The Survivalist 02 - The Nightmare Begins by Jerry Ahern Read Free Book Online Page A

minute."

    The sound was a rumbling, growing louder by the second, it seemed. "What is it?" Rubenstein asked, staring into the empty street.

    "Shh!" Rourke whispered. He was silent for another moment, then slowly, glancing behind him, said to Rubenstein, "Sounds like a riot maybe—some kind of a mob heading toward us. Let's get out of here." Rourke started turning his bike, Rubenstein behind him. Glancing up the street, Rourke watched as the mob turned into it—men, women, even some children, hands and arms flailing in the air, some carrying clubs, guns discharging into the air space and empty buildings around them.

    "They—nuts?" Rubenstein stammered, his voice and look filled with astonishment.

    "Maybe desperate's a better word—like I said, it's somethin' to do—isn't it?" Rourke wheeled his bike and gunned the engine back down the street, slowing at the corner, balancing the bike as he scanned the street in both directions, Rubenstein beside him again.

    "Can't go back the way we came—look," and Rourke pointed in the direction leading out of the city. "Either another mob or part of the same one," he commented.

    "But there's a gunfight down the other way by the border."

    "Maybe they won't notice us," Rourke said— smiling, then started the Harley under him into the street, Rubenstein beside him on his left. Rourke cruised slowly over the pavement, guiding his bike around stray bricks and rocks and broken glass, cutting all the way left to avoid a pool of stagnant water swamping the right gutter and overflowing into the street. Rourke and Rubenstein rounded the corner, Rourke pulling to a halt in the middle of the street. He glanced behind him—the sound of the mob was barely audible now over the sound of the gunfire ahead, but already Rourke could see the first phalanxes of the mob behind him coming into the street which they'd just left. Ahead was the main border crossing into Juarez—and from across the river Rourke could hear gunfire as well, see the smoke of buildings afire there.

    "Is this what's left of the world—my God!" Rubenstein exclaimed.

    "It may sound like some kind of put-on," Rourke said slowly, "but I expected worse. And don't worry who you shoot at—they'll all be shooting at us—kind of like a diversion for them. Let's ride," and Rourke gunned his motorcycle, glancing back over his shoulder toward Rubenstein. Already, Rourke's fist was curled around the pistol grip of the CAR-15 slung under his shoulder.

    Chapter Nine

    Rubenstein jerked back the bolt on the Schmeisser 9mm submachine gun, checked the safety and gunned his motorcycle ahead, John Rourke's tall lean frame bent over the big Harley Davidson already several yards ahead of him. With the back of his hand, Rubenstein pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up off the bridge of his nose, bending low over his handlebars, his sparse black hair whipping across his smooth sunburnt forehead. He repeated to himself what Rourke had told him—"Don't fire that thing like it's a garden hose, practice trigger control." Rubenstein had asked what the spare magazines were for. Rourke had simply told him to sit on his motorcycle, hold the handlebars with one hand and the MP-40 subgun with the other. Then Rourke had reached over and pulled out the magazine. He'd stuck it in the saddlebag on the right side of the bike and said, "Okay—without taking that hand off the handlebar and without dropping the gun, reload."

    Rubenstein had tried for a few moments, then looked at Rourke in exasperation. "That's why," Rourke had said, "you need more than one gun, and that's why with all your guns you only fire at something, not just to make noise. And with a full-auto weapon like that you confine yourself to three-shot bursts." Rubenstein had mimicked Rourke then: "I know—practice trigger control—right?"

    And now, as Rubenstein rounded a curve in the street, watching the armed men huddled along the supports for the bridge leading into Mexico and the other