The Awakening

The Survivalist #10

By Jerry Ahern

The Awakening

Chapter One

It was another dream, another in the endless succession of dreams, of nightmare fantasy and reality, of happiness and pleasure—another of the dreams. He had long since become aware of them, viewing them from the peculiar position of observer yet at once participant. He had even learned to control them. When a scene in the dream would be violent, when he was against insurmountable odds, he would stop the dream, go back several scenes and provide an additional weapon for himself, extra explosives, some added means of escape. He tried that when he came upon an electrified fence—like the one that had sur-rounded the Womb—and for some reason despite his precautions, the electrified fence was sending a charge through his body. The funny thing of it was that the charge was not killing him—but did one ever die in dreams, he wondered? In fact, the charge was almost pleasant. He felt the tingling sensation in his body—as if it were somehow animating him rather than destroying him. He considered this, in the surreal way in which dreamers can consider anything—why was it pleasant?

Enough of this dream.

He opened his eyes.

John Rourke opened his eyes.

He could breathe.

He closed his eyes—but he realized at one level of consciousness that it was not a dream now. He was at last awake.

John Rourke realized he was alive.

To sit up was impossible yet—he felt only the tickle of the electrical charge, the sensation of light touching his eyes, his eyes unused for five centuries. The sensation of the rising and falling of his chest.

There was no danger of falling asleep.

But with his eyes dosed, he felt his body awakening, never more aware of his body in so physical a way—it was like orgasm, only with the entire body as its focal point.

Alive…

Rourke sat up, the lid of the cryogenic chamber rising in rhythm with his body. He turned his head—he had been practicing that. The monitoring lights still glowed on the five other cryogenic chambers, still sealed. They too were alive—Sarah, Michael, Annie, Paul—and his eyes rested on Natalia. He closed his eyes. She was beautiful even in her sleep as the swirling clouds of the bluish gas drifted across her face. But he missed the surreal blue of her eyes. John Rourke looked to his right.

His Rolex Submariner—he picked it up and as he did the sweep second hand started to move again. He would have to ascertain the correct time, the correct date. Slowly—not moving well yet—he placed the watch on his wrist and closed the flip-lock clasp in place to secure it there. Beside the watch—the twin stainless Detonics .45s.

He remembered now.

There had been the fight with the last Soviet helicopter. He had killed Rozhdestvenskiy and Rozhdestvenskiy’s submachine gun—it was an Uzi, Rourke recalled for some strange reason—had fired into the chopper. The chopper had exploded and Rourke had dived for the escape tunnel. He remembered a wound to his left forearm, a rock chip. He had cleaned the wound, dressed it while he had gone about the rest of his business in preparing the Retreat. The world had been dying outside.

He had removed the bandage just before entering his chamber, just before injecting himself with the cryogenic serum.

The hypodermic needle—it lay on the floor beside the chamber now as he looked down. And he looked at his arm. The wound was healed and there was no scar. His pistols. Rourke had cleaned them, leaving them unloaded. He picked up one of the pistols— the lubrication was still in evidence. He was naked from the waist up, and bootless and sockless.

Slowly, he began to move his legs…

Rourke’s feet were over the side now, the pair of rubber thongs beside the chamber, the thongs that he had worn while cleaning the guns, securing the Retreat. He remembered that. He placed his feet in them and tried to stand—slowly.

He could stand, but he leaned against the cryogenic chamber for support. He started to walk, the twin Detonics’ Combat Masters in the hip pockets of his beltless Levi’s— his pants felt a little large on him at the waist. Weight loss, he supposed, the body burning energy however minutely for higher brain func-tions and the like.

There was a mirror in the bathroom—he started toward it, not having to urinate yet, but knowing that he should try to get his body working again. Water. He was suddenly cot ton-mouthed, thirsty. He continued toward the bathroom, up the three low steps, the steps hard going, hard to balance on, but he reached the bathroom.

Rourke activated the electrical pump for the water system, hearing it come on, turning on the cold water—air sputtered through the pipe, mak-ing loud noises, then a trickle of water from the tap, a murky yellow color, more air, a bubble of gas, then water, clean looking.

He let it run for a time, looking up to see himself in the mirror. His hair was a little longer than he remembered it. He could cut it himself. He had taught himself to do that. He had a beard that looked the equivalent of two weeks or so of growth—he’d grown beards before, sometimes involuntarily in the field. His eyes were clear. Wrinkles that had been at their corners were now gone.

The scar on the base of his left ear lobe where a bullet had nicked him—the scar was gone.

He had suspected the cryogenic process might serve to restore and rejuvenate the body, from the data he had seen. He felt, somehow, younger. Rourke sat down on the toilet, the lid down, to rest while the water ran… He had drunk watei after first testing it for purity—it was as pure as it had been. The underground stream had not failed him. He had cooked a meal of cream of wheat and lightly toasted whole wheat bread. He had one cup of black coffee—he had barely made it to the bathroom in time, but the results had been normal, healthy.

In the area beyond the confines of the living section of the Retreat he had constructed a ballistic test chamber. With boxes of ammunition selected at random and the twin Detonics pistols—he wore a shirt now and a belt, the belt notched in tight against his newer thinness—he went to this section of the Retreat. The primary generators hummed, working perfectly. He would detail-inspect them later.

But defense—it might be important.

Four boxes of Federal 185-grain JHP .45s. He selected one round from each box, having first more closely inspected his guns, removing excess lubrication. He fired the four rounds into the test chamber, the chronograph reading showing the proper muzzle velocity, the functioning of guns and ammunition combined as perfect as ever.

He loaded the magazines for both pistols, reinserting them, working the slides, lowering the hammers over the live rounds, He loaded the half-dozen magazines from the black leather Milt Sparks Six Pack, the Six Pack already on his belt. Rourke inserted the Detonics pistols into the double Alessi shoulder rig, settling the holsters on his body—the familiarity of the weight. He returned to the main portion of the Retreat— his little A. G. Russell Sting IA black chrome—he positioned this inside his trouser band behind his left hip bone. And the bone was easier to find with the loss of weight. Socks and boots. There would be time for a shower later. He found boot socks, pulled them on, then a pair of combat boots. He pulled these on, lacing them up.

His bomber jacket—before putting himself to sleep he had saddle soaped it. He pulled it on now, his gloves in the side pocket—they were still soft, supple. He pulled on the gloves.

Not a cigar—not yet.

His dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses—he placed these in the inside pocket of his coat.

He had no idea if it was day or night outside. He had been awake for nearly five hours.

He checked the charge for the battery units for one of the Geiger counters.

Adequate.

John Rourke started for the escape tunnel.

It had a double hermetic seal.

