The Survivalist

by Jerry Ahern

  There was row upon row of Mountain House foods in large containers and small packages, some ordinary canned goods, other food supplies, then stacks of white bootsocks, underpants, handker­chiefs. “All reserve stuff,” Rourke commented. A large bin occupied some of the end of the shelving area, inside it, as Rourke showed Rubenstein, were holsters, slings, various other leather goods. Beyond this was a shelf filled with a dozen pair of black GI combat boots, and beside these a half dozen pairs of rubber thongs.

  “It’ll take you a while,” Rourke commented to Rubenstein, “before you can really see all I’ve put up, but you’ll catch on to it. Check the inventory sheets.” Rourke took down one of four clipboards hanging on hooks at the far end of the shelving. “Now look behind you. My pride and joy—” Rourke gestured to the far wall, a gleaming black Harley-Davidson Low Rider suspended a few inches off the floor—“to protect the tires.”

  Rourke walked back to the end of the shelf row and hit another switch and the side cavern behind them went dark. Rourke hit a second switch and the darkened smaller chamber ahead of them il­luminated.

  Rourke commented, “Work room,” and pointed along the walls and down a row of log tables. Vises, reloading equipment, power saws, drill press, then ranked on shelves above these were oil filters, spark plugs, fan belts, tools hung on pegboard wall panels beyond these. Rourke set his CAR-15 on one of the tables, withdrew the six-inch Python, setting it beside the rifle, next he snatched both Detonics stainless pistols from their double-shoulder rig and set them down as well, then the small A.G. Russell black chrome Sting IA.

  “Gotta clean these tomorrow,” Rourke observed.

  Rubenstein took the Browning High Power from his belt and set it down, then laid down the Schmeisser, “I’ll get the little Lawman and the Steyr later,” Rourke noted. “Come on.”

  Rourke walked past the rows of tables and hit the light switch, then turned a corner and, once again, they were in the main cavern, but at the far end of the great room, the sound of the waterfall splashing beside them.

  Rourke stripped away his leather jacket, his Alessi shoulder rig, and the Ranger leather belt, and set them on the arm of what looked like a leather-covered chair.

  “Vinyl,” Rourke observed. “Hate the stuff, but it’s less susceptible to damage than leather and more easily repaired.”

  Rourke started into the room, then stopped, turned to Rubenstein, and took off his sunglasses. “What would you like to see first? I bet, the bath­room, hmm? How about a real shower?”

  Rourke didn’t wait for an answer, but started toward the near side of the great room, walked up a row of three low stone steps and pointed toward the opaque curtain of stone. “In there—help yourself. Grab yourself some clothes. I’ll use it later.”

  Then Rourke turned and walked across the great room toward the television set, the stereo, the books, the guns. He stopped in front of the glass gun case and slid the glass panel aside. He heard Rubenstein’s voice behind him, turned, and saw him with a hand­ful of clean clothes. Rourke smiled, pleased the younger man had found his way back to his motor­cycle, already learning to make his way around the retreat.

  “What’s that, John?”

  “Come and see,” Rourke said, staring back at the cabinet. He heard Rubenstein stop beside him, then pointed at each weapon in the gun case. “That’s an Interdynamics KG-9 9mm assault pistol,” Rourke began.

  “Looks like a submachine gun,” Rubenstein com­mented.

  “Only a semi-automatic, though,” Rourke said, then pointed to each succeeding item, identifying it in turn, “Smith and Wesson Model 29 six-inch, Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported; Smith and Wesson Model 60 two-inch stainless Chiefs .38 Special; Colt Mk IV, Series ‘70 Government Model; Metalifed with a Detonics Competition Recoil system installed and Pachmayr Colt Medallion grips. That little thing is an FIE .38 Special chrome Derringer, and the little tubes on the shelf down here are .22 Long Rifle and .25 ACP barrel inserts made by Harry Owens of Sport Specialties. Makes the little gun able to fire .38 Special, .22 rimfire, or .25 ACP. I’ve got more of those insert barrels for my Detonics, for my shotguns, et cetera.” Rourke pointed back up to the cabinet. “That gun is a Colt Official Police .38 Special five-inch—Metalifed with Pachmayr grips. Same frame essentially as a Python, so I had it reamed out to .357 to increase its versatility.” Then Rourke moved to his right to the long guns, racked one over the other. “That’s a standard AR-15, no scope. That’s a Mossberg 500ATP6P Parkerized riot shotgun. Safariland sling on it. That’s an original Armalite AR-7 .22 Long Rifle. Take it apart and it stows in the buttstock, even floats. Had enough?”

