Free The Last Run: A Novella by Stephen Knight Page B

it to the house and then back to Harmony in MOPP gear was effectively the same.
    “I don’t think I can leave you like this,” he said woodenly, and found he was disgusted with himself when he found a small part of him had already been considering it.
    “Scott…you have to…live.” CJ’s eyes moved, as if casting about, hoping to see him, despite her blindness. “Someone has to take care…of Rachel. You…you have to live.”
    Mulligan swallowed. “Rachel’s in a safe place, CJ. She’s going to be fine. Don’t worry about her.”
    “You…need to go,” CJ said, her voice a light murmur beneath the mask. “You…need…to save…them. No chance…for me.”
    “CJ…”
    She closed her eyes. “Rachel,” she said. “Oh, baby…”
    CJ stopped breathing.
    “CJ!” Mulligan grabbed one of her hands, and pried one of her eyes open. The pupil there was already dilating, as the muscles in her eye slowly relaxed, growing slack. Mulligan tightened the straps holding the mask in place, then reclined the seat as far back as it would go. It would be better to remove CJ from the copilot’s seat and stretch her out on the deck, but he was afraid to do so—her injuries were obviously severe, and the movement might make the damage irreparable.
    He began CPR for the second time that day, and as hot tears burned his eyes, a small voice inside him begged him to let CJ go, and stop wasting time.
    ***
    B Y THE TIME he stopped trying to revive CJ, the mushroom cloud had begun to break up, courtesy of the higher winds at altitude. It was just a mass of dirty smoke now, slowly fading away, a black, crooked finger reaching into the sky. His back, neck, and arms were on fire. The oxygen canister had depleted its charge long ago, rendering the mask useless. Mulligan left it on CJ’s face. Her skin was damp from his tears, and his throat was raw from shouting at her to come back. He had worked on her for more than twice as long as he had Peter, and he was exhausted, completely wrung out. He finally collapsed to the deck between the two cockpit seats, his lower back pressed against the center console, its hard metal edge biting into him. He ignored it. Compared to the rest of his pain, it was practically a lover’s kiss.
    “I killed my friends,” he said to himself. His voice sounded ragged and hollow inside the silent vehicle. “Oh fuck me, I killed both of them.”
    He looked down the length of the rig. While large on the outside, SCEVs weren’t exactly cavernous on the inside—all the room was taken up by gear and machinery, leaving just a little over four hundred square feet of living space. From the cockpit, he could look down the entire length of the rig, where lockers had popped open, strewing unsecured articles across the decking. Maintenance panels in the overhead had popped open as well, exposing ductwork and electrical components. In the rear of the rig, the door to the latrine hung crazily on one hinge, and the emergency light back there flickered irregularly, like a faulty heart threatening to quit. From his perspective, Mulligan could see the cabin’s lines were slightly off, as if the rig had been slightly twisted when it rolled over. Judging by the debris field he had seen through the viewports, that didn’t seem like a very farfetched notion. It was a wonder the rig’s pressure seals hadn’t been compromised.
    His friends were dead, and there was nothing he could do about that. And their passing had left him with the time to finally consider what to do next. His family was still out there, somewhere. He didn’t know what condition they were in—the house was far enough from the explosion to have probably been spared most of the effects of the shockwave that had raced across the plain and tossed One Truck aside like a child’s toy, but the radiation was all-encompassing. Rationally, he knew that things had progressed past the “they don’t have much time” point. While they might not be dead yet,