Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  He saw frozen splatters of blood on the ground. He followed them for about fifteen more feet and stopped at a circular piece of tin that lay up against the rough brick foundations of the ruined church. More frozen blood streaked the tin, and Josh could see other bits of shredded plaid around his boots. He put his foot against the piece of tin, which was about the size and shape of a manhole cover, drew a breath and slowly let it out. Then, abruptly, he shoved the tin aside and leaped back.

  Exposed underneath it was a hole burrowed down below the church’s foundations. A cold, sour reek rose from it that made his flesh crawl.

  Found you, was Josh’s first thought.

  His second was: Get the hell out of here! Run, you flat-footed fool!

  But he hesitated, staring at the hole.

  There was no sound from within, no movement. It’s empty! Josh realized. He’s gone!

  He took a tentative step toward the hole. Then a second, and a third. He stood over it, listening. Still no sound, no movement.

  The lair was empty. The man with the scarlet eye had gone. After Swan had faced him down, he must have left Mary’s Rest. “Thank God!” Josh whispered.

  There was a rustling behind him.

  Josh whirled around, his arms up to ward off a blow.

  A rat sat atop a cardboard box, baring its teeth. It began to squeal and chatter like an irate landlord.

  Josh said, “Be quiet, you little bas—”

  Two hands—one black, one white—shot out of the hole and grasped Josh’s ankles, jerking him off his feet. Josh had no time to cry out before he slammed to the ground, the air whooshing from his lungs. Dazed, he tried to scrabble free, tried to dig his fingers into the frozen earth around the hole, but the hands gripped his ankles like iron bands and began to draw him into the depths.

  Josh was halfway into the hole before he fully registered what had happened. He started fighting, thrashing and kicking, but the fingers only tightened. He smelled burning cloth, twisted his body and saw blue flames dancing over the man’s hands. Josh’s skin was beginning to scorch, and he felt the man’s hands wet and oozing like wax gloves melting.

  But in the next second the flames weakened and went out. The man’s hands were freezing cold again, and they yanked Josh down into darkness.

  The hands left his ankles. Josh kicked, felt his left boot connect. A cold, heavy form fell on him—more like a sack of ice than a body. But the knee that pressed against his throat was solid enough, trying to crush his windpipe. Blows that almost broke his bones smashed into his shoulders, chest and rib cage. He got his hands up around a clammy throat and dug his fingers into what felt like cold putty. The thing’s fists pounded his head and face but couldn’t inflict damage through the Job’s Mask. Josh’s brain was rattled in his skull, and he was close to passing out. He knew he had two choices: fight like hell or die.

  He struck out with his right fist, his knuckles flattening against the angular line of a jawbone, and instantly he brought his left fist around to crash it into the man’s temple. There was a grunt—more of surprise than of pain—and the weight was off Josh. He struggled to his knees, his lungs dragging in air.

  A freezing arm snaked around his throat from behind. Josh reached back, grabbed the fingers and twisted them at a vicious angle; but what had been bones a second before was now like coathanger wire—it would bend but would not break. With sheer strength, Josh lifted himself up from the floor and hurled himself backward, catching the man with the scarlet eye between himself and the church’s foundation wall of rough bricks. The freezing arm slithered away, and Josh tried to scurry out of the hole.

  He was caught and hauled down again, and as they fought in the dark like animals Josh saw the man’s hands flicker, about to burst into flames—but they wouldn’t catch, as if something had gone haywire with his ignition switch. Josh smelled an odor halfway between a struck match and a melting candle. But he kicked into the man’s stomach and knocked him back. As Josh got to his feet again a blow hammered across his shoulder, almost dislocating his arm, and flung him onto his face in the dirt.

  Josh twisted around to face him, his mouth bleeding and his strength running out fast. He saw the flicker of fire, and then both the man’s hands grew flame again. By their blue light, he could see the man’s face—a nightmare mask, and in it a gibbering, elastic mouth that spat dead flies like broken teeth.

