The Awakening

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be consistent for that, if off slightly from true north. The North Star—it seemed where it should be to him when he would scan the nighttime skies. He picked a mountain top that was due northwest of him, closing the compass, pocketing it.

Michael Rourke raised the binoculars, aiming the twin tubes toward the northwest.

A chill passed along his spine, consuming him with cold. There had been no lightning storms. But there was a thin plume of grey-black smoke rising. Fire.

“People.” He said the word very softly.

Chapter Eleven

He had followed his compass—and by the odometer on the Harley, he had traveled twenty-four miles. For the last two miles, when the rolling of the terrain had permitted, he had seen the plume of smoke, its detail rich, the colors in it varied. He had driven the Harley ever closer to it, his hands sweating inside his gloves.

He had stopped the Harley, taking it off the gravel and dirt track he had followed for the last mile, pulling it into the trees, camouflaging it with pine boughs, taking his pack onto his back, moving ahead on foot. In the clear air, sound traveled long distances. If there were people, he had no desire for a machine from the twentieth century to frighten them. They might well be very simple.

Michael Rourke checked his map, having updated it as best he could as he had traveled, marking on it in faint pencil the coordinates where he had left the bike. He walked on, the Harley’s key in his jeans pocket, a duplicate key at the Retreat, the pace he set one that was practiced from walking the mountains near the Retreat, one he could maintain in the thinner air. His right fist was closed on the Pachmayr-gripped butt of the Stalker… Michael Rourke walked into the wooded area which for the last mile had been ahead of him, threading his way through the trees, weaving back and forth, moving as soundlessly as possible.

He could smell the smoke now,

And he smelled something else. He didn’t know what it was, but it reminded him of the last time his sister had cooked meat. But the smell was not pleasant and warming to him, but somehow vile.

He was afraid.

He kept going.

Michael’s fist tightened on the butt of the Stalker, tighter than it had been, the Stalker unslung from his side, held slightly ahead of him but not too far—his father had taught him that a gun extended too far ahead of you was an invitation for someone to try to strike it from your hand. Someone. That there might be someone, besides himself, his sister, their parents, Paul Rubenstein and Natalia Tiemerovna—his stom-ach churned, his palms sweated and a chill again traveled the length of his spine. v Michael Rourke parted the low pine boughs, their heaviness at this altitude both startling to him and wonderful. He moved in a crouch, the Stalker in his right fist.

The smell.

He stood stock still as he reached the edge of the trees and could see clearly the open area beyond, the clearing. The fire still smoked, in the center of the clearing, blackened and smoldering. The smell was stronger as he moved into the clearing, his eyes riveted to what he saw beside the fire—it was a human femur. White, the flesh gone, the two ends of the bone jaggedly broken. Michael approached the bone, seeing more bones littering the ground near the fire. He dropped into a crouch—with the spearpoint tip of the big Gerber he carried, he rolled the bone over. The marrow from inside it had been scraped out.

He wiped the knife clean across the clump of grass nearest him, sheathing it.

In the grass, partially charred, lay a fork-sized chunk of meat. Michael took one of the sticks from the fire—it had evidently been used as a cooking spit, the edges notched. There were two forked sticks on each side of the fire. One end of the stick was sharpened to a point, as if it had been used to thrust through something.

With this sharp pointed end, Michael speared the tiny piece of meat. He raised it to his nose. The smell was sweet, sickeningly. It smelled like undercooked pork— what little pork had been in the freezer, he and Annie had long ago decided would be cooked and eaten. Rubenstein was, after all, Jewish, as was Natalia partially. Annie had had him helping her while she had cooked the pork, helping her with preserving vegetables grown in the garden. He remembered the smell.

But it was not pork. The bone, like the other bones Uttered near the fire—it was unmistakably human.

And so was the partially eaten, burned flesh.

He fought the feeling of nausea, standing up, turning away from the fire, trying to breathe through his mouth so he wouldn’t experience the smell. Human beings.

Swallowing hard, his stomach churning, he moved about the clearing. Human feces at the edge of the clearing—the smell still strong. He could have touched them to determine more precisely the age. But warm or not, he would not touch them. A bush, wet, the smell on the leaves that of urine. He scanned each oi the bones as he moved about the place—the encampment. Michael stopped beside a clump of thorny blackberry bushes. It was what he had searched for.

There were no insects since the Night of The

War, or at least none he had detected. So nothing crawled over it. He could have picked it up, if he could have reached through the thorny blackberry bush to take it.

But there was no need to take it.

The skin was gone from the top of the thing, as if scalped. Only the facial skin from halfway down the forehead to below the chin remained, the ears gone as well. The eyes were missing, Eaten, he surmised. The face had been that of a girl younger by some years than his sister. Now, Michael turned away and threw up, dropping to his knees, lurching forward with his heaving abdomen.

There were people—but they were not people like himself.

They were cannibals.

He had cried as a little boy, but never as a man. Until now.

