by Nick Petrie
Leonard leaned abruptly from behind the rear wheel with the MAC-10 up, pop pop pop pop, ducking back as Peter pressed the trigger and the machine pistol leaped from Leonard’s hands, the side of the ugly little gun bent inward.
No longer a weapon. Just dead metal.
Peter dropped the Winchester into the snow and worked the big Colt Army revolver from his side pocket. With his frozen bare fingertips, he cleared the accumulated snow from the trigger housing, the cylinder, the hammer. He was exposed, out in the open, maybe seventy-five feet from the Jeep.
Leonard poked his head out from behind the cargo compartment, saw Peter, and stood. He wore a hard-shell fleece camo jacket that must have come from Lewis’s luggage in the back of the Jeep. His face was red and irritated from the pepper spray, but he didn’t look like he was freezing. He looked warm and dry.
He really had been waiting in the Jeep. Fuck.
Leonard had a 1911-style automatic pistol hanging from his hand. The magazine would hold anywhere from seven to fourteen rounds, depending on the manufacturer and the caliber. The wind carried his laughter toward Peter, his harsh, powerful voice full of delight.
“Guess you really like the Broncos, huh?”
Seeing Peter in his blue gas-station clothes, cold and wet, legs and shoulders soaked to the skin, the rest of him not far behind. Warm enough from his adrenaline-fueled run that he hadn’t started really shaking yet. He would soon enough if he didn’t hurry up and shoot this guy.
“You’re an old-school guy,” Leonard called. “Believe me, I respect that. We should talk. Maybe work something out.”
Watching Peter, seeing his wet clothes. Stalling for time. Letting Peter get colder.
“Or if you’re going for some kind of duel, hell, we should get closer. So one of us can actually hit the other guy.”
Seventy-five feet wasn’t so far. Farther for the 1911 than the long-barreled Colt.
Peter turned his left side to Leonard, feet shoulder-width apart, felt a tremor in his shoulders, in the muscles of his stomach. The big .45 Colt Army twitched at the end of his arm. The static cold and crisp in his head.
He thumbed back the hammer, raised the revolver, took aim, and fired. The weapon leaped in his hand, the sound like a cannon.
Leonard stepping sideways with his own weapon up and firing.
Peter kept his eye focused on the other man. Center mass. Thumbed back the hammer again, aimed, fired. Again. Again. Again. He was empty.
Leonard was out, too. He held the automatic with the slide locked back, empty.
Laughing like a hyena.
Both of them cold, trembling from the adrenaline, not shooting for shit.
Neither of them so much as scratched.
—
Leonard stalked toward him, red around the nose and eyes from the pepper spray.
A wide smile split his round face.
“Guess we do this the truly old-fashioned way. One of us gonna die up here. And it ain’t gonna be me.”
He reached behind him and pulled up the back of his jacket and brought out something long and angular. “I was real happy to find this in your Jeep.”
Peter remembered what was nagging him. Lewis’s gun guy, retired to run his YouTube channel, had sold Lewis the two Colts, the Winchester, and the 10-gauge shotgun. He’d also thrown in something else.
The combat tomahawk.
A brutal and effective hand-to-hand weapon, a single piece of forged steel. A hatchet blade on one side of the head and a spike on the other.
Peter took in a breath and let it out. He looked around, trying to find the Winchester, thinking it would make a decent defensive weapon. But he couldn’t find the rifle in the deep, trampled snow. So he reached under his own coat and pulled the Hart framing hammer from his belt.
The long wooden handle, a big checkered head, and twin straight claws for pulling sixteen-penny nails from thick lumber.
Leonard saw what Peter held and laughed again, a high hyena cackle. “Oh, I’m gonna have fun with you.”
Suddenly, silently, the two men ran at each other.
—
The first contact was brutal, Leonard’s attack fast and strong, a diagonal blow reaching in and down to chop at Peter’s unprotected neck, Peter’s sideways stutter-step saving him, the tomahawk blade slicing through the wide, thick shoulder of the Broncos jacket and cutting down the sleeve, a powerful impact, but none of the hot pain of ruptured skin as Peter swung the framing hammer up into the other man’s body, landing a heavy but glancing blow into Leonard’s ribs.
