by Jerry Ahern
Rourke stopped the Harley he rode about twenty feet in front of Rubenstein, slowly but deliberately swinging the CAR-15 in the direction of the man with the bayonet, his right fist clenched on the rifle's pistol grip.
"Who are you people?" Rourke asked slowly, his eyes scanning the knot of young men and women, all of them armed. He had counted—including the ones walled behind him now and blocking his way out— perhaps twenty-five, more or less evenly divided male and female and all of them in their middle to late teens.
"We'll ask the questions," a dark-haired boy with what looked like acne on his left cheek shouted.
"Then ask away, boy," Rourke said, glaring at the young man but keeping the muzzle of his CAR-15 trained where it had been—on the one holding the bayonet to Rubenstein's throat.
"Who are you?" the acne-faced voice came back, unsteadily but loud.
Rourke exhaled hard, saying in a voice not much above a whisper, "John T. Rourke, the girl here says she's Natalie Timmons and the man your pal has on the ground there is Paul Rubenstein. Just wayfarin' strangers, kid."
"Who are you with?" the leader shouted.
"You don't listen too good, do you boy?" Rourke said, shooting an angry glance at the perhaps eighteen-year-old belonging to the voice.
"I mean what group are you with?"
"Well," Rourke began. "I belonged to a motor club before the war. That do you any good?"
"Cut out the smart-ass routine, mister!"
"Boy," Rourke said slowly, menacingly, "you talk that way to me once more and you've got an extra navel—just a shade over five and a half millimeters wide," and Rourke gestured with the CAR-15, then settled it back covering the man guarding Paul Rubenstein. "Now—what are you doing with my friend here?"
"You came to steal from us, didn't you?" the acne-faced leader shouted.
"What—you deaf kid," Rourke said. "Learn to control your voice. If you've got something I want, I'll deal with you for it. If there's something I want that nobody's got but it's there anyway, yeah, I'll take it. Promissory notes and money and checks and credit cards aren't much good these days, I understand."
"We call ourselves the Guardians."
"Well—how nice for you. What are you the "Guardians" of?"
As Rourke asked the question, he could hear Natalie trying to whisper to him. He leaned back away from his handlebars and caught her voice, "Rourke—behind us—six of them coming."
"We are the Guardians—"
"You ask me," Rourke said, "I think you're the crazies, myself." Suddenly Rourke's body tensed as he leaned forward. His tone softening, he addressed all the young men and women there, shouting, "How many of you have marks on your faces like he has—or elsewhere on your bodies?"
A girl stepped forward out of the knot around the leader. Rourke saw the acnelike marks on both her cheeks and neck. "Who are you?" she demanded.
The six advancing from behind Rourke were getting closer. He could see them now out of the corner of his left eye.
"Where were you the night of the war?" Rourke asked, slowly.
"Were we anywhere near a blast site, do you mean?" the girl asked, almost laughing, her dark eyes crinkling into a strange smile.
"We were," the acne-faced leader began. "And we know what we've got. But guarding here is what we do."
The girl beside the leader of the young people went on, "We were away on a senior class field trip. By the time the bus ran out of gas and we walked back here everyone had gone. We knew where there were some guns and we've been running the town ever since. We know we've all got radiation sickness, we're all dying. But we're guarding the town until our families get back. We're doing this for them."
Rourke eyed the six, now just a few feet behind himself and Natalie. "What if they don't come back?" Rourke asked slowly.
"We'll guard the town until the last of us has died," the girl beside the leader said flatly.
"Anybody with sores like that is going to die—and soon and painfully," Rourke told her.
"We know!" the girl beside the leader shouted back to him, her voice shrill.
"John!" Natalie rasped hard in Rourke's ear.
"I know," he muttered, catching sight of the six readying their weapons behind him. Then turning back to the leader, Rourke asked, "What do you want us for—let my friend go and we'll be on our way."
"People like you—violent people, people without a home or a town—you caused the war. You deserve to die!" the leader shouted.
