The humongous roar of the abominable snowman echoed through the glade, as it slowly sat up.

  Peter didn’t hesitate. ‘Drop your bag, run!’ he yelled.

  ‘But the supplies!’

  ‘Drop it!’ he screamed, shrugging his bag off and hurling it at the snowman. The movement drew the monster’s gaze, its bulging eyes ponderously shifting to follow the path of the bag, hitting his huge ankle and bouncing off.

  It would’ve been funny, if it weren’t so dire. Shrugging hers off, Lacey dropped it at her feet just as Peter’s hand clamped onto her wrist. He pulled her behind him, as she struggled to get her cold and tired feet moving.

  He led them straight toward the side of the hill they had come around. Skirting the hillside, they hugged its contours racing through the shadow it cast.

  There was a huge crash as one giant foot struck the ground. The earth rippled underneath, momentarily bouncing them off their feet. Falling back to the ground, Lacey’s foot twisted out from under her on the unstable surface below the snow. A dull sensation shot up her leg, the cold dulling any pain she might’ve felt, but she knew she had been injured. There was nothing right about what had happened to her ankle.

  Instinctively, she reached to Peter for help, only to stop as another massive roar, almost on top of them, ripped through the air and sent vibrations through the hillside. It was so close, chilling her spine and turning her legs into iced jelly.

  ‘Peter, go!’ she yelled at him, trying to wave him away as he rushed over to her. ‘I can’t, my leg.’

  He knelt down, grabbing her around the waist and lifted her to her feet. ‘I’m not leaving you.’ The ground rippled beneath their feet as the snowman approached, rounding the hill they’d just come from.

  They half ran, half stumbled away, out in front of it and around the next bend. The ground bouncing them around with every lumbering step it took. It was gigantic, but at least it wasn’t very fast.

  Here sheer cliffs rose up around them, topped with mounds of snow in the sky. Pressing on Peter, Lacey hobbled as fast as she could on her numb legs, keeping as much weight as she could off the injured one. The monster stepped around the corner behind him, each momentous footstep slamming into the ground.

  Spotting something, Peter veered to a dark spot under a slight overhang. As they drew up to it, he shoved Lacey into the dark space.

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  ‘Stay here, I’m going to distract it,’ he instructed.

  ‘No, Peter don’t!’ she tried to stop him, but it was already too late. He had dashed out into the open, right into the snowman’s view.

  The monster gave a terrifying, ululating cry, waving his long fur-matted arms in the air. The sunlight glinted off his crystal claws. Swooping his arms down, he struck Lacey’s cliff with a shattering impact, jarring her where she half-lay against it. Somewhere, high above her a rumbling roar started.

  On some level she registered it, but paid it no mind. It was less than nothing to her, as she saw the claws of his other hand swung down directly towards Peter. The monster’s gait might’ve been slow, but his swing was fast, his claws singing through the air as his hand arced down.

  ‘No!’ she screamed starting forward, ignoring her ankle. But, before she could leave the shelter of the overhang a solid, dirty-white curtain of snow and soil slammed down around her, rattling the ground with a woomph.

  In the blink of an eye, all light was cut off. ‘Peter!’ she screamed, her voice slamming into the snow filled debris. Not a single sound got out. She knew it. It was futile.

  The snow crunched and creaked ominously as it settled all around her. She flung herself forward through the darkness at wall of compacting snow, frantically pulling out chunks of snow with her gloved hands. In that first few minutes she managed to extend the hollow outward about an arms’ worth of space. With every passing second the snow became harder to shift, until finally she was beating her hands against what felt like solid soil.

  The ground bounced again with the steps of the snowman. In the blackness that surrounded her, all she could see was that final visual of Peter in the open space. The abominable snowman’s glinting claws ricocheting at him with breathtaking speed. ‘Peter,’ she sobbed, crumbling against the rock-hard snow.

  An ear-splitting crash sounded as the snowman smashed his foot down a hand’s breadth away from where Lacey lay. She hadn’t thought she could still care without Peter, but her body took over, instinctively scrabbling back to the safety under the overhang and hugging the cliff’s surface.

  More crashes sounded around her, the monster stumbling around in the snow. Her body kept cowering against the wall, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. Why, she didn’t know. It’s not as if she cared. With Peter gone, she might as well be too.

  After a while, the steps become softer and the vibrations less intense. Slowly, the snowman’s footsteps receded into the distant reaches of the Wasteland and an unearthly silence settled all around her.

  She listlessly opened her eyes, expecting nothing but for the darkness all around her to be as dark as the darkness in her soul. But, it wasn’t.

  Instead, the wall where she had dug into the avalanche debris, glowed with faint white light. She gasped, rushing forward, clawing at it with renewed fervour. Her hands not finding purchase fast enough, she rammed it with her shoulder, feeling a slight shudder run through it.

  She rammed it again, and this time it gave way, allowing her to fall through into a giant footprint crushed down into the snow. Her chest constricted at the sight. This close. This was how close she had come to being flattened under the creature’s foot.

  But that also wasn’t important right now. She fought her breathless lungs to pull in a huge breath of air.

  ‘Peter!’ she screamed into the snow-packed silence of the space between the cliffs. She didn’t even care whether the abominable snowman might hear her. She only cared for the sound of one man's voice.

  But, there was only silence.

  ??????