by Jerry Ahern
John Rourke began to check one, then the other of the twin stainless Detonics Combat Master
.45s he wore—it was the first time in his life, he smiled, that he had ever been funny. And in view of what lay before them, he thought, most likely the last time as well.
Chapter Four
Dawn came—the world had not perished by fire as it would, perhaps the next sunrise, or the next. It was an in-definite sentence of death — sometime, some sunrise within the next seven days at best, because of the electrically charged particles which had been thrust into the atmo-sphere during the bombings and missile strikes of The Night of The War, the total ionization of the atmosphere would take place. The atmosphere would catch fire, the fire spreading as the electrically charged particles were acted upon by the sun. It would be the last sunrise for humanity. As the earth rotated and the sun eventually rose throughout the twenty-four hours, there would be twenty-four hours of death, the sky itself aflame, the surface of the earth de-stroyed, the atmosphere all but completely burned away, much of the ozone layer destroyed. Humanity and all the lower life forms would be obliterated—forever.
And General Varakov had held out one chance—that in a hermetically sealed shelter such as Rourke’s own survival Retreat in the mountains of northeast Georgia not far from the town of Helen, his wife Sarah, his son Michael and his daughter Annie could survive, and that he—Rourke—could survive as well, and so could Natalia and Paul Ruben-stein and any others the Retreat could accommodate. All through the use of the cryogenic chambers originally devel-oped for deep space travel, in use with the six craft of the Space Shuttle Fleet somewhere on an elliptical voyage to the end of the solar system and back. The cryogenic sleep chambers, coupled with the almost mystical serum which allowed the human brain to be awakened from the life sustaining, unaging sleep, could allow Rourke’s family to sur-vive the scorching of the earth and the sky, to survive the centuries while the lower plant forms gradually rebuilt the atmosphere to a level comparable to the highest altitude mountain atmospheres—but liveable. The chambers and the serum without which the chambers would be a perpetual living death from which there could be no awakening would allow his family to awaken five centuries in the future to a world, once again and however marginally, habitable. And to awaken to the hoped for return of the Eden Project survi-vors, an international corps of deep space astronaut train-ees recruited because of their skills and their physical perfection from all the western aligned nations. To return with their microfilm libraries of the accumulated knowl-edge of mankind, their cryogenically frozen embryonic life forms—domestic animals, livestock, even birds to sing again in the air if indeed there were air.
An Ark.
But Colonel Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy, successor to Vladmir Karamatsov, the husband of Major Natalia Tiemerovna whom John Rourke had killed in a standup gunfight engineered by Natalia’s uncle General Varakov, had assembled the one thousand finest of his Elite KGB Corps. With one thousand handpicked perfect Soviet fe-male specimens, with the secret of life sustaining cryogenic sleep stolen with the American cryogenic serum, they would survive the global holocaust to use particle beam weapons already installed at what once had been NORAD
Head-quarters at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, they would sur-vive in what Rozhdestvenskiy had dubbed “The Womb” to destroy the returning Eden Project before the last survivors of the world democracies could land, could reclaim the purged earth.
It was this that was his mission, John Rourke realized, sitting in the semi-darkness at the height of the mezzanine steps, but in shadow from the first floor of the museum itself. He could see the two figures of mastodons fighting. Natalia had told him how her uncle watched these without cease. He understood the reason—and like the mastodons, he was now prepared to fight unto extinction because the circumstances of his own life had issued him no choice. It was his mission, above the saving of his wife and children, beyond saving Natalia and Paul and even himself for a world five centuries from now—it was his mission to pre-vent the KGB Elite Corps from utilizing the cryogenic se-rum, destroy the particle beam weapons, prevent the ultimate Soviet domination of the entire earth, the ultimate victory for evil.
It was an involuntary nerve response, a paroxysm, the shiver which ran along his spine—as a doctor he could think of a multiplicity of medical related reasons for it. But the truest reason was within himself and what he had to do.
