Swan Song

by Robert R. McCammon

  Mule’s eyes were already beginning to glaze over, but Swan understood that what Mule had been was already gone. “Oh ...” she whispered, and then she was unable to speak.

  Josh saw Robin running out of the smoke. “This way!” Josh shouted. Robin ran toward them, limping a little and holding his left thigh. But the soldiers had seen, too, and one of them started firing a pistol. A bullet plowed up dirt about four feet from Robin, and another whined past Josh’s head.

  “Come on!” Josh urged, and he started running toward town with Swan in his arms, his lungs working like a bellows in a metal forge. He saw another group of soldiers on the left. One of them shouted “Halt!” but Josh kept going. He looked quickly back to make sure Robin was following. Robin was right on his heels, wounded leg and all.

  They were almost to the warren of alleys when four soldiers stepped into their path. Josh decided to barrel through them, but two of the men lifted their guns. He stopped, skidding in the mud and looking for a way out like a fox trapped by hounds. Robin whirled to the right—and about ten feet away were three more soldiers, one of them already leveling his M-16. More soldiers were approaching from the left, and Josh knew that within seconds they were going to be cut to pieces in a crossfire.

  Swan was about to be killed in his arms. There was no way out now, and only one chance to save her—if indeed she could be saved. He had no choice, and no time to ponder the decision.

  “Don’t shoot!” he shouted. And then he had to say it, to keep the soldiers from firing: “This is Swan! This is the girl you’re looking for!”

  “Stand where you are!” one of the soldiers commanded, aiming a rifle at Josh’s head. The other men formed a circle around Josh, Swan and Robin. There was a brief discussion among several of the soldiers, one of whom seemed to be in charge, and then two of the men headed off in opposite directions, obviously going to find someone else.

  Swan wanted to cry, but she dared not let a tear show, not in front of these men. She kept her features as calm and composed as if sculpted from ice. “It’s going to be okay,” Josh said quietly, though the words sounded hollow and stupid. At least, for the moment, she was alive. “You’ll see. We’ll get out of this some—”

  “No talking, nigger!” a soldier shouted, pointing a .38 in Josh’s face.

  He gave the man the best smile he could muster.

  The noise of gunfire, explosions and screams still drifted over Mary’s Rest like the residue of nightmares. Our asses are grass, Robin thought, and there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it. Two rifles and four pistols were aimed at him alone. He looked out toward the blazing eastern wall, then toward the west, way over beyond the cornfield, where trucks and armored cars seemed to be grouping to make camp.

  In five or six minutes, one of the soldiers who’d left returned leading an old brown United Parcel Service truck in their direction. Josh was ordered to put Swan down, but she still had difficulty standing and had to lean against him. Then the soldiers conducted a thorough and rough body search. They let their hands linger on Swan’s budding breasts; Josh saw Robin’s face redden with anger, and he cautioned, “Be cool.”

  “What’s this shit?” The tarot card that had been in the pocket of Josh’s jeans was held up.

  “Just a card,” Josh replied. “Nothing special.”

  “Damn straight.” The man tore it into fragments and let The Empress fall in pieces to the ground.

  The rear door of the UPS truck was opened. Josh, Robin and Swan were shoved inside with thirty other people. When the door was slammed shut and bolted again, the prisoners were left in total darkness.

  “Take ’em to the chicken coop!” the sergeant in charge ordered the driver, and the UPS truck carried away its new load of parcels.

  84

  SWAN CLASPED HER HANDS over her ears. But she could still hear the terrible hurting sounds, and she thought her mind would crack before they stopped.

  Out beyond the “chicken coop”—which was a wide circle of barbed wire surrounding the two hundred and sixty-two survivors, now prisoners—the soldiers were going through the cornfield, shearing the stalks off with machetes and axes or wrenching them up roots and all. The stalks were being piled up like corpses in the backs of trucks.

  No bonfires were allowed within the coop, and the armed guards who stood around the wire were quick to fire warning shots that dissuaded people from huddling together. Many of the wounded were freezing to death.

