Swan Song (5 page)

“Yes, ma’am,” Swan said listlessly. She’d heard that story before. All Swan wanted was to live in one place for more than four or five months, so she could make friends she wouldn’t be afraid of losing, and go to the same school for a whole year. Because she had no friends, she turned all her energy and attention to her flowers and plants, spending hours creating gardens in the rough earth of trailer parks, boarding houses and cheap motels.

“Let’s get us some music on the radio,” Darleen said. She switched it on, and rock ‘n’ roll blared from the speakers. The volume was turned so loud that Darleen didn’t have to think about the lie that she’d told her daughter time and again; in truth, she only knew that he was a tall, blond hunk whose rubber had broken in mid-thrust. It hadn’t mattered at the time; a party was going on, and in the next room everybody was raising hell, and both Darleen and the hunk were flying high on a mixture of LSD, angel dust and poppers. That had been when she was living in Las Vegas nine years ago, working as a blackjack dealer, and since then she and Swan had lived all over the west, following men who promised to be fun for a while or taking jobs as a topless dancer wherever she could find them.

Now, though, Darleen didn’t know where they were going. She was sick of Tommy, but she was afraid of him, too; he was too crazy, too mean. It was likely he’d come after them in a day or so if she didn’t get far enough away. Frankie, at the High Noon Saloon where she danced, might advance her some money on her next paycheck, but then where?

Home, she thought. Home was a little speck called Blakeman, up in Rawlins County in the northwest corner of Kansas. She’d run away when she was sixteen, after her mother had died of cancer and her father had started going crazy on religion. She knew the old man hated her, and that’s why she’d left. What would home be like now, she wondered. She imagined her father would drop his teeth when he found out he had a granddaughter. Hell, no! I can’t go back there!

But she was already calculating the route she would take if she did decide to go to Blakeman: north on 135 to Salina, west through the sweeping corn and wheat fields on Interstate 70, north again on arrow-straight country roads. She could get enough money from Frankie to pay for the gas. “How’d you like to take a trip in the mornin’?”

“Where to?” She clutched the Cookie Monster tighter.

“Oh, just somewhere. A little town called Blakeman. Not much going on, the last time I was there. Maybe we could go there and rest for a few days. Get our heads together and think. Right?”

Swan shrugged. “I guess,” she said, but she didn’t care one way or the other.

Darleen turned the radio down and put her arm around her daughter. Looking up, she thought she saw a glimmer of light in the sky, but then it was gone. She squeezed Swan’s shoulder. “Just you and me against the world, kid,” she said. “And know what? We’re gonna win out yet, if we just keep on sluggin’.”

Swan looked at her mother and wanted-wanted very badly-to believe.

The Camaro continued into the night along the unfolding highway, and in the clouds hundreds of feet above, living chains of light linked across the heavens.

Five - [The Point of No Return]

11:50 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time

Blue Dome Mountain, Idaho

A gunmetal gray Ford Roamer recreational vehicle climbed the narrow, winding road that led to the top of Blue Dome Mountain, eleven thousand feet above sea level and sixty miles northwest of Idaho Falls. On both sides of the road, dense pine forests clung to harsh ribs of stone. The RV’s headlights bored holes in a low-lying mist, and the lights of the instrument panel glowed green on the drawn, tired face of the middle-aged man behind the wheel. In the reclined seat beside him, his wife was sleeping with a map of Idaho unfolded on her lap.

On the next long curve, the headlights hit a sign on the roadside that said, in bright orange luminescent letters: PRIVATE PROPERTY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.

Phil Croninger slowed the RV, but he had the plastic ID card they’d mailed him in his wallet, so he kept going past the forbidding sign and onward up the mountain road.

“Would they really do that, Dad?” his son asked, in a reedy voice, from the seat behind him.

“Do what?”

“Shoot trespassers. Would they really?”

“You know it. They don’t want anybody up here who doesn’t belong.” He glanced at the rearview mirror and caught his son’s green-daubed face floating like a Halloween mask over his shoulder. Father and son closely resembled each other; they both wore thick-lensed eyeglasses, had thin, lank hair and were slight and bony. Phil’s hair was threaded with gray and was receding rapidly, and the thirteen-year-old boy’s was dark brown, cut in straight bangs to hide the height of his forehead. The boy’s face was a study in sharp angles, like his mother’s; his nose, chin and cheekbones all seemed to be about to slice through his pallid skin, as if a second face were underneath the first and on the edge of being revealed. His eyes, magnified slightly by the lenses, were the color of ashes. He wore a T-shirt done in military camouflage colors, a pair of khaki shorts and hiking boots.

Elise Croninger stirred. “Are we there yet?” she asked sleepily.

“Almost. We should see something pretty soon.” It had been a long, tiring trip from Flagstaff, and Phil had insisted on traveling at night because, by his calculations, the cooler temperatures were kinder on the tires and boosted gas mileage. He was a careful man who took no chances.

“I’ll bet they’re looking at us right now with radar.” The boy stared toward the woods. “I’ll bet they’re really taking us apart.”

