pulling back the blanket from the baby's face. The flesh was cold to his touch,
the complexion blue-tinged. "This child is dead," Rourke said softly, dropping
the blanket back over the infant's face and staring up skyward to where the
woman holding the child was mumbling a prayer.
They spent several hours with the refugees, some thirty in all, Rourke doing
what he could, Natalie finally getting the woman to release her dead baby, then
helping Rubenstein bury the child by the side of the road. The people were from
a town some fifteen miles or so up ahead, a place Rourke had never heard of.
There had been a cafe and a U.S. Border Patrol Station there. Brigands had come,
the woman said, starting to pick up the story then, rocking back and forth on
her knees on the ground, her dirty face tear-streaked, blood on the front of her
dress from the dead infant she had carried through the night.
"My Jim and I was sleepin'—he was tossin' and turnin' so much that it woke me up
and I couldn't get back to sleep. I kept wonderin' if the radiation from the
bombs was gonna get to us and kill my baby." She choked back a sob then, Natalie
putting her arm around the woman's shoulders, the woman coughing and going on,
"… and then I heard all this commotion. Engine noises, gunshots, screamin' and
all. I thought maybe somethin' good was happenin', like maybe there were U.S.
troops coming in, or the Border Patrol men had come back. I got up and looked
out the window and saw them…" Her voice trailed off into a whisper, then she
began again. "There was maybe a couple hundred of them—all of them kinda young,
some of them ridin' motorcycles, some of them in pickup trucks or jeeps. Some of
our folks started runnin' out into the streets, some of the men shootin' at the
strangers, but they all got shot down or run over. They started smashin' and
burnin' everythin' then, stealin' everythin' like they owned the whole world or
somethin'. Jim was up then and he took his rifle and ran out after them and
they—" the woman stopped, crying now uncontrollably, her head sinking to her
breast, Natalie wrapping the woman in her arms.
An old man, sitting on the ground beside Rourke began talking, "They took those
of us they didn't kill and lined us up in the street. Just gunned down some of
us for fun it looked like, raped some of the women there in the street makin' us
all watch, took some of the women with 'em, looted all the houses and the couple
stores we had, took every gun in town, all the food and water they could find
and told us to go before they changed their minds about wastin' the bullets and
just killin' us all."
Rourke looked away from the man, hearing Natalie say, "They must be up ahead of
us, somewhere."
Rubenstein muttered, "I hope we get to meet them."
Rourke looked at Natalie, then at Paul Rubenstein, slowly then saying, "Chances
are we'll meet up with them. Anybody see who shot that woman's baby—what he
looked like?"
The woman Natalie had folded in her arms suddenly stopped crying, looking up at
Rourke, saying, "I saw him. Not too tall, thin kind of and had blonde hair,
curly and pretty like a girl maybe, and this little beard on the end of his
chin. Carried a long, fancy-lookin' pistol—that's what he used to kill my baby,
that's what he killed her with."
Rourke leaned forward to the woman, huddled there in Natalie's arms, saying
slowly, deliberately, his voice almost a whisper. "I can't promise you we'll
find that man, but I can promise you that if we do I'll kill him for you."
Rourke started to turn away and caught Natalie's blue eyes staring at him. He
didn't look away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
"You must assume the presidency sir," the green fatigue-clad air force colonel
said, leaning forward in the mustard-colored overstuffed chair, his blue eyes
focused tight on the lanky Samuel Chambers.
Chambers held up his left hand for silence, leaned back in the leather-covered
easy chair and began to speak. "Colonel Darlington—you and everyone here urge me
to essentially 'crown' myself as president of the United States—when I'm not
even sure there still is a United States. According to Captain Reed's contact
through army channels before the army ceased to function as a unified command,
Soviet landings were anticipated in Chicago and several other major U.S. cities
that were neutron-bombed. We could and probably do have thousands of Soviet
troops already in the country and thousands more on the way. The worse the
damage our forces did to them, the more desperate they'll be to utilize our
surviving factories and natural resources to get their own country back on its
feet. And what about the radiation fallout, the famine, the economic collapse we
are facing now? Is there actually a country—even a world—that's going to be able
to go on, even if it wants to? Answer me that colonel!" Chambers concluded.
Captain Reed leaned forward in his chair, a Sherlockian pipe—unlit—clamped in
the left corner of his thin-lipped mouth. He snatched at the pipe with his left
hand, pointed with the stem and said, "I've been listening to this sir, and I've
reached one conclusion, and I think it should be obvious to everyone here by
now. We're talking about a situation of mass confusion out there. The former
president did what he had to do. Had he stayed alive, essentially trapped in his
retreat, the Soviets could have used him for whatever they wanted to—with or
without his cooperation. But you're different, sir." Reed leaned back, glanced
briefly around the room and went on. "Your sentiments against Communism on a
philosophical basis are widely known, so putting words in your mouth would be
useless. They don't have you trapped in one spot—they don't know where you are.