  Josh flinched at the laughter and singing of the troops in town. He looked toward the shacks with weary eyes and saw a large fire burning in the middle of the road, near the spring. Parked around Mary’s Rest were dozens of trucks, armored cars, vans and trailers, and other bonfires blazed to keep the victors warm. Bodies were being stripped of clothes and left in macabre, frozen heaps. Trucks moved around collecting the clothes and guns.

  Whoever the bastards were, Josh thought, they were masters of efficiency. They wasted nothing but human life.

  There was the air of a wicked carnival over Mary’s Rest, but Josh consoled himself with the fact that Swan was still alive. Also nearby, sitting as close as the guards would allow, were Glory and Aaron. She was shocked beyond tears. Aaron lay curled up, his eyes open and staring and the thumb of one hand jammed into his mouth. The soldiers had taken Crybaby and thrown it onto a bonfire.

  Robin walked along the barbed wire like a caged tiger. There was only one way in or out, through a barbed wire gate the soldiers had hastily built. Off in the distance were more rapid gunshots, and Robin figured the bastards had found somebody still alive. He’d counted only six of his highwaymen inside the coop, and two of them were badly wounded. Dr. Ryan, who’d survived an attack on his makeshift hospital, had already told Robin those two were going to die. Bucky had made it, though he was sullen and would not speak. But Sister was missing, and that really twisted Robin’s guts.

  He stopped and stared across the wire at a guard. The man cocked his pistol, aimed it at Robin and said, “Move on, you piece of shit.”

  Robin grinned, spat on the ground and turned away. His groin crawled as he waited for the bullet to slam into his back. He’d seen prisoners shot down for no apparent reason other than to amuse the guards, and so he didn’t breathe easily again until he’d gotten far away from the man. But he walked slowly; he wasn’t going to run. He was through running.

  Swan took her hands from her ears. The last of the hurting sounds were drifting away. The cornfield was a stubbled ruin, and the trucks rumbled away fat and happy as cockroaches.

  She felt sick with fear, and she longed for the basement where she and Josh had been trapped such a long time ago. But she forced herself to look around at the other prisoners and to absorb the scene: the moaning and coughing of the wounded, the babbling of those who’d lost their minds, the sobbing and wailing of the death dirges. She saw their faces, their eyes dark and turned inward, all hope murdered.

  They’d fought and suffered for her, and here she was sitting on the ground like an insect, waiting for a boot to smash down. Her fists clenched. Get up! she told herself. Damn it, get up! She was ashamed of her own frailty and weakness, and a spark of rage leaped within her as if thrown off by an iron wheel grinding flint. She heard two of the guards laughing. Get up! she screamed inwardly, and the rage grew, spread through her and burned the sick fear away.

  “You’re a leader,” Sister had said, “and you’d better learn how to act like one.”

  Swan didn’t want to be. Had never asked to be. But she heard an infant crying not too far away, and she knew that if there was to be a future for any of these people, it had to start right here ... with her.

  She stood up, took a deep breath to clear away the last cobwebs and walked among the other prisoners, her gaze moving left and right, meeting theirs and leaving the impression of a glimpse into a blast furnace.

  “Swan!” Josh called, but she paid no attention and kept going, and he started to get up and go after her, but he saw h
ow stiff her back was; it was a regal posture, full of confidence and courage, and now the other prisoners were sitting up as she passed them, and even the wounded were struggling to rise from the dirt. Josh let her go.

  Her left leg was still stiff and aching, but at least it was unbroken. She, too, was aware of the energizing effect she was having on the others—but she did not know that around her they could have sworn they felt a radiance that briefly warmed the air.

  She reached the crying infant. The child was held in the arms of a shivering man with a swollen, purple gash on the side of his head. Swan looked down at the child—and then she began to unbutton her coat of many colors and shrug out of it. She knelt down to wrap it around the man’s shoulders and enfold the infant in it.

  “You!” one of the guards shouted. “Get away from there!”

  Swan flinched, but she kept at what she was doing.

  “Get away!” a woman prisoner urged. “They’ll kill you!”