“Could be,” Phil agreed. “They’ve got about everything you can think of up here. It’s a terrific place, wait’ll you see it!”

“I hope it’s cool in there,” Elise said irritably. “God knows I didn’t come all this way to cook in a mine shaft.”

“It’s not a mine shaft,” Phil reminded her. “Anyway, it’s naturally cool, and they’ve got all sorts of air-filtration systems and safety stuff. You’ll see.”

The boy said, “They’re watching us. I can feel them watching us.” He felt under his seat for what he knew was hidden there, and his hand came out with a.357 Magnum. “Bang!” he said, and he clicked the trigger toward the dark woods on his right. And another “Bang!” to the left.

“Put that thing down, Roland!” his mother told him.

“Put it away, son. We don’t want it out in the open.”

Roland Croninger hesitated and grinned slyly. He pointed the gun at the center of his mother’s head, pulled the trigger and said quietly, “Bang.” And then a “Bang” and a click of the trigger at his father’s skull.

“Roland,” his father said in what passed for a stern voice, “stop kidding around, now. Put the gun away.”

“Roland!” his mother warned.

“Aw, heck!” He shoved the weapon back under the seat. “I was just having some fun! You two take everything too seriously!”

There was a sudden jolt as Phil Croninger planted his foot on the brake pedal. Two men in green helmets and camouflage uniforms were standing in the middle of the road; both of them were holding Ingram submachine guns and had.45s in holsters at their waists. The Ingram guns were pointed right at the RV’s windshield.

“Jesus,” Phil whispered. One of the soldiers motioned for him to roll down the window; when Phil had done so, the soldier stepped around to his side of the RV, snapped on a flashlight and shone it in his face. “ID, please,” the soldier said; he was a young man with a hard face and electric blue eyes. Phil brought out his wallet and the ID card and handed it to the young man, who examined Phil’s photograph on the card. “How many coming in, sir?” the soldier asked.

“Uh… three. Me, my wife and son. We’re expected.”

The young man gave Phil’s card to the other soldier, who undipped a walkie-talkie from his utility belt. Phil heard him say, “Central, this is Checkpoint. We’ve got three coming up in a gray recreational vehicle. Name on the card’s Philip Austin Croninger, computer number 0-671-4724. I’ll hold for confirmation.”

“Wow!” Roland whispered excitedly. “This is just like the war movies!”

“Shhhh,” his father warned.

Roland admired the soldiers’ uniforms; he noted that the boots were spit-shined and the camouflage trousers still held creases. Above each soldier’s heart was a patch that depicted an armored fist gripping a lightning bolt, and below the symbol was “Earth House,” stitched in gold.

“Okay, thank you, Central,” the soldier with the walkie-talkie said. He returned the card to the other one, who handed it to Phil. “There you go, sir. Your ETA was 10:45.”

“Sorry.” Phil took the card and put it away in his wallet. “We stopped for a late dinner.”

“Just follow the road,” the young man explained. “About a quarter mile ahead you’ll see a stop sign. Make sure your tires are lined up with the marks. Okay? Drive on.” He gave a quick motion with his arm, and as the second soldier stepped aside Phil accelerated away from the checkpoint. When he glanced in the sideview mirror again, he saw the soldiers reentering the forest.

“Does everybody get a uniform, Dad?” Roland asked.

“No, I’m afraid not. Just the men who work here wear uniforms.”

“I didn’t even see them,” Elise said, still nervous. “I just looked up and there they were. They were pointing those guns right at us! What if one had gone off?”

“These people are professionals, hon. They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t know what they were doing, and I’m sure all of them know how to handle guns. That just shows you how secure we’re going to be for the next two weeks. Nobody can get up here who doesn’t belong. Right?”

“Right!” Roland said. He had experienced a thrill of excitement when he’d looked down the barrels of those two Ingram guns; if they’d wanted to, he thought, they could’ve blown us all away with a single burst. One squeeze of the trigger and zap! The feeling left him amazingly invigorated, as if cold water had been splashed in his face. That was good, he thought. Very good. One of the qualities of a King’s Knight was to take danger in stride.

“There’s the stop sign,” Phil told them as the headlights hit it, dead ahead. The large sign was affixed to a wall of rough, jagged rock that ended the mountain road. Around them were only dark woods and the rise of more rocky walls; there was no sign of the place they had come from Flagstaff to find.

“How do you get inside?” Elise asked.

“You’ll see. This was one of the neatest things they showed me.” Phil had been here in April, after he’d read an advertisement for Earth House in Soldier of Fortune magazine. He slowly guided the Roamer forward until its front tires sank into two grooves in the earth and triggered a pair of latches. Almost immediately, there was a deep rumbling sound-the noise of heavy machinery, gears and chains at work. A crack of fluorescent light appeared at the base of the rock wall; a section of it was smoothly ascending, like the door of the Croninger garage at home.

But to Roland Croninger it looked like the opening of a massive portal into a medieval fortress. His heart had begun to pound, and the crack of fluorescent light reflected in the lenses of his glasses grew wider and brighter.

