Swan Song (57 page)

Paul siphoned the last of the gasoline from the Jeep’s tank into a small plastic milk jug, and it barely wet the bottom. But the jug was securely sealed with tape and put down into the duffel bag, to be used to strengthen a fire.

It was as light as it was going to get outside. The sky was dingy, and there was no way to tell where the sun was. Sister’s watch said ten twenty-two; Paul’s said three thirteen.

It was time to go.

“Ready?” Sister asked Paul.

He looked longingly at the fire for a moment and then said, “Yeah.”

“Good luck!” Hugh called, hobbling to the mouth of the cave as they started out. Sister lifted a gloved hand, then pulled her collar up around the muffler at her throat. She checked the compass, and Paul followed her toward the woods.

Sixty-One - [Seeds]

“There it is.” Glory pointed to the hulk of a gray-boarded barn half hidden within a grove of trees. Two other structures had collapsed, and from one of them protruded a crumbling red brick chimney. “Aaron found this place a while back,” she said as Josh walked with her toward the barn and Mule tagged along. “Nobody lives out here, though.” She motioned toward a well-worn trail that went past the decayed structures and deeper into the forest. “The Pit’s not too far.”

The Pit, as Josh understood it, was the community’s burial ground-a trench into which hundreds of bodies had been lowered over the years. “Jackson used to say a few words over the dead,” Glory said. “Now that he’s gone, they just toss ’em in and forget ’em.” She glanced at him. “Swan came mighty close to joinin’ ’em last night. What’d she think she was doin’ out there?”

“I don’t know.” Swan had lapsed into unconsciousness when they’d gotten her to the shack. Josh and Glory had cleaned her hands and bandaged them with strips of cloth, and they could feel the fever radiating from her. They’d left Aaron and Rusty to watch over her while Josh fulfilled his promise to find shelter for Mule, but he was half crazy with worry; without medicine, proper food or even decent drinking water, what hope did she have? Her body was so broken down with exhaustion that the fever might kill her. He remembered her last words to him before she’d faded away: “Josh, I’ve gone blind.”

His hands gripped into fists at his sides. Protect the child, he thought. Sure. You’ve done a real fine job of that, haven’t you?

He didn’t know why she’d slipped out of the shack last night, but it was obvious she’d been digging in the hard earth. Thank God Mule had had the sense to know she was in trouble, or today they’d be taking Swan’s body to the-

No. He refused to think about that. She’d get better. He knew she would.

They passed the rusted remains of a car-minus doors, wheels, engine and hood-and Glory pulled the barn’s door open. It was dark and chilly inside, but at least the wind was blunted. Soon Josh’s vision grew accustomed to the gloom. There were two stalls with a little straw on the floor and a trough in which Josh could melt some snow for Mule to drink. On the walls hung ropes and harness gear, but there were no windows an animal might crawl through. It seemed a safe enough place to leave him, and at least he’d be sheltered.

Josh saw what looked like a pile of junk on the other side of the barn and walked over to examine it. He found some broken-up chairs, a lamp without bulb or wiring, a small lawn mower and a coil of barbed wire. A mouse-eaten blue blanket covered more junk, and Josh lifted it away to see what was underneath.

“Glory,” he said softly. “Come take a look.”

She walked over beside him, and he ran his fingers across the cracked glass screen of a television set. “I haven’t seen one of these in a while,” he said wistfully, “I guess the ratings are pretty low these days, huh?” He punched the on-off button and started to turn through the channels, but the knob came off in his hand.

“Not worth a damn,” Glory said. “Just like everything else.”

The TV was supported on some sort of desk with rollers on it, and Josh picked up the set, turned it around and pulled the pressboard off to reveal the tube and the jungle of wires within. He felt about as dumb as a caveman, peering into a magic box that had once been a commonplace luxury-no, necessity-for millions of American homes. Without power, it was as useless as a stone-probably less so, really, because a stone could be used to kill rodents for the stewpot.

