paving hurtling skyward. They had mined the gas system.
Rourke grabbed for his pistols, pushing himself to his feet, running,
stumbling, running again. A line of explosions—smaller ones—ripped
through the road ahead of him in series. He had to cross the road to reach
Martha Bogen’s house on the other side.
He ran, bending into the run, arms distended at his sides. The gunfire
resumed from behind him; he couldn’t hear it, but could see the grass and
dirt near his feet
chewing up under it.
He hit the pavement, still running, the explosions gutting the road
drawing closer. Debris—bits of tarmac and cement and gravel—rained down on
him. His hands, the pistols still in them, were over his head to protect
it.
The road was now twenty-five yards away; his body ached; the waves of
nausea and cold were starting to take hold.
“Narcan,” he rasped. He needed the Narcan shot. He tripped, sprawling,
pushed himself up, then ran on.
Ten yards. He was feeling faint, sick, the morphine was taking hold of him
again.
Five yards. He jumped, the street ripping as a manhole cover less than a
dozen yards to his right sailed skyward, roaring up on a tongue of flame.
The street behind him exploded and he was thrown forward.
Rourke rolled, still clutching his pistols.
He started to his knees, hearing—not hearing but feeling—something behind
him.
He wheeled, hitting the road surface, firing both pistols simultaneously.
Two Soviet troopers fired at him; the ground beside him erupted under the
impact of their slugs, both men going down under the impact of his.
He stumbled to his feet, lurching, feeling as though he would black out.
Rourke rammed both pistols, cocked and locked, into his wide trouser belt,
then snatched at the injection kit inside his shirt against his skin. His
hands shook, cold and nausea making his head reel. He dropped to his
knees. The Narcan injection was in his right hand.
He looked beyond his hand as he tested the syringe.
“Man with a gun—Russian,” he rasped, telling himself to act, forcing his
body to respond. His left hand—he
could feel the slowness—found the butt of one of his pistols.
Automatically, he swept the left thumb around behind the tang of the
Detonics to reach for the safety on the left side of the frame. He worked
it down as the Russian soldier raised his assault rifle.
Rourke’s right hand worked toward his left arm, the sleeve pulled up
already—he had planned ahead as he a/ways did.
He started raising his left arm, as if both sides of his brain were taking
separate control of him. He tried squinting at the sights a moment, seeing
the hypodermic come into his line of fire.
His right hand jabbed the hypo into his left forearm.
“Aagh,” he shouted, feeling the change sweep over him, seeing the
slow-motion movement in his left hand as the thumb moved back around the
tang, out of the way of the slide.
He was suddenly back—cold and sweating, but back, his mind working. His
left first finger worked the trigger and the Detonics bucked hard in his
hand.
The Soviet trooper’s assault rifle fired skyward as his body twisted,
almost as in a dance, then crumpled to the roadside.
Rourke pushed himself to his feet. That had been the last Narcan shot, but
the last he should need. He snatched at the other pistol in his belt,
worked down the safety and—he could not run again—he started into a loping
walk to the curb.
Rourke assessed his surroundings—head left. He started that way. It was at
least another block, maybe two. The B-complex shot would start working
soon after he administered it—after he got to it.
The nausea was passing, the coldness subsiding; his
head ached and his muscles ached.
As he increased his stride, more explosions rocked the ground beneath him.
Glass, in windows on both sides of the street he loped into, shattered;
fires erupted everywhere.
Another manhole cover sailed skyward on a column of flame and Rourke
jumped away, the explosion ringing in his ears, debris falling like rain
on him.
He rolled onto his back, protecting his face with his left forearm.
He had to run. He rolled onto his knees, then pushed himself up, starting
forward, lurching into a ragged, long-strided run.
More gunfire behind him. He wheeled, almost losing his balance. He pumped
a shot at hip level with the Detonics in his right fist, downing a Soviet
soldier at the end of the block.
He turned and kept running.
He could see the house—white frame with green vines growing up the round
columns on the front porch. Rourke could see the driveway; his bike would
be in the garage at the end of it.
Still running, he glanced behind him. No one. Perhaps the Russians were
getting out while they still could.
More explosions. Rourke glanced up, toward the rim of the valley; rock
slides were everywhere, the very faces of the peaks changing, seeming to
melt away.
Rourke turned up the driveway, running harder now, sweating. The garage
door—ten yards, five . . . He stopped. It would be locked. He raised both
pistols, firing the one in his right hand, then the one in his left. The
garage-door lock shattered as he loped and lurched forward. He fell
against the door.
Jamming the pistols into his belt, he wrenched the door handle, twisting
it, shoving it up, letting the door slide out of sight.
The jet black Harley—he saw it. Rourke stumbled toward it. His gear looked
untouched.
He snatched at the CAR- wrapped inside a blanket and a piece of ground
cloth.
He ripped the covering away, then searched the musette bag slung on the
handlebars, he found a thirty-round magazine, rammed it up the well, and
eared back the bolt handle.
He let the bolt slide forward.
“Come on,” he rasped, staring out into the street. He could hear the
sounds of more explosions; the gas lines were still going, of their own
accord now.
Rourke slung the CAR- cross-body from his left shoulder, under his right
arm.
He started searching the Lowe pack and found his medical kit, the
injection kit inside it. Rourke opened that, taking the B-complex syringes
and jabbing one into his left forearm.
He dropped to his knees, trying to even his breath.
Her jaw hurt where the man, John, had hit her. On her knees, on the window
seat in the main room of the library overlooking the street and the post
office beyond, she wrang a handkerchief in her hands, red hearts
embroidered on it, a gift from her husband years ago.
There were fires all over the city; she was afraid of fire.
Everyone else was with someone, safe, ready to die. John was out there in
the streets, somewhere. He wouldn’t make it; she knew that. She had nursed
for her husband often enough to know that in hib condition, he would be
too weak (o travel far. She had never even told him the secret paths
through the valley to reach beyond the mountains.
He would die alone; she would die alone.
She wondered what his last name was.
He hadn’t hit her because he hated her. It was because he hadn’t wanted to
die with her.
“I hope you live, John,” she said, suddenly feeling a weight slip from
her.
The manhole cover in the street outside rocketed skyward, the flame under
it rising, spreading. The floor under her shook; the plate-glass window in
front of her shattered.
She had one more injection—one she had saved in her desk drawer.
It would make her sleep. She gave it to herself, letting the needle fall
from her hand, her hands bloody from the glass that had cut her as the
window shattered around her.
There was a cool wind and as she closed her eyes, she could see her dead
husband’s stern face. He was scolding her for what she had tried to do,
but there was love in his eyes. &#; • .
Rourke settled himself on the seat of the Harley, the motor purring under
him, the tanks full, the Detonics stainless .s reloaded and holstered in
the Alessi rig across his shoulders. He was slightly cold—the exhaustion,
the drugs coursing through his veins. The collar of his Drown leather
jacket was snapped up.
Under the jacket he carried the musette bag on his left side, spare
magazines for the Detonics pistols and for the CAR- slung under his
right arm.
On his right hip was the Python, Metalifed and Mag-Na-Ported; spare ammo
for the big Colt was in the musette bag, too, in Safariland Speedloaders.
There were Soviet troops on the ground, Soviet helicopters in the air
above. The ground beneath him trembled. Fire was everywhere—in the houses
on both sides of the street, a wind whipping it up as he looked out of the
garage.
He had been breathing, slowly, evenly, getting the house (hat was his body