Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  The mist was tattering apart like old cloth. Josh vaguely made out Mule’s shape through it, about fifteen or twenty feet ahead. He heard the horse whinny—and then Josh abruptly stopped in his tracks, because right in front of him was something wonderful.

  It was a row of plants, all about two feet tall, and as the breeze stirred the mist away the long, slender fronds swayed and rustled together.

  Josh reached down, gently running his fingers over one of the delicate stalks. The plant was a pale green, but scattered on the fronds were dark red splotches that almost resembled blood stains.

  “My Lord,” Glory breathed. “Josh ... that’s new corn growin’!”

  And Josh remembered the dried kernel that had been stuck to the blood-caked palm of Swan’s hand. He knew what she’d been doing out there in the cold and dark.

  The wind picked up strength, shrilled around Josh’s head and made the young cornstalks dance. It punched holes through the gray walls of mist, and then the mist began to lift, and in the next moment Josh and Glory could see most of the field around them.

  They stood amid several irregular, weaving rows of pale green stalks, all about two feet high and all spotted with what Josh realized could very well have been drops of Swan’s blood, absorbed right into the dirt and the dormant roots like fuel into a thirsty engine. The sight of green life in that devastated, snow-swept field almost knocked Josh to his knees; it was like seeing color again after a long blindness. Mule was nibbling tentatively at one of the plants, and a few crows swirled over his head, cawing indignantly. He snapped at them, then chased them between the rows with the exuberance of a colt.

  “I don’t know what’s inside that girl,” Josh recalled Sly Moody saying, “but she’s got the power of life!”

  He shook his head, unable to find words. He reached out to the stalk in front of him and touched a small green nub that he knew was an ear of corn, forming in its protective sheath. There were four or five others just on the one stalk alone.

  “Mister,” Sly Moody had said, “that Swan could wake the whole land up again!”

  Yes, Josh thought, his heart pounding. Yes, she can.

  And now he understood at last the commandment that had come from PawPaw’s lips back in the dark basement in Kansas.

  He heard a holler and whoop, and he looked back to see John Gallagher running toward them. Behind him, Zachial and Gene Scully followed. Anna stood, staring with her mouth open, next to the teen-age girl. John fell down on his knees before one of the stalks and touched it with trembling hands. “It’s alive!” he said. “The earth’s still alive! Oh, God ... oh, Jesus, we’re going to have food!”

  “Josh ... how can ... this be?” Glory asked him, while Aaron grinned and poked at a stalk with Crybaby.

  He inhaled the air. It seemed fresher, cleaner, infused with electricity. He looked at Glory, and his deformed mouth smiled. “I want to tell you about Swan,” he said, his voice shaking. “I want to tell everybody in Mary’s Rest about her. She’s got the power of life in her, Glory. She can wake the whole land up again!” And then he was running across the field toward the figure that lay on the ground, and he bent down and lifted her in his arms and squeezed her against him.

  “She can!” he shouted. His voice rolled like thunder toward the shacks of Mary’s Rest. “She can!”

  Swan shifted drowsily. The slit of her mouth opened, and she asked in a soft, irritated voice, “Can what?”

  65

  THE WIND HAD STRENGTHENED and was blowing through the forest from the southwest. It carried the aroma of wood-smoke, mingled with a bitter, sulphurous smell that made Sister think of rotten eggs. And then she, Paul, Robin Oakes and the three other highwaymen emerged from the forest onto a wide field covered with ashy snow. Ahead of them, lying under a haze of smoke from hundreds of stove pipe chimneys, were the close-clustered shacks and alleys of a settlement.

  “That’s Mary’s Rest,” Robin said. He stopped, gazing around at the field. “And I think this is where I saw Swan and the big dude. Yeah. I think it is.”

  Sister knew it was. They were close now, very close. Her nerves were jangling, and she wanted to run toward those shacks, but her aching, weary legs would not permit it. One step at a time, she thought. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going.

  They neared a mudhole full of skeletons. The sulphurous odor was coming off it, and they gave it a wide berth as they passed. But Sister didn’t even mind that smell; she felt as if she were dream-walking in real life, exhilarated and strong, her gaze set toward the smoke-shrouded shacks. And then she knew she must be dreaming, because she imagined she heard the skittering music of a fiddle.

