Survivalist - 19 - Final Rain

by Ahern, Jerry

  Ten yards.

  She wheeled the Shire, letting the mighty animal rear upward as the black knight’s gray Belgian vaulted past her, her sword arcing through the blue air and the black helmet falling under her steel, into the surf.

  The Belgian slowed and stopped.

  The animal and its rider turned toward her.

  The rider bore no head. The right hand held the sword. The left hand reached back and raised the hood over the headless torso’s neck.

  “And now Natalia, your head.”

  She screamed.

  The Shire seemed unable to move and her arms were so leaden she could not raise the sword to even attempt defense. He shouted the word from within his cavernous armor, “Harlot!”

  The glint of red on the edge of his blade as he swung it so mightily over his head. His sword arced toward her and Annie realized “Wake me up. Wake me up. Wake me up! I’m dying!”

  “Annie. At the count of three — “

  “Skip that shit—get her awake.”

  “I’ll snap my fingers on three. You’ll awaken. One … two … three …”

  Annie Rubenstein opened her eyes, hands clutching to her throat.

  Her breath came in great gasps. She looked at Natalia on the couch beside her, Natalia’s chest rising and falling, eyelids blinking rapidly. “Get her out of that dream, please—please, Doctor Rothstein,” Maggie Barrow was saying.

  Annie stared.

  Rothstein had a hypodermic syringe in his hands. “Mrs. Rubenstein. Are you all right?” “Yes-“

  He injected Natalia, Maggie Barrow holding her down, Annie falling to her knees from her chair. “What happened?”

  “I can’t save her. But I know who can. Something that happened should never have happened. Something that should have happened never did.”

  “What?” Maggie Barrow asked.

  Annie looked at her. “She’s fighting a battle she never should have fought in the first place. Three times, now. It’s

  the same fantasy or dream or whatever it is And each time—But this time we almost died.”

  “But this is only in her delusions, Mrs. Rubenstein,” Doctor Rothstein began, patiently.

  “But she lives in her dreams. So that’s her reality. She has to survive the dream or we’ll never get her back, don’t you see?” Annie Rubenstein couldn’t explain it, but she knew, now, with a surety that was unshakable. “Find my father.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The radio transmitter was all but assembled in the room at the very top of the presidential palace which they had selected as their strong room, their last redoubt, the wounded brought there.

  Michael Rourke was banking on three facts: Nothing in the standing orders of the Elite Corps unit commander here at Hekla covered exactly what had transpired, a sword charge by Icelandic policeman who virtually spit in the face of death, when they weren’t busy singing their national anthem, and KGB personnel habitually avoided the consequences of independent action at all costs; no one among the Elite Corps personnel occupying Hekla would be exactly eager to be in the first ranks of the attack on the presidential palace, because doubtlessly they would be under orders to spare Madame Jokli as a bargaining chip with the other Icelandic community leaders and the rest of the allies, and therefore would not be able to use their firearms indiscriminately; thirdly, if Madame Jokli had not been killed yet, the second premise was all the stronger. They wanted her alive.

  There was always gas, but the Soviets seemed not to handle chemical agents well, the only such agent they had used the gas which Karamatsov himself had used against the Underground City during his failed coup attempt. That would be inappropriate here, since the majority of

  KGB personnel were male, and all of the defenders of the Icelandic presidential palace were male and the gas activated something within males exposed to it which turned them into homicidal maniacs, attacking each other and, particularly, women. Madame Jokli again. To use the gas would surely mean her death.

  There were always sound and light grenades, but powerfully built men wielding swords, men who were not afraid to die, could still be horribly lethal even if temporarily blinded and deafened. And, again, Madame Jokli might be at risk as a hapless victim to an inadvertent sword cut.

  Impasse though it was, the impasse would not last long.

  “How’s the transmitter?” Michael Rourke asked, leaning over the table where Madame Jokli, the only true scientist/engineer among them, worked busily with a small soldering iron.

