Swan Song (8 page)

Roland was fearful of setting up his computer because the air in his bedroom was so damp, and his first impression of Earth House as a neat-o medieval-type fortress was wearing thin. Of course, he’d brought books to read-tomes on Machiavelli and Napoleon and a study of medieval siege warfare-but he’d counted on programming some new dungeons for his King’s Knight game while he was here. King’s Knight was his own creation-128K of an imaginary world shattered into feudal kingdoms at war with one another. Now it looked as if he was going to have to read all the time!

He watched Colonel Macklin. Macklin’s eyes were lazy, and his face was fat. He looked like an old bull that had been put out to pasture because he couldn’t get it up anymore. But as Macklin’s eyes met his and held for a couple of seconds before they slid away again, Roland was reminded of a picture he’d seen of Joe Louis when the boxing champion had been a Las Vegas hotel greeter. In that picture, Joe Louis looked flabby and tired, but he had one massive hand clasped around the frail white hand of a tourist, and Joe Louis’ eyes were hard and dark and somewhere far away-maybe back in the ring, remembering the feel of a blow slammed against another man’s midsection almost to the backbone. Roland thought that the same distant stare was in Colonel Macklin’s eyes, and, just as you knew Joe Louis could’ve smashed the bones in that tourist’s hand with one quick squeeze, Roland sensed that the warrior within Colonel Macklin was not yet dead.

As Macklin’s address continued the wall telephone beside the display map buzzed. Sergeant Schorr got up and answered it; he listened for a few seconds, hung the receiver up and started back across the platform toward the colonel. Roland thought that something in Schorr’s face had been altered in the time he was on the telephone; Schorr appeared older now, and his face was slightly flushed. He said, “Excuse me, Colonel,” and he placed his hand over the microphone.

Macklin’s head snapped around, his eyes angry at the interruption.

“Sir,” Schorr said quietly, “Sergeant Lombard says you’re needed in Perimeter Control.”

“What is it?”

“He wouldn’t say, sir. I think… he sounded pretty damned shaken.”

Crap! Macklin thought. Lombard got “shaken” every time the radar picked up a flock of geese or an airliner passing overhead. Once they’d sealed Earth House because Lombard thought a group of hang gliders were enemy paratroopers. Still, Macklin would have to check it out. He motioned for Captain Warner to follow him, and then he told Schorr to dismiss the orientation after they’d gone. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Macklin said into the microphone, “I’m going to have to leave you now to take care of a small problem, but I hope to see each of you later this afternoon at the newcomers’ reception. Thank you for your attention.” And then he stalked up the aisle with Captain Warner right behind him.

They drove back in the electric cart the way Macklin had come, Macklin muttering all the way about Lombard’s stupidity. When they went into the Perimeter Control Room, they found Lombard peering into the screen that showed the returns from the sky radar atop Blue Dome. Near him stood Sergeant Becker and Corporal Prados, both staring at the screen as well. The room was full of electronic equipment, other radar screens and the small computer that stored the arrival and departure dates of Earth House’s residents. On a shelf above a row of radar screens, a voice was blaring from a shortwave radio, almost obscured by the crackling of static. The voice was panicked, babbling so fast Macklin couldn’t understand what was being said. But Macklin didn’t like the sound of it, and instantly his muscles tensed and his heart began to pound.

“Move aside,” he told the other men. He stood where he could get a good look at the screen.

His mouth went dry, and he heard the sizzling of circuits in his own brain at work. “God in Heaven,” he whispered.

The garbled voice from the shortwave radio was saying, “New York got it… wiped out… the missiles are comin’ in over the east coast… hit Washington… Boston… I can see flames from here…” Other voices surged out of the storm of static, bits and pieces of information hurtling along the network of ham radio operators across the United States and picked up by Blue Dome Mountain’s antennas. Another voice with a Southern accent broke in, shouting, “Atlanta just went dead! I think Atlanta got hit!” The voices overlapped, swelled and faded, commingled into a language of sobs and shouts, weak, faint whispers and the names of American cities repeated like a litany of the dead: Philadelphia… Miami… Newport News… Chicago… Richmond… Pittsburgh…

But Macklin’s attention was fixed on what the radar screen showed. There could be no doubt about what they were. He looked up at Captain Warner and started to speak, but he couldn’t find his voice for a second. Then he said, “Bring the perimeter guards in. Seal the doorway. We’re under attack. Move it!”

