The Survivalist 02 - The Nightmare Begins (12 page)

"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 Moun-tain 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 every-thing 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 lead-ing 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 com-paratively 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 moon-light 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 pick-up'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 remem-bered her. She took another drink, and so did Ruben-stein.

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 won-dered 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!"

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sarah Rourke climbed stiffly into the saddle, her stomach still cramping when she moved too quickly or bent, but the cramps lessening in intensity. The previous night's dinner had stayed with her although she hadn't eaten much, and at breakfast that morning there had been none of the accustomed nausea. After she had awakened that first morning, with Michael's help they had found a better, more permanent campsite as close as possible to the site they had used the night of her collapse. She had barely been able to mount up then, but with Michael leading her horse, they somehow had managed.

As she straightened in the saddle now, she thought of Michael and the last few days since she had drunk the contaminated water and been rendered virtually helpless. The boy was a constant source of amaze-ment to her. Lying virtually helpless on her back at that time, the stomach cramps, the nausea—Michael had been her hands, her feet, keeping the girls and himself fed, feeding and watering the horses. Once, there had been noises, voices from far along on the other side of the forested area from where they were, and the boy had brought her the .45

automatic pistol, then gathered the girls next to him and waited silently beside her until the voices had died away, the noise ceased. She turned now in the saddle, still awkwardly because of her stiffness, and looked at the boy.

"You're the finest son anyone could want, Michael," she said to him, her voice still not sounding quite right to her.

"Why did you say that, Mom?" the boy said, smiling at her, his brown hair falling across his fore-head.

"I just wanted to," she said. She moved her knees too fast and the cramps started to return, but she straightened up in the saddle as Tildie started forward along the trail into Tennessee.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Rourke brought the Harley to a fast stop, skidding his feet into the dirt and squinting against the morning sunlight despite the dark aviator-style sun-glasses he wore. His face and his body under his clothes were bathed in sweat. He shifted the CAR-15's web sling off his shoulder, the outline of the sling visible in dark wet stains on his shirt. He had cut across country, backtracking for a while until he had come across the lead elements of the paramilitary force. With his liberated field glasses he had spotted the familiar face of the officer he and Rubenstein had encountered days earlier by the abandoned truck trailer when they had been resupplying with ammu-nition. The force consisted of what Rourke estimated as close to three hundred and fifty men, traveling in trucks and jeeps in a ragged wedge formation along the road, outriders on dirt bikes paralleling their movements and working back and forth, up and down the convoy line like herders moving cattle or sheep. He timed them and judged they were making approximately fifty miles per hour, and with their numbers there was no reason to suppose they wouldn't press on for fourteen or more hours per day—as long as daylight lasted.

Rourke had cut ahead then, the convoy several hours behind where he had left Paul Rubenstein and the girl who called herself Natalie. And now, as he watched the road below him, the tight bend the highway followed, he could see the brigands. There were more than two dozen long-haul eighteen-wheeler trucks at their center, traveling four abreast, consuming the entire highway space, squads of motorcycle riders in front and in back and on the shoulders, all heavily armed. Though he had no way of telling what or who might be inside the trucks, he judged the strength of the brigand force at better than four hundred men and women. For some reason he couldn't fathom, they were heading back in the direction of Van Horn, speed approximately fifty miles per hour. A smile crossed Rourke's lips, but then vanished quickly. As he watched the brigand column began turning off the road, moving into a long, single column and heading into the desert.

"Shit!" he muttered, dropping the field glasses and staring down into his hands. The change of direction into the desert would keep the brigands ahead of him, and the paramilitary force was still behind him. Rourke reslung the CAR-15 on his right shoulder and revved up his bike. The brigands' turning had forced his hand, he realized, and any way he decided to go, the odds for staying alive were dropping.

Chapter Thirty

Rourke had left early in the morning, awakening the slightly hung-over Rubenstein to let him know his intentions, letting the girl continue to sleep. As Rourke slowed the Harley and drove it up the grade into the sheltered campsite where the truck was parked, he spotted Rubenstein sitting by the Coleman stove, a cup of coffee in both hands, his glasses off. Natalie was standing by the front of the truck and all Rourke could see of her as he eased the bike to a halt was her back.

"I didn't recognize you without your glasses," Rourke said to Rubenstein, smiling.

"Shut off the motor, huh? My head is—"

Rourke laughed, killing the Harley's engine and dismounting, then walking over toward Rubenstein. Rourke set the CAR-15 against the bumper of the truck and dropped to a crouch beside the younger man, snatching a cup and pouring himself some coffee. "What's with her?"