by Blake Crouch
He worked hard, tried to work fast. As the first rays of sunlight streamed through the aspen onto the meadow, he severed the muscle tissue that held the entrails and let the steaming gutpile roll out of the carcass into the grass. He excavated the colon and the bladder, liver and heart, and sent Cole back to the cabin in search of several blankets.
He was three hours skinning the elk, two more separating the shoulder from the ribcage. All afternoon removing the backstrap, boning out the meat from between the ribs, peeling off the tenderloins from underneath. Everything laid out to drain and cool on a large blanket. He cut the hindquarters from the pelvic bone as the sun slid down over the desert, trying not to slice the meat itself but still doing a fair amount of damage.
Naomi brought him a can of tomato soup for supper, which he drank down in less than a minute. When he asked about her mother, she told him Dee was sleeping. Had been all day.
In the cold still dusk, thirteen hours after the kill, Jack carried, in five trips, what he estimated to be two hundred pounds of meat to the front porch of the cabin.
The bags of water had frozen solid in the chest freezer, and Jack stowed the meat inside, still wrapped in blankets. He was sunburned and weak and covered in blood, the elk’s and his—several stitches had ripped and the wound in his shoulder had opened again.
He took his first shower since arriving at the cabin. Twenty minutes under near-scalding water scrubbing the blood out of his hair and skin and watching the filth swirl down the drain under his feet. Crawled into a double bed on an aspen frame a little before 10:00 p.m. in the second bedroom upstairs. Cole snoring softly next door. Through the window he could hear the sound of the stream in the woods.
A footstep snapped him awake. He opened his eyes to the silhouette of Dee standing in the doorway. She came over and climbed into bed, their faces inches apart in the dark.
“I hear we have an elk,” she whispered.
“In the freezer. As we speak.”
“You’re your kids’ superhero, I hope you know. I’ve never heard Naomi talk about you like she did today.”
“I’m going to miss being a constant source of embarrassment.”
She put her hand on his face. “You don’t stink,” she said.
“Showers will do that.”
“Why are you up here and not in my bed?”
“Figured you still needed some space.”
She kissed him. “Come with me, Jack.”
* * * * *
SNOW, just a dusting, lay upon the meadow the following morning but it was gone before lunch. Dee replaced the stitches in Jack’s shoulder and he spent an hour butchering steaks out of the tenderloins. Made a dry rub from the available spices in the kitchen and worked it into the meat.
He found a wiffle ball set in the shed. They used empty milkjugs for bases and weeded a pitcher’s mound and held a series, boys versus girls, that concluded in game seven when Cole knocked a line drive over third base and brought Jack home.
The afternoon, Jack spent sitting on the porch drinking beer and watching Dee and the kids play out on the meadow. He wouldn’t allow himself to think back or forward, but only to register the moment—the wind moving through gold aspen leaves, his skin warm in the sun, the sound of Cole’s laughter, the shape of Dee when, every so often, she would turn and look back toward the porch and wave to him. Her shoulders were brown and the details of her face obscured by distance and the shadow of a visor, though he could still pick out the white brushstroke of her smile.
As another day set sail, he grilled the elk steaks and a rainbow and surprised everyone with a bottle of 1994 Silver Oak he’d found hidden away in a cabinet over the sink. They gathered at the kitchen table and ate by candlelight, even Cole getting his own small pour of wine in a shotglass. Toward the end of supper, Jack stood and raised his glass and toasted his son, his daughter, his wife, each individually, and then said to everyone, his voice only breaking once, that of all his days, this had been the finest of his life.
* * * * *
ANOTHER fall day in the mountains, Jack fishing alone with his thoughts and the sound of moving water that never seemed to leave him now, even in dreams. Imagining what winter might be like in this place. An entire season spent indoors.