Chapter Twelve

It was true that the cryogenic process served to regenerate the body. But not completely. Only one kidney func-tioned. He no longer had a spleen. A section of his left lung had been cut away. There was a bypass around an irretrievably damaged portion of the large intestine. But aside from urinating a bit more frequently, and in the thin air tiring a bit more quickly than he would have, he suffered no sustaining ill effects. He stood, leaning against the fir tree, watching the snow-capped mountain peaks in the distance.

Greater distances away, beyond these moun-tains and the next and beyond what had been and was still an ocean, lay his desire.

He was confident that destiny had not cheated him. He had chosen the higher elevations where the air was thinnest for this period of four years since his awakening, chosen it so that he could adapt to thinner air and his decreased lung capacity, so that at normal elevations he would be at full physical strength.

His right hand in his right pocket, he felt at the hardness of his genitalia. He had thought of the woman.

It was time for that.

He turned and walked back from the precipice, along the rugged ground beneath the snow-laden fir trees, toward the mouth of the cave where he and the others had set their encampment three years earlier. He stroked his beard. He passed through the mouth of the cave and beyond./It was warmer from the solar-battery-generated electric heating coils and he opened his coat, not feeling any shortness of breath as he sometimes did when coming into warmth. His people were about their business and he was all but alone at the encampment. All but alone. He opened the wooden door of his hut, stepping inside, throwing down his coat, stripping away the shoulder holster and letting it hang from the straight back of the rough-hewn chair beside the table he used as his desk. He allowed the semi-automatic pistol to stay in its holster. He wouldn’t need it, though he practiced with it three times a week at least. He practiced drawing it quickly from the leather and hitting the torso of a silhouette-shaped target.

He walked from the small room of the hut into the larger room, the only other room. To the left, the shower and toilet behind a curtained doorway built off the room. To the right, the cabinet where he stored the bulk of his possessions. Ahead of him, the bed.

The girl waited there.

“Do you know what I intend to do?”

She had frightened eyes. She was one of the ones who had survived by some means or another and become more animal than human. But she, the animal, was frightened of him, the man.

She had no language other than grunts and he did not know how to converse with her.

But he spoke with her anyway. “I discovered in myself something very interesting—but this was centuries ago. I was a master of the earth then. A foul-breathed little beast like you would not have interested me then. But you are here.”

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

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

Chapter Thirteen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He would see…

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

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

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

He heard none.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A folding knife—nothing unique about it. In the light of the Zippo he read the legend “Rostfrei”

and “Solingen” on the blade, but there was no trade name. But the knife—it could not be new—

was in perfect condition. He closed the single lockblade and pocketed the folding knife, con-tinuing his search. He found nothing else beneath where the parachute hung. He sat on the ground in the cold and the darkness, constructing in his mind what might have happened. If the thing falling from the sky were some sort of conventional aircraft, what he had heard on the radio and what he had heard five years earlier had perhaps been a prerecorded distress signal, perhaps played at higher speed and broadcast toward some base which would have the equipment to ungarble it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But where was the downed aviator?

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

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

Another scream.

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

Chapter Fourteen

Annie Rourke sat up in bed—she was cold.

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

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

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

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

She shivered.

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

She hit the switch.

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

It was nearly Christmas anyway.

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

Chapter Fifteen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

her eyebrows had been an almost unnatural red.

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

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

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

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

“Who are—“

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

“The archangel Michael—the sword—“

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

“I’m naked.”

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

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

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

Why had she called him “archangel”?

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

Chapter Sixteen

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How old is Michael?”

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

“Thirty—he’s—“ Natalia looked at John Rourke—he stirred more, seemed about to open his eyes. “John, why?” Natalia sagged back against the chamber’s pillow and closed her eyes. She wanted to weep but no tears would come to her—yet.

Chapter Seventeen

Natalia had spoken almost not at all. Sarah had hugged Annie to her, but had said nothing.

Paul had asked questions. John Rourke had answered them, Annie answering some of the questions. Rourke watched his daughter’s eyes as she spoke to Paul Rubenstein. And he watched Paul’s eyes—Paul could see without his glasses. Natalia had been sick. Sarah, too—Paul as well. Rourke, more knowing what to expect, had taken the reactivation of his plumbing in better stride. Annie had reset his watch and he stared at the luminous black face of the Rolex now—the awakening had come some time after midnight. It was nearly nine a.m. and he was trying some of Annie’s herbal tea, sipping at it slowly.

He sat on the sofa in the great room. Annie sat on the floor, her legs vanished under the nearly ankle-length blue skirt she wore as she knelt near his feet. “You don’t believe in dreams, do you? I thought I raised you to be more level-headed than that.” Rourke smiled. The herbal tea tasted nauseating, but the coffee shortage to consider, he had decided at the first sip to drink enough tea to develop at least a tolerance for it.

