Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  “Nobody. I just figured it out.” She recalled her first garden, growing from a sandbox at a nursery school playground. It had been years before she found out that holding earth didn’t make everybody’s hands tingle with a pins-and-needles sensation, or that everybody couldn’t tell from its buzz whether a wasp wanted to sting or just investigate your ear. She’d always known, and that was that.

  “Oh,” he said. He watched her rubbing the dirt in her hands. Swan’s palms were tingling, her hands warm and moist. He looked at the green shoots again. “I’m just a wrestler,” he said, very quietly. “That’s all. I mean ... damn, I’m just a nobody!” Protect the child, he thought. Protect her from what? From whom? And why? “What the hell,” he whispered, “have I got myself into?”

  “Huh?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. Her eyes were those of a little girl again, and she mixed the rest of the warm dirt into the ground around the shoots. “We’d better start digging now. Are you up to it?”

  “Yes.” She grasped the shovel he’d laid aside. The tingling, glowing sensation was slowly ebbing away.

  But he wasn’t ready, not just yet. “Swan, listen to me for a minute. I want to be truthful with you, because I think you can handle it. We’re going to try to get out of here, but that’s not saying we can. We’ll have to dig a pretty wide tunnel to squeeze my blubber through. It’s going to take us some time, and it sure as hell won’t be easy work. If it caves in, we’ll have to start all over again. What I’m saying, I guess, is that I’m not sure we can get out. I’m not sure at all. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, said nothing.

  “And one more thing,” he added. “If—when—we get out ... we might not like what we find. Everything might be changed. It might be like ... waking up after the worst nightmare you can think of, and finding that the nightmare followed you into daylight. Understand?”

  Again, Swan nodded. She’d already thought about what he was saying, because no one had ever come to get them out like her mama had said. She put on her most grown-up face and waited for him to make the next move.

  “Okay,” Josh said. “Let’s start digging.”

  29

  JOSH HUTCHINS STARED, SQUINTED and blinked. “Light,” he said, the walls of the tunnel pressing against his shoulders and back. “I see light!”

  Behind him, about thirty feet away in the basement, Swan called, “How far is it?” She was utterly filthy, and there seemed to be so much dirt up her nostrils that they might sprout gardens, too. The thought had made her giggle a few times, a sound she’d never believed she’d make again.

  “Maybe ten or twelve feet,” he answered, and he continued digging with his hands and pushing the dirt behind him, then pushing it further back with his feet. The pickaxe and shovel approach had been a valiant effort, but after three days of working they’d realized the best tools were their hands. Now, as he squeezed his shoulders forward to grab more dirt, Josh looked at the weak red glimmer way up at the gopher hole’s entrance and thought it was the most beautiful light he’d ever seen. Swan entered the tunnel behind him and scooped the loose dirt up in a large can, carrying it back to the basement to empty over the slit trench. Her hands, arms, face, nostrils and knees—everything that was covered with dirt—tingled all the way down to her bones. She felt like she had a flame burning in her backbone. Across the basement, the young green shoots were four inches tall.

  Josh’s face was plastered with dirt; even his teeth were gritty with it. The soil was heavy, with a thick, gummy consistency, and he had to stop to rest.

  “Josh? You all right?” Swan asked.

  “Yeah. Just need a minute to get my wind.” His shoulders and forearms ached mercilessly, and the last time he’d been so weary was after a ten-man battle royal in Chattanooga. The light seemed further away than he’d first reckoned, as if the tunnel—which they’d both come to love and hate—was elongating, playing a cruel trick of perception. He felt as if he’d crawled into one of those Chinese tubes that lock your fingers, one stuck into each end, except his whole body was jammed tight as a monk’s jockstrap.

  He started again, bringing a double handful of the heavy earth back and underneath him as if he were swimming through dirt. My mama raised herself a gopher, he thought, and he had to grin despite his weariness. His mouth tasted like he’d been dining on mud pies.

