The Savage Horde

Chapter 14

Rourke saw them—Michael and Annie. They were running—but running happily. There was a beach—they were running along it in the surf, barefooted, their pants legs rolled up but stilt hopelessly wet as the foaming water lapped against their shins, the children only half-heartedly running.

He looked at himself—the weight distribution o*f his shoulder rig felt odd to him and he lifted his shoulders under it, searching the beach—Sarah had to be there too.

He wanted to shout to Michael and Annie—but even more than holding them he wanted to watch them run—to play. Hear them laugh. Annie had grown—but somehow she hadn't changed at all. The wild-eyed little kid—the happy girl, the girl who made you laugh. He laughed at himself.

Sarah—he still couldn't see her.

He watched Michael—his face was more serious than it had been—tanned more deeply than it always seemed to be, even in the dead of winter. He was somehow taller and straighter than he'd been just before the Night of The War, and even disguised under the T-shirt Michael wore, he could see the boy's musculature—how it had changed, matured.

Rourke stopped, seeing someone lying further along the beach. He brought the Bushnell xs out and focused them. The figure was a woman, wearing a bathing suit—she lay sunning herself, pale seeming under the bright sun on the sand.

'Sarah,'' he whispered. He started to run, the binoculars bouncing against his chest as they swung from their strap. "Sarah!" The children would hear him he knew.

The sand was hard to run in, slowing him. "Sarah!"

He was there suddenly, beside her. She didn't turn around.

"Sarah—I tried to make it back sooner—you'll never know how I tried. There were so many battles to fight—and—"

She didn't answer. She didn't move. He dropped to his knees in the sand. The body was so familiar to him—the patterns of the tiny freckles on her shoulders, the way she pushed her hair from the nape of her neck when she lay in the sun.

The flesh was cold as he touched it.

"Sarah—" He drew his hand back, then touched gently against her back. Still cold—clammy to the touch.

Swallowing hard, feeling his muscles bunching tight, he bent closer to her and felt at the neck for a pulse. There was none.

"Oh, Jesus," he rasped.

He took his hands away for a moment, then placed them both on the shoulders, turning the body.

Michael and Annie were standing beside him.

"Why didn't you come," Michael asked, his voice serious sounding, hurt sounding—like Rourke had heard it when he had been too busy to play, too busy to talk. "Why didn't you come, Daddy?"

Rourke couldn't answer—he knew they wouldn't understand.

"Your mother, he whispered, then looked back at the face as he finished rolling over the body.

Dead.

Lids open—the eyes a brilliant blue.

"Natalia." He heard himself whisper it.

Annie said. "That's why Daddy didn't come, Michael."

He turned to look at the children, to say, "No—that's not right—" But they were running off toward the surf again, laughing.

But the laughter somehow sounded forced to him, hollow.

It was Sarah's body as he drew it into his arms, but somehow Natalia's face and he asked himself if he were insane.

"What—"

"John!"

"Michael—please understand—"

"John!"

"Damnit!" Rourke opened is eyes, light in a yellow shaft coming through from the companionway. The face over him, shaking him—Paul.

"John—you all right—you were—"

"What's the matter?"

"That's why I came, John—it's Doctor Milton—he says Natalia's dying."

Rourke sat up.

"Michael," he murmured. Then he pushed himself from the cot and started into the companionway, Rubenstein beside him.