“I’ve had two dreams since I awoke from the sleep, Daddy. The one dream was about seeing you and Momma again—awake. The other dream was about Michael in danger. And I’m seeing you and Momma awake right now. And Michael’s been gone from the Retreat for eight days.”

“You said he’d told you he’d be back in fourteen days, Annie.”

“I felt it, Daddy—please. Go look for him.”

John Rourke sipped at the tea. “I intend to. By midday, my stomach should be stabilized and I should feel stronger. By tomorrow, I should be able to go after him.”

“Not without me—and my stomach’s killing me.” John Rourke knew the voice. He looked at Annie’s face instead as she looked up. He watched her hands as she smoothed her skirt with them, as she touched at her hair with them. “All right, Paul.” Rourke nodded, not looking at the younger man—he was five years younger still. “The ladies will be safe here at the Retreat—“

“I’m going, John. You made it so that Michael would be the right age.” Rourke turned around. Flanking Paul Rubenstein were Natalia and Sarah. “What do you mean?” Rourke said to Natalia.

“You stole my children,” Sarah hissed. “You stole them from me forever. Maybe you plan to make me pregnant again—so we can repopulate the world. But you stole these children. You stole Michael and Annie. They’re grown up.” “And you think that you solved our problem, don’t you?” Natalia said emotionlessly. “You pandered me to your son. How could you, John?” John Rourke looked at his hands—they were steady. “For all I knew, for all I know, there are six human beings alive on Earth. Maybe the Eden Project will return. Maybe some other people have survived. Maybe Michael is confronting them right now. Maybe. But six people. Six people. Definite. I love both of you,” and he looked at Sarah and then at Natalia. “I did what I did out of love, for our survival.”

John Rourke stood up. There should be quite a lot of the cigars remaining—he started, his legs still weak, across the great room, toward the kitchen and the freezer where he kept them. Behind him he heard Natalia’s voice, “I love you— not someone the age that you were, not someone who looks like you, not your son.”

Rourke stopped at the height of the three steps leading to the kitchen. He leaned against the counter. “I did the only thing I could do. Now leave it alone,” he almost whispered.

Q

Sarah’s voice—he didn’t look at her. “Which god are you, John?”

His voice welled up inside him and he shouted without looking at her, “Leave it alone!”

“Which god are you? Which god are you, John Rourke! Should I fall on my knees to you?

Should I burn a goddamned sacrifice to you? If you make me pregnant again, should I sacrifice our first born to you—you already made me sacrifice two children!”

“Alone! Leave it alone!”

“No!”

“Momma!”

“Stay out of this, Annie—“

“Mrs. Rourke, Sarah—“

“No. You worship him—it’s written all over your face. He’s your big macho hero—taught you how to ride a bike, how to shoot a gun. Well, nobody goddamned taught me. He wasn’t there with me.” Rourke turned around, watching Sarah now as she turned toward Natalia. “And you love him because you’re like him—you’re both better than human beings, better than anybody at anything. You were made for each other. But he didn’t steal your children from you. You don’t have the memories of them inside you, of caring for them when the world was going to hell, of smuggling them past Russian guards when they were naked and shivering under blankets, of fighting and killing to keep them alive. I went through all of the hell—and now he took them!”

John Rourke watched his wife’s eyes. “You did an this all because you know what’s right for everybody, don’t you? You’d stay away for days building this Retreat. You’d keep at it and at it making this—this place. Well, what good did it really do? We’re alive and to keep the damned human race going you played god and made the children grow up so your son could marry your mistress and your daughter could marry your best friend. How fucking noble!” She turned away, walking into the bedroom he had built with his hands for them to share.

The door slammed.

He felt something—a presence and he looked away from the closed door. Annie stood behind him, on the lowest step. She wrapped her arms around his waist. “We started to raise tobacco, and in the encyclopedia and in the other books, I learned how to make cigars for you. I’ve been freezing them for years. You can smoke all you want. Just like the Cuban ones—rolled on the lips of—“ She licked her lips, looking over her shoulder at Paul Rubenstein. Paul stood there, his hands in his pockets, Rourke watching as the younger man stared down at his feet. He’d never seen Paul Rubenstein’s face so red before. “I love you, Daddy. I know what Momma meant. I’d hate you if you took away my children, but I’m not Momma. And I love you. Hold me,” and she rested her head against his chest as she ascended the steps.

John Rourke held his daughter close against him and closed his eyes. A long time later, he smoked one of the cigars and the taste— different than his other cigars—was somehow better.

Chapter Eighteen

He was still stiff and his muscles sore, but on the trail in pursuit of Michael there would be time to regain his strength from his long sleep. At least Paul Rubenstein told himself that as he stood in the workroom, fieldstripping the Brown-ing High Power. The magazine out, he drew the slide back and locked the safety in the forwardmost notch. He began working the slide stop out until he could pluck it from the left side of the frame with his fingers. Slowly, he lowered the safety on the worn 9mm, letting the slide move forward and dismounting it from the rails. He removed the recoil spring and guide from the inverted slide, then jiggled out the barrel. He heard the rustle of clothing beside him. He looked to his left—it was Annie. “I guess your mother was kinda angry,” he told her, not looking at her but looking at the pistol again. He took the Break-Free CLP and began to pour some of it— the cap removed—onto a rag to degum the pistol. “You’re the only eligible man in the world. But that’s not why I fell in love with you, Paul.”

