Swan Song (52 page)

“I don’t know. A pistol, I guess.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything about the size of the bullet. Oh, Jesus, this is crazy! I can’t remove a bullet from a wound that close to-” The pistol swung back up again. Hugh saw the boy’s finger ready on the trigger, and something about being so close to death clicked on the façade of arrogance he had worn back in Amarillo. “Get that gun out of my face, you little swine,” he said, and he saw Robin blink. “I’ll do what I can-but I’m not promising a miracle, do you understand? Well? What are you standing there for? Get me what I need!”

Robin lowered the pistol. He went off to get the moonshine, the knives and the ashes.

It took about twenty minutes to get Bucky as drunk as Hugh wanted him. Under Robin’s direction, the other boys brought candles and set them in a circle around Bucky. Hugh scrubbed his hands in ashes and waited for the blades to cook.

“He called you Sister,” Robin said. “Are you a nun?”

“No. That’s just my name.”

“Oh.”

He sounded disappointed, and Sister decided to ask, “Why?”

Robin shrugged. “We used to have nuns where we were, in the big building. I used to call them blackbirds, because they always flew at you when they thought you’d done something wrong. But some of them were okay. Sister Margaret said she was sure things would work out for me. Like getting a family and a home and everything.” He glanced around the cavern. “Some home, huh?”

It dawned on Sister what Robin was talking about. “You lived in an orphanage?”

“Yeah. Everybody did. A lot of us got sick and died after it turned cold. Especially the really young ones.” His eyes darkened. “Father Thomas died, and we buried him behind the big building. Sister Lynn died, and then so did Sister May and Sister Margaret. Father Cummings left in the night. I don’t blame him-who wants to take care of a bunch of ratty punks? Some of the others left, too. The last to die was Father Clinton, and then it was just us.”

“Weren’t there any older boys with you?”

“Oh, yeah. A few of them stayed, but most took off on their own. Somehow, I guess I got to be the oldest. I figured that if I left, who was going to take care of the punks?”

“So you found this cave and started robbing people?”

“Sure. Why not? I mean, the world’s gone crazy, hasn’t it? Why shouldn’t we rob people if it’s the only way to stay alive?”

“Because it’s wrong,” Sister answered. The boy laughed. She let his laugh die, and then she said, “How many people have you killed?”

All traces of a smile left his face. He stared at his hands; they were a man’s hands, rough and callused. “Four. But all of them would’ve killed me, too.” He shrugged uneasily. “No big deal.”

“The knives are ready,” Paul said, returning from the fire. Standing on his crutch over the wounded boy, Hugh took a deep breath and lowered his head.

He stayed that way for a minute. “All right.” His voice was low and resigned. “Bring the knives over. Sister, will you kneel down beside me and keep me steady, please? I’ll need several boys to hold Bucky securely, too. We don’t want him thrashing around.”

“Can we just knock him out or something?” Robin asked.

“No. There’s a risk of brain damage in that, and the first impulse a person has after being knocked unconscious is to throw up. We don’t want that, do we? Paul, would you hold Bucky’s legs? I hope seeing a little blood doesn’t make you sick.”

“It doesn’t,” Paul said, and Sister recalled the day on I-80 when he’d sliced open a wolf’s belly.

The hot knives were brought in a metal pot. Sister knelt beside Hugh and let him lean his feeble weight against her. She laid the glass ring beside her on the ground. Bucky was drunk and delirious, and he was talking about hearing birds singing. Sister listened; she could only hear the keening of wind past the mouth of the cave.

“Dear God, please guide my hand,” Hugh whispered. He picked up a knife. The blade was too wide, and he chose another. Even the narrowest of the available knives would be as clumsy as a broken thumb. He knew that one slip could cut into the boy’s left ventricle, and then nothing could stop the geyser of blood.

“Go on,” Robin urged.

“I’ll start when I’m ready! Not one damned second before! Now move away from me, boy!”

Robin retreated but stayed close enough to watch.

