Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
Swan screamed. Screamed long and loud and couldn’t stop screaming. She backpedaled away from the human heads, still screaming, and as she spun around she saw another mannequin nearby, and another and another, some of the heads beaten and battered and the others painted and prettied with makeup to give them false and obscene smiles. She thought that if she couldn’t stop screaming her lungs would burst, and as she ran for Josh and Leona the scream died because all her air was gone. She pulled in breath and raced away from the grisly heads, and over Josh’s shouts she heard the terrier give a yipe-yipe-yipe of pain from the rear of the K-Mart.
“Swan!” Josh yelled, spitting out half-chewed candy. He saw her coming toward him, her face as yellow as the Kansas dust and tears streaming down her cheeks. “What is—”
“Blue Light Special!” a merry voice sang over the K-Mart’s intercom system. “Attention, shoppers! Blue Light Special! Three new arrivals at the front! Hurry for the best bargains!”
They heard the rough roar of a motorcycle’s engine firing. Josh scooped Swan up as a motorcycle hurtled at them along the center aisle, its driver dressed like a traffic cop except for his Indian headdress.
“Look out!” Leona shouted, and Josh leaped across a counter full of ice cube trays with Swan in his arms, the motorcycle skidding past them into a display of transistor radios. More figures were running toward them along the other aisles, and there was an ungodly whooping and hollering that drowned out the “Blue Light Special!” being repeated over the intercom.
Here came a mountainous, black-bearded man pushing a gnarled dwarf in a shopping cart, followed by other men of all ages and descriptions, wearing all kinds of clothing from suits to bathrobes, some of them with streaks of warpaint on their faces, others daubed white with powder. Josh realized—sickeningly—that most of them were carrying weapons: axes, picks, hoes, garden shears, pistols and rifles, knives and chains. The aisles were acrawl with them, and they jumped over the counters grinning and yelling. Josh, Swan and Leona were driven together and ringed by a shouting mob of forty or more men.
Protect the child! Josh thought, and as one of the men darted in to grab Swan’s arm Josh delivered a kick to his ribs that snapped bones and sent him flying back into the rabble. The move brought more gleeful cheers. The gnarled dwarf in the shopping cart, whose wrinkled face was decorated with orange lightning bolts, crowed, “Fresh meat! Fresh meat!”
The others took up the shout. An emaciated man plucked at Leona’s hair, and someone else grabbed her arm to pull her into the crowd. She became a wildcat, kicking and biting, driving her tormentors back. A heavy body landed on Josh’s shoulders, raking at his eyes, but he twisted and flung the man off into the sea of leering faces. Swan struck out with Crybaby, hit one of those ugly faces in the nose and saw it pop open.
“Fresh meat!” the dwarf yelled. “Come get your fresh meat!” The black-bearded man began to clap his hands and dance.
Josh hit someone square in the mouth, and two teeth flew like dice in a crap game. “Get away!” he roared. “Get away from us!” But they were closing in now, and there were just too many. Three men were pulling Leona into the throng, and Josh caught a glimpse of her terrified face; a fist rose and fell, and Leona’s legs buckled. Damn it! Josh raged, kicking the nearest maniac in the kneecap. Protect the child! I’ve got to protect the—
A fist struck him in the kidneys. His legs were kicked out from under him, and he lost his grip on Swan as he fell. Fingers gouged at his eyes, a fist crashed into his jaw, shoes and boots pummeled his sides and back and the whole world seemed to be in violent motion. “Swan!” he shouted, trying to get up. Men clung to him like rats.
He looked up through a red haze of pain and saw a man with bulging, fishlike eyes standing over him, lifting an axe. He flung his arm up in an ineffectual gesture to ward it off, but he knew the axe was about to fall, and that would be the end of it. Oh, damn! he thought as blood trickled from his mouth. What a way to go! He braced for the blow, hoping that he could stand up with his last strength and knock the bastard’s brains out.
The axe reached its zenith, poised to fall.
