THE SURVIVALIST #09
By Jerry Ahern
Earth Fire
Chapter One
Reed jumped from the Jeep before it had fully stopped, shouting to his driver, “Get up the road to the high school and warn headquarters and tell ‘em to pull out fast—use Emergency Plan Three—got that, Corporal?”
“Yes sir, but—”
“Just do it—move out—”
“What about you, Colonel—”
Reed started to run toward the grammar school building that had been converted to a field hospital — the wounded needed to be evacuated before the Soviet choppers struck. “I’ll get transportation—now boogey, soldier!”
“Yes, sir!”
Reed hit the steps, taking them three at a time in a long strided run toward the front doors of the school building which more resembled an elaborate courthouse in some rich Eastern states county.
The guard just inside the door was clambering to his feet, getting his rifle up to present arms, Reed snarling, “Can it, soldier—get into the administrator’s office—fast—tell him we’re evacuating—we’re using Emergency Plan Three—on the double, boy—”
“Yes, sir—”
Reed left the man gaping, punching through the inside doors and into the main corridor—the classrooms had been converted to laboratories and wards, the largest of the wards the lunchroom itself. But it was one of the smaller wards he ran toward—the only ward which housed the few female patients being treated. He sprinted along the corri-dor, shouting to one of the medical technicians, “We’re evacuating—Soviet Air Cavalry unit five minutes away— maybe six—get some of these patients ready to travel, sol-dier!”
“But, Colonel Reed—”
“No buts—do it,” and Reed sprinted on, reaching the end of the corridor, a nurse there, rather than white uniformed wearing clean but ragged fatigues that looked at least two sizes too big for her. “Nurse —start getting the patients ready,” Reed snapped, dragging the woman toward him for an instant by the shoulders of her uniform. “We’re movin’ out fast—Russian choppers five or six minutes away!”
He didn’t wait for an answer, taking the bend in the corri-dor left, running toward what had been one of the kinder-garten rooms, skidding to a halt on the worn heels of his combat boots, twisting the doorknob and pushing inside.
There was space for three beds—but there was only one bed, a white-haired woman lying in it, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her a white-haired man. The man’s face looked carved from stone—pain etched around the eyes, the jaw set. An IV tube ran between a half empty bottle and the woman’s arm. Reed walked across the room to the bed. The man stood up. “Colonel Reed—”
Reed saluted, despite the tattered civilian clothes the man wore rather than a uniform. “Colonel Rubenstein— sir—there’s a Soviet Air Cav Unit on the way—we don’t have much time. Mrs. Rubenstein has to be moved.”
Reed watched the older man’s eyes flicker. “You’re active duty—I’m just a retired Air Force officer. This is your show. But she can’t be moved. You move the other ones, Colonel—my wife stays here. And I stay with her —”
“Sir, they’re gonna—”
“I know what they’re going to do, Colonel Reed — but she can’t be moved. She’s dying—she knows it. I know it. I’m not going to take the last few hours she might have left away from her—anymore than can’t be helped anyway. If the Russians come, then maybe we’ll both die together—”
Reed shook his head. “No— no—what about your son— “
“Paul would understand, Colonel—”
Reed shook his head again. “No, he wouldn’t—if I were Paul Rubenstein, I wouldn’t understand — you’ve got an ob-ligation to live, sir. Your wife’d be the first one to tell you that—she’d—”
“That’s enough Colonel—get out of here—let Paul’s mother die in peace and maybe I can die with her—”
Reed balled his fists together along the outside seems of his fatigues. He opened his fists, turned around and found the doorknob, twisted it and stepped into the corridor. He wasn’t seeing too well and he closed his eyes, leaning against the door for a moment as it closed. His own mother had died of cancer, and Paul Rubenstein’s mother was doing the same.
“Shit,” he snarled, hammering his fist against the wall. “Damnit it to hell!” He pushed away from the door. As he started running back along the bend in the corridor, he could hear the voice of the hospital administrator over the intercom—he was announcing the evacuation, that there was nothing to fear if order could be maintained. Nothing to fear—to Reed, since the Night of The War, there had been nothing but fear. Some little fear at times for his own safety, but when there was a job to do that required intelli-gence gathering against the enemy, there was no time for personal fear. But fear—that the War would never end, fear that the Russians could never be displaced from the power they had seized in North America, fear that the guy you shared a smoke with was someone you’d never see again. After the evacuation of the Florida peninsula before the mega-quakes which severed it from the continental U.S., he had come to know the Rubensteins like a second set of par-ents, suffered with them both when it had been learned Mrs. Rubenstein was dying of bone cancer and nothing could be done to save her. He had come, in the precious little time since the discovery of the rapidly progressing disease, to accept her death as inevitable, but not the death of her husband who had become, even more since the nature of Mrs. Rubenstein’s illness had been revealed, a close friend.
He reached the end of the corridor, starting to thread his way through the evacuees and toward the doors leading to the outside.
Reed checked the Timex on his left wrist—the Russian gunships would fill the skies at any moment. From the bat-tered flap holster hanging at his right hip, he drew the 1911A1, working the slide of the .45, jacking a round into the chamber, leaving the hammer at full stand and upping the safety.
He pushed through the inner doors, his left hand helping ease a wheelchair patient through the doors. He reached the outer doors; the guard there was directing the flow of traf-fic —
wheelchair patients to the ramp, ambulatory patients down the steps.
Trucks were pulling up in front of the school, men pour-ing from the trucks to aid in the evacuation.
Above the din, the shouts, the blaring of the PA system, he heard the thrashing noise in the air.
In the distance, he could see their outlines, like huge, dark insects, like a swarm of mechanical locusts coming to devour all in their path.
He closed his eyes an instant, hammering his left fist against his thigh. Inside the improvised field hospital — Reed almost prayed Mrs. Rubenstein would die now so that her husband, his friend, might take the chance to live.
But he knew inside him that it wouldn’t happen that way.
Reed stared at the helicopters—they were coming closer. He ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair. He shouted toward the sky, toward the Soviet force, “God damn you all to hell!”
But he wondered if hell could be worse than the War.
Chapter Two
Rozhdestvenskiy stood beside Comrade Professor Zlovski, lighting a cigarette despite the fact that posted everywhere throughout the laboratory were boldly lettered signs
He watched; the coffin shaped object’s blue light seeming to flicker, the swirling clouds inside it parting, as did clouds before the dawn, he thought. And in a very real way, Rozhdestvenskiy considered, it was a dawn— the dawn of a new age for Earth.
