“I came in through the servants’ entrance.” He motioned toward the rear of the tent, and Macklin saw where the fabric had been slashed enough for the man to crawl through. “My name’s Alvin.” His muddy green eyes fixed on Colonel Macklin, and his teeth showed when he grinned. “Alvin Mangrim. You ought to have better security, Colonel. Somebody crazy could get in here and kill you if they wanted to.”
“Like you, maybe?”
“Naw, not me.” He laughed, and air made a shrill whistling sound through the hole where his nose had been. “I’ve brought you a couple of presents.”
“I could have you executed for breaking into my headquarters.”
Alvin Mangrim’s grin didn’t waver. “I didn’t break in, man. I cut in. See, I’m real good with knives. Oh, yes—knives know my name. They speak to me, and I do what they say to do.”
Macklin was about a half ounce of trigger pressure away from blowing the man’s head off, but he didn’t want to get blood and brains all over his papers.
“Well? Don’t you want to see your presents?”
“No. I want you to stand up, very carefully, and start walking—” But suddenly Alvin Mangrim leaned over beside the chair to pick up something from the floor. “Easy!” Macklin warned him, and he was about to call for the sentries when Alvin Mangrim straightened up and set the severed head of Franklin Hayes on the desktop.
The face had turned blue, and the eyes had rolled back to show the whites. “There you go,” Mangrim said. “Ain’t he pretty?” He leaned forward and rapped his knuckles on the skull. “Knock, knock!” He laughed, the air whistling through the crater at the center of his face. “Uh-oh, nobody’s home!”
“Where’d you get that?” Macklin asked him.
“Off the fucker’s neck, Colonel! Where’d you think I got it from? I came across that wall and there was old Franklin himself, standing right in front of me—and me with my axe, too. That’s what I call Fate. So I just chopped his head off and brought it here to you. I would’ve been here sooner, but I wanted him to finish bleeding so he wouldn’t mess up your tent. You’ve got a real nice, neat place here.”
Colonel Macklin approached the head, reached out and touched it with the .45’s barrel. “You killed him?”
“Naw. I tickled him to death. Colonel Macklin, for such a smart man you sure are slow to figure things out.”
Macklin lifted the upper lip with the gun barrel. The teeth were white and even.
“You want to knock those out?” Mangrim asked. “They’d make a nice necklace for that black-haired woman I’ve seen you with.”
He let the lip fall back into place. “Who the hell are you? How come I haven’t seen you before?”
“I’ve been around. Been following the AOE for about two months, I guess. Me and some friends of mine have our own camp. I got this uniform off a dead soldier. Fits me pretty good, don’t you think?”
Macklin sensed motion to his left and turned to see Roland Croninger coming into the tent. The young man was wearing a long gray coat with a hood pulled up over his head; at barely twenty years of age, Captain Roland Croninger, at six foot one, stood an inch shorter than Macklin, and he was scarecrow-thin, his AOE uniform and coat hanging off his bony frame. His wrists jutted from the sleeves, his hands like white spiders. He’d been in charge of the attack that had crushed Broken Bow’s defenses, and it had been his suggestion to pursue Franklin Hayes to the death. Now he stopped abruptly, and beneath the hood he squinted through his thick-lensed goggles at the head that adorned Colonel Macklin’s desk.
“You’re Captain Croninger, aren’t you?” Mangrim asked. “I’ve seen you around, too.”
“What’s going on here?” Roland’s voice was still high-pitched. He looked at Macklin, the lamplight glinting off his goggles.
“This man brought me a present. He killed Franklin Hayes, or so he says.”
“Sure I did. Whack! Whack!” Mangrim pounded the table with the edge of his hand. “Off went his head!”
“This tent is off limits,” Roland said coldly. “You could be shot for coming in here.”
“I wanted to surprise the colonel.”
Macklin lowered his pistol. Alvin Mangrim hadn’t come to do him harm, he decided. The man had violated one of the strictest rules of the AOE, but the severed head was indeed a good present. Now that the mission was accomplished—Hayes was dead, the AOE had captured a bounty of vehicles, weapons and gasoline and had taken about a hundred more soldiers into the ranks—Macklin felt a letdown, just as he did after every battle. It was like wanting a woman so bad your balls ached for release, and once you’d taken her and could do with her what you pleased, she was tiresome. It was not having the woman that counted; it was the taking—of women, land or life—that stirred Macklin’s blood to a boil.