  The flaming hands came toward Josh’s face, and suddenly one of them sputtered and went out like a live coal doused with water. The other hand began to burn out as well, little tongues of fire rippling along the fingers.

  Something lay beside Josh in the dirt. He saw a bloody pile of flesh and twisted bones, and around it a number of coats, pairs of pants, sweaters, shoes and hats. Nearby was a child’s red wagon.

  Josh looked back at the man with the scarlet eye, who had also been Mr. Welcome. The burning hand was almost extinguished, and the man stared at the dying flame with eyes that in a human face might have been called insane.

  He’s not as strong as before, Josh realized.

  And Josh lunged for the wagon, picked it up and smashed it into the thing’s face.

  There was an unholy bellow. The last of the flame went out as the man staggered back. Josh saw gray light and crawled for the hole.

  He was about three feet from it when the crumpled red wagon was slammed down across the back of his head. Josh had a second to remember being thrown from a ring in Gainesville, and how it felt to hit a concrete floor, and then he lay still.

  He awakened—how much later it was he didn’t know—to the sound of high-pitched giggling. He couldn’t move, and he thought every bone in his body must have snapped.

  The giggling was coming from ten or fifteen feet away. It faded out, replaced by a snorting noise that became a language of some kind—German, Josh thought it might be. He made out fragments of other tongues—Chinese, French, Danish, Spanish and more dialects that tumbled out one after the other. Then the harsh, awful voice began to speak in English, with a deep Southern drawl: “Always walked alone ... always walked alone ... always ... always ...”

  Josh mentally explored his body, probing to find out what worked and what didn’t. His right hand felt dead, maybe broken. Bands of pain throbbed at his ribs and across his shoulders. But he knew he’d been lucky; the blow he’d just survived might have crushed his skull if the Job’s Mask hadn’t been so thick.

  The voice changed, skittering into a singsong dialect Josh couldn’t understand, then returned to English with a flat Midwestern accent: “The bitch ... the bitch ... she’ll die ... but not by my hand ... oh, no ... not by my hand ...”

  Josh slowly tried to turn his head. Pain shot through his spine, but his neck still worked. He gradually got his head turned toward the raving thing crouched in the dirt on the other side of the lair.

  The man with the scarlet eye was staring at his right hand, where weak blue flames popped along the fingers. The man’s face was hung between masks. Fine blond hair mingled with coarse black, one eye was blue and the other brown, one cheekbone sharp and the other sunken. “Not by my hand,” he said. “I’ll make them do it.” His chin lengthened, sprouted a black stubble that turned into a red beard within seconds and just as quickly disappeared again into the writhing matter of his face. “I’ll find a way to make them do it.”

  The man’s hand trembled, began to curl into a tight fist, and the little blue flames went out.

  Josh gritted his teeth and started crawling for the gray light at the top of the hole—slowly and painfully, an inch at a time. He stiffened when he heard the man’s voice again, singing in a whisper, “Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, mulberry bush, mulberry bush; here we go ’round the mulberry bush, so early in the ...” It trailed off into muttered gibberish.

  Josh pushed himself forward. Closer to the hole. Closer.

  “Run,” the man with the scarlet eye said, in a thin and weary voice. Josh’s heart pounded, because he knew the monster was spe
aking to him in the darkness. “Go on. Run. Tell her I’ll make a human hand do the work. Tell her ... tell her...”

  Josh crawled upward toward the light.

  “Tell her ... I’ve always walked alone.”

  And then Josh pulled himself out of the hole, quickly drawing his legs up after him. His ribs were killing him, and he was fighting to stay conscious, but he knew he had to get away or he was dead meat.

  He kept crawling as rats scurried around him. A bitter cold had leeched to his bones, and he expected and dreaded the grip of the man with the scarlet eye, but it didn’t come. Josh realized his life had been spared—either because the man with the scarlet eye was weakened, or because he was worn out, or because he wanted a message sent to Swan.

