1987 - Swan Song v4

by Robert McCammon

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It was two, three days before you folks got here. Fella just come ridin’ along I-80 like he was out on a Sunday afternoon; he was on one of them French racin’ bicycles with the handlebars slung low. Oh, I remember him, ’cause ol’ Bobby Coates and me was up in the church tower on lookout, and Bobby punches me in the arm and says, ‘Cleve, look at that shit!’ Well, I looked and I seen it, but I still didn’t believe it!”

  “Speak English, friend!” Paul snapped. “What was it?”

  “Oh, it was a man. Pedalin’ that bike along I-80. But what was real weird was that he about had thirty or forty wolves followin’ him, almost at his heels. Just paradin’ along. And just before he gets to the top of the hill, this fella gets off his bike and turns around—and them wolves cower and slink like they was face-to-face with God. Then they broke and ran, and this fella walks his bike to the top of the hill.” Cleve shrugged, puzzlement scrawled across his bovine face. “Well, we went out to get him. Big fella. Husky. Hard to tell how old he was, though. He had white hair, but his face was young. Anyway, he was wearin’ a suit and tie and a gray raincoat. Didn’t seem to be hurt or anything. He had on two-tone shoes. I remember that real well. Two-tone shoes.” Cleve grunted, shook his head and directed his gaze at Sister. “He asked about you, lady. Asked if we’d seen a lady with a big leather bag. Said you was a relative, and that he had to find you. He seemed real eager and interested to find you, too. But me and Bobby didn’t know nothin’ about you, o’ course, and this fella asked the other sentries, but they didn’t know you, either. Said we’d take him into Homewood, give him a meal and shelter and let the Red Cross folks look him over.”

  Sister’s heart had begun pounding, and she felt very cold. “What… happened to him?”

  “Oh, he went on. Thanked us kindly and said he had miles to go yet. Then he wished us well and pedaled on out of sight, headin’ west.”

  “How’d you know this guy was looking for her?” Paul asked. “He could’ve been searching for some other woman carrying a leather bag!”

  “Oh no,” Cleve answered, and smiled. “He described this lady here so well I could see her face right in my head. Just like a picture. That’s why I thought you looked familiar at first, but I just this mornin’ put it together. See, you didn’t have a leather bag, and that’s what threw me.” He looked at Sister. “Did you know him, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Oh, yes, I know him. Did he… give you his name?”

  “Hallmark. Darryl, Dal, Dave… somethin’ like that. Well, he’s gone west. Don’t know what he’ll find out there. Too bad you two missed each other so near.”

  “Yes.” Sister felt as if her ribs had been laced with steel bands. “Too bad.”

  Cleve tipped his cap and went on about his business. Sister felt as if she were about to faint, and she had to lean against the fence for support.

  “Who was he?” Paul asked—but the tone of his voice said that he was afraid to know.

  “I’ve got to go to Kansas,” Sister said firmly. “I’ve got to follow what I’ve seen in the glass ring. He’s not going to give up looking for me, because he wants the glass ring, too. He wants to destroy it, and I can’t let him get his hands on it—or I’ll never know what I’m supposed to find. Or who I’m looking for.”

  “You’re going to need a gun.” Paul was spooked by both Cleve’s story and the terror in Sister’s eyes. Nobody human could’ve gotten through those wolves without a scratch, he thought. And on a French racing bicycle? Was it possible that everything she’d told him was true? “A real big gun,” he added.

  “There’s not one big enough.” She picked up her duffel bag and started walking away from the high school, up the hill toward the tent she’d been assigned to.

  Paul stood watching her go. Shit! he thought. What’s going on here? That lady’s got a ton of guts, but she’s going to get herself slaughtered out there on old I-80! He thought she had about as much chance to get to Kansas alone as a Christian in a Cadillac had of getting to Heaven. He looked around at the hundreds of tents in the wooded hills, at the little campfires and burning lanterns that surrounded Homewood, and he shuddered.

  This damned town’s got too many people in it, he thought. He couldn’t stand having to live in a tent with three other men. Everywhere he turned, there were people. They were all over the place, and he knew that pretty soon he’d have to hit the road or go crazy. So why not go to Kansas? Why not?

