Then a thought chilled him. The constant level of population. It had to be as he had surmised—
genocide, institutionalized genocide with victims who were willing to go. nft There were no large rocks visible, like there were outside the Retreat. Where was?… He heard the sound, wheeled toward it, shielding Madison behind him, swing-ing the M-16 forward taut against its black web sling, a panel opening out of the living rock, a human face, and then another and another, men, three of them, immaculately tailored three-piece business suits, but in bizarre contrast to this each of the men wore bedroom slippers. In their hands were swagger-stick-shaped objects, perhaps eighteen inches in length. The cattle prods, Michael surmised.
“All right—hold it. I’m coming as a friend. I don’t mean you any harm. You know what this is,” and he gestured with the assault rifle. “But the girl isn’t to be touched. You expelled her and she’s with me now.” He felt her hands against his shoulder blades.
One of the three men—a man on each side of him—smiled. “You are not from the Place. You are not from Them. Others live then.” “Others live.” Michael nodded, lowering the muzzle of the M-16 slightly. “My family, two of our friends. And there was an aircraft. I didn’t find the wreckage, but I found the pilot’s parachute. And the pilot was slaughtered by the ones you call Them. I didn’t have any chance to search through his things and find out where he came from. But there must be others alive as well, and somewhere technology has survived. The world can rebuild and grow and there’ll be no need for all of you to live here underground and—“
“Michael!” It began as a word and ended as a scream, Michael wheeling, the pressure of Madi-son’s hands against his back suddenly gone. Madison was being dragged toward the opposite wall by more of the men in immaculately tailored three-piece business suits and bedroom slippers, cattle prods held to her flesh as she screamed incomprehensibly.
Michael moved the M-16 forward, opening his mouth to shout, to order them—then trie pain. At first he could locate the origins. The small of his back, the center of the back of his neck—the word he remembered abstractly was “nape”—and where his right arm joined his shoulder.
The M-16 fell from his hand, on its sling, his body twitching uncontrollably, the pain flooding him now, Madison screaming, “Michael!” the pain, Michael Rourke falling to his knees, feeling something he had never felt before, everything in his field of vision fuzzy suddenly and green and a cold sweat on his skin, the feeling of nausea in his stomach. He sagged forward, rolling on the rock floor of the cave, trying to make his right hand respond and find the pistol grip of the M-16. Through the green wave washing over him he saw Madison being dragged through the opening in the rock wall on the opposite side of the cave.
She screamed again, and he heard it as his eyes closed and his head struck against the rock and the darkness flooded his consciousness. “Michael!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the intervening day, she had seen her mother four times. Four times her mother left the room her father had built for he and his wife to share, entered the bathroom and then returned to the room.
She sal at her sewing machine, her left foot on the pedal that gave the machine its electrical power, her left hand feeding the material beneath the needle, her right hand giving added tension to the thread, working the hand wheel on the side of the machine as she hemmed the blue floral print skirt she had been making for the last several months. She did most of her sewing by hand—it consumed more time and the supply of fabric was not inexhaustible, but she wanted this finished now so she could wear it when Paul returned. Annie looked up from the machine, her mother standing in front of her. Sarah Rourke wore a man’s shirt—Michael’s or their father’s. It was blue chambray and there were at least three dozen of them. Her mother’s hands were inside the pockets of a pair of blue jeans. On her feet she wore no shoes or socks. “Let’s talk, Ann.”
Ann—no one called her that. “I can make us some tea—you’ll like it.”
“You make the tea, I’ll make some lunch. I’m hungry.”
“I can—“
“I know you can—but I’ll make it.”
Annie flicked off the light on the sewing machine and stood up… “He likes you—I don’t mean Paul. I mean, that’s obvious, but I mean your father.” Sarah Rourke was stirring sliced potatoes in a frying pan. She had taken meat from the freezers. “Why’d you look at me so oddly when I took out the meat?”
“There isn’t very much meat, Momma, and Michael and I always saved it for special occasions, I was thinking I’d make a roast when Daddy and Paul and Natalia got back with Michael—like a special occasion. It’ll be the first time the whole family—“ “The whole family,” her mother repeated. “Yes, just the six of us. A father and mother who collectively aren’t ten years older than their children’s ages combined. The four of us, plus Paul and good old Natalia, the KGB
major. Paul’s very nice. I’m surprised at the friendship between Paul and your father. Your father never really made friends. He raised you to mate with Paul.” “I know that—but that’s not why I feel the way I do, and if Paul feels the same way, that isn’t why for him either.”
“You’re probably right. And he raised Michael for Natalia—that’s obvious.”
“He was trying to—“
“Did your father ever ask me?”
“The potatoes will burn.”
“No, they won’t, I’ve been doing this a hell of a lot longer than you have. He never asked me. I took the sleep expecting to wake up at the same ion time everyone else awakened. Not to wake up twenty years after my children did, not to find them already grown just so Natalia and Paul wouldn’t be forced to marry or whatever it is people can do when there are only six people alive on earth.” She cut off the burner and began shifting the potatoes into a serving bowl, then took a potholder and checked the oven for the meat. “Your father never cheated on me—never once. I’m sure of that. But he cheated me, cheated me more than he ever could have if he’d cheated on me.”
“But we—“
Sarah turned around, her eyes staring, harder than Annie had ever seen them. “If you marry Paul Rubenstein, if you and Paul have children—how would you feel closing your eyes and seeing them as children, then opening your eyes the next instant of consciousness and seeing them fully grown, missing all the years in the middle. How would you feel? Who told you what to expect when you were growing up—from your body, I mean? Who taught you everything you didn’t teach yourself?”
“Well, Daddy did, but—“
Sarah Rourke whispered, “You finish dinner— I’m not hungry.”
“But…”
Annie watched her mother walk away, to the bedroom, but Sarah Rourke didn’t look back.
It wasn’t as Annie had planned it—it wasn’t that way at all.
Chapter Thirty
John Rourke dismounted the Harley. By taking a route through the mountains that he and Paul Rubenstein had learned of by accident in the weeks following the Night of The War, he had saved two days of travel. Natalia dismounted as well. All about them were telltale signs of a camp. A fragmentary motorcycle tread.
Burned wood from a fire, and signs of a fire being meticulously put out.
“He’s been here, all right,” Paul volunteered.
Rourke looked at the younger man, but only nodded. Rourke studied the partial tread print, looking up from it, ahead, then taking off in a long-strided jog, his eyes scanning the ground through the dark-lensed aviator-style sunglasses, a cigar, unlit, clamped between his teeth in the left corner of his mouth.