Paul’s gun had stopped firing.
She reached the lean-to. Rubenstein was locked in combat with three men.
She heard Paul’s subgun discharge though” she couldn’t see it; one of the
men fell back, stumbling into the fire, his body and clothes now aflame.
Natalia fired her revolver once into the man’s head to put him out of his
agony. Then having taken two steps closer to Paul, she half-turned,
balancing in the snow on her right foot. Her left foot snaked out, giving
a double savate kick to th# head of the nearest of the two remaining men.
The man fell back against the bridge support, and she could see Paul now,
his right arm bound up in the sling for his subgun, his left hand holding
back the knife of his opponent, clutched around the man’s right wrist.
The subgun fell away; Paul’s right fist hammered up, into the midsection
of the vastly larger man.
Natalia’s instincts told her something.
She wheeled, emptying the revolver in her right hand into two men charging
for her. She wheeled again. No time for the revolver in her left hand, she
dropped the Metalife Custom L-Frame from her right fist, snatching in the
same motion for the Bali-Song knife in the right side hip pocket of her
jump suit.
Her thumb flicked open the lock as her right arm hauled back. The closed
knife sailed from her grip as she threw her arm forward. From beyond the
windbreak, a man advanced against her with an assault rifle. The
stainless-steel Bali-Song glinted in the firelight as it rotated in the
air, the handle halves splitting open.
The man with the assault rifle stopped in his tracks, both hands out at
his sides, the rifle falling from his grip. The handle slabs of her knife
were flat against the front of his coat, making a horizontal line. The
body sagged, then fell forward, into the fire, and Natalia, as she
snatched the revolver from her left holster, could smell his flesh burning
on the wind.
Rubenstein! She could see him, his left hand still locked on the knife
wrist of the man he fought. Suddenly his right arm hauled back, then
flashed forward, his bunched-together right fist smashing into the nose of
the larger man. The man’s knife hand went limp; the knife fell.
As the man fell.back, Rubenstein snatched at the pistol from his belt,
firing the High Power almost point-blank into the man’s midsection as the
body stumbled, then collapsed.
“Two outside, maybe,” she snapped, the revolver sailing from her left hand
into her right as she rounded the edge of the bridge support.
She ran hard, reaching the far side, making the corner. An assault rifle
at the shoulder of one of the two men there started opening up, its
flashes blinding against the snowy darkness. She stabbed the revolver
forward in her hands and double-actioned it twice. The man’s head
shuddered under the impact of the slugs, his body falling, as the assault
rifle fired uselessly up into the night sky.
She wheeled. Firing the L-Frame again at the last of the two, she heard
the chattering of Paul’s submachine gun as well. The body of the last of
the attackers rolled, twisted, lurched under the impact of the slugs
hammer-
ing at it; then it was still. “Too bad,” she said.
She heard Paul’s voice. “Yeah—what a waste of human life.”
“That, too,” she told him. “But with all the bullet holes, none of their
coats will do us much good for added warmth.” She started back toward the
windbreak, saying, “Check that they’re all dead while I get my other gun
and the knife.” She felt very cold, and realized Paul probably thought her
colder. “If any of them aren’t dead—tell me,” she added.
She sat down, picking up her gun, not yet ready mentally to retrieve the
Bali-Song knife. The gun was undamaged. Automatically, she emptied the
revolver of the spent cases, then reloaded it with one of the remaining
Speedloaders. She loaded the second revolver as well, holstering both
guns; then, her hands trembling, she lit a cigarette.
“Tired!” she screamed.
John Rourke looked at the Rolex; the exterior of the crystal was steamed
so he smudged it away with his right £love, then studied the time. It was
eight-thirty. A good time for a party, he thought—the shank of the
evening.
He leaned against the pine trunk, staring down into the valley, the wind
behind him now) the sweater pulled down from covering his head, his
leather jacket unzipped and wide open. The Bushnell Armored Xs focused
under his hands as he swept them across the valley floor. A town—a perfect
town, nothing changed. A blue-grass band was playing in the town square,
strains of the music barely audible in the distance; children played
behind a crowd of spectators surrounding the band; a car moved along the
far side of the town, its lights setting a pattern of zigzags in the
shadows where the streetlights didn’t hit.
For an instant only, Rourke questioned his own sanity, then dismissed the
idea.
He was sane; it was what he saw that wasn’t sane.
He took out one of his dark tobacco cigars, rolling it across his mouth
between his teeth to the left corner, then letting the Bushnell binoculars
dangle down from the strap around his neck. He found his lighter, and
flicking the Zippo, touched the tip of the cigar nearly into the flame.
Drawing, he felt the smoke in his lungs as he inhaled.
He and Natalia and Paul had often talked about it—a world gone mad; but
beneath him now, on the valley floor, was a world that hadn’t changed. Was
that madness? He closed his eyes, listening to the music. . . .
Comfortable with his leather jacket open^-he would have worn it now if he
had been hot because it concealed the twin stainless Detonics .s—he rode
the Harley into the town, his Python and the hip holster hidden in his
pack, the CAR- still wrapped in the blanket. At least it would take a
reasonably knowledgeable curious person to determine that it was a gun.
He could hear the music more clearly now as he passed a small school; the
facility would handle perhaps three hundred students, he decided. From the
high ground inside the lip of the valley, he had seen most of the town in
relief against the valley floor, but the details had been lost. Now he
could see it more clearly. No evidence of looting, bombing, fire,s—nothing
that showed there had ever been a war. The Night of the War hadn’t touched
this place.
He felt like Hilton’s very British hero, entering Shangri-La and leaving
the storm behind him.
“The storm,” he whispered to himself. Both literally and figuratively, a
storm.
He stopped his Harley-Davidson Low Rider for a stop sign; a police car was
across from him at the other side of the four-way stop.
Rourke ran his fingers through his hair, then gave the cop a wave and a
nod as he started. The police prowl car moved slowly, the policeman
lighting his dome light,
looking but saying nothing as Rourke passed the vehicle.
Rourke chewed down on the burned out stub of his cigar now. Reaching the
end of a storybook residential street, he turned left after slowing for a
yield sign, a public library on his right as he started toward the lights
of the square. A young girl wearing a dress sat on the steps of the
library building, with a boy of the same age sitting beside her, the two
talking.
The boy looked up, and Rourke gave him a nod, driving on. He passed the
post office; the street angled slightly toward the town square.
He stopped the Harley beside the curb, staring at what he saw. It was just
as he’d seen it from above—a band flaying, some younger people dancing,
clogging or step-dancing, children running and playing, some tugging on
their mothers—perhaps two hundred people in all around the square.
He turned off the key for the Harley. He couldn’t help himself as he sat
there, listening to the music, but hearing different music—a song he and
Sarah had always called their own song, danced to so many times. In the
faces of the strange children, Rourke saw the faces of his own. What he
couldn’t stop, what he felt—tears—a world gone.
Had Sarah seen him, he smiled, she would have thought he was almost human.
. . .
The blue-grass band had stopped, and a record player was humming through
the loudspeakers; there was the scratching sound of a needle against
plastic, then a country song, and through a momentary niche in the wall of
humanity surrounding the center of the square he saw more children—girls
in green-and-white plaid dresses with short skirts and petticoats that
made the skirts stand
away from their legs, the oldest of the girls perhaps twelve, the youngest