She realizes she’s crying. Tears are fine, even healthy in this line of work, just never on the clock, never in the grave. If you lose control down there, you might never get it back.
Approaching footsteps snap her out of her reverie. She wipes her face and looks up, sees Sam coming toward her, the bald and scrawny Australian team leader who always wears a tie, especially in the field, his rubber boots swishing through the grass. He plops down beside her, reeking of decomp. Rips off the pair of filthy, elbow-length gloves and tosses them in the grass.
“How many have you taken out so far?” she asks.
“Twenty-nine. Mapping system shows a hundred fifty, hundred seventy-five still down in there.”
“What’s the demographic?”
“Men. Women. Children.”
“High-velocity GSWs?”
“Yeah, we’ve collected a ton of .223 Remington casings. But this is another weird one. Same thing we saw in that mass grave in Denver. Maybe you heard about it.”
“I haven’t.”
“Dismemberment.”
“Have you determined what was used?”
“In most instances, it’s not a clean break, like a machete or ax strike. These bones are splintered.”
“A chainsaw would do that.”
“Clever girl.”
“Jesus.”
“So I’m thinking they cut everyone down with AR-15s, and then went through with chainsaws. Making sure no one crawled out.”
The blond hairs on the back of her neck stand erect, a rod of ice descending her spine. The sun burns down out of the bright June sky, more intense for the elevation. Brushstrokes of snow linger above timberline on the distant peaks.
“You okay?” Sam asks.
“Yeah. Just that this is my first mission out west. I’d been working New York City up until now.”
“Look, take the day if you want. Get yourself acclimated. You’ll need your head right for this one.”
“No.” She stands, hoisting the duffle bag out of the grass and engaging that compartment in her brain that functions solely as a cold, indifferent scientist. “Let’s go to work.”
THE president had just finished addressing the nation, and the anchors and pundits were back on the airwaves, scrambling, as they had been for the last three days, to sort out the chaos.
Dee Colclough lay watching it all on a flatscreen from a ninth-floor hotel room ten minutes from home, a sheet twisted between her legs, the air-conditioning cool against the film of sweat on her skin.
She looked over at Kiernan, said, “Even the anchors look scared.”
Kiernan stubbed out his cigarette and blew a river of smoke at the television.
“I got called up,” he said.
“Your Guard unit?”
“I have to report tomorrow morning.” He lit another one. “What I hear, we’ll just be patrolling neighborhoods.”
“Keeping the peace until it all blows over?”
He glanced at her, head cocked with that boyish smirk she’d fallen for six months ago when he’d deposed her as an adverse expert witness in a medical malpractice case. “Does anything about this make you feel like it’s going to blow over?”
A new banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen—45 dead in a mass shooting at a Southern Baptist church in Columbia, South Carolina.
“Jesus Christ,” Dee said.
Kiernan dragged heavily on his cigarette. “Something’s happening,” he said.
“Obviously. The whole country—”
“That’s not what I mean, love.”
“What are you talking about?”
He didn’t answer right away, just sat there for a while, smoking.
“It’s been coming on now, little by little, for days,” he said finally.
“I don’t understand.”
“I barely do myself.”
Through the cracked window of their hotel room—distant gunshots and sirens.
“This was supposed to be our week,” she said. “You were going to tell Myra. I was—”
“You should go home, be with your family.”
“You’re my family.”
“Your kids at least.”
“What is this, Kiernan?” She could feel an angry knot bulging in her throat. “Are we not in this together? Are you having second thoughts about everything or what?”
“It’s not that.”
“Do you have any concept of what I’ve already sacrificed for you?”
She couldn’t see all of his face in the mirror on the opposite wall, but she could see his eyes. Gaping into nothing. A thousand-yard stare. Somewhere other than this room. He’d gone deep, and she’d sensed it even before this moment, in the way he’d made love to her. Something held back. Something missing.
She climbed out of bed and walked over to her dress where she’d thrown it against the wall two hours ago.
“You don’t feel it?” he asked. “Not at all?”
“I don’t understand what—”
“Forget it.”
“Kiernan—”
“Fucking forget it.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
Dee pulled the straps over her shoulders as Kiernan glared at her through the cloud of smoke around his head. He was forty-one years old, with short black hair, and a two-day shadow that reminded her so much of her father.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“You and I are not the same anymore, Dee.”
“Did I do something or—”
“I’m not talking about our relationship. It’s deeper. It’s…so much more profound than that.”
“You’re not making sense.”
She was standing by the window. The air coming in was cool and it smelled of the city and the desert that surrounded it. A pair of gunshots drew her attention, and when she looked through the glass she saw grids of darkness overspreading the city.
Dee glanced back at Kiernan, and she’d just opened her mouth to say something when the lights and the television in their room cut out.
She froze.
Her heart accelerating.
Couldn’t see anything but the flare and fade of Kiernan’s tobacco ember.
Heard him exhale in the dark, and then his voice, all the more terrifying for its evenness.
“You need to get away from me right now,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s this part of me, Dee, getting stronger every time I breathe in, that wants to hurt you.”
“Why?”
She heard the covers rip back. The sound of Kiernan rushing across the carpet.
He stopped inches from her.
She smelled the tobacco on his breath, and when she palmed his chest, felt his body shaking.
“What’s happening to you?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t stop it, Dee. Please remember that I love you.”
He put his hands on her bare shoulders, and she thought he was going to kiss her, but then she was flying through darkness across the room.
She crashed into the entertainment center, stunned, her shoulder throbbing from the impact.
Kiernan shouted, “Now get the fuck out while you still can.”
To continue reading RUN by Blake Crouch, visit your library or favorite ebook retailer and pick up a copy today.
A Thriller
J. A. Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson
NOT TOO LONG AGO…
“Whenever possible, avoid engaging the enemy,” The Instructor said. “If engaged, run. Fighting should be your last resort. Patriotism has its place, but it costs millions of dollars to train people like you. You’re more valuable than the mission. If things go sour, flee.”