For an instant, grief welled up within him, a cold, almost sickening grief. But abruptly, it became an impersonal, remote kind of grief. It was like a Fourth of July rocket shooting out a blinding tail of crimson and then bursting, its body crumbling into a thousand pieces, a thousand tiny sparks falling and fading and dying.
"Still, they knew it was coming, didn't they, Sandy? And they didn't try very hard to stop it."
He looked again at the car. "Reckon it won't do any harm to see how it runs. After all, if we're goin' mad, we might as well enjoy ourselves first."
The window display in the sport shop fascinated him. There were guns and fishing rods and fur-lined jackets and shiny boots and bright woolen shirts and sun goggles and camp stoves and—
"Don't reckon the guns'd do us much good," Martin murmured, "seein' as how there's nothing left alive—'cept us. Might be fun to shoot 'em though. I remember when I was a kid, how I used to shoot windows out of old houses." He chuckled softly.
His gaze traveled to the fishing equipment. "Golly, Sandy, I'll bet there's fish left in the oceans! The gas never touched us there in the cave. I'll bet the fish—or a lot of 'em—escaped, too!"
He glanced disapprovingly at his thin, faded shirt, dirty khaki trousers, and worn, scuffed shoes. Those clean, bright, woolen clothes in the window would be nice, very nice, on cool nights.
"Might even have dog clothes in there," he said. "Maybe a dog sweater. How'd you like that, Sandy?"
Sandy barked eagerly.