Run

Her father is a little drunk, Sam more so, and she tunes back in to their conversation as Sam loosens his tie and says, “. . .learning more about the Great Auroral Storm.”

“Yeah, I’ve read some wild theories,” her father says.

“You talking about mine?”

“Entirely possible. You really believe these auroras contributed to the epic massacres and extinctions in history?”

“I think there’s some compelling solar abnormality data on that. But something of the magnitude that happened here? Keep in mind recorded human history is just the blink of an eye since life crawled out of the oceans. This was a hundred-thousand-year occurrence. Maybe a five-hundred. Natural selection at its darkest.”

“So who got selected?” her father asks. “Who won? Us?”

Sam laughs. “No.”

“The affected?”

“Most of them selected themselves out when they committed mass suicide.”

“Then who?”

“Your son,” Sam says.

“Excuse me?”

“People like Cole. Those who witnessed that terrible light show on October Fourth, and either didn’t kill, or did, and resisted the crushing guilt. That’s who won.”

“I have a close friend back home in Belgium in the humanities department where I teach. A priest. He thinks the aurora was just God testing us.”

“Those who saw the aurora, or those who ran?”

“Both, Sam.”

“Well, it all comes down to purification in the end, right?”

“You say it like that’s a good thing.”

“On a human level, no, but in terms of our DNA, it’s a different ball game. Remember, the barbarians finally took Rome. That was horrible, but Rome had become a corrupt, ineffectual, soft culture. Genetically speaking, it was a positive thing.”

“Or,” the old man says, “maybe we just need to kill each other. Maybe that’s our perfect state of being.”

Sam pauses to have a smoke, and when he finally exhales, says, “It surprises me that you would want to see this place again.”

“Why?”

“Because of what you saw and experienced here.”

“You should be examining my bones in that hole,” the old man says.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“This was an awful place, no question, but a miracle happened here. I never want to forget that.”

She’s buzzed and getting tired. Stretches her bare feet toward the fire, lays her head in her father’s lap. Soon he’s ru

“Excuse me, Sam,” her father says.

The old man reaches into his pocket and retrieves his mobile phone, answers, “I forgot, didn’t I? . . . I’m sorry. . . . Yes, here safe and sound, sitting by a fire. . . . Difficult but good. . . . Yes, I’m glad I came. . . . . . . That’s still the plan. We’ll meet you both in Calgary tomorrow evening. . . . . . . Oh, I know. It’ll be so good to all be together again. . . . Yes, she’s right here, but she’s sleeping. . . . Okay, I’ll tell her. . . . No, I won’t forget. I’ll do it as soon as we get off. . . . Goodnight, darling.”

The old man slides his phone back into his pocket.

She’s almost asleep now, in that cushioned bliss between consciousness and all that lies beneath. Feels her father’s hand on her shoulder, and his breath, still after all these years, familiar against her ear.

“Naomi,” he whispers, “your mother sends her love.”

* * * * *

Read on for an interview with Blake Crouch and excerpts from his four novels, Desert Places, Locked Doors, Abandon, and Snowbound…

* * * * *

Interview with Blake Crouch by Hank Wagner

Originally Published in Crimespree, July 2009

According to his website, Blake Crouch grew up in Statesville, a small town in the piedmont of North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000, where he studied literature and creative writing. He currently resides in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Crouch’s first book, Desert Places, was published in 2003. Pat Conroy called it “Harrowing, terrific, a whacked-out combination of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy.” Val McDermid described it as “An ingenious, diabolical debut that calls into question all our easy moral assumptions. Desert Places is a genuine thriller that pulses with adrenaline from start to finish.” His second novel, Locked Doors, was published in July 2005. A sequel to Desert Places, it created a similar buzz. His third novel, Abandon, was published on July 7, 2009.

HANK WAGNER: Your writing career began in college?

BLAKE CROUCH: I started writing seriously in college. I had tinkered before, but the summer after my freshman year, I decided that I wanted to try to make a living at being a writer. Spring semester of 1999, I was in an intro creative writing class and I wrote the short story (called “Ginsu Tony”) that would grow into Desert Places. Once I started my first novel, it became an obsession.

HW: Where did the original premise for Desert Places come from?

BC: The idea for Desert Places arose when two ideas crossed. I had the opening chapter already in my head... suspense writer receives an anonymous letter telling him there’s a body buried on his property, covered in his blood. I didn’t know where my protagonist was going to be taken though. Around the same time, I happened to be glancing through a scrapbook that had photographs of this backpacking trip I took in Wyoming in the mid 90’s. One of those photographs was of a road ru

HW: Why a sequel for your second book? Affection for the characters?

BC: It was actually my editor’s idea. I was perfectly happy walking away from the first book. But once she mentioned it during the editing of Desert Places, I really started to think about where the story could go, wondered how Andy might have changed after seven years in hiding, and I got excited about doing it. And I’m very glad I did, because I would’ve missed those characters. Even my psychopaths are family in some strange, twisted way.

HW: Of all the reviews and comments about your books, what was the strangest? The meanest? The nicest? The most perceptive?

BC: The strangest: This was a comment about me and the reviewer wrote something to the effect that I was either a super-talented writer with an immense imagination or one sick puppy. I think that’s open to debate. The meanest: From those [expletive deleted] at Kirkus. Now, keep in mind, this is my first taste of reviews and the reviewer absolutely savaged my book. It was so mean it was fu