The End is Coming ts-8

by Jerry Ahern

  Rozhdestvenskiy studied the glowing chamber, the swirling gases contained inside. “And what of the volunteer—when shall we know something?”

  “The longer we can wait, the greater fraction of experimental validity we shall have—I can termi-nate the experiment now, after only a few hours. I can wait for days—the results might well be a bit more meaningful after a few days’ duration than only a few hours. He is a volunteer, knew what he was volunteering to do.”

  “Regardless of the outcome, he shall receive decoration as a hero of the Soviet Union.”

  And it was laughter this time—Rozhdestvenskiy could not mistake it as he watched Professor Zlovski. “I have serious doubts, comrade colonel, whether the receipt of such an honor will impress our volunteer greatly, if at all, should the experi-ment prove to be unsuccessful. But do not de-spair—for I understand in discussions with some of my colleagues in the scientific establishment here that in the event of failure, The Womb can be hermetically sealed—”

  “It will be, at any event,” Rozhdestvenskiy inter-rupted, realizing his palms were sweating—ner-vousness.

  “Quite—and with the hydroponic gardens that have been planted, oxygen/carbon-dioxide inter-change would be of sufficient volume. So, we shall endure regardless.”

  “To live like moles?” Rozhdestvenskiy asked rhetorically, turning away from Zlovski, lighting a cigarette. Cigarette smoking was forbidden in the laboratory—it was why he lit it. “To live less than human existences? What does it matter to be mas-ters of a lifeless world? Hmm? To never see the sun?”

  “But comrade colonel—there are other avenues of endeavor besides the acquisition of power—are there not?”

  “Yes,” and Rozhdestvenskiy turned to face Zlovski. “The preservation of power.”

  He dropped his cigarette to the laboratory floor, heeling it out on the tiles there. All he could hear as he walked away was the clicking of his heels and the faint mechanical hum of the chamber.

  If he had not denounced all belief in God, he would have prayed then for the experiment to suc-ceed.

  Chapter Forty

  Rourke had been there before— he had lectured there once to more than a hundred police officers. Before The Night of The War it had been a public shooting range and gunshop, before that a skating rink. The sign had fallen, was gone—but he knew the place anyway. Waukegan Outdoor Sports-man. He stopped at the rear metal door, Emily tap-ping out some sort of code as she knocked. A peephole had been cut in the steel door, and Rourke saw a tiny shaft of light in the gathering darkness—it was near sunset—when the peephole opened.

  And then the peephole closed, the sound of metal scraping against metal, perhaps a security bar being lifted, and the door opened.

  Emily stepped through, Rourke going ahead of Natalia, following Emily and, as he glanced back quickly, Dumbrowski and two other men follow-ing after.

  There were no lights, and in the darkness—gray, indefinite, he could hear the door being closed behind them. A curtain—black, heavy, was ripped back and beyond the curtain burned dim ceiling lights. In a far corner of what had appar-ently been a shipping area, he heard the hum of a generator. He could smell its fumes.

  It was cold in the building, and he followed Em-ily past new faces, eyes staring at them—Rourke tried to smile. No one smiled back. As they walked, Rourke rasped under his breath to Nata-lia, falling in beside her as he slowed his pace, “Let me do the talking—please.”

  She looked at him, her blue eyes flashing—but she nodded, blinking her eyes closed for an instant as she did—it was like the light flickered out of the world when she closed them, he thought. They passed through a storage area—there were weapons of all descriptions on tables and on the floors, most disassembled. Reloading presses were in operation, children attending them. As they walked on, two men appeared, one older, one young, both men going to one of the tables, com-mencing to work on one of the firearms there.

  They passed into what Rourke remembered had been the sales floor of the retail store—it was now a hospital, apparently.

  “How many people have been treated here?” Rourke asked Emily Bronkiewicz.

