by Jerry Ahern
That death was inevitable did not escape him, but not from his wounds at least. He rested in the back of the van they had taken from the Russians, a police van. Through the open doors, he could see Marty approaching, carrying something.
He didn’t try to sit up. He watched instead.
Marty stopped at the open rear doors. “Hey, Tommy—how you feeling?”
“I’ve felt better—what have you got there?”
“Remember I promised you a beer? Well, this one closet near where the locker rooms were—guess one of the KGB prison guards liked beer. Had a cooler-full. I got us each one.”
Marty stepped up into the van, twisting the cap off one of the bottles and handing it to Maus.
“You heard something, didn’t you?”
“Well, you know how people talk—word is the KGB pulled out because some top secret project went belly up— and —” But he stopped talking.
“And what?”
“Nothin’ important—”
“What?”
Marty opened his beer, clinked the bottle against Maus’s bottle and then took a long pull. He smacked his lips. “Nice and cold.”
“What?”
“They had a radio here—one of those jobbies that pulls in stations from all over the place.”
Marty drank some more of the beer. “Got a ham operator out of Greenland—said all of Europe was off the air—lots of static, then a moment of clear transmission—one of the guys he had talked to—he said the—” Marty took another pull on the beer. “Trouble with beer—once you drink it, the bottle’s empty.” And he looked at Maus. “The ham operator said the guy told him the sky was on fire and—it didn’t make much sense.”
Maus raised his bottle of beer, clinked the glass against Marty’s. “Here’s lookin’ at ya, Marty.”
Marty began to laugh. “I betchya I can scrounge up a couple more beers if I try hard. Our work’s done tonight.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. You know, I had this terrific idea for increasing sales, ya know—was just gonna imple-ment it before The Night of The War.”
“What kinda idea?”
“It’ll take a while to explain it—”
Marty laughed, and Maus laughed then, too. Marty said, “I got all night, Tommy.”
Chapter Seventy-four
President Samuel Chambers stood on the rise of ground looking out. He could see much by the fires that still burned. Beside him stood Lieutenant Feltcher. At the base of the rise stood the TVM Commander.
The Soviet Armies had been defeated, routed.
Feltcher said, “We won, Mr. President.”
“My radio man has been getting these weird signals all night. Ham operators—like that.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
He looked at Feltcher.
He didn’t have the heart to tell him. Instead, he said, “Maybe what transpired will bring about peace someday. Maybe somebody somewhere will look back and know what happened—maybe.”
“You mean, Mr. President, maybe we whipped them so bad we’ll really beat them, drive ‘em back to the Soviet Union—have America back?”
“By tomorrow morning, I’m confident of it, Lieutenant, all our troubles will be over.”
“Is it some new weapon, sir?”
He looked at Feltcher in the firelight, then just shook his head as he lit a cigarette—he had several packs to still smoke that night—there was no sense wasting the last of his cigarettes.
“No—not a new weapon, Lieutenant. I think we’ll shortly see the old weapons did quite enough—quite enough.” He inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs and said nothing else for a moment.
Then he looked at Feltcher. “While you were away, well, it’s too long a story. But I’ll tell you anyway. We did something to the air and the sky is catching on fire and when the sun rises tomorrow morning we’ll all be dead. And there’s no way to stop it. I’ve got a lot of smoking to do—if you want to join me, I’ll tell you about it. Or maybe you want to find someplace to go and pray. Up to you, Lieutenant.”
Feltcher didn’t say anything. After a moment there was a solitary pistol shot. Someone in the darkness, Chambers knew, had just taken his own life rather than face the sun-rise. Others had already—others would.
Chambers began to walk toward the tent that was his newest headquarters, his last headquarters. He turned around to look at Feltcher. The young lieutenant was mak-ing the sign of the cross.
Chapter Seventy-five
Natalia’s knowledge of engineering and electronics, Paul’s practical knowledge of how things worked gained from his experience with editing technical writing, Sarah’s experience with the practical aspects of nursing and with de-sign, Rourke’s own experience with building the Retreat from nothing, with the functioning of the human body.
