The apple snagged his attention again, and the cold ice pick jabbing within Swan’s mind ceased. She saw his eyes glaze over and his mouth open, and from that mouth crawled a green fly that weakly spun around her head and fell into the mud.
His hand began to rise. Slowly, very slowly.
Swan didn’t look at it, but she sensed it rising like the head of a cobra. She was waiting for it to burst into flame. But it did not.
His fingers strained for the apple.
And Swan saw that his hand was trembling.
He almost took it.
Almost.
His other hand shot out and grabbed his own wrist, wrenched his arm back and pinned the offending hand underneath his chin. He made a gasping, moaning noise that sounded like wind through the battlements of Hell’s castles, and his eyes almost bulged from his skull. He shrank backward from Swan, his teeth gritted in a snarl, and for an instant he lost control: one eye bleached to blue, and white pigment streaked across the ebony flesh. A second mouth, full of shiny white nubs, gaped like a scar across his right cheekbone.
In his eyes was hatred and fury and longing for what could never be.
He turned and fled, and with his first running stride the trance of time broke and the crowd was whirling around Swan again, grabbing up the last of the apples. Josh was just a few feet away, trying to get through to protect her. But it was all right now, she knew. She needed no more protection.
Someone else plucked the apple from her hand.
She looked into Robin’s face.
“I hope this one’s for me,” he said, and he smiled before he bit into it.
He ran through the muddy alleys of Mary’s Rest with his hand trapped beneath his chin, and where he was going he didn’t know. The hand tensed and shivered, as if trying to fight free with a will of its own. Dogs scattered out of his path, and then he tripped over debris and went down in the mud, got up and staggered on again.
And if anyone had seen his face, they would have witnessed a thousand transformations.
Too late! he screamed inwardly. Too late! Too late!
He’d planned to set her afire, right there in the midst of them, and laugh as he watched her dance. But he’d looked into her eyes and seen forgiveness, and he could not stand up to such a thing. Forgiveness, even for him.
He’d started to take the apple; for a brief instant, he’d wanted it, like taking the first step along a dark corridor that led back to light. But then the rage and pain had flared within him, and he’d felt the very walls of the universe warp and the wheels of time start to clog and lock. Too late! Too late!
But he needed no one and nothing to survive, he told himself. He had endured and would endure, and this was his party now. He had always walked alone. Always walked alone. Always walked—
A scream echoed from the edge of Mary’s Rest, and those who heard it thought it sounded like someone being flayed alive.
But most of the people were busy collecting apples, shouting and laughing as they ate, and they did not hear.
Seventy-one
A visit with the Savior
A ring of torches lit the night, burning around the perimeter of a huge parking lot fifteen miles south of the ruins of Lincoln, Nebraska. At the center of the parking lot was a complex of brick buildings connected by sheltered walkways, and with skylights and ventilators set in their flat roofs. In the side of one of the buildings that faced Highway 77 South were rusted metal letters that read GREENBRI R SHOP IN MALL.
On the western edge of the parking lot, a Jeep’s lights flashed twice. About twenty seconds later, there was an answering double flash of headlights from a pickup truck with an armored windshield, parked near one of the entrances to the mall.
“There’s the signal,” Roland Croninger said. “Let’s go.” Judd Lawry drove the Jeep slowly across the parking lot, aiming at the headlights that grew closer as the pickup truck approached. The tires jarred roughly over bricks, pieces of metal, old bones and other debris that littered the snow-slick concrete. In the seat behind Roland was a soldier with an automatic rifle, and Lawry wore a .38 in a shoulder holster, but Roland was unarmed. He watched the range between the two vehicles steadily decrease. Both the Jeep and the truck were flying white pieces of doth from their radio antennas.
“They’ll never let you out of there alive,” Lawry said, almost casually. He glanced quickly over at Captain Croninger’s bandage-wrapped face, cowled by the hood of his coat. “Why’d you volunteer for this?”
The cowled face slowly swiveled toward Lawry. “I like excitement.”
