1987 - Swan Song v4

by Robert McCammon

  “The world’ll keep turnin’,” Leona had said. “Oh, God gave this world a mighty spin, He did! And He put mighty tough minds and souls in a lot of people, too—people like you, maybe.”

  She thought of PawPaw Briggs sitting up and speaking. That was something she hadn’t wanted to think about too much, but now she wanted to know what that had meant. She didn’t feel special in any way; she just felt tired and beat-up and dusty, and when she let her thoughts drift toward her mama all she wanted to do was break down and cry. But she did not.

  Swan wanted to know more about everything—to learn to read better, if books could be found; to ask questions and learn to listen; to learn to think and reason things out. But she never wanted to grow up all the way, because she feared the grownup world; it was a bully with a fat stomach and a mean mouth who stomped on gardens before they had a chance to grow.

  No, Swan decided. I want to be who I am, and nobody’s going to stomp me down—and if they try, they might just get themselves a footful of stickers.

  Rusty had been watching the child as he mixed their dinner of dog food; he saw she was deep in concentration. “Penny for your thoughts,” he said, and he snapped the fingers of his right hand, bringing up between his thumb and forefinger the coin he’d already palmed. He tossed it to her, and Swan caught it.

  She saw it wasn’t a penny. It was a brass token, about the size of a quarter, and it had Rydell Circus written on it above the smiling face of a clown.

  Swan hesitated, looked at Josh and then back to Rusty. She decided to say, “I’m thinking about… tomorrow.”

  And Josh sat with his back against the wall, listening to the shrill whine of the wind and hoping that somehow they would survive the forbidding corridor of tomorrows that stretched ahead of them.

  Forty-six

  Christian in a Cadillac

  The Homewood High School gymnasium had become a hospital, and Red Cross and army personnel had rigged up generators that kept the electricity going. A haggard Red Cross doctor named Eichelbaum led Sister and Paul Thorson through the maze of people lying on cots and mattresses on the floor. Sister kept the duffel bag at her side; she had not gone more than five feet from it in the three days since their gunshots had been heard by a group of sentries. A hot meal of corn, rice and steaming coffee had tasted to Sister like gourmet delicacies.

  She’d gone into a cubicle in a building marked INCOMING and had submitted to being stripped by a nurse in a white suit and mask who had run a Geiger counter over her body. The nurse had jumped back three feet when the counter’s needle almost went off the scale. Sister had been scrubbed with some kind of white, grainy powder, but still the counter cackled like a hen in heat. A half-dozen more scrubbings brought the reading down to an acceptable level, but when the nurse had said, “We’ll have to dispose of this,” and reached for the duffel bag, Sister had grabbed her by the back of the neck and asked her if she still liked living.

  Two Red Cross doctors and a couple of army officers who looked like boy scouts except for the livid burns across their faces couldn’t pry the bag away from Sister, and finally Dr. Eichelbaum had thrown up his arms and shouted, “Just scrub the shit out of the damned thing, then!”

  The duffel bag had been scrubbed several times, and the powder had been sprayed liberally over its contents. “You just keep that damned bag closed, lady!” Eichelbaum fumed. One side of his face was covered with blue burns, and he had lost the sight in one eye. “If I see you open it once, it goes in the incinerator!”

  Both Sister and Paul Thorson had been given baggy white coveralls. Most of the others wore them, and rubber boots as well, but Eichelbaum informed them that all the “antiradiation footgear” had been given out several days before.

  Dr. Eichelbaum had put a Vaseline-like substance over the burn marks on her face, and he had examined closely a thickened patch of skin just underneath her chin that looked like a scab surrounded by four small, wartlike bumps. He’d found another two warts at the jawline under her left ear, and a seventh right at the fold of her left eye. He’d told her that about sixty-five percent of the survivors bore similar marks—most probably skin cancer, but there was nothing he could do about them. Slicing them off with a scalpel, he’d told her, only made them grow back larger—and he showed her the angry black scablike mark that was creeping up from the point of his own chin. The most peculiar thing about the marks, he’d said, was that they appeared only on or near the facial area; he hadn’t seen any that were below the neck, or on a survivor’s arms, legs or any other area of skin exposed to the blasts.

