He picked up the gun. It was still warm. The interior of the car reeked of gunpowder. Or maybe that was just in his head. Either way, the gun felt like it was forged from iron; it was impossible to hold it steady. At the last second, he shoved it under his seat.
The officer approached the vehicle and made a roll-your-window-down gesture when he came up to the door.
“Daddy,” Ellie said.
“Shhh,” he told her. “It’ll be okay.”
He rolled down the window.
“License and registration,” the officer said automatically.
David leaned over onto one buttock and reached for his back pocket, only to find nothing there. He felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. But then he remembered his wallet was in his bag, which was piled up in the backseat. He said as much to the officer, who responded by taking several steps back from the window.
“Sir,” the officer said.
David looked at him. “What?”
“Sir. Sir.” It seemed all the officer was able to say.
“My wallet is in the back, in my bag,” David repeated. “If you want, I can get out and you can—”
“Are you sick, sir?”
He thought he’d misheard him. “What’s that?”
“Are you . . . are you sick?” The cop’s voice cracked. He took another step back from David’s window, his shiny black boots stomping over a tangle of kudzu. He had a pale, drawn face, with a fair complexion and eyelids rimmed with red.
David said, “Sick? What do you mean?”
The cop pointed at him. “You’re bleeding,” he said, then clapped a hand over his own mouth.
“I’m . . . ?” David glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Indeed, his nose was still gushing blood. He probably broke it when he slammed into Cooper back at the house. Blood trickled down over his lips and had spilled onto his shirt—Turk’s shirt—too.
“Stay in the car.” The officer held up a hand like a crossing guard.
“I’m not—”
“Please,” said the cop. He peered in at Ellie, then took another step back. “Go. Just go.”
The cop returned to his car, got in, and pulled back onto the road. The rack lights went dead as the cruiser sped by, leaving a cloud of exhaust in its wake. The cop didn’t even glance at them as he drove away.
David stared at his bloodied reflection again, his heart thundering in his chest.
“Here,” Ellie said. She had dug a Kleenex out of the glove compartment and handed it to him.
He cleaned up as best he could, which wasn’t very good at all. When he pressed a finger to the tip of his nose, pain blossomed behind both his eyes, though he didn’t think it was broken.
Yet for some reason he couldn’t help but laugh.
28
They slept in the car that night, parked behind a row of Dumpsters in the parking lot of an abandoned bowling alley in southeastern Missouri. Ellie had already been asleep for some time when David parked the car. He was ravenous but he looked like shit and didn’t want to risk stopping anywhere. He reclined his seat and rolled down the window, letting in the cool autumn air. Crickets chorused in a nearby field and a cloud of gnats orbited the single lamppost at the far end of the parking lot. There would be no birds on the prowl tonight. Once again, David wondered if this was how the world ended—in disease among a plague of insects. It wasn’t just that the birds had disappeared; it was that the insects had begun to take over. Wasn’t there something in the Bible about that?
Before closing his eyes, he powered up his phone and checked his e-mail. He knew it was wishful thinking, hoping that Tim had gotten back to him so quickly. And he was right—there was no message from Tim.
What if he’s gone dark? Completely off the grid? It was only a matter of time before Tim vanished completely.
Tim had never trusted the government, the police, the politicians, the bureaucrats. He’d stopped carrying around a cell phone because he didn’t want NSA listening in on his calls. He didn’t own a TV. The last bit of correspondence David had received from Tim had been in the form of an e-mail, so that kept some hope alive that he was still connected to the World Wide Web . . . but even that knowledge was not very reassuring.
What will we do if I don’t hear back from him? Where will we go? We can’t run forever.
David turned his phone off and shut his eyes. He slept for a while, surprised at the ease with which he came upon it, only to awaken sometime later by the harsh, mechanized sound of a helicopter flying close to the ground. He opened his eyes, hearing nothing but the steady chuh-chuh-chuh sound of its rotors.
It passed directly overhead, a great black hornet against a smoky black sky. It had a single searchlight combing the ground below. For a moment, the light passed right across the hood of the car. David sat there holding his breath, watching as the helicopter continued on into the night, the massive propeller eating up the darkness.
They’re looking for a black Ford Bronco, he reminded himself.
Once the helicopter was gone and the world settled, it was as if it never existed.
29
Six months earlier