Kempka had one leg out of his pants. He was wearing red silk boxer shorts. The boy was staring up at him, eyes slitted behind those damned goggles, and now the boy began to make a deep, animalish sound down in his throat, a cross between a growl and an unearthly moan.
“Stop that,” Kempka told him. That noise gave him the creeps. The boy didn’t stop, and the awful sound was getting louder. “Stop it, you little bastard!” He saw the boy’s face changing, tightening into a mask of utter, brutal hatred, and the sight of it scared the shit out of Freddie Kempka. He realized that the mind-altering drugs were doing something to Roland Croninger that he hadn’t counted on. “Stop it!” he shouted, and he lifted his hand to slap Roland across the face.
Roland leaped forward, and like a battering ram his head plowed into Kempka’s bulging stomach. The Fat Man cried out and fell backward, his arms windmilling. The trailer rocked back and forth, and before Kempka could recover, Roland plowed into him again with a force that sent Kempka crashing to the floor. Then the boy was all over him, punching and kicking and biting. Kempka shouted, “Lawry! Help me!” but even as he said it he remembered that he had double-bolted the door to keep the boy from escaping. Two fingers jabbed into his left eye and almost ripped it from the socket; a fist crunched into his nose, and Roland’s head came forward in a vicious butting blow that hit Kempka full in the mouth, split his lips and knocked two of his front teeth into his throat. “Help me!” he shrieked, his mouth full of blood. He hit Roland with a flailing forearm and swiped him off, then flopped over on his stomach and began to crawl toward that locked door. “Help me, Lawry!” he yelled through his cracked lips.
Something went around Kempka’s throat and tightened, catching the blood in the Fat Man’s head and reddening his face like an overripe tomato. He realized, panic-stricken, that the lunatic boy was strangling him with his own belt.
Roland rode on Kempka’s back like Ahab on the white whale. Kempka gagged, fighting to pry the belt loose. The blood pulsed in his head with a force that he feared would blow his eyeballs out. There was a hammering at the door, and Lawry’s voice shouted, “Mr. Kempka! What is it?”
The Fat Man reared up, twisted his shuddering body and slammed Roland against the wall, but still the boy held on. Kempka’s lungs strained for air, and again he threw his body to the side. This time he heard the boy’s cry of pain, and the belt loosened. Kempka squalled like a hurt pig, scrabbling wildly toward the door. He reached up to release one of the latches—and a chair smashed him across the back, splintering and shooting agony up his spine. Then the boy was beating at him with a chair leg, hitting him in the head and face, and Kempka screamed, “He’s gone crazy! He’s gone crazy!”
Lawry pounded at the door. “Let me in!”
Kempka took a dazing blow to the forehead, felt blood running down his face, and he struck out blindly at Roland. His left fist connected, and he heard the breath whoosh out of the boy. Roland collapsed to his knees.
Kempka wiped blood out of his eyes, reached up and tried to slide the first bolt back. There was blood on his fingers, and he couldn’t get a good grip. Lawry was pounding on the door, trying to force it open. “He’s crazy!” Kempka wailed. “He’s trying to kill me!”
“Hey, you dumb fuck!” the boy snarled behind him.
Kempka looked back and whined with terror.
Roland had picked up one of the kerosene lamps that illuminated the trailer. He was grinning madly, his goggles streaked with blood. “Here you go, Mike!” he yelled, and he flung the lamp.
It hit the Fat Man’s skull and shattered, dousing his face and chest with kerosene that rippled into flame, setting his beard, hair and the front of his sport shirt on fire. “Burnin’ me! Burnin’ me!” Kempka squalled, rolling and thrashing.
The door shuddered as Lawry kicked it, but the Airstream trailer people had built it to be strong.
As Kempka jitterbugged horizontally and Lawry kicked at the door, Roland turned his attention to the rack of rifles and the handguns on their hooks. He had not finished showing Mike Armbruster how a King’s Knight gets even. Oh, no… not yet.
He walked around the table and chose a beautiful .38 Special with a mother-of-pearl handle. He opened the cylinder and found three bullets inside. He smiled.
