Swan Song

by Robert McCammon

Chapter 11

 

  "I'm a gourmet," she replied calmly. She figured the kid wasn't going to let this crazy one-handed fucker hurt her, but her muscles were tensed for fight or flight. "What are youi"

  "His name is Colonel James Macklin," Roland told her. "He's a war hero. "

  "Looks to me like the war's over. and we lost. . . hero," she said, staring directly into Macklin's eyes. "Take what you want, but I need my stash back. "

  Macklin sized the young woman up, and he decided he might not be able to throw her to the ground and rape her, as he had intended until this instant. She might be too much to take with one hand, unless he wrestled her down and got the knife to her throat. He didn't want to try and fail in front of Roland, though his penis had begun to pound. He grunted and dug for the hamburgers. When he found them, he flung the pack to Sheila, and she started gathering up the packets of coke and the pill bottles.

  Macklin crawled over and pulled the shoes off Rudy's feet; he worked a gold Rolex wristwatch from the corpse's left wrist and put it on his own.

  "How come you're out herei" Sheila asked Roland, who was watching her pack the cocaine and pills away. "How come you're not over there, closer to the lighti"

  "They don't want dirtwarts," Macklin replied. "That's what they call us. Dirtwarts. " He nodded toward the rectangular hole a few feet away; it had been covered with a tarpaulin, impossible to detect in the darkness, and looked to Sheila to be about five feet deep. The corners of the tarp were held down with stones. "They don't think we smell good enough to be any closer. " Macklin's grin held madness. "How do you think I smell, ladyi"

  She thought he smelled like a hog in heat, but she shrugged and motioned toward a can of Right Guard deodorant that had fallen out of Rudy's pack.

  Macklin laughed. He was unbuckling Rudy's belt in preparation to pull the trousers off. "See, we live out here on what we can get and what we can take. We wait for new ones to pass through on their way to the light. " He motioned with a nod of his head toward the lake shore. "Those people have the power: guns, plenty of canned food and bottled water, gas for their torches. Some of them even have tents. They roll around in that salt water, and we listen to them scream. They won't let us near it. Oh, no! They think we'd pollute it or something. " He got Rudy's trousers off and flung them into the pit. "See, the hell of all this is that the boy and I should be living in the light right now. We should be wearing clean clothes, and taking warm showers, and having all the food and water we want. Because we were prepared. . . we were ready! We knew the bombs were going to fall. Everybody in Earth House knew it!"

  "Earth Housei What's thati"

  "It's where we came from," Macklin said, crouching on the ground. "Up in the Idaho mountains. We walked a long way, and we saw a lot of death, and Roland figured that if we could get to the Great Salt Lake we could wash ourselves in it, clean all the radiation off, and the salt would heal us. That's right, you know. Salt heals. Especially this. " He held up his bandaged stump; the blood-caked bandages were hanging down, and some of them had turned green. Sheila caught the reek of infected flesh. "I need to bathe it in that salt water, but they won't let us any closer. They say that we live off the dead. So they shoot at us when we try to cross open ground. But now - now - we've got our own firepower!" He nodded toward the automatic Roland held.

  "It's a big lake," Sheila said. "You don't have to go through that encampment to get there. You could go around it. "

  "No. Two reasons: somebody would move into our pit while we were gone and take everything we have; and second, nobody keeps Jimbo Macklin from what he wants. " He grinned at her, and she thought his face resembled a skull. "They don't know who I am, or what I am. But I'm going to show them - oh, yes! I'm going to show all of them!" He turned his head toward the encampment, sat staring at the distant torches for a moment, then looked back at her. "You wouldn't want to fuck, would youi"

  She laughed. He was about the dirtiest, most repulsive thing she'd ever seen. But even as she laughed, she knew it was a mistake; she stopped her laugh in mid-note.

  "Roland," Macklin said quietly, "bring me the gun. "

  Roland hesitated; he knew what was about to happen. Still, the King had delivered a command, and he was a King's Knight and could not disobey. He took a step forward, hesitated again.

  "Roland," the King said.

  This time Roland walked to him and delivered the pistol to his outstretched left hand. Macklin awkwardly gripped it and pointed it at Sheila's head. Sheila lifted her chin defiantly, hooked the pack's strap over her shoulder and stood up. "I'm going to start walking toward the camp," she said. "Maybe you can shoot a woman in the back, war hero. I don't think you can. So long, guys; it's been fun. " She made herself step over Rudy's corpse, then started walking purposefully through the junkyard, her heart pounding and her teeth gritted as she waited for the bullet.

  Something moved off to her left. a figure in rags ducked down behind the wreckage of a Chevy station wagon. Something else scrambled across the dirt about twenty feet in front of her, and she realized she'd never make the camp alive.

  "They're waiting for you," Roland called. "They'll never let you get there. "

  Sheila stopped. The torches seemed so far away, so terribly far. and even if she reached them without being raped - or worse - there was no certainty she wouldn't be raped in the camp. She knew that without Rudy she was walking meat, drawing flies.

  "Better come back," Roland urged. "You'll be safer with us. "

  Safer, Sheila thought sarcastically. Sure. The last time she'd been safe was when she was in kindergarten. She'd run away from home at seventeen with the drummer in a rock band, had landed in Hollyweird and gone through phases of being a waitress, a topless dancer, a masseuse in a Sunset Strip parlor, had done a couple of porno flicks and then had latched up with Rudy. The world had become a crazy pinwheel of coke, poppers and faceless Johns, but the deep truth was that she enjoyed it. For her there was no whining of might-have-beens, no crawling on her knees for forgiveness; she liked danger, liked the dark side of the rock where the night things hid. Safety was boredom, and she'd always figured she could only live once, so why not blow it outi

  Still, she didn't think running the gauntlet of those crawling shapes would be too much fun.

  Someone giggled, off in the darkness. It was a giggle of insane anticipation, and the sound of it put the lid on Sheila's decision.

