by Jerry Ahern
She touched her lips to his cheek.
His hands found the buttons of his shirt that she wore beneath his sweater. There were snaps and he pulled at the shirt front, the snaps opening with a succession of tiny clicking sounds.
His hands felt things incredibly warm—burn-ing. He had never touched a woman’s
breasts— until now…
Chapter Twenty-Five
They camped at the site of what Rourke realized was his son’s first camp. Being more experienced, they had made better time than Michael had. But then, Rourke thought, lying beside the fire, listening absently as Natalia and Paul talked, they had not been searching for something fallen from the sky. They were searching for a man and a machine. Only that.
He felt something against his cheeks—Natalia’s hand—and he turned his eyes from the fire to stare at her, crouched, then dropping to her knees beside him, between his legs and the fire.
“Paul is going up into the rocks to keep watch. He said we don’t need to relieve him. He can’t sleep.”
“He’ll be like that for a few days—and then he’ll really crash but good.” Rourke smiled.
“He has left us alone.”
“Subtle, isn’t he?”
Natalia moved closer to him. “After we find Michael—then what?” Rourke chewed down on the cigar. His daughter was an admirable cigar maker. Did her thought-fulness make the taste all the better? he wondered. “You’ll have to try one of these cigars and let me know what you think.” “I haven’t had the urge—to smoke at least.”
“Filthy habit.” He smiled.
“I had five hundred years to break it. But some things never change, do they, John?” John Rourke folded his right arm around her shoulders, and she eased beside him, against him.
“I’m sorry,” he almost whispered.
She kissed him quickly on the mouth, and then she buried her head against his shoulder. In the darkness he couldn’t tell, but he thought that she cried.
Chapter Twenty-Six
He sat at the small table that he used as a desk, reading the report.
There—far from where he was—it was waste-land, like it was wasteland everywhere. Believing that they lived somewhere, that they lived somehow, had kept him alive. The substance whose chemical formula could not be recon-structed. He had stolen it in the last hours.
With a few of the others, he had used it.
He had survived.
They would have survived.
He felt this inside of him.
He stood up, throwing down the sheaf of papers that made the report, crossing from the smaller anteroom into his bedroom.
The girl was still tied to the bed, where he had left her tied.
There was little left of her.
She had been cleaned up—the bleeding stopped —and returned to him. If the garbled grunts and noises she had made had been speech, this was lost to her.
She whimpered only, like an animal whim-pered. When there had been animals.
But there was still pleasure in her for him.
Watching her stirred him and he began to undress, seeing it in her eyes, the fear he had put there, fear like flowers blossoming amid the bruises of her face, amid the welts and cuts. “You serve a great purpose,” he told her. “There are women here, but I would not use them this way. But there is one woman. Perhaps after I find her, then perhaps after I do to her things I have never done even to you, perhaps then I will no longer care for this.” And he smiled. “But,” and he picked up the steel-cored rubber hose, watching the terror, hearing the insensate whimpers from her puffed and swollen lips, “until that time—“ and he brought the steel-cored hose down hard across her face, the head snapping hard right. There was no movement, and the eyes only stared. There was no sound.
He sighed long, loudly, then threw down the steel-cored rubber hose. He sat naked on the edge of the bed beside the dead female. He did what he had to do himself.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Her body moved beneath him—violently was the only word he could think of to describe it. Her thighs burned at his flesh. Her eyes were closed, and he could see the lids flutter in the firelight. It was remarkable, he thought, how somehow something he had never done before seemed so natural, so perfectly natural. His body trembled— hers trembled beneath him, his arms aching as he held himself over her, her hands against the bare flesh of his behind. He could feel her nails as they dug into him, her body moving more violently now than it had.