It was the only way to know…

His muscles were unused to working—and he was tired as he climbed the rungs of the tunnel from the interior door, a rechargeable flashlight in his jacket, the light swaying as he moved.

The barred hermetically sealed door. He opened this—cold. The air seemed somehow thinner to him. But he could breathe it. He had tested the Geiger counter against the luminous face of the Rolex. But it read nothing now. He checked it against the watch face again—the radiation detector worked. But there was no high level of background radiation. Rourke climbed through the tunnel, securing the hermetically sealed door behind him. He kept climbing upward, toward the final door. Did a viable world lay above it?

He worked away the bar. The rubber gasket still had its integrity but the rubber was a little dry—he made a mental note to lubricate it. He used the Geiger counter again with the door only open a small crack so he could close it quickly.

No alarming level of background radiation.

He opened the door, turning his face away, putting on the glasses. There was no way to test for ozone content. Skin cancer was a risk he would endure—but the signs of excessive incoming solar radiation would show up quickly. He moved through the last door into the blinding sunlight. Squinting against it, despite the dark-lensed glasses, he climbed out, exhausted from the climb, muscle weary, his breathing labored—the air was rarer than it had been but that was to be expected.

The digital readout on the cryogenic chamber had shown 481 years to have passed. v He stood up—around him was desert, at the base of the mountain and beyond. Binoculars—he took the Bushnells from their case at his side. Shivering again against the cold, he estimated the ambient temperature in the fifties and it was midday.

He focused the Bushnell eight-by-thirtys—in the far distance, there was green, patches of it, like sparse grass.

John Rourke dropped to his knees—half from exhaustion and half from a more compelling necessity.

He made the sign of the cross.

Chapter Two

Still using the escape tunnel and keeping the main entrance sealed, Rourke sortied into the world often throughout the next several days, testing the atmosphere against his own skin. After six days, he determined that although prolonged exposure to the sun would have its effects because of the thinness of the atmosphere, a sufficient amount of the ozone layer had survived and/or been restored so that with some care it would not be lethal to be out of doors. He determined this as best he could—only long-term time would truly tell, perhaps fatally.

But life in itself was a gamble.

Judging from the exact readout on the chamber in terms of years and decimal values thereof—and from readings on the position of the sun and some of the more regular constellations in the brilliant night sky (there was less distortion now because of the thinner atmosphere)—he calculated the date of his awakening as September twelfth, and the year as well.

He was also able to set his watch precisely, as well as the electric clocks throughout the Retreat.

Time was now a definitive commodity, measur-ing, rather than merely elapsed time, an orderly progression.

One by one, he had checked the systems within the Retreat—a minor repair here, an alteration there.

He experimented with the food. It had survived, the meal irradiated to kill bacteria before storage proving now exceedingly worthwhile. He was on solid foods, his appetite coming back to him, his bodily functions normal.

A complete physical—as complete as a physi-cian can give himself. His heart rate was better than it had been since his early twenties. So was his pulse. His hearing was better, too.

Smoking no longer a habit, he consumed three cigars a day or less. He calculated that, at that rate, he had enough for three years, perhaps a little longer. He had prepared. Tobacco could be grown.

He had begun a program of rigoroYis physical activity, large muscle group function tostrengthen the heart and to tone the body and develop lung power. At midday on the sixth day he used a soil test kit to determine the viability of the land near the Retreat, for the first time using the main entrance. The soil was richer than it had ever been, despite the sandy appearance. It was bleached by the stronger sun. He was tanning rapidly and by the fifth day had begun to wear one of his broad-brimmed Stetsons against the sun. Beneath the topsoil, the ground was still dark and rich. Some nutrients were in bizarre combina-tions—but it would grow food.

He had tested all of his weapons and ammuni-tion—all was in order.

Gradually, he was recharging the battery for the Harley Low Rider.

But he was alone.

Chapter Three

On the seventh day, September eighteenth, he did not rest. He was not God and so there was no special reason, for dramatic meaning or otherwise, to do so.

His plan was one he had considered carefully, one in which he had no choice but to place his confidence. For the survival of them all, it was necessity. / He stood—one of his cigars, the first of the day, was clamped tightly in the left side of his mouth between his teeth, unlit. Rourke stared at the cryogenic chambers.

His hair was cut. He could feel his muscle power returning more rapidly than he had anticipated. He was clean shaven and had a full stomach. Alive in all but the fullest sense of the word. He activated the controls of the cryogenic chambers, to awaken his son and his daughter.

He sat down on the sofa which had been pushed aside to make room for the cryogenic chambers when they had first been brought to the Retreat, watching the slow awakening process begin—the gas began to swirl in different patterns, to slowly dissipate.

He watched…

John Rourke was fascinated—the process took hours. He felt overly clinical, but he made notes as he watched, smiling too as expression returned to the face of his young daughter, to the face of his young son. Annie’s hair had grown—perhaps two inches. Michael’s hair had grown as well—he could give Michael a haircut. The longer length hair looked pleasing on Annie. Rourke watched them turn their heads, evi-dently passing through the state where dreams and returning consciousness co-mingled, as he had—it fascinated him how long this process seemed to endure. And he wondered what children’s dreams were. His dreams in childhood had long since faded in his memory.

Rourke watched. He noted things in the legal pad before him. He remembered things in his heart—he won-dered how it would be to watch his wife Sarah, Natalia, Paul. How would it be for them? To awaken.

Annie began to sit up. Michael—always the harder of the two children to awaken—still moved, but in a supine position, tossing, turning. The lid of Annie’s chamber began to rise, coordinated with the rising of her seven-year-old body. That she had been born 488 years ago did not escape him—the irony of it.

The cryogenic chamber’s lid was fully open.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Rourke whispered—for the first time since his awakening having someone with whom to speak.

“Da—“

Her mouth wasn’t working properly yet and he ift laughed, standing up, walking over to stand beside the chamber, reaching out his right hand to hold her hands. “We’re all alive. We made it. You’ve been sleeping for four hundred and eighty-one years.”

“How—how—“

“How long is that? It’s a very long time, longer than any other human being has ever slept and then awakened. The people on the Eden Project— they’ve been sleeping a little longer, but they’re still asleep. They should be for another twenty-one years. Do you understand me?”

Annie yawned, like only a little girl yawns, her body scrunching up, her mouth open, her arms outstretching.

And she smiled—he had remembered how beautiful her smile was, at least he had thought he had. But seeing it now was even more than he had remembered. He noticed too that the small chicken pox scar that had been on her eyelid, and the mark on her hand from the removal of a wart— both scars were gone now. She hugged her arms—awkwardly—around his neck. He lifted her from the chamber, kissing her cheek.

In the cryogenic chamber to the right, Rourke’s left, Michael was beginning to move with greater determination it seemed—and he was starting to rise, the lid of the chamber rising, the slightly sweet smell of the cryogenic gas again as it dissipated.

