Run - Blake Crouch [65]
“I can’t fit you all inside.”
“Then take my children.”
“Mom, no.”
“Shut up, Na. Would you? Please?”
Ed took out his revolver.
“I need you out of my Jeep right now. I’ve given you some of my food, my water. I’ll even leave a jug with you, but I cannot take you.”
Dee stared down at her filthy, stinking shoes.
“We’ll die out here.”
“And we may all die if you come with me. Now get out of there. I have to go.”
Dee stood watching the Jeep move across the meadow and into the road, heard the engine rev, saw its taillights wink out, listening as it sped away from them into the darkness.
Naomi was crying. “You should’ve shot him, Mom. You had him back there with his gun on the ground and you just let him—”
“He’s not a bad man, Na.”
“We’re going to die now.”
“He wasn’t trying to hurt us. You want to live in a world where we have to kill innocent people to survive? I won’t do that. Not even for you and Cole. There’s things worse than dying, and for me, that’s one of them.”
Cole said, “Listen.”
An engine was approaching. The shadow of that Jeep reappeared and shot out a triangle of light as it entered the meadow.
The engine cut off.
Ed climbed out.
“I’m not happy about this,” he said, walking around to the back, popping the hatch. “Not one goddamn bit. So don’t say anything, for God’s sake don’t thank me. Just get over here and help me make some room.”
Ed loaded what would fit into the cargo area and made just enough room for Naomi and Cole in the backseat. Dee climbed in up front, buckled herself in, and Ed cranked the engine. Heat rushed out of the vents. The digital clock read 2:59 a.m. Ed put the car into gear and eased across the meadow, over the shoulder, back onto the road.
Turned on the stereo as he accelerated.
Dirty blues blasting from the speakers: “She’s a kindhearted woman, she studies evil all the time/She’s a kindhearted woman, she studies evil all the time/You well’s to kill me, as to have it on your mind.”
Dee leaned against the window, watched the trees rush by. Felt so strange to be moving this fast again, the pavement streaming under the tires. The road snaked down through the spruce forest on a steep descent from the pass and her ears kept popping and clogging, the world loud, then muffled, then loud again when she swallowed. With the moon full and high, it struck the road like sunlight and made shadows of the trees. The view to the west was long, and through the windshield she could see the massive skyline of the Tetons.
Dee glanced back between the front seats—Cole and Naomi sleeping sprawled across each other. She reached over, touched Ed’s shoulder.
“You saved our lives.”
“What’d I say about thanking me?”
“I’m not thanking you, just stating a fact.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to, that’s the thing. I’m a supremely selfish fuck.”
Dee tilted her seat back. “Let me know if you want me to drive.”
He grunted, his hands tapping time to the blues, Dee wondering if he’d have sung along if they weren’t in the car with him.
“You can sing if you want,” she said. “Won’t bother us.”
“Might want to be more careful about what you offer in the future,” he said, and started to sing.
His voice was awful.
She dozed against the window, dipping in and out of dream fragments that she couldn’t quite commit herself to before settling finally into a hard and dreamless sleep.
Next time she woke, it was 5:02 a.m.
Still dark out the windows except where the faintest purple had begun to tint the eastern sky. Naomi and Cole slept. The music had stopped.
“Want me to drive for a bit so you can sleep?”
“No, I was going to stop a few miles ahead anyway. Get us off the road for the daylight hours.”
THE lodge towered like a mountain against the predawn sky. They pulled under the front portico. The kids were stirring, woken by the cessation of movement. Ed turned off the engine and stepped out and opened the back hatch. Took a flashlight from one of the supply boxes.
The red double doors stood ajar and they pushed through them.
Ed flicked on the flashlight.
“Anybody here?” His voice echoed through the