by Jerry Ahern
Rourke walked over to her, gently touching her shoulder, handing off the Schmeisser and the CAR-15 to Natalie behind him. He dropped to his knees, slowly pulling back the blanket from the baby's face. The flesh was cold to his touch, the complexion blue-tinged. "This child is dead," Rourke said softly, dropping the blanket back over the infant's face and staring up skyward to where the woman holding the child was mumbling a prayer.
They spent several hours with the refugees, some thirty in all, Rourke doing what he could, Natalie finally getting the woman to release her dead baby, then helping Rubenstein bury the child by the side of the road. The people were from a town some fifteen miles or so up ahead, a place Rourke had never heard of. There had been a cafe and a U.S. Border Patrol Station there. Brigands had come, the woman said, starting to pick up the story then, rocking back and forth on her knees on the ground, her dirty face tear-streaked, blood on the front of her dress from the dead infant she had carried through the night.
"My Jim and I was sleepin'—he was tossin' and turnin' so much that it woke me up and I couldn't get back to sleep. I kept wonderin' if the radiation from the bombs was gonna get to us and kill my baby." She choked back a sob then, Natalie putting her arm around the woman's shoulders, the woman coughing and going on, "… and then I heard all this commotion. Engine noises, gunshots, screamin' and all. I thought maybe somethin' good was happenin', like maybe there were U.S. troops coming in, or the Border Patrol men had come back. I got up and looked out the window and saw them…" Her voice trailed off into a whisper, then she began again. "There was maybe a couple hundred of them—all of them kinda young, some of them ridin' motorcycles, some of them in pickup trucks or jeeps. Some of our folks started runnin' out into the streets, some of the men shootin' at the strangers, but they all got shot down or run over. They started smashin' and burnin' everythin' then, stealin' everythin' like they owned the whole world or somethin'. Jim was up then and he took his rifle and ran out after them and they—" the woman stopped, crying now uncontrollably, her head sinking to her breast, Natalie wrapping the woman in her arms.
An old man, sitting on the ground beside Rourke began talking, "They took those of us they didn't kill and lined us up in the street. Just gunned down some of us for fun it looked like, raped some of the women there in the street makin' us all watch, took some of the women with 'em, looted all the houses and the couple stores we had, took every gun in town, all the food and water they could find and told us to go before they changed their minds about wastin' the bullets and just killin' us all."
Rourke looked away from the man, hearing Natalie say, "They must be up ahead of us, somewhere."
Rubenstein muttered, "I hope we get to meet them."
Rourke looked at Natalie, then at Paul Rubenstein, slowly then saying, "Chances are we'll meet up with them. Anybody see who shot that woman's baby—what he looked like?"
The woman Natalie had folded in her arms suddenly stopped crying, looking up at Rourke, saying, "I saw him. Not too tall, thin kind of and had blonde hair, curly and pretty like a girl maybe, and this little beard on the end of his chin. Carried a long, fancy-lookin' pistol—that's what he used to kill my baby, that's what he killed her with."
Rourke leaned forward to the woman, huddled there in Natalie's arms, saying slowly, deliberately, his voice almost a whisper. "I can't promise you we'll find that man, but I can promise you that if we do I'll kill him for you." Rourke started to turn away and caught Natalie's blue eyes staring at him. He didn't look away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
"You must assume the presidency sir," the green fatigue-clad air force colonel said, leaning forward in the mustard-colored overstuffed chair, his blue eyes focused tight on the lanky Samuel Chambers.
Chambers held up his left hand for silence, leaned back in the leather-covered easy chair and began to speak. "Colonel Darlington—you and everyone here urge me to essentially 'crown' myself as president of the United States—when I'm not even sure there still is a United States. According to Captain Reed's contact through army channels before the army ceased to function as a unified command, Soviet landings were anticipated in Chicago and several other major U.S. cities that were neutron-bombed. We could and probably do have thousands of Soviet troops already in the country and thousands more on the way. The worse the damage our forces did to them, the more desperate they'll be to utilize our surviving factories and natural resources to get their own country back on its feet. And what about the radiation fallout, the famine, the economic collapse we are facing now? Is there actually a country—even a world—that's going to be able to go on, even if it wants to? Answer me that colonel!" Chambers concluded.