  Rourke turned, smiling at Rubenstein.

  “How much—I mean it’s rude, John, I know that but how—”

  “Every cent I could scrape together for the last six years, after the cost of the property itself. I gambled. I’m sorry I won, but it paid off I guess.” Rourke closed the case and walked toward the sofa in the center of the great room, then leaned down to a small box on the table, and looked inside. “Empty,” he muttered, and crossed the room.

  He glanced over his shoulder, Rubenstein follow­ing him. Rourke smiled, saying, “You’re more curious than eager for that shower, aren’t you?”

  Rourke kept walking, up the three low stone steps and into the kitchen. There was a long counter with stools beside it, on the other side a six-burner range with a double oven, a double-door refrigerator, and more counter space. At the far left were two chest-type white freezers. “I’ve got a big meat locker back in the side of the utility area, maybe you saw it—this is for stuff that is most commonly used.”

  Rubenstein was next to him as Rourke opened one of the freezers, the entire left half of it was filled with aluminum-foil-wrapped packages. Rourke took a package from the freezer and turned over a roast, looked at it, then closed the freezer. He unwrapped the package on top of the freezer, extracted one of the small cigars he liked, rolled it between his fingers, smelled it, and put it to his mouth. He lit it with the Zippo.

  “You’re kidding,” Rubenstein said, his voice sounding to Rourke as though the young man were shocked.

  “What’s the matter? What’s so strange? All the comforts of home.” Rourke stopped, the lighter still burning in his hand as he stared over Rubenstein’s shoulder, past the counter to the small table on the side of the couch. There was a picture there—he couldn’t see it, but knew it—of Sarah and the children. “Almost all the comforts,” he said, his voice low. He snapped closed the cowling of the lighter and dropped the lighter in his pocket.

  “How did you get this up here?”

  “With the truck,” Rourke answered, as he went to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out an ice tray. He took a large glass beer mug from an overhead cabinet and filled it half with ice. He replaced the unused ice cubes, muttering, “Help yourself to anything you want,” then turned on a small black switch next to the sink. There was a rum­ble, a mechanical hum, then Rourke turned on the cold water faucet, the spigot sputtering a moment. “Air gets in the system,” Rourke remarked, then water spattered out, and Rourke walked away, leav­ing the water running.

  He went to another cabinet, this time below the counter level, and extracted a half-gallon bottle of Seagram’s 7, twisted off the cap, breaking the stamp, and poured a good three inches in the beer mug over the ice, then closed the bottle and replaced it under the counter. He returned to the sink and added two inches of water to the glass, shut off the water, then turned off the pump switch.

  “You’ve always got to remember to turn on the switches for the water—only thing different from or­dinary plumbing—electrically operated pumps. I use several, so if one breaks down it won’t kill all my water at once.”

  Rourke started out of the kitchen and back down the steps into the great room. Rubenstein was behind him. “John, this can’t be real, I mean—”

  “It is, Paul,” Rourke said, turning. “It is. Go get cleaned up. Later I’ll fix us something to
eat.”

  “How about steak and eggs?” Rubenstein asked laughing.

  Rourke didn’t laugh. “Well, I’ll have to flash thaw it, but I guess so. Powdered eggs all right?”