Some of the others were holding Bucky’s arms, head and body to the ground, and most of them-even the Job’s Mask victims-had crowded around. Hugh looked at the knife in his hand; it was shaking, and there was no stopping it. Before his nerve broke entirely, he leaned forward and pressed the hot blade against an edge of the wound.

Infectious fluids spattered. Bucky’s body jackknifed, and the boy howled with agony. “Hold him down!” Hugh shouted. “Hold him, damn it!” The boys struggled to control him, and even Paul had trouble with the kicking legs. Hugh’s knife dug deeper, Bucky’s cry reverberating off the walls.

Robin shouted, “You’re killing him!” but Hugh paid no heed. He picked up the moonshine jug and splashed alcohol in and around the oozing wound. Now the boys could barely hold Bucky down. Hugh began to probe again, his own heart pounding as if about to burst through his breast.

“I can’t see the bullet!” Hugh said. “It’s gone too deep!” Blood was welling up, thick and dark red. He plucked away bone chips from a nicked rib. The red, spongy mass of the lung hitched and bubbled beneath the blade. “Hold him down, for God’s sake!” he shouted. The blade was too wide; it was not a surgical instrument, it was a butchering tool. “I can’t do it! I can’t!” he wailed, and he flung the knife away.

Robin pressed the pistol’s barrel to his skull. “Get it out of him!”

“I don’t have the proper instruments! I can’t work without-”

“Fuck the instruments!” Robin shouted. “Use your fingers, if you have to! Just get the bullet out!”

Bucky was moaning, his eyelids fluttering wildly, and his body kept wanting to curl into fetal a position. It took all the strength of the others to restrain him. Hugh was distraught; the metal pot held no blades narrow enough for the work. Robin’s pistol pushed at his head. He looked to one side and saw the circle of glass on the ground.

He saw the two thin spikes, and noted where three more had been broken away.

“Sister, I need one of those spikes as a probe,” he said. “Could you break one off for me?”

She hesitated only a second or two, and then the spike was in his palm and aflame with color.

Spreading the wound’s edges with his other hand, he slid the spike into the scarlet hole.

Hugh had to go deep, his spine crawling at the thought of what the probe might be grazing. “Hold him!” he warned, angling the piece of glass a centimeter to the left. The heart was laboring, the body passing another threshold of shock. Hurry! Hurry! Hugh thought. Find the bastard and get out! Deeper slid the probe, and still no bullet.

He imagined suddenly that the glass was getting warm in his hand-very warm. Almost hot.

Another two seconds, and he was certain: The probe was heating up. Bucky shuddered, his eyes rolled back in his head and he mercifully passed out.

A wisp of steam came from the wound like an exhaled breath. Hugh thought he smelled scorching tissue. “Sister? I don’t… know what’s happening, but I think-”

The probe touched a solid object deep in the spongy folds of tissue, less than a half inch below the left coronary artery. “Found it!” Hugh croaked as he concentrated on determining its size with the end of the probe. Blood was everywhere, but it wasn’t the bright red of an artery, and its movement was sluggish. The glass was hot in his grip, the smell of scorching flesh stronger. Hugh realized that his remaining leg and the lower half of his body were freezing cold, but steam was rising from the wound; it occurred to him that the piece of glass was somehow channeling his body heat, drawing it up and intensifying it down in the depths of the hole. Hugh felt power in his hand-a calm, magnificent power. It seemed to crackle up his arm like a bolt of lightning, clearing his brain of fear and burning away the moonshine cobwebs. Suddenly his thirty years of medical knowledge flooded back into him, and he felt young and strong and unafraid.

He didn’t know what that power was-the surge of life itself, or something that people used to call salvation in the churches-but he could see again. He could bring that bullet out. Yes. He could.

His hands were no longer shaking.

He realized he would have to dig down beneath the bullet and lever it up with the probe until he could get two fingers around it. The left coronary artery and the left ventricle were close, very close. He began to work with movements as precise as geometry.

“Careful,” Sister cautioned, but she knew she didn’t have to warn him. His face was bent over the wound, and suddenly he shouted, “More light!” and Robin brought a candle closer.

