Run - Blake Crouch [47]
He helped Naomi through and then Dee. Lowered the window back and pulled his wife in close so he could whisper in her ear.
“We can’t leave without our packs. They’re in the back of the Rover, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait for me to call you over.”
Jack crept across the grass and peered around the corner of the cabin.
The meadow stretched into darkness.
No wind. No moon. No movement.
He sprinted twenty yards to the shed and crouched down behind it, straining to listen and hearing nothing but the internal combustion of his heart.
Jack blew a sharp, stifled whistle, then watched as Dee and the kids emerged from the shadows behind the cabin, running toward him, their pants swishing in the grass for eight agonizing seconds before they reached him.
“Did I do good?” Cole asked.
“You did great. Dee, I’m going around to the front of the shed to get our packs. If something goes wrong, you hear gunshots, me yelling, whatever, take the kids into the woods, all the way back to the stream. I’ll be able to find you there.”
He rose to his feet, moved along the backside of the shed, the shotgun in one hand, flashlight in the other. Rounded the corner, the driveway looming just ahead. He jogged the edge of the woods until he came to it. The single lane descended out of meager starlight into the darkness of the aspen grove, and he followed it down until he came around the first hairpin turn. A Suburban blocked the way, its color indeterminate in the lowlight. A Datsun pickup truck behind it. He put a light through the glass and checked the ignitions of both vehicles. No keys. No idea how to hotwire a car.
He ran back up the driveway. After several minutes in the woods, the clearing appeared almost bright. Stood there for a moment scanning the meadow and the trees around the periphery, but the shadows kept their secrets so well he couldn’t even see his family in the darkness behind the shed.
Twenty strides brought him to the side of it.
He swung around the corner and got his hand on the doorknob and the hinges ground together with a rusty shriek as he slipped inside.
A wave of disorientation accompanied the absolute, unflinching darkness.
Jack knelt down, laid the shotgun in the dirt, and fumbled with the head of the Maglite, trying to turn it on.
Several feet away, a shuffle in the dirt.
Jack froze, bracing against a shot of liquid fear that made his scalp tingle and his throat constrict, thinking it could be a rodent or some tool that had shifted. Or someone pointing a gun at him. Or his frazzled imagination.
Two choices. See it or shoot it.
He lowered the flashlight back onto the dirt floor. As he felt around for the shotgun, a motor coughed ten feet away, like someone had pulled a start rope. Then it sputtered again and the shed filled with the reek of gas and the banshee-wail of a two-stroke. A small LED light cut on—affixed to the handle with black electrical tape—and it sent out a schizophrenic beam that hit the Rover, the shed walls, and the large, bearded man who came at Jack with the screaming chainsaw, gripped like a bat, spring-loaded to swing.
Jack grabbed the shotgun and jacked a shell as the man reached him, no time to stand or brace.
The blast knocked Jack onto his back in the dirt, and at point-blank range, cut the ski-jacketed man in half at the waist.
Jack clambered back onto his feet, pumped the shotgun again, lifted the Maglite, and screwed the bulb to life.
The man still clutched the idling chainsaw, but only in one hand, having nearly severed his right leg at the knee.
Jack leaned down and flipped the kill switch.
In the renewed silence, the man emitted desperate drowning noises. Over them, Jack could hear Dee calling his name through the back wall of the shed. He went to it and put his mouth to the wood and said, “I’m okay. Go where we talked about right now. There’s more of them.”
He hurried over to the Rover and lifted his pack out of the cargo area, trying to recall what all it held, if it might be worth rifling through Dee’s pack or bringing it too, but there wasn’t