yards back?"
"On the right?"
"Yeah…"
"Man with a rifle, I thought, but wasn't sure."
"Yeah… okay… I'm going up to the end of the block here and turn down and back
into that secondary street Paul was coming up. That's when we should hit it."
"Brigands?" the girl said softly, her voice even, calm.
"Maybe worse—people defending what's left of their town," Rourke answered,
curving the bike wide to the right and then arcing left into the far lane of the
intersecting street—also seemingly deserted. The secondary street was coming up
on the left, and as Rourke's eyes scanned back and forth there was still no sign
of Paul Rubenstein.
He pulled the Harley into another wide arc, cutting left into the secondary
street. As he started the big machine along the uneven pavement, he heard
Natalie behind him, whispering, her voice hoarse, "John—on your right!"
Rourke perfunctorily glanced to his right, raised his right hand in a small wave
and whispered back to the girl. "Yeah… I saw them." As they cruised slowly down
the street on each side of them now armed men and women were appearing, stepping
out of doorways, from behind overturned cars and trucks, closing in like a wall
behind them. "Relax," he rasped. "If they wanted to shoot first they'd be doing
it by now."
"I don't take much comfort from that," the girl said, almost angrily.
Suddenly, the girl almost screamed, "Look—up ahead—they've got Paull"
"Yeah… I see it," Rourke said softly. Rubenstein was on his knees at the end of
the street, his hands tied out, arms stretched between the rear axle of an
overturned truck and a support column for one of the smaller factory loading
docks. There was a young man standing beside Rubenstein, an assault rifle with
fixed bayonet in his hands, the point of the bayonet at the side of Rubenstein's
throat. "I don't know who these people are—but they aren't brigands either. At
least not the type we've seen."
"John—go back!" Rubenstein screamed, the man beside Rubenstein then pressing the
bayonet harder against Rubenstein's throat, silencing him.
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 th
e
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. "But 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
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