“Just one rifle? Why do you think they haven’t come here? You know they’ve seen our lights.”
“They might be afraid,” Roland said. “They might think we’ll take what they have.”
Macklin took the jug back, recapped it and set it aside. A door opened and closed, and Sheila Fontana walked through the corridor into the room. She stopped short when she saw the uniform. “We could use the trailers and the vehicles,” Macklin decided. “But we don’t need anybody with burn marks. I don’t want anybody with burn marks in our camp.”
“Colonel… there are already about thirty or more people here who were burned in… you know,” Lawry said. “I mean… what does it matter?”
“I’ve thought a lot about this, Corporal Lawry,” he replied—and though he had not, it sounded impressive. “I think people with burn marks—keloids,” he said, remembering the technical name of atomic-induced burns, “are detrimental to the morale of our camp. We don’t need to be reminded of ugliness, do we? And people with burn marks are not going to keep themselves as clean as the rest of us, because they’re ashamed of the way they appear and they’re already demoralized.” He found himself staring at the scab on Roland’s chin. It was the size of a quarter. Hadn’t it been smaller just a few days ago? His gaze shifted. There were three other small scabs at Roland’s hairline. “People with burns are going to be disease spreaders,” he told Corporal Lawry. He looked over Lawry’s face but saw none of the scabs. “We’re going to have enough trouble as it is keeping disease out of our camp. So… in the morning I want you to round up the ones with the burn scars and take them out of the camp. I don’t want them returning. Understand?”
Lawry started to smile, because he thought the Colonel was kidding, but Macklin’s blue eyes bored into him. “Sir… you don’t mean… kill all of them, do you?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“But… why not just banish them? I mean… tell them to go somewhere else?”
“Because,” Roland Croninger, who saw to the heart of the matter, said, “they won’t go anywhere else. At night they’ll slip back into camp and try to steal food and water. They might help the dirtwarts attack us.”
“Right,” Macklin agreed. “So that’s the new law of this camp: No one is admitted who has burn marks. And you will take those others out in the morning, and they will not come back. Roland’ll go with you.”
“I can do it myself!”
“Roland will go with you,” Macklin said, quietly but firmly, and Judd Lawry looked at the floor. “Now, another thing: I want you to organize a work detail in the morning and distribute some of this to my people.” He nodded toward the cartons of soft drinks, potato chip bags, cookies and cakes. My people, he realized he’d said. “I want them to be happy. Do that after you’ve finished the first duty.”
“What about those people with the trailers out there?”
Macklin deliberated. Oh, he thought, the Shadow Soldier was going to be so proud of him! “How many soldiers do you need to go out and take those vehicles?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe four or five, I guess.”
“Good. Then go out and bring them back—but not the people. We don’t need people who aren’t healthy.”
“What do we need the trailers for?” Sheila asked. “We’re okay as we are!” She couldn’t bear to look at Judd Lawry’s face, because he haunted her nightmares along with an infant that kept crying. A decayed corpse named Rudy crawled through the dust in her dreams, right up into her bed, and she thought she was going crazy.
“Because,” Macklin said, turning toward her, “we’re not going to stay here forever. As soon as we get organized and healthy, as soon as we get our morale high, we’re moving out.”
“Moving out?” She laughed. “Moving to where, war hero? The fucking moon?” “No. Across the country. Maybe east. We can forage as we go.”
“You mean… everybody moving east? What the hell for? Where is there to go?”
“The cities,” Macklin answered. “Or what’s left of them. The towns. The villages. We can build our own cities, if we please. We can start to put things back together again, like they should’ve been in the first place, before this shit happened.”
“You’ve cracked, friend,” Sheila said. “It’s over. Can’t you dig it?”
“It’s not over. It’s just beginning. We can build things back, but better than they were. We can have law and order, and we can enforce the laws—”
“What laws? Yours? The kid’s? Who’s going to make the laws?”
“The man with the most guns,” Roland said.
Colonel Macklin turned his attention back to Judd Lawry. “You’re dismissed,” he said. “Have the trailers here within two hours.”
