Swan Song

Swan Song Page 28

"She's out of her mind," Sister said, but Swan got up from the mattress and approached the woman. "Better leave her alone," Sister warned. "She looks pretty far gone."

"Make it stop... make it stop... oh, Jesus, make it stop," Sheila was raving, curled up in the corner. Her face gleamed with sweat in the lamplight, and the woman's body odor almost repulsed Swan - but Swan stood over her and finally bent down at her side. She hesitated, then reached out to touch the other woman. Sheila's hand found Swan's and gripped it with painful pressure. Swan did not pull away.

"Please... make the baby stop crying," Sheila begged.

"There's... there's no baby here. There's no one here but us."

"I hear the crying! I hear it!"

Swan didn't know what kind of torment this woman had lived through, but she couldn't bear to watch her suffer. She squeezed Sheila's hand and leaned closer to her. "Yes," she said softly, "I hear the crying, too. a baby crying. Isn't that righti"

"Yes! Yes! Make it stop before it's too late!"

"Too latei Too late for whati"

"Too late for it to live!" Sheila's fingers dug into Swan's hand. "He'll kill it if it doesn't stop crying!"

"I hear it," Swan told her. "Wait, wait. The baby's stopping now. The sound's going away."

"No, it's not! I can still hear - "

"The sound's going away," Swan repeated, her face only a few inches from Sheila's. "It's getting quieter now. Quieter. I can hardly hear it at all. Someone's taking care of the baby. It's very quiet now. Very quiet. The crying's gone."

Sheila drew a sharp, sudden breath. Held it for a few seconds, and let it out in a soft, agonized moan. "Gonei" she asked.

"Yes," Swan answered. "The baby's stopped crying. It's all over."

"Is... is the baby still alivei"

That seemed very important to her. Swan nodded. "Still alive."

Sheila's mouth was slack, and a thin thread of saliva broke over the lower lip and trailed down into her lap. Swan started to work her hand free, but Sheila wouldn't let her go.

"You need some helpi" Sister offered, but Swan shook her head.

Sheila's hand came up, very slowly, and the tips of her fingers touched Swan's cheek. Swan couldn't see the woman's eyes - just two dark craters in the chalky flesh. "Who are youi" Sheila whispered.

"Swan. My name is Swan. Rememberi"

"Swan," Sheila repeated, her voice gentle and awed. "The baby... never stopped crying before. Never stopped crying... until it was dead. I never even knew if the baby was a boy or girl. It never stopped crying before. Oh... you're so pretty." Her dirty fingers moved across Swan's face. "So pretty. Men are beasts, you know. They take pretty things... and they make them ugly." Her voice cracked. She began to cry softly, her cheek resting against the girl's hand. "I'm so tired of being ugly," she whispered. "Oh... I'm so tired..."

Swan let her cry, and she stroked the woman's head. Her fingers touched scabs and sores.

after a while, Sheila lifted her head. "Can... can I ask you somethingi"

"Yes."

Sheila wiped her eyes and snuffled her nose. "Will you... let me brush your hairi"

Swan stood up and helped Sheila to her feet; then she went to the dressing table and sat down before the mirror. Sheila took a tentative step after her, followed by another. She reached the dresser and picked up a brush that was clotted with hair. Then Sheila's fingers smoothed out Swan's mane and she began to brush it, long and slow, stroke after stroke.

"Why are you herei" Sheila asked. "What do they want with youi"

Her tone was hushed and reverent. Sister had heard it before, when other people in Mary's Rest had talked to Swan. Before the girl could answer, Sister said, "They're going to keep us here. They're going to make Swan work for them."

Sheila stopped brushing. "Work for themi Like... as an RLi"

"In a way, yes."

She paused for a few seconds, then continued slowly brushing Swan's hair. "Such a pretty thing," she whispered, and Sister saw her blink heavily, as if trying to grapple with thoughts that she'd rather shut out.

Sister knew nothing about the woman, but she watched the way Sheila gently used the brush, her fingers moving dreamlike through Swan's hair to loosen tangles. She saw how Sheila kept admiring Swan's face in the mirror, then hesitantly lifting her gaze to her own shriveled, worn-out features - and Sister decided to take a chance. "It's a shame," she said quietly, "that they're going to make her ugly."

The brush stopped.

Sister glanced quickly at Swan, who'd begun to realize what the older woman was trying; then Sister came up to stand behind Sheila. "Not all men are beasts," she said, "but those men are. They're going to use Swan and make her ugly. They're going to crush her and destroy her."

Sheila looked at Swan in the mirror and then at herself. She stood very still.

"You can help us," Sister said. "You can stop them from making her ugly."

"No." Her voice was weak and listless, like that of a weary child. "No, I... can't. I'm nobody."

"You can help us get out of here. Just talk to the guards. Get their attention and move them away from that door for one minute. That's all."

"No... no..."

Sister put her hand on the woman's shoulder. "Look at her. Go ahead. Now look at yourself." Sheila's eyes shifted. "Look what they've made you into."

"Ugly," Sheila whispered. "Ugly. Ugly. Ugly..."

