The Quest

Chapter 28

“I’m goin’ with Pa to join up with the Resistance, and that’s the plain fact,” the red-haired boy said.

Sarah turned from watching the moon on the porch steps and looked at the boy, Thad, Mary’s son. Sixteen, she guessed, give or take a year. Sarah turned and stared back at the moon, hugging her knees up to her, swatting at a mosquito against her bare calf and pulling her dress down lower over her legs.

“Thad, don’t you think your mother needs a man around the house. Your father, your brothers— they’re all in the Resistance.” Inside, she could hear Michael and Annie running, playing, screaming with happiness.

“Sarah’s right, boy, we need a man ‘round here,” Mary Mulliner said softly.

Sarah Rourke watched the sky, trying to pick the constellations of stars on the clear night air.

“Them Russians is buildin’ a big fort or base near where Chattanooga used to be,” the boy began again, his voice sounding artificially deepened.

“Chattanooga’s still there, Thad,” Sarah commented. “But all the people are dead. I don’t think you’d want to see Chattanooga; there was death just everywhere.” The thought of the neutron-bombed city—she assumed that had been what had happened—made her shiver. No men, no women, no children. The dogs, the cats, the birds, the grass was all brown and yellow, the trees were just there—but all dead. She shivered again. “You wouldn’t want to see Chattanooga, Thad,” Sarah said again.

“That big base the Russians is got,” Thad insisted. “Gotta stop ‘em before they get so all set up and everythin’ they can’t get stopped, you know.” The boy wanted reassurance, Sarah thought. She laughed—almost out loud. Men so often—at least some men—insisted women were so alike. Men were sometimes alike, too, she thought now, and she almost envied it. If John, her husband, were still alive—she wanted him to be—whatever John was doing now, he was consumed with it, she was sure. He was searching for her, searching for the children, fighting Communist soldiers perhaps, brigands very likely. Men found “toys” for their minds even under the worst circumstances, just from their role of being men. There was always something to do, to go up against.

She leaned against the post beside the porch railing and stared out across the dark expanse of the fields. Thad and her husband, John—their thing to do now was go and fight. Mary and herself, too, if she found John (when, she reminded herself, or when he found her). She would wait, care for the children, keep the home, clean the wounds, and go quietly insane each time she thought of John going out and perhaps dying. She stared up at the peculiar haze around the moon, wishing John were there to tell her what it meant. Was the world ending—the heat, the cold, the torrential rains, the red sunsets?

“Mary,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Mary, I’m going to leave in a few days because if I don’t—” she stood up and walked into the darkness, wishing she had a sweater, cold suddenly.

“If I don’t,” she whispered to herself and the night, “I won’t have the strength to do anything, but stay here.”