"If you all feel that way, you're all crazy," Rourke said calmly. He was watching the leader now, but out of the corner of his eye saw the young man guarding Rubenstein take a half-step back, drawing the bayonet rifle rearward for a thrust. He heard Paul Rubenstein shouting, "John!"
"I am sorry," Rourke said so softly that he felt perhaps no one heard him, then pulled the trigger on the CAR-15, twice, cutting down the young man with the bayonet just as the thrust began for Paul Rubenstein's throat.
Rourke's left hand flashed across his body, snatching one of the stainless Detonics .45s, his thumb jacking back the hammer as the gun ripped from the Alessi shoulder holster, his left trigger finger working once, the slug catching the leader between the eyes and hurtling the already dying youth back against the knot of followers around him.
Rourke started to shout to Natalie, but as he turned, he could see her, already off the bike and in a crouch, the Python in both her fists, firing into the six attackers coming up behind him.
Rourke started the bike forward, the Detonics slipping into his trouser belt, replaced in his left hand by the black-chromed Sting IA, and as he reached Rubenstein he hacked out with the double-edge blade, cutting the ropes on Rubenstein's left wrist, then the right, tossing the younger man the once fired .45.
Rubenstein, still on his knees, looked up at Rourke, shouting, "They're only kids, John!"
Rourke, his eyes hard, bit his lower lip, then shouted, "God help me—I know that, damn itl"
Three of the heavily armed youths were rushing toward Rourke already and he swung the CAR-15 on line and opened up, cutting them down. He glanced back to Rubenstein, the younger man finishing a knee smash on a beefy-looking boy of about eighteen, beside Rubenstein's bike. Natalie was reloading the Python and as she brought it on line, with her left hand she brushed the hair back from her face. For an instant, Rourke wasn't in the middle of a life or death gun battle with a gang of bloodthirsty kids all dying of radiation poisoning—he was back in Latin America. The gun she held wasn't a Python—it was an SMG. And the hair was blonde, but the gesture, the stance, the set of the eyes—they hadn't been blue in those days—was exactly the same.
There was a burst of submachine gun fire from his right and Rourke turned, seeing Rubenstein firing the German MP-40—the "Schmeisser"—into the dirt at the feet of three attackers. The youths kept coming and—the reluctance was visible in the way Rubenstein moved—Rourke watched as the younger man raised the muzzle of the SMG and fired. Rourke turned back toward Natalie. He knew now that wasn't her name. His gun in her hands was silent. Rourke's eyes scanned the area around him, the muzzle of his CAR-15 sweeping the air. There were bodies, but no living combatants. He counted ten dead—meaning at least fifteen still out there somewhere.
In an instant, Rubenstein was standing beside him, the girl who called herself Natalie turning and facing him. The girl spoke first. "I was beginning to think you never were going to make your move—I know why you waited. I think I realized before you did that they were all dying of radiation sickness."
Rourke looked down to his bike, taking his .45 back from Rubenstein and swapping in a fresh load, saying to the girl, "I remembered where I saw you— South America, a few years ago. You were a blonde— I think your eyes were green. But it was you. Contact lenses?" He looked up at the girl then, taking off his sunglasses and pushing them back past his forehead into his hair.
He squinted past the midday sun at her.
"They were contact lenses," she nodded. "B
ut what now?"
"You mean about this, or about my remembering you?" Rourke asked softly.
"Whatever," the girl said.
"Let's stick to this for now—we can worry about the other thing later. We still need supplies. Looks like the town was abandoned for some reason. Probably, if we look hard enough, we can find what we need. Still gotta worry about those kids sniping at us."
"I can't understand this!" Rubenstein almost cried.
"What?" Rourke asked.
"We just killed ten perfectly decent kids, or at least they were. What's happening?"
"Sometimes when people realize they're dying, it's almost as if they step out of themselves," Rourke began. "Those kids were smart enough to realize what was happening to them, and they focused their energies, their thoughts—everything—on guarding this town. Kind of calculated mass hysteria. It didn't matter to them that it was wholly irrational, impossible, even that they knew I was right that no one was coming back here for them. Probably once the first one started noticing what was happening and then some of the others started coming up with the symptoms they just made a sort of pact. Kids are big on that sort of thing—pacts, blood oaths."
