The End is Coming

Chapter Eleven

“Momma?”

Half the women and a small percentage of the men in the world would react to the name, Sarah Rourke thought, turning around, seeing her son coming up from the bunker.

“Momma?”

“What is it, Michael?” and she felt herself smile.

But she saw past him, past his tall, straight little body, beyond the tousled brown hair that never stayed combed, beyond the brown eyes sometimes sparkling with curiosity, sometimes dull with wea-riness. She saw a figure of a man, a man, tall, straight, dark hair like her son’s hair, the wind catching it. There was an assault rifle slung from his body under his right arm—she could barely detect the shape of the barrel—it was across his back.

“Your father always carried a rifle like that—it never looked comfortable to—”

She stopped, staring.

She said it again. “Your father—your—Mi-chael—.” She was barely whispering. He looked at her, then to where Annie was still pretending to read to the injured Resistance fighter, and then he looked behind him, beyond the gutted frame of the farmhouse.

“Daddy—”

Michael started to run.

Sarah looked—like a reaction—to Annie. An-nie had dropped the book, was pulling the ban-danna from her hair, her honey-colored hair caught in the wind as she ran. “Daddy!”

Sarah Rourke closed her eyes. “Please, Jesus—let it work—please,” she whispered. Sarah Rourke ran, toward the tall, dark-haired man in the leather jacket, shouting across the field,

“John!”