  “Nearly ready. But I hope we have the frequency correct.”

  “Me, too,” Michael smiled, balling his left fist open and closed to get enough feeling into it that he could use a gun properly.

  The room was a rear bedroom at the center of the house, only two windows on one wall, the other walls windowless. Tables and doors taken off their hinges were used to shutter and reinforce it and Madame Jokli worked by hazy lamplight. Electricity in the presidential palace had been cut off some time ago.

  But there was a bicycle in the basement and, with a little help, Michael had converted that to where it would generate electricity. But, enough?

  The only way he would know would be if help arrived. With the center of attention the palace, and with Madame Jokli in friendly hands, a commando raid by the Germans would be riskable.

  Michael hoped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  John Rourke pulled the bathrobe more closely about him, just staring at his daughter’s face. “You want me to do what?” He had concluded his meeting, seen to it that the message to German headquarters was being broadcast by every submarine the Mid-Wake fleet could muster. At any time now, he expected an answer.

  Part of the message was to Sarah, that Annie and Natalia and Otto were still alive, and two of them at the least well.

  Annie repeated what she’d said the first time. “I want you to let yourself be put under hypnosis so you can enter Natalia’s mind.”

  “I can’t do that. I don’t have the ability.”

  “I think I can make it happen if youH try.”

  He looked at his daughter, realizing he was staring at her, turned away and looked out the window. “How?”

  “I think I can enter your mind and hers simultaneously, so what would be happening would occur in my mind, like a meeting ground for the two of you. She’s fighting Karamatsov’s ghost. And you have to fight it and defeat it so she doesn’t have to fight it any more. Then she’ll have a chance, Daddy. I just feel it.”

  He looked at her. “How can a dream—”

  “It’s her reality, now, all the reality she has. I tried several times and it was the same dream, that or—”

  John Rourke sat down on the edge of the bed. He was wide awake after a sound sleep, but wished this were a dream. “What?”

  “She sits-She, ahh—She thinks about you and sometimes, in her dream, she’s—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Daddy, you’re the only one.”

  He stood up, began to pace the room. “I don’t, ahh—I mean, what would I do?”

  “All you’d have to do is relax.”

  He laughed at that. When was the last time he’d relaxed? “And supposing I could do that. How would I get into her dream? I still don’t understand that.”

  Annie sat down on the straight back chair next to the writing desk, her heels on the rung midway to the floor, hands folding around her knees. “With you under hypnosis, once she begins the dream, I’ll just—”

  “You won’t be able to do this under hypnosis, will you?”

  “Not really. Hypnosis will help me, but I’ll be awake.”

  “So what happens if you get lost in her dream?”

  “You spoke with Doctor Rothstein, didn’t you?”

  Rourke stood beside the window now, looking down onto the greenway. “And with Doctor Barrow. At least under hypnosis, Rothstein can pull you out of it. But you might not be able to do that yourself, might become an active participant with
her fantasies.”

  “You could, too.”

  “This dream. What would I have to do in it?”

  “She’s riding along a beach. It’s some Medieval period, six hundred years ago—” And she smiled. “I mean eleven hundred years ago.” She shook her head. Her hair was very beautiful when she did that. “She’s dressed so beautifully and she’s riding this gorgeous black horse, a Shire. And she has a sword. She comes to some rocks near the water and a black knight emerges.”

  John Rourke watched his daughter’s eyes… .

  Annie Rubenstein watched her father’s face. She had never seen him looking so calm. But then she remembered that she had. Once, as a little girl, she’d watched him. He was home. It was a weekend and there was a football game on television. For some reason he really wanted to see it, she remembered, although she didn’t remember why.

  And she’d gone into the recreation room and he had been asleep on the sofa, the television still on, his eyes closed, perfectly still, his breathing even just as it was now. It looked so funny then that she ran into the kitchen and told her mother and dragged her back to see. They’d covered him with a blanket and turned off the television set and spent the rest of the afternoon very quietly in the kitchen. The smell of the cookies she helped her mother make was what woke him up, he said later. She couldn’t remember if Michael was home or not that day, but he probably was but she’d simply excluded him from the memory. Memory was selective.

