Survivalist - The Web Part 7

Rozhdestvenskiy only nodded, then touched his black-gloved right hand to the door handle, twisting it. Pulling it open toward him, he shone his light inside. He felt like Carter at the discovery of Tutankhamen. No golden idols were here, but file cabinets, unopened, unlike the ones in other parts of the complex. There was no pile of charred papers and microfilm rolls in the center of the floor.

"No tomb robbers have beaten us" he remarked, then stepped inside. He walked quickly through thedark-ness, the light of his torch showing across the yellow indexes on the file drawers.

He found the one he wanted-the ones. There were six file drawers marked "Project ,-C/RS." He opened the top drawer to pull out the abstract sheets at the front of the file. He read them, then closed his eyes, suddenly very tired.

"Voskavich, these drawers are not to be looked in. I will need carts for removing the contents after they have been boxed. Bring the cartons here and I will do that personally."

"Yes, Comrade Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy,' Voskavich answered.

"Leave me here-alone." And Rozhdestvenskiy, when the last one of them had left, switched off his torch and stood in the darkness beside the file drawers. He knew now what the Eden Project was. The Americans never ceased to amaze him.

"I wasn't born here. Most of the rest of them were, and their parents were born here, too, and before that," the woman told him.

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean, lady?" Rourke asked her, exasperated, smiling as he spoke through tightly clenched teeth while the men and women and children of the town who had made up the knot of humanity in the town square were now breaking up, going home.

"My name's Martha Bogen." She smiled.

"My question wasn't about your name. Don't these people-"

'That's right, Abe." She smiled, saying the last words loudly, a knot of people coining up to them, stopping. She looked at a pretty older woman at the center of a group of people roughly in their sixties, Rourke judged.

She said, "Marion-this is my brother, Abe Collins. He finally made it here to join me!"

"Ohh," the older woman cooed. "Martha, we're so happy for you-to have your brother with you. Ohh- Abe," she said, extending a hand Rourke took. The hand was clammy and cold. "It's so wonderful to meet you after all this time. Martha's younger brother. I hope we'll see you in church tomorrow."

"Well, I had a hard ride____I'll try though." Rourke smiled.

"Good! I know you and Martha have so much to talk about." The older woman smiled again.

Rourke was busy shaking hands with the others, and as they left, he smiled broadly at Martha Bogen, his right hand clamping on her upper left arm, the fingers boring tightly into her flesh. "You give me some answers- now."

"Walk me home, Abe, and I'll try." She smiled, the smile genuine, Rourke thought.

"I'll get my bike; it's at the corner." He gestured toward it, half-expect ing that in the instant since he'd last looked for it someone had taken it. But it was there, untouched. "I suppose you've got a fully operational gas station, too?"

"Yes. You can fill up tomorrow. You should stay here tonight-at my house.

Everyone will expect it."

"Why?" Rourke rasped.

"I told them you were my brother-of course." She smiled again, taking his arm and starting with him through the ever-thinning crowd.

"Why did you tell them that?"

"If they knew you were a stranger, then they'd have to do something." She smiled, nodding to another old lady as they pa.s.sed her.

Rourke smiled and nodded, too, then rasped, "Do what?"

"The strangers-most of them didn't want to stay."

"n.o.body's going to think I'm your brother. That was so d.a.m.ned transparent-"

"My brother was coming. He's probably dead out there like everybody else. G.o.d knows how you survived."

"A lot of us survived-not everyone's dead."

"I know that, but it must be terrible out there-a world like that."

"They know Fm not your brother."

"I know they do," Martha Bogen said, "but it won't matter-so long as you pretend."

Rourke shook his head, looking at her, saying, his voice low, "Pretend-what the h.e.l.l is going on here?"

"I can't -explain it well enough for you to understand, Abe-"

"It's John. I told you that."

"John. Walk me home, then just sleep on the couch; it looks like there's bad weather outside the valley tonight. Then tomorrow with a good meal in you-not just those terrible hot dogs-well, you can decide what you want to do."

Rourke stopped beside his bike. "I won't stay-not now," he told her, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, telling him something more than he could imagine was wrong.

"Did you see the police on the way into town-John?"

"So what?" He looked at her.

ffThey let anyone in, but they won't Jet you out. And at night you won't stand a chance unless you know the valley. I know the valley. Before he died, my husband used to take me for long walks. He hunted the valley a lot-white-tailed deer. I know every path there is."