He swallowed hard. “Hey, don’t make fun of me.”

“What did you look like with your glasses on?”

“I don’t know. Maybe my eyes being normal is just temporary. Maybe—“ “Daddy—my father—he had scars from old wounds and they healed.” “My left arm—there isn’t any scar from that spear. You’ll have to get your father to—“ “He told me. You’re a very brave man.”

Paul Rubenstein laughed. “Bullshit. I’m just— well, I pick things up quick. Your father—he’s the one—“ “You’re a brave man. He told me you saved his life more than once.” “No, I never did that. I just—and anyway, God, John saved me—I mean, your father, he—“ “When Daddy told you about your mother and father—what that Colonel Reed told him—I wanted to hold you.”

“Annie, you’re a little—“

“I’m a woman—and I fell in love with you while you slept. Not because Daddy made things so I would. I just did. Like girls falling in love with movie actors or rock singers—never meeting them. I fell in love with you.”

“That’s not love, that’s—“

“He told me about the girl in New York once— one night. He was up very late and I was ten years old and I sat up with him and he told me all about you.” “The Eden Project—there’ll be lots of guys, guys a lot better—“ “I’ll be a spinster then, if you won’t have me.” He realized he was moving the cleaning rod in and out of the barrel and he thought she might think he was thinking something he shouldn’t think and he set the barrel and the cleaning rod down and he looked at her. “I, ahh—“ “You want to say you don’t love me yet—and I understand that.”

“Gimme a chance to breathe—“

“I know that—but I wanted you to know before you go off after Michael. I couldn’t just not tell you,” and she leaned up toward him, Paul feeling her hands touching at his face. She was very pretty—the deepness of the brown of her eyes, the hair was unimaginable, like something from a fantasy about a mermaid or a goddess, he thought. The white blouse—it showed the bareness of her shoulders where the shawl she wore fell away from her.

“You’re the daughter of my best friend. He—“

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“You’re a gentile, I’m—“

“That has nothing to do with it—there aren’t any rabbis and there aren’t any ministers.”

“But—“

“But?”

He licked his lips. “Annie—you—Annie—“

“I fell in love with you. I used to fantasize what your voice was like because I couldn’t remember it. It’s soft—I like it.”

“Annie—“

“When I was seven or so and we played poker that night, you told me I was pretty.”

“You’re beautiful. You’re the most beautiful woman I ever—“

“I’m your woman. I don’t expect you to do anything. But when you want to—just—I never talked like this. I’m your woman.”

“You’re—“

“Almost twenty-eight.”

“You’re—“

“You’re almost five hundred and twenty-eight,” and she laughed.

“I’m not that—“ and he laughed.

“Daddy told me you were kind of quiet. I think he meant shy.”

“Aww, dammit, look—“

“All I wanted was for you to know—that I’ll be here when you get back, Paul.”

“Annie—look—“

“I looked—for a very long time,” and she leaned up suddenly and he realized she was standing on her toes and her lips touched his cheek and she was gone, walking away. He watched how she wrapped the shawl about her shoulders. He licked his lips. He looked back to the work table. Paul Rubenstein closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember how to put the parts together. Of the gun.

Chapter Nineteen

They had spent the night hiding in the tr-ees, the woman saying nothing, shivering, wrapped in the Thermos blanket from his back pack and inside the sleeping bag as well, Michael with the M-16 beside him, the two revolvers fully loaded. He had broken his cardinal rule and kept sixth rounds in each of the cylinders but would remove them before moving on. Daylight had come after the fireless night.

The woman talked in her sleep, but neither was she intelligible to him nor was the language the language from the tapes he had made of the radio broadcast. Michael had wanted to awaken her.

Had she come with the pilot?

Where was the pilot from?

Who were these people who craved human flesh?

Were there more of them?

He could not ask her because she did not awaken. She had raced through the trees, Michael grabbing her, dragging her in the right direction, toward the spot where he had secured the pack and the rifle, past the hanging parachute—mute testimony to what, he wondered. He had covered her body with his coat and his shirt, the snow freezing his bare skin.

They had reached the bracken of pines and the brush beyond and he had wrapped her in the blanket, found a fresh shirt for himself, taken back his jacket, wrapped her in the sleeping bag.

He had kept her warm while he sat on guard, unsleeping, freezing as the snow piled high around them.

Once there had been sounds. There were no animal forms on the earth that he had seen— except his family, except this woman, except the cannibals, whoever they were. But the sound had been the wind, he had reasoned, because it had returned several times in exactly the same way and there had been no attack. But he had stayed ready throughout the night.

