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  The Doomsayer

  ( The Survivalist - 4 )

  Jerry Ahern

  John Thomas Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert, and survival authority, is pursuing the trail of his wife and children from whom he was separated when World War III began. As he sets out from his retreat, he meets a beautiful woman scientist, who has learned that the nuclear bombing on the Night of the War has created an artificial fault line. Within days, perhaps hours, it will cause one of the most massive quakes in history—separating the Florida peninsula from the U.S. mainland. Rourke must postpone the search for his family in order to reach Army intelligence and begin the evacuation of Florida. He must also find young Paul Rubenstein who has gone there to learn if by some miracle his parents had survived The War. Communist Cuban troops, Soviet-Cuban rivalry, a traitor in the inner circle of U.S. II and natural disaster of blood-chilling magnitude block Rourke's way. But he must go on—he is The Survivalist.

  The Doomsayer

  The Survivalist #4

  by Jerry Ahern

  Copyright © 1981

  by Jerry Ahern

  All rights reserved.

  The Doomsayer

  A Peanut Press Book

  To Walter—Saying thanks for it all would be hopelessly inadequate, but here goes anyway. All the best….

  Chapter 1

  Rourke closed the Lowe Alpine Loco Pack and checked that it was secure on the back of the jet-black Harley Davidson Low Rider. He scanned the ground in the early sunlight and checked that the fire was out and all his gear accounted for. He would need gasoline by the end of the day and was aiming toward one of the strategic fuel reserve sites the new President of United States II, Samuel Chambers, had pinpointed for him. He had been out of the Retreat for nearly seven days, having re-equipped, then waited a day more while Paul Rubenstein had prepared. He left the same day Paul had set out for Florida in quest of his parents to see if somehow they had survived the holocaust of the Night of the War—

  World War III. "World War Last?" he wondered, noting the haze around the sunrise, the redness of the atmosphere. The Geiger counter strapped to the Harley still indicated normal radiation levels, but John Thomas Rourke was worried.

  In the seven days he had been out there had been no sign of Sarah, his wife, nor of his children, Michael and Ann.

  He was heading east, assuming that Sarah and the children had for some reason turned toward the Georgia coast, perhaps to avoid Brigand bands or the Russians. On this gamble Rourke currently hung his slim hopes. He had missed them before by mere hours.

  He snatched up the CAR-15, popped out the thirty-round magazine, worked the bolt, and removed the chambered round there. Then he loaded the .223 solid into the magazine and snapped off the trigger, putting the magazine back up the well. He bent his head as he slung the collapsible-stock semiautomatic rifle across his back, muzzle down, scope covers in place.

  He kicked away the stand on the Harley and started it, the humming of the engine somehow reassuring to him. He had chosen the Harley before the War because he had felt it was the best— and it hadn't let him down. Like the Rolex Submariner on his wrist, the Colt rifle on his back, the Detonics pistols in the double shoulder rig under his brown leather jacket, the six-inch Colt Python on his right hip— with these weapons he had survived until now.

  He stared past the bike into the gorge below, and his eyes followed the road climbing the side of the gorge from near the river bottom.

  Was Rubenstein alive? Had he yet located his parents? They were somewhere in the Armageddon that was Florida — like the rest of the United States , but only worse because there the Communist Cubans reportedly ruled at the discretion of the Soviets, titular winners of the War. Sarah, his son Michael, his daughter Ann.... Soon, Rourke thought, they would be turning— Michael was nearly seven, Ann almost five.

  Rourke revved the machine under him and started forward out of the small clearing where he had camped the night, following the mountains as long as he could before dropping to the Piedmont . He looked for some sign of a camp, hoofprints from the horses Sarah and the children had ridden as they had left Tennessee in search of him. Rourke pushed the sunglasses up against the bridge of his nose as he turned the bike from the clearing onto the winding animal trail that lead out of the woods.

