The Yeti Page 3

  At this early hour, the passing scenery out of their train cabin’s window was a dry mash of streaking orange and red earth, the highest tips of which were frosted white with snow. Gone were the green plant life and flowing rivers which had all vanished overnight in their travels. Even the usual overstuffed pastiche of India’s peasantry and livestock no longer populated the view from the train. In the many other parts of the country Conrad had visited, the nation crammed with people and animals in a gigantic circus of life. But now the view from the train was a stark spread of dirt that did not present any comfortable habitation. Even the most wretchedly impoverished, which only the nation of India could spawn in such ubiquitous numbers, were nowhere in sight.

  So as Conrad tried to rest, the streaking autumn colours of the world passing by outside were gracefully mesmerising. However, their combined efforts were not good enough to lull him back to sleep.

  The absolute peacefulness of the universe could not quell Conrad’s mind. It was still too restlessly possessed despite his best efforts to rest. Although the earlier bout of lovemaking had provided a nice reprieve for a brief hour, Conrad knew it was important now to be awake and alert. In the field of battle, being restlessly awake could be the key to surviving the enemy at night. Yet in the luxury and safety of the railcar, here the acumen was best used to appreciate the peace.

  Conrad indulged in another thick puff while thinking about how life did not often get much better than the current moment. And nor would it approach anything close until the end of the forthcoming expedition. After so many weary campaigns across the globe, Conrad knew he would be lucky to arrive here again. With each moment of tranquillity, it always became all the sweeter knowing it might be the last he would ever enjoy.

  The rhythmic clacking of the wheels on track began to tire as each interval elongated in duration. Outside the window, the world stopped its dash and slowed to a soldier’s brisk march for its entrance into the station. The windows finally provided the first glimpses of civilisation to be seen in some time, though the faded stone and wood buildings stuffed with beggars and merchants could hardly constitute a teeming metropolis. As the locomotive’s brakes released one final screech in its ultimate lurch to stillness, so too did Conrad sigh in an equally piercing and enduring gale of breath.

  The train’s other passengers began to rustle about in their waking or exiting, but still he refused to do anything but smoke and dream.

  A sharp knock at the cabin’s door startled his lover but not him. “Go away,” he barked into the ceiling, and the woman relaxed back into the sheets.

  The knock cracked again, a bit louder and longer this time for increased irritation and urgency.

  “Not bloody here,” Conrad sang out again.

  The woman stirred herself awake. A lock of dark hair flopped forward over her face to further obscure her vision, already burdened with groggy, half-lidded eyes. “Who goes there?” she said.

  The knock responded for a third time, now louder and even more deliberate. Its creator had lost all patience.

  “Can you be a gentleman and answer that?” the woman said.

  “It’s your door,” Conrad coolly replied, still stuck in full recline.

  After a brief moment for the woman to sleepily comprehend the lip she had just received, she rose quickly with an annoyed look across her large, wide-open eyes. Conrad finally turned over to acknowledge his scowling companion. Their showdown of stares ended when Conrad moved his attention to the rest of her naked body peeking out from the sheets. He smiled and relented. “I’ll get it.”

  He sat up slowly and with a groan. The knocks at the door resumed again to encourage him along. “Coming,” he snapped.

  Once upon his feet and completely naked, the woman gasped softly at the ornate number of scars covering her lover’s body. While the gentleman was older in years than her, his musculature held up better than most men a decade junior. However, the snarling pattern of slashes and wounds were eerily disarming to her.

  Though she groggily recollected scant details about the previous night’s drunken tryst, she did not ever see this warrior’s tattered skin in the darkness of night and the haze of inebriation. She recalled the feel of the strips of scar tissue and at the time thought they were sinewy ropes of muscle. While the man did possess an impressively taut musculature, she couldn’t help but be further mesmerised and horrified by the strange runes scribbled across his body by bullets and blades. She was almost relieved when he donned a robe and became decent to answer the caller at their door.

  Conrad opened the door but offered no greeting.

  “We need to go,” a voice quietly hissed.

