The End is Coming

by Jerry Ahern

  As he watched, the tank column slowed, then stopped.

  Rourke set down his rifle, snatching up his bin­oculars from the case at his side. He focused the armored Bushnell 8x30s on the head of the column. He could see no reason for the tanks to have stopped. He swept the binoculars forward, along the roadway.

  An overpass bridge. In the shelter of the center pylons he saw something moving.

  He focused the binoculars more sharply for the increased range.

  A dog—a stray dog, like hundreds he had seen since the Night of The War. Homeless, dirty, wild—ready to rip your throat to eat rather than starve. It looked part collie, perhaps part golden retriever—it was the right color for that. She was—as the dog began to stand up, he could make out beside it on the ground two puppies, barely visible. What the world desperately needed, he thought, were more stray dogs.

  He swept his binoculars back to the lead tank, nearer to him than the dogs themselves, the road angling away from him in the direction in which the tanks moved.

  The hatch open like the others, a man was clambering up and out of the hatch. There was an argument going on—between the man from the tank and one of the outside riders. The focal point of the argument seemed to be an AKM.

  Rourke squinted, returned his gaze to the dogs. The female, the mother, was attempting to carry one pup by the scruff of the neck in her mouth, nudging the other pup with her forelegs, with her muzzle. She dropped the puppy from her mouth as she nudged at the other one. It rolled, unable to fully stand. She picked it up again, nudging at the other puppy once more.

  Rourke heard the sound—automatic weapons fire.

  The mother dog fell—a broad splotch of red suddenly visible on her neck behind her right ear. The puppy in her mouth was also shot—its body cut in half. Another burst of automatic weapons fire—the little puppy on the ground. Its body seemed almost to disintegrate.

  Rourke swept the binoculars back to the lead tank—the man from inside the tank held the So­viet assault rifle to his shoulder, fired another burst, then handed the weapon back to the out­side rider.

  The man from the tank was laughing. Rourke could see him—laughing.

  Rourke chewed down harder on his cigar, feel­ing the smoke in his lungs. He replaced the Bushnells in the pouch, zippered it shut.

  He raised the CAR-15, extending the tele­scoped buttstock.

  He judged the range at just under four hundred and fifty yards—stretching the CAR-15 beyond common sense and reason.

  If he’d had the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, twice the range would have been possible and easily so.

  He settled the three-power scope’s reticle—be­tween the shoulder blades of the man from the lead tank, the man who had fired the AK.

  Rourke closed his right eye a moment—he had killed wild dogs, many of them since the Night of The War.

  What the tanker—the commander likely—had done was something altogether different, he real­ized.

  And besides, Rourke thought—riding with the hatch open seemed to assume no American would fight back against the tanks, would resist the So­viet invaders.

  Rourke moved the safety. He started the trig­ger squeeze.

  He felt the recoil, heard the crack, saw the scope shift slightly, blurred, then saw the man at the hatch of the lead tank, the man who had killed the dog and her two puppies—saw both hands move suddenly to the small of the back just above the belt, dead center over the spine. The body toppled forward, sliding across the front edge of the tank, slipping to the ground. The arms flapped once, twice—then no movement. Rourke made a mental note to experiment with bullet drop figures in excess of four hundred yards—he had aimed substantially higher.

  As soon as he got the opportunity.

  The Russians around the lead tank were mov­ing, the second tank already starting laterally across the road—some of the Russians who had ridden on the outside of the tanks, now hidden beside the treads, returned fire. The rocks below Rourke and a hundred yards or so ahead of him took the impact of the automatic weapons fire.

  Rourke felt a smile cross his lips. “So long, ass­hole,” and he was up, moving, the CAR-15’s safety coming on under his right thumb, raising his body up from its crouch, breaking into a long-strided run toward the Harley. There was a roar, a high-pitched loud whistling sound—the 125mm smooth-bore turret gun. He moved fast into a right angle, breaking through the tree line, run­ning, feeling the ground tremble as he was slapped forward by a rush of air—the HEAT round had impacted to the left of his original line of movement. If he hadn’t broken right, he real­ized, looking back through the cloud of smoke and dirt and foliage raining down, he would have been dead. Rourke pushed himself up, running again—if he could make the Harley, maximum speed on the T-72 series was fifty miles per hour—the Harley could do better than that—and effortlessly.