The bullet came loose from the surrounding tissue. Hugh heard a sizzling noise, smelled burning flesh and blood. What the hell…? he thought, but he had no time to let his concentration wander. The glass spike was almost too hot to hold now, though he dared not release it. He felt as if he were sitting in a deep freeze up to his chest.

“I see it!” Hugh said. “Small bullet, thank God!” He pushed two fingers into the wound and caught the bit of lead between them. He brought them out again, clenching what resembled a broken filling for a tooth, and tossed it to Robin.

Then he started withdrawing the probe, and all of them could hear the sizzling of flesh and blood. Hugh couldn’t believe what he was witnessing; down in the wound, torn tissue was being cauterized and sealed up as the spike emerged.

It came out like a wand of white-hot fire. As it left the wound there was a quick hissing and the blood congealed, the infected edges rippling with blue fire that burned for four of Sister’s rapid heartbeats and went out. Where a hole had been a few seconds before was now a brown, charred circle.

Hugh held the piece of glass before his face, his features washed with pure white light. He could feel the heat, yet the hottest of the healing fire was concentrated right at the tip. He realized it had cauterized the tiny vessels and ripped flesh like a surgical laser.

The probe’s inner flame began to weaken and go out. As the light steadily waned Sister saw that the jewels within it had turned to small ebony pebbles, and the interconnecting threads of precious metals had become lines of ash. The light continued to weaken until finally there was just a spark of white fire at the tip; it pulsed with the beat of Hugh’s heart-once, twice and a third time-and winked out like a dead star.

Bucky was still breathing.

Hugh, his face streaked with sweat and a bloody mist, looked up at Robin. He started to speak, couldn’t find his voice. His lower body was warming up again. “I guess this means,” he finally said, “that you won’t be killing us today?”

Fifty-Seven - [The Fountain and the

Fire]

Josh nudged Swan. “You doing okay?”

“Yes.” She lifted her misshapen head from the folds of her coat. “I’m not dead yet.”

“Just checking. You’ve been pretty quiet all day.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh.” He watched as Killer ran ahead along the road, then stopped and barked for them to catch up. Mule was walking as fast as he was going to go, and Josh held the reins loosely. Rusty trudged alongside the wagon, all but buried in his cowboy hat and heavy coat.

The Travelin’ Show wagon creaked on, the road bordered by dense forest. The clouds seemed to be hanging right in the treetops, and the wind had all but stopped-a merciful and rare occurrence. Josh knew the weather was unpredictable-there could be a blizzard and a thunderstorm the same day, and the next day calm winds could whirl into tornadoes.

For the past two days, they’d seen nothing living. They’d come upon a broken-down bridge and had to detour several miles to get back to the main road; a little further on, that road was blocked by a fallen tree, so another detour had to be found. But today they’d passed a tree about three miles back with TO MARY’S REST painted on its trunk, and Josh had breathed easier. At least they were headed in the right direction, and Mary’s Rest couldn’t be much further.

“Mind if I ask what you’re thinking about?” Josh prodded.

She shrugged her thin shoulders beneath the coat and didn’t reply. “The tree,” he said. “It’s that, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” The apple blossoms blowing in the snow and stumps continued to haunt her-life amid death. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“I don’t know how you did it, but…” He shook his head. The rules of the world have changed, he thought. Now the mysteries hold sway. He listened to the creaking axles and the crunch of snow under Mule’s hooves for a moment, and then he had to ask it: “What did… what did it feel like?”

“I don’t know.” Another shrug.

“Yes, you do. You don’t have to be shy about it. You did a wonderful thing, and I’d like to know what it felt like.”

She was silent. Up ahead about fifteen yards, Killer barked a few times. Swan heard the barking as a call that the way was clear, “It felt… like I was a fountain,” she replied. “And the tree was drinking. It felt like I was fire, too, and for a minute”-she lifted her deformed face toward the heavy sky-“I thought I could look up and remember what it was like to see the stars, way up in the dark… like promises. That’s what it felt like.”