"Please help us get away."

Sheila didn't reply for perhaps a minute, and Sister was afraid that she'd lost her. Suddenly the other woman began brushing Swan's hair again. "I can't," Sheila said. "They'd kill all of us. It wouldn't matter to them, because they like to use their guns."

"They won't kill us. The colonel doesn't want us hurt."

"They'd hurt me. Besides, where would you goi Everything's fucked up. There's no place to hide."

Sister cursed inwardly, but Sheila was right. Even if they did manage to escape the trailer, it would only be a matter of time before the soldiers caught them again. She looked at Swan in the mirror, and Swan shook her head a fraction to communicate the message that it was no use pursuing that tactic. Sister's attention fell on the glass bottles of perfume atop the dresser. Now she had very little to lose. "Sheila," she said, "you like pretty things, don't youi"

"Yes."

So far, so good. Here comes the kicker. "Would you like to see something that's really prettyi"

Sheila looked up. "Whati"

"It's... a secret. a buried treasure. Would you like to see iti"

"I know all about buried treasure. Roland buried the stash. He killed the Fat Man, too."

Sister disregarded her raving and stuck doggedly to the point. "Sheila," she said in a confiding tone, "I know where the treasure's buried. and it's something that could help us. If you're a wh - an RL," she quickly amended, "the guards wouldn't stop you from leaving. Like you said, you ought to be on the stroll right now. But you've never seen anything as beautiful as this treasure is, and if you went where I said and brought it back here, you'd be helping Swan. Isn't that right, Swani"

"Yes, that's right."

"It would have to be our secret, though," Sister continued, carefully watching Sheila's slack, emotionless face. "You couldn't let anybody know where you were going - and you couldn't let anybody see you digging it up or bringing it back here. You'd have to hide it under your coat. Could you do thati"

"I... don't know. I just did my nails."

"The buried treasure can stop them from making her ugly," Sister said, and she saw the thought register with slow power on the woman's face. "But it'll be our secret. Just between us roommates. Okayi" Still Sheila didn't answer, and Sister said, "Please help us."

Sheila stared at her reflection in the mirror. She hardly recognized the monster who peered back. The colonel didn't need her, she realized. Had never needed her, except to use and abuse. Men are beasts, she thought, and she remembered the colonel's map of a new america, with its sprawling gray Prison area.

That was not a country she wanted to live in.

She put the brush down. She felt Swan watching her in the mirror, and Sheila knew she could not - must not - let them make such a beautiful thing as ugly as herself.

"Yes," she answered finally. "I'll help you."  

Eighty-seven

"Stop!" he roared, and as the Jeep skidded in the plowed-up, icy mud of the rubied cornfield the man with the scarlet eye leapt over the vehicle's side and ran through the stubble.

I've got it now! he thought. It's mine! and whatever it is - ring of light, mystic gift or crown - I'm going to break it into bits right in front of her eyes!

The mud clung at his boots as he ran, and he tripped over the corn stubble and almost fell in his fury to get there.

Gray, murky light painted the clouds. In the wind he could smell fire and blood, and he stepped on the naked corpses in his way.

Oh, she thought she was so clever! he raged. So clever! Well, now she would understand that he was not to be denied, not to be fucked with; she would understand that it was still his party, after all the smoke had cleared and the bodies were counted.

at the first tinge of light, the guards had brought Sister to the colonel's trailer, and she'd been placed in a chair at the center of the room. He'd sat down in a chair before her, while Roland and Macklin had watched. and then he'd leaned his Oriental face close to hers, and he'd said in a Southern drawl, "Where'd ya'll bury iti"

She'd gathered up her saliva and spat in his face - but that was all right! Oh, yes! That was just fine! He'd wanted her to fight him, to block her memory with that damned blue light spinning around, so he could press both hands against her cheeks until blood spurted from her nostrils. and then, through the haze of her pain, he'd seen the pickaxe in her mind again, had seen it uplifted and slammed down into the dirt. She'd tried to barricade herself behind the blue light again and blind him with it. But he was too fast for her, and he'd slipped into her mind with ease, since the little bitch wasn't there to distract him.

and there it was. There it was. The plank of wood that had RUSTY WEaTHERS carved into it.

She'd buried the glass ring in the cowboy's grave.

He'd almost killed her when he saw it, but he wanted her alive to watch him break the glass to pieces. The grave was just ahead, in the clearing between the stubble and the rows of apple tree seedlings that had been scooped from the earth and loaded on another truck. He ran toward the area where he knew the cowboy had been buried. The ground under his boots had been chewed up by truck tires and the feet of soldiers, and the mud tried to grip and hold him.

He was in the clearing, and he looked around for the makeshift grave marker.

But it was not there.

Tire tracks interwove across the clearing like the plaid on the coat of the man he'd ripped apart. He looked in all directions and decided he was not yet in the correct place. He ran on about thirty more yards to the west, stopped and hunted again.

Nude corpses littered the clearing. He picked them up and flung them aside like broken dolls as he searched for any sign of the grave.

after about ten minutes of frenzied search, he found the grave marker - but it was lying flat and covered with mud. He got down on his knees and started clawing at the ground around the marker, digging the dirt up and throwing it behind him like a dog after a mislaid bone. His hands only found more dirt.

