She felt light-headed as she put out a hand for balance. Creed winced again, evidently realizing his last statement hadn't been exactly reassuring, and backtracked. "What I mean is - I was in the Marines with him. He knows what he's doing."
She didn't feel any better. Presumably Creed had also known what he was doing, but he'd gotten shot anyway. Maybe if she hadn't already been widowed once, she would have had a more noble outlook, but she had lost her husband suddenly at a young age. Untimely deaths happened - and doctors had been fighting to save Derek. Now people were actively trying to kill Cal; how could she possibly be reassured?
She felt as if she had just met him. and something was bursting to life between them. Everything was new and exciting and trembling with promise. She couldn't lose him now.
Forgetting about his errand for now, Creed hobbled back down the stairs and gently took her suddenly cold hands in his. His rugged face was kind, his hazel eyes full of understanding as he warmed her hands in his. "He 11 be okay. I don't know who those guys shooting at us are. but I promise you none of them is even close to being as good as he is. Cal wasn't a regular Marine, he was Force Recon. I don't know if you know what that means - " He paused, and she shook her head no. "Well, it means he's an expert at a lot of things, and high on that list is not getting killed.
Emotion roiled in her, terror and anger and even embarrassment that she was falling apart like this. But she couldn't help herself; she clung to his hands for support, looked up at him for even more reassurance. "Mr. Creed, I - "
"Call me Josh," he said. "1 think everyone here is on a first-name basis, don't you?'
"Josh," she said, vaguely ashamed because she had kept him, too, at a distance. "I - you - " She stopped because she was stammering and had no clear idea of what she wanted to say. Go get him? Bring him hark safe and sound? Yes, that was what she wanted. She wanted Cal to walk in that door.
"Listen." He squeezed her hands, then patted them. "He's doing what he does best, which is finding out what's going on."
"It's been hours - "
"People are still coming in, aren't they? He sent them, so you know he's okay. Roy Edward," he called, raising his voice. The elderly Starkeys were the most recent to arrive. "When did you last see Cal?"
Roy Edward looked away from Milly Earl, who had been cleaning his face. He and Judith, his wife, were bruised and scraped from falling. They weren't nimble on their feet; both had taken some bad tumbles, but, by some small miracle, hadn't broken any bones. "No more'n an hour," he replied. The old man was exhausted, his voice thready. "We were the last ones, he said. He was going to gather some things before he came back here."
The last ones. Stunned out of her own misery, Cate looked around at those who were here, and those who weren't. Everyone in the basement was doing the same thing, because no more neighbors would be arriving to cries of relief and welcome. Mario Contreras. Norman Box. Maery Last. Andy Chapman. Jim Beasley.
Lanora Corbett. Mouse Williams. They'd lost seven people - seven!
Silently Creed made his halting way up the stairs. Tears streaked Neenah's face as she went with him, lending him support so he wouldn't damage his leg more.
"We can't let 'em just lay there," Roy Edward declared, something fierce entering his cracked old voice. "They're our people. We have to do right by them."
Again there was silence as, one by one, they realized the enormous responsibility that lay before them. Retrieving the bodies would be a daunting task, and even then, without electricity, there was no way to present" them. Still, they had to do something. The weather was warm today, which meant the need for action was extremely pressing.
"I have that generator," Walter finally said. "We all have freezers. People, we'll manage something."
But Walter's generator was on the side of the community closest to the shooters - and moving chest-type freezers around was a two-man job that would require them to be in the open.
Gena couldn't bear up any longer, not even for Angelina's sake. She buried her face in her hands, sobbing in great, raw sounds, her entire body heaving. Cate remembered when she, too, had cried that way, and she crossed to Gena, sat down, and put her arms around her. There were no words that would make the pain less, so she didn't say anything. Angelina's face crumpled and her big dark eyes began swimming with tears. "Mommy, don't cry!" She patted Gena's leg, both giving and searching for comfort. "Mommy!"
Cate gathered Angelina close, too. Her babies had been too young to know anything when Derek died, too young to miss him and cry for him, but Angelina wasn't. When she understood that her daddy was gone and was never coming back, nothing in die world except time would give her solace.
"Mow do you do it?" Ciena sobbed, the words so thick with tears and choked out through sobs that Cate barely understood her. "How do you manage?"
How do you function when your entire body has been overtaken by searing emotional pain? How do you function day to day when a huge hole has been ripped in your life? How do you ever smile again, laugh again, feel joy again?
"You just do it," Cate answered quietly. "Because you have no choice. I had my babies. You have Angelina. That's why you have to do it."
The door opened and Cal came in.
He'd changed clothes. He was wearing what she thought of as deer-hunting clothes: a pair of woodland-pattern camouflage cargo pants, an olive-drab T-shirt, and an unbuttoned shirt in the same woodland pattern as his pants. He also had on flexible Gore-Tex boots, a hunting knife in a scabbard on his belt, the shotgun with its sling hooked over his left shoulder, and a rifle with a big scope mounted on it in his right hand. 11 he'd been going deer hunting, though, he'd have been wearing either a cap or a hunting vest in bright orange.