Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

I couldn’t die-I had too many women who would kill me.

The log I had been standing on exploded like a pipe bomb, the resin inside finally reaching the temperature of napalm, the dead husk no longer able to contain its fury. The force of the eruption hit the pond like a depth charge, the pressure making it feel as if my mouth, nose, ears, and eyes were being pressed back in my head. I stifled the scream that would kill me; instead, I crammed my face against the backpack and just lay there, crushing it against me.

The panic from lack of oxygen was yanking at my chest, trying to get me to the surface, but I held on with my face pressed against the Cordura fabric for what felt like another eight hours but was likely twenty seconds. I felt the involuntary heave of my diaphragm and knew that I had to get to the surface before the next one.

I disengaged from the pack and turned my head; the roar of the freight train was distant now, but I wasn’t sure if it was because my eardrums were partially, if not totally, shot, or if the fire was receding. My eyes were still working, however, and I could see that red had subsided to amber.

I figured I had about five seconds before I pulled in two solid lungs of pond water. I carefully listed to the side and raised my face slowly to the surface, barely allowing my nose and lips to break the tension where air and water met.

As horrifying as it was, it was magnificent. About a foot and a half above me, the air was burning like some gargantuan convection oven, jets of undulating flame coating the air and water vapor steaming from the surface of the pond. I was actually fortunate in that the water’s temperature had started at just above freezing, which was keeping me from being boiled alive.

I coughed uncontrollably and inhaled. The air was superheated, just as I’d expected, but it was air and breathable. I could feel my face beginning to burn, especially my eyes, so I closed them, hurriedly filled my lungs, and sank back into the warm and insulating water.

I lay there, thinking that if I could just hold on for another couple of minutes, the majority of the fire’s front would’ve passed and I could reemerge relatively unscathed-well, as long as a flaming tree didn’t fall on me.

I wasn’t taking anything for granted.

The reflections on the water continued to change from red to orange, finally fading to yellow. My air was running out again, and I was pretty sure that that last gulp had held a lot less oxygen. It seemed by the color refracted that the fire had receded to the banks. I really didn’t have much choice and carefully raised my head again.

The ceiling of flame was gone. There was a thick layer of ash on the surface of the pond, which I wiped away with the back of one of my gloves, and sleeper fires were still burning along the banks of the pond.

I rose up to my full height, the ash water rolling off me as I stood, leaving me cloaked with a grayish-black soot.

It was like hell on earth.

There was not a tree standing in the gulch leading toward the ridge, only blackened husks in the forest where I had stood only five minutes ago. The flat plains of scree and boulders steamed from the heat, and the pond had dropped about a foot since I’d entered it, the exploded tree trunk sunk into the black water from both ends.

I could hear nothing, not because there was no sound, but because I was stone deaf from the compression of the exploding log. I stretched my jaw again and felt a popping in my ears and a ringing, muted like an alarm clock under a pillow, with a dull thrum as accompaniment. I could feel the air going in and out of my lungs, but I could swear that there was no sound.

I turned my head and looked down the mountain where the fire had burned itself into the draw at the shore of Lake Marion. The valley was protected from the wind, and there was a larger snow load on the trees there that had smothered the flames so only a red and orange edge showed fire.

With my hand still holding the strap of both the pack and the rifle, I pivoted to my left and looked up the hill. There was some movement to my right, and I watched as a charred elk stumbled forward down the incline toward the edge of the pond, his blind eyes dead in the sockets but his nose drawing him to water.

I stood silently as the elk came closer, hobbling on hooves that had burned away. He bumped into a scorched tree, momentarily catching one of the points of his antlers, then yanked free and continued more carefully.

His body was telling him that he needed to drink; his body was telling him that if he could only go a little further it was possible that he might make it. His body, of course, was lying.

I wondered how many lies my body was telling me-maybe my hearing was gone for a reason. Perhaps my body didn’t wish to be the one to break the news to itself about things I shouldn’t hear.

Hairless and black, he lowered his blistered nose to the soot-covered surface. The great rack on his head bobbed as his lips pulled in the water with a shudder from his midriff. I was amazed that he could stand, let alone drink.

I stood there with him until his legs collapsed and, with a shiver and one brief exhale, he died. I waded out to him and placed a hand on his magnificent antlers as I paused and returned my eyes to the ridge, the dead silence crowding in on me and hardening like my clothes.

The animal’s horn still looked alive with the glow of the many fights the majestic old beast had won. Every rutting season he would’ve taken on all comers: younger elk, bears, cougars, wolves, and the human hunters that would’ve followed him to the very heights of the Bighorn range.

He had survived them all, only to end like this.

I could feel the air around me cooling, and the water that had protected me was solidifying underneath, in, and on top of my clothes; it was like I was wearing one of Dante’s lead cloaks. The ridge was naked, with just a stubble field of nubbin trees and scalded earth. The only thing I’d ever seen that approached it was a war zone, but somehow, in so many ways, this was worse.

I thought about all the recently lost lives, of all the current destruction, and could feel a stirring deep in a place where my ears wouldn’t have heard it harden even if they’d still worked. The ringing continued, bells of warning along with the continuing tattoo of distant drums, but the one sound that rustled over the others was the sound of the blackened, leathery wings of wrathful vengeance folding themselves around me.

Icicles fell off me with each step, but I could only imagine the delicate sounds they might have made when they struck the stones near my feet. After only a few minutes, it was getting impossible to move, so I stopped by one of the flaming logs, at least partially sure that the resin in it wouldn’t explode.

I set the pack against the outcropping of rocks just a little away from the flames. The sodden thing felt like a boulder with shoulder straps, and I was glad to be rid of it. I pulled off my gloves, turned the cuffs inside out, and placed them along with my goggles on one of the already-burnt sections of the log.

I held the rifle up and looked at the drop-block mechanism, which appeared fine until I jacked the lever, slid down the action and, after catching the round that feebly fell from the breech, could see the traces of ice inside the chamber.

I slipped the bullet into my pocket and breathed into the Sharps as if I were giving it mouth-to-rifle resuscitation. I turned it around and did the same thing to the end of the barrel-amazingly enough, it appeared unharmed. I checked for any signs of mud, but there was nothing. I set it by the pack and hoped the heat of the fire would override the ambient temperature. Then I glanced through the binoculars still hanging from my neck and found that they too were unharmed, but I hung them from a blackened branch just to make sure.