He heard voices and looked up. Four soldiers were prowling the field for anything the scavenger brigades might have missed. "You! Start digging!" he shouted at them - and they stared stupidly at him until he realized he'd spoken in Russian. "Dig!" he commanded, finding his English again. "Get down on your hands and knees and dig this whole fucking field up!"

One of the men ran. The other three hesitated, and a soldier called, "What are we digging fori"

"a bag! a leather bag! It's here somewhere! It's - " and then he abruptly stopped and gazed around at the muddy, ravaged clearing. armored cars and trucks had been moving across it all night. Hundreds of soldiers had marched through the clearing and the cornfield. The marker might have been knocked down an hour, three hours or six hours earlier. It might have been dragged under the wheels of a truck, or kicked aside by the boots of fifty men. There was no way to tell where the grave had actually been, and frantic rage sizzled through him. He lifted his head and screamed with anger.

The three soldiers fled, tumbling over one another in their panic to get away.

The man with the scarlet eye picked up the nude corpse of a man by the neck and one stiff, outstretched arm. He swung it away, and then he kicked the head of another body like a football. He fell upon a third corpse and twisted its head until the spine snapped with a noise like off-key guitar strings. Then, still seething with rage, he got on all fours like an animal and searched for someone living to kill.

But he was alone with the dead.

Wait! he thought. Wait!

He sat up again, his clothes filthy and his shifting face splattered with black mud, and he grinned. He began to giggle, then to chuckle, and finally he laughed so loud that the few remaining dogs that slinked through the alleys heard and howled in response.

If it's lost, he realized, no one else can have it either! The earth's swallowed it up! It's gone, and nobody will ever find it again!

He kept laughing, thinking about how stupid he'd been. The glass ring was gone forever! and Sister herself was the one who'd thrown it away in the mud!

He felt a lot better now, a lot stronger and more clearheaded. Things had worked out just as they should. It was still his party, because the little bitch belonged to Macklin, the human hand had destroyed Mary's Rest and Sister had consigned her treasure to the black, unforgiving dirt - where it would lie forever next to a cowboy's charred bones.

He stood up, satisfied that the grave was lost, and began striding across the field to where his driver waited with the Jeep. He turned back for one last look, and his teeth glinted white against his mud-smeared face. It would take a feat of magic, he mused, to make that damned glass ring reappear - and he was the only magician he knew.

Now we march, he thought. We take the little bitch with us, and we take Sister, that big nigger and the boy, too, to keep her in line. The rest of the dogs can live in these miserable shacks until they rot - which won't be very long.

Now we go to West Virginia and Warwick Mountain. To find God. He smiled, and the driver who was waiting just ahead saw that awful, inhuman grimace and shuddered. The man with the scarlet eye was very eager to meet "God," very eager indeed. after that, the little bitch would go to her prison farm, and then... who knowsi

He liked being a five-star general. It was a task he seemed particularly well suited for, and as he swept his gaze across the plain of heaped-up corpses he felt like the king of all he surveyed, and very much at home.  

Eighty-eight

at the crash of the dinner gong, Josh started salivating like an animal.

The guard was beating on the truck's rear door with his rifle butt, signaling the three prisoners to move to the far end of their cell-on-wheels. Josh, Robin and Brother Timothy knew that noise very well. Robin had held out the longest, refusing to eat any of the watery gruel for four days - until Josh had held him down and force-fed him, and afterward, when Robin wanted to fight, Josh had knocked him flat and told him he was going to live whether he liked it or not.

"What fori" Robin had asked, aching to fight but too smart to charge the black giant again. "They're just going to kill us anyway!"

"I don't really give a crap whether you live or not, you pissant punk!" Josh had told him, trying to make the boy mad enough to stay alive. "If you'd been a man, you would've protected Swan! But they're not going to kill us today. Otherwise they wouldn't have wasted the food. and what about Swani You're just going to give up and leave her to the wolvesi"

"Man, you're a jive fool! She's probably already dead, and Sister, too!"

"No way. They're keeping Swan and Sister alive - and us, too. So from now on you'll eat, or by God, I'll shove your face in that bowl and make you suck it up your nostrils! Understandi"

"Big man," Robin had sneered, crawling away into his customary corner and wrapping his dirty, threadbare brown blanket around himself. But from that day on he'd eaten his food without hesitation.

The truck's metal rear door was perforated with thirty-seven small round holes - both Josh and Robin had counted them many times, and they had devised a mental connect-the-dots-type game with them - which let in dim gray light and air. They were useful peepholes, too, through which to see what was going on in the camp and the landscape they were passing over. But now the door was unbolted, and it slid upward on its rollers. The guard with the rifle - who Robin less-than-affectionately called Sergeant Shitpants - barked, "Buckets out!"

Two more guards stood by with guns aimed and ready as first Josh, then Robin and Brother Timothy brought their waste buckets out.

"Step down!" Sergeant Shitpants ordered. "Single file! Move it!"

