“Roland,” he replied. What was his last name? He couldn’t remember it for a few seconds. Then, “Roland Croninger.”
“I need your help, Roland,” the man with the flashlight said. “Are you able to walk okay?”
Roland nodded.
“Colonel Macklin’s trapped down below, in the control room. What’s left of the control room,” Teddybear Warner amended. He was drawn up like a hunchback. He leaned on a piece of reinforcement rod that he was using as a walking stick. Some of the passageways had been completely blocked by rockslides, while others slanted at crazy angles or were split by gaping fissures. Screams and cries for God echoed through Earth House, and some of the walls were bloody where bodies had been battered to death by the shock waves. He had found only a half-dozen able-bodied civilians in the wreckage, and of those only two—an old man and a little girl—weren’t raving mad; but the old man had a snapped wrist through which the bones protruded, and the little girl wouldn’t leave the area where her father had disappeared. So Warner had continued to the cafeteria, looking for someone to help him, and also figuring that the kitchen would hold a useful assortment of knives.
Now Warner played the beam over Roland’s face. The boy’s forehead was gashed and his eyes were swimming with shock, but he seemed to have escaped major injury. Except for the blood, the boy’s face was pallid and dusty, and his dark blue cotton shirt was ripped and showing more gashes across his sallow, skinny chest. He’s not much, Warner thought, but he’ll have to do.
“Where’re your folks?” Warner asked, and Roland shook his head. “Okay, listen to me: We’ve been nuked. The whole fucking country’s been nuked. I don’t know how many are dead in here, but we’re alive, and so is Colonel Macklin. But to stay alive, we’ve got to get things in order as much as we can, and we’ve got to help the colonel. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so,” Roland replied. Nuked, he thought. Nuked… nuked… nuked. His senses reeled; in a few minutes, he thought, he’d wake up in bed in Arizona.
“Okay. Now I want you to stick with me, Roland. We’re going back into the kitchen, and we’re going to find something sharp: a butcher knife, a meat cleaver—whatever. Then we’re going back to the control room.” If I can find my way back, Warner thought—but he didn’t dare say it.
“My mom and dad,” Roland said weakly. “They’re here… somewhere.”
“They’re not going anywhere. Right now Colonel Macklin needs you more than they do. Understand?”
Roland nodded. King’s Knight! he thought. The King was trapped in a dungeon and needed his help! His parents were gone, swept away in the cataclysm, and the King’s fortress had been nuked. But I’m alive, Roland thought. I’m alive, and I’m a King’s Knight. He squinted into the flashlight beam. “Do I get to be a soldier?” he asked the man.
“Sure. Now stay close to me. We’re going to find a way into the kitchen.”
Warner had to move slowly, leaning all his weight on the iron rod. They picked their way into the kitchen, where pockets of fire still burned voraciously. Warner realized that what was afire was the remains of the food pantry; dozens of cans had exploded, and the burned mess clung to the walls. Everything was gone—powdered milk, eggs, bacon and ham, everything. But there was still the emergency food storeroom, Warner knew—and his guts tightened at the thought that they could’ve been trapped down here in the dark without food or water.
Utensils were scattered everywhere, blown out of the kitchen equipment pantry by the shock. Warner uncovered a meat cleaver with the tip of his makeshift cane. The blade was serrated. “Get that,” he told the boy, and Roland picked it up.
They left the kitchen and cafeteria, and Warner led Roland to the ruins of the Town Square. Slabs of stone had crashed from above, and the entire area was off-balance and riddled with deep cracks. The video arcade was still burning, the air dense with smoke. “Here,” Warner said, motioning with his light toward the infirmary. They went inside, finding most of the equipment smashed and useless, but Warner kept searching until he discovered a box of tourniquets and a plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol. He told Roland to take one of the tourniquets and the bottle, and then he picked through the shattered drug cabinet. Pills and capsules crunched underfoot like popcorn. Warner’s light fell upon the dead face of one of the nurses, crushed by a piece of rock the size of an anvil. There was no sign of Dr. Lang, Earth House’s resident physician. Warner’s cane uncovered unbroken vials of Demerol and Percodan, and these he asked Roland to pick up for him; Warner stuffed them in his pockets to take back to the colonel.