Warner picked up a walkie-talkie and hustled off. “Get Schorr down here,” Macklin said, and Sergeant Becker-a loyal and reliable man who had served with Macklin in Chad-instantly picked up the telephone and started pressing buttons. From the shortwave radio a frantic voice said, “This is KKTZ in St. Louis! Calling anybody! I’m lookin’ at a fire in the sky! It’s everywhere! God A’mighty, I’ve never seen such a-” A piercing squeal of static and other distant voices flooded into the empty hole left by St. Louis.

“This is it,” Macklin whispered. His eyes were shining, and there was a light sheen of sweat on his face. “Ready or not, this is it.”

And deep inside him, in the pit where no light had shone for a very long time, the Shadow Soldier cried out with joy.

Nine - [Burning Spears]

10:46 A.M. Central Daylight Time

On Interstate 70,

Ellsworth County, Kansas

Twenty-four miles west of Salina, Josh Hutchins’s battered old Pontiac gave a wheeze like an old man with phlegm in his lungs. Josh saw the temperature gauge’s needle zoom toward the red line. Though all the windows were lowered, the inside of the car felt like a steam bath, and Josh’s white cotton shirt and dark blue trousers were plastered to his body with sweat. Oh, Lord! he thought, watching the red needle climb. She’s about to blow!

An exit was coming up on the right, and there was a weathered sign that said PawPaw’s! Gas! Cold Drinks! One Mile! and had an exaggerated drawing of an old geezer sitting on a mule smoking a corncob pipe.

I hope I can make another mile, Josh thought as he guided the Pontiac onto the exit ramp. The car kept shuddering, and the needle was into the red but the radiator hadn’t blown yet. Josh drove northward, following PawPaw’s sign, and before him, stretching to the horizon, were immense fields of corn grown to the height of a man and withering under the terrible July heat. The two-lane county road cut straight across them, and not a puff of breeze stirred the stalks; they stood on both sides of the road like impenetrable walls and might have gone on, as far as Josh knew, for a hundred miles both east and west.

The Pontiac wheezed and gave a jolt. “Come on,” Josh urged, the sweat streaming down his face. “Come on, don’t give out on me now.” He didn’t relish the idea of walking a mile in hundred-degree sun; they’d find him melted into the concrete like an ink blot. The needle continued its climb, and red warning lights were flashing on the dashboard.

Suddenly there was a crackling noise that made Josh think of the Rice Krispies he used to like as a kid. And then, in the next instant, the windshield was covered with a crawling brown mass of things.

Before Josh could finish drawing a surprised breath, a brown cloud had swept through the open windows on the Pontiac’s right side and he was covered with crawling, fluttering, chattering things that got down the collar of his shirt, into his mouth, up his nostrils and in his eyes. He spat them from his mouth and clawed them away from his eyes with one hand while the other clenched the steering wheel. It was the most ungodly noise of chattering he’d ever heard, a deafening roar of whirring wings. And then his eyes cleared and he could see that the windshield and the car’s interior were covered with thousands of locusts, swarming all over him, flying through his car and out the windows on the left side. He switched on the windshield wipers, but the weight of the mass of locusts pinned the wipers to the glass.

In the next few seconds they began flying off the windshield, first five or six at a time and then suddenly the whole mass in a whirling brown tornado. The wipers slapped back and forth, smearing some unlucky ones who were too slow. And then steam billowed up from under the hood and the Pontiac Bonneville lurched forward. Josh looked at the temperature gauge; a locust clung to the glass, but the needle was way over the red line.

This sure isn’t turning out to be my day, he thought grimly as he brushed the remaining locusts from his arms and legs. They, too, whirred out of the car and followed the huge cloud that was moving over the sunburned corn, heading in a northwesterly direction. One of the things flew right up in his face, and its wings made a noise like a Bronx cheer before it darted out the window after the others. Only about twenty or so remained in the car, crawling lazily over the dashboard and the passenger seat.

Josh concentrated on where he was going, praying that the engine would give him just a few more yards. Through the cloud of steam he saw a small, flat-roofed cinder block structure coming up on his right. Gas pumps stood out front, under a green canvas awning. On the building’s roof was a full-sized old Conestoga wagon, and printed in big red letters on the wagon’s side was PAWPAW’S.

He breathed a sigh of relief and turned into the gravel driveway, but before he could reach the gas pumps and a water hose the Pontiac coughed, faltered and backfired at the same time. The engine made a noise like a hollow bucket being kicked, and then the only sound was the rude hiss of steam.

