The Savage Horde

Chapter 21

Michael Rourke sat by the window, Mary Mulliner beside him—he waited. He'd watched his mother do it many times before. He tried thinking about how it must feel.

"Michael—maybe you won't have to kill anybody."

"I killed a man once—maybe a second time. I'm not sure about that."

"But maybe—"

"It'll be all right. The stock for the rifle is too long for me so I can't hold it that well. But it'll be all right."

"You're only a little boy, Michael—"

"I'm eight years old."

"Michael—"

"It'll be all right, Aunt Mary," he told her.

He didn't know if it would be all right. His father had only just started teaching him to shoot seriously. He couldn't remember for certain, but he thought he was five the first time he'd been taken out into the woods behind the house and given a gun to shoot.

He remembered the gun—the Python. His father had cut his left hand holding the gun down in recoil. He remembered what he'd told his father, "Wow—that gun really kicks."

"It's a . Magnum," his father had said.

"Is that a powerful kind of gun?"

"Pretty powerful—you're going to have to be ten or

twelve before I let you try a .—"

"I wanna try a .—"

"Gotta be too careful with a .—any automatic. Keep your fingers out of harm's way. Gotta be older." But he had let Michael try the CAR-. And Michael had liked that, his father complaining, he remembered now, about the ammo cost, then laughing.

Michael reached out his right arm to its fullest extension—he could barely reach the trigger.

There was gunfire—coming from the rear of the house, but from outside.

He squinted his right eye, his left eye shut. He saw a man, coming out of the bushes at the front of the house.

"There's a man there," Mary MuIIiner said. Her voice sounded upset to Michael.

"I know," he told her, trying to keep his own voice calm. He was afraid.

He pulled the trigger.

The recoil hurt his right shoulder and the top edge of the stock hit his jaw and that hurt.

But the man in the bushes fell over. Michael Rourke guessed the man was dead.