Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [0]
THE
INFERNO
EARL EMERSON
Ballantine Books
New York
Table of Contents
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part 1
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part 2
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part 3
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part 4
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Part 5
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Part 6
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Epilogue
Copyright
The good die first . . .
—William Wordsworth
Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.
—Fred Allen
1. JUNE—NEAR THE END
I’m a mad dog. Utterly mad.
If you knew my circumstances, you’d trust me when I tell you I’m as crazy as they come. And growing madder by the minute.
Nobody out there in the dark doubts me. I can see a few of the uniforms in the shadows, fingers tightening on their triggers, scopes zeroed in on my heart. I can hear the whispering. Most can barely wait to begin pumping rounds into the night. Into me. Any excuse. Any little twitch on my part will provoke a bloodbath.
You think I’m kidding?
Consider this. . . .
I’m standing on the roof of a police cruiser screaming at twenty police officers to keep their distance. My mouth looks like the bloody maw of hell. Several of my teeth have been loosened and quite a few others are missing entirely. I have a cell phone in one hand, a pistol in the other. The cell phone is pressed to my left ear. The gun to my right ear. During most of the last twenty minutes I’ve been threatening to put a bullet through my brain. If that’s not enough, I’m naked as a jaybird.
I’m crazy as a shithouse rat and they know it. Destined for a jail cell, a straitjacket, or, more likely, to end up dancing the funky chicken in a fusillade of bullets.
Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for me. You’re headed there, too. That’s what I’ve learned in the last week. Maybe not the nuthouse or a fusillade of bullets, but you’re headed for the dirt. Same as me. Same as every last one of us. Eventually everybody lands in the dirt.
I don’t care anymore.
You can’t fake my kind of insanity. They know I mean business. They know I’m a mad dog.
That’s the whole point.
All I have to do is make a move and they’ll kill me. Don’t think I’m not tempted.
Suppose I move.
They’d shoot.
And they’d keep on shooting.
Maybe I should do it and end all this. In seven days I’ve turned into a lunatic, my life expectancy dropping from years to hours to minutes.
Running into Holly Riggs was the end for a bunch of us.
2. FEBRUARY—THE BEGINNING; OR,
A YOUNG GREEN-EYED WOMAN IN TIGHT JEANS
SCREAMS SHRILLY AT RELIGIOUS CHICKENS
The first time I saw Holly Riggs, she was standing in the left lane of Interstate 90 up to her knees in Bibles. Three hundred Bibles. Eight hundred chickens. It was ten o’clock at night, and already a good many of the birds had absconded for parts unknown, others sauntering away more slowly than any animal with a brain would. Some of the chickens were frozen to the roadway like art projects in a school for the mentally challenged.
As more emergency vehicles arrived, dozens of birds scampered off into the snow. Up the hill, teenage boys on their way home from night skiing got out of their cars and chased fryers, a shabby sport at best, for the birds were easily overtaken, even more easily bagged, and the boys had no use for their prey once captured.
Holly Riggs. Anyone who’d come over Snoqualmie Pass in an eighteen-wheeler