Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

“Move.”

I threw myself to the left helped by an aberrant gust that seemed to propel me, and fell against the spine of the Knife’s Edge. I felt the air move along with the two rounds from the Armalite as they bored holes through the snowflakes like angry, hunting eyes. Both shots passed through the spot where I’d been standing only a second ago.

Lying there in the snow, I tried to triangulate the fire at least enough to give me an idea of where he might be-with the visibility as limited as it was, he had to be close.

The Sharps was underneath me, but the Colt was pressed against my chest and I turned my head, looking at the slight ridge that broke up into another scree field. There were a few large boulders off to the break line west where I knew from experience there was another drop-off of a couple of thousand feet. I could make out secondary fracture lines in the snow just back from the edge, one in particular about four feet in width that ran from the crest. Climbing off the Knife’s Edge in that direction was a death trap of crevasse-ridden overhangs. One minute you would be walking, the next you’d have broken through and be falling close to a mile.

In the other direction, there was a steep incline that simply sloped off into nothing.

Cloud Peak was like an island in the sky with only one gangplank, the one I was on. I had him trapped, but he also had me; in fact, this was the perfect spot to pin somebody down, and here I was, pinned like a cushion.

He could move farther down the scree field, but that meant revealing himself. I could hope that he’d do that, but I had a suspicion he was too smart.

Time, in a sense, was on neither of our sides; reinforcements were eventually coming, but unless they showed quickly, it was just a question of when they’d find the two of us dead-not if. I wasn’t sure of his condition, but I was starting to ebb. My extremities were numb, and I was shivering violently again. My body was trying to tell me that enough was enough, and was focusing its last resources in trying to keep my vital organs warm.

I raised my hat from my head and moved it around a little, but my feeble attempts didn’t draw his fire. The steadily falling snow made it impossible to see, so I slumped back, careful to slip the strap of the Sharps from my shoulder along with the ascent pack. I rubbed my head with a hand that was rapidly feeling like a club. I swiped some of the snow onto my face to try to revive myself but still felt lethargic and a little confused.

I put my hat back on my head, rested the. 45 on my chest, and shoved my hand into my armpit, my middle finger feeling like a stick. In any other situation it would’ve been funny; generally, the middle fingers, being the longest, are the first to become immobile from frostbite-Vic would’ve been mute.

That was when the wind resurged, climbing and slapping me to blast over the black rock of the west face.

I’ve heard it said that the Eskimos have hundreds of names for snow; Wyomingites have just as many for wind-few of them complimentary. I rolled to my side, giving the blasts of heat-robbing cold my back, but it wasn’t going to do a lot of good.

Cold always wins-it’s the natural state of things. I was going to have to get moving soon. If I didn’t move, in less than two hours I would be dead.

The snow was already creating ridges around me, the high points of my profile forming sculpted edges, but it seemed different, as if the snow was not only changing color but texture, too. Sand; it was like sand, and as I watched, the wind began to winnow the dunes-and then me along with them. First the shoulder that I’d damaged in Vietnam folded into itself and blew away, my ear, then a leg, a hand, quickly followed by a wrist, a foot. It was all very strange, as if I were watching myself disintegrate into the wind.

Eroded.

I closed my eyes to try and stop the pounding in my head and drifted away with the dense fog-just for a few seconds.

Just for a few seconds. The boy can see the knife even as the almost-man holds it beside his leg, knows what it means. He raises his fists at him and remembers the story his grandfather told him about the mating rattlers, and how their chopped-off heads struck at his hands. There was another story that he had told the boy, one in which the big man killed his first snake, a bull that his grandfather’s father said you should let live so that the field mice don’t eat you out. His grandfather’s father had tied his grandfather to a bucket and lowered him into a well because of killing it. Down in that darkness he said that he had seen stars in full day. It is like that now for the boy, as if he is looking out of a well. He looks for stars, but there is only the almost-man. He waits, and at the last moment throws himself, all fists and feet flailing. He feels a fist connect with the almost-man’s nose and sees the spasm of anger that leaps in the cold eyes. He is satisfied with this; he will not die without passion.

Spindrift powder was flung around me so quickly that I was sure I was still blowing away with it, and I pulled my legs and arms into a parachutist’s tuck.

The hurting was gone, and it was good not to have to feel the pain any longer. The creeping cold was working its way through me as if it were something alive, but at the core of my body I still felt warm and almost calm. It made no sense, but that’s how it felt and it was almost as if it had a voice as it inexorably continued to immobilize me. Humming, that’s what it was like-humming.

I listened to the noise that flew away with the pirouetting flakes, distorted and inhuman. I was sure I must have been the one singing, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Besides, it felt good, and I kind of forgot about my tired legs, my bursting lungs, and my throbbing head. I lay there hunched against the jumbled rocks, convulsively humming and shivering. I could feel the two parts of myself, the one unemotional and objective, the other, manic.

I felt disembodied and limbless. All my thoughts of death were matter-of-fact. Maybe I was too tired to be scared. Maybe if I were more afraid, I would be able to fight harder.

It wouldn’t be long.

Long.

A couple of hours.

Hours.

I was facing east after all. The sun would rise, but would I see it?

“Longer than a couple.”

My eyes almost disjointed themselves flying open. “What?”

“Sunrise will be at five forty-three-seven hours from now. You will have died long before then.”

The voice was coming from behind me, and I partially raised my frozen body onto one shoulder as I fumbled with the. 45, turned my head, and looked into the wind, sure that Raynaud Shade had snuck up on me somehow.

I studied the outline of something huge right there beside me in the darkness. Its head was immense and had two small ears on top-the damaged one turned toward me in attention.

“You’re dead.”

The bear head shifted down to look at me, and I swear the ears again articulated. “Hmm?”

“I saw you; I saw your body.”

The great opening below the bear’s snout hung wide, and it was as if he was speaking from its maw, already swallowed. “I do not remember dying.”

I sat up a little more. “You weren’t breathing, and you were frozen.”

“Was I?”

“Yes, right down there before you get to the Knife’s Edge.”

“Hmm… I must have been resting.”

“Virgil, you were dead.” I thought about it. “You are dead.”

He placed his huge hand on my shoulder where I could feel the weight of it, heavy like the granite on which we were crouched. “I guess I’m not; I’m here.” He scooted his girth in closer to me, and now I could see at least part of his face in the shadows. “What are we doing?”

He looked normal-well, with the exception of the ears on the bear-head cloak that continued twitching. Distracted by this, it took a moment for me to remember my situation, and I grabbed his arm. “He’s up there with that Armalite.”