Chapter Five
Sarah Rourke, wearing a borrowed sweater—Natalia’s things fit her almost perfectly—and her own blue denim skirt, the only skirt she owned, sat on one of the high rocks not far from the Retreat entrance, her pistol in its holster on the ground beside her. On the next rock, Paul Rubenstein sat, an M-16 across his lap, some kind of submachinegun slung diagonally across his back, a pistol—she recognized it as a Browning High Power—in a shoulder holster that posi-tioned the pistol half across the left side of his chest.
“Are you sure you’re well enough—”
“It was only my left arm, Mrs. Rourke—I shoot with my right—”
“I didn’t mean that -and it’s Sarah—”
“Sarah,” he nodded, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up off the bridge of his nose with his right index finger. “Any-way, the fresh air’s good for me.”
“Do you think the children—”
“I left a note on the pillow next to Michael—he can read it, know we’re just outside—I just—”
And he looked at her. “Why’d you come out here? John tell you to keep an eye on me with my arm?”
She shook her head—it was such a good feeling to have clean hair, to wash it with seemingly limitless hot water. She suddenly wondered—shivering —what it would be like when all the supplies stored in the shelves and cabinets of her husband’s Retreat were depleted. She had looked through the library—there were books which showed how to weave cloth, books which showed how to make soap from animal fat. Would they someday wear rags? Live by the light of homemade candles because the supply of light bulbs and fluorescent tubes had been depleted—she laughed at the irony. Limitless electricity from the hydro-electric generators her husband had installed—but electric-ity was useless without lights. She laughed —out loud—
“I’m sorry—”
“What is it?” Paul Rubenstein asked her.
“Nothing—I was just thinking—how stupid I’ll feel someday running around in rags or animals skins cooking wild rabbit by candlelight on a microwave oven.”
Paul Rubenstein started to laugh and she laughed with him. It was nice to have something to look forward to, after all, Sarah Rourke thought.
Chapter Six
He had taken an M-16 from a soldier killed in the first pass the helicopters had made across the school grounds. As the machines banked, their guns opening up again, plowing waves in the dirt on both sides of the disabled, al-ready burning truck behind which he had taken cover, Reed leveled the assault rifle toward the bubble dome of the near-est of the machines—they were American Bell 209 Huey Cobras, taken over by the Russians, a red Soviet star embla-zoned over the American markings. Reed squeezed the trig-ger, firing, emptying the M-16’s magazine, the helicopter’s 7.62mm multi-barrel Minigun still firing, the helicopter un-swerving, unaffected.
“Shit!”
He tucked down, the ground on both sides of the truck erupting as another of the machines made a pass, the sound of bullets ricocheting off the metal of the truck body. Screams — not all of the patients had been successfully evac-uated from the building and those that were, were still pinned down in the trucks, some at the far end of the road, others still in front of the school.
The sound of a missile firing—Reed looked up. The con-trail, then one of the two and a half ton trucks at the far edge of the driveway seemed to bounce upward for an in-stant, then was consumed in a ball of flame. Men, women, their clothes and hair afire, fell from the back of the truck.
“Bastards!” Reed screamed at the machines as they fin-ished the pass.
They were coming back.
For some reason he turned around—he had never be-lieved in a sixth sense beyond the uneasy feeling one sometimes got in combat. But Colonel Rubenstein had left the school building. The man stood there. He screamed, “My wife is dead!” His hands tore at the collar of his shirt, rip-ping it. Suddenly, Reed was conscious of Rubenstein being a Jew and Reed seemed to remember that the rending of some article of clothing was a tradition for the death of a loved one.
Reed started to shout, “I’m sorry.” But then the school steps vaporized in a ball of flame and Colonel Rubenstein was gone.
Reed stabbed the M-16 skyward, firing it out uselessly, screaming the word again and again,
“Bastards!”
He pushed himself to his feet, out of magazines for the M-16, running toward the nearest of the trucks which could still move, shouting toward the cab, “Driver—get us out of here!”
