Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  They got into the Jeep, and the driver headed toward Colonel Macklin’s trailer.

  Out by the broken northern wall, where flames still gnawed and trucks rumbled back and forth with their cargos of guns, clothing and shoes, a solitary figure found a group of corpses that the scavenger brigades hadn’t yet gotten to.

  Alvin Mangrim rolled the body of a dead man over and examined the ears and nose. The nose was too small, he decided, but the ears would do just fine. He withdrew a bloody butcher knife from a leather holder at his waist and went to work severing both the ears; then he dropped them into a cloth bag that hung around his shoulder. The bottom of it was soggy with blood, and inside it were more ears, noses and a few fingers he’d already “liberated” from other bodies. He was planning on drying the objects out and stringing them into necklaces. He knew Colonel Macklin would like one, and he thought it might be a good way to barter some extra rations. In this day and age a man had to use his mind!

  He recalled a tune from a long time ago, part of a shadowy world. He remembered holding a woman’s hand—a rough, hard and hateful hand, covered with calluses—and going to a theater to see a cartoon movie about a lovely princess who shacked up with seven dwarves. He’d always liked the tune that the dwarves whistled as they worked in the mine, and he began to whistle that song as he carved off a woman’s nose and dropped it into the bag. Most of the music he was whistling went out through the hole where his own nose had been, and it occurred to him that if he found a nose the right size he could dry it and use it to plug the hole.

  He went to the next corpse, which was lying on its face. The nose would probably be smashed, Alvin thought. But he grasped the corpse’s shoulder and rolled it over anyway.

  It was a man with a gray-streaked beard.

  And suddenly the corpse’s eyes opened, bright blue and bloodshot against the grayish-white flesh.

  “Oh ... wow,” Alvin Mangrim said.

  Paul lifted his Magnum, pressed the barrel against the other man’s skull and blew his brains out with the last bullet.

  The dead man fell over Paul’s body and warmed him. But Paul knew he was dying, and he was glad now that he’d been too gutless to put that gun against his own head and take the easy way out. He didn’t know who the dead man was, but the bastard was history.

  He waited. He’d lived most of his life alone, and he wasn’t afraid to die alone. No, not afraid at all—because the fearsome thing had been getting to this point. It was a piece of cake from here on. The only thing he regretted was not knowing what had happened to the girl—but he knew that Sister was a tough old bird, and if she’d survived all this, she wasn’t going to let any harm come to Swan.

  Swan, he thought. Swan. Don’t let them break you. Spit in their eyes and kick their asses—and think sometimes of a Good Samaritan, okay?

  He decided he was tired. He was going to rest, and maybe when he woke up it would be morning. It would be so wonderful to see the sun.

  Paul went to sleep.

  FOURTEEN

  Prayer for the Final Hour

  The master thief

  Buried treasure

  A feat of magic

  The way out

  The greatest power

  Roland’s good, long look

  Realm of God

  The machine

  Swan’s death knell

  A place to rest

  The vow

  85

  YELLOW LAMPLIGHT FELL UPON the visage of Death, and in its presence Swan drew herself up tall and straight. Fear fluttered inside her ribs like a caged butterfly, but Swan met Colonel Macklin’s gaze without cringing. He was the skeletal rider, Swan realized. Yes. She knew him, knew what he was, understood the ravenous power that drove him. And now he’d scythed down Mary’s Rest, but his eyes were still hungry.

  On the desk before Colonel Macklin was a piece of paper. Macklin lifted his right arm and slammed his hand down, impaling the casualty report on the nails. He pulled them loose from the scarred desktop and offered his palm to Swan.

  “The Army of Excellence has lost four hundred and sixty-eight soldiers today. Probably more, when the reports are updated.” He glanced quickly at the woman who stood beside Swan, then back to the girl. Roland and two guards stood behind them, and standing at Macklin’s right was the man who called himself Friend. “Take it,” Macklin said. “Look for yourself. Tell me if you’re worth four hundred and sixty-eight soldiers.”