Suddenly, he felt as though he would explode— and a part of him did and he sagged against her, his lips touching at her breasts, his head resting beside hers, his breath coming hard to him, the girl’s body rising and falling hard against him, her lips moving, no words coming, then the words. “Michael. Michael. Michael.” Over and over, she said his name. Michael Rourke opened his eyes, very quickly. There was the sound of Madison breathing in the crook of his right arm, of the long night log crackling with fire. The sound of the wind, like a low whistle. But another sound in the darkness. He squinted to focus,studying the luminous black face of the Rolex Submariner. It was nearly four a.m.
The sound again, and Madison stirring beside him, curling her naked body against his in the sleeping bag. Again he saw the wisdom of his father—a smaller gun that could perhaps be fired easily from inside a sleeping bag would be useful now. He had no such gun.
The Predator was beside him.
His left fist closed around the Pachmayr-gripped butt. Five rounds loaded, an empty chamber under the hammer. With a Ruger of modern design, there was no need for this precaution, but it was still advisable for added safety. He lay perfectly still, waiting. Had it been before the holocaust, when the sky became flame, it could have been an animal. But there was no higher animal life. His left thumb poised over the Predator’s hammer.
Ready.
The sound of a twig breaking. Naked, Michael rolled from the sleeping bag, the hammer of the Predator jacking back, one of the cannibals, human skins layered over his body, a stone axe in both hands, was coming from beyond the fire. Michael twitched the Predator’s trigger, the can-nibal’s body lurching with it, falling back into the flames, the human skins which covered the cannibal catching afire, the smell of human flesh burning on the wind, shrieks, more animal than human. Michael leveled the Predator, the hammer jacked back. He swallowed hard, pulling the trigger again, the sound like thunder, a tongue of bright orange flame licking from the muzzle, through the darkness. Naked, shivering, he stood, waiting.
There was no sound from the cannibal, the fire consuming the flesh. If any more of them were in the darkness beyond the firelight, they were not attacking.
He was aware of movement beside him and he swung the muzzle of the Predator toward the sound.
But it was Madison, naked like he was, staring at the fire. He folded his right arm around her, drawing her close to him, her flesh against his flesh. “Michael —I love you,” she whispered. “Get dressed, we’re sitting up the rest of the night. At dawn, we get out of here.”
He looked down at her face. “Michael—“
“After we go to the Place, I want you to come back with me. To the Retreat. I want you to be with me. I guess that means I love you, too.” She buried her face against his chest, the fingers of her right hand knotting in the hairs there. “Yes, Michael.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘There—there is the Place.” Ill
There had been no more of the cannibals. Michael Rourke assumed the man he had killed at four o’clock that morning—a little over four hours ago—had pursued them for a blood feud. He would never know, he realized. Beside him, clad in the improvised skirt, his shirt and sweater, the sleeping bag no longer needed as a coat about her shoulders because of the radical change in tem-perature after the rising of the sun, Madison pointed down the defile and into a verdant valley and beyond, to the far side of it.
“That cave?” Michael asked her.
“It is the entrance—the
main entrance. I have always heard that there are other ways in and out known only to the Families. But the Place is there.” “How do you get in?” he asked her.
She looked up at him, her blue eyes pinpoints of color as the sun washed her pale face.
“Michael would be better to think how we will get out of the Place. They will want to take me and return me to Them to appease Them. And you are an out-sider—they will see that you too are one who goes.” He took her left hand in his right, saying, “Don’t worry—I come from hardy stock,” and with Madison beside him, Michael Rourke started down the defile and into the valley—toward the Place___ The cave entrance was very close now, Michael not touching either hand to his firearms but ready. Suddenly, he asked Madison, “Why didn’t you make some comment on my guns? If you thought I was an archangel and my knife was a sword.” “I saw the guns once. That is why I know you must be the Archangel Michael. No one can have guns but the Families. There is a very large room full of guns. Once, I was assisting the Cunning-hams, cleaning the quarters of one of the Families. And at the end of this corridor, there was a big roomand the doors were opened for just a minute. I looked up from my scrubbing through the doorway. I saw these things and one of the Cunninghams whispered to me what they were and that I should never mention them for any knowledge of guns was forbidden beyond the Ministers and the Families.” “Do they carry guns—the members of the Families, or the Ministers?”