  Tell her I’ll make a human hand do the work.

  Josh tried to stand but fell on his face again. It was another minute or two before he could find the strength to heave himself to his knees, and then he was finally able to stand up like a tottering, decrepit old man.

  He staggered along the alley to the road and started walking toward the bonfire that burned in front of Glory’s shack. But before he made it, his strength gave out; he toppled like a redwood to the ground, and he did not see Robin and Mr. Polowsky running toward him.

  THIRTEEN

  A Five-Star General

  The Waste Land

  Roland’s prize

  What the Junkman saw

  Friend

  Swan’s decision

  Robin being cool

  Bitter ashes

  The tide of death and destruction

  Iron claws

  The masters of efficiency

  75

  ROLAND CRONINGER LIFTED A pair of binoculars to his goggled eyes. Snow was whirling through the freezing air and had already covered most of the corpses and wrecked vehicles. Fires were burning around the mall’s entrance, and he knew the Allegiance soldiers were keeping watch as well.

  He heard the slow rumble of thunder up in the clouds, and a spear of blue lightning streaked through the snow. He swept his gaze across the parking lot, and his binoculars revealed a frozen hand reaching from a mound of snow, a pile of bodies locked together in icy death, the gray face of a young boy staring at the dark.

  The wasteland, Roland thought. Yes. The wasteland.

  He lowered the binoculars and leaned against the armored car that shielded him from sniper fire. The sound of hammers at work was carried past him by the wind. The wasteland. That’s what God’s prayer for the final hour was about. He’d been trying to remember where he’d heard it before, only it hadn’t been a prayer then, and it wasn’t Sir Roland who’d heard it. It was a memory from the child Roland’s mind, but it wasn’t a prayer. No, not a prayer. It had been a poem.

  He’d awakened that morning on the bare mattress in his black trailer and thought of Miss Edna Merritt. She was one of those spinster English teachers who must have been born looking sixty years old. She’d taught Advanced Freshman English back in Flagstaff. As Roland had sat up on his mattress he’d seen her standing beside the hand-crusher, and she was holding an open copy of The New Oxford Book of English Verse.

  “I am going to recite,” Miss Edna Merritt announced, in a voice so dry it made dust seem damp. And, cutting her eyes left and right to make sure the Advanced Freshman English class was attentive, she’d begun to read: “Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,/ The lady of situations./ Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,/ And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,/ Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,/ Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find/ The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.” And when she’d finished, she’d announced that the entire class was going to do a reasearch paper on some facet of T S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” a small portion of which she had just recited.

  He’d made an A on the term paper, and Miss Edna Merritt had written in red on the title page, “Excellent—Shows interest and intelligence.” He’d thought that it showed he was a superfine bullshitter. Bet old Miss Edna’s down to the bones by now, Roland mused as he stared across the parking lot. Bet the worms ate her from the inside out.

  Two possibilities intrigued him. One, that Brother Timothy was crazy and had been leading the American Allegiance to West Virginia in search of a fever dream; and two, that there was somebody on Warwick Mountain who called himself God and spouted poetry. Maybe he had some books up there or something. But Roland recalled a puzzling thing that Brother Gary had said, back in Sutton: “God showed him the black box and the silver key and told him how the world will end.”

  The black box and the silver key, Roland thought. What did that mean?

  He let the binoculars dangle on their strap around his neck, and he listened to the music of hammering. Then he turned around to look beyond the encampment, where Alvin Mangrim’s creation was being constructed by the light of bonfires about a mile away, and out of the line of sight of Allegiance sentries. The work had been going on for three days and three nights, and Colonel Macklin had supplied everything that Mangrim needed. Roland couldn’t see it through the heavy snowfall, but he knew what it was. It was a damned simple thing, but he wouldn’t have thought of it, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have known how to put one together. He didn’t like or trust Alvin Mangrim, but he had to admit that Mangrim had brains. If such a thing was good enough for a medieval army, it was certainly good enough for the Army of Excellence.