  “The people who killed those soldiers thought so,” Sister spoke up. “And if we’d had more bullets, you’d still be outside the walls getting your butts kicked.”

  Macklin’s attention drifted to her. “What’s your name?”

  “She’s called Sister,” Friend said. “And she’s got something I want.”

  “I thought you wanted the girl.”

  “No. She’s nothing to me. But you need her. You saw the cornfield for yourself; that’s her work.” He smiled vacantly at Sister. “This woman’s hidden a pretty piece of glass that I’m going to have. Oh, yes! I’m going to find it, believe me.” His eyes probed deeply into Sister’s, down through flesh and bone to the storehouse of memory. The shadows of her experiences flew like startled birds within her mind. He saw the jagged ruins of Manhattan, and Sister’s hands uncovering the circle of glass for the first time; he saw the watery hell of the Holland Tunnel, the snow-covered highway that wound through Pennsylvania, the prowling packs of wolves and a thousand other flickering images in the space of seconds. “Where is it?” he asked her, and at once he saw the image of an uplifted pickaxe in her mind, as if silhouetted by lightning.

  She felt him picking at her brain like a master thief at a safe’s lock, and she had to scramble the tumblers before he got in. She closed her eyes, squeezed them tightly shut and began to lift the lid of the most terrible thing, the thing that had sent her screaming over the edge and turned her into Sister Creep. The lid’s hinges were rusted, because she hadn’t looked inside it for a long time, but now she got the lid up and forced herself to see it, just as it had been that rainy day on the turnpike.

  The man with the scarlet eye was blinded by a blue light spinning around, and he heard a male voice saying, “Give her to me, lady. Come on now, let me have her.” The image cleared and strengthened, and suddenly he was holding a little girl’s body in his arms; she was dead, her face smashed and distorted, and nearby was an overturned car with steam hissing from its radiator. On the bloody concrete a few feet away were fragments of glass and little bits of sparkle. “Give her to me, lady. We’ll take care of her now,” a young man in a yellow rain slicker was saying as he reached for the child.

  “No,” Sister said softly, painfully, deep within the awful moment, “I won’t ... let you ... have her.” Sister’s voice sounded slurred and drunken.

  He drew back, out of the woman’s mind and memory. He resisted the urge to reach out and snap her neck. Either she was much stronger than he’d thought, or he was weaker than he knew—and he could feel that damned little bitch watching him, too! Something about her—her very presence—drained the power out of him! Yes, that was it! Her rampant evil was making him weak! One blow was all it would take; one quick blow to her skull, and it would all be over! He balled up his fist, and then he dared to look her in the face. “What are you staring at?”

  She didn’t answer. His face was fearsome, but it had a wet, plastic sheen. Then she said, as calmly as she could, “Why are you so afraid of me?”

  “I’m not afraid!” he bellowed, and dead flies fell from his lips. His cheeks reddened. One of his brown eyes turned jet-black, and the bones shifted under his face like the rotten foundations of a papier-mâché house. Wrinkles and cracks shot from the corners of his mouth, and he aged twenty years in an instant. His red, wrinkled neck quivered as he pulled his gaze away from her and back to Sister. “Croninger!” he said. “Go get Brother Timothy and bring him here.”

  Roland left the trailer without hesitation.

&nb
sp; “I could have someone shot every sixty seconds until you tell me.” Friend leaned closer to Sister. “Who should we start with? That big nigger? How about the boy? Shall we just pick and choose? Draw straws, or names out of a hat? I don’t give a shit. Where’d you hide it?”

  Again, all he could see was a spinning blue light and the scene of an accident. A pickaxe, he thought. A pickaxe. He looked at the woman’s dirty clothes and hands. And he knew. “You buried it, didn’t you?”

  There was no emotion on Sister’s face. Her eyes remained tightly closed.

  “You ... buried ... it,” he whispered, grinning.

  “What do you want with me?” Swan asked, trying to divert his attention. She looked at Colonel Macklin. “I’m listening,” she prompted.

  “You made the corn grow. Is that right?”

  “The ground made the corn grow.”

