Survivalist - 13 - Pursuit

by Ahern, Jerry

  The blond raised the sword with his right hand, whipping the sword upward and then presenting the blade’s tip toward Rourke —some sort of salute, Rourke surmised.

  Rourke took a step back, watching the blond’s eyes — they were riveted to the big Gerber Mkll at Rourke’s left hip. Rourke shifted the balance of the sword, holding it with one hand, drawing the Gerber with his left hand. The blond still eyed it.

  Rourke gathered somehow it wasn’t gentlemanly to have a dagger available when the other fellow didn’t. Rourke hefted the Gerber, then flipped it. It wasn’t a throwing knife, and in most cases throwing a knife was the least practical option. But he pitched it toward the grass, the blade biting into the dirt, staying.

  He looked at the blond and nodded, the blond nodding back. As the blond started toward him, Rourke sidestepped, right, the sword pointed downward bisecting the line of his left upper arm. Then Rourke sidestepped right again, as if crossing into his opponent’s path, but Rourke held the sword with the blade bisecting the line of his throat, the tip to Rourke’s right, his blade parallel now to his shoulders, blocking the blond’s downward hacking attack with the full force of his body, their blades locking.

  Rourke stepped back with his left foot, making the wedge of his body a more solid block against the blond-haired man, Rourke’s arms upthrusting, the blond leaning into the blade, slightly off balance, his weight too far forward. Rourke pivoted thirty degrees with his right foot, throwing the weight to his right leg, flexing the knee. Rourke snapped his left foot up and forward, the toe of his combat boot impacting the blond man’s scrotum, the blond’s china-blue eyes dilating for an instant with pain.

  The blond took a wobbling step back, their blades still locked, Rourke’s left foot down now, moving forward, their blades parting, Rourke hacking his own blade downward and right, the swords locked against the wide double quillon guards, Rourke knocking his opponent’s blade right and down. Rourke shifted his weight to his left foot, pulling his right leg behind him as if pivoting one hundred eighty degrees, but instead, their blades still locked at the level of Rourke’s abdomen, Rourke snapped his left elbow up, his elbow contacting the partially-doubled-forward blond-haired man’s chin. Rourke’s left fist released the hilt of the sword, the heel of his left fist snapping forward, catapulting against the center of the blond-haired man’s forehead just above the nose. His weight still on his right foot, his blade still blocking his opponent’s blade, Rourke’s left foot snapped outward in a side kick, against the right outside and rear of his opponent’s right knee, Rourke’s left fist backhanding cross-body into the blond’s lower left jawline, the blond’s head snapping right, the blond’s hands releasing the sword, the sword clattering to the flagstones of the path. Rourke swung his sword in a left arc with his right hand, loosing the hilt, the sword implanting into the ground near the Gerber knife. The blond’s body was limping, starting down as Rourke’s right knee

  smashed up, impacting the base of the blond man’s jaw.

  The head snapped back, the body back-flipping into the flower bed.

  It had been a long time since John Rourke had practiced his kendo —at least five centuries.

  Chapter Sixteen

  John Rourke had debated waiting around for one of them to awaken, to try all possible variants of “girl,” “woman,” “female,” and “daughter” to see if there was a flash of recognition.

  Instead he left the bodies where they fell, and clambered up into the rocks, getting his M-16 and his musette bag.

  Once back down, he had debated taking the sword the red-haired man had involuntarily loaned him — but to have defeated the blond-haired man in combat was one thing, to take his sword would dishonor him. Blade-oriented cultures were high in the attachment of honor to their weapons, historically at least. But, Rourke reflected, if someone had taken his twin stainless Detonics pistols, it would have sat poorly with him as well.

  He checked both men —both unconscious, both breathing satisfactorily. He retrieved his Gerber, leaving the men, running along the path now, his M-16 at high port. Viking warriors living in a place that by right should not exist —a technologically sophisticated place, so sophisticated that the need for blatant demonstration of the level of sophistication was apparently thought unnecessary. When he had retrieved his knife, the ground had felt warm, warmer than it should have felt considering the air temperature and the outside

  environment.

