Blake Crouch - Run

“Cold, Dad?” Naomi asked.

“Not too bad.”

“Why don’t you go for a swim then?”

He glanced back, grinning. “Why don’t you?”

She shook her head. He cupped a handful and tossed it back at his daughter, the water like falling glass where the moonlight passed through it.

Her screams echoed off the hills across the reservoir.

They drove west along the water.

“Where are we stopping tonight?” Dee asked.

“I wasn’t planning to. I’m not tired, and I think it might be safer to travel at night.”

It was noisy in the car, the plastic windows flapping. In the backseat, Naomi had her headphones in, eyes closed. Cole played with a pair of Hot Wheels, racing them up the back of Jack’s seat.

Jack said, “I was studying the roadmap you picked up in Silverton. I think we should head into northwest Colorado. It’s sparsely populated. Middle-of-nowhere type of place. What do you think?”

“And then where?”

“Day at a time for now. How you doing?”

She just shook her head, and he knew better than to push it.

The road traversed a dam and climbed. They followed the rim of a deep canyon. Deer everywhere, Jack stopping frequently to let them cross the road.

He pulled over after a while and the slowing of the car roused Dee from sleep.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to pee.”

He left the car running and got out and walked to the overlook. Stood pissing between the slats of a wooden fence, looking across the canyon, which by his reckoning couldn’t have spanned more than a couple thousand feet. Down in the black bottom of the gorge, invisible in shadow, he could hear a river rushing.

The road turned north away from the canyon. They rode through dark country, no points of houselight anywhere, but the moon bright enough on the pavement for Jack to drive the long, open stretches without headlights. Miles to the south, the horizon put forth a deep orange glow. He watched the fuel gauge falling toward a quarter of a tank and thought about the phantom cries of that baby he’d heard the day before. Wondering, if they were real, what had become of it.

Late in the night, Jack reached over and patted Dee’s leg. She stirred from sleep, sat up, rubbed her eyes. He said nothing, not wanting to wake the kids, but he pointed through the windshield.

City lights in the distance.

Dee leaned over and whispered into his ear, her breath soured with sleep, “Can’t we just go around?”

He shook his head.

“Why?”

“We’re on fumes.”

“We have ten gallons in back.”

“That’s for emergencies.”

“Jack, it’s an emergency right now. Our life has become a fucking emergency.”

The town was empty, but then it was almost three in the morning. The air that poured through the vents bore no trace of smoke and the houses seemed untouched, if vacant, a few even boasting porchlights.

At the intersection of highways, Jack pulled into a filling station. He stepped out and swiped his credit card and stood waiting for the machine to authorize the purchase, the night air pleasant at this lower elevation. While the super unleaded gasoline flowed into the tank, he went across the oil-stained concrete into the convenience store. The lights were on, and the empty coolers along the back wall hummed in the silence. He perused the four aisles, all heavily grazed, and emerged with a package of sunflower seeds and another quart of motor oil. The pump had gone quiet, the ticker frozen at a hair past eleven gallons. He squeezed the handle, but the lever was still depressed, the tank run dry.

With the hearing in his left ear still impaired, it took him a few seconds to get a fix on the sound. A mote of light tore up the highway toward the filling station, accompanied by the watery growl of a V-twin, two pair of headlights in tow a quarter mile back, and Dee already shouting inside the car as he yanked out the nozzle and screwed on the gas cap.

Dee had his door open and he jumped in, hands shoved into his pockets, digging for the keys.

“Jack, come on.”

Naomi sat up, blinking against the overhead dome light. “What’s going on?”

Jack fumbled the set of keys, finally got the right one between his thumb and forefinger, and fired the engine as the cycle roared up on them. He went straight at the black and chrome Harley, the rider cranking back on the throttle to avoid a collision, the bike popping up on one wheel as it surged out of the way.

Jack turned out into the highway. Back tires dragging across the pavement as he straightened their bearing.

“Get the shotgun, Dee.”

“Where is it?”

“In the way back.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and crawled over the console into the backseat.

“Mama?”

“Everything’s okay, Cole. I just need to get something. Go back to sleep.”

Jack forced the gas pedal to the floorboard. Above the din of engine noise and the plastic windows flapping like they might rip off, Jack registered the vibration of the cycle in his gut.

“Hurry up, Dee.”

“I’m trying. It’s wedged under your pack.”

He looked in the rearview mirror-darkness specked with the diminishing lights of town. He punched off the headlights. The speedometer needle holding steady at one hundred and ten though they still accelerated. The pavement silvered under the moon and glowing just enough for him to stay between the white shoulder lines.

Dee crawled back into her seat.

“Jesus, Jack. How fast are we going?”

“You don’t want to know.”

A piece of fire bloomed and faded in the side mirror, and the square of glass exploded.

“Get down.”

The gunshot was lost to the flapping windows, but the V-twin wasn’t.

“Give me the gun, Dee.” She hoisted it up from the floorboard, barrel first. “I need you to steer.”

The cycle screamed just a few feet behind their bumper, only visible where its chrome caught glimmers of moonlight.

His foot still on the gas, Jack turned back, vertebrae cracking, and aimed through the back hatch and pumped the twelve gauge. The thunder of its report sent a spike through his left eardrum and filled the Rover with the blinding, split-second brilliance of a muzzleflash. Through the shredded plastic of the back hatch, the cycle had disappeared.

Bullets pierced the left side of the Rover, glass spraying the backseat.

Jack spun back into the driver seat, his right ear ringing, and took the steering wheel and eased off the gas.

The cycle shot forward and then its taillight blipped and it vanished.

Cole screaming in the backseat.

“Naomi, is he hurt?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I think he’s just scared.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Help him.”

“Where’s the motorcycle, Jack?”

“I don’t see it. Steer again.”

She grabbed the wheel and Jack pumped the shotgun. “I still can’t hear too well,” he said. “You have to tell me when you-”

“I hear it now.”

He strained to listen, couldn’t see for shit through the plastic window, but he did hear the cycle’s engine, the throttle winding up, and then the guttural scream was practically inside the car.

“Hold on and stay down.”

He turned back into the driver seat and clutched the wheel and hit the brake pedal and something slammed into the back of the Rover, the sickening clatter of metal striking metal, Jack punching on the headlights just in time to see the cycle turning end over end as it somersaulted off the road into darkness, throwing sparks every time the metal met the pavement, the rider deposited on the double yellow thirty yards ahead, the man sitting dazed and staring at his left arm which dangled fingerless and unhinged from his elbow, his unhelmeted head scalped to the bone.