Hell Is Empty wl-7

by Craig Johnson

  “Oh, Shade’s bitch… Yeah, hey that dude’s crazy. He says there are ghosts all over these mountains and that they talk to him.”

  I stared at him, and fortunately he misinterpreted.

  “I’m not kidding. He says there are hundreds of them all around watching us.” He wiped the blood out of his eyes. “He’s fuckin’ crazy, man.”

  I looked down at the top of his head and could see the four grooves where the big cat had gotten him. It was a good thing he had had that hood or it would have been worse. I figured I’d play on it. “You might need some stitches.”

  “Hey, no shit. I’m bleeding to death here.”

  I looked around at our situation and wasn’t overcome with confidence. The only positive thing I could think of was that I had all the modes of transportation and a pretty good vantage point. Of course, there was also the opportunity to freeze to death before the sun came up in the morning.

  The gangbanger looked up at me. “Hey, you know I wasn’t going to shoot you, right?”

  I kept my eyes on the porch of the lodge but couldn’t see anything amidst the streaking snow. “Well, I appreciate that, Hector.”

  “Yeah, I mean I was just supposed to slow you down till they got that thing going.”

  I studied him. “What thing?”

  “The tank thing.”

  “Hector, what are you talking about?”

  He wiped more blood off his face with his sleeve. “When we got the van stuck, Shade said you’d be the one that would come after us; that the dead Indians told him.” He tapped the front of the Suburban with a hand. “When you got here we’d take your truck. But then one of the other guys, the guy they call Fingers, he found the tank thing in the shed behind the lodge and said he could get it going if we gave him enough time.”

  I seemed to remember an old surplus Thiokol Model 601 Spryte snowcat that had been brought up from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs back in the midseventies for use at the ski resort near Meadowlark Lake. So much for keeping them penned, but how far and how fast did they think they were going to go in a snowcat? If I were them, I’d still try for the Fed Suburban.

  I stood and checked for the keys to the SUV, which were still in my pocket, and then tapped Hector on the shoulder. “C’mon.”

  He looked up at me but didn’t move. “What?”

  Slitting my eyes to guard against the snow, I glanced across the hood. “We’re gonna go break up the party.”

  He settled into the parka, which was a good two sizes too big for him. “Fuck that.”

  I looked down at him and snorted, losing a little more of my soul through my nose. I raised my eyes and tried to sound indifferent. “Suit yourself, but with you bleeding like you are and alone, I’ll bet that hungry mountain lion comes back.”

  There wasn’t much cover between the cabins and the lodge, and I was going to have to hustle between them in open view of whoever was shooting the assault rifle. Occupying myself by thinking about how many wrong career choices I’d made to lead me to this lovely pass, I stood at the front of the van, shrugged the strap of Sancho’s pack onto my shoulder, and took a few deep breaths.

  I jolted forward and to the right, postholing only one step in the open. I slammed against the notched corner of the other cabin but didn’t hear anything. I was tempted to wave my hat but figured I’d already pressed my luck-and anyway, I liked my hat.

  I motioned for Hector to follow me. I’d cuffed him but figured his legs should still work fine.

  He shook his head and brought his hands together in a praying gesture.

  I’d given him the option of going first, but he’d said he’d rather follow. I guess he was having second thoughts now.

  I yelled above the wind. “C’mon.” Say what you want about the small man, he was agile and fast. He ran into my shoulder and stood there panting. “You do that again, and I’ll leave you out here.”

  His eyes circled the immediate vicinity, and I could only guess how many phantom cougars he was seeing.

  I stayed close to the cabin, careful to slip under the window, and continued to my right. If I remembered correctly, there was a straight shot to the lodge up ahead, but we had to go through another opening between the next two cabins before we could get there.

  I waited at the corner and hoped that when I made my mad dash, somebody wouldn’t be waiting on the other side with a riot gun. I stood there awhile just to break up the rhythm. I thought of Santiago’s cell phone in my pocket but didn’t want to open it out here in the dark-it’d be like a beacon for bullets.