Josh squinted in the hazy light of morning. The camp was gearing up to move again; tents were being packed up, vehicles being checked over and gassed up from drums on the back of supply trucks. Josh had noted that the number of gas drums was dwindling fast, and the army of Excellence had left many broken-down vehicles behind. He looked around at the land as he walked about ten yards away from the truck and dumped his bucket into a ravine. Dense thicket and leafless woods lay on the far side of the ravine, and in the misty distance were snow-covered, hard-edged mountains. The highway they'd been traveling on led up into those mountains, but Josh didn't know exactly where they were. Time was jumbled and confused; he thought it had been two weeks since they'd left Mary's Rest, but he wasn't even sure of that. Maybe it was more like three weeks. anyway, by this time they'd left Missouri far behind, he figured.

and Glory and aaron as well. When the soldiers had come to take him and Robin out of the chicken coop, Josh had had time only to pull Glory against him and say, "I'll be back." Her eyes had looked right through him. "Listen to me!" he'd said, shaking her - and finally she'd let her mind return and had focused on the handsome black man who stood before her. "I'll be back. You just be strong, you heari and take care of the boy as best you can."

"You won't be back. No. You won't."

"I will! I haven't seen you in that spangled dress yet. That's worth coming back for, isn't iti"

Glory had gently touched his face, and Josh had seen that she wanted desperately to believe. and then one of the soldiers had thrust a rifle barrel at his injured ribs, and Josh had almost doubled up with agony - but he'd forced himself to remain standing and to walk out of the chicken coop with dignity.

When the trucks, armored cars and trailers of the army of Excellence had finally rolled out of Mary's Rest, about forty people followed on foot for a while, calling Swan's name, sobbing and wailing. The soldiers had used them for target practice until the last fifteen or so turned back.

"Returrrrn buckets!" Sergeant Shitpants thundered after Robin and Brother Timothy had emptied theirs. The three prisoners took their buckets back into the truck, and the sarge commanded, "Bowls ready!"

They brought out the small wooden bowls they'd all been given, and about that time a cast-iron pot arrived from the field kitchen. a bland soup made of canned tomato paste and fortified with crumbled saltines was ladled into the bowls; the menu was usually the same, delivered twice a day, except sometimes the soup had slivers of salt pork or Spam floating in it.

"Cups out!"

The prisoners offered their tin cups as another soldier poured water from a canteen. The liquid was brackish and oily - certainly not water from the spring. This was water from melted snow, because it left a film in the mouth, made the back of the throat sore and caused ulcers on Josh's gums. He knew there were big wooden kegs of springwater on the supply trucks, and he knew also that none of them would get a drop of it.

"Back up!" Sergeant Shitpants ordered, and as the prisoners obeyed the metal door was pulled down and bolted shut, and feeding time was over.

Inside the truck, each found his own space to eat in - Robin in his corner, Brother Timothy in another, and Josh toward the center. When he was finished, Josh pulled his tattered blanket around his shoulders, because the unlined metal interior of the truck's storage space always stayed frigid; then he stretched out to sleep again. Robin got up, pacing back and forth to burn off nervous energy.

"Better save it," Josh said, hoarse from the contaminated water.

"For whati Oh, yeah, I guess we're going to make our break today, huhi Sure! I'd really better save it!" He felt sluggish and weak, and his head ached so much he could hardly think. He knew it was a reaction to the water after his system had been cleaned out by the spring in Mary's Rest. But all he could do to keep from going crazy was move around.

"Forget trying to escape," Josh told nun, for about the fiftieth time. "We've got to stay near Swan."

"We haven't seen her since they threw us in here! Man, there's no telling what the bastards have done to her! I say we've got to get out - and then we can help Swan get away!"

"It's a big camp. Even if we could get out - which we couldn't - how would we find heri No, it's best to stay right here, lay low and see what they've got planned for us."

"Lay lowi" Robin laughed incredulously. "If we lay any lower we'll have dirt on our eyelids! I know what they've got planned! They're going to keep us in here till we rot, or shoot us on the side of the road somewhere!" His head pounded fiercely, and he had to kneel down and press his palms against his temples until the pain had passed. "We're dead," he rasped finally. "We just don't know it yet."

Brother Timothy slurped at his bowl. He licked the last of it from the sides; he had a patchy dark beard now, and his skin was as white as the lightning streak that marked his oily black hair. "I've seen her," he said matter-of-factly - the first utterance he'd made in three days. Both Josh and Robin were shocked silent. Brother Timothy lifted his head; one lens of his spectacles was cracked, and electrical tape held the glasses together on the bridge of his nose. "Swan," he said. "I've seen her."

Josh sat up. "Wherei Where'd you see heri"

"Out there. Walking around one of the trailers. That other woman - Sister - was there, too. The guards were right behind them. I guess that was their exercise break." He picked up the tin cup and sipped the water as if it were liquid gold. "I saw them... day before yesterday, I think. Yes. Day before yesterday. When I went out to read the maps."

