The Awakening

by neetha Napew

  He picked up the two-foot steel-cored section of rubber hose, etching lines in his imagination with it across the white flesh of her abdomen, then very quickly, raked it hard across her breasts and she screamed. A scream of pain was somehow a universal language.

  He began to undress fully—and then he would beat her well.

  Chapter Thirteen

  For three days and nights, he had followed them—scraps of burned human flesh, a bone, an occasional footprint—like something wrapped in rags. He had followed the only humans he had found on the face of the earth. The cannibals.

  He had followed them on foot, leaving the Harley at the end of the second day, lest the motorcycle alert them to his presence, lest it deny him the chance of finding humankind, for somewhere inside him, he had told himself that there were at least two species moving on this part of the Earth/the cannibals and their victims. He knew little/of cannibal societies on the whole from Earth history, but logic and reason told him that any society, no matter how primitive, no matter how bizarre, no matter how brutal, would require certain rules. And that killing and eating fellow members of the tribe would be taboo—maybe. The human skull—the female—had seemed normal enough. But then, he had told himself, so too might the cannibals.

  The trek after the cannibals was leading him through the mountains, through the very area he had chosen to search for the landing spot or crash site—for the origin of the mysterious light in the night sky, perhaps the origin of the indecipherable radio broadcast.

  He had been maintaining a distance of perhaps two miles from the cannibals, never seeing them in more than a fleeting glimpse—a vaguely human shape passing into tree cover. They were nomadic, hunters, without a permanent village, he sur­mised.

  Either that or a long-range hunting party. If it were the latter, then following them would lead to their stronghold or base.

  Cautiously, lest he be discovered, he had tracked them, resting when he judged they rested, moving when he j udged they moved. They were diurnal in their travel.

  As the third day drew into the third night, the scraps of human leavings had all but ceased and no more were there the occasional piles of human feces near the track. They would hunger again.

  This night he would close the gap, come up to just outside their camp.

  He would see…

  Michael Rourke checked the face of the Rolex against the stars. It was nearly midnight. He theorized that his quarry would be asleep now. He shucked his pack so that he could move quickly, camouflaging it in nearby brush. He debated over the M-16. He had no intention of making battle. He camouflaged this as well, almost hearing his father’s voice telling him not to. But his confidence was in himself and in the two handguns with which he had so often practiced over the years.

  He marked this spot’s map coordinates, then moved ahead in silence in the darkness.

  Silence. He walked quickly, quietly over the rocky terrain, listening each time he stopped, listening for a human voice.

  He heard none.

  Clouds were moving into the sky on a stiff cold wind and he smelled snow in the air. He kept moving.

  Ahead of him, a shadow hung, deeper than the darkness around it. The Stalker in his right fist, he moved ahead, quietly, listening, toward the shadow.

  Michael Rourke stopped in the wooded defile beneath the shadow, the shadow now with form, substance, his left hand reaching up, touching at the harness webbing. He had seen these things in books, seen them in videotapes. What hung above him snarled in the trees was a parachute, the clouds overhead parting in a sudden and chilling gust of wind, the whiteness of siJk or nylon—he wasn’t sure which—catching the light from the stars or the moon. A parachute.

  It had been an aircraft he had seen in the sky. He lit the Zippo lighter he carried to examine the harness webbing. It had been cut cleanly. A knife.

  It was from what he had seen fall from the night sky. v

  The aircraft should be nearby. And so should the pilot. He moved about beneath the parachute, on his hands and knees in the grass and dirt, feeling the dark ground, using the flickering blue-yellow flame of the Zippo sparingly lest he burn down the wick.

  A folding knife—nothing unique about it. In the light of the Zippo he read the legend “Rostfrei” and “Solingen” on the blade, but there was no trade name. But the knife—it could not be new— was in perfect condition. He closed the single lockblade and pocketed the folding knife, con­tinuing his search. He found nothing else beneath where the parachute hung. He sat on the ground in the cold and the darkness, constructing in his mind what might have happened. If the thing falling from the sky were some sort of conventional aircraft, what he had heard on the radio and what he had heard five years earlier had perhaps been a prerecorded distress signal, perhaps played at higher speed and broadcast toward some base which would have the equipment to ungarble it.

