As they left, he said, 'Let's head for that church and then find the nearest hospital.'
Chapter Thirty
'I never wore a cowboy hat before,' Rubenstein said. 'Except when I was a kid.'
Rourke turned as he started opening the door into the church. 'Is that a fact? Come on.'
Rourke stepped inside, Rubenstein behind him. Then both men turned back toward the door. Rubenstein started coughing. 'My God!'
'Yeah, ain't it though,' Rourke said, turning back to look down the church's long main aisle and toward the altar. The smell of burnt flesh was strong. The pews had been converted into beds-people were lined one after the other, head to head along them.
Rourke started up the aisle. The pews were jammed with burn victims, as were the floors. He picked his way past the people in the aisles. A few were sitting up. They had open, festering sores on their beet-red faces. Many of them had their eyes bandaged. There were nuns-about six or seven-moving slowly about the church, and near the front of the church he saw a priest. He walked toward the man, tapped him on the shoulder.
The priest was gently washing the face of a little girl. The hair on the left side of her head was burned away. Her face was a mass of blisters. 'Father?' Rourke said.
The priest turned toward him then. Rourke studied the priest's face. He was dark-apparently Chicano. It looked like he hadn't shaved for several days. 'Father, my name is Rourke. My friend here and I are from a commercial jetliner that crashed about twenty-five miles south of here. I need to find a hospital, some medical-' but he stopped.
The priest's eyes were almost smiling, but not quite. Rourke whispered, 'This is the hospital?'
'Yes. All the hospitals were destroyed in the firestorm. We here are doing what we can, but there must be thousands out there in the ruins-like this one. There is no one to help your people on the plane.'
'What about medical supplies?' Rourke asked.
'Water-and that is running out. We make bandages from what we can.'
'I see,' Rourke said slowly, starting to stand. Then he leaned over the little girl. He said, 'Are you a doctor, Father?'
'We have no doctor.'
Rourke looked back to Rubenstein, and Rubenstein nodded, his face set in a grim mask.
'You do now-at least for a few hours. I'm a doctor.'
'God has heard me,' the priest said, crossing himself and smiling.
'Well, I can't say about that.'
He started working then, until sunrise, then noon, and long into the afternoon. As soon as he thought he'd seen every patient, another was brought in.
The little girl died at noon. There were no drugs, no pain killers and Rourke realized bitterly that most of the more serious cases would end in death. But at least he had been able to help some of them. As night started to fall, he checked one of the worst cases again. The man was dead. Rourke covered his sticky, raw-face with a sheet, then stood. Rubenstein was helping the priest move one of the dead, a woman, into the courtyard behind the church.
Rourke followed them, stopping just outside the door. There were dozens of bodies in the yard, seventy-five or more, Rourke judged. Rourke walked over to the priest. 'Father, I'm going to have to get back to the plane now.'
'Yes. I have been waiting all afternoon for you to say this. I knew you would have to return to the airplane. May God go with you.'
'You'd better get those bodies buried, Father. Soon.'
'I will do what I can.'
'Move them and burn them, then,' Rourke advised.
The priest stared at Rourke. 'They will be buried. I know most of these people. They were Catholic. They must be buried as Catholics.'
'If I could, I'd hang around and help,' Rourke said quietly. 'I'm sorry.'
'You have helped-and God bless you for it.'
Rourke took the priest's outstretched hand, then turned to go. 'I'm coming, John,' Rubenstein said.
Rourke turned to him, holding his hat in his hands, saying, 'After all this time, I don't know what we'll find out there, Paul.'
'I know that,' the smaller man said. 'I'm going with you anyway.'
Rourke just nodded, turned, and started toward the main doors, Rubenstein behind him. It was dark again by the time Rourke and Rubenstein reached the edge of the city. The howling of the wild dogs in the distance grew louder with the failing darkness.
Much of the residential section here had not been burned, but was deserted. 'Where'd you suppose everyone went?' Rubenstein said.
'Up there,' said Rourke, pointing toward the mountains on the other side of the city. 'For some reason, whenever there's disaster, people always think of going to the mountains. Santa Fe is probably a giant refugee center by now. Doesn't look like there were any hits up there, either.'