  Pipes, he presumed, were laid out along the ground, heating it. The energy requirements would be enormous, but the raw material for the energy, water, was recyclable with the exception of what he now realized was the comparatively small amount that escaped as steam.

  He kept running. Annie was here. Paul was here …

  Paul Rubenstein moved ahead along the ground on knees and elbows, stopping behind a hedgerow and listening. The language spoken by the long-skirted, fit-seeming, and very pretty girls was totally alien to him, all but for a trace of something that reminded him vaguely of segments of Beowulf in the original Old English that he had been exposed to once in college.

  He had enjoyed the translation, in fact had re-read Beowulf several times—the first adventure novel, a professor had called it, as well as the oldest extant work in English.

  The girls were seated on a low-backed wooden bench. Seated was the wrong word, perched more the term, he decided, the girls sitting on the edge of the bench, leaned forward, engrossed in their animated conversation, their skirts completely masking their legs. One girl was dark blonde, the other light blonde; one girl’s hair in braids that danced as she moved her head in conversation, the other girl’s hair braided as well, but the braids upswept and bound around her head — it was a hair style he had seen in old nineteenth-century photographs.

  “Shit,” he snarled under his breath. He rolled onto his side, undoing the belt at his waist for his pack, then shouldering first out of the left strap, then out of the

  right, then rolling to his left side —he opened the pack as noiselessly as he could. His flashlight. The musette bag with the spare magazines for his Browning High Power—the newer-looking spare gun he had left with Sarah and Natalia, as John Rourke had left the Scoremasters. Neither of them had expected battle. He took the second musette bag—spare magazines for the Schmeisser. He had two spare magazines for the M-16, taking them and shoving them into his hip pockets now. The flashlight he shoved into his trouser waistband. He checked for the battered Browning’s security in the Special Weapons Products’ tanker holster—the velcro strap was closed tight.

  He left the pack, pushing it as silently as he could beneath the hedgerow, trying to memorize the location—the positioning of the bench, the small, actually gurgling brook which ran perhaps ten feet to his right.

  He pushed up to his knees, watching the girls a moment longer.

  Who they were, why they even existed, was not immediately apparent. But he knew sophisticated technology when he saw it. The ground was warm to the touch — pleasandy so. Pipes buried within the ground, he realized. The whole place was climate-controlled with geothermal energy.

  On knees and elbows, taking a last look toward his pack, Paul Rubenstein began to crawl away. Annie …

  Natalia spoke into her headset microphone. “Sarah —do you read me? Over.”

  “I read you, Natalia—a litde static. Over.”

  “I haven’t sighted any flares. Either John is late or there’s something wrong. Over.”

  “Kurinami just came in —Want me to send him up,

  Natalia? Over.”

  Natalia’s eyes scanned the night —her consciousness was somehow still drawn to the mountains toward which John and Paul had trekked in search of footprints or some slight sign of Annie. John hadn’t said it —but Natalia realized it full well. If Annie spent a second night unprotected with these low temperatures, she would be dead. “No —111 give you my position. I’m just due west of a dormant volcano marked on our maps as Mt. Hekla. There’s considera
ble steam rising from it. I’m taking the machine down. Let Akiro rest for a while, then have Michael and Madison keep the watch at camp, have Elaine stay with them. You and Akiro come after me if you don’t get a transmission from me within two hours. Understood? Natalia, over.”

  “Understood —be careful. And thank you —for a lot of things. Sarah out.”

  Natalia focused her attention toward the clouds of steam, switching on the thermal-scanning equipment of the German helicopter—the steam seemed to be emitting more heat in greater concentration than any of the geysers she had taken test readings against earlier.

