But she started to climb.
Moving up the crack proved easier, if only because of the illusion of safety—boxed in on three sides and plenty of handholds. They climbed all morning, blisters forming on Jack’s fingertips, and he kept wondering how close it was to midday, the adrenaline rush having skewed his perception of time. Doubted their morale could withstand another night on this mountain.
Thirty feet above, Cole hollered.
Jack’s heart stopped. He looked up, the sun burning down, couldn’t see a thing through its cutting-torch glare.
He shouted, “Everyone okay?”
Dee yelled back, “We’re at the top.”
Jack stood on the ridge, bracing against the wind and staring east. The mountain fell away beneath them toward pine-covered foothills that downsloped into high desert. Several miles out and one vertical mile below, a highway ran north.
“There it is,” Jack said. “I don’t see any cars on it.”
“Backside of this mountain doesn’t look too awful,” Dee said.
“No, just long as hell.”
Dee lowered herself off the ridge.
“Ready to get off this rock, huh?”
“Like you can’t even imagine.”
They descended the east slope—a steep boulder field streaked with last year’s snow that was hard as asphalt—and evening was coming on by the time they stumbled out of it into the spruce. After two full days on nothing but rock, the moist dirt floor felt like sponge under Jack’s feet. He was too tired and sore to register hunger, but his thirst verged on desperation.
“Should we stop?” Dee asked as they hiked through the darkening woods. “I mean, it’s not like we need to find the perfect spot for our tent or anything. Any old piece of ground will do.”
“A stream would be nice,” he said.
Jack stopped four times so they could hush and listen for the sound of running water, but they never heard it, and exhaustion finally won out.
Jack climbed under a huge spruce tree and broke off as many lower limbs as his strength would allow. His family joined him under the overhanging branches, and they all lay huddled together on the forest floor.
Dee reached over, held Jack’s hand.
Cole already asleep.
Hardly any light left in the sky, and what little there was struggled to pass through the spiderweb of branches. Jack wanted to say something to Dee and Naomi before they drifted off, something about how proud he was of them, but he made the mistake of closing his eyes while he tried to think of what he should say.
He woke once in the middle of the night. Pitch black and the patter of rainfall all around them. The branches thick enough over where they slept to keep them dry. Jack’s body was cold but he could still feel the glow of the sunburn in his face. Brightness when he shut his eyes. Thinking, water is falling out there. Water. But thirsty as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to move.
* * * * *
THE woods smelled of last night’s rainfall and everything still dripped. They could’ve laid there all day under the tree watching the light spill through the branches, but he made them get up. Two full days since their last sip of water at that high lake on the other side of the mountain, and he fought a raging headache.
They left while it was still early. No trail to follow but the path of least resistance, slowly winding their way down through the spruce. Cole couldn’t walk, so Jack carried him on his shoulders. He felt dizzy, his legs cramping, thinking he should have dragged them all out from under the tree last night and made a catch for the rain. They were dying of thirst, and he’d let a shot at water pass them by.
Midafternoon and stumbling through the woods like zombies. Back down into pine trees, descending toward desert and the heat of it and the tang of dry sage in the upslope wind.
They would’ve missed it but for Cole.
The boy said, “Look.” Pointed toward a boulder a little ways off in the trees with a dark streak running down its face that glimmered where the sun struck it.
Jack lifted his son off his shoulders and set him down and ran for it, hurdling two logs and sliding to a stop on his knees in the wet mud at the base.
A steady trickle the width of a string ran off the lip of the rock. He bent down and took a sip, just one to make sure it tasted safe, the water down his throat so cold and sweet he had to physically tear himself away from it.
“How is it?” Dee said. “Safe to drink?”
“Like nothing you ever tasted.” Jack stood, traced the stream to where it disappeared into rock. “It’s a spring,” he said. “Come here, Cole.” He helped his son down onto the wet mud and held his mouth under the stream for thirty seconds.
“All right, buddy, let’s give sister a shot.”
They each got a half minute under the trickle, and then, beginning with Cole, took turns, each as long as they wanted, drinking their fill.
It was torture watching his children gulp down mouthful after mouthful, so Jack wandered away from the boulder to look for a place for them to sleep. Came upon it almost instantly—a stretch of dirt underneath an overhang that would probably keep them dry unless a wild storm blew in. He picked out all of the rocks from the dirt and found some patches of moss nearby which he peeled off the ground and spread out like plush moist carpeting. He sat down on the moss in the shade of the overhang and stared at the sky through the tops of the trees. Didn’t have his watch but he bet it was four or five in the afternoon. The light getting long and the clouds dissipating. The chill coming.
While his family slept, Jack lay under the trickle of water. It took fourteen seconds for his mouth to fill, and then he’d swallow and open again. Laid there forty minutes watching the sky darken, drinking until his stomach bloated and sloshed.
Their wet clothes froze during the night and they lay shivering under the overhang while the moon lifted above the desert. Jack got up and wandered out into the woods and broke off as many limbs as he could find. All pine—the needles densely clustered. Carried an armful back to their pitiful camp and laid the branches over the tangle of bodies that comprised his family.
He stood watching them.
Looked back toward the west, the mountain they’d scaled looming in the dark.
