Swan Song (38 page)

“No fair!” Lord Alvin shouted, jumping up from his throne. “You didn’t play right!”

The corpse hit the floor, still gripping the chainsaw, and the metal teeth chewed a circle in the linoleum.

Josh saw Lord Alvin throw aside the bullhorn and reach into his robes; the madman’s hand emerged with an extra gleaming finger-a crescent-bladed hunting knife, like a miniature scythe. Lord Alvin turned upon Swan and Leona.

With the shotgun’s blast, the other psychos had fled for cover. Josh had one shell left, and he couldn’t afford to waste it. He sprinted forward, leaped over the jittering body, and barreled for the pet department, where Lord Alvin-his face contorted with a mixture of rage and what might have been pity-knelt before Swan and grasped the back of her neck with his free hand.

“Death! Death!” Imp shrieked.

Swan looked up into Lord Alvin’s face and knew she was about to die. Tears burned her eyes, but she lifted her chin defiantly.

“Time to go to sleep,” Lord Alvin whispered. He lifted the crescent blade.

Josh slipped on the bloody floor and went down, skidding into a counter six feet short of the dowsing rod. He scrambled to get up, but he knew that he’d never make it.

Lord Alvin smiled, two tears rolling from his murky green eyes. The crescent blade was poised, about to fall. “Sleep,” he said.

But a small gray form had already streaked out from behind sacks of dog food and kitty litter and, growling like a hound from Hell, it leaped toward Lord Alvin’s face.

The terrier snapped his teeth around Alvin Mangrim’s thin and delicate nose, crunched through flesh and cartilage and snapped the man’s head back. Lord Alvin fell on his side, writhing and screaming, frantically trying to push the animal away, but the terrier kept hold.

Josh jumped over Crybaby, saw Swan and Leona still alive, saw the terrier gnawing on Lord Alvin’s nose and the madman flailing with his hunting knife. Josh aimed the shotgun at Lord Alvin’s skull, but he didn’t want to hit the dog and he knew he’d need that shell. The terrier suddenly freed Lord Alvin and scrambled back with bloody flesh between his teeth, then planted his paws and let out a fusillade of barks.

Lord Alvin sat up, what remained of his nose hanging from his face and his eyes wide with shock. Shrieking “Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” he bolted to his feet and ran, still screaming, out of the pet department. Nearby, Imp was the last of Lord Alvin’s subjects left in the vicinity; the dwarf was hissing curses at Josh, who lunged over to the shopping cart, spun it around and sent it flying down the aisle. Imp bailed out a few seconds before it crashed into fish tanks and upended.

Alvin Mangrim had left his knife behind, and Josh spent a couple of anxious minutes cutting the ropes loose from Swan and Leona. When Swan’s hands were freed, she put her arms around Josh’s neck and held tight, her body shaking like a tough sapling in a tornado. The terrier came close enough for Josh to touch and sat back on its haunches, its muzzle scarlet with Lord Alvin’s blood. For the first time, Josh saw that the dog was wearing a flea collar, and on it was a little metal name tag that said “Killer.”

Josh knelt over Leona and shook her. The woman’s eyelids fluttered, her face slack, a terrible purple swelling around the gash over her left eye. Concussion, Josh realized. Or worse. She lifted a hand to touch the smeared greasepaint on Josh’s face, and then her eyes opened. She smiled weakly. “You done good,” she said.

He helped her up. They had to get out fast. Josh braced the shotgun against his belly and started along the aisle where the Neanderthal lay. Swan retrieved the dowsing rod, grasped Leona’s hand and pulled her forward like a sleepwalker. Still barking, Killer darted ahead.

Josh came to Green Teeth’s body and took the ring of keys. He’d worry later about which key unlocked his wrist chains. Right now they had to get out of this asylum before Lord Alvin rallied the maniacs.

They sensed furtive movements on both sides of the aisle as they continued through the K-Mart, but Lord Alvin’s subjects had no initiative of their own. Someone threw a shoe, and a red rubber ball came bouncing at them, but otherwise they made the front doors without incident.

Cold rain was still pouring down, and within seconds they were drenched. The parking lot lamps cast harsh yellow halos over the abandoned cars. Josh felt the weight of exhaustion creeping up on him. They found their wheelbarrow overturned, their supplies either stolen or scattered. Their bags and belongings were gone, including Swan’s Cookie Monster doll. Swan looked down and saw a few of Leona’s tarot cards lying on the wet pavement, along with broken shards of her crystal ball collection. Lord Alvin’s subjects had left them nothing but the soaked clothes sticking to their bodies.