And then the woman spoke to him. “You are the archangel.” He looked at her, saw the smile etched across her face—one of peace. But her eyes were already closed again and she was asleep. She no longer moaned and mumbled in her sleep and Michael Rourke watched her for a long time. There was nothing else to do and under the dirt smudges on her face, she seemed pretty to him. It was how one perceived another human being—he had long ago thought that through. And he perceived her as pretty, as terrified. And he perceived her as safe from those people who would have done their foul things to her—for as long as he had breath.

The cold helped him stay awake because it made his body tremble.

Chapter Twenty

“I’m not some archangel—I just have the same name.” “But you are not one of Them, and you are not from the Place. The other one—he was an angel, that is why he fell from the sky. And you came to save him—and you saved me, too. I am sorry. Was he your friend?” “The pilot?”

“The other angel, his name was Pilate—like Pontius Pilate. I would think an angel would have a name that was less like that weak man’s name— Pilate. I am sorry for your friend, Archangel Michael.”

Michael Rourke closed his eyes. “This is a fighting knife,” and he showed her the Gerber. “It isn’t some heavenly sword.”

She smiled. Her eyes were still very pretty. “We were taught to call your mighty blade a sword. But I shall call it a fighting knife if you wish that, Archangel Michael.”

“I’m not an archangel. I’m not even a regular angel—I’m just a man.” “You are not Them, and you are not from the Place. The angel Pilate came down from the sky and you came to rescue him—you are obviously the archangel Michael. You told me that you were Michael.”

“I am Michael,” and she smiled as he said it. “But—“ “When must you return to heaven?”

“I, ahh—“

“Please, I know that I’m not worthy of heaven— but don’t leave me here. Slay me with your avenging sword, perhaps—anyplace but to be here with Them and alone.” “Them?”

“The ones who consume the flesh. Them. They fight those from the Place.”

“I can take you back to the place.”

The girl—he didn’t yet know her name—fell to her knees and folded her hands and touched her forehead to her hands. “Archangel Michael, do not return me to the Place. I beg this by all that is holy. They will give me back to Them. Do not return me to the Place—do not for they will give me to Them, slay me. I pray.” Michael Rourke looked at her—she prayed to him. She called him an archangel. She was from the Place. She was afraid of Them. But who was she? he thought.

‘Til go with you. You’ll be safe.”

She looked up, settling back on her behind—the blanket was all that was around her.

“Archangel Michael is good.”

Michael Rourke watched her eyes a moment. “Sure.”

Chapter Twenty-One

John Rourke stepped out of the Retreat and into the cold sunlight. There was snow on the air—he could smell it. Sarah had told him one thing and only one… “Bring Michael home to me.” The bikes were already outside, Annie and Paul talking, apparently, down the road a bit from the Retreat doors. Beside Rourke stood Natalia Tiemerovna. He didn’t look at her as she spoke. “I had to go with you. Sarah and Annie—they need time to know each other. And I couldn’t stay here now.”

He looked at her. “Are you angry at me, too?”

“You are a good man—your heart is good. But you don’t understand the human heart. I’m sure you could perform bypass surgery on the heart if you had to, but you don’t understand it. What you did may have been right objectively, but to Sarah it will always be wrong. Do you really want me to become Michael’s wife?” “That’s part of why I did what I did, allowed the children to age while we slept.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” He had looked away again, and he felt her hands on his arms now and he turned around to face her—her eyes. “Do you want me to be some other man’s wife?

Even if the other man is your son? Do you?” He didn’t answer her. “I was always certain of one thing since I first met you, I think. That I love you and that you love me. Do you want to think about your son loving me? Do you want to come to hate us both, or to hate yourself?” “From what Sarah said, I should hate myself already, shouldn’t I?”

“Do you want me as someone else’s wife? Do you?”

It was very cold in the fresh air after so long. “No.” “I looked to you like a god,” she whispered, barely audible as the wind rose from the north-west. “My uncle, he told me that you were not a god, that you would never consider yourself a god.”

Rourke looked away. “All I tried to do—“ he began. “I think the reason I felt what I felt, what my uncle spoke about—I have never met a human being so perfect.”

He looked at her. “I’m not—“

“But you are—and the perfection is your flaw, John.”

“You sound like you’re analyzing a tragedy.”

“Perhaps I am, John. You were always able to subordinate your humanity to your logic. And you did it one time too often. You wanted to love me— physically. But you would never allow yourself to. But because of your humanity, your perfect logic hurt you. In trying to do what you logically deduced was the impartial, the correct thing, you made the most subjective decision any man has ever made.”

Rourke laughed—a short laugh. “I kinda

Ql

screwed up, huh?”

“I love you with all of my heart. I’ll always love you that way. And I’ll do your will if that is what you choose.”

