Run - Blake Crouch [58]
“I have no idea. Cole, what light do you mean? Do we have it around any of us? Me or your mother or sister?”
“No.”
“Do you have it around you?”
The boy was quiet for a moment. “Yes.”
“What does it look like?”
“Like white light around my head and my shoulders.”
“Why is it around you and not us?”
“Because you didn’t see the lights. They didn’t fall on you.”
“Remember when I asked you if you felt different after the aurora?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any bad feelings toward any of us right now?”
“No, Daddy.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I don’t want to sleep in here with him.”
“Stop it, Naomi. He’s your brother.”
“He’s affected. He saw the lights like the rest of those crazy—”
“He’s a child.”
“So what?”
“Has he tried to hurt you or any of us?”
“No.”
“So maybe it doesn’t affect children the same way.”
“Why would that be?” Dee asked.
“I don’t know. Because they’re innocent?”
Cole began to cry. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
“I know you don’t,” Jack said, and he pulled the boy into his arms.
Jack woke several hours later to Cole moaning.
“Dee?”
“What is it?”
Still couldn’t see a thing in the dark.
“Something’s wrong with Cole. He’s shivering.”
Dee’s hand slid over his and onto the boy’s face.
“Oh, Jesus, he’s burning up.”
“Why’s he shaking?”
“He has the chills. Let me have him.”
She took Cole into her arms and rocked him and hushed him and Jack lay in the dirt as the sound of rain striking the tin roof tried to carry him off.
COLE looked pale in the gray dawnlight that filtered into the ruins of the stable.
Jack said, “What is it do you think?”
“I can’t tell if it’s viral or bacterial, but it’s getting worse.”
“We’ll stay here for the day. Let him rest.”
“A fever is very dehydrating. He needs water.”
“You want to keep moving?”
“I think we have to.”
“What else can we do for him?”
Tears welling, she shook her head. “Let’s try to find some water, then get him someplace warm and dry. That’s all we can do.”
Dark swollen clouds.
Cold.
Everything wet and dripping.
Jack carried Cole in his arms.
The boy had woken but his eyes were milky and unfocused. Not present.
They went down through the pine forest to the road.
The first mile was a straight and steady climb. Then the road curved through a series of switchbacks, and when Jack looked down again, Cole was sleeping.
In the bend of the next turn, he stopped and squatted down in the road, keeping Cole’s head supported so he wouldn’t wake.
“There’s no way,” Jack said. “I could carry him on my shoulders for a little while longer, but not like this.”
“We can rest,” Dee said.
“Resting isn’t going to make my arms stronger. He weighs fifty-four pounds. I just can’t physically hold him.”
He looked around. They had hiked up into snow—a sloppy inch of it upon everything except the asphalt, the evergreen branches dipping and bouncing back as the snow sloughed off.
“Jack, what do you—”
“Just let me rest for a minute. He’s sleeping, and I don’t want to wake him.”
They sat in the road. Everything still except the melting snow. The wind in the spruce trees. Cole shivered in his sleep and Jack wrapped his jacket around him. Every five minutes, Dee would lay her hand against the boy’s forehead.
Naomi asked, “Is he going to die?”
“Of course not,” Jack said.
They ate enough snow to quench their thirst and make them all much colder, and Jack fed Cole pieces of slush. After an hour, they struggled onto their feet and went on. The road kept climbing. Soon there was slush on the pavement, then snow. Instead of cradling him, Jack found he could manage the weight better by carrying Cole draped over his left shoulder. They would walk a ways and then stop and start up again, the periods of walking getting shorter, the rests longer.
It snowed off and on through the day, the road leading them back up into high country. Toward late afternoon, they came across a deserted construction site, Jack’s heart lifting at the prospect of finding a pickup truck or even a forklift, but the only motorized equipment left behind had been a small crane, its