Well, Josh thought, that’s that.

Bathed in sweat, he got out of the car and contemplated the rising plume of steam. When he reached out to pop the hood open, the metal burned his hand like a bite. He stepped back and, as the sun beat down from a sky almost white with heat haze, Josh thought his life had reached its lowest ebb.

A screen door slammed. “Got y’self some trouble?” a wizened voice inquired.

Josh looked up. Approaching him from the cinder block building was a little humpbacked old man wearing a sweat-stained ten-gallon hat, overalls and cowboy boots. “I sure do,” Josh replied.

The little man, who stood maybe five foot one, stopped. His ten-gallon hat-complete with a snakeskin hatband and an eagle’s feather sticking up-almost swallowed his head. His face was as brown as sunbaked clay, his eyes dark, sparkling dots. “Oooooeeeee!” he rasped. “You’re a big ’un, ain’t you! Lordy, I ain’t seen one as big as you since the circus passed through!” He grinned, revealing tiny, nicotine-stained teeth. “How’s the weather up there?”

Josh’s sweaty frustration tumbled out in a laugh. He grinned widely as well. “The same as down there,” he answered. “Mighty hot.”

The little man shook his head in awe and walked in a circle around the Bonneville. He, too, attempted to get the hood up, but the heat stung his fingers. “Hose is busted,” he decided. “Yep. Hose. Seen a lot of ’em lately.”

“Do you have spares?”

The man tilted his neck to look up, still obviously impressed with Josh’s size. “Nope,” he said. “Not a one. I can get you one, though. Order it from Salina, should be here in… oh, two or three hours.”

“Two or three hours? Salina’s only about thirty miles away!”

The little man shrugged. “Hot day. City boys don’t like hot days. Too used to air conditionin’. Yep, two or three hours’ll do it.”

“Damn! I’m on my way to Garden City!”

“Long drive,” the man offered. “Well, we’d best let ’er cool off some. I got cold drinks, if you want one.” He motioned for Josh to follow and started toward the building.

Josh was expecting a tumbledown mess of oil cans, old batteries and a wall full of hubcaps, but when he stepped inside he was surprised to find a neat, orderly country grocery store. A throw rug had been put down right at the doorway, and behind the counter and cash register was a little alcove where the man had been sitting in his rocking chair, watching television on a portable Sony. Now, though, the TV’s screen showed only static.

“Thing went out on me just before you drove up,” he said. “I was watchin’ that show about the hospital and them folks always gettin’ in trouble. Lord God, they’d put you under the jail around here for some of them shenanigans!” He cackled and took off his hat. His scalp was pale, and he had white hair that stood up in sweat-damp spikes. “All the other channels are off too, so I guess we got to talk, huh?”

“I guess so.” Josh stood in front of a fan atop the counter, letting the deliciously cool air separate his wet shirt from his skin.

The little man opened a refrigerator unit and brought out two canned Cokes. He handed one to Josh, who snapped the tab and drank thirstily. “No charge,” the man said. “You look like you’ve had a rough mornin’. My name’s PawPaw Briggs-well, PawPaw ain’t my real name. It’s what my boys call me. So that’s what the sign says.”

“Josh Hutchins.” They shook hands, and the little man grinned again and pretended to wince under the pressure of Josh’s grip. “Do your boys work here with you?”

“Oh, no.” PawPaw chuckled. “They got their own place, up the road four or five miles.”

Josh was grateful to be out of the hot sun. He walked around the store, rolling the cold can across his face and feeling the flesh tighten. For a country store out in the middle of a cornfield, he realized after another moment, the shelves of PawPaw’s place held an amazing variety of items: loaves of wheat bread, rye bread, raisin bread and cinnamon rolls; cans of green beans, beets, squash, peaches, pineapple chunks and all kinds of fruit; about thirty different canned soups; cans of beef stew, corned beef hash, Spam, and sliced roast beef; an array of utensils, including paring knives, cheese graters, can openers, flashlights and batteries; and a shelf full of canned fruit juices, Hawaiian Punch, Welch’s Grape Juice and mineral water in plastic jugs. A rack on the wall held shovels, picks and hoes, a pair of garden shears and a water hose. Near the cash register was a magazine stand displaying periodicals like Flying, American Pilot, Time and Newsweek, Playboy and Penthouse. This place, Josh thought, was the supermarket of country stores! “Lot of people live around here?” Josh asked.