Captain Reed leaned forward in his chair, a Sherlockian pipe—unlit—clamped in the left corner of his thin-lipped mouth. He snatched at the pipe with his left hand, pointed with the stem and said, "I've been listening to this sir, and I've reached one conclusion, and I think it should be obvious to everyone here by now. We're talking about a situation of mass confusion out there. The former president did what he had to do. Had he stayed alive, essentially trapped in his retreat, the Soviets could have used him for whatever they wanted to—with or without his cooperation. But you're different, sir." Reed leaned back, glanced briefly around the room and went on. "Your sentiments against Communism on a philosophical basis are widely known, so putting words in your mouth would be useless. They don't have you trapped in one spot—they don't know where you are. Now we can see that apparently there are people still alive, there are armed citizens out there willing to fight someone—but someone has to point them in the right direction, to channel what they're doing. Maybe that's the word. We need someone to channel the energies of the country. We need a leader and we don't have that now. And there's no one else but you, sir."
Reed sat back, glancing around the room again, then looking down to the floor as if studying the toes of his combat boots.
Colonel Darlington, after a long silence, said softly, "The captain is right—he put it better than any of us," then staring intently at Chambers, said, "Mr. President."
Chambers looked at Darlington, then at Reed and then at the others there in the room—Randan Soames, commander of the Texas Militia, volunteer paramilitary group; Federal Judge Arthur Bennington; his own aide, George Cripp.
Chambers lit a cigarette, saying through the cloud of smoke as he stared down in front of him, "Perhaps Judge Bennington could find a Bible so that he can administer the Oath. After that, gentlemen, I'll anticipate we'll be proceeding with this organizational conference well into tomorrow morning." Chambers looked up, catching the judge's eye, saying, "Arthur—whenever you're ready."
Moments later, Chambers stood in the garden, swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help him God. His aide, George Cripp, was the first to address him afterward as "Mr. President."
Chapter Twenty-Six
Natalie had kept the four-barreled COP derringer-type pistol, giving the other guns Rourke had salvaged from the jeep and the brigands she had killed to the most likely-looking of the refugee group. Rourke, Rubenstein—by now understanding firearms reasonably well—and Natalie showed the new gun owners how to employ them. Sharing the water and food left Rourke and Rubenstein and the girl with enough to reach Van Horn and nothing more. Before parting company with the refugee party early the next morning, Rourke sent Rubenstein back down the road in the direction in which the refugee party would be traveling, to scout twenty miles ahead, then come back. The younger man, dark hair whipping across his high forehead, eyes squinted both against the sun and apparently to keep the perpetually slipping wire-rimmed glasses from falling off the bridge of his nose, returned almost exactly forty minutes later, reporting nothing up ahead for the refugees—and nothing close behind for Rourke.
Rourke, the girl he knew as Natalie sitting behind him on his bike, watched until the refugee group had straggled a hundred yards or so down the road, then turned to Rubenstein, str
addling the Harley beside him. Rourke glanced at the smaller man, noting that the complexion which had been pallid only days earlier, and then red from the sun, was now starting to darken. Already, too, there was an added leanness about Rubenstein's face. Rourke exhaled slowly, saying, "Well, partner—about ready?"
Rubenstein looked at him, saying nothing, and nodded, then hurriedly pushed his glasses off the bridge of his nose. "You know, Paul," Rourke smiled, "We've gotta do something about getting those glasses fixed." Not looking at the girl behind him, Rourke said, "Hold on—I want to make some time." Rourke pushed the sleeves of his already sweat-stained light blue shirt up past his elbows, ran the long fingers of his hands back through his brown hair, then started his Low Rider, cutting a slow arc off the road shoulder and back onto the highway. A road sign a hundred yards off to his right, faded from the sunlight, read: "Van Horn—75 miles."