He set the TV aside, along with the other junk. It was going to take a smarter man than he to make juice run through wires and boxes show pictures that moved and spoke again, he mused. He bent down to the floor and found a box full of what looked like old wooden candlesticks. Another box held dusty bottles. He saw some pieces of paper scattered on the floor and picked up one. It was an announcement, and the faded red letters said Antique Auction! Jefferson City Flea Market! Saturday, June 5! Come Early, Stay Late! He opened his hand and let the announcement drift back to the floor and settle with a noise like a sigh amid the other pieces of yesterday’s news.

“Josh? What’s this thing?”

Glory was touching the desk with the rollers on it. Her hand found a small crank, and as she turned it there was the rattling noise of a chain moving over rusted gears. The rollers turned as achingly as old men revolving in their sleep. A number of rubber-cushioned pads were activated by the hand crank, coming down to press briefly against the rollers and then return to their original positions. Josh saw a small metal tray affixed to the other end of the desk; he picked up a few of the flea market announcements and put them in the tray. “Keep turning the crank,” he said, and they watched as the rollers and pads grasped one piece of paper at a time, fed them through a slot into the depths of the machine and delivered them to another tray at the opposite end. Josh found a sliding panel, pushed it back and looked into an arrangement of more rollers, trays of metal type and a dried-up series of spongy surfaces that Josh realized must have once been ink pads.

“We’ve got us a printing press,” he said. “How about that? Must be an old knocker, but it’s in pretty good shape.” He touched the close-grained oak of the press’s cabinet. “This was somebody’s labor of love. Sure is a shame to let it sit out here and rot.”

“Might as well rot here as anywhere else.” She grunted. “That’s the damnedest thing!”

“What is?”

“Before Jackson died… he wanted to start up a newspaper-just a little handout sheet. He said havin’ some kind of town newspaper would make everybody feel like more of a community. You know, people would take more of an interest in everybody else instead of shuttin’ themselves away. He didn’t even know this thing was out here. ’Course, that was just a dream.” She ran her hand across the oak next to Josh’s. “He had a lot of dreams that died.” Her hand touched his and quickly pulled away.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Josh could still feel the heat of her hand against his own. “He must’ve been a fine man,” he offered.

“He was. He had a good heart and a strong back, and he didn’t mind gettin’ his hands dirty. Before I met Jackson, I had a pretty rough life. I was full up with bad men and hard drinkin’. Been on my own since I was thirteen.” She smiled slightly. “A girl grows up fast. Well, I guess Jackson wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty on me, ’cause I’d sure be dead if he hadn’t turned me around. What about you? You have a wife?”

“Yes. An ex-wife, I mean. And two sons.”

Glory turned the hand crank and watched the rollers work. “What happened to ’em?”

“They were in south Alabama. When the bombs hit, I mean.” He drew a deep breath, slowly released it. “Down in Mobile. There’s a naval station in Mobile. Nuclear submarines, all kinds of ships. Was a naval station there, at least.” He watched Mule chomping at the straw on the floor. “Maybe they’re still alive. Maybe not. I… I guess it’s bad for me to think this, but… I kind of hope they died on the seventeenth of July. I hope they died watching television, or eating ice cream, or lying in the sun at the beach.” His gaze found Glory’s. “I just hope they died fast. Is that a bad thing to wish for?”

“No. It’s a decent wish,” Glory told him. And this time her hand touched his and did not retreat. Her other hand wandered up and gently brushed the black ski mask. “What do you look like under that thing?”

“I used to be ugly. Now I’m downright loathsome.”

She touched the hard gray skin that sealed the right eyehole. “Does that stuff hurt?”

“Sometimes it burns. Sometimes it itches so much I can hardly stand it. And sometimes…” He trailed off.

“Sometimes what?”

He hesitated, about to tell her what he had never told either Swan or Rusty. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “it feels like… my face is changing. It feels like the bones are moving. And it hurts like hell.”