Rubenstein stared into the dirt, saying, "That radiation poisoning thing—just because they were in the wrong spot at the wrong time. It could have been us, instead."
"It still could be us," Rourke said quietly, putting on his sunglasses again. "When was the last time you checked the Geiger counter?"
"Sometimes I like it better when you don't say anything—like you usually do," the girl, Natalie, said, holstering Rourke's revolver.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rourke sat by the small Coleman stove, water still steaming from the yellow kettle, the red-foil Mountain House package in his left hand, a table spoon he'd found held in his right. He gave the contents of the foil package a last stir and scooped a spoonful of the contents up and put it in his mouth, then leaned back against the rear bumper of the pickup truck. "I love their beef stroganoff," Rourke commented, almost to himself.
"This stuff is terrific!" Rubenstein said.
"What have you got there, Paul?" Rourke asked.
"Chicken and rice," Rubenstein answered, his speech garbled because his mouth was full.
"Next time try some of this—the noodles in it are great, too."
Natalie, still stirring at the contents of her packet, looked at Rourke across the glow of the small Coleman lamp between the three of them, saying, "Well—now that we've found food, plenty of water, gasoline and a four-wheel drive pickup—what next?"
Rourke leaned forward, looking at the full spoon inches from his mouth, saying, "Don't forget we found cigars for me and cigarettes for you."
"That guy really had the stuff put away under that warehouse," Rubenstein commented, his mouth still full.
"Yeah—too bad he never got a chance to use it, apparently," Rourke sighed, finally consuming the spoonful.
"I can't understand that town," the girl said. "Why hadn't the brigands been there?"
"Well…" Rourke began.
"And why and where did all the people who lived there go?" the girl went on.
Rourke looked at her, took another spoonful of the food and began again. "The way I've got it figured, everybody in the town just evacuated—I don't know to where. When those kids showed up and started shooting everything that moved, I guess the lead elements of the brigand force probably pulled in there, got killed and never reported back. There are two kinds of field commanders. Whoever's in charge of the brigands apparently isn't the kind of guy who took losing a squad of men as a personal challenge. He just went around the town, maybe figuring the people there were too well armed. That means he's smart. He's not out to conquer and hold territory— he's just out to keep his people going on whatever they can plunder. I'd figure right about now he's got a dicey job. Could be several hundred of them, no discipline, drinking up everything they can get their hands on and staying smashed most of the time on drugs. Be like tryin' to control a gang of alcoholic gorillas—or maybe more like the stereotype of Vikings. Come in and strike hard, earn a reputation for brutality, retreat or withdraw fast and steal everything that isn't nailed down."
"Then they're still ahead of us," the girl stated more than asked.
"Yeah—and strong and probably by now spoiling for a good fight. I wouldn't worry. We're bound to bump into them," Rourke concluded, finishing the last of his food packet and crumpling it in his hand, then tossing it in a sack in the back of the truck.
"Why did you go to all that trouble?" the girl asked, looking at him earnestly.
"What—not just throw it on the ground? Enough of the country's ruined; why ruin more of it?" Rourke reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cigar, lighting it with the Zippo.
"Here—give me that, the lighter," the girl said and Rourke snapped it closed and tossed it to her. She stared at it a moment—the initials "J.T.R." on it— turned it over in her hands and lit her cigarette, then snapped it closed, looked at it a moment and threw it back to him,
"Am I starting to ring bells for you, too—can you remember me yet?"
"I don't know what you mean," Natalie told him, smiling.
"Hey—" Rubenstein said, brightly. "Why don't we all have a drink? I mean, I could use one—we got six bottles back in the truck. "Where'd you put 'em, John?"
"In the front right-hand corner," Rourke answered, not looking at Rubenstein, but looking at the dark-haired, blue-eyed girl instead, her face glowing in the warm light of the lantern. "There, just in front of my bike—I wrapped 'em up in an old towel I found. Go get one if you want."
