Cold.

The stillness in the air reflected the stillness in my hands, and with my left hand, I rubbed the ice from my nostrils.

"What you people don't understand," he said, sitting in the snow a few feet away from me, "is that you cannot kill people like me."

I felt him smile.

The darkness around him became infected with his words, and to me, seemed to take on colors. With the barrel braced between my feet, I kept the .30-.30 Winchester pointed at his forehead, and my numbing finger on the trigger.

"There will be others that will follow you," he continued and rubbed his hands together. "Sadly, they will fail, as you did."

"I haven't failed," I replied as the snow began to fall once again.

He stood slowly, a red sheet of ice covered his right arm.

"You have failed," he said with his eyes closed. "Deep down you know it. You're no different than us."

He turned and walked to the broken down shack, leaving me with a rifle propped between my feet. I sat in the snow, trying to find warmth inside myself.

You're no different than us, I remembered.

I got up out of the snow, found that my finger had froze to the trigger, and I followed him to the shack.

* * *

"Negotiations are still continuing with the man who calls himself Uncle Tom, the messianic leader of the Bonehead Cult. More Federal personnel have been brought up to help with the situation, and the entire compound area has been surrounded by troops."

"Famed counter-culture journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, has entered the compound, to talk directly with Uncle Tom. We are awaiting his return."

"It is hoped that Mr. Thompson can bring about a peaceful resolution of this crisis, without any more loss of life."

* * *

"The hog is out of the tunnel, then," the gaunt man in the Panama hat drawled. "I didn't think it'll come out any other way."

The other said nothing, but continued loading his Remington shotgun.

The man in the hat reached into his aviator-style leather jacket, pulled out a sheaf of paper. "At the checkpoint I told them that these were my notes, but they're really sheets of paper impregnated with a powerful, new synthetic hallucinogen."

The paper changed hands.

"See you in hell." The man in the hat walked away, headed back towards the police lines.

* * *

The crowd in the Cactus consisted of the usual reprobates and degenerates. Beer bellies, tattoos, and beards were the most dominant stylistic motif. ScanLine got himself a Weinhard's Ale at the counter, then turned to look over the crowd from behind his RayBans.

The Walther 9mm is his shoulder holster chafed him, and he was looking forward to taking it off, when this is all wrapped up.

Techno beat, loud, sterile, and abrasive, was pumping out of the over-worked jukebox. A sure sign that the Godfather, the only known survivor of the Bonehead massacre of '97, was holding court within this crowded bar tonight.

No doubt that was him, in the dimly lit corner, a muscular albino woman in a tight, black leather mini-dress on his lap. He knew she was no toy, her name now at least, was Panther, and there was a string of unsolved murders downtown that were supposed to be her handiwork.

* * *

"He fell apart like a bubble," The Brain laughed, his hands spreading apart in front of his face.

The man on the next stool looked into his beer. The shadow of his Panama hat darkened the beer.

"You should have seen it man," The Brain continued. "it was glorious. Glorious, man! Goddamn. How can I explain it? Can I explain it? There, I thought I saw a madness, but it wasn't. It was Life, man. It was Life. There. Right there in front of me, man, it was there. In the act of him dying, in that act, I saw Life, man. Fuckin' Life. Don't you get it?"

The Panama hat never moved.

"Goddammit, Hunter," The Brain said, "I'm telling you a Truth. A Truth. A fuckin' Truth. They killed one of Them. Them. And I saw Truth."

The Brain fell back from the explosion, and his stomach fell past him. Everyone in the Cactus jumped, a woman screamed, a table fell, and the Godfather looked up.

The Panama hat never moved.

* * *

A space heater in one corner of the shack glowed a cherry red. It was the only source of light inside. He sat down on a pew of rough pine, I squatted down in front of him.

"Got a light?" he asked, "Come on, you can put the gun down for a minute. What am I going to do? Kill you with my bare hands." He laughed, it sounded like a dry wind blowing around inside a crypt.

I handed him my Zippo lighter. He lit himself a clove cigarette, took a deep drag.

"You're dead." I blew condensation off the objective lens of the rifle's scope. At this range I wouldn't need the scope. "The FBI reported that you killed yourself with a hand grenade."

He laughed that same graveyard laugh.

"They had to say something. They couldn't tell the American public that I was at large. It would be too much an embarrassment for President Quayle." He leaned back, blew out a cloud of pungent smoke.

"How did you get out?"

"That was easy," he said, in the glow of the cigarette tip his face seemed reflective. "It was Blap's idea. We found some pathetic glue-sniffer down at the mission. Set him up at me, put him in charge of the Bonehead Mission in Boise. It was me who tipped off the Feds, told them about the weapons. It was a convenient accident that he chose to exit this life by way of a hand grenade: otherwise there would have been dental records to check."

"This time, it'll be sure." I leveled the rifle barrel at him.

"Nothing is sure."

"What are you doing here? Are their others? Where are they?"

He laughed.

I pulled the trigger, blowing his brains out in a red mist on the rough-board wall behind him. Somehow I thought that, even with that ragged, red hole in the center of his face, he was still laughing at me.

* * *

"Damn!" Tom Frost said, as the rifle blast reverberated though the narrow valley. With hands that were clumsy inside thick, arctic gloves he picked up the heavy black metal walkie-talkie that lay on the stump beside him.

"Duke!" He shouted into the mouthpiece, his breath a white fog in front of his face. "Duke! He did it! Do I whack him now?!"

Frost picked up the armored binoculars, scanned the white, snowy waste around the shack.

"Wait." The simple command came from the radio. "Just wait."