As he started to climb aboard, hanging on to the stakes that surrounded the truck bed, he realized the truck’s engine was not running. “Driver!”
His .45 in his fist, Reed jumped to the ground. Screams of the wounded and dying were drowned out by the rattle of machinegun fire, the long staccato pulse that sounded like a solitary drone of some huge wasp as it beat its wings. The truck beside him was hit, Reed throwing himself to the dirt and gravel of the driveway, a shower of the material of the driveway raining down on him.
Flames engulfed the truck beside him—screams, bodies on fire hurtling themselves from the vehicle.
A missile impacted the front of the school, flames now belching from the roof as he pulled himself to his feet. He climbed up into the truck cab—the windshield was pep-pered with spiderwebbed bullet holes—the driver’s eyes were wide open in death, the front of the fatigue blouse dark and wet with blood.
Reed shoved the body through the driver’s side door, “God bless you, son,” he murmured, starting the deuce and a half. “Hang on back there,” Reed shouted behind him. “Hang on!” The sick, the wounded—he didn’t want to add them to the ranks of the dead.
He pumped the clutch, stomping the gas pedal, letting the truck start rolling forward, the gunships coming through for another pass. One of the helicopters was coming right at him as he upshifted, cranking the wheel hard left and out of the driveway. Reed ducked, machinegun fire blowing out the window—he was losing control of the truck—losing it. As he moved on the seat, he could feel the shards of glass falling, hear the tinkle of glass as it fell from his clothes, breaking, feel the crunch of it under and around him. He fought the wheel, trying to get control. A tree—he cut the wheel hard right. He felt it as he threw himself down, the lurch, the tremor of the truck cab around him, the shudder-ing of his own body as he slammed forward and rolled from the seat, his right elbow hitting the driveshaft hump, his head striking the dashboard.
With his left hand he felt for the door handle, twisting at it, his right hand clutching for the cocked and locked .45 which was back in his holster. He found it, half falling from the truck cab to the ground, steam rising in a whistling column from where the nose of the deuce and a half had struck the tree.
Reed staggered, falling to his knees, still clutching the .45.
He looked skyward—the Soviet marked gunships were breaking off, disengaging.
Reed looked around him now—the school was awash with flames, all but two of the trucks burning or otherwise disabled.
Bodies lay everywhere about the driveway, moans of the dying filling the air as the beating of the helicopter rotor blades died on the air slowly.
Reed got to his feet. His left hand was bleeding, he real-ized, and his head ached badly.
He staggered toward the rear of the truck, ripping back the tarpaulin cover there.
“Jesus.” He turned away, feeling the thing in the pit of his stomach, gagging as the vomit rose in him, falling to his knees as it poured from his mouth onto the ground.
The twenty or so people in the back of the truck were all dead.
He set down his pistol just to the side of the puddle of vomit, his left elbow aching as he moved the arm, both hands finding the lapel of his fatigue blouse. For Colonel Rubenstein, for Mrs. Rubenstein—for all the dead. It was hard to tear the fabric, but on the third try, it ripped.
Chapter Seven
Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna, Major, Committee for State Security of The Soviet, felt the warmth and strength of her uncle’s arms around her, a warmth and strength she had felt and loved since she was a little child, something she would never know again. She tasted the salt of her own tears mingled with the salt of General Ishmael Varakov’s tears as her head rested against his chest. “All—all of it—in the letter to John Rourke—about my real parents—my real mother—it—it only made me love you more, Uncle Ish-mael—it only—”
“I told all of those things in the letter because I thought perhaps, child, that I might never see you again, and you had the right to know these things. How goes it with the American Rourke?”
She still let her uncle hold her, there in the quiet darkness of the mummy room. “He has found his wife and children, Uncle—”
“What of you, child?”
She closed her eyes so tight she could see red and green floaters in them.
“What of you, child?”
