Run

Jack let go and stood up, turning slowly.

The man in the red bandana sat in the front passenger seat, lighting a cigarette. “Finally.” Took a deep drag. “Didn’t want you to see the smoke.”

He started toward Jack, motioning him away from the dead man with his automatic pistol.

“The fountain,” he said.

Jack crossed the plaza, never taking his eyes off the man, as if that somehow kept the balance of control in his favor.

The fountain was a circle of old concrete, fifteen feet across, with a stone feature rising out of the middle that had once rained water. Most of it had long since evaporated, and what remained was stagnant and filled with discs of ice.

The men sat five feet apart.

Jack saw that the man’s hands were covered in dried blood that was cracking on his skin like old asphalt. He looked out at the plaza—the minivan, the dead, the blood on the melting snow.

In proximity, the soldier looked nothing like Jack had imagined. A kinder face. Three-day beard. Thoughtful eyes. Curls of black hair that slipped out from under the bandana. His fatigues weren’t black as Jack had first thought, but some pattern of night camouflage comprised of dark blues.

Might have been Jack’s age, perhaps a year or two younger.

He stared at Jack while he smoked, handgun resting on his leg, trained on Jack’s stomach.

“Is Dee alive?”

Jack didn’t respond.

“Where’s your family, Jack?”

A twinge of curiosity cut through the fear.

“How do you know my name?”

The man smiled, Jack feeling the eerie prickling of recognition.

He said, “Kiernan.”

“I saw her name all over this square, and it didn’t even click with me until I was walking away.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Me and some Guard unit buddies from Albuquerque defected. We’ve been heading north, just like you, killing and f**king and ravaging and just causing all sorts of mayhem. Time of my life. Are you expecting Dee and the family? Because we can wait. I’d be totally up for that.”

“I haven’t seen them in days.”

“You got separated?”

Jack nodded.

“Where?”

“Wyoming. Where’s your family, Kiernan? I seem to remember Dee telling me you had children.”

Kiernan took another drag. “Rotting in our backyard back in New Mexico.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I killed them.”

Jack could feel, even in the light of everything he’d seen, a new horror at the registration of this.

Kiernan smiled. “Smoke?”

“Not in years.”

He tugged a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds out of an inner pocket, offered it to Jack. “Treat yourself. I don’t think it really matters anymore. Do you, Jack?”

Jack’s hands shook. He plucked a crooked cigarette from the pack along with the lighter. Four attempts to fire the tobacco sprigs hanging out of the end. Kiernan got another cigarette for himself.

“So why are you here, Jack?” he asked. “In this square out of all the places in the wild wild west?”

Jack said nothing, just pulled the smoke into his lungs. It was sweet and it burned.

“You think Dee’s going to find you here. That it?”

Jack exhaled, felt the nicotine hit and drag him a few steps deeper into himself, like sliding a filter between this moment and his perception of it. A dulling of the fear.

“Can I ask you something?” Jack said.

“As long as your cigarette’s still burning.”

“When you’re trying to fall asleep at night, do you see the faces of your wife and children?”

“Sometimes.”

“How do you not kill yourself?”

“That you could even ask that is a perfect demonstration of why you’re all being slaughtered. Now answer my question. Why are you here?”

The idea of lunging at Kiernan occurred to Jack, and with it a monster dose of weakness and fear that slashed through his nicotine rush.

Kiernan smirked. “You’d never pull it off. Not on your best day and my worst. Answer my f**king question.”

“I’m here because this is where I ran out of gas.”

“Why do you want to make me angry?”

Jack smoked.

“In all my travels north,” Kiernan said, “I was always looking for your green Land Rover. Always chasing you and Dee, even though I never expected to actually find you.”

“What is it like?” Jack said.

“What is what like?”

“To have become. . .whatever you are now.”

“All our life, Jack, we spend wondering, you know? Now, it’s all about knowing.”

“You were blind but now you see?”

“Something like that.”

“What do you know now that you didn’t before?”

“You taught philosophy, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So you know. . .words just f**k up true meaning. Even if I could make you understand, I wouldn’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“You didn’t see the lights. Just so I’m clear. . .you have no way to contact Dee, but you think she’s going to show up here. Why? Was it prearranged in the event you two were—”

“I’ve been here three days. She’s not coming.”

“She could be dead.”

“It’s all I think about. How many children did you have?”

“Three.”

Jack flicked off the ash.

“Did you look in their eyes while you murdered them?”

“I was crying. They were crying, asking what they’d done. My wife screaming. Horrible day. I need to know why you’re here before your cigarette’s gone. The curiosity will eat at me.”

“I told you. I ran out of gas.”

Kiernan shook his head. “You’re going to make me threaten you. Aren’t you?”

“Fuck your lights and f**k you.”

Kiernan let his cigarette slip out of his hand, hiss out in the snow. He stood, lifting his shirt so Jack could see the sheathed Ka-Bar combat knife.

“When I open you up and start pulling stuff out and feeding it to you, you will talk. You will tell me everything I want to know and more. You’ll curse Naomi and Cole with your last breath and beg me to do the same to them.”

Still had an inch of tobacco to go, but Jack threw his cigarette into the pool.

“You can’t touch it, and you know it, and it kills you, doesn’t it?”