Run

A man in a red bandana stood in front of the POWs. Jack could just hear his voice from the front seat of the van, telling them he would be pleased to shoot them each in the head, felt sure they would in turn be pleased with this outcome. However, if even one of them resisted, his unit would spend the rest of the day torturing them to death.

A handful of the civilians wept. He could see their shoulders bobbing. But no one moved.

The man in the red bandana went to the first civilian, pulled a handgun from his holster, and shot him between the eyes.

He went on down the line, stopping midway to reload, Jack watching the heads of the condemned snapping back, bodies toppling, found himself drawn to study the unimaginable bracing of the next one to die.

Ultimate tension, then emptiness, then ten people lay dead on the snow-dusted street where ten had knelt living thirty seconds before. The soldiers left them there, drifting on down Central Avenue toward the river, in a formation that made Jack certain they were military.

When the last man had slipped out of view, Jack breathed again, leaning forward, his forehead touching the steering wheel.

Staying here, in this plaza, wasn’t going to work. Not with the city under siege.

Meant pushing on.

As he lifted his head, the man in the red bandana reappeared around the corner of the Davidson building. He was walking back into the square, straight toward the van. Jack’s heart jumped from zero to afterburn, a hot spike of panic flooding in.

He slammed his shoulder into the door and barreled out of the minivan at a dead sprint toward the bank, waiting for the gunshots, waiting, the shattered windows rushing toward him, waiting. Just as he reached them, he heard three shots squeezed off faster than he could have imagined, and he was inside, untouched he thought, turning left now, bolting up a set of stairs into the mortgage department, dark save for where crumbs of daylight filtered in through the offices that overlooked the plaza.

Jack stopped.

He could hear the man’s footfalls in the lobby down below.

Now ru

Jack moved into a large, open maze of cubicles and desks, his world getting darker every step he took away from those windows.

He got down on his hands and knees and crawled under a desk. Couldn’t see a thing. Panting. The noise deafening. He shut his eyes, tried to calm himself, and when his heart finally slowed, he heard the footsteps—soft as mice—moving into the mortgage department toward him.

He took long, slow inhalations through his nose, and even in the dark chill of the bank, lines of sweat were ru

The man let out a sharp breath. Couldn’t have been more than four or five feet away.

His footsteps trailed off into the black, only audible when the boot tread caught on the carpet—an imperceptible scratch.

Jack’s legs burned. He’d crammed himself up underneath a desk, the wood digging into his backbone.

Five minutes passed without a sound.

Ten minutes.

Twenty.

Then an hour was gone, maybe longer. Impossible to know.

He leaned forward, rocking slowly back onto his hands and knees, his feet tingling with an excruciating numbness. Crawled several feet into the dark and stood, knees popping.

He glanced back over his shoulder, saw the barest thread of light sliding around a corner. Wondering, should I crawl back under the desk and wait a few more hours? Maybe the man with the red bandana had gone to get a flashlight. Maybe he’d left with no intention of returning. Maybe he was waiting out there just around the corner.

Jack moved forward between the cubicles, back into the light.

He stepped into the hallway.

Back down the stairs, through the lobby. He stood in that glassless window frame looking out across the plaza.

Snowing again. Nothing moving. The minivan riddled with bulletholes. Some of the dead lay beside their weapons, and he felt a subtle charge at the prospect of getting his hands on a gun again.

Ten steps into the plaza, Jack bent down to unwind the strap of a machinegun that had tangled around the arm of a dead man.

Froze as his finger touched the strap. An icy prickle down the center of his back. A door to the minivan was creaking open.

Jack let go and stood up, turning slowly.

The man in the red bandana sat in the front passenger seat, lighting a cigarette. “Finally.” Took a deep drag. “Didn’t want you to see the smoke.”

He started toward Jack, motioning him away from the dead man with his automatic pistol.

“The fountain,” he said.

Jack crossed the plaza, never taking his eyes off the man, as if that somehow kept the balance of control in his favor.

The fountain was a circle of old concrete, fifteen feet across, with a stone feature rising out of the middle that had once rained water. Most of it had long since evaporated, and what remained was stagnant and filled with discs of ice.

The men sat five feet apart.

Jack saw that the man’s hands were covered in dried blood that was cracking on his skin like old asphalt. He looked out at the plaza—the minivan, the dead, the blood on the melting snow.

In proximity, the soldier looked nothing like Jack had imagined. A kinder face. Three-day beard. Thoughtful eyes. Curls of black hair that slipped out from under the bandana. His fatigues weren’t black as Jack had first thought, but some pattern of night camouflage comprised of dark blues.

Might have been Jack’s age, perhaps a year or two younger.

He stared at Jack while he smoked, handgun resting on his leg, trained on Jack’s stomach.

“Is Dee alive?”

Jack didn’t respond.

“Where’s your family, Jack?”

A twinge of curiosity cut through the fear.

“How do you know my name?”

The man smiled, Jack feeling the eerie prickling of recognition.

He said, “Kiernan.”

“I saw her name all over this square, and it didn’t even click with me until I was walking away.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Me and some Guard unit buddies from Albuquerque defected. We’ve been heading north, just like you, killing and fucking and ravaging and just causing all sorts of mayhem. Time of my life. Are you expecting Dee and the family? Because we can wait. I’d be totally up for that.”

“I haven’t seen them in days.”

“You got separated?”

Jack nodded.

“Where?”

“Wyoming. Where’s your family, Kiernan? I seem to remember Dee telling me you had children.”

Kiernan took another drag. “Rotting in our backyard back in New Mexico.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I killed them.”

Jack could feel, even in the light of everything he’d seen, a new horror at the registration of this.

Kiernan smiled. “Smoke?”

“Not in years.”

He tugged a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds out of an i

Jack’s hands shook. He plucked a crooked cigarette from the pack along with the lighter. Four attempts to fire the tobacco sprigs hanging out of the end. Kiernan got another cigarette for himself.

“So why are you here, Jack?” he asked. “In this square out of all the places in the wild wild west?”

Jack said nothing, just pulled the smoke into his lungs. It was sweet and it burned.

“You think Dee’s going to find you here. That it?”

Jack exhaled, felt the nicotine hit and drag him a few steps deeper into himself, like sliding a filter between this moment and his perception of it. A dulling of the fear.

“Can I ask you something?” Jack said.

“As long as your cigarette’s still burning.”

“When you’re trying to fall asleep at night, do you see the faces of your wife and children?”

“Sometimes.”

“How do you not kill yourself?”