by Jerry Ahern
“How old is Michael?”
“He’ll be thirty in less than a month,” Annie’s soft alto answered in almost a whisper.
“Thirty—he’s—“ Natalia looked at John Rourke—he stirred more, seemed about to open his eyes. “John, why?” Natalia sagged back against the chamber’s pillow and closed her eyes. She wanted to weep but no tears would come to her—yet.
Chapter Seventeen
Natalia had spoken almost not at all. Sarah had hugged Annie to her, but had said nothing.
Paul had asked questions. John Rourke had answered them, Annie answering some of the questions. Rourke watched his daughter’s eyes as she spoke to Paul Rubenstein. And he watched Paul’s eyes—Paul could see without his glasses. Natalia had been sick. Sarah, too—Paul as well. Rourke, more knowing what to expect, had taken the reactivation of his plumbing in better stride. Annie had reset his watch and he stared at the luminous black face of the Rolex now—the awakening had come some time after midnight. It was nearly nine a.m. and he was trying some of Annie’s herbal tea, sipping at it slowly.
He sat on the sofa in the great room. Annie sat on the floor, her legs vanished under the nearly ankle-length blue skirt she wore as she knelt near his feet. “You don’t believe in dreams, do you? I thought I raised you to be more level-headed than that.” Rourke smiled. The herbal tea tasted nauseating, but the coffee shortage to consider, he had decided at the first sip to drink enough tea to develop at least a tolerance for it.
“I’ve had two dreams since I awoke from the sleep, Daddy. The one dream was about seeing you and Momma again—awake. The other dream was about Michael in danger. And I’m seeing you and Momma awake right now. And Michael’s been gone from the Retreat for eight days.”
“You said he’d told you he’d be back in fourteen days, Annie.”
“I felt it, Daddy—please. Go look for him.”
John Rourke sipped at the tea. “I intend to. By midday, my stomach should be stabilized and I should feel stronger. By tomorrow, I should be able to go after him.”
“Not without me—and my stomach’s killing me.” John Rourke knew the voice. He looked at Annie’s face instead as she looked up. He watched her hands as she smoothed her skirt with them, as she touched at her hair with them. “All right, Paul.” Rourke nodded, not looking at the younger man—he was five years younger still. “The ladies will be safe here at the Retreat—“
“I’m going, John. You made it so that Michael would be the right age.” Rourke turned around. Flanking Paul Rubenstein were Natalia and Sarah. “What do you mean?” Rourke said to Natalia.
“You stole my children,” Sarah hissed. “You stole them from me forever. Maybe you plan to make me pregnant again—so we can repopulate the world. But you stole these children. You stole Michael and Annie. They’re grown up.” “And you think that you solved our problem, don’t you?” Natalia said emotionlessly. “You pandered me to your son. How could you, John?” John Rourke looked at his hands—they were steady. “For all I knew, for all I know, there are six human beings alive on Earth. Maybe the Eden Project will return. Maybe some other people have survived. Maybe Michael is confronting them right now. Maybe. But six people. Six people. Definite. I love both of you,” and he looked at Sarah and then at Natalia. “I did what I did out of love, for our survival.”
John Rourke stood up. There should be quite a lot of the cigars remaining—he started, his legs still weak, across the great room, toward the kitchen and the freezer where he kept them. Behind him he heard Natalia’s voice, “I love you— not someone the age that you were, not someone who looks like you, not your son.”
Rourke stopped at the height of the three steps leading to the kitchen. He leaned against the counter. “I did the only thing I could do. Now leave it alone,” he almost whispered.
Q
Sarah’s voice—he didn’t look at her. “Which god are you, John?”
His voice welled up inside him and he shouted without looking at her, “Leave it alone!”
“Which god are you? Which god are you, John Rourke! Should I fall on my knees to you?
Should I burn a goddamned sacrifice to you? If you make me pregnant again, should I sacrifice our first born to you—you already made me sacrifice two children!”