  “She did it!” Friend said, turning away from Sister for the moment. “She put the seeds in the dirt and made them grow! Nobody else could’ve done that! The ground is dead, and she’s the only one who can bring it back! If you take her with you, the Army of Excellence’ll have all the food it needs! She could make a whole field grow from one ear of corn!”

  Macklin stared at her. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a girl as lovely as her—and her face was strong, very strong. “Is that right?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But I won’t grow food for you. I won’t grow crops for an army. There’s no way you can force me.”

  “Yes, there is!” Friend hissed over Macklin’s shoulder. “She’s got friends out there! A big nigger and a boy! I saw them myself, just a little while ago! You bring them with us when we march, and she’ll grow the crops to save their throats!”

  “Josh and Robin would rather die.”

  “Would you rather they died?” He shook his head, and his other eye turned sea-green. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Swan knew he was right. She couldn’t refuse to help them if Josh’s and Robin’s lives were at stake. “Where are you marching to?” she asked tonelessly.

  “Here!” Friend said. “Here’s our Brother Timothy! He’ll tell you!” Roland and Brother Timothy were just entering the trailer; Roland had a firm grip on the skinny man’s arm, and Brother Timothy walked as if in a state of trance, his shoes shuffling along the floor.

  Swan turned toward the two men and flinched. The new arrival’s eyes were staring circles of shock, surrounded by deep purple. His mouth was half open, the lips gray and slack.

  Friend clapped his hands together. “Simon says! Tell the little bitch where we’re marching to, Brother Timothy!”

  The man made a groaning, garbled sound. He shuddered, and then he said, “To ... Warwick Mountain. To find God.”

  “Very good! Simon says! Tell us where Warwick Mountain is!”

  “West Virginia. I was there. I lived with God ... for seven days ... and seven nights.”

  “Simon says! What does God have up on Warwick Mountain?”

  Brother Timothy blinked, and a tear ran down his right cheek.

  “Simon’s about to get angry, Brother Timothy,” Friend said sweetly.

  The man whined; his mouth opened wider, and his head thrashed back and forth. “The black box ... and the silver key!” he said, his words rushing and tangling together. “The prayer for the final hour! Fear death by water! Fear death by water!”

  “Very good. Now count to ten.”

  Brother Timothy held up both hands in the lamplight. He began to count on his fingers. “One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... six—” He stopped, puzzled.

  And Swan had already seen that the other four fingers of his right hand had been chopped off.

  “I didn’t say ‘Simon says,’” Friend told him.

  The veins stuck out from Brother Timothy’s neck, and a pulse beat rapidly at his temple. Tears of terror filled his eyes. He tried to back away, but Roland’s grip tightened on his arm. “Please,” Brother Timothy whispered hoarsely, “don’t ... hurt me anymore. I’ll take you to him, I swear I will! Just ... don’t hurt me anymore ...” His voice was broken by sobbing, and he cringed as Friend approached.

  “We won’t hurt you.” Friend stroked the other man’s sweat-damp hair. “We wouldn’t dream of it. We just wanted you to show these ladies what the power of persuasion can do. They’d be very stupid if they didn’t do what we said, wouldn’t they?”

  “Stupid,” Brother Timothy agreed, with a zombie grin. “Very stupid.”

  “Good dog.” Friend patted the top of his head. Then he returned to Sister’s side, grabbed the back of her neck and twisted her head toward Brother Timothy; with his other hand he roughly forced one of her eyes open. “Look at him!” he shouted, and he shook her.

  His touch spread unbearable cold through her body; her bones ached, and she had no choice but to look at the maimed man who stood before her.

  “Captain Croninger has a very nice playroom.” His mouth was right up against her ear. “I’m going to give you until dawn to remember where that trinket is. If your memory’s still deficient, the good captain’s going to start picking people out of the chicken coop to play games with him. And you’re going to watch, because the first game will be to cut your eyelids off.” His hand squeezed like a noose.

  Sister was silent. The blue light continued to spin in her mind, and the young man in the yellow rain slicker kept reaching for the dead child in her arms.