“You still with me?” Warner asked.
“Yes, sir.” I’ll wake up in a few minutes, Roland thought. It’ll be a Saturday morning, and I’ll get out of bed and turn on the computer.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Warner told him. “We’ll have to crawl part of the way. But stay with me, understand?”
Roland followed him out of the infirmary; he wanted to go back to search for his parents but he knew that the King needed him more. He was a King’s Knight, and to be needed like this by the King was a high honor. Again, one part of him recoiled at the horror and destruction that lay around him, and shouted Wake up! Wake up! in the whining voice of an anxious schoolboy; but the other part that was getting stronger looked around at the bodies exposed in the flashlight beam and knew that the weak had to die so the strong might live.
They moved into the corridors, stepping over bodies and ignoring the cries of the wounded.
Roland didn’t know how long it took them to reach the wrecked control room. He looked at his wristwatch by the light of a burning heap of rubble, but the crystal had cracked and time had stopped at ten thirty-six. Warner crawled uphill to the edge of the pit and shone his light down. “Colonel!” he called. “I’ve brought help! We’re going to get you out!”
Ten feet below, Macklin stirred and turned his sweating face toward the light. “Hurry,” he rasped, and then he closed his eyes again.
Roland crawled to the pit’s rim. He saw two bodies down there, one lying on top of the other, jammed in a space the size of a coffin. The body on the bottom was breathing, and his hand disappeared into a fissure in the wall. Suddenly Roland knew what the meat cleaver was for; he looked at the weapon, could see his face reflected in the blade by the spill of light—except it was a distorted face, and not the one he remembered. His eyes were wild and shiny, and blood had crusted into a star-shaped pattern on his forehead. His entire face was mottled with bruises and swollen like a toadfrog’s, and he looked even worse than the day Mike Armbruster had beaten his ass for not letting him cheat off Roland’s paper during a chemistry test. “Little queer! Little four-eyed queer!” Armbruster had raged, and everyone who ringed them laughed and jeered as Roland tried to escape but was knocked to the dirt again and again. Roland had started to sob, huddled on the ground, and Armbruster had bent down and spat in his face.
“Do you know how to tie a tourniquet?” the hunchback with the eye patch asked him. Roland shook his head. “I’ll guide you through it when you get down there.” He shone his light around and saw several things that would make a good, hot fire—the pieces of a desk, the chairs, the clothes off the corpses. They could get the fire started with the burning rubble they’d passed in the corridor, and Warner still had his lighter in his pocket. “Do you know what’s got to be done?”
“I… think so,” Roland replied.
“Okay, now pay attention to me. I can’t squeeze down into that hole after him. You can. You’re going to draw that tourniquet tight around his arm, and then I’m going to pass down the alcohol. Splash it all over his wrist. He’ll be ready when you are. His wrist is probably smashed, so it won’t be too hard to get the cleaver through the bones. Now listen to me, Roland! I don’t want you hacking down there for a fucking five minutes! Do it hard and quick and get it over with, and once you start don’t you even think about stopping before it’s done. Do you hear me?”
&nb
sp; “Yes sir,” Roland answered, and he thought, Wake up! I’ve got to wake up!
“If you’ve tied the tourniquet right, you’ll have time to seal the wound before it starts bleeding. You’ll have something to burn the stump with—and you make sure you set fire to it, hear me? If you don’t, he’ll bleed to death. The way he’s jammed in down there, he won’t fight you much, and anyway, he knows what has to be done. Look at me, Roland.”
Roland looked into the light.
“If you do what you’re supposed to, Colonel Macklin will live. If you fuck up, he’ll die. Pure and simple. Got it?”
Roland nodded; his head was dizzy, but his heart was pounding. The King’s trapped, he thought. And of all the King’s Knights, I’m the only one who can set him free! But no, no—this wasn’t a game! This was real life, and his mother and father were lying up there somewhere, and Earth House had been nuked, the whole country had been nuked, everything was destroyed—
He put a hand to his bloody forehead and squeezed until the bad thoughts were gone. King’s Knight! Sir Roland is my name! And now he was about to go down into the deepest, darkest dungeon to save the King, armed with fire and steel.
