then Sergeant Phillip FitzMartin, slightly smaller and
slimmer but still a big and strong man of six feet three, with distinctly
Celtic appearance topped by stereotypical long red hair. Last to shake my hand
was Sharp Eye, the famous Canadian tracker. He indeed had a strong Native
American appearance with many wrinkles in his face that made him look much
older than the others, although he was in fact the youngest of us at 28. At 5
feet 10, he was the only one smaller than my own 6-foot-1, but apparently,
even he was much stronger than me, and could overpower me with one hand in
case of need.

I was seated in the back row in the middle, being literally pressed from both
sides by the spacious SAS soldiers, but otherwise the journey wasn't
unpleasant. I enjoyed their stories from their harsh drills, and when my turn
came they seemed to enjoy my stories from field research.

After three hours, though, we shifted the topics of our talks to the quarry of
our hunt. "We will start at the Muir lodge camp in Glenmore Forest, where the
"yeti woman" was seen last," started Arthur, asserting his authority as a
patrol commander. "The proprietor of the lodge reported the same oversized
footprints right within his camp yesterday morning. By his report the
unexpected visitor had stolen some food supplies from his clients the night
before, and some other equipment had been missing as well. Still, she did this
all without waking any of the inhabitants up, so they were quite scared."

It was almost dark when we arrived into the said camp. It was located at the
edge of a forest and consisted of one hunting lodge, twelve wooden cabins and
a big area for tents that was totally empty now. We went to meet the elderly
proprietor who led us into one of the cabins showing us places to sleep. Then
he boiled us some tea and sat with us to describe his experiences:

"This was the last time she was here, but by far not the first. Her first
appearance was about ten days ago when there was still the summer camp of boy
scouts in here. No one has seen her, but a few things have been missing then,
like inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags. And those giant footsteps...
quite scary let me assure you. The next evening, most of the boys were out on
a quest and just two remained to prepare dinner. She stole a roasted turkey
right off the skewer above a bonfire. Both boys swore they lost sight of it
just for a few seconds. Then nothing for a full week.

"The Boy Scout camp ended in the meantime and most of the other guests had
departed as well. During that week she was seen by some farmers on the
southern side of the mountains, you might ask there. Always at night and just
a glimpse, no sound. One of them reported loss of a sheep, but other than
that, no damage. Last night in my camp, she opened two cabins and one tent
without making a sound and again stole some supplies... just the food; she
even left a wallet full of money after picking it up. In one cabin, a ladies'
manicure set was missing as well. All of my remaining guests departed just
thereafter. Whoever she is, she seems to be toying with everyone of us,"
finished the proprietor.

"And you are sure it's a 'she'?" I replied first.

"Oh, here no one has seen her in person, but I spoke to one of the farmers who
did, though from a distance, and he swore she was half-naked with big enough
feminine assets. And full ten feet tall, if you would believe this. If you
have time, ask Ben MacAllister in the vicinity of Newtonmore; it's some ten
miles to the west."

Of course I knew that human sight was at any time prone to illusions and thus
I didn't give much credit to the estimation of height. Other than that, the
narration just strengthened my initial opinion that we are dealing with an
ordinary human being, probably of enormous size indeed. Still I was reluctant
to believe that it could be a woman.

"Let's go to sleep for now," said Arthur. "As the weather is stable, the
tracks will not disappear overnight. In the morning Sharp Eye will follow
them, and at the end we will solve this mystery." We took most of our camping
equipment with us to the cabin, locked its door and wedged ourselves into the
sleeping bags on the floor. My mind occupied itself for a few minutes with our
quarry while I heard my colleagues snoring already, but then I myself passed
out and didn't wake up until the morning, with a cry of one of one of my
colleagues.

It was Phillip who first opened the cabin's door and reported a fresh chain of
the same oversized bare footsteps in the mud and grass around our very cabin.
"Those weren't here last evening! The damned yeti woman has been there, just a
few feet from us sleeping!" We were all angry and me, I have to admit, a bit
scared as well. Sharp Eye went to follow the tracks while Arthur and Phillip
went towards the Humvee parked at a clearing about 300 yards away from the
camp. Again there was a cry of disbelief: the back of the car was open and all
our electronic equipment ? like radio transmitters, mobile phones and the
thermocamera ? had disappeared. "Oh, fuck!" we said in unison upon this
discovery. The lock wasn't damaged and, when checking for possible
fingerprints, we didn't find any.

"Who the hell was last here?" asked Arthur and a silence followed.

I tried to calm him down: "It seems that someone just pressed the remote door
controller one more time than needed, and the car remained open." "But we are
fucking out of communication now!" cried the commander. "The big prankster
will soon find out that the SAS are not to be played with," he swore.