Lawry left the trailer. Outside, he grinned at the night sky and shook his head. The soldier shit had gone to the Colonel’s brain—but maybe he was right about getting rid of everybody who had burn scars. Lawry didn’t like looking at those burns and being reminded of the holocaust, anyway. The burn marks were ugly. Keep America Beautiful, he thought, Kill a Scarface Today.
He walked on into the camp to select four men for the mission, but he knew it would be a piece of cake. He’d never felt so important in his life; before the disaster, he’d just been a clerk in a gun store, and now he was a corporal in Colonel Macklin’s army! This was like waking up in a new skin. “It’s not over,” Colonel Macklin had said. “It’s just beginning.” Lawry liked the ring of that.
In the Airstream trailer, Sheila Fontana approached Macklin and looked him up and down. She saw the Nazi swastika on several of the badges he was wearing. “What are we going to start calling you? Adolf?”
Macklin’s hand came out and caught her chin. His eyes flared angrily, and she realized she’d gone too far. The strength in that hand felt like it was about to crack her jaw. “If you don’t like something here,” he told her quietly, “you know where the door is. And if you don’t watch your mouth, I’ll throw you to the dirtwarts. Oh, I’m sure they’d love to have company. Aren’t you, Roland?”
Roland shrugged. He could see that the King was hurting Sheila, and that bothered him.
Macklin released her. “You’re a fool,” he said. “You don’t see what could be, do you?”
Sheila rubbed her jaw. “Man, the game is done! You’re talking rebuilding and all that crap—we’re lucky to have a pot to piss in!”
“You’ll see.” His gaze searched her face for the small scabs. “I’ve got plans. Important plans. You’ll see.” He found no evidence of the cancers on Sheila’s face.
She’d noted his roving eyes. “What’s wrong? I washed my hair yesterday.”
“Wash it again,” he said. “It stinks.” He looked at Roland. A sudden inspiration struck him. “The Army of Excellence,” he said. “How does that sound?”
“Fine.” Roland liked it. There was a sweeping, grand, Napoleonic sound to it. “It’s good.”
“The Army of Excellence,” Macklin repeated. “We’ve got a long way to go. We’re going to have to find more able-bodied men—and women. We’ll need more vehicles, and we’ll have to carry our food and water with us. We can do it if we put our minds and our muscle to the job!” His voice rose with excitement. “We can build things back, but better than they ever were!”
Sheila thought he was off his bird. The Army of Excellence, my ass! But she held her tongue, figuring it was best to just let Macklin blow off steam.
“People will follow me,” he continued. “As long as I give them food and protection, they’ll follow me, and they’ll do whatever I say. They don’t have to love me—they don’t even have to like me. But they’ll follow me all the same, because they’ll respect me. Isn’t that right?” he asked Roland.
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered. “People want to be told what to do. They don’t want to make the decisions.” Behind his goggles, Roland’s eyes had begun to glint with excitement as well. He could see the vast picture the King was pa
inting—a massive Army of Excellence moving across the land on foot, in cars and in trailers, overrunning and absorbing other encampments and communities, swelling stronger—but only with healthy, unmarked men and women who were willing to rebuild America. He grinned; oh, what a game of King’s Knight this had turned out to be!
“People will follow me,” Colonel Macklin said, nodding. “I’ll make them follow me. I’ll teach them all about discipline and control, and they’ll do anything I say. Right?” His eyes blazed at Sheila.
She hesitated. Both the war hero and the kid were watching her. She thought of her warm bed, all the food and the guns that were here, and then she thought of the cold dirtwart land and the things that slithered in the dark. “Right,” she said. “Anything you say.”
Within two hours, Lawry and his raiding party returned with the Chevy van, the Pontiac and the two trailers. The small camp was taken by surprise, and there had been no wounds or casualties to Macklin’s Army of Excellence. Lawry delivered several knapsacks full of canned goods and more bottled water, plus three cans of gasoline and a carton of engine oil. He emptied his pockets of wristwatches, diamond rings and a money clip full of twenties and fifties. Macklin let him keep one of the watches and told him to distribute extra rations to the rest of the raiding party. The largest of the diamond rings he offered to Sheila Fontana, who stared at it for a moment as it glittered on Macklin’s palm and then took it from him. It was inscribed From Daniel to Lisa—Love Forever. Only after she’d put it on and was admiring it by lamplight did she realize that grains of dried blood were stuck down in the setting, giving the diamonds a dirty cast.
