by Blake Crouch
He felt, possibly for the first time in his life, like a fucking man.
At last, he crawled under the branches and wrapped his arms around his son.
Cole’s teeth chattered. “I’m cold,” the boy said.
“You’ll warm up.”
“When?”
“In a minute.”
“Can you die of cold?”
“Yeah, but that’s not going to happen to you.”
“I’m still not warm.”
“Be patient. It’s coming.”
* * * * *
JACK woke at dawn and laid his hands upon his children.
“They’re breathing,” Dee whispered.
“You sleep?”
“Not much.”
“We stink,” he said.
“Speak for yourself.”
“No, I think I can safely speak for you, too.”
He looked at his wife just to look at her. First time he’d done that in days.
Her cheeks smeared with dirt. Lips cracked. Sunburned all to hell.
“You’ve got a few dreadlocks starting there,” he said.
“I’m hideous, aren’t I?”
“Maybe a tad.”
“You smoothtalker.” She reached across the kids, touched his hand. “We can’t keep doing this,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“We’re almost out of these mountains, Dee. It’s going to get better then.”
“Or worse.”
“Do you believe we’re headed for someplace safe, where we can survive? Maybe get back what we lost?”
“I don’t know, Jack.”
“I think you need to believe that’s what’s going to happen.”
“It’s just so hard. I’m so tired. I’m hungry. And then I look at them and know they’re suffering even more.”
“We could be dead, Dee. All of us or some of us. But we’re not. We’re together. You have to hold onto that. Let it carry you.”
They came out of the woods in the late morning onto a bare hill that sloped down to a river, and several hundred yards past, a paved road. Beyond it all to the east lay miles of badlands—pale, dry country, rippled and treeless.
They worked their way down through the sage to the riverbank and stopped for a drink.
Jack lifted Cole onto his shoulders and waded across, Dee and Naomi following behind, his daughter gasping at the icy shock of the water, which was low in advance of winter, coming only to their knees at the deepest point.
On the other side, at the top of a small rise, they rested in the weeds and watched the road.
Nothing passed. No sound but the river and the wind blowing through the grass.
Early afternoon and low gray clouds streaming across the sky from the west.
Jack stepped into the road. Saw a quarter mile of it from where he stood.
Looking back, that rampart of mountains they’d crossed two days ago soared above everything, powdered with snow.
“What if a car comes?” Dee said. “There’s no way to know if they’re affected.”
“We’ll have to make a split-second decision,” Jack said. “If it’s only one car, with one or two people inside, maybe we chance it. Otherwise, we hide.”
They walked north along the shoulder.
“Let me have the gun, Dee.”
She handed him the Glock and he ejected the magazine, thumbed out the rounds—nine—and loaded them back.
“Do you know what road this is?” Dee asked.
“I think it’s Highway 287.”
“Where does it go?”
“To the Tetons, then north up to Yellowstone and into Montana.”
“We want to go to Montana?” Naomi asked.
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because after Montana comes Canada, and we might be safe there.”
They walked for several hours. No cars passed. The road seemed to be some kind of geographic dividing line—badlands to the east, foothills rising toward mountains in the west.
The clouds thickened and by late afternoon the first raindrops had begun to splatter on the pavement. They had walked about two miles, Jack figured, and hadn’t seen a glimmer of civilization beyond the telephone poles that ran alongside the west shoulder of the road.
“We have to get out of this rain,” Jack said.
They went across the road and up into the trees—tall, straight pines that offered little in the way of shelter.
It was getting dark and the sound of the rainfall filled the woods with a steady hiss.
They sat down against one of the pines, and Jack could instantly feel the difference in his legs from just a few hours of walking on pavement. His knees swollen. Shins riddled with pain like a million tiny fractures. He grimaced as he stood back up.
“I’m going to look for something to keep us dry.”
“Please don’t go far, Jack.”
He wandered away from them up the hillside through the old-growth forest.
After a quarter mile, he came out of the trees.
Stopped, chuckled.
He led them up through the woods into the clearing, gestured proudly toward their accommodations for the evening—the ruins of a stable.
“It ain’t the Hilton,” he said. “But it’ll keep us dry.”
The logs were so weathered and sun-bleached they looked albino. The tin roof, deep brown with rust, only covered half of the shelter, and they filed into the far right corner on the only patch of dry dirt.
The rain drummed on the tin roof.
“We’re lucky to be out of the mountains,” Jack said. “Probably snowing up there.”
Through the doorway, they could see the rain falling and watch the world getting dark—a grayness deepening toward blue.
Cole crawled into Jack’s lap, said, “My stomach hurts.”
“I know, buddy, we’re all hungry.”
