Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

I kneeled and propped her up enough to get the bandana out of her mouth. She still didn’t move but made a noise in her throat and then coughed, closed her eyes even tighter, and then opened them, looking up at me. As near as I could tell from the expression on her face, she had no idea who I was-after what I’d been through lately, I wasn’t so sure myself. Covered in soot, ash, soaked with snow and frozen hard with ice, I figured I looked like some sort of golem. “You’re okay, just relax.”

She swallowed, blinked, and continued to stare at me. “The sheriff.”

“Yep, the sheriff.”

She smiled and shivered. “Nice to see you.” Her glance went to the surrounding area, settling on the boot of the Ameri-Trans driver.

“He’s dead.”

“Good.”

I laughed. “Not a nice guy?”

She coughed again. “No, he’s the one who hit me. Besides, he made a deal with the devil for some money, which, by the way, turned out to be nonexistent.”

“Where is Shade?”

She rubbed her wrists where the zip cords had left ligature marks. “He went ahead to the top.”

“Do you know why?”

“No.” She sat up a little and stretched her back. “I’ve been lying here forever. I’m sorry. I think my ankle’s b-busted.”

“You want me to look at it?”

“No, it’s probably just sprained, but I don’t think I’d get very far out there.” She sat up a little more, coughed again, and looked at me with an odd expression. “He’s carrying the bones of that boy we excavated from behind the rock.”

“Owen White Buffalo. I know.” I patted my chest. “He left me a souvenir.”

She nodded and then glanced around some more. “Where’s your backup?”

My thoughts exactly.

She looked puzzled. “What?”

“Excuse me?”

She smiled a crooked smile. “You said something, but I didn’t catch it.”

I thought I’d said it to myself but evidently I hadn’t. I guess I was more tired than I thought. Talking with people was more confusing than being confused by yourself. “They’re coming, but right now I need to go get one of them and bring him in here.” I pushed off the rock. The driver was dead, and she was in no condition to help, so I was back to square one.

I reached over, picked up the. 40 from beside the dead man, dropped the clip, and pulled the action, watching a round fly out, and was amazed when the federal agent snatched it from the air.

She held it in her palm and smiled at me. “My hands are all right.”

“I guess so.” I took the round, reinserted it into the magazine, and slammed it home. I handed her the sidearm and tossed the 9mm from the Junk-food Junkie onto the blanket at her feet. “A full mag in the . 40, but only one round in the 9-I’ll be back in a minute with our reinforcements, so don’t shoot me, okay?”

I stood, readjusted my goggles, pulled my gloves back on, and started out.

He was gone.

Again.

The swale was still there where he’d fallen and where I’d left him, the sleeping bag was still in the semicircle where I had wrapped him, and even the paperback was still lying there in the snow.

No Virgil.

I looked around but couldn’t see any tracks other than mine leading in any direction. I stooped in the trough we’d made and picked up the book and sleeping bag. What if he had become confused and followed me? It was possible that the ever-falling snow had covered his tracks, but there still should’ve been something, anything, showing where the giant had gone.

Surely he hadn’t continued on after Shade; he couldn’t even walk when I’d left him. “Virgil, damn it, this is getting ridiculous!”

My voice echoed off the granite walls. “ Ridiculous! Ridiculous! ”

You said it, brother.

The snow continued to fall, and the faint glow of the late evening sun was opaque, lean, and dying. Sunday; it was still Sunday as near as I could remember-a good day for all of this to end. If I was going to make any time before it got really dark and visibility dropped from twenty feet to two, I needed to get going. I drew the sleeping bag over my shoulder, stuffed the book under my arm, and started tramping my way back to the overhang.

I thought about some of the things that the big Indian had said about my daughter having a daughter. Could it be true? Could Cady have told Henry and Henry have told Virgil on his monthly grocery drops? Why would he tell Virgil? Why wouldn’t anybody have told me? I was used to the clandestine relationship that Henry Standing Bear had with Cady, but this? I had wondered why there had been such a rush to get married, and maybe even suspected, but why hadn’t she told me? Through the exhaustion and confusion, I was hurt.

And where the hell had Virgil gone?

Traitors. The last thing he had talked about was something about traitors-the final ring of hell, the ninth circle, surrounded by giants with sinners frozen at different levels in an icy lake that stretched to the horizons. Most thought that Dante’s hell was a flaming, superheated place, which was true for part of the Florentine’s journey, but in the Inferno, the real hell was an arctic, glaciated, and windblown place far from the warmth of God.

Traitors.

Was Virgil trying to tell me that he was involved or was he warning me about the Ameri-Trans driver?

I stumbled into the overhang, the sleeping bag dragging behind me, the distressed book in my hands. I looked at it again and noticed that there was something in it-a marker Virgil had left behind that looked like an owl feather from his lance. I shoved the paperback into my inside pocket with Saizarbitoria’s phone. I had enough to try and think about.

“Who is Virgil?” She had moved as far from the dead man as possible.

“He’s the Crow Indian who was with me. I don’t suppose you’ve seen a seven-and-a-half-foot man wearing a grizzly-bear headdress and bear cloak roaming around here anyplace?”

She looked at me, understandably worried. “No.”

I put the sleeping bag next to her along with the satellite phone and my backpack, took the ascent portion from the top, and detached the straps. “This is all I’ve got.”

She took the sleeping bag and covered herself. “The rest of the task force, the marshals?”

I looked at her, trying to decide what to say. She had nice eyes, smart and resilient.

I spoke looking straight at her, so that there wouldn’t be further questions. “McGroder survived. The last time I spoke with anybody they said that he was being transported down the mountain, but everyone else is dead.”

She was looking at me strangely again.

“What?”

Her expression changed from amused to concerned. “Did you know you’re talking to yourself?”

“I am?”

“Yes.”

I laughed through a yawn and nodded. “I have a tendency to do that, but we’ll be all right as long as I don’t start answering.” I yawned again. “Maybe I’ve been up here too long. Anyway, I’ve got to find sensible conversation somewhere.” There was a hip harness in a Velcro panel underneath the ascent pack, and I pulled the straps loose and connected the buckle. I sorted through the supplies I had, dropping the majority onto her lap. “I’ll take one of the water bottles and a little of the food.” I tossed the Fed phone where she could reach it more easily. “The reception on this thing has been going in and out. Strangely enough, it’s when I’m with Virgil that it doesn’t seem to want to work-maybe he’s tall enough that he’s causing interference. The battery is at about half, but keep trying and maybe it’ll work.”

She took the phone, glanced at the ascent pack and then up at me. “Where are you going?”

“After Shade.”

Her eyebrows collided over her bloodshot blue eyes as she leaned a little to the side. “Are you crazy?”