  Because, he answered himself, we’ll never get there.

  So? Were you planning on living forever?

  I can’t let her go alone, he decided. Jesus Christ, I just can’t!

  “Hey!” he called after her, but she kept going, didn’t even look back. “Hey, maybe I’ll help you get a Jeep! But that’s all! Don’t expect me to do anything else!”

  Sister kept walking, burdened with thought.

  “Okay, I’ll help you get some food and water, too!” Paul told her. “But you’re on your own with the gun and gasoline!”

  One step at a time, she was thinking. One step at a time gets you where you’re going. And oh, Lord, I’ve got such a long way to go…

  “Okay, damn it! I’ll help you!”

  Sister finally heard him. She turned toward Paul. “What’d you say?”

  “I said I’d help you!” He shrugged and started walking toward her. “I might as well add another layer to the shitcake, huh?”

  “Yes,” she said, and a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “You might as well.”

  Darkness came, and an icy rain fell on Homewood. In the woods the wolves howled, and the wind blew radiation across the land, and the world turned toward a new day.

  Forty-seven

  Green froth

  The bicycle’s tires made a singing sound in the dark. Every so often they thumped over a corpse or veered around a wrecked car, but the legs that powered them had places to go.

  Two-toned shoes on the pedals, the man leaned forward and pumped along Interstate 80, about twelve miles east of the Ohio line. The ashes of Pittsburgh flecked his suit. He’d spent two days amid the ruins, had found a group of survivors there and looked into their minds for the face of the woman with the circle of glass. But it wasn’t in any of their heads, and before he’d left he’d convinced them all that eating the burned meat of dead bodies was a cure for radiation poisoning. He’d even helped them start on the first one.

  Bon appétit, he thought. Below him, his legs pumped like pistons.

  Where are you? he wondered. You can’t have come this far! Not yet! Unless you’re running day and night because you know I’m on your ass.

  When the wolves had come out to first snap and then fawn at his heels, he’d thought they had gotten her, way back in eastern Pennsylvania. But if that were so, where was the leather bag? Her face hadn’t been in the minds of the sentries back at Homewood, either, and if she’d been there, they would be the ones to know. So where was she? And—most importantly—where was the glass thing?

  He didn’t like the idea of its being out there somewhere. Didn’t know what it was, or why it had come to be, but whatever it was, he wanted to smash it beneath his shoes. Wanted to break it into tiny fragments and grind those pieces into the woman’s face.

  Sister, he thought, and he sneered.

  His fingers clenched the handlebars. The glass circle had to be found. Had to be. This was his party now, and such things were not allowed. He didn’t like the way the woman had looked at it—and he didn’t like the way she’d fought for it, either. It gave her false hope. So it was a humane thing, really, to find the glass circle and smash it and make her eat the shards. There was no telling how many others she could infect if she wasn’t stopped.

  Maybe she was already dead. Maybe one of her own kind had killed her and stolen her bag. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

  There were too many maybes. But no matter who had it, or where it was, he had to find the glass circle, beca
use such a thing as that should not be, and when it had gone dark and cold in his grip he’d known it was reading his soul.

  “This is my party!” he shouted, and he drove over a dead man lying in his path.

  But there were so many places to search, so many highways to follow. She must have turned off I-80 before she’d reached Homewood. But why would she? He remembered her saying, “We keep going west.” And she would follow the line of least resistance, wouldn’t she? Could she have taken shelter in one of the small hamlets between Jersey City and Homewood? If so, that would mean she was behind him, not ahead.

  But everything and everyone was dead east of Homewood and that damned Red Cross station, right?

  He slowed down, passing a crumpled sign that said NEW CASTLE NEXT LEFT. He was going to have to pull off and find a map somewhere, maybe retrace his route along another highway. Maybe she’d gone south and missed Homewood entirely. Maybe she was on a rural road somewhere right now, crouched by a fire and playing with that damned glass thing. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

  It was a big country. But he had time, he reasoned as he swung off I-80 at the New Castle exit. He had tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. It was his party now, and he made the rules.

