The Abdominal Snowman

This is the second story in The Erotic Adventures of Chastity Summers. It follows Romancing the Raptor.

**

Chauncey Adams started the day with a light breakfast of coffee and toast, explicitly avoiding any added sugar or cream or condiment that might irritate his bowels on such an important day, but, with each exhausted, stumbling step through the darkness that covered the ice plain, he considered that maybe—just maybe—he might have chanced an egg or two to help fuel his unexpected retreat to the base camp.

He slowed his limping run toward the safety of the sodium vapor halo on the horizon that marked the camp's location to briefly glance over his shoulder. The narrow beam from his headlamp cut a hard line through the darkness, illuminating nothing but the slow, downward drift of falling snow.

The darkness was far from empty, though. His pursuers would be coming for him soon enough.

He returned to his run and pushed through the metal gate in the perimeter fence that boxed in the camp. He slid though the narrow spaces between the hastily erected buildings and circled behind the mess tent and around the research annex to the central communication building.

He pressed through the flap, but his boot—the heavy, lumbering thing that it was—caught on the ledge where Antarctic ice transitioned to honeycombed plates of aluminum alloy flooring, and he fell to his knees.

Chauncey steadied himself, rose to a wobbly stand, and hobbled to the computer console. He half-collapsed in the chair in front of the monitor. He lifted his goggles to his forehead, the lenses wet and fogged from the moist heat that rose from rapid breaths, to catch one last glimpse through the closing divide in the nanomesh fabric. He saw no movement and heard no sound beyond the harsh scritch of wind across the frozen ground.

"Dot, pull up the surveillance cameras. Multiple mode, with infrared of the mountain double-sized in the center"

"Yes, Professor," the artificial intelligence program said in its irritatingly metallic and entirely emotionless voice. Images from the camp cameras lit the screen. In the distance the jagged peaks and dips of the mountain were visible, darker somehow than the starless sky. He squinted and scanned the images of the icy expanse. Empty.

He tugged the glove off his right hand and tapped the smaller interface screen to bring up the contact list. His finger hovered for a long second over the name pinned at the top labeled EASTBURN. He swiped it away and scrolled through the entire list, pausing to give the occasional name a moment of scrutiny before dismissing it and moving on. Each was a colleague at the university. He had known them for years—had trained two-thirds of them and had been on expeditions with them all.

None could be trusted now.

He hated the uncertainty that weighed down his thoughts. It was heavier than any he had felt in a long time. He dropped his head into his hands, not knowing what to do.

A bead of sweat trailed down the line of his nose and lingered at the sharp tip before releasing and dropping to the console below.

Despite the danger he was in, he chuckled at the novelty of it. It was the first time in years he had broken a sweat on an expedition.

Another drop fell and something wavered at the edge of his memory. Something on the news recently.

"Dot," he said as he straightened his back and cleared the list of names. "Circumvent the approved contact list. I need information for an outside individual."

"Global contact services are offline. Data can be uploaded to the satellite system but will be held in the queue until the scheduled transmission time," the computer replied in its metallic monotone.

"What?!? That's ridiculous."

"Dean Eastburn has not authorized roaming charges for this expedition. Unofficial communication is not included in the budget. Messages can be uploaded to the satellite system but will be held in the queue until the scheduled transmission time."

"I got that the first time. When will that be? I need to get a message out."

"Eleven hours, thirty-two minutes, and 11 seconds. You may record an outgoing message, but it will be held in the queue until—"

"Understood. Begin recording."

After the professor squeezed as much as he safely could into the message, he said, "I'm finished. Send it as soon as you can."

"To whom?" the computer asked.

"A former student of mine. Chastity Summers."

*

The golden, morning light streamed through the bedroom window and woke Chastity from a restful sleep. She stretched her hand over to her bedmate and ran her fingers in a smooth glide through the fine curls of straw-colored hair that covered Leo Thompson's chest. The mix of their sweat had dried, but his skin was still flushed and warm as she leaned in to kiss his cheek. He had a rough face—the face of a career military man who had seen more than his share of action on the battlefield—with a nose dented from a break that he hadn't bothered to set or surgically correct, and a pencil-thin scar that ran down the curve of his left cheekbone and ended at the cleft of his chin. It was handsome, made more so by its flaws. Right now, it was as peaceful as Chastity had ever seen it.

