Swan Song (20 page)

“Mi niña me perdona,” the woman sobbed. “Madre de Dios, mi niña me perdona.”

“What’s she saying?” Beth asked, standing behind Sister.

“I don’t know.” Sister put her hand around the glass ring and slowly pulled it toward her. The Spanish woman held onto it, shaking her head back and forth. “Come on,” Sister urged. “Let me have it-”

“My child forgives me!” the Spanish woman suddenly said. Her eyes were wide and full of tears. “Mother of God, I saw my child’s face in this! And she said she forgives me! I’m free! Mother of God, I’m free!”

Sister was stunned. “I… didn’t think you knew English.”

Now it was the Spanish woman’s turn to blink dazedly. “What?”

“What’s your name? How come you haven’t spoken English before this?”

“My name is Julia. Julia Castillo. English? I don’t… know what you mean.”

“Either I’m crazy or she is,” Sister said. “Come on, let me have this.” She pulled the ring away, and Julia Castillo let it go. “Okay. Now how come you haven’t spoken English before now, Julia?”

“No comprendo,” she replied. “Good morning. Good day. I am happy to see you, sir. Thank you.” She shrugged and motioned vaguely southward. “Mantanzas,” she said. “Cuba.”

Sister turned her head toward Beth, who had stepped back a couple of paces and had a weird expression on her face. “Who’s crazy, Beth? Julia or me? Does this lady know English or not?”

Beth said, “She… was speaking in Spanish. She never said one word of English. Did you… understand what she said?”

“Hell yes, I understood her! Every damned word! Didn’t…” She stopped speaking. Her hand holding the glass ring was tingling. Beyond the bonfire, Artie suddenly sat up and hiccuped. “Hey!” he said in a slightly slurred voice. “Where’s the party?”

Sister held the glass circle out toward Julia Castillo again. The Spanish woman touched it hesitantly. “What did you say about Cuba?” Sister asked.

“I’m… from Mantanzas, in Cuba,” Julia replied, in perfect English. Her eyes were large and puzzled. “My family came over in a fishing boat. My father could speak a little English, and we came north to work in a shirt factory. How do you… know my language?”

Sister looked at Beth. “What do you hear? Spanish or English?”

“Spanish. Isn’t that what you heard?”

“No.” She pulled the ring out of Julia’s grasp. “Now say something. Say anything.”

Julia shook her head. “Lo siento, no comprendo.”

Sister stared at Julia for a moment, and then she slowly lifted the ring closer to her face to peer into its depths. Her hand was trembling, and what felt like little jolts of energy coursed through her forearm to her elbow. “It’s this,” Sister said. “This glass thing. I don’t know why or how, but… this thing lets me understand her, and she can understand me, too. I heard her speak English, Beth… and I think she heard me speak Spanish.”

“That’s crazy!” Beth said, but she thought of the cool stream that had flowed across her lap, and her throat that was no longer parched. “I mean… it’s just glass and jewels, isn’t it?”

“Here.” Sister offered it to her. “Find out for yourself.”

Beth traced one of the spires with a finger. “The Statue of Liberty,” she said.

“What?”

“The Statue of Liberty. That’s what this reminds me of. Not the statue itself, but… the lady’s crown. “She lifted the circle to her head, the spires jutting up. “See? It could be a crown, couldn’t it?”

“I’ve never seen a lovelier princess,” said a man’s voice, from the darkness beyond the bonfire.

Instantly Beth had the glass circle protected in her arms and was backing away from the direction of the voice. Sister tensed. “Who’s there?” She sensed movement: Someone was walking slowly across the ruins, approaching the firelight’s edge.

He stepped into the light. His gaze lingered on each of them in turn. “Good evening,” he said politely, addressing Sister.

He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a regal bearing, dressed in a dusty black suit. A brown blanket was wrapped around his shoulders and throat like a peasant’s serape, and across his pallid, sharp-chinned face were the scarlet streaks of deep burns, like welts inflicted by a whip. A blood-crusted gash zigzagged across his high forehead, cut through his left eyebrow and ended at his cheekbone. Most of his reddish-gray hair remained, though there were bare spots the size of silver dollars on his scalp. The breath curled from his nose and mouth. “Is it all right if I come nearer?” he asked, his voice pained and halting.

Sister didn’t answer. The man waited. “I won’t bite,” he said.

He was shivering, and she could not deny him the fire. “Come ahead,” she said cautiously, and she stepped back as he did.

