He threw the knife—gently, again—this time the knife bouncing against the doorknob, sparks of electricity sputtering into the air. Michael Rourke stepped back.
After a long moment, he picked up his knife. Quickly, he resheathed it, concealing it, then dropped to the floor. He began to unlace his right combat boot. His father had told him the story of the last seconds before fire had engulfed the planet, of the climb to the top of the mountain which held the Retreat, of using the double magazine pouch like a heavy leather glove to insulate his hand. The boot off now, Michael placed his right hand inside it, flexing the leather so he could grip with it.
He thought suddenly of Madison. If they had killed her, he would kill them—it was very simple, very logical. He remembered, as they had lain together after discovering each other, she had asked him what the white flakes which fell from the sky had been and he had explained the crys-talline structures which when examined were never at all like any other. He had explained that some had theorized that perhaps as they fell, the flakes may indeed have fallen into certain patterns and that the infinite variety came about from the constant melting and refreezing they underwent as they passed through different temperature layers, or fell upon the warm ground to partially melt and then refreeze. She had stopped him, laughing, telling him that she thought they made his hair and his eyebrows look pretty. What did one call them, she had asked. Snow, he had told her. And she had repeated the word several times.
He approached the doorknob—he’d free her somehow, he told himself.
But as he reached for the doorknob, the knob sparked, then turned.
Michael Rourke drew back, ready to go for his gun. One of the men in a three-piece business suit stepped into the doorway from the corridor which Michael could partially see beyond him.
“You are to come with us. The Ministers wish to see you. We can use the electric sticks again if you resist.”
Smiling, he dropped to the floor. “Just let me get my boot on, guys.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
They had traveled for most of the night, gotten six hours of rest and then moved on before daylight. More of the shortcuts through the mountains and John Rourke estimated they had saved perhaps as much as two days of travel time compared to Michael’s route. He was exploring. They were searching, a more single-minded pursuit, Rourke had told Paul Rubenstein.
Natalia beside him now, Paul on foot moving through the woods beyond the clearing, looking for signs, John Rourke stood, staring at the remains of a fire. It was not one of Michael’s fires. Littered around the clearing, most prominently near, the fire, were human bones.
Natalia, her voice low, whisperlike, said, “Can-nibals.” “Michael parked his bike and moved through the clearing on foot—he went right to them.”
“Human beings, John—he was looking for more of his own kind. That’s why he left the Retreat. But there was no sign of him returning to the bike.” “He headed after them/’ Rourke added som-berly.
He looked at her, Natalia’s eyes looking into his. “What would you have done?” He laughed a little. “Gone after them—just like Michael—under the circumstances.”
“You told me you taught him to be very good with a gun. And Annie—she said he practiced regularly.”
“Yeah, but all he took with him was one assault rifle and those two single-actions he liked. And two knives. That means, in a firefight, just one viable weapon. Those handguns are super for what they were built for—hunting, backup in the game fields, silhouette shooting. Not for combat. And anyway, he’s on his own.”
“They’ve been on their own for fifteen years. Annie told us Michael would leave the Retreat sometimes to go off exploring.”
“Never this long. And anyway—he’s not just some guy. He’s my son. I’m worried. Cannibals,” and he dropped into a crouch beside an almost neatly stacked pile of human ribs, the bones spotless.
“John—oh, shit—John!”
Rourke was up, running, Natalia ahead of him, both of the Metalife Custom L-Frames which bore the American Eagle symbols on the barrel flats coming into her hands, Rourke snatching the Python from the full flap holster at his hip. He slowed his run, Natalia stopped already beside Paul Rubenstein, Paul’s hands shaking, the sling for the MP-40 subgun rattling. Rourke walked over to stand between them. In the bushes was a human head, the smell of the rotting tissue strong. The eyebrows were reddish tinged; the scalp and the skin above the middle of the forehead had been peeled away. “Cannibals?”
Rourke looked at Rubenstein. “Yeah,” he almost whispered.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Michael Rourke glanced at his Rolex—the date had changed, ever closer to Christmas and the time set for the Awakening. He had been imconscious from the electrical shocks overnight. They—the three men in the business suits—had let him stop in a bathroom. He had urinated and defecated, and washed his face and hands, noticing the stubble on his cheeks as he studied his face momentarily in the mirror. He looked identical to the sleeping visage of his father in the cryogenic chamber.
His three business-suited guards with their high-powered cattle prods walked with him as he moved down the corridor now, a large, double-doored room at one end. Was it the armory Madison had spoken of? he wondered. He made a mental note to investigate it.
The corridor made a left bend and at the far end where the corridor stopped there were two ornate wooden doors, like something one might expect forming the doorway of a conference room.
“You will go inside and await the Ministers,” the one who had spoken earlier told him, opening the right hand door. Michael noticed the door handle. It looked to be made of gold and ornately figured. “What about you guys?” Michael asked.
“The Ministers will see you.” The man held open the door. Michael walked through. The room was lit with conventional-looking ceiling fixtures, but bulbs rather than the fluorescent tubes which would have been more in keeping with the room, he thought.
A long, expensive-looking conference table dominated the center of the room, space to sit perhaps two dozen people: mentally, subcon-sciously, he began counting the chairs—twenty-eight, one larger chair at each end. At the far end, before the larger of the two largest chairs, were two candles, but neither candle was lit. He was alone in the room as far as he could ascertain. He looked to the walls on each side of the room, and then to the wall on the far side of the room. Murals, crudely painted, very stylized, at once modern, primitive and yet almost juvenile, filled the walls. His mouth was suddenly dry. It was the Night of The War, cities burning, missiles raining down from the skies. He had seen none of this where they had taken shelter that night in the barn opposite their house. But he had heard the stories around the campfires of the Resistance, remem-bered the stories his father had told of overflying the cities that night as they were systematically turned to ashes. Both flanking walls depicted this horror and he looked away from it, to a horror that had been worse, one he had seen, did remember, could never forget. It was the last sunrise, the holocaust, the end of the world, the sky aflame, lightning bolts crackling through the skies, ball lightning rolling across the ground, bodies on fire—death.
“These have meaning to you, young man?”
He turned around. The conference room doors closed. There were seven men, all in immaculately tailored business suits and red fabric bedroom slippers, their ages varying from younger than his own to what he judged might be late seventies. The same voice—the oldest one of them was slightly bent, balding to the point where a wispy fringe of white crowned the sides of his head, the light from the overhead bulbs gleaming dully off his head. “You remember this from stories?” “I saw this—with my own eyes—the holocaust, when the skies caught fire.”
“Heresy,” one of the others murmured.
“But I—I am very old, and I saw none of this.”
“It’s a long story—but we utilized a special scientific process, for cryogenic sleep.”
“What is this cryo—this—“
“Cryogenic sleep.”
“We?”
“My father and mother, my sister, our two friends. The six of us. We’d thought we were the only people left alive.”
“You wear shoes of leather, boy.”
Michael Rourke looked at his feet, and then at their own. “They were made five centuries ago but well-cared