Swan glanced back toward the K-Mart and felt horror like a cold hand placed to a burn.

They were coming out the doors. Ten or eleven figures, led by one in a purple robe that blew around his shoulders. Some of them were carrying rifles.

“Josh!” she shouted.

He kept walking, about ten feet ahead. He hadn’t heard her for the storm.

“Josh!” she shouted again, and then she sprinted the distance between them and whacked him across the back with Crybaby.

He spun around, eyes stricken-and then he saw them coming, too. They were thirty yards away, zigzagging between the cars. There was a flash of gunfire, and the rear windshield of a Toyota van behind Josh exploded. “Get down!” he yelled, shoving Swan to the pavement. He grabbed Leona as more pinpoints of fire sparked. Another car’s windshield blew out, but by then Josh, Swan and Leona were huddled in the shelter of a blue Buick with two flat tires.

Bullets ricocheted, and glass showered around them. Josh crouched, waiting for the bastards to come closer before he reared up and fired the last shell.

A hand grasped the shotgun’s barrel.

Leona’s face was drawn and weary, but the heat of life shone in her eyes. She gripped the shotgun firmly, trying to pull it away from him. He resisted, shaking his head. Then he saw the blood that trickled from a corner of Leona’s mouth.

He looked down. The bullet wound was just below her heart.

Leona smiled wanly, and Josh could just make out what she said from the movement of her lips: “Go.” She nodded toward the far expanse of the rainswept parking lot. “Now,” she told him.

He’d already seen how much blood she was losing. She knew, too; it was in her face. She wouldn’t let go of the shotgun, and she spoke again. Josh couldn’t hear her, but he thought it might have been: “Protect the child.”

The rain was streaming down Josh’s face. There was so much to say, so much, but neither of them could hear the other over the voice of the storm, and words were flimsy. Josh glanced at Swan, saw that she’d seen the wound, too. Swan lifted her gaze to Leona’s, then to Josh’s, and she knew what had been decided.

“No!” she shouted. “I won’t let you!” She grabbed Leona’s arm.

A gunshot blasted the side window of a pickup truck nearby. More bullets hit the truck’s door, blew out the front tire and whined off the wheel.

Josh looked into the woman’s eyes. He released the shotgun. She pulled it to her and put her finger on the trigger, then motioned for them to go. Swan clung to her. Leona grasped Crybaby and pushed the dowsing rod firmly against Swan’s chest, then deliberately pulled her arm free from Swan’s fingers. The decision was made. Now Leona’s eyes were clouding, the flow of blood fast and fatal.

Josh kissed her cheek, hugged her tight to him for a few seconds. And then he mouthed the words “Follow me” to Swan and started off in a half crawl, half crouch between the cars. He couldn’t bear to look at Leona again, but he would remember every line in her face until the day he died.

Leona ran the fingers of one hand over Swan’s cheek and smiled, as if she’d seen the child’s inside face and held it like a cameo in her heart. Then Swan saw the woman’s eyes go hard, preparing for what was ahead. There was nothing more. Swan lingered as long as she dared before she followed Josh into the maze of vehicles.

Leona rose to a crouch. The pain below her heart was an irritating sting compared to her rheumatic knees. She waited, the rain pounding down on her, and she was not afraid. It was time to fly from this body now, time to see clearly what she’d only beheld through a dark glass.

She waited a moment longer, and then she stood up and stepped out from behind the Buick, facing the K-Mart like a gunfighter at the O.K. Corral.

Four of them were standing about six feet away, and behind them were two others. She didn’t have time to make sure the one in the purple robe was there; she aimed the shotgun in their midst and pulled the trigger even as two of the madmen fired their guns at her.

Josh and Swan broke from the cover of the cars and ran across the open lot. Swan almost looked back, almost, but did not. Josh staggered, the exhaustion about to drive him down. Off to the side, the terrier kept pace with them, looking like a drowned rat.

Swan wiped rain from her eyes. There was motion ahead. Something was coming through the storm. Josh had seen it, too, couldn’t tell what it was-but if the lunatics had circled around them, they were finished.

The piebald horse broke from a sweeping curtain of rain, charging toward them-but it didn’t appear to be the same animal. This horse looked stronger, somehow more valiant, with a straighter back and courage in its forward-thrust neck. Josh and Swan both could have sworn they saw Mule’s hooves striking showers of sparks off the pavement.

The horse careened to a stop in front of them, reared and pawed at the air. When the animal came down again, Josh grabbed Swan’s arm by his free hand and flung her up onto Mule. He wasn’t sure which he was more scared of, riding the horse or facing the madmen; but when he dared to look around, he saw figures running through the rain, and he made up his mind right quick.

