Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty

by Craig Johnson

  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.”

  He ignored my urging and looked past me, retreating once again into the shadows of the grizzly. “He is? He must be getting low on ammunition.”

  “Virgil, get down or you’re going to get killed again.”

  He seemed surprised. “I was shot?”

  “Twice.”

  He considered my remark and made a gratuitous movement, but not exactly one that moved him to safety. He shifted his arm around, and I could see he still had the war lance with the painted coyote skull and the rattling deer hooves, elk teeth, and wisps of horse tail. The hooves shifted as if they were running, the teeth moved as if they were gnashing, the tails swished, and the paint on the coyote s
kull seemed to undulate and move. “I don’t think he’s there anymore.”

  “Was I asleep when you got here? How long has it been?”

  “I don’t know.” He took a deep breath and exhaled, and I watched the wind hold it in front of his face like a caul before snatching it away. “You were talking to yourself.”

  Maybe it was Virgil’s reappearance, maybe it was the rest I’d had, but I was feeling better. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” It was almost as if I was feeling too well and suddenly felt like I was on fire. I dropped the collar down to my chin. “Is it getting warmer?”

  Virgil reared back, and again it was as if the two heads were doing the work of one. “I don’t think so, colder maybe.” He looked past, his eyes returning to the sullen darkness of the mountain, the broken terrain of the summit, ghostly and vague in the fast-traveling fog. “Very cold at the top.”

  I rolled over and looked up at the boulder-covered hillside. “I guess I’m getting my second wind.”

  “Maybe so.” Abruptly, with the help of the war lance that stamped the snow like a horse’s hoof, he stood. “We should get moving.”

  I half expected to hear the .223 again, but there was no sound except the returning wind. When I stood, something heavy slid from my chest and hit the rocks. I thought there would be more resistance, but my legs pushed out and steadied me as I rose.

  “Perhaps you are the dead one.”

  I glanced up at him. “What?”

  He studied the face leading to the summit. “Maybe you’re the one who was killed.”

  I started off past him. “I’m not the one that got shot, Virgil.”

  He fell in behind me, unperturbed. “How do you know? You said I got shot, but I feel fine.”

  “How do you explain the fact that half your face is laid open?”

  I felt the hand on my shoulder, stopped, and turned to look at him as he crouched down to place his features close to mine. “I have always had this scar.”

  I didn’t move at first but then dropped the goggles so that I could see better.

  There was no fresh scar there; only the original one.

  I reached up and touched the unmarred side of his face with my glove. “Virgil, I remember that you had two wounds, a center shot and a tumbling round that hit the paperback and climbed up your face—I had to patch it myself while you held it.”

  He looked at me strangely and sniffed a laugh. “I don’t remember any of that, Lawman. Are you sure you didn’t dream it or make it up in your head?”

  “It was no more than a couple of hours ago.” I pulled his cloak apart so that I could see the blood-soaked mooseskin shirt, but when I did, it was whole and unstained. I stood there staring at him. But then I remembered the paperback in my coat and drove a hand in to pull it out. “Wait a minute, there was this book; the one you were reading when you got shot.” I yanked the Inferno from my coat and held it out to him. “There.”

  He took it and examined it before handing it back, turning and sheltering us from the wind. “Is there supposed to be something special about this book?”

  In exasperation, I took it and flipped through the pages to show him the damage it had sustained—but there was nothing there. The pages were swollen and sullied from the dunking I’d taken in the nameless pond, but there was no bullet hole stopping at page 305. I looked up, my mouth and eyes wide.

  He sighed a deep yet uncomplicated sigh. “You know what I think?”

  “No.” I looked around, trying to get my bearings; I felt more and more lost and not just in a geographic sense. “And I’m not sure I want to.”

  “I think that one of us was sent to guide the other one to the Beyond-Country.”

  His words had a ring of truth that stung like hopeful loneliness verging on desperation. “Well . . . that would mean that one of us is dead.”

  “Yes.”

  The words hung in my throat, thick and lugubrious. “And that the other one is soon to be dead.”

  “Possibly.”

  I reached up and placed the goggles back over my eyes, chortling a sad laugh at the ludicrousness of the conversation we were having and where it was taking place. “Well, I remember you dying, so I think you’re the dead one.”

  The grizzly reared a little in indignation, and Virgil’s words were gruff and clipped. “I remember you dying, more than once. You died under the four-wheeler, in the fire, when you walked off the cliff, and when you lay down a while ago.”

  I stuffed Inferno back into my inside and damnable pocket; one more layer of insulation. “That doesn’t make any sense, Virgil. You pulled the four-wheeler off me.”

  “Yes, and you were dead.”

  “At the fire?”

  “I found your body.” He dropped his shaggy head to look at me again. “You keep dying, but you keep coming back. It is all very strange, but I think the Old Ones have sent you back all these times to guide me.”