  The makeshift hospital was full of burn victims, people who had radiation sickness and people in shock and depression. The worst cases were kept in the school auditorium, Eichelbaum had told her, and their mortality rate was about ninety-nine percent. Suicide was also a major problem, and as the days passed and people seemed to understand more about the disaster’s scope, Dr. Eichelbaum said, the number of people found hanging from trees increased.

  The day before, Sister had gone to the Homewood Public Library and found the building deserted, most of the books gone, used as fuel in the fires that kept people alive. The shelves had been ripped out, the tables and chairs carried off to be burned. Sister turned down one of the few aisles where shelves of books remained and found herself staring at the antiradiation footgear of a woman who had climbed up a stepladder and hanged herself from a light fixture.

  But she’d found what she was looking for, amid a pile of encyclopedias, American history books, Farmer’s Almanacs and other items that had been spared burning. And in it she’d seen for herself.

  “Here he is,” Dr. Eichelbaum said, weaving through a few last cots to the one where Artie Wisco lay. Artie was sitting up against a pillow, a tray-table between his cot and the one to his left, and he was engrossed in playing poker with a young black man whose face was covered with white, triangular burns so precise they looked like they’d been stamped on the skin.

  “Hiya!” Artie said, grinning at Sister and Paul as they approached. “Full house!” He turned his cards over, and the black man said, “Sheeeyat! You cheatin’, man!” But he forked over some toothpicks from a pile on his side of the tray.

  “Look at this!” Artie pushed the sheet back and showed them the heavy tape that crisscrossed his ribs. “Robot here wants to play tic-tac-toe on my belly!”

  “Robot?” Sister asked, and the black youth raised a finger to tip an imaginary hat.

  “How’re you doing today?” the doctor asked Artie. “Did the nurse take your urine sample?”

  “Sure did!” Robot said, and he hooted. “Little fool’s got a cock that’d hang from here to Philly!”

  “There’s not much privacy here,” Artie explained to Sister, trying to keep his dignity. “They have to take the samples in front of God and everybody.”

  “Some o’ these women ’round here see what you got, fool, they gon’ be prayin’ on their knees, I be tellin’ you!”

  “Oh, Jeez!” Artie squirmed with embarrassment. “Will you shut up?”

  “You look a lot better,” Sister offered. His flesh was no longer gray and sickly, and though his face was a mass of bandages and livid scarlet burn marks—keloids, Dr. Eichelbaum called them—she even thought he had healthy color in his cheeks.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m gettin’ handsomer all the time! Gonna look in the mirror one of these days and see Cary Grant starin’ back!”

  “Ain’t no mirrors around here, fool,” Robot reminded him. “All the mirrors done broke.”

  “Artie’s been responding pretty well to the penicillin we’ve been pumping into him. Thank God we’ve got the stuff, or most of these people here would be dead from infections,” Dr. Eichelbaum said. “He’s still got a way to go yet before he’s out of the woods, but I think he’ll be okay.”

  “How about the Buchanan kid? And Mona Ramsey?” Paul asked.

  “I’ll have to check the list, but I don’t think either one of them is critical.�
� He looked around the gymnasium and shook his head. “There are so many, I can’t keep up with them.” His gaze returned to Paul. “If we had the vaccine, I’d put every one of you into rabies shots—but we don’t, so I can’t. You’d just better hope none of the wolves out there were rabid, folks.”

  “Hey, Doc?” Artie asked. “When do you think I can get out of here?”

  “Four or five days at the minimum. Why? You planning on going somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” Artie replied without hesitation. “Detroit.”

  The doctor cocked his head so the one good eye was fixed firmly on Artie Wisco. “Detroit,” he repeated. “I’ve heard Detroit was one of the first cities hit. I’m sorry, but I don’t think there is a Detroit anymore.”

