Out of the Cold Dark Sea

by Jeffrey D Briggs

  She tossed him to the floor and grabbed his gun. “Lance,” she screamed. “Lance!” She burst through the curtain and ran straight into the mattress. The impact bounced her back. “Lance, it’s me.”

  The mattress dropped, revealing the naked Trammell.

  “Good thinking,” she said. “Get dressed. I’m sure he didn’t come alone.”

  Two doors, two exits.

  Trammell yanked her down. A spray of bullets fluttered the curtain and splintered the back wall. Low to the floor, Martha heard more bullets thud into the heavy planks near her head. She prayed the old timbers were up to the task.

  “You know how to use that thing?” Trammell panted.

  “What?” Martha mouthed.

  “The gun. Know how to use it?”

  “No clue.” She had forgotten she held it in her hand.

  He grabbed it from her, extended his arm into the doorway and squeezed off a couple of shots. Everything went quiet. Now the unfriendlies knew they were up against someone who could shoot back.

  “Where’d you learn that?” Martha let herself breathe.

  “First-timer’s luck.” He poked his head around the corner, and ducked back just as a shot splintered the doorjamb. “He’s at the front door. Christ! The cabin’s on fire. The fireplace. Jesus! Hewitt’s papers! I gotta—”

  “Leave ’em, they’re not important!” Martha tossed him his pants and a sweater.

  “Are you nuts?” He hopped on one leg, trying to pull up his pants. “Why do you think they’re shooting at us? It’s about those papers. If we lose them, the bad guys win.”

  “Trust me! Forget them. They’re not important. We stick together. I've got an idea. Any bullets left in the gun?”

  “No fucking idea.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  Trammell fired a couple of shots, and they charged out of the bedroom with the mattress as a shield. He kept firing until the gun clicked empty and he tossed it aside. Four steps and they were at the floor hatch. Trammel dove through the growing flames into the crawlspace below. Flames licked Martha’s slippers as answering gunfire hit the mattress. She staggered when a bullet slammed into her shoulder. It punched the breath out of her and she dropped through the hole like a sack of grain.

  Burning embers followed her down, one in her hair. Trammell was there, arms under her shoulders, dragging her back against the wall then smothering her hair with his hands. She blinked to clear her eyes. She struggled to think. Move, she told herself, move. It’s only pain, move through it, she heard Jonesy say. Move! Control it or it’ll control you.

  But it was Trammell. “Move, we have to move.” His eyes dropped to her shoulder. “Oh, God, Martha, oh God.”

  She glanced down. Her left shoulder was covered in blood. She could move her arm, though she wanted to scream when she did. Still, her fingers curled. Her breath was jagged but she could breathe.

  “I’ll be okay.” Her attempt to speak came out as little more than a hoarse whisper. “Far back wall, under the bedrooms, there’s a door. Go, go.”

  Trammell didn’t move. “We go together.”

  She thrust one of the lanterns at him and shouted, “Goddamn it, go.”

  From the open cabinets, she grabbed the two gallon jugs of gasoline, twisted the tops off. With her good arm, she pitched one up the hole toward the kitchen. She sent the second toward the fireplace. In seconds, an explosion rocked the centuries-old timbers of the cabin. She heard a scream from above. Mid-scream, a second explosion shook the cabin. Someone had ventured too close too soon, hoping to follow them down the rabbit hole.

  Trammell had kicked out the crawlspace door by the time she got there and had pushed it into a wall of white snow until he could get his hands outside, then began furiously scooping snow back under the cabin. He turned. “Get some of that on your shoulder. It’ll slow the bleeding. Pack it tight.”

  Smoke filtered into the crawlspace. Martha coughed. The heat intensified. Embers were drifting down through seams in the floor. The fire roared above them. In minutes it would be through the floor boards. Timbers and planks dried for a hundred years were going up like a tinderbox. The snow packed against her shoulder turned red. Pain knifed through her.

