Honor Road

by Jason Ross

  Still soaked through, he couldn’t leave the flames. He’d to freeze again within minutes. Yet, the men he’d heard on the road could come at him any second. Reluctantly, he got up and walked away from the flickering light, collecting more firewood while he listened for movement.

  If they were stalking him, they wouldn’t speak. He might hear the crunch of compacting snow, but that would be all the warning he’d get.

  Sage set a bundle of wood beside the fire, added a few sticks and spent a moment in thought. Full-dark would descend any moment. The moon perched now on the rim of the mountain range and would soon vanish. The odds of being ambushed because of the light signature and smell of the fire, this close to the road, were high. He’d die faster from an ambush than hypothermia. If he sat by the fire, warming himself, he might not even hear the bullet that would take his life.

  In frozen agony, he pulled off his pants and underwear and hung them in the pine tree over the fire. He had no extra coat or dry, insulated jacket, and both pairs of pants were soaked through. Naked from the waist down, he unclipped his sleeping bag from the base of the pack, put on his one pair of dry socks and slipped back into his wet boots.

  The blood in his hands had returned to ice water. He struggled to dig his tent sack out of the pack, then to extricate the rain cover—a dome-shaped tarp. Luckily, he’d stuffed it on top the last time he’d broken camp. He repacked the backpack and turned again to hanging his clothes. Every micro-movement of packing and unpacking, undressing and dressing, required four times as much effort as normal. He moved like a zombie, and he had to force himself to stop groaning. He yearned to quit, wanted nothing more in the world than to slip away from the frozen hell into oblivion.

  Instead, he shucked off his wet wind shell, his fleece, his acrylic sweater, then his soaked thermal underwear top. He stood bare-chested and balls-out to the frigid breeze, but he had no time to warm himself. Marauders could be stalking him. He dangled the thermal top from a branch alongside the sweater. He climbed back into the wet fleece sweatshirt. Amazingly, it was warmer, even wet, than the thermal top had been. But warmer was a far cry from warm. Taking care not to damage the delicate Gore-tex with flame or sputtering cinders, he hung the wind shell on the underside of the pine, where it too would dry.

  With the sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and rifle in-hand, he left the fireside. His boots plunged into the deep, mountain snow as he followed his snowshoe tracks. With every step, he plunged almost to his naked balls. To escape each hole, he launched himself up and out, and threw himself forward. He back-tracked his own trail almost fifty yards without making any prints outside of his own snowshoe tracks. He found a spot beside his trail where a snowberry shrub convoluted the snowfield, and he jumped clear of his trail and came down in the disturbance beneath the shrub. Then, using the brush to conceal his new prints, he picked toward a small pine thirty yards off the trail. If someone stalked up on the fire, following his tracks, they’d walk past him, hiding under the little pine.

  He tucked his foam pad up and under the tree and teased the sleeping bag from its stuff sack. Miraculously, only a corner of it had gotten wet. He’d jumped out of the creek so fast that water hadn’t fully saturated his belongings.

  A wet corner on his already-damp sleeping bag was dangerous enough. He had no idea if the sleeping bag would be enough to warm him. He was chilled, wet and wasn’t wearing most of his clothing. The wet fleece would compromise the bag even further. The temperature had to be at least five degrees below zero, plus the damnable wind chill factor.

  He was so fucking cold he could barely think. His shin bones felt like they’d hardened to stone and the marrow was struggling to break out. It was like having an ice cream headache in his legs. His teeth clacked so hard he worried he might break a tooth. He leaned the rifle against the small pine and scrubbed the snow off his naked legs. So much of it had frozen to his leg hair, that he had to scrape at it with his fingernails. It had to be done. He couldn’t afford to bring any more water into the sleeping bag. Small failures now, could be life-and-death factors later. Finally succumbing to the desperation of hypothermia, he climbed into the bag, only realizing then, that he hadn’t done anything with the rain fly from the tent. It was still laying in the snow.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. It was no time to succumb to weakness. He’d made a promise to his father. He would do everything he could to survive.