  “No apology for the interruption?” Conrad asked the stranger.

  The visitor scoffed. “This isn’t funny, Conrad. The caravan is assembling now!” The voice became irritated, though still spoke in a polite hush.

  Though the woman was trying to fall back asleep, the exchange made her curious. “Who is it?”

  “No one,” Conrad replied back over his shoulder.

  “I played your game already like always, so don’t mess this up,” the mysterious voice lectured. Conrad’s torso quickly popped backward into the chamber as if the visitor had punctuated the rebuke with a hostile shove. “You better not have changed your mind.”

  “Not a lick,” Conrad sighed. He looked back over his shoulder at the woman, now wide awake and watching the commotion with keen intent. Then he leaned forward and said with a soft whisper, “Just one more quick go, eh?”

  Conrad moved to shut the door, but its closing was stopped by the sudden entrance of a large glove which slapped the wood forcefully. “No, Conrad, now!” the voice commanded.

  With a quick spin, Conrad slapped the hand away and pounced back to the egress to close it. The glove was not intimidated and grabbed the defender by the collar. Conrad’s barely clothed body was yanked into the hallway. With a series of bumps and grunts whilst locked in battle with the visitor, the muffled commotion of a tussle began as two big bodies slammed against the hallway walls and floor.

  The clatter was too great to permit any further slumber. The lady rose, covered herself with a sheet and proceeded to investigate.

  When she ripped the door back with almost enough force to remove the wood from its hinges, she found Conrad and last night’s black scoundrel lying together in the hallway, almost as if they were making love. Paused in their skirmish, the foolish look of shock upon both of their countenances was identical enough to make them appear to be twins, despite their distinctly distant differences in all other physical qualities of age, hair, size and skin colour.

  “What’s...” the woman said, studying the two partners and absorbing the shocking truth, “going on here?” By the time she finished speaking, her voice had eased from confused interrogation into simmering anger.

  Conrad released Baxter from the wrestle and leapt to his feet. Baxter was slow to rise with eyes averted in diffident embarrassment.

  Conrad approached the woman and said, “Pardon, miss.” His eyes flickered past her body back into the cabin compartment, so she reluctantly stepped aside for him to pass back into the room.

  With a curt nod of polite acknowledgment, he stepped past her, scooped his clothing and boots under his arm and exited again. With a slap to the back of Baxter’s apologetically bowed head, Conrad asked, “What are you waiting for?” Then Conrad dashed quickly away down the corridor, his robe flapping in his wake to reveal a pair of pale buttocks.

  Baxter had been abandoned and remained dumbstruck before the angry woman. To a few passersby who shoved around the pair to exit the stopped train, it was an odd sight for such a large and powerful man in full military regalia to be at the apparent mercy of this diminutive and delicate woman. “I do apologise, ma’am. It was all his idea,” Baxter said politely, bowing again. “Though I am responsible for my own actions.” Then with military precision, he spun about on his heels and marched away.

  “You ba
stard,” the woman hissed, also a bit too dumbstruck to react with any more flair.

  Outside the train car on the platform, Conrad blindly buttoned up his coat while mugging mischievously at Baxter, who emerged into the bright morning light with squinting, confused eyes. The peppery whiskers of Conrad’s overgrown moustache spread slightly out from the smirk like the upside-down fan of a peacock’s tail.

  Once Baxter finally located the gloating officer amongst the bustling crowd of passengers, his face turned into a sneer whose bitter exuberance rivalled the arrogant elation of Conrad’s expression. The African’s hands balled into fists in preparation for pounding. He stomped through the crowd in a straight line towards his target, though still possessing the wherewithal to offer a series of polite pardons to the various sirs and madams through which he marched.

  But passing through a cloud of the locomotive’s charcoal smoke had a transformative effect on the man. Upon emerging from the smog, Baxter’s angry scowl had been softened into a cheerful smile equal to Conrad’s. Baxter reeled back his hand to playfully clap Conrad on the back. Conrad responded with a short laugh and reciprocated the gesture. With their arms still interlocked over each other’s shoulder, the two began to walk in a tightly woven half-embrace, their boots marching in mechanical synchronisation together.

