by Jerry Ahern
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 bünging 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 the children had realized why at night he had sat alone in a far corner of the Great Room, music low on the air, a typewritergoing.lt was a memoir of events leading to the Night of The War, and events afterward. It was not finished and Rourke had confided to his son and daughter that he felt it never would be—there was always more to add. Shakespeare, Cervante
s, Ovid in the original Latin—it was good mental discipline, he had told them.
The sculpture of Michelangelo, the music of Beethoven and Liszt, the philosophy of Aquinas, Sartre, Rand. He realized early on that he was merely introducing the children to things they would have to learn without him. The fertile soil outside the Retreat yielded corn, potatoes, asparagus, tomatoes, peas. The winters were hard and long and cold and the growing seasons short, but in these times, as in all other times they shared, they shared the work together. John Rourke discovered that he not only had children, he had friends.
They would talk long into the evening— literature, philosophy, music, science, the arts.
Medicine. By the time the last year had begun, both Michael and Annie had learned first aid to the point where either would have been qualified to assume the duties of a paramedic. He had placed medical and dental knowledge above all else but self-defense, for without their health, in this hospitable yet forbidding world, they would perish.
Michael, at nearly fourteen, had begun to seriously assault Rourke’s limited—but not too limited—-supply of .44 Remington Magnum am-munition. The boy had become enamored of one particular pair of guns. John Rourke had never favored single action revolvers. Michael Rourke favored them.
At the range area beyond the entrance to the Retreat, Rourke stood, watching his son.
Michael, only two inches shorter than Rourke now, held the
eight-and-three-eighths-inch-barreled Stalker in’both hands at full arms length, the webbed sling for the massive Magnum Sales-converted Ruger Super Blackhawk swaying slightly in the breeze as it hung from its barrel and base-of-the-butt-mounted swivels. John Rourke watched as Michael Rourke studied the target—a pine cone one hundred yards distant—through the 2X
Leupold scope. Even with the sound-dampening earmuffs John Rourke wore, the sound of the Stalker as it discharged was intense. In the distance, the dot that had been the pine cone seemed to vaporize as Rourke studied it through the Bushnell armored eight-by-thirtys. “You hit it.”
“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; Mi-chael, 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 en-trance 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.”