“I know.”
“Let’s see what you can do with the short one.”
“All right.”
Michael set down the Stalker, taking the shorter barreled gun from the wooden table they had built together of rough hewn pine logs brought up from the valley below. Michael picked up the Predator. It was largely the same gun, a stainless Ruger Super Blackhawk reworked by Magnum Sales, but this without a scope, the barrel only four and five-eighths inches long.
Michael held the revolver in both hands. John Rourke called to him, “When I sleep again— practice firing that smaller one you’ve got now, « practice firing it faster at closer ranges. Teach yourself to reload it on the run as you fire.”
“I understand what you mean, but not how to do it,” Michael called back, his voice deeper than it had been as a child. But not as deep as it would be, Rourke thought.
“You take your shot down range—like you planned—then I’ll empty it and show you what I mean,” and Rourke brought the shooter’s ear-muffs up again, watching as Michael did the same.
Rourke watched through the binoculars again —another pine cone, this fifty yards away. It was a good-sized pine cone, John Rourke reminded himself as Michael’s Predator discharged, the pine cone disintegrating. Rourke looked at his son—proud, no prouder than when the boy had first attacked geometry and taken quickly to it, but just as proud. Rourke walked toward his son, leaving the earmuffs up.
Michael handed him the Predator.
“Four shots?”
“Never load more than five in a single action, even if it is a Ruger,” Michael nodded.
Rourke smiled. Twenty-five feet away, more or less, was a pine tree that had been struck by lightning—natural lightning. It had happened only six months earlier.
Rourke picked up five rounds of the Federal 240-grain .44 Mags, his right thumb working open the Ruger’s loading gate, closing it, opening it, closing. “With an original Colt, I knew a man who kept the loading gate open, reloading just as fast as he fired. You can’t do that with one of these. So you improvise.” “Show me,” Michael said, his even white teeth showing as his wide mouth opened in a smile.
“I was planning to,” Rourke laughed. “That struck tree—that’s a man shooting at you. This table is cover. You’ve gotta nail him as you run toward the table, reloading as fast as you can. Then because there’s somebody coming right up your back, you’ve gotta pass that guy and finish him. So you run from behind cover and empty the next five into him—if it takes that many. This time it will.” “All right.”
“Get back over there.” Rourke gestured toa rock some distance beyond the table and out of range of any possible missed shot. “And keep your muffs up—shooting’s hard enough on your ears in combat, no sense damaging your ears during practice.”
“All right.”
Rourke took the Predator and the five spare rounds of ammo and strode back perhaps twenty-five feet beyond the table at an angle. He shouted to Michael, “Gimme a yell when you want me to start—and keep in mind I’m not very good with a single action and I don’t shoot .44 very often.” “Excuses, excuses—now!”
Michael had caught him flat-footed—but Rourke broke into a run, the Predator in his right fist, the loose ammo in his left, his right thumb jerking back the hammer, the right index finger ‘triggering the shot, the Magnum Sales Custom Ruger bucking in his right hand at the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger, bucking again and again and again as he crossed the distance to the table, the lightning-struck pine shuddering with the impacts, starting to crack near the base, Rourke skidding down behind the table, the loading gate already flicked open. His left thumb worked the full length ejector rod, the loose rounds in the left palm, his left hand’s last two fingers holding the Ruger, as the rod reached maximum extension and the empty punched out, his right plucking a loaded round from the palm of his left, inserting it, then repeating the process, the Ruger loaded, the loading gate closed, Rourke up, running, emptying four of the five rounds into the tree trunk target—the tree split, falling. Rourke stopped running.
Michael was shouting, “That’s pretty good, Dad-“
Rourke wheeled, firing the fifth and last round into the remaining stump of the tree, the distance fifteen feet, the stump cracking, a chunk of pine wood perhaps two inches in diameter sailing skyward. Rourke pulled off his shooter’s earmuffs; Michael, approaching, did the same. Rourke, his voice almost a whisper, said, “I like a .45 better, or a double action. But if you’re wedded to these, maybe that’s more important. They’re good guns.”
Annie—nearly twelve, shouted from the entrance to the Retreat. “I cracked open the last jar of peanut butter—anybody want a -cornbread and peanut butter sandwich?”
Rourke looked at Michael—Michael looked at him.
Annie was turning into a good cook for a girl of her years. “Come on—peanut butter sandwiches with fresh strawberries and tomatoes and a green pea and asparagus salad. Come on!”