  “Look there,” Paul said, and he pointed.

  Off to their left was a gathering of what looked to be thirty or forty people, possibly more. They were dancing in the snow, doing old-fashioned clogging steps and square-dance spins around a bonfire. Sister saw musicians: an old man in a faded red cap and a fleece-lined coat, sawing away at a fiddle; a white-bearded black man seated on a chair, scraping a stone across the ribs of a washboard he held between his knees; a young boy plucking chords on a guitar; and a thick-set woman beating a cardboard box like a bass drum. Their music was rough, but it swelled like a raw-boned symphony across the field, inviting the dancers to clog and spin with greater abandon. Snow kicked from their heels, and Sister heard merry shouts and whoops over the music. It had been a long time since she’d heard music, and she’d never seen a sight like this before: They were having a hoedown in the midst of a wasteland.

  But then Sister realized that it was not quite a wasteland, for beyond the bonfire and the dancers were several rows of small, pale green plants. Sister heard Paul say, awestruck, “My God! Something’s growing again!”

  They walked across the field toward the celebrants and passed what appeared to be a newly-dug grave. There was a pinewood marker with RUSTY WEATHERS carved into it. Sleep well, she thought—and then they were getting close to the bonfire, and some of the people stopped dancing to watch their approach.

  The music faltered and ceased with a last fiddle whine. “How do,” a man in a dark green coat said, stepping away from the woman he’d been dancing with. He was wearing a Braves baseball cap, and underneath its brim almost all of his face was scarred by an ugly brown keloid; but he was smiling, and his eyes were bright.

  “Hello,” Sister replied. The faces here were different from others she’d seen. They were hopeful, joyful faces, in spite of the scars and keloids that marred many, in spite of the protruding cheekbones and sunken eyes that spoke of long hunger, in spite of the pallid skin that had not felt the sun in seven years. She stared at the pale green plants, mesmerized by their motion as they swayed in the wind. Paul walked past her and bent over to reach toward one of them with a trembling hand, as if he feared the delicate wonder might evaporate like smoke.

  “She says not to touch ’em,” the black man who’d been scraping the washboard said. “She says to let ’em be, and they’ll take care of themselves.”

  Paul drew his hand back. “It’s been ... a long time since I’ve seen anything growing,” he said. “I thought the earth was dead. What is it?”

  “Corn,” another man told him. “Stalks just came up almost overnight. I used to be a farmer, and I thought the dirt wasn’t fit to plant in, too. Thought the radiation and the cold had about finished it.” He shrugged, admiring the green stalks. “I’m glad to be wrong. ’Course, they’re not too strong yet, but anything that grows in that dirt—well, it’s a miracle.”

  “She says to let ’em be,” the black musician continued. “Says she can seed a whole crop field if we lets these first ones ripen, and we stands guard and keeps them crows away.”

  “She’s sick, though.” The husky woman, who had a vivid red keloid on her face, laid aside the cardboard box she’d been beating time to. “She’s burnin’ up with fever, and there ain’t no medicine.”

  “She,” Sister repeated. She hear
d herself speaking as if in a dream. “Who are you talking about?”

  “The girl,” Anna McClay said. “Swan’s her name. She’s in pretty bad shape. Got that stuff on her face even worse than you do, and she’s blind to boot.”

  “Swan.” Sister’s knees were weak.

  “She done this.” The black musician motioned toward the young cornstalks. “Planted ’em with her own hands. Everybody knows it. That Josh fella’s tellin’ the whole town.” He looked at Sister, grinned and showed a single gold tooth in the front of his head. “Ain’t it something?” he said proudly.

  “Where have you folks come from?” Anna asked.

  “A long way off,” Sister replied, close to tears. “A long, long way.”

  “Where’s the girl now?” Paul took a few steps toward Anna McClay. His own heart was pounding and the faint, rich odor of the stalks had been sweeter than the smell of any whiskey he’d ever poured into a glass.

  Anna pointed at Mary’s Rest. “That way. In Glory Bowen’s shack. It ain’t too far.”

