Ahern, Jerry - The Savage Horde

The Savage Horde

Jerry Ahern

Chapter 1

John Rourke pulled up the zipper on the fly of his Levis with his right hand, his left moving across his body plane to the Detonics stainless under his right armpit in the double Alessi rig, his fingers knotting around the black checkered rubber Pachmayr grips, his left thumb poised to cock the . as soon as it cleared the leather. He gave the pistol a short, firm tug, hearing the speed break through the trigger guard unsnap. His thumb jerked back the hammer.

Rourke wheeled, the . in his left hand snaking out from inside the brown leather bomber jacket, moving forward, his right hand reaching for the gun's twin under his left arm. He already had the target—a man about six-foot four, unshaven, his black leather jacket mud-stained, a riot shotgun in his hands, the pump tromboning as the twelve-gauge, roughly . caliber muzzle swung on line.

Rourke's trigger finger twitched once, the second Detonics already out, in his right fist, the hammer jacking back. Rourke fired the second pistol as well, the discharge like an echo of the first punctuating the riot shotgun as it fired.

Rourke threw himself down and right, the shotgunner right handed and the impact of Rourke's first slug pounding the man in the right side of the chest, twisting the body right, pulling the shot column right as well. The ground three feet from Rourke seemed to erupt, the .

caliber-sized pellets raising a spray of loose dirt and dead leaves, the dirt showering down as the shotgunner spun, twisted and lurched toward the lank Georgia pine beside which he'd stood. The body slipped along the length of the pine's trunk, then stopped, almost sagged down to the knees, the shotgun falling as the hands went limp.

Rourke pushed himself to his feet, muttering, "Can't even urinate without somebody tryin' to kill ya—hell." His pistols held close to his sides at hip level, Rourke moved toward the man, Rourke's eyes behind the dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses scanning from side to side. Where there was one brigand there were usually a dozen or more nearby.

But he saw no one else.

He stopped beside the body—the front of the leather jacket the dead man wore was caught up on a stump of branch. Blood oozed from the right center of the chest over the lung and from the left side of the neck near the hinge of the jaw, the eyes wide open in death, still clear.

Rourke shoved the body down to the ground, letting it flop into the rotted leaves and the brown and brittle pine needles there. The shotgun was a cheapie—Rourke had no interest in it. Rourke unzipped his bomber jacket, shoving one of his Detonics pistols into his belt, the safety upped. His left hand free now, the right fist clenched tight on the other Detonics, Rourke began—methodically—to search the dead man.

A poor-quality lockbiade folding knife—Rourke didn't need it. A disposable cigarette lighter—Rourke tried it under his thumb and it lit. He had no use for disposable anythings, but extra fire was always useful—Rourke pocketed the lighter. Cigarettes—Rourke didn't smoke them and he stuffed them back in the dead man's pocket. A Freedom Arms . Magnum Boot Pistol. "Hmm," Rourke murmured. He inspected the little gun; it seemed in perfect working order. He searched the pockets, finding

a plastic box of fifty rounds, only four holes in the plastic grid for the missing rounds. He stuffed the box of ammo in his bomber jacket patch pocket and put the boot pistol's hammer to half cock, twisted the cylinder base pin and withdrew it, then removed the cylinder. Four rounds, all unfired. He had used the little Freedom Arms guns a few times as last ditch back up ordnance. They worked well and were accurate, despite their size. But he carried no single action revolver ever with a round under the hammer. He pushed out one of the four loaded rounds, using the base pin to urge it out of the charging hole in the cylinder, then reassembled the gun, pocketing the loose fourth round. Rourke tucked the three-inch tubed gun in another pocket, then quickly resumed the search. A wallet; inside it a Pennsylvania driver's license— expired—and the folded up picture of a naked blonde-haired woman. It looked clipped from a magazine, and there was twenty dollars. The money was really useless, more suitable for fire starting than a means of exchange since the Night of The War.

Rourke took the twenty and pocketed it anyway, then thumbed closed the eyes.

Looking around the wooded area past the body, he upped the safety on the second Detonics, dropped the pistol in his hip pocket and picked up the shotgun, mechanically emptying the magazine tube. He unscrewed the nut at its front, tossing the nut into the trees, then pulling the magazine spring. He bent and twisted this, then threw it away, letting the emptied and nearly useless smooth bore fall to the ground. It could be fired awkwardly single shot, but there was no time to remove any less obvious parts.

He started back across the clearing now and away from the dead man. More brigands would be coming soon, having heard the gunfire. He was mildly surprised none had come yet. To have left an operable weapon behind him for someone else perhaps to use against him would have been foolish.

As he started to mount the Harley, he thought better of it, turned and pulled down the zipper of his fly, finishing what he'd started to do before the interruption . . .

"I tell ya those was shots—shots, Marty—maybe he's in trouble or something Crip!" His hands shook as he lit a cigarette, the lighter not working for him.

The taller, thinner man crouched beside him in the pines took a Zippo from his pocket and worked it. "Here—and if Marty's in trouble, then that's too fuckin'

bad, Jed—too fuckin' bad,"

The first man, Jed, poked the tip of the cigarette into the lighter's flame, nodding through a mouthful of smoke, coughing as he said, "But if he bumped into somebody—maybe—'

"Somebody comes this way lookin' for us, we take care .a them too—there's plenty of us and only six of them Army guys comin' and if we could hardly hear them shots, a cinch them Army guys didn't." Jed's eyes followed Crip as the taller man turned and glanced down along the defile and toward the valley below.

Spotted behind rocks and boulders and trees were more than two dozen men—armed with everything from riot shotguns to automatic weapons. And past these, at the far side of the valley, more visible from the wake of trodden down grass and wild oats tracking their line of march, were six figures in olive drab.

Crip was peering through binoculars now, "Those guys gotta have maybe a coupla hundred rounds of ammo apiece on 'em—and the six M-s. Maybe got other shit we can use."

"We could use gas better," Jed murmured.

"Yeah—well—with more ammo and better guns, maybe we can get us some gas, too.

been plannin'—"

"But killin' Army guys—maybe they're fightin' the Commies or somethin'—maybe—"

"Maybe shit," Crip laughed. "You wanna go fight Commies, go on and do it. Me—I wanna stay alive, stay cookin'—like the guys down there want. I take 'em to war with the fuckin' Russians and they'd run like hell. I take 'em to war to get some neat shit, to have some fun—they stick, they fight. Them Army guys down there's like ever'body else—fair game. They'd plug us soon as shit—but we'll ice 'em first."

Crip went back to looking through the binoculars. Jed puffed anxiously on the cigarette—and his hands still shook . . .

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna brushed the dark lock of hair back from her face, dismounting the bike, walking across the clearing. The fingers of her left hand swept back through the hair again, tiny knots in it from riding the bike against the wind. She made a mental note to put her hair up after she brushed it, either that or tie a scarf over it. The fingers of her right hand were half hidden under the full flap of the black leather holster on her right hip, the fingers—all but the first finger—wrapped around the smooth finger-grooved Goncala Alves stocks of the round butted Smith L-Frame, the firsf finger poised and slightly outstretched, to reach into the revolver's trigger guard as soon as she cleared leather.