  “Maybe not. But that’s where I’m going. That’s where my home is, and my wife. Jeez, I grew up in Detroit! Whether it was hit or not, I’ve gotta go back there and find out what’s left.”

  “Prob’ly the same as Philly,” Robot said quietly. “Man, there ain’t a cinder left in Philly.”

  “I have to go home,” Artie said, his voice resolute. “That’s where my wife is.” He looked up at Sister. “I saw her, you know. I saw her in the glass ring, and she looked just like she did when she was a teenager. Maybe that meant something—like I had to have the faith to keep going to Detroit, to keep looking for her. Maybe I’ll find her… and maybe I won’t, but I have to go. You’re gonna go with me, aren’t you?”

  Sister paused. Then she smiled faintly and said, “No, Artie. I can’t. I’ve got to go somewhere else.”

  He frowned. “Where?”

  “I’ve seen something in the glass ring, too, and I’ve got to go find out what it means. I have to, just like you have to go to Detroit.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Dr. Eichelbaum said, “but where do you think you’re going?”

  “Kansas.” Sister saw the doctor’s single eye blink. “A town called Matheson. It’s on the Rand McNally road atlas.” She had disobeyed the doctor’s orders and opened her bag long enough to stuff the road atlas down into it, next to the powder-covered circle of glass.

  “Do you know how far it is to Kansas? How are you going to get there? Walk?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You don’t seem to understand this situation,” the doctor said calmly; Sister recognized the tone of voice as the way the attendants had addressed the crazy women in the asylum. “The first wave of nuclear missiles hit every major city in this country,” he explained. “The second wave hit air force and naval bases. The third wave hit the smaller cities and rural industries. Then the fourth wave hit every other damned thing that wasn’t already burning. From what I’ve heard, there’s a wasteland east and west of about a fifty-mile radius of this point. There’s nothing but ruins, dead people and people who’re wishing they were dead. And you want to walk to Kansas? Sure. The radiation would kill you before you made a hundred miles.”

  “I lived through the blast in Manhattan. So did Artie. How come the radiation hasn’t already killed us?”

  “Some people seem to be more resistant than others. It’s a fluke. But that doesn’t mean you can keep absorbing radiation and shrug it off.”

  “Doctor, if I was going to die from radiation, I’d be bones by now. And the air’s full of the shit anyway—you know it as well as I do! The stuff’s everywhere!”

  “The wind’s carried it, yes,” he admitted. “But you’re wanting to walk right back into a supercontaminated area! Now, I don’t know your reasons for wanting to go to—”

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “And you can’t. So save your breath; I’m going to rest here for a while, and then I’m leaving.”

  Dr. Eichelbaum started to protest again; then he saw the determination in the woman’s stare, and he knew there was nothing more to be said. Still, it was in his nature to have the last word: “You’re crazy.” Then he turned and stalked away, figuring he had better things to do than trying to keep another fruitcake from committing suicide.

  “Kansas,” Artie Wisco said softly. “That’s a long way from here.”

  “Yeah. I’m going to need a good pair of shoes.”

  Suddenly Artie’s eyes glistened with tears. He reached out and grasped Sister’s hand, pressing it against his cheek. “God bless you,” he said. “Oh… God bless you.”

  Sister leaned down and hugged him, and he kissed her cheek. She felt the wetness of a tear, and her own heart ached for him.

  “You’re the finest lady I’ve ever known,” he told her. “Next to my wife, I mean.”

  She kissed him, and then she straightened up again. Her eyes were wet, and she knew that in the years ahead she would think of him many times, and in her heart she would say a prayer for him. “You go to Detroit,” she said. “You find her. You hear?”

  “Yeah. I hear.” He nodded, his eyes as bright as new pennies.

