The Nightmare begins

Chapter Twenty-Six

Natalie had kept the four-barreled COP derringer-type pistol, giving the other guns Rourke had salvaged from the jeep and the brigands she had killed to the most likely-looking of the refugee group. Rourke, Rubenstein—by now understanding firearms reasonably well—and Natalie showed the new gun owners how to employ them. Sharing the water and food left Rourke and Rubenstein and the girl with enough to reach Van Horn and nothing more. Before parting company with the refugee party early the next morning, Rourke sent Rubenstein back down the road in the direction in which the refugee party would be traveling, to scout twenty miles ahead, then come back. The younger man, dark hair whipping across his high forehead, eyes squinted both against the sun and apparently to keep the perpetually slipping wire-rimmed glasses from falling off the bridge of his nose, returned almost exactly forty minutes later, reporting nothing up ahead for the refugees—and nothing close behind for Rourke.

Rourke, the girl he knew as Natalie sitting behind him on his bike, watched until the refugee group had straggled a hundred yards or so down the road, then turned to Rubenstein, straddling the Harley beside him. Rourke glanced at the smaller man, noting that the complexion which had been pallid only days earlier, and then red from the sun, was now starting to darken. Already, too, there was an added leanness about Rubenstein's face. Rourke exhaled slowly, saying, "Well, partner—about ready?"

Rubenstein looked at him, saying nothing, and nodded, then hurriedly pushed his glasses off the bridge of his nose. "You know, Paul," Rourke smiled, "We've gotta do something about getting those glasses fixed." Not looking at the girl behind him, Rourke said, "Hold on—I want to make some time." Rourke pushed the sleeves of his already sweat-stained light blue shirt up past his elbows, ran the long fingers of his hands back through his brown hair, then started his Low Rider, cutting a slow arc off the road shoulder and back onto the highway. A road sign a hundred yards off to his right, faded from the sunlight, read: "Van Horn—75 miles."

They rode in silence, flanking the yellow line at the center of the road. Rourke checked his speedometer, his odometer and then the Rolex wristwatch, then bored his eyes back up the road and gunned the cycle harder. They had driven for just under an hour when Rourke signaled to Rubenstein and started cutting across the right-hand lane to pull up alongside the right shoulder. Ahead of them stretched a low, bridged highway running past smokeless high chimneys, and beyond that were the faint outlines of buildings scorching under the already intense sun.

Rourke glanced at his watch—the Rolex read nearly ten A.M. now. As Rubenstein pulled beside him, Rourke said quietly, "Van Horn," and gestured toward the lifeless-seeming factories and beyond.

"It looks dead," Rubenstein said, squinting against the light.

"Does," Rourke commented.

"What do we do?" It was Natalie, leaning over his shoulder.

"Well," Rourke began slowly. "We need food and water, and Rubenstein here could use some clip-on sunglasses before the glare does permanent damage to his eyes.

You could probably stand some things. And we could use some more gasoline. I promised I'd get you as far as I could toward Galveston. I don't know yet whether Paul and I are going to have to go down that far to find a safe way of getting onto the other side of the Mississippi. From what I was able to judge from the air that night—the night of the war— it looked as though that entire area should be nothing but a nuclear desert. But there's no way of telling that from here—unless you know something."

He craned his neck and looked at the girl, who smiled at him, saying, "Remember, I hadn't even heard about the war until you and Paul told me?"

"Yeah, I remember that," Rourke said slowly. "I guess though it sort of strikes me as odd that you seem so good with a gun, seem to have seen refugees close up before, and that somewhere in the back of each of our minds we remember each other from somewhere. I just thought maybe some vibrations or something might have come to you about the Mississippi Delta region."

"Sorry," the girl said, as though dismissing Rourke's remark.

"Right—sorry," Rourke echoed. "Well, since you just seem to have this mystical skill with borrowed handguns and submachine guns, when we get down into Van Horn, until we rearm you with something more than that little pea-shooter you've got, why don't you snatch my Python out of the leather here in case some shooting starts. I think if you study it for a while, you can figure out how it works. Right?"

The girl smiled again, almost whispering, "I'd imagine I can."