He winced as he hobbled forward, and Sister saw what was hurting him: a jagged splinter of metal had pierced his right leg just above the knee and stuck out about three inches on the other side. He passed between Sister and Beth and went straight to the fire, where he warmed his outstretched hands. “Ah, that feels good! It must be thirty degrees out there!”

Sister had felt the cold as well, and she returned to the fire. Behind her, Julia and Beth, who was still protectively clinging to the glass ring, followed.

“Who the hell are you?” Artie stared bleary-eyed across the bonfire.

“My name is Doyle Halland,” the man answered. “Why didn’t you people leave with the rest of them?”

“The rest of who?” Sister asked, still watching him warily.

“The ones who got out. Yesterday, I guess it was. Hundreds of them, leaving”-he smiled wanly and waved his hand around-“leaving the Garden State. Maybe there are shelters further west. I don’t know. Anyway, I didn’t expect anyone was left.”

“We came from Manhattan,” Beth told him. “We made it through the Holland Tunnel.”

“I didn’t think anybody could’ve lived through what hit Manhattan. They say it was at least two bombs. Jersey City burned fast. And the winds… my God, the winds.” He closed his fists before the flames. “It was a tornado. More than one, I think. The winds just… tore buildings off their foundations. I was lucky, I suppose. I got into a basement, but the building blew apart over my head. The wind did this.” He gingerly touched the metal splinter. “I’ve heard of tornadoes putting straws unbroken through telephone poles. I guess this is about the same principle, huh?” He looked at Sister. “I realize I’m not at my best, but why are you staring at me like that?”

“Where’d you come from, Mr. Halland?”

“Not far. I saw your fire. If you don’t want me to stay, just say so.”

Sister was ashamed of what she’d been thinking. He winced again, and she saw that fresh blood had begun to ooze around the splinter. “I don’t own this place. You can stay wherever you please.”

“Thank you. It’s not a pleasant night to be walking.” His gaze moved to the sparkle of the glass circle Beth was holding. “That thing shines, doesn’t it? What is it?”

“It’s…” She couldn’t find the right word. “It’s magic,” she blurted out. “You won’t believe what just happened! You see that woman over there? She can’t speak English, and this thing-”

“It’s junk,” Sister interrupted, taking it from Beth. She didn’t trust this stranger yet, and she didn’t want him knowing any more about their treasure. “It’s just shiny junk, that’s all.” She put it into the bottom of her bag, and the glow of the gems faded and went out.

“You want shiny junk?” the man inquired. “I’ll show you some.” He looked around, then hobbled away a few yards and painfully bent down. He picked up something and brought it back to the fire. “See? It shines just like yours,” he said, showing them what he held.

It was a piece of stained-glass window, a swirl of deep blue and purple.

“You’re standing in what used to be my church,” he said, and he pulled the blanket away from his throat to reveal the soiled white collar of a priest. Smiling bitterly, he tossed the colored glass into the fire.

Twenty-Three - [Land of the Dead]

In the darkness, sixteen civilians-men, women and children-and three badly injured members of Colonel Macklin’s army struggled to work the tightly jammed puzzle of rocks loose from the lower-level corridor. It’s only six feet to the food, Macklin had told them, six feet. It won’t take you long to break through, once you get a hole opened. The first one to reach that food gets a triple ration.

They had been laboring in total darkness for almost seven hours when the rest of the ceiling caved in on their heads with no warning.

Roland Croninger, on his knees in the cafeteria’s kitchen, felt the floor shake. Screams drifted up through an air vent-and then silence.

“Damn!” he said, because he knew what had happened. Who was going to clear that corridor now? But then, on the other side of the coin, the dead didn’t use up air. He went back to his task of scooping up bits of food from the floor and putting them into a plastic garbage bag.

He’d suggested that Colonel Macklin set up headquarters in the gymnasium. They’d found a treasure: a mop bucket, in which they could store the toilet bowl water. When Roland, his stomach gnawing with hunger, had left them to forage in the kitchen, both Macklin and Captain Warner had been asleep; Roland had the Ingram gun on a strap around his shoulder, and the handle of the holy axe was secured by his waistband. Near him, the flashlight lay on the floor, illuminating clumps of food that had exploded from cans in the pantry. The kitchen garbage pails had yielded some finds, too: banana peels, bits of tomato, cans with not all their contents quite scraped out, and a few breakfast biscuits. Anything and everything edible went into Roland’s bag, except for the biscuits, which were his first meal since the disaster.

