air on his flesh. , “Come with me. Do not try to resist/’ one of the anonymous voices called from the darkness.
Michael Rourke had never liked orders, he reflected. His right hand—toward the voice in the dark-ness. His left hand—toward the blindfold which covered his eyes.
The right hand—it found flesh, twisting, rip-ping.
The left hand found cloth—twisting, ripping.
He blinked his eyes tight against the misty light—it was dawn, the sun rising beyond the mouth of the cave, shafts of yellow light like hands across the cave floor as he ripped the flesh of his enemy toward him, his left hand punching forward into the face of the business-suited guard as the man raised the cattle prod in his defense.
The nose—Michael shattered it. Wheeling, back-kicking, his heel found the groin, driving the body back and away from him, his right hand reaching down to find the cattle prod, the other five of them coming for him, closing, Madison, the blindfold pulled from her eyes, screaming,
“Look out, Michael!” Michael sidestepped right, ducking, wheeling— there had been a seventh man. He should have realized—the cattle prod hammered down toward him, but his right hand and left hand held the wooden prod and he rammed his prod back, into the abdomen of the seventh man, doubling him forward. Michael loosed the prod with his left hand, his right still holding the prod, snapping out in a wide arc, across the nose of the nearest of the five men coming for him, the man falling back.
Another prod slicing the air toward him, his right arm going up, blocking the prod with his prod, his body half wheeling left, his right foot snapping up and out, into the abdomen ol his opponent, then his right arm snapping back, hammering the prod across the man’s face, knocking him down. Three remained, two of them starting for him, their prods held like sabers, the ends of the tips glowing hot orange with the electrical pain they could cause. Michael started toward them, hacking the air before their faces with the prod, one of them falling back, Michael wheeling to the second, feigning a strike with the prod, the man dodging, Michael wheeling half right, a double Tae Kwon Do kick to the chest.
The second man—he was driving fast, the prod in both hands to block a blow from the hand or arm. Michael drew his feet together, jumping, upward, his right leg flashing outward, the flat of his combat-booted right foot impacting the prod at the center, the prod splintering, breaking, the man holding it falling backward, losing his balance, regaining it as Michael dropped, his knees springing, taking the fall, the prod still in his own right hand out, aimed toward the face of the man.
The man edged back, Michael thrusting the prod forward, Michael sweeping the, prod left to right, the man’s head bobbing back, Michael wheeling half right, a double Tae Kwon Do kick, the man dodging as Michael had known he would, Michael holding the prod in both hands now, ramming it outward in a straight line for the man’s Adam’s apple, a scream, the smell of burning flesh as the edge of the prod impacted skin, the man caving in, falling back— dead, Michael realized. The last men—he was going through the air lock—to lock them out, to leave them…
for Them. Sounds, guttural, barely human if human at all, from the mouth of the cave.
Michael looked back once, shouting to Madi-son. “Run—for me—hurry!” The ones she called Them were coming.
Michael’s right hand found the coat of the escaping guard, jerking back, the man lunging with his cattle prod, Michael’s prod fallen, Michael’s left hand snapping forward, the heel aimed for the base of the chin. The man ducked—
Michael’s hand impacting the base of the nose, breaking it, driving it up and through the ethmoid bone into the brain.
The air lock door was jammed half open, but the body sagged, Michael throwing his weight against the door—but it closed, a clicking sound as it locked. Michael turned. The mouth of the cave—dozens of the cannibals, their stone axes held high to strike.
Beside him—Madison hugged at his left arm.
Michael reached down to the cattle prod, holding it now in his right balled fist.
His left hand—he found the knife hidden on his left leg.
He clenched the steel in his left hand.
“Stay behind me—won’t let them get you.”
Trapped, the air lock door closed, the cannibals filling the mouth of the cave in greater numbers by the minute. Michael Rourke stood his ground.
“Michael—we—“
“Just stay behind me,” he told her. “Behind me.”
He could see the lust for blood in the eyes of the cannibals as they approached.
Chapter Forty-Two
The panel of rock had slid back into position-it was as if the door into the Place had never existed, Michael Rourke thought. He felt Madison’s hands behind him, touching gently at his neck where his shirt stopped. “Michael —kill me.”
It was the first, time she had used the word. “Make me die.” He looked at her—no longer did she think in terms of “goes”—and as he looked at her, he whispered, “If it comes to that, I won’t let them have you. I love you.” A tear, a solitary tear, left the corner of her right eye and started to journey across her cheek. Then her eyes were rimmed with them. Michael Rourke looked away.
The cannibals, the ones she called Them, the spawn, he realized, of the rigid population control inside the Place, were closing. One of them could have been her father—Madison’s—or her brother. He had seen no cannibal women, which meant there was somewhere a village.
Women, children—children who would grow to become this, he thought.
Survival.
There were some prices too high—the cannibals paid such a price, the ones in the Place paid it as well. Inhumanity had spawned inhumanity. He had left one of the bodies on the ground, the man still alive—for an instant. A stone axe cleaved into the skull. A dozen of the cannibals [ell on the body, snarling, growling, snapping their teeth at each other, dismembering the body, hacking it to pieces, Madison screaming, “Michael!” One of them had the man’s left leg over his shoulder, the leg dripping blood. Another of the cattle-prod-armed guards—this one already dead, his body fallen on by another group of the cannibals, torn, the flesh ripped, one of the cannibals biting into the raw flesh of a human thigh dismembered from the hip joint and from the calf.
The other bodies—Michael edged back with Madison pressed behind him as the other bodies were one after another set upon, torn, some of the cannibals lapping blood from their victims.
One of the cannibals—a human ear being chewed half outside the right corner of his mouth—turned from his meal, staring.
He gestured toward Michael, Michael watching.
There was a grunting sound—another of the cannibals turned, blood dripping from both corners of his mouth.
More of the cannibals turned toward them now, some of their axes catching in the sunlight as it grew to till the cave, red glistening from them, the wetness of human blood.
A cannibal started for him—slowly, his axe raised. As the cannibal lunged, Michael stabbed the cattle prod forward, the hot end impacting the cannibal’s right eye. There was a scream, more hideous sounding then anythingMichael had ever heard and the cannibal fell back, whimpering.
A memory, he wondered, of the pain of the
AQ
electric sticks?
Michael brandished the prod, ready, waiting— waiting for what he knew was inevitable.
Three cannibals now—the first one crawling off, holding his hand to his eye—three now came toward Michael. Their axes were raised high. A sound—deafening, like rolls of thunder, then a woman’s voice. “Hold it—or we will kill you all!”
The sound of a submachine gun—he remem-bered it from his childhood. A man’s voice—not his father’s. “She means it—so do I.” The cannibals turned one by one, slowly, parting slightly, in two waves, a corridor forming from the rear of the cave, where Michael stood ready to defend Madison, to the mouth of the cave.
Backlit, a shadow because of the sunlight behind him, Michael recognized the man at the center of the mouth