“When can we eat?”
“We’ll find something tomorrow.”
“You promise?”
“He can’t promise, Cole,” Naomi said. “He doesn’t know for sure if we’ll find anything to eat tomorrow. All we can do is try.”
Cole began to cry.
Jack kissed his head, Cole’s hair still wet, said, “Hush, baby boy.”
It was still raining. They hadn’t moved from their corner and they weren’t going to be moving anytime soon with it so black out there they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces.
“I wish we could have a fire,” Naomi said.
“That would be nice.”
“I know how,” Cole said suddenly, just a voice in the dark.
“How to have a fire?” Dee said.
“How we can tell if they’re good or bad.”
“Who are you talking about, honey?”
“If we hear a car coming down the road.”
“You’ve been thinking about that?”
“If they have the light around them, we’ll know they’re bad.”
Jack said, “What light, buddy?”
“The light around their head.”
“What’s he talking about, Jack?”
“I have no idea. Cole, what light do you mean? Do we have it around any of us? Me or your mother or sister?”
“No.”
“Do you have it around you?”
The boy was quiet for a moment. “Yes.”
“What does it look like?”
“Like white light around my head and my shoulders.”
“Why is it around you and not us?”
“Because you didn’t see the lights. They didn’t fall on you.”
“Remember when I asked you if you felt different after the aurora?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any bad feelings toward any of us right now?”
“No, Daddy.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I don’t want to sleep in here with him.”
“Stop it, Nao
mi. He’s your brother.”
“He’s affected. He saw the lights like the rest of those crazy—”
“He’s a child.”
“So what?”
“Has he tried to hurt you or any of us?”
“No.”
“So maybe it doesn’t affect children the same way.”
“Why would that be?” Dee asked.
“I don’t know. Because they’re innocent?”
Cole began to cry. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
“I know you don’t,” Jack said, and he pulled the boy into his arms.
Jack woke several hours later to Cole moaning.
“Dee?”
“What is it?”
Still couldn’t see a thing in the dark.
“Something’s wrong with Cole. He’s shivering.”
Dee’s hand slid over his and onto the boy’s face.
“Oh, Jesus, he’s burning up.”
“Why’s he shaking?”
“He has the chills. Let me have him.”
She took Cole into her arms and rocked him and hushed him and Jack lay in the dirt as the sound of rain striking the tin roof tried to carry him off.
* * * * *
COLE looked pale in the gray dawnlight that filtered into the ruins of the stable.
Jack said, “What is it do you think?”
“I can’t tell if it’s viral or bacterial, but it’s getting worse.”
“We’ll stay here for the day. Let him rest.”
“A fever is very dehydrating. He needs water.”
“You want to keep moving?”
“I think we have to.”
“What else can we do for him?”
Tears welling, she shook her head. “Let’s try to find some water, then get him someplace warm and dry. That’s all we can do.”
Dark swollen clouds.
Cold.
Everything wet and dripping.
Jack carried Cole in his arms.
The boy had woken but his eyes were milky and unfocused. Not present.
They went down through the pine forest to the road.
The first mile was a straight and steady climb. Then the road curved through a series of switchbacks, and when Jack looked down again, Cole was sleeping.
In the bend of the next turn, he stopped and squatted down in the road, keeping Cole’s head supported so he wouldn’t wake.
“There’s no way,” Jack said. “I could carry him on my shoulders for a little while longer, but not like this.”
“We can rest,” Dee said.
“Resting isn’t going to make my arms stronger. He weighs fifty-four pounds. I just can’t physically hold him.”
He looked around. They had hiked up into snow—a sloppy inch of it upon everything except the asphalt, the evergreen branches dipping and bouncing back as the snow sloughed off.
“Jack, what do you—”
“Just let me rest for a minute. He’s sleeping, and I don’t want to wake him.”
They sat in the road. Everything still except the melting snow. The wind in the spruce trees. Cole shivered in his sleep and Jack wrapped his jacket around him. Every five minutes, Dee would lay her hand against the boy’s forehead.
Naomi asked, “Is he going to die?”
“Of course not,” Jack said.
They ate enough snow to quench their thirst and make them all much colder, and Jack fed Cole pieces of slush. After an hour, they struggled onto their feet and went on. The road kept climbing. Soon there was slush on the pavement, then snow. Instead of cradling him, Jack found he could manage the weight better by carrying Cole draped over his left shoulder. They would walk a ways and then stop and start up again, the periods of walking getting shorter, the rests longer.