He picked up a black piece of something and started to shove it into the bag but hesitated. The black thing reminded him of what he’d done to Mike Armbruster’s pet hamsters the day Armbruster had brought them to biology class. The hamsters had been left at the back of the room after school, while Armbruster went to football practice. Roland had gotten the cage of hamsters, without being seen by the cleaning women, and had sneaked stealthily to the school’s automotive workshop. In one corner stood a metal vat that held a greenish-brown liquid, and over the vat was a red sign that said Wear Your Gloves!

Roland had put on a pair of heavy asbestos gloves and made cooing noises to the two little hamsters, and he’d thought about Mike Armbruster laughing and spitting on him while he was down in the dust.

Then he’d picked up the cage by its handle and lowered it into the vat of acid, which was used to make rusted radiators shine like new.

He’d let the hamsters stay under until the bubbles stopped. When he brought the cage up, he noted that the acid had attacked the metal and chewed it down to a polished gleam. Then he took his gloves off and carried the cage back to the biology room on the end of a broom.

He’d often wondered what Mike Armbruster’s face had looked like when he saw the two black things where the hamsters used to be. Armbruster hadn’t realized, Roland often mused later, the many ways a King’s Knight can get even.

Roland tossed whatever it was into the bag. He turned up a box of oatmeal and-wonder of wonders!-a single green apple. Both of those went into the bag. He continued crawling, lifting the smaller rocks and avoiding the fissures in the floor.

He was getting too far from the flashlight, and he stood up. The garbage bag had some weight to it now. The King was going to be well pleased. He started toward the light, stepping nimbly over the dead.

There was a noise behind him. Not a loud noise, just a whirrrr of disturbed air, and he knew he was no longer alone.

Before he could turn, a hand clamped across his mouth. “Get the bag!” a man said. “Hurry!”

It was torn from his grip. “Little fucker’s got an Ingram gun!” That, too, was ripped off his shoulder. The hand moved from his mouth, replaced by an arm at his throat. “Where’s Macklin? Where’s the sonofabitch hiding?”

“I can’t… I can’t breathe,” Roland croaked.

The man cursed and flung him to the floor. Roland’s glasses flew off, and a boot pressed down on his spine. “Who you gonna kill with that gun, kid? You gonna make sure you get all the food for yourself and the colonel?”

One of the others retrieved the flashlight and aimed it in Roland’s face. He thought there were three of them from the voices and movements, but he couldn’t be positive. He flinched as he heard the Ingram gun’s safety click off. “Kill him, Schorr!” one of the men urged. “Blow his fucking brains out!”

Schorr. Roland knew that name. Hospitality Sergeant Schorr.

“I know he’s alive, kid.” Schorr was standing over nun, his foot planted on Roland’s back. “I went down to the command center, and I found those people working in the dark. I found Corporal Prados, too. He told me a kid got Macklin out of a hole, and that the colonel was hurt. He just left Prados down there to die, didn’t he?”

“The corporal… couldn’t move. He couldn’t stand up, because of his leg. We had to leave him.”

“Who else is with Macklin?”

“Captain Warner,” Roland gasped. “That’s all.”

“And he sent you here to find food? Did he give you the Ingram gun and tell you to kill everybody else?”

“No, sir.” The wheels of Roland’s brain were spinning, trying to find a way to squirm out of this.

“Where’s he hiding? How many weapons does he have?”

Roland was silent. Schorr bent down beside him and put the gun’s barrel to Roland’s temple. “There are nine other people not too far from here who need food and water, too,” Schorr said tersely. “My people. I thought I was going to die, and I’ve seen things…” He stopped, shaken, couldn’t go on for a moment. “Things nobody ought to see and live to remember. Macklin’s to blame for all this. He knew this place was falling apart-he must’ve known it!” The barrel bruised Roland’s skull. “High and mighty Macklin with his tin soldiers and his worn-out medals! Just marching the suckers in and out of here! He knew what was going to happen! Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir.” Roland felt the holy axe pressed against his stomach. Slowly, he began to work his hand under his body.

“He knows there’s no way in Hell to get to the emergency food, doesn’t he? So he sent you here to get the scraps before anybody else could! You little bastard!” Schorr grabbed his collar and shook him, which helped Roland slide his hand closer to the holy axe.

“The colonel wants to stockpile everything,” Roland said. Buy time! he thought. “He wants to get everybody together and ration out the food and wa-”

“You’re a liar! He wants it all for himself!”

“No! We can still get through to the emergency food.”

“Bullshit!” the man roared, and insanity leapt in his voice. “I heard the rest of Level One fall in! I know they’re all dead! He wants to kill all of us so he can have the food!”