  He kept running, but at an oblique angle now, to his left—the tank gunner would try to saturate the area. The gunner had fired left, now he would fire right—the whistling sound again, the roar of a blast dying on the air.

  Rourke threw himself into the run, the whis­tling louder, higher pitched.

  He hurtled himself forward through an open­ing in the tree cover, shielding his head with his hands. He felt the ground shake—but feeling at all meant he was still alive. Before the explosion died, he was up, running, a cloudburst of dust and broken bits of foliage engulfing the woods around him.

  Fire—he looked behind him, the trees burning near the two impact sites.

  He broke through the tree line—his bike, So­viet soldiers, six of them—they surrounded the machine, their own motorcycles parked on the opposite side of the dirt track.

  The nearest of the men was turning, toward him.

  No time for the CAR-15, Rourke’s right hand flashed under his brown leather bomber jacket, snatching at the Pachmayr gripped butt of the stainless Detonics there. As the Soviet soldier raised his AKM, Rourke fired, the pistol bucking in his hand.

  The soldier’s face took the 185-grain JHP—the center of the face collapsing in the redness of blood as the man fell back.

  A second soldier—Rourke shot him twice in the chest, Rourke’s left arm going out, his left fist straight-arming a third soldier in the chest, knocking the man back and down.

  Rourke jumped, his left leg snaking over the seat of the Harley Low Rider. He got the stand up, firing the Harley’s engine, pumping the trig­ger of the Detonics into the chest and abdomen of a fourth Soviet soldier. The little Detonics was empty, the slide locked back. He thumbed down the stop, letting the slide run forward, ramming the pistol into his belt. A fifth Soviet soldier— Rourke’s left leg snapped up and out, the toe of his combat-booted foot catching the man in the groin as the soldier tried to bring his rifle to bear. Rourke gunned the Harley, almost losing his bal­ance, dragging his feet, keeping upright and tak­ing off along the dirt road.

  The Low Rider was best suited to highway driv­ing, and making high speed on the bumpy, rutted dirt road was difficult, keeping it up harder—he let the machine out as much as he dared, keeping low over the handlebars as he looked back—one of the Soviet bikers was already coming, two more were mounting up.

  Rourke’s right hand slipped down to the CAR-15, his thumb working the safety off—he twisted the muzzle behind him, firing once, twice, a third time, the Soviet biker nearest him skidding off into the trees to avoid Rourke’s fire. Rourke worked the safety again, letting the CAR-15 drop on its sling at his side, his attention wholly fo­cused now on riding.

  Behind him, he could hear the sounds of bikes—the remaining two Soviets. He bent lower over the Harley—he made it there was at least an­other mile of the dirt track before he reached paved highway.

  A deep rut—Rourke skirted the machine around it, balancing out with his feet, then gun­ning the engine, jumping a huge bump, wrench­ing the machine up with his arms, gunfire from behind him now. He looked back again—two bikers close, a third fifty yards or so behind them.<
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  He couldn’t risk firing, the road too rutted for him to shift a hand from the handlebars. His body low across the jet black Harley, he kept rid­ing. There was a sharp bend right, Rourke’s ma­chine skidding through the curve, his right leg out, balancing the Harley, his right foot dragging through the mud as the road dipped, the Harley grinding, Rourke wrenching at the machine. Moving again—he kept the machine moving, through the curve and up the grade, the mud hard and rutted again, Rourke jumping the bike later­ally over a deep rut, the machine skidding, Rourke balancing it out. Still moving.

  A shouted curse from behind him—Rourke looked back, seeing one of the Soviet bikers down.

  He gunned the Harley, taking the grade, jump­ing a hummock of ground, the dirt road evening out, Rourke letting out the machine—ahead he could see paved road.