  Trammell broke through. He poked his head up and dropped back down. He raised it again, this time taking a longer look. “I don’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. The shed’s to our right.”

  “Get to the shed.”

  “We’ll be trapped again.”

  “And you’re in your bare feet. Where we going to go anyway? The mountains? We can’t stay here. Just go for the shed. If anyone shoots, drop into the snow and crawl.”

  It took Trammell another minute to create a big enough hole in the snow for them to crawl out. Martha held her shoulder and was nearly overcome by smoke. He went up and out, reached back, and yanked her up by her good arm. Pain screamed through her body.

  They plunged mid-thigh into snow, wading as if in slow motion, expecting more shots to erupt. All they heard was the roar of the fire. Steam rose from what was once the snow-covered roof. The wood shakes would go in seconds. They made it to the back side of the shed. Trammell poked his head around the corner, then waved Martha forward, and pulled the door open against a foot of fresh snow.

  Martha followed him into the shed. She kicked off Hewitt’s oversized sheepskin slippers. “Get these on. Now. Don’t argue.” With her good arm, she snatched the old snowshoes off the wall and tossed them to Trammell. “Figure out how to make these work.” Some kind of old horse blanket was folded up in the corner. “Wrap that around you like a coat.”

  Trammell stood motionless. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Lance.” She didn’t have time for this. “We got one pair of slippers between us and no coat. I’m hurt. You’re the runner. You’ve got the best chance to get out of here. Get back with some help. I have a better chance of dealing with anything here than you do. We don’t know how many there are.”

  “Even if you survive, you’ll freeze to death before I can get back.”

  “There’ll be plenty of fire to keep me warm for a while. Get to town and get back. The police will have snowmobiles.”

  Snowmobiles? She looked at the ATV, glanced around the shed. Behind the woodpile? Outside in the snow? Her eyes drifted up to the rafters. “Help me get up top.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to wait. Start the ATV, rev it high, and then run. Go out the back, loop far out around the cabin before turning back toward the trail. Look for their snowmobiles out on the trail. They had to come up on machines. They didn’t walk in this morning through the storm.”

  “But you can’t ride out of here on a goddamn ATV. You won’t get five feet in this snow.”

  “They don’t know that. They’ll think it’s a snowmobile. If anyone’s still out there, they’ll have to come check it out. And I’ll be ready. It may give you time to get out of sight.”

  “And they’ve got really big guns, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Have you got a better plan to get us the fuck out?”

  He remained silent and motionless for a moment. Then shook his head and muttered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Okay, come on.” He hoisted her up between two rafters.

  “I’ll leave the door open,” he said, looking up at her. “Light’s still in the east. You might see a shadow first, but fuck with this snow, you might not. If you’re over the door, right against the wall, they’ll have to look straight up to see you.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  He began strapping the snowshoes around the slippers. He looked up at her. “This is a really shitty plan, Martha, really shitty.” He grabbed the horse blanket and stood with one hand on the ignition for the ATV. His dark eyes held her. “Be here when I get back.”

  “Yeah. Just make sure you do get back.”

  “I love you.”

  He turned the ignition before she could re
ply. The engine sputtered to life, and he revved it once, twice, three times, until it roared in the small shed. Clomping away in his snowshoes, he disappeared out the door.

  Martha straddled two rafters, her back against the wall. The loss of blood and the sudden loss of adrenaline left her lightheaded. She was afraid she would faint. She forced herself back to the present, wrapping her good arm around a rafter to brace herself. “Ignore the pain” seemed like such a great idea until someone put a bullet in you. She tried to keep pressure on the shoulder wound. Blood oozed through her fingers and dripped onto the snow drifting through the door, bright red splotches of betrayal.

  They’d come soon, they’d come running. For all they knew it was one of their own. With snowmobiles, they could have left Tropic at dawn this morning.

  If they knew where to go.

  Martha refused to think about that betrayal. She had been so wrong about so many things. Survive the mountain and then deal with the rest, she told herself.

