Run - Blake Crouch [20]
“I like this better than the tomatoes and rice,” Cole said. “I could eat this every day.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Dee said.
Jack waved off his turn with the pot and stood up. He walked down to the edge and dipped his fingers in the water.
“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