by Ahern, Jerry
chopper, the observation craft won’t. All of us—well get her back.”
Madison whispered, “With the help of God.”
Rourke stood up, downing the rest of his coffee. “Let’s secure the truck, get a position on it, and Colonel Mann can send someone for it. We’re moving.”
Chapter Four
Annie Rourke assumed the survival rations had been irradiated to prevent the natural process of desication resultant from the unavoidable bacteria, much as her father had planned ahead and irradiated the meat and other perishable foodstuffs in the freezers at the Retreat. At least she hoped the rations had been irradiated, as she heated the water over the small “camp stove. She had wrapped a blanket around her over her clothes, further insulation against the cold, the helicopter lashed down with ropes and stakes against the wind, Blackburn having constructed a lean-to which served now as a windbreak while she prepared the food.
The headache had not all been from the long delay in relieving her kidneys —but she assumed food would cure it, waiting for the water to boil. It took longer, her father had told her, than it used to in the days before the sky had caught fire and consumed not all life as they had once supposed, but most life. It took longer for water to boil, because the air was so much thinner now. And she supposed that at almost seventy degrees north latitude, the air was thinner still, but it seemed comfortably breathable, albeit frigid.
Her memory grasped at something she had either
read in a book once or heard spoken in one of the near-memorized videotaped movies her father kept at the Retreat —“A watched pot never boils.” She looked away from the pot, lest the old saying be true. But then she suddenly realized that it couldn’t be. Perhaps a watched teakettle — the kind that whistled — might never boil, but a pot, if never watched, would never be known to boil, might boil away all its contents. She looked back at the pot —the water was boiling.
Despite the circumstances, she found herself smiling.
And they were searching for her —somehow she knew that. They were searching for her now.
“How’s it coming?” she heard Blackburn say over the howl of the wind. She knew he stood behind her, but she didn’t turn to look at him. “How’s it coming? I said.”
“The water just started to boil —only take a few minutes now,” and she began opening one of the foil-wrapped packages, seeing Blackburn at the corner of her peripheral vision, sitting on one of the two survival blankets. Annie knelt on the other one. If her father were in this position, or Natalia — either of them would have used the time profitably. “Where is this Underground City?”
“In the Ural Mountains. It was functional and wholly self-sufficient before what your people call the Night of the War. When the war came and then the Conflagration, it just went right on. It had to have — otherwise there wouldn’t have been any Soviet helicopters, none of this advanced technology.”
Annie Rourke laughed, looking at him for the first time since he had rejoined her. “A woman kneeling before a pot of boiling water in the middle of a snowstorm is advanced technology?”
Blackburn grinned. “You know what I mean,” and
his voice dropped as she handed him one of the prepared meal packets —it looked like beef stroganoff of some sort, but the writing on the packets was Cyrillic and she read no Russian. “Look — ahh — you’re a very pretty girl. I’ve been thinking, Annie. I don’t want to frighten you. I really don’t mean you any harm. I hadda get out with my life. You were my best insurance policy. And there’s nowhere else I can leave you.”
“Give me some rations —you won’t need much —and a couple of extra blankets and a flare pistol — I’ll take my chances. They’ll be looking for me.”
“No —I won’t do that. I’m an American —not a Russian. I kinda like American girls. I don’t know what kinda ugly servants of the state they’ve got at the Underground City. I like what I see.”
She began eating her food, remembering —was it advice? — Natalia, softening her words into a question. “And what if I don’t like what I see?”
“Is that how it is?”
“You kidnapped me. You treated me like some kind of animal.”
“I can be kind, Annie —really kind. I really can.”
Annie took a spoonful of her food — it was something like chicken and rice, but flat-tasting. She wondered if it was the company. “I don’t know,” she lied. “What choice do I have?”
“Not much, I’ll admit,” he smiled, taking some of his food.
She balanced the food packet against the box from which it had come, using her gloved left hand to pick up the boiling pot, pouring some of the still-hot water into the solitary cup. There was freeze-dried or dehydrated coffee or tea in it — she wasn’t sure which since it smelled like neither. She stirred it with the handle of her spoon.
She extended her left hand to Blackburn — she offered him the cup. He took it, smiling …
The configuration of land and water below them matched the configuration of Hamilton Inlet, Quebec, on the five-century-old map in Rourke’s hands. Rourke spoke into the headset microphone. “Akiro — here’s where we part company. You follow the coast like we planned — until you reach Alpatok Island off Newfoundland—then take that adjusted compass heading we worked out. Over.”
“Yes, John —between us —we shall find her! Kurinami over.”
“Good luck —Rourke out,” and Rourke set down the headset —he could hear if Kurinami tried reaching him, and Sarah and Paul would be taking turns monitoring the frequencies on the portable transmitter, trying to pinpoint a stray transmission from Blackburn or, if by some miracle Annie had overpowered him, an SOS from Annie.
It had been decided — Rourke had himself decided — that the most potentially efficacious course of action was for Kurinami, Elaine Halversen, Michael, and Madison to follow the route Blackburn almost certainly had to have taken, along the Canadian coastline and then to Greenland. It was a single-pilot mission.