He caught two brookies before lunch and stowed them away in the cooler. The exhaustion from two days ago still lingered. He found a bed of moss downstream and took off his disintegrating trail shoes and eased back onto the natural carpet. There weren’t as many leaves on the aspen as there had been just a week ago when they’d arrived, the woods brighter for it. He could feel the moisture from the moss seeping through his shirt—cool and pleasant—and the sunlight in his face a perfect offset. He slept.
Walked home in the early evening, the inside of the cooler noisy with the throes of four suffocating fish.
Called out, “I’m home,” as he climbed onto the porch.
Set the cooler down, kicked off his shoes.
Inside, Dee and the kids played Monopoly on the living room floor.
“Who’s winning?” he asked.
“Cole,” Dee said. “Na and I are broke. He’s bought every property he’s landed on. Owns Community Chest and Chance. I just sold him Free Parking.”
“Can you even do that?”
“I think he’s paying us not to quit at this point. It’s all very ridiculous.”
He bent down, kissed his wife.
“You smell fishy,” she said. “How’d you do?”
“Four.”
“Big ones?”
“Decent size.”
“We can eat whenever you’re ready.”
Jack showered and dressed in a plaid button-up and blue jeans that were perhaps a size too small and still smelled strongly of their prior owner. Tinged with the remnant of sweet smoke, cigar or pipe. Something crinkled in the back pocket as Jack walked from the bedroom to the kitchen, and he dug out a receipt for a box of tippet from the Great Outdoor Shop in Pinedale, purchased four months ago with a credit card by Douglas W. Holt.
A three-course meal: freshly-baked bread, one can of broccoli cheddar soup, a rainbow trout, seasoned and grilled. They had learned to eat slowly, to stretch out each course with conversation or some other diversion. That afternoon, Dee had perused a shelf of old paperbacks in the game closet, picked a David Morrell thriller, and now she read to them the first chapter during the soup course.
After supper, she boiled a pot of chamomile tea.
“That soup was excellent,” Jack said as she carried four steaming mugs over to the table, two in each hand. “You really outdid yourself.”
“Old family recipe, you know. The Campbells.”
“Who’s that?” Cole asked.
“Mom’s kidding around.”
“But seriously, Jack, the fish was incredible.”
He sipped his tea. Could’ve been stronger, but it felt so good just to hold the warm mug in his hands which were still raw from long hours of casting.
“Busy boy today, huh?” Dee said. “Four fish and how much wood did you cut?”
“I didn’t cut any wood.”
“Of course you did.”
He flashed a perplexed smile. “Um, I didn’t.”
“Are you joking?”
“About what?”
“Cutting firewood.”
“No, why?”
“I heard a chainsaw.”
Jack set his mug on the table and stared at Dee.
“When?” he asked.
“Late this afternoon.”
“Where was the sound of the chainsaw coming from?”
“The driveway. I thought you were taking down more trees.”
Cole said, “What’s wrong?”
“Jack, you’re playing around, and all things considered, what we’ve been through, this isn’t funny at—”
“I fished all day. Naomi, did you take the chainsaw out?” But he knew the answer before she spoke, because the mug was rattling against the table in her
trembling hands.
Dee started to rise.
“No, don’t get up.”
“We have to—”
“Just listen.” Jack lowered his voice. “If people have found the cabin, then they’re probably watching us right now through that window at your back, waiting until we go to bed.”
“Waiting for what?” Naomi asked.
“Everyone drink your tea and act like we’re wrapping up a nice family evening.”
His mouth had run dry. He sipped his tea and let his eyes move briefly past Dee’s shoulder to the window behind the kitchen table, the only one in the house they hadn’t shielded with a blanket since it backed right up against the woods. Nothing to see at this hour, the sun long since set. Wondered if someone crouched out there in the dark at this moment, watching his family.
“You’re sure you heard it?” he said quietly. “The chainsaw?”
“Yes.”
“I heard it, too.” Tears rolling down Naomi’s face. “I thought it was you, Dad.”
