“No, Mrs. Richards-we just got into different air space and out of his frequency. No, he didn’t die-yet.”
“Maybe the boy was right,” Mrs. Richards said. Rourke looked at the woman.
“Now, as long as we’re alive,” he said, “we’ve got a chance. Once we give up and lie down, that’s it.”
“My husband was in California,” Mrs. Richards said.
“I have a wife and two children back in Georgia,” Rourke replied.
“But they could still be alive. I know my husband is dead. Maybe that boy was just a liar,” she started. “A liar-he was just lying because he didn’t know-it couldn’t have just fallen into-”
“I don’t think he was lying, Mrs. Richards,” Rourke said, quietly.
“Do you think my husband could have survived?” she asked softly.
“Honest?” Rourke queried.
“Yes,” she said.
“No-I don’t. Even if he was on the right side of the fault line, the tidal wave would have gotten him. I had, I guess, a friend in San Diego-told me once that if the San Andreas fault ever went, he’d be okay. His office and his house were on the continental side. I didn’t have the heart to remind him about the tidal wave. See, when those mountains slipped off and all the land on the other side, the impact and the added mass, as well as the slipping motion itself-all that figured in to create a tsunami and then flood the lowland. I don’t know where the new coastline will wind up.”
“Why should I live?” she moaned. “There’s nothing left. Nothing to live for. Why live now?” She said it like a chant.
Rourke looked at Mrs. Richards, then slowly said, “That’s a question you’re going to have to answer for yourself, ma’am. And I hope you can. Now, lets try to fly this plane, and get everyone down, huh?”
He kept watching her. She did not seem hysterical or beside herself, but her eyes filled with tears. Finally, she turned to him, whispering, “Maybe you just said it-we got all those people back there, haven’t we?”
“Yes-we have,” Rourke said slowly. “And all they’ve got right now is us.”
“What will it be like-on the ground. If we make it, I mean?”
“Well, your guess is as good as mine. But I don’t see humanity coming to a screeching halt, if that’s what you mean. Maybe civilization, but humanity will find a way of going on. It always has, always will. Now,” he said, turning and facing the control panel, “like the man said, let’s see if this mother’ll fly. You got charge of the instruction book.”
Rourke put his hands on the controls, killed the auto pilot switch, and throttled back to get the feel. Suddenly, the plane shuddered.
“Mr. Rourke!” Mrs. Richards shouted.
“That wasn’t me, lady. That was the explosion down there.” Already, he was hauling back on the controls and throttling forward. “Hit that seat-belt sign, Mrs. Richards, and get on the PA and tell everyone to settle in. I gotta climb before that blast cooks us”‘
Mrs. Richards picked up the microphone for the PA, then asked, “Was that another missile that hit?”
“No-we were over an oil refinery, is my guess. It just blew.” Almost as the words left his mouth, the plane shuddered, and he locked his fists tighter on the controls. “Hit that seat-belt sign, huh!”
Chapter Twenty-four
Sarah Rourke crouched by the inside of the barn door, her right hand clutching the shotgun, her left arm around both children.
“Who is it, Mama?” Michael whispered.
“Shh,” she rasped, looking into the yard between the barn and the house.
Four men and a woman were the object of her gaze. All were in their middle or late twenties, it looked. They stood around a late-model van with a smashed right front fender. They had guns in their hands. She recognized one of them-a military-type weapon, an M16, she thought. It looked similar to a gun her husband used a lot, but the rear portion of the stock was different.
“Hello in the house!” the woman in the yard shouted. Annie started to speak, “Mommy-she said hello to our house,” then started to laugh. As Sarah turned and put her hand over the little girl’s mouth, she realized that the five in the yard had probably already heard Annie.
When she looked back into the yard, two of the men were gone, and the other two men and the woman were staring toward the barn.
“Hey-who’s in the barn?”
Sarah was paralyzed. If she shouted back, they’d realize-no matter what she told them-that there was no man. But if she said nothing?
“I said, who’s in the barn?” The voice was rough and angry.
“I am,” Sarah shouted back.
It was one of the men who spoke. “Just who are you?”
“I’m a woman with a gun, mister. Come any closer and you’ll find out who I am.” Sarah Rourke was surprised that the words had come from her mouth.
Suddenly, from behind her in the back of the barn she heard a voice “Drop the shotgun, lady-or I kill the kids.”
Sarah Rourke wheeled around on her knees, releasing the children and bringing her left hand onto the shotgun. Michael was starting to get up. “Stay still, Michael,” she screamed. The man who had spoken-there was another man behind him-was standing in the loft of the barn, the military rifle in his hands.
“Drop it, lady. We ain’t gonna hurt ya. Unless you put up a fight.”
“You leave my mother alone!” Michael shouted, his voice sounding younger and smaller to Sarah than she’d thought it could.
Behind her, Sarah heard footsteps. Then the woman’s voice “We got you covered, lady-drop the shotgun and move away from it.”
Bitterly, with a feeling of great failure, she dropped the shotgun.
“Okay.” it was the man who’d talked before from the loft. “Move away from the kids.”
“No,” Sarah shouted.
“Move-or they get it.”
Sarah looked up at him. “No, please don’t.” Suddenly, she was angry. She knew that John would not want her to beg these people. And she knew that she wouldn’t. As she started to edge across the barn floor, she saw Michael out of the corner of her eye. He was starting to walk toward their bags in the corner. No one was watching him.
“All right, lady-on the ground,” the man in the loft commanded.
“What you gonna do, Eddie?” It was the woman.
“I’m gonna get me a piece. Then I’ll see.
“Not in front of her kids, Eddie!”
“Why, maybe they’ll enjoy it.” Then-Sarah watched his eyes across the distance that separated them-“Okay, lady-down.” Sarah started to drop to her knees, watching the man coming down the ladder from the loft. She had lost sight of Michael, but saw a pitchfork in the opposite corner of the barn, perhaps ten feet away.
“All right, Eddie-me and Pete and Al can go check the house.” Sarah watched as the woman and the other two men left. Then she turned her eyes back to the man, who had reached the foot of the ladder and was turned to face her.
“I ain’t had no head for a while. Maybe we’ll get started with that. Stay right there on your knees, lady, or the kids get it.” The man started toward her. Her eyes were looking past him-to the pitch-fork. As she turned to look up into his eyes, he shouted “Goddamnit-” and started to fall forward against her. His body fell onto her and she pushed against him.
She saw the boning knife she’d taken from the house-it was buried up to the handle in the man’s right kidney. In the same instant, she saw Michael, standing where the man had been a second earlier.
“Take daddy’s gun, Mommy!” he shouted. She found herself reaching for it. The dead man was still half on top of her, and her legs were pinned. The .45 was in her hands now. She looked to the loft. The second man was already halfway down the ladder. She held the gun, cocked the hammer back, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She held the gun more tightly, pointed it, and tried the trigger again-the gun jumped in her hand. The shot rang in her ears, and the man fell from the ladder, his rifle sailing out of his hands. Sarah worked her legs under the weight of the dead man and pulled free. She stared at Michael. She knew in the back of her mind that the other two men and the woman would be coming any minute.
“Michael?” She looked again at the knife in the first man’s kidney.
“Daddy said that when he’s gone, I’m the man of the family.”
Sarah Rourke swept her six-year-old son into her arms, holding him tight against her.
“Mommy!” It was Annie screaming. Sarah, on her knees, turned, the .45 Colt automatic still in her right hand. It was the woman. She was aiming a revolver at Annie.