“Yeah. Well, you’re about to get it… sir.” Lawry negotiated the Jeep past the hulk of a burned-out car and tapped the brakes. The pickup truck was about fifty feet away and beginning to slow down. The vehicles stopped thirty feet apart.
There was no movement from the truck. “We’re waiting!” Roland shouted out his window, the breath steaming through his gnarled lips.
The seconds ticked past with no response. And then the passenger door opened and a blond man wearing a dark blue parka, brown trousers and boots got out. He stepped a few paces away from the door and leveled a shotgun at the Jeep’s windshield.
“Steady,” Roland cautioned as Lawry started to reach for his .38.
Another man got out of the truck and stood beside the first. He was slight and had close-cropped dark hair, and he lifted his hands to show he was unarmed. “Okay!” the one with the shotgun shouted, getting edgy. “Let’s make the trade!”
Roland was afraid. But he’d learned long before how to push the child Roland away and summon forth the Sir Roland in himself: the adventurer in service to the King, the King’s will be done, amen. His palms were wet inside his black gloves, but he opened the door and got out.
The soldier with the automatic rifle followed him and stood off to the side a few feet, aiming at the other armed man.
Roland glanced back at Lawry, making sure the fool wasn’t going to fuck this up, and then he began walking to the truck. The dark-haired man started walking to the Jeep, his eyes darting and nervous. The two figures passed, neither one looking at the other, and the man with the shotgun grabbed Roland’s arm about the same time as the AOE soldier pushed his captive against the Jeep’s side.
Roland was made to lean against the truck, spread his arms and legs and submit to a search. When it was over, the man spun him around and pressed the snout of the shotgun underneath his chin. “What’s wrong with your face?” the man demanded. “What’s under those bandages?”
“I was burned pretty bad,” Roland answered. “That’s all.”
“I don’t like it!” The man had lank, thinning blond hair and fierce blue eyes, like a maniac surfer-boy. “Imperfection is Satan’s work, praise the Savior!”
“The trade’s been done,” Roland said. The American Allegiance hostage was already being shoved into the Jeep. “The Savior’s waiting for me.”
The man paused, jittery and uncertain. And then Lawry began to back the Jeep up, clinching the deal. Roland didn’t know if that was smart or stupid.
“Get in!” The American Allegiance soldier hustled him into the truck’s cab, where Roland sat squeezed between him and the heavyset, black-bearded driver. The truck veered across the parking lot and turned back toward the mall.
Through the narrow view slit in the armored windshield, Roland saw the headlights pick out more vehicles protecting the American Allegiance’s fortress: an armored truck with BRINK’S still barely legible on its side, a Jeep with a mounted machine gun in the rear seat, a tractor-trailer rig with dozens of gunports—each showing a rifle or machine gun barrel—cut into the long metal trailer; a postman’s truck with a metal mesh turret on top; more cars and trucks, and then the vehicle that put a lump like a hen’s egg in Roland’s throat—a low-slung, wicked-looking tank covered with multicolored graffiti that said things like THE LOVE BUG and THE SAVIOR LIVES! The tank’s main cannon, Roland noted, was aimed in the general direction of Colonel Mac
klin’s Airstream trailer, where the King was now incapacitated, suffering from a fever that had struck him down the previous night.
The truck passed between the tank and another armored car, went over the curb and continued up a ramp for the handicapped, entering the mall through the dark, open space where glass doors had once been. The headlights illuminated a wide central mall area, with stores on either side that had been looted and wrecked a long time before. Soldiers with rifles, pistols and shotguns waved the truck on, and hundreds of lanterns were burning in the central corridor and in the stores, casting a flickering orange glow—like the light at a Halloween party—throughout the building. And Roland saw hundreds of tents set up as well, cramped into every possible space except for a path along which the truck traveled. Roland realized that the whole American Allegiance had set up camp inside the shopping mall, and as the truck turned into a larger, skylighted atrium he heard singing and saw the glare of a fire.