After a while the Blackfoot tracker returned to us. "She arrived and departed
through the creek upstream, walking in the water for hundreds of yards. I will
have to check thoroughly every inch of the banks, to find the place where she
entered the water. This might take a while but I am sure I will find it and
then the hunt will start seriously," he said.

"Please, try to calm down and think it over logically," I replied. "As it
seems, the "yeti woman" is active in the night only. We are now nearing the
equinox but still she has only over ten hours of darkness and almost 14 hours
of daylight and dusk each day. During the daylight, being a human, the
intruder has to sleep somewhere for eight hours ? or maybe a little less ?and
I am sure she doesn't sleep anywhere in the open. It had been raining very
often till yesterday and the morning temperatures are still around freezing.
So she has to use some kind of shelter as a permanent base. At least a
run-down farm, remains of a cottage, a mining tunnel.?"

That's when Michael, the blonde soldier spoke for the first time: "Yes! You
are right, Joe, and I think I know where she has her base. The Callaway mine
complex on the southern side of the ridge, about twenty miles straight across
and some sixty miles around by car!" Arthur, the commander, asked him how sure
can he be about this and he replied: "Don't forget that I was born and raised
not far from here, in Achnacarry. Pass me the map and I will show you ? it's
an ideal hiding place. It's a complex of five or more abandoned zinc and lead
ore mines at the end of a long valley formed by a glacial cirque. There are
four or five shafts connected by tunnels, and the remains of auxiliary
buildings. And on top of that, the area is rather impenetrable and hardly any
people visit it anymore.

"These mines opened some time in the late 19th century and closed due to
lowering yields during the Great Depression. After that, the area was chosen
for a re-forestation program and a few hundred acres in the valley were
actually planted, but then money ran out and then the war came. During it,
this whole area was requisitioned for training of military units, a few
temporary wooden barracks were erected but those have long since decayed, I
believe," he continued.

"After the war the valley was mostly neglected but the planted trees have
grown to maturity and scattered their seeds haphazardly. The result now is
that there is a clear planted forest around the ruins, surrounded by a dense
shrubbery of young birches and spruces on every side. I was there just once
with my grandfather when I was twelve, but I remember the place well, it was
quite scary. You can't imagine a better place to hide from the world anywhere
on the British Isles."

Thinking the situation over the map, Arthur decided to leave the camp and to
interrogate some farmers who had seen the "yeti woman" before. After that, we
would try to approach the suspected place from the western side, through
another mostly barren valley and over a mountain pass, so we couldn't be
spotted so easily.

The interrogations, though, took quite a while each. We spoke to five farmers
and some members of their families, but the reports were sketchy and notably
unreliable. The "yeti woman" was either naked or covered in long hair all over
the body, or clad in a long cloak; eight to twelve feet tall, doing ten yards
jumps and such a rubbish. We came upon some remaining footprints here and
there, but most had been erased by the recent rains.

The only notable exception to this was the aforementioned Ben McAllister. An
elderly single man who lived with his flock of sheep at the edge of the
National Park, below the rocky cliffs of Tullen Ridge, he took us with him to
the edge of the pastures right below the cliffs and started to explain: "It
was shortly before midnight and I was standing right here with Dag, my
greyhound. Suddenly he started to pull his leash harshly, twitching. He is
trained not to bark in peril, though, a fine dog. I looked around and saw her,
right at the top of this crag, about sixty yards away," he finished, pointing
with his hand.

"Incidentally, the full moon was right behind her, so I saw her quite clearly,
albeit rather in a silhouette. From top to bottom she had long hair flailing
in the wind, fine but not oversized breasts, slim waist and long legs. The
wind was coming from her towards us and I would swear I sensed an intense
smell of wild mountain thyme ? that is common on the other side of the ridge,
but not in this valley.

"She looked around and seemed to mention me and Dag, who was tearing the leash
apart by that time. She simply jumped over a gullet on another crag a bit
lower ? you can look there, it's almost twenty feet away ? passed through the
rosehip bushes behind, and ran uphill to the mountain pass there, and then
disappeared from my sight. Dag got loose at the same moment that she jumped
and pursued her, not returning until some forty minutes later when I was
already afraid for him. He was unharmed but totally exhausted and I presume
that she simply outran him, though he's a former racing champion..."

"You mean she was again barefoot?" asked Arthur incredulously. The way to the
pass above the bushes was barren, consisting of broken shale with edges sharp
as razors.

"No, I am almost sure she had some kind of heavy shoes on, like hiking or
military boots," responded Ben.

