Jack stepped on the brake, brought the Rover almost to a stop, and veered off the highway into the desert.
“What the f**k, Jack?”
“See what we’re heading for?”
Several miles east, a butte rose two hundred feet above the desert floor.
“Are you crazy?”
“We’d never make it back to Rock Springs on less than a quarter of a tank, which is where we’re at.”
“So you’re going to take us behind that butte.”
“Exactly.”
“Then go faster.”
“Christ, you’re bossy. I’m going as slow as I can so we don’t raise a trail of dust they can follow.”
Naomi lifted her head off the door. “Why’s it so bumpy?”
“We’re taking a detour, angel.”
“Why?”
“Cars coming.” Jack swerved to miss a sagebrush. “We making a dust cloud?”
Dee opened her door, leaned out, glanced back. “Little one.”
The butte grew bigger in the windshield—sunburnt strata of rock that rose to a flat-topped summit. The desert running like warped and shattered concrete under the tires and shaking the Rover all to hell.
“We’re running really hot,” Jack said. Kept searching for the road in his side mirror, kept forgetting the mirror had been shot out two nights ago.
“Where are they?” Naomi asked.
“We can’t see them from here,” Dee said. “Hopefully, they can’t see us.”
They rode into the shadow of the butte, Jack skirting the circumference until they reached the back side which had been fired into pink by the early sun.
He slammed the Rover into park, turned off the engine.
“Binoculars.”
Dee handed them over and he threw open the door and hopped down onto the hardpan. Ran up the lower slope of the butte, his quads burning after ten steps, perspiration beading on his forehead after twenty.
Where the slope went vertical for the last fifty feet, he traversed along the edge of the cliff band and had just caught his breath when the highway came into view.
His knees hit the dirt. Jack lowered himself and propped his elbows on the ground, still cold from the previous night. Brought the binoculars’ eyecups to his eyes, pulled the highway into focus, and slowly traced it north.
Footfalls behind him.
He inhaled a severely faded waft of Dee’s shampoo as she collapsed panting in the dirt.
“You see them?” she asked.
He did. An eighteen-wheeler led the convoy, puffing gouts of black smoke into the air and followed by a train of cars and trucks that might have been a mile long. Five hundred engines sounded otherworldly carrying across the desert.
“Jack?”
“Yeah, I see them.”
“What about our trail?”
He lowered the binoculars and looked to where he thought they’d cut across the desert and lifted them to his eyes again. First thing he fixed upon were a pair of antelope standing motionless with their heads raised, staring toward the noise of what was coming.
He adjusted the focus knob, spotted their tire tracks.
“I see our path. I don’t see any dust.”
The convoy had begun to pass the point on the highway where they’d turned off.
Jack said, “They’re not stopping.”
He lowered the binoculars.
“What are we going to do, Jack, when the gas runs out?”
“We’ll find some before that happens.”
“You said there aren’t any other cities for a—”
“We’ll have to get lucky.”
“What if we don’t—”
“Dee, what do you want me to say? I don’t know what’s going to—”
“Look.” She grabbed the binoculars from him and turned his head toward the ribbons of dust that were unspooling across the desert behind two trucks.
Jack descended the butte at a sprint, Dee calling after him, but he didn’t stop until he reached the Rover.
Popped the cargo hatch, grabbed the shotgun, felt confident he’d replaced the spent shell yesterday afternoon at the motel. Wondered if that meant he had eight rounds, though he couldn’t be sure.
“Dad?” Naomi said.
“Cole awake?”
“No.”
“Wake him.”
“Are people coming?”
“Yes.”
Dee arrived breathless as he opened his door and took the Glock from underneath the driver seat and a handful of twelve-gauge shells from the center console.
“Jack, let’s just get in the car and go. Make them catch us.”
He jammed the shells into his pocket.
Cole whined, “I’m hungry.”
Jack thinking this was one of those choices where if you took the wrong road, there’d be no chance to undo it. They’d be dead. His son and his daughter and his wife and him too if he was so lucky.
“Jack.”
He looked over Dee’s head to where the desert sloped up to the base of the butte.
“Naomi, you see that large boulder fifty yards up the hill?”
“Where?”
Jack punched through the plastic window and tore it off the door. “There.”
“Jack, no.”
“Take your brother up there and hide behind the rock. No matter what happens, what you see or hear, don’t move, don’t make a sound, until we come get you.”
“What if you don’t?”
“We will.”
“I’m hungry,” Cole cried, eyes still half-closed, not fully awake.
“Go with your sister, buddy. We’ll eat something when you come back.”
“No, now.”
“Get him up that hill, Na, and keep him with you.” He faced Dee, her eyes welling.
“You sure about this, Jack?”
“Yes.” What a lie.
Naomi dragged Cole out of the car, but the boy fell crying to the ground, and he wouldn’t get up.
Jack squatted down in the dirt.
“Look at me, son.” He held the boy’s face in his hands.
“I’m hungry.”
He slapped Cole.
The boy went clear-eyed and hushed, stared at his father, tears running down his face.
“Shut up, and go with your sister right now, or you’re going to get us all f**king killed.” He’d never sworn at his son, never laid a hand on him before.
Cole nodded.
Naomi helped her brother to his feet and Jack watched as they jogged up the slope together, hand-in-hand. Jack looked at his wife. “Come on.”