AFTER (26 page)

"I'm sorry, but you can't go in there. The doctor can't be disturbed."

"But we
must
see him, senorita. It is urgent, a matter of life and death!"

Rourke
opened his eyes. He had been napping at the desk of his darkened office. Frantic silhouettes appeared in the light of the open doorway. The physician reached for the switch on the desk lamp, while his free hand clutched the .44 Magnum he kept holstered beneath his coat at all times.

He relaxed his grip on the weapon when he realized there was no violent intent to the sudden intrusion, only desperation.

Rourke
knew the Mexican couple; Eduardo and
Naida
Guevara. He had repaired the man's hand once when a wild dog had torn it from the wrist. Eduardo now stood with his hysterical wife, his arms wrapped around a blanket-bundled child. The face of the small girl, perhaps four years of age, stared glassy-eyed at Doctor
Rourke
, her skin as deathly pale as candle wax.

"Please… oh,
please
, Senor Doctor, you must help us!" pleaded Nadia, her face damp with weeping. "You must help our poor Maria!"

"I told you before," insisted Nurse Taylor, looking strangely near tears herself, "there is nothing the doctor can do."

Rourke
stood and motioned for the man to bring the child closer. He peeled back the bloodstained blanket with gentle hands. The sight of physical mutilation had never bothered the doctor before, but what confronted him now filled him with revulsion and horror.

"Who, in God's holy name, did this horrible thing?" he asked.

Eduardo's face twisted into a mask of agonized grief. "It was the General and his gringos, Doctor. They came this night to wreak havoc upon us all. Our poor daughter, Maria, she was chosen from among many children and brought into the street of Ruin Town. He said that he wanted to show us who was truly the King of Houston. Then he pulled his machete, senor … the
bastardo
pulled his machete and hacked off our little Maria's arms!"

Naida
wailed in grievous recollection. "Oh, please, Senor
Rourke
… you must do something! Take little Maria into your room of wonders and make her whole again!" With that, the woman emptied the contents of an old shopping bag onto the desktop before him.

Two tiny severed arms, pale and bloodless, lay upon his desk blotter. The miniscule fingernails were painted bright pink, perhaps with a bottle of nail polish the parents had discovered somewhere in the ruins.

"I'm sorry… but I can do nothing," muttered
Rourke
, feeling utterly helpless in the presence of those tiny limbs. "Your daughter is dead."

"But you
must
do something!" screamed the mother, grasping at the lapels of the doctor's white coat. "It is your duty! You are --!"

"
I am not God!
" bellowed
Rourke
, breaking from the woman's claw-like hands. "Now, please… just go. And take this poor child from my sight."

Silently, Nurse Taylor ushered the man and wife from the office. They took the child and her tiny appendages with them. Outside, the nurse gave the grieving parents her condolences and, in the gentlest way possible, convinced them that some good could come from their daughter's senseless demise. They agreed and, instead of surrendering their child to the flaming pyres, donated the girl's body, knowing that some other child might benefit from that which Maria had unwillingly forfeited in death.

Nurse Taylor escorted them to the warehouse door and, upon returning, found
Rourke
pouring himself a shot from a vintage bottle of Jim Beam.

"Are you alright, Hamilton?" she asked from the doorway.

"No," he answered truthfully. He emptied the glass in one swallow and tipped the bottle for a refill. "No, I'm far from being alright."

"I'm sorry I let them in… it was my fault…"

Rourke
lifted haunted eyes to his loyal assistant. "No, my dear, it most certainly was
my
fault. I was the one who sent Payne on his murderous rampage. And that's not all. I've let this whole thing get out of hand, you know, this precious
service
I provide. I've allowed these poor people to think that I'm something more than a man… that I'm some great healer sent down from the heavens to repair their crippled bodies. I
let
them believe that!"

Nurse Taylor regarded the doctor with an ache deep in the pit of her soul. She could remember a time, before the social and economic unrest, before the random nukes of the Burn, when Hamilton
Rourke
had been considered an exceptional man by those around him. A great man, to be sure, but not some divine healer. He had been a respected surgeon and professor of anatomy at Rice University back then. All that changed, however, during a mass assassination attempt at an international medical symposium. Half of the great minds of the world had been mowed down by terrorist bullets.

All died, except for
Rourke
. Only an experimental procedure known as "brain-grafting" could salvage his injured mind. A team of able surgeons had deftly joined
Rourke's
cerebral cortex with the frontal lobe of the only available donor; a blue-collar welder who had perished from a fall off a five-story scaffold.
Rourke's
recovery had gone slowly and, during that time, the world as he knew it crumbled in chaos and nuclear annihilation. Eventually he began to practice again in the ruins of Houston, but using a new kind of medicine from an entirely different perspective. The melding of the two minds – surgeon and arc welder – had brought about the development of the highly specialized procedure known as "flesh-welding".

The doctor spoke, breaking Nurse Taylor's train of thought. "You know, I've been seriously considering moving our operation elsewhere. It seems as though we have lost our purpose here in Texas. Maybe we should move on to the Southern states. There is much resistance in Florida and Georgia… many injured who could benefit from our knowledge."

Taylor gave him a tired, little smile. "Anywhere you want to hang your shingle is fine with me."

The doctor capped the bottle of liquor and stared at the nurse with sad affection. "Louise… I don't feel like I can make it through this night alone."

"Neither can I," she whispered. She removed her starched white cap, let her long dark hair fall to her shoulders, and came to him.

And, when they kissed, their tears mingled with a mutual bitter-sweetness.