  Six more inches dug away. One more foot. Was the light closer, or further away? He pushed himself onward, thinking about how his mama used to scold him for not scrubbing behind his ears. Another foot, and another. Behind him, Swan crawled in and carried the loose dirt out again and again, like clockwork. The light was getting closer now; he was sure of it. But now it wasn’t so beautiful. Now it was sickly, not like sunlight at all. Diseased, Josh thought. And maybe deadly, too. But he kept going, one double handful after the next, inching slowly toward the outside world.

  Dirt suddenly plopped down on the back of his neck. He lay still, expecting a cave-in, but the tunnel held. For God’s sake, don’t stop now! he told himself, and he reached out for the next handful.

  “I’m almost there!” he shouted, but the earth muffled his voice. He didn’t know if Swan had heard or not. “Just a few more feet!”

  But just short of the opening, which was not quite as large as Josh’s fist, he had to stop and rest again. Josh lay staring longingly at the light, the hole about three feet away. He could smell the outside now, the bitter aromas of burned earth, scorched cornstalks and alkali. Rousing himself, he pushed onward. The earth was tougher near the surface, full of glazed stones and metallic lumps. The fire had burned the dirt into something resembling pavement. Still he strained upward, his shoulders throbbing, his gaze fixed on the hole of ugly light. And then he was close enough to thrust his hand through it, but before he tried he said, “I’m there, Swan! I’m at the top!” He clawed away dirt, and his hand reached the hole. But the underside of the surface around it felt like pebbled asphalt, and he couldn’t get his fingers through. He balled up his fist, the flesh mottled gray and white, and pushed. Harder. Harder still. Come on, come on, he thought. Push, damn it!

  There was a dry, stubborn cracking sound. At first Josh thought it was his arm breaking, but he felt no pain, and he kept pushing as if trying to punch the sky.

  The earth cracked again. The hole began to crumble and widen. His fist started going through, and he envisioned what it might look like to someone standing on the surface: the blossoming of a zebra-blotched fist like a strange new flower through the dead earth, the fist opening and fingers stretching petallike under the weak red light.

  Josh shoved his arm through almost to the elbow. Cold wind snapped at his fingertips. That movement of air exhilarated him, jarred him as if from a long somnolence. “We’re out!” he shouted, about to sob with joy. “Swan! We’re out!”

  She was behind him, crouched in the tunnel. “Can you see anything?”

  “I’m going to put my head through,” he told her. “Here goes.”

  He pushed upward, his shoulder following his arm, breaking the hole wider. Then his entire arm was out, and the top of his head was ready to press through. As he pushed he thought of watching his sons being born, their heads straining to enter the world. He felt as giddy and afraid as any infant could possibly be. Behind him, Swan was pushing at him, too, giving him support as he stretched to break free.

  The earth parted with a sound like baked clay snapping apart. With a surge of effort, Josh thrust his head through the opening and into a biting, turbulent wind.

  “Are you there yet?” Swan asked. “What can you see?”

  Josh narrowed his eyes, his hand up to ward off flying grit.

  He saw a desolate, grayish-brown landscape, featureless except for what appeared to be the mangled remnants of the Bonneville and Darleen’s Camaro. Overhead was a low sky plated with thick gray clouds. From dead horizon to dead horizon, the clouds were slowly, ponderously rotating, and here and there were quicksilver glints
of harsher scarlet. Josh looked over his shoulder. About fifteen feet behind him and to his left was a large dome of dirt, mashed-down cornstalks, pieces of wood and metal from the gas pumps and cars. He realized it was the grave they’d been buried in, and at the same time he knew that if the tons of cornfield dirt hadn’t sealed them in they would have been burned to death. Other than that, and a few drifts of cornstalks and debris, the land was scraped clean.

  The wind was blowing into his face. He crawled up out of the hole and sat on his haunches, looking around at the destruction, while Swan emerged from the tunnel. The cold sliced to her bones, and her bloodshot eyes moved incredulously over what had become a desert. “Oh,” she whispered, but the wind stole her voice. “Everything’s ... gone....”

  Josh hadn’t heard her. He couldn’t get any sense of direction. He knew the nearest town—or what was left of it—was Salina. But which direction was east, and which west? Where was the sun? Flying grit and dust obscured everything beyond twenty yards or so. Where was the highway? “There’s nothing left,” Josh said, mostly to himself. “There’s not a damned thing left!”