Perhaps one thousand people were jammed into the atrium, clapping their hands rhythmically, singing and swaying around a large campfire, the smoke whirling up through the skylight’s broken glass. Almost all of them had rifles slung over their shoulders, and Roland knew that one reason the Savior had invited an AOE officer here was to display his weapons and troops. But the reason Roland had accepted the courier’s invitation was to find a weak spot in the Savior’s fortress.
The truck did not enter the atrium, but continued along another corridor that branched off from it, again lined with looted stores now filled with tents, drums of gasoline and oil, what looked like cases of canned food and bottled water, clothes, weapons and other supplies. The truck stopped in front of a store, and the blond man with the shotgun got out and motioned for Roland to follow. Roland saw the broken fragments of a sign that had once said B. DALTON BOOKSELLERS over the entrance before he walked into the store.
Three lanterns burned on the cashier’s desk, where both registers had been battered into junk. The walls of the store were scorched, and Roland’s boots crunched over the skeletons of charred books. Not a volume remained on the shelves or display tables; everything had been piled up and set afire. More lanterns glowed back at the store’s information desk, and the man with the shotgun pushed Roland toward the closed door of the stockroom, where another American Allegiance soldier with an automatic rifle stood at attention. As Roland approached, the soldier lowered his rifle and clicked the safety off. “Halt,” he said. Roland stopped.
The soldier rapped on the door.
A short, bald man with narrow, foxlike features peered out. He smiled warmly. “Hello, there! He’s almost ready to see you. He wants to know your name.”
“Roland Croninger.”
The man pulled his head back into the room and closed the door again. Then, abruptly, it opened, and the bald man asked, “Are you Jewish?”
“No.” And then the hood of Roland’s coat was yanked back.
“Look!” the man with the shotgun said. “Tell him they sent us somebody with a disease!”
“Oh. Oh, dear.” The other one looked fretfully at Roland’s bandaged face. “What’s wrong with you, Roland?”
“I was burned, back on the seven—”
“He’s a fork-tongued liar, Brother Norman!” The shotgun’s barrel pressed against the hard growths on Roland’s skull. “He’s got the Satan Leprosy!”
Brother Norman frowned and made a clicking sound of sympathy with his lips. “Wait one minute,” he said, and again he disappeared into the stockroom. He returned, approached Roland and said, “Open your mouth, please.”
“What?”
The shotgun nudged his skull. “Do it.”
Roland did. Brother Norman smiled. “That’s good. Now stick out your tongue. My, my, I believe you need a new toothbrush!” He placed a small silver crucifix on Roland’s tongue. “Now keep that inside your mouth for a few seconds, all right? Don’t swallow it!”
Roland drew the crucifix in on his tongue and closed his mouth. Brother Norman smiled cheerfully. “That crucifix was blessed by the Savior,” he explained. “It’s very special. If you have corruption in you, the crucifix will be black when you open your mouth again. And if it is black, Brother Edward will blow your brains out.”
Roland’s eyes widened momentarily behind the goggles.
Perhaps forty seconds crept by. “Open up!” Brother Norman announced in a merry voice.
Roland opened his mouth, slowly stuck his tongue out and watched the other man’s face for a reaction.
“Guess what,” Brother Norman said. He took the crucifix from Roland’s tongue and held it up. It was still bright silver. “You passed! The Savior will see you now.”
Brother Edward gave Roland’s skull a final shove for good measure, and Roland followed Brother Norman into the stockroom. Sweat was trickling down Roland’s sides, but his mind was calm and detached.
Illuminated by lamplight, a man with brushed-back, wavy gray hair sat in a chair before a table, being attended to by another man and a young woman. There were two or three other people in the room, all standing back beyond the light’s edge.