“Alone! Leave it alone!”
“No!”
“Momma!”
“Stay out of this, Annie—“
“Mrs. Rourke, Sarah—“
“No. You worship him—it’s written all over your face. He’s your big macho hero—taught you how to ride a bike, how to shoot a gun. Well, nobody goddamned taught me. He wasn’t there with me.” Rourke turned around, watching Sarah now as she turned toward Natalia. “And you love him because you’re like him—you’re both better than human beings, better than anybody at anything. You were made for each other. But he didn’t steal your children from you. You don’t have the memories of them inside you, of caring for them when the world was going to hell, of smuggling them past Russian guards when they were naked and shivering under blankets, of fighting and killing to keep them alive. I went through all of the hell—and now he took them!”
John Rourke watched his wife’s eyes. “You did an this all because you know what’s right for everybody, don’t you? You’d stay away for days building this Retreat. You’d keep at it and at it making this—this place. Well, what good did it really do? We’re alive and to keep the damned human race going you played god and made the children grow up so your son could marry your mistress and your daughter could marry your best friend. How fucking noble!” She turned away, walking into the bedroom he had built with his hands for them to share.
The door slammed.
He felt something—a presence and he looked away from the closed door. Annie stood behind him, on the lowest step. She wrapped her arms around his waist. “We started to raise tobacco, and in the encyclopedia and in the other books, I learned how to make cigars for you. I’ve been freezing them for years. You can smoke all you want. Just like the Cuban ones—rolled on the lips of—“ She licked her lips, looking over her shoulder at Paul Rubenstein. Paul stood there, his hands in his pockets, Rourke watching as the younger man stared down at his feet. He’d never seen Paul Rubenstein’s face so red before. “I love you, Daddy. I know what Momma meant. I’d hate you if you took away my children, but I’m not Momma. And I love you. Hold me,” and she rested her head against his chest as she ascended the steps.
John Rourke held his daughter close against him and closed his eyes. A long time later, he smoked one of the cigars and the taste— different than his other cigars—was somehow better.
Chapter Eighteen
He was still stiff and his muscles sore, but on the trail in pursuit of Michael there would be time to regain his strength from his long sleep. At least Paul Rubenstein told himself that as he stood in the workroom, fieldstripping the Brown-ing High Power. The magazine out, he drew the slide back and locked the safety in the forwardmost notch. He began working the slide stop out until he could pluck it from the left side of the frame with his fingers. Slowly, he lowered the safety on the worn 9mm, letting the slide move forward and dismounting it from the rails. He removed the recoil spring and guide from the inverted slide, then jiggled out the barrel. He heard the rustle of clothing beside him. He looked to his left—it was Annie. “I guess your mother was kinda angry,” he told her, not looking at her but looking at the pistol again. He took the Break-Free CLP and began to pour some of it— the cap removed—onto a rag to degum the pistol. “You’re the only eligible man in the world. But that’s not why I fell in love with you, Paul.”
He swallowed hard. “Hey, don’t make fun of me.”
“What did you look like with your glasses on?”
“I don’t know. Maybe my eyes being normal is just temporary. Maybe—“ “Daddy—my father—he had scars from old wounds and they healed.” “My left arm—there isn’t any scar from that spear. You’ll have to get your father to—�
� “He told me. You’re a very brave man.”
Paul Rubenstein laughed. “Bullshit. I’m just— well, I pick things up quick. Your father—he’s the one—“ “You’re a brave man. He told me you saved his life more than once.” “No, I never did that. I just—and anyway, God, John saved me—I mean, your father, he—“ “When Daddy told you about your mother and father—what that Colonel Reed told him—I wanted to hold you.”
“Annie, you’re a little—“
“I’m a woman—and I fell in love with you while you slept. Not because Daddy made things so I would. I just did. Like girls falling in love with movie actors or rock singers—never meeting them. I fell in love with you.”