And a booming voice shouted over the tumult: “Cease!”
The effect was like a bullwhip being cracked over the heads of wild animals. Almost to a man, they flinched and drew back. The fish-eyed man lowered the axe, and the others released Josh. He sat up, saw Swan a few feet away and drew her to him; she was still holding onto Crybaby, her eyes swimming with shock. Leona was on her knees nearby, blood oozing from a cut above her left eye and a purple swelling coming up on her cheekbone.
The mob backed away, opened to make passage for someone. A heavyset, fleshy, bald-headed man in overalls and cowboy boots, his chest bare and his muscular arms decorated with weird multicolored designs, walked into the circle. He was carrying an electric bullhorn, and he looked down at Josh with dark eyes beneath a protruding Neanderthal brow.
Oh, shit! Josh thought. The guy was at least as big as some of the heavyweight wrestlers he’d grappled. But then behind the bald-headed Neanderthal came two other men with painted faces, supporting a toilet between them, hoisted up on their shoulders. And on that toilet sat a man draped in a deep purple robe, his hair a blond, shoulder-length mane of loose curls. He had a downy beard of fine blond hair covering a gaunt, narrow face, and under thick blond brows his eyes were murky olive-green. The color reminded Josh of the water of a swimming hole near his childhood home where two young boys had drowned on a summer morning. It was said, he recalled, that monsters lay coiled in wait at the bottom of that cloudy green water.
The young man, who might have been anywhere from twenty to twenty-five, wore white gloves, blue jeans, Adidas sneakers and a red plaid shirt. On his forehead was a green dollar sign; on his left cheekbone was a red crucifix, and on his right was a black devil’s pitchfork.
The Neanderthal lifted the bullhorn to his mouth and roared, “All shall praise Lord Alvin!”
40
MACKLIN HAD HEARD THE siren song of screaming in the night, and now he knew it was time.
He eased out of his sleeping bag, careful not to jostle Roland or Sheila; he didn’t want either of them to go with him. He was afraid of the pain, and he didn’t want them to see him weak.
Macklin walked out of the tent into the cold, sweeping wind. He began to head in the direction of the lake. Torches and campfires flickered all around him, and the wind tugged at the greenish-black bandages that trailed off the stump of Macklin’s right wrist. He could smell the sickly odor of his own infection, and for days the wound had been oozing gray fluid. He put his left palm over the handle of the knife in the waistband of his trousers. He was going to have to open the wound again and expose the flesh to the healing agony of the Great Salt Lake.
Behind him, Roland Croninger had sat up as soon as Macklin left the tent. The .45 was gripped in his hand. He always slept with it, even kept hold of it when Sheila Fontana let him do the dirty thing to her. He liked to watch, also, when Sheila took the King on. In turn, they fed Sheila and protected her from the other men. They were becoming a very close trio. But now he knew where the King was going, and why. The King’s wound had been smelling very bad lately. Soon there would be another scream in the night, like the others they heard when the encampment got quiet. He was a King’s Knight, and he thought he should be at the King’s side to help him, but this was something the King wanted to do alone. Roland lay back down, the pistol resting on his chest. Sheila mutteted something and flinched in her sleep. Roland listened for the cry of the King’s rebirth.
Macklin passed other tents, cardboard box shelters and cars that housed whole families. The smell of the salt lake stung his nostrils, promised a pain and a cleansing beyond anything Macklin had ever experienced. The land began to slope slightly downward toward the water’s edge, and lying on the ground around him were blood-caked clothes, rags, crutches and bandages torn off and discarded by other supplicants before him.
He remembere
“Discipline and control, mister,” a voice said, off to his right. The Shadow Soldier was standing there, white, bony hands on hips, the moonlike face streaked with commando greasepaint under the helmet’s rim. “You lose those, and what have you got?”
Macklin didn’t answer. The lapping of the water on the shore was both seductive and terrifying.