  Rourke nursed his drink while Rubenstein showered. He got the steaks and set the microwave oven, then returned to the sofa. He was reading, not a book, but a catalogue of the books he had on the shelves along one wall of the great room—refreshing himself on the contents of his library—determining, now that it was his only library, if any gaps existed that critically needed filling. He put down the looseleaf binder and went to the bookshelves, rolled the ladder along their length and climbed up, select­ing a book about projected climatalogical changes as the result of heat and temperature inversion. The red sunsets still worried him.

  He heard Rubenstein behind him, turned and stepped down the ladder.

  “All those books, John. What are these?” He stopped and pointed to a lower shelf.

  “Just books I’ve written on weapons, survivalism, things like that. I’ve tried to have something of everything,” Rourke said, sipping his drink and studying the cover of the book as if by holding it an answer to the bizarre climate would somehow come to him osmotically. “I always viewed a library as the most essential thing for survival beyond food, water, shelter, weapons. What good would it do if we sur­vived, Paul, if all the wisdom of the world were lost to us? I may be misquoting but I believe it was Ein­stein who said that regardless of what World War Three was fought with—and I’m just paraphras­ing—World War Four would be fought with rocks and clubs. Simply it means that civilization—regardless of the physical reality of man—would end. It won’t here.” Rourke gestured broadly toward his books.

  “Children’s books too?” Rubenstein asked, look­ing at the lowest shelf.

  “For Annie and Michael, perhaps their children someday. Can’t teach them to read with these.” Rourke gestured at the higher shelves. “Most of those, children’s books were illustrated or written and illustrated by Sarah, anyway—a double purpose.”

  “Do you really think it’ll last that long?”

  “The world or the aftermath of the War?” Rourke asked, turning away, not expecting an answer. He dropped the book on the coffee table, looked over his shoulder as he downed his drink, and said, “If the timer hits on the microwave, just push the off button. I’m taking a shower.”

  Rourke walked to the far side of the great room, past the waterfall, and up the three stone steps to the master bedroom. Curtains could be drawn to separate it from the rest of the retreat but he left them alone, going through his things to find a fresh change of clothes and dumping the contents of his pockets on top of the dresser. He went into the bathroom.

  He shaved, brushed and flossed his teeth, then climbed into the shower, washing himself several times, washing his hair, and standing under the hot water. He then turned it to straight cold—from the underground spring the temperature was cold, very cold. Rourke, standing under the icy water, stared down at himself: a few cuts, a few bruises. He was intact, the last radiation reading on himself and his equipment showed normalcy. He inhaled, able to count his ribs a little more easily, and he noticed too that more of the hair on his chest had turned to gray. He turned his face up to the spray, his eyes closed, feeling the water hammering on him, then shut off the water and stepped out to dry himself, shivering a little, unused still to the temperature of the cavern—a year-round constant 68 degrees because of the natural temperature of the rock and the water. It was a relief not to put on combat boots and wear instead a pair of rubber thongs.

  Rourke couldn’t see Rubenstein; he guessed the younger man was exploring. With his shirt tails out of his pants, his glass refilled and fresh cigar, Rourke walked toward the rear of the cavern, beyond the living quarters and shop area, past the waterfall. He stopped and smiled when he saw the look of bewilderment on Rubenstein’s face.

  “You’re impressed?” Rourke asked, sipping at his drink.

  “A greenhouse?” The younger man was staring at a small house of sheet plastic, humidity dripping from the windows, bright purple lights glowing from within.

  “I wish I could use sunlight, but if I installed any sort of skylight, it would be visible from the air and that could blow the whole place. So, as long as the growlights hold out, we’ve got fresh vegetables, oc­ca­sionally.”

  “I punched the off button on the microwave oven. You got everything here!”

  “Not quite,” Rourke said, then walked back in the kitchen.

  The men ate, Rourke in relative silence. Ruben-stein unending in his comments on the retreat. After dinner—time really didn’t matter in any relative sense, Rourke realized—the two sat in the great room, drinking and talking. Rourke’s watch read four a.m. for the outside world.