  I shrugged the strap of the pack farther up on my shoulder and launched across.

  My back flattened against the logs of the next cabin about halfway down the row, and I looked back at Hector. He was still panting and held up a finger. After a moment, he threw himself into the opening, slipped in the snow, and fell to his knees, finally scrambling across on all fours.

  I grabbed him by his collar and stood him up beside me. “I think after that epic display of catlike grace, we can safely say that they’re not keeping too close a watch on us.”

  “Fuck you, man.” He trapped his struggling mustache in his lower lip. “That shit’s slippery.”

  “Stay here until I motion for you.”

  He nodded. “I’m good with that.”

  I continued around the cabin and peered past the corner-it was a straight shot of about thirty yards to the side of the main lodge, but with the oblique angle of the lodge windows, I had a reasonable chance of taking them by surprise. There was a large lean-to shed behind the building with a set of steps that probably led to the kitchen. I was thinking that that might be just the opening I needed.

  The wind continued to pick up, and I imagined it was blowing at a thirty-mile-an-hour clip. The snow on the roadway between us and the lodge was a little over ankle deep, but after watching Hector’s Ice Capades, I wasn’t so sure we could make it before being discovered.

  I leaned back against the logs and waved for him.

  “Hey, Sheriff, are there more of you true blues coming?”

  “Lots of them.”

  “Are they bringing food and stuff?”

  I glanced at him. “What, are you hungry again?”

  “Yeah, an’ that bitch only brought that freeze-dried shit.”

  “Beatrice brought supplies?”

  “Uh huh, food packs-even snowshoes.”

  Well, double-hell. Why would she go to the trouble of bringing freeze-dried food? Packs and snowshoes? Where were they going that they needed these kinds of provisions? All things considered, the sooner they were stopped the better.

  I turned to look at Hector. “We’re going to hustle across to the lodge, and my advice to you is to keep up. If they even think they see people moving around out here, they’re just the type to shoot first and identify the bodies later. Got me?”

  He didn’t look enthused with the elegant simplicity of my plan. “Yeah.”

  “Ready? ”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “All right then, let’s go.”

  I rushed forward, the wet snow sticking to my right side like plaster of Paris. All of a sudden the whiteout was so thick you could’ve cut sheep out of the air with a sharp knife. I stumbled once and could hear Hector’s breath at my back.

  The drifts got deep toward the lodge where the snow had whistled against the building and had settled in a steep upgrade that wasn’t there anymore. I stopped at the base of the steps and clung to the railing, the air in my lungs feeling like battery acid.

  Hector stumbled onto the first step. “Hey, we’re not going to stay out here, are we?”

  I swallowed and grabbed my breath by the tail ends. “No.”

  I listened-something didn’t sound right. The noise was coming from my right, and I’d just about made up my mind that it was just the wind striking the corner of the building when the keening increased its pitch.

  I grabbed Hector as the padlocked barn door o
f the shed blew apart, with the majority of the nearest twelve-foot door tumbling on top of us. The metal bars of the railings, which were set in the concrete steps, held the weight of the thing above us, but it shifted when something very big rolled over the wooden planks, first raising them and then slapping them down on us again. The wood splintered this time, but the railings held, and Hector and I crawled toward the building, toward the only opening afforded us.

  I was the first to get clear of the shattered remains of the shed and slid up at the corner of the lodge in time to see the big, weathered blue shoebox of a 601 Spryte snowcat pivot a few times as the driver attempted to get a feel for the thing. He finally got the thirty-two-inch tracks going in the direction he wanted, which happened to be into the parked Suburban.

  The Thiokol thundered into the side of the Chevrolet, pushing it onto the porch of one of the cabins; the porch collapsed and the SUV was buried in the rubble. The 601 pivoted again, and I could see the primer patches on it-the U.S. AIR FORCE 6385 443 designation was still painted on the back, along with, scripted below, FOR OFFICIAL USE

  ONLY.