  “I’m sorry,” Conrad said. He helplessly erupted into laughter upon the conclusion of the final syllable of his apology.

  “Shut it,” Baxter said, but also with a grin.

  “No, seriously, I am,” he bent over from the guffawing. “I am deeply apologetic and regretful of my behaviour. I can’t help it. Please forgive me, mate.”

  “A very heartfelt apology while laughing like a hyena,” Baxter observed. He cast off the chummy embrace to walk at his own pace.

  “Wait, wait.” Conrad was taken aback, pausing in their stroll to further contemplate the situation. Baxter did not wait and continued ahead.

  Conrad followed. “You’re… You’re actually serious? Why, we’ve executed this shenanigan perhaps a dozen times in the past, so why so bloody offended now?” Conrad retaliated in his own offended tone of accusation.

  “This one was just different,” mused Baxter solemnly. His merry face grew serious. “I went back to my bunk - alone, mind you - and did not like the thought of it.”

  “Jealousy?” replied Conrad dismissively.

  Baxter ignored the interruption. “I could… feel a difference. It was just wrong. Before I could see about how these women could be equally complicit, but now... I just know that we shouldn’t be tricking them.” It was hard for Baxter to articulate the singular sensation of lying in bed and feeling as if he were being closely watched, almost inspected.

  “So you have guilt now?” Conrad scoffed. “Why? I assure you that all parties left satisfied.”

  “I’m through with the scams,” Baxter said humourlessly. “This is the last campaign, both in the service and at your service.”

  “Ha!” Conrad exclaimed while clapping his thigh. Baxter became even grumpier as he walked.

  “Can I not help but to also appreciate the silliness of the situation?” asked Conrad. “Why so glum about such an innocent little transgression? Would it help you if I told you she loved the loving? Or loved it enough to pretend to love the loving? Which is all the same anyways.”

  “I reiterate,” Baxter said, pointing an accusatory finger into Conrad’s face. “I won’t be running the scam again. None of them.”

  “Of course not. Well, except this last big one, yes,” Conrad said. “I’m long overdue and owe you a few repayment scams. Next time, I’ll play the drunken heel.”

  Baxter murmured indifferently. “Don’t bother,” he replied, with diminished enthusiasm. “You know I am chaste.”

  “Please, spare me your martyred humility,” Conrad jested. He patted his companion on the chest to resurrect some jovial spirits within Baxter’s lifeless frame. “What else are friends for?”

  Before Baxter could answer the rhetorical question, a new voice accepted the offer. “For you two bags of dirt, I’d say it’s getting into trouble.”

  The soles of Baxter’s boots ground to a halt in the dust, then snapped together as the foundation of a salute. Baxter’s demeanour petrified into seriousness, yet Conrad failed to react with the same instinctive show of austerity. The old corporal slowly addressed the interrupter with an unenthused salute of his own.

  “Colonel,” Conrad said with as much muted sneering as he could muster.

  Colonel Randall Snider stood in their path as a sentry to disembark the platform. The barrel-chested officer with cold green eyes and a geometric facial hair stood at an inhumanly erect angle. Baxter thought he looked even bitterer than usual.

  “Corporal Murray and Private Griffin,” Snider acknowledged, his tiny eyes bouncing back and forth between both targets.

  With both men still at attention, Snider slowly proceeded towards them with the nonchalant air of a predatory lion reluctantly selecting between the tastier of two rotten meals. Between the dead-solemn Baxter frozen like a statue at judgment and the impudent smirk of Conrad, the colonel wrestled to figure out where to attack first.

  Instead he settled on just groaning in frustration. “Late for assembly is one thing, but you don’t even have your bleeding full uniform on.”

  “Well, if you’re with us now, then you’re late too,” Conrad remarked. The other two men were not amused. “Though you’re quite right about the uni, sir.” He buttoned some more buttons on his jacket.

  Snider stomped closer towards Conrad. “At least the black one has enough sense to respect my authority. But you… You just can’t wait to get the boot.”