  A warning shot was fired. Swan arranged the folds of the patchwork coat to keep the child warm, and only then did she stand up.

  “Go back to where you were and sit down!” the guard ordered. He was holding a rifle braced against his hip.

  Swan felt everyone watching her. The moment hung.

  “I won’t tell you again! Move your ass!”

  God help me, she thought—and then she swallowed hard and started walking toward the barbed wire and the guard with the rifle. Immediately he lifted his weapon to a firing position.

  “Halt!” another guard warned, off to the right.

  Swan kept going, step after step, her eyes riveted to the man with the rifle.

  He pulled the trigger.

  The bullet whined past her head, and she knew it must have missed her by three inches or less. She stopped, wavered—and then took the next step.

  “Swan!” Josh shouted, standing up. “Swan, don’t!”

  The guard with the rifle took a backward step as Swan approached. “The next one is right between your eyes,” he promised, but the girl’s merciless stare pierced him.

  Swan stopped. “These people need blankets and food,” she said, and she was surprised at the strength in her voice. “They need them now. Go tell whoever’s in charge that I want to see him.”

  “Fuck you,” the guard said. He fired.

  But the bullet went over Swan’s head, because one of the other guards had grabbed the rifle barrel and uptilted it. “Didn’t you hear her name, dumb ass?” the second man asked. “That’s the girl the colonel’s looking for! Go find an officer and report!”

  The first guard had gone pale, realizing how close he’d come to being skinned alive. He took off at a run toward Colonel Macklin’s Command Center.

  “I said,” Swan repeated firmly, “that I want to see whoever’s in charge.”

  “Don’t worry,” the man told her. “You’ll get to see Colonel Macklin soon enough.”

  Another truck stopped over by the chicken coop’s gate. The rear door was unbolted and opened, and fourteen more prisoners were herded into the containment area. Swan watched them come in, some of them badly wounded and hardly able to walk. She went over to help—and an electric thrill shot through her, because she’d recognized one of the new arrivals.

  “Sister!” she cried out, and she ran toward the dirty woman who’d stumbled through the gate.

  “Oh, dear God, dear God!” Sister sobbed as she put her arms around Swan and held her. They clung together for a moment, silent, each just needing to feel the other’s heart beating. “I thought you were dead!” Sister finally said, her vision blurred by tears. “Oh, dear God, I thought they’d killed you!”

  “No, I’m all right. Josh is here, and so are Robin, Glory and Aaron. We all thought you were dead!” Swan pulled back to look at Sister. Her stomach clenched.

  Burning gasoline had splattered onto the right side of Sister’s face. Her eyebrow on that side had been burned off, and her right eye was almost swollen shut. Her chin and the bridge of her nose had both been gashed by flying glass. Dirt was all over the front of her coat, and the fabric was charred and torn. Sister understood Swan’s expression, and she shrugged. “Well,” she said, “I guess I was never meant to be pretty.”

  Swan hugged her again. “You’re going to be okay. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you!”

  “You’d get along fine, just like you did before Paul and I showed up.” She glanced around the area. “Where is he?”

  Swan knew who she meant, but she said, “Who?”

  “You know who. Paul.” Sister’s voice tightened. “He is here, isn’t he?”

  Swan hesitated.

  “Where is he? Where’s Paul?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “He’s not here.”

  “Oh ... my God.” Sister clasped a dirt-caked hand to her mouth. She was dizzy, and this new blow almost finished her; she was weary and sick of fighting, and her bones ached as if her body had been snapped apart and rearranged. She’d retreated from the western wall as the soldiers overran it, had found a discarded butcher knife and killed one of them in hand-to-hand fighting, then had been forced across the field by a wave of attacking troops. She’d hidden under a shack, but when it was set afire over her head she’d had no choice but to surrender. “Paul,” she whispered. “He’s dead. I know he is.”

  “You don’t know that! Maybe he got away! Maybe he’s still hiding!”

  “Hey, you!” the guard shouted. “Break it up and move on!”