“Finish him, Schorr,” the other man said. “Shoot his balls off.”

“Not yet, not yet. I want to know where Macklin is! Where’s he hiding, and how many weapons does he have?”

Roland’s fingers were almost touching the blade. Closer… closer. “He’s got… he’s got a lot of guns. Got a pistol. And another machine gun.” Closer, and closer still. “He’s got a whole arsenal in there.”

“In there? In where?”

“In… one of the rooms. It’s way down the corridor.” Almost got it!

“What room, you little shit?” Schorr grabbed him again, shook him angrily, and Roland took advantage of the movement; he slid the holy axe out of his waistband and lay on top of it, getting a good, strong grip around the handle. When he decided to strike, it would have to be fast, and if the other two men had guns, he was finished.

Cry! he told himself. He forced a sob. “Please… please don’t hurt me! I can’t see without my glasses!” He blubbered and shook. “Don’t hurt me!” He made a retching noise-and he felt the Ingram gun’s barrel move away from his skull.

“Little shitter. Little candy-ass shitter! Come on! Stand up like a man!” He grasped Roland’s arm and started to haul him to his feet.

Now, Roland thought-very calmly, very deliberately. A King’s Knight was not afraid of death.

He let the man’s strength pull him up, and then he uncoiled like a spring, twisting around and slashing out with the holy axe that still bore some of the King’s dried blood on its blade.

The flashlight’s beam glinted off the cleaver; the blade sliced into Schorr’s left cheek like it was carving off a piece of Thanksgiving turkey. He was too shocked to react for a second, but then the blood burst out of the wound and his finger jerked involuntarily on the trigger, sending a rattle of bullets whining past Roland’s head. Schorr staggered backward, half his face peeled open to the bone. Roland rushed him, hacking wildly before the man could aim that gun again.

One of the others grabbed Roland’s shoulder, but Roland broke away, tearing the rest of his shirt almost off. He swung again at Schorr and caught the meaty part of his gun arm. Schorr stumbled over a dead body, the Ingram gun clattering to the stones at Roland’s feet.

Roland scooped it up. His face contorted into a savage rictus and he whirled upon the man holding the flashlight. He braced his legs in the firing position the colonel had taught him, aimed and squeezed the trigger.

The gun hummed like a sewing machine, but its recoil knocked him back over the rubble and set him on his ass. As he fell he saw the flashlight explode in the man’s hand, and there was a grunt followed by a shrill cry of pain. Someone whimpered and scrabbled away across the floor. Roland fired into the dark, the red trajectories of tracer bullets ricocheting off the walls. There was another scream that broke into gurgling fragments and grew distant, and Roland thought that one of the men must’ve stepped into a hole in the floor and fallen through. He sprayed the cafeteria with bullets, and then he stopped firing because he knew he was alone again.

He listened; his heart was racing. The sweet aroma of a fired weapon hung in the air. “Come on!” he shouted. “You want some more? Come on!”

But there was only silence. Whether he’d killed them all or not, he didn’t know. He was sure he’d hit at least one. “Bastards,” Roland breathed. “You bastards, next time I’ll kill you.”

He laughed. It startled him, because it didn’t sound like the laughter of anyone he knew. He wished the men would come back. He wanted another chance at killing them.

Roland searched for his glasses. He found the garbage bag, but his glasses were lost. Everything would be blurred from now on, but that was okay; there was no more light, anyway. His hands found warm blood and a body to go with it. He spent a minute or two kicking the dead man’s skull in.

Roland picked up the garbage bag and, keeping the Ingram gun ready, carefully moved across the cafeteria toward where he knew the exit to be; his toes probed for holes in the floor, but he made it safely into the corridor.

He still trembled with excitement. Everything was black and silent but for the slow dripping of water somewhere. He felt his way toward the gymnasium with his bag of booty, eager to tell the King that he’d fought off three tunnel trolls, and that one of them was named Schorr. But there would be more trolls! They wouldn’t give up so easily, and besides, he wasn’t sure if he’d killed the hospitality sergeant or not.

Roland grinned into the darkness, his face and hair damp with cold sweat. He was very, very proud of himself for protecting the King, though he regretted losing the flashlight. In the corridor he stepped on bodies that were swelling like gasbags.

This was turning out to be the greatest game he’d ever played. This beat the computer version by a light-year!

He’d never shot anybody before. And he’d never felt so powerful before, either.

Surrounded by darkness and death and carrying a bagful of scraps and a warm Ingram gun, Roland Croninger knew true ecstasy.