by Ahern, Jerry
He had found her, but there had been no end to the nightmare that had begun following The Night of The War. John had explained it and she still did not really understand it —but during The Night of The War, particulate matter had begun accumulating in the atmosphere, the particles electrically charged, and when heated, agitated. The charge had been building—the cause of the wild electrical storms and bizarre weather patterns that had begun after The Night of The War. Then one morning, the electrical charge had built to such a level that the sky became consumed with fire at dawn, the last dawn, and the flames followed the rising of the sun and scorched the entire planet, destroying all life.
But Sarah had survived —because John had planned ahead. With John, Natalia, Paul, her young son Michael, and her young daughter Annie, using stolen
cryogenic chambers taken from the KGB, using cryogenic serum developed by NASA scientists for deep-space travel and without which the cryogenic chambers would have been perpetual living death, without which it would have been impossible to awaken. But when she awakened, John had already awakened, had awakened the children, spent five years with them teaching them all he could, then had returned to The Sleep while Michael and Annie grew, abandoned the childhood she had so cherished. She had awakened, in her mid-thirties, her children Michael and Annie respectively aged almost thirty and almost twenty-eight, her son off on some reckless adventure just like his father, her son returning with Madison, the survivor of another colony that had weathered the burning of the sky, but the twenty-fifth generation of these survivors. Pretty Madison—blonde, soft-spoken, gentle, feminine —and pregnant with Michael’s child.
In her mid-thirties, Sarah Rourke would soon be a grandmother, her children her contemporaries — and all because of John and his having planned ahead. Annie was somewhere — Sarah looked across the ice field, her work with the snowshoe bindings finished — out there, and when Annie were found —Sarah told herself when was the word, not if—Annie would marry Paul Rubenstein. She smiled thinking of Paul —the supremely unlikely hero. An associate editor of a magazine from New York City, his father a retired Air Force colonel, like Paul’s mother, dead five centuries ago. A Jew —she had never considered that she would have a Jewish son-in-law, but none of that really mattered. He was a good man, a gentle man, a fine man, heroic, loyal, quick. He had no heroic visage — his forehead was high, but from recession of hair, not high from nature’s sculpture as was John’s. His eyes were dark, but there was no hidden passion in them as
there always had been in John’s brown eyes. He had a normal voice —neither high nor low, not the heroic, attention-demanding deep whisper of John Rourke. There was innocence in his face, decency —and he loved Annie very much, Annie falling in love with him as she had grown up in The Retreat, watching Paul in the cryogenic sleep.
Sarah Rourke considered her life. And she was pregnant —she was certain that in making love to John, she had let him do it. Had she wanted it? She still didn’t know. A baby would recapture for her what John —she had at last grudgingly admitted in his wisdom —had taken from her. She could watch this baby grow up, be its mother, not its contemporary.
But she didn’t want a baby as a device for holding a husband. His honor —his unrelenting honor. That he loved Natalia, perhaps more than he loved her, was obvious, but that he would not touch Natalia, would not abandon his wife, was obvious too.
There had always been this godlike perfection in John Rourke, and Sarah Rourke had found that living with such a man —was it impossible?
He was almost invariably clean-shaven, almost invariably controlled his temper, invariably was right, his decisions based onJogic and the superimposed logic of genuine human decency. He was a knight-errant, a paladin, a demigod, a hero, comfortably wearing the perfect manhood other men strove for, pretended at. In his late thirties, he had the body of a twenty-five-year-old in perfect athletic trim, the few strands of gray in his thick, healthy-looking brown hair simply serving to heighten the innate dignity of his face. That he was a genius she had never doubted. Once, when it had been reported he was dead during that last mission in Latin America, she had begun to go through the copies of his personal papers, the originals of all important docu
ments something he had immediately stored at The Retreat.
