Survivalist - The Web Part 17

He had washed his body in an icy stream, and now- tired and changed into fresh clothes-he sat by his motorcycle, stirring cold water into a pack of his freeze-dried food. He tasted a spoonful of it. It would have been better hot, but the nutritional value was the same. He had added a hundred miles since leaving Bevington and was well inside Tennessee. Paul had probably pa.s.sed him. Perhaps Paul had found them.

Rourke leaned back, eating his cold food, his muscles still aching, his stomach still uneasy. He planned ahead-^always. He hadn't planned on Martha Bogen, or on the suicide of an entire town. Or on the Russians being there. The sun was setting-red on the horizon, too red, the weather warm now.

He had seen signs of Brigands in the last twenty-five miles-their habitually careless camps, litter and broken bottles everywhere.

To the east, he could see the faint glimmering of some early stars on the horizon.

Tomorrow, he would renew the search, to find Sarah, Michael, and Annie.

And perhaps Paul really had found them.

He would stop at the Retreat, he decided.

He finished the food, then set the empty package aside. Finding a cigar in his s.h.i.+rt pocket, he lit it in the blue-yellow flame of his Zippo.

John Rourke made a last check of the twin Detonics .s, then of the CAR-. He had cleaned all three guns, and reloaded the spare magazines for them.

As he watched the last wash of red in the sky where the bun was fast vanis.h.i.+ng, he closed his eyes. Sarah, Michael, Annie. Paul Rubenstein.

Another face-her eyes were a brilliant blue.

THE SURVIVALIST SERIES.

by Jerry Ahern #: THE WEB.

Blizzards rage around Rourke as he picks up the trail of his family and is forced to take shelter in a strangely quiet Tennessee valley town. But the quiet isn't going to last for long!

#: THE SAVAGE HORDE (, $.).

Rourke's search gets sidetracked when he's forced to help a military unit locate a cache of eighty megaton warhead missiles hidden on the New West Coast-and accessible only by submarine!

#: THE PROPHET (,.

As six nuclear missiles are poised to start the ultimate conflagration, Rourke's constant quest becomes a desperate mission to save both his family and all humanity from being blasted into extinction!

#: THE END IS COMING (,.

Rourke must smash through Russian patrols and cut to the heart of a KGB plot that could sp.a.w.n a lasting legacy of evil. And when the sky bursts into flames, consuming every living being on the planet, it will be the ultimate test for THE SURVIVALIST.

#: EARTH FIRE.

Rourke, the oniy hope for breaking the Russians' brutal hold over America, and the Reds fear the same thing: the imminent combustion of the earth's atmosphere into global deadly flames!

#: THE AWAKENING (,.

Rourke discovers that others have survived the explosion of the earth's atmosphere into flames-and must face humans who live to kill and kill to live, eating the flesh of their victims!

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