  She turned around and walked back to where the kid and the one-handed war hero waited, and she was already figuring out how to get that pistol and blow both their heads off. The pistol would help her get to the torches at the edge of the lake.

  "Get on your hands and knees," Macklin commanded, his eyes glittering above his dirty beard.

  Sheila smiled faintly and shrugged her pack off to the ground. What the helli It would be no worse than some of the other Johns off the Strip. But she didn't want to let him win so easily. "Be a sport, war hero," she said, her hands on her hips. "Why don't you let the kid go firsti"

  Macklin glanced at the boy, whose eyes behind the goggles looked like they were about to burst from his head. Sheila unbuckled her belt and started to peel the leopard-spotted pants off her hips, then her thighs, then over the cowboy boots. She wore no underwear. She got down on her hands and knees, opened the pack and took out a bottle of Black Beauties; she popped a pill down her throat and said "Come on, honey! It's cold out there!"

  Macklin suddenly laughed. He thought the woman had courage, and though he didn't know what was to be done with her after they'd finished, he knew she was of his own kind. "Go ahead!" he told Roland. "Be a man!"

  Roland was scared shitless. The woman was waiting, and the King wanted him to do it. He figured this was an important rite of manhood for a King's Knight to pass through. His testicles were about to explode, and the dark mystery between the woman's thighs drew him toward her like a hypnotic amulet.

  Dirtwarts crawled closer
to get a view of the festivities. Macklin sat watching, his eyes hooded and intense, and he stroked the automatic's barrel back and forth beneath his chin.

  He heard hollow laughter just over his left shoulder, and he knew the Shadow Soldier was enjoying this, too. The Shadow Soldier had come down from Blue Dome Mountain with them, had walked behind them and off to the side, but always there. The Shadow Soldier liked the boy; the Shadow Soldier thought the boy had a killer instinct that bore developing. Because the Shadow Soldier had told Macklin, in the silence of the dark, that his days of making war were not over yet. This new land was going to need warriors and warlords. Men like Macklin were going to be in demand again - as if they had ever gone out of demand. all this the Shadow Soldier told him, and Macklin believed.

  He started laughing then, too, at the sight in front of him, and his laughter and that of the Shadow Soldier intertwined, merged, and became as one.

  Thirty-five

  Over two thousand miles away, Sister sat next to the hearth. Everyone else was asleep on the floor around the room, and it was Sister's night to watch over the fire, to keep it banked and the embers glowing so they wouldn't have to waste matches. The space heater had been turned low to save their dwindling supply of kerosene, and cold had begun to sneak through chinks in the walls.

  Mona Ramsey muttered in her sleep, and her husband shifted his position and put his arm around her. The old man was dead to the world, artie lay on a bed of newspapers, and every so often Steve Buchanan snored like a chainsaw. But Sister was disturbed by the wheeze of artie's breathing. She'd noticed him holding his ribs, but he'd said he was okay, that he was sometimes short of breath but otherwise feeling, as he put it, "as smooth as pickles and cream. "

  She hoped so, because if artie was hurt somewhere inside - maybe when that damned wolf had slammed into him on the highway about ten days ago - there was no medicine to stave off infection.

  The duffel bag was beside her. She loosened the drawstring and reached inside, found the glass ring and drew it out into the emberglow.

  Its brilliance filled the room. The last time she'd peered into the glass circle, during her firewatch duty four nights before, she'd gone dreamwalking again. One second she was sitting right there, holding the circle just as she was doing now, and the next she'd found herself standing over a table - a square table, with what appeared to be cards arranged on its surface.

  The cards were decorated with pictures, and they were unlike any cards Sister had ever seen before. One of them in particular caught her attention: the figure of a skeleton on a rearing skeletal horse, swinging a scythe through what seemed to be a grotesque field of human bodies. She thought there were shadows in the room, other presences, the muffled voices of people speaking. and she thought, as well, that she heard someone coughing, but the sound was distorted, as if heard through a long, echoing tunnel - and when she came back to the cabin she realized it was artie coughing and holding his ribs.

  She'd thought often of that card with the scythe-swinging skeleton. She could still see it, lodged behind her eyes. She thought also of the shadows that had seemed to be in the room with her - insubstantial things, but maybe that was because all her attention had been focused on the cards. Maybe, if she'd concentrated on giving form to the shadows, she might have seen who was standing there.

  Right, she thought. You're acting like you really go somewhere when you see pictures in the glass circle! and that's only what they were, of course. Pictures. Fantasy. Imagination. Whatever. There was nothing real about them at all!

  But she did know that dreamwalking, and coming back from dreamwalking, was getting easier. Not every time she peered into the glass was a dreamwalk, though; most often it was just an object of fiery light, no dream pictures at all. Still, the glass ring held an unknown power; of that she was certain. If it wasn't something with a powerful purpose, why had the Doyle Halland-thing wanted iti

  Whatever it was, she had to protect it. She was responsible for its safety, and she could not - she dared not - lose it.

  "Jesus in suspenders! What's thati"

  Startled, Sister looked up. Paul Thorson, his eyes swollen from sleep, had come through the green curtain. He pushed back his unruly hair and stood, open-mouthed, as the ring pulsed in rhythm with Sister's heartbeat.

  She almost shoved it back into the duffel bag, but it was too late.

  "That thing's. . . on fire!" he managed to say. "What is iti"

  "I'm not sure yet. I found it in Manhattan. "

  "My God! The colors. . . " He knelt down beside her, obviously overwhelmed. a flaming circle of light was about the last thing he'd expected to find when he'd stumbled in to warm himself by the embers. "What makes it pulse like thati"

  "It's picking up my heartbeat. It does that when you hold it. "

  "What is it, some kind of Japanese thingi Does it run on batteriesi"

  Sister smiled wryly. "I don't think so. "

  Paul reached out and poked it with a finger. He blinked. "It's glass!"