An engineer turned spy, a trade magazine editor, a would-be nurse turned artist and writer, a doctor turned weapons expert and survivalist. The children served as ‘gophers’—go for this and go for that.
Paul with Michael’s help had prepared the bikes and the trucks for the long term storage. Sarah, with Annie’s help, had prepared the foodstuffs, supervised the plants which renewed the oxygen supply inside the Retreat. They would not last the five hundred years, but with the timer-con-nected growlights and water sprays, they would thrive long enough that when they awakened in five hundred years if they awakened, the oxygen would be clean to breathe if not very fresh.
They had seen to all of the weapons, seen to the generator systems, the backup generators, all these keyed to the hy-droelectric power system based on the underground stream and the waterfall. If this failed, the cryogenic chambers would be their coffins and they would never awaken.
The last of the cables were being strung, linking the cryo-genic chambers’ monitoring systems to the power supply, Annie feeding cable while Natalia connected it.
Rourke stepped to the electronic monitoring console. There had never been a need for the system before. But he had activated it once they had sealed the main entrance of the Retreat. The two escape chambers had also been checked, Rourke doing this himself. The one tunnel leading through to the other side of the mountain was hermetically sealed, as was the main entrance.
He had not yet hermetically sealed the second tunnel which led above.
Rourke studied the console controls, then looked up to the television monitoring screen—closed circuit, via cable, it would function until the end, until the atmosphere caught fire and the camera and cable just simply burned.
It was nearly dawn. He adjusted the instruments. In the distance near the base of the mountain, he could make out large numbers of troops moving with mechanized equip-ment.
In the air were helicopters of every description.
These were Rozhdestvenskiy’s forces, searching for the Retreat to destroy it.
But the sun was almost rising and throughout the hours they had worked until they could take no more of it, Rourke and the others had listened to shortwave broadcasts—the horror, the devastation. It followed the sun. There had been a ham operator in Greenland who had constantly been broadcasting—about the fires which consumed Europe, England—but now his voice too was stilled.
There had been other broadcasts—U.S. II announcing the victory over the Soviet Forces—Natalia had shown no emotion at this.
Victory, Rourke thought. What a strange word.
“John, all set!” Rubenstein sang out.
Rourke looked behind him, losing his train of thought. “Good, Paul, help Natalia with the injections.”
“I’m through here, too,” Sarah called out. “I can help; I’ve used hypodermics before.”
“Go ahead then.” Rourke stared at the monitor. The sky above the Retreat was almost black, lightning bolts streaking across it, ball lightning—pure electricity—shooting in low arcs under the clouds. Rourke played with the controls. He scanned the valley on zoom and more clearly now could see men and equipment moving toward the mountain road.
He exhaled hard, studying the television picture. There were dozens of helicopters in the air moving along above the men—Soviet. Rourke studied the monitor—the electri-cal storm was heightening.
“John, the injections are ready, all six.”
Rourke looked back at Natalia, then at Rubenstein and at Sarah—the children still moved, talked, but it was as if the three other adults and himself had suddenly frozen— still.
“Good,” Rourke finally said. “Isn’t much time left. From the way that sky looks, the ionization is already starting.”
Rourke started across the room, toward the cryogenic chambers, their blue light bathing the room in a haze.
Rourke glanced back toward the television monitor, the blackening sky, the lightning. “I’ll check the last escape hatch and seal it before I put myself under—give everybody the injections first,” Rourke said softly.
Rourke walked the few paces to the coffee table, earlier moved out of the way of the chambers and monitoring equipment. Beside his glass fronted gun case now. He looked down at the six hypodermic needles on a white towel there. There was a taped name on each. He picked up the needle for Michael.
“Natalia—you checked my figures—you agree on the amount of the injections.”
“There were only tables for body weights down to ninety pounds, John, I worked back through the formula in the manuals accompanying the chambers, Michael weighs sixty-two pounds. The injection should be right.”
