Run - Blake Crouch [59]
They spent the night inside one of the sixty-foot lengths of pipe, Jack sitting by the opening watching the snow come down until the light was gone. Listening to Dee whisper to Cole, the boy crying, mumbling gibberish, delirious with fever. Considering the state of their distressed little nation, he had no intention of falling asleep, but he shut his eyes just for a moment and
WHEN he opened them again, it was light out and the sky bright blue through the spruce trees and a half foot of fresh snow on the ground.
Naomi’s snoring echoed through the pipe.
He looked over at Dee who was awake and still holding Cole.
She said, “His fever broke about an hour ago.”
Had he been standing, the relief would have knocked Jack over.
“Did you even sleep?” he asked.
She shook her head. “But I can feel it coming now.”
Jack looked outside, snow glittering in the early sunlight. “I’m going to have a look around.”
“Food today,” she said.
“What?”
“One way or another, we have to find some food. Today. It’ll have been five days tonight since we last ate, and at some point in the not too distant, we won’t have the strength to keep moving. Our bodies just cannot continue to perform like this.”
He looked past Dee toward his daughter, sleeping in the shadows. “Na’s okay?”
“She’s okay.”
“You?”
Dee broke a smile. “I’ve lost probably twenty, twenty-five pounds these last three weeks. I can’t stop thinking how hot I’d look in a little bikini.”
Jack crossed the construction site, climbed up onto the track of the crane. The door had been left unlocked and he scoured the cab. Found three balled-up potato chip bags and a paper cup filled a quarter of the way with what appeared to be frozen cola.
He set the cup in the sun and moved back between the rows of stacked pipe.
The road was covered in snow.
He went up the hill, inhaling deep shots of freezing, snow-cleansed air. His stomach groaned. It felt good to be up early and walking in the woods with the sun streaming through the trees.
Someone shouted.
Jack stopped in the road, glanced back, but the sound hadn’t come from the construction site.
More voices spilled down through the trees.
He deliberated for three seconds, then started up the road, fighting for traction as he sprinted through powder.
The voices getting louder.
When he came around the next curve, there was a green sign that read “TOGWOTEE PASS, ELEV 9658.”
In the distance, a lodge. Gas station. Tiny cabins off in the spruce trees.
The parking lot was crowded with an array of vehicles—dozen civilian cars and SUVs, three Humvees, two armored personnel carriers, one Stryker, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and a big rig with two Red Cross insignias emblazoned on the trailer that framed the words, “Refugee Relief.”
Jack headed toward a group of men in woodland camo BDUs standing by the gas pumps. One of them spotted him, and without a word to the others, shouldered his M16 which had been fitted with a night-scope. The rest of the men saw his reaction, drew their own weapons, and turned to face Jack.
He stopped, staring at five men pointing a variety of firearms in his direction, and the first thing to cross his mind was that it had been nine days since they’d fled the cabin, and how strange it felt to see people who weren’t his family again.
“Where’d you come from?”
Jack bent over to catch his breath, pointed back down the road. The man closest to him was the one who’d spoken. A redhead. Very pale. Freckled. Looked to be his age, his height, but with thirty added pounds of muscle and only a two-day beard. He pointed a Sig Sauer at Jack’s face.
Said, “You’re on foot?”
“Yes.”
“Carrying any weapons?” Jack had to think, realized he’d left the Glock back at the pipe with Dee, and considering the firepower on hand, figured that was probably a good thing.
“No, nothing.”
The man waved a hand toward the others and they lowered their machine guns.
“Where you from?”
Jack straightened. “Albuquerque. Been hiking through the mountains last week