She started walking toward Annie, Annie pre-tending to read a book to one of the less seriously wounded Resistance men. Sarah had brought the man from the bunker for the fresh air. The genera-tor that powered the ventilation system in the be-low-ground-level shelter needed fuel or foot-pedal power. Fuel was in short supply, and so were feet with nothing to do but ride a bicycle. The job was frequently falling to Michael. He had been an in-trepid bike rider before The Night of The War and she thought that now Michael almost seemed to enjoy working the foot-powered generator. But foot power was not enough to pump sufficient air that the air smelled anything but stale and dirty. And so spent as much time outside as she could.
The wounded man’s airing was just an excuse.
She wondered, suddenly, as she walked, what it would be like inside her husband’s Retreat—if he found her. “When,” she said under her breath, correcting herself.
She stopped walking, about midway between the burned shell of the barn and the gleaming whiteness of the corral fence where the quarter horses old Mr. Cunningham had raised once roamed. They were gone now—but so were Tildie and Sam, her horse and John’s horse, the horses she had used with the children, the horses that had moved them out of danger, been like part of her family—
She stood there, wiping her hands along her blue-jeaned thighs—then resting her hands on her hips. Under her right hand she felt the butt of the Trapper .45 Bill Mulliner had given her. He should have met his Resistance contact by now, perhaps already be on his way back to report to Pete Critchfield. Mary Mulliner—Bill’s mother—it was written in the lines etched in her face, a fear for him, that she’d lose red-haired, blue-eyed Bill just like she had lost her husband—fighting in the Resistance against Russians and Brigands. The .45 had been Bill’s father’s gun—and now it was Sarah’s. She had already used it to save her life.
She rarely thought of it—it was so much a part of her now, carrying a gun, like wearing the blue and white bandanna with which she habitually covered her hair.
Little Annie was still pretending to read to the wounded Resistance fighter. Birds whistled in the trees. Sarah closed her eyes—very tired. Would there be time to teach Annie Rourke to read—ever—and not just pretend?
Chapter Eight
General Ishmael Varakov sat on a park bench, halfway across the spit of land extending out into the lake toward the astronomy museum. The wind was stiff and cold off the lake there. Beside him, Catherine sat. His secretary, the girl who wore her uniform skirts too long—a shy girl. A shy girl who had told him that she loved him when he had attempted to send her back to spend the last few days with her mother and her brother in the home he would never again visit beside the Black Sea. She had refused to go—he had let her stay.
He looked down at his left hand now—for some reason he yet didn’t understand, his left hand clutched her right hand. She was young enough to be his daughter—or perhaps granddaughter. She would not call him anything besides “com-rade general”—and she whispered those words now.
“Yes, child,” he nodded.
“We will all die?”
“Yes, child—all of us. A week, perhaps—if that—” And thunder rumbled from the sky, a flash of chain lightning snaking low through gray clouds over the white-capped waters of Lake Michigan. But the lightning subsided, passed. “Very soon,” he whispered to her, “very soon, Catherine—the lightning will not go away.”
“I will miss it—if you can miss it, comrade gen-eral—being alive, I think.”
He looked at her face—the rims of her eyes were moist. “You cry, child?”
She nodded yes.
“That you die, child? We will all die.”
She shook her head no.
“Then why is it that you cry, child?”
“That I had to be told I would die—comrade general—before—before I—” and she looked away from him, Varakov feeling her hand in his, her nails digging into his flesh. It was life—sensa-tion was life now, and he did not tell her to stop.
Chapter Nine
Rourke stopped the Harley-Davidson Low Rider, dismounting as he let down the stand. Below him, in a shallow depression too small to be actually called a valley, was a burned farm-house—or so it appeared to be. A barn too, also burned. There was a white fence, a corral fence, freshly painted it seemed, gleaming white against the blackness of the burned timbers of the two buildings. There was movement near the shell of the house.
Rourke removed his binoculars from the case, the lens caps already off, in the case bottom. His hands were trembling.
It was near Mt. Eagle, it had apparently once been a horse farm. A sign, fallen down and bro-ken in half, partially obscured by underbrush, had been at the end of the dried-mud-rutted ranch road, where the ranch road had met the blacktop.
The sign had read: Cunningham’s Folly—Friends Welcome, Others Planted. Apparently, it hadn’t been planting season.
Both buildings, having been burned so com-pletely, bore the marks of other than natural causes—Brigands.
Rourke raised the binoculars to his eyes, foc-using them.
“Freeze!”
Rourke froze—whoever was behind him, whoever had spoken, was very good—very good. Rourke held the binoculars at eye level, shift-ing his right hand slightly so the fingers of his left hand could reach under the storm sleeve of his bomber jacket. With all the Soviet activity, Rourke had hidden the little Freedom Arms .22 Magnum boot pistol he’d taken off the dead body of a Brigand, hidden it on a heavy rubber band butt downward on the inside of his right wrist. The four-round cylinder was one-round shy, the half-cocked hammer resting over an empty chamber.
“You must be an Indian to sneak up on me like that,” Rourke said, not turning around, palming the little Freedom Arms gun under his left hand, still peering through the binoculars. There was a woman moving about the yard near the white corral fence.
“I been called ‘nigger’ lots, but ain’t never been called no Indian, fella.”
“There’s a woman—young woman—down there by the corral fence—what’s her name?”
He heard movement behind him.
“I asked her name.”
He felt the muzzle of a gun at the back of his neck.
Rourke stepped back against it on his right foot, simultaneously snapping his left foot up and back, hearing a guttural sigh, feeling his heel connect with tissue and bone, his left arm moving as he half dodged, half fell right, sweep-ing up and against the muzzle of the gun—it was a Ruger Mini-14
stainless—knocking the rifle barrel hard left as the man holding it sagged for-ward, knees buckling. Rourke half rolled, half wheeled, balanced on his right hand and left foot, his right leg snaking up and out, the toe of his combat boot impacting against the black rifleman’s abdomen just above the belt. Then Rourke was up, the little Freedom Arms boot pistol’s hammer at full stand, the muzzle of the pistol against the black man’s right ear as the man sagged to the ground.
“Don’t move—you alone?”
“Fuck you—”
Rourke increased the pressure of the pistol against the man’s ear. “It’d be awful dumb for you to make me shoot you—I think we’re on the same side. Now—the name of the woman down by the corral fence—”
“Why the hell you wanna know—”
“Maybe she’s my wife—”
“You the guy’s who’s the doctor— “
Rourke eased the three-inch barreled pistol away from the man’s ear. He stood up, blocking the hammer with his thumb, his hands shaking too much to trust to lowering it at that instant.