  Conrad didn’t look at Snider, but his eyes stared dreamily off into the mountaintops in the distance. “No, I cannot, sir.”

  “That might be someday soon, you old rat. The mountain might even be kind enough to put your flippant nonsense out of its misery.” As the angry colonel leered uncomfortably close to the old soldier, Conrad’s levity hardened into a grim expression ready for pugilism. The flat fingers of his salute tensed slightly in the urge to become a fist. “Where is your hat, officer?”

  Locked into a staring contest, the two men simply glowered at each other from point blank distance. Baxter strained his eyes in curiosity to look sideways at the two men without turning his head.

  “Hey, bastard,” a lady’s voice hollered from behind them.

  Conrad turned to find that he was being addressed by an angry woman standing a dozen paces away from the trio of soldiers. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a simple knot behind her plain but pretty face. She wore a long black gown that covered her entire body save the face, neck and hands.

  “You forgot your hat!” she shouted. By the time he recognised the woman as the one he had bedded the previous night, his mind had to rapidly scramble to also recognise that she had hurled his helmet at him. It was already mid-flight and aimed squarely at his forehead, a surprisingly powerful and true throw from such a small girl.

  With a dextrous dip of his brow, Conrad caught the hat atop his head and between the fingers of his left hand, effortlessly encircling his crown while courteously dipping the lip at her. “Milady,” he said while sweeping his off hand out in a graceful gesture of respect.

  The woman growled while a wild anger flared in her eyes. She flung a black hood over her eyes to storm off in fury.

  Both Conrad and Snider resumed their own little war, but Baxter’s attention lingered on the damsel. It was just a short flash, but he was certain that the brow of her sparse headpiece was adorned with a simple white band, the only decoration on her otherwise blank clothing.

  The woman was a nun.

  Despite Baxter’s determination to adhere to strict attention, he could not stifle a sharp gasp of fright.

  “What was that, private?” barked Snider.

  Baxter watched the woman depart, her flowing black outline reminiscent of the spectre of death. The
image was such a grim and foreboding thought to betray such an innocent, it was remarkable that Baxter could even manage to say, “Nothing, sir,” while privately suffering at the idea of his horrific transgression.

  Snider huffed angrily, then released the tension with a scoff. “You two think you’re so bleeding smart, don’t you?” he asked rhetorically.

  “We do, sir,” answered Conrad anyways.

  “And you are,” confirmed Snider. “But you’re also insubordinate, disrespectful, lazy and unfocused.” Snider reached over to bat at a patch of grey hair at Conrad’s temple, which caused the man to bristle. “Your problem is you lack ambition, Murray. It’s why an old bit of riffraff like you would never lead fine men like myself to our doom, whereas Her Majesty has seen fit to place me in charge of the babysitting.”

  Conrad’s easy smile returned with a defiant flash of exuberance. “Thank you, sir.”

  “And you,” Snider said to Baxter, his head fluidly snapping to the side like a viper. “We all know why you don’t advance around here either. Frankly if the decision were mine, I would have left you two scums back in the lowest castes of India to die of a dishonourable discharge and dysentery. But as fate would have it, this assignment was happy to take any warm bodies.”

  “Lucky us indeed, sir,” said Conrad with a jolly smile.

  “Your sarcasm won’t break me,” said Snider. “But the two of you and your infamous reputation are on a very short leash in my command. This mission leaves no room for error or buffoonery.” Snider spread one last angry glare amongst the two soldiers. “Consider yourselves warned.”

  Snider spun quickly about on his heels and walked away. Baxter held his salute in the off chance the corporal would turn around, but Conrad eased his hand away from his forehead at the first opportunity once his commander’s eyesight was averted. He then extended the hand out and folded back his two smallest fingers and thumb. He aimed the imaginary pistol at the back of Snider’s helmet. When he pulled the thumb hammer, Conrad whispered softly, “Kapow.”

  At that moment, Snider suddenly spun back around. Conrad deftly snapped his hand back to attention as if the salute had never been interrupted. “Dismissed,” Snider growled and resumed his march.