  “Take us there,” Paul urged. “Please.”

  Anna hesitated, trying to read their eyes like she used to do with the marks strolling on the carny midway. Both of them were strong and steady, she decided, and furthermore they would take no shit. The gaunt boy with the long hair full of feathers and bones looked to be a real hell-raiser, and the other kids appeared pretty tough, too; all of them probably knew very well how to use the rifles they were carrying. She’d already seen that the man had a gun tucked down in the waistband of his trousers, and the woman most likely was packing iron as well. But both of them had a need in their eyes, too, like the glimmer of a fire that burned deep inside. Josh had told her to be wary of strangers who wanted to see Swan, but she knew it was not for her to deny that need. “Come on, then,” she said, and she walked toward the shacks. Behind them, the fiddler warmed his hands at the fire and then began playing again, and the black man scraped merrily at his washboard as the celebrants danced.

  They followed Anna McClay through the alleys of Mary’s Rest. And, as Sister turned a corner about five or six paces behind the other woman, something shot out into her path from the mouth of another alley. She had to draw up sharply to keep from stumbling and falling, and suddenly she had a sensation of numbing cold that seemed to draw the breath from her lungs. She instinctively whipped the shot-gun from its holster beneath her coat—and stuck it into the leering face of a man who sat in a child’s red wagon.

  He stared up at her through deep-set eyes, and he lifted one hand toward the satchel that Sister held under her arm. “Welcome,” he said.

  Sister was aware of a series of clicks, and the man’s fathomless eyes moved to look past her. She glanced back and saw that Paul had his Magnum in his hand. Robin was aiming his rifle, and so were the other three boys. They all had a deadly bead on the man in the red wagon.

  Sister stared into his eyes; he cocked his head to one side, the grin widening to show a mouthful of broken teeth. Slowly he withdrew his hand and laid it across the stumps of his legs.

  “That’s Mr. Welcome,” Anna said. “He’s crazy. Just push him to one side.”

  The man’s gaze ticked between Sister’s face and the satchel. He nodded. “Welcome,” he whispered.

  Her finger tightened on the shotgun’s trigger. Tendrils of cold seemed to be sliding around her, gripping her, slithering down through her clothes. The shotgun’s barrel was about eight inches from the man’s head, and Sister was seized with an impulse to blow that hideous, grinning face away. But what would be under it? she wondered. Tissue and bone—or another face?

  Because she thought she recognized the cunning glint in those eyes, like a beast patiently waiting for the moment to destroy. She thought she saw something of a monster who’d called himself Doyle Halland in them.

  Her finger twitched, ready to fire. Ready to unmask the face.

  “Come on,” Anna said. “He won’t bite you. Fella’s been hangin’ around here a couple of days, and he’s crazy, but he ain’t dangerous.”

  The man in the red wagon suddenly drew a lungful of air and released it in a quiet hiss between clenched teeth. He lifted his fist and held it up before Sister’s face for a few seconds; then one finger protruded to form the barrel of an imaginary weapon aimed at her head. “Gun goes bang,” he said.

  Anna laughed. “See? He’s a looney!”

  Sister hesitated. Shoot him, she thought. Squeeze the trigger—just a little harder. You know who it is. Shoot him!

  But ... what if I’m wrong? The shotgun’s barrel wavered.

  And then her chance was gone. The man cackled, muttered something in a singsong rhythm and pushed himself past her with his arms. He entered an alley to the left, and Sister stood watching the demented cripple go. He did not look back.

  “Gettin’ colder.” Anna shivered, pulling her collar up. She motioned ahead. “Glory Bowen’s shack is this way.”

  The man in the red wagon turned down another alley and pushed himself out of Sister’s sight. She let out the breath she’d been holding, and the white steam floated past her face. Then she returned her shotgun to its sheath and followed the other woman again, but she felt like an exposed nerve.

  Another bonfire was burning on the main street of Mary’s Rest, casting warmth and light over twelve or fifteen people who stood around it. The ugliest, most swaybacked old horse Sister had ever seen was tied to a post on the front porch of one of the shacks; the horse was covered with a number of blankets to keep him warm, and his head was nodding as if he were about to fall asleep. Nearby, a small black boy was trying to balance a crooked stick on the ends of his fingers.

