This is the continuation of The Nome Man saga, about a man that inherited a strange power, found himself standing on the edge of an abyss, contemplating whether to deal with the power, or step off the edge, and take it to his grave. As he made the decision to deal with the power and live, the frozen cliff edge broke loose, and he fell into the abyss. Twenty years later, he was discovered by an ecological survey team, encased in a block of ice. Find out what lies in wait for the continuation of this exciting saga.
The Nome Man 2 (Nome Man, No More)
By Raymond J. HowlettAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Raymond J. Howlett
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4772-6049-4Chapter One
It is the eleventh day of the month of June in 1996, and for most parts of the United States (other than the high mountain ranges), the snow has long since been gone. But, there is one place in the U.S. that still has snow at this time of the year. That place is the Northern part of Alaska. The snow is even starting to melt there, but it will not stay green for very long, before the snow covers the ground again with a blanket of white.
An ecological survey team, consisting of seven men, had just arrived in Nome, Alaska to set up their base camp for exploration. Three of the men would stay at the base camp to work on analysis of the samples that would be brought in. They also keep in close communication with the exploration team, as they explore the frozen tundra of Alaska. One man would start out with the exploration team, and then act as a transporter between the exploration team and the base camp. The other three men would do the measurements of the ice thicknesses, and gather the samples from the different areas.
Their plans are to explore the upper regions of Alaska and parts of the Yukon, to test the different thicknesses of ice in varying areas. They will be working on, determining the effects of what Global Warming may be causing on these areas of the continent, and compare them with other studies, which were taken from the North and South Poles.
They used tents for their base camp and set them up in an open field, which a landowner had leased to them for three months. Each man had his own personal tent, and three large tents were brought along for different purposes. One large tent was used as a headquarters area, communications area, and meeting tent, where the explorers brought their data, and also work on their tests in one designated place. That was the tent which was used for everyone to bring their data into, so it could all be compiled together, and properly analyzed. They also used this tent to have meetings on the information that was accumulated, and the different subjects that would come up about the exploration. It also served a third purpose of keeping their communication equipment in one place, so they could keep in close communication with the men that were out on the exploration. Another large tent was used as a makeshift cafeteria, and the last large tent was used as a makeshift medical station. The medical station tent was also used as a supply area. This way, they would have a designated place to pick up more supplies when they needed them during their exploration. They also set up two smaller tents, which had a small porta-potty in each tent, to be used as restrooms. Once they had their base camp situated, all of the members of the exploration team had gathered in one of the large tents, to have a meeting on their plans of gathering their data.
While they were discussing different issues of the exploration, they decided that it will take them about two months, to complete all of their testing of the areas that they will explore. Upon arrival to each area, they will be checking the thicknesses of ice in each of the areas, and also take samples from each of these areas to be analyzed later on. Once they gather all of the samples, from the different areas of the explored region, they will load them onto an Arctic transport vehicle. As they complete their exploration of each region, they will send the samples back to their base camp in Nome for analysis. They also decided they would start their exploration, at the furthest northern point from Nome first, which was in the Yukon, and then they would work their way back towards their base camp.
As soon as they had all of their plans ironed out, they adjourned the meeting for the day. Afterwards, they started packing up one of the two transport vehicles that would be used to make the journey north. Most of the equipment they would use was packed onto one of the vehicles. The other vehicle would carry the rest of the equipment and three of the scientific explorers. When they completed packing up the equipment that was being taken on the exploration trip, they each went to their own designated sleeping tents to get some rest for the next day.
The following morning, the men woke up around 6:00 A.M., got cleaned up, and ate breakfast in the cafeteria tent. While they were eating breakfast, some of them discussed some last minute preparations for the trip up to the Yukon. When they finished breakfast, they double checked to make sure they had all of their equipment packed up. Then they all climbed into the transport vehicles, and headed out towards the Yukon.
Because of the rugged, snow covered terrain; it took them about two days of traveling, before they arrived at the place in the Yukon, where they wanted to start their exploration. When they arrived at their destination, they were on the frozen tundra, in the middle of the Yukon. They had stopped near the mouth of a river, which cut through the tundra, and had created the walls of a huge cavern. The river was still frozen at this time, which gave the exploration team the chance to study the ice, from the bottom and the top of the great cavern. This was the point where they had originally planned to start their exploration.