  I raised the. 40 and aimed at the small windows in the thing, but what was I going to shoot and whom? I allowed the Sig to slip to my side as the snowcat pivoted once again, climbed the small embankment, and turned left on West Tensleep Road.

  Left.

  I ducked my head down and peered into the gloom and blowing snow just to make sure I’d seen what I’d seen. They weren’t heading for the paved road to the south but north, up the snow-covered, dead-end road toward West Tensleep Lake.

  Left.

  I watched as they continued toward the bridge, easily maneuvering over the drift that had stopped me flat, the motor accelerating in the distance until the noise mingled with the wind and was gone.

  “This ain’t fair.” As if to demonstrate the cruelty of my act, Hector yanked at the handcuffs that secured him to the water pipes. “What if that fucking tiger comes back?”

  I finished patching his head with the available medical supplies in the first-aid kit under the counter. He looked like he was wearing a gauze beanie, but at least the bleeding had stopped for good. I stuffed a few of the water bottles I’d found into the Basquo’s pack and tossed one to Hector. “Here.”

  He caught the bottle with his free hand and sat back on the chair I’d provided for him behind the counter beside the cash register next to the pay phone. “What am I supposed to do?”

  I needed to make more room in the pack, so I emptied it and arranged the items on the round table in the dining area of Deer Haven Lodge. Saizarbitoria had scrounged up a pretty good amount of candy bars, a bag of Funyuns, and a few cans of Coke. I axed the pop-the water was what I was going to need. “Around these parts, we drink it.”

  “I mean about the tiger!”

  I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and from the plastic bag. I planned to place it in the nifty, little pouch on the outside of the pack so that I could find it later. First, though, I flipped it open and looked at the battery indicator, which read about three-quarters, and then at the signal indicator, which read nothing. There was no service; it was just as well, since I was going to feel pretty silly telling everybody about how I’d found the escaped convicts but, after being shot at and pretty much hit with a barn door, had allowed them to escape.

  On a whim, I went over to the pay phone next to Hector, picked up the receiver, and clicked the toggle-there was a dial tone. I dialed 911.

  “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “I’d like to report a storm in Maybruary.”

  She practically screamed. “Where are you!?”

  “Nestled in the heart of the Bighorn Mountains.”

  Ruby calmed a little but was adamant. “Where exactly?”

  “Deer Haven Lodge at the cutoff to West Tensleep Lake.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

  “Have you found them?”

  “One down, four to go.” I held the phone out. “Say hello, Hector.”

  He lurched forward, the handcuffs rattling against the pipe. “Hey, this guy’s crazy, and there’s a fucking tiger up here!”

  I returned the phone to my ear and lodged it against my shoulder as I buckled up the main cavity of the pack. “Hector’s a little excitable, but he’ll be at the main lodge when they get here. Speaking of which, where’s my backup?”

  “They’re on their way from both sides of the mountain. Joe Iron Cloud, Tommy Wayman, and about a division of Highway Patrol and search and rescue are on their way from the west, but the switchbacks in Tensleep Canyon are filled with drifts. Henry and Vic with an even larger contingency are on their way up from our side, but I haven’t heard anything from them in over an hour. I’d imagine they’re encountering the same conditions.”

  “Maybe worse. Hey, you didn’t say over.”

  She sighed, but I could still tell my dispatcher was slightly amused. “It’s a phone, Walter. You don’t use radio procedures on a phone.”

  “Ruby, the remaining convicts stole a snowcat from the lodge here and are headed up West Tensleep Road; give a call to everybody and let them know what’s going on.”

  “They went up the trailhead road?”