He swung up behind Swan and kicked Mule’s ribs with both heels. The horse reared again, and Josh saw the pursuing figures abruptly stop. The one in the lead wore purple, had long, wet blond hair and a mangled nose. Josh had a second to lock stares with Lord Alvin, the hatred flaming through his bones, and he thought, Someday, you sonofabitch. Someday you’ll pay.

Gunfire leapt. Mule whirled around and raced out of the parking lot as if he were going for the roses in the Kentucky Derby. Killer followed behind, plowing through the storm.

Swan gripped hold of Mule’s mane to guide him, but the horse was deciding their direction. They sped away from the K-Mart, away from the dead town of Matheson, through the rain along a highway that stretched into darkness.

But in the last of the light from the lunatic K-Mart, they saw a roadside sign that read Welcome to Nebraska, the Cornhusker State. They passed it in a blur, and Swan wasn’t sure what it had said. The wind blew into her face, and she held Crybaby in one hand and Mule’s mane with the other, and they seemed to be cleaving a fiery path through the dark and leaving a sea of sparks in their wake.

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!” Swan shouted.

“Damn straight!” Josh answered.

They raced into the storm, heading toward a new horizon.

And a couple of minutes after they’d passed, the terrier came bounding after them.

Forty-Three - [Thinking About

Tomorrow]

A wolf with yellow eyes darted in front of the pickup truck.

Paul Thorson instinctively hit the brake, and the truck slewed violently to the right, narrowly missing the burned wreckage of a tractor-trailer rig and a Mercedes-Benz in the middle of I-80’s westbound lanes before the worn tires gripped pavement again. The truck’s engine racketed and snorted like an old man having a bad dream.

In the passenger seat, Steve Buchanan stuck the Magnum’s barrel through the slit of his rolled-down window and took aim, but before he could fire the animal had vanished into the woods again. “Jesus H. Christ,” Steve said. “Those fuckers are comin’ out of the woodwork now. This is a suicide mission, man!”

Another wolf ran in front of the truck, taunting them. Paul could’ve sworn the bastard smiled. His own face was set like stone as he concentrated on weaving a path through the wreckage, but inside he was lanced by icy fear of a kind he’d never known. There would not be enough bullets to hold off the wolves when the time came. The people in the truck would look to him for help, but he would fail them. I’m afraid. Oh, dear God, I’m afraid. He picked up the bottle of Johnny Walker Red that sat between himself and the teenager, uncapped it with his teeth and took a swig that made his eyes water. He handed it to Steve, who drank some courage of his own.

For perhaps the hundredth time in the last five minutes, Paul glanced at the gas gauge. The needle was about three hairs shy of the big red E. They’d passed two gas stations in the last fifteen miles, and Paul’s worst nightmares were coming true; one of the stations had been razed to the ground, and the other had a sign that said NO GAS NO GUNS NO MONEY NO NOTHING.

The pickup labored west under a leaden sky. The highway was a junkyard of wrecked hulks and frozen, wolf-gnawed corpses. Paul had seen a dozen or so wolves trailing them. Waiting for us to start walking, he knew. They can smell that tank drying up. Damn it to Hell, why did we leave the cabin? We were safe! We could’ve stayed there-

Forever? he wondered.

A gust of wind hit the pickup broadside, and the vehicle shuddered right down to its slick treads. Paul’s knuckles turned white as he fought the wheel. The kerosene had run out a day earlier, and the day before that Artie Wisco had begun coughing up blood. The cabin was twenty miles behind them now. They’d passed a point of no return, everything around them desolate and as gray as undertakers’ fingers. I should never have listened to that crazy woman! he thought, taking the bottle from Steve. She’ll get us all killed yet!

“Suicide mission, man,” Steve repeated, a crooked grin carved across his burn-scarred face.

Sister sat beside Artie in the rear of the truck, both of them protected from the wind by a blanket. She was holding onto Paul’s rifle; he’d taught her how to load and fire it, and had told her to blow hell out of any wolves that got too close. The fifteen or so that were following slipped back and forth between the wreckage, and Sister decided not to waste bullets.

Nearby, also covered by a blanket, were the Ramseys and the old man who’d forgotten his name. The old man clutched the shortwave radio, though the batteries had died days ago. Over the engine’s racket, Sister could hear Artie’s agonized breathing. He held his side, blood flecking his lips, his face contorted with pain. The only chance for him was to find medical help of some kind, and Sister had come too far with him to let him die without a struggle.