Michael sat fully erect. f

“Hi, son.”

Michael looked at him oddly. And then it looked like Michael was starting to laugh.

Chapter Four

Oddly, the children had seemed tirecl after only a few hours of wakefulness—but a rapid yet com-plete examination had revealed no unexpected physical conditions, no illness. They were simply children—something which Rourke had con-sciously reminded himself to remember—and been exhausted by the excitement. After eight hours of sleep, a surprisingly large breakfast and endless questions about the cryo-genic process, Rourke stood with them before the open outer door of the Retreat. It was their first sight of the New World. “It looks like a desert,” Annie observed. “But it’s kinda pretty, isn’t it, Daddy?”

“Yes—kind of pretty,” Rourke answered, smok-ing his first cigar of the day.

“Kind of.”

“Is everything dead out there?” Michael asked suddenly, his shoulders hunched in the too large blue denim jacket Rourke had loaned him. Rourke didn’t answer for a moment.

Annie repeated Michael’s question. “Is it all dead out there?” “I thought that it would be—and in a way it is. But I was awake for a week before I awakened you, Annie, or you, Michael. And I did a lot of thinking.” He started through the outer doorway —the rocks were still in place as they should be, the rocks which he used as the counterbalances for opening the door of the Retreat. He perched on a rock near them, Annie squirming up onto his lap, Michael leaningon his shoulderat his left. Rourke carried his Detonics pistols only. “There might have been other nations which foresaw what could happen and prepared, maybe other groups. There wefe a lot of Survivalists in the days before the Night of The War. If an elaborate enough Retreat could have been built, one that was self-sustaining —well, maybe we aren’t alone.” And he smiled, hugging Annie tighter on his lap, holding Michael close, too. “But we’re alone here—as far as the eye can see, even with binoculars.” He pointed toward the top of the mountain. “From way up there, I can see vegetation—plants, you know. But no signs of fish in the streams, animal life—or people. No campf ires, no smokestacks, no vehicles —like the land around us was wiped clean like a chalkboard and no one has written on it yet. And that’s what I want to talk to you both about.” The air temperature was chill, but Rourke felt a warmth in him he rarely felt as he held his children. “The Eden Project—“ “The spaceships,” Annie supplied.

“Space Shuttles,” Michael corrected, seemingly automatically. “Shuttles, ships—but the Eden Project. They should return in about twenty-one years if the data was correct. But what if the Eden Project never returned, and what if we were the only people on Earth?”

“I wouldn’t have anybody to play with,” Annie said softly. Rourke smiled, holding her. “More important that that—and I know playing is important—but more important than that even: survival, not just of ourselves, but the human race. The three of us here, and your mother, and Uncle Paul and Natalia—only six people. I thought a long time about this. Ourchancesofrcbmlding, of makinga new world—the only way is for all six of us to be adults at the same time, for all six of usto be as close in age as possible. And so I have a plan. You’d both have to be very brave and be very smart.”

“What is it that you want us to do, Daddy?”

He looked at his son’s lean face, the brown eyes, the full shock of dark brown hair—it was as il somehow he were studying his own reflection in a mirror, but the light bünging him the reflection had taken a quarter century to return from the mirror to his eyes. “For the next five years, I’m going to teach both of you everything, some things you probably shouldn’t know until you are much older.

We’re going to work very hard—“

“Will we have a chance to play, Daddy?” Annie smiled, “Yes—there’ll be time for that, too.”

“Why five years?” Michael asked him.

“Because, son, in live years you’ll be nearly fourteen biologically,” and he looked at Annie on his lap, her dark honey blond hair caught up in the breeze, her brown eyes sparkling. “And you, young lady—you’ll be nearly twelve. That’s awfully young for both of you—“ “Fourteen is pretty old,” Michael insisted.

Rourke let himself smile. “It’s going to have to be. Because in five years, if everything goes as I plan, I’m taking the cryogenic sleep again. For sixteen years. And when you are thirty, Michael— and Annie, you’ll be twenty-eight. Then all the chambers will open, your mother’s, Paul’s, Nata-lia’s—and mine again.” He looked at his son. “You’ll be about two years older than Natalia, Michael.”

He looked at Annie. “And you’ll be just a little younger than Paul Rubenstein. And Mommy and Daddy won’t be that much older than either of you. Then there’ll be six of us—and we can build the world again if we have to.” They didn’t understand, Rourke thought. His children didn’t understand.

But in Michael’s eyes, he saw something. Rourke knew that he would. “Our first lesson in survival and in growing up begins today. So run—don’t run far, but run and play-“ Annie kissed him on the lips and slipped off his lap, running after Michael. Rourke watched as they played tag down the mountain road from the entrance of the Retreat. “Play,” John Rourke whispered.

“While you can.” He inhaled on his cigar but it had gone dead. He lit it again in the blue-yellow flame of his Zippo.

Chapter Five

The most important task at the beginning had been teaching Annie to do more than just pretend to read. And she had learned quickly. And he had immediately begun each child in the ways of self-preservation. Michael had been taught the rudi-ments of marskmanship before the Night of The War. And from what Sarah had told him, Michael had learned these rudiments well. He found himself—John Rourke—sometimes watching Mi-chael in those first days.Nine yearsoldand the boy had already killed. But it seemed not to affect him. The subject matter to be taught and mastered had been overwhelming, Rourke had realized from the start. Electronics, plumbing, electrical work, motorcycle maintenance—all these to pre-serve the Retreat and what it housed. Cooking, from the use of the stove and the microwave oven to how to build a fire in the wild. Wood was scarce and the search for it had taken Rourke away from the children with the pickup truck to far beyond the base of the mountain. No life—but trees to cut down. Eventually, as the years passed, he had taught Michael to handle the full-sized McCuIloch Pro-Mac 610. Rourke’s palms had sweated, his stomach churning, letting an eleven-year-old boy handle a chain saw. Both children he had taught the rudiments of sewing—putting back buttons and mending ripped seams and holes in Levi’s. Annie had quickly gotten into the books Rourke had put up for Sarah and by the time she had reached age ten spent much of her leisure time doing needlepoint as she listened to recordings, watched videotapes, and questioned her father.

Marksmanship training for both of them pro-gressed, Annie utilizing the CAR-15 because of the shorter buttstock length, Michael managing one of the Ml 6s. Target practice in the early years was confined to the .223 because Rourke had such an abundance of ammo for this caliber as well as a large number of M-16s and replacement parts, all of this from the United States Air Force base on the New West Coast, part of the supplies he and Rubenstein and Natalia had brought back with them. Occasional handgun marksmanship was practiced, utilizing miscellaneous .38 Special ammunition fired through Rourke’s Metalifed Colt Python.