  Swan saw a familiar object lying nearby. She stood up and walked with an effort against the wind to the small figure. Most of the blue fur had been burned off of it, but its plastic eyes with the little black rolling pupils were intact. Swan reached down and picked it up. The cord with its pull ring dangled from the doll’s back; she yanked it and heard the Cookie Monster ask for more cookies in a slow, distorted voice.

  Josh rose to his feet. Well, he thought, now we’re out. Now what the hell do we do? Where do we go? He shook his head in disgust. Maybe there was nowhere to go. Maybe everything, everywhere, was just like this. What was the point of leaving their basement? He looked grimly at the hole they’d just crawled from, and he thought for a moment of shimmying back down there like a big gopher and spending the rest of his days licking out cans and shitting in a slit trench.

  Careful, he warned himself. Because that hole back to the basement—back to the grave—was suddenly too appealing. Much, much too appealing. He stepped away from the hole a few paces and tried to think coherently.

  His gaze slid toward the child. She was covered with tunnel dirt, her ragged clothes napping around her. She stared into the distance, her eyes narrowed against the wind, with that dumb doll cradled in her arms. Josh looked at her for a long time.

  I could do it, he told himself. Sure. I could make myself do it, because it would be the right thing. Might be the right thing. Wouldn’t it? If everything is like this, what’s the damned point of living, right? Josh opened his hands, closed them again. I could make it quick, he thought. She’d never feel a thing. And then I could just mosey over to that junk pile and find a nice piece of metal with a sharp edge and finish the job on myself, too.

  That would be the right thing to do. Wouldn’t it?

  Protect the child, he thought—and a deep, terrible shame stabbed him. Some protection! he thought. But Jesus Christ, everything’s gone! Everything’s been blown to Hell!

  Swan turned her head, and her eyes sought his. She said something, but he couldn’t understand her. She walked closer to him, shivering and bowed against the wind, and she shouted, “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know!” he shouted back.

  “It’s not like this everywhere, is it?” she asked him. “There must be other people somewhere! There must be towns and people!”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Damn, it’s cold!” He trembled; he’d been dressed for a hot July day, and now he hardly had a shirt on.

  “We can’t just stand here!” Swan said. “We’ve got to go somewhere!”

  “Right. Well, take your choice of directions, little lady. They all look the same to me.”

  Swan stared at him for a few seconds more, and again Josh felt shamed. Then she turned in all directions as if trying to choose one. Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, and they stung so much she almost screamed; but she bit her lower lip, bit it until it almost bled. She had wished for a moment that her mama was at her side, to help her and tell her what to do. She needed her mama to guide her, now more than ever. It wasn’t fair that her mama was gone! It wasn’t kind, and it wasn’t right!

  But that was thinking like a little girl, she decided. Her mama had gone home, to a peaceful place far from this—and Swan had to make some decisions for herself. Starting right now.

  Swan lifted her hand and pointed away from the source of the wind. “That way,” she decided.

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Yes.” She turned and gave him a look that made him feel like the stupidest clown on earth. “Because the wind’ll be at our backs. It’ll push us, and walking won’t be as hard.”

  “Oh,” Josh said meekly. In the distance she’d pointed out was nothing—just swirling dust and utter desolation. He couldn’t see the reason in making his legs move.

  Swan sensed he was ready to sit down, and when he did that there was no way she could pry his giant butt up again. “We worked hard to get out of there, didn’t we?” she shouted to him over the wind. He nodded. “We proved we could do something if we really wanted to, didn’t we? You and me? Kind of like a team? We worked hard, and we shouldn’t ought to stop working hard now.”

  He nodded dully.

  “We’ve got to try!” Swan shouted.

  Josh looked down at the hole again. At least it was warm down there. At least they’d had food. What was so wrong with stay—

  He sensed movement from the corner of his eye.

  The little girl, Cookie Monster doll in arms, had begun to walk off in the direction she’d chosen, the wind pushing her along.

  “Hey!” Josh yelled. Swan didn’t stop or slow down. “Hey!” She kept going.