“I can’t breathe,” he said suddenly. “I can’t get my breath.” He drew in air, couldn’t seem to get enough of it. He thought he saw the Shadow Soldier standing just behind Alvin Mangrim, but then he blinked and the ghostly image was gone. “I can’t breathe,” he repeated, and he took off his cap.
He had no hair; his scalp was a ravaged dome of growths, like barnacles clinging to rotten pilings. He reached behind his head and found the mask’s zipper. The mask fell away, and Macklin inhaled through what was left of his nose.
His face was a misshapen mass of thick, scablike growths that completely enclosed his features except for the single staring blue eye, a nostril hole and a slit over his mouth. Beneath the growths, Macklin’s face burned and itched fiercely, and the bones ached as if they were being bent into new shapes. He couldn’t bear to look at himself in the mirror anymore, and when he rutted with Sheila Fontana, she—like any number of other women who followed the AOE—squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away. But Sheila Fontana was out of her mind anyway, Macklin knew; all she was good for was screwing, and she was always screaming in the night about somebody named Rudy crawling into her bed with a dead baby in his arms.
Alvin Mangrim was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Well, whatever it is, you’ve got a bad dose of it.”
“You’ve brought your present,” Macklin told him. “Now get the hell out of my tent.”
“I said I brought you two presents. Don’t you want the other one?”
“Colonel Macklin said he wants you to leave.” Roland didn’t like this blond-haired sonofabitch, and he wouldn’t mind killing him. He was still high on killing, the smell of blood in his nostrils like a delicious perfume. Over the past seven years, Roland Croninger had become a scholar of killing, mutilation and torture; when the King wanted information from a prisoner, he knew to summon Sir Roland, who had a black-painted trailer where many songs had been sung to the accompaniment of chains, grindstones, hammers and saws.
Alvin Mangrim leaned down to the floor again. Macklin aimed his .45—but the blond-haired man brought up a small box, tied with a bright blue ribbon. “Here,” Mangrim said, offering the box. “Take it. It’s just for you.”
The colonel paused, glanced quickly at Roland and then laid the pistol down within reach and took the box. With his nimble left hand, he tore the ribbon off and lifted the lid.
“I made it for you. How do you like it?”
Macklin reached into the box—and brought out a right hand, covered with a black leather glove. Piercing the hand and glove were fifteen or twenty nails, driven through the back of the hand so their sharp points emerged from the palm.
“I carved it,” Mangrim said. “I’m a good carpenter. Did you know that Jesus was a carpenter?”
Colonel Macklin stared in disbelief at the lifelike wooden hand. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”
Mangrim looked wounded. “Man, it took me three days to get that just right! See, it weighs about as much as a real hand does, and it’s balanced so well you’d never know it’s made out of wood. I don’t know what happened to your real hand, but I kinda figured you’d appreciate this one.”
The colonel hesitated; he’d never seen anythi
ng quite like this before. The wooden hand, securely tucked into a tight glove, bristled with nails like the hide of a porcupine. “What’s it supposed to be? A paperweight?”
“Naw. You’re supposed to wear it,” Mangrim explained. “On your wrist. Just like a real hand. See, somebody takes a look at that hand with those nails sticking right through it, and they say, ‘Whoa, that motherfucker just don’t even know what pain is!’ You wear that and somebody gives you backtalk, you give them a whack across the face and they won’t have lips anymore.” Mangrim grinned merrily. “I made it just for you.”
“You’re crazy,” Macklin said. “You’re out of your goddamned mind! Why the hell would I want to wear—”
“Colonel?” Roland interrupted. “He may be crazy, but I think he’s got a good idea.”
“What?”
Roland pushed his hood back. His face and head were covered with dirty gauze bandages secured with adhesive strips. Where the windings didn’t exactly meet, there were gray growths as hard as armor plate. The bandages were thickly plastered over his forehead, chin and cheeks and came right up to the edges of his goggles. He pulled loose one of the adhesive strips, unwound about twelve inches of gauze and tore it off. He offered it to Macklin. “Here,” he said. “Put it on your wrist with this.”