Their momentum carried them past each other, only to slow and circle and come together again. This time Leonard bent and scooped up a handful of snow, threw it at Peter’s face as he came in with the tomahawk again, but Peter raised the hammer to block, the steel handle against the hard hickory, then gave a yank to pull the weapon from Leonard’s hand. Leonard’s grip was just as tight, and they came together, Leonard trying to butt Peter with his head, Peter jamming his stiff knuckles up and under Leonard’s chin to crush his larynx, but neither man connected.
They separated and came together, again and again, fast and direct or slow and circling, feinting and slashing and parrying like dueling swordsmen, their thick layered clothing a kind of rude armor, the razor edges of the tomahawk’s blade and spike against the raw, punishing power of the hammer’s head and claw, their breath panting hot and hard in the blasting wind. Each tested his opponent’s weaknesses, each man landing occasional blows, but no single impact powerful enough to do disabling damage, to change the balance of strength and speed and power.
But the weapons weren’t equal. With each crashing parry, Peter watched the tomahawk’s hard steel frame nibble away at the hammer’s hickory handle. Even without a killing blow, Peter’s simple carpenter’s tool would never outlast Leonard’s engineered weapon of war.
So Peter let himself be driven back, bit by bit, shortening his reach slightly, feeling for his footing in the cold, wet snow. The blade sliced at his knee, his neck, his face, closer each time.
On the attack, Leonard grew more confident, pushing faster. He swung the tomahawk a little bit harder each time, brought his arm back just a bit farther, leaving himself exposed for a single moment longer.
Peter watched the timing, saw the opening, but as he set his feet for the counterattack, a loose rock rolled and his boot slipped.
Leonard brought his weapon around backhand in a tight arc and buried the spike end into the outside of Peter’s thigh, midway above the knee.
It felt first like a hard punch. Then like a red-hot poker.
Peter saw Leonard’s smile widen, knew Leonard was thinking Peter’s mobility was gone, this fight was over, just a matter of cleanup.
Until Peter grabbed the handle of the tomahawk and held it there, lodged deep in the muscle of his thigh. Maybe even into the bone. It didn’t matter. The handle strap kept Leonard stuck there, too, just long enough.
Leonard’s pepper-pink eyes widened as Peter brought the framing hammer around in a long looping sidearm blow. Claw-first into the side of the other man’s skull.
The sharp twin wedge sank into Leonard’s cannonball head like a ripe red melon.
Peter watched one-legged as the other man fell, staining the pure white blanket around them.
Then dropped beside him.
—
Peter lay in the soft pillowy snow, his jacket and fleece saturated with melt, his soaked pants beginning to freeze into a crusty shell. Sweat cooled rapidly on the rest of his beaten and battered body. He couldn’t reconcile the cold on his skin with the heat on his leg, halfway above the knee, which was definitely on fire.
He felt the black exhaustion of the adrenaline draining from his system. His hands were shaking, a chemical reaction from the comedown. He’d haul his ass out of this snow in a minute or two. Get up and do something.
Do what, he didn’t know. Something.
He’d already blown up the Jeep.
; It was a long way down to the Kia.
The wind howled. He watched the trees swaying back and forth, the snow blowing sideways. He was pretty wiped. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. He’d fought and run and walked and climbed and fought again. The coffee was gone and the Jeep was dead and Peter was tired.
But he’d saved June.
—
Now the rest of him was beginning to shake, this time from the cold.
It wasn’t a problem, though. The shaking was his body protecting itself, trying to keep his core temperature from dropping too low. He wasn’t in trouble until his body stopped shaking.
Then he was screwed.
Then he was dying.
But he’d get up soon, he would. Get himself out of the wind, find a way to get warm.
Break into the cabin. Build a fire.
Any minute now.
In a few more minutes, anyway.
