Blake Crouch - Run

They broke out of the fading smoke and Dee accelerated. The morning sky burned blue overhead, oblivious to it all.

Jack straightened and glanced back between the seats-nothing to see through the plastic sheeting that hyperventilated over the back hatch.

“I don’t like how we can’t see the road behind us,” he said. “Pull over.”

Three miles out of Pinedale, Dee veered onto the shoulder and Jack stumbled out of the Rover. Heard the incoming engines before he’d even raised the binoculars to his face-a dive-bomber wail like they were being pushed to the limits of their performance capabilities.

He jumped back into the front seat, said, “Go,” and Dee shifted into drive, hit forty before Jack had managed to shut his door.

“How far?”

“I didn’t even look. Where’d you put the shotgun?”

“Backseat floorboard.”

“Hand it to Daddy, Na.”

Jack took the Mossberg from his daughter, had to yell over the straining engine. “How many times did you shoot it, Dee?”

“I don’t know. Four or five. I wasn’t keeping count.”

Jack flipped open the center console, grabbed a few shells, started feeding them in, the pain brilliant with every twitch of the deltoid in his left shoulder.

“Na, climb into the way back and peek through those holes. See if you can spot whatever’s coming.”

He reached under his seat, grabbed the roadmap. Opened it across his lap to the Wyoming page and traced their route north out of Rock Springs through Pinedale.

“There’s a turnoff coming up, Dee. Highway 352. Take it.”

“Where’s it go?”

“Into the Wind Rivers. Dead-ends after twenty miles or so.”

“Oh my God, I see the trucks.”

“How far, Na?”

“I don’t know. They’re small, but I can see them. Getting closer for sure.”

“Why would we take a dead-end road, Jack?”

“Because they can see us and run us down on these long, open stretches. Go faster.”

“We’re doing ninety.”

“Well, do a hundred. If they catch us before the turnoff, it’s over.”

“I think I see it.”

They screamed toward a road sign.

“You’re about to miss it,” Jack said.

She stepped on the brake and made the turn at thirty-five, swinging wide into the oncoming lane, the Rover briefly on two wheels.

“Nice,” Jack said.

Through the fist-size hole in his plastic window, he stared back down the highway, saw four vehicles streaking toward them. Inside of half a mile, he would’ve guessed.

“You see them?” Dee asked.

“Yeah. Get us up in those mountains as fast as you can.”

The highway shot through the last bit of desert before the mountains, and Jack could smell the heat of the engine and the sagebrush screaming by.

At a hundred miles per hour, they ripped through a ghost town-three buildings, two of them listing, a derelict post office.

The foothills lifted out of the desert less than a mile away, and already they were climbing.

“How’s the fuel gauge, Dee?”

“We’re on the empty slash.”

The road cut a gentle turn away from the foothills and passed through a grove of cottonwoods. They sped alongside a river and into a canyon, the colder, pine-sweetened air streaming through the plastic windows.

Jack said, “Start looking for a place to pull over.”

“Trees are too tight here.”

“Na, would you climb into the back again? When we make our move, we need to be certain they can’t see us.”

The sun blinked through the trees in shards of blinding light.

Jack leaned against the door again, felt Dee take hold of his hand.

“Talk to me, Jack.”

“I don’t feel like talking.”

“Because of the pain?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t see them yet,” Naomi yelled.

“Cole all right?” he asked.

“Sleeping if you can believe it.”

Into a meadow, the frosted grasses sparkling under the sun, the road straight for a quarter mile.

As they reentered the woods on the other side, Naomi said, “They’re just now coming into the meadow.”

“How many, sweetie?”

“Four.”

“You feel that, Jack?”

“What?”

“Engine just sputtered.”

He struggled to sit up.

Leaned back over.

Vomited into the floorboard.

“Jack, is there blood in it?”

“I don’t know.”

He sat up, focused on the passing trees instead of the acid burn in the back of his throat.

When they rounded the next hairpin curve, Jack saw a corridor through the pines-not a road or a path, just a little space between the trees.

“There, Dee. See it?”

“Where?”

“There. Slow down. Just left of that boulder. Drive off the road right there.”

Dee steered into the trees.

The violent jarring launched Jack into the dashboard, something struck the undercarriage, and by the time he was back in his seat, nose pouring blood, Dee had pulled the Rover into a shady spot between several giant ponderosa pines.

She killed the engine and Jack opened his door and stumbled out.

Easy to see the path they’d blazed through the forest-saplings severed, pale tire tracks in the trampled grass.

A couple hundred yards through the trees, four trucks raced by, and Jack stood listening to the roar of their engines, which after ten seconds, quieted down to a distant idling that went on and on, Jack listening, inadvertently holding his breath while his shoulder throbbed like a second heartbeat.

Dee walked over.

“They’re wondering if we’ve gotten ahead of them, or pulled a fast one,” he said. “If they’re smart, they’ll send two trucks up the canyon and two trucks back to the meadow to wait.”

“But they don’t know we’re out of gas,” Dee said. “If they think we doubled back, maybe they’ll keep going all the way to the highway.”

The engines went silent.

Naomi called out to Jack.

He spun around. “Shhh.”

“You think they’ve moved on?” Dee whispered.

“No. They’re listening for the sound of our engine. Go get the guns.”

They walked as far back into the woods as Jack could manage-barely fifty yards-and lay down in a bed of pine needles.

“Dee,” Jack whispered.

“What?”

“You’ve got to listen for what’s coming, okay? I have to rest now.”

“That’s fine.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “Just close your eyes.”

Jack turned over onto his right side, and he tried to listen for approaching footsteps but kept passing in and out of consciousness as the sun moved over the pines and made a play of light and shadow on his face.

The next time he woke the sun was straight overhead and he could hear Dee telling Cole a story. He sat up. His head swirled. Looked down at the pine needles, some of which had become glued together with blood. He felt feverish and cold, and soon Dee was there, easing him back onto the forest floor.

He opened his eyes, tried to sit up, thought better of it. Dee sat beside him and the sun was gone. Through the pines, the pieces of sky held the rich blue of late afternoon.

“Hi there,” she said.

“What time is it?”

“Four-fifteen. You’ve been sleeping all day.”

“Where are the kids?”

“Playing by a stream.”

“Nobody came?”

“Nobody came. You’re thirsty, I bet.” She unscrewed the cap from a milk jug and held it to his mouth. The coldness of the water stung his throat, ignited a fierce and sudden thirst. When he finished drinking, he looked up at his wife.

“How am I doing, Doc?”

Shook her head. “I stopped the bleeding, but you’re not so hot, Mr. Colclough.” She reached into the first aid kit, cracked open a bottle of Tylenol. “Here. Open.” Dumped a handful of pills onto Jack’s tongue, helped him wash them down. “I have to get that bullet out, and I need to do it before we run out of daylight.”