Not that it would do much good. The radiation would get everybody eventually. Maybe it would be better to be killed quick and get it over with.
"Pop—I'm not fibbing to you—"
Dan roused himself from his somber thoughts. "I know you're not honey. Listen, let's go out and give Buck some water and about that time Mom will have supper ready. What do you say?"
Biddy sighed. "All right Pop...."
The sun blazed down on the desert just as it had yesterday and would do tomorrow. Biddy sat on the dozing Buck and looked across the rocks at the place she'd first seen the doorway. It had taken a lot of courage to come back here after being so scared before and after nobody had believed her. They'd said there hadn't been any door at all—that she'd only been make-believing.
And maybe—just maybe—they had been right, because there wasn't any door there now.
Biddy urged Buck on up the slope. She went fearfully at first, then with more courage because everything looked very quiet and peaceful, really. Maybe the horrid people from the Eastern Bloc had realized how silly it was—trying to blow up our station—and had packed up and gone home. It wasn't scary at all now. Biddy urged Buck right up to the wall and he stood there with his eyes half-closed catching a nap. And that was good because you couldn't fool animals about people. If there had been anyone around, Buck would have known, all right.
"Hello, little girl."
A chill went through Biddy. Not the cold kind, the tickly kind, as she turned and saw the man. Buck turned and saw him too and then went back to sleep.