He let out a quiet snuffle as she moved, but didn't wake as Chastity slid off the mattress and picked up the sheet that had been torn from the bed and forgotten. She brought it up to her nose and inhaled. It was filled with the smell of both of them, a mix of two scents, one leafy and green, like the earth after a rain, and the second, a robust combination of musk and gun oil. She inhaled again, relishing the new, strange smell of her pheromones. A month ago her scent was different—dark cherries and butterscotch—a sweet, cloying perfume she had grown to hate. The smell had marked her as one of the unfortunates infected with the VN1R1 retrovirus—succubus syndrome, as it had become commonly known. It made her a prisoner in her own body and had taken away almost two years of her life, until Georgie Ashford, the mad scientist who created the virus, reworked her DNA a second time during a convoluted Cretaceous Period jailbreak and freed her from he effects of the infection. On mornings like this she could almost thank him for that, if the change had been a kindness instead of part of his escape plan that would have ended with her trapped millions of years in the past. She could walk outside now without pheromone inhibitors—without being forced into a neck-to-toe pheromone-blocking carbon nanomesh bodysuit—without the fear of every man being turned into a rabid sex fiend by the smell of her as she walked through the farmer's market.

Georgie Ashford. The man who set off the bio-bomb that infected thousands. The man who, with the help of his nephew, Tom Frye, used her to escape Chamfield Penitentiary. The man who was still out there, free to continue his research on innocents.

Chastity took a deep, cleansing breath, let the past go for now, and walked naked from the bedroom to the kitchen. "Alex, has anything been on the news? Any sightings of Ashford or Tom?"

The artificial intelligence that her fiancé, Edward Brinkley, designed for her before his death hummed to life and its ever-changing face—today a geriatric with deep-set wrinkles and purple tiger-striped hair that bore some resemblance to a punk rock Queen Victoria—appeared on the kitchen's wall display. "No mention of either."

Chastity poured a cup of coffee and stirred it without drinking.

"Something wrong? That cup is normally empty by now. Disgusting, by the way, how you hoover it down."

"Maybe it's a little on the bitter side, like you seem to be this morning."

The face on the monitor was expressly emotionless, yet somehow accusing. "You disconnected my sensors."

"Just the ones in the bedroom. You don't need to watch everything that Leo and I do in there."

"Leo. Leeeeeo. Last week it was Thompson."

"I figure anyone who did what he did to me last night deserves to be on a first name basis."

A geriatric scowl filled the screen. "It couldn't have been that good. You didn't have an orgasm."

The spoon Chastity stirred the coffee with clinked hard against the inside of the cup. "How—"

"You turned off the cameras but forgot I have excellent hearing. That oh oh ohh eeee moan—fake, obviously. I could tell even from the microphones in the living room."

Chastity was annoyed at the unexpected intrusion, but Alex was right. The sex was good, but she didn't orgasm. She hadn't since Scar.

She changed the subject. "So, no trace of Ashford. Have you tried other things, besides the news?"

"I've got a live feed from the city's security and traffic cameras cycling through my processors. Don't expect much, they're an exceptional pair of genii. They'll know better than to take a public stroll down by the bay. But if they do, the facial recognition software will pick them out. Other things were on the news, though... there was another segment about you this morning."

"Christ on toast, I don't want to know—no. No, I do. It's that bitch Betsy Chase again, isn't it?"

Betsy Chase. Chastity hadn't known anything about the woman—hadn't even known about her talk show—until after the newswoman came out as being infected with the VN1R1 retrovirus.

"Go ahead and play it."

Alex faded and a new face took his place. Betsy Chase, a vaguely attractive woman in a turtleneck that rose to a harshly angled jaw. It was made from a version of the carbon nanomesh fabric that Chastity had been forced to wear—only this woman's was far more expensive. Her hair was mousy and pulled back in a tight bun today. Bulky black and grey clothing hid everything from the neck down. Puritanical. The woman had taken the clothing requirements for infected women, taken them to the fashionable extreme, and trademarked the style after she revealed her infection status during sweeps week. Chastity felt the same sorrow for the woman as she did for herself, until she saw through the façade—it was a ratings grab. Pity me, Betsy had said through fake sobs to the people in the New San Francisco viewing area, but know that I'm not like those others—I'm a good woman. I'm safe.

