Rourke skidded the Harley into a tight left, realizing he was almost past the abandoned truck trailer. He took the bike in a tight circle around it as Rubenstein approached. As he completed the 360 degrees he stopped alongside the younger man’s machine. “Common carrier,” Rourke said softly. “Abandoned. After we run the Geiger counter over it we can check what’s inside-might be something useful. Shut off your bike. I don’t think we’re gonna find any gas here.”
Rourke unstrapped the Geiger counter from the back of his Harley and gave it to Rubenstein. He watched as the smaller man carefully checked the truck trailer; the radiation level proved normal. Rourke walked up to the double doors at the rear of the trailer and visually inspected the lock.
“You gonna shoot it off?” Rubenstein was asking, suddenly beside him. Rourke turned and looked at him. “You’ve gotten awful violent lately, haven’t you? We got a prybar?”
“Nothin’ big,” the other man said.
“Well,” Rourke said, drawing the Metalifed Colt Python from the holster on his right hip, “then I guess I’m going to shoot it off. Stand over there,” he gestured back toward the motorcycles. Once Rubenstein was clear, Rourke took a few steps back and on angle to the lock, raised the Magnnaported six-inch barrel on line with the lock and thumbed back the hammer. He touched the first finger of his right hand to the trigger, his fist locked on the Colt Medallion Pachmayr grips, the .357 Magnum 158-grain semi-jacketed soft point round slamming into the lock, the mechanism visibly shattering. Rourke holstered the revolver. As Rubenstein started for the lock, he cautioned, “It might be hot,” but Rubenstein was already reaching for it, pulling his hand away as his fingers contacted the metal.
“I said it might be hot,” Rourke whispered. “Friction.” Rourke walked to the edge of the shoulder, bent down and picked up a medium sized rock, then walked back to the trailer door and knocked the shattered lock off the hasp with the rock, throwing the rock aside. “Now open it,” Rourke said slowly. Rubenstein fumbled the hasp for a moment, then cleared it and tugged on the doors. “You’ve got to work that bar lock,” Rourke advised.
Rubenstein started trying to pivot the bar and Rourke stepped beside him. “Here-watch.” Rourke swung the bar clear, then opened the right hand door, reached inside and worked the closure on the left hand door, then opened it as well.
“Just boxes,” Rubenstein said, staring inside the truck.
“It’s what’s in them that counts. We could stand to re-supply.”
“But isn’t that stealing, John?”
“A few days ago, before the War, it was stealing. Now it’s foraging. There’s a difference,” Rourke said quietly, boosting himself onto the rear of the truck trailer.
“What do you want to forage?” Rubenstein said, throwing himself onto the truck, then dragging his legs after him.
Rourke, using the Sting 1A from its inside-the-pants sheath, cut open the tape on a small box and said, “Well-what do I want to forage? This might be nice.” Reaching into the box, he extracted a long rectangular box about as thick as a pack of cigarettes. “.45 ACP ammo-it’s even my brand and bullet weight-185-grain JHPs.”
“Ammunition?”
“Yeah-jobbers or wholesalers used certain common carriers to ship firearms and ammunition to dealers. I’d hoped we’d find some of this. Find yourself some 9-mm Parabellum-may as well stick to solids so you can use it in that M-40 as well as the Browning High Power you’re carrying. If you come across any guns, let me know.”
Rourke started working his way through the truck, opening each box in turn unless the label clearly indicated something useless to him. There were no guns, but he found another consignment of ammunition-.357 Magnum, 125-grain semi-jacketed hollow points. He put several boxes aside in case he didn’t find the bullet weight he wanted.
“Hey, John? Why don’t we take all of this stuff-all the ammo, I mean?”
Rourke glanced back to Rubenstein. “How are we going to carry it? I can use .308, .223, .45 ACP and .357-and that’s too much. I’ve got ample supplies of ammunition back at the retreat once we get there.”
“That’s still close to fifteen hundred miles, isn’t it?” Rubenstein’s voice had suddenly lost all its enthusiasm.
Rourke looked at him, saying nothing.
“Hey, John-you want some spare clips-I mean magazines-for your rifle?”
Rourke looked up. Rubenstein held thirty-round AR-15 magazines in his hands-a half dozen. “Are they actual Colt?”
Rubenstein stared at the magazines a moment, Rourke saying, “Look on the bottom-on the floorplate.”
“Yeah-they are.”
“Take ’em along then,” Rourke said, opening a box of baby food in small glass jars, said, “now go and see if you can find something to use as a sack to carry all this stuff. I’m going to take some of this baby food-it’s full of protein and sugar and vitamins.”
“I have a little-I mean had-a little nephew back in New York that…” and Rubenstein’s voice began noticeably tightening, “that stuff tastes terrible.”
“But it can keep us alive,” Rourke said, with a note of finality.
Rubenstein started to turn and go out of the trailer, then looked back to Rourke, saying, “John-New York is gone, isn’t it? My nephew-his parents. I had a girl. We weren’t serious but we might have gotten serious. But it’s gone.”
“Yeah,” Rubenstein said, his voice odd sounding to Rourke. “I guess-” Rourke looked up, Rubenstein was already climbing out of the trailer. Rourke searched the remaining boxes quickly. He found some flashlight batteries, bar type shaving soap prepacked in small mugs, and safety razors and blades. He rubbed the stubble on his face, took a safety razor and as many packs of blades as he could cram in the breast pocket of his sweat-stained blue shirt, one of the mugs and several bars of soap. He found another consignment of ammunition-158 grain semi-jacketed soft point .357s and took eight boxes of fifty. With it were some .223 solids and he took several hundred rounds of these as well. He carried what he wanted in two boxes back to the rear of the trailer and helped Rubenstein climb inside with the sack to carry it all. They crammed the sack full and Rourke jumped down to the road, boosting it onto his left shoulder and carrying it toward the bikes. “We’re going to have to split up this load,” he said.
As Rourke turned toward his bike, he heard Rubenstein’s voice and over it the clicking of bolts-from assault rifles. Without moving he looked up, heard Rubenstein repeat, “John!”
Slowly, Rourke raised to his full height, squinting against the glare through his sunglasses. A dozen men-in some sort of uniform-were on the far side of the road. Slowly, he turned around, and behind him, on Rubenstein’s side of the road beside the abandoned truck trailer, were at least a half-dozen more.
All the men carried assault rifles of mixed heritages-and all the guns were trained on Rourke and Rubenstein…