Run

by Blake Crouch

  “She didn’t kill him, did she?” Mathias said.

  “Not quite, but she did break the humerus of his right arm. He probably lost consciousness from the pain.” She noticed Max’s legs, fighting back the rise of bile in her throat as she said, “If you burn him anymore he’s going to lose so much fluid he’ll go into shock and die. I mean, he’s going to die of sepsis in the next day or so anyway, no doubt, but keep burning him, and you’ll lose him tonight.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Was there anything else you needed from me?” Dee asked, staring at this man who would’ve murdered her children and yet still cringing for him.

  “Max did happen to mention that Cole is affected.”

  Dee looked back over her shoulder. “Is that a joke?”

  “Max told us that when you pulled up to the checkpoint and got out, he saw a light around Cole’s head.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “You think?”

  “You were torturing him. He’d say anything to—”

  “That’s possible. In fact, I hope it’s the case. But just to be sure, Mike’s talking with Cole right now.”

  Dee jumped up and started toward the door. As she reached for the handle, something struck her from behind and shoved her up against the cold wall of concrete.

  Liz spoke into her ear, “Just settle down, Dee.”

  “I’ll fucking kill you if you touch—”

  “They’re only talking,” Mathias said.

  “You don’t talk to my son without me.” She was trembling with rage.

  “Fair enough. Let’s join them.”

  She walked between Liz and Mathias, the woman clutching Dee’s left arm in a solid grip that Dee imagined could be crushing if Liz wanted it to be. There was candlelight glowing in the windows of her cabin now, and if she could have broken free she would have run toward it, her heart bumping harder and harder as they approached.

  They followed Mathias up the three steps to the door.

  He pushed it open, said, “How we doing?”

  Dee jerked her arm out of Liz’s grasp and pushed past Mathias into the cabin.

  Cole sat on the bed and Mike straddled a chair which he’d spun around in front of the door. Naomi was up, too, sitting against the window, and Dee could see in her daughter’s face a measure of real fear.

  She climbed onto the bed, pulled her son into her arms.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Naomi?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “Everybody’s fine, Mom,” Mike said, and something in his tone—a note of rehearsed steadiness and authority—and his cleanshaven face and buzzed blond hair reminded her of everything she hated about lawmen.

  “You don’t speak to my son without me.”

  Mike seemed to disregard this jurisdictional instruction, glancing instead at Mathias.

  “Ask the boy about the lights.”

  Mathias looked at Cole. “Go ahead, tell me about—”

  “Don’t answer him, Cole. You don’t have to say a word to that man.”

  “That’s not exactly true, Dee,” Mathias said. “Do you think I’m incapable of arranging a private conversation with your son? You can answer me, Cole. Cole, no, Jesus. . .it’s okay, don’t get upset. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Cole had turned into Dee’s chest, and she could feel his little body shaking, Cole trying not to cry in front of these strange people.

  Mike said, “From what the boy told me, there was some feature in the sky several weeks ago.”

  “So he’s confirmed what Max said.”

  “Yeah, and apparently the people who witnessed this event became affected shortly thereafter.”

  “Did you see the lights, Cole?”

  Cole wouldn’t look at him.

  “Did the boy see it?”

  “Says he did, but that his parents and sister didn’t.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with him,” Dee said. “He’s no threat to anyone.”

  Mathias stared at Dee. “We stay intentionally out of the loop here. We don’t monitor the news or even the weather. Tell me exactly what this event was.”

  Dee kissed the top of Cole’s head and rubbed his back while she spoke. “A massive aurora visible to all of the lower forty-eight, northern Mexico—”

  “And you didn’t see it?”

  “It wasn’t like the news was going too crazy over it. No more coverage than a large meteor shower. We had wanted to stay up for it, but it happened so late, Jack and I just didn’t manage to drag ourselves out of bed.”

  “But your son saw it.”

  Her eyes filled up with tears. “Cole slept at a friend’s house and they set their alarm and woke up at three in the morning and watched it.”

  Mathias smiled. “You lied to me.”

  “I was afraid you’d—”

  “You’ve brought someone who’s affected into our community.”

  “My son is not affected.”

  “So you say. But Cole has admitted to seeing the lights. Max saw the light around his head yesterday night. How exactly is he not affected?”

  “I’m his mother. I know my son. He hasn’t changed at all. He isn’t hostile.”

  “You’ll understand, me being responsible for the safety of the sixty-seven souls who live in this field, if I don’t just take your word on that.”

  “Then we’ll leave,” she said.

  “I wish it were that easy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know the location of our compound. You’ve had a tour of our security measures. Do you honestly believe I would allow you to go back out into that war zone with this information?”

  “You can’t stop us from leaving if we want to.”

  “Dee.” Mathias moved forward, eased down onto the bed. Ran his hand along her shinbone until his fingers closed gently around her ankle. “I wrote the constitution we abide by. I invented our civil and criminal codes of law. I am God here.”

  He released her leg and glanced over his shoulder at Mike.

