Run (37 page)

Sweat ran into his eyes, and when he wiped the sting away, the lights had disappeared.

He stopped.

Didn’t hear the engines anymore.

Just an ocean of soundless dark.

Seven flashes exploded through the black. For a fraction of a second, he saw Dee’s Jeep and the three trucks surrounding it. Much closer than he thought, just a few hundred yards out. He was running again as the seven gunshots reached him and ripped his guts out, the last four hundred yards blazing past in a rush of terror, pain, and self-doubt, thinking he should have stayed with his children. He was going to see his wife dead and get himself killed, never see any of them again. And so close to safety, too.

He stopped twenty yards out from the vehicles, so far beyond the boundary of his endurance.

It sounded like sirens ringing inside his head, the darkness spinning.

He leaned over and puked into the grass.

Straightened up again, staggered past the trucks toward the Jeep.

The driver side door had been thrown open, the stench of cordite strong in the air, and he was moving through a haze of smoke, waiting for the gunshots, the attack.

He stopped again when he saw them, not understanding what it meant, figuring he must be missing something, his brain failing to process information after he’d pushed himself so hard.

Had to count them twice.

Seven people sprawled in the grass around the Jeep. Each of them dead from a headshot, their guns lying within reach or still in hand.

In the light that spilled out of the Jeep, he saw the eighth member of the party crouched down against the right front wheel, tears streaming down his face, the long barrel of a large-caliber revolver jammed between his teeth. He wore a fleece vest and a cowboy hat, a patchy blond beard struggling to cover an acne-ruined face.

When he saw Jack, he pulled the gun out of his mouth.

“I can’t do it,” the man said. He offered Jack the gun. “Please.”

“What?”

“Kill me.”

Jack was still gasping for air, his legs burning. He reached forward, slowly, as if sudden movement might cause the young man to rethink his offer, then snatched the revolver out of his hand.

The man said, “Where are you going?” as Jack walked around the open door and looked into the Jeep.

“Oh God, baby.”

The driver seat had been reclined and his wife lay stretched back on it, unmoving, her eyes closed, blood still running out of her leg.

“Dee.”

He glanced down at her right leg, saw where the shirt he’d tied around her thigh had been severed.

He set the gun in the floorboard and reached in, taking up both ends of the bloody shirt sleeve and cinching it down even harder than before, until the blood stopped flowing.

“Dee.” He touched her face. “Dee, wake up.”

Outside, the man was crying, begging for Jack to end him.

Jack moved outside and around the door.

“Which of those trucks is yours?” he asked.

“Oh my God,” the man cried. “Oh my God. My daughter. I—”

Jack held the revolver to the man’s knee. “Look at me.”

The man looked up at him.

“My wife needs medical attention. Do you have keys to any of these trucks?”

The man pointed beyond the Jeep. “The Chevy. Here.” He dug a pair of keys out of his jeans, handed them to Jack.

“What happened?” the man said.

“What are you talking about?”

“To me.”

“I have no fucking idea.”

“You have to kill me. I can’t stand knowing what I—”

“I’m not going to kill you.”

“Please—”

“But I will take your mind off it.”

Jack pulled the trigger and the man screamed, clutching his knee. Jack stood and walked around the car door. He shoved the revolver down the back of his jeans, leaned in, lifted his wife out of the pool of blood.

He was drenched in sweat, his legs trembling with exhaustion. Stumbled away from the Jeep with Dee in his arms and the young man pleading to die. It was all he could do to carry her those fifty feet to the pickup truck.

It was a pristine 1966 Chevy.

Powder blue.

He opened the passenger door and laid Dee across the vinyl, then limped around and hauled himself up into the cab.

The third key he tried started the engine.

He hit the lights, shifted into gear, floored the accelerator.

They raced across the prairie. He held her hand which was growing cold, saying her name over and over, an incantation. He had no idea if she even had a pulse, and still promising things he had no business promising—that they were almost over the border, almost to safety, where a city of tents awaited them, a refuge crawling with doctors who could fix her. She’d lost a lot of blood, but she was strong, had made it this far, she could surely hang on just a little farther, live to see the end of this and whatever new life they made, live to forget the worst of this, to see Na and Cole forget the worst of this, see her children grow up strong and happy, because they had so many more years the four of them, so many experiences to share that didn’t involve running and death and fear, and please God darling, if any part of you can hear me, don’t let this be the end.

* * * * *

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.

Revelations

* * * * *

THE team disbands as the light begins to fail. But she lingers in the pit, gently brushing the dirt from the ribcage of a skeleton she’s just uncovered in the last hour, lost in her work. The distant hum of an airplane breaks her concentration, and she looks up into the sky—easy to see the twin-engine turboprop catching sunlight on its descent.

She climbs out of the pit and walks over to the showers. Pulls the curtain. Strips out of her boots, elbow-length rubber gloves, her clothes, and stands under the heavy spray of water, letting it pound away the reek of decomp.

In fresh, clean clothes, she starts across the field.

The airplane is parked in the distance, the cabin door beginning to open.

She breaks into a run.

The old man comes down the stairs of the plane already smiling, must have seen her as they taxied up. Drops his bag as she runs into his arms, and they embrace for the first time in six months on the broken pavement of the runway.

“My angel,” he whispers. “My angel.”