How had he gotten so tired?
—
He wasn’t quite so cold anymore.
Hypothermia, probably. He was supposed to do something. Get moving, get warm.
Had the shaking stopped?
He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t tell.
The wind had died away again. Maybe that was it.
—
This wasn’t a bad way to go.
Out in the open, on the side of a mountain. Trees and rocks and wildflowers waiting to bloom.
June was safe down in Denver.
He never did learn to sleep inside like she’d wanted.
No wind now.
The trees had gone still.
He looked up past the feathery branches into the infinite falling snow.
The fat wet flakes landing on his face.
Like looking into the future, he thought.
Like being at the front of a spaceship traveling a million miles a second.
The snowflakes like stars.
51
That old Chevy pickup was beautiful to look at, June thought, but it was a fucking sled going uphill in the snow. The rear-wheel drive sucked balls, and the heating system smelled like wet dog.
But the tires were good and the cargo bed was loaded down with all of Peter’s shit, his backcountry gear and carpentry tools and that heavy mahogany cap, so the back end was nice and heavy. Those big tires dug into the snow pretty well, all told.
The roads were empty. Cell service hit or miss, mostly miss. There were places where the snow covered all evidence of human habitation entirely. It could have been two hundred years ago, June a woman on a horse, out looking for her missing man.
With a pit in her stomach, fear and worry.
She stopped at the turn to the state highway and beat the lock off the mahogany box with the butt of the shotgun to find some warmer clothes. Along with a neatly folded blue plastic tarp that she somehow thought might come in handy, Peter also had a set of actual old-school tire chains back there, which June’s paranoid dad had taught her to install on the same day he’d taught her to break the ignition lock from an old car. The ignition lock was easier.
But twenty cold minutes later, she clanked forward wearing Peter’s old fleece-lined Carhartt work coat going fifty miles an hour through a foot or more of wet, heavy snow.
Only two sets of tire tracks ahead of her.
The black pit in her stomach getting deeper by the mile.
Peter’s truck didn’t have a radio, so she sang to distract herself.
She knew a lot of pop songs, but she kept coming back to one particular hymn.
“From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli …”
Fucking Marine.
She was going to kill him.
As long as he was still alive.
—
It was well past dark by the time she saw the turn onto the forest road. The tire tracks stood out clearly on the white road, dark magnets pulling her forward.
The Kia sat high-centered on a rock only a hundred yards up the narrow track.
When she opened the truck door, the frigid wind hit her like a sledgehammer. She muttered elaborate obscenities as she scrambled to the Kia. It was unlocked. No key. No residual warmth left inside the car.
She popped the lid to that fucking trunk and found her suitcase and her backpack, pulled both out, and ran back to Peter’s truck. She dressed in a hurry, the worry hole in her stomach gone bottomless now. Dry socks and T-shirt, long underwear under her thick polypro running tights, thin fleece sweater under her thick fleece jacket, then her wind layer, then Peter’s heavy work coat over the whole thing. Revolver in the side pocket, shotgun on its wire over her shoulder, a thick wool hat jammed down low on her head and lined leather gloves on her hands and the folded blue tarp in her pack on her back, she ran up the road.
She’s late, too late, she’s too fucking late.
But her body did what she needed it to do, despite the beating she’d taken already that day, despite being locked in the trunk of a car. Her legs powerful from running and hiking and climbing, her heart strong and pumping, her lungs like bellows sucking oxygen from the thin mountain air.
She ran, following Peter’s footprints up the long, narrow forest road.
But when his footprints left the road, she didn’t. She stayed with the Jeep tracks, knowing that’s where Leonard would be, where Peter would end up.
No sound but the crunch of her feet in the snow and that mournful howling wind.
She ran faster.
—
She found him there by the black Jeep, the snow gone a frozen red around his left leg. Some weird-looking tool jammed into his thigh. His eyes were open, his skin was cold.
But a white puff of breath still came from his open mouth.
“Hey,” she said. “Peter. Hey! Marine!”
