Run - Blake Crouch [98]
She didn’t respond except to make a sleepy sigh and to nuzzle in a little closer.
Jack sat up. The building shook, books falling off the shelves. His ears ringing. Dee was up too, her lips moving, but he couldn’t hear anything, and then the sound came rushing back—the kids screaming, Dee shouting. He got to his feet, the room brilliantly lit through those tall windows by the flames consuming a building several blocks away, burning with such intensity he could feel the heat through the glass.
He opened his mouth to say something but a fast-building roar stopped him, something approaching, the noise of it getting louder and closer. And then it was right on top of them, like God screaming, and in the flamelight, Jack could see his children covering their ears, mouths dropped open, eyes wide with terror.
Then it was gone, and the room filled with enough silence for the sounds of distant machine gun fire to filter in.
Jack was panting—they all were.
He turned to Dee, said, “We’re—”
A flash of scalding white light. The window blew out and something hit Jack in the chest that was neither force nor sound, but a terrible fusion of the two, and he was lying on his back, his molars jogged loose in their beddings, telling himself to get up, to check on his children, but his legs were slow to respond.
The ringing in his ears had become a jackhammer.
He sat up, eyes still struggling after that blinding detonation.
The building across the street had taken a direct hit, and amid the massive flames, he could see steel girders sagging, melting in the heat.
He was unstable on his feet.
Dee looked all right. She was sitting up, stunned, and he could see that her eyes were open, blinking slowly.
Cole and Naomi lay in fetal positions on the floor, still bracing, covering their heads and trembling. Jack put his hands on them and patted their backs, ran his fingers through their hair, and then Dee was beside him. He tried to say something to her, couldn’t hear his own voice inside his head, but Dee grabbed his face and pulled him close enough to read her lips.
He slung the machine gun straps over his neck and carried Naomi down the staircase, Dee leading with the flashlight, Cole draped over her shoulder.
On the second-floor landing, Jack heard that sound again, muffled now but racing toward a violent climax, and then the building shook with such intensity he couldn’t believe it resisted collapse.
Everywhere on the ground level, shelves had toppled. They waded through books, and the smell of old paper filled the air.
The shock wave had exploded the wall of windows at the entrance. They passed over mounds of shattered glass and outside into a nightmare world. Black smoke poured out of the ruins of whatever had stood across the street and at the pinnacle of the flagpole, the United States and Montana State flags had begun to burn at the fringes.
Dee led Jack over to a green Cherokee parked out of sight between the building and a hedge.
She glanced back, yelled, “You drive,” and tossed him a ring of keys.
Dee opened the rear passenger door and set Cole inside. Jack handed Naomi over, and after Dee had gotten their daughter in and shut the door, he put his lips to his wife’s ear.
“How much gas?”
“Enough to reach the border.”
“You have to be my gunner.” She nodded. “Shoot any fucking thing that moves.”
Jack climbed in behind the wheel and cranked the engine as Dee slammed her door and lowered the window.
His mind ran hot, trying to orient himself in the city.
Essentially two routes north—I-15 to Sweetgrass or Highway 87 to Havre.
He shifted into gear and eased the Jeep down through the steaming grass onto the pavement, the heat from the building across the street so intense it broke him out into a sweat.
He punched the gas, felt the wind and smoke streaming through the windshield into his face. The glass had been shot out, and that was going to make driving at high speed infinitely more difficult.
By the time he rolled up on the next intersection,