  Sage climbed out of the sleeping bag, stood naked in the snow, lifted up the foam sleeping pad and set them aside. He laid the tent’s rain fly half-inside the snow print of the pad. It would serve as a vapor barrier, blocking heat vapor from rising up and away from the bag, but first it would have to be anchored. He laid the pad down on the fly, then the sleeping bag on top of that.

  He removed his wet socks, stepped onto the pad, wrung out the water and spread the socks over his shoulders. He would warm, and maybe dry them with body heat in the sleeping bag. The bottom of the sleeping bag was already the wettest. If he was going to get any part of the sleeping bag damp, he reasoned it’d be better at the top.

  Finally, he climbed once again into the sleeping bag, then wrapped the rain fly around it. He tucked it over and around, then under the pad again like a rip-stop burrito.

  The warmth didn’t come for a long time. He knew better than to expect it. He was hypothermic, and it would take his body the better part of a half hour to accumulate warmth in the bag and the vapor barrier. Despite the foam sleeping pad under him, he could feel his heat pouring straight through and into the snow. Naturally, the pad compressed wherever his body weight was greatest. There was no stopping it.

  Chattering violently, he stilled himself and focused on making micro-movements in the sleeping bag, tensing muscles up and down his frigid legs. Little by precious little, they loosened. Numbness abated, and pins and needles stung like wasps around his calves. He welcomed the pain. There was no sensation in his feet, other than the throbbing ache of the bones.

  The 30-30 was tucked alongside him, outside the burrito, but he didn’t dare extricate his arms from the bag to breach check it. He felt certain he’d breach checked it, reflexively, before climbing into the bag.

  He worked muscles, up and down his body. He listened and waited. He didn’t so much sleep as fade in and out of consciousness for the rest of the interminable night. He heard the distant fire crackle and pop as it burned down to a restless pile of ash. He worried about his half-dry clothing, hanging under the big pine, fifty yards away in the inky dark.

  He could’ve unpacked himself from the bag, and restarted the fire. He weighed the cost against the benefit. Even at its warmest, the sleeping bag burrito didn’t stop the relentless cold from gnawing at his feet and ears. If he unwrapped it to restart the fire, he’d have to rebuild body heat all over again.

  He hadn’t heard anything on the silent snowfields around him. The threat of marauders, paramount minutes before, now drew back into the dead of night.

  The night was crystal clear, which explained why the cold seemed so bitterly disposed to killing him—there were no clouds to hold in yesterday’s warmth. When morning finally arrived, so would the sun, and it’d come blazing out of the east on this downslope of the mountain range. His clothes would need to be pulled from under the pine boughs. If the morning came strong, they could be arrayed in the saplings and snowberry to sun themselves in the sparkling, hopeful light of day. He decided to take the entire next day to dry his things—if he survived the excruciating night without frostbite.

  He couldn’t tell if he would lose his toes or not. He attempted, a couple times throughout the night, to burrow into his bag with his head lamp and look at his feet. They didn’t look any different than usual, which belied the torment of the freezing bones. If they hurt that bad, he reasoned, they might not be dead yet.

  As dawn’s first light colored the horizon, Sage drifted in and out of a stupor.

  He flashed awake.

  Had he heard something crack?

/>   He stared, wide-eyed, into the underside of the pine hanging over his ice burrito. He dared not move a muscle.

  He listened, then heard the airy crumple of snow. Then a woof—the snow compacting under a footstep. Then nothing.

  A whisper.

  He pictured them. Men, following his snowshoe prints; stopping when they saw flashes of color through the pine trees—his clothes drying.

  Another woof. Then another. They were picking up speed. Moving in for the kill.

  Sage sat up slowly. He could hear the footfalls, clearly now. He couldn’t see them. The ambushers were on the other side of a screen of trees and they were closing in on his cold campfire. He wriggled out of his sleeping bag and quietly breach-checked his 30-30. Brass glistened.

  Bare-footed and half-naked, he rolled out of the sleep burrito and stepped into the holes in the snow left by his boots the night before. His dick and balls dangled free, and the cold was almost unbearable, but his blood was up and he couldn’t afford to worry about exposure.

