HE WAS WAITING INI THE dark for them to come home. The wind was strong. It sang sweetly to his soul of millions dead and the dying not yet done, but when the wind was so strong he couldn’t search very far. He sat in the dark, in his new face and his new skin, with the wind shrilling around the shed like a party noisemaker, and thought that maybe—just maybe—it would be tonight.
But he understood the twists and turns of time, and so if it was not tonight, there was always tomorrow. He could be very patient, if he had to be.
Seven years had passed quickly for him; he had traveled the roads, a solitary journeyer, through Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. He had sometimes lodged in struggling settlements, sometimes lived by himself in caves and abandoned cars as the mood struck him. Wherever he passed was darkened by his presence, the settlements sucked dry of hope and compassion and left to blow away as the inhabitants killed one another or themselves. He had the knack of showing them how futile life was, and what the tragedy of false hope could bring about. If your child is hungry, kill it, he urged starving mothers; think of suicide as the noble thing, he told men who asked his advice. He was a fountain of information and wisdom that he was eager to share: All dogs spread cancer and must be killed; people with brown keloids have developed a taste for the flesh of children; there’s a new city being built in the wilds of Canada, and that’s where you should go; you could get a lot of protein by eating your own fingers—after all, how many do you need?
He was continually astonished by how easy it was to make them believe.
It was a great party. But for one thing, and that one thing gnawed at him day and night.
Where was the ring of glass?
The woman—Sister—was surely dead by now. He didn’t care about her, anyway. Where was the glass thing, and who had it? Many times he’d sensed he was close to it, that the next crossroads would take him right to it, but the instincts had always faded, and he was left deciding to try a new direction. He’d searched the mind of everyone he met, but the woman was not in there, and neither was the ring of glass. So he went on. But with the passage of years his traveling had slowed somewhat, because there were so many opportunities in the settlements, and because even if the glass ring was still out there somewhere, it didn’t seem to be of any consequence. It wasn’t doing anything, was it? It was still his party, and nothing had changed. The threat he’d felt from it, back in the house in New Jersey, still remained with him, but whatever else the glass ring was, it was surely not making a difference in his existence or in the things he saw around him.
No problemo, he thought—but where was it? Who had it? And why had it come to be?
Often he recalled the day he’d turned off Interstate 80 on his French racing bicycle and headed south. He’d sometimes wondered what would have happened if he’d gone back east along I-80. Would he have found the woman and the glass ring? Why hadn’t the sentries at that Red Cross station seen her by then, if indeed she was still alive?
But he couldn’t see everything, or know everything; he could only see and know what his counterfeit eyes told him, or what he picked from the human mind, or what the searchers brought him back from the dark.
They were coming to him right now. He sensed the mass of them gathering together from all points of the compass and approaching against the wind. He pushed himself toward the door, and the wheels beneath him squeaked.
The first one touched his cheek and was sucked through the flesh as if into an opening vortex.
His eyes rolled back in his head, and he looked inward. Saw dark forest, heard wind shrieking, and nothing more.
Another thing that resembled a fly squeezed through a hole in the wall and landed on his forehead, instantly being drawn into the rippling flesh. Two more joined it and were pulled down.
He saw more dark woods, an icy puddle, a small animal of some kind lying dead in the brush. A crow swept in, snapped and spun away.
More flies penetrated his face. More images whirled through him: a woman scrubbing clothes in a lamplit room, two men fighting with knives in an alley, a two-headed boar snuffling in garbage, its four eyes glinting wetly.
The flies crawled over his face, being sucked through the flesh one after the other.
He saw dark houses, heard someone playing a harmonica— badly—and someone else clapping in time; faces around a bonfire, a conversation of what baseball games used to be like on summer nights; a skinny man and woman, entwined on a mattress; hands at work, cleaning a rifle; an explosion of light and a voice saying, “Found me a play-pretty, didn’t—”
Stop.
The image of light and the voice froze behind his eyes like a frame of a movie.
