He was aware of movement beside him and he swung the muzzle of the Predator toward the sound.
But it was Madison, naked like he was, staring at the fire. He folded his right arm around her, drawing her close to him, her flesh against his flesh. “Michael —I love you,” she whispered. “Get dressed, we’re sitting up the rest of the night. At dawn, we get out of here.”
He looked down at her face. “Michael—“
“After we go to the Place, I want you to come back with me. To the Retreat. I want you to be with me. I guess that means I love you, too.” She buried her face against his chest, the fingers of her right hand knotting in the hairs there. “Yes, Michael.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘There—there is the Place.” Ill
There had been no more of the cannibals. Michael Rourke assumed the man he had killed at four o’clock that morning—a little over four hours ago—had pursued them for a blood feud. He would never know, he realized. Beside him, clad in the improvised skirt, his shirt and sweater, the sleeping bag no longer needed as a coat about her shoulders because of the radical change in temperature after the rising of the sun, Madison pointed down the defile and into a verdant valley and beyond, to the far side of it.
“That cave?” Michael asked her.
“It is the entrance—the main entrance. I have always heard that there are other ways in and out known only to the Families. But the Place is there.” “How do you get in?” he asked her.
She looked up at him, her blue eyes pinpoints of color as the sun washed her pale face. “Michael would be better to think how we will get out of the Place. They will want to take me and return me to Them to appease Them. And you are an outsider—they will see that you too are one who goes.” He took her left hand in his right, saying, “Don’t worry—I come from hardy stock,” and with Madison beside him, Michael Rourke started down the defile and into the valley—toward the Place___ The cave entrance was very close now, Michael not touching either hand to his firearms but ready. Suddenly, he asked Madison, “Why didn’t you make some comment on my guns? If you thought I was an archangel and my knife was a sword.” “I saw the guns once. That is why I know you must be the Archangel Michael. No one can have guns but the Families. There is a very large room full of guns. Once, I was assisting the Cunninghams, cleaning the quarters of one of the Families. And at the end of this corridor, there was a big roomand the doors were opened for just a minute. I looked up from my scrubbing through the doorway. I saw these things and one of the Cunninghams whispered to me what they were and that I should never mention them for any knowledge of guns was forbidden beyond the Ministers and the Families.” “Do they carry guns—the members of the Families, or the Ministers?”
“No—the electric stick.”
“Cattle prods, I read of them,” Michael noted half to himself. “They carry no guns?”
“No, I have never seen a gun beyond the confines of that room, and of course the guns that Michael himself uses. You are very skillful with these.” She smiled. He looked away from her. Staring down at the ground, they walked a moment. “My father is better.”
“The father you speak of—he is Our Heavenly Father?” Michael smiled, looking at her—smiled at her innocence. “No, he’s my father and my sister’s father.” m “But he must be very wise, and know all things.” “Possibly,” Michael told her. “When you come with me to the Retreat you’ll meet him. It’ll be time for the Awakening soon. I’ll miss it. But perhaps Annie will wait.”
“Annie—she is your sister.”
“Right. And my father’s name is John. My mother’s name is Sarah. And we have a good friend named Paul and another good friejid named Natalia. There were six of us. Now there’ll be seven.”
She touched at her abdomen as they stopped before the entrance to the cave.
“Perhaps more than that,” and she smiled.
Michael Rourke leaned down and kissed her lips quickly. Then he turned away and stared at the entrance to the Place. It was a cave, of natural rock, but had undergone much human engineering. It still bore scorch marks on the rock from the fires that had consumed all life—almost all, he corrected himself—five centuries ago.
He walked around behind her, then took her right hand in his left, the M-16 slung crossbody at his right side. He had packed the crossdraw holster for the Predator in his pack, the Predator concealed under his shirt behind his left hipbone. The A.G. Russell Sting IA was clipped inside his sock on the inside of his left calf.
By nature, he reflected, he was not a trusting soul. They entered the cave, the cave entrance broad and high, the walls narrowing as the cave penetrated the rock of the mountain itself. “I am frightened,” Madison whispered, but her voice was picked up by the walls, echoed, amplified, reverberating around them like a thousand loud whispers. He did not answer, still moving. He saw no entrance yet, no entrance into the mountain.
He stopped, leaning down to her, his lips touching at her right ear as he whispered, “Where’s the entrance?”
“I do not know—one is taken for sacrifice to Them blindfolded and the blindfold is removed when one is outside.”
“What do you do when you normally go outside?”
“We never venture out—because of Them.”
Michael Rourke rose to his full height. He was as tall as his father and had been since he was just shy of seventeen. He looked behind them— nothing. Ahead, there was nothing. His palms sweated and he loosed her hand for a moment to wipe his left palm against his blue-jeaned thigh. He took her hand again and started ahead, holding the pistol grip of the M-16 now in his bunched right fist, his thumb poised near the selector. If these people had guns but never used them, he rationalized, a modest display of firepower might avert any danger. They kept moving.
Nothing ahead. He looked back. Nothing behind.
PL
They kept moving, his fist tightening on theM-16, twenty-nine rounds in the magazine, one round already chambered.
“I am frightened,” she whispered again, and again the echoing, the thousand whispers, only more distorted now. The construction of the cave—how much was man-made he was uncertain —formed a natural whispering gallery, a natural security system for the slightest sound. Gradually, he had been becoming more aware v of their reverberating footfalls. If he did fire a burst from the M-16, aside from the potential for ricochet, there would be a deafening noise. He kept moving.
His mind raced, calculating the possibilities for a hidden entrance. There were shackles built into the side wall—to secure the sacrifices. He had read the books his father had read before constructing the main entrance to the Retreat. Was the doorway to this place opened by a system of weights and counterbalances? It would have to be, he reasoned, for otherwise, how could the structure be secured against unwanted entrance when the owners or users were all away. It was obvious to him, that what he was about to enter—however he was about to enter it—was a survival retreat, constructed before the Night of The War, But how had the people survived?
Then a thought chilled him. The constant level of population. It had to be as he had surmised— genocide, institutionalized genocide with victims who were willing to go. nft There were no large rocks visible, like there were outside the Retreat. Where was?… He heard the sound, wheeled toward it, shielding Madison behind him, swinging the M-16 forward taut against its black web sling, a panel opening out of the living rock, a human face, and then another and another, men, three of them, immaculately tailored three-piece business suits, but in bizarre contrast to this each of the men wore bedroom slippers. In their hands were swagger-stick-shaped objects, perhaps eighteen inches in length. The cattle prods, Michael surmised.
“All right—hold it. I’m coming as a friend. I don’t mean you any harm. You know what this is,” and he gestured with the assault rifle. “But the girl isn’t to be touched. You expelled her and she’s with me now.” He felt her hands against his shoulder blades.
One of the three men—a man on each side of him—smiled. “You are not from the Place. You are not from Them. Others live then.” “Others live.” Michael nodded, lowering the muzzle of the M-16 slightly. “My family, two of our friends. And there was an aircraft. I didn’t find the wreckage, but I found the pilot’s parachute. And the pilot was slaughtered by the ones you call Them. I didn’t have any chance to search through his things and find out where he came from. But there must be others alive as well, and somewhere technology has survived. The world can rebuild and grow and there’ll be no need for all of you to live here underground and—“ “Michael!” It began as a word and ended as a scream, Michael wheeling, the pressure of Madison’s hands against his back suddenly gone. Madison was being dragged toward the opposite wall by more of the men in immaculately tailored three-piece business suits and bedroom slippers, cattle prods held to her flesh as she screamed incomprehensibly.