He blinked. His eyeballs rolled slowly in their sockets. Looking at her.
Now she could admit to herself why she’d brought the blue plastic tarp.
She laid it out on the snow beside him, weighed down the corners with snow, and rolled him on top. When she did, the tool came out of his leg, and she saw what it was, some kind of futuristic tomahawk, and she had to stop a moment until the shakes left her.
Then she saw that his leg was bleeding again with the tomahawk taken out, so she packed the wound with snow and got back to the job at hand. Laid him out on that blue tarp, gathered up the grommets at the bottom half, and tied them together with the wire sling from Lewis’s shotgun. Bunched the top of the tarp in her hand and tied them in a rough knot, so she had a handle to pull on.
Then she stood up, and for the first time since she’d laid eyes on Peter, she looked around.
Saw the rodeo rider six feet away with the claw end of a hammer stuck in the side of his head.
She closed her eyes against the sight and ran to the shot-up Jeep. She was hoping to use the tarp to get Peter over the snow and somehow into the back seat. But no matter how many times she hit the button, the Jeep wouldn’t start.
She couldn’t pull him two miles down to his pickup.
He’d be dead by then.
She looked at the rough shuttered little cabin.
At the stovepipe poking through the steep roof.
“We’re going on a little ride,” she said. “Won’t take long. Hold on, okay?”
She took the bunched top of the tarp in her two strong hands and pulled Peter to the front door. Used Lewis’s revolver to blow the padlock off the hasp, and pulled Peter through the doorway and inside.
Left the door open behind her so she could see with whatever dim nocturnal glow came off the fallen snow.
Talking to Peter the whole time.
“Hey, a Coleman lantern, I grew up with these.” She gave it a shake, felt the fuel slosh inside. “All gassed up, now I just need some matches.” Took four steps to the rudimentary kitchen space. “Here we go, I remember this, adjust the wick, strike the match, look at that.”
The little room filled with yellow light.
“
Now we need some heat, right?” She closed the front door against the wind and went to the cast-iron woodstove in the corner. “First newspaper, then kindling.” Another wooden match and flames flickered up. “And a big bin of firewood, nice and dry. Hot damn, we’re in business.”
She went to look at him, laid out on the blue tarp on the floor. He was still breathing, his eyes still open and following her. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and pulled the ancient plaid couch nice and close to the woodstove, then went to the bedroom in search of blankets. She found a folded pile in an armoire, along with a bonus surprise first-aid kit, a pretty good one. Expired Vicodin would do fine.
She spread two blankets down on the couch, fed some logs into the stove, and went to Peter, unwrapped him from the blue plastic burrito. His clothes were soaking wet.
“Now for the hard part.” She stripped him naked and dried him off with kitchen towels. He was dead weight, skin cold to the touch, body pale and bruised and battered. The leg wound was a deep puncture, ugly, and bleeding again with her packed snow melted away. She hauled him up on the couch and under more blankets, then went to her backpack, fished around for a tampon, and held it up. His eyes were more focused now.
“I’m not going to lie to you, this is gonna suck,” she said. “I’m gonna stick a tampon into your leg to stop the bleeding.” She gave him a sweet smile. “This doesn’t make you any less of a man.”
Had his lips twitched? They were blue. She unwrapped the tampon, cut it down with shears from the first-aid kit, coated it with antibiotic gel, pushed it into the wound, and wrapped the leg in bandages. As she worked, Peter gave a deep groan and his body tensed under the blankets, which she took as a positive sign.
The woodstove was heating nicely now. It would take a while to make the whole cabin comfortable, but from five feet away, it threw off some heat. Peter’s blankets were warm to the touch. She stripped off the old Carhartt coat and hung it over a chairback to dry by the fire. Peter’s clothes hung dripping around the kitchen table.
She dug through the pantry and found decent supplies in mouse-proof containers, so she knew they wouldn’t starve. She filled the pots and pans with snow and set them on the stove to melt. She loaded up an old blue enameled percolator and set that on the stove, too.