The Survivalist 02 - The Nightmare Begins (16 page)

Rubenstein was already freeing the extra tarps and ground clothes from the truck. Fighting the wind it took Rourke and the younger man several minutes to set up the covered portion of the shelter, sticking out perhaps seven feet beyond the rear of the truck and on a level as high as the sides of the truck bed itself. Days earlier when Rourke had cut wood for their first fire after finding the truck and the provi-sions, he'd cut small saplings and trimmed them to use as tent poles if need be, and once the "roof" of the shelter was secured and one of the sides dropped against the driving rain, it was relatively simple for him and Rubenstein to complete the ground cover-ing and then secure the opposite sides of the shelter.

Over the roar of the rain and the rumbling of the truck engines around them, Rourke shouted to Rubenstein, "Paul—get the stuff from the truck so we can get some food going. I'll get Natalie out." Then Rourke took one of the spare ground cloths and walked around through the rain to the front of the pickup, hammered on the window with his fist and signaled to the girl to open up. Using the ground cloth like an umbrella against the rain, he helped the girl from the truck, secured his weapons and made sure the truck was locked, then, with her huddled beside him, started back toward the impromptu tent.

Rubenstein had already broken out the small Coleman stove and the Coleman lantern and was sorting through the Mountain House meal packets. Natalie found some of the fresh water and put some on to warm up, then started making some order out of the chaos of the shelter.

They ate later in relative silence, all three exhausted from the ordeal of the day. At Rourke's suggestion, they broke out another bottle of the whiskey and each drank, but only moderately. Finally, the shelter flap partially open for ventilation, as they sat beside its edge staring out into the rain, Rubenstein asked, "John—what are we gonna do now? It looks like they'll be setting up for a battle as soon as the rain slacks up."

Rourke sighed heavily, lighting one of his cigars and holding the flame of the Zippo for Natalie's cigarette. "The paramils won't be moving far in this weather—they looked less prepared for rough weather than the brigands did. I don't think we're gonna see much before this lets up, probably not for several hours afterwards. I could be wrong. I'd imagine if Mike's awake, he's putting out guards by that road, just in case. Depends on how tough the paramils are."

"We gonna try and get out?" Rubenstein asked.

"We can't," the girl said. "Not until the battle starts and if we're still up here, I don't see us getting out then."

"She's right," Rourke said. "Once the battle starts, depending on whether or not we're here, then we get out. But if we are still up here, that's going to be next to impossible. Just have to do our duty as good brigand troopers and hope the bad guys win instead of the good guys."

"The paramils are good guys?" Rubenstein asked, laughing.

"Well, I admit we had a kind of bad experience with them. But somebody's gotta go up against the brigands and it doesn't look like there's any kind of government left."

"What do you think
is
left?" Rubenstein queried, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

"Probably more of Russia than there is of us," Rourke said, glancing toward the girl. "But I don't know for certain. Looks like a good deal of the country is going to be uninhabitable for a long time. Look at this weather we're having, too. It's supposed to be hot out there, but I bet the temperature is pushing down to forty or so. You notice the sunsets? Each night they've been a little redder. All that crap from the bomb blasts is getting up into the atmos-phere and staying there."

"You mean we're all gonna die?"

As Rourke started to answer the younger man, the girl cut in, saying, "No—listen. Just trust me, because I know something about this. The radiation couldn't have done that much damage. The world is going to survive—I just know it."

Rourke looked at her, saying, "I know you know it—and it's not Natalie, is it? At least not in the language you grew up with. Right?"

Rubenstein started getting up, saying, "What do you mean—not in the language she grew up with? You mean she's…"

"Sit down and relax, Paul," Rourke commanded, his voice low.

The girl sighed heavily, snapping the butt of her cigarette through the opening in the shelter flap and into the mud outside. "He means I'm Russian."

"Russian!"

"She's one of the top women in the KGB—the Committee for State Security—the Russian version of the CIA and FBI rolled into one," Rourke said, exhaling a cloud of the gray cigar smoke.

