Run - Blake Crouch [11]
Jack said, “Give me your BlackBerry, Na.”
“Why? There’s no signal.”
“I want it fully charged in case we get one.”
She handed it up between the seats.
“I’m really worried about you, Na,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t been able to send a text in two days. I can’t imagine the withdrawal you’re going through.”
Jack saw Dee smile.
“You’re such a retard, Dad.”
They climbed through high desert as the road followed the course of a river. Dee turned on the radio, let it seek the AM dial—nothing but static—and FM landed just one station, an NPR affiliate out of southwest Colorado that had diverged markedly from its standard programming. A young man read names and addresses over the airwaves.
Jack slammed the palm of his hand into the radio.
The volume spiked, the station changed, the car filled with blaring static.
Twenty miles ahead, out of a valley tucked into the juniper-covered foothills, reams of smoke lifted into the blue October sky.
When the kids were younger, they had vacationed in this tourist town—ski trips after Christmas, autumn driving tours to see the aspen leaves, the long holiday weekends that framed their summers.
“Let’s not go through there,” Dee said.
A few miles ahead, everything appeared to be burning.
“I think we should try to get through,” he said. “This is a good route. Not too many people live in these mountains.”
Power lines had been cut down to block the business route, forcing Jack to detour up Main Avenue, and when they turned into the historic district, Dee said, “Jesus.” Everything smoking, getting ready to burn or burning or burned already. Broken glass on the street. Fire hydrants launching arcs of white spray. Tendrils of black smoke seething through the door- and window-frames of the hotel where they used to stay—a redbrick relic from the mining era. Two blocks down the smoke thickened enough to blot out the sky. Orange fire raged through the exploded third-floor windows of an apartment building, and the canopies of the red oaks that lined the sidewalks flamed like torches.
“Unbelievable,” Dee said.
The kids stared out their windows, speechless.
Jack’s eyes burned.
He said, “We’re getting a lot of smoke in here.”
The windows blew out of a luxury Hummer on the next block. Flames engulfed it.
“Go faster, Jack.”
Cole started coughing.
Dee looked back between the front seats. “Pull your shirt over your mouth and breathe through it. Both of you.”
“Are you doing it too, Mama?”
“Yes.”
“What about Daddy?”
“He will if he can. He needs his hands to drive right now.”
They passed through a wall of smoke, the world outside the windows grayish white, all things obscured. They rolled through an intersection under dark traffic signals.
“Look out, Jack.”
“I see it.”
He steered around a FedEx truck that had been abandoned in the middle of the street, its left turn signal still blinking, though at half-speed, like a heart with barely any beat left in it. Cole coughed again.
They emerged from the smoke.
Jack slowed the car, said, “Close your eyes, kids.”
Cole through his shirt: “Why?”
“Because I told you to.”
“What is it?”
Jack brought the Land Rover to a full stop. An ember blew in through Dee’s window and alighted upon the dash, smoldering into the plastic. Ash fell on the windshield like charcoal snow. He looked back at his children.
“I don’t want you to see what’s up ahead.”
“Is it something bad?” Cole said.
“Yes, it’s something very bad.”
“But you’re going to see it.”
“I have to see it because I’m driving. If I shut my eyes, we’ll wreck. But I don’t want to see it. Mama’s going to close her eyes, too.”
“Just say what it is.”
Jack could see Naomi already straining to peer around her mother’s seat.
“Is it dead people?” Cole asked.
“Yes.”
“I want to