On the floor, the Fat Man had beaten the fire out. His face was a mass of scorched flesh, burned hair and blisters, his eyes so swollen he could hardly see. But he could see the boy well enough, approaching him with the gun in his hand. The boy was smiling, and Kempka opened his mouth to scream, but a croak came out.
Roland knelt in front of him. The boy’s face was covered with sweat, and a pulse beat at his temple. He cocked the .38 and held the barrel about three inches from Kempka’s skull.
“Please,” Kempka begged. “Please… Roland… don’t…”
Roland’s smile was rigid, his eyes huge behind the goggles. He said, “Sir Roland. And don’t you forget it.”
Lawry heard a shot. Then, about ten seconds later, there was a second shot. He gripped the boy’s automatic in his right hand and threw his shoulder against the door. It still wouldn’t give. He kicked at it again, but the damned thing was stubborn. He was about to start shooting through the door when he heard the bolts being thrown back.
The door opened.
The boy was standing there, a .38 dangling in his hand, gore splattered across his face and in his hair. He was grinning, and he said in a fast, excited, drugged voice, “It’s over I did it I did it I showed him how a King’s Knight gets even I did it!”
Lawry lifted the automatic to blow the boy away.
But the twin barrels of a shotgun probed the back of his neck.
“Uh-uh,” Sheila Fontana said. She’d heard the commotion and had come over to see what was happening, and other people were coming through the dark as well, carrying lanterns and flashlights. “Drop it or you get dropped.”
The automatic hit the ground.
“Don’t kill me,” Lawry whimpered. “Okay? I just worked for Mr. Kempka. That’s all. I just did what he said. Okay?”
“Want me to kill him?” Sheila asked Roland. The boy just stared and grinned. He’s shitfaced, she thought. He’s either drunk or stoned!
“Listen, I don’t care what the kid did to Kempka.” Lawry’s voice cracked. “He wasn’t anything to me. I just drove for him. Just followed his orders. Listen, I can do the same for you, if you want. You, the kid and Colonel Macklin. I can take care of things for you—keep everybody around here in line. I’ll do whatever you say to do. You say jump, I’ll ask how high.”
“I showed him I sure did,” Roland rattled on, beginning to weave on his feet. “I showed him!”
“Listen, you and the kid and Colonel Macklin are the head honchos around here, as far as I can see,” Lawry told Sheila. “I mean… if Kempka’s dead.”
“Let’s go take a look, then.” Sheila poked his neck with the shotgun, and Lawry eased past Roland into the trailer.
They found the Fat Man crumpled in a bloody heap against one wall. There was the smell of burnt skin in the air. Kempka had been shot through the skull and through the heart at close range.
“All the guns, the food and everything are yours now,” Lawry said. “I just do what I’m told. You just tell me what to do, I’ll do it. I swear to God.”
“Drag that fat carcass out of our trailer, then.”
Startled, Sheila looked toward the door.
Macklin stood there, leaning against the doorframe, shirt-less and dripping. The black overcoat was draped over his shoulders, the stump of his right arm hidden in its folds. His face was pale, his eyes sunken in violet hollows. Roland stood beside him, weaving and swaying, about to collapse. “I don’t know… what the hell happened here,” Macklin said, speaking with an effort, “but if everything belongs to us now… we’re moving into the trailer. Get that thing out of here.”
Lawry looked stricken. “By myself? I mean… he’s gonna be damned heavy!”
&nbs
p; “Either drag him or join him.”
Lawry went to work.
“And clean up this mess when you get through,” Macklin told him, going over to the rack of rifles and handguns. God, what an arsenal! he thought. He had no idea what had transpired here, but Kempka was dead and somehow they were in control. The trailer was theirs, the food, the water, the arsenal, the whole encampment was theirs! He was stunned, still exhausted by the pain he’d endured—but he felt somehow stronger, too, somehow… cleaner. He felt like a man again instead of a sniveling, scared dog. Colonel James B. Macklin had been reborn.
Lawry had almost manhandled the corpse to the door. “I can’t make it!” he protested, trying to catch his breath. “He’s too heavy!”
