Run - Blake Crouch [102]
He made a slow scan of the horizon.
A pickup truck scrolled into view—old, beat-to-hell Chevy with equal parts paint and rust. He lowered the binoculars to gauge the true distance—a mile, possibly more—then glassed the truck again.
A woman stood in the bed staring through the scope of a high-powered rifle that she’d braced against the roof. The rifle bucked, soundless. A bullet hit the other side of the Cherokee with a hard ping, like it had struck one of the wheels.
The report was slow in reaching him.
While the woman loaded another long, brass-tipped cartridge, he panned down the prairie, starting when he saw them. The men already so close they took up the entire sphere of magnification—three of them in hunting camouflage, a man perhaps five years his senior and two teenagers who shared a strong resemblance.
The teen boys carried semiautomatic pistols and the man a double-barreled shotgun, their faces flushed from running.
Jack lowered the binoculars. They were less than a hundred yards away. No idea how he’d missed them.
He took up one of the machine guns wondering how much ammo remained.
Looked over at Dee, the children huddled around her.
“They’re coming, Dee.”
“How many?” she asked.
“Three of them.”
“I can help shoot,” Cole said.
“I need you to stay with Mama.”
Jack crouched behind the rear, right wheel, fingering the trigger.
“Is this it, Jack?”
“No, this is not it.”
He eased up until he could just see through the panels of spiderwebbed glass. The footsteps had become audible, swishing through the grass. The men would be upon them in seconds.
He crouched back down behind the tire.
Shut his eyes, took three deep breaths.
Came suddenly to his feet and swung out around the corner of the Jeep with the AR-15 shouldered. The three men already scrambling to raise their weapons vanished behind the burst of fire, the steady recoil driving into his shoulder, and then the magazine was evacuated, the barrel smoking, the men cut down fifteen feet from the Jeep.
A bullet struck the taillight by Jack’s leg, and he was back around the other side of the Jeep by the time the gunshot reached them.
“Are they dead, Daddy?”
“Yes.”
He lifted the other machine gun out of the grass.
“That one’s empty,” Dee said. “We’re out.”
He couldn’t stand the pain in her voice.
Knelt down behind the tire again and raised the binoculars. The light was going fast. Took him a moment to find the pickup truck again, and when he had, it wasn’t alone. Two other trucks had pulled up alongside it, their doors thrown open, and now he counted eight people, heavily-armed, in heated discussion.
“What?” Dee said. “What do you see? Jack.”
“There’s eight of them now. Three trucks.”
“We have to go.”
“Where, Dee? We’d get a mile, maybe two, before we broke down again.”
“Then what, Jack?”
“We fight.”
The people were climbing back into the trucks now.
“They’re coming,” he said.
Dee was struggling to sit up.
“You shouldn’t be moving,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. Give me a hand.”
“Dee, you shouldn’t—”
“Give me your fucking hand.” He pulled her onto her feet, her right pant leg dark with blood. She used him for support, groaning as she limped over to the Jeep and opened the driver side door.
She climbed in behind the steering wheel.
“Dee, the car will break down. We are not—”
“I know we’re not.”
He felt something inside of him unhook.
“No.”
Dee looked past him to her daughter. “Naomi, take Cole and gather up the weapons from the dead men.”
“Mom.”
“Right. Now.” When the children were gone, she said, “I can’t walk, Jack. It would be so easy for me to bleed out.”
“We’re going to get you help.”
“We’re all going to be dead in five minutes.”
“Dee—”
“Listen to me. It’s dusk. Soon, it’ll be night. Let me—”
“No, Dee—”
“Let me take the Jeep. Those trucks will follow my lights. Think they’re chasing us all down. By the time they catch up to me, it’ll be dark, and you and the kids—” her voice broke “—you’ll be safe.”
“But we’re almost there, baby.”
“You run all night, Jack. Promise me you won’t stop.”
Over the roof