Blake Crouch - Run

JACK woke cold and stiff and thirsty. His family slept, Cole burrowed into his side completely under the sleeping bag, and Jack let them sleep, a temporary escape from the diamond-cut hardness of this place. The panic was certainly there. Felt it lingering in his blindspot, trying to break in. He’d gotten them into a terrible bind, it whispered-out of food, out of water, twelve thousand feet up a mountain they had no business climbing. He’d utterly failed them, and now they were going to die.

Naomi said, “A box of Fruit Loops, and I don’t mean one of those little ones.”

“Family size.”

“Exactly. I’d pour the whole thing into one of our glass mixing bowls and open a carton of cold whole milk. Oh my God, I can almost taste it.”

“Lucky Charms,” Cole said. “Except just the marshmallows and chocolate milk.”

“I would kill for one of those southwest breakfast burritos from that place near campus,” Dee said. “Filled with scrambled eggs and chorizo sausage and green chiles. Couple fried cinnamon rolls. Steaming cup of dark roast. Jack?”

“Bacon, short stack, two eggs over easy, biscuits smothered in sausage gravy. Everything, and I mean everything, drowned in maple syrup and hot sauce.”

“No coffee?”

“Of course coffee. Goes without saying. Might even splash some bourbon in it. Start the day off right.”

They got underway, climbing in shadow, the rock still freezing. Logged another two hundred feet and then emerged from the loose talus onto solid granite, the steepest pitch they’d seen, Dee leading now and Jack climbing under his kids, all four appendages on the mountain.

He was reaching for the next handhold when Dee said, “Holy shit, Jack.”

“What?”

“Have you looked down?”

He looked down. The sweep of the mountain falling away beneath them nothing short of a total mindfuck.

“That looks way worse than it is,” Jack said, though he felt like he was going to be sick. He shut his eyes and leaned into the mountain, clutching it, his chest heaving against the rock. “Just keep climbing,” he said. “Don’t look down if it bothers you.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Cole said.

“Good, but you be as careful as can be,” Jack said. “Na?”

“I’m fucking freaked.”

“I know it’s scary, but a little less profanity, angel.”

“I can’t do this, Jack. There’s no way.”

“Dee, you want to know something?”

“What?”

“We’re kicking ass. Think of all we’ve been through since-”

“This is the worst.”

“Worse than getting shot at? Than some of the things we’ve seen?”

“For me it is. I’ve had nightmares about this before. Being stuck on a cliff.”

“Well, we aren’t stuck, and we have to get over this mountain. That’s all there is to it.”

“My legs are shaking, Jack.”

“You can do this. You have to do this.”

They started to climb again, Jack hanging back, watching their progression, monitoring how comfortable Naomi and Cole looked on the rock, telling them how good they were doing and struggling to hide his own fear.

It was almost worse looking up the mountain. He couldn’t see the spires anymore, had no idea how close or far they were from the summit ridge. It was just cold, fissured rock and the deep blue sky above it all and a blinding cornice of sunshine.

He worked his way up a series of ledges in a wide dihedral, and it occurred to him as he climbed that even if they wanted to, going back down now would be an impossibility.

“We taking a rest?” he asked.

His family stood just above him on a grassy ledge and he climbed the last few feet to them.

“This is bad, Jack.”

“What?”

“This.” She patted the vertical rock. “It just got steeper.”

“There’s another way up,” he said. “Has to be.” He stepped around Naomi and followed the ledge along the rockface, which slimmed down after twenty feet to a lip barely sufficient to support the toes of his shoes.

He sidestepped back over to them. “That way’s no good,” he said, staring up the rock that Dee leaned against. Certainly steeper than anything they’d been on thus far, but the handholds and footholds were prominent, and twelve feet above, a wide crack opened.

“I think we can climb this,” he said.

“Are you crazy?”

“Watch.”

He reached up, slid his fingers into a crack, and pulled himself up. Jammed his foot into a ledge.

“There’s no way, Jack.”

“This really isn’t bad,” he said, though he could feel the threat of a tremor in his right leg, which at the moment, held all of his weight. He lifted his left foot onto a bulging rock and went for another handhold. Seven feet above the grassy ledge now and the world tilting, an ocean of open air underneath him.

Nothing to do but keep climbing.

The next move brought him to the crack and he squeezed into a space no larger than a coffin.

“Send the kids up,” he said.

“Jack, come on.”

“Just do it, Dee. Cole, can you climb to me, buddy?”

“If they fall-”

“No one’s going to fall. Don’t even put that thought in their head.”

“I can do it, Mom.”

Cole reached up, pulled himself onto the rock. “Spot him, Dee.”

“No, Cole.”

“You have to let him go.”

She cried as she raised her arms, said, “Move out of the way, Na, in case he slips. I don’t want him knocking you off the mountain. Cole, you be so careful, baby.”

The boy moved up the rock as if he had no concept of the price for falling. Jack on his knees in the nook, stretching his right arm down as the boy came within range.

“Cole, grab my hand, and I’ll pull you up.”

Cole reached.

Jack got a solid grasp on his wrist, heaved his boy up the rest of the way.

With the cumbersome pack and the shotgun tied to it, the two of them took up every square inch of the recess.

“Dee, you still have the Glock, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I have to get rid of this pack.”

“Jack, no, it has our tent, our sleeping bags, our-”

“I know, believe me. Last thing I want to do, but I can’t move in this crack with the pack on, and I’ve almost fallen twice because of it getting caught up.”

He unhooked the hip belt.

“Jack, please. Think about this.”

“I have.”

“We have to have a tent.”

He unclipped the chest strap.

“We’ll make do.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Look out, both of you.” He slid out of the shoulder straps and slung the pack hard enough to clear the ledge.

It fell uninterrupted for a hundred and fifty feet, then struck rock, then bounced through a series of echoing ricochets for another four hundred feet until it vanished in the upper realm of the boulder field, the delayed sound of its ongoing fall still audible.

“All right, Naomi,” Jack said, “it’s all you.”

She began to climb, either more careful or less sure of herself than Cole.

Halfway to the crack, she froze.

“I’m stuck,” she said.

“You’re not stuck. There’s a great handhold a couple feet up.”

“I can’t hold on much longer. My fingers are-”

“Listen to me, Na. Reach above you and pull yourself up. If you get to that point, I can grab you.”

She looked up at him, tears streaming from the corners of her eyes and so much fear, her entire body trembling, knuckles blanching from the sheer strain of clutching the rock.

“I’m slipping, Daddy.”

“Naomi. Reach up right now or you’re going to fall.”

She lunged for the handhold, and Jack saw her miss it, fingers dancing across smooth rock. He reached so far down he nearly fell out of the nook, catching her wrist as she came off the mountain, her feet dangling over the ledge, one hundred and five pounds slowly tugging Jack’s shoulder out of socket and dragging him off the nook.