Ahern, Jerry - The Savage Horde

Michael and Annie were standing beside him.

"Why didn't you come," Michael asked, his voice serious sounding, hurt sounding—like Rourke had heard it when he had been too busy to play, too busy to talk. "Why didn't you come, Daddy?"

Rourke couldn't answer—he knew they wouldn't understand.

"Your mother, he whispered, then looked back at the face as he finished rolling over the body.

Dead.

Lids open—the eyes a brilliant blue.

"Natalia." He heard himself whisper it.

Annie said. "That's why Daddy didn't come, Michael."

He turned to look at the children, to say, "No—that's not right—" But they were running off toward the surf again, laughing.

But the laughter somehow sounded forced to him, hollow.

It was Sarah's body as he drew it into his arms, but somehow Natalia's face and he asked himself if he were insane.

"What—"

"John!"

"Michael—please understand—"

"John!"

"Damnit!" Rourke opened is eyes, light in a yellow shaft coming through from the companionway. The face over him, shaking him—Paul.

"John—you all right—you were—"

"What's the matter?"

"That's why I came, John—it's Doctor Milton—he says Natalia's dying."

Rourke sat up.

"Michael," he murmured. Then he pushed himself from the cot and started into the companionway, Rubenstein beside him.

Chapter 15

"I won't let you die." He told her that even though she couldn't hear him.

"Doctor Rourke—"

"I'm opening her again. Maybe I counted wrong and there was another fragment that didn't show up—"

"But she's bleeding to death."

"I'm opening her."

"Later maybe—you could—"

"If I don't—you want me to run down the list of what could happen and what would happen first—"

"Let me—you look exhausted."

"No—no," and Rourke felt himself shaking his head. "No." He looked at his hands, then touched them to her face . . .

"We're going to have a couple members of the crew down for the count—I've had men volunteer to give a second pint of blood—I'm taking half pints only."

"Give me their names when this is through," Rourke told Milton. "If she makes it she'll want to thank them." It wasn't the suture line—it was gastric bleeding and as Rourke completed re-opening her he could see nothing. "I need suction here—fast—there's so much fluid I can't—"

"Coming up." It was Kelly and Rourke nodded, starting to apply the suction. At the rate at which she was bleeding—he didn't finish the thought . . .

"Here—" and Rourke glanced at the clock—it had

been more than eighty minutes. "You—you close her," and Rourke stepped back, blood half way up his forearms, staining his gown, his gloved hands splotched with it—her blood. He stripped away the gloves.

"Here, Doctor—" It was Kelly.

"No—no—you stick with Doctor Milton—I'm all right." Rourke couldn't leave the room—he was too tired, his head aching too badly. On the white clothed tray was the bullet. He picked it up—there had been eight rounds, this one buried in the abdominal wall—a place he'd searched and missed before. Upon removing the bullet, he controlled the bleeding with another continuous locked chromic suture. "Tired," he murmured.

He started to strip away the gown and when it was half off, dropped the bullet in the pocket of his pants—it would remind him of two things, always—mortality and fallability. And a third thing—to persevere.

Chapter 16

Sarah, her hands stabbed into the squared pockets of her dress, walked. She felt the high grass against her bare legs, felt the sun warm her chest and back. She was changing—she knew that, had realized it from the first time she'd picked up her husband's gun when they'd left the house on the Night of The War. Known the change was irreversible since she'd shot the brigands that morning after. She had killed.

She had killed many times since then and no longer did she vomit in her first moment alone afterward.

Almost absently, she wondered if John had changed. Always his guns, his knives, his obsession with being prepared. For what she had never understood—and now she understood. Was he at his Retreat—would she ever find it? Would he ever find her?

She stopped, standing midway in the long field made narrow by the natural foundation of the ground, a ridge crest at its far end, trees there rising to the higher ground beyond the shallow valley. She saw movement. Before the Night of The War, it would only have been the movement of a bird, perhaps a squirrel who'd misjudged his weight and landed on a branch too weak to support him—but the movement now she saw as something else—the branch had bent low.

She listened, feeling it in the stray wisps of hair that had not gotten caught up in the rubber band-like pony tail

holder which held her hair. Her fists knotted in the pockets of her dress. She licked her lips.

Movement again—a man.

She stood there, assessing her options, finding herself coldly professional about them, smiling as she thought again -of the change in herself.

Two hundred yards at least to the end of the field, the ground slightly uneven but runnable for her. Another hundred yards or more from the edge of the field to the house. There was an AR-beside the door of the kitchen. If she could get that tar.

She cursed herself for being stupid and leaving the house—so far from it—without a gun.

"Sarah," she whispered to herself. She turned and started walking, not too slowly, but slowly enough that she hoped no one would think she had spotted the movement in the trees.

It might only be the returning resistance fighters—but they wouldn't hide in the trees.

It might be Soviet forces moving through—she doubted that. They traveled with greater fanfare.

Brigands.

A woman caught alone in the open—she couldn't He to herself as to her fate if they got her. She had seen what they did to women, to little girls—even to little boys. But to women most of all.

She felt a pain in her, below her abdomen. She would have put the twinge down to ovulation—but it was fear instead.

She quickened her pace, snatching up a piece of high grass in her hands and using that as an excuse to turn around.

Men—six, then six more, then more than a dozen others. There seemed to be more each time she shifted her gaze. She watched them—they watched her. Big—long haired, some of them. The clothes, the weapons—"Brigands." She whispered the word to herself. Then she screamed it. "Brigands!"

Sarah Rourke started to run.

Chapter 17

Her heart pounded in her chest, her lungs aching with the oxygen deprivation, the skirt of her yellow dress bunched against her thighs, the wind resistance as she ran keeping it there. She heard the sounds behind her— motorcycles.

She turned, starting to look at the brigands pursuing her, her right foot catching in a clump of the high grass that was somehow tangled. She felt herself falling.

Her chest, her face—she slapped into the sandy ground.

She looked behind her as she jerked her right foot free—there were three men on bikes, closing fast. She could hear them shouting now above the roar of their engines.

"A woman—shit!"

She pushed herself to her feet, scooping up two handfuls of the sandy soil. Then she started running again. Fifty yards remained to the end of the field and there was nothing she could do to outrun the men on the bikes.

Sarah stopped, turning, her fists bunched tight together. The lead biker slowed, the other two slowing behind him.