  Rourke slowed the bike again at the edge of the tree line, cutting it in a narrow arc and stopping, surveying the gorge more clearly visible now below him, snapping up the leather jacket's collar against the cold— it was summer by the calendar. The oddity of the seasons worried him, too.

  He could hear the rushing of water, but it was not that noise which caused him to cut the Harley's motor and listen, hardly daring to breathe. A smile crossed his lips. Rourke lit one of the small, dark tobacco cigars in the blue-yellow flame of his Zippo and listened more intently, inhaling the gray smoke then exhaling it hard through his nostrils.

  Gunfire, engine noises. The Brigands, Rourke thought, below him along the road paralleling the gorge. He dismounted the bike, letting out the kick stand, and walked toward the lip of ground looking down into the river bottom canyon. He snatched the Bushnell Armored 8x30s from the case under his jacket and focused them along the road below.

  A single motorcycle, the rider low over the handlebars; and a hundred yards or less behind the rider were two dozen or so motorcycles. Behind them, at a short distance, were a half-dozen pickup trucks—

  filled with Brigands. He focused in on the rider of the lead motorcycle. A woman with reddish-brown hair that hung straight in the slipstream behind her.

  He watched. The woman rounded a curve, the bike skidding from under her, out of control.

  She pulled herself to her feet, the Brigands closing in. They would want her for rape, for robbery, and then for murder, Rourke thought. The girl had the bike up and was getting it started again. The Brigand pursuers were less than thirty yards behind her now, and there was gunfire again. As she straightened the bike on the road below Rourke, he could see her twitch as a pistol shot echoed among the rocks, see her back arch, the bike weave, then see her lean over the handlebars, lower than before. He focused in more tightly on her— her left hand was streaming blood from some wound elsewhere on her body.

  Rourke swept the binoculars back down the road. The Brigand gang closed in on her, their guns firing, some of them armed with submachineguns. Men and women stood in the pickup truck beds speeding behind the bikers, firing rifles at the girl cyclist.

  Rourke carefully but quickly replaced the binoculars in their case, slipping the Colt CAR-15 from his back, the sling now on his right shoulder. He grasped the ears on the bolt and chambered the first round from the thirty-round magazine, then worked the safety to on.

  Slowly, deliberately, he walked back to his own Harley, swung his right leg across and settled himself, then kicked away the stand. "Damn it," he rasped to himself. He gunned the Low Rider along the edge of the tree line, scanning the ground for a suitable access to the gorge below.

  The path down into the gorge was steep and the gravel and dirt loose beneath the Harley's wheels as Rourke balanced himself, his feet dragging as he headed his machine down into the gorge. The sound of the gunfire was louder now, the face of the girl clearly visible as she looked up and then back at the pursuing brigand killers.

  Something in his fleeting glimpse of her face had told him she was pretty.

  Rourke hit the level of the gorge road. The Harley bounced over a hummock of hard-packed clay and stone, and the bike came down hard, Rourke's jaw set against the impact. The wind of the slipstream as he accelerated the Harley blew the hair from his forehead. He raced the bike ahead to intercept the girl, putting distance between himself and the nearest of the Briga
nd bikers, now less than a dozen yards behind him along the river.

  Rourke leaned low over his machine, throttling it out, the ripping and tearing sound of the exhaust from the engine reassuring in its strength, its very loudness. He was gaining on the girl. She was low over her bike and at an awkward angle. Gunshots echoed behind him from the Brigand bikers and the pickup trucks following them. Rourke swung the CAR-15 forward, thumbing off the safety, pointing the rifle behind him, firing it without looking back at his pursuers. A little gunfire might slow them, he thought—

  only a fool was eager to die.

  He swung the rifle back at his side, thumbing the safety on, throttling out his bike. The brown-haired girl was less than ten yards ahead of him now, the Japanese bike she rode seemingly at full throttle. There was a burst of gunfire— an automatic weapon, Rourke determined— and he swerved his bike far left toward the edge of the road and the river bank. The girl ahead of him lurched— he could see the impact of the weapons-fire in the road, against the seat of the bike she rode, against her body. She slumped low over the machine, the bike weaving.