  She started the German helicopter down, switching on landing lights because with the overcast it was the only way she could find a landing spot. She realized that if some enemy force were out there, they would spot her because of the lights. But provoking a reaction, if such a force existed, seemed the most expeditious way of making contact. She hit the switches for full lights now, using the rotating spots. There was no sense in making it difficult …

  Annie Rourke awoke — something like bells. An alarm —the ringing was all around her, a voice in the

  strange language proclaiming something she couldn’t understand. She pushed the covers down from her bed, throwing her feet to the floor, the nightgown that had bunched at her hips falling to her ankles now. Her feet blindly found the slippers she had been given. She found the light switch, hitting it —the bedside lamp cast a yellow glow in a cone of light beside her feet and across much of the rug. She found the six-foot-square fringed shawl on the chest at the bottom of the bed by the footboard, folding it around herself, starting for the door. She tried the door handle —it opened. They hadn’t locked her in. She stepped into the hallway. People were running, other women like herself in nightdresses and shawls, men topless and barefoot, closing their pants as they ran, green-tunicked guards, their swords buckling on.

  She looked right and left along the corridor, then started to run, following the greatest concentration of women …

  Natalia stared down into the steam clouds —lights. Purplish lights. Perhaps more lavender. She pulled the hood closer about her face, tugging at the silk scarf over her mouth and nose that guarded her face at least slighdy against the cold.

  The sound she heard was more unnatural than the lights.

  A choice — return to the helicopter and get help, or go it alone.

  Emotion or logic. She chose logic, running, skidding down the slope, falling, picking herself up and slogging down through the snow. The sound was barely audible now over the rising wind. But it was some sort of loud alarm signal.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Damn,” John Rourke hissed, breaking out of his jog-trot and into a run. The guards might have awakened, but more likely when he had crossed one of the expanses of open ground he had broken the beam of an electronic eye or stepped on a pressure-sensitive plate. “Damn,” and he threw himself into the run. Mingled with the alarm but less audible was a voice, the language something like Norwegian, but closer to Old English and totally unintelligible to him.

  He kept running, breaking left, into a stand of fruit trees — peaches and apples.

  He could hear voices now, shouted commands from the far side of the orchard. He kept running that way anyway —there was no other way to run unless he turned back.

  Annie. Paul. John Rourke kept running, well into the orchard now, the fruit here in various stages of growth, some ripe and ready to be picked, some just flowering —a totally controlled, seasonless environment.

  Smart people —he wondered if they were deadly.

  He was nearing the end of the orchard now, a running man in green tunic and high boots dressed identically to the first two men, coming toward him, shouting, brandishing his sword. Rourke slowed,

  looked to left and right. The sword-wielding man — blond-haired, bearded, was charging still. If the rifle in Rourke’s hands had been an M-l Garand or an M-14, he would have risked using it to block the sword. But the M-16 was too fragile. As the man charged, Rourke dropped, going into a short roll, then a leg sweep, bringing the man down face forward to the bark-covered ground of the orchard, Rourke up to his knees, snapping the M-16’s butt against the side of the man’s head, putting him down.

  The ethics of taking a man’s sword left him now — he picked up the sword, identical in shape and size to the one he had used before, but the carving in the hilt different, the guard slightly different in shape. Lack of total uniformity was a good sign.

  Rourke took the sword and ran with it, still heading for the far end of the orchard.

  Another guard, his sword drawn running toward Rourke, shouting in the bizarre but beautiful-sounding language —he imagined it was Icelandic. He hoped.

  That this was some sort of survival colony was clear —but how had they survived?

  The swordsman attacked, Rourke sidestepping, one-handing his sword, countering the blow, backstepping, the swordsman cleaving downward with his blade. Rourke blocking it to the right, snapping his left fist out and forward, lacing the man across the jaw, putting him down.

  Rourke ran, his M-16 bouncing across his back on its sling, the sword in his right fist.

  He was out of the orchard now, into a long greenway that reminded him of the mall between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument, running, a taller, imposing-looking building ahead of him, men pouring down the steps of the building, green-clad some of them, some of them shirtless, some wielding

  swords, some barehanded. Rourke slowed, stopped.

  He looked behind him. More of the same. To either side now, men coming, closing him off.

