Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

I remember my wife on those trips, mostly with her hair tied back with a bandana, as she dutifully breaded the fillets and carefully browned them over an open campfire. I remembered the closeness in our double sleeping bag and the smooth soles of her feet as she attempted to keep them warm by pressing them against my legs.

A surge of wind pulsed against the trees on the far ridge as if trying to push them aside and then swirled into a snow devil in the frozen meadow below, the tiny tornado jumping the hard surface of the water and moving across the small valley toward me. Just as suddenly as it had appeared, another gust caught it, and it was gone.

I wasn’t even aware that I’d stopped walking.

Standing there on the ridge trail, I realized I’d come to a fork and my subconscious mind had been unable to make the choice. The main path led north, the one to the right went east toward Mirror and Lost Twin lakes.

I felt a shudder run through me that had nothing to do with the temperature. I could feel a slight twinge in my fingers and in that little portion of my ear that was missing, and felt kind of like those amputees that reach to scratch limbs that have long been removed.

I adjusted my collar, pulled the balaclava over my nose, stuffed my gloved hands in my pockets in an attempt to further insulate my long-healed wounds, and stared at the path east. There were no tracks, but I could swear that someone was watching me. It was the same feeling that I’d had at the West Tensleep parking loop at the start of this trail. My mind made the logical connection and moved back to the time when I’d been even more sure that I’d been watched, prodded, cajoled, and enticed.

I thought about the questions I’d asked Henry after I brought George and him out of the wilderness, and the inadequacy of his answers. Maybe there were no answers to what had happened on my multiple trips to and from Lost Twin Lakes that time on the mountain-maybe there were no answers because there was nothing there at all.

Perhaps, but it still felt as if something had been there and that something was here now.

I glanced up the main trail where there were three sets of snowshoe prints. Looking for movement, I let my eyes unfocus, but there was nothing there. I took a few steps and felt a sudden sense of loss, snow devils being better than the real ones.

I lifted the binoculars just to check the trail more closely and saw what I must have sensed-there was another set of footprints along the creek bed. I tromped my way down the slope, kneeled-careful not to let the top-heavy pack topple me over-and gently blew in the nearest print. It was a huge track, moccasins, smooth with just a trace of the stitching on the side-crude stitching that could only have been homemade.

Virgil.

I glanced back up and half expected him to be standing there with the paws of the giant grizzly swaying in the breeze beside his massive girth, but there was still nothing, only the tracks that continued to follow the other three. It took the better part of a mile to get to Lake Helen, and Virgil continued to follow the others. As I trudged along, I thought about the Crow Indian. Had he known that they had left Freddie in the Thiokol and continued on? Why was he following them? Was he the guide whom Hector had alluded to, that Beatrice had mentioned? If he was, then why had he taken the time to fool with me?

He said he’d been watching them last night before waking me, and if that was the case, wouldn’t he have seen them leave? If he was the so-called guide, then why wouldn’t he have simply joined them there?

The moonlight had given way to dawn, and I could see some movement on the trail far ahead. I pulled the binoculars up again and looked.

The blue patches of the early morning sky were succumbing to a wall of gray, but it was light enough that I could see the Cloud Peak massif rising above the valley. The granite-ribbed peaks gave way to the subalpine forests trickling down to scattered groves of conifers that strung all the way to Mistymoon, one of the last lakes before the true high country.

I used the ridge as a guide and followed the trail from there to the area below where I could see three people struggling to make their way up to the next hanging plateau. The one in the back was stumbling under the weight of a large pack and was unarmed-must be the real Ameri-Trans driver; the one in the middle with the blonde hair had to be Agent Pfaff; and the one in front carrying a large pack, an automatic rifle, and what looked to be a black duffel had to be Raynaud Shade-confident son of a bitch.

I lowered the binoculars and thought about what Omar had said in his cabin before I’d left: “Kill ’em, kill ’em as fast as you can and from far away.”

I unclipped the center strap of my pack and carefully slipped the rifle off my shoulder. I figured just a hair over six hundred yards-at the edge of my limit. All my instincts were telling me to take the shot, to do it now and end it. I would never have a better opportunity or conditions.

It would take about a half second to reach out to Raynaud Shade, but there was something about shooting a man, even a guilty man, unawares from great distance that didn’t sit well with my job description.

They’d made the ridge but weren’t moving too rapidly, mostly because of the Ameri-Trans driver, who seemed to be having trouble keeping up. I looked at him for a moment, then moved the rifle back to Pfaff, and then to Shade. He had dropped his bags and was standing on the ridge, the. 223 aimed with his eye pressed to the scope.

Watching me.

I had that same eerie feeling I’d had every time I looked at him and had found him looking at me. It was possible that there was no surprising Raynaud Shade.

He knew that the Armalite wouldn’t reach this far. He was aware, also, that what I was carrying would, but he still didn’t move. We stood like that, the two of us, for a long second.

Waves of unease overtook me, and I remembered the last long-distance shot that I’d taken with a Sharps buffalo rifle and how it had ended in tragedy. In some ways they all ended in tragedy, no matter which end of the slug you were on.

He lowered the tactical carbine but continued looking at me. After a moment his left arm came up and he waved, but it was a strange wave. Then he closed his fingers as if grasping something.

The satellite phone in my pocket rang.

I lowered the rifle, pulled the device out, and hit the button.

“Hello, Sheriff. We are somewhat at an impasse.”

I measured my words. “You need to stop this.”

He breathed into the phone. “That is what I’m trying to do.”

“Let the two hostages go, and maybe we can figure all of this out.”

“They tell me you don’t believe in them.”

Of all the conversations I wanted to have with Shade, this was the one I wanted to have least. “Shade, look… We need to get you some help.”

He laughed, but there was nothing but depravity in it. “I have all the help I need.” He was silent for a moment. “More than I can stand.”

I waited.

“You should acknowledge them; so few of us can. They discovered me when I was very young, but from the reading I’ve done and what the psychiatrists and therapists tell me, that isn’t abnormal.”

“No.”

“They took part of me with them then. I’ve been trying to get that part of me back ever since-that’s why they speak to me so much; that’s why I listen.” He stopped talking but didn’t disconnect, and I pulled the binoculars up to watch him remove something from the bag he carried and place it on an uncovered boulder alongside the trail. “I’m leaving this for you because they tell me it is what I must do.”

The phone went dead, and I watched him for a few more seconds as he loaded up and continued on over the ridge with the other two following.