"Thank God," he whispered, letting out a long sigh. As the light passed inches from where he crouched, he began to cut the wire, using the same pattern he had before, cutting up approximately four feet, then across approximately three feet.
Looking over his shoulder, the wire cutters in his left hand now, he folded back the fence section and started through, into the compound.
He folded the fence section back, in a crouch, the pistol grip of the Schmeisser in his right fist, the muzzle moving from side to side as he surveyed the compound. He could see a guard— one only— walking slowly around the grounds, fifty yards from where he was. Rubenstein. still holding the wirecutters, started toward the nearest tent in a low, dead run. He pushed his way inside the tent.
Paul Rubenstein stopped, the smell that assailed his nostrils nauseating him, a buzzing sound in the air as flies swarmed throughout the tent. He looked in the faces of the people under the glow of the single yellow light hanging from a drop cord in the center of the tent, the flies and moths buzzing close to it. The faces were young, old, all of them weary, some of them sleeping, flies crawling across them. There was a child, moaning beside a sleeping woman. He stepped closer to them, and he kicked away the mouse nibbling at the child's leg.
Paul Rubenstein stood there a moment, tears welling up in his eyes, his glasses steaming a little. In that instant, he was thankful for the guns he carried, for the things he'd learned that had kept him from a similar fate. He was grateful to Rourke for teaching him how to survive after the Night of the War.
The phrase, "My fellow Americans.. ." and how he'd thought of it earlier as the roach climbed around the palm tree beyond the fences, came to his mind. Rubenstein stood there, crying, his right fist wrapped tightly on the Schmeisser.
Chapter 28
Sarah Rourke stood at the wheel of the fishing boat, glancing shoreward, trying to see if she could still locate Mr. Coin in the darkness. She couldn't. "It was rough, wasn't it, Mrs. Rourke?" Harmon Kleinschmidt asked her.
She looked down at the young man seated at her feet as she stood before the controls.
Before she answered him, she looked back to the stern— on the tarp that covered the blood from the dead soldier she could see Michael and Annie, already dozing.
She looked down at Kleinschmidt, saying, "My name is Sarah. You don't need to call me Mrs. Rourke— I'm not that much older than you are. Yes, it was rough, I suppose."
"I saw them bloodstains. You had to kill somebody, didn't you?"
"I thought gentlemen didn't ask questions like that."
"I ain't a gentleman that much— and you sure ain't either, Sarah."
She looked away from the waters ahead of her, and down at the young man again. "What do you mean?" she asked, still cold in her wet things despite the blanket wrapped around her now.
"I'll just come right out with it. What you told me, I don't think it's fair to you or them kids to go on doin' what you're doin'. You need a man to take care of all of you. I guess I'm sort of volunteerin'. I like you—a lot— Sarah."
Her cheeks felt hot. She didn't know what to say to the man— the boy, she thought. He wasn't more than twenty-five, if that.
"That's sweet of you, Harmon."
"Ain't sweet of me, Sarah. I mean what I say."
"A lot of men feel that way about somebody who's helped them, like a nurse for example."
"It ain't that," he told her flatly.
"Well, you just rest," she began.
I'm sick of restin'— sick of this whole War, the whole damned thing."
"So am I," she said, honestly. "I killed a man with a knife just a little bit ago. My boy, Michael, killed a man. I've killed other people since the Night of the War. We've been cold, sick, wet, dirty; we've gone without sleep. All of it."
"I hear that northeastern Canada didn't get hit much. Fella I met had come down from there, missed the Commies all the way. New York City he heard was all gone, but up in northeastern Canada it was still like before. Ain't nothin' there the Communists would want, I guess— too cold. But a man could have a good life up there, with the right woman, with kids like them."
Sarah looked down at him and wished he weren't sitting so close to her feet. "How far is the island?"
"You still on the compass heading I worked out?"
"Uh-huh."
"Maybe twenty minutes or so. Just keep them runnin' lights out so the patrol boats don't spot us. I figure we could take this boat and make it pretty far up into Canada— leave all this behind us."
"What about the Resistance, the men in prison you told me about?" Sarah said softly.
"I don't know.., don't guess I'll help them any by gettin' myself killed. I did my share. Sounds like you've done your share too since the War began."
"My husband is out there somewhere, looking for us."
"You don't know that. He might be dead. If he is alive, might figure you and the kids were dead—
maybe took up with another woman."
"Maybe," Sarah answered. "Maybe all of that. But if he's alive, he's looking for me. And the only thing that's kept me going is telling myself he's alive."
"What if I tell you he's dead probably; or what if I tell you he's so busy stayin' alive himself that he can't look for you? What if—"
"What if the War had never happened?" She looked back across the bow, searching the shadowy, moonlit horizon for some sign of the offshore island.
"How come he was away from you when it happened? None of my business, I know that. But how come?"
"We—" she began. "We'd been separated. Nothing formal. Just couldn't get along the last few years. He came back, just before the War. We made up, decided to try again. It was my fault, really. He wanted to cancel the job he had in Canada and stay home. I told him I needed the time to get my head clear, to think, so we could start again. The night the War happened he should have been on his way back."
"Driving?"
"No, by air."
"Ain't nothin' left of Atlanta, Sarah, if he landed there. I heard lots of commercial airliners crashed when they ran out of fuel with nowhere to land, or just got blown out of the sky when they flew too close to a missile or an air burst. He's dead— got to be."
"You don't know my husband," she told Kleinschmidt. "He isn't like anybody you ever met."
"He's some kind of super guy or somethin'?"
"In a way, I guess he is. You can see it in Michael. I wouldn't have expected a boy three times Michael's age to do what he's done. It's not normal."
"What do you mean?" Kleinschmidt asked.
A cloud passed in front of the moon. She could no longer see Kleinschmidt's young, tired face when she looked down by her feet where he sat, propped against the bulkhead. "John Rourke is— he's always been so much larger than life. He's almost perfect, really. He seems to know everything, to be able to do anything, to solve any problem. He isn't like you," she told Kleinschmidt. Then, under her breath, so no one but herself would hear, she added, "Or me."
Chapter 29