“Michael.” Rourke smiled. “He’s, ahh—“

“Not you. He couldn’t be. No matter how like you he is—no matter what he looks like, Annie said he looks just like you. No matter what is in his heart or his mind—he’s not you.”

He raised his eyes—he’d been studyjng the toes of his combat boots in detail, the added coats of polish he’d given them before the last sleep had preserved them perfectly. Some of the spare pairs of combat boots in storage—he should look to them, he reminded himself.

“I never planned for falling in love with you,” he told her simply. “It changed so—it—“ “Sarah will be so happy when she sees Michael, when she gets to know Annie.

She’ll—“

He closed his eyes. “No, she won’t. He’s a man now—I took her little boy. I took her little girl.”

“You and Sarah, you can have—“

“I don’t think so,” Rourke answered, lighting one of his new cigars in the blue-yellow flame of his battered Zippo. “I don’t think so.”

“But she loves you—“

“If we’re going to make any time while there’s still daylight—“ “John-“ Rourke looked away from her. He didn’t know what to say and there wasn’t much point in say-ing anything at all, he felt. “No point at all,” he told the wind.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Rather than going back to where he had hidden the Harley, they had walked, the girl—she was very pretty—telling him the Place was less than a day’s journey from the spot where they had spent the night. The snow and the cold made more permanent shelter imperative, Michael Rourke had reasoned—and his curiosity at finding the nature of her people was something he realized to be insatiable. She had had no clothes and from his things and with his help she had fashioned some. His spare pair of Levi’s was too hopelessly large for her; but with a cut of rope she had fashioned a belt and the Thermos blanket had become an ankle-length skirt. She wore one of his spare shins and his sweater against the cold, his sleeping bag like a coat. With part of the butchered Thermos blanket and a little more of the rope, she had fashioned coverings for her feet, and in addition to these wore two pairs of his boot socks. She seemed physically fit, healthy—the pace she set was a quick one as they moved out of the woods, widely circumventing the clearing where the cannibals had held her and nearly killed her.

He watched her hair as it caught in the wind—it was a golden blond color, like the yellow of the sun and cascaded in waves to the middle of her back. She turned around suddenly—he guessed she somehow knew he was watching her. She smiled and the pale blue of her eyes struck him.

“You’re very beautiful,” he told her.

She laughed. “The Archangel Michael is very kind, but I am not beautiful.” Her face was thin, but not unpleasantly so—it was youth, he decided. “How old are you?”

“I have nineteen years—that is why it was my time.”

“Your time?”

“To be sacrificed to Them.”

Michael had no idea what she was talking about. He suddenly realized that he had never asked her name. “What’s your name?”

She laughed again. “Only the Families have names.”

“You have to have a name. What do they call you?”

“Who?”

“Your friends—the other people?”

“Oh, I am Madison. But then so are many others. The numbers change when one goes.”

“What do you mean—goes?”

She stopped walking, putting her tiny, long-fingered hands on her hips. “The Archangel Michael must know what it means when some person goes. You laugh at me.”

They were coming into some rocks. They had been walking for two hours by the position of the sun. He glanced at the Rolex on his left wrist—it was two hours and fifteen minutes. “Let’s rest for a few minutes before we go on,” he decided, starting toward the rocks, talking to her still.

“And I told you—I’m not an archangel, my name is Michael, but it’s Michael Rourke.” She laughed. “That must be why you do not know what it means when someone goes. In the language of heaven, Rourke must mean Arch-angel. In the language of the Place, goes is like—

well, whatever it would be in the language of heaven.” He found a flat rock and sat on it, the girl dropping to a slightly lower rock beside him, tucking her knees up almost to her chin, gathering the improvised skirt around her legs.

“When someone goes,” he persisted. “What happens?”

“You joke with me again, Archangel Michael.”

“I’m—“ He started to tell her he was not an archangel. Instead, he said, “For convenience sake, just call me Michael.”

“Like, ohhh, like you called the other angel Pilate. I feel this is disrespectful for me not to call you Archangel Michael.” “It isn’t disrespectful, believe me.”

“Michael—Michael,” she repeated, smiling. “I like the sound of Michael.”

“What do they call you?”

“When I learned that Madison twenty-four goes I became Madison fifteen.”

“Madison fifteen?”

“One is born a Madison and assigned an immaturity number, but then at the age of eight one is given a maturity number. I was Madison twenty-nine, then I was Madison nineteen, then I was Madison four. I am now Madison fifteen. But I am probably not Madison fifteen anymore. When someone is sacrificed to Them, the person goes and their number is reassigned.”

“Then you’re just Madison.” Michael Rourke smiled.

She appeared to consider this. “Yes, Michael. I am Madison.”

“What are some of the other names at the Place?”

“Among the Families or among the people like myself?”

“Like yourself, for openers.”

“There are Hutchins, Greeleys, Cunninghams —many like that. There are many Cunninghams but they work in direct contact with the Families.” “Madison—who are the Families?”

“The Families own the Place.”

