Survivalist - 15 - Overlord Read online

“I am a member of the intelligence service of the People’s

  Republic of China. I believe our peoples were de facto allies during the Great War of The Nations five centuries ago.”

  “They were —you fought a land war with Russia after my country got all but destroyed. But then when the Great Conflagration came—”

  “The Dragon Wind—Ahh! It must have been an awesome spectacle.”

  “There was death everywhere —I remember watching my father’s face as he watched it happening—”

  “You joke, of course, although I see little taste in it.”

  “I was born in the twentieth century —it’s a long story,” Michael Rourke nodded grimly. “And I wouldn’t joke about that. Why do you speak English?”

  Han grinned, saying, “Because I presume you speak no Chinese,” and he rattled off something totally incomprehensible to Michael, then laughed again. “And apparently I was right, American.”

  “But how did you learn it?”

  “Before the Dragon Wind, so much of the scientific and engineering literature was written in English, that afterward what survived of it could not be trusted to translation, and ours, though more beautiful, is a more cumbersome language. We have kept your language alive. We knew life still existed in America. We thought, perhaps, that someday — well, and we have met, heh?”

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Several hundred thousand in our city alone. And in their city, nearly that many, perhaps more.”

  “Their city?” And Michael Rourke jerked his head in the general direction of their attackers.

  “It is not their city, really, although they live there at times and lived there once long ago. Before the Great War of Nations, we of the People’s Republic had determined that the Soviet Union was preparing for global thermonuclear war. We wished none of this, but desired to be prepared to survive it — “

  “You’d like my father,” Michael Rourke grinned.

  “Perhaps I would. But we constructed three Underground Cities, as the story goes. But the records of the Third City were lost or stolen and perhaps it is only a myth. When the Great War of Nations began, radical elements—”

  “Maoists?”

  “You are indeed the student of history—these Red Guards seized the Second City, while the People’s Republic maintained control of the First City. When the Dragon Wind came, it was impossible to venture forth, to contact the Second City. In the five centuries our cities went their separate ways. The First City evolved as had the original People’s Republic before it. We are very democratic now. But the Second City, we learned, had devolved, returned to the domination of radical militants, seeking to return to the Communism of Mao while yet resorting to the tactics of the old warlords who dominated China before the Revolution. They developed in a rigid class society, and these who attack us are of their warrior class, as fierce as the Mongols whom their tradition emulates.”

  “What about these guys?” And Michael gestured with the gun in his left fist toward the other two men who had come from the encampment.

  “Some soldiers learn that the only way to truly succeed at their craft is to sell their services to those who would pay most highly. Mercenary soldiers, they would be called in English. These men I travel with are mercenary soldiers in the employ of the First City. We were assigned to penetrate the Second City and I was to assassinate the leader of the Second City. His name is taken from his deity —he calls himself Mao, though it is really a much more ordinary name that he was given at birth, no doubt.”

  “What about your mercenary pals—just to get you into the city?”

  “You have captured the spirit of the endeavor.” “How were you going to get out?”

  The smile vanished from Han’s face. He looked up over the back of the dead horse and then returned his gaze to Michael. “We are in a state of war with the Second City, and have been for some five decades. Two years ago, during one of the many invasive commando raids made by the warriors of the Second City, my wife and two daughters happened to be shopping in the central market. A bomb exploded and they were killed. The thought of leaving the Second City after succeeding in killing the one who calls himself Mao had not occurred to me,” and Han smiled again.

  “I understand you,” Michael almost whispered. “We are at war with the Soviet Union. My wife and our unborn child — they were — ” Michael Rourke closed his eyes for a moment, then felt Han’s hand touch at his shoulder. Michael opened his eyes.

  Han said, “You need say no more, American. But these Russians of whom you speak. We knew of their existence and tried to conceal our own. But how goes your war?”

  “It goes, let’s say,” Michael smiled.

  “Ahh —” And Han peered up again, over the back of the horse. “Our enemies return, I fear.”

  Michael rested spare magazines for each of the pistols on the small flat rock beside which he knelt, worked up the safeties of the twin Berettas, then raised himself up to look toward the attackers. Perhaps ten remained on horseback, a few more crouched behind their dead animals, but the animals the horsemen rode appeared nearly dead with exhaustion, whipped by their riders into a skirmish line.

  “The horses. The animal skins —where do they come from?”

  “We returned to the surface five decades ago, the Second City perhaps as much as a decade .before that —but they are less cautious, less caring for the welfare of their people than ourselves. Animals of all types were maintained in small zoos within each of the cities, with their habitats such that they simulated wild conditions. The Second City began an

  ambitious program of return to the wild, as we did some years later. Wolves, rabbits-, a wide range of species now roam in these mountains, and more are raised in the cities themselves to be added to the wild population. But the people of the Second City prefer to hunt these animals into possible extinction. We do not. It is all a matter of perspective, I suppose. And as to horses, they were raised, at least by ourselves, in the event of their being used should synthetic fuel research prove fruidess, as it has.”

