Survivalist - 22 - Brutal Conquest Read Online Free PDF

freed women. She was very thin, with deep circles under dark, fearful eyes. The woman kept her head slighdy down, the result being that her eyes did not meet John Rourke’s as he looked at her.
    Martin Zimmer stood between Natalia and Annie, an evil-looking smile on his face, his hands clasped on his upper arms, rubbing himself for warmth. “Why don’t you just leave her, Dad?”
    “Let’s set the lady down,” Rourke suggested to Paul Rubenstein, ignoring Martin’s suggestion; Paul nodded as Annie and Natalia each helped in gendy lowering the injured woman to the ground. Rourke dropped to one knee beside her, reassuring her, “We’re only stopping to rest for a minute. You’re doing fine.”
    She bit her lower lip as she forced a close facsimile of a smile.
    John Rourke walked a few feet from her as Annie began to speak. “Daddy, we were talking back there, and Mary Ann—this is Mary Ann.”
    Again, John Rourke tried to meet the dark, furtive eyes of the woman, but she almost seemed intrigued with studying the toes of her worn cloth shoes instead.
    “Tell them, Mary Ann,” Natalia urged. “Tell them what you told us.
    “I didn’t mean to cause no trouble,” the girl mumbled. John Rourke judged her age to be twenty, if that, but she seemed as careworn as a woman three times her age might be.
    “It isn’t causing trouble if you know something that will help us,” Paul told her. He put his arm around Annie.
    The girl did not speak.
    John Rourke queried, “Is it something about where we are or—what?”
    Her lips were cracked, the bottom one swollen a little as if she’d been struck. He’d noticed before the crash that many of the women kept by the Land Pirates for slavery and sex appeared physically abused beyond overwork and malnutrition. Mary Ann said, “My pa always tol’ me to keep my mouth shut.”
    “I don’t know about your father’s motivation for that, Mary Ann,” Rourke began, “but being silent is inappropriate under the circumstances. We’re all in this together, and if you know something that will enable us to get out of this more easily, you should tell us. Do you understand?”
    She was drawing in the dirt with her toes, swaying her body back and forth to some sort of unheard rhythm. But she nodded her head. Her fingers played with the tattered fabric of her dress. She didn’t look up as she spoke. “I come from ‘round here, mister.”
    John Rourke said nothing for a moment.
    Mary Ann continued. “Over that ridge, I think. Ain’t sure. Maybe’s the town.”
    “Town,” John Rourke repeated. He doubted her description of the place as an actual “town.” Aerial photos he’d studied indicated isolated collections of buildings,
    but there were no large human habitations within at least fifty miles of their current position. Still, if she were right, some small hamlet on the other side of the ridge might be possessed of a vehicle or even horses.
    Even the smallest vehicle or a solitary horse would allow them to make contact with Allied Intelligence and get real help. There was a Resistance movement within Eden, of course, and there were personnel affiliated with it in the Wildlands as well.
    “Let her take you to her little town. It will make you easier to find,” Martin laughed.
    Annie straight-armed Martin in the chest, knocking him onto his rear end in the snow. “Why don’t you act like a human being?” she snapped.
    John Rourke looked at Mary Ann. “Do you have people in your town? A family, I mean?”
    Uh-huh.”
    “Do you think somebody there might be able to loan us a vehicle or a horse? Just for a little while, Mary Ann?”
    “Maybe.”
    “And your town is just over that ridge? Not much further than that?” Mary Ann nodded. John Rourke nodded.
    Then he looked back toward the remainder of the women. The twenty-two all huddled together for warmth a few yards away would cover the distance that he judged to the ridge and over in perhaps a hard day’s march. He