Run

“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, Naomi. 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 i

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 ca

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.