  “Yep. Maybe they think it comes out somewhere. Boy, are they going to be surprised when all they find is a parking lot and some Porta Potties.” I shifted the receiver to my other ear as Hector watched. “Sancho loaned me his cell, but there’s no service.” I read her the number in case she didn’t have it handy. “He says that if I get one of the Fed satellite phones, it should work; I would imagine they’re sequential, so just add a digit to the end of the one he called you on, and you’ll probably have the number. Read me his, and I’ll put it in Sancho’s mobile.” I leaned against the wall and shared a look with Otero as I repeated the number she read to me. “Sancho’s still back at Meadowlark with McGroder; the convicts took Pfaff and one of the Ameri-Trans personnel. All the rest of the federal agents and marshals are dead.”

  There was a long pause as I waited for the lecture that was coming. “Walter, if they’ve gone north on that road, there’s no way for them to escape. You should wait until someone gets there.”

  I thought about the private cabins up here and the hostages. “I think it’s better to keep close to them and know where they are.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yep, well… Manpower seems to be pretty much at a shortage up here.”

  There was an even longer pause. “Do you have your radio with you?”

  It would only be helpful if there was line of sight, and if they got within thirty miles of me, sans weather conditions, but I figured I’d keep that little nugget of information to myself. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’ll only be good if they get within thirty miles, but it makes me feel better knowing that you’ve got it.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’ll give the cell and the potential satellite number to everyone.”

  I listened to her breathing on the other end. “I gotta head out. ..”

  “You do realize it’s two o’clock in the morning?”

  “That’s okay-it’s a weekend, and I’m becoming something of a night owl.”

  Ruby, aware of the Northern Cheyenne belief that owls were messengers from the great beyond, didn’t take mention of them lightly. “Don’t talk about owls.”

  “What, you’re starting to believe the heathen-red-man’s sorcery?”

  “Let’s just say I’m playing it safe.”

  “Good night, Ruby.” I hung up the pay phone and then palmed open Saizarbitoria’s cell to check again-still nothing. I looked at the screen saver of Sancho’s wife Marie holding their son Antonio. I sighed, turned it off, and slipped the device into the Ziploc. Then I tried to put it into the outside compartment of the Basquo’s pack, but it wouldn’t fit. I unzipped the compartment, pulled out a paperback, and turned it over.
>
  The cover art was a detail, The Damned of the Last Judgement, from the fourteenth-century cupola mosaic in the Baptistery in Florence. A very large blue devil appeared to be munching on the unfortunate next to a sticker that proclaimed a “New Translation” by Robin Kirkpatrick. I peeled through the pages, Italian on the left, English translation on the right.

  That Basquo.

  The first page caught my eye: At one point midway on our path in life,

  I came around and found myself now searching through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost.

  Boy howdy. I walked over and stood there looking out the windows for a second, then closed the Penguin Classic and popped it back in the pack. I picked up the Sig semiautomatic from the table, palming the clip and thumbing the remaining rounds into my pocket-body and soul, crime and punishment, law and order.

  “How ’bout you give me that gun.”

  I’d all but forgotten about him. I turned and gave my attention to Hector as I buttoned my sheepskin coat and slapped the mag back in the grip. “I’m not sure how they do things down Texas way, but we try to keep guns out of the hands of convicted killers up here in Wyoming.”

  I came back over, sat in one of the chairs, and tossed the Sig onto the counter between us. He immediately snatched it up and pointed it at me.

  “Besides, it’s empty.”

  He pulled the action and then dropped the clip just to make sure. He tossed it back onto the counter. “What if that tiger comes back?”

  I rubbed my face with my hands. “Hector, I don’t think a mountain lion is going to be bold enough to break down the door to get in here even if she feels like a little Mexican.”

  “Fuck you.” He looked past me toward the fireplace. “Hey, give me that stick from over there, huh?”

  I glanced behind me, and sure enough there was a walking staff with a leather loop on one end and tacked on the shaft a number of tiny, metal plates commending the places the stick and its owner had gone. I walked over and took it from the freestanding coat rack, behind which were hung an old pair of strung-gut willow snowshoes. There was also the outline of something that must have been hanging next to them, like a rug, maybe, or a skin of some sort.