Chapter Fourteen
Annie Rourke sat up in bed—she was cold.
It was a curious effect of the cryogenic sleep— she and Michael had discussed it. But dreaming, which was so continual, so vivid during “the sleep,” seemed somehow to be all but impossible once “the sleep” had been endured. She had consciously dreamed twice since the awakening of herself and Michael. Once on the night her father had returned to the sleep. And this was the second time. She was aware of the fact that dreaming was frequently subconscious, that one didn’t remember the dream or remember having had it. But this was a dream of which she was aware.
Perhaps it was the closeness with Michael, of knowing no other human being for sixteen years—but she could feel inside her that the dream was somehow more than a dream.
She pushed back the covers, standing up, her nightgown falling down around her ankles, not bothering with a robe until she found her slippers in the dark. She found them, then feit in the darkness at the bottom of the bed, finding the robe, pulling it on, belting it around her waist. She shivered still. She turned on the light beside the bed, its yellow glow bathing the room that her father had built for her in diffused light. She went to the closet—from a hanger she took the heavy knitted double triangle of shawl, throwing it around her shoulders, huddling in it. She turned off the light, sitting on the edge of the bed in the total darkness, still cold.
Michael. She could not remember the dream. But Michael had been in great danger.
She shivered.
She stood up, walking in total confidence in total darkness across her room. Just outside the door was one of the switches for the lights which illuminated the Great Room.
She hit the switch.
She walked down the three steps from her room toward the four operating cryogenic chambers.
It was nearly Christmas anyway.
First her father, then her mother, then Natalia, then—she studied the face as she activated the switch. “I’ll finally know you.” Paul Rubenstein. It would be several minutes before they began to awaken—running, she took the three steps to her room. She wanted to change into something pretty. She threw the shawl down onto the bed and began to rummage through her closet.
Chapter Fifteen
He had run into it, not slowing, the snow covering the ground in spots now, the cold wind blowing the snow like tiny icy needles against his skin, the fire at the center of the clearing flickering, the flames licking skyward into the cold darkness, the screaming again. A woman—a human woman. She screamed once more and was silent, the instrument in the hands of the cannibal dripping crimson with blood in the firelight as her executioner turned. The woman’s guts spilled to the ground.
Michael Rourke raised the Stalker in both fists, shouting, “Freeze!” The cannibal raced toward him, shouting something barely intelligible—but it sounded like “Meat!”
Michael Rourke thumbed back the hammer. He had taken human life, but it had been centuries ago. “So help me—freeze!”
The cannibal kept coming. There were others— at least two dozen. In the flickering of the bonfire—the smell of human flesh in the smoke as the wind died for an instant—there were bodies tied to trees. An arm was missing from one of them, and a man—was it a man really—at the fireside held the thing—the arm—to his teeth. There was a human form dead on the ground. But it wasn’t dead. It was moving and there was a scream—the skin was being peeled away from the flesh with ^ wedge of rock.
Michael Rourke pulled the trigger, the 240-grain lead hollow point making a tongue of orange flame in the gray-black nightas theStalker rocked in his fists. The center of the cannibal’s face collapsed, blood and brain matter spraying in a cloud on the air, the fire hissing and steaming with it. A scream, almost inhuman, and then the shrieked word, “Help!” Michael Rourke wheeled right, a woman there. She had shouted in English. Naked, tied to a tree, one of the cannibals falling upon her, his teeth catching the glint of firelight, yellow, saliva dripping from his mouth as he started to bite at her right breast and she screamed again. Michael jacked back the Stalker’s hammer, firing, the big customized Ruger rocking again in his hands, the cannibal’s body jerking away from the woman as if caught in some irresistible wind. Michael felt it on the hairs at the back of his neck— grateful Annie hadn’t cut his hair. He wheeled, backstepping. The Stalker not raised to his line of sight yet, he jerked the trigger, a cannibal with a stone axe less than six feet trom him, the axe making the downswing, Michael feeling the rush of air as the scoped .44 Magnum rocked in his fists. The cannibal’s body jackknifed, feet off the ground, the body rolling back in midair, falling. Michael slipped the Stalker’s sling over his head and his right arm through it, letting the pistol fall to his side, grabbing the smaller, more manueverable Predator in his right fist, firing as another of the cannibals charged at him.
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 rucksack. 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, firing, 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 stomach. 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