“Oh my God, Jack. Oh my God.”

“Get the food in the back of the car.”

“This is not-”

“Listen to me. Get the food in the back of the car. Naomi, bring yours and Cole’s clothes out to the garage. I’ll meet you all there in one minute.”

He ran down the hall, his sockfeet skidding across the dusty hardwood floor as he rounded the turn into the master bedroom. Clothes everywhere. Drawers evacuated from a pair of dressers. Sweaters spilling out of the oak chest at the foot of the bed. Into the walk-in closet, stepping on shoes and winter coats and handbags long gone out of vogue. He reached for the highest shelf on the back wall, fingers touching the hard plastic case and two small boxes, which he crammed into the pockets of his khaki slacks.

He returned to the bedroom, dropped to his knees, his stomach, crawling under the bed frame until he grasped the steel barrel of the Mossberg, loaded and trigger-locked.

Then back on his feet, down the hall, through the kitchen, the living room, foyer, right up to the front door, the lightbeam crossing adobe walls covered in photographs of his smiling family-vacations and holidays from another lifetime. Beside the door, on a table of wrought iron and glass, he grabbed his keys, his wallet, even his phone though there’d been no signal in two days. Jammed his feet into a pair of trail shoes still caked with mud from his last run in the Bosque, not even a week ago. He didn’t realize how badly his hands were shaking until he failed on the first two attempts to tie his shoelaces.

Dee was struggling to fit a sleeping bag into a compression sack as he came down the steps into the garage.

“We don’t have time for that,” he said. “Just cram it in.”

“We’re running out of space.”

He grabbed the sleeping bag from her and shoved it into the back of the Land Rover on top of the small cardboard box filled with canned food.

“Throw the packs in,” he said as he lay the shotgun on the floor against the backseat.