Run (17 page)

“Just listen.” Jack lowered his voice. “If people have found the cabin, then they’re probably watching us right now through that window at your back, waiting until we go to bed.”

“Waiting for what?” Naomi asked.

“Everyone drink your tea and act like we’re wrapping up a nice family evening.”

His mouth had run dry. He sipped his tea and let his eyes move briefly past Dee’s shoulder to the window behind the kitchen table, the only one in the house they hadn’t shielded with a blanket since it backed right up against the woods. Nothing to see at this hour, the sun long since set. Wondered if someone crouched out there in the dark at this moment, watching his family.

“You’re sure you heard it?” he said quietly. “The chainsaw?”

“Yes.”

“I heard it, too.” Tears rolling down Naomi’s face. “I thought it was you, Dad.”

Before supper, Jack had switched off the solar power system to recharge overnight and they’d eaten by firelight. Several candles lit the living room, too. One in each of the upstairs bedrooms.

“The shotgun and the Glock are under our bed,” Jack said. “I think we have a box of ammo for the Glock that’s mostly full, but we’re down to the last half-dozen twelve gauge shells.” He looked at Naomi, then Dee, then Cole. Hated the fear he saw. “We’re going to act like it’s just another normal night. I’ll put Cole to bed. Naomi, you head up to your room. Dee, clear the table and get all the cans of food and whatever bread’s left into a plastic bag, some silverware, too, and a can opener. We don’t know how close they are to the cabin, if they can see inside, see us in the other rooms, so don’t hurry, but don’t take too much time either.”

“What about all our meat?”

“Leave it. I’ll come back downstairs and then Dee and I will blow out the living room and kitchen and bedroom candles. We’ll dress in the dark, all of us, all the clothes we can wear, and then we’ll meet in the other downstairs bedroom—the one near the shed. Naomi, you stay upstairs with your brother after I’ve left and listen for me to call you down. Got it?”

She was crying. “I don’t want to leave.”

“Me either, but can you do this, what I’m asking?”

She nodded.

“Look, maybe there’s nobody out there, but we have to make sure, and we aren’t safe in here until we know.”

“Are we going to take the car?” Dee asked.

“No, because they probably have one blocking us in. I’m sure they were using the chainsaw to cut that tree I brought down across the driveway. So they could drive up. We just need to get into the woods and hide until I can figure out what’s going on.”

Jack carried his son through the kitchen, up the spiral staircase, and into the bedroom. Threw back the covers and laid Cole on the mattress.

“Naomi’s right next door,” Jack said. “You listen to your sister, okay?”

“Don’t blow out the candle.”

“I have to, buddy.”

“I don’t like it dark.”

“Cole, I need you to be brave.” He kissed the boy’s forehead. “I’ll see you real soon.”

Jack extinguished the candle on the dresser and tried not to rush down the steps. The kitchen was already dark, the plastic bag of food tied off and sitting on the hearth. He blew out the candles on the coffee table and moved blindly toward his and Dee’s bedroom, eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness.

Dee stood by the blanketed window.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

“Just peeking out at the meadow. Haven’t seen anything yet.”

“Let’s get going.”

Jack donned two more pipe-scented shirts, his fingers struggling with the buttons in the dark, heart slamming in his chest. When he’d dressed, he slid two shells into the Mossberg to replace the two he’d used on the elk. He crammed the four remaining into the side pocket of his jeans, grabbed the Mag-Lite from the bedside table drawer, and handed Dee the Glock.

In the living room, Jack called up to his children. Laced his trail shoes while Naomi and Cole descended the stairs, and they all went together past the fireplace into the second bedroom.

Jack crawled across the bed and tugged down the blanket Dee had tacked over the glass and unlatched the hasp.

The window slid up. The night cold rushed in.

Jack climbed over the sill, stepped down into the grass.

“All right, Cole, come on.”

He grabbed his son under his arms and hoisted him out of the cabin. “Stay right beside me, and don’t say a word.”

He helped Naomi through and then Dee. Lowered the window back and pulled his wife in close so he could whisper in her ear.

“We can’t leave without our packs. They’re in the back of the Rover, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait for me to call you over.”

Jack crept across the grass and peered around the corner of the cabin.

The meadow stretched into darkness.

No wind. No moon. No movement.

He sprinted twenty yards to the shed and crouched down behind it, straining to listen and hearing nothing but the internal combustion of his heart.

Jack blew a sharp, stifled whistle, then watched as Dee and the kids emerged from the shadows behind the cabin, running toward him, their pants swishing in the grass for eight agonizing seconds before they reached him.

“Did I do good?” Cole asked.

“You did great. Dee, I’m going around to the front of the shed to get our packs. If something goes wrong, you hear gunshots, me yelling, whatever, take the kids into the woods, all the way back to the stream. I’ll be able to find you there.”

He rose to his feet, moved along the backside of the shed, the shotgun in one hand, flashlight in the other. Rounded the corner, the driveway looming just ahead. He jogged the edge of the woods until he came to it. The single lane descended out of meager starlight into the darkness of the aspen grove, and he followed it down until he came around the first hairpin turn. A Suburban blocked the way, its color indeterminate in the lowlight. A Datsun pickup truck behind it. He put a light through the glass and checked the ignitions of both vehicles. No keys. No idea how to hotwire a car.

He ran back up the driveway. After several minutes in the woods, the clearing appeared almost bright. Stood there for a moment scanning the meadow and the trees around the periphery, but the shadows kept their secrets so well he couldn’t even see his family in the darkness behind the shed.

Twenty strides brought him to the side of it.

