Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  “I’m sorry. It’s just ... I mean, you’re young again, and I’m sit-tin’ here like a French fry in red pajamas. I mean ... it’s not right.”

  She frowned, as if she couldn’t fathom what he was talking about. “You’re silly,” she decided. “Don’t you like your sandwich?”

  “Sure. Sure, I do.” He bit into it, expecting it to dissolve like a mirage between his teeth, but he had a mouthful of pastrami, and if this was a dream it was the best damned dream sandwich he’d ever eaten! He poured himself a third cup of wine and guzzled it merrily. The sweet, clean scent of the pine woods filled the air, and Artie breathed deeply. He stared out at the green woods and the meadow, and he thought, My God, my God, it’s good to be alive!

  “You all right?”

  “Huh?” The voice had startled him. He blinked and was looking at Sister’s blistered face. The glass ring was still between his hands.

  “I asked you if you’re all right,” she said. “You’ve been looking into that thing for about half a minute, just sitting there staring.”

  “Oh.” Artie saw the bonfire, the faces of Beth and the Spanish woman, the ruined walls of the building. I don’t know where I went, he thought, but I’m back now. He imagined that he could taste pastrami, spicy mustard and wine lingering in his mouth. He even felt just a bit lightheaded, as if he’d drunk too much too fast. But his stomach felt full now, and he wasn’t thirsty anymore. “Yeah, I’m all right.” He let his fingers play along the glass ring for a moment longer, and then he handed it back to Sister. “Thank you,” he said.

  She took it. For an instant she thought she smelled—what was it? Liquor? But then the faint odor was gone. Artie Wisco leaned back and belched.

  “Can I hold that?” Beth asked her. “I’ll be careful with it.” She took it from Sister as the Spanish woman admired it over her shoulder. “It reminds me of something. Something I’ve seen,” she said. “I can’t think of what, though.” She peered through the glass at the sparkle of topaz and diamonds. “Oh, Lord, do you know what this must be worth?”

  Sister shrugged. “I guess it would’ve been worth some money a few days ago. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s worth some cans of food and a can opener. Maybe a pack of matches. At the most, a jug of clean water.”

  Water, Beth thought. It had been over twenty-four hours since she’d had a drink of the ginger ale. Her mouth felt like a dry field. A drink of water—just a sip—would be so wonderful.

  Her fingers suddenly submerged into the glass.

  Except it was not glass anymore; it was a stream of water, running over multicolored stones. She pulled her hand away, and drops of water fell like diamonds from the tips of her fingers back into the flowing stream.

  She sensed Sister watching her, but she also felt distanced from the other woman, distanced from the wreckage of the city around them; she felt Sister’s presence, but it was as if the woman was in another room of a magic mansion to which Beth had just found the front door key. The cool stream of water made an inviting chuckling sound as it passed over the colored stones. There can’t be water running right across my lap, Beth thought, and for an instant the stream wavered and started to fade, a thing of mist burned off by the stark sun of reason. No! she wished. Not yet!

  The water continued flowing, right under her hands, moving from beyond to beyond.

  Beth put her hand into it again. So cool, so cool. She caught some of the water in her palm and brought it to her mouth. It tasted better than any glass of Perrier she’d ever had. Again she drank from it, and then she lowered her head to the stream and drank as the water rushed around her cheek like a lingering kiss.

  Sister thought Beth Phelps had gone into some kind of trance. She’d watched Beth’s eyes suddenly glaze over. Like Artie, Beth hadn’t moved for over thirty seconds. “Hey!” Sister said. She reached out and poked Beth. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

  Beth looked up. Her eyes cleared. “What?”

  “Nothing. I think it’s time we got some rest.” Sister started to take the glass circle back, but the Spanish woman abruptly grabbed it and scrambled away, sinking down amid the broken stones and clasping it to her body. Both Sister and Beth stood up—and Beth thought she felt her stomach slosh.

  Sister walked to the Spanish woman, who was sobbing with her head bent over. Sister knelt beside her and said gently, “Come on, let me have that back, okay?”

  “Mi niña me perdona,” the woman sobbed. “Madre de Dios, mi niña me perdona.”

  “What’s she saying?” Beth asked, standing behind Sister.

