by neetha Napew
spun out, both hands going to his neck. He fell, Rubenstein turned, backing off
from a second man, Rourke starting toward him. The second man had no weapon
Rourke could see. He swung his right fist, a classic barroom brawl haymaker.
Rubenstein blocked it neatly with his left forearm, stepped into the man's guard
and launched his right fist forward, the man's head snapping back, Rubenstein's
left crashing down across the exposed jaw, the body sagging down to the knees.
Rubenstein's right knee smashed forward, against the tip of the jaw, the
wildman's head snapping back again—there was an audible snapping sound. The body
sagged down, lurching forward, still kneeling, not moving—dead, Rourke judged.
"Come on, Paul!"
Rourke started toward Cole and his men, the four battling twice that many of the
wildmen.
Rourke slipped the CAR-15 forward, the safety going off under his right thumb,
then the stock telescoping under his hand.
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The nearest of the wildmen turned from Cole and the others, starting for him.
Rourke was shifting the sling off from his left shoulder. There wasn't time to
finish it. His right foot snapped out, catching the man's crotch, the wildmen
screaming but not stopping. Rourke wheeled three hundred sixty degrees, free of
the sling now.
As the wildman spun toward him, he arched the butt of the CAR-15 up, the heel of
the flat metal buttplate catching at the tip of the wildman's jaw, the head
snapping back, Rourke smashing out with the full flat of the butt for the center
of the man's face.
Rourke wheeled half right as the body dropped away, tucking down his right elbow
to recover the stroke, slashing down with the muzzle of the CAR as if there had
been a bayonet in place. The flash deflector laid open the right cheek of the
man coming at him with the machete. Rourke snapped his left foot out, going into
a forward ^thrust, the flash deflectored muzzle punching into the attacker's
Adam's apple. The man went down.
Rourke took the step forward on his right, pivoting, the bayonetless rifle in a
high guard position, a wildman with a spear rushing him. Rourke swatted the
spear away, taking a long stride out with his right leg, dipping low, snapping
the butt of the rifle up in an arc, the toe of the butt impacting against the
left cheekbone of the man with the spear, the body falling back as Rubenstein
stepped in from the far right, the pistol grip of the Schmeisser connecting
against the man's left temple.
Rourke wheeled, sidestepping as Rubenstein advanced on two of the wildmen, one
armed with a riot shotgun, another with an assault rifle. Rubenstein's MP-40 was
already spitting, Rourke snatching the Detonics from his belt, thumbing down the
safety and emptying the pistol's remaining four rounds into the two men.
Rubenstein started forward, Rourke reaching out the right hand which still held
the empty Detonics, the slide
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locked back over the spent magazine.
"Wait!"
Cole was the only one still fighting—a wildman roughly his own size, blond
shoulder length hair falling across his face and half obscuring the irregular
beard.
The man was barehanded—so was Cole, his rifle gone somewhere, the .45 he'd
threatened Rourke with still in his holster.
The wildman's hands reached out, Rourke not shifting his eyes as by feel he
swapped for a fresh magazine in the Detonics, leaving the six pack intact,
getting one from his musette bag.
By feel again, he found the slide stop, thumbing it down, hearing the slide rake
forward.
Cole had the .45 out of the holster now, the man he fought swatting it away, the
pistol discharging skyward. Cole slumped back, making to fire the .45 again as
the blond haired wildman came at him. Nothing happened.
Rourke pumped the Detonics' trigger once, the wildman's head exploding on the
left side, the body sprawling back across the sand.
Cole was looking up, at Rourke, then down to his gun. Rourke took four steps
forward and stopped beside Cole. He reached down, carefully taking the pistol.
The slide was only part way into battery, the full metal case 230-grain hardball
round somehow jammed diagonally, bullet pointing upward.
"Odd," Rourke almost wispered. "Jam like that in a military gun. Wouldn't have
happened though if you'd fed that round into the chamber off the top of the
magazine." Rourke thumbed the magazine catch release, pulling the magazine out,
the half chambered round jamming it. He counted the glimmers of brass in the
witness holes, the bottom hole empty only. He jacked back the slide, popping the
seventh round out of the breech and into the palm of his right hand. "Like I
told
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you." He flashed what he hoped was his biggest smile as he tossed Cole the empty
pistol, the magazine and the loose round.
Rourke turned away, under his breath muttering, "Shit—"
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Sarah kept her eyes closed. She could hear Michael breathing, hear Annie snoring
a little as she always did. She heard nothing from Millie but had checked a few
moments earlier—the girl had always been a sound, unimaginative sleeper.
