States could be made to fear their own homes, the safety of their own beds, they
would be that much easier to conquer. Some agents were sent out—perhaps—" She
let the statement hang.
Rourke looked at her, saying nothing, then knitting his fingers on the table,
the cigar clamped in the left corner of his mouth. "It appears we have to go
around or through these wildmen. Have to send a small, well-armed force to
penetrate to that airbase. If there is any surviving complement there, we can
use their help. Like as not they're under siege by these wildmen, too. If there
was a neutron strike, there could have been some personnel in hardened sites or
using hardened equipment who survived. Hopefully for our sake, Armand Teal was
one of them. He was a good man. For an Air Force officer, a good ground
tactician as well. We could use his help if we ever hope to get those warheads
out." Rourke looked at Gundersen, saying, "I've got equipment to clean—the salt
water. After that, I gotta sleep. I'm no good to anyone the way I feel now. If
you can find another inlet further up the coast, then just surface to let us
out, then dive again, maybe go to another inlet, attract a lot of attention,
maybe we can slip through, past the bulk of the wildmen."
"Wildmen—Jesus," Gundersen nodded. "It's hard to imagine—"
"People are afraid," Natalia told him. "Afraid, and fear does a great deal.
During the Second World War, people were easily reduced to depravities—informing
on their friends and families, consuming human excrement to survive—''
Rourke interrupted her. "What she's saying is perfectly valid. Take the basic
kernel of a fanatically violent religious cult—the cult offers a family, an
ordered society, some element of protection. After the war—if you didn 't join
the cult, you'd be an enemy1 of the cult—a heathen, like they
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shouted at us. Either join or die. And apparently to lose in battle and still
live is the ultimate sin, or close to it."
"But such savagery/' Gundersen said, his voice incredulous.
"The vikings—at least some of them—I read once they'd set their beards on fire
as they ran into battle to show their ferocity, their obsession with taking
enemy life was greater than preserving their own. These people are like that.
Wtldmen is more than apt—savage."
Gundersen held his face in his hands for a moment, then looked up, at Rourke,
then at Natalia. "Have all of us done this—with our technology? Have we—ohh,"
and he sighed.
"I think it was Einstein," Natalia began.
"It was," Rourke nodded slowly, his voice little more than a whisper.
"He said that he didn't know what the weapons of World War Three would be when
he was asked once. But he said the weapons of World War Four would be stones and
clubs."
Rourke looked at her, felt the momentary increase of pressure of her hand on his
thigh. "Maybe," he said, his eyes closing, his head resting in his hands, his
voice a whisper, "the dark times—or whatever they'll be called—maybe they've
already begun."
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Chapter 49
Sarah Rourke opened her eyes—she looked at the wrist-watch she had taken from
one of the dead brigands after the attack on the Mulliner farm. It was a Tudor,
the band hopelessly big for her, but the construction simitar to a Rolex like
her husband wore—made by the same company before the Night of The War as she
recalled. It read a little after ten in the morning.
"Ohh—I was tired," she told herself, sitting up, banging her head on the tent
pole above her.
She remembered—where she was—the refugee camp, the resistance commander David
Balfry—how she had fallen asleep dreaming of her husband.
Pete Critchfield, the local commander who had, with Bill Mulliner, taken herself
and the children to the camp had said there were showers.
She sat up on the blankets, searching through her kit— she found a clean
T-shirt, a bra that didn't look too dirty and clean underpants. Mary Mulliner
still slept—Sarah realized the trek would had to have been harder on the older
woman. She decided to find the shower. She had no towel, but perhaps she could
find one—or just be wet—to be clean was more important.
She gathered up the things as she stepped into her tennis shoes, stood up and
stepped through the tent flap, finally rising to her full height. She noticed,
suddenly, that without being aware of it, she had grabbed up the Trapper .45
Bill Mulliner had given her and replaced it in the belt holster on her hip.
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"I'm going crazy," she told herself. She started across the camp, hearing
children laughing, the sounds of play, from the far left end of the camp. She
decided to find her children first—her own two and Millie Jenkins as well. She
started through the camp.
More of the wounded, the habitually injured—they walked the impacted dirt of
what had perhaps once been a front yard and was now a street. Their eyes—she
could see no hope in them.