  The empty parachute harness, the open folding knife. The pilot had bailed out after sending the message, the parachute snarling in the trees. The pilot had cut himself free. He looked up—the fall would have been perhaps six feet to the ground, but perhaps the pilot had already been injured. It would be the reason for leaving the knife—either that or the approach of the cannibals. But he could not envision even unconsciousness prolonging for more than a week and the pilot simply hanging suspended. He would have left the scene. But if he left the knife, it meant he was injured.

  Michael stood beneath the parachute surveying the night around him. The pilot crashed his aircraft, bailing out after sending his distress signal. The pilot’s chute became hung up. The pilot was injured in one manner or another and crawled off into the denser trees. Michael moved to his right—down the defile, easier for an injured person to navigate. He followed the gentlest slope, toward the denser growth of trees.

  His foot stubbed against something in the dark. He crouched, shielding the Zippo’s flame from the stiffening chill wind. A plastic container, the plastic opaque, heavy, evidently designed for re­use. He smelled the container. A food smell he could not identify. In the denser tree cover, he could trust to using a flashlight. It was one of the angleheads his father and Paul Rubenstein had taken from the geologi-cal supply store in New Mexico—his father had told them the story of the 747’s crash more than once, of the origins of his partnership with Paul Rubensiein. In the beam of the flashlight, Michael scanned the ground, the Stalker slung across his back.

  The earth disturbed—he found a sharp stick and dug with it. Human feces, The pilot? The cannibals did not cover their leavings. He re­covered the tiny mound. Another plastic container. In the brush there was the sign of a freshly sawn sapling. But the pine tar had solidified—he judged it as several days old. He moved deeper into the brush, stopping—his right leg, the shin barked against something hard.

  Michael shone the flashlight down. Another sapling, but the entire shaft of the tree. He shone the light beyond it—a lean-to built into the natural brush. Around the lean-to and inside, three more of the plastic containers. A canteen— plastic, late G.I., one quart issue. The kind his father frequently had used when they would be away from the Retreat all day long. The canteen was empty.

  He searched in detail near the lean-to—more of the neatly covered mounds of human leavings.

  But where was the downed aviator?

  He heard then, over the keening of the night wind, a scream. The first human sound he had heard since Annie’s voice when he’d left the Retreat, the first human sound beside his own musings.

  He started toward the scream, up the defile, taking a right angle when he reached the tree where the parachute still hung, running now, the Stalker in both hands as he pushed through the trees. The cannibals—perhaps they had the pilot. Snow—he felt it touch his right cheek.

  Another scream.

  Michael Rourke threw himself into the run. If a civilized man were ahead of him, he had to know from where the man had come. His heart beat— not from the thinness of the air or its coldness, b
ut from something deep inside him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Annie Rourke sat up in bed—she was cold.

  It was a curious effect of the cryogenic sleep— she and Michael had discussed it. But dreaming, which was so continual, so vivid during “the sleep,” seemed somehow to be all but impossible once “the sleep” had been endured. She had consciously dreamed twice since the awakening of herself and Michael. Once on the night her father had returned to the sleep. And this was the second time. She was aware of the fact that dreaming was frequently subconscious, that one didn’t remem­ber the dream or remember having had it. But this was a dream of which she was aware.

  Perhaps it was the closeness with Michael, of knowing no other human being for sixteen years—but she could feel inside her that the dream was somehow more than a dream.