Macklin whirled around and walked toward Lawry, stopping only when their faces were about four inches apart. Macklin’s eyes were bloodshot, and they bored into the other man’s with furious intensity. “You listen to me, slime,” Macklin said menacingly. Lawry listened. “I’m in charge here now. Me. What I say goes, without question. I’m going to teach you about discipline and control, mister. I’m going to teach everybody about discipline and control. There will be no questions, no hesitations when I give an order, or there will be… executions. Public executions. You care to be the first?”
“No,” Lawry said in a small, scared voice.
“No… what?”
“No… sir,” was the reply.
“Good. But you spread the word around, Lawry. I’m going to get these people organized and off their asses. If they don’t like my way of doing things, they can get out.”
“Organized? Organized for what?”
“You think there won’t come a time when we’ll have to fight to keep what we’ve got? Mister, there are going to be plenty of times we’ll have to fight—if not to keep what we have, then… to take what we want.”
“We’re not any fucking army!” Lawry said.
“You will be,” Macklin promised, and he motioned toward the arsenal. “You’re going to learn to be, mister. And so is everybody else. Now get that piece of shit out of here… Corporal.”
“Huh?”
“Corporal Lawry. That’s your new rank. And you’ll be living in the tent out there. This trailer is for headquarters staff.”
Oh, Christ! Lawry thought. This guy’s gone wacko! But he kind of liked the idea of being a corporal. That sounded important. He turned away from the colonel and started hauling Kempka’s body again. A funny thought hit him, and he almost giggled, but he held it back. The king is dead! he thought. Long live the king! He hauled the corpse down the steps, and the trailer door shut. He saw several men standing around, attracted by all the ruckus, and he began barking orders at them to pick up Freddie Kempka’s corpse and carry it out to the edge of the dirtwart land. They obeyed him like automatons, and Judd Lawry figured he might grow to enjoy playing soldiers.
Seven
Thinking About Tomorrow
Heads will roll / The
straitjacket game / Suicide
mission / My people / A
smoky old glass / Christian
in a Cadillac / Green froth
Forty-one
Heads will roll
“My name is Alvin Mangrim. I’m Lord Alvin now. Welcome to my kingdom.” The young blond madman, sitting on his toilet-throne, motioned with a slender hand. “Do you like it?”
Josh was sickened by the smell of death and decay. He, Swan and Leona were sitting together on the floor of the K-Mart’s pet department at the rear of the store. In the small cages around them were dozens of dead canaries and parakeets, and dead fish lay moldering in their tanks. Beyond a glassed-in display area, a few kittens and puppies were drawing flies.
He longed to bash that grinning, blond-bearded face, but his wrists and ankles were chained and padlocked. Both Swan and Leona were bound by ropes. Around them stood the baldheaded Neanderthal, the man with bulging fish-eyes, and about six or seven others. The black-bearded man and the dwarf in the shopping cart lurked nearby, the dwarf clutching Swan’s dowsing rod in his stubby fingers.
“I fixed the juice,” Lord Alvin offered, reclining on his throne and eating grapes. “That’s why the lights are on.” His murky green eyes shifted from Josh to Swan and back again. Leona was still bleeding from the gash in her head, and her eyes fluttered as she fought off shock. “I hooked a couple of portable generators up to the electrical system. I’ve always been good with electricity. And I’m a very good carpenter, too. Jesus was a carpenter, you know.” He spat out seeds. “Do you believe in Jesus?”
“Yes,” Josh managed to croak.
“I do, too. I had a dog named Jesus once. I crucified him, but he didn’t come back to life. Before he died, he told me what to do to the people in the brick house. Off went their heads.”
Josh sat very still, looking up into those green, bottomless eyes.
Lord Alvin smiled, and for a moment he resembled a choirboy, all draped in purple and ready to sing. “I fixed the lights here so we’d attract plenty of fresh meat—like you folks. Plenty of play toys. See, everybody left us at Pathway. All the lights went out, and the doctors went home. But we found some of them, like Dr. Baylor. And then I baptized my disciples in the blood of Dr. Baylor and sent them out into the world, and the rest of us stayed here.” He cocked his head to one side, and his smile faded. “It’s dark outside,” he said. “It’s always dark, even in the daytime. What’s your name, friend?”
Josh told him. He could smell his own scared sweat over the odor of dead animals.