“What are some of their names?”

“One of the Families is called the Vandivers. Another is called the Cambridges.

Another is—“

He cut her off. “And these people have first names. I mean like Michael is a first name.”

“Oh, yes, Michael—once I served Elizabeth Vandiver in her suite. I carried in her wedding dress along with several of the other Madisons.” He puzzled over this a moment. “What do the Madisons do?” She laughed. “What Madisons always do. Make the clothing, clean the clothing, repair the clothing, take the wrinkles from the clothing, fit the clothing. But only two of the Madisons do this—fitting.”

“Just for the women or—“

She laughed again. “The Hutchins do this for the men—they fit the clothing. But the Madisons do all the rest.”

“You’re a servant.”

“Of course. I am a Madison.”

“All Madisons do this?”

“Yes, Michael—what else would a Madison do?”

“Who does the cooking?”

“The Callaways.”

“The Place—who cleans it?”

“We keep things clean among ourselves—but for the Families?”

“Yes—for the Families.”

“The Cunninghams—they clean and serve and—“ “What do the Families do—like this Elizabeth Vandiver?” “Do?” and she laughed.

“Yeah—what do they do?”

“Miss Elizabeth Vandiver paints, and she raises orchids. But, of course, she is Madame Elizabeth Cambridge now. She supervises her household.” “You have two classes—the masters and the servants.”

“Yes.” She nodded.

Q

“Why?” Michael asked her.

“Why?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It is always this way.”

“When someone goes—it’s always to Them?”

“No,” and her face lost its smile. He noticed her dimples by their absence from the corners of her mouth. Her lips were thin, pale. Her hands trembled and he didn’t think it was the cold. “A very little one goes sometimes—it is not known why. And the very old ones. When it is time, each of them goes. And when a new one is born someone always goes. When Madame Elizabeth had her baby, I thought it would be my turn for sacrifice, And it was.” Michael Rourke closed his eyes, opened them, focusing on the toes of his combat boots. “How many people live at the Place?”

“One hundred,” she answered.

“About a hundred, huh?”

“Exactly one hundred.” It was the first time he had heard her use any word even similar to exactly.

“What do you mean—exactly a hundred?”

“There are never more than a hundred—except for a few hours after a young one is born. Sometimes there are less than a hundred, but then new ones are born.” “Exactly a hundred. Young and old, male and female?”

“Yes—why do you take such interest, Michael?”

Cannibals lay outside the Place. Inside, he realized, there was likely something much worse. Systematic genocide with willing victims. He reached out his left arm, putting it around the girl’s shoulders, drawing her close against him as they sat beside one another on the rocks. “You’ll be safe, Madison,” Michael Rourke almost whis-pered. “Safe.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

John Rourke ran his bare fingertips across the ground—it was the faintest of tire impressions. He stood to his full height, stiff still from the cryogenic sleep but feeling his strength return. He didn’t look back. “Michael’s been this way. He must be following a straight northwesterly course.” “He cannot—the mountains,” he heardNatalia interject. ‘ ‘It doesn”t matter which way he picks around an obstacle—he’ll pick up the same course on the other side. If we lose all track of him, Paul can go one way, you and I the other,” he told her, pulling on his gloves against the cold, turning, walking back toward the bikes. Natalia stood beside the jet-black Harley. Paul rode his own bike. The blue Low Rider Rourke had taken from the Brigand camp was the machine Michael rode. “You’ve gotta remember,” Rourke told them, mounting the Harley, putting his dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses back to cover his eyes. “I taught him land navigation—I taught both of them. But this is his first time any great distance from the Retreat. He’ll be smart enough to stick to the basics, even if it means going out of his way a little. Anyway— he’d stick northwesterly because he’s trying to pinpoint that crash site or whatever it was.”

“The messages on the tapes—or whatever they were. Could you figure out the language?” Paul asked.

Rourke looked at Rubenstein, feeling Natalia mounting the Harley behind him, feeling her arms circle his waist. “Yeah. It was some sort of computer message. I’d need the access code to figure it out.”

“The Eden Project?” Natalia’s voice asked from behind him. Rourke twisted in the saddle, looking at her. “No, this is something else. I don’t know what— not yet. But if something crashed out there, well, we’ll see,” and Rourke shoved the CAR-15 back on its sling, gunning the Harley, feeling the machine as it vibrated under him. “Let’s go, Paul,” he called. There were still a few hours of daylight. After the cryogenic sleep, he would not feel he needed sleep, but he was tired from the exertion. So long without exercise or proper nutrition.

He let out the Harley—to follow his son.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“I have never eaten flesh—it is forbidden. Them, they eat flesh.” Michael looked at the jerked beef stick in his right hand. “Used to be, I remember it a little— before the Night of The War—“

“Between the angels?”