Josh knew that what Swan had experienced was far beyond his senses; but he could fathom what she meant about the stars. He hadn’t seen them for seven years. At night there was just a vast darkness, as if even the lamps of Heaven had burned out.

“Was Mr. Moody right?” Swan asked.

“Right about what?”

“He said that if I could wake up one tree, I could start orchards and crop fields growing again. He said… I’ve got the power of life inside me. Was he right?”

Josh didn’t answer. He recalled something else Sly Moody had said: “Mister, that Swan could wake the whole land up again!”

“I was always good at growing plants and flowers,” Swan continued. “When I wanted a sick plant to get better, I worked the dirt with my hands, and more often than not the brown leaves fell off and grew back green. But I’ve never tried to heal a tree before. I mean… it was one thing to grow a garden, but trees take care of themselves.” She angled her head so she could see Josh. “What if I could grow the orchards and crops back again? What if Mr. Moody was right, and there’s something in me that could wake things up and start them growing?”

“I don’t know,” Josh said. “I guess that would make you a pretty popular lady. But like I say, one tree isn’t an orchard.” He shifted uncomfortably on the hard board beneath him. Talking about this made him jittery. Protect the child, he thought. If Swan could indeed spark life from the dead earth, then could that awesome power be the reason for PawPaw’s commandment?

In the distance, Killer barked again. Swan tensed; the sound was different, faster and higher pitched. There was a warning in that bark. “Stop the wagon,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Stop the wagon.”

The strength of her voice made Josh pull Mule’s reins.

Rusty stopped, too, the lower half of his face shielded with a woolen muffler under the cowboy hat. “Hey! What’re we stoppin’ for?”

Swan listened to Killer’s barking, the noise floating around a bend in the road ahead. Mule shifted in his traces, lifted his head to sniff the air and made a deep grumbling sound. Another warning, Swan thought; Mule was smelling the same danger Killer had already sensed. She tilted her head to see the road. Everything looked okay, but the vision blurred in and out in her remaining eye and she knew its sight was rapidly failing.

“What is it?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, Killer doesn’t like it.”

“Could be the town’s just around the bend!” Rusty said. “I’ll mosey ahead and find out!” His hands thrust into his coat pockets, he started walking toward the bend in the road. Killer was still barking frantically.

“Rusty! Wait!” Swan called, but her voice was so garbled he didn’t understand her and kept going at a brisk pace.

Josh realized that Rusty wasn’t carrying a gun, and no telling what was around that bend. “Rusty!” he shouted, but the other man was already taking the curve. “Oh, shit!” Josh unzipped the wagon’s flap, then opened the shoe box with the.38 in it and hastily loaded it. He could hear Killer’s yap-yap-yapping echoing through the woods, and he knew that Rusty would find out what Killer had seen in just a matter of seconds.

Around the bend, Rusty was faced with nothing but more road and woods. Killer was standing in the center of the road about thirty feet away, barking wildly at something off to the right. The terrier’s coat was bristling.

“What the hell’s bit your butt?” Rusty asked, and Killer ran between his legs, almost tripping him. “Crazy fool dog!” He reached down to pick the terrier up-and that was when he smelled it.

A sharp, rank odor.

He recognized it. The heady spoor of a wild animal.

There was a nerve-shattering shriek, almost in his ear, and a gray form shot from the forest’s edge. He didn’t see what it was, but he flung an arm up over his face to protect his eyes. The animal slammed into his shoulder, and for an instant Rusty felt entangled by live wires and thorns. He staggered back, trying to cry out, but the breath had been knocked from his lungs. His hat spun away, spattered with blood, and he sank to his knees.

Dazed, he saw what had hit him.

Crouched about six feet away, its spine arched, was a bobcat almost the size of a calf. The thing’s extended claws looked like hooked daggers, but what shocked Rusty almost senseless was the sight of the monster’s two heads.

While one green-eyed face shrieked with a noise like razor blades on glass, the second bared its fangs and hissed like a radiator about to blow.