A week had passed since the hellish assault on Ruin Town. After a grueling seven day session of mending and repairing Jeremiah Payne's hideous handiwork,
Rourke
and Taylor had had enough. They were on the verge of packing their equipment and possessions, when the steel door reverberated with a furious pounding. It was Payne and his men and, from the ferocity of the commander's swearing and threats, it sounded as though he was in great physical pain.

"Are you game for one final operation?"
Rourke
asked his assistant after the threat of blowing the door with C-4 had been issued.

The nurse was about to protest, but was silenced by a strange look in the doctor's eyes.

"What have you got in mind?"

"Just trust me."

When the door was raised, Payne's unit was in like a flash, faces mean and enraged, the ugly muzzles of their weapons covering the two. A couple of soldiers carried a bloody stretcher that bore the devastated remains of what had once been a human body. It was the agonized, but still living body of General Jeremiah Payne.

"What happened to him?" the doctor asked indifferently.

"We were heading down to the southern limits," said Colonel Walker, Payne's right-hand man. "The Cubes and the SA's are joining for a major offensive, planning to take Houston by storm. We were out recruiting manpower when the General's jeep hit an IED. It killed the driver instantly and the General – well, he's a real mess as you can see."

Rourke
crouched beside the stretcher, secretly gloating at the extent of the man's injuries. The General had been literally blown in half, his intestines and abdominal organs hanging below the ribcage where his pelvis and legs should have been. The left arm had been torn away at the shoulder, leaving only the right one to grip the stretcher pole in white-knuckled agony. He checked Payne's pulse. It was weakening by the moment, but perhaps there was still time to do something for him.

"Fix me up, Doc," croaked the General through bloody lips. "My body, it's all screwed up. You gotta give me a new one. You hear me? You've
got
to… or else my men have orders to kill you and your pretty nurse right here and now."

"A head-to-torso graft is a very tricky procedure. I'm not sure I can pull it off successfully. Besides, due to your little show of authority last week, the body parts I have in stock are extremely limited as far as quality is concerned. I would have to make do with what I have handy."

"Damn the quality! Just do it…
fast
!"

The General was carried into the operating room and laid upon the table. Nurse Taylor fired up the generator and
Rourke
began to gather his welding equipment.

"Walker! Get over here!" shouted Payne. The colonel approached his leader's side. "I want the defensive to go on as planned. Take the unit down to the southern limits and really kick some ass!"

"But what about you?"

"Don't worry.
 
Leave me Lackey over there, just to make sure things go straight with this body job the Doc's going to give me. After the battle, come back for us. If there has been some foul play on the part of the good doctor here, then you have orders to terminate both him and his nurse. Got it?"

"Yes, sir!" Walker saluted and ordered the men to return to the convoy. The only one who remained was Private Lackey, a swaggering youth with a garish neon green
mohawk
, an Uzi, and a chest covered with stolen medals, one of them a five-pointed star proclaiming LUBBOCK SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT.

"No funny stuff now," warned the soldier, snapping back the bolt of his submachine gun. "You fix up the General real nice and you'll be just fine. Screw it up and I'll grind you and Florence Nightingale into hamburger meat."

As
Rourke
proceeded to administer the anesthesia, Payne glared up at him threateningly. "Do it right!"

"Don't worry, General… I will."

After the patient had slipped into a state of drug-induced slumber,
Rourke
turned to the young private. "Would you mind accompanying Nurse Taylor to the freezer? She will need some help carrying the replacements to the thaw bath for final preparation."

Lackey shrugged. "Sure, I guess so." He shouldered the Uzi and followed the nurse out of the operating room. Taylor pushed a gurney toward the deep-freeze and, after opening the heavy steel door, entered the dark interior.

The soldier tagged along, his right hand resting on the butt of his holstered .45.

"There they are," said the nurse, pointing. "On the shelves at the back wall."

Lackey took a flashlight from his utility belt and walked to the rear of the freezer. Clouds of frosty breath billowed from his mouth and nostrils. When he reached the shelves, he studied the plastic-wrapped parcels in the pale beam of his light.

He turned, his mouth open, his brow creased in genuine puzzlement. He didn't see the half-moon blade of the scalpel rising in Nurse Taylor's hand, chromed and deadly. Neither did he feel the flesh of his throat part cleanly or the rasp of honed steel against his neck bone. All he saw was the shocking amount of blood that splattered across his shiny medals – before darkness swiftly overtook him.

"He's coming to, Doctor."

Payne began to open his eyes, then screwed them shut against the blazing brilliance of the overhead fluorescence. He laid there for a moment, gradually growing aware of nagging pain and discomfort. He tried to lift his head, but the numbing effect of the anesthesia made that simple action impossible.

"Lackey…" he whispered. His voice sounded slurred and muffled, as if his head was stuffed with thick wads of cotton. "Dammit, Lackey! Where are you?"

He received no answer, but could definitely detect the presence of two people in the room. Painfully, he again opened his eyes and squinted against the white glow. Doctor
Rourke
and his nurse stood to either side of the recovery table. They looked exhausted, their canvas gowns heavily stained with blood. Satisfaction crept through Payne's sluggish thoughts. The grueling session of surgery had certainly left its mark on them.

"Well, Doc," asked Payne, "was the operation a success?" He fought to break through the grogginess that weighed him down and slowly felt himself gaining ground.

"We did what had to be done."

Payne felt his new limbs gradually begin to regain sensation. Throbs of dull agony flared at the joints where
Rourke's
unique procedure had fused limbs to torso and torso to head. "Good. I'm glad to hear that."

"I don't believe you've grasped my full meaning,"
Rourke
told him