She had found medical and psychological profiles; how he had obtained them was something she had never asked. She knew enough of medicine to interpret the medical profiles. Strength, endulrance, lung capacity, heart stress capacity —all above normal. The IO_— why it had been tested she did not know, but she imagined it had perhaps been in relation to his work in the CIA. She had blinked, not believing what she had seen, but then realizing more about her husband than she had ever known. Average for a young adult was one hundred plus chronological age. The one hundred forties were well into the genius level or on its. very indefinite boundary, the one hundred sixties phenomenal. John Thomas Rourke — intelligence quotient one hundred eighty-six.
Her demigod — she watched him as he worked beside his best friend, Paul Rubenstein, and bent the last of the tent spars into its final shape for the last snowshoe.
John Thomas Rourke —she loved him.
Chapter Ten
Bjorn Rolvaag and the massive, furry dog at his heels, Hrothgar, navigated the rising ground decidedly more easily, she thought, than she could ever do it. “Hey-wait!”
Rolvaag turned toward her and she thought she saw him smile, but it wasn’t easy to tell. He had covered his head and most of his face with something that looked like a ski mask, only looser, with individual holes for his eyes and a hole for his mouth, again the color of it green. She wondered if green were some sort of uniform here, or if perhaps he just liked the color because it did nice things with his red hair and beard and his blue eyes. He had apparently understood her intent, if not the words, and waited now, Hrothgar running in tight circles at his heels as Rolvaag leaned easily on his shoulder-height staff.
He had no rifle, no pistol that she had seen, but two edged weapons. Over the leather shift that came to his knees he wore a coat —green again —hooded and belted at the waist and coming to mid-calf length, but over the left breast a sewn-in sheath for a massive knife of some sort —she had not seen the blade shape, but
from the pattern of the sheath, it seemed roughly Bowie-shaped. Belted over his coat, his left hand resting on its hilt now, was a sword, something like she had seen in movies, read of in Arthurian legends. Again, she had not seen the blade, but only the hilt and the sheath —but unless the sheath were overly large, the blade seemed wide and perhaps a yard in length.
Annie Rourke kept slogging after him, her stride not wide enough to fill his footsteps, but rather making a third footprint in the snow that covered the slope between each of his two. Over her blankets, she wore one of the sleeping-bag-like quilts wrapped over her head and as much around her body as she could and still be capable of walking normally. Her legs were cold above her stockings under her skirt, and the fabric of her slip against her thighs felt like thin ice.
She wanted to ask him how much further, and where, and what “further” was —but all of this was beyond the scope of their communications.
When she had nearly reached him, he began along the slope again, his staff in his right hand helping him to walk, his left gloved hand resting on the hilt of his sword as though walking here were the most casual of things to do, his massive backpack with the frame empty at the top and the second sleeping bag rolled at the bottom, unswaying on his back as he moved.
Hrothgar — whatever sort of dog he was —raced ahead, stopping, then racing back.
She gathered they were climbing Hekla, to which Rolvaag had alluded earlier, and Heckla was apparently a substantial mountain. Below them, in a valley, were geysers, steam rising from them, the steam seemingly captured in an artificial cloud layer that obscured the mountain slope some few hundred feet overhead. But the walk was more lateral now, she
realized, noting
that the steam cloud layer was getting no closer to them, Rolvaag picking his steps, shifting slighdy up the slope and down, as though following some invisible path. She judged his height at about six-foot-six, his weight in excess of two hundred fifty pounds, but because of his size and, she imagined, because of the life he led, it seemed all muscle rather than excessive bulk.
The life he led —that he was alive at all was incomprehensible to her. And a dog?
She kept following him, the sleeping bag pulled so close around her face that sometimes it would slip over her eyes and she was unable to see. She would tug it away and continue, though the walk seemed never-ending. She wondered at times if it was — was he some sort of nomad without a base, a home? But the clothes —they were clean, the sleeping bag not possessed of any body-odor smell. The hair and the beard were immaculate, as though freshly washed and well-brushed or combed. His teeth, when he smiled, were perfect-seeming and white. His face, what was visible of the skin between the long hair and the magnificent mustache and beard, seemed not as skin would be for someone who constantly lived exposed to these temperature extremes. She had no way to judge accurately the ambient temperature but guessed that it was several dozen degrees below zero. Silently, she thanked God there was no wind to speak of. Her face where it was exposed already felt numb, her hands and feet numbing too. If the walk were of much greater duration, she would begin experiencing frostbite. Rolvaag, though, seemed literally unaffected by the cold.
