1987 - Swan Song v4

by Robert McCammon

  She felt him picking at her brain like a master thief at a safe’s lock, and she had to scramble the tumblers before he got in. She closed her eyes, squeezed them tightly shut and began to lift the lid of the most terrible thing, the thing that had sent her screaming over the edge and turned her into Sister Creep. The lid’s hinges were rusted, because she hadn’t looked inside it for a long time, but now she got the lid up and forced herself to see it, just as it had been that rainy day on the turnpike.

  The man with the scarlet eye was blinded by a blue light spinning around, and he heard a male voice saying, “Give her to me, lady. Come on now, let me have her.” The image cleared and strengthened, and suddenly he was holding a little girl’s body in his arms; she was dead, her face smashed and distorted, and nearby was an overturned car with steam hissing from its radiator. On the bloody concrete a few feet away were fragments of glass and little bits of sparkle. “Give her to me, lady. We’ll take care of her now,” a young man in a yellow rain slicker was saying as he reached for the child.

  “No,” Sister said softly, painfully, deep within the awful moment, “I won’t… let you… have her.” Sister’s voice sounded slurred and drunken.

  He drew back, out of the woman’s mind and memory. He resisted the urge to reach out and snap her neck. Either she was much stronger than he’d thought, or he was weaker than he knew—and he could feel that damned little bitch watching him, too! Something about her—her very presence—drained the power out of him! Yes, that was it! Her rampant evil was making him weak! One blow was all it would take; one quick blow to her skull, and it would all be over! He balled up his fist, and then he dared to look her in the face. “What are you staring at?”

  She didn’t answer. His face was fearsome, but it had a wet, plastic sheen. Then she said, as calmly as she could, “Why are you so afraid of me?”

  “I’m not afraid!” he bellowed, and dead flies fell from his lips. His cheeks reddened. One of his brown eyes turned jet-black, and the bones shifted under his face like the rotten foundations of a papier-mâché house. Wrinkles and cracks shot from the corners of his mouth, and he aged twenty years in an instant. His red, wrinkled neck quivered as he pulled his gaze away from her and back to Sister. “Croninger!” he said. “Go get Brother Timothy and bring him here.”

  Roland left the trailer without hesitation.

  “I could have someone shot every sixty seconds until you tell me.” Friend leaned closer to Sister. “Who should we start with? That big nigger? How about the boy? Shall we just pick and choose? Draw straws, or names out of a hat? I don’t give a shit. Where’d you hide it?”

  Again, all he could see was a spinning blue light and the scene of an accident. A pickaxe, he thought. A pickaxe. He looked at the woman’s dirty clothes and hands. And he knew. “You buried it, didn’t you?”

  There was no emotion on Sister’s face. Her eyes remained tightly closed.

  “You… buried… it,” he whispered, grinning.

  “What do you want with me?” Swan asked, trying to divert his attention. She looked at Colonel Macklin. “I’m listening,” she prompted.

  “You made the corn grow. Is that right?”

  “The ground made the corn grow.”

  “She did it!” Friend said, turning away from Sister for the moment. “She put the seeds in the dirt and made them grow! Nobody else could’ve done that! The ground is dead, and she’s the only one who can bring it back! If you take her with you, the Army of Excellence’ll have all the food it needs! She could make a whole field grow from one ear of corn!”

  Macklin stared at her. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a girl as lovely as her—and her face was strong, very strong. “Is that right?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” she replied. “But I won’t grow food for you. I won’t grow crops for an army. There’s no way you can force me.”

  “Yes, there is!” Friend hissed over Macklin’s shoulder. “She’s got friends out there! A big nigger and a boy! I saw them myself, just a little while ago! You bring them with us when we march, and she’ll grow the crops to save their throats!”

  “Josh and Robin would rather die.”

  “Would you rather they died?” He shook his head, and his other eye turned sea-green. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Swan knew he was right. She couldn’t refuse to help them if Josh’s and Robin’s lives were at stake. “Where are you marching to?” she asked tonelessly.