Alex cued up to the segment on Chastity. "... and just why won't Miss Summers come on The Betsy Chase Show and explain how she was alleviated of this affliction. I—and thousands of other suffering women—want to know... need to know." The woman's words were so emotionally overdone they bordered on fraudulent. She would probably win another daytime award for them.

Chastity's interest faded in and out, pulled back when she heard her name a dozen more times. It was the same spiel that she'd heard since the "news broke" earlier in the week.

"How does she even know?" Chastity said mostly to herself, since Alex never had any insight on it. "I haven't told anyone."

She didn't know who the leaker was, but the list of potential informants was exceptionally small. Leo, who she could immediately mark off; Tom Frye, her dead fiancé's best friend and co-engineer of the Chamfield prison break; Georgie Ashford, Tom's uncle and the mad scientist who created the succubus virus; and Charles McMurtey, the director of the Think Tank.

Any of the three could be guilty. It had been part of the confidentiality agreement that she had signed with Charles McMurtey and the Think Tank. If she said a word, the colossal stack of hush money McMurtey slid across the table to her after the Chamfield incident would go away.

A soft beep came from the monitor.

"You have a message," Alex said.

"I don't want to deal with people. Just let it record."

"It is a recording. Time stamped twelve hours ago. The metadata from the originating AI indicates it was delayed until a scheduled transmission from a satellite relay."

"Satellite?" Chastity stepped around the counter and centered herself on a stool in front of the screen. "Who the hell uses satellites nowadays? Where did it come from?"

"Antarctica. Sent by a Professor Chauncey Adams."

"Play it."

Chastity's heart warmed as the wrinkled, sun-worn face of her mentor appeared on the screen, and she smiled when she saw he still had that dreadful mustache. "Hello dear girl, I'm afraid I don't have time for pleasantries and I apologize, but I'm in need of help and you're the only one I believe to be marginally trustworthy—the professional seclusion you've been forced into, you understand. I'm on a covert expedition in Antarctica—revolutionary findings, I wish I could discuss them, but I'm not sure this recording will make it to you, and the communiqué most certainly isn't secure... Not my personal AI sending it, you see—a disagreeable university-issued system, always bogging down and with no personality whatsoever. Drier than Doctor Everly, if you remember him, the one who has a way of making himself less interesting than those igneous rocks he always drones on about. Anyway, there was an incident—something very bad is happening and I believe someone on the team is bent on my demise. Could you be a dear and come for a visit? Dress warm. The coordinates are included. Best wishes and see you soon."

*

"I'm sorry," said the secretary who was more interested in the state of her nail polish than meeting Chastity's irritated gaze. "Dean Eastburn isn't in. If you'd like to leave a—"

"Okay. That's fine. If you could flip the bangs out of your eyes long enough to check the Rolodex for her number, I'll just forward this to her vid-phone—her extension?" Chastity tapped the string of numbers into her phone as the woman grudgingly rattled them off and swiped the video to send. "Thanks. After those dry, would you write a little note to let her know she can see the high definition version on the six o'clock news."

Before Chastity's third step toward the exit, she heard the crack of shattering porcelain. Pauline Eastburn, Dean of the School of Cryptid Studies, flung the connecting door to her office open, her plump face affright.

"Pauline, I heard you weren't in."

The secretary suddenly busied herself with a blank paper on her desk.

"Get in here." Pauline grabbed Chastity's shoulder with a harpy's strength and dragged her into the office and slammed the door. "Where did you get that video?" she said, venom covering but not replacing the panic in her voice. "Delete it now."

"You have a mess here," Chastity said. "And I'm not just talking about this." She stepped over the wet, scattered remains of the broken teacup.

"That is confidential material—restricted information about a government funded expedition. Having it can get you locked up for years. Erase it. Now."