Rourke felt the corners of his mouth downturning. "How long ago did your husband die?"

"He was a doctor. You have hands like a doctor, John. Good hands. He died five years ago. There was an influenza outbreak in the valley and he worked himself half to death; children, pregnant women-all of them had it. And he caught it and he died."

"I'm sorry, Martha," Rourke told her genuinely. "But J cant stay."

"We have twelve policemen and they work twelve-hour shifts lately-six men on and six off. Can you fight twelve policemen to get out of town-into a storm?" She stroked his face with her right hand. "You need a shave. I'll bet a hot shower would be good, and a warm bed."

Her face flushed, then she added, "In the guest room, I meant."

Rourke nodded. There was no strategic reserve site for more than a hundred miles, and Rourke knew that he needed gasoline. The slow going in the storm had depleted his tanks. "That gas station really has gas?" he asked her.

"You can even use my credit card, John, if you don't have any money."

Rourke looked at her, speechless. "Credit card?" The gasoline-without it he couldn't press the search for Sarah and the children. "All right, Martha, I'll accept your generous invitation. Thank you." His skin crawled when he said it.

Tildie's breath came in clouds of heavy steam. On a rise overlooking Lake Hartwell, Sarah reined the sweating animal in. Beneath her horse's hoofs was South Carolina and on the far sh.o.r.e, Georgia. In the distance, to her left, she could make out the giant outline of the dam through the swirling snow. And below her, on the lake, was a large flat-bottomed houseboat.

Smoke drifted from a small chimney in the center of the houseboat's roof.

She looked behind her at Michael and Annie, freezing with the cold; at Sam, John's horse before the war and now she supposed more realistically Michael's horse. The animal was shuddering as large clouds of steam, like those Tildie exhaled, gushed from its nostrils. "Michael, where'd you get that knife?" "One of the children on the island-he gave it to me." Sarah didn't know what to say. Her son had just stabbed at a man trying to hurt him, trying to hurt his sister. "You did the right thing, using it-but be careful with it." She couldn't quite bring herself to tell him that she wanted to take it away from him. tfJust be careful with it. We'll talk about it later."

"All right," he said-slightly defensively, she thought.

beneath it slick and wet and like polished ice.

When she reached the base of the rise, the houseboat was less than thirty feet away.

There were no mooring lines, but there were trees nearby that woulddo, she calculated. The houseboat rose and fell with the meager tide, edgingin toward the sh.o.r.e and away. Sarah visually searched the hank. At one place the houseboat's gunwales were three feet away from the edge when the Hat-bottomed craft drifted in. Sarah skidded down, along the red clay toward this spot, secured her rifle, then waited, wiping imaginary sweat from her palms as she rubbed her gloved hands along her thighs.

The houseboat was easing in. Sarah jumped, her hand reaching out for the line of rope that formed the rail, grabbing at it. The rope, ice-coated, slipped from her fingers.

She twisted her body, arching her back, throwing her weight forward, crashing her arms down across the rope, falling, heaving over the raiJ and sprawling across the ice-coated deck.

She lay there a moment, catching her breath, her belly aching where the b.u.t.t of the Government Model Colt had slammed against it as she fell. She rolled onto her side, giving a brave wave toward the children, still watching her from atop the rise. But she didn't call out because of the smoke in the houseboat chimney-there had to be people aboard.

Sarah tried standing up, but the deck was too slippery for her and she fell, catching herself on her hands, the b.u.t.t of the AR- slamming into the deckboards. She crawled on hands and knees toward the door leading inside.

Sarah looked at the houseboat again. "I'm going to see. if there's anyone aboard that houseboat-if maybe wecan find shelter with them. Michael, you and Annie stay here. Don't come after me. If it looks like I'm in trouble . . . then . . ." She didn't know what to tell him. Finally she said, "Use your ownjWgment. But wait until I come for you or you see Vm in trouble.

Understood?" rtYe$, I understand," he told her. She knew he understood; whether he would do as she asked was another question. "And watch out behind you-for those people." She didn't know what else to call the wild men and women who had attacked them.

She stepped down from Tildie, her rear end suddenly cold from leaving the built-up warmth of the saddle. She handed Michael Tildie's reins. "Hold her. I'm going down there to look."

Sarah settled the AR- across her back, on its sling, then thought better of it. She took the rifle off and held it in her right hand, a fresh thirty-round magazine in place, the chamber loaded already. Her pistol, John's pistol, was freshly reloaded and back against her abdomen under her clothes. It was starting to rust a great deal; she didn't know what to do to stop it except to oil the gun.