He swung around the corner and got his hand on the doorknob and the hinges ground together with a rusty shriek as he slipped inside.

A wave of disorientation accompanied the absolute, unflinching darkness.

Jack knelt down, laid the shotgun in the dirt, and fumbled with the head of the Mag-Lite, trying to turn it on.

Several feet away, a shuffle in the dirt.

Jack froze, bracing against a shot of liquid fear that made his scalp tingle and his throat constrict, thinking it could be a rodent or some tool that had shifted. Or someone pointing a gun at him. Or his frazzled imagination.

Two choices. See it or shoot it.

He lowered the flashlight back onto the dirt floor. As he felt around for the shotgun, a motor coughed ten feet away, like someone had pulled a start rope. Then it sputtered again and the shed filled with the reek of gas and the banshee-wail of a two-stroke. A small LED light cut on—affixed to the handle with black electrical tape—and it sent out a schizophrenic beam that hit the Rover, the shed walls, and the large, bearded man who came at Jack with the screaming chainsaw, gripped like a bat, spring-loaded to swing.

Jack grabbed the shotgun and jacked a shell as the man reached him, no time to stand or brace.

The blast knocked Jack onto his back in the dirt, and at point-blank range, cut the ski-jacketed man in half at the waist.

Jack clambered back onto his feet, pumped the shotgun again, lifted the Mag-Lite, and screwed the bulb to life.

The man still clutched the idling chainsaw, but only in one hand, having nearly severed his right leg at the knee.

Jack leaned down and flipped the kill switch.

In the renewed silence, the man emitted desperate drowning noises. Over them, Jack could hear Dee calling his name through the back wall of the shed. He went to it and put his mouth to the wood and said, “I’m okay. Go where we talked about right now. There’s more of them.”

He hurried over to the Rover and lifted his pack out of the cargo area, trying to recall what all it held, if it might be worth rifling through Dee’s pack or bringing it too, but there wasn’t time.

He shouldered his pack and clipped the hip belt and chest strap and went back over to the man in the ski jacket who’d turned sheet white and already bled a black lake across the dirt.

“How many of you are there?” Jack asked. But the man just stared up at him with a kind of glassy-eyed amazement and would not, or could not, speak.

Jack killed the Mag-Lite and eased open the door to the shed and peered out.

Already, they were halfway across the meadow—four shadows running toward him and two smaller, faster ones out ahead of the others.

He leveled the shotgun, squeezed off three blinding reports.

Four points of light answered, flashing in the dark like high-octane lightning bugs, and bullets struck the wood beside him and punched through the door above his head.

He stepped out and around the side and sprinted to the back of the shed.

His family was gone.

Lightning footsteps approached, the jingle of a chain, snarling. He turned back to see the pit bull tear around the corner, skidding sidelong across the grass trying to right its forward motion.

Jack raised the shotgun, the animal accelerating toward him, and fired as it leapt for his throat, the buckshot instantly arresting its momentum. He pumped the slide and took aim on the second pit bull which ripped around the corner with greater efficiency. He dropped it whimpering and tumbling through the grass.

Jack ran ten feet into the woods and slid out of his pack. He prostrated himself behind a log. Couldn’t hear a thing over his own panting and he closed his eyes and buried his face in the leaves until the pounding in his chest decelerated.

When he looked up again, four figures stood behind the shed where his family had hid just moments ago. Three others joined them.

Someone said, “Where’s Frank?”

“In the field. He caught some pellets in his neck.”

A woman walked over, the helve of an ax resting on her shoulder.

She said, “I saw someone run into the woods a minute ago.”

A beam of light struck the ground. “Let’s head in. Only four. And two of them children.”

Another light.

Another.

Someone shot their beam through the woods. Jack ducked behind the log, the light slanting past him, firing the fringes of the bark. They were still talking, but he’d lost their voices with his face jammed up under the log and straining to fish the twelve gauge shells out of his pocket. Jack was on the brink of shifting to another position but the footfalls stopped him.

They approached him now—must have been all eight of them—filling the woods with the dry rasp of crushing leaves. Someone stepped over the log and the heel of a boot came down inches from Jack’s left arm. He caught the scent of rancid body odor. He watched them move by, eight distinct fields of light sweeping the woods. He wondered how far in his family had made it, if Dee had any concept of what was coming her way.

After a while, he rolled out from under the log and sat up. Glanced back toward the shed. Into the woods again. He could hear the footfalls growing softer, indistinguishable and collective like steady rain, glimpsed the bulbs of distant light and occasionally a full beam where it swung through mist.

Jack dug into his pocket for the shells, fed in the last four.

Six rounds. Eight people.

He stood up and got his pack on.

Jacked a shell, started toward the lights.

After forty yards, the stream-murmur filtered in, and soon there was nothing but the sound of it and the cool, sweet smell of the water.

He eased down onto the bank. The lights had moved on. Blackness everywhere. Thinking he’d told Dee to get to the stream, but she may have seen the group of flashlights coming, been forced to go elsewhere. The urge to call out for her overwhelmed him.

He got up, started hiking again.

Sometimes the starlight would find a way down through the trees and he would catch a glimpse of the stream like black glass, warped and fissured, but mainly it was impossible to see anything. He didn’t dare use the Mag-Lite.

Fifteen minutes of blind groping brought him a quarter mile uphill.

He collapsed in a patch of cold, damp sand and stared back the way he’d come. He tried to catch his breath, but the longer he sat there the panic festered inside of him. Finally he rose to his feet, running uphill now, running until his heart felt like it was going to swell out of his chest. He went on like this for he didn’t know how long, and every time he stopped it was still just him alone in the woods and the dark.