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file:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Stephen%20King%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htmLouis reached the top himself and paused there momentarily, right foot planted on an old fallen tree thatwas canted up at a thirty-five-degree angle, left foot on something springier—a mesh of old firbranches? He didn’t look down to see, but only switched the heavy trashbag with Church’s body in itfrom his right hand to his left, exchanging it for the lighter shovel. He turned his face up into the windand felt it sweep past him in an endless current, lifting his hair. It was so cold, so clean . . . so constant.Moving casually, almost sauntering, he started down again. Once a branch that felt to be the thickness ofa brawny man’s wrist snapped loudly under his foot, but he felt no concern at all—and his plunging foot was stopped firmly by a heavier branch some four inches down. Louis hardlystaggered. He supposed that now he could understand how company commanders in World War I hadbeen able to stroll along the top of the trenches with bullets snapping all around them, whistling“Tipperary.” It was crazy, but the very craziness made it tremendously exhilarating.He walked down, looking straight ahead at the bright circle of Jud’s light. Jud was standing there,waiting for him. Then he reached the bottom, and the exhilaration flared up in him like a shot of coal oilon embers.“We made it!” he shouted. He put the shovel down and clapped Jud on the shoulder. He rememberedclimbing an apple tree to the top fork where it swayed in the wind like a ship’s mast. He had not felt soyoung or so viscerally alive in twenty years or more. “Jud, we made it!”“Did you think we wouldn’t?” Jud asked.Louis opened his mouth to say something—Think we wouldn’t?We’re damn lucky we didn’t kill ourselves!—and then he shut it again. He had never really questionedat all, not from the moment Jud approached the deadfall. And he was not worried about getting backover again.“I guess not,” he said.“Come on. Cot a piece to walk yet. Three miles or more.”They walked. The path did indeed go on. In places it seemed very wide, although the moving lightrevealed little clearly; it was mostly a feeling of space, a feeling that the trees had drawn back. Once ortwice Louis looked up and saw stars wheeling between the massed dark border of trees. Once somethingloped across the path ahead of them, and the light picked up the reflection of greenish eyes—there andthen gone.At other times the path closed in until underbrush scratched stiff fingers across the shoulders of Louis’sfile:///E|/Funny%20&%20Weird%20Shit/75%20-%20Ste...%20Books/Stephen%20King%20-%20Pet%20Sematary.htm (99 of 333)7/28/2005 9:21:49 PM