Josh and Robin moved around him, watching him with new interest. Lately the soldiers had been coming for Brother Timothy and taking him to Colonel Macklin's Command Center, where old maps of Kentucky and West Virginia were tacked to the wall. Brother Timothy answered questions from Captain Croninger, Macklin and the man who called himself Friend; he'd shown them the Warwick Mountain Ski Resort on the map, over in Pocahontas County, just west of the Virginia line and the dark crags of the alleghenies. But that wasn't the place he'd found God, he'd told them; the ski resort lay in the foothills on the eastern side of Warwick Mountain, and God lived in the heights on the opposite side, way up where the coal mines were.

The best that Josh could determine from Brother Timothy's rambling, often incoherent tale was that he'd been in a van with either his family or another group of survivors, heading west from somewhere in Virginia. Someone was after them; Brother Timothy said their pursuers rode motorcycles and had chased them for fifty miles. The van either ran off the road or had a blowout, but they'd made it on foot to the shuttered Warwick Mountain Hotel - and there the motorcycle riders had trapped them, attacking with machetes, butcher knives and meat cleavers.

Brother Timothy thought he recalled lying in a snowdrift on his belly. Blood was all over his face, and he could hear thin, agonized screaming. Soon the screaming stopped, and smoke began to curl from the hotel's stone chimney. He ran and kept going cross-country through the woods; then he had found a cave large enough to squeeze his body into during the long, freezing night. and the next day he'd come upon God, who had sheltered him until the motorcycle riders stopped searching for him and went away.

"Well, what about heri" Robin prompted irritably. "Was she all righti"

"Whoi"

"Swan! Was she okayi"

"Oh, yes. She seemed to be fine. a little thin, maybe. Otherwise a-OK." He sipped water and ran it over his tongue. "That's a word God taught me."

"Look, you crazy fool!" Robin grasped the collar of his grimy coat. "What part of the camp did you see her ini"

"I know where they're keeping her. In Sheila Fontana's trailer, over in the RL district."

"RLi What's thati" Josh asked.

"Red Light, I think. Where the whores are."

Josh pushed aside the first thought that came at him: that they were using Swan as a prostitute. But no, no; they wouldn't do that. Macklin wanted to use Swan's power to grow crops for his army, and he wasn't going to risk her getting hurt or infected with disease. and Josh pitied the fool who tried to force himself on Sister.

"You don't... think..." Robin's voice trailed off. He felt breathless and sick, as if he'd been kicked in the stomach, and if he saw any indication that Josh thought it might be true, he knew he was going to lose his mind in that instant.

"No," Josh told him. "That's not why she's here."

Robin believed it. Or wanted to, very badly. He let go of Brother Timothy's coat and crawled away, sitting with his back against the metal wall and his knees drawn up to his chest.

"Who's Sheila Fontanai" Josh asked. "a prostitutei"

Brother Timothy nodded and returned to slowly sipping his water. "She's watching them for Colonel Macklin."

Josh looked around their makeshift prison and felt the walls pressing in on him. He was sick of the cold metal, sick of the smell, sick of those thirty-seven holes in the door. "Damn! Isn't there any way out of herei"

"Yes," Brother Timothy replied.

That got Robin's attention again and brought him back from his memory of awakening Swan with a kiss.

Brother Timothy held up his tin cup. He ran a finger along a small, sharp edge that had broken loose from the handle. "This is the way out," he said softly. "You can use it on your throat, if you like." He drank the rest of the water and offered the cup to Josh.

"No, thanks. But don't let me stop you."

Brother Timothy smiled slightly. He put the cup aside. "I would, if I were without hope. But I'm not."

"How about spreading the cheer around, theni" Robin said.

"I'm leading them to God."

Robin scowled. "Excuse me if I don't jump right up and dance."

"You would, if you knew what I do."

"We're listening," Josh prompted.

Brother Timothy was silent. Josh thought he was going to refuse to answer, and then the man leaned his back against the wall and said quietly, "God told me that the prayer for the final hour will bring down the talons of Heaven upon the heads of the wicked. In the final hour, all evil will be swept away, and the world will be washed clean again. God told me... he was going to wait on Warwick Mountain."

"Wait for whati" Robin asked.

"To see who won," Brother Timothy explained. "Good or Evil. and when I lead Colonel Macklin's army of Excellence up Warwick Mountain, God will see for himself who the victors are. But he won't permit Evil to conquer. Oh, no." He shook his head, his eyes dreamy and blissful. "He'll see that it's the final hour, and he'll pray to the machine that calls down the talons of Heaven." He looked at Josh. "You understandi"

"No. What machinei"

"The one that speaks and thinks for hour after hour, day after day. You've never seen such a machine as that. God's army built it, a long time ago. and God knows how to use it. You wait, and you'll see."

"God doesn't really live on top of a mountain!" Robin said. "If there's anybody up there, it's just a crazy man who thinks he's God!"

Brother Timothy's head slowly swiveled toward Robin. His face was tight, his eyes steady. "You'll see. at the final hour, you'll see. Because the world will be washed clean again, and all that is will be no more. The last of the Good must die with the Evil. Must die, so the world can be reborn. You must die. and you." He looked at Josh. "and me. and even Swan."

