The End is Coming

Chapter Fifteen

It had taken better than an hour for Sarah to calm Mary Mulliner, and to calm herself, her throat sore-feeling, her eyes burning, her sinuses strangely clear as she had returned to the Sam-sonite card table around which her husband, John Rourke, the de facto Resistance leader, Pete Crit-chfield, the black man, Tom, and Curley sat. The air was blue-gray under the glow of the bulb with the cigar smoke. At the far end of the under-ground shelter—like a huge concrete basement—she could hear the rhythm of the bicycle generator being pedaled.

She was happy it wasn’t Michael.

“Sarah—glad you’re back,” Pete Critchfield nodded. “Pull up a chair.” Her husband stood, pushing a chair for her as she sat. Tom started to stand—neither of the other two men moved. “I’m tryin’ to convince your husband here to throw in with all of us in the Resistance against the Com-mies, rather than take you away from us.”

John Rourke said nothing. Critchfield cleared his throat loudly, cigar smoke filtering from his nostril.

“What about it, John?” Sarah asked him.

He looked at her— a stern look. “I’m getting you and the children to safety at the Retreat. The weather, the thunder and lightning—all of it. Something’s happening and I need to find out what so we can prepare for it and survive it. After all that, if there’s a chance, sure—I’ll help the Re-sistance. My friend Paul will help—but you and Michael and Annie. I don’t want you having any part of it.”

“Yeah—I don’t mean to interfere between a man and his wife, John, but—well, hell— “Critchfield started.

John Rourke turned his eyes away from her and stared across the table at Critchfield—Pete Critchfield fell silent.

Tom spoke. “What Pete means, man—your lady there. She’s one of us. Fights better than a lot of us—especially me,” and Tom laughed. “She’s good with a gun and all, but so’s your son, I hear. But more than that—she’s well—hell—a strong lady, and smart. We lose her and well—even the boy, and little Annie—she keeps us goin’—but we lose Sarah here, man—I mean, I know she’s your wife and belongs with you, but—we can’t get somebody else—nobody—ain’t nobody’ll replace her to us, ya know?”

Sarah looked at Tom—his eyes coal-black, the whites slightly yellowed, were warm, deep against his dark chocolate skin—and he smiled at her. She felt her lips raise in a smile, then looked at her hus-band. He wasn’t looking at her.

She couldn’t see John’s face other than in profile, saw the cigar, unlit, clamped tight in the left corner of his mouth. His lips were drawn back, his teeth so white she sometimes wondered if he were really human. He had shaved before the meeting, before the meager meal from their stores. His face looked chiseled in stone, like she imagined some-how God should look—or if not God, some god. His voice was low, a whisper—barely audible so that you strained to listen to him, the result that his words were always heard, always under-stood—and the feeling behind his words.

“Sarah’s my wife—I’m taking her with me. All of us are righting what’s happening—in our own ways. Raising Michael and Annie if we all live long enough for her to do that is the best way I know to fight the Communists, to try to make something out of America again—to rebuild. That’s what she’ll be doing. Period—end of discussion.”

If it were possible, he seemed to clamp the cigar more tightly, his jaw set harder. Sarah—her hands shaking—fought within her thousands, millions of years of what if meant to be a woman. Standing up, she whispered, “Damn you—” and she walked away from the table, start-ing for the outside.

She needed to breathe.