  “Here!” Friend said. “Here’s our Brother Timothy! He’ll tell you!” Roland and Brother Timothy were just entering the trailer; Roland had a firm grip on the skinny man’s arm, and Brother Timothy walked as if in a state of trance, his shoes shuffling along the floor.

  Swan turned toward the two men and flinched. The new arrival’s eyes were staring circles of shock, surrounded by deep purple. His mouth was half open, the lips gray and slack.

  Friend clapped his hands together. “Simon says! Tell the little bitch where we’re marching to, Brother Timothy!”

  The man made a groaning, garbled sound. He shuddered, and then he said, “To… Warwick Mountain. To find God.”

  “Very good! Simon says! Tell us where Warwick Mountain is!”

  “West Virginia. I was there. I lived with God… for seven days… and seven nights.”

  “Simon says! What does God have up on Warwick Mountain?”

  Brother Timothy blinked, and a tear ran down his right cheek.

  “Simon’s about to get angry, Brother Timothy,” Friend said sweetly.

  The man whined; his mouth opened wider, and his head thrashed back and forth. “The black box… and the silver key!” he said, his words rushing and tangling together. “The prayer for the final hour! Fear death by water! Fear death by water!”

  “Very good. Now count to ten.”

  Brother Timothy held up both hands in the lamplight. He began to count on his fingers. “One… two… three… four… five… six—” He stopped, puzzled.

  And Swan had already seen that the other four fingers of his right hand had been chopped off.

  “I didn’t say ‘Simon says,’” Friend told him.

  The veins struck out from Brother Timothy’s neck, and a pulse beat rapidly at his temple. Tears of terror filled his eyes. He tried to back away, but Roland’s grip tightened on his arm. “Please,” Brother Timothy whispered hoarsely, “don’t… hurt me anymore. I’ll take you to him, I swear I will! Just… don’t hurt me anymore…” His voice was broken by sobbing, and he cringed as Friend approached.

  “We won’t hurt you.” Friend stroked the other man’s sweat-damp hair. “We wouldn’t dream of it. We just wanted you to show these ladies what the power of persuasion can do. They’d be very stupid if they didn’t do what we said, wouldn’t they?”

  “Stupid,” Brother Timothy agreed, with a zombie grin. “Very stupid.”

  “Good dog.” Friend patted the top of his head. Then he returned to Sister’s side, grabbed the back of her neck and twisted her head toward Brother Timothy; with his other hand he roughly forced one of her eyes open. “Look at him!” he shouted, and he shook her.

  His touch spread unbearable cold through her body; her bones ached, and she had no choice but to look at the maimed man who stood before her.

  “Captain Croninger has a very nice playroom.” His mouth was right up against her ear. “I’m going to give you until dawn to remember where that trinket is. If your memory’s still deficient, the good captain’s going to start picking people out of the chicken coop to play games with him. And you’re going to watch, because the first game will be to cut your eyelids off.” His hand squeezed like a noose.

  Sister was silent. The blue light continued to spin in her mind, and the young man in the yellow rain slicker kept reaching for the dead child in her arms.

  “Whoever she was,” he whispered, “I hope she died hating you.”

  Friend felt Swan watching him, felt her eyes probing to his soul, and he removed his hand before blind rage m
ade him break the woman’s neck. Then he could stand it no longer, and he whirled toward her. Their faces were about six inches apart. “I’ll kill you, bitch!” he roared.

  Swan used every shred of willpower to keep herself from shrinking back. She held his gaze like an iron hand trapping a snake. “No, you won’t,” she told him. “You said I didn’t mean anything to you. But you were lying.”

  Brown pigment streaked across his pale flesh. His jaw lengthened, and a false mouth opened like a jagged wound in his forehead. One eye remained brown, while the other turned crimson, as if it had ruptured and gorged with blood. Smash her! he thought. Smash the bitch dead!

