The End is Coming

Chapter Seven

She looked at Annie—it was like Annie was try-ing to be her little carbon copy. One of the men in the Resistance—a black man, Tom—had given Annie a bandanna handkerchief, blue and white. And Annie wore it tied over her hair now, like Sarah herself had habitually worn one since The Night of The War. She thought about that - when she had cleaned house, or been baking bread she’d always—but there was no house to clean, no house at all.

Sarah Rourke licked her lips, getting up from the fire-blackened ridge pole of the destroyed barn—fallen now. She had found it a favorite place to sit when she’d been outside the under-ground survival bunker beneath the burned-out Cunningham farmhouse.

She started walking toward Annie, Annie pre-tending to read a book to one of the less seriously wounded Resistance men. Sarah had brought the man from the bunker for the fresh air. The genera-tor that powered the ventilation system in the be-low-ground-level shelter needed fuel or foot-pedal power. Fuel was in short supply, and so were feet with nothing to do but ride a bicycle. The job was frequently falling to Michael. He had been an in-trepid bike rider before The Night of The War and she thought that now Michael almost seemed to enjoy working the foot-powered generator. But foot power was not enough to pump sufficient air that the air smelled anything but stale and dirty. And so spent as much time outside as she could.

The wounded man’s airing was just an excuse.

She wondered, suddenly, as she walked, what it would be like inside her husband’s Retreat—if he found her. “When,” she said under her breath, correcting herself.

She stopped walking, about midway between the burned shell of the barn and the gleaming whiteness of the corral fence where the quarter horses old Mr. Cunningham had raised once roamed. They were gone now—but so were Tildie and Sam, her horse and John’s horse, the horses she had used with the children, the horses that had moved them out of danger, been like part of her family—

She stood there, wiping her hands along her blue-jeaned thighs—then resting her hands on her hips. Under her right hand she felt the butt of the Trapper .45 Bill Mulliner had given her. He should have met his Resistance contact by now, perhaps already be on his way back to report to Pete Critchfield. Mary Mulliner—Bill’s mother—it was written in the lines etched in her face, a fear for him, that she’d lose red-haired, blue-eyed Bill just like she had lost her husband—fighting in the Resistance against Russians and Brigands. The .45 had been Bill’s father’s gun—and now it was Sarah’s. She had already used it to save her life.

She rarely thought of it—it was so much a part of her now, carrying a gun, like wearing the blue and white bandanna with which she habitually covered her hair.

Little Annie was still pretending to read to the wounded Resistance fighter. Birds whistled in the trees. Sarah closed her eyes—very tired. Would there be time to teach Annie Rourke to read—ever—and not just pretend?