Run - Blake Crouch [86]
Donald Walter Massey.
Angela Jacobs-Massey.
Jack looked at Donald.
“Jesus Christ.”
They went on through the mountains, Jack trying to pay attention to what was coming in the distance, but all he could think about was Donald, wondering what had happened back down the road. Couldn’t imagine the man fleeing. He wouldn’t have left his family. Had the affected purposely left him alive then? Murdered his family in front of him and then sent him down the highway on foot?
Jack blinked the tears out of his eyes.
He looked over at the man who now leaned against the door. That look in his face like he’d just been hollowed out. Jack wanting to tell him that he’d taken care of their bodies, or at least done what he could, shown them respect. He wanted to say something beautiful and profound and comforting, about how even in all this horror, there were things between people who loved each other that couldn’t be touched, that lived through pain, torture, separation, even death. He thought he still believed that. But he didn’t say anything. Just reached over and laced his fingers through Donald’s, which barely released their incomprehensible store of tension, and Jack held the man’s hand as he drove them down out of the mountains, and he did not let go.
In the early evening, the city lay several miles in the distance. The sun low over the plains beyond. Everything bright, golden. The way Jack dreamed of this place.
He disengaged his hand from Donald’s, the man still sleeping against the door.
The gas gauge needle hovered over the empty slash.
He was debating whether to head into town or take the bypass when he saw the first sign—a billboard that had once advertised a casino, now whitewashed and covered in black writing:
YOU ARE NOW UNDER SNIPER SURVEILLANCE
STOP IN THE NEXT 400 YARDS
Jack took his foot off the gas.
Another billboard, same side of the road, one hundred yards further down.
300 YARDS TO STOP
COMPLY OR YOU WILL BE SHOT
Jack looked in the rearview mirror, saw several vehicles trailing him, no idea where they’d come from.
200 YARDS
TURN OFF YOUR VEHICLE AND…
He could see a roadblock a quarter mile in the distance, set up at a fork in the highway.
More than twenty cars and trucks. Sand bags. Staunch artillery.
He was passing vehicles now on the shoulder that had been shot to hell and burned.
DO NOT FUCKING MOVE
The cars behind him were close now, one of them a Jeep Grand Cherokee with the roof cut out and two men with machine guns standing on the back seat, ready to unload.
Jack brought the minivan to a full stop, put it in park, and turned off the engine.
The Jeep hung back thirty yards.
Jack looked over at Donald, started to rouse him, then thought, Why wake the man just to be killed?
Six heavily-armed men in body armor strode up the middle of the highway toward the minivan, one of them dragging an emaciated man along by a leash in one hand, the other holding a cattle prod.
They didn’t strike Jack as military, didn’t carry themselves so cocksure.
As if it had been scripted, the greeting party stopped thirty yards out from the front bumper of the minivan, and the tallest of the bunch raised a bullhorn to his mouth.
“Both of you, out of the car.”
Jack grabbed Donald’s arm. “Come on, we have to get out.”
The man wouldn’t move.
“Donald.”
“You have five seconds before we open fire.”
Jack opened his door and stepped out into the highway with his hands raised.
“You in the car, get out or—”
“He doesn’t hear you,” Jack yelled. “His mind is gone.”
“Lay down on your stomach.”
Jack got down onto his knees and then prostrated himself across the rough, sun-warmed pavement. Listened to the sound of their footsteps coming toward him, and he didn’t dare move or even raise his head to watch them approach. Just lay there with his heart throbbing against the road, wondering, from a strangely