He trembled.
Flies were still on his face, but he concentrated on the image of the light. It was just a red flare, and he couldn’t tell much about it yet. His hands clenched into fists, his long and dirty nails carving half moons into the skin but drawing no blood.
Forward, he thought, and the film of memory began to unreel.
“... I?” the voice—a man’s voice—said. And then an awestruck whisper: “Jewels!”
Stop.
He was looking down from above, and there in the man’s hand was ...
Forward.
... the circle of glass, glowing with dark red and brown. A room with sawdust on the floor. Glasses. Cards on a table.
He knew that place. He’d been there before, and he’d sent his searchers there because it was a place where travelers stopped. The Bucket of Blood was about a mile away, just over the next hill.
His inner eye watched it unfold, from the perspective of a fly. The blast of a gun, a hot shock wave, a body spewing blood and tumbling over tables.
A woman’s voice said, “You want some of it?” Then an order: “Guns on the table.”
I’ve found you, he thought.
He caught a glimpse of her face. Turned out to be a beauty, didn’t you? he mused. Was that her? Yes, yes! It had to be her! The glass ring went into a satchel. It had to be her!
The scene continued. Another face: a man with sharp blue eyes and a gray beard. “Leper! Leper!” someone shouted. And then a silver-haired man was there, and he knew that face as belonging to the one everybody called Scumbag. More voices: “Be my guest . . Derwin’s a hunter ... used to have another leg, too ... For God’s sake, don’t go west ... supposed to be the mark of Satan ...”
He smiled.
“... We’re heading south ... that would be Mary’s Rest ... doubt he’ll need the gasoline anymore, don’t you?”
The voices grew hazy, the light changed, and there were dark woods and houses below.
He played the memory-movie over again. It was her, all right. “... We’re heading south ... that would be Mary’s Rest ...”
Mary’s Rest, he thought. Fifty miles to the south. I’ve found you! Going south to Mary’s Rest!
But what was the point of waiting? Sister and the circle of glass might still be over at the Bucket of Blood, only a mile away. There was still time to get over there and—
“Lester? I’ve brought you a bowl of—”
There was a crash of breaking pottery and a gasp of horror.
He let his eyes resurface again. At the shed’s door stood the woman who’d taken him in three weeks ago as a handyman; she was still very pretty, and it was too bad that a wild animal had chewed up her little girl in the woods one evening two weeks ago, because the child had looked just like her. The woman had dropped his bowl of soup. She was a clumsy bitch, he thought. Anybody with two fingers on each hand was bound to be clumsy.
The claw of her left hand held a lantern, and by its light she’d seen the rippling, fly-swarmed face of Lester the handyman.
“Howdy, Miz Sperry,” he whispered, and the fly-things whirled around his head.
The woman took a backward step toward the open door. Her face was frozen into a horrified rictus, and he wondered why he’d ever thought she was pretty.
“You’re not afraid, a
re you, Miz Sperry?” he asked her; he reached out his arms, dug his fingers into the dirt floor and drew himself forward. The wheels squeaked, badly in need of oil.
“I ... I ...” She tried to speak, but she couldn’t. Her legs had seized up, too, and he knew that she knew there was nowhere to run except the woods.
“Surely you’re not afraid of me,” he said softly. “I’m not much of a man, am I? I do ’preciate you havin’ pity on a poor man like me, I surely do.” The wheels squeaked, squeaked.
“Stay ... away from me ...”
“This is ol’ Lester you’re talkin’ to, Miz Sperry. Just ol’ Lester, that’s all. You can tell me anything.”
She almost broke away then, almost ran, but he said, “Ol’ Lester makes the pain go away, don’t he?” and she settled back into his grip like warm putty. “Why don’t you put that lamp down, Miz Sperry? Let’s have us a nice talk. I can fix thangs.”
The lantern was slowly put on the floor.
So easy, he thought. This one particularly, because she was already walking dead.
