Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

The handle grips were heated, and the motor warmth of the big Arctic Cat that Omar had loaned me floated up against the trunk of my body before being whipped away at speeds approaching forty miles an hour. The ATV was capable of going a lot faster, but I wasn’t. Fortunately, Omar had remembered to loan me a pair of antifogging goggles or my eyes would’ve been frozen to my eyelids.

Even with the blowing snow and the four hours that had passed, the tracks of the Thiokol were evident, at least until I arrived at West Tensleep Lake. It was only when I got to the fork in the road that I slowed the Cat to see which direction in the parking loop they’d taken. The wide tracks continued on the high road, which was what I’d expected, figuring the cover story that Raynaud had planted was indeed false. The snow had reached levels where no regular wheeled vehicle could go, and even trying on horseback would’ve been nothing but a slog.

Then the tracks simply disappeared.

I pulled up to the two bathroom structures buried in the snow and overlooking the pull-through parking area. Nothing there.

There were no vehicles in the place, and no tracks whatsoever.

Where could the damn thing have gone? It wasn’t as if it a were svelte mode of transportation.

Listening to the idling motor of the ATV, and watching the trees sway with the wind, I sat there thinking about the last time that I’d been this high; about how things had not gone well, and I’d had to haul two men from Lost Twin Lakes in a blizzard. That had been difficult, but it wasn’t the memory that held me still at the moment.

I’d seen and heard things all those months ago-things I’d never seen or heard before yet which continued to haunt me.

I cut the motor and listened more carefully.

There was the noise of the wind, like something colossal moving past me, something important-so imperative in fact that it could not pause for me. It was the cleaning sound that the wind made in the high mountain country, scrubbing the landscape in an attempt to make it fresh.

I thought about the dream of the boy in the truck, the trees moving-and how the dream didn’t seem to be mine. Maybe our greatest fears were made clear this high, so close to the cold emptiness of the unprotected skies. Perhaps the voices were of the mountains themselves, whispering in our ears just how inconsequential and transient we really are.

The snow continually fell, and the canvas unrelentingly washed itself clean.

I saw some movement to my right, a different kind of movement surging against the insistence of the wind. I stared at the copse of trees by the sign that marked the entrance to the Lost Twin trailhead. My eyes through the goggles stayed steady, but I couldn’t see anything more, just the movement of the limbs and branches.

Something else moved to my left, and I whirled in time to see a shape dart back into the trees where the ridge dropped off into the open, white expanse of the lake.

I quietly dismounted the Cat and stepped onto the surface of the snow, which crunched like cornflakes under the Vibram soles of my Sorels. I thought of the Sharps fastened to the side of the Arctic Cat, but instead slipped the glove from my right hand and unsnapped the safety strap from my. 45, drawing it from the holster and moving toward the small ridge.

I was not seeing any green dots.

I kept looking at the grove of trees to the right but could catch sight of nothing more. By the time I got to the top, I could make out where the wind had struck the rise, lifted its load, and then dropped the snow, flake by flake, in a drift as sharp as the edge of a strop razor.

It was then that something made a noise very close to me. I stood there for a moment and looked around. It was muted and almost like music. I looked down at the ground, but it wasn’t coming from there, it was coming from my coat. I remembered that I had put Saizarbitoria’s cell phone in the inside pocket of the high-tech jacket. I unzipped and pulled out the device, took it from the plastic bag, and looked at the number on the display-Wyoming, but not one I recognized. I flipped it open and used Vic’s patented greeting: “What fresh hell is this?”

There was some fumbling on the other end, and then a strange voice spoke. “What the fuck does that mean, man?”

Great-just what I needed was a wrong number eating up my battery.

“Hey, Sheriff, is that you?”

I stared at the phone and then returned it to my ear. “Hector?”

“Yeah, it’s me; hey, how you doin’?”

“Hector, where are you?”

He laughed. “Where the hell do you think I am? Locked to a water pipe, right where you left me.”

“How did you…?”

“I got a credit card that some tonto left out of the cash register and activated it for some long-distance charges. I’m bad, I’m nationwide. I called my family back in Houston, and then I called my buds down in…”

“How did you get this number?”

“I got it when you gave it to your secretary.”

“Dispatcher.”

“Whatever, man. Hey, aren’t you glad to hear from me?”

“You’re eating up my battery, Hector.” He paused, and I thought for a moment that he’d hung up.

“Hey Sheriff, I wanna get something straight here from the beginning-I’m no snitch, you got me? I mean, where I come from, ratting somebody out is the lowest of the low.” There was another pause, and then he continued. “But you been pretty good to me with the tiger and all, so I figure I owe you something.”

“Okay.”

“Where you’re goin’ and what you’re tryin’ to do-don’t trust nobody. I mean even the people you think you know? Don’t trust ’em. I’m just sayin’. Adios.”

The phone went dead. I hit the disconnect button and shook my head. Just when I didn’t need reception, I got it.

I stared at the hillside that led down to the lakeshore and shifted the goggles further onto my forehead. There was no one there, and no one had been-no prints, no tracks, nothing. What early morning light there was reflected across the lake, making it look like tundra. I shifted to the left to peer through the trees and saw where it was the Thiokol had gone.

I carefully placed the cell phone back in my inside pocket and thought about who I knew up here, and who I trusted.

West Tensleep Lake is almost a mile long, large for the high country of the Bighorn Mountains. I was now traveling across it and soon to be in direct violation of the 1964 Wilderness Act and the 1984 designation of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area; they could ticket me if they could find me.

The center of the lake had been whitewashed, and the surface was a reflective sheen of about sixteen inches of solid ice, easily capable of holding the weight of the Thiokol and the Arctic Cat. They’d traveled to the center of the lake and then continued north to where it tapered into its source.

I slowed the machine as I got to the place where the hillsides rose and narrowed and where the snow grew steadily deeper. The wind had refilled the tracks where the big Spryte had gone, but now there was an uneven surface underneath that would suddenly send the Cat lurching to one side or the other and almost yank the handlebars out of my hands.

Lifting the amber-tinted goggles onto my forehead, I slowed and stared at the terrain ahead-everything had a flat, gray quality. The snow had stopped somewhat; the sun was just up, although behind a thin cloud cover, and I was glad to see its opaque glow, hoping it might lift the mercury above zero and ground some of the blowing snow. Closing my eyes for just a second, I stood there on the running boards of the Cat and soaked in a little of the warmth from the sun. I took a deep breath and thought about the figures I’d seen back at the turnaround and wondered if they might’ve been the ones Hector had warned me about in his phone call. I didn’t allow myself to dwell on the subject for too long.