  But he did not. Could not. Because he knew, even through the vile entanglement of his own hatred, that there was a power in her beyond anything he could understand, and something deep within him yearned like a diseased heart. He despised her and wanted to grind her bones—but at the same time he dared not touch her, because her fire might sear him to a cinder.

  He backed away from her; his face became Hispanic, then Oriental, and finally it caught somewhere in mid-change. “You’re going with us when we march,” he promised. His voice was high and raspy, rising and tumbling through octaves. “We’re going to West Virginia first… to find God.” He sneered the word. “Then we’re going to find you a nice farm with plenty of land. And we’re going to get the seeds and gram for you, too. We’ll find what you need in silos and barns along the way. We’re going to build a big wall around your farm, and we’ll even leave some soldiers to keep you company.” The mouth in his forehead smiled, then sealed up. “And for the rest of your life you’re going to be growing food for the Army of Excellence. You’ll have tractors, reapers, all kinds of machines! And your own slaves, too! I’ll bet that big nigger could really pull a plow.” He glanced quickly at the two guards. “Go get that black bastard out of the chicken coop. And a boy named Robin, too. They can share Brother Timothy’s quarters. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Brother Timothy grinned slyly. “Simon didn’t say speak.”

  “Where can we put these two ladies?” Friend asked Colonel Macklin.

  “I don’t know. A tent, I guess.”

  “Oh, no! Let’s at least give the ladies mattresses! We want them comfortable while they think! How about a trailer?”

  “They can go into Sheila’s trailer,” Roland suggested. “She’ll watch them for us, too.”

  “Take them there,” Friend ordered. “But I want two armed guards on duty at that trailer’s door. There will be no mistakes. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” He withdrew his pistol from its waist holster. “After you,” he told Swan and Sister, and as they went out the door and down the carved steps Swan clenched Sister’s hand.

  Friend stood at the doorway and watched them go. “How long before dawn?” he asked.

  “Three or four hours, I think,” Macklin said. Swan’s face remained impressed in Macklin’s mind as clearly as a photograph. He ripped the casualty report off the nails in his palm; the numbers were organized by brigade, and Macklin tried to concentrate on them, but he couldn’t get past the girl’s face. He’d not seen such beauty in a long, long time; it was beyond sexual—it was clean, powerful and new. He found himself staring at the nails in his palm, and at the filthy bandages taped around his wrist. For an instant he could smell himself, and the odor almost made him puke.

  He looked up at Friend in the doorway, and Macklin’s mind suddenly cleared like clouds blown away by a scorching wind.

  My God, he thought. I’m… in league with…

  Friend turned his head slightly. “Is anything on your mind?” he inquired.

  “No. Nothing. I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

  “Thinking gets people in trouble. Simon says! Isn’t that right, Brother Timothy?”

  “Right!” the man chirped, and he clapped his mangled hands together.

  Eighty-six

  Buried treasure

  “I’m an entertainer,” the woman who sat on a pile of dirty pillows in the corner suddenly said.

  It was the first time she’d spoken since they’d been shoved into the filthy trailer more than a hour before. She’d just sat there and watched them as Swan lay on one of the bare mattresses and Sister paced the room.

  “Do you two like to party?”

  Sister stopped pacing, stared at her incredulously for a few seconds and then continued. There were nine steps from wall to wall.

  “Well”—she shrugged—“if we’re going to bunk together, we should at least know one another’s names. I’m Sheila Fontana.”

  “Good for you,” Sister muttered.