It was not until Michael reached age twelve that Rourke in earnest began teaching him the use of the .45.

The training gun was the blue Detonics .45 Rourke had taken from the Soviet agent who had worked with Randan Soames near the early site of of;

U .S. II headquarters. Michael had quickly taken to it. Annie’s marksmanship with Rourke’s CAR-15 reached such a level that after a time he began joking with her that Annie’s real last name should be Oakley rather than Rourke. The martial arts. Childrens’ bodies are supple, strong, flexible—they learned quickly and well, Rourke teaching them the basics of Tae Kwon Doe and letting them progress into other variations. It was not until Michael was thirteen and Annie eleven that Rourke began teaching the children what to do in order to kill with their hands.

He paralleled their instruction, which at times meant holding Michael back, at times pushing Annie forward. But teaching both children simul-taneously was the only way for him.

The children studied history. Having lived through its most important epoch, its most pivotal period, they seemed naturally drawn to the discipline. Questions—why had U.S. and Soviet relations fallen to the point where the Night of The War had been the only alternative?

It was then that Rourke showed them some-thing he had begun shortly after the Awakening-it was then that the children had realized why at night he had sat alone in a far corner of the Great Room, music low on the air, a typewritergoing.lt was a memoir of events leading to the Night of The War, and events afterward. It was not finished and Rourke had confided to his son and daughter that he felt it never would be—there was always more to add. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ovid in the original Latin—it was good mental discipline, he had told them.

The sculpture of Michelangelo, the music of Beethoven and Liszt, the philosophy of Aquinas, Sartre, Rand. He realized early on that he was merely introducing the children to things they would have to learn without him. The fertile soil outside the Retreat yielded corn, potatoes, asparagus, tomatoes, peas. The winters were hard and long and cold and the growing seasons short, but in these times, as in all other times they shared, they shared the work together. John Rourke discovered that he not only had children, he had friends.

They would talk long into the evening— literature, philosophy, music, science, the arts.

Medicine. By the time the last year had begun, both Michael and Annie had learned first aid to the point where either would have been qualified to assume the duties of a paramedic. He had placed medical and dental knowledge above all else but self-defense, for without their health, in this hospitable yet forbidding world, they would perish.

Michael, at nearly fourteen, had begun to seriously assault Rourke’s limited—but not too limited—-supply of .44 Remington Magnum am-munition. The boy had become enamored of one particular pair of guns. John Rourke had never favored single action revolvers. Michael Rourke favored them.

At the range area beyond the entrance to the Retreat, Rourke stood, watching his son.

Michael, only two inches shorter than Rourke now, held the

eight-and-three-eighths-inch-barreled Stalker in’both hands at full arms length, the webbed sling for the massive Magnum Sales-converted Ruger Super Blackhawk swaying slightly in the breeze as it hung from its barrel and base-of-the-butt-mounted swivels. John Rourke watched as Michael Rourke studied the target—a pine cone one hundred yards distant—through the 2X

Leupold scope. Even with the sound-dampening earmuffs John Rourke wore, the sound of the Stalker as it discharged was intense. In the distance, the dot that had been the pine cone seemed to vaporize as Rourke studied it through the Bushnell armored eight-by-thirtys. “You hit it.”

“I know.”

“Let’s see what you can do with the short one.”

“All right.”

Michael set down the Stalker, taking the shorter barreled gun from the wooden table they had built together of rough hewn pine logs brought up from the valley below. Michael picked up the Predator. It was largely the same gun, a stainless Ruger Super Blackhawk reworked by Magnum Sales, but this without a scope, the barrel only four and five-eighths inches long.

Michael held the revolver in both hands. John Rourke called to him, “When I sleep again—

practice firing that smaller one you’ve got now, « practice firing it faster at closer ranges. Teach yourself to reload it on the run as you fire.”

“I understand what you mean, but not how to do it,” Michael called back, his voice deeper than it had been as a child. But not as deep as it would be, Rourke thought.

“You take your shot down range—like you planned—then I’ll empty it and show you what I mean,” and Rourke brought the shooter’s ear-muffs up again, watching as Michael did the same.

Rourke watched through the binoculars again —another pine cone, this fifty yards away. It was a good-sized pine cone, John Rourke reminded himself as Michael’s Predator discharged, the pine cone disintegrating. Rourke looked at his son—proud, no prouder than when the boy had first attacked geometry and taken quickly to it, but just as proud. Rourke walked toward his son, leaving the earmuffs up.

Michael handed him the Predator.

“Four shots?”

“Never load more than five in a single action, even if it is a Ruger,” Michael nodded.

Rourke smiled. Twenty-five feet away, more or less, was a pine tree that had been struck by lightning—natural lightning. It had happened only six months earlier.

Rourke picked up five rounds of the Federal 240-grain .44 Mags, his right thumb working open the Ruger’s loading gate, closing it, opening it, closing. “With an original Colt, I knew a man who kept the loading gate open, reloading just as fast as he fired. You can’t do that with one of these. So you improvise.” “Show me,” Michael said, his even white teeth showing as his wide mouth opened in a smile.

“I was planning to,” Rourke laughed. “That struck tree—that’s a man shooting at you. This table is cover. You’ve gotta nail him as you run toward the table, reloading as fast as you can. Then because there’s somebody coming right up your back, you’ve gotta pass that guy and finish him. So you run from behind cover and empty the next five into him—if it takes that many. This time it will.” “All right.”

“Get back over there.” Rourke gestured toa rock some distance beyond the table and out of range of any possible missed shot. “And keep your muffs up—shooting’s hard enough on your ears in combat, no sense damaging your ears during practice.”

“All right.”

Rourke took the Predator and the five spare rounds of ammo and strode back perhaps twenty-five feet beyond the table at an angle. He shouted to Michael, “Gimme a yell when you want me to start—and keep in mind I’m not very good with a single action and I don’t shoot .44

very often.” “Excuses, excuses—now!”

Michael had caught him flat-footed—but Rourke broke into a run, the Predator in his right fist, the loose ammo in his left, his right thumb jerking back the hammer, the right index finger

‘triggering the shot, the Magnum Sales Custom Ruger bucking in his right hand at the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger, bucking again and again and again as he crossed the distance to the table, the lightning-struck pine shuddering with the impacts, starting to crack near the base, Rourke skidding down behind the table, the loading gate already flicked open. His left thumb worked the full length ejector rod, the loose rounds in the left palm, his left hand’s last two fingers holding the Ruger, as the rod reached maximum extension and the empty punched out, his right plucking a loaded round from the palm of his left, inserting it, then repeating the process, the Ruger loaded, the loading gate closed, Rourke up, running, emptying four of the five rounds into the tree trunk target—the tree split, falling. Rourke stopped running.