“Josh,” Lord Alvin repeated. He ate a grape. “Mighty Joshua. Blew those old walls of Jericho right fucking down, didn’t you?” He smiled again and motioned at a young man with slicked-back black hair and red paint circling his eyes and mouth. The young man came forward, holding a jar of something.
Swan heard some of the men giggle with excitement. Her heart was still pounding, but the tears were gone now, and so was the molasses that had been jamming up her brain gears. She knew these crazy men had escaped from the Pathway place, and she knew that death was before her, sitting on a toilet. She wondered what had happened to Mule, and since she’d bumped into the mannequins—she shoved that memory quickly aside—there’d been no sight or sound of the terrier.
The young man with red paint on his face knelt in front of Josh, unscrewed the lid of the jar and revealed white greasepaint. He got a dab of the stuff on his forefinger and reached toward Josh’s face; Josh jerked his head back, but the Neanderthal gripped Josh’s skull and held it steady as the greasepaint was applied.
“You’re going to look pretty, Josh,” Lord Alvin told him. “You’re going to enjoy this.”
Through the waves of pain in her legs and the numbing frost of shock, Leona watched the greasepaint going on. She realized the young man was painting Josh’s face to resemble a skull.
“I know a game,” Lord Alvin said. “A game called Straitjacket. I made it up. Know why? Dr. Baylor said, ‘Come on, Alvin! Come get your pill like a good boy,’ and I had to walk down that long, stinking corridor every day.” He held up two fingers. “Twice a day. I’m a very good carpenter, though.” He paused, blinking slowly as if trying to get his thoughts back in whack. “I used to build dog houses. Not just ordinary dog houses. I built mansions and castles for dogs. I built a replica of the Tower of London for Jesus. That’s where they chopped the heads of witches off.” The corner of his left eye began ticking. He was silent, staring into space as the finishing touches were put to the greasepaint skull that covered Josh’s face.
When the job was done, the Neanderthal released Josh’s head. Lord Alvin finished his grapes and licked his fingers. “In the Straitjacket game,” he said between licks, “you get taken to the front of the store. The lady and the kid stay here. Now, you get a choice—what do you want freed, your arms or your legs?”
“What’s the point of this shit?”
Lord Alvin waggled an admonishing finger. “Arms or legs, Josh?�
�
I need my legs free, Josh reasoned. Then: no, I can always hop or hobble. I’ve got to have my arms free. No, my legs! It was impossible to decide without knowing what was going to happen. He hesitated, trying to think clearly. He felt Swan watching him; he looked at her, but she shook her head, could offer no help. “My legs,” Josh finally said.
“Good. That didn’t hurt, did it?” Again, there was a giggle and rustle of excitement from the onlookers. “Okay, you get taken up to the front and your legs are freed. Then you get five minutes to make it all the way through the store back here.” He pulled up the right sleeve of his purple robe. On his arm were six wristwatches. “See, I can keep the time to the exact second. Five minutes from when I say go—and not one second more, Josh.”
Josh released a sigh of relief. Thank God he’d chosen his legs to be freed! He could see himself crawling and hobbling through the K-Mart in this ridiculous farce!
“Oh, yes,” Lord Alvin continued. “My subjects are going to try their best to kill you between the front of the store and here.” He smiled cheerfully. “They’ll be using knives, hammers, axes—everything except guns. See, guns wouldn’t be fair. Now, don’t worry too much: You can use the same things, if you find them—and if you can get your hands on them. Or you can use anything else to protect yourself with, but you won’t find any guns out there. Not even a pellet rifle. Isn’t that a fun game?”
Josh’s mouth tasted like sawdust. He was afraid to ask, but he had to: “What… if I don’t get back here… in five minutes?”
The dwarf jumped up and down in the shopping cart and pointed the dowsing rod at him like a jester’s scepter. “Death! Death! Death!” he yelled.
“Thank you, Imp,” Lord Alvin said. “Josh, you’ve seen my mannequins, haven’t you? Aren’t they pretty? So lifelike, too! Want to know how we make them?” He glanced up at someone behind Josh and nodded.
1987 - Swan Song v4 Page 41
