The Nightmare begins

Chapter Thirteen

Very slowly, Sarah Rourke climbed back up the slope and out of the valley. At the back of her mind, she knew she couldn't leave Ron Jenkins' body on the street in the town below—there were packs of dogs running the hills and mountains now and his body might well be partially devoured by morning. She was tired, at the prospect of burying Ron Jenkins and from the added weight of his pistol and rifle. The pistol was a gun like the one she carried in the waistband of her Levis, a .45 Colt Automatic, but smaller than her husband's gun and having a differently shaped hammer. She had no idea what kind of rifle Jenkins had carried, but it was heavy, she decided, as she reached the top of the rise and turned through the darkness toward their camp, her breath short.

It was as though she had never left, she thought. Michael was sitting up with Annie's head on his lap. Carla Jenkins was sitting stock straight on the ground a few feet away from him, staring blankly into the darkness, her daughter Millie cradled in her arms. Sarah Rourke walked toward Carla Jenkins, dropped to her knees on the ground beside the woman and said nothing. Carla turned, even in the darkness the frightened set of her eyes unmistakable to Sarah Rourke.

"That's Ron's rifle—and you got his pistol belt there, too," she said softly.

"Carla—I don't. I, ah… I don't know how to tell you—"

"He is dead," Carla Jenkins said flatly.

"Yes," Sarah murmured.

"I'd like to be alone for a few minutes, Sarah. Can you take care of Millie for me?"

Sarah nodded, then realized that in the darkness Carla Jenkins might not have understood and said, "Of course I will, Carla." The Jenkins woman handed the ten-year-old girl into Sarah Rourke's arms and Sarah, leaving Jenkins' guns beside Carla, walked the few feet toward her own children. She dropped to her knees, trying to get into a sitting position.

She turned her head before she realized why—a gunshot, she realized. Putting Millie down on the ground, Sarah half crawled, half ran the few feet to Carla Jenkins. Sarah reached down to the Jenkins woman's head there on the ground by her feet. Her hand came away wet and slightly sticky. "Can you take care of Millie for me?" Sarah had told Carla, "Of course I will."

"Ohh, Jesus," Sarah Rourke cried, dropping to her knees beside Carla Jenkins'

body, wanting to cover her own face with her hands but sitting on her haunches instead, perfectly erect, the bloody right hand held away from her body at arms'

length…

Sarah Rourke couldn't load Carla Jenkins' body across the saddle without getting her son, Michael, to help—and the thought of asking him had revolted her more than manhandling the body, but he had done it, simply asking her why Mrs.

Jenkins had shot herself. Miraculously, Millie was sleeping still, as was Annie.

Sitting with Michael a few feet away, not comprehending how the girls had slept through the gunshot, she began, "Well—sometimes death is awfully hard for people to accept. Do you understand?"

"Well," he had said, knitting his brow, "maybe a little."

"No—" Sarah said, looking down into the darkness and then back at her son's face. "See, if all of a sudden on Saturday morning—before the war—I had told you that you couldn't watch any cartoon shows at all and never explained why, told you you'd never see a cartoon show again, how would you have felt?"

"Mad."

"Sad, too?" she asked.

"Yeah. Yeah, I would have been sad."

"And probably the worst part of it making you mad and sad would have been that there wasn't any reason why—huh?"

"Yeah—I'd want to know why I couldn't watch TV."

"Well, see when Mr. Jenkins died, I guess his wife—Mrs. Jenkins—just couldn't understand why he had to die. And losing someone you love is more important than missing cartoon shows, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Well, see, once somebody is dead you never get him back."

"But in church they said that after you die you live forever."

"I hope so," Sarah Rourke said quietly.