Read Survivalist - 19 - Final Rain for Free Online Page A

her body’s circa-dian rhythm to what the time here was supposed to be.
    If she’d been alone, or if only the members of her family were around her, she would have changed into something more comfortable. All she wanted now was to strip off the damned BDU pants and slip into a nightgown and scratch her pregnancy-swollen abdomen.
    It would have been more than a bit unseemly with Wolfgang Mann, the injured Akiro Kurinami and two of Mann’s soldiers in the Retreat with her.
    But as she crossed behind the counter to get cups, the counter masking her from view, she sneaked a scratch of her abdomen and it felt good.
    “Sarah?”
    It was Colonel Mann. She turned toward the sound of his voice. He hau been studying the Retreat’s electronic monitoring system. Her husband, John Rourke, had recently upgraded it with German equipment, but it looked much the same as it had in those pre-dawn moments five centuries earlier when she’d been able to watch the sky catch fire and ball lightning roll across the ground and a Soviet KGB Elite Corps force sent to destroy her and her entire family wiped clean from the face of the earth.
    She almost dropped one of the coffee cups.
    “What is it, Wolf?” She still felt a little awkward calling him by his first name, let alone a nickname, but he insisted she use it.
    “The more I learn about your husband, the more remarkable I find him. The electronic security system here is amazing, not in its equipment, but the use of such equipment, the innovation it displays.”
    “He’s always been very smart, John has,” Sarah Rourke agreed.
    “More than smart, as you say. If there were the opportunity, now, it would be wonderful if he were to devote his mind to new challenges, not just staying alive.”
    She smiled. “Well, he’s always seen staying alive as the ultimate challenge, I guess. That’s the only reason this place exists, Colonel. And John is also the only reason Michael and Annie and I still exist.”
    Mann smiled. “I suppose you’re right.”
    “Would you like some coffee? I made enough for you and your men.”
    “That would be very pleasant, Frau Rourke — Sarah.”
    It would be time to check on Akiro Kurinami in a few moments—her watch told her that—but not yet.
    “This place, its very concept, amazes me!” Mann enthused, sitting down on a stool on the ppposite side of the kitchen counter.
    Sarah Rourke looked past him, out across the Great Room, its books, its music, the video library, the gun cabinets. “I never wanted him to build this place. Every spare dime we had, every spare minute he had, always here, building this. And then, when the Night of the War came, he was away. I’d sent him away, really. We were going to try things again. I didn’t think it would work, but we’d always loved each other, and Michael and Annie were so little then.” Sarah Rourke felt a catch*5 in her throat. That her husband had robbed her of their childhood was something she would never forget, although she wanted to forgive. And there was another chance, inside her womb. Had John made her pregnant because of that? To give her a second chance?
    “And you spent much of the period immediately follow
    ing the bombings endeavoring to reunite. It is a fabulous story, Sarah. And that you were able to find one another.”
    “After the Night of the War, I realized,” she said slowly, “that John wasn’t waiting for disaster, like I’d always thought, but simply preparing for it. And I realized that he had been right. I never thought mankind could be so insane. And, despite the crisis which brought it about, East-West tensions were easing. That was the real insanity of it all. And we’ll never know who pushed the button. That damn button.”
    She sipped at her coffee.
    Wolfgang Mann spoke so softly his voice was almost a whisper. “There were disaffected elements on both sides, those who truly saw war as inevitable and wished to hasten it along before supposed weaknesses they saw in