  “I don’t know.” Sister put her hand around the glass ring and slowly pulled it toward her. The Spanish woman held onto it, shaking her head back and forth. “Come on,” Sister urged. “Let me have it—”

  “My child forgives me!” the Spanish woman suddenly said. Her eyes were wide and full of tears. “Mother of God, I saw my child’s face in this! And she said she forgives me! I’m free! Mother of God, I’m free!”

  Sister was stunned. “I ... didn’t think you knew English.”

  Now it was the Spanish woman’s turn to blink dazedly. “What?”

  “What’s your name? How come you haven’t spoken English before this?”

  “My name is Julia. Julia Castillo. English? I don’t... know what you mean.”

  “Either I’m crazy or she is,” Sister said. “Come on, let me have this.” She pulled the ring away, and Julia Castillo let it go. “Okay. Now how come you haven’t spoken English before now, Julia?”

  “No comprendo,” she replied. “Good morning. Good day. I am happy to see you, sir. Thank you.” She shrugged and motioned vaguely southward. “Mantanzas,” she said. “Cuba.”

  Sister turned her head toward Beth, who had stepped back a couple of paces and had a weird expression on her face. “Who’s crazy, Beth? Julia or me? Does this lady know English or not?”

  Beth said, “She ... was speaking in Spanish. She never said one word of English. Did you ... understand what she said?”

  “Hell yes, I understood her! Every damned word! Didn’t ...” She stopped speaking. Her hand holding the glass ring was tingling. Beyond the bonfire, Artie suddenly sat up and hiccuped. “Hey!” he said in a slightly slurred voice. “Where’s the party?”

  Sister held the glass circle out toward Julia Castillo again. The Spanish woman touched it hesitantly. “What did you say about Cuba?” Sister asked.

  “I’m ... from Mantanzas, in Cuba,” Julia replied, in perfect English. Her eyes were large and puzzled. “My family came over in a fishing boat. My father could speak a little English, and we came north to work in a shirt factory. How do you ... know my language?”

  Sister looked at Beth. “What do you hear? Spanish or English?”

  “Spanish. Isn’t that what you heard?”

  “No.” She pulled the ring out of Julia’s grasp. “Now say something. Say anything.”

  Julia shook her head. “Lo siento, no comprendo.”

  Sister stared at Julia for a moment, and then she slowly lifted the ring closer to her face to peer into its depths. Her hand was trembling, and what felt like little jolts of energy coursed through her forearm to her elbow. “It’s this,” Sister said. “This glass thing. I don’t know why or how, but... this thing lets me understand her, and she can understand me, too. I heard her speak English, Beth ... and I think she heard me speak Spanish.”

  “That’s crazy!” Beth said, but she thought of the cool stream that had flowed across her lap, and her throat that was no longer parched. “I mean ... it’s just glass and jewels, isn’t it?”

  “Here.” Sister offered it to her. “Find out for yourself.”

  Beth traced one of the spires with a finger. “The Statue of Liberty,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The Statue of Liberty. That’s what this reminds me of. Not the statue itself, but ... the lady’s crown.” She lifted the circle to her head, the spires jutting up. “See? It could be a crown, couldn�
��t it?”

  “I’ve never seen a lovelier princess,” said a man’s voice, from the darkness beyond the bonfire.

  Instantly Beth had the glass circle protected in her arms and was backing away from the direction of the voice. Sister tensed. “Who’s there?” She sensed movement: Someone was walking slowly across the ruins, approaching the firelight’s edge.

  He stepped into the light. His gaze lingered on each of them in turn. “Good evening,” he said politely, addressing Sister.

  He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a regal bearing, dressed in a dusty black suit. A brown blanket was wrapped around his shoulders and throat like a peasant’s serape, and across his pallid, sharp-chinned face were the scarlet streaks of deep burns, like welts inflicted by a whip. A blood-crusted gash zigzagged across his high forehead, cut through his left eyebrow and ended at his cheekbone. Most of his reddish-gray hair remained, though there were bare spots the size of silver dollars on his scalp. The breath curled from his nose and mouth. “Is it all right if I come nearer?” he asked, his voice pained and halting.

  Sister didn’t answer. The man waited. “I won’t bite,” he said.

  He was shivering, and she could not deny him the fire. “Come ahead,” she said cautiously, and she stepped back as he did.

