by Ahern, Jerry
"I won't let you die." He told her that even though she couldn't hear him.
"Doctor Rourke—"
"I'm opening her again. Maybe I counted wrong and there was another fragment that didn't show up—"
"But she's bleeding to death."
"I'm opening her."
"Later maybe—you could—"
"If I don't—you want me to run down the list of what could happen and what would happen first—"
"Let me—you look exhausted."
"No—no," and Rourke felt himself shaking his head. "No." He looked at his hands, then touched them to her face . . .
"We're going to have a couple members of the crew down for the count—I've had men volunteer to give a second pint of blood—I'm taking half pints only."
"Give me their names when this is through," Rourke told Milton. "If she makes it she'll want to thank them." It wasn't the suture line—it was gastric bleeding and as Rourke completed re-opening her he could see nothing. "I need suction here—fast—there's so much fluid I can't—"
"Coming up." It was Kelly and Rourke nodded, starting to apply the suction. At the rate at which she was bleeding—he didn't finish the thought . . .
"Here—" and Rourke glanced at the clock—it had
been more than eighty minutes. "You—you close her," and Rourke stepped back, blood half way up his forearms, staining his gown, his gloved hands splotched with it—her blood. He stripped away the gloves.
"Here, Doctor—" It was Kelly.
"No—no—you stick with Doctor Milton—I'm all right." Rourke couldn't leave the room—he was too tired, his head aching too badly. On the white clothed tray was the bullet. He picked it up—there had been eight rounds, this one buried in the abdominal wall—a place he'd searched and missed before. Upon removing the bullet, he controlled the bleeding with another continuous locked chromic suture. "Tired," he murmured.
He started to strip away the gown and when it was half off, dropped the bullet in the pocket of his pants—it would remind him of two things, always—mortality and fallability. And a third thing—to persevere.
Chapter 16
Sarah, her hands stabbed into the squared pockets of her dress, walked. She felt the high grass against her bare legs, felt the sun warm her chest and back. She was changing—she knew that, had realized it from the first time she'd picked up her husband's gun when they'd left the house on the Night of The War. Known the change was irreversible since she'd shot the brigands that morning after. She had killed.
She had killed many times since then and no longer did she vomit in her first moment alone afterward.
Almost absently, she wondered if John had changed. Always his guns, his knives, his obsession with being prepared. For what she had never understood—and now she understood. Was he at his Retreat—would she ever find it? Would he ever find her?
She stopped, standing midway in the long field made narrow by the natural foundation of the ground, a ridge crest at its far end, trees there rising to the higher ground beyond the shallow valley. She saw movement. Before the Night of The War, it would only have been the movement of a bird, perhaps a squirrel who'd misjudged his weight and landed on a branch too weak to support him—but the movement now she saw as something else—the branch had bent low.
She listened, feeling it in the stray wisps of hair that had not gotten caught up in the rubber band-like pony tail
holder which held her hair. Her fists knotted in the pockets of her dress. She licked her lips.
Movement again—a man.
She stood there, assessing her options, finding herself coldly professional about them, smiling as she thought again -of the change in herself.
Two hundred yards at least to the end of the field, the ground slightly uneven but runnable for her. Another hundred yards or more from the edge of the field to the house. There was an AR-beside the door of the kitchen. If she could get that tar.
She cursed herself for being stupid and leaving the house—so far from it—without a gun.
"Sarah," she whispered to herself. She turned and started walking, not too slowly, but slowly enough that she hoped no one would think she had spotted the movement in the trees.
It might only be the returning resistance fighters—but they wouldn't hide in the trees.
It might be Soviet forces moving through—she doubted that. They traveled with greater fanfare.
Brigands.
A woman caught alone in the open—she couldn't He to herself as to her fate if they got her. She had seen what they did to women, to little girls—even to little boys. But to women most of all.
She felt a pain in her, below her abdomen. She would have put the twinge down to ovulation—but it was fear instead.
She quickened her pace, snatching up a piece of high grass in her hands and using that as an excuse to turn around.
Men—six, then six more, then more than a dozen others. There seemed to be more each time she shifted her gaze. She watched them—they watched her. Big—long haired, some of them. The clothes, the weapons—"Brigands." She whispered the word to herself. Then she screamed it. "Brigands!"
Sarah Rourke started to run.
Chapter 17
Her heart pounded in her chest, her lungs aching with the oxygen deprivation, the skirt of her yellow dress bunched against her thighs, the wind resistance as she ran keeping it there. She heard the sounds behind her— motorcycles.
She turned, starting to look at the brigands pursuing her, her right foot catching in a clump of the high grass that was somehow tangled. She felt herself falling.
Her chest, her face—she slapped into the sandy ground.
She looked behind her as she jerked her right foot free—there were three men on bikes, closing fast. She could hear them shouting now above the roar of their engines.
"A woman—shit!"
She pushed herself to her feet, scooping up two handfuls of the sandy soil. Then she started running again. Fifty yards remained to the end of the field and there was nothing she could do to outrun the men on the bikes.