When they come apart, she stares up at him, thinking, God, was his hair this white last Christmas? But he isn’t looking at her. He’s staring across the field, an intensity coalescing in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Daddy?”

He can barely speak, eyes shimmering with tears, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“This is the place.”

They cross the field, moving toward the pit.

“They pulled the trucks up to here,” he says. “A half dozen tractor trailers. There were tents set up over there,” he points, “right about where yours are. They told us there was hot food and beds waiting.” He stops. “Is that smell. . .?”

“Yeah.”

“Right about this time of day, too. Dusk. A beautiful sunset.” He continues walking, the stench growing worse with every step, until they stand at the edge of the grave.

She watches his face. He’s somewhere else—nineteen years in the past.

“They lined us up right here,” he says. “They’d already dug the grave.”

“How many people do you think?”

“Maybe two hundred of us.” He closes his eyes, and she wonders what he sees, what he hears.

“Do you remember where you stood?”

He shakes his head. “I just remember the sounds and what the sky looked like, staring up at it through the bodies that had fallen on top of me.”

“Did they use chainsaws?”

He looks down at her, startled by the question.

“Yeah. How did you—”

“We were curious about how some of the bones had been bisected.”

The man eases himself down into the grass and she sits beside him.

“You’ve been down in the grave?” he asks.

“I worked in it all day. That’s what I do, Daddy.”

He chuckles. “You know I’m proud to death of you, angel, but Jesus do you have a fucked-up job.”

She leans her head against his shoulder, laces her fingers through his, twiddling the platinum band he now wears on the nub of his left ring finger.

The team builds a bonfire after supper.

Someone strums a guitar.

Someone rolls a joint.

A bottle makes the rounds.

She sits between the old man and Sam, the Australian team leader, feeling contemplative off two swigs of whiskey and staring into the flames. The cold of the night a wonderful contrast to the eddies of heat sliding up her bare legs.

Usually, those thirty days in hell are as unreachable as if they had happened to another family. But sometimes, like tonight, she feels plugged in to the raw emotion of it all, a closed circuit, and if she doesn’t keep it at arm’s length, it still has the power to break her.

Her father is a little drunk, Sam more so, and she tunes back in to their conversation as Sam loosens his tie and says, “. . .learning more about the Great Auroral Storm.”

“Yeah, I’ve read some wild theories,” her father says.

“You talking about mine?”

“Entirely possible. You really believe these auroras contributed to the epic massacres and extinctions in history?”

“I think there’s some compelling solar abnormality data on that. But something of the magnitude that happened here? Keep in mind recorded human history is just the blink of an eye since life crawled out of the oceans. This was a hundred-thousand-year occurrence. Maybe a five-hundred. Natural selection at its darkest.”

“So who got selected?” her father asks. “Who won? Us?”

Sam laughs. “No.”

“The affected?”

“Most of them selected themselves out when they committed mass suicide.”

“Then who?”

“Your son,” Sam says.

“Excuse me?”

“People like Cole. Those who witnessed that terrible light show on October Fourth, and either didn’t kill, or did, and resisted the crushing guilt. That’s who won.”

“I have a close friend back home in Belgium in the humanities department where I teach. A priest. He thinks the aurora was just God testing us.”

“Those who saw the aurora, or those who ran?”

“Both, Sam.”

“Well, it all comes down to purification in the end, right?”

“You say it like that’s a good thing.”

“On a human level, no, but in terms of our DNA, it’s a different ball game. Remember, the barbarians finally took Rome. That was horrible, but Rome had become a corrupt, ineffectual, soft culture. Genetically speaking, it was a positive thing.”

“Or,” the old man says, “maybe we just need to kill each other. Maybe that’s our perfect state of being.”

Sam pauses to have a smoke, and when he finally exhales, says, “It surprises me that you would want to see this place again.”

“Why?”

“Because of what you saw and experienced here.”

“You should be examining my bones in that hole,” the old man says.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“This was an awful place, no question, but a miracle happened here. I never want to forget that.”

She’s buzzed and getting tired. Stretches her bare feet toward the fire, lays her head in her father’s lap. Soon he’s running his fingers through her hair, still debating with Sam. She’s almost asleep when something vibrates against the back of her head.

“Excuse me, Sam,” her father says.

The old man reaches into his pocket and retrieves his mobile phone, answers, “I forgot, didn’t I? . . . I’m sorry. . . . Yes, here safe and sound, sitting by a fire. . . . Difficult but good. . . . Yes, I’m glad I came. . . . . . . That’s still the plan. We’ll meet you both in Calgary tomorrow evening. . . . . . . Oh, I know. It’ll be so good to all be together again. . . . Yes, she’s right here, but she’s sleeping. . . . Okay, I’ll tell her. . . . No, I won’t forget. I’ll do it as soon as we get off. . . . Goodnight, darling.”

The old man slides his phone back into his pocket.

She’s almost asleep now, in that cushioned bliss between consciousness and all that lies beneath. Feels her father’s hand on her shoulder, and his breath, still after all these years, familiar against her ear.

“Naomi,” he whispers, “your mother sends her love.”

* * * * *

Read on for an interview with Blake Crouch and excerpts from his four novels, Desert Places, Locked Doors, Abandon, and Snowbound…