  He winced as he hobbled forward, and Sister saw what was hurting him: a jagged splinter of metal had pierced his right leg just above the knee and stuck out about three inches on the other side. He passed between Sister and Beth and went straight to the fire, where he warmed his outstretched hands. “Ah, that feels good! It must be thirty degrees out there!”

  Sister had felt the cold as well, and she returned to the fire. Behind her, Julia and Beth, who was still protectively clinging to the glass ring, followed.

  “Who the hell are you?” Artie stared bleary-eyed across the bonfire.

  “My name is Doyle Halland,” the man answered. “Why didn’t you people leave with the rest of them?”

  “The rest of who?” Sister asked, still watching him warily.

  “The ones who got out. Yesterday, I guess it was. Hundreds of them, leaving”—he smiled wanly and waved his hand around—“leaving the Garden State. Maybe there are shelters further west. I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t expect anyone was left.”

  “We came from Manhattan,” Beth told him. “We made it through the Holland Tunnel.”

  “I didn’t think anybody could’ve lived through what hit Manhattan. They say it was at least two bombs. Jersey City burned fast. And the winds ... my God, the winds.” He closed his fists before the flames. “It was a tornado. More than one, I think. The winds just ... tore buildings off their foundations. I was lucky, I suppose. I got into a basement, but the building blew apart over my head. The wind did this.” He gingerly touched the metal splinter. “I’ve heard of tornadoes putting straws unbroken through telephone poles. I guess this is about the same principle, huh?” He looked at Sister. “I realize I’m not at my best, but why are you staring at me like that?”

  “Where’d you come from, Mr. Halland?”

  “Not far. I saw your fire. If you don’t want me to stay, just say so.”

  Sister was ashamed of what she’d been thinking. He winced again, and she saw that fresh blood had begun to ooze around the splinter. “I don’t own this place. You can stay wherever you please.”

  “Thank you. It’s not a pleasant night to be walking.” His gaze moved to the sparkle of the glass circle Beth was holding. “That thing shines, doesn’t it? What is it?”

  “It’s ...” She couldn’t find the right word. “It’s magic,” she blurted out. “You won’t believe what just happened! You see that woman over there? She can’t speak English, and this thing—”

  “It’s junk,” Sister interrupted, taking it from Beth. She didn’t trust this stranger yet, and she didn’t want him knowing any more about their treasure. “It’s just shiny junk, that’s all.” She put it into the bottom of her bag, and the glow of the gems faded and went out.

  “You want shiny junk?” the man inquired. “I’ll show you some.” He looked around, then hobbled away a few yards and painfully bent down. He picked up something and brought it back to the fire. “See? It shines just like yours,” he said, showing them what he held.

  It was a piece of stained-glass window, a swirl of deep blue and purple.

  “You’re standing in what used to be my church,” he said, and he pulled the blanket away from his throat to reveal the soiled white collar of a priest. Smiling bitterly, he tossed the colored glass into the fire.

  23

  THE DARKNESS, SIXTEEN civilians—men, women and children—and three badly injured members of Colonel Macklin’s army struggled to work the tightly jammed puzzle of rocks loose from the lower-level corridor. It’s only six feet to the food, Macklin had told them, six feet. It won’t take you long to break through, once you get a hole opened. The first one to reach that food gets a triple ration.

  They had been laboring in total darkness for almost seven hours when the rest of the ceiling caved in on their heads with no warning.

  Roland Croninger, on his knees in the cafeteria’s kitchen, felt the floor shake. Screams drifted up through an air vent—and then silence.

  “Damn!” he said, because he knew what had happened. Who was going to clear that corridor now? But then, on the other side of the coin, the dead didn’t use up air. He went back to his task of scooping up bits of food from the floor and putting them into a plastic garbage bag.

  He’d suggested that Colonel Macklin set up headquarters in the gymnasium. They’d found a treasure: a mop bucket, in which they could store the toilet bowl water. When Roland, his stomach gnawing with hunger, had left them to forage in the kitchen, both Macklin and Captain Warner had been asleep; Roland had the Ingram gun on a strap around his shoulder, and the handle of the holy axe was secured by his waistband. Near him, the flashlight lay on the floor, illuminating clumps of food that had exploded from cans in the pantry. The kitchen garbage pails had yielded some finds, too: banana peels, bits of tomato, cans with not all their contents quite scraped out, and a few breakfast biscuits. Anything and everything edible went into Roland’s bag, except for the biscuits, which were his first meal since the disaster.