He was bored with her. “I believe I need to fix that there gun,” he said, and he nodded silkily toward the rifle in the corner. “Will you fetch it for me?”
She picked it up.
“Miz Sperry?” he said. “I want you to put the barrel in your mouth and your finger on the trigger. Yes’m, go ahead. Just like that. Oh, doin’ just fine!”
Her eyes were bright and shining, and there were tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Now ... I need you to test that there gun for me. I want you to pull the trigger and tell me if it works. Okay?”
She resisted him, just a second of the will to live that she probably didn’t even know she had anymore.
“Lester’s gon’ fix thangs,” he said. “Little tiny pull, now.”
The rifle went off.
He pulled himself forward, and the wheels squeaked over her body. The Bucket of Blood! he thought. Got to get over there!
But then—no, no. Wait. Just wait.
He knew Sister was on her way to Mary’s Rest. It wouldn’t take him as long to walk cross-country as it would take her to drive over what was left of the road. He could beat her there and be waiting. There were a lot of people in Mary’s Rest, a lot of opportunities; he’d been thinking of traveling down that way in the next few days, anyway. She might already have left the tavern and be on the road right now. This time I won’t lose you, he vowed. I’ll get to Mary’s Rest before you. Ol’ Lester’s gon’ fix thangs for you, too, bitch!
This was a good disguise, he decided. Some modifications were needed if he was going to walk the distance, but it would do. And by the time the bitch got to Mary’s Rest, he’d be set up and ready to Watusi on her bones until she was dust for the pot.
The rest of the flies were sucked into his face, but they brought information that was of no use to him. He stretched his torso, and after a minute or two he was able to stand.
Then he rolled down the legs of his trousers, picked up his little red wagon and began walking, his feet bare, through the snow toward the forest. He began to sing, very quietly: “Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush ...”
The darkness took him.
53
A TALL FIGURE IN A LONG black overcoat with polished silver buttons stalked through the burning ruins of Broken Bow, Nebraska. Corpses lay scattered across what had been Broken Bow’s main street, and the tanklike trucks of the Army of Excellence ran over those that were in the way. Other soldiers were loading trucks with salvaged sacks of corn, flour, beans and drums of oil and gasoline. A pile of rifles and pistols awaited pickup by the Weapons Brigade. Bodies were being stripped by the Clothing Brigade, and members of the Shelter Brigade were gathering together tents that the dead would no longer need. The Mechanics Brigade was going over a wealth of cars, trailers and trucks that had fallen to the victors; those that could be made to run would become recon and transport vehicles, and the others would be stripped of tires, engines and everything else that could possibly be used.
But the man in the black overcoat, his polished ebony boots crunching over scorched earth, was only intent on one thing. He stopped before a pile of corpses that were being stripped, their coats and clothes thrown into cardboard boxes, and examined their faces by the light of a nearby bonfire. The soldiers around him stopped their work to salute; he quickly returned the salute and continued his examination, then went on to the next scatter of bodies.
“Colonel Macklin!” a voice called over the rumble of passing trucks, and the man in the black overcoat turned around. Firelight fell on the black leather mask that covered James B. Macklin’s face; the right eyehole had been crudely stitched up, but through the other Macklin’s cold blue eye peered at the approaching figure. Under his coat, Macklin wore a gray-green uniform and a pearl-handled .45 in a holster at his waist. Over his breast pocket was a black circular patch with the letters AOE sewn into it in silver thread. A dark green woolen cap was pulled over the colonel’s head.
Judd Lawry, wearing a similar uniform under a fleece-lined coat, emerged from the smoke. An M-16 was slung over his shoulder, and bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossed his chest. Judd Lawry’s gray-streaked red beard was closely cropped, and his hair had been clipped almost to the scalp. Across his forehead was a deep scar that ran diagonally from his left temple up through his hair. In seven years of following Macklin, Lawry had lost twenty-five pounds of fat and flab, and now his body was hard and muscular; his face had taken on cruel angles, and his eyes had retreated into their sockets.
