Michael sat fully erect. f
“Hi, son.”
Michael looked at him oddly. And then it looked like Michael was starting to laugh.
Chapter Four
Oddly, the children had seemed tirecl after only a few hours of wakefulness—but a rapid yet com-plete examination had revealed no unexpected physical conditions, no illness. They were simply children—something which Rourke had con-sciously reminded himself to remember—and been exhausted by the excitement. After eight hours of sleep, a surprisingly large breakfast and endless questions about the cryo-genic process, Rourke stood with them before the open outer door of the Retreat. It was their first sight of the New World. “It looks like a desert,” Annie observed. “But it’s kinda pretty, isn’t it, Daddy?”
“Yes—kind of pretty,” Rourke answered, smok-ing his first cigar of the day.
“Kind of.”
“Is everything dead out there?” Michael asked suddenly, his shoulders hunched in the too large blue denim jacket Rourke had loaned him. Rourke didn’t answer for a moment.
Annie repeated Michael’s question. “Is it all dead out there?” “I thought that it would be—and in a way it is. But I was awake for a week before I awakened you, Annie, or you, Michael. And I did a lot of thinking.” He started through the outer doorway —the rocks were still in place as they should be, the rocks which he used as the counterbalances for opening the door of the Retreat. He perched on a rock near them, Annie squirming up onto his lap, Michael leaningon his shoulderat his left. Rourke carried his Detonics pistols only. “There might have been other nations which foresaw what could happen and prepared, maybe other groups. There wefe a lot of Survivalists in the days before the Night of The War. If an elaborate enough Retreat could have been built, one that was self- sustaining —well, maybe we aren’t alone.” And he smiled, hugging Annie tighter on his lap, holding Michael close, too. “But we’re alone here—as far as the eye can see, even with binoculars.” He pointed toward the top of the mountain. “From way up there, I can see vegetation—plants, you know. But no signs of fish in the streams, animal life—or people. No campf ires, no smokestacks, no vehicles —like the land around us was wiped clean like a chalkboard and no one has written on it yet. And that’s what I want to talk to you both about.” The air temperature was chill, but Rourke felt a warmth in him he rarely felt as he held his children. “The Eden Project—“ “The spaceships,” Annie supplied.
“Space Shuttles,” Michael corrected, seemingly automatically. “Shuttles, ships—but the Eden Project. They should return in about twenty-one years if the data was correct. But what if the Eden Project never returned, and what if we were the only people on Earth?”
“I wouldn’t have anybody to play with,” Annie said softly. Rourke smiled, holding her. “More important that that—and I know playing is important—but more important than that even: survival, not just of ourselves, but the human race. The three of us here, and your mother, and Uncle Paul and Natalia—only six people. I thought a long time about this. Ourchancesofrcbmlding, of makinga new world—the only way is for all six of us to be adults at the same time, for all six of usto be as close in age as possible. And so I have a plan. You’d both have to be very brave and be very smart.”
“What is it that you want us to do, Daddy?”
He looked at his son’s lean face, the brown eyes, the full shock of dark brown hair—it was as il somehow he were studying his own reflection in a mirror, but the light bunging him the reflection had taken a quarter century to return from the mirror to his eyes. “For the next five years, I’m going to teach both of you everything, some things you probably shouldn’t know until you are much older.
We’re going to work very hard—“
“Will we have a chance to play, Daddy?” Annie smiled, “Yes—there’ll be time for that, too.”
“Why five years?” Michael asked him.
“Because, son, in live years you’ll be nearly fourteen biologically,” and he looked at Annie on his lap, her dark honey blond hair caught up in the breeze, her brown eyes sparkling. “And you, young lady—you’ll be nearly twelve. That’s awfully young for both of you—“ “Fourteen is pretty old,” Michael insisted.