Sarah stopped, turning, her fists bunched tight together. The lead biker slowed, the other two slowing behind him.
"Ya'll git tired a runnin', woman?"
"Maybe," she gasped, nodding.
"Hey—maybe I like my women when they skin sweats—maybe I'll just put me a rope 'round yo neck and
run ya awhiles, huh? See how ya like it and git ya t'beg me maybe to stop. Maybe offer me something good, huh?"
Sarah said nothing.
The man dismounted the bike, the engine still throbbing. She had ridden a bike with John but counted herself no expert. But only two hundred, maybe two hundred and fifty yards to the house—it as her only prayer.
The brigand, his face dripping dirty sweat, the sweat running in brown rivulets along his neck and hair-covered chest, stopped, less than a yard from her. He reached out his right hand—she felt it explore her neck, start to knot into her hair.
She took a single step, closer to him, thrusting both hands up and outward into his eyes, the sandy dirt powdering through her splayed fingers, the man starting to scream. Her nails were too short for it, but she dug them into the eyes, the man grabbing at her as she smashed her bare right knee up into his crotch.
There was a pistol—she felt it as he sagged against her—and she snatched it from his waistband. She almost lost the gun, the grips sweaty and wet. An automatic.
She lifted the pistol into her left hand as she stepped back, the man screaming, pawing at her as he sank to his knees. Her right hand worked back the slide, her eyes catching sight of the flicker of brass in the sunlight—there had already been a round chambered.
The two closest bikers were starting toward her.
She let the slide go forward and fired, the pistol bucking in her hands, but the shot low. She didn't see it impact. She fired again, the
nearest biker less than two yards from her.
She saw the explosion of blood on his upper chest just under the hollow of the neck.
She stepped back, firing again at the second biker, the man's right arm leaving the handlebars, the right hand
grasping at the abdomen, the bike starting to go down.
There was a hand on her ankle, dragging her down. As she fell forward, she fired again, the pistol discharging point blank into the face of the first man still on the ground.
The hand was still locked on her ankle. She fired the pistol—it was a . but smaller than her husband's gun somehow. The shot impacted into the forearm, the hand's grip on the bare flesh of her ankle loosening.
She tripped, caught herself and fired a wild shot toward the remainder of the brigand force, the men halfway across the field, some on bikes, some on foot, some pickup trucks coming behind them, packed with men "and some women—all armed.
The first brigand's bike was the only one still standing near her, the engine still pulsing loudly. She ran for it, straddling it, her underpants feeling the wetness of sweat on the saddle as the wind gusted, billowing her skirt.
She fumbled the controls, hoping she wouldn't by accident shut the machine off.
It started to lurch ahead, the pistol thrown down because she didn't have any place to hold it, her fists locked white-knuckle tight on the handlebars, the machine too powerful for her, she realized, the movement of the fork as she started across the field tearing at her muscles, making her shoulders ache.
She wasn't sure she knew how to stop it.
There was gunfire coming from the house—either Mary Mulliner or the hired man Mary had taken in—perhaps Michael. "Michael," she gasped. Were Michael and Annie still in the house?
She heard the light, intermittent reports of the AR-—whoever was firing the gun didn't know how to handle it, wasn't as good as—"As good as I am," she screamed into the wind.
She could hear the brigand bikes all around her behind her.
She kept moving, out of the field and across the yard now, the house looming up ahead of her coming fast—too fast.
She started trying to find the brakes, the machine slowing but not fast enough.
She was losing it. She gave the brakes all she had and threw herself from the machine as it skidded in the grass near the back door leading to the kitchen.
She rolled, her hands and knees tearing on the dirt and gravel mixed in with the grass. She rolled again, the biker nearest behind her sailing up into the air, his bike going out of control as it bounced over the bike she'd jumped clear of.
The man's body was still in the air, there was a scream. The body hammered through the kitchen window over the sink.
Sarah pushed herself up, a biker starting for her. The washbasket was beside her. She threw it at him. He kept coming. She was running, toward the back door.
A rake—the heavy one with the long metal tines that Mary used for her, vegetable garden on the side of the house—leaned by the kitchen door.
Sarah reached for it, grabbed it, the biker closing.
She swung the rake, the tines catching the brigand biker full in the face.
There was a scream and she thought she felt blood spraying her hands and arms.
The biker collapsed from his machine.
Sarah half threw herself up the steps and through the doorway.
Mary was firing the AR-.
"Give it to me!" Sarah snatched it from Mary's hands, ramming the flash deflectored muzzle through a pane of unbroken glass.
Two shot semiautomatic bursts—she started firing. One biker down, another biker.
"Sarah!"
She heard the scream. She turned. The biker who'< sailed through the window was conscious, starting t< crawl up from the sink top, reaching for a pistol.
Sarah grabbed the butcher knife on the counter am hammered it down—into the back of the biker's neck. Tru brigand was dead, blood gushing out of his open moutl past his tongue.
She looked at the far kitchen wall—Michael and Annii and the little Jenkins girl.
"Michael—keep low—get my rifle and my pistol from upstairs—hurry—then find anything else you can."