  Josh took the first step after her. The wind hit him behind his knees—a clip! Fifteen yards penalty! he thought—and then caught him in the small of the back, staggering him forward. He took a second step, then a third and a fourth. And then he was following her, but the wind was so strong at his back that it seemed more like flying than walking. He caught up with her, walking a few yards off to the side, and again Josh felt a pang of shame at his weakness, because she didn’t even grace him with a glance. She was walking with her chin uplifted, as if in defiance of the bleakness that faced them; Josh thought that she looked like the little queen of a realm that had been stolen from her, a tragic and determined figure.

  There’s nothing out there, Swan thought. A deep, terrible sadness wrenched at her, and if the wind hadn’t been pushing so hard she might’ve crumpled to her knees. It’s all gone. All gone.

  Two tears ran through the crusted dirt and blisters on her face. Everything can’t be gone, she told herself. There have to be towns and people left somewhere! Maybe a mile ahead. Maybe two. Just through the dust and over the horizon.

  She kept going, step after step, and Josh Hutchins walked at her side.

  Behind them, the gopher popped his head out of the crater and looked in all directions. Then he made a little chattering sound and disappeared again into the safety of the earth.

  30

  TWO FIGURES TRUDGED SLOWLY along Interstate 80, with the snow-covered Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania at their backs. The fallen snow was dirty gray, and from it protruded rough rocks like warts growing in leprous flesh. New gray snow was tumbling from the sullen, sickly green and sunless sky, and it hissed softly amid the thousands of leafless black hickories, elms and oaks. The evergreens had turned brown and were losing their needles. From horizon to horizon, as far as Sister and Artie could see, there was no green vegetation, not a green vine or leaf.

  The wind whipped past them, blowing the ashy snow into their faces. Both of them were bundled up with layers of clothes they’d been able to scavenge in the twenty-one days since they’d escaped from the monster that called itself Doyle Halland. They’d found a looted Sears department store on the outskirts of Paterson, New Jersey, but almost everything had been c
arried out of it except for some merchandise at the back, under a big sign with painted icicles that read WINTER IN JULY SALE! SAVE THE SEARS WAY!

  The racks and tables had been untouched, and they yielded up heavy herringbone overcoats, plaid mufflers, wool caps and gloves lined with rabbit fur. There was even thermal underwear and a supply of boots, which Artie praised as being high-quality merchandise. Now, after more than one hundred miles, the boots were supple but their feet were bloody, wrapped in rags and newspapers after their socks had fallen apart.

  Both of them carried knapsacks on their backs, laden with other scavenged objects: cans of food, a can opener, a couple of sharp all-purpose knives, some kitchen matches, a flashlight and extra batteries, and the lucky find of a six-pack of Olympia beer. Around her shoulder, as well, Sister supported a dark green duffel bag from the Paterson Army-Navy surplus store, which had taken the place of the smaller Gucci bag and held a thermal blanket, some bottles of Perrier and a few items of packaged cold cuts found in an almost-empty grocery store. At the bottom of the duffel bag was the glass circle, placed so Sister could feel it through the canvas whenever she wanted to.

  A red plaid muffler and an electric green woolen cap protected Sister’s face and head from the wind, and she was wrapped in a woolen coat over two sweaters. Baggy brown corduroy pants and leather gloves completed her wardrobe, and she moved slowly through the snow with the weight that pressed on her, but at least she was warm. Artie, too, was burdened with a heavy coat, a blue muffler and two caps, one over the other. Only the area around their eyes was exposed to the blowing snow, the flesh raw and windburned. The gray, ugly snow swirled about them; the interstate pavement was covered to a depth of about four inches, and higher drifts grew amid the denuded forest and deep ravines on either side.

  Walking a few yards in front of Artie, Sister lifted her hand and pointed to the right. She trudged over to four dark clumps lying in the snow, and she peered down at the frozen corpses of a man, a woman and two children. All were wearing summer clothes: short-sleeved shirts and light pants. The man and woman had died holding hands. Except the third finger of the woman’s left hand had been chopped off. Her wedding ring, Sister thought. Somebody had cut the whole finger off to get it. The man’s shoes were gone, and his feet were black. His sunken eyes glistened with gray ice. Sister turned away.