But the sound of the children laughing—it was nearer. At the furthest extent of
the camp itself but still inside the security perimeter was a corral, white
painted, though as she cut the distance, running her free right hand through her
greasy-feeling hair, she could see the fence paint chipped and cracking.
She could already see Annie, and with her Millie Jenkins and more than two dozen
other children, all seated on the ground, some older girls—teenagers, talking
with them, the children laughing.
She stopped, not wanting to distract her daughter—the children were beginning to
sing a song. Like many more things since the Night of The War, it held religious
overtones—a hymn, but a cheerful sounding one, how Jesus loved little children.
She didn't see Michael, and as she started searching the crowd of singing
children more closely, she noticed his total absence.
"I'm over here," she heard a voice say, the voice shockingly deep, but
recognizable.
She turned, looking at her son—he was growing too fast, she thought absently,
watching him sitting on the running board of a Volkswagen beetle, the car dirty,
dented, but apparently still serviceable.
"What's the matter, Michael?"
He looked up at her, his brown eyes not smiling, the corners of his still
childish mouth downturned, the leanness of his face more pronounced than she
ever remembered
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having seen it. He had killed, he had saved her life and Annie's life—he had
been a man.
"That's stupid—playing. Stupid."
"It's not stupid to play," she began, walking over to him. "Scoot over," and she
nudged against him gently, sitting beside him on the running board of the VW.
"Yes, it is stupid—you know why?"
"No—tell me why," she told him.
"You know why."
"No—no, I don't. What is it? Just because you're a man when I need you, you
figure you can't be a little boy anymore. Well—you are a little boy. You'll be a
man soon enough—don't rush it anymore than you already have."
"That's not what I mean," he answered, looking
up at her.
She folded her arms around him, drawing his head against her right breast. She
heard the other children playing, the singing stopped, the children running off
excess energy, chasing each other around the fenced-in corral.
She held her son very close—the little boy in him had died somewhere and she
started to cry as she held him more tightly against her body.
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Chapter 50
Nehemiah Rozhdestvenskiy ordered the driver of the electric car to stop, then
stepped out.
Its vastness amazed him.
The Womb.
Everywhere, men moved machinery and equipment, weapons, ammunition, food stores.
At the far end of the long, high-vaulted rock chamber he witnessed the
coffm-shaped crates being transported one at a time because of their fragility
on yellow, Hyster forklifts. There would be eventually two thousand of these, if
time permitted. The first one hundred were already being unpacked, connected to
monitoring equipment, being tested for functional reliability.
What they carried meant everything.
The rumble of electric generators being transferred on propane fueled trucks
made an echoing sound.
"Comrade colonel—"
He looked at his driver.
"The future—it is here," he told the man. He told the polished stone of the
walls—he told himself.
The Womb—he smiled as he thought of it. The most important strategic
intelligence operation in the history of mankind—and at least for once, the code
name was apt.
The Womb.
"Yes—drive on." He sat down, closing his eyes as the electric car took him
ahead.
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Chapter 51
Rourke sat with the ship's armorer, the man reassembling an M-16 after having
saturated it in a bath of Break Free CLP. Rourke had done the same with his own
and Rubenstein's guns, getting to the salt water in time to prevent damage. He
assembled Rubenstein's Browning High Power now, the finish a little the worse
for wear but the gun wholly serviceable and no new evidence of rust or pitting.
The armorer had aided Rourke in the detailed reassembly of the German MP-40
submachinegun—the older the weapon, somehow, Rourke had always noted, the
greater the complexity of parts,
The six-inch tubed Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported Colt Python .357 lay on the table
before him, as did both Detonics stainless .45s, the CAR-15 and Rubenstein's
MP-40 Schmeisser there as well—oiled, loaded except for the chamber (the
revolver's cylinder was empty) and ready. A mink oil compound had been used on
his boots and other leather gear, again preventing moisture damage.
The last item—the Russell Sting IA. Carefully, to avoid destroying the black
chrome coating of the steel, he touched up the edge on the fine side of a
whetstone, using the Break-Free as the lubricating agent here as well—he always
preferred oil to water when the former was available.
