Jack got up quietly in the middle of the night. He hadn’t allowed himself to sleep too soundly. He walked softly over to the small four-paned glass window and nudged it open. The heat from outside instantly enveloped his face as he stared out into the night. He crawled through the window and squatted on the desert floor, where he pulled on his shoes.
It seemed an overly elaborate escape plan, but with Molly sleeping on the couch and Boots lurking who knew where, the window was his best option. He had tested it earlier that day and was happy to find that it did not make a sound when opened. Quiet.
He stood up and looked back through the window at Laura sleeping in the bed. He felt a twinge in his heart with the thought of leaving her here, but she had voiced her opinion of his plan loud and clear. They were no longer a team. Whether or not that conclusion would last after he brought back help would have to play itself out. For now, he had to leave, whether she was on board or not.
Looking at the stars, he tried to recall any astronomy lessons he may have slept through and estimated to the best of his knowledge what way might be east. He didn’t know why, but he was sure Vegas was that way. Careful not to make a sound, he stalked around the corner of the house and walked off.
The situation ran through his mind like a grocery store checklist. It has to be around midnight, so six hours until daybreak. You have little water, so you have to make some miles before the heat gets unbearable, he thought. You have no idea where you are going, or how far it might be to see another soul. Awesome odds.
Trotting off into the desert night, Jack established a steady pace. The moon was not full but still illuminated the rock and dust, which gave off an eerie glow of haunting subtlety. In his mind he could envision the rattlesnakes and scorpions watching his progress through the dark and licking their chops at what might possibly be a free lunch by noon. The crunching sounds of his own footfalls were all that he could hear as he progressed to a small rise east of the cabin. He stopped and looked back at the prison trailer.
It wasn’t too late to go back, he thought. He could simply turn around and walk back through the front door, take off his shoes, and get back in bed with Laura. She would wake up and be none the wiser to his jailbreak, to the idea that he had left her.
No. He had made up his mind. Jack was marching home and getting help to save her. He wished that their parting words had been more loving, but if they had been, he would not be trekking off alone. She would be following him right now.
What was going on with her? Ever since their “capture,” for that is how Jack had labeled it, she seemed resigned to staying, almost welcoming the confinement as a relief. Perhaps he didn’t know her at all. He told her that they should go get help; she said that they didn’t need help and that he was being delusional.
The slow breaking had brought him to this moment of staring back, of imagining her sleeping alone in a strange trailer in the middle of nowhere. Small steps of detachment.
Then there was Boots. “He saved us from roasting to death out on that highway,” Laura had said.
“No, he brought us here for some other reason . . . and it ain’t good.”
The idea of the old man brought anger. Jack refused to entertain the belief that Boots knew what he was doing. He was the delusional one, sitting out here in the desert, paranoid of living among civilization. Hiding away in a shack, safe from all the boogeymen a senile mind could think of. What help could he provide? None. Boots didn’t want to help them get out of there, he was looking for fellow cowards who would validate his withdrawal from the world, who would keep him company as he hid.
Jack thought briefly that they all deserved each other, sitting in the tin roof dump. Members of the spineless huddled masses. He was not of that ilk. He was going to make things happen. He was directing his path, and if no one was on board with it, then he was going alone.
He turned back east, took a sip of water from the container, and started walking again.
His thoughts drifted back to the highway . . . where it all started. That seemingly innocent drive out from the strip. The week out here in the desert seemed like a total nightmare. Who could have ever imagined this, he thought. Getting stranded, and then getting held hostage. What he wouldn’t give for the hour-long commute to work, of walking in and sitting in front of his computer. No, he just had to drive into the boondocks for no reason at all. If there had been a wall close by, Jack would have punched it. He kept on walking.
The highway. That long two-lane of nothingness. But there really wasn’t nothingness, was there. The highway. That was where Jack first saw them, dancing and wailing in the convection. Down the road, where the horizon dipped past sight he saw them, hundreds of them, shapes distorted by the distance and the heat, but there nonetheless. He told himself that it was just dehydration playing tricks on him, but something deeper than that gave him a more somber chill, like hundreds of eyes staring at him through the mist.
And then they had appeared again in the dust storm. An endless cloud of malice whipping up a desert maelstrom. He couldn’t blame that on dehydration. No, they had been there, physically, absolutely. Daylight might bring them back again. Though the idea sent a chill up his spine, confronting an evil mist still seemed to be better than sitting idly by.
He scanned the horizon. The night was cloudless. No storms in any direction. Nothing creeping up on him from the skyline. His spine warmed again in the dark heat.
On and on he ran toward what his body told him was east. His watch hadn’t worked for days, but he kept moving through the fatigue and the brush as he tried to calculate the distance he covered . . . always calculating. Ten miles . . . maybe fifteen . . . gotta be close to that . . . gotta be close to something, anything. He crested a small butte and was crushed. The desert stretched on for miles with no signs of life, and on the horizon he could see the first edge of sunlight breaking through like a crack in a child’s closet door.
Jack marched on as the hours ticked by. His trot turning into a slog as the sweat poured down his face. He hated himself for being out of shape. But he’d never imagined that he would need to train for such an event as this. He would have, he told himself, had he only known. The temperature began to rise as the day fully unfolded.
Knowing that he could not beat the sun, Jack looked for a place to hide. Halfway down a ridge he found a cave with an opening twice his size. He stood at its mouth and peered in. What hungry things lived inside? He could envision snakes and coyotes looking out, whispering prayers of “Oh please just one more step” in the darkness.
That would be quick, the sun would be slow, he thought, playing with death in his mind. He stepped inside and felt a few degrees cooler instantly. His bravery was thinly veiled, and he managed only a few steps before it failed him and he sat down.
Jack was exhausted. His legs were screaming and released slow pinpricks of relief when his weight was removed. How far had he come? A long way, he told himself. A very long way.
He unwrapped a small piece of meat he had hidden away from the dinner table last night and savored it slowly. His water was almost gone, but he drank it without hesitation. Civilization had to be just over the next hill. This was America, no less—how far could you go without seeing a subdivision sprout up before your eyes? Las Vegas had to be close, it just had to be.
After his meal, he slumped back against the rocks and tried to sleep. He could feel imaginary creatures crawling on his clothes, and every time he almost succeeded in drifting off, he would jump with a start, check himself, settle down, and start the cycle over again.
Soon, though, his exhaustion took hold of him and he was gone to the world.