“Maybe it’s healin’.”

He managed a weak smile. “Just what I need: a ray of optimism. Thank you, but I think I’m way beyond healing. These growths are about as hard as concrete.”

“Swan’s got the worst I’ve ever seen. She sounds like she can hardly draw a breath. Now, with that high fever she’s runnin’-” She stopped, because Josh was walking toward the door. “You and she’ve been through a lot together, haven’t you?” she asked.

Josh stopped. “Yes. If she dies, I don’t know what I’ll-” He caught himself, lowered his head and then lifted it again. “Swan won’t die,” he resolved. “She won’t. Come on, we’d better get back.”

“Josh? Wait-okay?”

“What is it?”

She worked the printing press’s hand crank, rubbing her fingers against the smooth oak. “You’re right about this thing. It’s a shame for it to sit out here and rot.”

“Like you said, here’s as good a place as any.”

“My shack would be a better place.”

“Your shack? What do you want that thing for? It’s useless!”

“Now, yes. But maybe not always. Jackson was right: It’d do wonders for Mary’s Rest to have some kind of newspaper-oh, not the kind people used to get thrown in their yards every afternoon, but maybe just a sheet of paper to tell folks who’s bein’ born, who’s dyin’, who’s got clothes to spare and who needs clothes. Right now people who live across the alley from each other are strangers, but a sheet of paper like that might bring the whole town together.”

“I think most people in Mary’s Rest are more interested in finding another day’s worth of food, don’t you?”

“Yes. For now. But Jackson was a smart man, Josh. If he’d known this thing was sittin’ here in a junkpile, he’d have toted it home on his back. I’m not sayin’ I know how to write or anything-hell, I have a hard enough time speakin’ right-but this thing might be a first step toward makin’ Mary’s Rest a real town again.”

“What are you going to use for paper?” Josh asked. “And how about ink?”

“Here’s paper.” Glory picked up a handful of auction announcements. “And I’ve made dye from dirt and shoe polish before. I can figure out how to make ink.”

Josh was about to protest again, but he realized a change had come over Glory; her eyes were excited, and their sparkle made her look five years younger. She has a challenge, he thought. She’s going to try to make Jackson’s dream come true.

“Help me,” Glory urged. “Please.”

Her mind was set. “All right,” Josh answered. “You take the other end. This thing’s going to be heavy.”

Two flies lifted off from the top of the printing press and darted around Josh’s head. A third sat motionlessly on the television set, and a fourth buzzed slowly just below the barn’s roof.

The press was lighter than it looked, and getting it out of the barn was relatively easy. They set it down outside, and Josh went back in to tend to Mule.

The horse nickered nervously, walking around and around the stall. Josh rubbed his muzzle to calm him the way he’d seen Swan do so many times. He filled the trough with snow and put the blue blanket over Mule to keep him warm. A fly landed on Josh’s hand, its touch stinging him as if the thing had been a wasp. “Damn!” Josh said, and he slapped his other hand down on it. A twitching, green-gray mess remained, but it still stung, and he wiped it off on his trousers.

“You’ll be okay out here,” Josh told the jittery horse as he rubbed its neck. “I’ll check on you later, how about that?” As he closed the barn door and latched it he hoped he was doing the right thing leaving Mule out there alone. But at least this place-such as it was-would protect Mule from the cold and the bobcats. Mule would have to hold his own against the flies.

Together, Glory and Josh lugged the press down the road.

Sixty-Two - [Seeds]

Under a darkening sky, two figures struggled through a forest of dead pines where the wind had sculpted snowdrifts into barriers five feet high.

Sister kept close watch on the CrackerJack compass and pointed her nose toward the southwest. Paul followed at a few paces, carrying the duffel bag slung over his shoulder and watching their rear and flanks for the furtive movements of animals; he knew they were being tracked and had been tracked since they’d left the cave. He’d seen only quick glimpses of them, hadn’t had time to tell what they were or how many, but he could smell the spoor of beasts. He kept the.357 gripped in his gloved right hand with his thumb on the safety.

