The Awakening ts-10
Page 17
Here!”
Rourke wrenched the bike right, blind, not seeing the trail, but trusting Natalia as he had so many times before. The Harley lurched under him, bounced. Before them, running steeply downward but not so steeply as to be unnavigable, was a trail, the valley spreading out below.
Rourke slowed the bike again, balancing the machine with his feet as the trail dodged right then left then right. He glanced back once—Paul Rubenstein was coming along the trail and the cannibals were already gone from sight. John Rourke remembered to breathe then.
Chapter Sixty-One
They had intercepted Michael and Madison in the valley, Natalia’s route across the mountain and then down, despite a greater distance, faster than Michael’s navigating the bike down the steeper trail by walking it. They had ridden long into the night, the moon bright, traveling on until nearly dawn to be far gone from the Place and the ones Madison had called Them. A sparse meal—Madison had tried meat again and Michael had patiently explained to her that the meat of domestic animals or wild game was all i lght to eat. She had not eaten much, John Rourke had noticed.
They had slept a few hours, Rourke, his son and Paul Rubenstein each taking a two-hour shift on guard, then taking to the trail again without breakfast, by midmorning.
They settled into a schedule, reaching the Retreat the prime objective, stopping once to leave the route and locate one of the strategic fuel sites to gas up the Harleys and the spare gas canisters, then to move on. John Rourke and his son had agreed—to return to the wooded area where Michael had found the parachute, then to fan out and search for the wreckage of the aircraft to learn its source.
But after Christmas,
They had ridden hard through the day, and long into the night now, the Retreat so close and the date December twenty-fourth. Christmas—always a time Sarah had at once enjoyed and found somehow sad. John Rourke had no desire to make this Christmas sadder. ‘s They had crossed the remains of a paved road and started up the long mountain road toward the main entrance of the Retreat, John Rourke rolling hack the cuff of his bomber jacket to read the face of the Rolex—it was smudged with the light snow as soon as he rolled back the cuff and he wiped this away to better read the watch face. It was nearly midnight—and very soon, before it was actually Christmas morning, they would be “home”. He felt a smile cross his lips. “Home,” he murmured.
“John!”
It was Natalia’s voice from behind him, muffled sounding, his back shielding her from the wind.
“What is it?” he said over his shoulder, slowing the Harley Low Rider under them.
“For a moment—stop and look up there.”
Rourke slowed the Harley even more, making a wide arc with it, Michael with Madison behind him stopping just ahead of them, Paul stopping beside them. “We’re almost home, Dad—what’s up?”
Paul Rubenstein stopped beside them, laugh-ing. “You didn’t remember to wish me happy Hanukkah, but I’ll wish you Merry Christmas anyway.” Rourke reached out and clasped his old friend on the back. “Happy Hanukkah then.”
“You can remember me on May Day,” Natalia laughed, “but look up there—all of you.”
The snow was a shower, the sky surprisingly clear, a wide opening in the clouds to the east.
Light. One. Then another, then another, and still more, pinpoints, moving, “The radio—we can signal them!” Michael shouted. ^”Holy shit—the Eden Project, it’s gotta be,” Paul Rubenstein murmured. “Yes.” John Rourke nodded. “I doubt they’ll be able to read our signal—but, maybe, we can try to—“ But the clouds covered the opening in the sky now and the pinpoints of moving light were no longer visible. Had the atmosphere been the way it was when the Eden Project fleet had left the Earth five centuries earlier to travel in cryogenic sleep to the edge of the solar system and back, the shuttles would never have been visible at all, Rourke realized. “They will find us—or we’ll find them,” Natalia said from behind him. It would be a long night, Rourke knew—listening for radio signals, alternately transmitting, observing in the cold from the top of the mountain to attempt to get a fix on the crafts if they passed overhead again. Coincidence or providence, Rourke wondered. He dismissed the question. Rourke twisted in the saddle to better see Natalia’s face. He took her face in his hands, the wind catching at her hair, her cheeks cold to the touch, her lips drawing out into a smile. “Merry Christmas, John*” He smiled, wondering—but he drew her face toward him, kissing her lips, holding her there.
Chapter Sixty-Two
All was ready, his meager things prepared for the journey—an historic journey, he had told himself.
The old wounds bothered him not at all.
His speed with a gun was fast—very fast. Faster, he wondered? Faster than John Rourke?
The vial of the cryogenic serum he had paid so much to obtain when he had first learned of the Eden Project long before the Night of The War. The gunfight—he had lost.
But some few of his faithful—he would sing their names to the pages of history—they had taken him, found him the best of care in secret and when the inevitability of it had been known, helped him to survive. He closed his eyes tightly, a pressure behind them he could feel, then opening them, staring at the sky—it was already Christmas. And the present he so much wanted to bestow—the gift of death— he could not yet give. “Soon,” he whispered to the morning stars, to the horizon beyond the mountain top where he had forged his plans, begun it all. Footsteps crunched in the snow behind him and he turned around. “All is ready. But there are strange signals coming over the radio—it is perhaps the time. The words are garbled—but I think they are English. It is a signal like none I have ever heard.”
“The Eden Project. So much the better—so much the better.”
“There is no way to be certain.”
“I am certain. When the pain was all that consumed me, it seemed somehow to deepen my perception, to heighten my awareness—I could feel their presence before you spoke of it to me. We leave, then.”
The other man, swathed in arctic parka and ski toque, raised his right hand in salute, “Yes, Comrade Colonel.”
The snow through which he trod had been virgin until he had made his imprint on it, he thought as he walked, the subordinate following him. It would be that way with this new world as well.
FB2 document info
Document ID: a55ab190-b13f-4bfb-a793-caa2dc985e22
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Document creation date: 20.12.2012
Created using: calibre 0.9.10, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Jerry Ahern
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