Rourke let himself smile. “It’s going to have to be. Because in five years, if everything goes as I plan, I’m taking the cryogenic sleep again. For sixteen years. And when you are thirty, Michael— and Annie, you’ll be twenty-eight. Then all the chambers will open, your mother’s, Paul’s, Nata-lia’s—and mine again.” He looked at his son. “You’ll be about two years older than Natalia, Michael.”
He looked at Annie. “And you’ll be just a little younger than Paul Rubenstein. And Mommy and Daddy won’t be that much older than either of you. Then there’ll be six of us—and we can build the world again if we have to.” They didn’t understand, Rourke thought. His children didn’t understand.
But in Michael’s eyes, he saw something. Rourke knew that he would. “Our first lesson in survival and in growing up begins today. So run—don’t run far, but run and play-“ Annie kissed him on the lips and slipped off his lap, running after Michael. Rourke watched as they played tag down the mountain road from the entrance of the Retreat. “Play,” John Rourke whispered.
“While you can.” He inhaled on his cigar but it had gone dead. He lit it again in the blue-yellow flame of his Zippo.
Chapter Five
The most important task at the beginning had been teaching Annie to do more than just pretend to read. And she had learned quickly. And he had immediately begun each child in the ways of self-preservation. Michael had been taught the rudi-ments of marskmanship before the Night of The War. And from what Sarah had told him, Michael had learned these rudiments well. He found himself—John Rourke—sometimes watching Mi-chael in those first days.Nine yearsoldand the boy had already killed. But it seemed not to affect him. The subject matter to be taught and mastered had been overwhelming, Rourke had realized from the start. Electronics, plumbing, electrical work, motorcycle maintenance—all these to pre-serve the Retreat and what it housed. Cooking, from the use of the stove and the microwave oven to how to build a fire in the wild. Wood was scarce and the search for it had taken Rourke away from the children with the pickup truck to far beyond the base of the mountain. No life—but trees to cut down. Eventually, as the years passed, he had taught Michael to handle the full-sized McCuIloch Pro-Mac 610. Rourke’s palms had sweated, his stomach churning, letting an eleven-year-old boy handle a chain saw. Both children he had taught the rudiments of sewing—putting back buttons and mending ripped seams and holes in Levi’s. Annie had quickly gotten into the books Rourke had put up for Sarah and by the time she had reached age ten spent much of her leisure time doing needlepoint as she listened to recordings, watched videotapes, and questioned her father.
Marksmanship training for both of them pro-gressed, Annie utilizing the CAR-15 because of the shorter buttstock length, Michael managing one of the Ml 6s. Target practice in the early years was confined to the .223 because Rourke had such an abundance of ammo for this caliber as well as a large number of M-16s and replacement parts, all of this from the United States Air Force base on the New West Coast, part of the supplies he and Rubenstein and Natalia had brought back with them. Occasional handgun marksmanship was practiced, utilizing miscellaneous .38 Special ammunition fired through Rourke’s Metalifed Colt Python.
It was not until Michael reached age twelve that Rourke in earnest began teaching him the use of the .45.
The training gun was the blue Detonics .45 Rourke had taken from the Soviet agent who had worked with Randan Soames near the early site of of;
U .S. II headquarters. Michael had quickly taken to it. Annie’s marksmanship with Rourke’s CAR-15 reached such a level that after a time he began joking with her that Annie’s real last name should be Oakley rather than Rourke. The martial arts. Childrens’ bodies are supple, strong, flexible—they learned quickly and well, Rourke teaching them the basics of Tae Kwon Doe and letting them progress into other variations. It was not until Michael was thirteen and Annie eleven that Rourke began teaching the children what to do in order to kill with their hands.
He paralleled their instruction, which at times meant holding Michael back, at times pushing Annie forward. But teaching both children simul-taneously was the only way for him.
The children studied history. Having lived through its most important epoch, its most pivotal period, they seemed naturally drawn to the discipline. Questions—why had U.S. and Soviet relations fallen to the point where the Night of The War had been the only alternative?
It was then that Rourke showed them some-thing he had begun shortly after the Awakening-it was then that