Roland found a road map of Utah on the rear floorboard of the Buick, and from the glove compartment he retrieved several Flair pens and a compass. He gave all the booty to the King, and Macklin rewarded him with one of the medals adorned with a swastika.
Roland immediately pinned it on his shut.
In the lamplight, Colonel Macklin spread the road map out on the table in his command headquarters and sat down to study it. After a few moments of silent deliberation, he picked up a red Flair pen and began to draw a jagged arrow pointing east.
“My main man,” the Shadow Soldier said, leaning over Macklin’s shoulder.
And in the morning, under thick gray clouds scudding slowly eastward, Roland and Lawry and ten handpicked soldiers escorted thirty-six burn-scarred men, women and children out to the edge of the dirtwart land. After the shooting was over, the dirtwarts emerged from their holes and scuttled forward to claim the corpses.
Forty-five
A smoky old glass
Swan and Josh had been following the railroad tracks through a Nebraska dust storm for three days when they found the wrecked train.
They didn’t see the train until they were almost upon it. And then there it was, railroad cars scattered everywhere, some of them riding piggyback. Most of the cars were broken to pieces except for a caboose and a couple of freight cars. Swan slid down off Mule, following Josh as he walked carefully over the debris. “Watch out for nails!” he warned her, and she nodded. Killer had been turned the color of chalk by all the dust, and he advanced before Josh, sniffing warily at the splintered planks under his paws.
Josh stopped, shielding his eyes from the dust with one hand, and he looked up at the side of a freight car. The storm had almost scoured all the paint off, but he could still make out a faded panorama of clowns, lions and three rings under a big top. Scrolled red letters spelled out RYDELL CIRCUS, INC.
“It’s a circus train!” he told Swan. “Probably going somewhere to set up when it got knocked off the tracks.” He motioned toward the caboose. “Let’s see what we can find.”
For the past three nights they’d slept in barns and deserted farmhouses, and once the railroad tracks had taken them to the outskirts of a moderate-sized town—but the wind brought such a smell of decay from the town that they dared not enter it. They’d circled the town, picking up the tracks on the other side and continuing across the open plains.
The caboose’s door was unlocked. It was gloomy within, but at least it was shelter. Josh figured both the horse and terrier could fend for themselves, and he stepped in. Swan followed, closing the door behind her.
Josh bumped into a small desk, making little bottles and jars clink. The air was warmer the further he went, and he made out the shape of a cot to his right. His groping fingers touched warm metal—a cast-iron, freestanding stove. “Somebody’s been here,” he said. “Hasn’t been gone very long, either.” He found the grate and opened it; inside a few coals had burned down to ashes, and an ember glowed like a tiger’s eye.
He continued to feel his way around the caboose, almost tripping over a bundle of blankets lying in a corner, and made his way back to the desk. His eyes were getting used to the dim yellow murk that came through the caboose’s filmy windows, and he discovered a half-burned candle stuck with wax to a saucer. Near it was a box of kitchen matches. He struck one and lit the candle’s wick, and the light spread.
Swan saw what appeared to be crayons and lipsticks atop the desk. A curly red wig sat on a wigstand. In front of the desk’s folding metal chair was a wooden box, about the size of a shoebox, decorated with little intricately carved lizards. Their tiny eyes were formed of multifaceted glass, and they sparkled in the candlelight.
Next to the cot Josh found an open bag of Gravy Train dog food and a plastic jug that sloshed when he nudged it with his foot.
Swan stepped closer to the stove. On a wall rack were gaudy suits with spangles, oversized buttons and floppy lapels. There was a pile of newspapers, shards of timber and coals ready for the fire. She looked toward the far corner, where the bundle of blankets lay. Except there was something else over there, too… something only half covered by the blankets. “Josh?” She pointed. “What’s that?”
He brought the candle over. The light fell on the rigid smile of a clown’s face.
