“A lot of us survived—not everyone’s dead.”
“I know that, but it must be terrible out there—a world like that.”
“They know Fm not your brother.”
“I know they do,” Martha Bogen said, “but it won’t matter—so long as you
pretend.”
Rourke shook his head, looking at her, saying, his voice low,
“Pretend—what the hell is going on here?”
“I can’t -explain it well enough for you to understand, Abe—”
“It’s John. I told you that.”
“John. Walk me home, then just sleep on the couch; it looks like there’s
bad weather outside the valley tonight. Then tomorrow with a good meal in
you—not just those terrible hot dogs—well, you can decide what you want to
do.”
Rourke stopped beside his bike. “I won’t stay—not now,” he told her, the
hairs on the back of his neck standing up, telling him something more than
he could imagine was wrong.
“Did you see the police on the way into town—John?”
“So what?” He looked at her.
ffThey let anyone in, but they won’t Jet you out. And at night you won’t
stand a chance unless you know the valley. I know the valley. Before he
died, my husband used to take me for long walks. He hunted the valley a
lot—white-tailed deer. I know every path there is.”
Rourke felt the corners of his mouth downturning. “How long ago did your
husband die?”
“He was a doctor. You have hands like a doctor, John. Good hands. He died
five years ago. There was an influenza outbreak in the valley and he
worked himself
half to death; children, pregnant women—all of them had it. And he caught
it and he died.”
“I’m sorry, Martha,” Rourke told her genuinely. “But J cant stay.”
“We have twelve policemen and they work twelve-hour shifts lately—six men
on and six off. Can you fight twelve policemen to get out of town—into a
storm?” She stroked his face with her right hand. “You need a shave. I’ll
bet a hot shower would be good, and a warm bed.”
Her face flushed, then she added, “In the guest room, I meant.”
Rourke nodded. There was no strategic reserve site for more than a hundred
miles, and Rourke knew that he needed gasoline. The slow going in the
storm had depleted his tanks. “That gas station really has gas?” he asked
her.
“You can even use my credit card, John, if you don’t have any money.”
Rourke looked at her, speechless. “Credit card?” The gasoline—without it
he couldn’t press the search for Sarah and the children. “All right,
Martha, I’ll accept your generous invitation. Thank you.” His skin crawled
when he said it.
Tildie’s breath came in clouds of heavy steam. On a rise overlooking Lake
Hartwell, Sarah reined the sweating animal in. Beneath her horse’s hoofs
was South Carolina and on the far shore, Georgia. In the distance, to her
left, she could make out the giant outline of the dam through the swirling
snow. And below her, on the lake, was a large flat-bottomed houseboat.
Smoke drifted from a small chimney in the center of the houseboat’s roof.
She looked behind her at Michael and Annie, freezing with the cold; at
Sam, John’s horse before the war and now she supposed more realistically
Michael’s horse. The animal was shuddering as large clouds of steam, like
those Tildie exhaled, gushed from its nostrils. “Michael, where’d you get
that knife?” “One of the children on the island—he gave it to me.” Sarah
didn’t know what to say. Her son had just stabbed at a man trying to hurt
him, trying to hurt his sister. “You did the right thing, using it—but be
careful with it.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell him that she
wanted to take it away from him. tfJust be careful with it. We’ll talk
about it later.”
“All right,” he said—slightly defensively, she thought.
beneath it slick and wet and like polished ice.
When she reached the base of the rise, the houseboat was less than thirty
feet away.
There were no mooring lines, but there were trees nearby that woulddo, she
calculated. The houseboat rose and fell with the meager tide, edgingin
toward the shore and away. Sarah visually searched the hank. At one place
the houseboat’s gunwales were three feet away from the edge when the
Hat-bottomed craft drifted in. Sarah skidded down, along the red clay
toward this spot, secured her rifle, then waited, wiping imaginary sweat
from her palms as she rubbed her gloved hands along her
thighs.
The houseboat was easing in. Sarah jumped, her hand reaching out for the
line of rope that formed the rail, grabbing at it. The rope, ice-coated,
slipped from her
fingers.
She twisted her body, arching her back, throwing her weight forward,
crashing her arms down across the rope, falling, heaving over the raiJ and
sprawling across the ice-coated deck.
She lay there a moment, catching her breath, her belly aching where the
butt of the Government Model Colt had slammed against it as she fell. She
rolled onto her side, giving a brave wave toward the children, still
watching her from atop the rise. But she didn’t call out because of the
smoke in the houseboat chimney—there had to be
people aboard.
Sarah tried standing up, but the deck was too slippery for her and she
fell, catching herself on her hands, the butt of the AR- slamming into
the deckboards. She crawled on hands and knees toward the door leading
inside.
Sarah looked at the houseboat again. “I’m going to see. if there’s anyone
aboard that houseboat—if maybe wecan find shelter with them. Michael, you
and Annie stay here. Don’t come after me. If it looks like I’m in trouble
. . . then . . .” She didn’t know what to tell him. Finally she said, “Use
your ownjWgment. But wait until I come for you or you see Vm in trouble.
Understood?” rtYe$, I understand,” he told her. She knew he understood;
whether he would do as she asked was another question. “And watch out
behind you—for those people.” She didn’t know what else to call the wild
men and women who had attacked them.
She stepped down from Tildie, her rear end suddenly cold from leaving the
built-up warmth of the saddle. She handed Michael Tildie’s reins. “Hold
her. I’m going
down there to look.”
Sarah settled the AR- across her back, on its sling, then thought better
of it. She took the rifle off and held it in her right hand, a fresh
thirty-round magazine in place, the chamber loaded already. Her pistol,
John’s pistol, was freshly reloaded and back against her abdomen under her
clothes. It was starting to rust a great deal; she didn’t know what to do
to stop it except to oil the gun.
With her gloved left hand she tugged at the blue-and-white bandanna on her
hair, pulling it down where it had slipped up from covering her left ear.
She smiled at the children. “I love you both. Michael. Take care of
Annie.” She started down from the rise, toward the houseboat. It appeared
as though there were no moorings, that something like a tide was forcing
the
boat toward shore.
She hurried as best she could, slipping several times where the iced-over
gravel was still loose, the red clay
She stopped beside the closed door and reaching around behind her, got the
AR- and worked the selector to full auto. Reaching up to it, she tried
the door handle. It opened under her hand, swinging outside to her left.
Not entering, she looked inside. A man and a woman lay on the bed at the
far corner of the large room, the sheets around them stained; the smell
assailed her nose. They were locked in each other’s arms, their bodies
blue-veined and dead.
“They killed themselves,” she murmured, resting her head against the
doorjamb.
Sarah Rourke wept for them—and for herself.
Settling his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, Paul Rubenstein
pulled down the bandanna covering his face as he slowed the Harley, the
snow under it slushy and wet. He looked up, and for a brief instant could
see a patch of blue beyond the fast scudding gray clouds.
“It is breaking up,” Natalia said from behind him.
‘”Bout time.” He smiled. He suddenly had the realization of the air
temperature on his face. rtMust be twenty degrees warmer than it was when
we broke camp,” he told her, looking over his right shoulder at her.
“We should be getting into my territory soon, Paul— there may not be
time,” she began.
“I know; give John your love, right?”
He felt the Russian woman punch him in the back. “Yes.” He heard her
laugh. “And this is for you.” And he felt her hands roughly twisting his
head around, her face bumped his glasses as she kissed him full on the
lips. “I won’t ask you to give that to John—that was for you.” She smiled.