'Well,' Rourke said, drawing the Metalifed Colt Python from the holster on his right hip, 'then I guess I'm going to shoot it off. Stand over there,' and Rourke gestured back toward the motorcycles. Once Rubenstein was clear, Rourke took a few steps back, and on angle to the lock, raised the Magn-Na-Ported six-inch barrel on line with the lock and thumbed back the hammer. He touched the first finger of his right hand to the trigger, his fist locked on the Colt Medallion Pachmayr grips, and the .357 Magnum 158-grain semijacketed soft point round slammed into the lock, visibly shattering the mechanism. Rourke holstered the revolver. As Rubenstein started for the lock, Rourke cautioned, 'It might be hot,' but Rubenstein was already reaching for it, pulling his hand away as his fingers contacted the metal.
'I said it might be hot,' Rourke whispered. 'Friction.' Rourke walked to the edge of the shoulder, bent down and picked up a medium-sized rock, then walked back to the trailer door and knocked the shattered lock off the hasp with the rock. 'Now open it,' Rourke said slowly.
Rubenstein fumbled the hasp for a moment, then cleared it and tugged on the doors. 'You've got to work that bar lock,' Rourke advised.
Rubenstein started trying to pivot the bar and Rourke stepped beside him.
'Here—watch,' and Rourke swung the bar clear, then opened the right-hand door, reached inside and worked the closure on the left-hand door, then opened it as well.
'Just boxes,' Rubenstein said, staring inside the truck.
'It's what's in them that counts. We could stand to resupply.'
'But isn't that stealing, John?'
'A few days ago, before the war, it was stealing. Now it's foraging. There's a difference,' Rourke said quietly, boosting himself onto the rear of the truck trailer.
'What do you want to forage?' Rubenstein said, throwing himself onto the truck then dragging his legs after him.
Rourke, using the Sting IA from its inside-the-pants sheath, cut open the tape on a small box and said, 'Well—what do I want to forage? This might be nice.'
Reaching into the box, he extracted a long rectangular box about as thick as a pack of cigarettes. 'Forty- five ACP ammo—it's even my brand and bullet weight—185-grain JHPs.'
'Ammunition?'
'Yeah—jobbers or wholesalers use certain common carriers to ship firearms and ammunition to dealers. I'd hoped we'd find some of this. Find yourself some 9 mm Parabellum—may as well stick to solids so you can use it in that MP-40 as well as the Browning High Power you're carrying. If you come across any guns, let me know.'
Rourke started working his way through the truck, opening each box in turn unless the label clearly indicated something useless to him. There were no guns, but he found another consignment of ammunition—.357 Magnum, 125-grain semijacketed hollow points. He put several boxes aside in case he didn't find the bullet weight he wanted.
'Hey, John? Why don't we take all of this stuff—all the ammo, I mean?'
Rourke glanced back to Rubenstein. 'How are we going to carry it? I can use .308, .223, .45 ACP and .357—and that's too much. I've got ample supplies of ammunition back at the retreat once we get there.'
'That's still close to fifteen hundred miles, isn't it?' Rubenstein's voice had suddenly lost all its enthusiasm. Rourke looked at him, saying nothing.
'Hey, John—you want some spare clips—I mean mgazines—for your rifle?'
Rourke looked up. Rubenstein held thirty-round AR-15 magazines in his hands—a half-dozen. 'Are they actual Colt?'
Rubenstein stared at the magazines a moment, Rourke saying, 'Look on the bottom—on the floor- plate.'
'Yeah—they are.'
'Take 'em along then,' Rourke said.
'You sure this isn't dishonest—I mean that we're not stealing?'
Rourke, opening a box of baby food in small glass jars, said, 'This is a war, Paul. A few nights ago, the United States and the Soviet Union had a major nuclear exchange. The United States apparently didn't fare so well. Every place we flew over before the 747 crashed looked hit—the whole Mississippi River area seems to have been saturated. According to that Arizona kid I got on the radio before we crashed, the San Andreas fault line slipped and everything north of San Diego washed into the sea and the tidal waves flooded as far in as Arizona, and there were quakes there. Albuquerque was abandoned after the firestorm—except for the injured and dying and the wild dogs —you remember them.
We shot it out with that gang of renegade bikers who butchered the people we'd left back at the plane while we went to try and get help. Now how would you evaluate all that?'
'No civil authority, no government—every man himself. No law at all.'
'You're wrong there,' Rourke said quietly. 'There is law. There's always moral law—but we're not violating that by taking things here that we need in order to survive out there. And the obligation we have is to stay alive— you want to see if your parents made it, I want to find Sarah and the children. So we owe it to ourselves and to them to stay alive. Now go and see if you can find something to use as a sack to carry all this stuff. I'm going to take some of this baby food—it's full of protein and sugar and vitamins.'
'I have a little—I mean had—a little nephew back in New York—that,' and Rubenstein's voice began noticeably tightening, 'that stuff tastes terrible.'
'But it can keep us alive,' Rourke said, with a note of finality.
Rubenstein started to turn and go out of the trailer, then looked back to Rourke, saying, 'John—New York is gone, isn't it? My nephew—his parents. I had a girl. We weren't serious but we might have gotten serious. But it's
