“For a fact. So, how’d you make it when your friends didn’t.”
“I et ‘em.”
Jocelyn threw back her head and laughed as hard as she could remember since arriving in this dying town, a fugitive in her own right, the man wondering if she was laughing because she thought he’d made a joke, or because she was crazy, and on the fence as to which reason he might prefer.
He drank the whiskey, poured himself another shot, said, “Care to hoist a glass with me?”
Jocelyn set up a tumbler for herself, and they raised their glasses, the man feeling better already. Maybe it was the hunger and the thirst, exhaustion bordering on madness, but he felt a surge of something, and though he couldn’t name it outright, having never known it, he suspected it was peace, the embracing of a thing he’d had his back to going on thirty years.
He said, “To you—what’s your name?”
“Joss.”
“To you, Joss.”
And he made a quiet toast to himself also, to finding his good, red road, to Dan and to Marion, and to Nathan of a now crushed skull, having brained the man in his sleep with a still-warm stone from the fire-ring upon which they’d roasted Marion.
He wondered what Sik’is would’ve thought of this new thoroughfare he’d found for himself, then realized he no longer cared.
As he swallowed his whiskey, the glow spreading through his stomach, to the tips of his filthy fingers, dulling the pain in his shoulder, he was overcome by a joy that sheeted his cloudy irises with tears. He felt thankful for every painful second of those twenty-one days in the wilderness, for the starvation and the thirst. He regretted nothing. If he’d never met Nathan and the boys, he’d have rolled into Abandon right on schedule, that weak, miserable fuck of a man he’d been for thirty long years since he’d watched his brothers die on Malvern Hill.
“You all right?” Jocelyn asked.
Oatha reached for the whiskey bottle.
“Strange to say, but I believe I just woke up.”
BLAKE CROUCH is the author of DESERT PLACES, LOCKED DOORS, and ABANDON, which was an IndieBound Notable Selection last summer, all published by St. Martin's Press. His newest thriller, SNOWBOUND, also from St. Martin's, was released in June 2010. His short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Thriller 2, and other anthologies, including the new Shivers anthology from Cemetery Dance. In 2009, he co-wrote "Serial" with J.A. Konrath, which has been downloaded over 250,000 times and topped the Kindle bestseller list for 4 weeks. That story and DESERT PLACES have also been optioned for film. Blake lives in Durango, Colorado. His website is www.blakecrouch.com.
Blake Crouch’s Works
Andrew Z. Thomas thrillers
Desert Places
Locked Doors
Other works
Draculas with J.A. Konrath, Jeff Strand and F. Paul Wilson
Abandon
Snowbound
Luminous Blue
Perfect Little Town (horror novella)
Serial Uncut with J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn
Serial with Jack Kilborn
Bad Girl (short story)
Four Live Rounds (collected stories)
Shining Rock (short story)
*69 (short story)
On the Good, Red Road (short story)
Remaking (short story)
Visit Blake at www.BlakeCrouch.com
Blake Crouch, On the Good, Red Road
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