Survivalist - 15 - Overlord (14 page)

Michael Rourke thumbed back the .44 Magnum’s hammer. It was the kind of shooting he had painstakingly taught himself over the years since he had first begun using handguns and practicing to be good with them. He adjusted for elevation by feel and squeezed the trigger gently, the 629 bucking in his hands for the third time, the third Mongol’s body lurching forward into the snow.

He felt something — like someone staring at him and he dropped left and rolled, thrusting the 629 forward in his right fist, another Mongol emerging from the trees. Michael fired, then fired again, the Mongol’s assault rifle discharging into the ground, then jamming, the man falling, the gun, silent, falling with him. Michael Rourke raised to his left knee, the 629 with one shot remaining in his right fist, one of the Berettas in his left. There was a burst of automatic weapons fire from the trees and then a single pistol shot. Michael was up, running.

Han shouted, “Do not fire!” then stepped from the trees. “When you said there were ten, I thought nine but chose out of politeness not to correct your oversight. But it appears that it was I who was in error.” He nodded into the trees. “Ten”

Three of the dead men’s horses were tethered at the far edge of the stand of trees, the stand like a small woods. Michael Rourke, reloading his revolver, said, “Let’s take those horses. Let’s find my friends. You’re pretty good, you know,” and he rammed the 629 into the leather and started toward the dead men’s horses. There were no saddles in sight here and he assumed they were near the animals …

Maria Leuden had been watching the shortest of the five men, also the one who should have been the most drunk. But he was still standing, dancing around the fire, laughing, but his eyes were drifting toward her every few seconds and she knew the meaning of terror.

One of the five fell over, drunk. The others stopped dancing and stared at him for an instant, then began to resume their dancing. All but the short man who had been watching her.

He picked up the bag they had been drinking from —it looked to be almost eighteen inches in length and more than half empty by the way he handled it. He took a long drink from the bag, then wiped his mouth clean against his sleeve and handed off the bag to one of the three men who were still dancing.

He walked away from the other three and stood on the near edge of the fire to her, staring at her.

One of the three still dancing came toward him, grabbed him at the shoulder and shouted something to him she could not understand, but the short man shook him off. The other man shrugged, took a drink from the bag and went back to dancing.

Maria Leuden tried to avert her eyes but couldn’t — when she looked back at the short man he was still watching her, and his eyes were lit strangely by the firelight and his mouth hung open and he was laughing.

Maria Leuden, tied, naked, helpless, screamed.

John Thomas Rourke had not been ready for sleep. He sat in a rocking chair on the porch of the dormitory near the presidential residence. The rocking chair was one of several.

One of the Detonics Scoremasters was stuffed in the waistband of his Levis.

His wife, Sarah, sat on the porch railing near him. Her dark brown hair was down, well past her shoulders and the way the shawl swathed her upper body, it would have been impossible to tell by looking at her, he thought, that she was pregnant.

“You’re going back,” she said, not a question.

“Tomorrow —after I see Munchen and he tells me I’ll be stiff for a little while. Yeah.”

“What happens after you get Karamatsov, John?”

Rourke smiled. “Maybe life will calm down a little. I think we could both use it. The three of us,” and he looked into her eyes, then flickered his eyes down toward her abdomen. “Start over again, raise our children a litde more normally this time. There’ll be a lot to do. America begs rebuilding.”

“And you’re just the man to do it, aren’t you?”

“In less than a century we could begin repopulation at a serious rate, especially if some of the Germans or the Icelandics or any other peoples we found decided to emigrate from Argentina or here. And then there are the Wild Tribes—Jea and his people will need a lot of help, but they’ll bounce back. Civilization will start again in Europe eventu

ally if we help them. I don’t know if civilization is all that marvelous a goal, but at least it’ll be better than what they’ve got now. And maybe we can avoid the mistakes we all made the last time.”

“Does that mean us too,” Sarah asked him. “Avoiding mistakes, I mean?”