Before supper, Jack had switched off the solar power system to recharge overnight and they’d eaten by firelight. Several candles lit the living room, too. One in each of the upstairs bedrooms.
“The shotgun and the Glock are under our bed,” Jack said. “I think we have a box of ammo for the Glock that’s mostly full, but we’re down to the last half-dozen twelve gauge shells.” He looked at Naomi, then Dee, then Cole. Hated the fear he saw. “We’re going to act like it’s just another normal night. I’ll put Cole to bed. Naomi, you head up to your room. Dee, clear the table and get all the cans of food and whatever bread’s left into a plastic bag, some silverware, too, and a can opener. We don’t know how close they are to the cabin, if they can see inside, see us in the other rooms, so don’t hurry, but don’t take too much time either.”
“What about all our meat?”
“Leave it. I’ll come back downstairs and then Dee and I will blow out the living room and kitchen and bedroom candles. We’ll dress in the dark, all of us, all the clothes we can wear, and then we’ll meet in the other downstairs bedroom—the one near the shed. Naomi, you stay upstairs with your brother after I’ve left and listen for me to call you down. Got it?”
She was crying. “I don’t want to leave.”
“Me either, but can you do this, what I’m asking?”
She nodded.
“Look, maybe there’s nobody out there, but we have to make sure, and we aren’t safe in here until we know.”
“Are we going to take the car?” Dee asked.
“No, because they probably have one blocking us in. I’m sure they were using the chainsaw to cut that tree I brought down across the driveway. So they could drive up. We just need to get into the woods and hide until I can figure out what’s going on.”
Jack carried his son through the kitchen, up the spiral staircase, and into the bedroom. Threw back the covers and laid Cole on the mattress.
“Naomi’s right next door,” Jack said. “You listen to your sister, okay?”
“Don’t blow out the candle.”
“I have to, buddy.”
“I don’t like it dark.”
“Cole, I need you to be brave.” He kissed the boy’s forehead. “I’ll see you real soon.”
Jack extinguished the candle on the dresser and tried not to rush down the steps. The kitchen was already dark, the plastic bag of food tied off and sitting on the hearth. He blew out the candles on the coffee table and moved blindly toward his and Dee’s bedroom, eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness.
Dee stood by the blanketed window.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Just peeking out at the meadow. Haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Let’s get going.”
Jack donned two more pipe-scented shirts, his fingers struggling with the buttons in the dark, heart slamming in his chest. When he’d dressed, he slid two shells into the Mossberg to replace the two he’d used on the elk. He crammed the four remaining into the side pocket of his jeans, grabbed the Mag-Lite from the bedside table drawer, and handed Dee the Glock.
In the living room, Jack called up to his children. Laced his trail shoes while Naomi and Cole descended the stairs, and they all went together past the fireplace into the second bedroom.
Jack crawled across the bed and tugged down the blanket Dee had tacked over the glass and unlatched the hasp.
The window slid up. The night cold rushed in.
Jack climbed over the sill, stepped down into the grass.
“All right, Cole, come on.”
He grabbed his son under his arms and hoisted him out of the cabin. “Stay right beside me, and don’t say a word.”
He helped Naomi through and then Dee. Lowered the window back and pulled his wife in close so he could whisper in her ear.
“We can’t leave without our packs. They’re in the back of the Rover, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait for me to call you over.”
Jack crept across the grass and peered around the corner of the cabin.
The meadow stretched into darkness.
No wind. No moon. No movement.
He sprinted twenty yards to the shed and crouched down behind it, straining to listen and hearing nothing but the internal combustion of his heart.
Jack blew a sharp, stifled whistle, then watched as Dee and the kids emerged from the shadows behind the cabin, running toward him, their pants swishing in the grass for eight agonizing seconds before they reached him.
“Did I do good?” Cole asked.
“You did great. Dee, I’m going around to the front of the shed to get our packs. If something goes wrong, you hear gunshots, me yelling, whatever, take the kids into the woods, all the way back to the stream. I’ll be able to find you there.”
