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?”
Rourke called out.
The cannibal’s face seamed with something half between a smile and a snarl, his body bending slightly forward as his left hand joined his right on the axe. From behind another rock, another of the cannibals, then from behind still another rock still a third, the second two armed like the first, each with a massive stone axe. Rourke owned one, a Cherokee Indian stone axe. But he had never fought with it—as these men, barely men, seemed intent to do. The first one—with the woman’s hair near his crotch—started forward in a loping, crouching walk. Rourke didn’t move away. “I didn’t come to kill you—probably. I want my son. He looks like me— just like me.”
The first cannibal was coming closer, the other two hanging back slightly. Rourke swallowed hard—the reason for the man’s loping walk, he realized, was a bullet wound, the left side of the man’s body sagging, leaves plastered over the left shoulder, dried blood there as well. The wind shifted, and Rourke could smell it—the wound was suppurating. “I’m a healer—for information on my son, I’ll heal your wound.”
The cannibal kept coming, raising the stone axe now to swing. The only other person alive—possibly—who could have shot the man would have been Michael. For that reason, as the cannibal moved toward him now, Rourke would not reach for the second Detonics pistol, or the Black Chrome Sting IA. The axe started the downstroke, Rourke side-stepping quickly, wheeling half right, his left leg snapping up and out, a double Tae Kwon Do kick to the left side of the cannibal’s head, the cannibal staggering, not falling. The other two were coming now, screaming something so guttural Rourke couldn’t even be certain the screams were not words, threats, the second cannibal closing. Rourke wheeled again, sidestepping as the stone axe cleaved the air where his head had been, a high sweeping forward kick with his right leg, then wheeling, the same high sweeping kick again, but this time the left leg, this time connecting against the jaw of the second cannibal, the axe flying from his hands. Rourke stepped in, the heel of his left hand hammering up and out, impacting the base of the cannibal’s jaw, his right hand punching forward, the middle knuckles finding the solar plexus—the human skin the cannibal wore over his own was cold, damp to the touch.
The cannibal sagged back, Rourke’s left knee smashing up, hammering into the testicles, but Rourke feeling no squish as the cannibal doubled forward, Rourke sidestepping to avoid the canni-bal’s breath. The body fell. Rourke wheeled, the third cannibal charging, the first man up as well, grabbing his stone axe.
Rourke spun one hundred eighty degrees left, back-kicking the cannibal once, then again in the chest, as Rourke’s right foot settled back to the ground. Rourke’s right fist backhanded the man across the center of the face, the nose shattering, blood spraying on the wind, Rourke wheeling right one hundred eighty degrees, a left hook to the cannibal’s jaw, then backhanding the cannibal across the face again on the backswing.
The third cannibal was too close. Rourke threw himself down to the rock surface, rolling against the cannibal’s shins, the axe flying, the man’s body sailing over him.
Rourke rolled onto his back, both legs coming up, snapping outward and down, Rourke up, to his feet, the second cannibal coming again. Rourke’s right fist snapped outward into the center of the face once, then again, then still again, the cannibal sagging, falling.
Rourke wheeled left, the third cannibal on his feet again, coming, the axe in a giant swing laterally, Rourke wheeling, sidestepping. Rourke reached down to the rock surface, snatching up one of the fallen stone axes—the stones were wound to the wooden shaft with what Rourke recognized as dried and cured human intestines.
Rourke swung the axe upward, blocking the lateral thrust of the cannibal’s axe, Rourke’s right foot snapping forward and up, into the jaw of the cannibal, Rourke backstepping. The axe heads locked, dragging the man forward and down as teeth spit from the cannibal’s cracked and bleeding lips. The cannibal rolled forward, Rourke side- stepping, half wheeling right, Rourke’s left foot snaking out, a fast double kick to the side of the head—he might be killing the man, Rourke realized. The man still moved, another double kick and there was no movement.
The sound of feet against stone, Rourke wheel-ing. The first man, the one who bore the gunshot wound, he was coming, charging, blood covering his face and chest, the axe high over his head.
There was no choice—Rourke swung the axe in his own hands, cleaving the stone head into the right chest cavity of the charging cannibal. The cannibal’s body rocked with it, the cannibal recovering, swinging the axe in a horizontal chop. Rouike blocked it with his own borrowed axe, pulling his opponent off balance. The cannibal swung the axe again, Rourke dodging back, dodging again on the backswing, Rourke’s own axe coming up, powering down, impacting the crown of the skull, a crunching, splitting sound, blood spraying in a pink cloud, then gray—the gray of human brain. The cannibal’s body fell backward, impacting the stone, bouncing, blood spraying upward again, the body rocking, the arms sagging, spread-eagling, still.
The second cannibal, moving quickly now, reaching out for Rourke’s rifle. Rourke didn’t know if the man could use it. He couldn’t gamble. Rourke leaned out on his left leg, taking a half step as he wheeled ninety degrees left, his right leg fully extended forward, his hands and arms bringing the axe down diagonally, impacting the left side of