Sister had one arm around the duffel bag. The previous night she’d looked into the shining jewels of the glass circle and seen another strange image: what appeared to be a roadside sign at night, dimly illuminated by a distant glow, that read Welcome to Matheson, Kansas! We’re Strong, Proud and Growing!

She’d had the impression of dreamwalking along a highway that led toward a light, reflected off the bellies of low clouds; there were figures around her, but she couldn’t quite make out who they were. Then, abruptly, she’d lost her grip on the vision, and she was back in the cabin, sitting in front of a dying fire.

She’d never heard of Matheson, Kansas, before-if there was really such a place. Looking into the depths of the glass ring caused the imagination to boil like soup in a stockpot, and why should what bubbled out of it have any connection with reality?

But what if there was a Matheson, Kansas? she’d asked herself. Would that mean her visions of a desert where a Cookie Monster doll lay and of a table where fortune-telling cards were arranged were also real places? No! Of course not! I used to be crazy, but I’m not crazy anymore, she’d thought. It was all imagination, all wisps of fantasy that the colors of the glass circle created in the mind.

“I want it,” the thing in its Doyle Halland disguise had said, back in that bloody room in New Jersey. “I want it.”

And I have it, Sister thought. Me, of all possible people. Why me?

She answered her own question: Because when I want to hold onto something, even the Devil himself can’t pry it loose, that’s why.

“Goin’ to Detroit!” Artie said. He was smiling, his eyes bright with fever. “’Bout time I got home, don’t you think?”

“You’re going to be all right.” She took his hand. The flesh was wet and hot. “We’re going to find some medicine for you.”

“Oh, she’s gonna be sooooo mad at me!” he continued. “I was supposed to call her that night. I went out with the boys. Supposed to call her. Let her down.”

“No, you didn’t. It’s all right. You just be quiet and-”

Mona Ramsey screamed.

Sister looked up. A yellow-eyed wolf the size of a Doberman had scrambled up on the rear bumper and was trying to hitch itself over the tailgate. The animal’s jaws snapped wantonly at the air. Sister had no time to aim or fire; she just clubbed the beast’s skull with the rifle barrel, and the wolf yelped and dropped back to the highway. It was gone into the woods before Sister could get her linger on the trigger. Four others who’d been shadowing the truck scattered for cover.

Mona Ramsey was babbling hysterically. “Hush!” Sister demanded. The young woman stopped her jabbering and gaped at her. “You’re making me nervous, dear,” Sister said. “I get very cranky when I’m nervous.”

The pickup swerved over ice, its right side scraping along the wreckage of a six-car pileup before Paul could regain control. He threaded a passageway between wrecks, but the highway ahead was an auto graveyard. More animals skulked at the edges of the road, watching the pickup rumble past.

The gas gauge’s needle touched E. “We’re running on fumes,” Paul said, and he wondered how far they could get on the Johnny Walker Red.

“Hey! Look there!” Steve Buchanan pointed. To the right, over the leafless trees, was a tall Shell gas station sign. They rounded a curve, and they both saw the Shell station-abandoned, with REPENT! HELL IS ON EARTH! painted in white across the windows. Which was just as well, Paul reasoned, because the off-ramp was blocked by the mangled hulk of a bus and two other crashed vehicles.

“Good shoes!” Artie said in the rear of the truck. Sister dragged her gaze away from the message-or warning-on the Shell station’s windows. “Nothin’ beats a pair of good, comfortable walkin’ shoes!” He lost his breath and began coughing, and Sister cleaned his mouth with an edge of the blanket.

The pickup truck stuttered.

Paul felt the blood drain from his face. “Come on, come on!” They’d just started up a hill; its top was about a quarter mile away, and if they could make it they could coast down the other side. Paul leaned forward against the steering wheel, as if to shove the truck the rest of the way. The engine rattled and wheezed, and Paul knew it was about to give up the ghost. The tires kept turning, though, and the truck was still climbing the hill.

“Come on!” he shouted as the engine caught, sputtered-and then died.

The tires rolled on about twenty yards, getting slower and slower, before the truck stopped. Then the tires began to roll backward.

Paul plunged his foot on the brake, pulled up the parking brake and put the gears into first. The truck halted about a hundred yards from the hilltop.

Silence fell.

“That’s that,” Paul said. Steve Buchanan was sitting with one hand on the Magnum and the other strangling the scotch bottle’s neck.

“What now, man?”

“Three choices: We sit here for the rest of our lives, we go back to the cabin or we start walking ahead.” He took the bottle, got out into the cold wind, and walked around to the tailgate. “Tour’s over, friends. We’re out of gas.” He snapped a sharp glance at Sister. “You satisfied, lady?”

“We’ve still got legs.”