  Rubenstein became tired and Rourke pointed him toward one of the spare bedrooms. He left Rourke alone in the great room. Rourke, unable to sleep, was still considering the note his wife had left and wondering where to begin the search. He found a videotape to his liking and put it on the machine. There was one of Sarah and the children, but he couldn’t take seeing it, he told himself, so he watched a movie he’d recorded from commercial television two years earlier, he thought. It was a Western with the hero a gunfighting marshal up against a land baron. Rourke turned it off and found another tape, a science program on the big bang theory of the origins of the universe. He fixed another drink and watched the tape. Still wide awake when the tape ended, he found a movie more to his liking, a British secret agent after a top secret satellite. Rourke watched, fixed another drink, and wondered when the whiskey would run out.

  Chapter 9

  Natalia screamed again. Karamatsov pushed the bottle toward her. Inside herself, feelings of the guilt she held for betraying him by helping Rourke escape, the feelings for wanting to betray him and become Rourke’s lover, the half-conscious, half-subconscious desire to be punished for doing what she knew to be wrong—these fought with her ra­tionality. And against the pain. She could feel the lip of the bottle. She screamed again, knowing that somehow Karamatsov had won against her. She lashed out with her right arm, the knife edge of her hand slashing across her husband’s Adam’s apple, the heel of her left hand soaring up. Her body was acting independently of her will now, she realized, as though once the decision to defend herself had been made, a floodgate of vengeance and brutality had washed open. The heel of her left hand caught the tip of Vladmir’s chin and hammered his head back.

  Naked, she rolled to the floor, her husband fallen over the back of the couch.

  He came at her, smiling, the belt in his hands, swinging it, but this time the side with the buckle.

  She screamed at him, “Vladmir! Where are you?” And she realized the man she had virtually grown up with, married, loved, been faithful to except for one unconsummated indiscretion, was gone from her.

  The brass belt buckle swung toward her and she dropped to the carpeted floor, sweeping her legs under his swing, against his legs, knocking him to the floor. The belt sailed from his hands as he fell. She threw herself on him, her knees hammering into his ribs and chest, her hand grasping for the tiny .38 Special revolver he carried, her right elbow jabbing into the side of his head as he fought to stop her.

  She had the revolver. She cocked the hammer, the stubby muzzle less than an inch from his face, be­tween his eyes. She didn’t recognize her own voice. “I’ll kill you if you move, bastard! Leave this house, leave me, leave us! I don’t know you anymore. So help me, I’ll shoot this thing between your eyes, and I’ll laugh!”

  Karamatsov stood up and she edged away from him. He threw up on the floor and stumbled toward the hall.

  A long time after that, when he was gone, the door locked, she lowered her husband’s gun and dropped to her knees and cried.

  Chapter 10

  John Thomas Rourke sat up, staring at the videotape on the television set. He realized im­mediately what had happened. The great room was dark
; he’d fallen asleep watching the movie. And when he had recorded it, he’d left the tape running too long.

  U.S. Navy jet fighters were soaring through the bright blue sky in perfect formation, the “Star Spangled Banner” was playing loudly. There were faces, too. A black child, an Hispanic farm laborer, a businessman, an Oriental woman, a housewife. The faces of children, men, women—Americans. The flag—fifty stars on a field of blue with thirteen stripes of red and white—it waved across the faces of the children. An American Eagle soared through the sky, the signoff cutting to the Washington Monu­ment, the Lincoln Memorial, and an aerial view of the Statue of Liberty.

  “And the home of the brave,” Rourke stood up, knocking over the empty beer mug, tears welling up in his eyes in the darkness.

  He fell to his knees as the flag waved in the wind, then suddenly the tape went blank. And the great room, inside a cavern, in a granite mountain, a retreat, bomb-hardened from anything except a direct hit of a nuclear device . . . Sarah, Michael, Ann—faces, Americans. Rourke wept in the darkness. It was all gone and perhaps only they sur­vived all of it—the faces in memory.