"Sure!" Robin scoffed, but the man's sincerity gave him the creeps. "I'd hate to be in your skin when old Colonel Mack finds out you've been jiving him along."

"Soon, young man," Brother Timothy told him. "Very soon. We're on Highway 60 right now, and yesterday we passed through Charleston." There hadn't been much left, only burned-out and empty buildings, a brackish contaminated river, and maybe two hundred people living in wood-and-clay hovels. The army of Excellence had promptly taken all their guns, ammunition and clothing and their meager supply of food. The aOE had raided and destroyed five settlements since leaving Mary's Rest; none of them had given even the slightest resistance. "We'll keep following this highway to the junction of 219," Brother Timothy continued, "and then we'll turn north. There'll be a ghost town called Slatyfork within forty or fifty miles. I hid there for a while after I left God. I hoped he'd call me back, but he didn't. a road goes east from that town, up the side of Warwick Mountain. and that's where we'll find God waiting." His eyes shone. "Oh, yes! I know the way very well, because I always hoped to come back to him. My advice to both of you is to prepare yourselves for the final hour - and to pray for your souls."

He crawled away into his corner, and for a long time afterward Josh and Robin could hear him muttering and praying in a high, singsong voice.

Robin shook his head and lay down on his side to think.

Brother Timothy had left his tin cup behind. Josh picked it up and sat thoughtfully for a moment. Then he ran his finger along the handle's sharp edge.

It drew a fine line of blood.  

Eighty-nine

"Please," Sheila Fontana said, touching Sister's shoulder. "Can I... hold it againi"

Sister was sitting on a mattress on the floor, drinking the vile soup that the guards had brought in a few minutes before. She looked over at Swan, who sat nearby with her own bowl of watery breakfast, and then she lifted the thin blanket that was draped across the lower end of the mattress; underneath, the mattress had been slashed open and some of the stuffing pulled out. Sister reached up into the hole, her fingers searching.

She withdrew the battered leather satchel and offered it to Sheila.

The other woman's eyes lit up, and she sat down on the floor the way children had once done on Christmas morning.

Sister watched as Sheila hurriedly unzipped the satchel.

Sheila reached into it, and her hand came out gripping the circle of glass.

Dark blue fire rippled through it, brightened for a few seconds and then faded away. The somber blue picked up Sheila's rapid heartbeat. "It's brighter today!" Sheila said, her fingers gently caressing the glass. Only one of the glass spikes remained. "Don't you think it's brighter todayi"

"Yes," Swan agreed. "I think it is."

"Oh... it's pretty. So pretty." She held it out to Sister. "Make it be bright!"

Sister took it, and as her hand closed on its cool surface the jewels flared and fire burned along the embedded filaments.

Sheila stared at it, transfixed, and in its wonderful glow her face lost its hardness, the lines and cracks softening, the toil of the years falling away. She'd done just as Sister had said that first night. She'd gone out into the field and searched for the grave marker that said RUSTY WEaTHERS. Trucks and armored cars were rolling over the field, and soldiers called mockingly to her, but none of them bothered her. at first she couldn't find the marker, and she'd wandered back and forth across the field in search of it. But she'd kept looking until she'd found it, still planted in the earth but leaning crazily to one side and all but ripped loose. Tire tracks had zigzagged all around it, and there was a dead man lying near it with most of his face shot away. She'd gotten down on her knees and begun to dig through the churned-up dirt. and then, finally, she'd seen the edge of the leather satchel sticking up, and she'd worked it loose. She had not opened the satchel but had hidden it up under her coat so no one would take it from her. Then she'd done the last thing that Sister had said: She'd pulled the marker out of the ground and had taken it far away from where it originally was, and there she'd left it lying in the mud.

and keeping the satchel in the folds of her heavy coat and hiding her muddy hands, she'd returned to her trailer. One of the guards had called out, "Hey, Sheila! Didja get paid, or was it another freebiei" The other one had tried to grab at her breasts, but Sheila had gotten inside and shut the door in his leering face.

"So pretty," Sheila whispered as she watched the jewels shine. "So pretty."

Sister knew that Sheila was entranced by the circle of glass, and she'd kept their secret very well. During the time they'd been together, Sheila had told Sister and Swan about her life before the seventeenth of July, and how she and Rudy had been attacked by Colonel Macklin and Roland Croninger in the dirtwart land, on the edge of the Great Salt Lake. She didn't hear the infant crying much anymore, and Rudy no longer crawled after her in her nightmares; whenever the baby did start to cry, Swan was always there, and she made the baby stop.

"So pretty," she whispered.

Sister stared at her for a moment - and then she snapped off the last glass spike. "Here," she said, and it rippled with bright emerald green and sapphire blue as she held it toward Sheila. The other woman just looked at it. "Take it," Sister offered. "It's yours."

"Minei"

"That's right. I don't know what's ahead for us. I don't know where we'll be tomorrow - or a week from tomorrow. But I want you to have this. Take it."