“That’s not love, that’s—“
“He told me about the girl in New York once— one night. He was up very late and I was ten years old and I sat up with him and he told me all about you.” “The Eden Project—there’ll be lots of guys, guys a lot better—“ “I’ll be a spinster then, if you won’t have me.” He realized he was moving the cleaning rod in and out of the barrel and he thought she might think he was thinking something he shouldn’t think and he set the barrel and the cleaning rod down and he looked at her. “I, ahh—“ “You want to say you don’t love me yet—and I understand that.”
“Gimme a chance to breathe—“
“I know that—but I wanted you to know before you go off after Michael. I couldn’t just not tell you,” and she leaned up toward him, Paul feeling her hands touching at his face. She was very pretty—the deepness of the brown of her eyes, the hair was unimaginable, like something from a fantasy about a mermaid or a goddess, he thought. The white blouse—it showed the bareness of her shoulders where the shawl she wore fell away from her.
“You’re the daughter of my best friend. He—“
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“You’re a gentile, I’m—“
“That has nothing to do with it—there aren’t any rabbis and there aren’t any ministers.”
“But—“
“But?”
He licked his lips. “Annie—you—Annie—“
“I fell in love with you. I used to fantasize what your voice was like because I couldn’t remember it. It’s soft—I like it.”
“Annie—“
“When I was seven or so and we played poker that night, you told me I was pretty.”
“You’re beautiful. You’re the most beautiful woman I ever—“
“I’m your woman. I don’t expect you to do anything. But when you want to—just—I never talked like this. I’m your woman.”
“You’re—“
“Almost twenty-eight.”
“You’re—“
“You’re almost five hundred and twenty-eight,” and she laughed.
“I’m not that—“ and he laughed.
“Daddy told me you were kind of quiet. I think he meant shy.”
“Aww, dammit, look—“
“All I wanted was for you to know—that I’ll be here when you get back, Paul.”
“Annie—look—“
“I looked—for a very long time,” and she leaned up suddenly and he realized she was standing on her toes and her lips touched his cheek and she was gone, walking away. He watched how she wrapped the shawl about her shoulders. He licked his lips. He looked back to the work table. Paul Rubenstein closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember how to put the parts together. Of the gun.
Chapter Nineteen
They had spent the night hiding in the tr-ees, the woman saying nothing, shivering, wrapped in the Thermos blanket from his back pack and inside the sleeping bag as well, Michael with the M-16 beside him, the two revolvers fully loaded. He had broken his cardinal rule and kept sixth rounds in each of the cylinders but would remove them before moving on. Daylight had come after the fireless night.
The woman talked in her sleep, but neither was she intelligible to him nor was the language the language from the tapes he had made of the radio broadcast. Michael had wanted to awaken her.
Had she come with the pilot?
Where was the pilot from?
Who were these people who craved human flesh?
Were there more of them?
He could not ask her because she did not awaken. She had raced through the trees, Michael grabbing her, dragging her in the right direction, toward the spot where he had secured the pack and the rifle, past the hanging parachute—mute testimony to what, he wondered. He had covered her body with his coat and his shirt, the snow freezing his bare skin.
They had reached the bracken of pines and the brush beyond and he had wrapped her in the blanket, found a fresh shirt for himself, taken back his jacket, wrapped her in the sleeping bag.
He had kept her warm while he sat on guard, unsleeping, freezing as the snow piled high around them.
Once there had been sounds. There were no animal forms on the earth that he had seen— except his family, except this woman, except the cannibals, whoever they were. But the sound had been the wind, he had reasoned, because it had returned several times in exactly the same way and there had been no attack. But he had stayed ready throughout the night.
And then the woman spoke to him. “You are the archangel.” He looked at her, saw the smile etched across her face—one of peace. But her eyes were already closed again and she was asleep. She no longer moaned and mumbled in her sleep and Michael Rourke watched her for a long time. There was nothing else to do and under the dirt smudges on her face, she seemed pretty to him. It was how one perceived another human being—he had long ago thought that through. And he perceived her as pretty, as terrified. And he perceived her as safe from those people who would have done their foul things to her—for as long as he had breath.
