“Michael…”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The wind of the slip stream was cold against his face, but every few moments he would feel the warmth of Natalia’s breath against the back of his neck, her body close against his as they rode searching for Michael’s trail lost in the rocks an hour earlier. They had split up, Paul running a search pattern to the south, Rourke and Natalia searching to the north. AH they had uncovered was another campfire of the cannibals and more—but vastly less this time than before—of their ghastly leavings: human bones.
“John.”
He turned his face right, to speak over his right shoulder. “What is it?”
“I think I saw movement in the rocks—above us and to the left.” He nodded. “I saw it a little while ago. I think we’ve got company. Our cannibal friends.”
“What about Paul?”
“He’ll be all right—so’ll we. It’s Michael I’m worried about.” He glanced up into the rocks—a furtive blur of motion, then nothing. He slowed the Harley, stopping it at the close of a wide arc, cutting the engine. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going up there—gonna catch a cannibal. Get him to talk.”
“John!”
“They won’t come down here after us. I’ll go up after them.” He felt her hands leave his waist where they had rested as they had driven. She dismounted the Harley, Rourke dismounting as well. He un-zipped his coat, pulling off his gloves, folding them after straightening them, putting them in his bomber jacket’s left outside patch pocket. He took a cigar from the inside pocket of his jacket, the end already cut away as was his habit, putting the cigar in the left corner of his mouth, clamping it tight between his teeth. “You back me up from down here—and listen for any gunfire fr6m Paul. He should be on the other side of the rocks. If it sounds like he’s getting into trouble, you double back and I’ll cut across the top.”
“You don’t know how many of them there could be, John.” “They don’t have guns,” he told h^r, his voice low. “At least I don’t think they do. But I do. Anyway, maybe we can just talk,”
and he smiled.
“Don’t—I mean—just because it is Michael— don’t—“
“I won’t,” Rourke whispered, leaning toward her, kissing her cheek lightly. He pushed the CAR-15 farther back on its sling so it was across his back, then started toward the rocks.
Chapter Thirty-Six
He would find his son—there was no question of it, he knew. He kept moving, across the bare rock face, moving upward slowly, his rifle sway-ing away from his back, then swaying against it. He had seen no more movement above. Rourke looked back once, below him, Natalia, her hands on her hips, standing beside the jet-black Harley, black like the black of the jumpsuit she wore—her battle gear—black like the boots she wore. Black like the color of her hair—but her hair was only almost black for there was no true black in nature he knew. Rourke kept moving.
Sarah. Natalia. But now the task was to find Michael. He had laughed at Annie when she had awakened them early from the Sleep, laughed at her premonition, her dream. But the cannibals—
he had not anticipated this. How any men could have survived on the surface was incompre-hensible to him. There were mysteries in this new earth. If the Eden Project returned, there would soon be machining capabilities. Perhaps an aircraft could be built. As it was, the Harley’s engine would power a light biplane more than adequately. He kept moving, reaching up with his right hand, then bringing his left leg up, then his left hand, then his right leg, repeating the sequence as he climbed higher, the edge of the higher rocks more clearly discernible now. He kept moving.
His left hand reached out, and with his left leg he thrust himself up against the meager purchase below the height of the rocks, half falling forward onto the rock surface.
Rourke pushed himself up and rolled away from the edge, flat on his back for a moment, resting from the exertion in the thin air, setting himself as bait to the cannibals, for them to attack.
No one came.
After several minutes, he rolled onto his abdo-men, then pushed himself up, standing to his full height. He walked back toward the edge, waving down at Natalia. She waved back. Michael would be more used to the thinner air. In time, he too would become used to it.
He turned away from the edge, staring across the flat expanse of the height of the rocks. He reached into his Levi’s pocket, finding his lighter. He smoked less and less—in the thin air, intentionally damaging his lung capacity was insane. But he lit his cigar now, rolling the Zippo’s striking wheel under his thumb, plunging the tip of the cigar into the wind-dancing blue-yellow flame, flicking the cowling shut with an audible click. It was the stillness. No sudden engine noise betraying a Soviet patrol or a Brigand biker gang, no gunshots from off in the distance, no one. Nothing. The Earth was a dead place.
And he supposed the cannibals were its new-found scavengers. He moved ahead, dragging easily on the cigar, his breathing still rapid from the exertion of the climb, his rifle across his back again rather than at his side as he had placed it before making the final assault on the top. He wanted to look like easy prey.
Rourke kept walking.
Could these people talk? Could they under-stand?
Where had they come from?
If these cannibals lived, however few in number, others lived too, he knew.
He kept walking. “Hey—I want to talk,” he called.
No answer. “Do you speak English?”
No answer. “Habla EspanoB”
No answer. “Parlez-vous FrancaisV he laughed. He could ask the same question in German, in Russian, perhaps another language or two if he racked his brain for the right combination of words.
“I didn’t come to harm you,” he shouted. “I came searching for one who looks like me.”
And Rourke stopped. “One who looks like me,” he whispered. If Michael had met the cannibals and fought them off, they would think he— Rourke—was his own son. If Michael had died—a shiver ran along his spine. They would think he was Michael’s ghost.
He gambled on life, smiling to himself—it had been the one commodity on which he had always gambled.
He reached down to the holster at his hip, slowly withdrawing the Python. It was big, shiny—close enough in appearance to Michael’s handguns, at least to the untutored eye. Slowly, Rourke raised the gun over his head. Then slowly again, he dropped into a crouch, flexing his knees, setting the pistol on the ground. The CAR-15—it too looked near enough to Michael’s M-16. He slipped the sling over his head and set the rifle down, the safety off but the chamber empty. Michael carried two handguns, and Rourke reached under his jacket for the Detonics in the double Alessi rig. He-snapped the pistol from the leather, setting it down beside the Colt revolver and the CAR-15. There was still one under his right armpit. The little Detonics Combat Master .45 looked nothing like Michael’s smaller .44 Magnum Predator—but again, Rourke thought: To the untutored eye. v And a knife. He gambled Michael had likely had only the one knife visible—the big Gerber. Rourke unsheathed the black-handled Gerber Mkll and set it down beside his guns.
He stood. “There,” he shouted. “No weapons!”
He stepped back one step, then a second step, then a third. His palms sweated. There were boulder-sized rocks scattered all along the top of the mountain, and from behind one of these now stepped a man. He was clad in human skins, a woman’s head of hair dangling obscenely near his crotch. In his right hand was something Rourke considered at least slightly more mundane—a stone axe, the handle perhaps two feet long, a massive flat rock laced to it with what Rourke surmised would likely be human hair woven into rope. “Do you speak English?”