“Come here. This rocking chair’U hold three,” and she laughed, stood up, came to him, sat in his lap, Rourke putting his pistol down on the porch floor beside the rocker. She wriggled a little in his lap, and then her arms were around his neck, her hair, her clothing flooding over him, the smell of her. It was a good smell —woman. The shawl fell from her shoulders as he closed his arms around her and touched his mouth to hers …

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna thrust her hands into the pockets of her skirt. Tomorrow, it would be back to battle gear, but tonight she could feel more comfortable. She walked, the warmth of the air here at Hekla feeling good against her ankles. She wore no stockings.

She rounded the bend in the path through the garden which dominated the center of the Hekla community. And she saw John Rourke and Sarah Rourke sitting on the porch, wrapped in each others arms.

Natalia stopped walking. In one of her pockets she had a package of the German cigarettes and a lighter. She dug in both pockets, finding them, lighting a cigarette, inhaling the smoke deep into her lungs as she watched them. And very suddenly she felt dirty standing here, watching them, and she turned and started back into the garden …

Paul Rubenstein completed the entry in his journal. The entries were always longer here at Hekla or back at the Retreat. There was more time to write.

He could hear Annie in the shower. She was singing.

He put down his pen and stood, stretching. He wore the bathrobe Annie had made for him while he was gone. It had a hood like something a Christian monk might use and went to his ankles and folded over generously and was warm, but not unpleasandy so. He ran his hands through his thinning hair as he walked toward the window, staring down into the greenway which he could see when he stood at the far right side of the window.

It was Natalia. Walking alone.

He didn’t know how long he watched her, but suddenly he was aware of the fact that Annie’s litde sounds from the shower had stopped and he started to turn around and she was there, her arms coming around his neck, her waist-length hair unbound, She wore only a nightgown, white, high necked and long sleeved, the neck and cuffs trimmed with lace, as he looked down at her thinking that she seemed to be suspended in air because he could not see her feet under its hem.

“Whatchya thinking about?”

He smiled. “That I’ve got the prettiest girl in the world.”

“Well, you do —otherwise you’ve been lying to me.”

“I haven’t been lying to you,” and his hands closed at her waist, the tips of his thumbs and the tips of his fingers almost but not quite able to touch. A man with larger hands could have touched, he thought absendy. But Annie Rourke, now Annie Rubenstein, hadn’t wanted any other man. And that made him very special, he realized, smiling as he leaned down and kissed her parted lips.

She kissed him back hard.

“You feeling better?”

“I’m feeling perfect —almost. And if you take me to bed, then I will feel perfect.”

“You got to ahh —” Dr. Munchen had fitted her with a diaphragm.

“I already did that, Paul. Carry me?”

Paul Rubenstein took her up in his arms. She was a good sized girl, but he was stronger than he ever had been in his life and she felt like nothing in this arms. He wondered if that were merely psychological.

He carrier her toward the bed, her arms still around his neck.

She was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. He set her down on the bed, her hair flowing across the pillows like an amber wave.

She was the prettiest girl …

Natalia finished the cigarette, grinding it out under her heel, then carrying the dead butt in her fingertips until she passed a trash container. She deposited it there, then continued walking, hands once again thrust deep into the pockets of her skirt.

John Rourke would never be hers.

She had resigned herself to that sometime ago, but could not stop loving him. She knew she was beautiful, had always known that. At one time in her life, she had thought that loneliness for another human being could only afflict girls who were not pretty. But then she had married Vladmir Karamatsov, now the Hero Marshal of the Soviet Union, the most evil man she could have conceived of. And from the first time he had made love to her, she had understood loneliness.

It was a different loneliness now. John Rourke had taken away that first loneliness, though he had never really touched her with his body, having touched her more strongly than any man had ever touched her.

She felt stupid —Natalia realized that she was crying.

Otto Hammerschmidt’s feet would not respond at all and so, along the snow covered, rocky ground, he crawled, moving inexorably toward the fire. Michael had used an expression once, like a moth to a flame. Otto Hammerschmidt had needed to have it explained to him what a moth had been, a type of insect. Otto Hammerschmidt had never seen one. He sometimes found himself wondering what the old world had been like before the Night of The War and the Great Conflagration.

