He stopped, staring at the woman’s body inches from the dusty toes of his black combat boots. Rourke pushed the sunglasses back from his head and up into his hair, staring at her more closely. She was incredibly beautiful, even dirty and disheveled as she was now, and somewhere at the back of his mind Rourke knew he’d seen the face before. “I wouldn’t forget you,” he murmured, then pushed the toe of his left boot toward her, moving her body a little and finally rolling her over. The limpness of her body spelled recent death or a deep state of unconsciousness. He dropped to one knee beside her, swinging the scoped CAR-15 behind his back, bending down to her then and taking her head gently into his left hand, his right thumb slowly opening her left eyelid. She was alive. He felt her pulse, weak but steady. Her skin was waxy-appearing and cold to the touch. “Shock,” he murmured to himself. “Heat prostration.” Rourke looked up and called across the road.
“Paul—do a wide circle to make sure she doesn’t have any friends, then come over—we’ve got to get her out of the sun.”
Rourke scanned the horizon to see if there were any natural shade, fearing she might not survive until darkness. About a hundred yards off to the opposite side of the road, he spotted an overhanging outcropping of bare rock. Quickly feeling the woman’s arms and legs and along the rib case to ascertain that there were no readily apparent broken bones, he stood up, bringing the unconscious girl to her feet, then sweeping her up into his arms. As Rubenstein completed his circuit and drove up alongside, Rourke, the girl cradled in his arms like a child, said, “I’m heading over toward those rocks on the other side of the road. Bring your bike over there, then come back for mine.” Rourke didn’t wait for an answer, but started across the concrete, his knees slightly flexed under the added weight of the girl in his arms. As he reached the opposite shoulder he looked down, felt her stirring there. She was moving her lips. “… find Sam Chambers… get to jeep,” and she repeated herself, over and over again as Rourke reached the shelter of the rocks with her. The sun low, there was ample shade. Rourke set her down in the sand as gently as he could. Rubenstein was already coming back with Rourke’s Harley. Rourke looked up as Rubenstein ground to a dusty halt. “We’ve got to normalize her body temperature. Get me the water—she needs it more than we do.”
Rourke looked down at the girl’s face. He nodded to himself. It was a face he wouldn’t forget and he remembered it now but couldn’t yet make the connection.
Chapter Nineteen
The moon was bright but there was a haze around it—Sarah Rourke recalled her husband using the phrase “blood on the moon.” There was enough blood on the earth, she thought. All through the day she had followed along the path of the brigands who had tortured Ron Jenkins and everywhere they had gone—small farms, two more towns—the scene had been the same. Wanton destruction and dead people and animals everywhere. But their trail had taken a sharp turn back into the northeastern portion of the state and now, as she guessed she was crossing the border into Tennessee, as best as she could judge they were behind her and going in an entirely different direction, each mile taking them farther apart.
She pulled up on the reins. Tildie slowed and stopped, bending her head down low and browsing the ground. Sarah Rourke looked behind her. Michael was riding her husband’s horse Sam by himself now, and Millie and her own daughter Annie were riding Carla Jenkins’ mount and Ron Jenkins’ appaloosa was carrying most of the cargo. It was a better arrangement for the animals, and every few hours she swapped horses with Michael to rest Tildie from her weight. It would be several more days before they reached Mt. Eagle, Tennessee and tried searching for Millie’s aunt who had a small farm there. Earlier in the day, Sarah had tried questioning Millie about where the farm was, but the girl had remained silent, just as she had been since the death of her parents the previous night. At the back of her mind, Sarah Rourke realized that if the girl did not respond, trying to find her surviving family would be hopeless. And by leaving Georgia, Sarah thought bitterly, she was cutting down on her own chances of reuniting with her husband. She had concretized the idea in her mind that John Thomas Rourke was still alive, out there somewhere and looking for her even now. She realized that if she once abandoned that idea she would be without hope.
She could not see any value in a life of constantly running from outlaws or brigands, living in the wild like hunted animals. She bent low over the saddle horn. The pains in her stomach were increasing in frequency and severity. It wasn’t the time of the month for her period, though she supposed it possible she was having it early. But the cramps were somehow different anyway. She had tried the water near the one town they had passed, she recalled. Something had been odd-tasting and she had kept the children and the horses from it and gone on. Hours later, she had found bottled water in an abandoned convenience store and stocked up.
She turned quickly when she heard a noise from one of the horses behind her. It was Sam—her husband’s horse. As she started to turn her head back, she doubled over the saddle, gagging, her head suddenly light and hurting badly. She started to dismount but couldn’t straighten up, tumbling from the saddle onto her knees on the ground.
“Momma!”
“Mommie!” The last voice was Annie’s. Sarah started to push herself to her feet, wanting to say something to Michael. She pulled on the base of the left stirrup near her hand, but as she stood she slumped against the saddle, colored lights in her eyes. She could feel the blood rushing to her head. Her hands slipped from the saddle horn and she tried grabbing at the stirrup but couldn’t…
Chapter Twenty
Rubenstein sat in the darkness, watching the rising and falling of the strange girl’s chest in the moonlight, listening to her heavy breathing, the Schmeisser cradled in his lap. His mouth was dry. He’d given up cigarette smoking two years earlier, but now having a cigarette was all he could think about. He looked at the Timex on his wrist. Rourke had been gone for more than an hour. “That woman keeps mumbling about a jeep,” Rourke had said. “If there is one out there, that should mean food and water, maybe gasoline.”
“But she wouldn’t have left it if it hadn’t been out of gas,” Rubenstein had countered.
“People out here in the desert don’t usually let themselves run out of gas. Could have punched a hole in a radiator, severed a fuel line. Could still be enough gas to run these bikes into Van Horn. Otherwise, we’ve got a long walk ahead of us and we used our last water with her.”
“You’re the survivalist, the expert,” Rubenstein had said, almost defensively. “Can’t you just go out there and find water?”
“Yeah,” Rourke had answered. “If I take a hell of a long time doing it I can, and I can find us food, too— but not gasoline. Even if I discovered crude oil it wouldn’t do us any good.”
And Rourke had mounted up and gone, leaving the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG rifle with Rubenstein for added protection, the light-gathering qualities of the 3-9 variable Mannlicher scope that rode it something Rourke had labeled “potentially useful” if whoever had wounded the girl were still out there somewhere in the darkness. The thought of more violence-prone thieves didn’t appeal to Rubenstein. He shivered in the darkness. The girl’s body temperature was about normal, Rourke had said, and she wasn’t really so much unconscious anymore as just sleeping, Rourke had cleansed and bandaged the deep flesh wound on her left forearm. Her right hand still had blood on it, but only blood from the arm wound, which Rourke had not washed away because of the water shortage.
Rubenstein shifted his position on the ground, hearing something in the darkness to his left. He turned and peered into the black, seeing nothing. He heard the sound again, pulling open the bolt on the Schmeisser, ready, his voice a loud whisper, saying, “I know you’re out there—I hear you. I’ve got a submachine gun, so don’t try anything.”
“That doesn’t do much to scare a rattler, Paul,” Rourke said softly. Rubenstein wheeled, seeing Rourke standing beside the sleeping woman, the CAR-15 in his hands, the sling suspending the gun beneath his right shoulder. “Rattler—your body heat is drawing him. Move over.”