They jumped out of the vehicles and started their exploration at the beginning of the cavern. They worked their way inward towards the dark depths of the chasm, gathering up samples from the walls, as they made their way towards the center of the cave. As they continued in towards the middle of the cavern, the light of the day had disappeared, and gave way to the darkness of the depths of the cave. At this point, they had to start using flashlights, so they could see through the darkness. As they reached the middle of the cavern, one man named, "Charlie" saw a huge cone shaped, block of ice protruding upwards, and sticking out of the frozen river. He thought this seemed kind of peculiar, so he went to investigate it. He walked over to the block of ice, and shined his flashlight up about waist-height at the ice. As the light hit the mid-section of the ice, he jumped back quickly, then shouted out loud, "Holy crap!", and stood there with a startled look on his face, as if he had seen a ghost.
Another man, who was situated about thirty feet down towards the opening of the cave from Charlie, yelled out, "What's the matter, Charlie?"
Charlie answered back in an anxious, almost scared, voice, "Bill, come over here, you have got to see this!"
As Bill came over to see what all of the commotion was about, he walked over to Charlie and said, "What's goin' on, Charlie?"
Charlie pointed to the block of ice and again said in an anxious voice, "Look at this!"
As Bill looked at the ice, he too had a surprised look on his face and said, "What the heck!"
Charlie then told Bill, to go get the other two guys, and bring them down to see the spectacle.
Bill was standing there in awe, but when he heard what Charlie had said, he turned around, without saying a word, and started back down towards the entrance to get Steve and Mike. A few minutes later, all three men returned to the block of ice.
As the other two men gazed at the protruding block of ice, neither one of them could believe their eyes.
After a few seconds of being mesmerized by the object, Steve spoke up and said, "I can't believe this!"
Mike also responded in disbelief, "No, neither can I!"
All four of the men were standing in a semi-circle around the block of ice, which had the figure of a man encased inside of it.
They all came up closer to the block of hazy-looking ice, to see if they could peer inside of it.
Then Charlie posed the question to the rest of the men, "Who do you think it is?"
Mike answered, "I don't know!"
Bill then asked, "How long do you think he's been there?"
Steve chimed in and said, "I don't know, but he doesn't look like any kind of caveman."
Bill came back at Steve's answer and said, "Why do you say that he doesn't look like a caveman?"
Steve answered, "Well, look at his clothes. They don't look like animal skins. They look like clothes they used to wear about twenty or thirty years ago."
Bill looked a little closer, then said, "Oh yea, I guess you're right. They're definitely not animal skins."
Mike then asked, "What are we going to do about him?"
Charlie quickly responded, "I know! We can get the hooks and ropes from the one transport vehicle, tie the hooks onto the end of the ropes, wrap them around the block of ice, and hook the other end of the ropes to both of the vehicles. We'll drill holes all the way around the bottom of the ice chunk to loosen it. Then once it's loose, we'll yank it out of the river with the vehicles."
Bill then asked, "Well, that's great, but once we get him out of there, what are we going to do with him then?"
Charlie answered, "Well, then we'll drag him back to the base camp. He's encased in an eight foot in diameter block of ice, so he's surely not gonna get damaged."
Steve chimed in and said, "Yes, and then we can thaw him out, and see if we can find out who he is, and why he was in there in the first place."
Mike agreed with enthusiasm in his voice, "Yep, it sounds like a good idea to me!"
Bill also agreed, and said, "Who knows, there might even be some money in it for us for finding him. You know, like a reward or something."
Charlie then came back with, "Well gentlemen, I guess we had better get to work on this, because we're not getting anything accomplished by standing around here chatting about it."
After Charlie said that, the men all started to work on getting the hooks tied to the ropes, and the ropes wrapped around the ice block.
Once the block was secured with the ropes and hooks, they attached the other ends of the ropes to the vehicles. One man got into each vehicle; they started them up, and sat there idling, until they got the signal from Charlie to go.
Bill and Charlie started to drill the holes through the ice on the river around the huge chunk. As they encircled the block with holes, they stopped just before they completed the circle. Bill told Charlie to step back, so he could finish drilling the last hole by himself. This way it would not endanger both of the men if the ice collapsed through the river water. As Bill was completing the drilling of the last hole, the familiar sound of ice cracking had started to fill the air. Just as Bill broke through the ice with the drill, the whole chunk of ice had dropped straight down into the water. As the ice dropped through, Bill yelled to Charlie to give them the signal. Bill stepped out away from the hole in the ice, while Charlie turned around quickly to face the vehicles. Charlie then frantically waved his hands in the air, signaling the men to go. Once the ropes on the vehicles became taut, Charlie and Bill had both started to back up a distance from the ropes and ice. They didn't want to take a chance of getting lashed by one of the ropes, if they would have happened to snap off from either, the block of ice, or one of the vehicles. As the vehicles' engines continued with a straining, whine of a sound, the block of ice was slowly pulling out of the river. After ten minutes of strenuous pulling from the vehicles, they were able to bring the large mass, all the way out of the river, and drag it up to the entrance of the cavern. When they reached the entrance of the cavern, they had stopped the vehicles. Mike got out of the one of the vehicles, and unhooked the hooks and ropes from the vehicle he had been driving. Now, since they pulled the ice chunk out of the river, they only needed one of the vehicles to drag it back to the base camp. As Mike was unhooking the ropes from the one vehicle, Bill and Charlie approached the vehicles with the rest of the samples, which they had gathered up around that area. The two men outside the vehicles had loaded the samples onto the vehicles, and then jumped into the vehicles. Once all of the men were in the vehicles, they started to head back towards the base camp, while dragging the block of ice behind them.