Michael was shouting, “That’s pretty good, Dad-“

Rourke wheeled, firing the fifth and last round into the remaining stump of the tree, the distance fifteen feet, the stump cracking, a chunk of pine wood perhaps two inches in diameter sailing skyward. Rourke pulled off his shooter’s earmuffs; Mi-chael, approaching, did the same. Rourke, his voice almost a whisper, said, “I like a .45 better, or a double action. But if you’re wedded to these, maybe that’s more important. They’re good guns.”

Annie—nearly twelve, shouted from the en-trance to the Retreat. “I cracked open the last jar of peanut butter—anybody want a -cornbread and peanut butter sandwich?”

Rourke looked at Michael—Michael looked at him.

Annie was turning into a good cook for a girl of her years. “Come on—peanut butter sandwiches with fresh strawberries and tomatoes and a green pea and asparagus salad. Come on!”

A fine cook, if somewhat bizarre.

Chapter Six

Rourke sipped at a glass of the corn whiskey. The first batch had been too strong, but this was palatable enough. He still had a more than ample supply of civilized Seagram’s Seven but almost three years ago had started the still. Michael was planning to produce beer eventually. Rourke had never worshipped beer that terribly much, but if he were nearly fourteen, he supposed that he might— in anticipation.

They sat in the kitchen, Annie talking. “I wish we could find some surviving dairy animals—

anything. Even a goat. I’ve got some great recipes for cheese, for yogurt, and you’ve got the starters I need. Remember that yogurt I tried with the dehydrated milk?” “It was good, sweetheart,” Rourke told his daughter. She reminded him of her mother, except for the hair color. She had not cut her hair either, not since the Awakening. He mentally corrected himself—occasionally she trimmed “split ends,” as she called them. He imagined she had picked up the term from a book or from a videotape. But her hair, when it was unbound as it was now, reached past her waist, still the same dark honey blond color it had always been. She was becoming a woman—but he would miss the little girl she so rarely was nowadays. He had told her what to expect—when she actually became a woman. For there would be no woman there, no adult.

He had explained to both children what they would feel in their bodies, and explained to both of them the obvious limitations their environment would impose.

But he had planned for that as well…

They sat in the great room, Rourke on the couch, Michael on the reclining chair, but the chair not reclined, the back up straight. Annie sat cross-legged, Indian fashion, on the floor. Behind them—Rourke suddenly noticing it—was the soft hum of the cryogenic chambers. “We six are the future—it’s important that all six of us survive to make that future. I haven’t really taught you anything, either of you, except the means to improve your skills, to acquire real knowledge. Sixteen years will pass after tonight before I see either of you again, yet daily each of you will see me, see your mother—she is unchanging. SeePau] and Natalia. I’m not leaving you—either of you— an easy task. Not at all. If something comes up for which I wasn’t able to prepare you, you’ll have to solve it. If it cannot be solved, then awaken me from the sleep and hope that I can solve it. If either of you is so seriously injured that the medical techniques I’ve taught you and the reference material available cannot alleviate the situation, then awaken me from the sleep. If there is a problem with the/ Retreat systems which you cannot solve, th£n awaken me. At even the slightest intimafion that the cryogenic systems are failing or thepower is failing, awaken the four of us instantly. Instantly.”

He looked at Annie. “I want you to pursue your interest in things creative—creativity is vital to survival, mentally as well as physically. Don’t redecorate the Retreat—I kind of !ike it the way it is. But exercise your mind, practice the fighting techniques I’ve taught you—but don’t break your brother in half.”

“Dad,” Michael laughed.

Annie only smiled.

“Move up from those .38s out of my Python— start into .357 Magnums. Don’t get hooked on single action revolvers like your brother.” “I like that Detonics Scoremaster you let me try once—it’s pretty and it’s accurate.”

“Fine—but wait a few years before you get into

it, and the gun is yours.”

“All right.” She smiled, the corners of her mouth dimpling. He looked at Michael. “I’m not sounding chauvinistic—at least I hope not. But you’re two years older, and you’re a man. Fourteen is a rough age to start being a man, but you started when you were younger than that and saved your mother’s life with those Brigands, helped your mother and Annie out of that swollen lake when the dam burst. You’ve got an ego I haven’t seen the like of since my own. That can be a positive feature if you can control it. A negative feature if you can’t. But you’ll be in charge. I think Annie accepts that,” and Rourke looked at his daughter. She smiled, laughing a little, but nodded. He looked back to Michael. “If I didn’t think you could handle it, I wouldn’t say you were in charge. You’re the one responsible for yourself, your sister and, while we sleep, for the four of us. And when you work with that smokeless powder you’re experimenting with, don’t blow yourself up.” He looked at his son and laughed. Michael stood up, stabbing his hands into the side pockets of his Levi’s, the cuffs turned up because they were Levi’s Rourke had put in the Retreat to wear for himself and Michael was not yet his height. “I won’t let Annie down—I won’t let you, or Mom, or Paul or Natalia down. I don’t know how smooth it’s gonna go for the next sixteen years, but it’ll be all right.” John Rourke stood, Michael Rourke walking toward him. John Rourke outstretched his right hand to his son. His son took it. Annie stood up, embracing them both. In a few hours, John Rourke would sleep again.

Chapter Seven

The scoped Stalker slung diagonally across his back, Michael Rourke started down from the rocks, into the valley, the Retreat—his father had told him once that^Jatalia Tiemerovna referred to it as “Rourke’s Mountain”—in the distance. He had begun ranging the mountains surrounding the Retreat when he was twenty and in nearly ten years, he had seen no sign of animal life, but the vegetation—where it grew at all—was thicker and lusher with each spring. He quickened his pace— Annie, who had turned into a superb cook, was fixing meat. It was a special-occasion delicacy usually—for his birthday or her own, but this was not January, the month of both their birthdays. Annie, that morning, had simply said, “I’m tired of being a vegetarian—I’m taking some meat out of one of the freezers. Make sure you’re not late for dinner.” Michael Rourke hadn’t argued.

A rabbit or a squirrel—had he seen one, he would not have shot it, but attempted to follow it.

^ He would have brought such an animal food from their gardens. But no such animal existed.

No birds flew in the sky. No insect buzzed.

Some type of beetle to attack the vegetables in the gardens would have been welcome, but there were none.

Perhaps in other parts of the world, or at lower a altitudes—perhaps. He had taken one of the three Harley Davidson Low Riders once, taken it far from the Retreat. That had been five years ago. He had ranged for more than a hundred miles in the four cardinal directions. He had found the rusted, gutted remains of an automobile. He had found the ruins of what had once been a city—skeletons of buildings now. Not even a human bone survived. But the strategic fuel supplies were intact—it had been the announced reason for the trip. He had checked two of the reserves and they still held their precious gasoline.