  What would she have said in response to Trammell’s “I love you?” She didn’t have an answer, but those three words seemed to be the only thing right now that was true and genuine and worth living for.

  She looked down. Another splotch of blood fell to the snow. She smelled the burning cabin. Over the roar of the ATV, she tried to clear her mind. Either they’ll come or they won’t. It was out of her control; all she could do was react if they did.

  His shadow arrived first. Arms extended, a two-handed grip on the gun. The noise from the ATV muffled the bullets, if there were any, until one hit something vital. The ATV chugged a couple of times and died. Martha, pressed tight against the wall, prepared to drop between the rafters. But she needed him to take another step. Just one more step, you bastard. The gun shifted—left, right, fast. The figure looked down and saw the blood. He started to look up. He took one more step.

  Martha dropped. Both feet drove into his back. He sprawled out face first. The gun flew from his hand and skittered across the dirt floor. She rose and sprang at him as he reached for the gun. She stomped on his fingers and kicked it out of reach. He lunged up and she drove the heel of her bare foot into his knee. It snapped backwards, and he screamed in pain, dropping to his other knee. A hand reached toward his boot—for a knife or a second gun, she didn’t know or care. His nose broke with a loud crack when she kneed his face. With her good arm, she grabbed his searching hand and twisted it behind his back until she heard the shoulder pop. He howled and went limp.

  “Who sent you, you fucking bastard?” she yelled, her knee on the back of his neck, ready to break it with the slightest downward pressure. “Who sent you here? It was all for nothing, goddamn it, don’t you know it was all for nothing?”

  “He said you’d be a tough bitch.”

  Martha snapped her head up. Outside the shed door stood a monster, half his shirt and hair scorched, eyebrows gone, one eye swollen shut, left check and forehead blistering and flame red. The other half of his hair ended in a little flip just below his collar. The gasoline surprise hadn’t killed him. Not yet anyway. One hand tried to steady the one holding the gun. Both hands trembled. Still the barrel never left its target—her.

  “So we meet again, asshole,” she said.

  He offered a lopsided grin. “But this time, it’s for real, darling. No make-believe. Get up. Without breaking his neck. Where’s your boyfriend?”

  Martha stood up, raising a hand. She could only bring the other one waist high. The prone man below her rolled to his side, gasping and moaning.

  “Long gone,” Martha said. “With all Hewitt’s papers in his backpack. It’s just you and me now.”

  The man laughed, or tried to. It came out as a wheeze. He winced and blinked his one open eye, as if trying to stay focused. It was a missed opportunity, Martha knew; she might not get another.

  “We’ll catch him.”

  “You won’t get off this mountain alive.”

  “Yeah? I’m the one with the gun.”

  “I’ve heard that before. You and your buddy here won’t get a hundred yards in this snow. Your snowmobiles are disabled, by the way, except the one Lance is on right now.”

  His eyes darted back over his shoulder, but before Martha could move, they flicked back. His hands still quivered, but the gun remained on her. “You’re bluffing.” He shook the gun at her. “Where’s the old queer hiding?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be on this godforsaken mountain.”

  “Unless he sent you. This isn’t exactly the kind of place you just stumble on. We know he’s talking to you somehow. Tell me where he is and I’ll let you walk.”

  “We both know that’s not true, so let’s not pretend.”

  “Don’t you get it? We want the fag, not you. We had a deal and he’s trying to break it. Thought he could protect you by bringing in the police. Clever move to drive his van into the water.” What might have been a laugh came out a grunt. “But we got it figured out.”

  A deal? Protect me?

  “That’s why you had to kill Ralph,” Martha said. “That put your man in place.”

  The unburned portion of his lip curled in a sneer. “And let him know we’re very serious about him delivering on his promise. We’re running out of time, and I’m running out of patience.” He steadied the gun. “We need to have a little chat with the old man.”

  “You’re running out of time, all right. I told you, I don’t know. Shooting me won’t change that.”

