1987 - Swan Song v4

by Robert McCammon

  “You’ll be okay out here,” Josh told the jittery horse as he rubbed its neck. “I’ll check on you later, how about that?” As he closed the barn door and latched it he hoped he was doing the right thing leaving Mule out there alone. But at least this place—such as it was—would protect Mule from the cold and the bobcats. Mule would have to hold his own against the flies.

  Together, Glory and Josh lugged the press down the road.

  Sixty-two

  The savage prince

  Under a darkening sky, two figures struggled through a forest of dead pines where the wind had sculpted snowdrifts into barriers five feet high.

  Sister kept close watch on the CrackerJack compass and pointed her nose toward the southwest. Paul followed at a few paces, carrying the duffel bag slung over his shoulder and watching their rear and flanks for the furtive movements of animals; he knew they were being tracked and had been tracked since they’d left the cave. He’d seen only quick glimpses of them, hadn’t had time to tell what they were or how many, but he could smell the spoor of beasts. He kept the .357 gripped in his gloved right hand with his thumb on the safety.

  Sister figured they had less than an hour of light left. They’d been traveling for almost five hours, according to the wristwatch Robin had given her; she didn’t know how many miles they’d covered, but the going was excruciating, and her legs felt like stiff lengths of timber. The effort of struggling across rocks and over snowdrifts had made her sweat, and now the sound of the ice in her clothes brought up the memory of Rice Krispies cereal—snap, crackle and pop! She remembered that her daughter used to like Rice Krispies: “Make it talk, Mama!”

  She forced the ghosts of the past away. They had seen no sign of life but the things that prowled around them, watching them hungrily in the deepening twilight. When darkness fell, the beasts would get bolder…

  One step, she told herself. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going. She said it mentally over and over again, while her legs continued to carry her like the laboring movement of a machine. She held her satchel close, and her left arm had cramped and locked in that position, but she could feel the outline of the glass ring through the leather, and she drew strength from it as surely as if it was her second heart.

  Swan, she thought. Who are you? Where do you come from? And why have I been led to you? If indeed it was a girl named Swan that the dreamwalk path had brought her to, Sister had no idea what she’d say to the girl. Hello, she practiced, you don’t know me, but I’ve come halfway across this country to find you. And I sure hope you’re worth it, because Lord, I want to lie down and rest!

  But what if there was no girl named Swan in Mary’s Rest? What if Robin had been wrong? What if the girl was only passing through Mary’s Rest and might be gone by the time they arrived?

  She wanted to pick up the pace, but her legs wouldn’t allow it. One step. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going.

  A scream from the woods to her left almost shocked her out of her boots. She whirled to face the noise, heard the scream become the shrill wail of a beast and then a muttering, chuckling noise like a hyena might make. She thought she saw a pair of greedy eyes in the gloom; they gleamed balefully before receding into the forest.

  “We haven’t got much more light,” Paul told her. “We should find a place to camp.”

  She gazed toward the southwest. Nothing but a tortured landscape of dead pines, rocks and snowdrifts. It looked like a cold day in Hell. Wherever Mary’s Rest was, they were not going to reach it today. She nodded, and they started searching for shelter.

  The best they could find was a narrow niche in a hollow surrounded by rough-edged boulders. They pushed the snow away to expose the earth and form a three-foot-high snow wall circling them, then Paul and Sister went to work gathering dead branches to start a fire. Around them, shrill cries echoed from the woods as beasts began to gather like lords at a feast table.

  They made a small pile of branches and ringed them with stones, and Paul dribbled a little gasoline on the wood. The first match he scraped across a stone flared, fizzled and went out. That left them with two. Darkness was falling fast.

  “Here goes,” Paul said tersely. He scraped the second match across the rock he was kneeling over, his other hand ready to cup the flame.

  It flared, hissed and immediately began to die. He quickly held the weakening flame against a stick in the pile of branches, kneeling over it like a savage praying at the altar of a fire spirit.

  “Catch, you little bastard,” he whispered between clenched teeth. “Come on! Catch!”