“She knows — his wife knows that I love him. And that he loves me—he actually loves me.”
“A man does not have two wives—at least not a man like this Dr. John Rourke.”
“We—we—”
“Perhaps he thinks of the Jew, Rubenstein, of him for you should the Eden Project not return—”
She kept her eyes closed. “I love Paul—but like he were my brother, Uncle—like that only. I would rather go on lov-ing John Rourke and have him never touch me than to lie that I could love someone else.”
“She is older than you?”
“She is thirty-two, perhaps thirty-three, I think, there is only four or five years of difference between us—”
“Then you will both outlive him if you somehow survive this holocaust.”
“I would not want—”
“To live if this Rourke man were dead?”
“Yes—I would not.”
“You are skilled in many ways, child—”
She closed her eyes still tighter, like she had when Karamatsov had beaten her before Rourke had killed him. “I could never—it would—it would be—”
“I know that you could never,” and she felt his body shud-der as he laughed. “The efficient KGB killing machine— you were called that once and I never told you. A killing machine in skirts and silk stockings—a member of the Pol-itburo spoke of you that way when you and Karamatsov worked together in Latin America before The Night of The War. But I knew that what the Politburo member said was wrong. Your heart—it has always been the heart of your real mother—did I tell you in the letter that her name was Natalia as well?”
“Yes—yes, Uncle,” she whispered. “You told me that—”
“An old man forgets, child. But there are some things— some things that an old man can never—” He ceased to speak.
“Forget,” she whispered for him.
“There are some things, and perhaps for you John Rourke is such a thing—would that she had so worshiped me as is evident you worship this Rourke—”
“He is—”
He released his arms from her, turning up her chin with the tips of the fingers of both his massive, spatulate hands.
“He is a man—”
“He is more, Uncle—he—”
“I am not a religious person—but it is wrong to speak of such things, I think. For a man to worship a woman, or a woman to worship a man—this can be. But —but he is not your god. Perhaps, child,” and she looked into his eyes, tear-rimmed, large, loving seeming to her,
“—perhaps, child, neither you nor I can have a god. And if in the hour of my death, I should discover one, it will be the same one that someday perhaps you sh
all discover, and Dr. Rourke shall discover too. And your John Rourke—he will not discover his god by staring at his own image in a reflecting pool and being deceived. It is in this Rourke’s eyes — that he is not this sort of man. If you love him so, then respect him also for what he is and what he is not and would never pretend to be.”
She closed her eyes again, hugging her arms as best she could around her uncle’s chest—and it was something un-changing since she had been a little girl—her fingertips would not meet no matter how hard she tried, how tightly she squeezed . . .
Chapter Eight
If free will were in its exercise an intrinsic good, then those who would consciously and totally abrogate the exer-cise of free will for the bulk of mankind for their own pur-poses were, by contrast, intrinsically evil.
Good. Evil.
Rourke considered these as he stood at the height of the mezzanine steps, staring down at Varkov’s figures of the mastodons which dominated the museum hall. John Rourke looked at the Rolex Submariner on his left wrist. Varakov indicated they would have to be clear of the mu-seum by eight forty-five at the latest. It was almost eight-thirty. But the thought of rushing Natalia’s last farewell to her uncle, though it entered his mind, was something Rourke instantaneously dismissed.
He had removed his pack again, placing it on one of the benches at the rear of the mezzanine, his M-16 beside it, only the CAR-15 slung cross body from his left shoulder under his right arm now. He looked back, hearing foot-steps.
It was Natalia, walking slowly beside her uncle.
Rourke turned back toward the great hall, whistling low, once, Vladov’s man beside the brass doors leading to the outside turning, acknowledging.
Rourke turned back to stare at Natalia. As he did, he spoke to Vladov, on the mezzanine beside him. “Captain, looks like we’re ready.”
“It would appear so, Dr. Rourke.”
“How do you feel about this—going against other Rus-sians like yourself?”