"Let's get there and take a look, some tracks might have remained," said
Arthur and we started to climb the rocky crags.

Joe "Sharp Eye" took the lead and immediately found the tracks ? for us almost
invisible ? leading from the lower crag to the bushes. Upon entry into them he
surprisingly lifted his head and then snatched something from the branches
high above his head. "Oops, come and take a look!" he cried.

As we came closer, we saw him holding a hair in the fingers of both of his
hands set quite apart. He really stood up to his name. "A human hair, almost
two feet long. And, as you can easily see, whoever she is, she is a blonde."
As Joe led us deeper into the bushes, he made soon another discovery: "Look, a
piece of sheep wool. But it is dry, lyed; not naturally greasy like strands of
sheep hair that often stick to shrubs when sheep pass through them. She indeed
had a sheepskin cloak on, as some observers reported."

The biggest surprise however came at the exit point from the bushes. Five
reasonably discernable surviving imprints of enormous boots remained in the
soft earth below the wild roses. "Ufff! Everyone, come here!" cried the scout.
"You see, the heel there and the front of the shoe here?" he asked us. We all
felt rather confused, not catching what he meant. "Wherever you walk, booted
or barefoot, you tend to press the tip of your foot deeper into the soil than
the heel part. But here we see the heel imprints be clearly deeper. Either she
walks with her heels afore, which is nonsense, or the soles of her boots are
reversed, so it may seem that she walks in the opposite direction."

We all were impressed but the meaning of the situation came first to the
commander: "You mean, special boots made for misleading a possible tracker?"
he asked. Joe answered: "Not a true tracker, as you see. But I suppose it
would be enough to fool a boy scout or an ordinary policeman."

"Well, that is something serious," continued Arthur. "Such boots indicate a
logistical support beyond the possibilities of any group of pranksters. They
also indicate that the person in them has an important goal ? not just making
her way to the tabloids. Now, what might be that goal; the reason to send a
giant person ? if this is true ? to the barren mountains in Scotland?"

No one around had an answer to this but Michael mentioned: "My grandfather
served in the war close to here. He was a training officer assigned to the
Norwegians who escaped from the occupied homeland and were preparing here to
fight for its liberation. He once told me that such boots with inverted soles
were given to those who were about to be parachuted back to Norway, and that
it was generally enough to fool the Gestapo there. But if you ask me to point
a finger in our case, I would suspect the Russians. They are also known for
such cunning... maskirovka is their word."

I raised my voice next: "Well, in that case I could be helpful to you. I mean
in case she should be willing or pressed to negotiate. Simply because I am
fluent in Russian, having spent my initial post-doc period at the University
in Novosibirsk." They looked curious so I continued: "I came last to pick up
the exchange offers and I accepted this out of dire need, as well as from
curiosity. At the beginning it looked like a lousy assignment but now I am
happy for it, because thanks to it I was able to participate at one of the
greatest paleontological discoveries of the recent years ? the excavations at
the Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains. It was a great boost for my career,
as we have probably revealed the remains of a third branch of the family of
man ? besides the Neanderthals and the Cro- Magnons, our direct ancestors. But
that's not that important just now; I made a lot of friends there and learned
the language in a natural way," I finished.

By now, the sun already started to set and we had to decide where to spend the
night. Ben was inviting us to his farm but Arthur decided that we would raise
our tents in the open some 300 yards from the farm, and set watches. I also
applied for a watch but the SAS soldiers politely declined it and decided to
watch outside two hours each. Michael was the first to hold the watch and as
far as the others go, I was put to one tent with Joe the tracker, who was to
hold the last watch starting from 5 a.m. the next day. Each member was to wake
up his successor for his watch.

I slept well until nature called me in the early morning. I checked the clock
and it was 5:20 so I was surprised to see Joe the tracker still snoring beside
me. I looked outside the tent first and expected to see Arthur, the patrol
commander, outside... but no one was there! The waning half-moon gave enough
illumination to see for hundreds of yards around but there was no movement nor
sound. Startled, I woke Joe and he immediately noted slight smell of thyme in
the air. We both jumped out of the tent and woke up the other two soldiers as
well.

The grassy patch around the tents was full of our own prints, of course, but
Sharp Eye was able to discern the latest of Arthur's big tracks, leading along
a creek to a place where the banks bordered the shrubbery. Apparently
something happening near had raised his attention and drawn him there. At one
place, some two yards from an overhanging bush right on the bank, his big
footprints crossed a trail of yet bigger prints... and abruptly ended. Then,
not a trace of him anywhere, as if he was suddenly snatched into the air. And
he most probably was, indeed. The giant inverted shoeprints continued on, but
as Sharp Eye pointed out, they suddenly became deeper as if the weight of the
person had doubled.