  The flame was all but gone, just a tiny glint dancing in the dark.

  And then there was a pop! as a few drops of the gasoline caught, and flame curled up around the stick like a cat’s tongue. The fire sputtered, crackled and began to grow. Paul added more gas.

  A gout of flame leapt up, fire jumping from stick to stick. Within another minute they had heat and light, and they held their stiff hands toward the warmth.

  “We’ll get there in the morning,” Paul said as they shared the dried squirrel meat. The stuff tasted like boiled leather. “I’ll bet we’ve only got about another mile.”

  “Maybe.” She pried the lid off the can of baked beans with the all-purpose knife and scooped some out with her fingers. They were oily and had a metallic taste but seemed okay. She gave the can to Paul. “I just hope this kiddie compass works. If it doesn’t, we could be walking in circles.”

  He’d already considered that possibility, but now he shrugged his shoulders and scooped the beans into his mouth. If that compass was one hair off, he realized, they could have already missed Mary’s Rest. “We haven’t gone seven miles yet,” he told her, though he wasn’t even sure of that. “We’ll know tomorrow.”

  “Right. Tomorrow.”

  She took first watch while Paul slept next to the fire, and she kept her back against a boulder with the Magnum on one side of her and the shotgun on the other.

  Under its hard carapace of Job’s Mask, Sister’s face rippled with pain. Her cheekbone* and jaw were throbbing. The searing pain usually passed within a few minutes, but this time it intensified to a point where Sister had to lower her head and stifle a moan. Again, for the seventh or eighth time in the last few weeks, she felt sharp, cracking jolts that seemed to run deep beneath the Job’s Mask, down through the bones of her face. All she could do was clench her teeth and endure the pain until it passed, and when it was finally gone it left her shivering in spite of the fire.

  That was a bad one, she thought. The pains were getting worse. She lifted her head and ran her fingers across the Job’s Mask. The knotty surface was as cool as ice on the slopes of a dormant volcano, but beneath it the flesh felt hot and raw. Her scalp was itching maddeningly, and she put her hand under the hood of her parka to touch the mass of growths that encased her skull and trailed down the back of her neck. She longed to dig her fingers through the crust and scratch her flesh until it bled.

  Slap a wig on my bald head, she thought, and I’d still look like a graduate of gargoyle school! She balanced precariously between tears and laughter for a few seconds, but the laughter won out.

  Paul sat up. “Is it my watch yet?”

  “No. Couple of hours to go.”

  He nodded, lay back down and was asleep again almost at once.

  She continued to probe the Job’s Mask. Feels like my skin’s on fire underneath there—whatever skin I’ve got left, she thought. Sometimes, when the pain was acute and her flesh beneath the Job’s Mask felt like it was boiling, she could almost swear that the bones shifted like the foundations of an unsteady house. She could almost swear that she felt her face changing.

  A glimpse of movement on the right brought her attention back to the business of survival. Something made a deep, guttural barking noise off in the distance, and another beast replied with a sound like that of a baby crying. She laid the shotgun across her lap and looked up at the sky. Nothing b
ut darkness up there, and a sensation of low, hanging clouds like the black ceiling of a claustrophobic’s nightmare. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen the stars; maybe it had been on a warm summer’s night, when she was living in a cardboard box in Central Park. Or maybe she’d stopped noticing the stars a long time before the clouds had blanked them out.

  She missed the stars. Without them, the sky was dead. Without them, what was there to make a wish on?

  Sister held her hands toward the fire and shifted against the boulder to get more comfortable. A hotel suite this was not, but her legs weren’t aching so much now. She realized how tired she was, and she doubted she could have continued another fifty yards. But the fire felt good, and she had a shotgun across her lap, and she would blast hell out of anything that came within range. She put her hand on the satchel and traced the glass ring’s outline. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow we’ll know.

  She leaned her head against the rock and watched Paul sleeping. Good for you, she thought. You deserve it.