“Yeah. So do they.” He nodded toward the two wolves that were standing at the edge of the forest, watching intently. “I think they’d beat us in a footrace, don’t you?”

“How far is it back to the cabin?” Kevin Ramsey asked, his arms around his shivering wife. “Can we make it before dark?”

“No.” He regarded Sister again. “Lady, I’m one damned fool for letting you talk me into this. I knew the gas stations were going to be shut down!”

“Then why’d you come?”

“Because… because I wanted to believe. Even though I knew you were wrong.” He sensed motion to his left, saw three more wolves coming through, the wrecks on the east-bound lanes. “We were safe in the cabin. I knew there wasn’t anything left!”

“All the people who passed this way had to be going somewhere,” she insisted. “You would’ve sat in that cabin until your ass grew roots.”

“We should’ve stayed!” Mona Ramsey wailed. “Oh, Jesus, we’re going to die out here!”

“Can you stand up?” Sister asked Artie. He nodded. “Do you think you can walk?”

“Got good shoes,” he rasped. He sat up, pain stitched across his face. “Yeah, I think I can.”

She helped him to his feet, then lowered the tailgate and just about lifted Artie to the pavement. He clutched at his side and leaned against the truck. Sister slung the rifle’s strap around her shoulder, hefted the duffel bag carefully to the ground and stepped down from the truck bed. She looked Paul Thorson in the face. “We’re going that way.” She motioned toward the hilltop. “Are you coming with us or staying here?”

Her eyes were the color of steel against her sallow, burn-blotched face. Paul realized that she was either the craziest or toughest mutha he’d ever met. “There’s nothing over there but more nothing.”

“There’s nothing where we came from.” Sister picked up the duffel bag and, with Artie leaning on her shoulder, started walking up the hill.

“Give me the rifle,” Paul told her. She stopped. “The rifle,” he repeated. “That won’t do you a damned bit of good. By the time you get it unslung you’ll be hash. Here.” He offered her the bottle. “Take a long swig. Everybody gets a drink before we start. And for God’s sake, keep those blankets around you. Protect your faces as much as you can. Steve, bring the blanket from the front seat. Come on, hurry it up!”

Sister drank from the bottle, gave Artie a swallow and then returned it and the rifle to Paul. “We keep together,” he told all of them. “We stay in a tight group-just like the wagons when the Indians attacked. Right?” He watched the converging wolves for a moment, lifted the rifle, aimed and shot one through the side. It fell, snapping, and the others leapt upon it, tearing it to pieces. “Okay,” Paul said. “Let’s get on down this damned road.”

They began walking, the wind whipping around them in vicious crosscurrents. Paul took the lead and Steve Buchanan brought up the rear. They’d gone no more than twenty feet when a wolf lunged out from behind an overturned car and shot across their path. Paul raised his rifle, but the animal had already found cover beyond another hulk. “Watch our backs!” he shouted to Steve.

The animals were coming in from all sides. Steve counted eight scurrying up from the rear. He eased back the Magnum’s hammer, his heart whacking like a Black Flag drumbeat.

Another wolf ran in from the left, a streak of motion headed for Kevin Ramsey. Paul whirled and fired; the bullet sang off the pavement, but the animal turned away. Instantly, two more darted in from the right. “Look out!” Sister shouted, and Paul turned in time to shatter a wolf’s leg with one slug. The animal danced crazily across the highway before four others dragged it down. He pumped shots at them and hit two, but the rest fled. “Bullets!” he called, and Sister dug a handful out of the box he’d given her to carry in her duffel bag. He hastily reloaded, but he’d given his gloves to Mona Ramsey, and his sweaty skin was sticking to the rifle’s cold metal. The rest of the bullets went into his coat pocket.

They were seventy yards from the top of the hill.

Artie leaned heavily on Sister. He coughed blood and staggered, his legs about to fold. “You can make it,” she said. “Come on, keep moving.”

“Tired,” he said. He was as hot as a furnace, and he spread warmth to the others gathered around him. “Oh… I’m… so…”

A wolf’s head lunged from the open window of a burned Oldsmobile at their side, the jaws snapping at Artie’s face. Sister jerked him aside and the teeth came together with a crack! that was almost as loud as Paul’s rifle shot a second later. The wolf’s head spewed blood and brains and the beast slithered down into the car.

“… tired,” Artie finished.

Steve watched two wolves racing in from behind. He lifted the Magnum with both hands, his palms slick on the butt though he was freezing. One of the animals shot off to the side, but the other kept coming. He was just about to fire when it closed within ten feet, snarled and ran behind a wrecked Chevy. He could’ve sworn the snarl had spoken his name.