Dan Simmons - Hardcase

Levine was wearing a wool cap with earflaps, a bulky goosedown vest, a small candy-orange rucksack, and one of those night-hiking headsets with a battery-powered miner's lamp attached to colorful straps around his forehead. On a normal person, this would have looked absurd: on this dwarf, it looked strangely obscene. Perhaps it was the Taser in his left hand, the dog chain in his right hand, or the huge Ruger tucked in his belt that dulled the humor of it.

"Get up," said Levine. He touched the Taser to the.steel dog chain. Kurtz spasmed, twitched, and almost wet himself.

Levine put the Taser in his down-vest pocket and aimed the Ruger while Kurtz slowly, painfully, got to his knees and then to his feet. He stood swaying. Kurtz could rush Levine, but «rush» would mean shuffling and staggering the ten feet while the dwarf emptied the Ruger into him. Meanwhile, although the frozen ground was free of snow this far from the lake, flakes were beginning to fall through bare branches above. Kurtz began shivering violently and could not stop. He wondered idly if hypothermia was going to kill him before Levine did.

"Let's go." Levine rattled Kurtz's chain.

Kurtz looked around to get his bearings and began shuffling into the dark woods.

"You know that Sammy raped and murdered the woman who was my partner," said Kurtz about fifteen minutes later. They had come into a wide, dark clearing, illuminated only by the beam of the lamp on Manny Levine's head.

"Shut the fuck up." Levine was very careful, never coming closer than ten feet from Kurtz, never letting the chain go taut, and never dropping the aim of the big-bore Magnum.

Kurtz shuffled across the clearing, looked at the huge elm tree at the far side, looked at another tree, crossed to a stump, and looked around again.

"What if I can't find the place?" said Kurtz. "It's been twelve years."

"Then you die here," said Levine.

"What if I remember it was another place?"

"You die here anyway," said Levine.

"What if this is the place?"

"You die here anyway, asshole." Levine sounded bored. "You know that. The only question now, Kurtz, is how you're going to die. I've got six rounds in the cylinder and a whole box of cartridges in my pocket. I can use one or I can use a dozen. Your choice."

Kurtz nodded and crossed to a big tree, looking up at a twisted branch for orientation. "Where's the little girl… Rachel?" he said.

Levine showed his teeth. "She's upstairs in her house, all tucked in," said the little man. "She's warm enough, but her legal daddy's pretty cold, lying facedown drunk in that fancy-schmancy kitchen of theirs. But not nearly as cold as her real daddy's going to be in about ten seconds if he doesn't shut the fuck up."

Kurtz shuffled ten paces out from the tree. "Here," he said.

Keeping the Ruger Redhawk leveled, Levine took off his backpack, unzipped it, and tossed Kurtz a stubby but heavy metal object.

Kurtz's frozen fingers fumbled unfolding the dung. A folding shovel—an "entrenching tool," the army called it. It was the closest Kurtz would come to having a weapon in his hand, but it couldn't be used as a weapon in Kurtz's condition unless Manny Levine decided to walk five steps closer and offer his head as a target. Even then, Kurtz knew, he might not have the strength to hurt Levine. And chained and manacled as he was, there was absolutely no chance of throwing the shovel at the dwarf.

"Dig," said Levine.

The ground was frozen and for a few desperate moments, Kurtz was sure that he would not be able to break through the icy crust of old leaves and tight soil. He got on his knees and tried to put his weight behind the small shovel. Then he got the first few divots up and managed to start a small hole.

Levine had tied the end of the chain around a sapling. This allowed his left hand to hold the Taser and tap it on the steel chain from time to time. Kurtz would gasp and fall on his side while his muscles spasmed. Then, without a word, he would get to his knees and continue digging. He was shaking so badly from the cold now that he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to hold the shovel much longer. At least the physical labor offered a simulacrum of warmth.

Thirty minutes later, Kurtz had excavated a trench about three feet long and two and a half feet deep. He'd encountered roots and stones, but nothing else.

"Enough of this shit," said Manny Levine. "I'm freezing my balls off out here. Drop the shovel." He raised the Magnum.

"B-b-burial," Kurtz managed through chattering teeth.

"Fuck it," said Levine. "Sammy'll understand. Drop the fucking shovel out of reach." He cocked the huge double-action revolver.

Kurtz dropped the little shovel at the side of the trench. "Wait," he said. "S-s-something."

Levine stepped closer so the headlight beam illuminated the trench, but he took no chances—standing at least six feet from where Kurtz crouched. The shovel was out of Kurtz's reach. The snow was falling heavily enough to stick on the leaves and black soil in the circle of light.

A bump of black plastic protruded from the black soil.

"Wait, wait," gasped Kurtz, crawling down into the trench and scraping away soil and roots with his shaking hands.

Even in the cold night, after almost twelve years, a faint, loamy whiff of decomposition rose from the trench. Manny Levine took a half step back. His face was contorted with anger. The hammer was still back on the Ruger, the muzzle aimed at Kurtz's head.

Kurtz uncovered the head, shoulders, and chest of a vaguely human shape wrapped in black construction plastic.

"Okay," said Levine, speaking through clenched teem. "Your job's done, asshole."

Kurtz looked up. He was caked with mud and his own blood and was shaking so hard from the cold that he had to force himself to speak clearly. "It m-m-may not b-be Sammy."

"What the fuck are you talking about? How many stiffs did you bury out here?"

"M-m-maybe it is," Kurtz said through chattering teeth. Without asking permission, he crouched lower and began peeling away the plastic over the shape's face.

The twelve years had been hard on Sammy—his eyes were gone, skin and muscle turned into a blackened leather, lips pulled back far over the teeth, and frozen maggots filled the mouth where his tongue had been—but Kurtz recognized him, so he assumed Manny could. Kurtz's left hand continued peeling away black plastic around the skull while his right hand went lower, tearing rotted plastic around the chest.

"Fucking enough," said Manny Levine. He took one step closer and aimed the Ruger. "What the fuck is that?"

"Money," said Kurtz.

Levine's finger stayed taut on the trigger, but he lowered the Ruger ever so slightly and peered down into the grave.

Kurtz's right hand had already found and opened the blue steel hardcase where he had left it on Sammy's chest, and now he pulled the bundle out still wrapped in oily rags, clicked off the butterfly safety with his thumb, and squeezed the trigger of his old Beretta five times.

The weapon fired five times.

Manny Levine spun, the Magnum and Taser flew off into the darkness, and the dwarf went down. The headlight illuminated frozen leaves on the forest floor. Goose feathers floated in the cold air.

Still holding the rag-wrapped Beretta, Kurtz grabbed the shovel and crawled over to Levine.

He'd missed once, but two of the nine millimeter slugs had punched into the dwarf's chest, one had caught him in the throat, and one had gone in just under Levine's left cheekbone and taken his ear off on the way out.

The little man's eyes were wide and staring in shock, and he was trying to talk, spitting blood.

"Yeah, I'm surprised, too," said Kurtz. Strengthened by the adrenaline rush he had counted on, Kurtz used the entrenching tool to finish him off and then went through the dwarf's shirt pockets. Good . The cell phone was in his shirt pocket and hadn't been hit.