  Back to Dee.

  “I think at this point, it would benefit all concerned for you and I to step outside and have a private conversation.”

  “You go to hell.”

  He lowered his voice. “Think about your children, Dee.” Whispering now: “If you get upset, it’s only going to make them more afraid.”

  Mike’s radio squeaked.

  “Mike, come back.”

  Mike unclipped the radio from his belt and lifted the receiver to his mouth.

  “Can this wait, Bruce? Little tied up at the moment.”

  “The sensors are returning multiple echoes.”

  “Look, I don’t mean to be critical, since I know this is a new assignment for you, but sometimes a herd of elk or deer will pass through.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We’ve had a current interruption in the razorwire.”

  “You’re telling me someone’s cut through?”

  “I think so, because now. . .” His voice trailed off.

  Mike said, “Bruce, repeat. You broke up.”

  “I’m wearing night vision goggles and staring south toward the woods. . .definitely picking up a lot of movement in the trees.”

  “How many?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “I don’t know. They’re crawling along the ground.”

  Mathias stood and grabbed the radio from Mike. “Bruce, we’re coming. Put the word out on channel eight and get people into position right now. Just like we’ve drilled. If you get a shot, start taking them out.”

  “Copy that.”

  Mathias handed the radio back to Mike and started for the door. “Liz, stand guard outside. If they try to leave, shoot them.”

  Dee brought the lit candle over from the dresser and down with her and Cole onto the floor.

&n
bsp; “Come on Naomi, I don’t want you near the window.”

  Her daughter climbed off the bed, said, “We’re going to be killed if we stay in here.”

  Dee crawled over to Naomi’s bed and lifted the mattress.

  “Still there?” Naomi whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  Dee took the gun and eased the mattress back down. She ejected the magazine—still fully loaded—then coughed to cover the metallic clatter as she popped the magazine home and jacked a round.

  “Both of you, get dressed quickly,” she whispered. “Put on every piece of clothing they gave you.” Dee went to the closet and tugged the three black parkas off the hangers, handed Naomi and Cole theirs, slid into hers.

  Then she knelt between them, Cole struggling with the laces of the hiking boots they’d given him which were a size too big.

  “Take Cole over there and crouch down with him behind the mattress until I come back for you.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Two minutes tops.”

  Dee approached the door, tried to steady the Glock in her hand.

  Glanced back at her children hiding behind the bed, could see only a bit of Naomi’s hair.

  She spoke through the door, “Liz? You out there?”

  No answer.

  Dee slid the Glock into the front pocket of her parka and pulled the door open.

  Whispered, “Liz?”

  The woman squatted ten feet away, watching the far woods with her back to the door. Dee would have shot her then but she had no faith in her aim.

  “Liz?”

  The woman looked back. “He told you to stay inside.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Liz stood and started back toward the cabin. A machinepistol dangled from a strap around her neck. Her right hand held it trained on Dee. She drew in deep lungfuls of air though it wasn’t sufficient oxygen to fuel the raging pump of her heart.

  Liz stopped at the foot of the steps, two feet below her. “What?”

  Dee breathless, lightheaded.

  “Isn’t there a safer place you can put us?”

  “Mathias wants you here, so you stay here. Now go back inside or I’ll fuck you up a little.”

  Dee wasn’t sure if Liz would even notice in the starlight, but she suddenly diverted her eyes toward the woods, let her brow scrunch into a subtle furrow. In the time it took Liz to glance back at whatever she thought Dee had seen, Dee drew the Glock from the parka pocket, had it waiting when Liz looked back, aimed down at her face.

  Liz’s eyes went wide and she said, “Cunt.”

  Dee pulled the trigger.

  Liz dropped like she’d been poured out of a glass. Dee stood frozen, staring down at her, awestruck. How short the distance from life and thought to a sprawled shell in the grass. Knew she could have stood there all night trying to wrap her head around it and been no closer at sunrise. No closer forty years from now, or whenever the end of her days might come.

  A spark flared across the field in the trees, the report right on its heels. Other muzzleflashes erupting in the forest like lightning bugs and the night filling with gunshots and men yelling.

  She hurried back into the cabin, found her children still hiding behind the bed just like she’d told them.

  “Time to leave, guys.”

  Movement everywhere—shadows running through the dark and voices broken by sporadic shots. As she led her children around the side of the cabin, a distant burst of machinegun fire shredded the front door.

  “Stay with me,” she said, grabbing Cole’s hand and pulling him toward the woods. Naomi ran alongside them. Fifty yards to cover and they were passing people in pajamas who’d just stumbled groggy-eyed out of their shacks, some loading rifles or shotguns.

  They reached the woods and Dee dragged Naomi and Cole down into the leaves.

  From where she lay, it looked like chaos.

  Clusters of gunfire blazing back and forth.

  Muzzleflashes in the guard towers.

  No apparent order.

  Just people trying to kill each other and not be killed themselves.

  “You guys ready?”