With her gloved left hand she tugged at the blue-and-white bandanna on her hair, pulling it down where it had slipped up from covering her left ear.

She smiled at the children. "I love you both. Michael. Take care of Annie." She started down from the rise, toward the houseboat. It appeared as though there were no moorings, that something like a tide was forcing the boat toward sh.o.r.e.

She hurried as best she could, slipping several times where the iced-over gravel was still loose, the red clay She stopped beside the closed door and reaching around behind her, got the AR- and worked the selector to full auto. Reaching up to it, she tried the door handle. It opened under her hand, swinging outside to her left.

Not entering, she looked inside. A man and a woman lay on the bed at the far corner of the large room, the sheets around them stained; the smell a.s.sailed her nose. They were locked in each other's arms, their bodies blue-veined and dead.

"They killed themselves," she murmured, resting her head against the doorjamb.

Sarah Rourke wept for them-and for herself.

Settling his gla.s.ses back on the bridge of his nose, Paul Rubenstein pulled down the bandanna covering his face as he slowed the Harley, the snow under it slushy and wet. He looked up, and for a brief instant could see a patch of blue beyond the fast scudding gray clouds.

"It is breaking up," Natalia said from behind him.

'"Bout time." He smiled. He suddenly had the realization of the air temperature on his face. rtMust be twenty degrees warmer than it was when we broke camp," he told her, looking over his right shoulder at her.

"We should be getting into my territory soon, Paul- there may not be time," she began.

"I know; give John your love, right?"

He felt the Russian woman punch him in the back. "Yes." He heard her laugh. "And this is for you." And he felt her hands roughly twisting his head around, her face b.u.mped his gla.s.ses as she kissed him full on the lips. "I won't ask you to give that to John-that was for you." She smiled.

"Look, you don't have to-"

"To go back to my people? John and I went over that. I have to. I'm a Russian-no matter how good my English is, no matter how much I can sound or look like an American. I'm a Russian. What I feel for John, what I feel for you as my friend-that will never change. But being what I am won't change either."

"You know you're fighting on the wrong side," Rubenstein told her, suddenly feeling himself not smiling.

"If I said the same thing to you, would you believe me? I don't mean believe that I believed it, but believe it inside yourself?"

"No," Rubenstein said flatly.

'Then the same answer ior you, Paul. No. My people have done a great deal of harm, but so have yours. With good men like my uncle, perhaps I can do something-* to-"

"Make the world safe for Communism?" He laughed.

She laughed, too, saying through her laughter, "You're not the same barefoot boy from the Big Apple that I met long ago, Paul."

He was deadly serious when he said to her, "And you're not the same person you pretended to be then. I'll tell you what your problem is. You grew up believing in one set of ideals and you've been realizing what you believed in all that time was wrong. Karamatsov was the Communist, the embodiment of-"

"I won't listen anymore, Paul." She smiled,*touching her fingers to his lips.

"All right." He smiled, kissing her forehead as she leaned against his chest for a moment. "Just think what a team you and John would make," he told her then.

She looked up at him, her eyes wet. "Fighting? Always fighting? Brigands or some other enemies?"

"That's not what I meant. You can find other ways to be invincible together." He laughed because he'd sounded so serious, so philosophical.

"He-he can't. And I can't."

"What if he never finds Sarah?"

"He will," she told him flatly.

Paul said again, "What if he never finds Sarah? Would you marry him?"

"That's none of your business, Paul," she said, then smiled.

"I know it isn't-but would you?"

"Yes," she said softly, then started to fumble in her bag. She took out a cigarette and a lighter, then plunged the tip of the cigarette into the flame with what looked to Rubenstein like a vengeance.

"Stay where you are. Raise your hands and you will not be harmed!"

Rubenstein looked ahead of them-a half-dozen Russian soldiers, greatcoats stained with snow, and at their head a man he guessed was an officer. "You are under arrest. Lay down your arms!"

She said it in English-he guessed so he could understand. "I am Major Natalia Tiemerovna,"-Rubenstein thought he detected her voice catch for an instant before she added, "of the Committee for State Security of the Soviet."

Ill Varakov pushed the b.u.t.ton for his window to roll down-it was warm now, so much warmer than it had been.

He glanced at his driver; this driver was not as good a man as Leon had been. Varakov exhaled hard, waiting as the Soviet fighter homber taxied across the field.