  “Whoever she was,” he whispered, “I hope she died hating you.”

  Friend felt Swan watching him, felt her eyes probing to his soul, and he removed his hand before blind rage made him break the woman’s neck. Then he could stand it no longer, and he whirled toward her. Their faces were about six inches apart. “I’ll kill you, bitch!” he roared.

  Swan used every shred of willpower to keep herself from shrinking back. She held his gaze like an iron hand trapping a snake. “No, you won’t,” she told him. “You said I didn’t mean anything to you. But you were lying.”

  Brown pigment streaked across his pale flesh. His jaw lengthened, and a false mouth opened like a jagged wound in his forehead. One eye remained brown, while the other turned crimson, as if it had ruptured and gorged with blood. Smash her! he thought. Smash the bitch dead!

  But he did not. Could not. Because he knew, even through the vile entanglement of his own hatred, that there was a power in her beyond anything he could understand, and something deep within him yearned like a diseased heart. He despised her and wanted to grind her bones—but at the same time he dared not touch her, because her fire might sear him to a cinder.

  He backed away from her; his face became Hispanic, then Oriental, and finally it caught somewhere in mid-change. “You’re going with us when we march,” he promised. His voice was high and raspy, rising and tumbling through octaves. “We’re going to West Virginia first ... to find God.” He sneered the word. “Then we’re going to find you a nice farm with plenty of land. And we’re going to get the seeds and grain for you, too. We’ll find what you need in silos and barns along the way. We’re going to build a big wall around your farm, and we’ll even leave some soldiers to keep you company.” The mouth in his forehead smiled, then sealed up. “And for the rest of your life you’re going to be growing food for the Army of Excellence. You’ll have tractors, reapers, all kinds of machines! And your own slaves, too! I’ll bet that big nigger could really pull a plow.” He glanced quickly at the two guards. “Go get that black bastard out of the chicken coop. And a boy named Robin, too. They can share Brother Timothy’s quarters. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Brother Timothy grinned slyly. “Simon didn’t say speak.”

  “Where can we put these two ladies?” Friend asked Colonel Macklin.

  “I don’t know. A tent, I guess.”

  “Oh, no! Let’s at least give the ladies mattresses! We want them comfortable while they think! How about a trailer?”

  “They can go into Sheila’s trailer,” Rola
nd suggested. “She’ll watch them for us, too.”

  “Take them there,” Friend ordered. “But I want two armed guards on duty at that trailer’s door. There will be no mistakes. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” He withdrew his pistol from its waist holster. “After you,” he told Swan and Sister, and as they went out the door and down the carved steps Swan clenched Sister’s hand.

  Friend stood at the doorway and watched them go. “How long before dawn?” he asked.

  “Three or four hours, I think,” Macklin said. Swan’s face remained impressed in Macklin’s mind as clearly as a photograph. He ripped the casualty report off the nails in his palm; the numbers were organized by brigade, and Macklin tried to concentrate on them, but he couldn’t get past the girl’s face. He’d not seen such beauty in a long, long time; it was beyond sexual—it was clean, powerful and new. He found himself staring at the nails in his palm, and at the filthy bandages taped around his wrist. For an instant he could smell himself, and the odor almost made him puke.

  He looked up at Friend in the doorway, and Macklin’s mind suddenly cleared like clouds blown away by a scorching wind.

  My God, he thought. I’m ... in league with ...

  Friend turned his head slightly. “Is anything on your mind?” he inquired.

  “No. Nothing. I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

  “Thinking gets people in trouble. Simon says! Isn’t that right, Brother Timothy?”

  “Right!” the man chirped, and he clapped his mangled hands together.

  86

  “I’M AN ENTERTAINER.” THE woman who sat on a pile of dirty pillows in the corner suddenly said.

  It was the first time she’d spoken since they’d been shoved into the filthy trailer more than an hour before. She’d just sat there and watched them as Swan lay on one of the bare mattresses and Sister paced the room.

  “Do you two like to party?”