Sister figured they had less than an hour of light left. They’d been traveling for almost five hours, according to the wrist-watch Robin had given her; she didn’t know how many miles they’d covered, but the going was excruciating, and her legs felt like stiff lengths of timber. The effort of struggling across rocks and over snowdrifts had made her sweat, and now the sound of the ice in her clothes brought up the memory of Rice Krispies cereal-snap, crackle and pop! She remembered that her daughter used to like Rice Krispies: “Make it talk, Mama!”

She forced the ghosts of the past away. They had seen no sign of life but the things that prowled around them, watching them hungrily in the deepening twilight. When darkness fell, the beasts would get bolder…

One step, she told herself. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going. She said it mentally over and over again, while her legs continued to carry her like the laboring movement of a machine. She held her satchel close, and her left arm had cramped and locked in that position, but she could feel the outline of the glass ring through the leather, and she drew strength from it as surely as if it was her second heart.

Swan, she thought. Who are you? Where do you come from? And why have I been led to you? If indeed it was a girl named Swan that the dreamwalk path had brought her to, Sister had no idea what she’d say to the girl. Hello, she practiced, you don’t know me, but I’ve come halfway across this country to find you. And I sure hope you’re worth it, because Lord, I want to lie down and rest!

But what if there was no girl named Swan in Mary’s Rest? What if Robin had been wrong? What if the girl was only passing through Mary’s Rest and might be gone by the time they arrived?

She wanted to pick up the pace, but her legs wouldn’t allow it. One step. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going.

A scream from the woods to her left almost shocked her out of her boots. She whirled to face the noise, heard the scream become the shrill wail of a beast and then a muttering, chuckling noise like a hyena might make. She thought she saw a pair of greedy eyes in the gloom; they gleamed balefully before receding into the forest.

“We haven’t got much more light,” Paul told her. “We should find a place to camp.”

She gazed toward the southwest. Nothing but a tortured landscape of dead pines, rocks and snowdrifts. It looked like a cold day in Hell. Wherever Mary’s Rest was, they were not going to reach it today. She nodded, and they started searching for shelter.

The best they could find was a narrow niche in a hollow surrounded by rough-edged boulders. They pushed the snow away to expose the earth and form a three-foot-high snow wall circling them, then Paul and Sister went to work gathering dead branches to start a fire. Around them, shrill cries echoed from the woods as beasts began to gather like lords at a feast table.

They made a small pile of branches and ringed them with stones, and Paul dribbled a little gasoline on the wood. The first match he scraped across a stone flared, fizzled and went out. That left them with two. Darkness was falling fast.

“Here goes,” Paul said tersely. He scraped the second match across the rock he was kneeling over, his other hand ready to cup the flame.

It flared, hissed and immediately began to die. He quickly held the weakening flame against a stick in the pile of branches, kneeling over it like a savage praying at the altar of a fire spirit.

“Catch, you little bastard,” he whispered between clenched teeth. “Come on! Catch!”

The flame was all but gone, just a tiny glint dancing in the dark.

And then there was a pop! as a few drops of the gasoline caught, and flame curled up around the stick like a cat’s tongue. The fire sputtered, crackled and began to grow. Paul added more gas.

A gout of flame leapt up, fire jumping from stick to stick. Within another minute they had heat and light, and they held their stiff hands toward the warmth.

“We’ll get there in the morning,” Paul said as they shared the dried squirrel meat. The stuff tasted like boiled leather. “I’ll bet we’ve only got about another mile.”

“Maybe.” She pried the lid off the can of baked beans with the all-purpose knife and scooped some out with her fingers. They were oily and had a metallic taste but seemed okay. She gave the can to Paul. “I just hope this kiddie compass works. If it doesn’t, we could be walking in circles.”

