The Nightmare begins

Chapter Twenty-Four

"Who are they, John?" Rourke heard Rubenstein asking. Rourke didn't answer, staring up the road at the stricken faces of the men, women and children struggling slowly toward them. As the women's faces showed recognition of Rourke, Rubenstein and the girl bending over their cycles, Rourke watched the women hug the children closer to them, some of the men starting to raise sticks or axes as if for defense. "Who are they?" Rubenstein asked again.

Rourke turned and started to answer, but then the woman's alto, choked-sounding as she spoke, came from behind him on the Harley's long seat. "They're refugees from some town up ahead—it's written all over their faces, Paul."

"I do know you from somewhere," Rourke said to her.

"And I know you—I wonder what will happen when we remember from where, John?"

"I don't know," he said slowly, then stared back up the road at the faces of the people. He looked over to Rubenstein on the bike beside him, saying, "Dismount and leave your subgun on the bike or give it to Natalie. Go tell them we don't mean them any harm."

"But how do I know they don't mean me any harm?" Rubenstein asked, starting off his bike.

"I'll cover you."

Rubenstein handed the SMG to Natalie, Rourke glancing back to her and saying, "Don't tell me you can't figure out how to use it—remember I saw the job you did back there at the jeep."

"Whatever do you mean," she said, her voice half laughing.

"Sure, lady," Rourke grunted, then watched as Rubenstein, hands outspread as though he were approaching an unfamiliar dog, walked toward the refugees.

Rourke heard Rubenstein starting to speak, "Hey look—we're good guys—don't mean you any harm, maybe we can help you."

A man started toward Rubenstein with a long-handled scythe and Rourke shouted, "Watch out!" then started to bring the Python out of the Ranger cammie holster on his pistol belt. There was a short, loud roar behind him, hot brass burning against his neck, the scythe handle was sliced in half, and Rubenstein spun on his heel, the Browning High Power in his right hand, his left hand pushing his glasses back off the bridge of his nose. Rourke glanced back to Natalie, saying, "Like I said, sure lady."

"The hell with you," Rourke heard her say, as she slid from the back of his Harley and handed him the Schemiesser, the bolt still open, the safety on. She walked a few steps ahead of the bike, stopped and wiped the palms of her hands against her blue-jeaned thighs, shot a glance over her shoulder at Rourke, then started walking slowly toward the people, the refugees, the closest now less than a dozen feet from Paul Rubenstein.

Her voice was soft, low—the way you'd want your lover to sound, Rourke thought.

"Listen to us— please," she was saying. "We don't want to hurt any of you at all—I just fired to protect my friend here. We want to help. We don't want to hurt you," and she walked into the front of the crowd, reaching out her right hand slowly and tousling the sandy hair of a boy of about ten, standing pressed against a woman Rourke assumed to be the boy's mother.

Rourke looked down to the MP-40, pulled the magazine and let the bolt kick forward, then reseated the magazine. He held the submachine gun in his left hand, dismounting the Harley-Davidson Low Rider and walking slowly, his right palm outstretched, toward Rubenstein, Natalie and the refugees. Natalie was talking again. "Where are you people from? What happened to you all?"

Rourke found himself looking at her—the way the sides of her hair were pulled back and caught up at the back of her head, her hair then falling past her shoulders slightly, the movement of her hands. He inhaled hard, bunching his right hand into a fist, stepping up beside her, saying, "She's telling you the truth—we just want to know where you are all from, what happened. I'm a doctor—maybe I can help some of you."

Rourke spun half-around, almost going for a gun—there was a woman screaming in the middle of the group, the faces on both sides of her melting away as Rourke took a step closer to her. She was on her knees, crying, holding a baby in her arms, the blanket stained dark red with blood.

Rourke walked over to her, gently touching her shoulder, handing off the Schmeisser and the CAR-15 to Natalie behind him. He dropped to his knees, slowly pulling back the blanket from the baby's face. The flesh was cold to his touch, the complexion blue-tinged. "This child is dead," Rourke said softly, dropping the blanket back over the infant's face and staring up skyward to where the woman holding the child was mumbling a prayer.

They spent several hours with the refugees, some thirty in all, Rourke doing what he could, Natalie finally getting the woman to release her dead baby, then helping Rubenstein bury the child by the side of the road. The people were from a town some fifteen miles or so up ahead, a place Rourke had never heard of.

There had been a cafe and a U.S. Border Patrol Station there. Brigands had come, the woman said, starting to pick up the story then, rocking back and forth on her knees on the ground, her dirty face tear-streaked, blood on the front of her dress from the dead infant she had carried through the night.

"My Jim and I was sleepin'—he was tossin' and turnin' so much that it woke me up and I couldn't get back to sleep. I kept wonderin' if the radiation from the bombs was gonna get to us and kill my baby." She choked back a sob then, Natalie putting her arm around the woman's shoulders, the woman coughing and going on, "… and then I heard all this commotion. Engine noises, gunshots, screamin' and all. I thought maybe somethin' good was happenin', like maybe there were U.S.

troops coming in, or the Border Patrol men had come back. I got up and looked out the window and saw them…" Her voice trailed off into a whisper, then she began again. "There was maybe a couple hundred of them—all of them kinda young, some of them ridin' motorcycles, some of them in pickup trucks or jeeps. Some of our folks started runnin' out into the streets, some of the men shootin' at the strangers, but they all got shot down or run over. They started smashin' and burnin' everythin' then, stealin' everythin' like they owned the whole world or somethin'. Jim was up then and he took his rifle and ran out after them and they—" the woman stopped, crying now uncontrollably, her head sinking to her breast, Natalie wrapping the woman in her arms.

An old man, sitting on the ground beside Rourke began talking, "They took those of us they didn't kill and lined us up in the street. Just gunned down some of us for fun it looked like, raped some of the women there in the street makin' us all watch, took some of the women with 'em, looted all the houses and the couple stores we had, took every gun in town, all the food and water they could find and told us to go before they changed their minds about wastin' the bullets and just killin' us all."

Rourke looked away from the man, hearing Natalie say, "They must be up ahead of us, somewhere."

Rubenstein muttered, "I hope we get to meet them."

Rourke looked at Natalie, then at Paul Rubenstein, slowly then saying, "Chances are we'll meet up with them. Anybody see who shot that woman's baby—what he looked like?"

The woman Natalie had folded in her arms suddenly stopped crying, looking up at Rourke, saying, "I saw him. Not too tall, thin kind of and had blonde hair, curly and pretty like a girl maybe, and this little beard on the end of his chin. Carried a long, fancy-lookin' pistol—that's what he used to kill my baby, that's what he killed her with."

Rourke leaned forward to the woman, huddled there in Natalie's arms, saying slowly, deliberately, his voice almost a whisper. "I can't promise you we'll find that man, but I can promise you that if we do I'll kill him for you."

Rourke started to turn away and caught Natalie's blue eyes staring at him. He didn't look away.