“No—the electric stick.”
“Cattle prods, I read of them,” Michael noted half to himself. “They carry no guns?”
“No, I have never seen a gun beyond the confines of that room, and of course the guns that Michael himself uses. You are very skillful with these.” She smiled. He looked away from her. Staring down at the ground, they walked a moment. “My father is better.”
“The father you speak of—he is Our Heavenly Father?” Michael smiled, looking at her—smiled at her innocence. “No, he’s my father and my sister’s father.” m “But he must be very wise, and know all things.” “Possibly,” Michael told her. “When you come with me to the Retreat you’ll meet him. It’ll be time for the Awakening soon. I’ll miss it. But perhaps Annie will wait.”
“Annie—she is your sister.”
“Right. And my father’s name is John. My mother’s name is Sarah. And we have a good friend named Paul and another good friejid named Natalia. There were six of us. Now there’ll be seven.”
She touched at her abdomen as they stopped before the entrance to the cave.
“Perhaps more than that,” and she smiled.
Michael Rourke leaned down and kissed her lips quickly. Then he turned away and stared at the entrance to the Place. It was a cave, of natural rock, but had undergone much human engineering. It still bore scorch marks on the rock from the fires that had consumed all life—almost all, he cor-rected himself—five centuries ago.
He walked around behind her, then took her right hand in his left, the M-16 slung crossbody at his right side. He had packed the crossdraw holster for the Predator in his pack, the Predator concealed under his shirt behind his left hipbone. The A.G. Russell Sting IA was clipped inside his sock on the inside of his left calf.
By nature, he reflected, he was not a trusting soul. They entered the cave, the cave entrance broad and high, the walls narrowing as the cave penetrated the rock of the mountain itself. “I am frightened,” Madison whispered, but her voice was picked up by the walls, echoed, amplified, reverberating around them like a thousand loud whispers. He did not answer, still moving. He saw no entrance yet, no entrance into the mountain.
He stopped, leaning down to her, his lips touching at her right ear as he whispered, “Where’s the entrance?”
“I do not know—one is taken for sacrifice to Them blindfolded and the blindfold is removed when one is outside.”
“What do you do when you normally go outside?”
“We never venture out—because of Them.”
Michael Rourke rose to his full height. He was as tall as his father and had been since he was just shy of seventeen. He looked behind them— nothing. Ahead, there was nothing. His palms sweated and he loosed her hand for a moment to wipe his left palm against his blue-jeaned thigh. He took her hand again and started ahead, holding the pistol grip of the M-16 now in his bunched right fist, his thumb poised near the selector. If these people had guns but never used them, he rationalized, a modest display of firepower might avert any danger. They kept moving.
Nothing ahead. He looked back. Nothing behind.
PL
They kept moving, his fist tightening on theM-16, twenty-nine rounds in the magazine, one round already chambered.
“I am frightened,” she whispered again, and again the echoing, the thousand whispers, only more distorted now. The construction of the cave—how much was man-made he was uncertain
—formed a natural whispering gallery, a natural security system for the slightest sound. Gradually, he had been becoming more aware v of their reverberating footfalls. If he did fire a burst from the M-16, aside from the potential for ricochet, there would be a deafening noise. He kept moving.
His mind raced, calculating the possibilities for a hidden entrance. There were shackles built into the side wall—to secure the sacrifices. He had read the books his father had read before constructing the main entrance to the Retreat. Was the doorway to this place opened by a system of weights and counterbalances? It would have to be, he reasoned, for otherwise, how could the structure be secured against unwanted entrance when the owners or users were all away. It was obvious to him, that what he was about to enter—however he was about to enter it—was a survival retreat, constructed before the Night of The War, But how had the people survived?