  "That's right. "

  "Wow," he whispered. Then: "Would it be okay if I held iti Just for a secondi"

  She was about to answer yes, but Doyle Halland's promise stopped her. That monster could make itself look like anyone; any of the people in this room could be the Doyle Halland-thing, even Paul himself. But no; they'd left the monster behind them, hadn't theyi How did such a creature traveli "I followed the line of least resistance," she recalled him saying. If he wore human skin, then he traveled as a human, too. She shuddered, imagining him walking after them in a pair of dead man's shoes, walking day and night without a rest until the shoes flayed right off his feet, and then he stopped to yank another pair off a corpse because he could make any size fit. . .

  "Can Ii" Paul urged.

  Where was Doyle Hallandi Sister wondered. Out there in the dark right now, passing by on I-80i Up ahead a mile or two, running down another pair of shoesi Could he fly in the wind, with black cats on his shoulders and his eyes filled with flame, or was he a tattered highway hiker who looked for campfires burning in the nighti

  He was behind them. Wasn't hei

  Sister took a deep breath and offered the glass ring to Paul. He slid his hand around it.

  The light remained constant. The half that Paul held took on a new, quickened rhythm. He drew it to himself with both hands, and Sister let her breath out.

  "Tell me about this," he said. "I want to know. "

  Sister saw the gems reflected in his eyes. On his face was a childlike amazement, as if the years were peeling rapidly away. In another few seconds he appeared a decade younger than his forty-three years. She decided then to tell him all of it.

  He was quiet for a long time when she'd finished. The ring's pulsing had speeded up and slowed down all through the telling. "Tarot cards," Paul said, still admiring the ring. "The skeleton with the scythe stands for Death. " With an effort, he looked up at her. "You know all that sounds crazy as hell, don't youi"

  "Yes, I do. Here's the scar where the crucifix was torn off. artie saw the thing's face change, too, though I doubt he'll admit it to you. He hasn't mentioned it since it happened, and I guess that's for the best. and here's the glass circle, missing one spike. "

  "Uh-huh. You haven't been slipping into my Johnny Walker, have youi"

  "You know better. I know I see things when I look into the glass. Not every time, but enough to tell me I've either got a hummer of an imagination or - "

  "Or whati"

  "Or," Sister continued, "there's a reason for me to have it. Why should I see a Cookie Monster doll lying in the middle of a deserti Or a hand coming out of a holei Why should I see a table with tarot cards on iti Hell, I don't even know what the damned things are!"

  "They're used to tell the future by gypsies. Or witches. " He summoned a half smile that made him almost handsome. It faded when she didn't return it. "Listen, I don't know anything about demons with roaming eye
balls or dream-walking, but I do know this is one hell of a piece of glass. a couple of months ago, this thing would've been worth - " He shook his head. "Wow," he said again. "The only reason you've got it is that you were in the right place at the right time. That's magic enough, isn't iti"

  "But you don't believe what I've told you, righti"

  "I want to say the radiation's unscrewed your bolts. Or maybe the nukes blew the lid right off Hell itself, and who can say what slithered outi" He returned the ring to her, and she put it back in the bag. "You take care of that. It may be the only beautiful thing left. "

  across the room, artie winced and sucked in his breath when he changed position, then lay still again.

  "He's hurt inside," Paul told her. "I've seen blood in his crap bucket. I figure he's got a splintered rib or two, probably cutting something. " He worked his fingers, feeling the warmth of the glass circle in them. "I don't think he looks too good. "

  "I know. I'm afraid whatever's wrong may be infected. "

  "It's possible. Shit, with these living conditions you could die from biting your fingernails. "

  "and there's no medicinei"

  "Sorry. I popped the last Tylenol about three days before the bombs hit. a poem I was writing fell to pieces. "

  "So what are we going to do when the kerosene runs outi"

  Paul grunted. He'd been expecting that question, and he'd known no one would ask it but her. "We've got another week's supply. Maybe. I'm more worried about the batteries for the radio. When they're dead, these folks are going to freak. I guess then we'll get out the scotch and have a party. " His eyes were old again. "Just play spin the bottle, and whoever gets lucky can check out first. "

  "Check outi What's that supposed to meani"

  "I've got a . 357 Magnum in that footlocker, lady," he reminded her. "and a box of bullets. I've come close to using it on myself twice: once when my second wife left me for a kid half my age, took all my money and said my cock wasn't worth two cents in a depression, and the other time when the poems I'd been working on for six years burned up along with the rest of my apartment. That was just after I got kicked off the staff at Millersville State College for sleeping with a student who wanted an a on her English Lit final. " He continued working his knuckles, avoiding Sister's stare. "I'm not what you'd call a real good-luck type of guy. as a matter of fact, just about everything I've ever tried to do turned into a shitcake. So that Magnum's been waiting for me for a long time. I'm overdue. "

  Sister was shocked by Paul's matter-of-factness; he talked about suicide like the next step in a natural progression. "My friend," she said firmly, "if you think I've come all this way to blow my brains out in a shack, you're as crazy as I used to - " She bit her tongue. Now he was watching her with heightened interest.

  "So what are you going to do, theni Where are you going to goi Down to the supermarket for a few steaks and a six-packi How about a hospital to keep artie from bleeding to death insidei In case you haven't noticed, there's not much left out there. "

  "Well, I never would've taken you for a coward. I thought you had guts, but it must've been just sawdust stuffing. "

  "Couldn't have said it better myself. "

  "What if they want to livei" Sister motioned toward the sleeping figures. "They look up to you. They'll do what you tell them. So you're going to tell them to check outi"

  "They can decide for themselves. But like I say, where are they going to goi"

  "Out there," she said, and she nodded at the door. "Into the world - what's left of it, at least. You don't know what's five or ten miles down the highway. There might be a Civil Defense shelter, or a whole community of people. The only way to find out is to get in your pick-up truck and drive west on I-80. "

  "I didn't like the world as it used to be. I sure as hell don't like it now. "

  "Who asked you to like iti Listen, don't jive me. You need people more than you want to believe. "

  "Sure," he said sarcastically. "Love 'em, every one. "

  "If you don't need people," Sister challenged, "why'd you go up to the highwayi Not to kill wolves. You can do that from the front door. You went up to the highway looking for people, didn't youi"

