“Oh, yes, they tell us everything that we need to know.” “Have you ever wondered if there’s maybe something you needed to know that they didn’t tell you?”
“But the Ministers know best for us.”
“You’re beautiful, Madison.”
She looked away. “You joke with me. I am not beautiful. Madame Elizabeth Cambridge is beautiful. Miss Genevieve Vandiver is beautiful. I am—“ “I said you’re beautiful. May I kiss you?’
She raised her eyes, looking at him, the fire making shadows there one instant, the shadows gone the next.
“But you are an archangel and I am only a Madison.”
“Then there shouldn’t be anything wrong if I kiss you,” Michael Rourke told her.
“I have never—I am not a breeder.”
“A breeder—a breeder?”
“Only some from the Madisons can breed and I was not selected.”
“To breed with whom—another Madison?”
“That is forbidden.”
“To breed with whom, then?”
“With one of the Ministers, or someone appointed by them from the Families.”
“And who do the male Madisons breed with?” nu
“After the first time—they may breed with any of the female breeders if the permission is given.”
Michael Rourke felt a tightness in his throat he had never felt. “Breed with me, then.”
Her eyes seemed suddenly so wide. “An archangel would not—“
“I told you, I’m not an archangel. I’m a man. And suddenly I want to breed with you very much. But we don’t call it breeding. Although I guess that’s what it is. I’ve never done it before either.”
“If it is not breeding, then how would one say it then?” He watched her face, her eyes—her lips. He touched his lips lightly to hers. She didn’t move away. “It’s called making love. And you’re the first woman I ever kissed besides my mother or my sister or some relative years ago I can’t remember.”
“Michael.” She whispered his name, saying nothing more. His hands moved, almost independent of thought, under the sleeping bag that was around her, her arms folding around his neck. He felt her breath against his skin, his face.
She touched her lips to his cheek.
His hands found the buttons of his shirt that she wore beneath his sweater. There were snaps and he pulled at the shirt front, the snaps opening with a succession of tiny clicking sounds.
His hands felt things incredibly warm—burning. He had never touched a woman’s
breasts— until now…
Chapter Twenty-Five
They camped at the site of what Rourke realized was his son’s first camp. Being more experienced, they had made better time than Michael had. But then, Rourke thought, lying beside the fire, listening absently as Natalia and Paul talked, they had not been searching for something fallen from the sky. They were searching for a man and a machine. Only that.
He felt something against his cheeks—Natalia’s hand—and he turned his eyes from the fire to stare at her, crouched, then dropping to her knees beside him, between his legs and the fire.
“Paul is going up into the rocks to keep watch. He said we don’t need to relieve him. He can’t sleep.”
“He’ll be like that for a few days—and then he’ll really crash but good.” Rourke smiled.
“He has left us alone.”
“Subtle, isn’t he?”
Natalia moved closer to him. “After we find Michael—then what?” Rourke chewed down on the cigar. His daughter was an admirable cigar maker. Did her thought-fulness make the taste all the better? he wondered. “You’ll have to try one of these cigars and let me know what you think.” “I haven’t had the urge—to smoke at least.”
“Filthy habit.” He smiled.
“I had five hundred years to break it. But some things never change, do they, John?” John Rourke folded his right arm around her shoulders, and she eased beside him, against him.
“I’m sorry,” he almost whispered.
She kissed him quickly on the mouth, and then she buried her head against his shoulder. In the darkness he couldn’t tell, but he thought that she cried.
Chapter Twenty-Six
He sat at the small table that he used as a desk, reading the report.
There—far from where he was—it was wasteland, like it was wasteland everywhere. Believing that they lived somewhere, that they lived somehow, had kept him alive. The substance whose chemical formula could not be reconstructed. He had stolen it in the last hours.
With a few of the others, he had used it.
He had survived.
They would have survived.
He felt this inside of him.
He stood up, throwing down the sheaf of papers that made the report, crossing from the smaller anteroom into his bedroom.
The girl was still tied to the bed, where he had left her tied.
There was little left of her.
She had been cleaned up—the bleeding stopped —and returned to him. If the garbled grunts and noises she had made had been speech, this was lost to her.
She whimpered only, like an animal whimpered. When there had been animals.
But there was still pleasure in her for him.
Watching her stirred him and he began to undress, seeing it in her eyes, the fear he had put there, fear like flowers blossoming amid the bruises of her face, amid the welts and cuts. “You serve a great purpose,” he told her. “There are women here, but I would not use them this way. But there is one woman. Perhaps after I find her, then perhaps after I do to her things I have never done even to you, perhaps then I will no longer care for this.” And he smiled. “But,” and he picked up the steel-cored rubber hose, watching the terror, hearing the insensate whimpers from her puffed and swollen lips, “until that time—“ and he brought the steel-cored hose down hard across her face, the head snapping hard right. There was no movement, and the eyes only stared. There was no sound.
He sighed long, loudly, then threw down the steel-cored rubber hose. He sat naked on the edge of the bed beside the dead female. He did what he had to do himself.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Her body moved beneath him—violently was the only word he could think of to describe it. Her thighs burned at his flesh. Her eyes were closed, and he could see the lids flutter in the firelight. It was remarkable, he thought, how somehow something he had never done before seemed so natural, so perfectly natural. His body trembled— hers trembled beneath him, his arms aching as he held himself over her, her hands against the bare flesh of his behind. He could feel her nails as they dug into him, her body moving more violently now than it had.
Suddenly, he felt as though he would explode— and a part of him did and he sagged against her, his lips touching at her breasts, his head resting beside hers, his breath coming hard to him, the girl’s body rising and falling hard against him, her lips moving, no words coming, then the words. “Michael. Michael. Michael.” Over and over, she said his name. Michael Rourke opened his eyes, very quickly. There was the sound of Madison breathing in the crook of his right arm, of the long night log crackling with fire. The sound of the wind, like a low whistle. But another sound in the darkness. He squinted to focus,studying the luminous black face of the Rolex Submariner. It was nearly four a.m.
The sound again, and Madison stirring beside him, curling her naked body against his in the sleeping bag. Again he saw the wisdom of his father—a smaller gun that could perhaps be fired easily from inside a sleeping bag would be useful now. He had no such gun.
The Predator was beside him.
His left fist closed around the Pachmayr-gripped butt. Five rounds loaded, an empty chamber under the hammer. With a Ruger of modern design, there was no need for this precaution, but it was still advisable for added safety. He lay perfectly still, waiting. Had it been before the holocaust, when the sky became flame, it could have been an animal. But there was no higher animal life. His left thumb poised over the Predator’s hammer.
Ready.
The sound of a twig breaking. Naked, Michael rolled from the sleeping bag, the hammer of the Predator jacking back, one of the cannibals, human skins layered over his body, a stone axe in both hands, was coming from beyond the fire. Michael twitched the Predator’s trigger, the cannibal’s body lurching with it, falling back into the flames, the human skins which covered the cannibal catching afire, the smell of human flesh burning on the wind, shrieks, more animal than human. Michael leveled the Predator, the hammer jacked back. He swallowed hard, pulling the trigger again, the sound like thunder, a tongue of bright orange flame licking from the muzzle, through the darkness. Naked, shivering, he stood, waiting.
There was no sound from the cannibal, the fire consuming the flesh. If any more of them were in the darkness beyond the firelight, they were not attacking.