"Good," Rourke said softly, then turning to Rubenstein, "Paul, there's one main drag down there, probably. When we hit the town, I'll wait five minutes, you cut down along the perimeter as fast as you can, then turn into the main street and start back toward me. Those brigands who destroyed that town those refugees came from are up ahead of us somewhere. I figure they probably already attacked Van Horn, but some of them could have hung around. People like that are usually pretty loose organizationally, coming and going when they please. Keep that thing you call a Schmeisser ready, huh?"

"Gotcha," Rubenstein said, swinging the submachine gun off his back and slinging it under his arm.

Rourke turned back to the girl. "That Python of mine is Mag-Na-Ported—gas-venting slots on each side of the barrel. So it won't give you as much felt recoil as you might expect."

"I don't understand," the girl said.

He turned his head and looked at her a moment, saying, "Just fake it," a smile crossing his lips.

He started the Harley Davison Low Rider between his legs into first and back onto the highway and toward the bridge. The buildings coming up on his right were gray factory smokestacks from light industry. Rourke's Harley was halfway across the bridge now, and from the elevation he could look beyond the largely flat rooflines and into the town and beyond that into the gray-seeming desert.

There was no sign of life. The winds were coming strong and Rourke tacked the Harley into them to keep their buffeting effect from flipping the big bike down.

Three-quarters of the way across the bridge he angled right, trying to keep quartering into the wind as he did, heading the bike down and onto the off ramp into the town. Rubenstein, behind him as he looked back, was evidently having greater problems handling the heavy winds.

As Rourke's Harley dipped below the level of the bridge, the bridge itself seemed to block the winds and he swerved slightly left, then straightened out, coming to a slow halt at the base of the ramp, then cutting a lazy figure eight in the street fronting it as he scouted in both directions, then heading right from the direction he'd come and into the town itself. The main street seemed some two blocks ahead, Rourke gauged, and he waved Rubenstein down along a narrow side street, glancing over his shoulder, watching the younger man sharply turning the bike and disappearing behind an intact but deserted-appearing building.

Rourke reached the main street, slowed and cut a gentle arc in the large intersection there and came to a stop. "It looks like everyone just vanished,"

Natalie commented.

"I've got a bad feeling about this place," Rourke said, staring down the street, waiting to see Rubenstein reappear approximately a half-mile down.

"A Neutron bomb?" the girl asked, her voice hushed.

"Now what would a nice young lady like you know about Neutron bombs?" Rourke said, not looking at her. He settled his sunglasses and pulled back the bolt-charging handle on the CAR-15, setting the safety on and swinging the collapsible stock Colt's muzzle away from the bike and into the empty street.

"It's not a Neutron bomb," he said. "Look over there."

He watched over his shoulder as the girl turned, looking in the general direction the CAR-15 was pointed. Scrawny but healthy trees were growing in a small square. "No," he said. "Everybody just left—or mostly everybody."

He glanced down to his watch, then back up the street.

"Where's Paul?" Natalie asked. He could feel her breath against his right ear.

"That's just what I was starting to ask myself," Rourke muttered, his voice a whispered monotone. "It might not be a bad idea, you know, for you to reach around my waist, unbuckle my gunbelt and put that Python on yourself—you might need the spare ammo on the belt."

Rourke felt the woman's hands and arms encircling his waist.

He helped her undo the buckle, craned his neck and watched as she slung the cammie-patterned gunbelt from her right shoulder across to her left hip, the Python in its flap holster on her left side, butt forward.

"You ready?"

The girl took the massive revolver from the leather and nodded.

"Okay," Rourke said softly, starting the bike down the center of the deserted street.

He stared ahead of them, whispering over the hum of the Harley's engine, "Did you just see something moving in that space between buildings about twenty-five yards back?"

"On the right?"

"Yeah…"

"Man with a rifle, I thought, but wasn't sure."

"Yeah… okay… I'm going up to the end of the block here and turn down and back into that secondary street Paul was coming up. That's when we should hit it."

"Brigands?" the girl said softly, her voice even, calm.