Broken granite shining in the moonlight.
And he felt something like a drug enter his bloodstream—several heartbeats of pride coursing through him, only it wasn’t really pride. Just knowledge. Clarity. A brief window passing through his field of vision. He saw himself objectively, what he’d done, how with his hands and his brain and his handling of fear, he’d kept his family alive this far, a realization surfacing, and it was this: a part of him needed this, loved this, loved being strong for them, going hungry and thirsty for them, even killing for them. He knew he would do it again and without a moment’s hesitation. Hell, a part of him might even welcome it. There was simply nothing in his experience that even compared with the thrill of killing to protect his family. In this moment, it was the purpose of his existence.
He felt, possibly for the first time in his life, like a fucking man.
At last, he crawled under the branches and wrapped his arms around his son.
Cole’s teeth chattered. “I’m cold,” the boy said.
“You’ll warm up.”
“When?”
“In a minute.”
“Can you die of cold?”
“Yeah, but that’s not going to happen to you.”
“I’m still not warm.”
“Be patient. It’s coming.”
* * * * *
JACK woke at dawn and laid his hands upon his children.
“They’re breathing,” Dee whispered.
“You sleep?”
“Not much.”
“We stink,” he said.
“Speak for yourself.”
“No, I think I can safely speak for you, too.”
He looked at his wife just to look at her. First time he’d done that in days.
Her cheeks smeared with dirt. Lips cracked. Sunburned all to hell.
“You’ve got a few dreadlocks starting there,” he said.
“I’m hideous, aren’t I?”
“Maybe a tad.”
“You smoothtalker.” She reached across the kids, touched his hand. “We can’t keep doing this,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“We’re almost out of these mountains, Dee. It’s going to get better then.”
“Or worse.”
“Do you believe we’re headed for someplace safe, where we can survive? Maybe get back what we lost?”
“I don’t know, Jack.”
“I think you need to believe that’s what’s going to happen.”
“It’s just so hard. I’m so tired. I’m hungry. And then I look at them and know they’re suffering even more.”
“We could be dead, Dee. All of us or some of us. But we’re not. We’re together. You have to hold onto that. Let it carry you.”
They came out of the woods in the late morning onto a bare hill that sloped down to a river, and several hundred yards past, a paved road. Beyond it all to the east lay miles of badlands—pale, dry country, rippled and treeless.
They worked their way down through the sage to the riverbank and stopped for a drink.
Jack lifted Cole onto his shoulders and waded across, Dee and Naomi following behind, his daughter gasping at the icy shock of the water, which was low in advance of winter, coming only to their knees at the deepest point.
On the other side, at the top of a small rise, they rested in the weeds and watched the road.
Nothing passed. No sound but the river and the wind blowing through the grass.
Early afternoon and low gray clouds streaming across the sky from the west.
Jack stepped into the road. Saw a quarter mile of it from where he stood.
Looking back, that rampart of mountains they’d crossed two days ago soared above everything, powdered with snow.
“What if a car comes?” Dee said. “There’s no way to know if they’re affected.”
“We’ll have to make a split-second decision,” Jack said. “If it’s only one car, with one or two people inside, maybe we chance it. Otherwise, we hide.”
They walked north along the shoulder.
“Let me have the gun, Dee.”
She handed him the Glock and he ejected the magazine, thumbed out the rounds—nine—and loaded them back.
“Do you know what road this is?” Dee asked.
“I think it’s Highway 287.”
“Where does it go?”
“To the Tetons, then north up to Yellowstone and into Montana.”
“We want to go to Montana?” Naomi asked.
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because after Montana comes Canada, and we might be safe there.”
They walked for several hours. No cars passed. The road seemed to be some kind of geographic dividing line—badlands to the east, foothills rising toward mountains in the west.
The clouds thickened and by late afternoon the first raindrops had begun to splatter on the pavement. They had walked about two miles, Jack figured, and hadn’t seen a glimmer of civilization beyond the telephone poles that ran alongside the west shoulder of the road.
“We have to get out of this rain,” Jack said.
They went across the road and up into the trees—tall, straight pines that offered little in the way of shelter.
It was getting dark and the sound of the rainfall filled the woods with a steady hiss.
They sat down against one of the pines, and Jack could instantly feel the difference in his legs from just a few hours of walking on pavement. His knees swollen. Shins riddled with pain like a million tiny fractures. He grimaced as he stood back up.
“I’m going to look for something to keep us dry.”
“Please don’t go far, Jack.”
He wandered away from them up the hillside through the old-growth forest.
After a quarter mile, he came out of the trees.
Stopped, chuckled.
He led them up through the woods into the clearing, gestured proudly toward their accommodations for the evening—the ruins of a stable.
“It ain’t the Hilton,” he said. “But it’ll keep us dry.”
The logs were so weathered and sun-bleached they looked albino. The tin roof, deep brown with rust, only covered half of the shelter, and they filed into the far right corner on the only patch of dry dirt.
The rain drummed on the tin roof.
“We’re lucky to be out of the mountains,” Jack said. “Probably snowing up there.”
Through the doorway, they could see the rain falling and watch the world getting dark—a grayness deepening toward blue.
Cole crawled into Jack’s lap, said, “My stomach hurts.”