  "Maybe I wanted a captive audience for my poetry readings. "

  "Uh-huh. Well, when the kerosene's gone, I'm heading west. artie's going with me. "

  "The wolves'll like that, lady. They'll be happy to escort you. "

  "I'm also taking your rifle," she said. "and the rifle bullets. "

  "Thanks for asking my permission. "

  She shrugged. "all you need is the Magnum. I doubt if you'll have to worry much about the wolves after you're dead. I'd like to take the pick-up truck, too. "

  Paul laughed without mirth. "In case you've forgotten, I told you it doesn't have much gas, and the brakes are screwed up. The radiator's probably frozen solid by now, and I doubt if there's a gasp in the battery. "

  Sister had never met anybody so full of reasons to sit on his ass and rot. "Have you tried the truck latelyi Even if the radiator's frozen, we can light a fire under the damned thing!"

  "You've got it all figured out, huhi Going to make it to the highway in a broken-down old truck and right around the bend will be a shining city full of Civil Defense people, doctors and policemen doing their best to put this fine country back together again. Bet you'll find all the king's horses and all the king's men there, too! Lady, I know what's around the bend! More fucking highway, that's what!" He was working his knuckles harder, a bitter smile flickering at the edges of his mouth. "I wish you luck, lady. I really do. "

  "I don't want to wish you luck," she told him. "I want you to come with me. "

  He was silent. His knuckles cracked. "If there's anything left out there," he said, "it's going to be worse than Dodge City, Dante's Inferno, the Dark ages and No Man's Land all rolled up in one. You're going to see things that'll make your demon with the roaming eyeballs look like one of the Seven Dwarves. "

  "You like to play poker, but you're not much of a gambler, are youi"

  "Not when the odds have teeth. "

  "I'm going west," Sister said, giving it one last shot. "I'm taking your truck, and I'm going to find some help for artie. anybody who wants to can go with me. How about iti"

  Paul stood up. He looked at the sleeping figures on the floor. They trust me, he thought. They'll do what I say. But we're warm here, and we're safe, and -

  and the kerosene would last only a week longer.

  "I'll sleep on it," he said huskily, and he went through the curtain to his own quarters.

  Sister sat listening to the shriek of the wind. artie made another gasp of pain in his sleep, his fingers pressed to his side. From off in the distance came the thin, high howling of a wolf, the sound quavering like a violin note. Sister touched the glass circle through the duffel bag's canvas and turned her thoughts toward tomorrow.

  Behind the green curtain, Paul Thorson opened the foot-locker and picked up the . 357 Magnum. It was a heavy gun, blue-black, with a rough dark brown grip. The gun felt as if it had been made for his hand. He turned the barrel toward his face and peered into its black, dispassionate eye. One squeeze, he thought, and it would all be over. So simple, really. The end of a fucked-up journey, and the beginning of. . . whati

  He drew a deep breath, released it and put the gun down. His hand came up with a bottle of scotch, and he took it to bed with him.

  Thirty-six

  Josh dug the grave with a shovel from Leona Skelton's basement, and they buried Davy in the back yard.

  While Leona bowed her head and said a prayer that the wind took and tore apart, Swan looked up and saw the little terrier sitting about twenty yards away, its head cocked to one side and its ears standing straight up. For the last week, she'd been leaving scraps of food for it on the porch steps; the dog had taken the food, but he never got close enough for Swan to touch. She thought that the terrier was resigned
to living off scraps, but it wasn't enough of a beggar yet to fawn and wag its tail for handouts.

  Josh had finally taken his bath. He could've sewn a suit from the dead skin that peeled away, and the water looked like he'd dumped a shovelful of dirt into it. He had washed the crusted blood and dirt away from the nub where his right ear had been; the blood had gotten down deep into the canal, and it took him a while to swab it all out. afterward he realized he'd only been hearing through one ear; sounds were startlingly sharp and clear again. His eyebrows were still gone, and his face, chest, arms, hands and back were striped and splotched with the loss of black pigment, as if he'd been caught by a bucketful of beige paint. He consoled himself with the idea that he resembled a Zulu warrior chieftain in battle regalia or something. His beard was growing out, and it, too, was streaked with white.

  Blisters and sores were healing on his face, but on his forehead were seven small black nodules that looked like warts. Two of them had connected with each other. Josh tried to scrape them off with his finger, but they were too tough, and the pain made his entire skull ache. Skin cancer, he thought. But the warts were just on his forehead, nowhere else. I'm a zebra toadfrog, he thought - but those nodules for some reason disturbed him more than any of his other injuries and scars.

  He had to put his own clothes back on because nothing in the house would fit him. Leona washed them and went over the holes with a needle and thread, but they were in pretty sorry shape. She did supply him with a new pair of socks, but even those were much too tight. Still, his own socks were bags of holes held together with dried blood, totally useless.

  after the body was buried, Josh and Swan left Leona alone beside her husband's grave. She gathered a threadbare brown corduroy coat around her shoulders and turned her face from the wind.

  Josh went to the basement and began to prepare for the journey they'd agreed on. He brought a wheelbarrow upstairs and filled it with supplies - canned food, some dried fruit, petrified corn muffins, six tightly sealed Mason jars full of well water, blankets and various kitchen utensils - and covered the whole thing with a sheet, which he lashed down with heavy twine. Leona, her eyes puffy from crying but her spine rigid and strong, finally came in and started packing a suitcase; the first items to go in were the framed photographs of her family that had adorned the mantel, and those were followed by sweaters, socks and the like. She packed a smaller bag full of Joe's old clothes for Swan, and as the wind whipped around the house Leona walked from room to room and sat for a while in each one, as if drawing from them the aromas and memories of the life that had inhabited them.

  They were going to head for Matheson at first light. Leona had said she'd take them there, and on their way they'd pass across a farm that belonged to a man named Homer Jaspin and his wife Maggie. The Jaspin farm, Leona told Josh, lay about midway between Sullivan and Matheson, and there they would be able to spend the night.