  “Maybe a thousand since The Night of The War. We have some real doctors, and we have a lot of volunteers. Some of the tougher cases—well, they can’t do anything for them. My hus-band—he was one of ‘em,” and her eyes flickered to Natalia, but this time the woman smiled. The woman started up a flight of stairs, Rourke going ahead of Natalia again, following Emily. As they climbed the stairs, he could overlook the vast square footage—he estimated more than a hun-dred beds in use, crammed together with barely enough room to walk between. And few of them were beds—most were mats, some packing boxes.

  The woman turned down a small corridor, past open office doors, men inside the offices, some-times a face looking up, then quickly turning away.

  She stopped at the last office, the door open.

  A man perhaps Rourke’s own age, perhaps a lit-tle younger, looked up from a paper-littered desk. His face lit up with a smile beneath his close-cropped, light-colored, curly hair. His eyes seemed to radiate a good humor Rourke had seen in none of the other men or women of the local Resistance. And Rourke re-membered the man. “It’s Maus, isn’t it?”

  “Tom Maus,” the man said, rising from his seat, extending his right hand, Rourke took it. “And you’re—John Rourke, right? The M.D. who taught survivalism and weapons training—I re-member the presentation you gave.”

  “That’s right,” Rourke nodded. He watched Maus’s eyes as they took in Natalia.

  “And you, miss—I know your face, too—it’s Major Tiemerovna of the KGB—mistress or maybe the wife of Karamatsov before he was killed.”

  “Wife,” Rourke heard Natalia answer—life-lessly.

  “I guess that’s kind of a negative way of starting a conversation, though, isn’t it—I didn’t mean anything by it. Before the war I used to think I was busy— Reserves, running the shop here, the wholesaling business—hell, I wish I had that much free time now. I get a little testy when I’m tired. Why don’t we all sit down.”

  Rourke looked at Natalia—her face seemed to show that she had relaxed—if only a little.

  “Emily,” Maus said. “Good to see you’re still alive—” and Maus grinned as he looked at Rourke. “Her husband was one of the best field people I had—and she’s better. But I still miss him. I’d offer you coffee but I don’t like poisoning people—and the pop machine never worked that well before The Night of The War and anyway we ran out of pop.”

  “We’re fine,” Rourke nodded.

  He noticed Maus looking at Natalia, and then Maus spoke. “I know a lot about you, major— heard through U.S. II all the scuttlebutt about what you did in Florida during the quakes. And I also know through our sources—we have some spies who take a lot of risks and sometimes get us pretty good information—so I know that the KGB has you on some kind of hit list—wants you dead. Why, I don’t know. So,” Maus looked at Rourke then. “Like I said—nothin’ I like better than re-newing old acquaintances, but I’ve got a field hos-pital to run, a weapons repair shop, a reloading operation—”

  “What’s where the range used to be?” Rourke asked him, interrupting. “More beds?”

  “No—we can’t accommodate the people we have out on the floor down there—no. Since it’s soundproofed, we use it as a training area, a test-ing area for the weapons we repair—everything it needs to be used for—and a few other things be-sides. But like I said, if I had twelve hands, I still wouldn’t have a thumb to twiddle—so why are you both here? Something for U.S. II or what?”

  Rourke shrugged, saying to Natalia as he looked at her, “You explain it—all of it. We can trust this man.”

  Natalia’s eyes—they seemed to look into his soul, Rourke thought, but then she turned to look at Maus.

  “My uncle is General Varakov, the su-preme commander—”

  “I sort of figured he was some kind of relative of yours�
�go ahead.”

  And, gradually, she told Tom Maus everything.

  Chapter Forty-one

  The hospital that occupied the sales floor of Waukegan Outdoor Sportsman, and had almost since The Night of The War, was known to the So-viet authorities—General Varakov periodically sent teams of Soviet doctors into the hospital to help however they could, and what medical sup-plies—meager—could be spared were sent as well. The plans were simple—when Soviet patrols were in the area, or an inspection was due, or the medi-cal team was to be sent, the beds were spread out into the range area and the weapons and reloading equipment hidden in an underground area left from an old storm drain.

  It was risky business, Rourke knew, the timing critical, a gap in information potentially fatal. If the underground storage area were discovered, or the equipment not gotten away in time, or the beds not spread out in time—a firing squad.

