Ahern, Jerry - The Savage Horde

"John—"

Rourke stabbed one of the pistols into his belt, his right hand going out, to Rubenstein's shoulder. He said nothing, just looked at the man—his friend.

He moved his hand away, retaking the Detonics . in his fist, his fingers balling on the checkered rubber of the Pachmayr grips.

Rourke had predetermined it—he would save one round, to shoot Paul if somehow it looked the wildmen would take him alive. It was better than the cross, far better.

He held the pistols at his hips, ready.

The mob was slowing its advance, the leaders or front runners—Rourke couldn't tell which—waving their torches in the air.

The mob stopped, then began to advance, slowly, at a determined walk. The isolated shouts and curses were gone, but the voices now becoming one voice, a chant, the words chilling his soul. "Kill the heathens! Kill the heathens! Kill the heathens! Kill—"

"John—remember how you used to tell me—trigger control?"

Rourke nodded, words hard to come for him, his throat tight. "Yeah. I remember."

"It's been like a second life anyway, hasn't it," the younger man's voice murmured, Rourke not looking at him.

"Yes."

Rourke turned to look at Rubenstein, the pistol—the battered Browning High Power—clutched in his right fist. His left hand, as if an automatic response, moved to the bridge of his nose, to push back the wire-framed glasses.

"It has—a second life," Rourke nodded, seeing his friend he judged perhaps for the last time.

The mob was less than fifty yards from them now, the smell of the torches acrid on the night air, the faces of the men and women who held them gleaming and reddened, glistening sweat.

The chanting of the mob had stopped.

One man stepped out of the front ranks, a torch in his right hand, a long bladed knife in the left, the torchlight glinting in streaks of orange and red from the steel—blood was there. He shouted, the crowd otherwise hushed.

"Kill the heathens!"

Rourke snapped the pistol in his right hand to shoulder height and fired once.

The -grain JHP brought the man down, the body

lurching into the crowd, the torch igniting the animal skin covering a woman near him. Her scream was loud, but died in the shouts of the mob as they broke and ran— toward Rourke and Rubenstein.

Rourke waited, remembering a tine his father had quoted often, but only as a joke. It was no joke now. "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes."

Chapter 40

Rourke could see the whites of their eyes in the torchlit glare reflected from their steel. He opened fire, Rubenstein's pistol barking from beside him, the pistol sounding louder to him than his own guns, despite the difference in objective noise volume between . ACP and mm Parabellum merely because of the Browning's position relative to his ears.

The twin stainless Detonics pistols bucked, bucked again and again, bodies tumbling, spinning out, falling, more bodies swelling the ranks behind them—a wave, a human wave that seemed endless.

The Detonics pistol in his right hand was locked open, empty.

He fired the pistol in his left, the round slamming into the chest of a man less than twenty yards from him, the man going down, the slide of the second Detonics locking open, empty as well now.

Rubenstein's pistol was still discharging, Rourke changing to his last full magazines for both guns. He would have to scrounge the partially loaded spares.

As he raised the pistol in his right hand, Rubenstein's pistol suddenly still, the forward element of the wave, of the mob so near he could feel the heat of their torches, vthere was a shot burst, then another and another.

The wildmen—they were using their guns?

Another shot burst—M-I fire as best he could tell,

bodies going down from the leading ranks of the wildmen storming toward them.

Now shot burst after shot burst, automatic weapons fire ringing deafeningly across the rocky outcropping on which Rourke stood, Rubenstein beside him.

"John!"

Rourke glanced to his right, muzzle flashes coming from the rocks at the base of the ridge which rose then fell toward the beach. There were men, running from the rocks, M-s in their hands, spitting tongues of fire in the night.

"Rourke! Doctor Rourke!" Rourke heard the shout but didn't look to find the source, instead turning his freshly loaded pistols at the mob, none of them advancing now, some screaming, fleeing, dropping their torches.

The pistol in his right fist—a shot into the head of a wildman still holding a torch, the head seeming to explode, the torch falling against it, the hair catching aflame. The pistol in his left—a woman, an assault rifle blazing in her hands toward the shore party—her chest seeming to sink into her as the body flipped back, spread eagling against a heavily bearded man who dropped his torch.

The pistol in his right—the man with the heavy beard who held the woman, his neck spouting a gusher of blood in the firelight.

The pistol in his left, the pistol in his right, his left, his right, his left, right, left, right, left—the slides of both Detonics pistols, the stainless steel gleaming dully in the torchlight of the burning faggots on the ground, bodies writhing there, were locked open, the guns empty, "Rourke!"

He turned his head now—Commander Gundersen, running, a . in his right fist, two seamen flanking him, firing M-s.

"John!" It was Rubenstein. "John!"

Rubenstein's High Power was licking flame into the night, the pistol at full extension in his locked fists, his body in a classic combat crouch, the mm double column magazine Browning barely rocking in his hands.

"Rourke!"

Gundersen was beside them, the two seaman dropping to their knees, firing their assault rifles as they spread prone on the ground, short, rapid bursts, spinning more of the wildmen from the mob, the mob breaking up, running.

"I've only got fifteen men—all I could spare from the ship—we gotta get the hell outa here."

"Wait a minute," Rourke rasped. He walked forward, staying clear of the field of fire from the two seamen, noticing others of the landing party drawing back now, consolidating on Gundersen.

Rourke found what he sought, wrestling an M-from the hands of a dead wildman, searching bodies on the ground for loaded magazines, finding a half dozen magazines, twenties and thirties and some of the non-Colt forties as he found a second M-.

He started back toward Paul and Commander Gundersen, the two injured men now being helped away by the two seamen who had covered Gundersen's advance.

"We gotta get outa here, Rourke!"

"Right," Rourke nodded, handing Rubenstein an M-, distributing the magazines evenly between them, but keeping the thirties for himself—he liked them better.

He dumped the partially spent magazine in his newly acquired assault rifle, ramming it into his open musette bag, the fresh magazines in his belt, his empty Detonics pistols already holstered. He worked the bolt of the M-, kicking out the already chambered round, Rubenstein catching it, Rourke smiling as he did, then Rourke letting the bolt fly forward.

"Now we can travel," he whispered. Already, the mob of wildmen was reforming, coming—and it was still a long way to the beach.

Chapter 41

Natalia shivered in the sail. She was cold, and the gunfire she now heard from the height of the rocks above the darkened beach chilled her more—was Rourke alive? Paul? There had been sporadic gunfire, then heavier gunfire—a firefight.

She felt—it was a man's word and she smiled at it—impotent. She could do nothing trapped on the sail in her damned robe, the blanket around her like an Indian squaw, her bones shivering, her teeth chattering.

She looked beside her—a young man, almost equally as cold, she guessed, his cheeks and the edges of his ears red tinged in the wind that blew across them both.