  “No, I had a conversation with the agent, Pfaff.”

  “I had a conversation with her as well, down in the overhang; I told her how you had died and that I was going after the man with the bag because it was what you would’ve wished.”

  I brought my hand up and felt my forehead for a temperature as my headache attempted to come back.

  “I told her how you had burned up in the fire.” His posture softened a little. “I’m sorry, it’s disrespectful to talk of these things, but I thought it was something you should know.”

  “That I’m dead?”

  He nodded and then was still, like a lizard on a rock; he didn’t even blink, but I swear the bear did. “Yes.”

  “Thanks for enlightening me.”

  He didn’t catch the sarcasm in my voice or chose not to acknowledge it. “You’re welcome.”

  I guessed it wasn’t that outrageous; I was sure that Virgil had been killed, but it seemed as if he was just as certain that I had died, and numerous times. He had me, four deaths to one. “Well, whichever one of us is dead, we’d better get going. I’d hate to think that the Old Ones went to all the trouble of bringing us back and that we couldn’t get the job done.” Turning, I tacked against the wind that struck the ridge with six-pound sledgehammer blows.

  “With the four-wheeler, the handlebars had driven into your chest, and your eyes were bugged out; you had frozen to death.” Over the wind, I could hear his trudging footsteps behind me along with the rattling of the teeth and hooves, striking in rhythm with the words. “I didn’t see you when you fell off the cliff and into the pass, but I heard the yelling—not very dignified.”

  We were on the steep incline, following the path that Raynaud Shade had left behind, even stopping at the collection of boulders where he’d thrown the few shots to slow me down. “Uh huh.”

  “When I found you on the Knife’s Edge back there you were frozen the second time, but you looked more comfortable. You know, like you had died in your sleep?”

  I stopped and rested an arm on the boulder. I was feeling pretty strong, but my breath continued to remain short.

  “The fire was the worst one; you were floating in the pond like barbecued chicken, only with really white teeth.”

  It was silent, except for the noise of the wind and the accoutrement of Virgil’s lance. It was another couple of hundred yards to the top, but then what? What was Shade doing up there? How many people had he killed to get here and why?

  My mind, with the appearance of Virgil and his chatter, had become clear—but my body was another matter. The last reserves of energy were petering from my tank, and I didn’t know how useful I was going to be once we got to the top. Virgil, aside from the fact that he’d had bullets pass through his body and appeared to have a living lance and cloak, seemed to be in fine fettle. If it came down to a fight, which I was sure it would, Virgil might have to be our man. “Virgil?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got to tell you.” I took a few breaths just to steady my voice. “I’m not so sure how much help I’m goi
ng to be topside.”

  “You will be fine.”

  I leaned my head against the rock to try to steady myself in the endless, vertically sloped world. As I leaned there, I could feel my legs giving out beneath me.

  I was about to crumple when two powerful hands grasped me and sat me on the lee side of the boulder. He took the Sharps from my shoulder and rested it against the granite. “You need to sit, Lawman.”

  I was numb; my headache was gone, and I couldn’t feel anything, even the cold. “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” I watched as the brows on the bear headdress furrowed and narrowed as they looked down at me. “Hey Virgil, I don’t mean to sound crazy, but are you sure that that headdress and cloak you’re wearing is dead?”

  The big Indian stared at me. And the bear winked.

  Subconsciously, I pulled a little away. “Virgil, that damn thing is alive.”

  He studied me a few moments more and then began laughing. It was like a seismic event, slow and low at first but then roaring from his mouth. “That is why they sent you, Lawman. I thought it was because you never stop; you never quit. That first time we met in the long road culvert, you fought me to a standstill and no one has ever done that. I thought that was why the Old Ones had sent you, but it is because you make me laugh. No one tickles me the way you do—you say some of the craziest shit.”

  The bear winked at me again and then rolled its eyes.

  “Virgil, I’m not joking.”

  He shook his oversize head at me and then leaned in close. “Did I ever tell you how I killed this bear?” I started to speak, but the headdress raised an eyebrow above his face, placing the upcoming story in a dubious light. “It was a tremendous fight, epic in nature. I was very tired, but I’ll tell you how I defeated him.”

  “Virgil, there’s something I have t-to tell you.”

  He ignored me and with one swirling movement, the giant Crow heaved himself up from where he crouched and whirled. His cloak flew off, and the wind filled it. The billowing headdress turned of its own accord and towered over Virgil with its claws outstretched, ready to knock my friend senseless with forepaws powerful enough to break a full-grown moose’s neck. It froze there in the incline of Cloud Peak with its ferocious mouth hanging open, bellowing the wind into submission. Even the fog and snow were frightened, and everything stopped almost as if we were in a self-contained snow globe.