  “I know some people who can help you there,” Michael nodded. “Here they come!”

  Han opened fire with his assault rifle, Michael biding his time until the attackers came into range …

  Maria Leuden told herself she was behaving like a child — but she couldn’t help herself, crying. She had been stripped of her winter gear and all of the clothing beneath it. But she had not been raped. Yet. But she knew it would come, from the way the men looked at her; the man who had knocked her unconscious stared at her and laughed.

  She wondered if perhaps she were being saved for someone else.

  She was freezing cold, the dirty blankets and animal skins she had been covered with dislodging each time she attempted to move, to restore circulation to her bound wrists and ankles. And it was hard to breathe, something around her neck constricting her. Also, her glasses kept sliding down her runny nose.

  She had seen no sign of Otto Hammerschmidt since regaining consciousness. Perhaps he was dead. And Michael—she had fallen in love with him; she knew that. And he had no interest in returning her love, and with the recent death of his wife, she could not blame him. But it was all over now.

  She would keep herself alive long enough to get at least

  one of these men and kill him somehow. She had learned that from the Rourkes. Life was not taken cheaply.

  She stared at the man who had hit her. And she turned her eyes away as he stood up and started to walk toward her. And she couldn’t help herself. The tears came again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Vladmir Karamatsov stripped away his parka. It was warm in the command tent with the chemical heater going as it was. Beneath it, he wore the shoulder holster with the five centuries old Model 59 Smith & Wesson 9mm which he had vowed to himself he would use to personally kill John Thomas Rourke. The moment was getting close when he would keep the vow.

  His field grade officers were assembled a
nd they sat when he bade them to sit and he began to speak.

  “For some time I have concealed from you my ultimate purpose in leading our armies to the east. I shall reveal to you much of that purpose. Before the Night of The War, in my capacity with the Committee for State Security, I was privy to considerable information, much of which has helped our people to survive in these centuries since the fire swept our skies.

  “All nations prepared for the war which some said was inevitable—” A younger officer cleared his throat and Karamatsov looked icily toward him. “Which some said was inevitable,” Karamatsov continued, “and some said was unthinkable. I believed it inevitable. I devoted considerable energies to ferreting out the plans of other nations for the time when the war came. Our own great people had planned

  [

  wisely with the Underground City, though its leadership has now become corrupted with its own power and would deny the very revolution which sustained it.” None of this was really true, but he had never shared his reasons for attacking the Underground City and the seat of Soviet government with his inferiors and these words seemed as good as any to serve the purpose.

  “Other nations, as you all know, had their special plans as well. The United States developed the Eden Project, at once the most daring and the most foolhardy of the scenarios. Five centuries of sleep in space. Our own nation conceived a project of equal daring and with considerably greater chance for success. But more of this when it is appropriate.” He liked to give them a taste and nothing more. Men keen to know were willing to serve. “Our enemies, the so-called People’s Republic of China, planned as well. They constructed their own versions of our Underground City, their spies stealing much of the needed technological information from our own heroic scientists and leaders. Two cities were completed.” A third city was under construction at that time and he had no way of knowing if it had ever been completed and since his data was incomplete, he declined any mention of it to his subordinates.

  “In the era immediately before the Night of The War,” he told his officers, “the nuclear strength of the nations possessed of this power was assessed as follows. Both our nation and the United States had roughly over fifty thousand nuclear devices, distributed more or less evenly among the two largest of the nuclear powers. The allies of the Americans had litde more than a thousand between them, exclusive of the Jew occupiers of Palestine, who had nuclear capability of their own which they chose to keep secret. But the so-called People’s Republic of China had some three hundred nuclear devices. Aside from a few dozen which were used tactically during the land war our heroic ancestors fought against Chinese aggression when the so-called

  People’s Republic attacked us during our war for Communist liberation of the world, none of the remaining were used. But I know where they are. We go to claim these nuclear weapons and to utilize them against the enemies of the Soviet people if need be.”

  He heard someone from the back of the command tent breathe loudly.

  Vladmir Karamatsov asked, “Are there any questions?”

  The tent was deathly silent except for the night wind outside it. Finally, the younger officer who had cleared his throat raised himself to a standing position. It was what Karamatsov had hoped for. “Comrade Marshal Karamatsov?”

  “Yes, Comrade?” Karamatsov felt himself smile.

  “Comrade Marshal. What effect would the use of a thermonuclear device have on the current state of the atmosphere?” The young officer sat down again, his face pale.

  “The use of ten moderate yield devices, I am told, could well bring about a destruction of earth’s environment which would make all which has gone before, the Night of The War and the fires —all of it seem like a ripple in a stream. It would destroy all life forever, I am told.” He made no pretense to scientific knowledge, but his scientific advisors had told him this and it seemed to make sense. The terrestrial environment, once hardy, had become fragile. They had spoken of things he had not heard of for five centuries — the total loss of the atmosphere, the inability for the surface to ever again sustain life.