  Two men, both armed with rifles, sat on the shack’s cinder block front steps, talking and drinking hot coffee from clay mugs. Their attention turned from their quiet talk to Anna.

  “Folks here say they want to see the girl,” Anna told one of them, a man in a plaid coat and tan cap. “I think they’re all right.”

  He’d seen their weapons, and now he rested his own rifle across his knees. “Josh said no strangers were allowed in.”

  Sister stepped forward. “My name’s Sister. This is Paul Thorson, Robin Oakes, and I can vouch for the other boys. Now, if you’ll tell me your name, we won’t be strangers anymore, will we?”

  “Gene Scully,” he answered. “Are you folks from around here?”

  “No,” Paul said. “Listen, we’re not going to hurt Swan. We just want to see her. We want to talk to her.”

  “She can’t talk,” Scully said. “She’s sick. And I’ve been told not to let any strangers through that door.”

  You need your ears cleaned out, mister? Robin, smiling with cold menace, stood between Sister and Paul. “We’ve come a long way. We said we want to see the girl.”

  Scully rose to his feet, ready to swing the rifle’s barrel up at them. Beside him, Zachial Epstein also nervously stood up. The silence stretched. And then Sister gritted her teeth and started to climb the steps, and if the men tried to stop her, she thought, she was going to blast both of them to hell.

  “Hey, Anna!” Aaron called suddenly. “Come look at the magic!”

  She glanced over at him. He was still playing with that dumb stick. “Later,” she told him. Aaron shrugged and started swinging it like an imaginary sword. Anna returned to the problem at hand. “Listen, we don’t need any more shit around here. And nobody needs to get riled or hurt, either. Gene, why don’t you just go on in and ask Josh to come speak to these folks?”

  “We want to see Swan.” Anger reddened Paul’s face. “We’re not going to be turned back, lady!”

  “Who’s Josh?” Sister asked.

  “Fella who’s been travelin’ with the girl. Takin’ care of her. Her guardian, I guess you’d say. Well? Do you want to state your business to him, or not?”

  “Bring him out.”

  “Go get him, Gene.” Anna took the rifle from him and immediately turned it on the strangers. “And now you folk
s can dump all that hardware in a neat pile next to the steps, if you please. You too, kiddies—I ain’t your mama! Drop ’em!”

  Scully started into the shack, but Sister said, “Wait!” She opened her satchel, attracting the direct interest of the rifle the other woman had, but she took care to move slowly, without threat. She reached past the glass ring into the bottom of the satchel, fished out what she was after and handed it up to Anna. “Here. Give this to Josh. It might mean something to him.”

  Anna looked at it, frowned and passed it back to Scully, who took it and went in.

  They waited. “Some town you’ve got here,” Robin said. “How much rent do the rats charge?”

  Anna smiled. “You’ll be glad we’ve got plenty of rats after you taste some cooked up in a stew, smartass.”

  “We were better off back in the cave,” he told Sister. “At least we had fresh air. This place smells like somebody’s shit bucket over—”

  The door opened, and a monster walked out. Gene Scully followed behind. Robin just stood and stared, his mouth agape, because he’d never seen anybody so ugly before. The big dude was easily the size of three regular men.

  “Jesus,” Paul whispered, and he couldn’t help but be repelled. The man’s single eye fixed on him for a few seconds, then moved to Sister.

  She didn’t budge. Monster or not, she’d decided, nobody was going to stop her from seeing Swan.

  “Where did you find this?” Josh asked, holding up the object Gene Scully had given him.

  “In the parking lot of what used to be a K-Mart. It was in a town in Kansas called—”

  “Matheson,” Josh interrupted. “I know the place, from a long time ago. This belonged to a friend. But ... do I know you?”

  “No. Paul and I have been traveling for years, searching for someone. And I think the person we’ve been led toward is in that house. Will you let us see her?”

  Josh looked again at what he held in his hand. It was one of Leona Skelton’s tarot cards, the colors faded, the edges curled and yellowed. The legend on the card said THE EMPRESS.