  Leona packed away several of her best crystal balls, and from a box on a closet shelf she took out a few yellowed envelopes and birthday cards - "courting letters" from Davy, she told Swan, and cards Joe had sent her. Two jars of salve for her rheumatic knees went into her suitcase, and though Leona had never said so, Josh knew that walking that distance - at least ten miles to the Jaspin farm - was going to be sheer torture for her. But there were no available vehicles, and they had no choice.

  The deck of tarot cards went into Leona's suitcase as well, and then she picked up another object and took it out to the front room.

  "Here," she told Swan. "I want you to carry this. "

  Swan accepted the dowsing rod that Leona offered her.

  "We can't leave Crybaby here all alone, can wei" Leona asked. "Oh, my, no. Crybaby's work isn't done yet - not by a far sight!"

  The night passed, and Josh and Swan slept soundly in beds they were going to regret leaving.

  He awakened with gloomy gray light staining the window. The wind's force had died down, but the window glass was bitterly cold to the touch. He went into Joe's room and woke Swan up, and then he walked out into the front room and found Leona sitting before the cold hearth, dressed in overalls, clodhoppers, a couple of sweaters, the corduroy coat and gloves. Bags sat on either side of her chair.

  Josh had slept in his clothes, and now he shrugged into a long overcoat that had belonged to Davy. During the night, Leona had ripped and resewn the shoulders and arms so he could get it on, but he still felt like an overstuffed sausage.

  "I guess we're ready to go," Josh said when Swan emerged, carrying the dowsing rod and clad in a pair of Joe's blue jeans, a thick, dark blue sweater, a fleece-lined jacket and red mittens.

  "Just a minute more. " Leona's hands were clamped together in her lap. The windup clock on the mantel was no longer ticking. "Oh, Lordy," she said. "This is the best house I've ever lived in. "

  "We'll find you another house," Josh promised.

  a wisp of a smile surfaced. "Not like this one. This one's got my life in its bricks. Oh, Lordy. . . oh, Lordy. . . " Her head sank down into her hands. Her shoulders shook, but she made no sound. Josh went to a window, and Swan started to put her hand on Leona's arm, but at the last second she did not. The woman was hurting, Swan knew, but Leona was preparing herself, too, getting ready for what was to come.

  after a few minutes, Leona rose from her chair and went to the rear of the house. She returned with her pistol and a box of bullets, and she tucked both of those under the sheet that covered the wheelbarrow. "We might need those," she said. "Never can tell. " She looked at Swan, then lifted her eyes to Josh. "I think I'm ready now. " She picked up the suitcase, and Swan took the smaller bag.

  Josh lifted the wheelbarrow's handles. They weren't so heavy now, but the day was fresh. Suddenly Leona's suitcase thumped to the floor again. "Wait!" she said, and she hurried into the kitchen; she came back with a broom, which she used to sweep ashes and dead embers from the floor into the hearth.

  "all right. " She put the broom aside. "I'm ready now. "

  They left the house and started in a northwesterly direction, through the remains of Sullivan.

  The little gray-haired terrier followed them at a distance of about thirty yards, his stubby tail straight up to balance against the wind.

  Thirty-seven

  Darkness found them short of the Jaspin farm. Josh tied the bull's-eye lantern to the front of the wheelbarrow with twine. Leona had to stop every half hour or so, and while she laid her head in Swan's lap, Josh gently massaged her legs; the tears Leona was weeping from the pain in her rheumatic knees crisscrossed the dust that covered her cheeks. Still, she made no sound, no complaint. after she'd rested for a few minutes she would struggle up again, and they'd continue on across rolling grassland burned black and oily by radiation.

  The lantern's beam fell upon a rail fence about four feet tall and half blown down by the wind. "I think we're near the house!" Leona offered.

  Josh manhandled the wheelbarrow over the fence, then lifted Swan over and helped Leona across. Facing them was a black cornfield, the diseased stalks standing as high as Josh and whipping back and forth like strange seaweed at the bottom of a slimy pool. It took them about ten minutes to reach the far edge of the field, and the lantern's beam hit the side of a farmhouse that had once been painted white, now splotched brown and yellow like lizard's skin.

  "That's Homer and Maggie's place!" Leona shouted against the wind.

  The house was dark, not a candle or lantern showing. There was no sign of a car or truck anywhere around, either. But something was making a loud, irregular banging noise off to the right, beyond the light's range. Josh untied the lantern and walked toward the sound. about fifty feet behind the house was a sturdy-looking red barn, one of its doors open and the wind banging it against the wall. Josh returned to the house and aimed the light at the front door; it was wide open, the screen door unlatched and thumping back and forth in the wind as well. He told Swan and Leona to wait whe
re they were, and he entered the dark Jaspin farmhouse.

  Once inside, he started to ask if anyone was home, but there was no need. He smelled the rank odor of decomposing flesh and almost gagged on it. He had to wait for a moment, bent over a decorative brass spittoon with a dead bunch of daisies in it, before he was sure he wouldn't throw up. Then he began to move through the house, sweeping the light slowly back and forth, looking for the bodies.

  Outside, Swan heard a dog barking furiously in the black cornfield they'd just come through. She knew that the terrier had shadowed them all day, never coming closer than twenty feet, darting away when Swan bent down to summon it nearer. The dog's found something out there, Swan thought. Or. . . something's found it.

  The barking was urgent - a "come see what I've got!" kind of bark.

  Swan set her bag down and leaned Crybaby against the wheelbarrow. She took a couple of steps toward the black, swaying cornfield. Leona said, "Child! Josh said to stay right here!"

  "It's all right," she answered. and she took three more steps.

  "Swan!" Leona warned when she realized where the little girl was heading; she started to go after her, but immobilizing pain shot through her knees. "You'd best not go in there!"

  The terrier's barking summoned Swan, and she stepped into the cornfield. The black stalks closed at her back. Leona shouted, "Swan!"