  The question lay unspoken on the very air that he breathed. And so, Vladmir Karamatsov answered it. “We will be the only ones capable of such destruction, hold the very power of life and death over all who live on the planet. Our enemies will have no choice but to acquiesce to my demands. If they do not, their world will end forever.” And he knew his first demand. The surrender of John Rourke

  and his family. And Natalia, the woman he, Vladmir Karamatsov, had once called his wife.

  What happened after that to the rest of humanity was of little consequence.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The attacks had come less frequently and less savagely throughout the day, but they had come. One of the two Mongol mercenaries had died in battle, the other, riddled with bullets when he had attempted to steal a wandering horse, its rider slain, rode off. The horse, dead too, had collapsed over his body.

  Only Michael Rourke and the Chinese intelligence agent, Han, lived. At least ten of their attackers survived somewhere in the night.

  “They aren’t like Indians, are they?”

  “Indian?”

  “American Indians —the old legends said they wouldn’t attack at night because they feared evil spirits.”

  “These men fear nothing,” Han observed. And as he slapped at his upper arms for increased circulation, he added, “not even death by freezing, it appears.”

  Michael had tried contacting Maria Leuden and Otto Hammerschmidt again, but there had only been a response from Bjorn Rolvaag and Michael had gotten across to Rolvaag to wait where he was and remain on guard, Rolvaag getting across that he had seen nothing of Maria Leuden or of the German commando Captain Hammerschmidt, but that he would wait, at least until dawn.

  By the time dawn would come, Michael Rourke was beginning to have serious doubts he would be in a position to worry over anything. The body of the dead horse was beginning to smell and for that reason he thanked the below freezing temperatures.

  Han spoke. “I will confess that my brain is lacking in ideas for some means of extricating ourselves from this predicament.”

  The night was clear and cold, the clarity of the stars at night the one tangible benefit to the reduced density of the overall terrestrial atmosphere, Michael thought, staring up at them. He remembered the times during the five years his father had spent teaching them to stay alive while he again took the Sleep that sometimes he and his father and Annie had sat outside the Retreat at night, cold like it was now, his father smoking one of the eternal cigars, discussing the night sky.

  John Rourke had liked to conjecture that somewhere up there —or out there, Michael corrected himself — there was more life than just that of the returning Eden Project. That millions of light years from this small planet there might be men such as themselves who knew the answers to questions we could not even begin to comprehend, men like themselves who had found ways to live without mutual destruction.

  John Rourke had likened the Retreat to an island, saying that perhaps there were other islands on the earth, and likely there were other islands out there. Perhaps someday we would know more of them — the islands here, the islands out there.

  Michael Rourke remembered that one evening as they had sat outside the Retreat, star watching as his father had called it, Annie huddled between them for their warmth, that he —Michael —had finally understood his father’s obsession with survival. It wasn’t just an indomitable will to live. It was an indomitable will to know. And all the fighting and the killing which had kept them alive was simply the means

  to an end, a time when all of that would be gone and there would be quiet moments to contemplate the stars, learn all that there was to learn from the vast cache of books and videotapes and computer files John Rourke had passionately preserved at the Retreat.

  He had, many years later in his own reading, encountered a description which well fit his father—The Socratic Man.

>   And perhaps it was the ultimate irony, that a man of great wisdom was so embroiled in the violence needed to preserve life, that there remained no time at all to live life. Those five years before his father had resumed the Sleep were the only time in which he had ever known his father at all. He had liked John Rourke the man, the father, far better than he liked John Rourke the implacable hero of humanity.

  “I said, I am suffering from a lack of ideas, American — ideas for surviving this ordeal.”

  Michael Rourke looked at Han. “Me too,” and returned to field stripping the Chinese assault rifle. He had climbed over to the body of the dead Mongol mercenary who had gone down in batde and reclaimed the man’s rifle, pistol and other gear that might be useful. The man’s sword, on close examination, seemed satisfactory at best. The rifle was ill-kept but seemed serviceable. The ammunition was corroded. He had noticed an inordinate number of misfires and jams and he realized his enemies and his allies were shooting poorly preserved cartridges stored since before the Great Conflagration, and military ammunition at that.

  Michael had been gently but persistently rubbing corrosion from the primers of the rifle ammunition. He began to speak. “My father taught me a great deal about staying alive.”

  “He taught you well, I have seen since our meeting.”

  “Thank you,” Michael nodded. At one level of consciousness he was listening for the sounds of another attack, the Chinese beside him peering over the body of the dead horse behind which they had taken cover a short while after dawn.

  “He told me that if all seems lost and it appears that you’ll get killed anyway, that is the time for bold action. There’s nothing to lose and possibly everything to gain. I would imagine that, translating that advice into terms relative to our current situation, we should attack. If all ten or so of them rush us, we’ll be up shit’s creek anyway.”

  “What is shit?”

  “Feces.”

  “A creek of human waste — this would be a small river of human excrement?”