  Sister turned away, and Paul Thorson followed her. Behind her, she heard Robot say, “Man, I had an uncle in Detroit. I was kinda thinkin’ about…”

  Sister wound her way through the hospital and out the doors. She stood staring at the football field, which was covered with tents, cars and trucks. The sky was dull gray, heavy with clouds. Off to the right, in front of the high school and under a long red canopy, was a large bulletin board where people stuck messages and questions. The board was always jammed, and Sister had walked along it the day before, looking at the pleas scribbled on scratch paper: “Searching for daughter, Becky Rollins, age fourteen. Lost in Shenandoah area July 17…”; “Anybody with information about the DiBattista family from Scranton please leave…”; “Looking for Reverend Bowden, First Presbyterian Church of Hazleton, services urgently needed…”

  Sister walked to the fence that surrounded the football field, set the duffel bag on the ground beside her and wound her fingers tightly through the mesh. Behind her came the sound of a woman wailing at the bulletin board, and Sister flinched. Oh, God, Sister thought, what have we done?

  “Kansas, huh? What the hell do you want to go way out there for?”

  Paul Thorson was beside her, leaning against the fence. There was a splint along the bridge of his broken nose. “Kansas,” he prompted. “What’s out there?”

  “A town called Matheson. I saw it in the glass ring, and I found it in the road atlas. That’s where I’m going.”

  “Yeah, but why?” He pulled up the collar of his battered leather jacket against the cold; he’d fought to keep the jacket as hard as Sister had fought for her duffel bag, and he wore it over the clean white coveralls.

  “Because…” She paused, and then she decided to tell him what she’d been thinking since she’d found the road atlas. “Because I feel like I’m being led toward something—or someone. I think the things I’ve been seeing in that glass are real. My dreamwalking has been to real places. I don’t know why or how. Maybe the glass ring is like… I don’t know, like an antenna or something. Or like radar, or a key to a door I never even knew existed. I think I’m being led for some reason, and I’ve got to go.”

  “Now you’re talking like the lady who saw a monster with roaming eyeballs.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t expect you to give a shit, and I didn’t ask you. What are you doing hanging around me, anyway? Didn’t they assign you a tent?”

  “Yeah, they did. I’m in with three other men. One of them cries all the time, and another one can’t stop talking about baseball. I hate baseball.”

  “What don’t you hate, Mr. Thorson?”

  He shrugged and looked around, watching an elderly man and woman, both of their faces streaked with keloids, supporting each other as they staggered away from the bulletin board. “I don’t hate being alone,” he said finally. “I don’t hate depending on myself. And I don’t hate myself—though sometimes I don’t like myself too much. I don’t hate drinking. That’s about it.”

  “Good for you. Well, I want to thank you for s
aving my life, and Artie’s, too. You took good care of us, and I appreciate that. So—” She stuck out her hand.

  But he didn’t shake it. “What have you got that’s worth a damn?” he asked her.

  “Huh?”

  “Something valuable. Do you have anything worth trading?”

  “Trading for what?”

  He nodded toward the vehicles parked on the field. She saw he was looking at a dented old Army Jeep with a patched convertible top painted with camouflage colors. “You got anything in that bag you could trade for a Jeep?”

  “No. I don’t—” And then she remembered that deep down in her duffel bag were the chunks of jewel-encrusted glass she’d picked up, along with the ring, in the ruins of Steuben Glass and Tiffany’s. She’d transferred them from the Gucci bag and forgotten them.

  “You’re going to need transportation,” he said. “You can’t walk from here to Kansas. And what are you going to do about gasoline, food and water? You’ll need a gun, matches, a good flashlight and warm clothes. Like I say, lady, what’s out there is going to be like Dodge City and Dante’s Inferno rolled into one.”

  “Maybe it will be. But why should you care?”

  “I don’t. I’m just trying to warn you, that’s all.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet you can. I’ll bet you were the bitch of the ball.”

  “Hey!” somebody called. “Hey, I’ve been lookin’ for you, lady!”

  Approaching them was the tall man in the fleece-lined coat and Stroh’s beer cap who had been on sentry duty and heard the gunshots. “Been lookin’ for you,” he said as he chewed a couple of sticks of gum. “Eichelbaum said you were around.”

  “You found me. What is it?”

  “Well,” he said, “I kinda thought you was familiar the first time I seen you. He said you’d be carryin’ a big leather bag, though, so I guess that’s what threw me.”