  In the farmhouse, Josh followed the beam of light into a small dining area. a cupboard had been flung open, and the floor Was littered with chips and pieces of shattered crockery. Chairs had been smashed against the wall, a dining table hacked apart. The smell of decay was stronger. The light picked out something scrawled on the wall: aLL SHaLL PRaISE LORD aLVIN.

  Written in brown paint, Josh thought. But no, no. The blood had run down the wall and gathered in a crusty little patch on the floor.

  a doorway beckoned him. He took a deep breath, straining the horrid smell through his clenched teeth, and walked through the doorway.

  He was in a kitchen with yellow-painted cupboards and a dark rug.

  and there he found them.

  What was left of them.

  They had been tied to chairs with barbed wire. The woman's face, framed with blood-streaked gray hair, resembled a bloated pincushion punctured by an assortment of knives, forks, and the little two-pronged handles that stick into the ends of corn on the cob. On the man's bared chest someone had drawn a target in blood and gone to work with a small-caliber pistol or rifle. The head was missing.

  "Oh. . . my God," Josh croaked, and this time he couldn't hold back the sickness. He stumbled across the kitchen to the sink and leaned over it.

  But the lantern's light, swinging in his hand, showed him that the sink's basin was already occupied. as Josh shouted in terror and revulsion the hundreds of roaches that covered Homer Jaspin's severed head broke apart and scurried madly over the sink and countertop.

  Josh staggered backward, the bile burning in his throat, and his feet slipped out from under him. He fell to the floor, where the dark rug lay, and felt crawling things on his arms and legs.

  The floor, he realized. The. . . floor. . .

  The floor around the bodies was an inch deep in surging, scrambling roaches.

  as the roaches swarmed over his body Josh had a sudden ridiculous thought: You can't kill those things! Not even a nuclear disaster can kill 'em!

  He leaped up from the floor, sliding on roaches, and started running from that awful kitchen, swatting at the things as he ran, swiping them off his clothes and skin. He fell to the carpet in the front room and rolled wildly on it, then he got up again and barreled for the screen door.

  Leona heard the noise of splintering wood and ripping screen, and she turned toward the house in time to see Josh bring the whole door with him like a charging bull. There goes another screen door, she thought, and then she saw Josh fling himself to the ground and start rolling, swatting and squirming as if he'd run into a nest of hornets.

  "What is iti" she called, hobbling toward him. "What the hell's wrong with youi"

  Josh got up on his knees. He was still holding the lantern, while the other hand flopped and flipped here and there all over his body. Leona stopped in her tracks, because she'd never seen such terror in human eyes in her life. "What. . . is iti"

  "Don't go in there! Don't you go in there!" he babbled, squirming and shaking. a roach ran over his cheek, and he grabbed it and flung it away with a shiver. "You stay out of that damned house!"

  "I will," she promised, and she peered at the dark square where the door had been. a bad odor reached her; she'd smelled that reek before, back in Sullivan, and she knew what it was.

  Josh heard a dog barking. "Where's Swani" He stood up, still dancing and jerking. "Where'd she goi"

  "In there!" Leona pointed toward the black cornfield. "I told her not to!"

  "Damn!" Josh said, because he'd realized that whoever had done such a job on Homer and Maggie Jaspin might still be in the area - maybe was even in that barn, watching and waiting. Maybe was out in that field with the child.

  He dug the pistol and the box of bullets out of the wheelbarrow and hurriedly slid three shells into their cylinders. "You stay right here!" he told Leona. "and don't you go in that house!" Then, lantern in one hand and pistol in the other, he sprinted into the cornfield.

  Swan was following the terrier's barking. The sound ebbed and swelled with the wind, and around her the long-dead cornstalks rustled and swayed, grabbing at her clothes with leathery tendrils. She felt as if she were walking through a cemetery where all the corpses were standing upright, but the dog's frantic summons pulled her onward. There was something important in the field, something the dog wanted known, and she was determined to find out what it was. She thought the barking was off to the left, and she began to move in that direction. Behind her, she heard Josh shout, "Swan!" and she replied, "Over here!" but the wind turned. She kept going, her hands up to shield her face from the whipping stalks.

  The barking was closer. No, Swan thought, now it was moving to the right again. She continued on, thought she heard Josh calling her again. "I'm here!" she shouted, but she heard no reply. The barking moved again, and Swan knew the terrier was following something - or someone. The barking said, "Hurry! Hurry, come see what I've found!"

  Swan had taken six more steps when she heard something crashing toward her through the field. The terrier's voice got louder, more urgent. Swan stood still, watching and listening. Her heart had begun to pound, and she knew that whatever was out there was coming in her direction and getting closer. "Who's therei" she shouted. The crashing noise was coming right at her. "Who's therei" The wind flung her voice away.

  She saw something coming toward her through the corn - something not human, something huge. She couldn't make out its shape, or what it was, but she heard a rumbling noise and backed away, her heart about to hammer through her chest. The huge, misshapen thing was coming right at her, faster and faster now, cleaving right through the dead, swaying stalks, and in another few seconds it would be upon her. She wanted to run, but her feet had rooted to the ground, and there was no time, because the thing was crashing at her and the terrier was barking an urgent warning.

  The monster tore through the cornstalks and towered over her, and Swan cried out, got her feet uprooted and stumbled back, back, was falling, hit the ground on her rear and sat there while the monster's legs pounded toward her.

  "Swan!" Josh shouted, bursting through the stalks behind her and aiming his light at what was about to trample her.

  Dazzled by the light's beam, the monster stopped in its tracks and reared up on its hind legs, blowing steam through its widened nostrils.

  and both Swan and Josh saw what it was.

  a horse.

  a piebald, black-and-white blotched horse with frightened eyes and oversized, shaggy hooves. The terrier was yapping tenaciously at its heels, and the piebald horse whinnied wit
h fear, dancing on its hind legs for a few seconds before it came down again inches from where Swan sat in the dirt. Josh hooked Swan's arm and yanked her out of harm's way as the horse pranced and spun, the terrier darting around its legs with undaunted courage.