“My God,” Elise said softly. The rock wall was opening to reveal a concrete-floored parking deck, its spaces filled with cars and other recreational vehicles. A row of lights hung from a gridwork of iron beams at the ceiling. In the doorway stood a uniformed soldier, waving Phil to come ahead; he eased forward, the grooves guiding the Roamer down a concrete ramp and onto the parking deck. As soon as the tires had disengaged the latches again, the doorway began to rumble shut.

The soldier motioned Phil along to a parking place between two other campers and made a gesture with a finger across his throat.

“What’s that mean?” Elise asked uneasily.

Phil smiled. “He’s telling us to cut the engine.” He did. “We’re here, gang.”

The rock doorway closed with a solid, echoing thunk, and the outside world was sealed off.

“We’re in the army now!” Phil told his son, and the boy’s expression was one of dreamy amazement. As they got out of the Roamer two electric carts pulled up; in the first one was a smiling young man, his hair sandy brown and clipped in a crewcut, wearing a dark blue uniform with the Earth House insignia on his breast pocket. The second cart carried two husky men in dark blue jumpsuits and pulled a flat luggage trailer like those used at airports.

The smiling young man, whose white teeth seemed to reflect the fluorescent lighting, checked the information on his clipboard to make sure he had the name right. “Hi, folks!” he said cheerfully. “Mr. and Mrs. Philip Croninger?”

“Right,” Phil said. “And our son, Roland.”

“Hi, Roland. You folks have a good trip from Flagstaff?”

“A long trip,” Elise told him; she gawked around at the parking deck, figuring that there were well over two hundred cars. “My God, how many people are here?”

“We’re about ninety-five percent of capacity, Mrs. Croninger. We figure to be a hundred percent by the weekend. Mr. Croninger, if you’ll give these two gentlemen your keys, they’ll bring your luggage along for you.” Phil did, and the two men began to unload suitcases and boxes from the Roamer.

“I’ve got computer equipment,” Roland told the young man. “It’ll be okay, won’t it?”

“Sure will. You folks just hop aboard here and I’ll take you to your quarters. Corporal Mathis?” he said, addressing one of the baggage-handlers, “Those go to Section C, Number Sixteen. You folks ready?” Phil had gotten into the front passenger’s seat, and his wife and son in the back. Phil nodded, and the young man drove them across the parking deck and into a corridor-concrete-floored and lined with lights-that angled gently downward. A cool breeze circulated from an occasional strategically placed ceiling fan. Other corridors branched off from the first, and there were arrows that pointed to Sections A, B and C.

“I’m Hospitality Sergeant Schorr.” The young man offered his hand, and Phil shook it. “Glad to have you with us. Are there any questions I can answer for you?”

“Well, I’ve taken the tour-back in April-and I know about Earth House,” Phil explained, “but I don’t think my wife and son got the full impact from the pamphlets. Elise was worried about the air circulation down here.”

Schorr laughed. “Not to worry, Mrs. Croninger. We’ve got two state-of-the-art air-filtration systems, one on-line and one backup. The system would power up within one minute of a Code Red-that’s when we’re… uh… expecting impact and we seal the vents. Right now, though, the fans are drawing in plenty of air from outside, and I can guarantee you that the air on Blue Dome Mountain is probably the cleanest you’ll ever breathe. We’ve got three living areas-Sections A, B and C-on this level, and underneath us is the Command Center and Maintenance Level. Down there, fifty feet below us, is the generator room, the weapons supply, the emergency food and water supply, the radar room and the officers’ quarters. By the way, we have a policy of storing all incoming firearms in our weapons supply. Did you happen to have any with you?”

“Uh… a.357 Magnum,” Phil said. “Under the back seat. I didn’t know about that policy.”

“Well, I’m sure you overlooked it in the contract you signed, but I think you’ll agree all firearms should be localized for the safety of Earth House residents. Right?” He smiled at Phil, and Phil nodded. “We’ll code it and give you a receipt, and when you leave us in two weeks you’ll get it back cleaned and shining.”

“What lands of weapons do you have down there?” Roland asked eagerly.

“Oh, pistols, automatic rifles, submachine guns, mortars, flamethrowers, grenades, antipersonnel and antivehicle mines, flares-about everything you can think of. And of course we keep our gas masks and antiradiation suits down there, too. When this place was put together, Colonel Macklin wanted it to be an impregnable fortress, and that’s exactly what it is.”

Colonel Macklin, Roland thought. Colonel James “Jimbo” Macklin. Roland was familiar with the name through articles in the survivalist and weaponry magazines that his father subscribed to. Colonel Macklin had a long record of success as a 105-D Thunderchief pilot over North Vietnam, had been shot down in 1971 and had been a POW until the end of the war; then he’d gone back into Vietnam and Indochina looking for MIAs, and had fought with soldiers of fortune in South Africa, Chad and Lebanon. “Will we get to meet Colonel Macklin?”

“Orientation is at 0800 hours sharp, in the Town Hall. He’ll be there.”