We all four sat on the ground, shocked by the unbelievable experience and more
than a bit scared. The first rays of light appeared over the hills on the
eastern side and there was no doubt that in the broad daylight, Sharp Eye
would be able to follow the tracks easily, but signs of fear were visible in
the faces of hardened SAS soldiers as well. "What if the yeti woman just
killed Arthur after a while...?" was the question we were all afraid to put
forward.

Sharp Eye held his head in his hands and murmured something for a while, as if
meditating. "He is alive; I sense it," he said after several minutes. "Alive
and mostly unharmed, but... restricted; behind bars or something like that,"
he added then. I asked him how he could be sure about it and he replied: "It's
hard to explain but once you serve together in the same unit for years and
spend almost every minute together, you develop some kind of spiritual link
with your colleagues-in-arms. At least if your mind is sensitive enough, as
mine is. I can feel ? or sense ? deep in my mind that he is not far away as
well as the state he is in," he concluded.

Phillip then took the lead as the oldest remaining member of the patrol and
decided to get to the car, retrieve all necessary gear and continue the
search, first of all to liberate the commander, as the unit's sense of
brotherhood dictated. However, another nasty surprise was waiting for us. As
we followed the bending road to the place where we left the car, we saw it
almost at the same place where it had been parked the evening before... but
turned upon its roof!

Other than that, it was unharmed, not even a glass broken. I suppose that I
don't have even to mention the familiar oversized footprints in the grass all
around the car once again (this time barefoot ones!). We attempted to turn the
car back onto its wheels, but the combined effort of all four of us wasn't
able to raise one side of the over-two-ton vehicle high enough. We thus spent
about two hours cutting and transporting young tree trunks to use as levers.
Finally around noon we were successful (while breaking just one door window on
the left side in the process) and exhausted as well.

So we took a break and prepared an improvised dinner out of tin cans,
discussing what to do next. Phillip argued for sending me back to
civilisation, in order not to put a civilian in danger. I understood it even
if I desperately tried not to show my growing fear, asserting repeatedly that
I was up to this challenge. At the end, however, the notion that I might still
be useful prevailed and we all boarded the Humvee and rode around the
mountains towards the wide end of a valley leading generally towards the mines
from the west. There was a small hamlet on the main road and we decided to
park the car there, behind the fence of an unsuspecting friendly local.

This all meant a demanding three-hour hour trek with all necessary equipment
to the mountain pass dividing this valley from the mines. The SAS soldiers
took all necessary equipment into their backpacks, which must have weighed
almost a hundred pounds each, not counting the three tranquilizer rifles. Even
though I carried nothing, and I thought of myself as of a regularly fit man, I
had trouble keeping pace with them. The mood was sour and no one was willing
to talk more than absolutely necessary. We all paid extreme attention to our
surroundings and any suspicious movement or sound made us stop for a while and
look around with rifles pointed. "This is where the hunters become the
hunted," I mused silently to myself.

Due to all those stops and breaks, we arrived at the end of the valley at the
same moment when daylight turned into dusk. "No traces left by any human here
in the last weeks," said Sharp Eye after a short examination of our
surroundings. "She hasn't been down in this valley yet. But she might easily
observe it from that pass above the treeline." So Phillip decided to camp in a
small grove at the bottom of the valley. Only one tent was erected because
Phillip and Michael decided to stay awake and hold double-watch together the
whole night, standing back to back with their rifles aimed.

The other Joe and I entered the tent and tried to sleep. We were kept awake by
any small sound but after two hours or so we both finally lost consciousness.

This time it was my companion who shook me and urged me to wake up after some
time. It was around four a.m. and the mostly overcast sky made the darkness
outside almost complete.

"Wake up, Joe! Philip and Michael are not reporting," he said. A terrible
dread immediately set upon my heart and I was unable to speak. As I exited my
sleeping bag and then the tent I found myself sweating terribly and my teeth
rattling. Sharp Eye signaled me not to make a sound and crawled silently to
the edge of the grove we were in. I did the same more clumsily, afraid of
losing sight of him. At one place, just a few yards from the tent, I stumbled
upon something thin and cold. At this very moment the moon exited the clouds,
and I took a closer look at the object. It looked like an inch-thick iron
circle and I wondered what purpose could it have served and how would it
appear in such a barren place. Then I held it up in the moonlight to see even
better and involuntarily emitted a high- pitched yell. It was the barrel of
one of my comrades' tranq rifles, twisted into a complete circle!