"What—you!" and Rubenstein started toward her, but Rourke's left hand shot out, pushing against Rubenstein's chest and knocking the younger man back. Rourke glanced down. The medium-frame automatic size four-barreled COP derringer pistol was in her right hand.

Her voice was trembling as she rasped, "Please Paul—I don't want to use this, please?"

"What do you mean?" the younger man said. "You mean after all we've been through together, after the way you lied to us? We saved your life, lady!"

"I didn't ask you to come along and find me. I don't mean any harm to either of you—I almost love you both—please, Paul!"

Rubenstein was starting to get to his feet. Rourke— almost in one motion—pushed Rubenstein back and twisted the COP pistol out of the girl's hand, saying, "Now both of you—knock it off!"

"Knock it off?" Rubenstein demanded, his lips drawn back in a strange mixture of incredulity and anger. He pushed the glasses off the bridge of his nose, saying, "It's not enough that the Russians have destroyed the world practically, they killed millions of Americans—yeah, knock it off! What about you, John? You gonna knock it off? Just 'cause you miss your wife and you think maybe she's dead and this one comes along and she's a knockout and she's got the hots for you to get into her pants? What—you think I'm blind? She's a goddamned communist agent, John!" and Rubenstein was shouting.

"I didn't drop any bombs, I didn't give any attack orders, Paul! Leave me alone!" The girl nervously pulled another cigarette from the pack and tried lighting a match, but her hand was shaking so badly the matches kept breaking. Rourke took his lighter and flicked it, holding the flame for her.

She looked at him in the glow of the flame, saying, "Well—what are you going to say?"

Rourke leaned back, closing the lighter, saying, "He's right, you're right. You didn't drop any bombs—you were just being a patriotic Russian. And now you're here in this country and you're looking for Samuel Chambers. What? To kill him? So he doesn't serve as a rallying point for resistance? Right?"

"I'm just doing my damned job, John. It's my job!"

"I had a job like that once. But you know what I
did
? I quit. That's where you remembered me from— South America, a few years ago. I was down there a lot in those days. I didn't quit because my philosophy changed or anything—I just quit because I wanted to and figured I'd done my time. You could do the same, couldn't you?"

"I've got other reasons," she said, staring into the cigarette in her right hand. "I believe in what I'm doing."

"You didn't see your face when you looked at those refugees, the woman with the dead baby. You're on the wrong side."

"Is that why you didn't try and kill me when you recognized me?" she asked, looking up at Rourke.

"No—that isn't why," Rourke answered.

"How long have you known, John?" Rubenstein asked.

"Long enough—after the first couple of days I was sure." Then turning to the girl, he said, "Is Karamatsov here too? You always worked with him down south."

The girl said nothing for a long moment, then, "Yes."

"Who the hell is Karamatsov?" Rubenstein said, leaning forward.

Rourke started to answer, but the girl cut him off, her voice suddenly lifeless-sounding, Rourke thought. "He's the best agent in the KGB—at least he thinks so and everyone tells him that. He's—I guess it doesn't matter—he's in charge of the newly formed American branch of the KGB—he's the top man in your entire country. The only man who can overrule him here is General Varakov—he's the military commander for the North American Army of Occupation."

"This is like some kind of a nightmare," Ruben-stein started, taking off his glasses and staring out into the rain. "During World War II, my aunt was trapped over in Germany when the war broke out. They found out she was Jewish and they arrested her and we never heard from her again. I grew up hating the Nazis for what they'd done. What the hell do you think American kids are gonna grow up hating, Natalie? Huh? How many houses and apartment buildings and farms—schools, office buildings… how many places just stopped existing, how many children and women and little dogs and cats and everything else that matters in life did you people kill that night? Jees—you guys make Hitler look like some kinda bush leaguer!"

"This was a war, Paul," the woman said. "We had no choice. The U.S. ultimatum in Afghanistan, there was no choice, Paul—no choice. We had to strike first! And then your own president held back U.S. retaliation until the last possible minute—we didn't know!"