Annie would range from the Retreat as well at times. He didn’t worry that terribly much for his sister. She had begun mastery of the Detonics Scoremaster .45 she had liked so much, begun its mastery when she was fifteen. At twenty-eight— almost—she was a superlative shot. At one hundred yards, without a scope, using just the Bo-Mar iron sight, she could consistently hit objects Michael could barely see with the naked eye.

They had begun reading through the Bntannica when in their late teens. He had reached the end of volume seventeen of the Macropaedia and found it amusing to read the information concerning tax laws. Taxes were no more. Michael remembered an expression his father had used once—something regarding the in-evitability of death and taxes. Taxes were no longer inevitable. He wondered if death were.

The thought was vaguely disquieting to him that he had known more people who were now dead than still alive. As best he had been able to ascertain in nearly sixteen years of monitoring the airwaves on the Retreat radio, Qf studying the stars and the daytime sky as well, of searching the ground for the slightest sign, no one else lived on the earth.

He had been tempted once to take one of the Harleys and drive/toward Colorado where the Soviet Womb had Keen. But if anyone had survived there, they would likely be his enemies now as they had been his father’s enemies almost five centuries earlier.

At night, when he monitored the radio or studied the stars through the telescope, he would sometimes sit with a glass of the corn-based whiskey—it was quite good now and, at least to him, the taste was as pleasing as the occasional glass of Seagram’s Seven; other times he would stare at the cryogenic chambers. Annie would always fall asleep earlier than he, perhaps while they watched a film together on the video recorder. But there were the alone times—and as he watched the cryogenic chambers, he would consider what it would be like when there were no longer just two people walking the earth, but six instead. As he walked along the mountain road leading to the Retreat now, he wondered again. What was the woman Natalia like?

He remembered from his early childhood seeing his mother and father kiss. From films, he had seen others. One film in particular—the man and the woman lay in bed beside one another. He was not sexually ignorant of the technical aspect of it—he had read, his father in his wisdom having provided things for them both. And before his father had slept, his father had told them both things, answered questions.

But he watched the woman Natalia sometimes, wondering. And he wondered at his father’s remarks about the imperative of all six of them surviving.

Michael Rourke sometimes thought that he thought like his father—and if he did, he realized, then he knew what his father planned and it alternately warmed and frightened him… “I got the recipe from that cookbook Mom wrote once. What do you think?” Michael Rourke put down the glass of Sea-gram’s—it was, after all, a special occasion. “I liked it, Annie. What did you call it again?” “Beef Stroganov. But I didn’t have any wine, so I used some of your homemade beer.”

“Terrific. The man who marries you—“ and Michael Rourke shut up. He watched his sister’s brown eyes, brown like his. She moved her hair—she kept it at waist length—back from her face. “What do you think Dad has planned?” she asked, her voice soft—like Michael remembered his mother’s voice being soft. “You want my honest opinion?”

“Yeah, I want your honest opinion. I’m gonna get dessert. Strawberry shortcake—come on and refill your glass.” She stood up, walking back toward the stove and the counter beside it. Michael climbed down from the stool, taking her empty glass as well as his. He passed her, standing at the nearer counter, untwisting the cap on the bottle. “What do you think? You want some more 500-year-old whiskey?”

“Talk about aging! Am I gonna need some more whiskey?” / “Might not be a bad idea.”

“All right.” She paused. “I’ll have some more whiskey. You want a lot of strawberries?”

“Yeah.”

He poured the second glass, closed the bottle and turned to watch her as she fixed the strawberry shortcake, ladling freshly cut strawberries which they had grown themselves onto the chunks of cornbread. She was dressed as she usually dressed. Rarely did she wear pants, although she was so talented that she could easily have made more than the few pairs she had fabricated. His father—their father—had provided before the Night of The War bolts of material and thread and a sewing machine and all the necessary accessories. Annie had taken Aft to using the machine like a pianist would take to a concert-tuned piano. He had read about concerts, pianists and the like, watched the videotape of a concert several times. And he listened to music incessantly, as did Annie. But she wore one of her typical in idea If-length full skirts, navy blue in color. And a blouse which seemed to hold up on her shoulders by friction—he had read a novel where such a garment had been described as a “peasant blouse.” This was her usual attire. He watched her as she carried the dessert back to the main counter.

He followed her, crossing to the far side of the counter and straddling the stool. He scratched his bare left thigh where it itched beneath the ragged edge of the cut-off Levi’s. There were still more pairs of these in the storeroom than he could wear through in a lifetime, but these old ones were comfortable for sitting around the Retreat at night.

“So—what do you think he has planned for us?”

“Salud,” he murmured, raising his glass. He had studied Spanish from books and audio tapes and—again his father had provided—watched the one Spanish language movie in the tape library innumerable times.

“Salud, already.” And Annie clinked glasses with him. “So, what do you think?” He wished that he smoked, so he could have lit a cigar or cigarette and delayed saying what he felt. “All right.”

But he didn’t smoke. “He always talked about the six of us being vital for survival.”

“AH right—so?”

“So—you’ve probably seen me—I’ve seen you do it—“ “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about being human.”

“Michael!”

“I think he planned this all along, from the first time that he learned what was going to happen to end the world. That’s why he awakened us, spent only five years with us and then slept1. He planned it.”

“What do you—“

“When you look at Paul Rubenstein, in his chamber—what do you think of?”

“That he’s—“ I

“That’s he’s a man? The only man who isn’t your blood relative?” Michael Rourke watched his sister. She looked down at her dessert, playing with it with her spoon, not eating it. “I think about that,” she whispered. And she looked up then. “And what about Natalia?”

“I think that she’s a woman,” he answered, his voice almost a whisper. Michael Rourke looked behind him, at the four cryogenic chambers which dominated the great room—the two others had been put away into the storage area. He looked at the face of the woman Natalia—he remembered something suddenly. Her blue eyes.

Michael turned away—Annie continued to stare at the cryogenic chambers. And he knew what she stared at. “Did he—did he—“ Michael Rourke didn’t answer her, his sister.

Chapter Eight

It lasted only a minuscule amount of time, but as soon as it began, Michael Rourke hit the buttons for play and record—the radio made sound. Words.

As he listened, he tried to understand them—the words—but the language was alien to him.

He checked the Rolex Submariner his father had given him before taking the sleep. The transmis-sion lasted approximately two and one-half minutes. Annie was already in bed.

The radio had yielded words only twice in all the time he had monitored it. Once nearly five years earlier. Once now.

He had put the words off as an errant transmis-sion bounced back from some object in space. The transmission had been vastly weaker five years ago. It was strong this night.