  The men had passed his bivouac under the little pine, and followed his trail right to where he’d left his clothes drying—along with every bit of food and gear he had left. He cursed himself for not keeping the pack with him.

  Why leave it fifty yards away? If he lost the pack, he might as well shoot himself.

  Hopefully, they would double back on their own trail. He didn’t know how many men—two to four, he guessed—but if they cut new track and continued on from his camp with all his gear, he was done-for.

  People didn’t usually do that, though. People usually went the easiest route, which would be back the way they’d come.

  He reached the trail and crawled on his knees behind a snow-basted clump of wild rose.

  He could hear them mumbling over a rise in the snow. He pictured them gathering up his stuff. Their whispered voices jumped up an octave. They were probably excited about the freeze-dried food. The voices grew louder as they approached. As predicted, they’d doubled back on their own trail; his own snowshoe trail from the night before. He’d get the jump on them. He might have no choice but to kill them.

  No. He told himself. There would be no time to think it through. If he waited to decide until the moment presented itself, then it’d be too late. The other guy might decide first.

  If they have a weapon, they die, he decided.

  The voices echoed louder now. Bolder. They were returning, confidently, on their back-trail. Men were brazen on ground they knew.

  Behind the wild rose, Sage hid. It was trail they’d covered just minutes before. It wasn’t a threat anyone would expect.

  A head appeared over the rise in the trail. Then another, walking single-file to take advantage of the packed snow. A third head wobbled into view over the drift. Three men, whispering loudly.

  “Maybe he fell in the crick,” one of them said. “And froze to death.”

  Not far from the truth, Sage thought.

  His hands shook like palsy, a combination of galloping nerves and killing cold. The sun still hadn’t shown its face. The morning hung, cold and muted, like a bear still groggy in April.

  “Naw. Those clothes were set out to dry,” the first guy—the smarter guy—corrected.

  All three were in the clear, now, thirty yards from Sage’s ambush.

  Any weapons, I shoot, he reminded himself.

  He stood up from behind the wild rose.

  “Show me your hands or you die.” Sage’s dad had taught him defensive shooting. His dad taught him: watch the hands. Nothing else matters.

  Piles of gear thumped to the snow. The first guy dumped his arm-load and raised his empty hands. The second guy did the same, but his right hand came out from under the falling gear with a black pistol. Sage couldn’t see the third guy’s hands, because he was behind the other two.

  BOOM! The 30-30 thundered.

  “Oh shit,” Sage swore. He hadn’t meant to pull the trigger.

  Or had he?

  The first man dropped to the ground and rolled into a ball. The second fell sideways and the third fell over backwards.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” the first man screamed. “We’re sorry. Don’t shoot me.”

  Sage had racked the lever on the 30-30 reflexively. He almost racked it again but stopped himself.

  “Let me see your hands! All of you,” Sage bellowed. His voice cracked.

  The first man had his hands up and his head down, still half-rolled into a ball. The second guy was on his side, not moving. Sage couldn’t see any blood on the front of his green jacket, but the guy’s eyes were open, staring hard at the blue-on-blue sky. The black handgun had vanished into the snow.

  The third man writhed in a fan-pattern of blood and snow. Thousands of red droplets surrounded him, vivid against the sparkling whitescape. Most of the blood must’ve come from the man in front of him in line, who still hadn’t moved.

  The third guy mewled, “I’m shot, I’m shot…”

  Sage kept the 30-30 trained on the group, mostly on the first man who didn’t seem to be injured. He’d only shot one round, but two men were down. He’d never seen a bullet do that, but he’d only shot men twice before in his life, and all since Black Autumn.

  The mewling guy rocked back and forth on the snow, holding in his guts. The rocking slowed, then slowed some more. He stopped mewling. His hand fell away from the ragged hole in his jacket. Tufts of white down lifted in the breeze. The guy’s face went slack and his head rested against the snow. Sage focused on the first man. The only one left alive.