The cold helped him stay awake because it made his body tremble.
Chapter Twenty
“I’m not some archangel—I just have the same name.” “But you are not one of Them, and you are not from the Place. The other one—he was an angel, that is why he fell from the sky. And you came to save him—and you saved me, too. I am sorry. Was he your friend?” “The pilot?”
“The other angel, his name was Pilate—like Pontius Pilate. I would think an angel would have a name that was less like that weak man’s name— Pilate. I am sorry for your friend, Archangel Michael.”
Michael Rourke closed his eyes. “This is a fighting knife,” and he showed her the Gerber. “It isn’t some heavenly sword.”
She smiled. Her eyes were still very pretty. “We were taught to call your mighty blade a sword. But I shall call it a fighting knife if you wish that, Archangel Michael.”
“I’m not an archangel. I’m not even a regular angel—I’m just a man.” “You are not Them, and you are not from the Place. The angel Pilate came down from the sky and you came to rescue him—you are obviously the archangel Michael. You told me that you were Michael.”
“I am Michael,” and she smiled as he said it. “But—“ “When must you return to heaven?”
“I, ahh—“
“Please, I know that I’m not worthy of heaven— but don’t leave me here. Slay me with your avenging sword, perhaps—anyplace but to be here with Them and alone.” “Them?”
“The ones who consume the flesh. Them. They fight those from the Place.”
“I can take you back to the place.”
The girl—he didn’t yet know her name—fell to her knees and folded her hands and touched her forehead to her hands. “Archangel Michael, do not return me to the Place. I beg this by all that is holy. They will give me back to Them. Do not return me to the Place—do not for they will give me to Them, slay me. I pray.” Michael Rourke looked at her—she prayed to him. She called him an archangel. She was from the Place. She was afraid of Them. But who was she? he thought.
‘Til go with you. You’ll be safe.”
She looked up, settling back on her behind—the blanket was all that was around her.
“Archangel Michael is good.
”
Michael Rourke watched her eyes a moment. “Sure.”
Chapter Twenty-One
John Rourke stepped out of the Retreat and into the cold sunlight. There was snow on the air—he could smell it. Sarah had told him one thing and only one… “Bring Michael home to me.” The bikes were already outside, Annie and Paul talking, apparently, down the road a bit from the Retreat doors. Beside Rourke stood Natalia Tiemerovna. He didn’t look at her as she spoke. “I had to go with you. Sarah and Annie—they need time to know each other. And I couldn’t stay here now.”
He looked at her. “Are you angry at me, too?”
“You are a good man—your heart is good. But you don’t understand the human heart. I’m sure you could perform bypass surgery on the heart if you had to, but you don’t understand it. What you did may have been right objectively, but to Sarah it will always be wrong. Do you really want me to become Michael’s wife?” “That’s part of why I did what I did, allowed the children to age while we slept.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” He had looked away again, and he felt her hands on his arms now and he turned around to face her—her eyes. “Do you want me to be some other man’s wife?
Even if the other man is your son? Do you?” He didn’t answer her. “I was always certain of one thing since I first met you, I think. That I love you and that you love me. Do you want to think about your son loving me? Do you want to come to hate us both, or to hate yourself?” “From what Sarah said, I should hate myself already, shouldn’t I?”
“Do you want me as someone else’s wife? Do you?”
It was very cold in the fresh air after so long. “No.” “I looked to you like a god,” she whispered, barely audible as the wind rose from the north-west. “My uncle, he told me that you were not a god, that you would never consider yourself a god.”
Rourke looked away. “All I tried to do—“ he began. “I think the reason I felt what I felt, what my uncle spoke about—I have never met a human being so perfect.”
He looked at her. “I’m not—“
“But you are—and the perfection is your flaw, John.”
“You sound like you’re analyzing a tragedy.”