Teddybear Warner crawled away to get a fire built, and Roland followed him like an automaton. They piled the pieces of the desk, the chairs and the clothes from the corpses into a corner and used some burning pieces of cable from the hallway to start the fire. Teddybear, moving slowly and in agony, piled on ceiling tiles and added some of the alcohol to the flames. At first there was just a lot of smoke, but then the red glow began to strengthen.
Corporal Prados still sat against the opposite wall, watching them work. His face was damp with sweat, and he kept babbling feverishly, but Warner paid him no attention. Now the pieces of the desk and the chairs were charring, the bitter smoke rising up into the holes and cracks in the ceiling.
Warner hobbled to the edge of the fire and picked up a leg of one of the broken chairs; the other end of it was burning brightly, and the wood had turned from black to ash-gray. He poked it back into the bonfire and turned toward Roland. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get it done.”
Though he ground his teeth with the pressure that wrenched his back, Warner grasped Roland’s hand and helped lower him into the pit. Roland stepped on the dead body. Warner kept the light directed at Macklin’s trapped arm and talked Roland through the application of the tourniquet to the colonel’s wrist. Roland had to lie in a contorted position on the corpse to reach the injured arm, and he saw that Macklin’s wrist had turned black. Macklin suddenly shifted and tried to look up, but he couldn’t lift his head. “Tighter,” Macklin managed to say. “Tie knots in the bastard!”
It took Roland four tries to get it tight enough. Warner dropped the bottle of alcohol down, and Roland splashed the blackened wrist. Macklin took the bottle with his free hand and finally twisted his head up to look at Roland. “What’s your name?”
“Roland Croninger, sir.”
Macklin could tell it was a boy from the weight and the voice, but he couldn’t make out the face. Something glinted, and he angled his head to look at the meat cleaver the boy held. “Roland,” he said, “you and I are going to get to know each other real well in the next couple of minutes. Teddy! Where’s the fire?”
Warner’s light vanished for a minute, and Roland was alone in the dark with the colonel. “Bad day,” Macklin said. “Haven’t seen any worse, have you?”
“No, sir.” Roland’s voice shook.
The light returned. Warner was holding the burning chair leg like a torch. “I’ve got it, Colonel! Roland, I’m going to drop this down to you. Ready?”
Roland caught the torch and leaned over Colonel Macklin again. The colonel, his eyes hazy with pain, saw the boy’s face in the flickering light and thought he recognized him from somewhere. “Where are your parents, son?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve lost them.”
Macklin watched the burning end of the chair leg and prayed that it would be hot enough to do the job. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll make sure of that.” His gaze moved from the torch and fixed on the meat cleaver’s blade. The boy crouched awkwardly over him, straddling the corpse, and stared at Macklin’s wrist where it joined the rock wall. “Well,” Macklin said, “it’s time. Okay, Roland: let’s get it done before one of us turns chickenshit. I’m going to try to hang on as much as I can. You ready?”
“He’s ready,” Teddybear Warner said from the lip of the pit.
Macklin smiled grimly, and a bead of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose. “Make the first lick a hummer, Roland,” he urged.
Roland gripped the torch in his left hand and raised his right, with the meat cleaver in it, back over his head. He knew exactly where he was going to strike—right where the blackened skin was swallowed up in the fissure. Do it! he told himself. Do it now! He heard Macklin draw a sharp breath. Roland’s hand clenched the cleaver, and it hung at the zenith over his head. Do it now! He felt his arm go as rigid as an iron rod. Do it now!
And he sucked in his breath and brought the cleaver down with all of his strength on Colonel Macklin’s wrist.
Bone crunched. Macklin jerked but made no sound. Roland thought the blade had gone all the way through, but he saw with renewed shock that it had only penetrated the man’s thick wrist to the depth of an inch.
“Finish it!” Warner shouted.
Roland pulled the cleaver out.
Macklin’s eyes, ringed with purple, fluttered closed and then jerked open again. “Finish it,” he whispered.