Rourke looked at the injection, then at his son. “Michael, kiss your mother and sister, then come over to me.”
Natalia was beside Rourke in an instant, reaching up, taking the hypodermic from Rourke’s fingers. “I’ll give your son the injection—if something—it shouldn’t be your guilt, John.”
Rourke started to say something, but didn’t, just nod-ding. He watched Michael and his mother hug each other, then watched Annie throw her arms around her brother, kissing him.
Michael walked toward him.
Rourke looked down at the boy. “Michael, it should seem like only a little time. I know five hundred years sounds like a long time, but when you’re just sleeping—”
“Will I dream a lot, Daddy?”
Rourke dropped to his knees in front of the boy, squeez-ing Michael tight against him, and as he spoke his voice sounded choked, strained to him. “Son, you’ll dream good dreams, I know you will,” Rourke whispered.
He could feel the boy’s body tense, Rourke’s eyes focus-ing tight on the needle as it entered his son’s arm, then on Natalia’s eyes.
“I feel-I feel-“
Rourke stood up, sweeping his son into his arms as the boy fell almost instantly asleep.
“That’s supposed to—” Natalia began.
Rourke looked at her, murmuring, “I know, it’s supposed to happen.”
Rourke carried his son to the cryogenic chamber, resting the tiny body inside it. His eyes flicked from the elapsed time readout setting back to his son’s face. The breathing was shallow—too shallow? Rourke listened for the heart-beat with a stethoscope from the small shelf at the side of the chamber. “It’s slow—very slow—”
Sarah was beside him, holding Rourke’s arm.
Annie, her voice odd sounding, asked, “Is Michael all right?”
Rourke looked down at his daughter and swept her into his arms, tears streaming from his eyes as he held her.
“Michael’s all right ...”
Both children rested under the glowing translucent domes now, their faces bathed in the blue light, clouds of gas beginning to swirl around them. Rourke stared at them. Sarah stood on his right, Rourke’s arm around her. Natalia stood at his left, her hand in his. Paul flanked Natalia.
Rourke looked away from the faces of his children. For the last two minutes, the horror show had continued—the Soviet soldiers as they marched up the mountainside were dying, struck by lightning, ball lightning consumed some of them—human torches. Only three of the helicopters re-mained aloft, burning debris dotting the landscape.
“You’d think they’d give up,” Rourke murmured.
“Would you?” Natalia asked softly.
Rourke said nothing. After a long moment, then, “Paul—you’re—”
“Yeah—I know—I kind of figured—God,” and Ruben-stein let out a long, deep breath. “Guess I’d better lie down—in my chamber, huh?”
“Relax, Paul,” Rourke whispered, taking the needle, starting toward his friend.
Natalia embraced Rubenstein, kissing him on the lips. Rubenstein stepped back, looking somehow embarrassed. “I’m going to feel—funny, I’m—aw, give it to me,” and Ru-benstein started to sit down on the edge of his chamber.
Rourke extended his hand, the younger man taking it. “Paul, if I’d had a brother, it would have been you.”
The younger man smiled. “I love ya, both of you,” and he looked at Natalia then back at Rourke. Already he was roll-ing up his left sleeve.
“Loosen your belt, kick off your shoes—don’t want to constrict your blood vessels. Probably should all be naked.”
“I don’t think it’ll make much difference—if we live, we live—you taught me that,” Rubenstein smiled.
Rourke clapped the younger man on the shoulder, saying, “Until we wake up then.”
Rubenstein’s eyes were on the needle. Rourke started to put the needle to Rubenstein’s arm. Rubenstein blocked Rourke’s hand for a second, saying sheepishly, “I always hated shots—let me look the other way.”
Rourke gave him the injection . . .
Rourke, Sarah and Natalia stood beside the glowing blue lights, the three remaining unoccupied chambers. The elec-trical storm had intensified still more as Rourke studied the monitor for a moment. Natalia, glancing at Sarah, came into Rourke’s arms. Rourke held her.