  Even General Varakov would have no other choice, Rourke realized. And Maus was risking his entire operation now—he had provided Rourke with medical credentials, and Natalia as well, medical credentials that would serve as travel permits. And he had loaned them an automobile, the kind of loan Rourke knew Maus had realized would never be returned. Rourke’s false identity listed him as “Peter Mas-ters,” a dead Resistance fighter in reality, but on paper a hospital volunteer with little medical back-ground. To have listed Rourke as an M.D. would have been suicidal—all medical doctors were reg-istered with Soviet headquarters, Maus had said, and Natalia confirmed it. Natalia was listed as “Mary Ann Klein,” another volunteer. The travel request—Maus had signed it as ad-ministrator of the de facto hospital—indicated they were en route to the Soviet Mobile Surgical Unit stationed at Soldier’s Field Stadium to re-quest a fresh supply of hypodermic syringes. Maus had used the system before, for the actual pro-curement of medical supplies, and to cover covert operations of his Resistance command. Somewhat the statistician, Maus had predicted odds of three to one that the travel documents would get them through, at least as far as the sta-dium.

  And medical emergency was the only even re-motely justified purpose for nighttime travel. They had passed the Belvedere Road checkpoint leaving Waukegan—no difficulties there, Rourke driving. They had passed two checkpoints along what had been the Illinois Tollway, no difficulties either. The checkpoint on the Edens Expressway had been something both Rourke and Natalia had sweated, Rourke watching her eyes as the Soviet officer in charge of the checkpoint had been sum-moned to examine their travel documents. But they had been allowed to move on their way. Their risk was doubly great—concealed in a hid-den compartment of what had been the gas tank, accessible by going through the firewall from the inside or outside of the trunk of the vintage Ford LTD, were their weapons and gear. Should these be discovered, it would mean instant death. To compensate for the Ford’s reduced gasoline tank, an auxiliary tank had been rigged partially under the rear seat—Rourke wouldn’t have wanted to have been in the car in case of high-speed impact, he had decided.

  The checkpoint leaving the Edens and entering the Kennedy Expressway had been almost too simple. They had proceeded.

  There was a long line of military vehicles ahead of them as they came within the boundaries of what had been the Chicago Loop, the downtown shopping and business district. As they drove, Na-talia had described to him what it had been like there after The Night of The War—wild dog packs which had come in from outside the neutron bomb area, roving gangs of thugs who lived like rats be-neath the once great department stores and in the abandoned subway tunnels. Soviet troops would chase after them, but for the most part—this ur-ban equivalent of Brigands would vanish before the soldiers could close with them. The urban Brigands were armed with everything from stolen

  Soviet assault rifles to clubs, some of the bands re-sorting to the behavior of beasts, Natalia had told him.

  She had not amplified.

  They sat now, the engine running, the LTD ad-vancing a car length at a time toward the check-point. Natalia spoke. “This checkpoint is staffed by KGB—and the army too, but the main staffing is a KGB

  unit.”

  “You think they’ll recognize you.” It was a state-ment, not a question.

  “I could only do so much—putting my hair up under this,” and Rourke looked at her as she ges-tured to the scarf covering her hair, “and these glasses—” Maus had given her the glasses of a dead woman who had expired at the hospital—the woman had been farsighted and Natalia had had trouble walking when she wore them to the car. It was the reason Rourke drove and had not shared the long run with her.

  “And your face—it is known to many of the KGB.”

  Rourke wore a hat borrowed from the supply of old clothing kept at the Resistance headquarters, an old fedora, gray, stained. It matched the over-coat he wore.

  “What are you getting at?” Rourke finally asked her, beginning to worry the car might overheat—the engine was already stalling a little as he ad-vanced another car length toward the checkpoint. He had spent a good amount of time in Chicago before The Night of The War, learned the streets. The checkpoint was at the near side of the tunnel near Hubbard Street.

  “I don’t know—but maybe we should make a break for it.”

  Rourke looked around them, not answering Na-talia’s question. A troop truck flanked them on the left, an M-72 motorcycle/sidecar combination on the right. “Where do you suggest we go—up?”