  A ridge of packed hard mud and gravel—he jumped the Harley over it, nearly losing it, recov­ering, letting the bike skid almost out from under him as he angled the machine right—he was on the road.

  Balancing out, his feet up, he revved the Har­ley, the crackle of his exhaust loud, gunfire be­hind him as the coolness of the day turned into a chill slipstream around him, Rourke molding his body over the machine.

  The road was a straight ribbon, black, recently paved, he guessed, before the Night of The War, the yellow double lines bright, fresh-painted.

  Gunfire—the road surface behind him sparked with it as he looked back. Two of the Soviet bik­ers still pursued.

  His exhaust rumbled, sputtered, made a sound that seemed to split the fabric of the air as he let the machine full out, the front wheel rising slightly, Rourke balancing as he fought the fork—and then the slipstream around him was harder, louder, colder, punching at his face, tear­ing at his hair—the gunfire was suddenly more distant.

  He risked a look back once—the military bikes of the Soviet soldiers were fading in the distance.

  He chewed down once, hard, on his cigar butt, then spit it into the slipstream.

  Chapter Six

  There had been more Russians as Rourke had moved off the highway and kept to the side roads, the dirt tracks—more and more Russians. Supply convoys—tanks riding shotgun for them—moved along each major artery in the directions of cities large enough to have airports. He had spent hours watching them, unable to move because of them, waiting.

  A truck had broken down—an axle, Rourke had guessed, watching from the distance with his Bushnell 8x30s. After some time of Russian offi­cers wandering about the truck, apparently shout­ing orders, cursing out the driver and the like, the truck had been unloaded.

  Rourke had expected confiscated M-16s, or ex­plosives, or foodstuffs—even medical supplies. But when one of the crates had broken—more stomping around, more apparent name-calling and threatening—the contents had proven to be a microfilm projector. All of the cases inside the truck—as they were emptied out with meticu­lous care—were apparently possessed of the same con­tents.

  Rourke sat back, not looking at the road, con­sidering instead.

  He studied the CAR-15 as he laid it across his lap—how many thousands of rounds had he fired through it? The parkerized finish of the thirty-round magazine up the well was badly scratched, but the magazine was wholly serviceable. Absent-mindedly, he wondered if his friend Ron Ma­hovsky, who had customized his Python, had survived the Night of The War. Rourke, retro­spectively, decided he should have asked Mahovsky to Metalife the CAR-15’s magazines for added durability.

  It was too late now—but many things were too late.

  The microfilm projectors—why so many?

  And he thought of Sarah, and Michael, and An­nie. The children would have changed—not the time, but the experience. And Sarah—he closed his eyes.

  Before the Night of The War, they had always argued over his “preoccupation,” as she had called it, “with gloom and doom, preparing for the un­thinkable”—his concerns with survival. She had seen guns as nothing more than weapons of de­struction.

  Rourke studied the profiled CAR-15 across his thighs.

  It was hard to consider a rifle a weapon of de­struction, considering the weapons unleashed on the Night of The War.

  He closed his eyes—he remembered the flight across the United States that night—he could not forget it.

  The children dying of burns in Albuquerque.

  The teens who had called themselves the Guard­ians—in Texas. Their faces and their bodies scarred with radiation burns, their lives ending, their minds scarred and gone with the horror.

  He opened his eyes, staring at the gun—he had saved lives with it, tried righting wrongs.

  John Rourke closed his eyes again—he won­dered if Sarah had changed—at all.

  Chapter Seven

  She looked at Annie—it was like Annie was try­ing to be her little carbon copy. One of the men in the Resistance—a black man, Tom—had given Annie a bandanna handkerchief, blue and white. And Annie wore it tied over her hair now, like Sarah herself had habitually worn one since The Night of The War. She thought about that - when she had cleaned house, or been baking bread she’d always—but there was no house to clean, no house at all.

  Sarah Rourke licked her lips, getting up from the fire-blackened ridge pole of the destroyed barn—fallen now. She had found it a favorite place to sit when she’d been outside the under­ground survival bunker beneath the burned-out Cunningham farmhouse.