He leaned back, breathing a long sigh, watching with one level of his
consciousness as the armorer reassembled the trigger group of an M-16, and with
the other level of his consciousness trying to think. The man Cole—there was
something more to him than the swaggering, perhaps
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cowardly, certainly self-serving too-rapidly-promoted military officer he
purported to be. He tried remembering the words of the dying man—that Cole was
not who he seemed to be.
It was a cliche, he realized, but dying men rarely did lie. Other than a last
laugh on the world, what was there to gain from it?
The original orders Rourke had seen. They had clearly indicated to him that Cole
did indeed carry presidential orders—but orders for whom?
More and more, things seemed to point to Cole being someone other than Cole.
Rourke leaned forward in the chair, beginning to load 230-grain Military Ball
.45 ACP into the Detonics magazines. At the Retreat, he had large amounts of
185-grain Jacketed Hollow Points stored.
"At the Retreat," he murmured to himself.
Where he wanted to bring Sarah, Michael, Annie—Natalia, too? And Paul
Rubenstein.
He smiled as he whacked the spine of a fresh loaded magazine against the palm of
his hand to seat the rounds, then began to load another magazine.
He had been a man who had habitually done things alone. He had a wife, two
children. He now had a woman who loved him, whom he loved. And he had a friend
Rubenstein—the wound in his head had not proven serious, nor had any signs of
concussion been evinced during Doctor Milton's twenty-four hours of observation.
In a few hours, the submarine would surface, he and Paul and the enigmatic Cole
and others would start cross country to Filmore Air Force Base, to find the
warheads.
That there would be further fighting with the wild-men—whoever they were—was
obvious to him. Natalia had been grievously wounded, near death. Paul had been
wounded in the last battle.
He had escaped it all—so far. There was no time for him
176
to be injured. The skies became progressively redder, the weather progressively
more bizarre. The thunder which rumbled in the skies was so much a part of
day-to-day existence that he barely noticed it, primarily noting it at all by
its occasional absence.
He tried to remember—had it thundered during the time on land. But then it only
seemed to thunder during the daylight hours. There were books at the Retreat—if
he could find Sarah and the children, perhaps there could be time to study his
books, to learn what was happening, to prepare somehow.
Time—he glanced at the Rolex. Time had become a way of keeping score only.
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Chapter 52
Two reports troubled him. He stuffed his feet awkwardly into his shoes, standing
as he pushed away from his desk. Both reports were related, really.
General Ishmael Varakov—he read the sign on the front of his desk in his office
without walls in what had been the Natural History Museum in Chicago. "Supreme
Commander, Soviet North American Army of Occupation."
"Supreme commander," he muttered. If he were as "supreme" as the sign indicated,
the two reports would not have concerned him as greatly.
He started to walk across the great hall and toward the nearer of the two
staircases which led to the small mezzanine, so he could better overlook the
main hail.
The first report concerned additional data on the American Eden Project and the
related post-holocaust scenario which had necessitated the creation of the Eden
Project from the very beginning. Had he been a man given to profanity, he
realized he would have used it. Where was Natalia? He had sent her with the Jew,
Paul Rubenstein, to get the American Rourke, to give him the note.
He started up the stairs toward the mezzanine, his feet hurting. He scratched
his belly once under his unbuttoned uniform tunic. Natalia and the young Jew had
been dropped by plane near "The Retreat," the place the American Rourke had.
Perhaps Rourke would not come. The obsession—a laudable one as obsessions
went�
��with finding his wife and children. But, surely he thought, a man such as
Rourke
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could not ignore the letter.
Perhaps—it was a possibility—the ghost-like Rourke, the man neither brigand
killers nor Soviet Armies had been able to capture or murder, was somehow dead.
What would Natalia do?
She would return—as Rourke would have done—to learn the rest of the information,
what she could do. The young American Jew—he would come with her.
As Varakov stopped at the mezzanine railing, slightly out of breath, weary, he
wondered if perhaps all of them had been killed. Rourke, Rubenstein, his niece
Natalia.
"What will I do then?" he murmured.
"Comrade general?"
The voice was soft, uncertain. He turned. "Yes, Catherine."
"Comrade general," the girl began. "These papers— they require your signature."
"Hmmph," he said, turning away, studying the figures of the mastodons which
dominated the center of the great hall. "Soon, Catherine—we shall be like them."