'Right—sorry,' Rourke echoed. 'Well, since you just seem to have this mystical skill with borrowed handguns and submachine guns, when we get down into Van Horn, until we rearm you with something more than that little pea-shooter you've got, why don't you snatch my Python out of the leather here in case some shooting starts. I think if you study it for a while, you can figure out how it works. Right?'
The girl smiled again, almost whispering, 'I'd imagine I can.'
'Good,' Rourke said softly, then turning to Rubenstein, 'Paul, there's one main drag down there, probably. When we hit the town, I'll wait five minutes, you cut down along the perimeter as fast as you can, then turn into the main street and start back toward me. Those brigands who destroyed that town those refugees came from are up ahead of us somewhere. I figure they probably already attacked Van Horn, but some of them could have hung around. People like that are usually pretty loose organizationally, coming and going when they please. Keep that thing you call a Schmeisser ready, huh?'
'Gotcha,' Rubenstein said, swinging the submachine gun off his back and slinging it under his arm.
Rourke turned back to the girl. 'That Python of mine is Mag-Na-Ported—gas-venting slots on each side of the barrel. So it won't give you as much felt recoil as you might expect.'
'I don't understand,' the girl said.
He turned his head and looked at her a moment, saying, 'Just fake it,' a smile crossing his lips.
He started the Harley Davison Low Rider between his legs into first and back onto the highway and toward the bridge. The buildings coming up on his right were gray factory smokestacks from light industry. Rourke's Harley was halfway across the bridge now, and from the elevation he could look beyond the largely flat rooflines and into the town and beyond that into the gray-seeming desert.
There was no sign of life. The winds were coming strong and Rourke tacked the Harley into them to keep their buffeting effect from flipping the big bike down.
Three-quarters of the way across the bridge he angled right, trying to keep quartering into the wind as he did, heading the bike down and onto the off ramp into the town. Rubenstein, behind him as he looked back, was evidently having greater problems handling the heavy winds.
As Rourke's Harley dipped below the level of the bridge, the bridge itself seemed to block the winds and he swerved slightly left, then straightened out, coming to a slow halt at the base of the ramp, then cutting a lazy figure eight in the street fronting it as he scouted in both directions, then heading right from the direction he'd come and into the town itself. The main street seemed some two blocks ahead, Rourke gauged, and he waved Rubenstein down along a narrow side street, glancing over his shoulder, watching the younger man sharply turning the bike and disappearing behind an intact but deserted-appearing building.
Rourke reached the main street, slowed and cut a gentle arc in the large intersection there and came to a stop. 'It looks like everyone just vanished,'
Natalie commented.
'I've got a bad feeling about this place,' Rourke said, staring down the street, waiting to see Rubenstein reappear approximately a half-mile down.
'A Neutron bomb?' the girl asked, her voice hushed.
'Now what would a nice young lady like you know about Neutron bombs?' Rourke said, not looking at her. He settled his sunglasses and pulled back the bolt-charging handle on the CAR-15, setting the safety on and swinging the collapsible stock Colt's muzzle away from the bike and into the empty street.
'It's not a Neutron bomb,' he said. 'Look over there.'
He watched over his shoulder as the girl turned, looking in the general direction the CAR-15 was pointed. Scrawny but healthy trees were growing in a small square. 'No,' he said. 'Everybody just left—or mostly everybody.'
He glanced down to his watch, then back up the street.
'Where's Paul?' Natalie asked. He could feel her breath against his right ear.
'That's just what I was starting to ask myself,' Rourke muttered, his voice a whispered monotone. 'It might not be a bad idea, you know, for you to reach around my waist, unbuckle my gunbelt and put that Python on yourself—you might need the spare ammo on the belt.'
Rourke felt the woman's hands and arms encircling his waist.
He helped her undo the buckle, craned his neck and watched as she slung the cammie-patterned gunbelt from her right shoulder across to her left hip, the Python in its flap holster on her left side, butt forward.
'You ready?'
The girl took the massive revolver from the leather and nodded.
'Okay,' Rourke said softly, starting the bike down the center of the deserted street.
He stared ahead of them, whispering over the hum of the Harley's engine, 'Did you just see something moving in that space between buildings about twenty-five yards back?'
'On the right?'
'Yeah…'
'Man with a rifle, I thought, but wasn't sure.'
'Yeah… okay… I'm going up to the end of the block here and turn down and back into that secondary street Paul was coming up. That's when we should hit it.'
'Brigands?' the girl said softly, her voice even, calm.
'Maybe worse—people defending what's left of their town,' Rourke answered, curving the bike wide to the right and then arcing left into the far lane of the intersecting street—also seemingly deserted. The secondary street was coming up on the left, and as Rourke's eyes scanned back and forth there was still no sign of Paul
