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