  The road twisted ahead of him, Rourke keeping his Harley at full throttle in spite of it, closing the gap between himself and the wounded girl. Five yards, four, six feet, five. Three feet— he was beside her now.

  Rourke swung his rifle back out of the way on the sling, then reached out with his right arm. The girl's face turned up toward him, her lips drawn back, her teeth bared against the wind, her eyes filled with fear. Rourke hooked his right arm toward her, catching her under the right armpit, his hand squeezing around her, brushing against the fullness of her breast. He cut the bike he rode left, pulling the girl from her motorcycle, shouting to her across the wind, "Get on!

  Hurry!"

  He could feel her moving as he fought to balance the Harley. He edged forward to give her added room, felt her suddenly behind him, her arms encircling his waist and her hands pressed against his chest. Rourke throttled out the Harley as the Japanese bike the girl had ridden zoomed toward him. It missed him and spun out over the edge of the road and past the river bank, rocketing into the water.

  Both hands on the bars, Rourke cut back on his speed, making a wide right angle into the bend of the road and starting the Harley to climb. The gunfire behind him picked up in intensity. The sound of the girl's labored breathing in his left ear was somehow audible to him despite the roar of the Harley's engine. He could feel her head lolling against him and rasped, "Hold on, damn it!"

  He scanned the road ahead of them— it climbed steeply and sharply out of the gorge, potholed and uneven and twisting. Rourke set his jaw and squinted against the sunlight as he gunned the bike ahead.

  Chapter 2

  Rourke gunned his Harley glancing over his shoulder as the Brigand gunfire crackled from behind him. Then he turned his eyes back to the sharp shoulder of the gorge straight ahead of him. The girl's breathing was hard in his ear now, the moaning of pain from her gunshot wounds unmistakable to him. His black-booted feet balancing the big bike, he hauled it up, over a hummock of ground and onto the narrow ridge. Rourke wrestled the Harley to his left and started along the shoulder of ground— the grating of truck and motorcycle gears, the belching of exhausts, the Brigand gunfire was all too near, he realized.

  Rourke guided his bike along the ridge for a quarter mile, the pickups along the embankment, the Brigand motorcycles behind him. Spotting a particularly steep channel of red clay and gravel leading back down to the road, Rourke throttled back on the Harley and wheeled the machine left. He crossed less than a yard from the lead Brigand pickup truck, snatching one of the Detonics .45s into his left hand and snapping off two shots fast into the truck's windshield. As Rourke headed the bike down toward the road, ramming the cocked and locked Detonics into his belt under his jacket, he glanced to his left— the pickup truck was out of control, rolling over and careening down the embankment. Rourke gunned the Harley as the pickup truck exploded. The heat of the fireball scorched his face as he glanced back. Then he jumped the Harley onto the road.

  Rourke heard the girl, her voice weak as she tried to shout: "Who are you?" Shaking his head, Rourke throttled out the bike, then glanced behind him. The Brigand bikers had already reached the road, and a second pickup crashed into the first. There was another explosion. Rourke leaned forward over his bike. The river road veered sharply upward ahead and Rourke took it, throttling down as he started into the grade. Then he increased his speed as he kept the Harley just to the right of the black top road's fading yellow line. Over seventy as he hauled the bike toward the top of the grade, Rourke let the machine out as the road leveled. Glancing behind him, he saw nearly a dozen Brigand bikers. They were coming up over the rise in pursuit, behind them a half-dozen trucks.