  She pushed back the covers, standing up, her nightgown falling down around her ankles, not bothering with a robe until she found her slippers in the dark. She found them, then feit in the darkness at the bottom of the bed, finding the robe, pulling it on, belting it around her waist. She shivered still. She turned on the light beside the bed, its yellow glow bathing the room that her father had built for her in diffused light. She went to the closet—from a hanger she took the heavy knitted double triangle of shawl, throwing it around her shoulders, huddling in it. She turned off the light, sitting on the edge of the bed in the total darkness, still cold.

  Michael. She could not remember the dream. But Michael had been in great danger.

  She shivered.

  She stood up, walking in total confidence in total darkness across her room. Just outside the door was one of the switches for the lights which illuminated the Great Room.

  She hit the switch.

  She walked down the three steps from her room toward the four operating cryogenic chambers.

  It was nearly Christmas anyway.

  First her father, then her mother, then Natalia, then—she studied the face as she activated the switch. “I’ll finally know you.” Paul Rubenstein. It would be several minutes before they began to awaken—running, she took the three steps to her room. She wanted to change into something pretty. She threw the shawl down onto the bed and began to rummage through her closet.

  Chapter Fifteen

  He had run into it, not slowing, the snow cover­ing the ground in spots now, the cold wind blow­ing the snow like tiny icy needles against his skin, the fire at the center of the clearing flickering, the flames licking skyward into the cold darkness, the screaming again. A woman—a human woman. She screamed once more and was silent, the instru­ment in the hands of the cannibal dripping crim­son with blood in the firelight as her executioner turned. The woman’s guts spilled to the ground.

  Michael Rourke raised the Stalker in both fists, shouting, “Freeze!” The cannibal raced toward him, shouting some­thing barely intelligible—but it sounded like “Meat!”

  Michael Rourke thumbed back the hammer. He had taken human life, but it had been centuries ago. “So help me—freeze!”

  The cannibal kept coming. There were others— at least two dozen. In the flickering of the bon­fire—the smell of human flesh in the smoke as the wind died for an instant—there were bodies tied to trees. An arm was missing from one of them, and a man—was it a man really—at the fireside held the thing—the arm—to his teeth. There was a human form dead on the ground. But it wasn’t dead. It was moving and there was a scream—the skin was be­ing peeled away from the flesh with ^ wedge of rock.

  Michael Rourke pulled the trigger, the 240-grain lead hollow point making a tongue of orange flame in the gray-black nightas theStalker rocked in his fists. The center of the cannibal’s face collapsed, blood and brain matter spraying in a cloud on the air, the fire hissing and steaming with it. A scream, almost inhuman, and then the shrieked word, “Help!” Michael Rourke wheeled right, a woman there. She had shouted in English. Naked, tied to a tree, one of the cannibals falling upon her, his teeth catching the glint of firelight, yellow, saliva dripping from his mouth as he started to bite at her right breast and she screamed again. Michael jacked back the Stalker’s hammer, firing, the big customized Ruger rocking again in his hands, the cannibal’s body jerking away from the woman as if caught in some irresistible wind. Michael felt it on the hairs at the back of his neck— grateful Annie hadn’t cut his hair. He wheeled, backstepping. The Stalker not raised to his line of sight yet, he jerked the trigger, a cannibal with a stone axe less than six feet trom him, the axe making the downswing, Michael feel­ing the rush of air as the scoped .44 Magnum rocked in his fists. The cannibal’s body jackknifed, feet off the ground, the body rolling back in mid­air, falling. Michael slipped the Stalker’s sling over his head and his right arm through it, letting the pistol fall to his side, grabbing the smaller, more manueverable Predator in his right fist, fir­ing as another of the cannibals charged at him.

  The woman on the far side of the fire with the missing arm—she was dead. The man on the ground with his skin being severed from his flesh—beside him was one of the plastic food containers, half spilled from a ruck­sack. The container was still full. These people wanted only living flesh as food. He backstepped toward the still-untouched woman—she screamed again and he wheeled, fir­ing, the cannibal from the fireside, swinging the arm of the human female over his head like a club, Michael’s slug splitting the cannibal’s skull at the center of the forehead.