  The fire’s soft heat soothed her. The forest was silent. And Sister’s eyes closed. Just for a minute, she told herself. It won’t do any harm if I just rest for a—

  She sat bolt upright. Before her, the fire was down to a few red embers, and the cold was slipping through her clothes. Paul was huddled up, still sleeping. Oh, Jesus! she thought as panic snapped at her. How long was I out? She was shivering, her joints throbbing with the cold, and she got up to add more branches to the fire. There were only a few small ones left, and as she knelt down and arranged them in the embers she sensed a quick, catlike movement behind her. The flesh tightened across the back of her neck.

  And she knew with sickening certainty that she and Paul were no longer alone. Something was behind her, crouched on a boulder, and she’d left both weapons where she was sitting. She took a deep breath, made up her mind to move, turned and lunged for the shotgun. She picked it up and spun around to fire.

  The figure sitting cross-legged atop the boulder lifted his gloved hands in mock surrender. A rifle lay across his knees, and he was wearing a familiar, patched brown coat with a cowl protecting his head.

  “Hope you enjoyed your nap,” Robin Oakes said.

  “Whazzit?” Paul sat up, blinking. “Huh?”

  “Young man,” Sister said hoarsely, “I was about one second from sending you to a much warmer place than this. How long have you been sitting there?”

  “Long enough so that you ought to be glad I don’t have four legs. If one person goes to sleep, the other has to keep watch or you’re both dead.” He looked at Paul. “And by the time you woke up, you’d be bobcat meat. I thought you two knew what you were doing.”

  “We’re okay.” Sister took her finger off the trigger and put the weapon aside. Her insides felt like quivering jelly.

  “Sure.” He glanced over his shoulder and called toward the forest, “Come on in!”

  Three bundled-up figures emerged from the woods and scrambled up onto the boulder with Robin. All of the boys carried rifles, and one of them lugged another of the canvas bags that Robin’s highwaymen had stolen from Sister.

  “You two didn’t make such a good distance, did you?” Robin asked her.

  “I thought we did damned fine!” Paul was shaking the last of the sleep out of his head. “I figure we’ve got about another mile in the morning.”

  Robin grunted disdainfully. “More like three, most likely. Anyway, I sat down and started thinking, back at the cave. I knew you’d make camp somewhere, probably screw that up, too.” He appraised the boulders and the wall of snow. “You’ve got yourselves trapped in here. When that fire went down, the things in the woods would’ve jumped you from all sides. We saw a lot of them, but we stayed downwind and low to the ground, and they didn’t see us.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Sister said.

  “Oh, we didn’t come out here to warn you. We followed you to keep you from getting killed.” Robin climbed down the boulder, and the other boys did the same. They stood around the fire, warming their hands and faces. “It wasn’t hard. You left a trail that looked like a plow had gone through. Anyway, you forgot something.” He opened the other duffel bag, reached into it and brought out the second jug of moonshine that Hugh had given Paul. “Here.” He tossed it to Sister. “I think there’s enough left for everybody to have a swig.”

  There was, and the moonshine’s fire heated Sister’s belly. Robin sent the three boys out to stand guard around the camp. “The trick is to make a lot of noise,” Robin said after they’d gone. “They don’t want to shoot anything, because the blood would drive the other animals crazy out there.” He sat down beside the fire, pulled his hood back and took his gloves off. “If you want to sleep, Sister, you’d better do it now. We’ll have to relieve them on watch before light.”

  “Who put you in charge?”

  “I did.” The firelight threw shadows in the hollows of his face, glinted off the fine hairs of his beard. His long hair, still full of feathers and bones, made him look like a savage prince. “I’ve decided to help you get to Mary’s Rest.”

  “Why?” Paul asked. He was wary of the boy, didn’t trust him worth a damn. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Maybe I want some fresh air. Maybe I want to travel.” His gaze flicked toward Sister’s satchel. “Maybe I want to see if you find who you’re looking for. Anyway, I pay my debts. You people helped me with one of mine, and I owe you. So I’ll get you to Mary’s Rest in the morning, and we’ll call it even, right?”

  “Okay,” Sister agreed. “And thank you.”

  “Besides, if you two get killed tomorrow, I want the glass ring. You won’t be needing it.” He leaned against the boulder and closed his eyes. “You’d better sleep while you can.”

