Run - Blake Crouch [3]
They listened as she read another name, another address over the radio.
Jack said, “They’ve lost their fucking minds.”
Dee turned off the tap, screwed a cap onto the final jug. “You think anyone’s actually acting on that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“I’ll take these jugs out to the car. Go make sure the kids are getting packed.”
Jack hit the light switch out of habit, but when he opened the door, the garage remained dark. He shined the flashlight on the four steps that dropped out of the utility room. The smooth concrete was cold through his socks. He popped the hatch to the cargo area, illumination flooding out of the overhead dome lights into the two-car garage. He set the first jug of water in the back of the Land Rover Discovery. Their backpacks and camping equipment hung from hooks over the chest freezer, and he lifted them down off the wall. Pristine, unblemished by even a speck of trail dust. Four never-slept-in sleeping bags dangled from the ceiling in mesh sacks. He dragged a workbench over from the red Craftsman tool drawer and climbed up to take them down. Dee had been begging for a family camping trip ever since he’d purchased three thousand dollars’ worth of backpacking gear, and he’d fully intended for their family to spend every other weekend in the mountains or the desert. But two years had passed, and life had happened, priorities changed. The gas stove and water filter hadn’t even been liberated from their packaging, which still bore price tags.
Inside the house, Dee released a loud gasp. He grabbed the flashlight, negotiated the sprawl of backpacks and sleeping bags, and bolted up the steps and through the door into the utility room. Past the washer and dryer, back into the kitchen. Naomi and his seven-year-old son, Cole, stood at the opening to the hallway, their faces all warmth and shadow in the candlelight, watching their mother at the sink.
Jack shined the light on Dee—her face streaked with tears, body visibly shaking.
She pointed at the radio.
“They just read off Marty Anderson’s name. They’re going through the humanities department, Jack.”
“Turn it up.”
“Jim Barbour is a professor of religious studies at the University of New Mexico.” The old woman on the radio spoke slowly and with precision. “His address is Two Carpenter Court. Those of you near campus, go now, and while you’re in the neighborhood, stop by the home of Jack Colclough.”
“Dad—”
“Shhh.”
“—a professor of philosophy at UNM.”
“Oh my God.”
“Shhh.”
“—lives at fourteen, fourteen Arroyo Way. Repeat. Fourteen, fourteen Arroyo Way. Go now.”
“Oh my God, Jack. Oh my God.”
“Get the food in the back of the car.”
“This is not—”
“Listen to me. Get the food in the back of the car. Naomi, bring yours and Cole’s clothes out to the garage. I’ll meet you all there in one minute.”
He ran down the hall, his sock feet skidding across the dusty hardwood floor as he rounded the turn into the master bedroom. Clothes everywhere. Drawers evacuated from a pair of dressers. Sweaters spilling out of the oak chest at the foot of the bed. Into the walk-in closet, stepping on shoes and winter coats and handbags long gone out of vogue. He reached for the highest shelf on the back wall, fingers touching the hard plastic case and two small boxes, which he crammed into the pockets of his khaki slacks.
He returned to the bedroom, dropped to his knees, his stomach, crawling under the bed frame until he grasped the steel barrel of the Mossberg, loaded and trigger-locked.
Then back on his feet, down the hall, through the kitchen, the living room, foyer, right up to the front door, the lightbeam crossing adobe walls covered in photographs of his smiling family—vacations and holidays from another lifetime. Beside the door, from a table of wrought iron and glass, he grabbed his keys, his wallet, even his phone, though there’d been no signal in two days. Jammed his feet into a pair of trail shoes still caked with mud from his last run in the Bosque, not even a week ago. He didn’t realize how badly his hands were shaking