“No, there weren’t any angels involved.” He smiled, watching how the glows from the firelight played across her little girl face. “But before the Night of The War, you could go places—fast food restaurants they called them. You could get hamburgers and chicken sandwiches and fish sandwiches. I always liked hamburger. But there aren’t any animals now. When the Eden Project returns, they should bring back animals and after a while, there should be meat again. But it’s a delicacy now.”

He extended the jerked beef stick to her—Annie had processed some of the less appealing cuts of meat in the freezer into jerky. The darkness around them was cold, forbidding, but it was warm near the fire in the shelter of the rocks. He had given up on reaching the Place before dark, and had not wanted to come on it after the light was gone. He had worried over the fire, that guards from the Place might see it, or the cannibals. But the cannibals would be glutted and he had beaten them off once. And Madison had told him there were no guards at the Place.

She sat close beside him and he gnawed away a piece of the jerked beef. “Come on—I can’t see where it’s against your religion.” “The angels eat flesh?”

He avoided the remark. “This isn’t flesh like you’re thinking of. The people I call cannibals—

the ones you call Them— they eat other people, the flesh of other people. This is the flesh of cattle. They were raised specifically to be eaten even-tually. That was their function.”

She licked her lips. She had eaten half the supply of dehydrated fruit and vegetables he had brought as trail food, the fruit and the vegetables from the garden. It had been only the last few years that they had actually gotten the fruit trees to bear, pollinating the trees themselves. She had eaten five of the fingers of cornbread Annie had sent with him. “I will try the flesh.” “That’s a girl.” Michael felt himself smile. He handed her the beef stick. He watched as gingerly she placed it near her mouth. “Think of it as meat—like hamburger or something.”

“Hamburger,” she repeated, touching the tip of her tongue to the rolled stick. Her tongue moved as rapidly as the tongue of a snake was supposed to move. He had read of snakes, seen thousands of them in a very famous movie his father had the videotape of. But the comparison to a snake was wrong somehow, he thought. Her tongue moved like the wings of a hummingbird. He remembered actually seeing one during the times he and his sister had been on the trail with their mother after the Night of The War. Her tongue moved like that. He asked himself why he was watching her in such detail. She placed the stick of beef in her mouth. Her nose wrinkled up a little and he laughed as she struggled to tear the bite she had taken from the stick. She handed it back to him.

He watched as she held it in her mouth. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to—I just wanted you to try it.”

“It—is—is very tasty, Michael.”

His arm was around her. He watched her mouth as she chewed, her throat, the movement there as she swallowed. “Why do you know so much about angels and archangels and so little about hambur-ger?” It was a stupid question, the way he put it, he realized.

She smiled, the firelight in her eyes, changing the shade of the blue there. “We read the Holy Bible. The Families—they read other things sometimes. But we read the Holy Bible and the Holy Bible is interpreted for us by the Ministers.” “Who are the Ministers?”

“The heads of the Families—men from each of the Families are the Ministers. It is always this way.”

She shivered in his arm and he couldn’t quite understand that because she was very healthy seeming and she was dressed more warmly than he, the sleeping bag she had used as a coat earlier when they’d walked now swathed around her beside the fire.

He held her more closely against him.

“Do these Ministers—do they tell you about other things, besides the Bible?”

“Oh, yes, they tell us everything that we need to know.” “Have you ever wondered if there’s maybe something you needed to know that they didn’t tell you?”

“But the Ministers know best for us.”

“You’re beautiful, Madison.”

She looked away. “You joke with me. I am not beautiful. Madame Elizabeth Cambridge is beauti-ful. Miss Genevieve Vandiver is beautiful. I am—“ “I said you’re beautiful. May I kiss you?’

She raised her eyes, looking at him, the fire making shadows there one instant, the shadows gone the next.

“But you are an archangel and I am only a Madison.”

“Then there shouldn’t be anything wrong if I kiss you,” Michael Rourke told her.

“I have never—I am not a breeder.”

“A breeder—a breeder?”

“Only some from the Madisons can breed and I was not selected.”

“To breed with whom—another Madison?”

“That is forbidden.”

“To breed with whom, then?”

“With one of the Ministers, or someone ap-pointed by them from the Families.”

“And who do the male Madisons breed with?” nu

“After the first time—they may breed with any of the female breeders if the permission is given.”

Michael Rourke felt a tightness in his throat he had never felt. “Breed with me, then.”

Her eyes seemed suddenly so wide. “An arch-angel would not—“

“I told you, I’m not an archangel. I’m a man. And suddenly I want to breed with you very much. But we don’t call it breeding. Although I guess that’s what it is. I’ve never done it before either.”

“If it is not breeding, then how would one say it then?” He watched her face, her eyes—her lips. He touched his lips lightly to hers. She didn’t move away. “It’s called making love. And you’re the first woman I ever kissed besides my mother or my sister or some relative years ago I can’t remember.”

“Michael.” She whispered his name, saying nothing more. His hands moved, almost independent of thought, under the sleeping bag that was around her, her arms folding around his neck. He felt her breath against his skin, his face.

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.