Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  And then the tiny mouth opened in that battered head and a wail came from it that made Sheila Fontana go rigid, her hands clamped to her ears and tears streaming from her wide-open, staring eyes.

  The ghosts fragmented and whirled away, and Sheila was left with her own scream echoing within the filthy trailer.

  But the shout of the Lord continued, this time pounding on the trailer’s door. A voice from outside yelled, “Shut up, you crazy fool! You tryin’ to wake up the fucking dead?”

  Tears ran down her face, and she felt sick to her stomach; the trailer already smelled of vomit and stale cigarette smoke, and there was a bucket next to her mattress where she relieved herself during the night. She couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. She fumbled for the bottle of vodka that she knew was there on the floor beside her bed, but she couldn’t find it, and she wailed again with frustration.

  “Come on, open the damned door!” It was Judd Lawry’s voice, and he hammered at the door with the butt of his rifle. “He wants you!”

  She froze, her fingers finally locked on the neck of the half-full bottle. He wants me, she thought. Her heart kicked. He wants me!

  “You hear what I said? He sent me to get you. Come on, get your ass moving!”

  She crawled out of bed and stood with the bottle in one hand and the blanket in the other. The trailer was cold, and red light came from a bonfire blazing outside.

  “Speak, if you can understand English!” Lawry said.

  “Yes,” she told him. “I hear you. He wants me.” She was shaking, and she dropped the blanket to take the top off the vodka bottle.

  “Well, come on then! And he says for you to put on some perfume this time!”

  “Yes. He wants me. He wants me.” She drank from the bottle again, capped it and searched for her lantern and matches. She found them, got the lantern lit and placed it on her dressing table, next to the cracked mirror that hung on the wall. Atop the dresser was a forest of dried-up make-up bottles, lipsticks, bottles of scent that had long ago gone skunky, jars of cream and mascara applicators. Taped to the mirror were yellowed pictures of fresh-faced models clipped from ancient copies of Glamour and Mademoiselle.

  She placed the vodka bottle next to the lantern and sat down in her chair. The mirror caught her face.

  Her eyes resembled dull bits of glass sunken into a sickly, heavily lined ruin. Much of her hair had turned from black to a yellowish gray, and at her crown the scalp was beginning to show. Her mouth was tight and etched with deep lines, as if she’d been holding back a scream that she dared not release.

  She peered into the eyes that looked back. Make-up, she decided. Sure. I need to use a little make-up. And she opened one of the bottles to smear the stuff on her face like a healing balm, her hands unsteady because she wanted to look pretty for the colonel. He’d been nice to her lately, had called for her several times, had even given her a few bottles of precious alcohol from a deserted liquor store. He wants me, she told herself as she scrawled lipstick across her mouth. The colonel used to prefer the other two women who’d lived in the trailer with Sheila, but Kathy had moved in with a captain and Gina had taken a .45 to bed one night. Which meant that Sheila was on her own in driving the pickup truck that hauled the trailer and earning enough gasoline, food and water to keep both the truck and herself going. She knew most of the other RLs—Recreation Ladies—who followed the Army of Excellence in their own convoy of trucks, cars and trailers; a lot of the women had diseases, some were young girls with ancient eyes, a few enjoyed their work, and most were searching for the “golden dream”—being taken in by an AOE officer who had plenty of supplies and a decent bed.

  It’s a man’s world, Sheila thought. That had never been as true as it was now.

  But she was happy, because being summoned to the colonel’s trailer meant she wouldn’t have to sleep alone and, for a few hours at least, Rudy couldn’t come crawling into her bed with his grisly gift.

  Rudy had been a kick in life. But in death he was a real drag.

  “Hurry it up!” Lawry shouted. “It’s cold out here!”

  She finished her make-up and ran a brush through her hair. She didn’t like to do that, though, because so much of her hair was falling out. Then she searched the many bottles of perfume for the right scent. Most of their labels had come off, but she found the distinctive bottle she wanted and sprayed perfume on her throat. She remembered an ad she’d seen in a Cosmo magazine a long time ago: “Every man alive loves Chanel Number 5.”