He’d already considered that possibility, but now he shrugged his shoulders and scooped the beans into his mouth. If that compass was one hair off, he realized, they could have already missed Mary’s Rest. “We haven’t gone seven miles yet,” he told her, though he wasn’t even sure of that. “We’ll know tomorrow.”

“Right. Tomorrow.”

She took first watch while Paul slept next to the fire, and she kept her back against a boulder with the Magnum on one side of her and the shotgun on the other.

Under its hard carapace of Job’s Mask, Sister’s face rippled with pain. Her cheekbone* and jaw were throbbing. The searing pain usually passed within a few minutes, but this time it intensified to a point where Sister had to lower her head and stifle a moan. Again, for the seventh or eighth time in the last few weeks, she felt sharp, cracking jolts that seemed to run deep beneath the Job’s Mask, down through the bones of her face. All she could do was clench her teeth and endure the pain until it passed, and when it was finally gone it left her shivering in spite of the fire.

That was a bad one, she thought. The pains were getting worse. She lifted her head and ran her fingers across the Job’s Mask. The knotty surface was as cool as ice on the slopes of a dormant volcano, but beneath it the flesh felt hot and raw. Her scalp was itching maddeningly, and she put her hand under the hood of her parka to touch the mass of growths that encased her skull and trailed down the back of her neck. She longed to dig her fingers through the crust and scratch her flesh until it bled.

Slap a wig on my bald head, she thought, and I’d still look like a graduate of gargoyle school! She balanced precariously between tears and laughter for a few seconds, but the laughter won out.

Paul sat up. “Is it my watch yet?”

“No. Couple of hours to go.”

He nodded, lay back down and was asleep again almost at once.

She continued to probe the Job’s Mask. Feels like my skin’s on fire underneath there-whatever skin I’ve got left, she thought. Sometimes, when the pain was acute and her flesh beneath the Job’s Mask felt like it was boiling, she could almost swear that the bones shifted like the foundations of an unsteady house. She could almost swear that she felt her face changing.

A glimpse of movement on the right brought her attention back to the business of survival. Something made a deep, guttural barking noise off in the distance, and another beast replied with a sound like that of a baby crying. She laid the shotgun across her lap and looked up at the sky. Nothing but darkness up there, and a sensation of low, hanging clouds like the black ceiling of a claustrophobic’s nightmare. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen the stars; maybe it had been on a warm summer’s night, when she was living in a cardboard box in Central Park. Or maybe she’d stopped noticing the stars a long time before the clouds had blanked them out.

She missed the stars. Without them, the sky was dead. Without them, what was there to make a wish on?

Sister held her hands toward the fire and shifted against the boulder to get more comfortable. A hotel suite this was not, but her legs weren’t aching so much now. She realized how tired she was, and she doubted she could have continued another fifty yards. But the fire felt good, and she had a shotgun across her lap, and she would blast hell out of anything that came within range. She put her hand on the satchel and traced the glass ring’s outline. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow we’ll know.

She leaned her head against the rock and watched Paul sleeping. Good for you, she thought. You deserve it.

The fire’s soft heat soothed her. The forest was silent. And Sister’s eyes closed. Just for a minute, she told herself. It won’t do any harm if I just rest for a-

She sat bolt upright. Before her, the fire was down to a few red embers, and the cold was slipping through her clothes. Paul was huddled up, still sleeping. Oh, Jesus! she thought as panic snapped at her. How long was I out? She was shivering, her joints throbbing with the cold, and she got up to add more branches to the fire. There were only a few small ones left, and as she knelt down and arranged them in the embers she sensed a quick, catlike movement behind her. The flesh tightened across the back of her neck.

And she knew with sickening certainty that she and Paul were no longer alone. Something was behind her, crouched on a boulder, and she’d left both weapons where she was sitting. She took a deep breath, made up her mind to move, turned and lunged for the shotgun. She picked it up and spun around to fire.