Roland lifted his arm and struck down again. Still the wrist wouldn’t part. Roland struck down a third time, and a fourth, harder and harder. He heard the one-eyed hunchback shouting at him to hurry, but Macklin remained silent. Roland pulled the cleaver free and struck a fifth time. There was a lot of blood now, but still the tendons hung together. Roland began to grind the cleaver back and forth; Macklin’s face had turned a pasty yellow-white, his lips as gray as graveyard dirt.
It had to be finished before the blood started bursting out like a firehose. When that happened, Roland knew, the King would die. He lifted the cleaver over his head, his shoulder throbbing with the effort—and suddenly it was not a meat cleaver anymore; it was a holy axe, and he was Sir Roland of the Realm, summoned to free the trapped King from this suffocating dungeon. He was the only one in all the kingdom who could do it, and this moment was his. Righteous power pulsed within him, and as he brought the holy axe flashing down he heard himself shout in a hoarse, almost inhuman voice.
The last of the bone cracked. Sinews parted under the power of the holy axe. And then the King was writhing, and a grotesque bleeding thing with a surface like a sponge was thrust up into Roland’s face. Blood sprayed over his cheeks and forehead, all but blinding him.
“Burn it!” Warner yelled.
Roland put the torch to the bleeding spongy thing; it jerked away from him, but Roland grabbed and held it while Macklin thrashed wildly. He pressed the torch to the wound where the colonel’s hand had been. Roland watched the stump burn with dreadful fascination, saw the wound blacken and pucker, heard the hiss of Macklin’s burning blood. Macklin’s body was fighting involuntarily, the colonel’s eyes rolled back in his head, but Roland hung on to the wounded arm. He smelled blood and burnt flesh, drew it deeply into his lungs like a soul-cleansing incense, and kept searing the wound, pressing fire to flesh. Finally Macklin stopped fighting, and from his mouth came a low, eerie moan, as if from the throat of a wounded beast.
“Okay!” Warner called down. “That’s it!”
Roland was hypnotized by the sight of the melting flesh. The torn sleeve of Macklin’s jacket was on fire, and smoke whirled around the walls of the pit.
“That’s enough!” Warner shouted. The boy wouldn’t stop! “Roland! That’s enough, damn it!”
This time the man’s voice jolted him back to reality. Roland released the colonel’s arm and saw that the stump had been b
urned black and shiny, as if coated with tar. The flames on Macklin’s jacket sleeve were gnawing themselves out. It’s over, Roland realized. All over. He beat the piece of wood against the pit’s wall until the fire was out, and then he dropped it.
“I’m going to try to find some rope to get you out with!” Warner called. “You okay?”
Roland didn’t feel like answering. Warner’s light moved away, and Roland was left in darkness. He could hear the colonel’s harsh breathing, and he crawled backward over the corpse that lay jammed between them until his back was against rock; then he drew his legs up and clutched the holy axe close to his body. A grin was fixed on his blood-flecked face, but his eyes were circles of shock.
The colonel moaned and muttered something that Roland couldn’t understand. Then he said it again, his voice tight with pain: “Shape up.” A pause, then again, “Shape up… shape up, soldier…” The voice was delirious, getting louder and then fading to a whisper. “Shape up… yes, sir… every bit of it… yes, sir… yes, sir…” Colonel Macklin’s voice began to sound like a child, cringing from a whipping. “Yes, sir… please… yes, sir… yes, sir…” He ended with a sound that was half moan, half shuddering sob.
Roland had been listening carefully. That had not been the voice of a triumphant war hero; it had sounded more like a cringing supplicant, and Roland wondered what lived inside the King’s mind. A king shouldn’t beg, he thought. Not even in his worst nightmares. It was dangerous for a king to show weakness.
Later—how much later Roland didn’t know—something prodded his knee. He groped in the dark and touched an arm. Macklin had gained consciousness.
“I owe you,” Colonel Macklin said, and now he sounded like the tough war hero again.
Roland didn’t reply—but it had dawned on him that he was going to need protection to survive whatever was ahead. His father and mother might be dead—probably were—and their bodies lost forever. He was going to need a shield from the dangers of the future, not only within Earth House but beyond it—that is, he told himself, if they ever saw the outside world again. But he planned on staying close to the King from now on; it might be the only way that he could get out of these dungeons alive.
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