It snowed off and on through the day, the road leading them back up into high country. Toward late afternoon, they came across a deserted construction site, Jack’s heart lifting at the prospect of finding a pickup truck or even a forklift, but the only motorized equipment left behind had been a small crane, its snow-dusted framework looming over stockpiles of corrugated steel drainage pipe.
They spent the night inside one of the sixty-foot lengths of pipe, Jack sitting by the opening watching the snow come down until the light was gone. Listening to Dee whisper to Cole, the boy crying, mumbling gibberish, delirious with fever. Considering the state of their distressed little nation, he had no intention of falling asleep, but he shut his eyes just for a moment and
* * * * *
WHEN he opened them again, it was light out and the sky bright blue through the spruce trees and a half foot of fresh snow on the ground.
Naomi’s snoring echoed through the pipe.
He looked over at Dee who was awake and still holding Cole.
She said, “His fever broke about an hour ago.”
Had he been standing, the relief would have knocked Jack over.
“Did you even sleep?” he asked.
She shook her head. “But I can feel it coming now.”
Jack looked outside, snow glittering in the early sunlight. “I’m going to have a look around.”
“Food today,” she said.
“What?”
“One way or another, we have to find some food. Today. It’ll have been five days tonight since we last ate, and at some point in the not too distant, we won’t have the strength to keep moving. Our bodies just cannot continue to perform like this.”
He looked past Dee toward his daughter, sleeping in the shadows. “Na’s okay?”
“She’s okay.”
“You?”
Dee broke a smile. “I’ve lost probably twenty, twenty-five pounds these last three weeks. I can’t stop thinking how hot I’d look in a little bikini.”
Jack crossed the construction site, climbed up onto the track of the crane. The door had been left unlocked and he scoured the cab. Found three balled-up potato chip bags and a paper cup filled a quarter of the way with what appeared to be frozen cola.
He set the cup in the sun and moved back between the rows of stacked pipe.
The road was covered in snow.
He went up the hill, inhaling deep shots of freezing, snow-cleansed air. His stomach groaned. It felt good to be up early and walking in the woods with the sun streaming through the trees.
Someone shouted.
Jack stopped in the road, glanced back, but the sound hadn’t come from the construction site.
More voices spilled down through the trees.
He deliberated for three seconds, then started up the road, fighting for traction as he sprinted through powder.
The voices getting louder.
When he came around the next curve, there was a green sign that read “Togwotee Pass, ELEV 9658.”
In the distance, a lodge. Gas station. Tiny cabins off in the spruce trees.
The parking lot was crowded with an array of vehicles—dozen civilian cars and SUVs, three Humvees, two armored personnel carriers, one Stryker, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and a big rig with two Red Cross insignias emblazoned on the trailer that framed the words, “Refugee Relief.”
Jack headed toward a group of men in woodland camo BDUs standing by the gas pumps. One of them spotted him, and without a word to the others, shouldered his M16 which had been fitted with a nightscope. The rest of the men saw his reaction, drew their own weapons, and turned to face Jack.
He stopped, staring at five men pointing a variety of firearms in his direction, and the first thing to cross his mind was that it had been nine days since they’d fled the cabin, and how strange it felt to see people who weren’t his family again.
“Where’d you come from?”
Jack bent over to catch his breath, pointed back down the road. The man closest to him was the one who’d spoken. A redhead. Very pale. Freckled. Looked to be his age, his height, but with thirty added pounds of muscle and only a two-day beard. He pointed a Sig Sauer at Jack’s face.
Said, “You’re on foot?”
“Yes.”
“Carrying any weapons?” Jack had to think, realized he’d left the Glock back at the pipe with Dee, and considering the firepower on hand, figured that was probably a good thing.
“No, nothing.”
The man waved a hand toward the others and they lowered their machineguns.
“Where you from?”
Jack straightened. “Albuquerque. Been hiking through the mountains last week and a half. Haven’t had food in five days.”
The man holstered his pistol and smiled, said, “Well, by God, somebody get this man an MRE,” but no one moved.
He had blue eyes the color of a washed-out summer sky and he was squinting a little in the sun. “Good thing you caught us. We were on the verge of moving out.”
“I’m Jack Colclough.” Jack stepped forward and extended his hand, which the man accepted.
“Good to meet you, Jack. My name. . .” The elbow caught Jack on the chin. He sat down in the snow as the reinforced steel toe of a black leather combat boot slammed into his face. “. . .is not really important.” Jack opened his eyes. He lay on his back, the redhead’s face inches from his own and the blue sky distorted by tears that streamed out of his eyes from his crushed nose. “Who else is with you?”
“No one.”
The man’s hand wrapped around his ring finger and twisted until Jack felt the bone snap and he howled as the man stood on his arm and unsheathed a knife.