Flowers were pollinated by artificial means, scientists having determined to release bees into an environment which was not balanced would have produced ecological disaster. But moths did not pollinate flowers. Otto Hammerschmidt had asked Michael Rourke if moths pollinated flowers. Michael had told him they did not—they flew into flames and lightbulbs and some kinds ate holes in woolen clothing. They seemed suicidal and without value. In his present condition, he was without value, and his act was premeditatedly suicidal, but necessary.

He kept crawling toward the flames …

Michael Rourke and Han had taken the two strongest

looking of the Mongol animals, all three of the horses looking still exhausted. But the horses had responded well, hardy beasts, Michael realized. In a way they were very much reminiscent of the little ponies of the plains Indians.

They had ridden back the way they had come during the chase, but such a frantic pace would have destroyed the horses before they had conquered half the intervening distance, and even with the light of the moon and stars, to traverse the sometimes uneven ground at such speed would have invited a fall.

But the animals made good time, Michael stopping to rest them after an hour’s riding, wiping the animals down against the chill.

He took the opportunity to try the radio again. “Maria. Otto —this is Michael. Come in. Over.”

But the only voice which came back to him was that of Bjorn Rolvaag. And Rolvaag was trying to tell him something. Michael realized his radio had been off during the time in which he and Han had counter-attacked — a logical if unconscious move to avoid a radio transmission signalling his presence. And he had forgotten to turn it back on.

Rolvaag spoke slowly, Michael trying to understand, having little success.

But at last he heard a word which he thought he understood. “A fire?”

Rolvaag saw a fire? Rolvaag seemed to be telling him yes.

Michael reiterated his earlier instructions. Stay by the vehicle and the supplies.

Michael closed the transmission, turning to the Chinese, both horses feeding from bags which were fitted to their heads like bridles. “My friend at our vehicle —he sees a fire. In the same place where we saw the fire last night. You don’t suppose — ” Michael left the question hanging.

Han nodded. “Is your friend in plain sight from the plateau?”

“Not from that edge of it. But further back, he would be.

But they’d have to look for him.”

“He is very fortunate that apparendy they did not. Wood for fires is scarce here and these men we fight are by nature lazy people, all their energy consumed with battle and in drunken revels. If there was wood at hand, from our campfire, they would merely have relit it if they wished to stay in the area. When my party and I came upon the plateau we searched for more than a half hour until finding the campsite we used, because it had been used before and there was some wood there. We hacked down a little more and set our fire. Our enemies have probably done the same.”

“Stupid bastards —and I’m thankful they are.” Michael Rourke worked the cinch of the saddle, having loosened it only slighdy after dismounting to tend the horses. If Maria Leuden and Otto Hammerschmidt were alive, they would be there, he told himself. He swung up into the saddle. He had full loads remaining for each of the Berettas, fifteen rounds in the magazine plus an additional round in the chamber. A full cylinderful for the 629. If there weren’t too many of them, it would be enough.

Han mounted. Michael said nothing, just dug in his heels and the little horse vaulted ahead …

Maria Leuden had fallen asleep —or fainted. She was not sure which. The little man with the hungry eyes had returned to his drinking after tugging the blankets and robes which covered her nakedness away, staring at her for a while and then covering her once again.

As she looked toward the dying fire, the little man stirred from sleep. He stood up and urinated, starting to close his pants. But then he turned back and looked at her.

She couldn’t look away. He disgusted her, terrified her. He held his penis in his hand a moment and smiled.

Now she looked away.

He said something, and she tried to ignore him. He spoke

again. She turned and looked back at him. His penis hanging out of his pants, his hands rubbing it, he started toward her.

She screamed at him in German, “No —go away. Go away from me!” He only laughed. She tried English. He kept walking toward her.

From the shadows beside the fire, she saw a ghostly shape in white —Otto Hammerschmidt, she realized suddenly, stripped to his underwear, diving for the little man, throttling the litde man to the ground. But it seemed that Hammerschmidt could not really walk. He pushed himself up, seemed to fall on the little man, the two of them rolling toward the fire. She was screaming, she knew.