Rourke stooped over the nearest dog, studying it. Then he stood, fished in the bag for spare magazines for his pistols and reloaded, saying to Rubenstein, "That dog has rabies. Watch out for cats, dogs, anything. We gotta get out of here, soon."
Without another word, they started down the street in their original direction. Rubenstein had slung the rifle across his shoulders.
On the next block, Rourke stopped, staring up and down the street, then pointing. "Over there. We'll see if there's anything left-might have been looted."
He started walking toward the clothing store, Rubenstein behind him. There was no glass in the windows; it had blown inward. Rourke glanced down the street. There was a huge hole where, apparently, a gas main had ruptured. Beyond that, at the end of the block, all the buildings were burned.
"Why are some of the buildings left, some only partway burned do you suppose?" Rubenstein asked.
"A firestorm is a funny thing-it feeds on itself, builds its own winds. There's no logic to it. That's why they're so dangerous. Probably," and Rourke-cautiously because of his bare feet-stepped through the smashed glass door, "when that plane hit the gasoline tanker truck at the airport, the city was pretty much evacuated. May have been expecting a Soviet missile to be targeted on them. No one to put out the fire, got into the gas system and gas mains blew-then a firestorm. It must have burned itself out fast though."
"Here," Rubenstein said. "Take your flashlight."
"Thanks," Rourke muttered, shining the beam along the length of the store. The merchandise seemed untouched. "Help yourself," Rourke said over his shoulder, starting toward a table loaded with Levi's.
After ten minutes both men were dressed again-jeans, shirts, boots. And each took a jacket.
Rourke stopped by the cash register and walked behind the counter, going into the smashed display case and snatching a handful of Timex watches. "Here," he shouted, tossing a couple of the watches to Rubenstein, then putting two on his left wrist.
"Got any idea what time it is?" Rubenstein asked.
"Doesn't really matter anymore. A watch is just a way of keeping track of elapsed time. When the sun rises, it'll be about seven. Grab yourself a wide-brimmed hat, Paul," he added. "That sun on the desert'll be strong tomorrow."
Rourke snatched a pair of dark-lensed aviator sunglasses and tried them on, then found a dark gray Stetson in his size.
As they left, he said, "Let's head for that church and then find the nearest hospital."
Chapter Thirty
"I never wore a cowboy hat before," Rubenstein said. "Except when I was a kid."
Rourke turned as he started opening the door into the church. "Is that a fact? Come on."
Rourke stepped inside, Rubenstein behind him. Then both men turned back toward the door. Rubenstein started coughing. "My God!"
"Yeah, ain't it though," Rourke said, turning back to look down the church's long main aisle and toward the altar. The smell of burnt flesh was strong. The pews had been converted into beds-people were lined one after the other, head to head along them.
Rourke started up the aisle. The pews were jammed with burn victims, as were the floors. He picked his way past the people in the aisles. A few were sitting up. They had open, festering sores on their beet-red faces. Many of them had their eyes bandaged. There were nuns-about six or seven-moving slowly about the church, and near the front of the church he saw a priest. He walked toward the man, tapped him on the shoulder.
The priest was gently washing the face of a little girl. The hair on the left side of her head was burned away. Her face was a mass of blisters. "Father?" Rourke said.
The priest turned toward him then. Rourke studied the priest's face. He was dark-apparently Chicano. It looked like he hadn't shaved for several days. "Father, my name is Rourke. My friend here and I are from a commercial jetliner that crashed about twenty-five miles south of here. I need to find a hospital, some medical-" but he stopped.
The priest's eyes were almost smiling, but not quite. Rourke whispered, "This is the hospital?"
"Yes. All the hospitals were destroyed in the firestorm. We here are doing what we can, but there must be thousands out there in the ruins-like this one. There is no one to help your people on the plane."
"What about medical supplies?" Rourke asked.
"Water-and that is running out. We make bandages from what we can."
"I see," Rourke said slowly, starting to stand. Then he leaned over the little girl. He said, "Are you a doctor, Father?"
"We have no doctor."
Rourke looked back to Rubenstein, and Rubenstein nodded, his face set in a grim mask.
"You do now-at least for a few hours. I'm a doctor."
"God has heard me," the priest said, crossing himself and smiling.
"Well, I can't say about that."
He started working then, until sunrise, then noon, and long into the afternoon. As soon as he thought he'd seen every patient, another was brought in.
The little girl died at noon. There were no drugs, no pain killers and Rourke realized bitterly that most of the more serious cases would end in death. But at least he had been able to help some of them. As night started to fall, he checked one of the worst cases again. The man was dead. Rourke covered his sticky, raw-face with a sheet, then stood. Rubenstein was helping the priest move one of the dead, a woman, into the courtyard behind the church.
Rourke followed them, stopping just outside the door. There were dozens of bodies in the yard, seventy-five or more, Rourke judged. Rourke walked over to the priest. "Father, I'm going to have to get back to the plane now."
"Yes. I have been waiting all afternoon for you to say this. I knew you would have to return to the airplane. May God go with you."
"You'd better get those bodies buried, Father. Soon."
"I will do what I can."
"Move them and burn them, then," Rourke advised.
The priest stared at Rourke. "They will be buried. I know most of these people. They were Catholic. They must be buried as Catholics."
"If I could, I'd hang around and help," Rourke said quietly. "I'm sorry."
"You have helped-and God bless you for it."
Rourke took the priest's outstretched hand, then turned to go. "I'm coming, John," Rubenstein said.
Rourke turned to him, holding his hat in his hands, saying, "After all this time, I don't know what we'll find out there, Paul."
"I know that," the smaller man said. "I'm going with you anyway."
Rourke just nodded, turned, and started toward the main doors, Rubenstein behind him. It was dark again by the time Rourke and Rubenstein reached the edge of the city. The howling of the wild dogs in the distance grew louder with the failing darkness.
Much of the residential section here had not been burned, but was deserted. "Where'd you suppose everyone went?" Rubenstein said.
"Up there," said Rourke, pointing toward the mountains on the other side of the city. "For some reason, whenever there's disaster, people always think of going to the mountains. Santa Fe is probably a giant refugee center by now. Doesn't look like there were any hits up there, either."
"Why don't we go to Santa Fe for help, then?"
"Too far to walk, and if the town is still functioning, I'd guess they don't have any doctors, nurses, or medical supplies to spare."
"How come you're a doctor but you run around with guns?"
"That's a long story."
"I got the time," Rubenstein said.
"Well, briefly, I studied to be a doctor, went all through college and medical school, even interned. But then I started watching what was happening in the world and said to myself that as a doctor, all I'd be able to do would be to patch things up for other people. Maybe in the CIA or something like that, I thought, I could keep things from needing to be patched up for a while longer. After a few years in covert operations, down in Latin America, mostly, I saw that wasn't possible. I'd always been into guns-hunting, the outdoors, the whole nine yards. Started getting interested in survivalism. I was a weapons expert already, found myself writing articles and books on it, started getting into the technical side of survival. Wrote about that, too. Because of my degree, I wound up doing a lot of seminars on survival medicine, stuff like that. I traveled all around the United States, parts of Latin America, the Mideast, Europe-teaching survivalism, weapons training. Anyway, here I am."