  She hurriedly pulled a dark red sweater over her sagging breasts, squeezed herself into a pair of jeans and put on her boots. It was too late to do anything about her fingernails; anyhow, they were all but bitten away. She shrugged into a fur coat that had belonged to Gina. One more peek in the mirror to check her make-up. He wants me! she thought, and then she blew the lantern out, went to the door, unbolted and opened it.

  Judd Lawry, his beard cropped close to his jawline and a bandanna wrapped around his forehead, glared at her and laughed. “Jeez!” he said. “You ever heard of a movie called The Bride of Frankenstein?”

  She knew not to answer him as she dug a key out of the fur coat and locked her door. He was always picking at her, and she hated his guts. Whenever she looked at him she heard the wail of a baby and the sound of a rifle butt striking innocent flesh. She walked right past him, in the direction of Colonel Macklin’s silver Airstream command center on the western edge of what had been Sutton, Nebraska.

  “You sure do smell nice,” Lawry said as he followed her between the parked trailers, trucks, cars and pitched tents of the Army of Excellence. Firelight glinted off the barrel of the M-16 slung over his shoulder. “You smell like an open sore. When’s the last time you took a bath?”

  She couldn’t remember. Bathing used up water, and she didn’t have a lot of that to spare.

  “I don’t know why he wants you,” Lawry continued, walking right at her heels. “He could have a young RL, a pretty one. One who takes baths. You’re a two-legged lice farm.”

  She ignored him. She knew he hated her because she’d never let him touch her, not even once. She’d taken on everybody who could pay her with gasoline, food, water, pretty trinkets, cigarettes, clothes or alcohol—but she wouldn’t take on Judd Lawry if his prick gushed refined oil. Even in a man’s world, a woman had her pride.

  He was still ranting at her when she walked between two tents and almost into a squat, square trailer painted pitch black. She stopped abruptly, and Lawry almost barreled into her. His nagging ceased. Both of them knew what went on inside Roland Croninger’s black trailer—the AOE’s “interrogation center”—and being so close to it stirred in their minds the stories they’d heard of Captain Croninger’s inquisition methods. Lawry remembered what Croninger had done to Freddie Kempka years ago, and he knew that the captain was best avoided.

  Sheila regained her composure first. She walked past the trailer, its windows sealed with sheet metal, and on toward the colonel’s command center. Lawry silently followed.

  The Airstream trailer was hooked to the cab of a diesel truck surrounded by six armed guards. Spaced at intervals were fires that burned in oil drums. As Sheila approached, one of the guards rested his hand on the pistol beneath his coat.

  “It’s okay,” Lawry said. “He’s expecting her.” The guard relaxed and let them pass, and they walked up a set of intricately carved wooden risers that led to the Airstream’s closed door. The three-step staircase even had a bannister, into which was cut the grotesque faces of demons with lolling tongues, contorted nude human figures and deformed gargoyles. The subject matter was nightmarish, but the workmanship was beautiful, the faces and figures carved by a hand that knew blades, then sanded and polished to a high luster. Red velvet pads had been tacked down on the surface of each riser, as if on the steps to an emperor’s throne. Sheila had never seen the staircase before, but Lawry knew it was a recent gift from the man who’d joined the AOE back in
Broken Bow. It galled Lawry that Alvin Mangrim had already been made a corporal, and he wondered how Mangrim had gotten his nose chewed off. He’d seen the man working with the Mechanical Brigade and hanging around with a gnarled little dwarf he called “Imp,” and Mangrim was another sonofabitch he wouldn’t dare turn his back on.

  Lawry knocked on the door.

  “Enter,” came Colonel Macklin’s raspy voice.

  They went in. The front room was dark but for the single oil lamp burning atop Macklin’s desk. He was sitting behind the desk, studying maps. His right arm lay across the desktop, almost like a forgotten appendage, but the black-gloved palm of his new right hand was turned up, and the lamplight glinted on the sharp points of the many nails that pierced it.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Macklin said, without lifting his leather-masked face. “You’re dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lawry shot a smirking glance at Sheila, then left the trailer and closed the door.