The dog was sniffing —she remembered dogs only a little from childhood, but she knew what the dog had on his mind, watching with fascination because it was
something that she had thought had ceased to exist. The dog urinated against a rock, then ran on a few steps, circling, raising its tail, circling, squatting, feces steaming in the snow as Annie walked up even with the dog, passing it, Rolvaag slowing down, to wait for his animal, she assumed.
The dog sprinted past her again, beyond Rolvaag, disappearing when the ground dipped suddenly, great clouds of steam rising from beyond the temporary horizon.
Rolvaag’s pace quickened, Annie trying to do the same, her feet numb to the point of being difficult to raise them enough to walk. He ascended the rise, stopping, backlit as it were by the rising clouds of steam.
“Annie!” Rolvaag called. “Annie Rourke! Hekla!” And he gestured behind him, into the steam. She had thought they were climbing Hekla, and she now wanted to sink to her knees in the snow and ice and huddle against a rock outcropping, because if Hekla was still some distance away, whatever this mountain-she assumed it was that still —held for Rolvaag, she could not continue.
But Annie Rourke told herself that she had to, almost losing the sleeping bag that was around her as she used her hands to help her scale this newest summit, toward Rolvaag and the clouds of steam. He was extending his staff toward her and she reached for it, clasping it in her right hand, closing her fist around it, her fingertips without feeling now.
As she pulled herself up with the staff, Rolvaag reeling her in toward him with it, she noticed the staff for the first time in greater detail. It was made of some type of metal, its tip formed into a spike, and there were seams along the shaft, as though the shaft were
joined in pieces. She wondered if it was hollow, used to secret objects part of Bjorn Rolvaag’s gear?
She almost tripped, Rolvaag arresting her fall, catching her against him, laughing. She stared over the rise, toward the origin of the steam.
It was the first time in her life Annie Rourke had ever done it —she fainted.
Chapter Eleven
John Rourke shouldered his rifle —an M-16 —muzzle down over his left shoulder, the Lowe Alpine System’s Loco Pack on his back. He waved to the German helicopter — it was the better of the two machines and Natalia flew it, Sarah with her. Beside him, Paul Rubenstein said, “This should do some good — shouldn’t it?”
“Is that a question or a statement?” Rourke asked, pulling his hood up over the black SAS Headover.
“A statement.”
“Hmm,” Rourke nodded, not agreeing, adjusting his dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses as he spoke. “Well, Natalia seems to think that Annie would have headed this way. Since I don’t have a better idea, I’m inclined to agree. With this black clothing we’re wearing, and sticking to the compass course we prearranged, Natalia—or Kurinami, when he gets here — shouldn’t have any trouble finding us. Searching from ground level seems to be the only alternative.”
“You didn’t say anything about when Mann’s people get here,” Paul observed.
“No —honestly speaking, if we haven’t found her by then, considering the clothing she had, considering the terrain, the temperature — I don’t think it would do any good. So what are we wasting time for?” John Rourke
almost whispered. “But yeah —we’ll keep looking until we find her, however —we —ahh —shit —come on,” and Rourke started ahead.
The country they began to cross —long, angular valleys, high barren ridges, the white starker seeming against the grayness of the sky — would be navigable on foot unaided, but time was their enemy as much as it was Annie’s enemy, and the snowshoes they had fabricated would make the walking faster, and with the snowshoes the walking would be less fatiguing, hence they could cover greater distance.
