Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

The line went dead.

“What’d he say?”

I thumbed off the phone. “He says he’s having a wonderful time and wishes you were there.” I drew the pack onto my shoulder along with the Sharps and grabbed the snowshoes beside the door.

“Hey look, you’re not going to like just leave me here, right?”

“I am but don’t worry, I’m going to use the phone to bring the cavalry to you.”

“What about the bears and the mountain lions?”

“When I leave I’ll close and latch the door. Both of them are amazingly adaptable hunters, but one thing they don’t have is opposable thumbs, which means the next thing that opens the cargo hold will be human. It’ll probably be Henry Standing Bear, a big Indian fellow, or a mean little brunette deputy of mine by the name of Victoria Moretti-if I were you, I’d hope for the Cheyenne.”

I stood there for a moment, thinking about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I had limited resources and a limited amount of time. I pulled Saizarbitoria’s cell phone from the inside pocket of my jacket, rescued it from the waterproof Ziploc, and flipped it open; it was still out of service. I closed it and put it back-insurance, just in case I was to get to an altitude where it might get a signal.

I looked at the satellite phone in my other hand and thought about which of two calls I wanted to make. I punched in the office number.

“Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”

“It’s me.”

“Where are you!”

I held the receiver a little away from my ear. “Ruby, I need you to listen. I’ve got one of the Fed satellite phones now, so this is the number where you can reach me, and I was right, the numbers are sequential. I’m at the waterfall meadows on Tensleep Creek where I’ve got a vehicle broken down. Is there any backup nearby?”

“Wait… meadows at the base of the falls at Tensleep Creek, right? Yes, they broke through on the east and west slopes. Saizarbitoria is arranging transport for that agent.”

“McGroder. He’s alive?”

“Yes, and Henry’s with search and rescue. They’re getting ready to head out from there. Did you really leave a man handcuffed to a water pipe at Deer Haven Lodge?”

“I did, and I’m about to leave another one handcuffed at this location.”

“Another one?”

“Yep, and there’s a body at Omar Rhoades’s cabin at Bear Lake.”

“Oh, Walter.” There was a rustling of some papers. “Tommy Wayman, Joe Iron Cloud, and a detachment of Highway Patrol are at the last turn at Tensleep Canyon and should be joining Henry before too long. Do you know about the weather?”

“It’s cold but dry up here for now.”

“It’s going to get much worse. The NOAA says that was only the front of the storm and that this blizzard is carrying fifty-mile-an-hour winds with severe mountain temperatures that will likely reach forty below zero. It’s going to be a complete whiteout by midmorning.” There was only a short pause. “Walter, you have to stop.”

I placed my thumb over the OFF button.

“Walter, please? They are on their way; at least wait until Henry and the others get there.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll find me.” My thumb hovered over the button. “I’ve got to go.”

“Walter…”

I punched it and looked at the indicator, which still read fully charged. I turned the satellite phone off and hoped for the best.

The Junk-food Junkie was looking at me when I raised my face. “Popp’s dead?”

“Yep.”

“Good, he was a prick. How about the Mexican kid?”

“Hector. Alive and well.”

“What about Fingers?”

I didn’t answer.

He seemed to take a certain amount of satisfaction in that at least one of his companions was alive, but the troubled expression returned to his face as he began rocking again. “You cannot like leave me here.”

“I don’t see as how I have much of a choice, Freddie. Unless you want to leave the comfortable environs of the Thiokol and accompany me farther up the range, but the weather report isn’t good.” I studied the Fed phone and wondered if any of the other ones had been left. I held the device out. “I don’t suppose they left any more of these, dead or otherwise?”

“No.” He wiped his hands, rattling the restraints that held them close to the bench, and looked at the water bottle beside him. “How am I supposed to drink that, cuffed like I am?”

“Pour it into the lid a bunch of times, but I’d not wait too long or it’ll freeze. The other option is keeping it close to your body.” I pushed my own water bottle inside the pack to help it stay insulated and then placed the satellite phone in one of the outside pockets of my jacket in hopes that the cold would do the battery some good.

“Hey, have you got any more food?”

I dug into the expedition pack, dragged out Omar’s sandwiches, and handed one of them to him. “Here.”

He took it, crouched down to reach his hands, and began eating. He studied me from under the knit cap, his eyes shifting like bad cargo. “You should just let me have the other one, too.”

“How do you figure?”

He swallowed and took another bite. “You’re gonna be like dead here in a few hours anyway.”

I stood there looking at him for an elongated moment. “Dead, or like dead?” He didn’t say anything more, so I repacked, starting with placing the other sandwich back in my pack. “Beatrice said that Shade had a waterproof duffel with him. Do you have any idea what’s in it?”

“He’s got a lot of stuff with him, some of it that she brought and some that he took from those FBI guys.” He took another bite and chewed, suddenly sullen. “You don’t get it, do you, Sheriff?” He licked the mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth with his tongue and shook his head. “It doesn’t mean shit that you’ve stopped us; he’s not like us. I mean, we’re the kinds of guys that give people nightmares.” He shifted his weight and leaned back against the bulkhead with one shoulder. “He’s the kind of guy that gives us nightmares.”

I lifted the pack up onto the seat by the door to make it easier to hoist onto my shoulder, stretched my eyes, and rubbed my face. “Then I guess you’d better stay awake.”

It was starting to snow again, but through the tides of the storm I could see small leaks of moonlight seeping to the ground. I was able to follow their tracks, but before heading into the timber, I checked the early morning western sky for stars-there weren’t any. This was not a good thing. I was feeling tired again and that wasn’t good, either. I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nostrils, the vapor blowing across the expanse of my jacket like the twin trails of two locomotives. Maybe what I needed to do was work up some steam.

Even as cold as it was, there was still a discernible amount of water dropping from the rocks above; of course it was smothered under a two-foot casing of ice, but the dull thudding of the falling water pounded a rhythm and I settled into a comfortable pace. It’d been a long while since I’d had this kind of physical activity at altitude, and I figured the burgeoning headache that seemed to be mushrooming in the front of my head was just that. Of course, the knot on my forehead probably didn’t help.

I wondered once again where Raynaud Shade thought he was going.

The path straightened at the ridge along Mistymoon Trail, bypassing some smaller ponds I remembered. I knew this area better than Virgil’s since we were now approaching the main trail. Of course, I’d been here mostly in the summer and that was a different landscape. I’d fished Gunboat Lake with Cady and before that with my late wife, what seemed like a few lifetimes ago. Before my daughter was born, Martha and I made summer pilgrimages in an attempt to break up the heat and to supplement my civil service wages with a freezer full of brookies and a few rainbows-some as large as ten inches, big for being that high.