They rode in silence, flanking the yellow line at the center of the road. Rourke checked his speedometer, his odometer and then the Rolex wristwatch, then bored his eyes back up the road and gunned the cycle harder. They had driven for just under an hour when Rourke signaled to Rubenstein and started cutting across the right-hand lane to pull up alongside the right shoulder. Ahead of them stretched a low, bridged highway running past smokeless high chimneys, and beyond that were the faint outlines of buildings scorching under the already intense sun. Rourke glanced at his watch—the Rolex read nearly ten A.M. now. As Rubenstein pulled beside him, Rourke said quietly, "Van Horn," and gestured toward the lifeless-seeming factories and beyond.
"It looks dead," Rubenstein said, squinting against the light.
"Does," Rourke commented.
"What do we do?" It was Natalie, leaning over his shoulder.
"Well," Rourke began slowly. "We need food and water, and Rubenstein here could use some clip-on sunglasses before the glare does permanent damage to his eyes. You could probably stand some things. And we could use some more gasoline. I promised I'd get you as far as I could toward Galveston. I don't know yet whether Paul and I are going to have to go down that far to find a safe way of getting onto the other side of the Mississippi. From what I was able to judge from the air that night—the night of the war— it looked as though that entire area should be nothing but a nuclear desert. But there's no way of telling that from here—unless you know something."
He craned his neck and looked at the girl, who smiled at him, saying, "Remember, I hadn't even heard about the war until you and Paul told me?"
"Yeah, I remember that," Rourke said slowly. "I guess though it sort of strikes me as odd that you seem so good with a gun, seem to have seen refugees close up before, and that somewhere in the back of each of our minds we remember each other from somewhere. I just thought maybe some vibrations or something might have come to you about the Mississippi Delta region."
"Sorry," the girl said, as though dismissing Rourke's remark.
"Right—sorry," Rourke echoed. "Well, since you just seem to have this mystical skill with borrowed handguns and submachine guns, when we get down into Van Horn, until we rearm you with something more than that little pea-shooter you've got, why don't you snatch my Python out of the leather here in case some shooting starts. I think if you study it for a while, you can figure out how it works. Right?"
The girl smiled again, almost whispering, "I'd imagine I can."
"Good," Rourke said softly, then turning to Rubenstein, "Paul, there's one main drag down there, probably. When we hit the town, I'll wait five minutes, you cut down along the perimeter as fast as you can, then turn into the main street and start back toward me. Those brigands who destroyed that town those refugees came from are up ahead of us somewhere. I figure they probably already attacked Van Horn, but some of them could have hung around. People like that are usually pretty loose organizationally, coming and going when they please. Keep that thing you call a Schmeisser ready, huh?"
"Gotcha," Rubenstein said, swinging the submachine gun off his back and slinging it under his arm.
Rourke turned back to the girl. "That Python of mine is Mag-Na-Ported—gas-venting slots on each side of the barrel. So it won't give you as much felt recoil as you might expect."
"I don't understand," the girl said.
He turned his head and looked at her a moment, saying, "Just fake it," a smile crossing his lips.
He started the Harley Davison Low Rider between his legs into first and back onto the highway and toward the bridge. The buildings coming up on his right were gray factory smokestacks from light industry. Rourke's Harley was halfway across the bridge now, and from the elevation he could look beyond the largely flat rooflines and into the town and beyond that into the gray-seeming desert. There was no sign of life. The winds were coming strong and Rourke tacked the Harley into them to keep their buffeting effect from flipping the big bike down. Three-quarters of the way across the bridge he angled right, trying to keep quartering into the wind as he did, heading the bike down and onto the off ramp into the town. Rubenstein, behind him as he looked back, was evidently having greater problems handling the heavy winds.