“Any word, Lieutenant Lawry?” Macklin’s voice was distorted, the words slurred, as if something was not right with his mouth.
“No, sir. Nobody’s found him. I checked with Sergeant McCowan over on the northern perimeter, but he can’t produce a body either. Sergeant Ulrich took a detail through the southern segment of their defensive trench, but no luck.”
“What about the reports from the pursuit parties?”
“Corporal Winslow’s group found six of them about a mile to the east. They tried to fight it out. Sergeant Oldfield’s group found four to the north, but they’d already killed themselves. I haven’t gotten word yet from the southern patrol.”
“He can’t have gotten away, Lawry,” Macklin said forcefully. “We’ve got to find the sonofabitch—or his corpse. I want him—dead or alive—in my tent within two hours. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”
“Do more than your best. Find Captain Pogue and tell him he’s in charge of bringing me the corpse of Franklin Hayes; he’s a good tracker, he’ll get the job done. And I want to see the casualty counts and captured weapons list by dawn. I don’t want the same kind of fuckup that happened last time. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’ll be in my tent.” Macklin started to move off, then turned back. “Where’s Roland?”
“I don’t know. I saw him about an hour ago, over on the south edge of town.”
“If you see him, have him report to me. Carry on.” Macklin stalked away toward his headquarters tent.
Judd Lawry watched him go, and he couldn’t suppress a shudder. It had been more than two years since he’d last seen Colonel Macklin’s face; the colonel had started wearing that leather mask to protect his skin against “radiation and pollution”—but it seemed to Lawry that Macklin’s face was actually changing shape, from the way the mask buckled and strained against the bones. Lawry knew what it was: that damned disease that a lot of others in the Army of Excellence had gotten as well—the growths that got on your face and grew together, covering everything but a hole at your mouth. Everyone knew Macklin had it, and Captain Croninger was afflicted with it, too, and that was why the boy wore bandages on his face. The worst cases were rounded up and executed, and to Lawry it was a whole hell of a lot worse than the most sickening keloid he’d ever seen. Thank God, he thought, that he’d never gotten i
t, because he liked his face just the way it was. But if Colonel Macklin’s condition was getting worse, then he wasn’t going to be able to lead the AOE very much longer. Which led to a lot of interesting possibilities ...
Lawry grunted, got his mind back on his duties and went off through the ruins.
On the other side of Broken Bow, Colonel Macklin saluted the two armed sentries who stood in front of his large headquarters tent and went in through the flap. It was dark inside, and Macklin thought he remembered leaving a lantern lit on his desk. But there was so much in his mind, so much to remember, that he couldn’t be sure. He walked to the desk, reached out with his single hand and found the lantern. The glass was still warm. It blew out somehow, he thought, and he took the glass chimney off, took a lighter from his overcoat pocket and flicked the flame on. Then he lit the lamp, let the flame grow and returned the glass chimney. Dim light began to spread through the tent—and it was only then that Colonel Macklin realized he was not alone.
Behind Macklin’s desk sat a slim man with curly, unkempt, shoulder-length blond hair and a blond beard. His muddy boots were propped up on the various maps, charts and reports that covered the desktop. He’d been cleaning his long fingernails with a knife in the dark, and at the sight of the weapon Macklin instantly drew the .45 from his holster and aimed the gun at the intruder’s head.
“Hi,” the blond-haired man said, and he smiled. He had a pale, cadaverous face—and at the center of it, where his nose had been, was a hole rimmed with scar tissue. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Put the knife down. Now.”
The knife’s blade thunked through a map of Nebraska and stood upright, quivering. “No sweat,” the man said. He lifted his hands to show they were empty.
Macklin saw that the intruder wore a blood-spattered AOE uniform, but he didn’t appear to have any fresh injuries. That grisly wound at the center of his face—through which Macklin could see the sinus passages and gray cartilage—had healed as much as it ever would. “Who are you and how did you get past the sentries?”
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