  Swan was still shaking, but she knew in an instant that the horse was more terrified. It turned this way and that, confused and dazed, looking for a way of escape. The dog's barking was scaring it further, and suddenly Swan pulled free from Josh and took two steps forward, almost under the horse's nose; she lifted her hands and clapped her palms together right in front of the horse's muzzle.

  The horse flinched but ceased jittering around; its fear-filled eyes were fixed on the little girl, steam curling from its nostrils, its lungs rumbling. Its legs trembled as if they might give way or take flight.

  The terrier kept yapping, and Swan pointed a finger at it. "Hush!" she said. The dog scrambled away a few feet but caught back the next bark; then, as if deciding it had come too close to the humans and compromised its independence, darted away into the cornfield. It stood its distance and continued to bark intermittently.

  Swan's attention was aimed at the horse, and she kept its eyes locked with her own. Its large, less-than-lovely head trembled, wanting to pull away from her, but it either would not or could not. "Is it a boy or a girli" Swan asked Josh.

  "Huhi" He still thought he felt roaches running up and down his backbone, but he shifted the lantern's beam. "a boy," he said. and a whopper of a boy, he thought.

  "He hasn't seen people for a long time, I bet. Look at him; he doesn't know whether to be glad to see us or to run away. "

  "He must've belonged to the Jaspins," Josh said.

  "Did you find them in the housei" She kept watching the horse's eyes.

  "Yes. I mean. . . no, I didn't. I found signs of them. They must've packed up and gone. " There was no way he was letting Swan into that house.

  The horse rumbled nervously, its legs moving from side to side for a few steps.

  Swan slowly lifted her hand toward the horse's muzzle.

  "Be careful," Josh warned. "He'll snap your fingers right off!"

  Swan continued to reach upward, slowly and surely. The horse backed away, its nostrils wide and its ears flicking back and forth. It lowered its head, sniffing the ground, then pretended to be looking off in another direction, but Swan saw the animal appraising her, trying to make up his mind about them. "We're not going to hurt you," Swan said quietly, her voice soothing. She stepped toward the horse, and he snorted a nervous warning.

  "Watch out! He might charge you or something!" Josh knew absolutely nothing about horses, and they'd always scared him. This one was big and ugly and ungainly, with shaggy hooves and a floppy tail and a swayed back that looked like he'd been saddled with an anvil.

  "He's not too sure about us," Swan told Josh. "He's still making up his mind whether to run or not, but I think he's kind of glad to see people again. "

  "What are you, an expert on horsesi"

  "No. I can just tell, from the set of his ears and the way his tail is swishing back and forth. Look at how he's smelling us - he doesn't want to seem too friendly. Horses have got a lot of pride. I think this one likes people, and he's been lonely. "

  Josh shrugged. "I sure can't tell any of that. "

  "My mama and I lived in a motel one time, next to a pasture where somebody's horses grazed. I used to climb over the fence and walk around with them, and I guess I learned how to talk to them, too. "

  "Talk to themi Come on!"

  "Well, not human talk," she amended. "a horse talks with his ears and tail, and how he holds his head and his body, He's talking right now," she said as the horse snorted and gave a nervous whinny.

  "What's he sayingi"

  "He's saying. . . that he wants to know what we're talking about. " Swan continued to lift her hand toward the animal's muzzle.

  "Watch your fingers!"

  The horse retreated a pace. Swan's hand continued to rise - slowly, slowly. "No one's going to hurt you," Swan said, in a voice that sounded to Josh like the music of a lute, or a lyre, or some instrument that people had forgotten how to play. Its soothing quality almost made him forget the horrors tied to chairs back in the Jaspin farmhouse.

  "Come on," Swan urged. "We won't hurt you. " Her fingers were inches away from the muzzle, and Josh started to reach out and pull her back before she lost them to crunching teeth.

  The horse's ears twitched and slanted forward. He snorted again, pawed at the ground and lowered his head to accept Swan's touch.

  "That's right," Swan said. "That's right, boy. " She scratched his muzzle, and he pushed inquisitively at her arm with his nose.

  Josh wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it. Still, Swan was probably right; the horse simply missed people. "I think you've made a friend. Doesn't look like much of a horse, though. Looks like a swayback mule in a clown suit. "

  "I think he's kind of pretty. " Swan rubbed between the horse's eyes, and the animal obediently lowered his head so she wouldn't have to stretch up so far. The horse's eyes were still frightened, and Swan knew if she made a sudden move he'd bolt into the cornfield and probably not return, so she kept all her movements slow and precise. She thought that the horse was likely old, because there was a weary patience in the droop of his head and flanks, as if he was resigned to a life of pulling a plow across the very field in which they stood. His dappled skin jittered and jumped, but he allowed Swan to rub his head and made a low noise in his throat that sounded like a sigh of relief.

  "I left Leona over by the house," Josh said. "We'd better get back. "

  Swan nodded and turned away from the horse, following Josh through the field. She'd taken about a half-dozen steps when she sensed rather than heard the heavy footfalls in the dirt behind her; she looked over her shoulder. The horse stopped, freezing like a statue. Swan continued after Josh, and the horse followed at a respectful distance, at its own ambling pace. The terrier darted out and yapped a couple of times just for the sake of being nettlesome, and the piebald horse kicked its hind hooves backward in disdain and showered the dog with dirt.

  Leona was sitting on the ground, massaging her knees. Josh's light was coming, and when they reappeared from the field she saw Swan and the horse in the beam's backwash. "Lord a'mighty! What'd you findi"

  "This thing was running wild out there," Josh told her, helping her to her feet. "Swan charmed the horseshoes right off him, got him settled down. "

  "Ohi" Leona's eyes found the little girl's, and she smiled knowingly. "Did shei" Leona hobbled forward to look at the horse. "Must've belonged to Homer. He had three or four horses out here. Well, he's not the handsomest animal I've ever seen, but he's got four strong legs, don't hei"

  "Looks like a mule to me," Josh said. "Those hooves are as big as skillets. " He caught a whiff of decay from the Jaspin farmhouse. The horse's head jerked, and he whinnied as if he'd smelled death as well. "We'd better get out of this wind. " Josh motioned toward the barn with his lantern. He put the pistol and the lantern back in the wheelbarrow and went on ahead to make sure whoever had killed Homer and Maggie Jaspin wasn't hiding in there, waiting for them. He wondered who Lord alvin was - but he was surely in no hurry to find out. Behind him, Swan picked up her bag and Crybaby, and Leona followed with her suitcase. Trailing them at a distance was the horse, and the terrier yapped at their backs and began to roam around the farmyard like a soldier on patrol.