  Swan sat up and regarded the dark-haired woman with closer scrutiny. By the light of the trailer’s single kerosene lamp, Swan saw that Sheila Fontana was thin to the point of emaciation, her yellowish flesh drawn and sunken over her facial bones. The scalp showed at the crown of her head, and her black hair was dirty and lifeless. Around her on the floor was a scatter of empty food cans, bottles and other trash. The woman wore stained and dirty clothes under a heavy corduroy coat, but Swan had also seen that Sheila’s fingernails, though broken and gnawed down to the quick, had been meticulously polished bright red. On first entering the trailer, Swan had noticed the dresser covered with make-up jars, tubes of lipstick and the like, and now she glanced over at the mirror where the clipped photographs of young, fresh-faced models were taped up. “I used to be an entertainer, too,” Swan offered. “In the Travelin’ Show, with Josh and Rusty. Mostly I just stayed in the wagon, though. Rusty was a magician—he could make things disappear and appear again, just like that.” She snapped her fingers, lost in a memory of the past. She focused her attention on Sheila again. “What do you do?”

  “A little of everything, honey.” Sheila smiled, showing gray and shrunken gums. “I’m an RL.”

  “An RL? What’s that?”

  “Recreation Lady. I ought to be out on the stroll right now, too. A good RL can score till she’s sore after a battle. It makes the men want to fuck.”

  “Huh?”

  “She means she’s a whore,” Sister explained. “Jesus, it smells in here!”

  “Sorry, I’m fresh out of Air-Wick. You can spray some of that perfume around, if you want.” She motioned toward the gummy, dried-up bottles on the dresser.

  “No, thank you.” Sister broke her rhythm and strode to the door; she twisted the handle, opened the door and faced the two guards who were just outside.

  Both of them held rifles. One of the guards said, “Get back in there.”

  “I’m just getting some fresh air. Do you mind?”

  A rifle barrel was pushed against her chest. “Back inside,” the man ordered. He shoved her, and Sister slammed the door shut.

  “Men are beasts,” Sheila said. “They don’t understand that a woman needs her privacy.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Sister’s voice quavered on the edge of panic. “If he finds it, he’s going to destroy it—and if I don’t let him find it, he’s going to start executing people!”

  “Find what?” Sheila drew her knees up against her chest.

  “It’s going to be dawn soon,” Sister continued. “Oh, God!” She leaned against the wall, hardly able to stand. “He’s going to find it! I can’t stop him from finding it!”

  “Hey, lady!” Sheila said. “Anybody ever tell you you were crazy?”

  Sister was close to falling apart, Swan knew; she was, too, but she would not let herself think about what was ahead. “How long have you been with them?” Swan asked the dark-haired woman.

  Sheila smiled thinly—a horrible smile on that emaciated, life-drained face. “Forever,” she replied. “Oh, Christ, I wish I had some blow! Or pills. If I had just one Black Beauty, I’d slice that bastard into little-bitty pieces and fly high for a fucking week! You don’t have any dope on you, do you?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Nobody’s got any. I guess it’s all been smoked, snor
ted and popped by now. Oh, shit.” She shook her head sadly, as if bemoaning the death of a lost culture. “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Swan.”

  Sheila repeated it. “That’s a nice name. An unusual name. I used to know a girl named Dove. She was hitching a ride up near El Cerrito, and Rudy and I pulled—” She stopped. “Listen!” she whispered urgently. “Do you hear that?”

  Swan heard some men laughing nearby, and in the distance were the sounds of gunshots.

  “The baby!” Sheila’s right hand went to her mouth. Her eyes were pools of darkness. “Listen! Can’t you hear the baby crying?”

  Swan shook her head.

  “Oh… Jesus!” Sheila was almost choked with terror. “The baby’s crying! Make it stop crying! Please!” She put her hands over her ears, and her body began to curl into a fetal shape. “Oh, God, please make it stop!”

  “She’s out of her mind,” Sister said, but Swan got up from the mattress and approached the woman. “Better leave her alone,” Sister warned. “She looks pretty far gone.”

  “Make it stop… make it stop… oh, Jesus, make it stop,” Sheila was raving, curled up in the corner. Her face gleamed with sweat in the lamplight, and the woman’s body odor almost repulsed Swan—but Swan stood over her and finally bent down at her side. She hesitated, then reached out to touch the other woman. Sheila’s hand found Swan’s and gripped it with painful pressure. Swan did not pull away.