She didn't wait for an answer, pumping more shots a the brigands streaming into the yard.
' 'Mary—search that dead man for guns an< ammunition—we'll need it all!"
Sarah—she thought of it as she pulled the trigger for j fast shot on a brigand biker, seeing the man's hands fly t< his face where she'd shot him. She had changed.
Chapter 18
He had lost all sense of day and night—he awoke now, realizing that on the East Coast where he had last seen land it would be mid-morning. He frowned at the luminous dial of the Rolex, then sat up in the darkness.
A nuclear submarine—he tried recalling how much actual time had gone by. Not expert when it came to submarines, he wondered if they had gone under the ice yet. He doubted it though.
Sarah and the children—somewhere in Georgia or the Carolinas, perhaps as far as Alabama or Mississippi, or perhaps again up in Tennessee.
"Up in Tennessee," he laughed.
He reached over and flipped on the light. He rubbed his stubbled cheeks—he needed a shave, badly—and he could smell his own body.
"All right," he mumbled to himself, sighing heavily. It was time to do something.
John Rourke stood up. "Time to do something," he murmured ...
He felt naked as he walked the companionway looking for Paul Rubenstein—no guns.
It was the first time since the Night of The War—except for periods of captivity under the Russians and the problem with the woman in the town who had chosen suicide—that he had been without them. As he turned what he would have called a corner, his hair still wet from the shower, picking his way over the lintel of one of the myriad watertight doors, an officer—a lieutenant JG stopped him.
"You're Doctor Rourke?"
"Yes," Rourke nodded.
"The captain requested that you join him on the bridge, sir. I can take you there."
Rourke nodded again, falling into step behind the young man. "How is the Soviet major doing, sir?"
Rourke smiled—it was hard to think of Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna as "the Soviet major." He let out a long sigh. "She's doing fine, lieutenant. Still weak, but she's sleeping normally. Should be for a while. Sort of the body's natural defense mechanism against things like what happened to her."
"That's good to hear, sir," the lieutenant nodded, Rourke watching the back of his head as the man ducked. "She's got a pint of my blood in her."
Rourke told him, "I thought your face looked familiar—you were from the second time around."
"You got it, sir—guess it was more than a pint. Boy, did I sack out last night."
Rourke laughed. "Yeah—so did I. And I didn't even give blood. What's Commander Gundersen .want to see me about?" Rourke asked, ducking his head for another watertight door.
"Don't know, sir," the young man answered. "Here we are," and the lieutenant stepped through into a compartment that seemed almost too spacious to be believed aboard a submarine, nuclear or not. Rourke had several times been aboard the post-World War II diesel subs, their forward and aft torpedo rooms the only large areas to be found. The spaciousness of the operating theater had surprised him—was not nearly so surprising as the quarters he'd been given. Like the size of a rather large bathroom as opposed to the subminiature closet-sized offices and quarters on the earlier subs. He had ridden nuclear subs before, but never for any length of time, and these in his days in CIA Covert Operations.
This nuclear sub was apparently of the newest class, the ones begun just prior to the Night of The War. It was at the least the size of a decent tonnaged destroyer, perhaps larger. He stood now, overlooking the maze of lights and .panels, the many crew members.
He was impressed.
"Like my bridge, Doctor Rourke?" Commander Gundersen sounded confident, assured—appreciative of Rourke's stare.
"I'm going to build one just like this soon as I get home—got a kit?" Rourke smiled.
"I understand the Soviet major—"
"Natalia Tiemerovna."
"Yes—understand she's going to be fine."
Rourke nodded, still surveying the bridge before entering it. "Always the risk of a low grade infection with surgery so massive, but yes—I think so."
"WiH she fully recover—I mean—"
"Yeah—yeah," Rourke nodded again. "Matter of fact, she should be pretty much back to normal in a week or so. Still a little weak, but normal."
"Good—I'm glad to hear that—come down."
Rourke nodded, stepping away from the watertight door and taking one long stride across the metal platform, then taking the ladder down to the core of the bridge. Gundersen stood at its center, hands resting on the periscope housing.
His fingers tapped at it—not nervously, but expectantly.
Gundersen turned to his side, "Charlie—take her up to periscope depth."
"Aye, Captain," a voice sang back.
There was a muted humming, Rourke feeling nothing in the way of movement.
"Periscope depth, sir," the same voice called out.
"Good, Charlie—let's take a look here. Sonar give me a readout on anything that gets near us."
"Aye, sir," another voice called,
The periscope tube raised, Gundersen flipping out the handles on its sides.
"Always like to take a look at the pack before we go under—wanna look yourself, Doctor?"
Rourke stepped toward the periscope—noticing now it was the largest of several.
He stepped nearer as Gundersen stepped back and turned the periscope handles toward him.
Rourke pressed his eyes to the subjective lenses, his nose crinkling at the faint but distinctive smell of the rubber eye cups. "Makes you want to say 'Torpedo Los,' doesn't it?" Rourke said, studying the white rim at the far edge of his vision—the icecap.