Now, while barrels of tranquilizer rifles are not as massive as those of
regular guns, I still wouldn't deem it possible to twist it with two bare
hands. Even Joe the tracker was visibly shaken when he returned to me and saw
the results. He wasn't able to track in the darkness and he just repeated his
meditation-like exercise. "Phillip and Michael are alive and well, just like
Arthur, and very close to us; I sense them. Probably just behind that mountain
pass, as we presumed," he whispered to me.

We contemplated what to do next. He advised me to go back to civilisation
immediately but I was scared of the idea of being left alone in such
horrendous circumstances, despite having just witnessed that even three of the
best-trained SAS soldiers weren't able to protect themselves, let alone
myself, against the hidden danger. However, my last remaining companion was
resolute to try to free his friends and brothers-in-arms, and succeed or die
trying. We both therefore cautiously exited the grove and climbed in pale
moonlight a bit uphill towards a prominent rocky crag. Sharp Eye stood on top
of it with our last remaining rifle looking constantly all around, and I
wedged myself into a small rift in the rock with the futile idea to have at
least my back protected.

I just stood there wedged for over an hour and despite the terrible fear I
started to slumber. It came and it went in short periods, sometimes just for a
few seconds, sometimes for several minutes according to my watch. In one of
those periods I thought I heard a muted cry that was abruptly cut short and I
jumped out and started to loudly call the other Joe to all sides. No answer
whatsoever...

The moon appeared once more and in desperation, I climbed the crag where Joe
had been standing before. There was only his almost empty backpack and his
rifle. I put the rucksack in front of me in a foolish need for having some
protection, took up the rifle, and wedged myself back to the rift. The weapon
in my hands was shaking, together with the whole of me, with fear and intense
cold.

In a while the moon slid behind thick clouds and soon it began to rain. Also
the wind started to blow harshly, covering other possible sounds I was
desperately trying to discern with my ears. I looked at my watch and saw it
was about 5:30. Thus, I expected the first signs of daylight to appear in
about half an hour. "If only I could survive till then... the yeti woman was
not supposed to be active in daylight," I thought.

Then suddenly I thought I heard a strange sound just in front of me. Not
thinking, I pointed my rifle into the void and pulled the trigger. Nothing
happened and I knew my last weapon was useless now, so I threw it a few yards
away and wedged myself deeper. I admit I even started weeping from pure
desperation.

Minutes passed; I was freezing from the effects of the rain and wind. The
darkness seemed to start thinning slightly, but I still couldn't discern
anything farther than a few yards and remained in the doubtful safety of the
rift. Despite all the discomfort, I again slumbered for a while and when I
opened my eyes again, the visibility was much better. I looked at my
surroundings and my heart froze again as I saw the rifle, still where I had
thrown it, but with its barrel twisted now as well ? not into a circle but
into a perfect shape of a heart.

At the same time, I sensed a waft of mountain thyme smell again. It was all
too much for me and my sense of dignity. I jumped out of the rift and started
to yell at the top of my lungs: "Come and take me, yeti woman, I am totally
helpless against you! See me, here I am; do what you want with me!"

I repeated this a few times but there was no response. At one time I thought I
heard a slight giggling, but then it seemed I was just hallucinating. It was
already reasonably light around me so I turned, wanting to return to the rift
and wait some more time ? and then possibly, in full daylight, to exit the
damned place as quickly as possible, never to return again.

That's exactly when I saw Her, standing straight and silently just a few yards
away from me and from the rift. She was indeed blonde, with very long platinum
hair, and she was indeed the tallest person I have ever seen. I would estimate
her slightly below eight feet, rather like 7'9'' or 7'10''. She was clad only
in a camouflage T-shirt that was extremely stretched on her enormous body and
looked painted on her, but a lot of tears and small holes showed its real
existence. On her hips were similarly overstretched and half-torn khaki
shorts. Her arms and legs were relatively slim in proportion to their extreme
length, as was her waist. Only the width and muscularity of her bare shoulders
betrayed extreme strength on her part. On her feet she had those black
military boots of enormous size, and that was all when it came to clothing,
despite the cold weather.

Nevertheless, she didn't look like a "yeti woman" at all. In fact, if smaller
by a third, she could pass in any beauty contest in the western world. Coming
back to top, her face was round and pretty with slight hints of partly
Oriental ancestry despite being a Slavic-type light blonde. Her full red lips
were bent into slight sneer and her deep green eyes looked at me with a
strange mix of derision and... sympathy? Seeing me shaking before her, her
lips unexpectedly parted and she spoke in a melodic voice: "Nye nada richat,
chelovyek. Ya tut i tvoi druzya voyiny spyat nyedaleko! (No need for yelling,
man. I am here close and your military friends are sleeping not far away)."

to be continued.