  Swan said, “Lean on me,” and she started helping Sister back to where the others were. Josh was coming toward them, followed by Robin. And suddenly Swan realized that Sister no longer had the leather satchel. “The glass ring! What happened to it?”

  Sister put a finger to her lips.

  A Jeep roared up. Its two passengers were Roland Croninger, still wearing a helmet and with mud splattered across his bandaged face, and the man who called himself Friend. Both of them got out while the driver kept the engine idling.

  Friend stalked along the wire, his brown eyes narrowed as he searched among the prisoners. And then he saw her, supporting an injured woman. “There!” he said excitedly, and he pointed. “That’s her!”

  “Bring the girl out,” Roland told the nearest guard.

  Friend paused, staring at the woman who leaned on Swan’s shoulder. The woman’s face was unfamiliar, and the last time he’d seen Sister she’d been disfigured. He thought he recalled seeing that woman the day he’d overheard the Junkman talking about the Army of Excellence, but he hadn’t paid any attention to her. That was back when he was sick, and details had escaped him. But now he realized that, if indeed the woman was Sister, she no longer had that damned bag with the circle of glass in it.

  “Wait!” he told the guard. “Bring that woman out, too! Hurry!”

  The guard motioned for another to help him, and they entered the containment area with their rifles ready.

  Josh was just about to reach out for Sister when the guards ordered Swan to halt. She looked over her shoulder at the two rifle barrels. “Come on,” one of the men said. “You wanted to see Colonel Macklin? Here’s your chance. You too, lady.”

  “She’s hurt!” Josh objected. “Can’t you see—”

  The guard who’d spoken fired his rifle into the ground at Josh’s feet, and Josh was forced back.

  “Let’s go.” The guard prodded Swan with his rifle. “The colonel’s waiting.”

  Swan supported Sister, and they were bracketed by the two guards as they were escorted to the gate.

  Robin started after them, but Josh grabbed his arm. “Don’t be stupid,” Josh warned.

  The boy angrily wrenched free. “You’re just going to let them take her? I thought you were supposed to be her guardian!”

  “I used to be. Now she’ll have to take care of herself.”

  “Right!” Robin said bitterly. “What are we going to do, just wait?”

  “If you have a better sugg
estion—and one that won’t get a lot of people killed, including yourself and Swan—I’d just love to hear it.”

  Robin had none. He watched helplessly as Swan and Sister were herded toward the Jeep where the two men waited.

  As they neared the Jeep, both Swan and Sister felt their skin crawl. Sister recognized the one with the bandaged face from her confrontation with the tank—and she knew the other as well. It was in his eyes, or his smile, or the way he cocked his head or held his hands in fists at his sides. Or maybe it was the way he trembled with excitement. But she knew him, and so did Swan.

  He did not look at Swan. Instead, he strode forward and ripped the collar of Sister’s coat away from her neck.

  Exposed underneath was a brown scar in the shape of a crucifix.

  “Your face is different,” he said.

  “So is yours.”

  He nodded, and she saw a quick glint of red deep in his eyes, there and then gone like a glimpse of something monstrous and unknown. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “The ring. The crown. Or whatever the fuck it is. Where?”

  “Don’t you know everything? You tell me.”

  He paused, and his tongue flicked across his lower lip. “You didn’t destroy it. I know that fer sure, fer sure. You hid it somewhere. Oh, you think you’re just a cutie-pie, don’t you? You think you shit roses, just like—” He almost turned his head, almost let himself look at her, but he did not. The muscles of his neck were as taut as piano wires. “Just like she does,” he finished.

  “What crown?” Roland asked.

  Friend ignored him. “I’ll find it,” he promised Sister. “And if I can’t persuade you to help me, my associate Captain Croninger has a wonderful way with tools. Do you forgive me now?”

  Swan realized he was speaking to her, though he still stared at Sister.

  “I said, do you forgive me now?” When Swan didn’t reply, his smile broadened. “I didn’t think so. Now you have a taste of what hate is. How do you like it?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Oh,” he said, not yet trusting himself to even glance at her, “I think you’ll learn to enjoy the flavor. Shall we go, ladies?”