Now we can see that apparently there are people still alive, there are armed
citizens out there willing to fight someone—but someone has to point them in the
right direction, to channel what they're doing. Maybe that's the word. We need
someone to channel the energies of the country. We need a leader and we don't
have that now. And there's no one else but you, sir."
Reed sat back, glancing around the room again, then looking down to the floor as
if studying the toes of his combat boots.
Colonel Darlington, after a long silence, said softly, "The captain is right—he
put it better than any of us," then staring intently at Chambers, said, "Mr.
President."
Chambers looked at Darlington, then at Reed and then at the others there in the
room—Randan Soames, commander of the Texas Militia, volunteer paramilitary
group; Federal Judge Arthur Bennington; his own aide, George Cripp.
Chambers lit a cigarette, saying through the cloud of smoke as he stared down in
front of him, "Perhaps Judge Bennington could find a Bible so that he can
administer the Oath. After that, gentlemen, I'll anticipate we'll be proceeding
with this organizational conference well into tomorrow morning." Chambers
looked up, catching the judge's eye, saying, "Arthur—whenever you're ready."
Moments later, Chambers stood in the garden, swore to protect and defend the
Constitution of the Uni
ted States, so help him God. His aide, George Cripp, was
the first to address him afterward as "Mr. President."
Chapter Twenty-Six
Natalie had kept the four-barreled COP derringer-type pistol, giving the other
guns Rourke had salvaged from the jeep and the brigands she had killed to the
most likely-looking of the refugee group. Rourke, Rubenstein—by now
understanding firearms reasonably well—and Natalie showed the new gun owners how
to employ them. Sharing the water and food left Rourke and Rubenstein and the
girl with enough to reach Van Horn and nothing more. Before parting company with
the refugee party early the next morning, Rourke sent Rubenstein back down the
road in the direction in which the refugee party would be traveling, to scout
twenty miles ahead, then come back. The younger man, dark hair whipping across
his high forehead, eyes squinted both against the sun and apparently to keep the
perpetually slipping wire-rimmed glasses from falling off the bridge of his
nose, returned almost exactly forty minutes later, reporting nothing up ahead
for the refugees—and nothing close behind for Rourke.
Rourke, the girl he knew as Natalie sitting behind him on his bike, watched
until the refugee group had straggled a hundred yards or so down the road, then
turned to Rubenstein, straddling the Harley beside him. Rourke glanced at the
smaller man, noting that the complexion which had been pallid only days earlier,
an added leanness about Rubenstein's face. Rourke exhaled slowly, saying, "Well,
partner—about ready?"
Rubenstein looked at him, saying nothing, and nodded, then hurriedly pushed his
glasses off the bridge of his nose. "You know, Paul," Rourke smiled, "We've
gotta do something about getting those glasses fixed." Not looking at the girl
behind him, Rourke said, "Hold on—I want to make some time." Rourke pushed the
sleeves of his already sweat-stained light blue shirt up past his elbows, ran
the long fingers of his hands back through his brown hair, then started his Low
Rider, cutting a slow arc off the road shoulder and back onto the highway. A
road sign a hundred yards off to his right, faded from the sunlight, read: "Van
Horn—75 miles."
They rode in silence, flanking the yellow line at the center of the road. Rourke
checked his speedometer, his odometer and then the Rolex wristwatch, then bored
his eyes back up the road and gunned the cycle harder. They had driven for just
under an hour when Rourke signaled to Rubenstein and started cutting across the
right-hand lane to pull up alongside the right shoulder. Ahead of them stretched
a low, bridged highway running past smokeless high chimneys, and beyond that
were the faint outlines of buildings scorching under the already intense sun.
Rourke glanced at his watch—the Rolex read nearly ten A.M. now. As Rubenstein
pulled beside him, Rourke said quietly, "Van Horn," and gestured toward the
lifeless-seeming factories and beyond.
"It looks dead," Rubenstein said, squinting against the light.
"Does," Rourke commented.
"What do we do?" It was Natalie, leaning over his shoulder.
"Well," Rourke began slowly. "We need food and water, and Rubenstein here could
use some clip-on sunglasses before the glare does permanent damage to his eyes.
You could probably stand some things. And we could use some more gasoline. I
promised I'd get you as far as I could toward Galveston. I don't know yet
whether Paul and I are going to have to go down that far to find a safe way of
getting onto the other side of the Mississippi. From what I was able to judge
from the air that night—the night of the war— it looked as though that entire
area should be nothing but a nuclear desert. But there's no way of telling that
from here—unless you know something."