She was alone in the small tent except for them—except for her thoughts. She
kept her eyes closed tight, but could not sleep.
There had been no word through Bill Mulliner—no word of John. She had asked
David Balfry and he had promised to put out feelers that very night—to see if
her husband had contacted the resistance or if U.S. II knew his whereabouts.
"David Balfry," she murmured.
He was a handsome man, by any woman's standards, she thought.
She wondered why he had smiled at her.
She rolled over, the blankets on the hard, damp ground not so uncomfortable she
couldn't sleep—since the Night of The War she had slept under far worse
conditions.
She made herself think of the refugees—in the morning, Reverend Steel would be
back and she'd begin helping him as a nurse—
She couldn't stay forever at the refugee center.
She would take up the search for John if no news came of his whereabouts. She
would do that.
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John was strong—David Balfry—he was strong, too. She remembered the way his hand
had felt. It had been a long time since a man had held her hand like that, no
matter how brief.
She closed her eyes tighter, rolling onto her back again. She mentally
reconstructed her husband's features. His eyes—they could see through you, she
remembered. His forehead was high, but it had always been high, his hair thick,
healthy, dark. There had been gray hair on his chest—prematurely gray, she had
realized then and told herself now. She thought of the hardness of his muscles
when he held her in his arms.
She opened her eyes, staring up at the tent beyond the hazy darkness, the
grayness.
"John," she whispered, barely hearing her own words, feeling them more. "I need
you. now—"She realized what her hands were doing—and she kept them there,
closing her eyes.
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Chapter 33<
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Rourke understood it now—why no one had come in response to the shots.
The chanting and screaming would have drowned out any noise.
The wildmen chanted, men and women, dressed in the same curious mixture of
tattered conventional clothing, animal skins and rags.
The shore party Cole had risked did the screaming. Men—all of them hung on
crudely made crosses of limbs and scrap timbers—were being tortured in a variety
of ways. Pyres were set about the bases of each cross and Rourke watched now as
one of the wildmen reached a faggot into the bonfire which crackled loudly in
the wind in the center of the ring of crosses, the ring of crucified men and
their torturers.
The faggot glowed and sparked in the wind—it was now a torch. ,
"Holy shit," Rubenstein murmured, Rourke feeling the younger man's breath beside
him.
"You might say that," Rourke observed.
"What are we gonna do?" It was Cole's voice, his whisper like a blade being
drawn across a rough stone.
"That's an odd question for you to ask me," Rourke noted, not looking at Cole,
watching the progress instead of the wildmen who held the torch. "We left one
man dead on the beach—well, that isn't really true. We sent his
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body back with the other two and the two prisoners. And one of your two men was
wounded. Now even if Lieutenant O'Neal had his shore party in the boats, should
still be ten minutes before they'd even hit the beach. Then another fifteen
minutes' climb up here. I'd say that leaves only the three of us."
"The three of us against them," Cole snarled. "You're crazy—there must be a
hundred of 'em—all of 'em with guns and more of those damn knives."
Rourke turned and looked at Cole, then at Paul Ruben-stein. "I guess that
doesn't leave three of us then—6'nly leaves two of us. You guard the rear,
Cole—your rear. Looks like you're pretty damned experienced at it anyway."
Rourke pushed himself up over the rocks, feeling Cole tug at him. He looked back
at the man.
He didn't have to say anything. Paul whispered, "What he meant was—save your
ass—seems you got a lot of practice at it."
Rourke finished moving across the rocks, hearing Rubenstein beside him as he
slipped down onto the grassy expanse below, hiding in the shadow there while he
watched the man with the torch stop in front of one of the crosses. "Ohh, boy,"
he whispered to himself.
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Chapter 34
Rourke's left hand snaked out through the darkness, in his right the A.G.
Russell black chrome Sting IA he'd retrieved from the dead body on the beach.
The left hand grasped a handful of hair, jerking the head under it back, the
right hand plunging the knife down into the voicebox to stifle any scream. He
pulled the knife, then raked it once ear to ear as the body fell back toward
him—just in case.
He'd killed the man to avoid having someone directly at his back.
He stepped out of the shadow of the trees now and into the meager glow of the
fire, some hundred yards away still from the ring of crosses.
The wildman who held the torch stood beneath the cross of one of the shore
party—Rourke thought vaguely—at the angle he wasn't able to be sure—that it was
Corporal Henderson.
