Ahern, Jerry - The Quest

THE SURVIVALIST #03

The Quest

by Jerry Ahern

Chapter 1

Sarah. Michael. Ann. Alive. God—Rourke thought as he walked briskly through the woods beyond the gutted framework of his house, the note Sarah had written and nailed to the barn door folded tightly in his wallet—but why do I need a wallet? Driver’s license, Social Security card, concealed weapons permit—the latter made Rourke laugh—he wanted to laugh for the first time since the night of the war. Concealed weapons permit, he laughed again. He walked on, the Python strapped to his right hip in the Ranger leather camouflage rig, the twin stainless Detonics in the Alessi shoulder holsters under his leather jacket, the Colt CAR-15 slung under his right arm, muzzle down, his thumb hooked in the carrying handle under the scope.

It was all useless, he realized, everything in his wallet—or almost everything. The hundred-dollar bill with Ben Franklin looking enigmatic in its center, the CIA card, the credit cards—the only things that were real there anymore was the picture of his wife, Sarah, his son, Michael, and his daughter, Ann—and it wasn’t really such a good picture of them, didn’t do them justice. But the picture and the voided Rourke family check with the note from Sarah scrawled across it were the only real things ever since the war. Looking up at the stars, he revised his thinking: the stars were real, the earth was still real under his feet, but for how long he didn’t know. There had been odd clouds in the night sky, the sunsets had been redder each evening, and the weather seemed definitely to be changing. How many missiles had been launched, bombs dropped that night of World War III, World War Last in all likelihood? And that was another real thing, he thought, puffing on one of the cigars, the stubby, thin tobacco in the left corner of his mouth, almost bolted between his clenched white teeth.

He stopped walking and looked up to the sky again, wondering what was up there. He’d found himself wondering that progressively more often. When he was training to be a physician, he had been concerned with what had made man work, not the humanity but the physiology of it. Later, in the CIA in Covert Operations, he’d been equally concerned with making men stop working: he hadn’t become a weapons expert by mere chance or through a correspondence course. Later as a quote/unquote Survival Expert, Rourke had been concerned again with keeping men working—the body functioning and living, despite all odds. But he wondered, as he dragged on the cigar, whether or not Sarah and the children were watching the stars this night, if somewhere there were sanity, somewhere beings who had not pressed the magic and deadly red button and ordered the mass midnight executions of legions of total strangers, men and women and children and all their dogs, cats, frogs, and farm animals. Sometimes, Rourke realized, he almost cursed himself for being sane; it would have been easier the other way.

And there was Paul Rubenstein, the young Jewish guy from New York City, or what had been New York City. He’d never ridden a motor, never fired a gun—let alone in anger—and somehow Rourke counted the younger man his best ally and, next to Sarah and the children, the only friend he had.

He looked at the dark ground, then studied the cigar butt, the tip glowing orange in his fingers, and looked again, trying to find the nearest star.

Rourke didn’t like riding the motorcycle in darkness. The Harley Low Rider handled perfectly, everything worked well, but he wouldn’t ride any bike without glasses, and all he had were the sunglasses and light sensitive with well-above-normal night vision. Rourke could see well enough in the dark with his sunglasses on, but felt like a fool wearing them. He glanced at his watch. Once he’d crossed into what had been—before the night of the war—the Eastern Time Zone, he’d set the Rolex Submariner one hour ahead. But he still felt he was on Rourke Standard Time: he had set the watch by the sun, but now he was judging sunrise by the watch and the Rolex’s luminous face read just past six-thirty A.M. He watched the horizon and could see the reddish line there that meant the clouds were still dust-laden. Radioactive dust? He reminded himself to check one of the two Geiger counters, the one he carried on his bike. He’d left the other one with Paul Rubenstein.

Rourke stopped the bike. He was less than five miles from where he’d left Paul, secure up in the rocks, the wounds still painful but on the mend, the “Schmeisser” subgun as the younger man still insisted on calling the MP-40, the Browning High Power, and Rourke’s own Steyr-Mannlicher SSG Special Rifle as companions. Rourke watched the horizon line—the hell with the watch he thought—and saw the sun wink up above the glowing red clouds. The redness of the clouds worried him; he made another mental note to check the radiation count. Suddenly, there was a knot in the pit of his stomach: what would life be like after his quest was through, after he found Sarah, Michael, and Ann? Would they all live in the retreat forever—like early man, but instead in a sophisticated cave with all the conveniences? And afterward, after that, what kind of world—what world at all perhaps—would the children grow up into?

Rourke could see himself, someday saying to his son, “Michael, I leave you vast nuclear wastelands, in which nothing will grow for two centuries, irradiated water you cannot drink, poisoned air you cannot breath, the last surviving Encyclopedia because there is no one left to write another and a superlative command of the language—but no one to talk to. Here’s a vintage motorcycle, but there is no gasoline; Here’s your choice of the finest pistols ever made, but all the ammunition is gone now. And the birds and the bees I told you about are now totally extinct, and if you do find a human female who hasn’t grown up to be a murderess or just gone insane, you can have children with her to perpetuate the race, but it’s likely they’ll be hideously deformed.” Rourke shook his head and watched the sunrise. He never knew when it would be the last time anymore. The sun rose because the earth rotated, but when would that stop? He thought of the finishing line for the lecture to his son on the attaining of his manhood: “Have a good time ...” Rourke stopped the bike again, the grayness in the East pink-tinged with the color of the horizon, the fog smelling foul and rolling in waves across the ground. He heard shots just ahead, killed the motor on the Harley and swung the CAR-15 from the muzzle down carry across his back into his right hand, the fingers of his fist wrapped around the pistol grip, his left hand automatically coming back and sweeping the bolt open and letting it fly forward, his thumb fingering the semi-automatic’s selector into the safe position. The ground dropped off perhaps fifty yards ahead of him. Beyond that was a long grade, then a clearing of flatland, then a high mound of rocks. Rourke edged forward from the Harley, the gunfire growing clearer with each step, sporadic, not like a pitched battle, but rather like ... He stopped and flattened himself on the lip of the grade. Paul Rubenstein was in the high rocks beyond the clearing where Rourke had left him early that previous night. Below Paul were perhaps a dozen figures, most of them men, but one or two possibly women—(it was hard to tell sometimes, Rourke reflected). The figures—clearly brigands, heavily armed, dirty-looking, and out for blood—were slowly advancing up the rocks, firing to keep Rubenstein pinned down until they could close in. Rourke’s face creased into a smile. “Here it goes again,” he whispered.

Chapter 2

Rourke moved the Harley back into a stand of trees, then circled wide around the lip of the grade, noticing five pick up trucks of varying vintage parked perhaps two hundred yards farther back in a small clearing—the brigands’ transportation, he decided. Rourke had already assessed the situation. If he started shooting, there would be a protracted gun battle, lasting hours, perhaps it could last days, especially if there were more of the brigands nearby to hear the change in the pattern of the shots and come running to reinforce their friends.