He craned his neck and looked at the girl, who smiled at him, saying, "Remember,
I hadn't even heard about the war until you and Paul told me?"
"Yeah, I remember that," Rourke said slowly. "I guess though it sort of strikes
me as odd that you seem so good with a gun, seem to have seen refugees close up
before, and that somewhere in the back of each of our minds we remember each
other from somewhere. I just thought maybe some vibrations or something might
have come to you about the Mississippi Delta region."
"Sorry," the girl said, as though dismissing Rourke's remark.
"Right—sorry," Rourke echoed. "Well, since you just seem to have this mystical
skill with borrowed handguns and submachine guns, when we get down into Van
Horn, until we rearm you with something more than that little pea-shooter you've
got, why don't you snatch my Python out of the leather here in case some
shooting starts. I think if you study it for a while, you can figure out how it
works. Right?"
The girl smiled again, almost whispering, "I'd imagine I can."
"Good," Rourke said softly, then turning to Rubenstein, "Paul, there's one main
drag down there, probably. When we hit the town, I'll wait five minutes, you cut
down along the perimeter as fast as you can, then turn into the main street and
start back toward me. Those brigands who destroyed that town those refugees came
from are up ahead of us somewhere. I figure they probably already attacked Van
Horn, but some of them could have hung around. People like that are usually
pretty loose organizationally, coming and going when they please. Keep that
thing you call a Schmeisser ready, huh?"
"Gotcha," Rubenstein said, swinging the submachine gun off his back and
slinging it under his arm.
Mag-Na-Ported—gas-venting slots on each side of the barrel. So it won't give you
as much felt recoil as you might expect."
"I don't understand," the girl said.
He turned his head and looked at her a moment, saying, "Just fake it," a smile
crossing his lips.
He started the Harley Davison Low Rider between his legs into first and back
onto the highway and toward the bridge. The buildings coming up on his right
were gray factory smokestacks from light industry. Rourke's Harley was halfway
across the bridge now, and from the elevation he could look beyond the largely
flat rooflines and into the town and beyond that into the gray-seeming desert.
There was no sign of life. The winds were coming strong and Rourke tacked the
Harley into them to keep their buffeting effect from flipping the big bike down.
Three-quarters of the way across the bridge he angled right, trying to keep
quartering into the wind as he did, heading the bike down and onto the off ramp
into the town. Rubenstein, behind him as he looked back, was evidently having
greater problems handling the heavy winds.
As Rourke's Harley dipped below the level of the bridge, the bridge itself
seemed to block the winds and he swerved slightly left, then straightened out,
coming to a slow halt at the base of the ramp, then cutting a lazy figure eight
in the street fronting it as he scouted in both directions, then heading right
from the direction he'd come and into the town itself. Th
e main street seemed
some two blocks ahead, Rourke gauged, and he waved Rubenstein down along a
narrow side street, glancing over his shoulder, watching the younger man sharply
turning the bike and disappearing behind an intact but deserted-appearing
building.
Rourke reached the main street, slowed and cut a gentle arc in the large
intersection there and came to a stop. "It looks like everyone just vanished,"
Natalie commented.
"I've got a bad feeling about this place," Rourke said, staring down the street,
waiting to see Rubenstein reappear approximately a half-mile down.
"A Neutron bomb?" the girl asked, her voice hushed.
"Now what would a nice young lady like you know about Neutron bombs?" Rourke
said, not looking at her. He settled his sunglasses and pulled back the
bolt-charging handle on the CAR-15, setting the safety on and swinging the
collapsible stock Colt's muzzle away from the bike and into the empty street.
"It's not a Neutron bomb," he said. "Look over there."
He watched over his shoulder as the girl turned, looking in the general
direction the CAR-15 was pointed. Scrawny but healthy trees were growing in a
small square. "No," he said. "Everybody just left—or mostly everybody."
He glanced down to his watch, then back up the street.
"Where's Paul?" Natalie asked. He could feel her breath against his right ear.
"That's just what I was starting to ask myself," Rourke muttered, his voice a
whispered monotone. "It might not be a bad idea, you know, for you to reach
around my waist, unbuckle my gunbelt and put that Python on yourself—you might
need the spare ammo on the belt."
Rourke felt the woman's hands and arms encircling his waist.
He helped her undo the buckle, craned his neck and watched as she slung the
cammie-patterned gunbelt from her right shoulder across to her left hip, the
Python in its flap holster on her left side, butt forward.
"You ready?"
The girl took the massive revolver from the leather and nodded.
"Okay," Rourke said softly, starting the bike down the center of the deserted
street.
He stared ahead of them, whispering over the hum of the Harley's engine, "Did
you just see something moving in that space between buildings about twenty-five