At first Josh was startled, but then he realized what it was. “A dummy! It’s a life-sized dummy!” The thing was sitting up, with white greasepaint on its face and bright red lips; a green wig was perched on its scalp, and its eyelids were closed. Josh leaned forward and poked the dummy’s shoulder.
His heart kicked.
He gingerly touched the thing’s cheek and smeared off some of the greasepaint. Under it was sallow flesh.
The corpse was cold and stiff and had been dead at least two or three days.
Behind them, the caboose door suddenly swung open, letting in a whirlwind of dust.
Josh spun around, stepping in front of Swan to shield her from whoever—or whatever—was coming in. He saw a figure standing there, but dust in his eyes blinded him.
The figure hesitated. In one hand was a shovel. There was a long, tense silence, and then the man in the doorway said, “Howdy,” in a thick western drawl. “You folks been here long?” He closed the door, shutting off the storm. Josh watched him warily as the man walked across the caboose, his cowboy boots clomping on the planked floor, and leaned the shovel against a wall. Then the man untied a bandanna from around his nose and mouth. “Well? Can you two speak English, or am I gonna have to do all the talkin’?” He paused a few seconds, then answered himself in a high, mocking voice, “Yessir, we surely do speak English, but our eyeballs are ’bout to bug out of our heads, and if we flap our tongues they’ll go flyin’ out like fried eggs.” He pronounced it aigs.
“We can speak,” Josh replied. “It’s just… you surprised us.”
“Reckon I did. But the last time I walked out that door, Leroy was alone, so I’m a mite surprised myself.” He took off his cowboy hat and swatted it against one denim-covered thigh. Dust welled into the air. “That’s Leroy.” He motioned toward the clown in the corner. “Leroy Satterwaite. He died coupla nights ago, and he was the last of ’em. I been out diggin’ a hole for him.”
“The last of them?” Josh prompted.
“Yep. Last of the circus people. One of the
best clowns you ever laid your eyes on. Man, he could’ve made a stone crack a grin.” He sighed and shrugged. “Well, it’s over now. He was the last of ’em—except me, I mean.”
Josh stepped toward the man and held the candle and saucer out to illuminate his face.
The man was thin and lanky, his scraggly, grizzled face as long and narrow as if it had been pressed in a vise. He had curly light brown hair spilling over his high forehead almost to his bushy brown eyebrows; beneath them, his eyes were large and liquid, a shade between hazel and topaz. His nose was long and thin, in keeping with the rest of him, but it was the mouth that was the centerpiece of his face: the lips were thick, rubbery folds of flesh designed to pull miraculous mugs and grins. Josh hadn’t seen such a pair of lips since he’d been served a bigmouth bass in a restaurant in Georgia. The man wore a dusty denim jacket, obviously much used and abused, a dark blue flannel shirt and jeans. His lively, expressive eyes moved from Josh to Swan, lingered a few seconds, then returned to Josh. “Name’s Rusty Weathers,” he said. “Now who in blazes are you, and how’d you get out here?”
“My name is Josh Hutchins, and this is Swan Prescott. We haven’t had any food or water in three days. Can you help us?”
Rusty Weathers nodded toward the plastic jug. “Help yourselves. That’s water from a creek a coupla hundred yards from the tracks. Can’t say how clean it is, but I’ve been drinkin’ it for about—” He frowned, walked over to the wall and felt for the notches he’d carved there with his penknife. He ran a finger along them. “Forty-one days, give or take.”
Josh opened the jug, sniffed at it and took a tentative swallow. The water tasted oily, but otherwise okay. He drank again and gave the jug to Swan.
“Only food I’ve got left is Gravy Train,” Rusty said. “Fella and his wife had a dog act. Jumped French poodles through hoops and all.” He plopped the cowboy hat on top of the red wig, pulled the folding chair to him, turned it around and sat down with his arms crossed on the backrest. “Been a time, I’ll tell ya. Train was movin’ pretty as you please one minute; the next minute the sky looked like the inside of a mine shaft, and the wind started whippin’ cars right off the tracks. We get twisters back in Oklahoma, but damned if this wasn’t the granddaddy of ’em all!” He shook his head, rattling loose the memories. “You got any cigarettes?”
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