“Few.” PawPaw whacked the TV with his fist, but the static remained. “Not too many.”

Josh felt something crawling under his collar; he reached back and dug out a locust.

“Things are hell, ain’t they?” PawPaw asked. “Get into everythin’, they do. Been flyin’ out of the fields by the thousands for the last two, three days. Kinda peculiar.”

“Yeah.” Josh held the insect between his fingers and went to the screen door. He opened it and flicked the locust out; it whirled around his head for a couple of seconds, made a soft chirring noise and then flew toward the northwest.

A red Camaro suddenly pulled off the road, swerved around Josh’s sick Bonneville and halted at the pumps. “More customers,” Josh announced.

“Well, well. We got us a regular convention today, don’t we?” He came around the counter to stand beside Josh, barely the height of Josh’s breastbone. The doors of the Camaro opened, and a woman and a little blond-haired girl got out. “Hey!” the woman, who was squeezed into a red halter top and tight, uncomfortable-looking jeans, called toward the screen door. “Can I get some unleaded gas here?”

“Sure can!” PawPaw went outside to pump the gas for her. Josh finished his Coke, crumpled the can and dropped it into a wastebasket; when he looked through the screen door again, he saw that the child, who wore a little powder-blue jumpsuit, was standing right in the blazing sun, staring at the moving cloud of locusts. The woman, her poorly dyed blond hair tangled and wet with sweat, took the child’s hand and led her toward PawPaw’s place. Josh stepped aside as they entered, and the woman-who had a blackened right eye-shot Josh a distrustful glance and then stood before the fan to cool off.

The child stared up at Josh as if peering toward the highest branches of a redwood tree. She was a pretty little thing, Josh thought; her eyes were a soft, luminous shade of blue. The color reminded Josh of what the summer sky had looked like when he himself was a child, with all the tomorrows before him and no place to go in any particular hurry. The little girl’s face was heart-shaped and fragile-looking, her complexion almost translucent. She said, “Are you a giant?”

“Hush, Swan!” Darleen Prescott said. “We don’t talk to strangers!”

But the little girl continued to stare up at him, expecting an answer. Josh smiled. “I guess I am.”

“Sue Wanda!” Darleen grabbed Swan’s shoulder and turned her away from Josh.

“Hot day,” Josh said. “Where are you two heading?”

Darleen was silent for a moment, letting the cool air play over her face. “Anywhere but here,” she replied, her eyes closed and her head tilted upward to catch the air on her throat.

PawPaw returned, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a much-used handkerchief. “Gotcha filled up there, lady. Be fifteen dollars and seventy-five cents, please.”

Darleen dug in her pocket for the money, and Swan nudged her. “I need to go right now!” Swan whispered. Darleen laid a twenty dollar bill on the counter. “You got a ladies’ room, mister?”

“Nope,” he replied, and then he looked down at Swan-who was obviously in some discomfort-and shrugged. “Well, I reckon you can use my bathroom. Hold on a minute.” He reached down and pulled back the throw rug in front of the counter. Beneath it was a trapdoor. PawPaw threw back a bolt and lifted it. The aroma of rich, dark earth wafted from the open square, and a set of wooden steps descended into the basement. PawPaw went down a few steps, flicked on an overhanging light bulb and then came back up. “Bathroom’s through the little door on the right,” he told Swan. “Go ahead.”

She glanced at her mother, who shrugged and motioned her down, and Swan went through the trapdoor. The basement had wails of hard-packed dirt; the ceiling was crisscrossed with thick wooden beams. The floor was made of poured concrete, and the room-which was about twenty feet long, ten feet wide and seven or eight feet high-held a cot, a record player and radio, a shelf of dog-eared Louis L’Amour and Brett Halliday paperbacks, and had a poster of Dolly Parton on one wall. Swan found the door and entered a tiny cubicle that had a sink, a mirror and a toilet.

“Do you live down there?” Josh asked the old man as he peered through the trapdoor.

“Sure do. Used to live in a farmhouse a couple of miles east, but I sold that after the wife passed on. My boys helped me dig the basement out. It ain’t much, but it’s home.”

“Ugh!” Darleen wrinkled her nose. “It smells like a graveyard.”

“Why don’t you live with your sons?” Josh inquired.

PawPaw looked at him curiously, his brow knitting. “Sons? I ain’t got no sons.”