‘ ‘The Eden Project?” he asked himself. Had they come back, entered Earth’s orbit? Was it a message? Was it that he could not understand the language? Or that the transmission was so garbled as to be unintelligible, the fault of atmospheric disturbance, or the fault of his equipment? He had stripped the radio with Annie’s help several times, searching—in vain—for some fault in the receiver itself.

There had been none that he could discern.

It was impulse, but he had learned to obey that sometimes. He snatched up the Predator as he ran across the great room, toward the storage area. His father’s Bushnell eight-by-thirtys—he passed them by. The forty power zoom lens spotting scope he used as a telescope. He grabbed this, stuffing it box and all inside his shirt. Pulling aside what blocked the emergency exit hatch, he worked the combination, opening it, and started up through the tunnel along the rungs his father had put in place five centuries earlier. He kept moving, through the next hatch, not bothering to put the bar in place, merely closing the hermetically sealed door. He kept moving, upward, the exertion making him sweat, the flashlight in his left hand bouncing its beam across the natural rock chimney in the darkness, a white light. The upper door—he wrenched the bar free, swinging the door open, the cold wash of night air chilling him as he crawled out onto the top of the mountain. He let the hatch swing closed behind him.

I Stars—millions, the night cold and crystal clear ■ and the moon little more than a crescent of light. I The box for the spotting scope—he opened it, f not bothering with the supporting bipod.

The forty power scope—he zoomed the lens to half of full magnification, searching the horizon.

A streak of light.

Holding his position, he increased the magnifi-cation—the streak of light gained definition, clarity, color. Orange, tinged with yellow and red. It zigzagged. A meteor, he told himself, would not do that. It vanished toward Earth and in his mind he marked the approximate position. North-west, beyond the mountains, past which he had never ventured, long past these. Michael Rourke’s hands trembled—had they ceased to be alone? He watched the night sky, shivering with the cold. There was no more light, no further clue.

His voice unsteady—he told himself because of the cold, thin night air—Michael Rourke whis-pered, “I’ll find you.”

Chapter Nine

“If it was the Eden Project, it was a crash maybe. And if it wasn’t the Eden Project, then it almost had to be some other type of aircraft. That means people—that other people are alive.” »

Annie licked her lips—she felt strange hearing Michael’s words. She was used to them being alone except for the four sleeping figures in the blue gas swirling cryogenic chambers. She stood up, slipping off the counter stool, stuffing her bare feet into her slippers, her robe and the nightgown beneath it falling past her ankles, the hems brushing the gap of flesh above the banded tops of the slippers. “What do you want to do about it, Michael?” she asked, her voice low, turning to the stove to pour the boiling hot water into the teapot. She grew her own herbs in the garden and made from them an herbal tea which she had become quite fond of. She could smell it as the water penetrated the holes in the small metal tea strainer, and she placed the lid of the china pot in position, twisting it slightly to lock. She would let the tea steep.

“That’s ^yhat I wanted to talk to you about,” she heard Michbel saying. She turned around to face him, holding the teapot with a potholder, setting it on the counter beside their waiting cups— Michael tolerated the tea because coffee was a scarce commodity.

Annie gathered her robe around her and eased back onto the stool. “You want to go and see, don’t you?”

“Yes—I have to.” He reminded her of the memories she had of her father—he looked

virtually identical to John Rourke and he sounded identical to him. Her father

had made instruc-

AfL

tional videotapes for them regarding minor sur-gical procedures, gunsmithing techniques, etc. She played them often so she could remember him. She had no specific memory of her mother, though looking at her in the cryogenic chamber where she slept Annie saw their common physical features. But her mother’s hair was darker, auburn colored. Her own hair was, as her father had always called it, a dark honey blond. Specific memories she didn’t have, but general memories—love, warmth, friendship. To have another woman in whom she could confide—it was a dream and soon, when it would be the appointed time for the Awakening, it would be reality. She had read books, seen videotaped movies, where mother and daughter disagreed, where enmity had replaced love, dis-trust replaced respect. It was something she could not comprehend. And yet her mother would be like her sister. Only four years older physically than she when the Awakening would come.

She poured some of her tea, Michael’s cup first. “Where will you go?” “I marked the point on the mountains and when I came back up top I shot an azmuth on it. I can’t really be too precise as to the distance. But the direction, I’ve got that.”

“Will you take one of the motorcycles?”

“I can use Dad’s maps of the strategic fuel reserves—I’ll be all right.” “You can take some of the dehydrated food. I’ll prepare it for you. When are you thinking of—“ “Today—in a few hours. If there was a crash and there’s someone out there, well—maybe I can—“■

“I know—you sound like our father. You look like him. Sometimes I think you think like him.”

He smiled.

“But you don’t smoke cigars. I can help you get your gear ready—what will you need?”

“I’ve got my guns—and I’ll take an M-16—“

“Take one of the Gerber fighting knives.”

“I was planning to.”

“I’ll pack some socks and underwear and things for you.”

“All right.” Michael nodded. “Will you be all right?”

“Alone? But I’m not alone.” Annie smiled. “And you’ve been gone before.”

“This’ll be for a longer time.”

“Give me a time limit—so I know when to start worrying.” Michael Rourke laughed. “All right, if I’m not back in fourteen days, then start worrying.”

“If you’re not back in fourteen days,” and she sipped at her tea—it was very hot, “I’ll do more than worry,” she promised. The Awakening was to be on Christmas Day and that was seventeen days.

She stood outside the Retreat, the motorcycle— one of the big Harley-Davidson Lowx Riders, blue—between them. It was cold and she hunched her shoulders under the quilted midcalf-length coat she had made for herself two years earlier, the wind blowing up the road leading away from the Retreat, whipping under her nearly ankle-length skirt, making her bare legs cold where her stockings stopped just below the knee. A shawl— she had crocheted it herself—was wrapped around her head and neck, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her coat. She watched Michael as he finished securing the last of his gear aboard the bike. She had helped him check it, had prepared a spare parts kit for him just in case.

“Well.” Michael smiled. “I guess this is it.”

She looked at her brother a moment. He wore one of her father’s spare leather jackets. Slung across his back was the Magnum Sales Stalker, scope covers in place. In a crossdraw holster by his left hip bone was the smaller, scopeless, .44 Magnum Predator. She had helped him to secure the M-16 to the bike. On his right hip was the Gerber Mkll fighting knife. She had given him another knife from her father’s stock—an A.G. Russell Sting IA, but not black chromed like the one that helped to form her father’s battery of personal weapons. This was natural stainless steel finish. “I wish you’d take a double action revolver or a semi-automatic pistol.”

“I’m happy with these. I know how to use them—even Dad told me I was a good shot with them.”

“But Daddy never liked you just carrying single actions—too slow to reload.”