  And then he felt the feeling rising in his stom­ach. The cannibals—their bodies were clothed in human skins. The man he had just shot, his upper body and his loins were wrapped in it, the upper portion of a human face, long red hair hanging from it, almost obscene but more than obscene, swaying over his crotch as the wind caught at it. The human skull. The dead woman— her eyebrows had been an almost unnatural red.

  “Fuck you all!” Michael shouted the words, his throat hoarse with them—he pulled the Predator’s trigger again, then again, then again. One shot remained, the action cocked under his thumb as the just-shot bodies rocked on the ground. By the fireside, others of the cannibals had fallen on two of the bodies, ripping arms and legs from the torsos, running with them into the shadow. Rourke heard the woman scream from behind him. “No!” He spun ninety degrees right. His father had been right, a single action—he pulled the trigger from hip level, the cannibal’s hands claspingat his chest as the body rocked back and away—was too slow to reload. Michael stabbed the revolver—empty—into the crossdraw holster, finding the butt of the big Gerber knife. He wheeled toward the woman, hacking the blade outward—the ropes binding her hands to the notch of the tree above her, the rope made of twisted vines, blood oozing from her right wrist as she fell to the ground.

  He reached for her, drawing back as he saw the shadow from the firelight lunging forward. He buried the big fighting knife into the neck of one of the cannibals and drew it back.

  He hacked at the vine rope twisted around the woman’s ankles. Woman? She was only a girl.

  The girl raised her head—her eyes looked blue in the firelight. She was the first totally naked woman he had seen in his life.

  “Who are—“

  “Michael. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “The archangel Michael—the sword—“

  Her eyes—they seemed riveted to the knife in his right hand. Another of the cannibals, Michael dragging the girl up, but only to her knees, his right hand hacking out in a wide backhand arc, blood spurting as the blade snagged at the carotid artery of the lunging cannibal. The body fell back, blood making a fine cloud in the cold wind. Michael dragged the girl to her feet. “Can you run?”

  “I’m naked.”

  “I noticed—run for it!” And he shoved at her, the girl starting forward, Michael shouting, “Back that way—hurry!”

  He looked back once—another of the cannibals. M ichael swung the knife toward him. The cannibal stepped back, then ran toward the fire, falling onto one of the bodies.

  Michael Rourke tu
rned, running after the naked girl before he lost sight of her in the darkness. Had she come in the plane?

  Why had she called him “archangel”?

  His heart pounded in his chest harder than it had ever pounded before. But he kept running. Once he reached the Retreat again—if he reached the Retreat again, when he reached the Retreat again—he would take a third handgun. One that loaded faster.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna sat up—so sud­denly her head felt light and she closed her eyes.

  To her left was Paul Rubenstein. He had not yet sat up. She could tell because the cryogenic chamber’s lid was not yet elevated. To her right was John Rourke. “John,” she whispered, her voice sounding, feelingvodd to her. The lid of his chamber too was closed, but she could see him stir inside. He was alive. Beyond John Rourke, in the farthest chamber, Sarah sat up, rubbing her eyes.

  Natalia closed her eyes—the children. “The children—where— “ and she looked at the face that held the eyes that looked at her. The eyes were brown, like John Rourke’s eyes. The hair, it was a dark honey blond, very long it seemed, draped over the girl’s left shoulder and to her waist and beyond. The girl. “Who? Annie?”

  “Natalia—rest. We can talk. All of us can—“

  Natalia looked to her right—she had moved her head too fast. Annie was talking. “I think women wake up faster from cryogenic sleep than men do—just like they do from regular sleep, I guess.”

  If Annie were an adult, Natalia thought— thinking was hard. She tried to organize her thoughts. John Rourke, there was some little gray in his hair, more than she remembered. She watched as he stirred. Natalia turned to Annie, trying to move her legs. She could not move them yet.

  “How old is Michael?”

  “He’ll be thirty in less than a month,” Annie’s soft alto answered in almost a whisper.