Run - Blake Crouch [90]
Jack picked a cigar box off the floor, raised the lid.
Markers, pastel pencils, miniature bottles of acrylic paint, charcoal, brushes, erasers, and a sterling silver-etched heart locket that only ten-year-old boys give to ten-year-old girls.
Couldn’t bring himself to open it.
He was all morning writing her name. Big, block letters on the sliding door, the black Sharpies showing up well on the minivan’s white paint. He used up three markers coloring in the letters, then took a bottle of white acrylic paint and brushed her name onto the dark plate glass windows of the surrounding buildings.
Walked out into the street to test the visibility.
Dee’s name couldn’t be missed, even from fifty yards away.
By early afternoon a light mist was falling, and he sat in the front seat behind the wheel, watching the beads of water populate the glass.
Drifted off and when he woke again it was dark and a harder rain falling. He crawled into the very back and stretched out across the young girl’s seat. Wrapped himself in a blanket that still carried her smell. Hungry but he thought he should start rationing his bag of junk food, which contained only twelve packages when he’d taken inventory this morning.
The rainfall on the minivan roof was a good sound. He thought about his family until it hurt too much, and then he went to sleep.
THUNDER is what it sounded like in his half-conscious state, and it made the windows tremble. Jack tugged the blanket away from his face, lay there listening to see if it would come again, thinking he might’ve dreamed it.
It came again. Not thunder.
This was a deeper, focused sound, and it didn’t roll across the sky.
He crawled out of the backseat and pulled open the side door.
Walked through the plaza into the street.
Late morning. A low cloud deck. The pavement wet.
He heard it again. Far off. Perhaps beyond the city. He’d never heard it before, not in real life, but he knew it was the sound of bombs exploding.
The plate glass on the first floor of the Wells Fargo bank had been smashed out some time ago. Jack stepped through into the lobby. Dark, silent. He looked at the vacant bank teller stations. The velvet rope lines. Signs for commercial and residential mortgage departments. A water fountain stood against the wall between the men’s and women’s restrooms. He walked over and turned the knob. Nothing. He went into the women’s restroom and tried the faucet. Dry. There was water in the toilets, but he wasn’t at that point just yet. Comforting to know it was here, though.
He crossed the plaza to the Davidson Building. The entrance doors were locked. The glass intact. He uprooted a baby fir tree from a concrete planter which must have weighed fifty or sixty pounds. When he’d finally hoisted it up, he ran toward the doors and heaved the planter at the glass like an oversize shot put.
Straight through. Shattered across the marble floor.
He took his time stripping branches from the fir tree, relieved just to have something to occupy his mind. When he’d finished, he unbuttoned his outer shirt and tore it into long strips. Raised the hood of the minivan, unscrewed the cap to the oil tank, dipped the pieces of his shirt inside. He tied the oil-coated cloth around the end of the stick, no idea if this would even work. He’d seen some version of it on a TV survival show several years ago, but he kept thinking he was missing a step.
He held the glowing orange coils of the van’s cigarette lighter to a dry corner of the fabric.
A flame appeared, crept across the cloth, and then the end of Jack’s torch ignited.
It burned beautifully.
He laughed out loud.
Jack arrived on the fourth-floor landing, firelight flickering off the concrete walls of the stairwell. He opened the door and stepped out into a carpeted hallway. Moved down the corridor,