But his was a two-pilot mission — Natalia and himself, to fly over water, making a straight-line course for Greenland, the helicopter’s fuel tanks topped off, the distance to the next landfall something he didn’t want to contemplate, but had calculated as accurately as map and compass would allow.
He banked to starboard, heading out to sea, in the distance to the north icebergs visible. His suspicion had been becoming slowly confirmed — that there had
been a major magnetic shift — compass readings the further north they had come becoming more and more erratic. But it would soon be night, and then the stars could serve as his navigational beacons, Natalia taking the Controls, Rourke using his binoculars to scan the heavens. If the night were overcast, he would be shooting craps with their lives that he could handle the compass abnormalities.
Sarah came forward, kneeling between Rourke and Natalia, talking a little loudly over the whirring of the rotor blades, but it was the only way to be heard. “What if they didn’t come this way, John? I mean — well —what if they didn’t?”
“There’s nowhere else he could be going, Sarah. If we can’t intercept them, we’ll find that Underground City —and we’ll get inside somehow.”
“Do you think he’s —ahh —”
He looked at his wife. Natalia was turning to face her, touched her left hand lightly to Sarah’s right shoulder. “Sarah —Annie is very smart —if anyone could avoid — well — could avoid that —I feel it —inside me I feel it.”
John Rourke looked ahead —the whitecaps were building, and there would likely be a storm —he could see heavy gray patches of cloud that looked like harbingers of a front, far to the north of them, blocking their path. He hoped Natalia was right …
Annie felt almost overfull, her second meal of the day, but it was already night. No lean-to this time, but a tent, taken from survival stores already aboard the helicopter. And there had been a bottle of vodka — she wondered if it was for the medicinal needs of Soviet helico
pter pilots.
Forrest Blackburn had taken a drink from the bottle,
passing it to Annie. She had taken a sip from the bottle, trying to make it appear as though she had taken more than a sip, hurriedly but not too hurriedly returning the bottle to Blackburn.
The flight over open water in daylight had terrified her, and when the night had come, she had studied the luminosity of the instruments, studied the silhouette of the man who currently held her life in his hands. And now she studied his face in the light of the Soviet counterpart of a Coleman lantern. He sipped again at the vodka.
The moment was coming—it was inevitable.
She had no idea what she would do, if she succeeded, other than go to the tied-down helicopter and try the radio, see if somehow she could contact help. If she could not, she would die here. But there were some things worse than death, she thought. Taking Blackburn to her breast would be such a thing.
He was staring at her —she tried to smile a little, without making the smile look too obvious or too false, or both. “You’re going to get drunk,” she told him.
“No —I won’t get drunk. If I got drunk, I might pass out, then we’d both miss tonight.”
Annie said nothing.
Blackburn spoke again. “You probably think I’ll get drunk and you can kill me and slip out to the radio. Well —you can’t.” He reached into his coverall pocket, under his coat. “See this?”
It was a little fiat piece of some type of fiberboard, with tiny wires set into it, the wires forming some sort of pattern. She guessed it was a circuit. “I see it.”
“This runs the radio, No spare part —I checked.” He closed his fist around the piece of fiberboard, crushing it in his hand.
“You’re a fool, Forrest Blackburn,” she whispered.
“No —more insurance, Annie Rourke,” and he
smiled. “I had no one to talk to. I know the location of the Underground City. Don’t need a radio to find it. And I sure don’t want you getting to that radio and sending out a distress signal to your people.” The wind howled around the tent, the tent vibrating with it, but keeping its integrity.
She leaned back, further, against the sleeping bag, letting the blanket drop from around her shoulders, her coat already open, pushing the shawl down from her hair.
“Is that an invitation?”
“I don’t want to die. I don’t have a choice. There’s no sense getting beaten up and losing anyway. But — ” and she told the truth now —“I’ve never done this. Never once. So you’ll have to help me.”
He stood up, his head almost touching the dome of the tent, his body wobbling a little as though he were about to lose his balance. But, if that was what it had been, he regained his balance, standing there, looking down at her. “You’re a pretty girl, Annie —the hair, the eyes —I like long hair. I like brown eyes. You have any idea how good it is to see a girl in a dress with long hair and all, when all the other women you see are wearing the same kinda work clothes youVe wearing, their hair almost as short as yours? When I took this job for Karamatsov —well, I never realized how it would be to wake up five hundred years in the future — everything gone. No friends. Nobody knew you. The Eden Project people —hell. All of’em — dewy-eyed liberal idealists. But you —you’re something different, Annie. I didn’t think it’d be this easy. But I’m glad. I would have raped you —you know that?” She didn’t think he wanted an answer. “But I didn’t want it that way. I’ll be good to you. You’ll be safe with me.”
Forrest Blackburn came around to her side of the lantern, dropped to his knees, his left hand touching at
her left leg just above her combat boot, his hand trailing along her stockinged calf, under the hem of her skirt, her slip, stopping when the fingers touched bare flesh. “You’re soft —very soft to touch.”