  Macklin was calculating the rate of march between Sutton and Nebraska City, where he planned to lead the Army of Excellence across the Missouri River. But the supplies were dwindling by the day, and the AOE hadn’t made a successful raid since the destruction of Franklin Hayes’s army back in Broken Bow. Still, the ranks of the AOE continued to swell as stragglers from other dead settlements drifted in, seeking shelter and protection. The AOE had abundant manpower, weapons and ammunition, but the grease that slicked the wheels of forward movement was running out.

  The ruins of Sutton had still been smoking when the AOE’s advance armored cars pulled in just before full dark. All that was worth taking was already gone, even the clothes and shoes from the piles of dead bodies. There were signs that grenades and Molotov cocktails had been used, and at the eastern edge of the burning debris were the treadmarks of heavy vehicles and the footprints of soldiers marching off through the snow.

  And Macklin had realized that there was another army—perhaps as large as or larger than the AOE—heading east right in front of them, looting settlements and taking the supplies that the Army of Excellence needed to survive. Roland had seen blood in the snow and reasoned that there would be wounded soldiers struggling to keep up with the main body. A small recon force might be able to capture some of those stragglers, Roland had suggested. They might be brought back and interrogated. Colonel Macklin had agreed, and Roland had taken Captain Braden, Sergeant Ulrich and a few soldiers out in an armored truck.

  “Sit down,” the colonel told Sheila.

  She walked into the circle of light. A chair had been prepared for her, facing the colonel’s desk. She sat down, edgy and not knowing what to expect. In the past, he’d always waited for her in his bed.

  He continued to work on his maps and charts. He was dressed in his uniform with the Army of Excellence patch sewn over the breast pocket and four bars of gold-colored thread attached to each shoulder to signify his rank. Covering his scalp was a gray woolen cap, and the black leather mask obscured his face except for his left eye. She hadn’t seen him without that mask for several years, and she didn’t particularly care to. Behind Macklin was a rack of pistols and rifles, and a black, green and silver AOE flag was tacked neatly to the pine paneling.

  He let her wait a few more minutes, and then he lifted his head. His frosty blue eye chilled her. “Hello, Sheila.”

  “Hello.”

  “Were you alone? Or did you have company?”

  “I was alone.” She had to listen hard to understand all his words. His speech had gotten worse since the last time she’d visited there, less than a week ago.

  “Well,” Macklin said, “sometimes it’s good to sleep alone. You get more rest that way, don’t you?” He opened a filigreed silver box that sat atop his desk. In it were about twenty precious cigarettes— not soggy butts or rerolled chewing tobacco, but the real thing. He offered the box to her, and she immediately took a cigarette. “Take another,” he urged. She took two more. Macklin pushed a pack of matches across the desktop to her, and she lit up the first cigarette and inhaled it like true oxygen.

  “Remember when we bluffed our way into here?” he asked her. “You, me and Roland? Remember when we bargained with Freddie Kempka?”

  “Yeah.” She’d wished a thousand times that she still had a supply of cocaine and uppers, but that stuff was hard to come by these days. “I do.”

  “I trust you, Sheila. You and Roland are about the only ones I can trust.” He pulled his right arm toward him and cradled it against his chest. “That’s because we know each other so well. People who’ve been through so much together should trust each other.” His gaze lifted from Sheila’s face. He looked at the Shadow Soldier, who was standing behind her chair, just at the edge of the darkness. His eye shifted back to her again. “Have you been entertaining many officers lately?”

  “A few.”

  “How about Captain Hewlitt? Sergeant Oldfield? Lieutenant Vann? Any of those?”

  “I guess.” She shrugged, and her mouth curled into a faint smile through the haze of smoke. “They come and go.”