Chastity brushed past Pauline and plopped down in a plush, pink and gilded oak rococo chair. Gaudy and overdone, just like the rest of the office. "Government funded?" Chastity leaned back nonchalantly, stretched her legs one at a time before crossing them at the ankles, and patted the armrests absentmindedly with her fingertips. "Odd. I checked the Cryptid Research and Licensing Registry before I came and there's nothing listed for the university in Antarctica. I did find a permit for Professor Adams, but it was for Argentina, where he's supposed to be collecting samples of a newly discovered subspecies of vampire vine."

Pauline's frown stiffened.

"Anyway, I'm sure it'll all be sorted out when Betsy Chase gets a copy of the video. She's practically on my doorstep badgering me for an interview. She's persistent, I'll give her that. Maybe this will distract her and her for a week or two—get her off my back, you know, give me a little break."

"Let's not do anything hasty."

"So let's have an off-the-record discussion, Pauline. Why is Professor Adams in Antarctica—illegally in Antarctica? Why is he calling me for help? And, why does he think someone on the team wants him dead?"

"It isn't illegal, technically speaking; the paperwork is in the processing pipeline. Antarctic claims are always touchy so we need to be established on the ground as soon as the permits clear. The university doesn't want any dispute about who the findings belong to."

"So you found something and you don't want to tip your hand."

Chastity didn't need the breakaway in Pauline's stare to know she was right.

"It's a frozen desert. Why would you need to send a secret group of cryptoanthropologists and cryptozoologists there?"

Pauline smiled and Chastity wasn't sure if the sentiment behind it reeked of smugness or a desperate eagerness to share. Despite Pauline's propensity toward self-serving posturing, she was a fine cryptozoologist and could get as excited as anyone over a new discovery.

"Yeti," she finally said. "We found evidence of a small yeti population."

"Not possible. The food supply would be inadequate to support a predator population like that."

"Yet, there they are there," Pauline said. "A hundred years ago people said the existence of homo sasquatii wasn't possible, but we now know there are syndicates scattered all along the northwest forests." Pauline moved behind her desk, removed a file folder from the central drawer and flipped to a photograph. She slid it across the desk's polished marble surface to Chastity. "This picture was taken at the edge of the Hudson Mountains. A lucky find—a fluke, really. The university's geology department recently obtained a grant to study deglaciation in the surrounding area. One of their mapping drones captured this image. This tribe is the first real find in ten years—we need to be on top of it."

The image was grainy and out of focus, but still clear enough to see the outline of two yeti standing at the dark, yawning maw of a high-ceilinged cave.

The first real find in ten years.

"Amazing, but how..."

"The information we've obtained so far indicates a primitive level of technology, but still surpassing that of the Western-American Sasquatch and the Himalayan Snowman. Pre-iron working. Stone and wood tools. Hunting parties to the coast bring back seal and penguin meat, driftwood."

"Protocol says you'll have to send a team to investigate, and I'm going, too," Chastity said.

"Absolutely not."

Chastity tapped her phone and watched the adrenaline bloat the black disks of Pauline's pupils as Professor Adams's voice repeated: "...there was an incident—something very bad is happening and I believe someone on the team is bent on my demise..."

"I absolutely am. Professor Adams is still a big deal in the cryptozoology world. A leaked copy of this recording might be newsworthy enough to get international attention—maybe even in one of those countries where expedition teams can buy backdated permits as long as the check has a few extra zeroes at the end. It would be a shame for another group to bump you out of your expedition site, seeing as the university's paperwork is still in the processing pipeline."

*

"You're not doing this," Leo said as he stared Chastity down from the opposite side of her bed. "It's too dangerous."

Chastity ignored the irritate flex in Leo's voice, and stuffed her tattered copy of A Sherpa's Encounter with the Abominable Snowman into her expedition pack. "I am. Professor Adams is my friend and he's in danger. And he's studying a tribe of yeti where there shouldn't be one and I've got the chance to be involved—to be out in the field again. A murderer isn't going to stop me."

"Murderer, Chas! You say it like it's nothing. It's been two days since that message came through. This guy might be dead already—everybody might be dead. You don't know what you're walking into."

"I can handle myself. I survived a pack of dinosaurs and a mad scientist determined to leave me—leave us—stranded a hundred million years in the past. And I'm not going to be alone. And they're going to need someone with experience if something has happened to Professor Adams... And, if we're talking about danger, aren't you and your team leaving for a mission to take down some renegade warlord in the Australian Outback?"