  Rourke looked ahead, then behind again as automatic weapons fire chipped into the pavement all around him. There were men and women standing in the pickup trucks, firing assault rifles over the cab roofs. Rourke retrieved the Detonics from his belt, wiping down the safety with his right thumb, turning awkwardly in the bike saddle with the woman behind him. His right arm stretched to maximum extension; he fired the stainless .45 once, then again. One of the lead bikers swerved. Rourke fired twice more, emptying the shiny pistol. The biker spun out, up the lip of concrete on the right side of the road, the man's body soaring high into the trees. There was a scream, resonating over the crackle of gunfire as Rourke rammed the slide-opened pistol awkwardly into his belt and bent low again over his bike, taking it into a sharp, almost hairpinning curve.

  The road dropped off now to the right, and at the bottom of a long-running, nearly overgrown grade was a stream. Rourke cut the bike into a hard right, dropping his speed, his feet skidding along the road surface as he pulled the bike up and over the runoff gutter, then onto the dirt of the grade. The Harley skidded under him, his right leg going out, bracing the machine as his arms strained to right the black bike between his legs. His lips drawn back, his teeth bared, Rourke shouted to the wounded girl still holding on behind him, "Hang on!"

  The gunfire from behind him abruptly stopped for a moment as Rourke angled the bike diagonally across the grade. Then he looked up. Two of the pickup trucks were already starting down, trailing six of the bikers. The remaining pickups were parked along the edge of the road, and in an instant there was gunfire again from the Brigands.

  Rourke turned the bike hard right to miss a deadfall tree trunk. The machine started to skid away from him, but his fists knotted on the handlebars, pulling the machine upright as he braced against its weight with his left leg, his boots dragging the ground. The bike under control again, Rourke throttled out, jumping over another deadfall and away from the grade and onto the bank of the fast-running but shallow stream. Some of the Brigand bikers had already made it down, Rourke saw now, glancing behind him. Then he throttled out and headed toward the stream. It was shallow, rocky— perfect he thought, as he cut the handlebars to his right and the bike half-jumped, half-wheeled into the water. His feet bracing the machine, he upped his speed. Icy water splashed up past his calves, spraying against his face as the front tire of the Harley sliced through the stream.

  More gunfire sent bullets ricocheting off the water around him. Rourke glanced back. There were still five bikers and two trucks. Wrenching the front of the bike up hard, the machine almost wholly supported on his legs as he reached the far bank, Rourke gunned up and out of the water. Flipping off the CAR-15's safety, he swung the rifle up, his right fist wrapped on the pistol grip. He fired a two-round burst, then another and another. The lead biker's machine slammed hard against a large rock in the center of the stream, the biker soaring upward, hands clasped to his face. Rourke turned away, starting the Harley up the incline of red clay and gravel, back toward the river road.

  As the Harley reached the top of the grade, Rourke could already hear— almost feel—

  that the remaining Brigands had doubled back. As he hit the road edge, Rourke made the bike surge
ahead. The CAR-15 back in his right fist, he fired as the Brigand pickups that had stayed on the road bore down on him. Crossing in front of them, he emptied his rifle. One of the pickup trucks and two of the bikers collided as Rourke took the far grade the only way he could. He could feel it more than see it, the bike in mid-air, the wheels spinning and the engine noise almost deafening as he throttled back. Then the bike impacted. His spine, his neck, his shoulders— the bones themselves shuddered as he wrestled the big machine to keep it from skidding under him.

  "Lost it," he snarled, feeling the girl's hands letting loose of him, feeling the Harley slide from between his legs. Rolling, snatching at the second of the twin stainless Detonics .45s, Rourke came up on his knees. His hands were sore and bloodied as he shoved the .45 straight ahead of him, thumb cocking the hammer, his right trigger finger edging back. The pistol bucked once, then once more in his hands— the lead biker coming down the grade and catching both rounds. The man's hands sprung out from the handlebars, his face twisted in pain and surprise, the bike going on, down the grade. The body of the already dead biker hit the grade spread-eagled, sliding downward. Then a second biker crashed into the first man's body, his bike rocking out of control, sending the rider sprawling face forward into the dirt.