“I’ll be all right, Annie—now don’t worry.” He smiled. She walked around behind the back of the bike, inspecting it once more with her eyes. She put her arms around his neck, felt his arms encircle her body, pulling her close. She wondered what the embrace of a lover would be like. At nearly twenty-eight, she had never known that. She felt Michael’s lips brush her cheek. She took his face in her hands, her hands cold in the wind, and kissed him full on the lips, fast. “I love you, Michael—you’re the only brother I’ve got. Be careful.”

Michael Rourke laughed. ifThat the only reason you love me—because I’m the only brother you’ve got?”

She laughed, burying her head against his chest—the shawl worked down from her head as he stepped away to mount the bike, the wind caught her hair. She raised her arms to capture her hair with her hands, holding it back with her left hand. Michael mounted the Harley and gunned the engine to life.

He looked at her once, smiling. “Be seein’ ya, Annie,” and then he turned away. She stood there, the bike starting down the road away from the Retreat, watching him. He looked back once and she waved at him. She kept watching, wrapping the shawl around her head again, stabbing her hands into her pockets, shivering in the wind, but watching him until she could no longer see even a speck of movement that might still be him. ‘t Alone, Annie Rourke turned around and started back into the Retreat, opening the interior door after closing the exterior door, killing the red light and then closing the Retreat door behind her.

In the winter, there was little to do. No garden. She neatly folded her shawl and set it on the edge of the kitchen counter to be put away later. She took off her coat, setting it across the top of one of the stools—the one Michael usually used.

Standing in the cold had made her want to go to the bathroom, and she started across the Great Room. But she stopped, staring at one of the cryogenic chambers. Not her father, or her mother, or the Russian woman Natalia—Natalia was very beautiful. As she—Annie—stabbed her hands into the pockets of her skirt, she stared at another face. Paul Rubenstein. He was not handsome, but she liked the set of his face. She remembered him almost not at all, except that they had all played cards together and Faul Rubenstein had told her she was a very pretty girl and she had giggled.

She smiled thinking of it.

Later she would check the small paper-making operation. Later she would fix a little dinner for herself. Later—later she would go to the bath-room. She stood watching Paul Rubenstein instead.

She was her father’s daughter, she had always known, and before Michael had even begun to realize it, she had realized it.

John Rourke had played God.

John Rourke had let her age to nearly the age of Paul Rubenstein. He had picked Paul as her mate, or husband, but who would marry them? Her father? Was being master of the Retreat like being master of a ship? Or perhaps if the Eden Project did return, the commander of the Shuttle Fleet could perform some sort of ceremony.

She had accepted her father’s decision, not because it was his decision, but because for some reason she could not understand, she had found herself staring at Paul Rubenstein a great deal, fantasizing what his voice would sound like, wondering if the cryogenic sleep would somehow alleviate the eyesight problem which caused him to wear the wire-rimmed glasses which were with his things in the storeroom. She had^washed the glasses once, buffed the lenses. She had wanted to do it.

She looked away from Paul Rubenstein, smil-ing, laughing a little as she whispered, “My intended.” Annie looked at the face of Natalia Tiemerovna. She—Natalia—was her brother’s

“intended,” and Annie knew that. She had considered that a great deal. Michael had talked about their father and “the Russian woman” many times. Annie had decided that her father had been in love with two women—their mother and “the Russian woman.” But something inside of her, and something too in the face of the sleeping “Russian woman” made her feel inside of her that playing at being God wouldn’t prove quite as easy as her father might have thought. She no longer had to urinate. Instead, she started back toward the kitchen—she wondered if Paul Rubenstein would like her cooking. She stopped beside the counter, unbuckling the web belt with the military flap holster from around her waist, the Detonics Scoremaster always carried there when she left the Retreat whatever the reason. She set the gunbelt down beside her shawl, picked up her apron and began tying it about her waist. She could fix something exotic—Michael liked only bland things. A spinach souffle—she could start with that.

Chapter Ten

He had traveled for five days and in two more would turn back, he had promised himself. He would not abandon the search, but rather return to be with Annie for the Awakening. Then perhaps he and his father both could search, Paul Ruben-stein staying behind with the women to protect the Retreat. He had often fantasized what it would be like to rove the new earth with his father, to search out its secrets.

There was his mother to consider, and the Russian woman as well—but he knew his father well. There was something inside his father—and it burned inside him as well.

There was a world to tame, to explore.

Michael Rourke dismounted the Harley Low Rider, letting down the stand, the bike freshly filled some twenty miles back at one of the strategic fuel sites from his father’s map. From the cold temperatures and the spectacular height of the mountains and the distance he had traveled, he judged himself somewhere in Tennessee between what had been Chattanooga and what had been Nashville. There was a high rise of rocky ground with some scrub brush clinging to it for a distance, the rise too steep to navigate with the Harley but not too steep by foot. t He took the key for the Harley, perfunctorily taking the M-16, slinging it across his back, letting the Stalker swing on its sling across his chest as he started up the rocky face. He climbed for a dual purpose—for sign of what he had seen fall from the sky to the northwest and to see if any of the terrain stirred memories in him, memories of the times he and his mother and his sister had moved about these mountains following the Night of The War, searching for his father.

The rocks were a steeper climb than he had anticipated, but he worked cautiously and slowly

—a broken ankle or broken leg could have spelled his doom here and he was aware of the hazards of traveling alone in the wilderness. Michael Rourke kept climbing.

When he reached the top, he sagged over the edge, catching his breath. He wondered what it would be like to function in a full atmosphere again where the air was not so thin and cold in his lungs.

He edged completely over the lip of rock, standing up. Had it been summer, he would have worn a hat to guard against the stronger sunlight. He ran his hands through his hair instead, reminding himself he would need Annie to give him a haircut when he returned to the Retreat. The wind caught at his hair again and he pushed a thick strand of it—dark brown like his father’s, he thought—back from his eyes.

Michael Rourke looked behind him—nothing but landscape, however more beautiful it seemed almost day by day to become. He walked across the flat expanse of rock, taking the Bushnell eight-by-thirtys from their case at his left side—they were his father’s.

Before him, as he stopped at the edge of the rock, he thought he might well be able to see as far as the next state.

He focused the rubber-armored binoculars, scanning toward the horizon. Trees were growing in more abundance than he had seen near the Retreat—perhaps being farther north had some-thing to do with it, he surmised—the rays of sunlight less direct, the sunlight level more benign. Michael had placed the binocular strap around his neck, and now he let it fall to his chest.

He took the G.I. Lensatic compass from his leather jacket’s left outside patch

pocket, opened the case and raised the lens, sighting due north-west. He had no

way of knowing if the poles might perhaps have shifted somehow during the

cata-clysm, the holocaust. But even if they had, he used the compass only for

land navigation and it would

A

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