“Your nerve going bye-bye, Jimmy boy?” the Shadow Soldier asked, and Macklin thought that the voice was similar to his father’s. It carried the same note of taunting disgust. “Well, I’m not surprised,” the Shadow Soldier continued. “You sure pulled a royal fuckup at Earth House, didn’t you? Oh, you really did a fine job!”
“No!” Macklin shook his head. “It wasn’t my fault!”
The Shadow Soldier laughed quietly. “You knew, Jimmy boy. You knew something was wrong in Earth House, and you kept packing the suckers in because you smelled the green of the Ausley cash, didn’t you? Man, you killed all those poor chumps! You buried ’em under a few hundred tons of rock and saved your own ass, didn’t you?”
Now Macklin thought it really was his father’s voice, and he thought that the Shadow Soldier’s face was beginning to resemble the fleshy, hawk-nosed face of his long-dead father as well. “I had to save myself,” Macklin replied, his voice weak. “What was I supposed to do, lie down and die?”
“Shit, that kid’s got more sense and guts than you do, Jimmy boy! He’s the one who got you out! He kept you moving, and he found food to keep your ass alive! If it wasn’t for that kid, you wouldn’t be standing here right now shaking in your shoes because you’re afraid of a little pain! That kid knows the meaning of discipline and control, Jimmy boy! You’re just a tired old cripple who ought to go out in that lake, duck your head under and take a quick snort like they did.” The Shadow Soldier nodded toward the lake, where the bloated bodies of suicides floated in the brine. “You used to think being head honcho at Earth House was the bottom of the barrel. But this is the bottom, Jimmy boy. Right here. You’re not worth a shit, and you’ve lost your nerve.”
“No I haven’t!” Macklin said. “I ... haven’t.”
A hand gestured toward the Great Salt Lake. “Prove it.”
Roland sensed someone outside the tent. He sat up, clicking the safety off the automatic. Sometimes the men came around at night, sniffing for Sheila, and they had to be scared off.
A flashlight shone in his face, and he aimed the pistol at the figure who held it.
“Hold it,” the man said. “I don’t want any trouble.”
Sheila cried out and sat bolt upright, her eyes wild. She drew herself away from the man with the light. She’d been having that nightmare again, of Rudy shambling to the tent, his face bleached of blood and the wound at his throat gaping like a hideous mouth, and from between his purple lips came a rattling voice that asked, “Killed any babies lately, Sheila darlin?”
“You’ll get trouble if you don’t back off.” Roland’s eyes were fierce behind the goggles. He held the pistol steady, his finger poised on the trigger.
“It’s me. Judd Lawry.” He shone the flashlight on his own face. “See?”
“What do you want?”
Lawry pointed the light at Macklin’s empty sleeping bag. “Where’d the Colonel go?”
“Out. What do you want?”
“Mr. Kempka wants to talk to you.”
“What about? I delivered the ration last night.”
“He wants to talk,” Lawry said. “He says he’s got a deal for you.”
“A deal? What kind of deal?”
“A business proposal. I don’t know the details. You’ll have to see him.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Roland told him. “And whatever it is can wait until daylight.”
“Mr. Kempka,” Lawry said firmly, “wants to do business right now. It’s not important that Macklin be there. Mr. Kempka wants to deal with you. He thinks you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. So are you coming or not?”
“Not.”
Lawry shrugged. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll tell him you’re not interested.” He started to back out of the tent, then stopped. “Oh, yeah: He wanted me to give you this.” And he dropped a boxful of Hershey bars on the ground in front of Roland. “He’s got plenty of stuff like that over in the trailer.”
“Jesus!” Sheila’s hand darted into the box and plucked out some of the chocolate bars. “Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve had one of these!”
“I’ll tell him what you said,” Lawry told Roland, and again he started to leave the tent.
“Wait a minute!” Roland blurted out. “What kind of deal does he want to talk about?”
“Like I say, you’ll have to see him to find out.”
Roland hesitated, but he figured whatever it was couldn’t hurt. “I don’t go anywhere without the gun,” he said.