  Josh checked the barn out thoroughly and found no one else there. Plenty of hay was strewn about, and the horse came inside with them and made himself at home. Josh unpacked the blankets from the wheelbarrow, hung the lantern from a wall and opened a can of beef stew for their dinner. The horse sniffed around them for a while, more interested in hay than in canned stew; he returned when Josh opened a Mason jar of well water, and Josh poured a bit out for him in an empty bucket. The horse licked it up and came ba
ck for more. Josh obliged him, and the animal pawed the ground like a newborn colt. "Get out of here, mule!" Josh said when the horse's tongue tried to slip into the Mason jar.

  after most of the stew was gone and just the juice remained, Swan took the can outside and left it for the terrier, as well as the rest of the water from the Mason jar. The dog came to within ten feet, then waited for Swan to go back into the barn before coming any closer.

  Swan slept under one of the blankets. The horse, which Josh had christened Mule, ambled back and forth, chomping on hay and peering out through the cracked door at the dark farmhouse. The terrier continued to patrol the area for a while longer; then it found a place to shelter against one of the outside walls and lay down to rest.

  "Both of them were dead," Leona said as Josh sat against a post with a blanket draped over his shoulders.

  "Yeah. "

  "Do you want to talk about iti"

  "No. and neither do you. We've got another long, hard day tomorrow. "

  She waited for a few minutes to see if he would tell her or not, but she really didn't want to know. She pulled her blanket over her and went to sleep.

  Josh was afraid to close his eyes, because he knew what was waiting for him behind the lids. across the barn, Mule rumbled quietly; it was an oddly reassuring sound, like the noise of heat coming through a vent into a cold room, or a town crier signaling that all was well. Josh knew he had to get some sleep, and he was about to close his eyes when he detected a small movement just to his right. He stared and saw a little roach crawling slowly over the scattered bits of hay. Josh balled up his fist and started to slam it down on the insect, but his hand paused in midair.

  Everything alive's got its own way of speaking and knowing, Swan had said. Everything alive.

  He stayed the killing blow, watching the insect struggle tenaciously onward, getting caught in pieces of hay and working itself loose, plowing forward with stubborn, admirable determination.

  Josh opened his fist and drew his arm back. The insect kept going, out of the light's range and into the darkness on its purposeful journey. Who am I to kill such a thingi he asked himself. Who am I to deliver death to even the lowest form of lifei

  He listened to the keening of the wind whistling through holes in the walls, and he pondered the thought that there might be something out there in the dark - God or Devil or something more elemental than either - that looked at humankind as Josh had viewed the roach - less than intelligent, certainly nasty, but struggling onward on its journey, never giving up, fighting through obstacles or going around them, doing whatever it had to do to survive.

  and he hoped that if the time ever came for that elemental fist to come crashing down, its wielder might take a moment of pause as well.

  Josh drew the blanket around himself and lay down in the straw to sleep.

  Thirty-eight

  "This is our power!" Colonel Macklin said, holding up the . 45 automatic he'd taken off the dead young man from California.

  "No," Roland Croninger replied. "This is our power. " and he held up one of the bottles of pills from Sheila Fontana's drug cache.

  "Hey!" Sheila grabbed at it, but Roland held it out of her reach. "That's my stash! You can't - "

  "Sit down," Macklin told her. She hesitated, and he rested the pistol on his knee. "Sit down," he repeated.

  She cursed quietly and sat down in the filthy pit while the kid continued to tell the one-handed war hero how the pills and cocaine were stronger than any gun could ever be.

  Dawn came with a cancerous, yellow sky and needles of rain. a black-haired woman, a man with one hand in a dirty overcoat, and a boy wearing goggles trudged across the landscape of rotting corpses and wrecked vehicles. Sheila Fontana was holding up a pair of white panties as a flag of truce, and close behind her Macklin kept the . 45 aimed at the small of her back. Roland Croninger, bringing up the rear, carrier Sheila's knapsack. He remembered how the woman's hair had felt in his hands, how her body had moved like a roller-coaster ride; he wanted to have sex again, and he would hate it if she made a wrong move now and had to be executed. Because after all, they'd shown her the highest chivalry last night; they'd saved her from the rabble, and they'd given her some food - dog biscuits they'd been living on from the wreck of a camper, the dog's carcass having been consumed long ago - and a place to rest after they were done with her.

  They reached the edge of the dirtwart land and started across open territory. ahead of them lay the tents, cars and cardboard shelters of the privileged people who lived on the lake shore. They were about halfway across, heading for a battered, dented airstream trailer at the center of the encampment, when they heard the warning shout: "Dirtwarts coming in! Wake up! Dirtwarts coming in!"

  "Keep going," Macklin told Sheila when she faltered. "Keep waving those panties, too. "

  People started coming out of their shelters. In truth, they were every bit as ragged and dirty as the dirtwarts, but they had guns and supplies of canned food and bottled water, and most of them had escaped serious burns. The majority of dirtwarts, on the other hand, were severely burned, had contagious illnesses or were insane. Macklin understood the balance of power. It was centered within the airstream trailer, a shining mansion amid the other hovels.

  "Turn back, fuckers!" a man hollered from a tent's entrance; he aimed a high-velocity rifle at them. "Go back!" a woman shouted, and someone threw an empty can that hit the ground a few feet in front of Sheila. She stopped, and Macklin pushed her on with a shove of the automatic.