  “Where are we going?” Naomi asked.

  Dee stood. “Just come on.” She put the Glock in her parka. “Give me your hands.”

  They jogged through the woods.

  Somewhere in the clearing, a woman screamed.

  “Why did they just yell like that?” Cole asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. We have to keep running.”

  They worked their way through the trees and around the clearing as the firefight intensified.

  A hail of bullets eviscerated a spruce tree three steps ahead.

  Dee forced her children to the ground and lay on top of them.

  “Anybody hit?”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  “There’s a hole just ahead. Crawl into it. Go. Now.”

  They scrabbled the last few feet through the leaves and then rolled down an embankment. With starlight barely straggling through the crowns of the trees, it was almost pitch-black in their hole, which was really more of a depression, two feet below the forest floor and just spacious enough to accommodate the three of them. Dee sweated under her clothes from the exertion, but as her heart began to slow, she knew the chill would come. She pulled her children into her and shoveled as many leaves as she could on top of them.

  “We have to be quiet now,” she said.

  “For how long?” Cole asked.

  “Until the shooting stops.”

  It went on all night, broken occasionally by spates of silence. Sometimes, there were footfalls in the leaves nearby, and once Dee glimpsed two shadows run past the edge of their depression.

  Just before dawn, the shooting stopped. After a while, a chorus of weeping and pleading started up, rising toward a crescendo that was promptly smothered under twenty-five shots that rang out in tandem from what sounded like a pair of small-caliber handguns.

  * * * * *

  BY dawn, an eerie silence had settled over the clearing and the woods. The sky was lightening through the trees, and though her children snored quietly, Dee hadn’t slept all night. Carefully, she withdrew her arms from under Cole’s and Naomi’s necks and turned over in the frosted leaves and crawled up to the lip of the embankment.

  Gunsmoke hovered over the clearing like a dirty mist. From ten yards back in the trees, she had a decent view of the soldiers. Counted at least twenty of them milling around in the grass, sometimes squatting down to confirm the dead were really dead.

  There were bodies everywhere in the clearing, and over by the mess hall, two dozen or more lay toppled in a row—women and children.

  She backed down into the hole.

  Naomi stirred. Her eyes opened. Dee brought her finger to her lips.

  They didn’t venture out of the hole. Kept hidden instead down in the leaves, listening and sometimes watching the soldiers in the clearing. At midday, a commotion pulled Dee back up to the forest floor. She saw Mathias running through the field, chased by a group of soldiers, one of whom stopped, drew a sidearm, and sighted him up.

  Mathias fell concurrently with the pistol report, cried out, and amid the fading echoes of the gunshot, Dee could hear the soldiers laughing.

  Someone said, “Nice shot, Jed.”

  She watched them approach, others coming over now. Surrounding Mathias at the back of a little cabin, fifty or sixty yards away.

  “What hole did this rat crawl out of?”

  “There’s a trapdoor in the ground back there, camouflaged with grass.”

  “Anyone else in there?”

  “Just big enough for him.”

  Mathias was still crying, and someone said, “You’re only shot in the ass. Shut the fuck up until we give you something to cry about.”

  And they did. All afternoon and into the evening, they did. The screams of Mathias blaring through the woods in between bouts of what Dee could only ho
pe was unconsciousness. She didn’t trust Cole’s curiosity, so she held the boy to her chest and covered his ears herself, part of her dying to know what was happening out there, figuring her imagination had invented something infinitely worse than the truth. The other part trying to force her thoughts elsewhere—to a memory or a fantasy—but when the raw and blistering screech of human agony filled the clearing, there was no way to avert her mind from it or to keep from attempting to picture what they must be doing to him.

  As darkness fell, light flickered off the trees above them and streamers of sweet smoke drifted into the woods. For three minutes, Mathias screamed louder than he had all day, and then at last, went silent.

  Cole and Naomi became still, and soon they were both murmuring softly in their sleep. Dee turned over onto her stomach, the stiffness in her joints excruciating after nearly twenty hours in this hole.

  She crawled up the embankment and peered out past the trees.

  A bonfire raged in the middle of the clearing and some of the men had gathered around it, their faces aglow, while others carried the pieces of the cabin they were using for firewood over to what she now realized was a pyre.

  Mathias had been hoisted up in the middle of the blaze. Even from sixty yards away, she could see that the crossbeams which held him were still standing and that in fact her imagination had failed to concoct anything as remotely evil as what they had actually done to the man.

  The soldiers’ laughter sounded alcohol-infused.

  Somewhere out there, a woman wept.

  Dee eased back down into the depression and roused her children.

  They crept all the way back to the razorwire, which no longer hummed, and followed it through the trees. The fire was roaring now, shooting flames thirty feet high. From Dee’s vantage, she could see one of the soldiers running naked through the grass carrying a burning branch, which he delivered onto the front porch of a cabin.

  The soldiers hooted their approval, assembling to watch as the flames licked out along the sides and the roof like molten fingers. Then the voices started up from inside.