Free Run by Blake Crouch Page B

milky and failing to dilate at the onslaught of light. He held his belly as if trying to keep something in.
    Jack left the cart and walked over to the boundary of where the blood had pooled. He squatted down. The boy’s respirations coming labored and sodden. He ran his tongue across his dried and cracking lips and said, “Water.”
    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 skinny, long-legged kid. Black denim jeans and a western shirt. He turned away from the water and drew a breath.
    “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