  “I wish that we could,” she answered, lighting a cigarette—she was nervous, he realized. Perhaps it was, in part, just the very fact of be-ing in Chicago, Soviet headquarters so near. KGB

  everywhere. He said to her, “If they spot us at all, it won’t be until we reach the checkpoint gate—and if it happens there, we can make a break for it then. If we do, ditch those glasses so you can see and rip out the back seat so you can get to that panel inside the truck and get at the weapons.” And then Rourke smiled, looking at her with the scarf covering her hair and the tattered raincoat that all but obscured her figure. “And if we do make a break for it, get rid of that scarf and that coat—if we wind up dying, I wanna at least have something pretty to look at while I can still look.”

  She smiled, then very quickly, as if someone might see, leaned across the front seat, across the space separating them, kissing him on the cheek.

  Chapter Forty-two

  The checkpoint was at what, before the war, had sometimes been called Hubbard’s Cave. Rourke eased the old LTD to the gate that blocked his lane.

  A green-shouldered, bearded KGB noncom ap-proached the car, Rourke rolling down his win-dow. In poor English, the man stated, “Civilian traffic is expressly forbidden after sunset—”

  Rourke smiled his warmest smile, interrupting the man, “Except for medical emergencies, right?” Rourke passed the man his papers.

  The man unfolded the letter Maus had signed as director of the civilian hospital in the converted gunshop and shooting range. “Hippoder mineed—”

  “Hypodermic needles,” Rourke corrected. “Can’t give shots with dirty needles—hepatitis, stuff like that.”

  The man unfolded Rourke’s identity papers, looking at Rourke—apparently trying to match the physical description with the face—it should match, Rourke thought. The forger had been looking at his face while counterfeiting the iden-tity papers.

  “And her?” the man said.

  Rourke turned to look at Natalia—fear was written across her face so that a blind man could have almost known it, he thought. She handed him her papers from the battered brown vinyl purse that had come with the old raincoat.

  Rourke passed them over to the KGB noncom. “Here you go,” he smiled. “Say look—we got a lot of sick people up there—need those needles. The hypodermics.”

  There had been one other risk for Maus—that if they were discovered and traced back to the hospi-tal, there would be a raid, and the Resistance headquarters destroyed. Rourke considered that now as he watched the man, studying Natalia’s forged docume
nts, peering into the car, a flash-light in his right hand, the beam high, trained on Natalia’s face.

  Rourke made a decision.

  “Major Tiemerovna!”

  As the man gasped her name, Rourke wrenched the LTD’s door handle—he had prepared to do it, and he slammed the door hard outward, against the abdomen of the KGB noncom, hammering the man back. Rourke reached out of the car, stepping half out of the driver’s seat, his left hand grabbing for the military flap holster on the man’s belt, his right grabbing for the papers—he had them all. The pistol—Rourke stuffed the papers into the pocket of his borrowed overcoat, worked the slide of the pistol in case a round hadn’t been cham-bered—none had. He pointed the pistol at the KGB

  noncom’s face—the mouth was open to shout for aid. Rourke emptied the pistol into the man’s mouth, then threw it down to the pavement, the door not closed as he stomped the accelerator, the door slamming as it whacked against the side of the barricade, Rourke throwing the hat out the window as he ducked, shouting to Natalia, “Down!”

  Gunfire shattered the rear window, bullet holes spiderwebbing the windshield in front of him, the accelerator already flat to the floor, the speedome-ter needle passing fifty and climbing fast—he’d al-ways liked eight cylinder Fords.

  Chapter Forty-three

  “I’m going for the guns,” Natalia shouted, Rourke shooting a glance toward her—he smiled. She had ripped away the scarf that had covered her hair, shaking her head now, freeing her hair like a wild animal, something untamed, might shake itself at the first taste of freedom. She smiled at him—they both understood what she had done. Death might be imminent.

  Behind them, motorcycle/sidecar combinations were rolling, headlights bouncing as the vehicles accelerated, their noise loud in the cold night air through Rourke’s open window.