Two days later, they arrived at the base camp with their newly found prize. Two of the three men that were in the main tent had come out to greet their arrival. Just after the two men, Francis and Jake, had exited the tent, they both stood there in awe, as they watched the vehicle drag the huge block of ice up to the encampment area. As the men in the vehicles started to disembark, they went to the back of the one vehicle to see what condition the ice block was in. At first, the two men at the tent were both wondering why they were bringing such a huge sample back to the camp. As they both started walking closer towards the ice block, they also started to realize that there was a figure of a man encapsulated inside the ice.
As they came up next to the ice chunk, Francis asked the question to whoever would answer it, "Who or what, in the world is inside of this chunk of ice?"
Charlie answered up, "I don't know, but we need to take it somewhere to melt it down, and find out who it is."
As Francis was posing the question to the men, Jake walked back to the tent and yelled into it, "Hey Seth, come out here! You have got to see what they brought back!"
A few seconds later, Seth came out of the tent and said, "What's goin' on! What's all of the excitement about?"
Jake pointed towards the ice block and excitedly said, "Go over and feast your eyes on that specimen!"
As Seth approached the ice, he stopped in front of it, and said, "Holy crap! Where did this guy come from?"
Bill walked over next to Seth and answered, "Believe it or not, we found him sticking up out of the middle of a river, encased in this chunk of ice."
Seth then asked, "Well, how do you think he got there?"
Bill answered with puzzlement, "I haven't the faintest idea."
Seth then posed the next obvious question, "Well, how long do you think he's been there frozen like that?"
Steve walked over and said, "That's another good question. Maybe when we get him thawed out, we might be able to find the answer to these questions. But first, we have to find a place to thaw him out, so we can study him."
All of a sudden, Francis came up with the suggestion, "Hey I know.
We can take it over to the morgue at the hospital, and put it in one of their rooms until it thaws out. What do you guys think?"
Steve replied back, "Yea, that's a good idea."
The rest of the men joined in and also agreed with Francis' suggestion. After they all came to the agreement of taking the frozen person over to the hospital morgue, Seth, Jake, Francis, Bill, and Steve went back into the large tent, while Charlie and Mike got back into the transport vehicle with the ice block hooked to it. They drove the vehicle over to the hospital and parked it near the morgue. Charlie got out of the vehicle and walked out to the Emergency Room of the hospital, while Mike stayed in the vehicle. As he walked into the Emergency Room, he was greeted by a nurse that asked if she could help him. He explained the situation to the nurse, she told Charlie that she would contact the mortician at the morgue, and he could meet him outside of the morgue. As the nurse called the mortician, Charlie stood there waiting to make sure the mortician was going to help him. The nurse hung up the phone and told Charlie to meet the mortician at the entrance of the morgue. Charlie thanked the nurse for the assistance with the issue at hand, then turned around, and walked out of the Emergency Room.
He walked back around to the entrance of the morgue, and the mortician greeted him at the door. He explained to the mortician about his special find and he told him that he wanted the person thawed out very carefully, so as to not damage the body. After the mortician finished discussing the situation with Charlie, he walked over behind the vehicle to assess the situation. As he saw the huge block of ice with the person inside of it, he couldn't believe how thick the ice was around the person. Then he told Charlie that he will need to chip some of the thickness of the ice away from the body, before he can start to thaw the ice block. He also told Charlie that the ice was too thick and too heavy to move into the morgue like it is, so he would need to get some of his tools, and chip some of the ice away. Then he told Charlie that after the thickness of the ice is reduced some, he will be able to use a lift to take the ice block inside the building. The mortician walked back into the morgue to get some tools for chipping the ice away. As the mortician was getting the tools, Charlie and Mike unhooked the ice chunk from the ropes and hooks.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Nome Man 2 (Nome Man, No More)by Raymond J. Howlett Copyright © 2012 by Raymond J. Howlett. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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