It stood to reason—make an example of the leader and burn him first.
Considering what Henderson had done, Rourke had at least a twinge,of desire to
let the man die. But that wasn't his way—and he knew it wasn't.
Rourke glanced at the Rolex as he rolled back the cuff of the bomber jacket and
the sweater beneath it. It had been five minutes—time enough for Paul to be in
position on the far side of the ring of crosses. He discounted any
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help from Cole completely.
It was time.
Rourke started forward, searching his pockets for the Zippo lighter which bore
his initials, finding it, lighting the chewed stump of dark tobacco in the left
corner of his mouth.
He put the light away, swinging the CAR-15 forward. While he'd been up in the
rocks, he'd reloaded the spent and partially spent Detonics magazines. Counting
the six pack, he had twelve magazines, including the two in the guns—seventy-two
rounds. He carried six spare magazines for the CAR-15, plus the one already up
the well—no loose ammo for these. The Python was at his right hip, 158-grain
JHPs loaded, three speedloaders ready, plus the loose ammo in the dump pouches
on his belt.
If it took him one shot per man—and woman— around the crosses and they all stood
perfectly still while he shot so there would be no chance of a miss, he'd have
plenty of ammo to spare.
Rourke smiled to himself—somehow, he doubted things would work that way.
The CAR-15 slung cross body under his right arm, he stopped walking, less than
twenty-five yards from the nearest cross—the one on which Henderson was hung,
the one before which the wildman stood holding the torch.
Rourke balanced the rifle butt against his right hip, pulling the trigger once,
firing into the air.
The chanting stopped, the screaming didn't.
The faces of the wildmen and their women turned— toward him.
His voice little above a whisper, Rourke rasped, "You can stop all this or
you're dead—your play, guys."
That was something else he doubted would work that way.
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Chapter 35
"Kill the heathen!"
The man with the torch shouted it, Rourke already lowering the muzzle of the
CAR-15, his trigger finger moving once, gutshooting the man where he stood.
The screaming was louder now, drowning out the screams of the crucifixion
victims—but the cries from the wildmen and their women—"Kill the heathen!"
Rourke had the CAR-15 to hip level now, pumping the trigger in rapid, two-shot
semi-automatic bursts. Men and women ran everywhere, screaming, some running
toward him, some running blindly like trapped animals. He could hear small arms
fire from the far side of the ring of crosses—Rubenstein, he hoped.
As a wedge in the wildmen opened he could see something more immediate. The
wifdman he'd gut shot had somehow crawled toward the pyre beneath the cross on
which Henderson was hung—and the pyre was beginning to burn.
He started to run, toward the cross, the flames licking higher, fanned it seemed
by their own heat, higher pitched than the screams and curses and threats of the
wildmen the scream from Henderson—Rourke could see the man's face, orange lit
and shadowed, as the flames seemed sucked up toward his flesh.
"Help me!"
Rourke spun half left, pumping the CAR-15's trigger
again, putting down a man rushing him with a machete. He pumped the CAR-15
again, a woman with a revolver. Red flowers of blood blossomed on her chest as
she stumbled back.
Hands reached for him, Rourke sidestepping, a bear-sized man grasping at him.
No time to shoot, no way to swing the CAR-15's muzzle on line, Rourke hammered
out hard to his right with the rifle's butt, doubling the man forward. Rourke's
right knee smashed upward, catching the face midway between the lips and t
he
base of the nose, blood spurting as the shout issued from the mouth that now
looked like a raw wound.
Rourke swung the CAR-15 forward, still counting his shots, firing rapid two-shot
bursts into the running, screaming men and women around him. He was ten yards
from the cross now, changing sticks for the CAR, Henderson's screams beyond what
could have come from a human, Rourke thought. The flames were licking at the
skin of his bare legs, the words Henderson screamed unintelligible save for the
agony they expressed.
Rourke slammed the fresh magazine home, working the bolt, turning as three men
and a woman rushed him. He pumped the CAR-15's trigger, nailing the nearest of
the four, then pumped the trigger again, getting the woman.
The two men came at him in a low rush, Rourke losing his balance as he pumped
the trigger, shooting one of the men in the chest, the body rolling away. The
second man's hands were on his throat, Rourke stumbling back, hitting the ground
hard, the flames there scorchingly hot on his hands, his neck.
The fingers were closing tightly on htm—floaters were crossing his eyes, gold,