"Maybe worse—people defending what's left of their town," Rourke answered, curving the bike wide to the right and then arcing left into the far lane of the intersecting street—also seemingly deserted. The secondary street was coming up on the left, and as Rourke's eyes scanned back and forth there was still no sign of Paul Rubenstein.

He pulled the Harley into another wide arc, cutting left into the secondary street. As he started the big machine along the uneven pavement, he heard Natalie behind him, whispering, her voice hoarse, "John—on your right!"

Rourke perfunctorily glanced to his right, raised his right hand in a small wave and whispered back to the girl. "Yeah… I saw them." As they cruised slowly down the street on each side of them now armed men and women were appearing, stepping out of doorways, from behind overturned cars and trucks, closing in like a wall behind them. "Relax," he rasped. "If they wanted to shoot first they'd be doing it by now."

"I don't take much comfort from that," the girl said, almost angrily.

Suddenly, the girl almost screamed, "Look—up ahead—they've got Paull"

"Yeah… I see it," Rourke said softly. Rubenstein was on his knees at the end of the street, his hands tied out, arms stretched between the rear axle of an overturned truck and a support column for one of the smaller factory loading docks. There was a young man standing beside Rubenstein, an assault rifle with fixed bayonet in his hands, the point of the bayonet at the side of Rubenstein's throat. "I don't know who these people are—but they aren't brigands either. At least not the type we've seen."

"John—go back!" Rubenstein screamed, the man beside Rubenstein then pressing the bayonet harder against Rubenstein's throat, silencing him.

Rourke stopped the Harley he rode about twenty feet in front of Rubenstein, slowly but deliberately swinging the CAR-15 in the direction of the man with the bayonet, his right fist clenched on the rifle's pistol grip.

"Who are you people?" Rourke asked slowly, his eyes scanning the knot of young men and women, all of them armed. He had counted—including the ones walled behind him now and blocking his way out— perhaps twenty-five, more or less evenly divided male and female and all of them in their middle to late teens.

"We'll ask the questions," a dark-haired boy with what looked like acne on his left cheek shouted.

"Then ask away, boy," Rourke said, glaring at the young man but keeping the muzzle of his CAR-15 trained where it had been—on the one holding the bayonet to Rubenstein's throat.

"Who are you?" the acne-faced voice came back, unsteadily but loud.

Rourke exhaled hard, saying in a voice not much above a whisper, "John T.

Rourke, the girl here says she's Natalie Timmons and the man your pal has on the ground there is Paul Rubenstein. Just wayfarin' strangers, kid."

"Who are you with?" the leader shouted.

"You don't listen too good, do you boy?" Rourke said, shooting an angry glance at the perhaps eighteen-year-old belonging to the voice.

"I mean what group are you with?"

"Well," Rourke began. "I belonged to a motor club before the war. That do you any good?"

"Cut out the smart-ass routine, mister!"

"Boy," Rourke said slowly, menacingly, "you talk that way to me once more and you've got an extra navel—just a shade over five and a half millimeters wide,"

and Rourke gestured with the CAR-15, then settled it back covering the man guarding Paul Rubenstein. "Now—what are you doing with my friend here?"

"You came to steal from us, didn't you?" the acne-faced leader shouted.

"What—you deaf kid," Rourke said. "Learn to control your voice. If you've got something I want, I'll deal with you for it. If there's something I want that nobody's got but it's there anyway, yeah, I'll take it. Promissory notes and money and checks and credit cards aren't much good these days, I understand."

"We call ourselves the Guardians."

"Well—how nice for you. What are you the "Guardians" of?"

As Rourke asked the question, he could hear Natalie trying to whisper to him. He leaned back away from his handlebars and caught her voice, "Rourke—behind us—six of them coming."

"We are the Guardians—"

"You ask me," Rourke said, "I think you're the crazies, myself." Suddenly Rourke's body tensed as he leaned forward. His tone softening, he addressed all the young men and women there, shouting, "How many of you have marks on your faces like he has—or elsewhere on your bodies?"

A girl stepped forward out of the knot around the leader. Rourke saw the acnelike marks on both her cheeks and neck. "Who are you?" she demanded.

The six advancing from behind Rourke were getting closer. He could see them now out of the corner of his left eye.

"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.