  Paul had returned. She’d kissed him, hugged him, let his hands move over her body, enjoyed him touching her. And then she told him what was happening and he’d just held her very tightly and asked what he could do to help.

  He waited outside Doctor Rothstein’s office. This time, Margaret Barrow was not in the office, but waiting outside as well.

  There could be nothing to interfere because she didn’t know if she could do this again.

  Doctor Rothstein interrupted her thoughts. “I’ve just started the IV. Major Tiemerovna will be in her dreamstate again, although she may become a little agitated. Counteracting that sedative can have some side effects. Nothing serious.”

  “Put me under, Doctor, then bring me up.” He nodded.

  “And Doctor Rothstein?” “Yes, Mrs. Rubenstein?”

  “That man sitting in your outer office with Doctor Barrow? He’s not only my husband, he’s my father’s best

  friend and Major Tiemerovna’s, too.”

  He sat down in front of her, saying, “I want you to be very relaxed.” She placed her hands in her lap… .

  The hypnosis was used to clear her mind, relax her. She was awake now, feeling as if she’d just slept twelve hours, dreamlessly, in the softest bed, Paul’s arms around her.

  But by her father’s watch, it had been five minutes. She looked at the sweep second hand as it crossed the Rolex’s black face, the Rolex on the desk beside which she sat.

  She knew what seemed odd about her father. He wore his usually customary faded blue jeans, a light blue shirt, but no watch and no weapons. She had frequently seen him without a weapon on his body, always knowing there was at least one at hand nearby, but she couldn’t remember ever seeing him without his watch on.

  She focused on her father, and on Natalia. The feeling of relaxation she’d had was gone and a headache was beginning at the base of her neck… .

  It was different this time.

  Natalia was dressed the same, the green brocade long dress, the maroon cloak, riding astride her black horse, but she was outside Natalia, watching from every perspective imaginable, as if she were at once some tiny bird perched on Natalia’s shoulder and yet a hundred yards away watching through binoculars.

  The crashing of the surf was a constant, and the drumming of the Shire’s mighty hooves. None of that changed.

  The wind. She didn’t feel the wind and the spray as she had felt it before, just a bone-chilling dampness and a tight knot of fear in her stomach. Who was she?

  Natalia’s mount approached the rocks.

  The black knight, cloaked in black, astride his gray Belgian.

  “Sir knight, who are you?”

  “You shall die as punishment for betraying me.”

  Natalia physically recoiled in the saddle.

  Natalia threw back her cloak, her hair flowing on the wind like the wings of some beautiful black bird. “I will meet you, evil knight!”

  The black knight only laughed, but the laugh made Annie shiver when she heard it.

  “I am at a great disadvantage, evil knight. Might we both dismount? Riding in a woman’s way as I do, I could not withstand your charge.”

  “Dismount if you like. I do not.”

  Slowly, the gray Belgian began to move forward. Natalia raised her sword over her head, spinning it by its hilt like she had always spun the Bali-song knife.

  “You know no courtesy, sir.”

  “Nor do I give quarter, harlot,” the black knight shouted in return.

  Natalia urged the mighty Shire into battle, “Ahead. And do not fail me.”

  They rode, charging toward one another across the surf, a wake of spray rising under the hooves of their powerful horses.

  At the last moment, Natalia’s mount wheeled to her command and the sword flashed in the orange light of the sun which seemed just suspended there on the gray blue horizon beyond the sea.

  The black helmet arced upward, landing in the surf, the waves crashing over it.

  The black knight’s gray horse stopped, wheeled. From within him, his head gone, came Vladmir Karamatsov’s laughing voice. “And now Natalia, your head.”

  As he charged toward her, the single epithet “Harlot!” emanated from within his armor with such volume that the earth and sky and sea seemed to shake with it and Annie knew fear like she had never known.