“Hello, Roland,” the gray-haired man in the chair said gently, a smile twisting the left side of his mouth; he was holding his head very still, and Roland could only see his left profile—a high, aristocratic forehead, a strong and hawklike nose, a straight gray brow over a clear azure eye, cleanshaven cheek and jaw and a chin as powerful as a mallet. Roland thought he was probably in his late fifties, but the Savior seemed in robust health, and his face was unmarred. He was wearing a pin-striped suit with a vest and a blue tie, and he looked ready to preach before the cameras on one of his cable TV telecasts—but on closer observation Roland saw well-worn patches here and there at stress points on the coat, and leather pads had been sewn onto the knees. The Savior was wearing hiking boots. Around his neck, dangling down in front of his vest, were maybe twelve or fifteen silver and gold crucifixes on chains, some of them studded with precious stones. The Savior’s sturdy hands were decorated with half a dozen glittering diamond rings.
The man and young woman attending him were working on his face with pencils and powder applicators. Roland saw an open make-up case on the table.
The Savior lifted his head slightly so the woman could powder his neck. “I’m going before my people in about five minutes, Roland. They’re singing for me right now. They have voices like angels, don’t they?” Roland didn’t answer, and the Savior smiled faintly. “How long has it been since you’ve heard music?”
“I make my own,” Roland replied.
The Savior tilted his head to the right as the man penciled his eyebrow. “I like to look my best,” he said. “There’s no excuse for a shabby appearance, not even in this day and age. I like for my people to look at me and see confidence. And confidence is a good thing, isn’t it? It means you’re strong, and you can deal with the traps Satan lays for you. Oh, Satan’s very busy these days, Roland—yes, he is!” He folded his hands in his lap. “Of course, Satan has many faces, many names—and one of those names might be Roland. Is it?”
“No.”
“Well, Satan’s a liar, so what did I expect?” He laughed, and the others laughed, too. When he was through laughing, he let the woman rub rouge onto his left cheek. “All right, Satan—I mean, Roland—tell me what you want. And tell me why you and your army of demons have been following us for the last two days, and why you’ve now encircled us. If I knew anything about military tactics, I might think you were about to lay siege. I wouldn’t like to think that. It might disturb me, thinking of all the poor demons who were about to die for their Master. Speak, Satan!” His voice snapped like a whip, and everybody in the room jumped but Roland.
“I’m Captain Roland Croninger of the Army of Excellence. Colonel James Macklin is my superior officer. We want your gasoline, oil, food and weapons. If you give those to us within six hours, we’ll withdraw and leave you in peace.”
“You mean leave us in pieces,
don’t you?” The Savior grinned and almost turned his face toward Roland, but the woman was powdering his forehead. “The Army of Excellence. I think I’ve heard of you. I thought you were in Colorado.”
“We moved.”
“Well, I guess that’s what armies do, isn’t it? Oh, we’ve met ‘armies’ before,” he said, slurring the word with disgust. “Some of them wore little uniforms and had little pop-guns, and all of them crumpled like paper dolls. No army can stand before the Savior, Roland. You go back and tell your ‘superior officer’ that. Tell him I’ll say a prayer for both your souls.”
Roland was about to be dismissed. He decided to try another tactic. “Who are you going to pray to? The god on top of Warwick Mountain?”
There was silence. The two make-up artists froze, and both of them looked at Roland. He could hear the Savior’s breathing in the quiet.
“Brother Gary’s joined us,” Roland continued calmly. “He’s told us everything—where you’re going and why.” Under Roland’s persuasion in the black trailer, Gary Cates had repeated his tale of God living atop Warwick Mountain, West Virginia, and something about a black box and a silver key that could decide whether the earth lived or died. Even the grinding wheel hadn’t changed the man’s story. True to his word, Macklin had spared Brother Gary’s life, and Brother Gary had been skinned and hung by his ankles from a flagpole in front of Sutton’s post office.
The silence stretched. Finally, the Savior said softly, “I don’t know any Brother Gary.”
“He knows you. He told us how many soldiers you have. He told us about the two tanks. I’ve seen one of them, and I guess the other is around back somewhere. Brother Gary’s a real fountain of information! He told us about Brother Timothy leading you to Warwick Mountain to find God.” Roland smiled, showing bad teeth between the folds of his bandages. “But God’s closer than West Virginia. Much closer. He’s right out there, and he’s going to blast you to Hell in six hours if we don’t get what we want.”
1987 - Swan Song v4 Page 71