Then a thought chilled him. The constant level of population. It had to be as he had surmised—
genocide, institutionalized genocide with victims who were willing to go. nft There were no large rocks visible, like there were outside the Retreat. Where was?… He heard the sound, wheeled toward it, shielding Madison behind him, swing-ing the M-16 forward taut against its black web sling, a panel opening out of the living rock, a human face, and then another and another, men, three of them, immaculately tailored three-piece business suits, but in bizarre contrast to this each of the men wore bedroom slippers. In their hands were swagger-stick-shaped objects, perhaps eighteen inches in length. The cattle prods, Michael surmised.
“All right—hold it. I’m coming as a friend. I don’t mean you any harm. You know what this is,” and he gestured with the assault rifle. “But the girl isn’t to be touched. You expelled her and she’s with me now.” He felt her hands against his shoulder blades.
One of the three men—a man on each side of him—smiled. “You are not from the Place. You are not from Them. Others live then.” “Others live.” Michael nodded, lowering the muzzle of the M-16 slightly. “My family, two of our friends. And there was an aircraft. I didn’t find the wreckage, but I found the pilot’s parachute. And the pilot was slaughtered by the ones you call Them. I didn’t have any chance to search through his things and find out where he came from. But there must be others alive as well, and somewhere technology has survived. The world can rebuild and grow and there’ll be no need for all of you to live here underground and—“
“Michael!” It began as a word and ended as a scream, Michael wheeling, the pressure of Madi-son’s hands against his back suddenly gone. Madison was being dragged toward the opposite wall by more of the men in immaculately tailored three-piece business suits and bedroom slippers, cattle prods held to her flesh as she screamed incomprehensibly.
Michael moved the M-16 forward, opening his mouth to shout, to order them—then trie pain. At first he could locate the origins. The small of his back, the center of the back of his neck—the word he remembered abstractly was “nape”—and where his right arm joined his shoulder.
The M-16 fell from his hand, on its sling, his body twitching uncontrollably, th
e pain flooding him now, Madison screaming, “Michael!” the pain, Michael Rourke falling to his knees, feeling something he had never felt before, everything in his field of vision fuzzy suddenly and green and a cold sweat on his skin, the feeling of nausea in his stomach. He sagged forward, rolling on the rock floor of the cave, trying to make his right hand respond and find the pistol grip of the M-16. Through the green wave washing over him he saw Madison being dragged through the opening in the rock wall on the opposite side of the cave.
She screamed again, and he heard it as his eyes closed and his head struck against the rock and the darkness flooded his consciousness. “Michael!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the intervening day, she had seen her mother four times. Four times her mother left the room her father had built for he and his wife to share, entered the bathroom and then returned to the room.
She sal at her sewing machine, her left foot on the pedal that gave the machine its electrical power, her left hand feeding the material beneath the needle, her right hand giving added tension to the thread, working the hand wheel on the side of the machine as she hemmed the blue floral print skirt she had been making for the last several months. She did most of her sewing by hand—it consumed more time and the supply of fabric was not inexhaustible, but she wanted this finished now so she could wear it when Paul returned. Annie looked up from the machine, her mother standing in front of her. Sarah Rourke wore a man’s shirt—Michael’s or their father’s. It was blue chambray and there were at least three dozen of them. Her mother’s hands were inside the pockets of a pair of blue jeans. On her feet she wore no shoes or socks. “Let’s talk, Ann.”
Ann—no one called her that. “I can make us some tea—you’ll like it.”
“You make the tea, I’ll make some lunch. I’m hungry.”
“I can—“
“I know you can—but I’ll make it.”
Annie flicked off the light on the sewing machine and stood up… “He likes you—I don’t mean Paul. I mean, that’s obvious, but I mean your father.” Sarah Rourke was stirring sliced potatoes in a frying pan. She had taken meat from the freezers. “Why’d you look at me so oddly when I took out the meat?”