  Natalia bravely stood her ground.

  The pain at the base of Annie’s neck grew more intense.

  For a moment, she thought there was all the brightness of the moon rising out of the sea. But it was a man, riding out of the surf from behind the black rocks, a man astride

  a white Shire with silver trappings, the spray rising from the impact of the animal’s feathered hooves forming the corona of light which surrounded them, suddenly like a prism, all the colors of the spectrum emanating from the animal’s brilliant whiteness.

  His armor was burnished and caught the light, not like a mirror might but as though it somehow intensified the light. He rode tall in his stirrups, but carried no lance.

  There was a mighty sword in his hand as his voice reverberated across the rocks and sand and water and as he spoke, the black knight reined in his gray. “I have followed you to here, the ends of the earth, Karamatsov. And now you are mine.”

  Natalia’s horse shifted nervously in the surf, the sword suddenly limp in her hand.

  The black knight’s laughter was his only reply. He swept down from his saddle, catching up the fallen black helmet, and the water which poured from it was blood as he pushed back the hood of his cloak and set the helmet upon his shoulders.

  Natalia cried out, “Good knight, this is not your battle, but a fight of my own making.”

  “You are wrong, lady.” He rode slowly, even with her now, with the right hand which held his sword, he raised his visor.

  Annie saw her father’s face, younger than she could ever remember seeing it, more handsome than she ever remembered him being.

  “You fought my battle once,” John Rourke told Natalia. “But this shall be the battle which ends it, lady, forever. And I fight it alone.” If he died, Annie suddenly realized, he might really die. She didn’t understand why she felt that, knew that, but if he died in Natalia’s mind-She shivered, the pain at the base of her skull blindingly intense. For a moment, the light which surrounded her father was so intense, Annie could not see.

  The black knight’s laughter rose and fell. Annie could see again. Perspective still shifted. She could see Natalia through her father’s eyes, so incredib
ly beautiful, the sadness in her eyes, her eyes tear-rimmed. “Sir knight, do not risk your life for me.”

  “My life has always been yours, lady,” John Rourke almost whispered. And he lowered his visor then, the great white Shire on which he rode sidestepping to clear Natalia’s animal as it pawed the surf.

  The black knight’s Belgian edged back, reared slightly, the black steel of his sword again catching the orange light of the unmoving sun along its edges, the effect like blood.

  John Rourke’s great steed seemed to settle where it stood, as though somehow it sensed the impending battle and was drawing all its energy into its center, even as the man who rode it did.

  The sword in John Rourke’s hand was clearer for her to see now.

  Its blade was slightly longer than a man’s leg and the breadth of a man’s hand.

  She could hear the creak of his brown leather tunic, feel the weight of his gleaming chain mail, sense the strength in his leather gauntleted right fist as he held the sword, his eyes narrowing behind the visor’s slitted sights. He snorted air through the tiny holes in the visor. It was cold and there was mist on it.

  Natalia’s perspective now. Natalia watched him, her hands shaking, the sword just held limp at her side, silver against the flowing green silk brocade she wore, a paroxysm seizing the black Shire, Natalia feeling it as it traveled the length of the animal’s spine and the animal reared slightly.

  Natalia murmured to it, but her voice was unsure.

  “I curse your name!” The black knight’s voice flooded over the beach as he dug in his black spurs, blood spurting from the flanks of the gray Belgian as it bore him forward.

  John Rourke’s white horse reared to its full height, the sword in John Rourke’s right fist whirling at its hilt, cutting the air with a whistling sound like the wind itself. His horse charged forward, the sword still wheeling at his

  fingertips, as if it were alive of itself, his voice like thunder as he challenged, “Meet me and die.”

  The horses and men. John Rourke’s horse skidded on its haunches, the black knight’s gray Belgian rearing high, their swords clashing, lightning bolts flashing over the sea out of the perpetually resting blood red orb of sun.