Rourke glanced away from the girl and toward the truck. They'd found the warehouse just as darkness had started, and Rubenstein—good at finding things, Rourke decided—had uncovered the doorway leading into the small basement under the main floor of the place. Using one of the flashlights they'd taken a long time back from the geological supply shop in Albuquerque, Rourke had gone down and discovered the cache of supplies. All the ammunition had been .308 and Rourke had left it, not having need of additional ammo for the Steyr. But the vast supplies of Mountain House freeze-dried foods, water and gasoline had been welcome. They had taken comparatively little, resealing the door after themselves just in case the original owner was still alive. They'd found the pickup truck a half-hour earlier and with the added supplies decided on taking it along—the keys had been in it.
The girl had been left on guard outside the warehouse while Rourke and Rubenstein had done the loading, the most awkward thing being getting the Harleys aboard the truck and securing them. There had been no further signs of the doomed, insane "Guardians" they had confronted earlier. As the three had started to leave—darkness already having fallen—the girl had said to Rourke, "You're a doctor—isn't there something you can do for them?"
"Mercy killing?" he'd asked quietly. "And beyond that, they're beyond help. If I had a hospital, some specialists in nuclear medicine, we could make them comfortable, prolong their lives by a few weeks, maybe. But the result'd be the same. The longer we keep moving on the greater the chance we have of the same thing happening to us."
They'd driven in silence after that, Rubenstein starting to whistle occasionally, some lonely-sounding tune Rourke couldn't quite identify. The pickup's headlights didn't go on once, as Rourke headed slowly along the road and after several miles turned off into the desert, nothing more than moonlight lighting his way. He'd walked back along the route and carefully obliterated their tire treads from the sand then, and when Rubenstein—as usual—had asked why, Rourke had merely said, "I want to sleep with both eyes closed tonight—maybe."
Rubenstein passed the bottle around—Jack Daniels, square bottle, black label—and Rourke took a hard pull on it, leaning back again by the light blue pickup's rear bumper. He looked at the girl as she drank and when she handed the bottle back to Rubenstein, said, "Have you remembered me yet?"
She just
shook her head, the same gesture of brushing her hair from her face, making Rourke see her again as she had been years earlier, as he remembered her. She took another drink, and so did Rubenstein.
Rourke alternately watched the stars overhead and stared at his watch, only once more taking a drink. As he watched the glowing tip of his second cigar, already burnt to nearly a stump in his fingers, he turned, startled. Rubenstein was snoring, the bottle beside him more than half-empty. A smile crossed Rourke's lips.
"I must trust you," the girl started to say, standing up, weaving a bit as she walked around the lantern, then sitting down on the ground beside him.
"Why do you say that?" Rourke said as she picked up Rubenstein's bottle and drank from it. She offered it to Rourke and he wiped his sleeve across it and took a tiny swallow, then returned it to her.
"I trust—trust you, because otherwise I wouldn't let myself get drunk around you! You will have to promise me," she whispered, leaning toward him, smiling, "that if I start to talk, you won't listen—I mean if I say anything personal or like that."
She leaned toward him and he turned to face her and she kissed him on the mouth. "There, Mister Goodie-goodie," she laughed. "That didn't hurt, did it?"
Rourke looked into her eyes, watched her eyes, the sad and beautiful set they had, the deepness of their blue. He whispered, "No—it didn't hurt. The problem is it felt too good." He dropped the cigar butt on the ground and kicked it out with the heel of his boot, folding the girl into his left arm and letting her head sink against his chest. In a moment he could hear her breathing, slow and even against him. He looked up at the stars, the warmth of the woman in his arms only heightening the loneliness. He wondered what was in the stars—was there another world where men and women hadn't been foolish enough to destroy everything as it was now destroyed here. As the girl stirred against him, Rourke closed his eyes. Her breathing, its evenness, and the warmth of her body in the desert cold… he opened his eyes, breathing hard and stared down at her in the light of the lamp. He eased her head down onto the rolled-up blanket beside him and stood up to put out the lantern. He stared back at her profile in the semi-darkness, his fists bunching hard together. He was a man who had always screamed inwardly, silently, and this time he screamed the name "Sarah!"