A fine cook, if somewhat bizarre.
Chapter Six
Rourke sipped at a glass of the corn whiskey. The first batch had been too strong, but this was palatable enough. He still had a more than ample supply of civilized Seagram’s Seven but almost three years ago had started the still. Michael was planning to produce beer eventually. Rourke had never worshipped beer that terribly much, but if he were nearly fourteen, he supposed that he might— in anticipation.
They sat in the kitchen, Annie talking. “I wish we could find some surviving dairy animals— anything. Even a goat. I’ve got some great recipes for cheese, for yogurt, and you’ve got the starters I need. Remember that yogurt I tried with the dehydrated milk?” “It was good, sweetheart,” Rourke told his daughter. She reminded him of her mother, except for the hair color. She had not cut her hair either, not since the Awakening. He mentally corrected himself—occasionally she trimmed “split ends,” as she called them. He imagined she had picked up the term from a book or from a videotape. But her hair, when it was unbound as it was now, reached past her waist, still the same dark honey blond color it had always been. She was becoming a woman—but he would miss the little girl she so rarely was nowadays. He had told her what to expect—when she actually became a woman. For there would be no woman there, no adult.
He had explained to both children what they would feel in their bodies, and explained to both of them the obvious limitations their environment would impose.
But he had planned for that as well…
They sat in the great room, Rourke on the couch, Michael on the reclining chair, but the chair not reclined, the back up straight. Annie sat cross-legged, Indian fashion, on the floor. Behind them—Rourke suddenly noticing it—was the soft hum of the cryogenic chambers. “We six are the future—it’s important that all six of us survive to make that future. I haven’t really taught you anything, either of you, except the means to improve your skills, to acquire real knowledge. Sixteen years will pass after tonight before I see either of you again, yet daily each of you will see me, see your mother—she is unchanging. SeePau] and Natalia. I’m not leaving you—either of you— an easy task. Not at all. If something comes up for which I wasn’t able to prepare you, you’ll have to solve it. If it cannot be solved, then awaken me from the sleep and hope that I can solve it. If either of you is so seriously injured that the medical techniques I’ve taught you and the reference material available cannot alleviate the situation, then awaken me from the sleep. If there is a problem with the/ Retreat systems which you cannot solve, th£n awaken me. At even the slightest intimafion that the cryogenic systems are failing or thepower is failing, awaken the four of us instantly. Instantly.”
He looked at Annie. “I want you to pursue your interest in things creative—creativity is vital to survival, mentally as well as physically. Don’t redecorate the Retreat—I kind of !ike it the way it is. But exercise your mind, practice the fighting techniques I’ve taught you—but don’t break your brother in half.”
“Dad,” Michael laughed.
Annie only smiled.
“Move up from those .38s out of my Python— start into .357 Magnums. Don’t get hooked on single action revolvers like your brother.” “I like that Detonics Scoremaster you let me try once—it’s pretty and it’s accurate.”
“Fine—but wait a few years before you get into
it, and the gun is yours.”
“All right.” She smiled, the corners of her mouth dimpling. He looked at Michael. “I’m not sounding chauvinistic—at least I hope not. But you’re two years older, and you’re a man. Fourteen is a rough age to start being a man, but you started when you were younger than that and saved your mother’s life with those Brigands, helped your mother and Annie out of that swollen lake when the dam burst. You’ve got an ego I haven’t seen the like of since my own. That can be a positive feature if you can control it. A negative feature if you can’t. But you’ll be in charge. I think Annie accepts that,” and Rourke looked at his daughter. She smiled, laughing a little, but nodded. He looked back to Michael. “If I didn’t think you could handle it, I wouldn’t say you were in charge. You’re the one responsible for yourself, your sister and, while we sleep, for the four of us. And when you work with that smokeless powder you’re experimenting with, don’t blow yourself up.” He looked at his son and laughed. Michael stood up, stabbing his hands into the side pockets of his Levi’s, the cuffs turned up because they were Levi’s Rourke had put in the Retreat to wear for himself and Michael was not yet his height. “I won’t let Annie down—I won’t let you, or Mom, or Paul or Natalia down. I don’t know how smooth it’s gonna go for the next sixteen years, but it’ll be all right.” John Rourke stood, Michael Rourke walking toward him. John Rourke outstretched his right hand to his son. His son took it. Annie stood up, embracing them both. In a few hours, John Rourke would sleep again.