"Do you hear what you're both saying?" Rourke asked quietly. "Things haven't changed at all since the war, have they?" Rourke closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the edge of the pickup's tailgate. No one spoke for a while and all he could hear was the unseasonably heavy rain.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Rubenstein had elected to sleep in the bed of the pickup truck and was snoring occasionally as Rourke and Natalie lay beside one another under the tarps, listening to the rain. An hour earlier, one of the brigands had passed by, sticking his head under the shelter flap, then seeing Rourke and the girl together, grunted, "Sorry, man—I didn't know if— see ya," then walked away. Rourke had had one of the Detonics pistols under the blanket, the hammer cocked and the safety down, his finger against the trigger.

After the man had gone and Rourke had lowered the hammer on the pistol, the girl started to cry. Rourke heard the strange sound from her before he turned and saw the tears. Then he asked her why.

"He's right—what we did," she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.

"Yes, Paul is," Rourke said. "But if everybody who isn't Russian winds up hating everybody who is Russian, what's that gonna do, huh?"

"What kind of man are you—he was right, he was right, you know," the girl said to him.

"I did try everything I could to get you to come after me—I guess I still am. What? Was it because you knew who I was, thought I was Karamatsov's woman or some-thing?"

"That didn't really have anything to do with it," he said, then fell silent. The rain fell heavily and Rourke glanced at his Rolex—it was well after mid-night. The girl spoke again.

"Why then?"

"Why then what?" Rourke said, not turning to look at her.

"What we were saying before—you didn't care that I was a Russian agent, that I might be Karamatsov's woman—then why?"

"Forget it," Rourke whispered. "You'll wake the kids," and he pointed up toward the truck bed, listening to Rubenstein snore.

"I won't forget it," she said. "Is it that wife you have—the one who's maybe still alive?

What are you afraid of—you'll stop trying to find her?"

"No—I won't stop," he said. "Give me one of your cigarettes—I don't want to smell up the place."

The girl turned away from him a moment, fumbled in the pocket of her jacket and handed Rourke the half-empty pack. Then she took it back, extracted one of the cigarettes and lit it—her hands steady, the match lighting the first time. She inhaled hard, then passed the cigarette over to Rourke. He stayed on his back, the cigarette in his lips, staring up at the top of the shelter and the darkness there.

"Is it that you'd be unfaithful to her?" Natalie said, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Somethin' like that," Rourke said, snapping ashes from the tip of the cigarette out the partially open flap and into the rain.

"But—what if she isn't—" and the girl left the question unfinished.

"Then it wouldn't be somethin' like that," Rourke said quietly, dragging hard on the cigarette, then tossing it out into the rain.

He could feel the girl moving beside him under the blanket. "Are you human?" she whispered.

He turned his head and looked at her, then without getting up reached out his left hand and knotted his fingers into the dark hair at the nape of her neck, drawing her face down to him, looking for her eyes by the dim light there through the shelter flap. All he could see was shadow. He could feel her breath against his face, hear her breathing, feel the pulse in her neck as he held her.

Her lips felt moist and warm against his cheek as she moved against him, and Rourke took her face in his hands and found her mouth in the darkness and kissed her, her breath hot now and almost something he could taste, sweet, the release of her body against him something he could feel in her as well as himself, She lay in his arms and he could hear her whispering,

"You are human."

Rourke touched his lips to hers again, heard her say, "Nothing is going to happen, is it John?"

"I don't know—go to sleep, huh? At least for now," and he felt her head sink against his chest and heard her whisper something he couldn't hear.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Rourke opened his eyes, glancing down at the watch on his left wrist. It was three A.M. The girl was still sleeping in his arms, and to see the face of the Rolex he'd had to move her. He heard the sound again, a shot, then another and then a long series of shots—submachine gun fire, light like a 9mm should sound. "The damned fools," Rourke said aloud, feeling the girl stirring in his arms, then feeling her sit up beside him.

"Shots?"

Then Rourke heard Rubenstein, sliding off the pickup truck bed, beside them suddenly under the shelter. The rain was still pouring down outside, and Rourke stared out from the shelter flap, then pulled his head back inside, his face and hair wet. Without looking at either Rubenstein or the girl, Rourke said, "The damned fool paramils—it's a blasted night attack. Damn them!"