Rourke’s eyes scanned the snow, Paul fanning to the left, his eyes on the snow and ice as well. It was futile, but the only chance, the only option, searching for some footprint, some sign the terrain had been disturbed. With the cessation of the wind, and if Annie was moving toward the mountains, fresh tracks might be possible —might. The chance of finding them was even slimmer.
Paul shouted. “John!”
Rourke turned toward the younger man, his friend, watching as Paul ran several yards west, Rourke starting after him, Paul’s run in the snowshoes reminiscent of the moonwalks of the American astronauts — how long ago? Rourke thought for an instant.
Paul dropped to one knee, then shouted, “Nothing — I-I thought-“
“Keep looking —we’ll find her,” Rourke called back, angling back toward his earlier course, his eyes scanning the snow. Natalia would be flying north, then cutting an arc into the mountains toward which he and Paul now walked. If Annie was ahead of them and no tracks were found, Sarah with the binoculars or Natalia with the naked eye would see her —he hoped, he prayed.
He glanced at the Rolex on his left wrist, his storm
sleeve rolled back. It was three o’clock and the light would soon be fading. If she had found no shelter, she would not survive the night. Rourke quickened his pace, glancing at Paul. Paul was doing the same …
The Rolex read four-eighteen. When Rourke looked up from it, he saw an impression, or perhaps only a darker splotch, in the snow a few yards to his right.
He didn’t call to Paul, removing his sunglasses, walking toward it slowly, his eyes focusing on it. He dropped to his right knee. “Paul!” It was the impression partially filled with snow, of a combat boot heel. “Paul!”
Rourke stood, eyeballing the direction the footprint would have come from, hearing, not hearing, the slooshing sound of the snowshoes in the snow, Rourke replacing his sunglasses, looking toward the high rocks some two hundred yards to the east.
“What-holy-“
“Uh-huh —you figure direction —I make it almost due north from here —follow out along a zigzag —don’t miss anything. I’m backtracking up into that ridge — see if I find evidence she spent the night there —or anything else.”
“Hey,” Paul whispered, his voice muffled sounding, his mouth, like Rourke’s, covered with the lower portion of an identical black SAS Headover. “You be careful.”
“I always am,” Rourke nodded, clapping Paul on the shoulder, then starting up toward the ridge, unslinging the M-16, not charging the chamber, but holding the weapon in his gloved right fist. The light —what there was —was gray now, grayer than before, darkness coming too quickly. He called bac
k. “Two shots —pause — then two—means come fast.”
“Right.” Paul answered, Rourke walking on, scan
ning the ground. Nothing.
He found a second impression —a deep impression, cylindrical in shape, extending perhaps two inches into the snow, to the ice below it and the harder packed snow, Rourke exploring the impression with his Gerber, resheathing it, quickening his pace.
Another footprint, all but obscured —but a different footprint, the heel narrower, but much larger, the impression deeper in the snow. “A man,” Rourke whispered.
He charged the M-16, working the bolt, letting it fly forward, but the selector still on safe.
He was climbing into higher rocks, a deeper darkness ahead of and above him than shadow would have created. He worked the safety tumbler to auto, his gloved right index finger alongside the trigger guard, his right fist tight on the pistol grip. “Annie!”
His own voice reverberated off the rocks, but there was no answering call.
“Annie!”
No answer. He was nearing the dark spot in the rocks —it appeared to be the mouth of a cave.
A ledge of rock —wide enough, but ice-coated, Rourke uncertain of the contour, lay ahead. Rourke worked the M-16’s safety back to the on position, edging along the rock ledge.
“Annie.” He didn’t shout now, but called the name in a normal tone. “It’s me —Daddy.”
Nothing. He stopped, halfway across the rock ledge, listening, looking back into the lower terrain he had just left. He could barely see Paul, but he could track Paul easily enough, the bootprints fresh.
He edged along the ledge, working the safety to off as he neared the cave mouth.
“If you’re in there, don’t be frightened—just me. Been worried about you.”
Rourke stepped through, into the cave mouth, stabbing the M-16 toward the deeper darkness, making himself a target. But nothing.