Macklin stared at him as if he thought Roland had lost his mind as well, then he took the gauze and the strip of adhesive and worked at taping the counterfeit hand to the stump of his right wrist. He finally got it in place, so the nail-studded palm was turned inward. “It feels funny,” he said. “Feels like it weighs ten pounds.” But other than the weird sensation of suddenly having a new right hand, he realized that it looked very real; to someone who didn’t know the truth, his gloved hand with its palmful of nails might well be attached by flesh to the wrist. He held his arm out and slowly swung it through the air. Of course, the hand’s attachment to the wrist was still fragile; if he was going to wear it, he’d have to bind it tightly to the stump with a thick wrapping of strong adhesive. He liked the look of it, and he suddenly knew why: It was a perfect symbol of discipline and control. If a man could endure such pain—even symbolically—then he had supreme discipline over his own body; he was a man to be feared, a man to be followed.
“You should wear that all the time,” Roland suggested. “Especially when we have to negotiate for supplies. I don’t think the leader of any settlement would hold out very long after he saw that.”
Macklin was spellbound by the sight of his new hand. It would be a devastating psychological weapon, and a damned dangerous close-quarters weapon as well. He’d just have to be real careful when he scratched what was left of his nose.
“I knew you’d like it,” Mangrim said, satisfied by the colonel’s response. “Looks like you were born with it.”
“That still doesn’t excuse you from being in this tent, mister,” Roland told him. “You’re asking to be shot.”
“No, I’m not, Captain. I’m asking to be made a sergeant on the Mechanical Brigade.” His green eyes slid from Roland back to Colonel Macklin. “I’m real good with machines, too. I can fix just about anything. You give me the parts, I can put it together. And I can build things, too. Yes, sir, you make me a Mechanical Brigade sergeant and I’ll show you what I can do for the Army of Excellence.”
Macklin paused, his eye examining Alvin Mangrim’s nose-less face. This was the kind of man the AOE needed, Macklin thought; this man had courage, and he wasn’t afraid to take risks to get what he wanted. “I’ll make you a corporal,” he replied. “If you do your work well and show leadership, I’ll make you a sergeant in the Mechanical Brigade one month from today. Do you agree to that?”
The other man shrugged and stood up. “I guess so. Corporal’s better than private, isn’t it? I can tell the privates what to do now, can’t I?”
“And a captain can put your ass before a firing squad.” Roland stepped in front of him. They stared at each other face to face like two hostile animals. A thin smile crept across Alvin Mangrim’s mouth. Roland’s bandaged, grotesque face remained impassive. Finally, he said, “You step in this tent without permission again, and I’ll personally shoot you—or maybe you’d like a guided tour of the interrogation trailer?”
“Some other time. Sir.”
“Report to Sergeant Draeger at the MB tent. Move it!”
Mangrim plucked his knife from the desktop. He walked to the slit he’d cut in the tent, then bent down; but before he crawled through, he looked back at Roland. “Captain?” he said in a soft voice. “I’d be careful walking around in the dark, if I were you. Lots of broken glass out there. You could fall down and maybe cut your head right off. Know what I mean?” Before Roland could respond, he’d crawled through the slit and was gone.
“Bastard!” Roland seethed. “He’ll end up in front of the firing squad!”
Macklin laughed. He enjoyed seeing Roland, who was usually as controlled and emotionless as a machine, caught off balance for once. It made Macklin feel more in control. “He’ll make lieutenant in six months,” Macklin said. “He’s got the kind of imagination the AOE thrives on.” He walked to the desk and stood looking down at the head of Franklin Hayes; with a finger of his left hand, he traced one of the brown keloids that marred the cold blue flesh. “Damned by the mark of Cain,” he said. “The sooner we get rid of that filth, the sooner we can build things back like they were. No. Better than they were.” He reached out with his new hand and brought it down on the map of Nebraska, impaling it with the nails; he dragged it across the desk to him.
“Send recon patrols out to the east and southeast at first light,” he told Roland. “Tell them to search until dark before they start back.”
“How long are we staying here?”