He rose to his feet, moved along the backside of the shed, the shotgun in one hand, flashlight in the other. Rounded the corner, the driveway looming just ahead. He jogged the edge of the woods until he came to it. The single lane descended out of meager starlight into the darkness of the aspen grove, and he followed it down until he came around the first hairpin turn. A Suburban blocked the way, its color indeterminate in the lowlight. A Datsun pickup truck behind it. He put a light through the glass and checked the ignitions of both vehicles. No keys. No idea how to hotwire a car.
He ran back up the driveway. After several minutes in the woods, the clearing appeared almost bright. Stood there for a moment scanning the meadow and the trees around the periphery, but the shadows kept their secrets so well he couldn’t even see his family in the darkness behind the shed.
Twenty strides brought him to the side of it.
He swung around the corner and got his hand on the doorknob and the hinges ground together with a rusty shriek as he slipped inside.
A wave of disorientation accompanied the absolute, unflinching darkness.
Jack knelt down, laid the shotgun in the dirt, and fumbled with the head of the Mag-Lite, trying to turn it on.
Several feet away, a shuffle in the dirt.
Jack froze, bracing against a shot of liquid fear that made his scalp tingle and his throat constrict, thinking it could be a rodent or some tool that had shifted. Or someone pointing a gun at him. Or his frazzled imagination.
Two choices. See it or shoot it.
He lowered the flashlight back onto the dirt floor. As he felt around for the shotgun, a motor coughed ten feet away, like someone had pulled a start rope. Then it sputtered again and the shed filled with the reek of gas and the banshee-wail of a two-stroke. A small LED light cut on—affixed to the handle with black electrical tape—and it sent out a schizophrenic beam that hit the Rover, the shed walls, and the large, bearded man who came at Jack with the screaming chainsaw, gripped like a bat, spring-loaded to swing.
Jack grabbed the shotgun and jacked a shell as the man reached him, no time to stand or brace.
The blast knocked Jack onto his back in the dirt,
and at point-blank range, cut the ski-jacketed man in half at the waist.
Jack clambered back onto his feet, pumped the shotgun again, lifted the Mag-Lite, and screwed the bulb to life.
The man still clutched the idling chainsaw, but only in one hand, having nearly severed his right leg at the knee.
Jack leaned down and flipped the kill switch.
In the renewed silence, the man emitted desperate drowning noises. Over them, Jack could hear Dee calling his name through the back wall of the shed. He went to it and put his mouth to the wood and said, “I’m okay. Go where we talked about right now. There’s more of them.”
He hurried over to the Rover and lifted his pack out of the cargo area, trying to recall what all it held, if it might be worth rifling through Dee’s pack or bringing it too, but there wasn’t time.
He shouldered his pack and clipped the hip belt and chest strap and went back over to the man in the ski jacket who’d turned sheet white and already bled a black lake across the dirt.
“How many of you are there?” Jack asked. But the man just stared up at him with a kind of glassy-eyed amazement and would not, or could not, speak.
Jack killed the Mag-Lite and eased open the door to the shed and peered out.
Already, they were halfway across the meadow—four shadows running toward him and two smaller, faster ones out ahead of the others.
He leveled the shotgun, squeezed off three blinding reports.
Four points of light answered, flashing in the dark like high-octane lightning bugs, and bullets struck the wood beside him and punched through the door above his head.
He stepped out and around the side and sprinted to the back of the shed.
His family was gone.
Lightning footsteps approached, the jingle of a chain, snarling. He turned back to see the pit bull tear around the corner, skidding sidelong across the grass trying to right its forward motion.
Jack raised the shotgun, the animal accelerating toward him, and fired as it leapt for his throat, the buckshot instantly arresting its momentum. He pumped the slide and took aim on the second pit bull which ripped around the corner with greater efficiency. He dropped it whimpering and tumbling through the grass.