Run

Pulled the prairie into focus.

Distant grass, waving in the wind. A backdrop of clouds going dark as night fell. A jackrabbit standing on its hind legs.

He made a slow scan of the horizon.

A pickup truck scrolled into view—old, beat-to-hell Chevy with equal parts paint and rust. He lowered the binoculars to gauge the true distance—a mile, possibly more—then glassed the truck again.

A woman stood in the bed staring through the scope of a high-powered rifle that she’d braced against the roof. The rifle bucked, soundless. A bullet hit the other side of the Cherokee with a hard ping, like it had struck one of the wheels.

The report was slow in reaching him.

While the woman loaded another long, brass-tipped cartridge, he pa

The teen boys carried semiautomatic pistols and the man a double-barreled shotgun, their faces flushed from ru

Jack lowered the binoculars. They were less than a hundred yards away. No idea how he’d missed them.

He took up one of the machineguns, wondering how much ammo remained.

Looked over at Dee, the children huddled around her.

“They’re coming, Dee.”

“How many?” she asked.

“Three of them.”

“I can help shoot,” Cole said.

“I need you to stay with Mama.”

Jack crouched behind the rear, right wheel, fingering the trigger.

“Is this it, Jack?”

“No, this is not it.”

He eased up until he could just see through the panels of spiderwebbed glass. The footsteps had become audible, swishing through the grass. The men would be upon them in seconds.

He crouched back down behind the tire.

Shut his eyes, took three deep breaths.

Came suddenly to his feet and swung out around the corner of the Jeep with the AR-15 shouldered. The three men already scrambling to raise their weapons vanished behind the burst of fire, the steady recoil driving into his shoulder, and then the magazine was evacuated, the barrel smoking, the men cut down fifteen feet from the Jeep.

A bullet struck the taillight by Jack’s leg, and he was back around the other side of the Jeep by the time the gunshot reached them.

“Are they dead, Daddy?”

“Yes.”

He lifted the other machinegun out of the grass.

“That one’s empty,” Dee said. “We’re out.”

He couldn’t stand the pain in her voice.

Knelt down behind the tire again and raised the binoculars. The light was going fast. Took him a moment to find the pickup truck again, and when he had, it wasn’t alone. Two other trucks had pulled up alongside it, their doors thrown open, and now he counted eight people, heavily-armed, in heated discussion.

“What?” Dee said. “What do you see? Jack.”

“There’s eight of them now. Three trucks.”

“We have to go.”

“Where, Dee? We’d get a mile, maybe two, before we broke down again.”

“Then what, Jack?”

“We fight.”

The people were climbing back into the trucks now.

“They’re coming,” he said.

Dee was struggling to sit up.

“You shouldn’t be moving,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter. Give me a hand.”

“Dee, you shouldn’t—”

“Give me your fucking hand.” He pulled her onto her feet, her right pant leg dark with blood. She used him for support, groaning as she limped over to the Jeep and opened the driver side door.

She climbed in behind the steering wheel.

“Dee, the car will break down. We are not—”

“I know we’re not.”

He felt something inside of him unhook.

“No.”

Dee looked past him to her daughter. “Naomi, take Cole and gather up the weapons from the dead men.”

“Mom.”

“Right. Now.” When the children were gone, she said, “I can’t walk, Jack. It would be so easy for me to bleed out.”

“We’re going to get you help.”

“We’re all going to be dead in five minutes.”

“Dee—”

“Listen to me. It’s dusk. Soon, it’ll be night. Let me—”

“No, Dee—”

“Let me take the Jeep. Those trucks will follow my lights. Think they’re chasing us all down. By the time they catch up to me, it’ll be dark, and you and the kids—” her voice broke “—you’ll be safe.”

“But we’re almost there, baby.”

“You run all night, Jack. Promise me you won’t stop.”

Over the roof of the Jeep, in the blue dusk across the plain, he could see three points of light.

“No.”

“You ready to watch them die? Are you?”

“I’m not ready for this, Dee.”

“I know.”

Naomi and Cole were coming back over.

He grabbed her face and kissed her. There were tears ru

“There are trucks coming,” Naomi said.

“I know, baby,” Dee said. She looked at Jack. He took the handguns from Naomi and set them in Dee’s lap.

“We’re going due north,” he told her. “You come to us.”

Dee nodded. She looked down at Cole, her eyes glistening again. “Got a hug for Mommy?” The boy handed Jack the shotgun and leaned into the Jeep. Dee pulled Cole into her and kissed the top of his head. She glanced up at her daughter. “Na?”

“What are you doing?”

“Mom’s going to run some interference for us.”

“We’re not staying together?”

Jack grabbed Naomi’s arm and glared at her, his chin trembling. “Hug your mother, Na.”

Naomi looked at Jack. She looked at Dee. She wrapped her arms around her mother, and as she sobbed into her chest, Jack heard the first distant grumble of the approaching trucks.

Already, it was dark and cold.

“Come on, angel.” Jack pulled Naomi away from Dee. “Take your brother into that depression, and you lie down in the grass at the bottom. I’ll be right there.”

“Daddy—”

“I know. Don’t think right now. Just go.”

Naomi gathered herself. “All right, Cole, let’s see what’s over here.”

“Where?” the boy said.

Dee watched her children run off down the hill into the dark.

“Let me take the car,” Jack said.

“I can’t walk,” Dee said. “The kids would have to leave me to find help. They’d be on their own. You want that?”

“Dee—”

“Stop wasting our last moment.”

He nodded.

“Do you know what I’m going to think about?” she said.

“What?”

“That day we had up at the cabin. That perfect day.”

“Wiffle ball in the field.”

She smiled. “Please get our children someplace safe. Make this mean something.”

“I swear to you I will.”

“I have to go now.”

“You have to stop crying so you can drive.”

In the distance, it was too dark to see the trucks, but their headlights were close enough to have separated into six points of light.

Jack kissed his wife once more and buried his face into the softness of her neck and just breathed her in. Then he looked into her eyes for precious seconds until she pushed him away. She pulled the door closed and cranked the engine.

He got down in the grass and he was crying as the Jeep rolled away, picking up speed. After ten seconds, the cornerlamps cut on—dim, orange light—and the noise of the engine became rackety across the prairie, sputtering and hacking.

Jack watched the approaching trucks, still moving toward him, getting louder as the Jeep dwindled away. No evident course diversion yet.

He glanced back into the depression, couldn’t see his children.

When he looked forward again, the trucks were turning, all of them, and difficult to see now with their headlights blazing east.

He lay there watching the lights move across the plain, the engines becoming quiet, the lights fading.

Their Jeep disappeared.

The trucks vanished.

He had to strain now to even hear the engines.