Run

Jack went to the buggy and rolled it back over and set the flashlight beside the gun. He broke the seal and twisted off the cap and held the mouth of the jug to the boy’s lips. He drank. A ski

“You got to take me to Junction. I ain’t going to make it through tonight.” The boy looked off into the darkness. “Where’s Mama?”

“I don’t know.”

Jack got up.

“Where you going?”

“I have my family waiting outside.”

“Don’t leave me, mister.”

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do for you.”

“You got a gun?”

“What?”

“A gun.”

“Yeah.”

“You can shoot me.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“I can’t just sit here in the dark. Please shoot me in the head. You can do that for me. I’d be so grateful. You got no concept how this hurts.”

Jack lifted the jug of water.

“Don’t leave me, mister.”

He took the gun from the cart and jammed it down the back of his waistband. He tucked the bananas under his right arm and grabbed the flashlight and started walking up the aisle toward the front of the store.

“You son of a bitch,” the boy called after him, crying now.

They stopped at a filling station on the outskirts but the pumps were dry. Jack checked the oil and washed the filthy windshield and they headed north out of town into the high desert. The night clear and cold and nothing else on the road save the occasional mule deer. They ate the bananas—too soft and reeking of that oversweet candy stench of fruit that has just begun to turn—and Jack let them split his share. The two hamlets they passed through barely warranted the black specks they’d been assigned on the map—tiny ranching communities, burned and vacated. The most substantive structure for miles was a grain mill, looming above the desert like some improbable skyline.

Jack pulled off onto the side of the road to let Cole and Naomi have a bathroom break, and when the kids were out of the car, Dee said, “What’s wrong, Jack?”

He looked at her, glad when the overhead light cut off.

“Nothing. I mean, you know, besides everything.”

“What’d you see in that grocery store?”

He shook his head.

“Jack. We together in this?”

“Of course. That doesn’t mean you need to have me putting things in your head that you can’t get rid of.” As his eyes readjusted to the darkness, he looked through the windshield at a range of hills in the east. Heard a sudden shriek of laughter from Cole that almost made him smile.

Dee said, “Don’t push me away. I need to share this experience with you. I want to know what you know, Jack. Every single thing, because there’s comfort in it. I need that.”

“Not this, you don’t.”

Five miles on, Jack pulled off the road again, said, “Give me the binoculars.”

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

“I saw something.”

“What?”

“Lights. Everyone just sit still and don’t open your doors.”

“Why?”

“Because the interior lights will come on, and I don’t want anyone to see where we are.”

“What if they see us? What will happen?”

“Nothing good, Cole.”

Dee handed him the binoculars and he brought the eyecups to his eyes. At first, nothing but black, and he thought maybe the focus had been jarred, but then he picked them up again, stretched along the road like a stateless strand of Christmas lights.

“You just sighed. What is it, Jack?”

He moved the knob, pulled everything into focus. “The convoy.”

“Oh, God.”

“I think they’re moving away from us.”

“Can you tell how far?”

“Maybe ten miles. I don’t know.”

“And you’re sure they’re not coming toward us?”

He lowered the binoculars. “Let’s wait here awhile. Track their movement. Make absolutely certain.”

Jack glassed the convoy through the windshield, watching its slow progression away from them while the kids played Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Within the hour, the lights had vanished.

Heat blasted out of the vents to check the frigid air that streamed through rips in the plastic windows, Naomi and Cole bundled in their sleeping bags and huddled miserably together.

Just before midnight, Jack turned off the highway onto a dirt road and punched on the headlights.

They’d gone several miles when Dee leaned across the center console, and then back into her seat, pushing a discreet exhalation through her teeth that no one but her husband would have caught. The opening move in a battle they’d fought before.

“What?”

“You see the light?” she said.

“Yes, I see it.”

“Do you think there’s going to be a gas station out here?” She gestured toward the windshield and the expanse of empty country beyond the glass, devoid of even a spore of manmade light.

“It just came on a minute ago.”

“It means we’re out of gas, darling-heart.”

“No, it means we can still go for twenty-five miles. It’s called a reserve tank.”

He could feel the heat of her stare even in the dark.

She said, “We have ten gallons of gas sloshing around back there, and I don’t understand why you won’t—”

“Dee, it’s—”

“Oh my God, if you say it’s for emergencies one more. . .” She turned away from him. Stared into the plastic of her window. Jack on the brink of just pulling over, an act of appeasement he would never have considered under any other circumstance, when the headlights grazed a dark house.

He turned into the gravel drive and parked beside a powder-blue Chevy pickup truck from another time, headlights firing across a brick ranch with white columns on the porch.

“Let’s not stop here, Jack.”

“We have to take a look.”

Jack and Dee followed the stone path to the house and stepped up onto the front porch and knocked on the door. They waited. Heard nothing on the other side.

“Nobody’s home,” Jack said.

“Or maybe they saw a man walking up to their house with a shotgun and they’re waiting on the other side with a fucking arsenal.”

“Always the pessimist.” He knocked again and tried the door.

Jack pried a large, flat piece of sandstone out of the walkway and lobbed it through the dining room window. They crouched in the cedar chips and listened. A stalactite of glass fell out of the framing. Silence followed.

“I’ll go in,” Jack said, “make sure it’s safe.”

“What if it’s not?”

He reached into his pocket, handed her the keys. “Then you get the hell out of here.”

Standing in the dining room, the first thing to strike him was the warmth. He walked into the kitchen. The refrigerator humming. He opened it. Jars of mayo

Dee sat in the Rover in the driver seat, her hands on the steering wheel. He opened the door, said, “It’s empty and they have power.”

“Food?”

“There’s some stuff in the cabinets.” He looked into the backseat. “Na and Cole, I want you to bring all the empty jugs inside.”

Jack went around to the side of the house. He unsheathed his bowie and sawed off the nozzle to the garden hose. He unwound it and cut a six-foot length of green tubing. The opening to the Chevy’s gas tank was next to the driver-side door, a silver cap speckled with rust that took some hard cranking to unscrew. He’d already poured the five-gallon cans into the Rover, and they sat open on the gravel drive while he threaded the hose through the hole. It touched the bottom of the tank, the smell already wafting out of the end of the tube as he brought it to his lips.