  He picked up a black piece of something and started to shove it into the bag but hesitated. The black thing reminded him of what he’d done to Mike Armbruster’s pet hamsters the day Armbruster had brought them to biology class. The hamsters had been left at the back of the room after school, while Armbruster went to football practice. Roland had gotten the cage of hamsters, without being seen by the cleaning women, and had sneaked stealthily to the school’s automotive workshop. In one corner stood a metal vat that held a greenish-brown liquid, and over the vat was a red sign that said Wear Your Gloves!

  Roland had put on a pair of heavy asbestos gloves and made cooing noises to the two little hamsters, and he’d thought about Mike Armbruster laughing and spitting on him while he was down in the dust.

  Then he’d picked up the cage by its handle and lowered it into the vat of acid, which was used to make rusted radiators shine like new.

  He’d let the hamsters stay under until the bubbles stopped. When he brought the cage up, he noted that the acid had attacked the metal and chewed it down to a polished gleam. Then he took his gloves off and carried the cage back to the biology room on the end of a broom.

  He’d often wondered what Mike Armbruster’s face had looked like when he saw the two black things where the hamsters used to be. Armbruster hadn’t realized, Roland often mused later, the many ways a King’s Knight can get even.

  Roland tossed whatever it was into the bag. He turned up a box of oatmeal and—wonder of wonders!—a single green apple. Both of those went into the bag. He continued crawling, lifting the smaller rocks and avoiding the fissures in the floor.

  He was getting too far from the flashlight, and he stood up. The garbage bag had some weight to it now. The K
ing was going to be well pleased. He started toward the light, stepping nimbly over the dead.

  There was a noise behind him. Not a loud noise, just a whirrrr of disturbed air, and he knew he was no longer alone.

  Before he could turn, a hand clamped across his mouth. “Get the bag!” a man said. “Hurry!”

  It was torn from his grip. “Little fucker’s got an Ingram gun!” That, too, was ripped off his shoulder. The hand moved from his mouth, replaced by an arm at his throat. “Where’s Macklin? Where’s the sonofabitch hiding?”

  “I can’t ... I can’t breathe,” Roland croaked.

  The man cursed and flung him to the floor. Roland’s glasses flew off, and a boot pressed down on his spine. “Who you gonna kill with that gun, kid? You gonna make sure you get all the food for yourself and the colonel?”

  One of the others retrieved the flashlight and aimed it in Roland’s face. He thought there were three of them from the voices and movements, but he couldn’t be positive. He flinched as he heard the Ingram gun’s safety click off. “Kill him, Schorr!” one of the men urged. “Blow his fucking brains out!”

  Schorr. Roland knew that name. Hospitality Sergeant Schorr.

  “I know he’s alive, kid.” Schorr was standing over him, his foot planted on Roland’s back. “I went down to the command center, and I found those people working in the dark. I found Corporal Prados, too. He told me a kid got Macklin out of a hole, and that the colonel was hurt. He just left Prados down there to die, didn’t he?”

  “The corporal ... couldn’t move. He couldn’t stand up, because of his leg. We had to leave him.”

  “Who else is with Macklin?”

  “Captain Warner,” Roland gasped. “That’s all.”

  “And he sent you here to find food? Did he give you the Ingram gun and tell you to kill everybody else?”

  “No, sir.” The wheels of Roland’s brain were spinning, trying to find a way to squirm out of this.

  “Where’s he hiding? How many weapons does he have?”

  Roland was silent. Schorr bent down beside him and put the gun’s barrel to Roland’s temple. “There are nine other people not too far from here who need food and water, too,” Schorr said tersely. “My people. I thought I was going to die, and I’ve seen things ...” He stopped, shaken, couldn’t go on for a moment. “Things nobody ought to see and live to remember. Macklin’s to blame for all this. He knew this place was falling apart—he must’ve known it!” The barrel bruised Roland’s skull. “High and mighty Macklin with his tin soldiers and his worn-out medals! Just marching the suckers in and out of here! He knew what was going to happen! Isn’t that right?”