“Where were you the night of the war?” Rourke asked, slowly.
“Were we anywhere near a blast site, do you mean?” the girl asked, almost laughing, her dark eyes crinkling into a strange smile.
“We were,” the acne-faced leader began. “And we know what we’ve got. But guarding here is what we do.”
The girl beside the leader of the young people went on, “We were away on a senior class field trip. By the time the bus ran out of gas and we walked back here everyone had gone. We knew where there were some guns and we’ve been running the town ever since. We know we’ve all got radiation sickness, we’re all dying. But we’re guarding the town until our families get back. We’re doing this for them.”
Rourke eyed the six, now just a few feet behind himself and Natalie. “What if they don’t come back?” Rourke asked slowly.
“We’ll guard the town until the last of us has died,” the girl beside the leader said flatly.
“Anybody with sores like that is going to die—and soon and painfully,” Rourke told her.
“We know!” the girl beside the leader shouted back to him, her voice shrill.
“John!” Natalie rasped hard in Rourke’s ear.
“I know,” he muttered, catching sight of the six readying their weapons behind him. Then turning back to the leader, Rourke asked, “What do you want us for—let my friend go and we’ll be on our way.”
“People like you—violent people, people without a home or a town—you caused the war. You deserve to die!” the leader shouted.
“If you all feel that way, you’re all crazy,” Rourke said calmly. He was watching the leader now, but out of the corner of his eye saw the young man guarding Rubenstein take a half-step back, drawing the bayonet rifle rearward for a thrust. He heard Paul Rubenstein shouting, “John!”
“I am sorry,” Rourke said so softly that he felt perhaps no one heard him, then pulled the trigger on the CAR-15, twice, cutting down the young man with the bayonet just as the thrust began for Paul Rubenstein’s throat.
Rourke’s left hand flashed across his body, snatching one of the stainless Detonics .45s, his thumb jacking back the hammer as the gun ripped from the Alessi shoulder holster, his left trigger finger working once, the slug catching the leader between the eyes and hurtling the already dying youth back against the knot of followers around him.
Rourke started to shout to Natalie, but as he turned, he could see her, already off the bike and in a crouch, the Python in both her fists, firing into the six attackers coming up behind him.
Rourke started the bike forward, the Detonics slipping into his trouser belt, replaced in his left hand by the black-chromed Sting IA, and as he reached Rubenstein he hacked out with the double-edge blade, cutting the ropes on Rubenstein’s left wrist, then the right, tossing the younger man the once fired .45.
Rubenstein, still on his knees, looked up at Rourke, shouting, “They’re only kids, John!”
Rourke, his eyes hard, bit his lower lip, then shouted, “God help me—I know that, damn itl”
Three of the heavily armed youths were rushing toward Rourke already and he swung the CAR-15 on line and opened up, cutting them down. He glanced back to Rubenstein, the younger man finishing a knee smash on a beefy-looking boy of about eighteen, beside Rubenstein’s bike. Natalie was reloading the Python and as she brought it on line, with her left hand she brushed the hair back from her face. For an instant, Rourke wasn’t in the middle of a life or death gun battle with a gang of bloodthirsty kids all dying of radiation poisoning—he was back in Latin America. The gun she held wasn’t a Python—it was an SMG. And the hair was blonde, but the gesture, the stance, the set of the eyes—they hadn’t been blue in those days—was exactly the same.
There was a burst of submachine gun fire from his right and Rourke turned, seeing Rubenstein firing the German MP-40—the “Schmeisser”—into the dirt at the feet of three attackers. The youths kept coming and—the reluctance was visible in the way Rubenstein moved—Rourke watched as the younger man raised the muzzle of the SMG and fired. Rourke turned back toward Natalie. He knew now that wasn’t her name. His gun in her hands was silent. Rourke’s eyes scanned the area around him, the muzzle of his CAR-15 sweeping the air. There were bodies, but no living combatants. He counted ten dead—meaning at least fifteen still out there somewhere.
In an instant, Rubenstein was standing beside him, the girl who called herself Natalie turning and facing him. The girl spoke first. “I was beginning to think you never were going to make your move—I know why you waited. I think I realized before you did that they were all dying of radiation sickness.”