Slowly, Sheila lifted her hand. She hesitated, and Sister said, "Go ahead." Then Sheila took it, and at once the colors darkened again to the somber blue. But down deep inside the glass there was a small ruby-red glint, like the flame of a candle. "Thank you... thank you," Sheila said, almost overcome. It didn't occur to her that it would have been worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the world that had used to be. She lovingly moved her fingers over the tiny red glint. "It'll get brighter, won't iti" she asked hopefully.

"Yes," Sister replied. "I think it will."

and then Sister turned her attention to Swan, and she knew it was time.

She remembered something the Junkman had told her, when he'd wanted to see what was inside the satchel: "Can't hold onto things forever. Got to pass them along."

She knew what the circle of glass was. Had known it for a long time. Now, with the last spire broken off, it was even more clear. Beth Phelps had known, long ago in the ruined church, when it had reminded her of the Statue of Liberty: "It could be a crown, couldn't iti" Beth had asked.

The man with the scarlet eye had realized, as well, when he'd asked her where it was: "The ring. The crown," he'd said.

The crown.

and Sister knew to whom that crown belonged. She'd known it ever since she'd found Swan in Mary's Rest and seen the new corn growing.

Can't hold onto things forever, she thought. But oh, she wanted to so very, very badly. The glass crown had become her life; it had lifted her off her feet and made her go on, one step at a time, through the nightmare land. She'd clung to the crown with the jealous fervor of a New York City bag lady, and she'd both shed and taken blood to protect it.

and now it was time. Yes. Now it was time.

Because for her the dreamwalk path had ended. When she looked into the glass, she saw beautiful jewels and threads of gold and silver, but nothing more. Her dreamwalking was done.

It was for Swan to take the next step.

Sister got up off the mattress and approached Swan, holding the shining circle of glass before her. Swan realized it was the image she'd seen in Rusty's magic mirror. "Stand up," Sister said, and her voice quavered.

Swan did.

"This belongs to you," Sister said. "It always belonged to you. I've just been its keeper." Her fingers traced a filament of platinum, and it sizzled within the glass. "But I want you to remember one thing, and hold it fast: If a miracle can make sand into something like this... then just think - just dream - of what people can be." and she placed the crown on Swan's head.

It was a perfect fit.

Golden light suddenly flared around the crown, receded and flared again. The brilliant glow made both Sister and Sheila squint, and down deep within the gold more colors bloomed like a garden in sunlight.

Sheila put a hand to her mouth; her eyes overflowed, and she began laughing and crying at the same time as the colors washed over her face.

Sister felt heat radiating from the glass, as startling and strong as if she'd caught a faceful of sun. It was getting so bright that she had to retreat a step, her hand rising to shield her eyes.

"What's happeningi" Swan asked, aware of the brightness and a tingling sensation of warmth in her scalp. She was getting scared, and she started to take the crown off, but Sister said, "No! Don't touch it!"

The golden, fiery light had begun to ripple through Swan's hair. Swan stood as rigidly as if balancing a book on her head, scared to death but excited, too.

The golden light flared again, and in the next instant Swan's hair seemed to be on fire. The light was spreading over her forehead and cheeks in tendrils, and then Swan's face became a mask of light - a wonderful and terrifying sight that almost knocked Sister to her knees. The fierce glow spread over Swan's throat and neck and began to wind like golden smoke around her shoulders and arms, rippling down over her hands and around each finger.

Sister reached toward Swan; her hand entered the radiance and touched Swan's cheek - but it felt like armor plate, though she could still see the faint impression of Swan's features and the girl's eyes. Sister's fingers could not reach Swan's skin - not her cheeks, her chin, her forehead - not anywhere.

Oh, God, Sister thought - because she'd realized the crown was weaving an armor of light around Swan's body.

It had covered her almost to the waist. Swan felt as if she were standing at the center of a torch, but the warmth was not unpleasant, and she saw the fiery reflection on the walls and the faces of Sister and Sheila with vision only slightly tinged golden. She looked down at her arms, saw them ablaze; she curled her fingers, and they felt fine - no pain, no stiffness, no sense of anything around them at all. The light moved with her, cleaving to her flesh like a second skin. The fire had begun to crawl down her legs.

She moved, cocooned by light, to the mirror. The sight of what she was becoming was too much for her. She reached up, grasped the crown and lifted it off her head.

The golden glow faded almost at once. It pulsed... pulsed... and the armor of light evaporated like drifting mist.

Then Swan was as she'd been before, just a girl holding a ring of sparkling glass.

She couldn't find her voice for a minute. Then she held the crown to Sister, and said, "I... I think... you'd better keep it for me."

Slowly, Sister lifted her hand and accepted it. She returned the crown to the satchel and zipped it up. Then, moving like a sleepwalker, she pulled up the blanket and put the satchel back in the mattress. But her eyes still buzzed with golden fire, and as long as she lived she'd never forget what she'd just witnessed.

She wondered what might have happened if, as an experiment, she'd balled up her fist and tried to strike Swan in the face. She didn't want to suffer broken knuckles to find out. Would the armor have turned away the blade of a knifei a bulleti a bomb's shrapneli

Of all the powers the circle of glass held, she knew that this was one of the greatest - and it had been saved for Swan alone.

