The Savage Horde

Chapter 23

Sarah Rourke sat with her blue jeans across her lap, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her bare legs against the wind, the fire licking loudly in front of her.

"We got all your things out of the house—Mom told me where they were."

"How are the children, Bill?"

"Fine, Mrs. Rourke—Michael's sleeping and so's Annie. Millie's sitting on Mom's lap—but she's all right. Won't go to sleep though."

Sarah looked behind her at what had been the farmhouse. It was as burned and gutted as her own house in Georgia.

"I'm sorry for your mother's house," she whispered. "Sorry I fainted on you, too. But—"

"Hey—I understand it. I'm just a kid—at least I was. But—well, since the Night of The War, I seen a lot, ya know, ma'am."

"Yes—I know. I have too," Sarah told him. "Your resistance people were just like the cavalry—just in the nick of time," and she forced a laugh.

"Here," he said, sounding awkward to her. He handed her a gun—it was shiny. A ., small like the ones her husband carried, but different somehow. "This was my Dad's—that's why Mom's crying. Not 'cause of the house, ya see—Dad—he didn't make it during the last raid on the Russians in Nashville."

She turned the gun over in her hands. As she looked at it, young Bill Mulliner continued talking to her. "Dad was a friend of this guy named Trapper—gunsmith up in Michigan before the Night of The War. Trapper made the gun up for him special. Started out a Colt Combat Commander—the one with the steel frame.

Them's Smith & Wesson K-frame rear sights—gun's real short in the barrel and slide and the grip—a round shorter. Makes it nice to carry. And that's a Colt ambidextrous thumb safety on her—no grip safety—pinned in. That's a special nickel plating Trapper used."

"But this was your father's gun—you can't give it—"

"Ma'am—see, I got plenty a guns—and—well—if it weren't for you, my mom'd be dead too. Figure with this on ya, and a regular .—you can use the same clips—"

"Magazines I think they're called," she smiled, feeling self-conscious at correcting a man about a gun.

"Yes'm—but you'll always have six extra rounds when ya need 'em. She's a smoothie of a shooter, ya know— and—well—so here," and he handed her a spare loaded magazine for the pistol.

She looked at the pistol in the firelight. The right side of the slide read "Trapper Gun" and there was a scorpion etched there in the metal, like there was on the flat black grips, barely visible in the flickering of the flames. "Thank you, Bill—I don't know what to say—I, ahh—"

"You just stay alive with it, ma'am—that's thanks enough and more."

"We can't stay here anymore, can we?" she said, still holding the gun, wrapping the blanket more tightly around her.

"No, ma'am—there's a big refugee camp not too far from here—should be safe from them brigand vermin. You and Mom and the children are gonna be okay there. Least ways ya should be."

She leaned across to the boy, still holding his dead

father's gun. She kissed the boy on the cheek.

"Mrs. Rourke," he drawled.

She leaned back against the side of the log that was being fed slowly into the fire, feeling the pleasant warmth. She closed her eyes. But she didn't let go of the pistol.