  Rourke took the weapon in his right fist and hurled it away, the sword’s blade burying several inches into the grassy ground.

  Rourke swung the M-16 forward, working the bolt back, chambering a round, working the selector to auto.

  He swung the muzzle of the rifle toward the impressive-looking building and the men running from it toward him.

  He fired, into the ground a dozen yards ahead of the leaders.

  The leaders slowed. Rourke fired again. They stopped.

  Rourke swung the M-16 left, firing a short burst, stopping the left flank attack.

  He swung the rifle behind him, to both sides —none of the men moved.

  The alarm still sounded. *

  There was a word for it — standoff …

  It was some sort of dormitory, half-naked men, women in long nightgowns with shawls, some few of them with robes, running from what seemed the main doors, stopping at various levels along the high steps, some of the men running down the steps, toward the more central portion of the volcano floor. What Paul Rubenstein had heard he had heard before —a .223 fired on full auto. He saw no guns in evidence, but there would be security forces, more than just the bearded, long-haired men he had observed patrolling the grounds with swords at their hips.

  He knew the meaning of the concept of one’s heart leaping —he felt it. Annie —in a long nightgown, a shawl wrapped about her upper body, her hair uncombed, standing near the top of the steps. Beautiful.

  Paul Rubenstein broke cover, running, hurdling the hedge, running, shouting, “Annie! I’m coming for you!”

  Men from the steps started toward him, one of them with a sword, the other barehanded. Paul Rubenstein fired the Schmeisser into the grass near their feet, firing another burst into the air over their heads. Annie was starting down the steps, running toward him.

  The man with the sword —he moved out of his paralysis and started to charge, Paul firing into the ground at the man’s feet, the man sidestepping the impact line, still running. “There’s always a hardass,” Paul almost verbalized, running, sidestepping as the man charged, dodging the sword, hammering the Schmeisser against the man’s head, putting him down.

  Paul started to lose his balance, caught himself, ran, Annie at the base of the steps now, holding the shawl clutched to her chest in her left hand, hitching up the nightgown with the fin
gers of her right. “Paul —don’t kill anyone! Paul!”

  Paul Rubenstein looked back —the swordsman, the right side of his face streaming blood, was running after him, the sword upraised, ready to strike.

  Annie — Paul reached her, his left arm sweeping around her, hugging her body against him. His lips brushed at her forehead. The swordsman. Paul made to fire. “Don’t kill him, Paul!”

  Paul looked at her quickly —he trusted her judgment—he fired again into the ground^by the swordsman’s feet, making the man dodge. “Steps —come on!” He grabbed her hand, running with her now, brandishing the subgun as he started up the steps, feeling

  Annie pull free of his hand, glancing toward her —her shawl, the hem of her nightgown. To the height of the steps. Paul grabbed the battered Browing High Power from the Tanker holster, thrusting it into Annie’s right hand now. “Round’s chambered — what the hell’s going on?”

  “These people — they’re peaceful — one of them saved my life.”

  “I love you —you all right?”

  “I love you too —yes —” He felt her move close against him, the Schmeisser in both his fists now. More of the assault-rifle fire from the distance.

  “Can’t be that peaceful.”

  “Maybe it’s Daddy-“

  “Shit — ” The swordsman was racing up the steps — Paul shouted to him, “Hold it —I’ll kill you —so help

  me!”

  “They speak Icelandic — but — “

  The swordsman didn’t slow his pace. Annie moved, stepped in front of Paul, Paul trying to push her back. She held her left palm out toward him, clutching the pistol against the front of her shawl. “No!” She was screaming the word.

  Overhead, Paul heard the sound of a chopper …

  Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna parted the swirling mists of steam as the German machine descended. The gunfire she had heard while making/the radio transmission—it had decided her.

  Her hands moved to arm the German gunship’s machine guns, targeting manually, her eyes scanning the mists —purple light, more pronounced now, but definitely lavender. Gardens everywhere. Trees. A long grassy stretch amid orchards and official-looking buildings.