Run - Blake Crouch [85]
The man just stood there. His entire body trembling slightly. Like there was a cataclysm underway deep in his core.
Jack touched the man’s bare arm where the shirt sleeve had been torn away, felt the sun’s accumulation of heat radiating from it.
“You should come with me. You’ll die out here.”
He escorted the man to the passenger side and installed him in the front seat.
“Sorry about the smell,” Jack said. “It ain’t pretty, but it beats walking.”
The man seemed not to notice.
Jack buckled him in and closed the door.
They sped down the abbreviated main street of another slaughtered town. Mountains to the north, and the road climbed into them. Jack glanced over at the man, saw him touching the matter on his window, running his finger through it, smearing it across the glass. A bag of potato chips and a candy bar sat in his lap, unopened, unacknowledged.
“I’m Jack, by the way,” he said. “What’s your name?”
The man looked at him as if he either didn’t know or couldn’t bring himself to say. His wallet bulged out of the side pocket of his slacks, and Jack reached over, tugged it out, flipped it open.
“Donald Massey, of Provo, Utah. Good to meet you, Donald. I’m from Albuquerque.”
Donald made no response.
“Aren’t you hungry? Here.” Jack reached over and took the candy bar out of Donald’s lap, ripped open the packaging. He slid the bar into Donald’s grasp, but the man just stared at it.
“Do you want to listen to some music?”
Jack turned on the Beach Boys.
They rode up into the mountains, Jack hating to be on a winding road again. With all these blind corners, you could roll up on a roadblock before you knew what hit you.
In the early afternoon, they passed through a mountain village that was probably very much a ghost town before anyone had bothered to burn it. A few dozen houses. Couple buildings on the main strip. Evergreen trees in the fields and on the hills, the smell of them coming through the dashboard vents, a welcome change.
On the north side of town, Jack pulled over and turned off the engine. When he opened the door, he could hear the running water in the trees and smell its sweetness.
“You need to drink something, Donald,” Jack said.
The man just stared through the windshield.
Jack lifted a travel mug out of the center console.
Jack rinsed the residue of ancient coffee out of the mug and filled it with water from the creek.
Headed back to the van, opened Donald’s door.
“It’s really good,” Jack said.
He held the mug to Donald’s sun-blasted lips and tilted. Most of the water ran down the man’s chest under his shirt, but he inadvertently swallowed some of it.
Jack tried to give him a little more, but the man was disinterested.
“We’ll reach Great Falls in the afternoon,” Jack said. “It’s a big city. I used to live there.”
Impossible to know if the man registered a word he was saying.
“I got separated from my family five days ago.” Jack glanced at the man’s left ring finger, saw a gold wedding band. “Were you with your family, Donald?”
No response.
Jack sipped the water, grains of sand from the creek bed deposited on the tip of his tongue.
“Let me guess what you do for a living. My wife and I used to play this game all the time.” Jack studied the man’s leather clogs—nothing much to look at now, but they suggested wealth. Couple hundred dollars off the shelf. Jack inspected the tag on the back of the man’s collar. “Brooks Brothers. All right.” He looked at Donald’s hands. Covered in blood and still clutched like claws, but he could tell they weren’t the hands of a man who earned his living working outdoors. “You strike me as an ad man,” Jack said. “Am I right? You work in an advertising and marketing firm in Provo?”
Nothing.
“I bet you’d never guess my vocation. Tell you what. I’ll give you three…”
Jack stopped. Felt the cold premonition of having missed something lifting out of his gut. He almost didn’t want to know, but the fear couldn’t touch his curiosity.
He opened the glove compartment, rifled through a stack of yellow napkins, plastic silverware, bank