Rusty tried to crawl away. His body refused. Something was wrong with his right arm, and blood was streaming down the right side of his face. Bleedin’! he thought. I’m bleedin’ bad! Oh, Jesus, I’m-

The bobcat came at him like a spring unwinding, its claws and double set of fangs ready to rip him to pieces.

But it was hit in mid-air by another form, and Killer almost took one of the monster’s ears off. They landed in a clawing, shrieking fury, hair and blood flying. But the battle was over in another instant as the massive bobcat twisted Killer on his back and one of the fanged mouths tore the terrier’s throat open.

Rusty tried to get to his feet, staggered and fell again. The bobcat turned toward him. One set of fangs snapped at him while the other head sniffed the air. Rusty got a booted foot up in the air to kick at the monster when it attacked. The bobcat crouched back on its hind legs. Come on! Rusty thought. Get it over with, you two-headed bas-

He heard the crack! of a pistol, and snow jumped about six feet behind the bobcat. The monster whirled around, and Rusty saw Josh running toward him. Josh stopped, took aim again and fired. The bullet went wild again, and now the bobcat began to turn one way and then the other, as if its two brains couldn’t agree on which way to run. The heads snapped at each other, straining at the neck.

Josh planted his feet, aimed with his single eye and squeezed the trigger.

A hole plowed through the bobcat’s side, and one head made a shrill wailing while the second growled at Josh in defiance. He fired again and missed, but he hit with his next two shots. The monster trembled, loped toward the woods, turned and streaked again toward Rusty. The eyes of one head had rolled back to show the whites, but the other was still alive, and its fangs were bared to plunge into Rusty’s throat.

He heard himself screaming as the monster advanced, but less than three feet from him the bobcat shuddered and its legs gave way. It fell to the road, its living head snapping at the air.

Rusty scrambled away from the thing, and then a terrible wave of weakness crashed over him. He lay where he was as Josh ran toward him.

Kneeling beside Rusty, Josh saw that the right side of his face had been clawed open from hairline to jaw, and in the torn sleeve of his right shoulder was mangled tissue.

“Bought the farm, Josh.” Rusty summoned a weak smile. “Sure did, didn’t I?”

“Hang on.” Josh tucked the pistol under one arm and lifted Rusty off the ground, slinging him over his back in a fireman’s carry. Swan was approaching, trying to run but being thrown off balance by the weight of her head. A few feet away, the mutant bobcat’s fangs came together like the crack of a steel trap; the body shook, and then its eyes rolled back like ghastly green marbles. Josh walked past the bobcat to Killer and the terrier’s pink tongue emerged from its bloody mouth to lick Josh’s boot.

“What happened?” Swan called frantically. “What is it?”

Killer made an effort to rise to all fours when he heard Swan’s voice, but his body was beyond control. His head was hanging limply, and as Killer toppled back on his side Josh could see that the dog’s eyes were already glazing over.

“Josh?” Swan called. Her hands were up in front of her, because she could hardly see where she was going. “Talk to me, damn it!”

Killer gave one quick gasp, and then he was gone.

Josh stepped between Swan and the dog. “Rusty’s been hurt,” he said. “It was a bobcat. We’ve got to get him to town in a hurry!” He grasped her arm and pulled her with him before she could see the dead terrier.

Josh gently laid Rusty in the back of the wagon and covered him with the red blanket. Rusty was shivering and only half conscious. Josh told Swan to stay with him, and then he went forward and took Mule’s reins. “Giddap!” he shouted. The old horse, whether surprised by the command or by the unaccustomed urgency of the reins, snorted steam through his nostrils and bounded forward, pulling with new-found strength.

Swan drew the tent’s flap open. “What about Killer? We can’t just leave him!”

He couldn’t yet bring himself to tell her that the terrier was dead. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “He’ll find his way.” He snapped the reins against Mule’s haunches. “Giddap now, Mule! Go, boy!”

The wagon rounded the bend, its wheels passing on either side of Killer, and Mule’s hooves threw up a spray of snow as the horse raced toward Mary’s Rest.