  She started walking toward Annie, Annie pre­tending to read a book to one of the less seriously wounded Resistance men. Sarah had brought the man from the bunker for the fresh air. The genera­tor that powered the ventilation system in the be­low-ground-level shelter needed fuel or foot-pedal power. Fuel was in short supply, and so were feet with nothing to do but ride a bicycle. The job was frequently falling to Michael. He had been an in­trepid bike rider before The Night of The War and she thought that now Michael almost seemed to enjoy working the foot-powered generator. But foot power was not enough to pump sufficient air that the air smelled anything but stale and dirty. And so spent as much time outside as she could.

  The wounded man’s airing was just an excuse.

  She wondered, suddenly, as she walked, what it would be like inside her husband’s Retreat—if he found her. “When,” she said under her breath, correcting herself.

  She stopped walking, about midway between the burned shell of the barn and the gleaming whiteness of the corral fence where the quarter horses old Mr. Cunningham had raised once roamed. They were gone now—but so were Tildie and Sam, her horse and John’s horse, the horses she had used with the children, the horses that had moved them out of danger, been like part of her family—

  She stood there, wiping her hands along her blue-jeaned thighs—then resting her hands on her hips. Under her right hand she felt the butt of the Trapper .45 Bill Mulliner had given her. He should have met his Resistance contact by now, perhaps already be on his way back to report to Pete Critchfield.

  Mary Mulliner—Bill’s mother—it was written in the lines etched in her face, a fear for him, that she’d lose red-haired, blue-eyed Bill just like she had lost her husband—fighting in the Resistance against Russians and Brigands. The .45 had been Bill’s father’s gun—and now it was Sarah’s.

  She had already used it to save her life.

  She rarely thought of it—it was so much a part of her now, carrying a gun, like wearing the blue and white bandanna with which she habitually covered her hair.

  Little Annie was still pretending to read to the wounded Resistance fighter. Birds whistled in the trees.

  Sarah closed her eyes—very tired. Would there be time to teach Annie Rourke to read—ever—and not just pretend?

  Chapter Eight

  General Ishmael Varakov sat on a park bench, halfway across the spit of land extending out into the lake toward the astronomy museum. The wind was stiff and cold off the lake there.

  Beside him, Catherine sat. His secretary, the girl who wore her uniform
skirts too long—a shy girl. A shy girl who had told him that she loved him when he had attempted to send her back to spend the last few days with her mother and her brother in the home he would never again visit beside the Black Sea. She had refused to go—he had let her stay.

  He looked down at his left hand now—for some reason he yet didn’t understand, his left hand clutched her right hand. She was young enough to be his daughter—or perhaps granddaughter.

  She would not call him anything besides “com­rade general”—and she whispered those words now.

  “Yes, child,” he nodded.

  “We will all die?”

  “Yes, child—all of us. A week, perhaps—if that—” And thunder rumbled from the sky, a flash of chain lightning snaking low through gray clouds over the white-capped waters of Lake Michigan. But the lightning subsided, passed. “Very soon,” he whispered to her, “very soon, Catherine—the lightning will not go away.”

  “I will miss it—if you can miss it, comrade gen­eral—being alive, I think.”

  He looked at her face—the rims of her eyes were moist. “You cry, child?”

  She nodded yes.

  “That you die, child? We will all die.”

  She shook her head no.

  “Then why is it that you cry, child?”

  “That I had to be told I would die—comrade general—before—before I—” and she looked away from him, Varakov feeling her hand in his, her nails digging into his flesh. It was life—sensa­tion was life now, and he did not tell her to stop.

  Chapter Nine

  Rourke stopped the Harley-Davidson Low Rider, dismounting as he let down the stand.

  Below him, in a shallow depression too small to be actually called a valley, was a burned farm­house—or so it appeared to be. A barn too, also burned. There was a white fence, a corral fence, freshly painted it seemed, gleaming white against the blackness of the burned timbers of the two buildings. There was movement near the shell of the house.