  A rifle shot echoed from the woods, followed by two more. Sister and Paul looked at each other uneasily, but the young highwayman lay motionless and undisturbed. The noise of rifle fire continued intermittently for another minute or so, followed by the angry shrieks of what sounded like several animals—but their cries were fading as they retreated. Paul reached for the moonshine jug to coax out the last drops, and Sister leaned back to contemplate tomorrow.

  Sixty-three

  Fighting fire with fire

  “Fire!… Fire!”

  The bombs were falling again, the earth erupting into flames, humans burning like torches under a blood-red sky.

  “Fire!… Somethin’s on fire!”

  Josh shook loose from his nightmare. He could hear a man’s voice shouting “Fire!” out in the street. At once he was on his feet and striding to the door; he threw it open, looked out and saw an orange glow reflected off the clouds. The street was empty, but Josh could hear the man’s voice off in the distance, raising the alarm: “Fire! Somethin’s on fire!”

  “What is it? What’s on fire?” Glory’s face was stricken as she peered out the door beside him. Aaron, who could not be separated from Crybaby, pushed between them to see.

  “I don’t know. What’s over in that direction?”

  “Nothin’,” she said. “Just the Pit, and—” She stopped suddenly, because both of them knew.

  The barn where Josh had left Mule was on fire.

  He pulled his boots on, put on his gloves and his heavy coat. Glory and Aaron raced to bundle up as well. Red embers burned in the stove’s grate, and Rusty was sitting up from his bed of rags; his eyes were still dazed, and cloth bandages were plastered to the side of his face and the wound at his shoulder. “Josh?” he said. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “The barn’s on fire! I locked the door, Rusty! Mule can’t get out!”

  Rusty stood up, but his legs were weak and he staggered against the wall. He felt like a deballed bull, and he was furious at himself. He tried again but still didn’t have the strength to even get his damned boots on.

  “No, Rusty!” Josh said. He motioned toward Swan, who lay on the floor under the thin blanket that Aaron had given up. “You st
ay with her!”

  Rusty knew he’d collapse before he got ten paces from the shack. He almost wept with frustration, but he knew also that Swan needed to be watched over. He nodded and sank down wearily to his knees.

  Aaron darted on ahead, and Josh and Glory followed as fast as they could. Josh found some of the speed he had once shown on the football field at Auburn University in making the two hundred yards between the shack and the barn. Other people were out in the street, running toward the fire as well—not because they wanted to extinguish it, but because they could get warm. Josh’s heart almost cracked; over the roar of flames that covered all but the structure’s roof, he could hear Mule’s frantic cries.

  Glory screamed, “Josh! No!” as he barreled at the barn door.

  Swan said something in a soft, delirious voice, but Rusty couldn’t make it out. She tried to sit up, and he put his hand on her shoulder to restrain her. Touching her was like putting his hand to the stove’s grate. “Hold on,” he said. “Easy now, just take it easy.”

  She spoke again, but her speech was unintelligible. He thought she said something about corn, though that was all he could even halfway understand. Now the remaining eyehole in the mask of growths was almost sealed over. She’d been fading in and out of consciousness since Josh had brought her in at daylight from the field, and she’d alternately shivered and thrashed free of the blanket. Glory had wound cloth bandages around Swan’s raw hands and tried to feed her some watery soup, but there wasn’t a thing any of them could do for her now except try to make her more comfortable. Swan was so far gone she didn’t even know where she was.

  She’s dying, Rusty thought. Dying right in front of me. He eased her back down again, and he heard her say something that might have included “Mule.”

  “It’s all right,” Rusty told her, his own swollen jaw making speech difficult. “You just rest now, everythin’s gonna be all right in the mornin’.” He sure wished he could believe that. He’d come too far with Swan to watch her fade away like this, and he cursed his own weakness. He felt about as sturdy as a wet sponge, and his mama sure hadn’t raised him to live on rat meat soup. The only way he could get that stuff down was to pretend it came off the bones of little bitty steers.