He had argued with himself silently all the long walk after he'd left his Harley hidden two miles or so back. He had tried to imagine a scenario for all the possibilities of what might have happened at the farm. In each case, he had determined that Sarah, Michael and Ann would no longer be there. But perhaps there would be a clue to where they had gone. There had been one scenario that he had rejected since the night of the war—that he would find their bodies there.
He was armed to find them, if they lived. The retreat contained more than enough supplies for several years, enough ammunition for his needs, and there was hydroelectric power, which he had engineered himself, using the natural underground stream as the source. The one thing he had lacked was gasoline and now he had that—by way of repayment, President Chambers had shown him a map, which afterwards Rourke had memorized and burned but was still able to reproduce from memory. It showed strategic reserves of gasoline cached throughout the southeast. For Rourke's comparatively meager needs, the supply was infinite.
Rubenstein had spoken of going south to Florida to see if somehow his parents had survived, and Rourke supposed that soon the younger man would.
He hoped Paul would return. Rourke had counted on few people as friends in life and Rubenstein was one of these few, perhaps the only one left alive. He supposed that perhaps he should count the Russian girl, Natalia—he rolled the name off his tongue in the darkness so that only he could hear it—had there been anyone else present.
After leaving Chambers, Rourke had used the twin engine plane to carry him across the Mississippi with the still weakened Rubenstein. There had been nothing. Once thriving cities were obliterated, the course of the river itself even seemed altered. From the air, Rourke had seen no signs of life, and the vegetation that still had stood had appeared to be dead or dying. Captain Reed had rigged the plane with a device similar to a Geiger counter that was a sensor which worked from outside of the craft. The radiation levels—if the device had been accurate— were unbelievably high.
Rourke had landed the plane just inside the Georgia line—what had been the Georgia line before, just below Chattanooga. The city was no longer really there—a neutron bomb site, Rourke decided, since the majority of the buildings were standing but there were no people at all.
Finally, the cigar burnt out in the left corner of his mouth, Rourke rose to his feet and started forward through the woods again, in a low crouch, a round already chambered in the CAR-15, the two Detonics .45s cocked and locked in the Alessi shoulder rig, the Python riding in the Ranger scabbard on his right hip.
He had no pack, just a canteen and one packet of the freeze-dried food and a flashlight.
He edged to the boundary of the tree line and stopped. The frame of the house was partially standing, like bleached bones of a dead thing, the walls burned and the house itself gone. Rourke stood to his full height, the CAR-15 in his right hand by the carrying handle, awkward that way for his large hands with the scope attached.
He walked forward, hearing the howling of the dogs. The moon was full and he could see clearly, not a cloud in the sky, the stars like a billion jewels in the velvet blanket of the sky.
He stopped by where the porch had been. Michael had liked to climb over the railing and Rourke had always told the boy to be careful. Annie had driven her tricycle into the railing once, and knocked loose one of the finials, if that was what you called them, he thought. He remembered Sarah standing in the front door that morning after he had come back. She had taken him inside, they had had coffee, talked—she had shown him the drawings for her latest book, then they had gone upstairs to their room and made love. The room was gone, the bed, porch—probably even the coffee pot, Rourke thought.
The barn was still standing, the fire that had gutted the house apparently not having spread. He started toward the barn, then turned back toward the house, studying it for a pattern. After circling it completely, he had found two things—first, that the house had exploded, and second, the charred and twisted frame of Annie's tricycle.
Rourke sat down on the ground and stared up at the stars, again wondering if there could be places where the things that called themselves intelligent life had elected to keep life rather than wantonly spoil it. He looked at the wreckage of the house behind him and thought not. He started toward the barn, then stopped, hearing something behind him.
Rourke wheeled and dropped to his right knee, the CAR-15 thrusting outward. Four men, wild-looking, unshaven, hair long, clothes torn, started toward him, one with a club, another with a knife almost as long as a sword, the third carrying a rock and the fourth man with a gun. They were screaming something he couldn't understand and Rourke fired at them, the one with the rock going down, then the man with the club. Then he fired at the man brandishing the knife, missing the man as he lunged toward him. Rourke rolled onto his back, snatching one of the stainless Detonics pistols into his right hand, the CAR-15 on the ground a yard away from him. As the man with the knife charged at him again, Rourke fired once, then once more.
There was still the fourth of the wildmen, the man with the gun, and Rourke spun into a crouch, his eyes scanning the darkness. He heard a scream, like an animal dying, then fell to the ground, rolled and came up on his knees, the Detonics in both his fists, firing as the fourth man stormed toward him. The man's body lurched backwards and into the dirt. Rourke got to his feet and walked toward the man. He was really little more than a boy, Rourke realized. The beard was long in spots, but sparse, the hairline bowed still, the face underneath the beard looking to be a mass of acnelike sores. Rourke reached down for the gun—it was a reflex action with him, he realized. The pistol was old, European, and so battered and rusted that for a moment he couldn't identify it. The weight was wrong and he pointed the pistol to the ground and snapped the trigger. There was a clicking sound and Rourke looked up into the darkness and let the gun fall to the ground from his hand.
After a while, he reholstered his pistol and found the rifle on the ground.
There was no thought of burying the four dead men, he realized. If he were to bury the dead, where would he start?
Mechanically, still half staring at the gutted frame of the house where his family had lived, he reloaded the Detonics and the CAR-15 with fresh magazines.
He started away from the house, then turned, remembering he'd been walking to the barn before the attack. He opened the barn door—an owl fluttered in the darkness, the sound of the wings were too large for a bat. Rourke lit one of the anglehead flashlights that he and Rubenstein had stolen that first night in Albuquerque.
He scanned the barn floor—the horses were gone, but he had expected that. But so was the tack. He started toward the stalls, then remembered to flash the light behind him. He saw something catching the light, and he walked toward the barn door, then swung the door outward into the light of the stars and the moon.
It was a plastic sandwich bag, the kind Sarah had used for lunches she'd stashed in the pocket of his jacket when he'd left early in the mornings to go deer hunting. There was something inside it and he ripped the bag from the nail attaching it to the barn door. It was a check, the first two letters of the word "Void" written across it—it was Sarah's writing. He turned the check over, shining the light on it, and read: My Dearest John, You were right. I don't know if you're still alive. I'm telling myself and the children that you survived. We are fine. The chickens died overnight, but I don't think it was radiation. No one is sick. The Jenkins family came by and we're heading toward the mountains with them. You can find us from the retreat. I'm telling myself that you will find us. Maybe it will take a long time, but we won't give up hope. Don't you. The children love you.