Examining the crates, she got to business. “You’ll want the ammunition. What about the dynamite?”
I remembered the rear end of the van on the highway. I was willing to bet that there were originally two of those little crates. It might be a little risky hauling dynamite, but there would be considerably less risk involved without someone throwing Molotov cocktails at us. And dynamite could come in very handy. Besides, I wasn’t about to leave it for Larry.
“Definitely.”
“Okay, what else?”
Half an hour later, we were reloaded and on our way, leaving Larry, Han, and Frank where they lay.
We arrived at Amber’s forty-five minutes later. Amber, my mother-in-law, must have heard us pull up, because she came out to greet us. “I had a feeling I might be seeing y’all. Come on in. Anybody hungry?”
Thankful, we headed for the sanctuary of her open door.
“What the hell happened to you?” Amber asked, as I came in behind the others.
“Tell you later.” I grinned wearily, happy to have finally reached our goal. The aroma of home cooking wafted in through the air. “What smells so good?”
“Forget the smell. You don’t get zip until you let me see that neck.” Amber was a retired nurse turned small-time chicken and goat farmer and took health risks very seriously. She wasn’t satisfied until she had removed the gauze from my neck and treated the wound herself.
She got the story from Debra and the kids as she did so. When the story reached the point of all the shooting, though, the kids went silent, and Debra continued a bit shakily, “I killed a man, Mom. I know it had to be done… I… but, I just don’t know how to deal with it right now.”
Amber kept quiet. Nothing she could say would change anything, and she was wise enough to know that. But it obviously pained her to see her daughter in such anguish. She opened her arms, and Debra curled into them, tears sliding down her cheeks, comforted in her mother’s arms. The tie was ancient and instinctive.
Everyone had been facing me as Debra spoke: Amber treating my neck, and Debra, Zachary, and Megan watching her. When Debra broke down, Amber and Zach were busy comforting her. So when Megan slipped away, I was the only one to notice.
I patted Amber on the arm and pointed toward the kitchen to let her know I was leaving for a moment, then went to follow Megan. I found her in the back yard sitting in the shadows. She didn’t move as I sat next to her, and we sat together in silence for a time before she spoke.
“This isn’t what it’s going to be like from now on, is it? This is just the first day, Dad, and we’ve already had to kill people.”
I started to reply, but she continued, “I know you told me just this morning that it could happen, but I didn’t really expect anything like that. Did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
But she wasn’t listening to me. “Now Mom is crying because she had to do exactly what you told me I might have to do. So should I be crying, too? Is there something wrong with me?” She turned to me, her face completely devoid of tears, but no less anguished than her mother’s. “I’m not sorry I killed him; I know he would have killed us if he could have. So is there something wrong with me?”
I reached to pull her close, draping my arm around her shoulders as I groped for an answer. “No, babe, there’s nothing wrong with you. Different people just react differently to stress.”
Megan nodded. “I know, but she didn’t have any choice. She knows that, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, she knows. She knows it intellectually. But knowing something in your head isn’t the same as knowing it in your heart. I’ve taught you for the past six years that there may come a time when you’ll have to fight, and that you might even have to kill. You’ve had time to deal with the idea.
“But your mother has always tried to live a peaceful life. She’s always thought people are basically good, deep down. Now she can’t think that way. She can’t afford to. Those guys would have killed me. They would have killed all of us to get our supplies, and your mom knows it. To her, it’s like life just reached out and slapped her in the face. That’s why she’s so mixed up right now. Give her a little time to put her head and her heart in sync.”
Megan said nothing, and after a time she laid her head on my shoulder, and we watched the clear night sky that could only be seen far away from cities.
Chapter 6
La grande cite sera bien desolee,
Des habitans vn seul n’y demeurera
Mur, sexe, temple amp; vierge violee,
Par fer, feu, peste canon peuple mourra.
The great city will be thoroughly desolated,
Of the inhabitants not a single one will remain there:
Wall, sex, temple and virgin violated,
Through sword, fire, plague, cannon people will die.
My scream awakened me, as well as nearly everyone else in the house. But concern over my nightmare immediately vanished as we all saw the intense light streaming in through the curtained southern windows-a glaring light, brighter than the sunniest summer day. I squinted at my watch-almost midnight.
“Everybody get away from the windows!” I ran through the house. “No one look outside! It’ll blind you! Don’t look!”
As I ran into the kids’ room, the light, which had been fading, seemed to pulse brighter. I realized that a second explosion had occurred. I burst into the room with two things on my mind.