“Don’t feel, well, just don’t,” Sarah whispered, her voice odd. She turned away, walking over to where the children slept, gas filling the chambers now in a swirling cloud.
“What are our chances?” Natalia whispered to Rourke.
“Natural granite will insulate against electrical shock—should keep the air from burning in here. After we’re all in the chambers, we won’t need air anyway. We’ll breathe the gas—it’s continuously purified. The plants over there will keep growing,” and he gestured beyond the far end of the great room, the plastic covered greenhouse there with the purple grow lights. “The underground springs should keep up our electrical power. Those grow lights should burn for years with the timers before the fluorescent tubes die—the plants will clean the air we breathed now so there’ll be clean air inside the Retreat when we awaken. Stale—but it’ll be clean. Nothing else on earth—unless it’s sealed in granite— nothing should survive, live. We have the only chambers that will work because we have the only serum.”
“The Eden Project—”
“If there wasn’t a meteor shower that got their hulls, or there wasn’t a malfunction in their solar batteries, or some-thing else no one foresaw—they would be back after we awaken.”
“I feel,” Natalia whispered, “feels like, like the harlot or something—” She glanced at Sarah.
“Don’t.”
“After we wake up, what—”
“Don’t worry—but I know I’m glad you’re with me, here.”
“Give me the injection, John, unless you want me to ad-minister the injection to—to Sarah, for you.”
“You sleep,” Rourke whispered to her, bending his face toward hers, kissing her lips.
She closed her eyes and leaned against him, murmuring, “I love you.”
“Natalia,” Rourke said softly, holding her.
He walked beside her, to her chamber. She sat on the edge of it and their eyes met as Rourke placed the needle against her skin. “I love you,” he rasped, giving her the injection. She closed her eyes—he missed the blueness there already. . .
It seemed to Rourke like an eternity, but it had been only minutes by the digital
clock on the console beside the televi-sion monitor, only minutes since Natalia had given Michael the first injection. Sarah stood beside him. “Thank you for finding us—I think.” She smiled oddly. “We’ll have lot to talk about—the children, other things. You’d better hurry now.”
“You always talked us to death,” Rourke whispered, chill-ing at the word. He drew his wife into his arms, looked into her face, then kissed her.
“What are you going to do—about us?” she whispered back, kissing him again.
Rourke breathed hard. “Trust me once more?”
“I love you, John Rourke, and I know you love me. Whatever we make of our lives if we wake up, I guess it doesn’t matter as much as our loving one another. We should never have married—we both know that. But I love you.”
Rourke held her close, walked with her to her chamber.
“Will you be all right—can you get your chamber started after you—”
“I’ll give myself the injection just after I start my cham-ber,” he assured her. “I can hold my breath against the gas — I’ll be fine.”
“I know that,” she smiled, leaning up to him, kissing him, holding his hand. “I’ll see you in five hundred years.” She closed her eyes and sat on the edge of her chamber as Rourke put the needle to her skin.
“I love you,” he whispered, and as she sank back, asleep, he said the word, “Sarah.”
Chapter Seventy-six
Rourke studied the television monitor. Perhaps a hun-dred of the KGB troopers remained now, huddled on the ground, lightning smashing into the rocks beside which they took shelter.
“Armageddon,” he whispered. Two of the helicopters remained airborne, the sky around them alive with electricity. “Rozhdestvenskiy,” he said, staring at the monitor as one of the helicopters flew near the camera.
The sky was black, electricity filling the air, arcing across the ground now. He thought of Reed and what he had died doing.
Rourke, the double Alessi rig still across his shoulders, ran the length of the darkened Great Room, the bluish glow of the chambers chilling, eerie somehow. He stud-ied the faces in the chambers, one-by-one, the eyelids closed, the swirling gases marking the faces then seeming to whisk aside. “I have to,” he said to them. “I have to do this —show the KGB why they lost, why they’d lose again or anyone else would lose if it happened all over again.”