Sheila held her own piece of the crown up before her face. The red glint was stronger; she was sure of it. She got up and hid that in the mattress, too.

and perhaps thirty seconds later, there was a loud banging at the door. "Sheila!" a guard called. "We're getting ready to move out!"

"Yeah," she answered. "Yeah. We're ready."

"Everything okay in therei"

"Yeah. Fine."

"I'll be driving the rig today. We'll be hitting the road in about fifteen minutes." a chain rattled as it was being fastened around the doorknob and across the door; then there was the solid click of a padlock. "Now you're nice and tight."

"Thanks, Danny!" Sheila said, and when the guard had gone Sheila knelt on the floor beside Swan and pressed the girl's hand against her cheek.

But Swan was lost in thought. Her mind had turned to the visions of green fields and orchards. Were those images of things that would be, or things that could bei Were they visions of the prison farm, the fields tended by slaves and stuttering machines, or were they places free of barbed wire and brutalityi

She didn't know, but she understood that each mile they traveled brought her closer to the answer, whatever it was to be.

In Macklin's Command Center, preparations were being made to get underway. The fuel allocation reports from the Mechanical Brigade lay on his desk, and Roland stood next to Friend in front of the West Virginia map tacked to the wall. a red line marked their progress along Highway 60. Roland got as close to Friend as he could; he was tortured with fever, and the cold that came off the other man comforted him. Last night the pain in his face had almost driven him crazy, and he swore he'd felt the bones shift under the bandages.

"We're down to nine drums," Macklin said. "If we don't find any more gasoline, we're going to have to start leaving vehicles behind." He looked up from his reports. "That goddamned mountain road'll make the engines strain. They'll use more gas. I still say we give it up and go find fuel."

They didn't answer.

"Did you hear mei We've got to have more gas before we start up that - "

"What's wrong with 'Nel Macreen todayi" Friend turned toward him, and Macklin saw with a start of horror that the man's face had changed again; the eyes were slits, the hair black and plastered down. His flesh was pale yellow - and Macklin was looking at a mask that took him back to Vietnam and the pit where the Cong guards had dropped their refuse on him. 'Nel Macreen gots a plobremi"

Macklin's tongue had turned to lead.

Friend came toward him, his Vietnamese face grinning. "Onry plobrem 'Nel Macreen gots is gettin' us where we wants go." His accent changed from pidgin English back to a husky american voice. "So you get rid of the trucks and shit. So whati"

"So... we can't carry as many soldiers or supplies if we leave trucks behind. I mean... we're losing strength every day."

"Well, what do you say we do, theni" Friend pulled another chair toward him, turned it around and sat down with his arms crossed on the chair's back. "Where do we go to find gasolinei"

"I... don't know. We'll have to search for - "

"You don't know. and so far the towns you've raided were zero for gas, righti So you want to backtrack and fuck around until every truck and car is running on emptyi" He cocked his head to one side. "What do you say, Rolandi"

Roland's heart jumped every time Friend addressed him. The fever had slowed his mind, and his body felt sluggish and heavy. He was still the King's Knight, but he'd been wrong about something: Colonel Macklin was not the King, and neither was he his own King. Oh, no - the man who sat in the chair before Macklin's desk was the King. The undisputed, the one and only King, who did not eat or drink and whom he'd never seen either crap or piss either, as if he didn't have time for such mundane things.

"I say we keep going on." Roland knew many armored cars and trucks had already been left behind; the tank had broken down two days out of Mary's Rest, and several million dollars worth of Uncle Sam's machinery had been abandoned on the Missouri roadside. "We go on. We've got to find out what's on that mountain."

"Whyi" Macklin asked. "What's it to usi I say we - "

"Silence," Friend commanded. The slitted Vietnamese eyes bored into him. "Must we go around about this again, Coloneli Roland feels that Brother Timothy saw an underground complex on Warwick Mountain, complete with an operating electrical supply and a mainframe computer. Now, why's the power still on up there, and what purpose does the complex servei I agree with Roland that we should find out."

"There might be some gasoline up there, too," Roland added.

"Right. So going to Warwick Mountain might solve your problem. Yesi"

Macklin kept his gaze averted. In his mind he saw the girl's face again, achingly beautiful. He saw her face at night, when he closed his eyes, like a vision from another world. He could not stand his own smell when he awakened. "Yes," he answered, in a small, quiet voice.

"I kneeewww you'd see the light, brotha!" Friend said, in the high, careening voice of a Southern revival preacher.

a ripping noise made Friend's head swivel.

Roland was falling; he'd reached out for support and was taking half the map with him. He hit the floor.

Friend giggled. "Fall down go boom."

In that instant Macklin almost lunged forward and slammed the palm of his right hand into the monster's skull, almost drove the nails deep into the head of the beast that had taken his army from him and made him into a snuffling coward - but as the thought thrilled through him and he tensed for action, a small slit opened in the back of Friend's head, about four inches above the nape of the neck.

In the slit was a staring scarlet eye with a silver pupil.

Macklin sat very still, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a grimace.