As Rourke's Harley dipped below the level of the bridge, the bridge itself seemed to block the winds and he swerved slightly left, then straightened out, coming to a slow halt at the base of the ramp, then cutting a lazy figure eight in the street fronting it as he scouted in both directions, then heading right from the direction he'd come and into the town itself. The main street seemed some two blocks ahead, Rourke gauged, and he waved Rubenstein down along a narrow side street, glancing over his shoulder, watching the younger man sharply turning the bike and disappearing behind an intact but deserted-appearing building.
Rourke reached the main street, slowed and cut a gentle arc in the large intersection there and came to a stop. "It looks like everyone just vanished," Natalie commented.
"I've got a bad feeling about this place," Rourke said, staring down the street, waiting to see Rubenstein reappear approximately a half-mile down.
"A Neutron bomb?" the girl asked, her voice hushed.
"Now what would a nice young lady like you know about Neutron bombs?" Rourke said, not looking at her. He settled his sunglasses and pulled back the bolt-charging handle on the CAR-15, setting the safety on and swinging the collapsible stock Colt's muzzle away from the bike and into the empty street. "It's not a Neutron bomb," he said. "Look over there."
He watched over his shoulder as the girl turned, looking in the general direction the CAR-15 was pointed. Scrawny but healthy trees were growing in a small square. "No," he said. "Everybody just left—or mostly everybody."
He glanced down to his watch, then back up the street.
"Where's Paul?" Natalie asked. He could feel her breath against his right ear.
"That's just what I was starting to ask myself," Rourke muttered, his voice a whispered monotone. "It might not be a bad idea, you know, for you to reach around my waist, unbuckle my gunbelt and put that Python on yourself—you might need the spare ammo on the belt."
Rourke felt the woman's hands and arms encircling his waist.
He helped her undo the buckle, craned his neck and watched as she slung the cammie-patterned gunbelt from her right shoulder across to her left hip, the Python in its flap holster on her left side, butt forward.
"You ready?"
The girl took the massive revolver from the leather and nodded.
"Okay," Rourke said softly, starting the bike down the center of the deserted street.
He stared ahead of them, whispering over the hum of the Harley's engine, "Did you just see something moving in that space between buildings about twenty-five yards back?"
"On the right?"
"Yeah…"
"Man with a rifle, I thought, but wasn't sure."
"Yeah… okay… I'm going up to the end of the block here and turn down and back into that secondary street Paul was coming up. That's when we should hit it."
"Brigands?" the girl said softly, her voice even
, calm.
"Maybe worse—people defending what's left of their town," Rourke answered, curving the bike wide to the right and then arcing left into the far lane of the intersecting street—also seemingly deserted. The secondary street was coming up on the left, and as Rourke's eyes scanned back and forth there was still no sign of Paul Rubenstein.
He pulled the Harley into another wide arc, cutting left into the secondary street. As he started the big machine along the uneven pavement, he heard Natalie behind him, whispering, her voice hoarse, "John—on your right!"
Rourke perfunctorily glanced to his right, raised his right hand in a small wave and whispered back to the girl. "Yeah… I saw them." As they cruised slowly down the street on each side of them now armed men and women were appearing, stepping out of doorways, from behind overturned cars and trucks, closing in like a wall behind them. "Relax," he rasped. "If they wanted to shoot first they'd be doing it by now."
"I don't take much comfort from that," the girl said, almost angrily.
Suddenly, the girl almost screamed, "Look—up ahead—they've got Paull"
"Yeah… I see it," Rourke said softly. Rubenstein was on his knees at the end of the street, his hands tied out, arms stretched between the rear axle of an overturned truck and a support column for one of the smaller factory loading docks. There was a young man standing beside Rubenstein, an assault rifle with fixed bayonet in his hands, the point of the bayonet at the side of Rubenstein's throat. "I don't know who these people are—but they aren't brigands either. At least not the type we've seen."
"John—go back!" Rubenstein screamed, the man beside Rubenstein then pressing the bayonet harder against Rubenstein's throat, silencing him.