He pulled the Harley into another wide arc, cutting left into the secondary street. As he started the big machine along the uneven pavement, he heard Natalie behind him, whispering, her voice hoarse, 'John—on your right!'
Rourke perfunctorily glanced to his right, raised his right hand in a small wave and whispered back to the girl. 'Yeah… I saw them.' As they cruised slowly down the street on each side of them now armed men and women were appearing, stepping out of doorways, from behind overturned cars and trucks, closing in like a wall behind them. 'Relax,' he rasped. 'If they wanted to shoot first they'd be doing it by now.'
'I don't take much comfort from that,' the girl said, almost angrily.
Suddenly, the girl almost screamed, 'Look—up ahead—they've got Paull'
'Yeah… I see it,' Rourke said softly. Rubenstein was on his knees at the end of the street, his hands tied out, arms stretched between the rear axle of an overturned truck and a support column for one of the smaller factory loading docks. There was a young man standing beside Rubenstein, an assault rifle with fixed bayonet in his hands, the point of the bayonet at the side of Rubenstein's throat. 'I don't know who these people are—but they aren't brigands either. At least not the type we've seen.'
'John—go back!' Rubenstein screamed, the man beside Rubenstein then pressing the bayonet harder against Rubenstein's throat, silencing him.
Rourke stopped the Harley he rode about twenty feet in front of Rubenstein, slowly but deliberately swinging the CAR-15 in the direction of the man with the bayonet, his right fist clenched on the rifle's pistol grip.
'Who are you people?' Rourke asked slowly, his eyes scanning the knot of young men and women, all of them armed. He had counted—including the ones walled behind him now and blocking his way out— perhaps twenty-five, more or less evenly divided male and female and all of them in their middle to late teens.
'We'll ask the questions,' a dark-haired boy with what looked like acne on his left cheek shouted.
'Then ask away, boy,' Rourke said, glaring at the young man but keeping the muzzle of his CAR-15 trained where it had been—on the one holding the bayonet to Rubenstein's throat.
'Who are you?' the acne-faced voice came back, unsteadily but loud.
Rourke exhaled hard, saying in a voice not much above a whisper, 'John T.
Rourke, the girl here says she's Natalie Timmons and the man your pal has on the ground there is Paul Rubenstein. Just wayfarin' strangers, kid.'
'Who are you with?' the leader shouted.
'You don't listen too good, do you boy?' Rourke said, shooting an angry glance at the perhaps eighteen- year-old belonging to the voice.
'I mean what group are you with?'
'Well,' Rourke began. 'I belonged to a motor club before the war. That do you any good?'
'Cut out the smart-ass routine, mister!'
'Boy,' Rourke said slowly, menacingly, 'you talk that way to me once more and you've got an extra navel —just a shade over five and a half millimeters wide,'
and Rourke gestured with the CAR-15, then settled it back covering the man guarding Paul Rubenstein. 'Now—what are you doing with my friend here?'
'You came to steal from us, didn't you?' the acne-faced leader shouted.
'What—you deaf kid,' Rourke said. 'Learn to control your voice. If you've got something I want, I'll deal with you for it. If there's something I want that nobody's got but it's there anyway, yeah, I'll take it. Promissory notes and money and checks and credit cards aren't much good these days, I understand.'
'We call ourselves the Guardians.'
'Well—how nice for you. What are you the 'Guardians' of?'
As Rourke asked the question, he could hear Natalie trying to whisper to him. He leaned back away from his handlebars and caught her voice, 'Rourke—behind us—six of them coming.'
'We are the Guardians—'
'You ask me,' Rourke said, 'I think you're the crazies, myself.' Suddenly Rourke's body tensed as he leaned forward. His tone softening, he addressed all the young men and women there, shouting, 'How many of you have marks on your faces like he has—or elsewhere on your bodies?'
A girl stepped forward out of the knot around the leader. Rourke saw the acnelike marks on both her cheeks and neck. 'Who are you?' she demanded.
The six advancing from behind Rourke were getting closer. He could see them now out of the corner of his left eye.
'Where were you the night of the war?' Rourke asked, slowly.
'Were we anywhere near a blast site, do you mean?' the girl asked, almost laughing, her dark eyes crinkling into a strange smile.
'We were,' the acne-faced leader began. 'And we know what we've got. But guarding here is what we do.'
The girl beside the leader of the young people went on, 'We were away on a senior class field trip. By the time the bus ran out of gas and we walked back here everyone had gone. We knew where there were some guns and we've been running the town ever since. We know we've all got radiation sickness, we're all dying. But we're guarding the town until our families get back. We're doing this for them.'
Rourke eyed the six, now just a few feet behind himself and Natalie. 'What if they don't come back?' Rourke asked slowly.