She realized suddenly that this man was trying to be nice, to be decent in his way, to make her feel comfortable, wanted —it sickened her that she was deceiving him, that she wanted nothing but to kill him. “You have a nice voice,” she told him softly. “And your hands aren’t cold.” Both hands touched her left leg now, beneath her clothes. He withdrew his hands, unbuckling his pistol belt, putting it down beside the lantern. She looked away from the light. She could see the outline of the pistol butt silhouetted against the tent wall, that and the sheath for the bayonet. She looked back into his eyes, feeling Blackburn’s breath —hot, smelling a little of the vodka —against her cheek, his lips touching at her forehead. She closed her eyes, feeling his lips touch at her left eyelid, linger there for an instant. She felt something as though somehow she was becoming moist —she shivered.
“What is it, Annie?”
“I’m cold,” she whispered, and it was true in part.
He lay down beside her, his left hand beginning to explore beneath her sweater, pushing up along her blouse, in the gap between the buttons, his fingers touching the flesh of her abdomen. She closed her eyes tightly, folding her arms around his shoulders, inside herself whispering, “God forgive me —Paul, forgive me.” She touched her lips against Blackburn’s left cheek —his cheek was rough, unshaven, like her father’s cheek sometimes when she would kiss him good morning as a little girl. She was feeling sick. His left hand found her right breast, pushing up the bra cup, his fingers touching gently at her right nipple. She moaned with the touch, Blackburn’s lips crushing
down on hers, making her respond —Was she responding to lead him on, to lull him into believing her? Or because he was exciting her? She didn’t know —there was no time to think. Her left hand trailed down along Blackburn’s right side — her fingers felt something. The butt of the pistol. The knife would be surer, but less instantly deadly. She had seen him check his pistol, and the chamber had been loaded. What if he hadn’t kept it that way? His lips touched at her neck, his right hand knotted in her hair, pulling her head back — she could hardly breathe. His left hand was under her clothes now, not at her breast, but pulling down her panties — she could feel the coldness of the night air inside the tent, the roughness of his hand.
Her left hand found the flap of the holster—it was one of the M-12s, and she tugged down at the latch, freeing it. Her father had shown her this, all the weapons accessories he had, and all the weapons. She edged her left thumb against the lip of the fabric holster, Blackburn’s fingers exploring her now — she felt pain and sucked in her breath, hearing the tiny scream as though somehow she were outside her own body, an observer. She could almost see him on top of her, see his face beside hers, see her bunched-up skirt and slip, his hand vanished beneath the clothes, working at her. Her body was trembling. She had the pistol free, settling her left hand around the butt — it felt as thick in the butt as Paul’s High Power pistol. She had fired a pistol like this — her father had one in the armory at the Retreat.
She worked her left thumb against the safety, easing it upward, this time making herself moan as he touched her, to cover the click of the safety. She moved the pistol by feel, trying to see it in her mind. If she pressed it against his side to fire, would it still fire? Was it like a .45? She couldn’t remember. But there was no
other way. She sucked in her breath with a tiny scream —half voluntary, half involuntary — her thumb working back the hammer to full stand. She couldn’t risk the long, double-action pull. She remembered now —with this pistol, there was a loaded chamber indicator. She moved her left thumb forward, along the slide, feeling for the loaded chamber indicator to protrude —it didn’t.
His fingers were delving deeper into her now, her body moving under his, as though it had no will of its own anymore.
The knife —it had to be the knife. He had unloaded the chambered round.
The bayonet’s grip —she felt it, closed her left fist over it. In her mind, she tried to see the sheath —a snap closure that ringed the handle. Her left thumb pried at it, and she moaned again to cover the noise. She started edging the knife out of the sheath, the pistol belt weighi
ng it down, her body moving under his body. Her right hand —he was holding it now, bringing it to his crotch —she felt the hardness there, felt him draw her hand to the zipper at the crotch of his coveralls — she started tugging the zipper down, his hand returning to explore her, his lips against her neck. She sucked in her breath as the snap pieces made a scratching noise against the blade of the bayonet.
It was free. His zipper was down.
She closed her eyes tightly, reached inside his pants, and found his testicles, then closed her fist around them, her nails gouging into them as her left hand hammered toward him, down, into the center of his back, Blackburn screaming, “Bitch!” She pried the knife out as his right hand closed on her throat, her legs locking his left hand between them, her right hand twisting, ripping at his testicles now, her teeth biting into his cheek, the bayonet hammering down again,
into his right kidney, then out, down again, again into the kidney, then out, then down, into the spine, his body going rigid over her, his breath coming in a long hot rush against her face —there was a wetness in her hand and a smell like bleach.
Annie Rourke closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see his dead eyes staring at her. It was as if Forrest Blackburn were asking, “Why?”
Chapter Five
She had washed the white liquid from her hand with the remainder of the warm water from the pot and the soap she had washed her hands with earlier before preparing the meal.