The Doomsayer Read online

  Smiling, pushing his glasses up off the bridge of his nose, he saluted the creature, muttering, “My fellow American...” He stared beyond the palm now where his real fellow Americans were. Some of the faces he had observed for the last few hours were Hispanic-looking, probably anti-Communist Cubans; some of the faces looked Central European in origin; and some, he thought, were Jews, like himself. The barbed wire was the part that nauseated him, with people living behind it.

  He had left the motorcycle about a mile back in a wooded area, then come the rest of the way on foot. After scouting the perimeter of the camp, he had selected the spot least visible between the guard towers and decided on it as his point of entry. He had brought the big Gerber knife, the Browning High Power and the Schmeisser and spare loaded magazines for each of the guns.

  He smiled, remembering how, just prior to leaving, Rourke had tried to talk him out of the Schmeisser. “What are you going to do for spare parts? What about extra spare magazines? You’d be better off with something else.” But, for once not taking Rourke’s advice, Rubenstein had decided to keep the gun he called the “Schmeisser”— despite the fact Rourke had told him repeatedly it was an MP-40. He was familiar with it and liked the firepower it afforded.

  Rubenstein studied the camp, smiling to himself— a weapon originally developed for the Nazi war machine was now going to help him to break into a concentration camp and perhaps break some of the inmates out.

  It was a good hundred yards from the farthest edge of the tree line to the outer fence, Rubenstein estimated. He had searched the St. Petersburg area and found a deserted farm implements store, the windows smashed and yet a few items remaining there. He had scanned the place for radiation with the Geiger counter on his Harley Davidson, then stolen a pair of long-handled wire cutters. Rubenstein remembered when he and Rourke had broken into the back room of the geological supply store and stolen the flashlights that first night they had teamed up. Rourke had explained then that it was no longer stealing, it was foraging.

  Rubenstein smiled at the thought: he had foraged wire cutters.

  Beyond the first wire fence was a barren patch, extending perhaps twenty-five yards. Rubenstein had studied the ground through the armored Bushnell 8x30s he carried— identical to the ones Rourke used. He could see no signs of recent digging, no signs of depressions in the sparsely grassed ground. He hoped it was not mined.

  At the end of the twenty-five yards of open ground was another fence, ten feet high, and this one might be electrified. He wasn’t certain; but the way no one of the guards ever walked close to it made him wonder. Beyond that was another ten feet or so of open ground, then a six-foot-high barbed wire fence. Against this fence people were leaning, staring out. At what they stared he didn’t know. He wondered if they knew.

  It had been dark for several hours; he had observed the pattern of the guards.

  He checked the Timex on his left wrist— he’d decided to go exactly on the hour, and that was five more minutes.

  Chapter 26

  Sarah Rourke wished she had a watch. She looked up, trying to determine the time by the position of the moon, but couldn’t. She slowed the boat, then brought it to a stop, realizing for the first time that had she not killed the young Russian guard, he would likely have alerted the harbor patrol and she would never have gotten far from the pier. She walked back to the aft portion of the boat. She had dragged the young man’s body up from below deck earlier, covering it with a tarp she had found. That was nearly an hour ago, and now as she drew back the tarp, she imagined the skin to have grayed appreciably. But she realized that if it had, it would have been impossible to tell in the moonlight. She reached down, trying to touch the body where it was clothed, but her left hand brushed against the man’s left hand as she tugged at the inert form. She drew her hand back. The body was cold, unnaturally cold, like a turkey already plucked, frozen, and left to thaw— touching him felt like sticking her hand inside a turkey to take out the giblets on Thanksgiving morning.

  Sarah leaned over the rail. She knew that Mr. Coin, Kleinschmidt, and her two children were waiting farther down the beach, and she wanted to be rid of the body before the children saw. Michael had killed a man, with the same knife— but she didn’t want Michael or Annie to see this. She turned and looked back at the body, then shook her head, imagining that the left hand had moved. She hadn’t closed the eyes and she should have. They were open, gaping, like fish eyes.

  The fish, she thought. She was feeding him to the fish.

  She leaned down, again trying to grasp the body to pull it toward the portside rail, and again touching the dead hand. She turned, quickly, bending over the railing, vomiting into the water. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, feeling colder now in the damp shorts and T-shirt than she had felt before.

  She bent down to the dead man again, this time grabbing his arms, her hands touching his— but she held them anyway. She pulled the heavy body toward the portside railing, stopping at the bulkhead beneath it, then wrapping her arms around the dead man’s chest. As she hauled him up, she could only see the back of his head. She pulled, shoved, twisted, then positioned the body beside the railing.