Rourke looked down to his bike, taking his .45 back from Rubenstein and swapping in a fresh load, saying to the girl, “I remembered where I saw you— South America, a few years ago. You were a blonde— I think your eyes were green. But it was you. Contact lenses?” He looked up at the girl then, taking off his sunglasses and pushing them back past his forehead into his hair.
He squinted past the midday sun at her.
“They were contact lenses,” she nodded. “But what now?”
“You mean about this, or about my remembering you?” Rourke asked softly.
“Whatever,” the girl said.
“Let’s stick to this for now—we can worry about the other thing later. We still need supplies. Looks like the town was abandoned for some reason. Probably, if we look hard enough, we can find what we need. Still gotta worry about those kids sniping at us.”
“I can’t understand this!” Rubenstein almost cried.
“What?” Rourke asked.
“We just killed ten perfectly decent kids, or at least they were. What’s happening?”
“Sometimes when people realize they’re dying, it’s almost as if they step out of themselves,” Rourke began. “Those kids were smart enough to realize what was happening to them, and they focused their energies, their thoughts—everything—on guarding this town. Kind of calculated mass hysteria. It didn’t matter to them that it was wholly irrational, impossible, even that they knew I was right that no one was coming back here for them. Probably once the first one started noticing what was happening and then some of the others started coming up with the symptoms they just made a sort of pact. Kids are big on that sort of thing—pacts, blood oaths.”
Rubenstein stared into the dirt, saying, “That radiation poisoning thing—just because they were in the wrong spot at the wrong time. It could have been us, instead.”
“It still could be us,” Rourke said quietly, putting on his sunglasses again. “When was the last time you checked the Geiger counter?”
“Sometimes I like it better when you don’t say anything—like you usually do,” the girl, Natalie, said, holstering Rourke’s revolver.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rourke sat by the small Coleman stove, water still steaming from the yellow kettle, the red-foil Mountain House package in his left hand, a table spoon he’d found held in his right. He gave the contents of the foil package a last stir and scooped a spoonful of the contents up and put it in his mouth, then leaned back against the rear bumper of the pickup truck. “I love their beef stroganoff,” Rourke commented, almost to himself.
“This stuff is terrific!” Rubenstein said.
“What have you got there, Paul?” Rourke asked.
“Chicken and rice,” Rubenstein answered, his speech garbled because his mouth was full.
“Next time try some of this—the noodles in it are great, too.”
Natalie, still stirring at the contents of her packet, looked at Rourke across the glow of the small Coleman lamp between the three of them, saying, “Well—now that we’ve found food, plenty of water, gasoline and a four-wheel drive pickup—what next?”
Rourke leaned forward, looking at the full spoon inches from his mouth, saying, “Don’t forget we found cigars for me and cigarettes for you.”
“That guy really had the stuff put away under that warehouse,” Rubenstein commented, his mouth still full.
“Yeah—too bad he never got a chance to use it, apparently,” Rourke sighed, finally consuming the spoonful.
“I can’t understand that town,” the girl said. “Why hadn’t the brigands been there?”
“Well…” Rourke began.
“And why and where did all the people who lived there go?” the girl went on.
Rourke looked at her, took another spoonful of the food and began again. “The way I’ve got it figured, everybody in the town just evacuated—I don’t know to where. When those kids showed up and started shooting everything that moved, I guess the lead elements of the brigand force probably pulled in there, got killed and never reported back. There are two kinds of field commanders. Whoever’s in charge of the brigands apparently isn’t the kind of guy who took losing a squad of men as a personal challenge. He just went around the town, maybe figuring the people there were too well armed. That means he’s smart. He’s not out to conquer and hold territory— he’s just out to keep his people going on whatever they can plunder. I’d figure right about now he’s got a dicey job. Could be several hundred of them, no discipline, drinking up everything they can get their hands on and staying smashed most of the time on drugs. Be like tryin’ to control a gang of alcoholic gorillas—or maybe more like the stereotype of Vikings. Come in and strike hard, earn a reputation for brutality, retreat or withdraw fast and steal everything that isn’t nailed down.”