“Until the AOE’s rested and up to full strength. I want all the vehicles serviced and ready to move.” The main body of trucks, cars and trailers—including Macklin’s own Airstream command trailer—was eight miles west of Broken Bow, and it would be moved to connect with the advance war battalion at daylight. Starting with Freddie Kempka’s encampment, Macklin had built a traveling army where everyone had a duty to perform, including footsoldiers, officers, mechanics, cooks, blacksmiths, tailors, two doctors and even camp prostitutes like Sheila Fontana. All of them were linked by Macklin’s leadership, the need for food, water and shelter—and a belief that those survivors who bore the mark of Cain had to be exterminated. It was common knowledge that those with the mark of Cain were infecting the human race with radiation-poisoned genes, and if America was ever going to be strong enough to strike back at the Russians, the mark of Cain had to be erased.
Macklin studied the Nebraska map. His eye moved eastward, along the red line of Highway 2, through Grand Island and Aurora and Lincoln, to the blue line of the Missouri River. From Nebraska City, the AOE could march into either Iowa or Missouri—virgin land, with new settlements and supply centers to take. And then there would be the broad expanse of the Mississippi River, and the entire eastern part of the country would lie ahead of the AOE, to be taken and cleansed just as they had cleansed large sections of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. But there was always the next settlement, and the next, and Macklin was restless. He’d heard reports of Troop Hydra, Nolan’s Raiders and the so-called American Allegiance. He looked forward to meeting those “armies.” The AOE would crush them, just as they’d destroyed the People’s Freedom Party during months of warfare in the Rocky Mountains.
“We’re heading east,” he told Roland. “Across the Missouri River.” His eye in the growth-stricken face gleamed with the excitement of the hunt. He lifted his right arm and swung the gloved hand through the air. Then faster. And faster still.
The nails made a high, eerie whistling sound, like the noise of human screams.
54
“HEY! HEY, COME LOOK at this!” The barn door flew open, and Sly Moody tumbled in with the morning wind at his heels. Instantly, Killer jumped up from underneath the wagon a
nd began rapid-fire barking.
“Come look at this!” Moody shouted, his face ruddy with excitement, flakes of snow melting in his hair and beard. He had dressed hurriedly, throwing on a brown coat over his long Johns, and he still wore slippers on his feet. “You gotta come look!”
“What the hell are you jabberin’ about, mister?” Rusty had sat up from the pile of hay in which he’d slept, and now he rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He could only make out the faintest light coming through the barn doorway. “Christ A’mighty! It’s not even dawn yet!”
Josh was on his feet, arranging the mask he’d just pulled over his head so he could see through the eyehole. He’d slept next to the wagon, and over the years he’d learned that waking up alert was a good way to stay alive. “What is it?” he asked Moody.
“Out there!” The old man pointed through the doorway with a shaking finger. “You gotta come see! Where’s the girl? Is she awake?” He looked toward the closed folds of the wagon’s tent.
“What’s this all about?” Josh asked. Last night, Sly Moody had told Josh and Rusty to keep Swan in the barn; they’d taken their bowls of stew and beans and eaten in the barn with her, and she’d been nervous and silent as a sphinx. Now it made no sense to Josh that Sly Moody was wanting to see Swan.
“Just get her!” Moody said. “Bring her and come see!” And then he sprinted through the doorway, out into the cold wind with Killer yapping right behind him.
“Who pulled that fella’s string?” Rusty muttered to himself as he shrugged into his coat and pulled his boots on.
“Swan?” Josh called. “Swan, are you a—”
And then the tent opened and Swan stood there, tall and slim and disfigured, her face and head like a gnarled helmet. She wore blue jeans, a heavy yellow sweater and a corduroy coat, and on her feet were hiker’s boots. She held Crybaby in one hand, but today she’d made no effort to hide her face. Feeling her way with the dowsing rod, Swan came down the stepladder and angled her head so she could see Josh through the narrow slit of her vision. Her head was getting heavier, harder to control. Sometimes she was afraid her neck was about to snap, and whatever was beneath the growths burned so savagely that she often couldn’t hold back a scream. Once she’d taken a knife to the ugly, deformed thing that her head had become, and she’d started slashing away in a frenzy. But the growths were too tough to cut, as unyielding as armor plate.
Swan Song Page 53