  Sarah had the sudden, horrible thought that if she didn’t have the body weighted it would float to the surface. But she couldn’t see herself putting the body down, then getting it up and over to the railing again. She stood the dead soldier up beside the rail, then pushed his body forward, and as the head and upper trunk swung out over the water, she could see the man’s face.

  She screamed as she let go of the body; it tumbled into the darkness of the water.

  Sarah Rourke stood there a moment, her body shaking.

  “Got to get going,” she muttered to herself. She peered over into the dark water and thought she saw him, the eyes staring up at her. Then she turned and ran forward toward the controls, almost slipping on the blood-stained deck.

  Chapter 27

  Paul Rubenstein glanced at his wristwatch. Running in a low crouch, he started out of the palms and toward the first of the ten-foot wire fences, the Schmeisser slung from his right shoulder, the wirecutters in his left hand. He was slightly winded by the time he’d crossed the distance to the first fence. And as he reached it he dropped into a deeper crouch, glancing quickly from side to side, the wire cutters already moving in his hands. Starting at the bottom of the fence he clipped a single cut, approximately four feet high. Because of the heaviness of the wire, another cut was needed. He cut horizontally across the top of the first cut, then pulled the barbed wire outward, toward him, slipping through in the darkness and pulling the “gate” in the wire closed behind him. He glanced toward the guard towers, then hit the dirt, flattening himself, the Schmeisser out in his right hand. A searchlight beam crossed over the ground less than a foot away from him.

  The searchlight moved on, and so did Rubenstein, running across the grassy area, zigzagging just in case there were a minefield, hoping by some miracle he would miss them all by not running in a straight line. He reached the opposite fence line, breathless again. He started to reach his hand toward it, then stopped, his hand recoiling. There was a rat on the ground less than a foot from him, the body half-burned.

  “Electrified,” he cursed to himself.

  Rubenstein glanced from side to side, quickly trying to determine whether to go back or whether there were some other way to cross the fence. “Damn it!” he muttered, then snatched at the big Gerber knife and started digging in the mixed dirt and sand. He couldn’t go through the fence, couldn’t go over it— so he’d go under it. He glanced up, flattening himself on the ground, sucking in his breath, almost touching the fence with his bare hand. The searchlight moved down the center of the open space between the fences, missing him by inches. As soon as it passed, keeping himself as low to the ground as possible, he began again to dig.

  For once he was grateful he wasn’t as big or as broad-shouldered as Rourke, he thought. He scooped dirt with his hand
s, widening the hole under the fence. The searchlight was making another pass and he flattened himself to the ground, as close to the fence as possible, this time noticing the searchlight that scanned, more frequently and more rapidly, the ground between this fence and the interior fence. That, at least, was not electrified. With the hour, all the prisoners in the compound had been herded inside the tents under which they were sheltered, and the compound grounds were empty of life. But earlier he had seen hands, faces— all touching that fence. It was possible, he thought, as he began again to dig, that the smaller fence was electrified after the compound was cleared, but he had to take the chance.

  The small trench under the fence seemed wide enough now and, slipping into position, just missing another pass of the searchlight, he started through on his back. His shirt pulled out of his pants, and he felt the dirt against the skin at the small of his back.

  He pushed on, then stopped— the front of his shirt was stuck on a barb in the lowest strand of wire. Perhaps there was no power in the lowest strand, he thought; perhaps the material in the shirt just hadn’t made the right contact. He didn’t know. He sucked his stomach in lest his skin touch the barb. Rubenstein looked from side to side, past the fence and back toward his feet, seeing the searchlight starting again. It would pass over his feet, reveal his presence.

  There was a sick feeling inside him, his mind racing to find a way out. He had to gamble, he thought. He touched, gingerly with his shirt-sleeved elbow, at the wire. Nothing happened. Rubenstein reached out with both hands, freeing the shirt front from the barb, then pushed through, under the wire, the searchlight sweeping over the ground as his feet moved into the shadow. He was through!

  The young man got to his feet, still in a crouch. He stared back at the wire a moment, then reached into the pockets of his leather jacket. There was nothing he could use, but he had to know. Taking the wirecutters, he reached under the fence’s lowest strand, using the cutters like a slave hand in a laboratory, picking up the dead rat and sliding it under the fence toward him. He looked at the charred creature, and his mouth turned down at the corners in disgust. He hated the things. He lifted the rat with the tips of the cutters and tossed the already-dead body against the wire second from the bottom of the fence. Then he drew back, his right arm going up toward his face. The body clung to the wire a moment, smoking, electrical sparks flying. Paul’s stomach churned and he felt like throwing up, but instead watched the searchlight as it swept toward him; then he darted across the few feet of ground to the low fence, hiding beside it, gambling it wasn’t electrified as he touched the cutters to the lowest strand, then the one above it.

  “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 probabl
y; 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.”