  He’d find her. Oh, yes! Find her and shove that glass ring right up her…

  He realized the wind had died down. It wasn’t blowing as hard as it had been even a few hours before. That was why he hadn’t been able to search properly yet. He had trouble searching when the wind was so rough—but the wind was his friend, too, because it spread the party dust.

  He licked a finger with a cat-rough tongue and held it up. Yes, the wind had definitely weakened, though errant gusts still blew in his face and brought the smell of burned meat. It was time—past time—to get started.

  His mouth opened. Stretched, and began to stretch wider still, while his black eyes stared from a handsome face.

  A fly crawled out onto his lower lip. It was a shiny, ugly green, the kind of fly that might explode from the nostrils of a bloated corpse. It waited there, its iridescent wings twitching.

  Another fly crawled from his mouth. Then a third, a fourth and a fifth. Six more scrabbled out and clung to his lower lip. A dozen others seeped out like a green tide. In another few seconds there were fifty or more flies around his mouth, a green froth that hummed and twitched with eager anticipation.

  “Away,” he whispered, and the movement of his lips sent the first group of them into the air, their wings vibrating against the wind until they found their balance. Others took off, nine or ten at a time, and their formations flew to all points of the compass. They were part of him, and they lived down in the damp cellar of his soul where such things grew, and after they made their slow radius of two or three miles they’d return to him as if he were the center of the universe. And when they came back, he’d see what they’d seen—a fire burning, sparking off a ring of glass; or her face, asleep in a room where she thought she was safe. If they didn’t find her tonight, there was always tomorrow. And the next day. Sooner or later, they would find a chink in a wall that brought him down on her, and this time he’d Watusi on her bones.

  His face was rigid, his eyes black holes in a face that would scare the moon. The last two things that resembled flies but were extensions of his ears and eyes pushed from between his lips and lifted off, turning toward the southeast.

  And still his two-toned shoes pumped the pedals, and the bike’s tires sang, and the dead were ground under where they lay.

  BOOK TWO

  Eight

  Toadfrog with Golden Wings

  The last apple tree / Flee

  the mark of Cain / The good

  deed done / Job’s Mask /

  Solitary journeyer / A new

  right hand / White

  blossoms

  Forty-eight

  The last apple tree

  Snow tumbled from the sullen sky, sweeping across a narrow country road in what had been, seven years before, the state of Missouri.

  A piebald horse—old and swaybacked, but still strong-hearted and willing to work—pulled a small, crudely-built wagon, covered with a patched dark green canvas dome, that was a strange amalgam of Conestoga and U-Haul trailer. The wagon’s frame was made of wood, but it had iron axles and rubber tires. The canvas dome was a two-man all-weather tent that had been stretched over curved wooden ribs. On each side of the canvas, painted in white, was the legend Travelin’ Show; and, beneath that, smaller letters proclaimed Magic! Music! and Beat the Masked Mephisto!

  A couple of thick boards served as a seat and footrest for the wagon’s driver, who sat draped in a heavy woolen coat that was beginning to come apart at the seams. He wore a cowboy hat, its brim heavy with ice and snow, and on his feet were battered old cowboy boots. The gloves on his hands were essential to ward off the stinging wind, and a woolen plaid scarf was wrapped around the lower part of his face; just his eyes—a shade between hazel and topaz—and a slice of rough, wrinkled skin were exposed to the elements.

  The wagon moved slowly across a snow-covered landscape, past black, dense forests stripped bare of leaves. On each side of the road, an occasional barn or farmhouse had collapsed under the weight of seven years of winter, and the only signs of life were black crows that pecked fitfully at the frozen earth.

  A few yards behind the wagon, a large figure in a long, billowing gray overcoat trudged along, booted feet crunching on snow. He kept his hands thrust into the pockets of his brown corduroy trousers, and his entire head was covered with a black ski mask, the eyes and mouth ringed with red. His shoulders were bent under the whiplash of wind, and his legs ached with the cold. About ten feet behind him, a terrier followed, its coat white with snow.