  His eyes darted around wildly, like a leg-snared rabbit. “Don’t shoot me, dude. I didn’t mean any harm by it. Look, my gun’s right here on my hip and I haven’t touched it. I haven’t even tried. See? I’m a good guy. I’m no threat.”

  Sage didn’t know what to do. When the second guy went for his gun, Sage’s hand automatically made the decision to kill. Somewhere between his lower brain stem and his finger, his body acted on its own. But this man didn’t have a weapon—not that he’d touched.

  “Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it,” the guy yammered. “I promise. What do you want me to do?”

  “Just wait. And shut up,” Sage said, the iron sights danced across the guy’s chest.

  His bare feet were blocks of ice and he needed to get them warm very soon.

  “Check your friends’ pulse. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  The guy struggled up out of the snow. He didn’t stop talking the whole time. He remonstrated Sage in a loop about how much of a good guy he was, how he didn’t mean to steal his gear, so-on and so-forth.

  The talker looked to be in his late thirties. He wore expensive-looking winter-wear, like stuff from REI. It was noteworthy that none of the guys were wearing rugged clothes: Carhartt or Wrangler, like rural folks would. These were all white collar guys.

  The third man, who’d probably bled out now from the gut wound, was much younger. Maybe twenty.

  The talker put a finger on both of their throats, one after the other, and declared, “Dude. They’re dead. You killed them both. Please don’t shoot me. What do you want me to do with my gun? Please don’t shoot me.”

  Sage realized that he’d let him keep his pistol on his hip this whole time. The crushing pain in Sage’s feet—locked in four feet of snow—was beginning to cloud his judgment.

  “Pull your pistol out with TWO FINGERS, and drop it on your buddy’s chest.” Sage motioned to the guy laying on his back.

  He complied.

  “Now, put everything back in my backpack. Take off that guy’s clothes and bring them to me.” He waved the gun barrel at his gear, spread around the snow. “Are there more of you?”

  “No. I mean, yes,” the guy sputtered as he loaded dirty clothing, freeze-dried food, and the JetBoil back into Sage’s pack. “There are women and kids. No other men. We’re just travelers, man. We weren’t going to hurt you.”

  Sage doubted that very
much. Desperate men with women and children would almost always hurt a solo person if it meant their family got to eat.

  “Pick up all that stuff and walk back to my campfire,” Sage ordered. Before anything else, he needed to un-freeze his feet and put on some dry clothes. He had no doubt: his toes were now frost-bitten. As he walked by the bodies, one dressed and the other one naked, Sage picked up the handguns. He had no pockets, so he hooked the stiff fingers of his left hand through the trigger guards. At least that way he could still keep two hands on the rifle.

  As he moved past, he stole a glance at the two dead men—just regular guys. There was no sign of evil in their slack faces.

  Sage worked the tactical dilemma in his mind as he forced the talker at gunpoint to rebuild the campfire and light it with the JetBoil. He ordered him to sit opposite him, across the fire, while Sage sat on his pack and put his bare feet toward the flame. The pins and needles were excruciating.

  He considered his situation: a gun had gone off in the canyon, and now there was woodsmoke. If anyone was within a mile, they would come to the ruckus like coyotes to a wounded rabbit. These days, people gravitated toward distress, and humans were the worst kind of opportunists.

  Others could follow the well-trodden path in the snow and come across the two dead men. They’d either turn back, at that point, or stalk up on him while he had his shoes off. For the thousandth time since the world died, Sage wished he had a dog.

  The women, and maybe the kids from the camp might come, and that’d be a holy mess.

  “How many women and children?” Sage asked the talker.

  “Um. Joey’s wife, Becky. Their five year-old boy, Robin and a toddler, Gershwin. Ryan didn’t have any kids. Just his wife, Tanya.”

  Sage hated this. He’d killed a father and a husband, but what the hell else was he supposed to do? They had guns. The one guy had drawn on him.

  “Switch sides with me.” Sage needed to watch the trail and put his back up against a tree. A stalker would probably shoot the talker first.