The figure sitting cross-legged atop the boulder lifted his gloved hands in mock surrender. A rifle lay across his knees, and he was wearing a familiar, patched brown coat with a cowl protecting his head.

“Hope you enjoyed your nap,” Robin Oakes said.

“Whazzit?” Paul sat up, blinking. “Huh?”

“Young man,” Sister said hoarsely, “I was about one second from sending you to a much warmer place than this. How long have you been sitting there?”

“Long enough so that you ought to be glad I don’t have four legs. If one person goes to sleep, the other has to keep watch or you’re both dead.” He looked at Paul. “And by the time you woke up, you’d be bobcat meat. I thought you two knew what you were doing.”

“We’re okay.” Sister took her finger off the trigger and put the weapon aside. Her insides felt like quivering jelly.

“Sure.” He glanced over his shoulder and called toward the forest, “Come on in!”

Three bundled-up figures emerged from the woods and scrambled up onto the boulder with Robin. All of the boys carried rifles, and one of them lugged another of the canvas bags that Robin’s highwaymen had stolen from Sister.

“You two didn’t make such a good distance, did you?” Robin asked her.

“I thought we did damned fine!” Paul was shaking the last of the sleep out of his head. “I figure we’ve got about another mile in the morning.”

Robin grunted disdainfully. “More like three, most likely. Anyway, I sat down and started thinking, back at the cave. I knew you’d make camp somewhere, probably screw that up, too.” He appraised the boulders and the wall of snow. “You’ve got yourselves trapped in here. When that fire went down, the things in the woods would’ve jumped you from all sides. We saw a lot of them, but we stayed downwind and low to the ground, and they didn’t see us.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Sister said.

“Oh, we didn’t come out here to warn you. We followed you to keep you from getting killed.” Robin climbed down the boulder, and the other boys did the same. They stood around the fire, warming their hands and faces. “It wasn’t hard. You left a trail that looked like a plow had gone through. Anyway, you forgot something.” He opened the other duffel bag, reached into it and brought out the second jug of moonshine that Hugh had given Paul. “Here.” He tossed it to Sister. “I think there’s enough left for everybody to have a swig.”

There was, and the moonshine’s fire heated Sister’s belly. Robin sent the three boys out to stand guard around the camp. “The trick is to make a lot of noise,” Robin said after they’d gone. “They don’t want to shoot anything, because the blood would drive the other animals crazy out there.” He sat down beside the fire, pulled his hood back and took his gloves off. “If you want to sleep, Sister, you’d better do it now. We’ll have to relieve them on watch before light.”

“Who put you in charge?”

“I did.” The firelight threw shadows in the hollows of his face, glinted off the fine hairs of his beard. His long hair, still full of feathers and bones, made him look like a savage prince. “I’ve decided to help you get to Mary’s Rest.”

“Why?” Paul asked. He was wary of the boy, didn’t trust him worth a damn. “What’s in it for you?”

“Maybe I want some fresh air. Maybe I want to travel.” His gaze flicked toward Sister’s satchel. “Maybe I want to see if you find who you’re looking for. Anyway, I pay my debts. You people helped me with one of mine, and I owe you. So I’ll get you to Mary’s Rest in the morning, and we’ll call it even, right?”

“Okay,” Sister agreed. “And thank you.”

“Besides, if you two get killed tomorrow, I want the glass ring. You won’t be needing it.” He leaned against the boulder and closed his eyes. “You’d better sleep while you can.”

A rifle shot echoed from the woods, followed by two more. Sister and Paul looked at each other uneasily, but the young highwayman lay motionless and undisturbed. The noise of rifle fire continued intermittently for another minute or so, followed by the angry shrieks of what sounded like several animals-but their cries were fading as they retreated. Paul reached for the moonshine jug to coax out the last drops, and Sister leaned back to contemplate tomorrow.