  Roland knew the Savior must be getting jittery by now, wondering when the next attack would come. They must be in there singing their chants good and loud by—

  Searing pain tore through Roland’s face, and he pressed his palms against the bandages. A shuddering moan escaped his lips. He thought his head was going to explode. And then, beneath his fingers, he felt the growths under the bandages move and swell outward, like pressure seething below the crust of a volcano. Roland staggered with pain and terror as the entire left side of his face bulged outward, almost ripping the bandages loose. Frantically, he pressed his hands against his face to keep it from coming apart. He thought of the cracked fragments on the King’s pillow, and what had been revealed beneath, and he whimpered like a child.

  The pain ebbed. The movement of the bandages stopped. And then it was over, and Roland was all right. His face hadn’t cracked apart. He was all right. This time the pain hadn’t lasted as long as usual, either. What had happened to Colonel Macklin was a freak thing, Roland told himself. It wouldn’t happen to him. He was content to wear these bandages for the rest of his life.

  He waited until he’d stopped shaking. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see him that way. He was an officer. Then he began walking briskly across the camp toward Colonel Macklin’s trailer.

  Macklin was seated behind his desk, going over reports from Captain Satterlee about how much fuel and ammunition remained. The supplies were rapidly dwindling. “Come in,” he said when Roland knocked at the door. Roland entered, and Macklin said, “Close the door.”

  Roland stood before his desk, waiting for him to look up—but dreading it, too. The skeletal face, with its jutting cheekbones, exposed veins and muscles, made Macklin look like walking death.

  “What do you want?” Macklin asked, busy with his merciless figures.

  “It’s almost ready,” Roland said.

  “The machine? Yes. What about it?”

  “We’ll attack when it’s finished, won’t we?”

  The colonel put aside his pencil. “That’s right. If I can have your permission to attack, Captain.”

  Roland knew he was still stung from their disagreement. It was time now to mend the rift, because Roland loved the King—and also because he didn’t want Alvin Mangrim to be in the King’s favor and himself cast out in the cold. “I ... want to apologize,” Roland said. “I spoke out of turn.”

  “We could’ve broken them!” Macklin snapped vengefully. “One more attack was all we needed! We could’ve broken them right then and there!”


  Roland kept his eyes lowered in submission, but he knew damned well that another frontal attack would only have slaughtered more AOE soldiers. “Yes, sir.”

  “If anybody else had spoken to me like that, I would’ve shot them down on the spot! You were wrong, Captain! Look at these goddamned figures!” He shoved the papers at Roland, and they flew from the desk. “Look how much gasoline we’ve got left! Look at the ammunition inventory! You want to see how much food we have? We’re sitting here starving, and we could’ve had the Allegiance’s supplies three days ago! If we’d attacked then.!” He slammed his black-gloved hand down on the desk, and the oil lantern jumped. “And it’s your fault, Captain! Not mine! I wanted to attack! I have faith in the Army of Excellence! Go on! Get out!”

  Roland didn’t move.

  “I gave you an order, Captain!”

  “I have a request to make,” Roland said quietly.

  “You’re in no position to make requests!”

  “I’d like to request,” Roland continued doggedly, “that I lead the first assault wave when we break through.”

  “Captain Carr’s leading it.”

  “I know you gave him permission. But I’d like to ask you to change your mind. I want to lead the first wave.”

  “It’s an honor to lead an assault wave. I don’t think you’re deserving of an honor, do you?” He paused and then leaned back in his chair. “You’ve never asked to lead an assault wave before. Why now?”

  “Because I want to find someone, and I want to capture him alive.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “The man who calls himself Brother Timothy,” Roland replied. “I want him alive.”

  “We’re not taking prisoners. They’re all going to die. Every one.”

  “The black box and the silver key,” Roland said.

  “What?”

  “God showed Brother Timothy the black box and the silver key and told him how the world will end. I’d like to know more about what Brother Timothy says he saw on that mountaintop.”