  “I’ve heard things,” Macklin said. “It seems that some of my officers—I don’t know who—aren’t very pleased with the way I’m running the Army of Excellence. They think we should plant roots, start a settlement of our own. They don’t understand why we’re moving east, or why we have to stamp out the mark of Cain. They can’t see the grand scheme, Sheila. Especially the young ones—like Hewlitt and Vann. I made them officers against my better judgment. I should have waited to see what they were made of. Well, I know now. I believe they want to take my command away from me.”

  She was silent. Tonight there would be no screwing, just one of the colonel’s sessions of raving. But that was fine with Sheila; at least Rudy couldn’t find her here.

  “Look at this,” he said, and he turned one of the maps that he’d been working on toward her. It was an old, creased and stained map of the United States, torn from an atlas. The names of the states had been marked through, and large areas were outlined heavily in pencil. Substitute names had been scrawled in: “Summerland” for the area of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana; “Industrial Park” for Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee; “Port Complex” for the Carolinas and Virginia; “Military Training” for the southwest, and also for Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming were marked “Prison Area.”

  And across the entire map Macklin had written “AOE—America of Enlightenment.”

  “This is the grand scheme,” he told her. “But to make it come true, we have to destroy the people who don’t think like us. We have to wipe out the mark of Cain.” He turned the map around and grazed the nails across it. “We have to stamp it out so we can forget what happened and put it behind us. But we’ve got to get ready for the Russians, too! They’re going to be dropping paratroopers and landing invasion barges. They think we’re dead and finished, but they’re wrong.” He leaned forward, the nails digging into the scarred desktop. “We’ll pay them back. We’ll pay the bastards back a thousand times!”

  He blinked. The Shadow Soldier was smiling thinly, his face streaked with camouflage paint under the brow of his helmet. Macklin’s heart was hammering, and he had to wait for it to settle down before he could speak again. “They don’t see the grand scheme,” he said quietly. “The AOE has almost five thousand soldiers now. We have to move to survive, and we have to take what we need. We’re not farmers—we’re warriors! That’s why I need you, Sheila.”

  “Need me? For what?”

  “You get around. You hear things. You know most of the other RLs. I want you to find out whom I can trust among my officers—and who needs to be disposed of. Like I say, I don’t trust Hewlitt, Oldfield or Vann, but it’s nothing I can prove before a court-martial. And the cancer might run deep, very deep. They think that just because of this”—and he touched the black leather mask—“I’m not fit for command anymore. But this isn’t the mark of Cain. This is dif
ferent. This’ll go away when the air gets clean again and the sun comes out. The mark of Cain won’t go away until we destroy it.” He angled his head to one side, watching her carefully. “For every name you can put on an execution list—and verify—I’ll give you a carton of cigarettes and two bottles of liquor. How about it?”

  It was a generous offer. She already had a name in mind; it started with an L and ended with a Y But she didn’t know if Lawry was loyal or not. Anyway, she sure would like to see him in front of a firing squad—but only if she could smash his brains out first. She was about to answer when someone knocked at the door.

  “Colonel?” It was Roland Croninger’s voice. “I’ve got a couple of presents for you.”

  Macklin strode to the door and opened it. Outside, illuminated by the firelight, was the armored truck that Captain Croninger and the others had gone out in. And chained to the rear fender were two men, both bloody and battered, one on his knees and the other standing straight and staring defiantly.

  “We found them about twelve miles east, along Highway 6,” Roland said. He was wearing his long coat, with the hood pulled up over his head. An automatic rifle was slung over his shoulder, and at his waist was a holstered .45. The dirty bandages still covered most of his face, but growths protruded like gnarled knuckles through spaces between them. The firelight burned red in the lenses of his goggles. “There were four of them at first. They wanted to fight. Captain Braden bought it; we brought back his clothes and guns. Anyway, that’s what’s left of them.” Roland’s growth-knotted lips parted in a slick smile. “We decided to see if they could keep up with the truck.”

  “Have you questioned them?”

  “No, sir. We were saving that.”

  Macklin walked past him, down the carved staircase. Roland followed, and Sheila Fontana watched from the doorway.