“Sure, why not?”
Roland got out of his sleeping bag and stood up. Sheila, already finishing one of the chocolate bars, said, “Hey, hold on! What about me?”
“Mr. Kempka just wants the boy.”
“Kiss my ass! I’m not staying out here alone!”
Lawry shrugged the strap of his shotgun off his shoulder and handed it to her. “Here. And don’t blow your head off by accident.”
She took it, realizing too late that it was the same weapon he’d used to kill the infant. Still, she wouldn’t dare be left out there alone without a gun. Then she turned her attention to the box of Hershey bars, and Roland followed Judd Lawry to the Airstream trailer, where yellow lantern light crept through the slats of the drawn window blinds.
On the edge of the lake, Macklin took off his black overcoat and the filthy, bloodstained T-shirt he wore. Then he began to unwrap the bandages from the stump of his wrist as the Shadow Soldier watched in silence. When he was done, he let the bandages fall. The wound was not pretty to look at, and the Shadow Soldier whistled at the sight.
“Discipline and control, mister,” the Shadow Soldier said. “That’s what makes a man.”
Those were the exact words of Macklin’s father. He had grown up hearing them pounded into his head, had fashioned them into a motto to live by. Now, though, to make himself walk into that salty water and do what had to be done was going to take every ounce of discipline and control he could summon.
The Shadow Soldier said in a singsong voice, “Hup two three four, hup two three four! Get it in gear, mister!”
Oh, Jesus, Macklin breathed. He stood with his eyes tightly shut for a few seconds. His entire body shook with the cold wind and his own dread. Then he took the knife from his waistband and walked down toward the chuckling water.
“Sit down, Roland,” the Fat Man said as Lawry escorted Roland into the trailer. A chair had been pulled up in front of the table that Kempka sat behind. “Shut the door.”
Lawry obeyed him, and Roland sat down. He kept his hand on the pistol, and the pistol in his lap.
Kempka’s face folded into a smile. “Would you like something to drink? Pepsi? Coke? Seven-Up? How about something stronger?” He laughed in his high, shrill voice, and his many chins wobbled. “You are of legal age, aren’t you?”
“I’ll take a Pepsi.”
“Ah. Good. Judd, would you get us two Pepsis, please?”
Lawry got up and went to another room, which Roland figured must be a kitchen.
“What’d you want to see me about?” Roland asked.
“A business deal. A proposition.” Kempka leaned back, and his chair popped and creaked like fireworks going off. He wore an open-collared sport shirt that showed wiry brown hair on his flabby chest, and his belly flopped over the belt line of his lime-green polyester trousers. Kempka’s hair had been fres
“That’s nice.” Roland kept the pistol aimed in Freddie Kempka’s direction. On the wall behind the Fat Man, the many rifles and handguns on their hooks caught the baleful yellow lamplight.
“Well,” Kempka shrugged, “we can talk anyway. Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? What happened to your parents?”
My parents, Roland thought. What had happened to them? He remembered them all going into Earth House together, remembered the earthquake in the cafeteria, but everything else was still crazy and disjointed. He couldn’t even recall exactly what his mother and father had looked like. They had died in the cafeteria, he thought. Yes. Both of them had been buried under rock. He was a King’s Knight now, and there was no turning back. “That’s not important,” he decided to say. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
“No, it’s not. I wanted to—ah, here are our refreshments!”
Lawry came in with Pepsis in two plastic glasses; he set one glass in front of Kempka and handed Roland the other. Lawry started to walk behind Roland, but the boy said sharply, “Stay in front of me while I’m in here,” and Lawry stopped. The man smiled, lifted his hands in a gesture of peace and sat on a pile of boxes against the wall.
“As I say, I like young men with fire.” Kempka sipped at his drink. It had been a long time since Roland had tasted a soft drink, and he chugged almost half the glassful down without stopping. The drink had lost most of its fizz, but it was still about the best stuff he’d ever tasted.