  Martha glanced over his shoulder. With a crackling explosion, flames shot through the roof of the cabin behind him.

  “There are no Death Angels.” She spoke quickly and turned slightly, bringing her good arm toward the gunman. “It’s all a forgery. But you know that don’t you? You’re part of it. Even the Hammer of God was quoting a forged letter—how ironic.”

  “That poor prick actually believed God and some high-tech body armor would save his ass. The bastard had a death wish, you ask me. He was just supposed to put a little fear of God in you so you’d get the old queer to get back in the game. Like the night at the newspaper. Oh well, bigger split for the rest of us.”

  “So you were going to sell the forgeries to the church and Hewitt took them to Trammell instead.”

  “Shut up. The only thing I want from you is the old man. Tell me where he is or you’ll never see your boyfriend again. We’ve spent too long laying the groundwork for this. We’ve been getting old documents for him for years, and all he’s given us is peanuts along the way. A little here, a little there. Big score’s coming, big score’s coming. Well, this is the big score.”

  She slowly flexed her fingers. “You don’t think the LDS will know the stuff is forged?”

  “They haven’t yet, honey. The old man was good, very, very good. Fooled the church. Fooled his buddies. Even got them to sign off on a signature for Abraham fucking Lincoln. Had it framed, I hear. I’ll get my money alright, and once I do, you think I give a fuck what the church figures out?”

  “So this was the last haul, the big haul. Only, Hewitt never intended to sell it. He didn’t get cold feet. He planned to publish it the whole time. He was after revenge. Retribution." She snarled the word. "It’s all he wanted. Revenge. And you played right into his hand. You became the Death Angels for him. How much more convincing is it that the Mormons had a secret team of assassins if everyone who’s touched the documents ends up dead? You and your buddies couldn’t’ve played the part any better. He set you up and you were just too fucking greedy to see it. You got played. Just like we did.”

  “You might’ve been played, honey, but we weren’t. The old pussy didn’t think anyone would get hurt, but we thought the church might pay more and bury the forgeries faster if it seemed a little more real. We just upped the asking price by eliminating a few queers.”

  “You fucking bastard.”

  The man in the shed groaned and shifted to a sitting position. The other man’s eye left Martha for just a second. In that instant, she jabbed-
stepped hard to her left, planted her foot and spun in the opposite direction. The gun swung with her first step and he fired, drilling a bullet into the side of the shed. He fired again. The gun kept swinging away from her.

  “NO!” Trammell came around the back corner with the old snowshoe raised like a club. “No, you fucking bastard, not her.”

  The gunman fired. Trammell staggered but kept coming. Martha lunged at the burnt man. He fired again. Missed again. He screamed when she drove a short jab into the burned side of his face. It spun him, and she kicked his leg out, dropped to a knee, grabbed the back of his collar with her good arm and yanked him down. When he landed, he hit hard across her leg, just as he was supposed to do. With a little more help, his spine snapped. She felt it and heard it. He went limp and she flung him off her leg and into the snow.

  She rushed to Trammell, who had dropped just short of his intended target, arms flung out in a final grasp, his mouth still open with a desperate scream. She lifted his face. Blood poured from a chest wound. She started packing it with snow.

  “Goddamn it, Lance, you stay with me now.” She was shouting and crying and packing more snow against his chest and holding it tighter until it oozed red between her fingers. “Lance, stay with me, and we’ll get you out of this.”

  His eyes opened, eyes she had gotten lost in, eyes she wanted to stay lost in forever. He stared at her for what seemed an eternity. His words were faint, spoken between heavy wheezing. “Strawberries. The Louvre. Shakespeare,” he gasped. “Don’t forget.” He struggled for breath. His eyes opened one last time, and he whispered, “I love you.”

  Before she could answer, he was dead.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Martha held Trammell until an uncontrollable shiver wracked her body. She held him awhile longer. Finally, she eased his head to the snow and tried to stand up. She stumbled, felt the world spin and fell. It was time to move or give up. But she could not move.