  I smell smoke, Rusty Weathers thought, and he narrowed his eyes to peer through the white curtain before him. Then the wind shifted direction, gnawing at him from another angle, and the smell of woodsmoke—if it had really been there at all—was gone. But in another few minutes he thought they must be getting near civilization; on the right, scrawled in red paint on the broad trunk of a leafless oak tree, was BURN YOUR DEAD.

  Signs like that were commonplace, usually announcing that they were coming into a settled area. There could be either a village ahead or a ghost town full of skeletons, depending on what the radiation had done.

  The wind shifted again, and Rusty caught that aroma of smoke. They were going up a gentle grade, Mule laboring as best he could but in no hurry. Rusty didn’t push him. What was the use? If they could find shelter for the night, fine; if not, they’d make do somehow. Over the course of seven long years, they had learned how to improvise and use what they could find to the best advantage. The choice was simple; it was either survive or die, and many times Rusty Weathers had felt like giving up and lying down, but either Josh or Swan had kept him going with jokes or taunts—just as he had kept both of them alive over the years. They were a team that included Mule and Killer as well, and on the coldest nights when they’d had to sleep with minimal shelter, the warmth of the two animals had kept Rusty, Josh and Swan from freezing to death.

  After all, Rusty thought with a faint, grim smile beneath the plaid scarf, the show must go on!

  As they reached the top of the grade and started down on the winding road Rusty caught a yellow glint through the falling snow off to the right. The light was obscured by dead trees for a minute—but then there it was again, and Rusty felt sure it was the glint of a lantern or a fire. He knew calling to Josh was useless, both because of the wind and because Josh’s hearing wasn’t too good. He reined Mule in and pressed down with his boot a wooden lever that locked the front axle. Then he climbed down off the seat and went back to show Josh the light and tell him he was going to follow it.

  Josh nodded. Only one eye showed through the black ski mask. The other was obscured by a gray, scablike growth of flesh.

  Rusty climbed back onto the wagon’s seat, released the brake and gave a gentle flick to t
he reins. Mule started off without hesitation, and Rusty figured he’d smelled the smoke and knew shelter might be near. Another road, narrower yet and unpaved, curved to the right over snow-covered fields. The glint of light got stronger, and soon Rusty could make out a farmhouse ahead, light glowing through a window. Other outbuildings were set off beside the house, including a small barn. Rusty noted that the woods had been cut away from around the house in all directions, and hundreds of stumps stuck up through the snow. There was just one dead tree remaining, small and skinny, standing about thirty yards in front of the house. He smelled the aroma of burning wood and figured that the forest was being consumed in somebody’s fireplace. But burning wood didn’t smell the same as it had before the seventeenth of July, and radiation had seeped into the forests; the smoke had a chemical odor, like burning plastic. Rusty remembered the sweet aroma of clean logs in a fireplace, and he figured that particular scent was lost forever, just like the taste of clean water. Now all the water tasted skunky and left a film on the inside of the mouth; drinking water from melted snow—which was about all the remaining supply—brought on headaches, stomach pains and blurred vision if consumed in too large a dose. Fresh water, like from a well or a bottled supply, was as valuable now as any fine French wine in the world that used to be.

  Rusty pulled Mule up in front of the house and braked the wagon. His heart was beating harder. Here comes the tricky part, he thought. Plenty of times they’d been fired on when they stopped to ask for shelter, and Rusty carried the scar of a bullet crease across his left cheek.

  There was no movement from the house. Rusty reached back and partially unzipped the tent’s flap. Within, distributed around the wagon so as to keep its weight balanced, was their meager total of supplies: a few plastic jugs of water, some cans of beans, a bag of charcoal briquettes, extra clothes and blankets, their sleeping bags and the old Martin acoustic guitar Rusty was teaching himself to play. Music always drew people, gave them something to break the monotony; in one town, a grateful woman had given them a chicken when Rusty had painstakingly picked out the chords of “Moon River” for her. He’d found the guitar and a pile of songbooks in the dead town of Sterling, Colorado.