Swan Song (87 page)

He knew with whom he was in league. He knew. And he knew also that he was damned, and the final pit was about to close over his head.

“Oh… the waste… the waste,” he whispered, and tears ran down from the staring eyes. “God forgive me… oh, God forgive me,” he began to sob as the man who called himself Friend laughed and clapped his hands.

Someone touched Colonel Macklin’s shoulder. He lifted his head. Swan did her best not to flinch from him, because there was a tiny flicker of light deep in his eyes, just as there’d been a small flame in Sheila Fontana’s bit of glass.

For a soul-awakening instant, Macklin thought he saw the sun in her face, thought he saw all that the world could have been. Now all was lost… all was lost…

“No,” he whispered. The pit hadn’t closed over him yet… not yet. And he rose to his feet like a king and turned toward the mainframe computers that were about to destroy the wounded world.

He attacked the nearest machine, battering frenziedly at it with his nail-studded palm, trying to shatter the smoked glass and get at the spinning data tapes. The glass cracked, but it was reinforced with tiny threads of metal and would not let his hand through. Macklin fell to his knees and started ripping at one of the cables on the floor.

“Roland!” Friend snapped. “Stop him-now!”

Roland Croninger stepped behind Macklin and spoke one word-“Don’t!”-that went unheeded.

“Kill him!” Friend shouted, coming forward like a whirlwind before the nails in Macklin’s palm tore through the rubber cable into the wiring.

The true King had spoken. Roland was a King’s Knight, and he must follow the word of the King. He lifted his.45. His hand was shaking.

And then he fired two bullets into Colonel Macklin’s back at point-blank range.

The colonel fell onto his face. His body twitched, and then he lay still.

“Bang bang!” Roland wailed. He tried to laugh, but the sound came out strangled.

“One minute to detonation.”

Ninety-Four - [Prayer For the

Final Hour]

Friend smiled.

All was in hand. It had turned out to be a fine party, and now it was to be finished with a fireworks display. But the place to watch such a show was not here, in the basement seats. He saw that Sister and the little bitch were down on their knees, clinging together, because they knew it was almost finished. It was a pleasant sight, and he had nothing else to prove here.

“Fifty seconds,” the countdown continued.

He let his gaze move over Swan’s face. Too late, he thought, and he swept the weakness aside. Outside this place there would still be bands of people, more settlements to visit; the fireworks display might crack the world in an eye blink, or it might be a slow decay and consumption. He didn’t fully understand all that nuclear shit, but he was always ready to party.

In any case, she would be here, out of his way. The glass ring, or crown, or whatever it was, was lost. Sister had given him a good run, but she was on her knees now, broken. “Swan?” he said. “Do you forgive me?”

She didn’t know what she was going to say until she said it, but as she opened her mouth he put his finger to his lips and whispered, “Too late.”

His already-charred uniform had begun to smoke. His face had started melting.

“Forty seconds,” the computer’s voice said.

The flame that was consuming the man with the scarlet eye was a cold burning. Both Sister and Swan shrank away, but Roland stood awed, his teeth chattering and his eyes gleaming behind the goggles.

False flesh sizzled away and laid open what was beneath the mask-but Swan averted her eyes at the last second, and Sister cried out and shielded her face.

Roland watched and saw a face that no human being had ever witnessed and lived to tell about.

It was a suppurating sore with reptilian eyes, a seething and diseased mass that pulsed and rippled with volcanic fury. It was a maddening glimpse into the end of time, at worlds afire and the universe in chaos, black holes yawning in the fabric of time and civilizations scorched to ashes.

Roland fell to his knees at the feet of the true King. He lifted his hands toward the cold flame and begged, “Take me with you!”

What might have been a mouth opened in that nightmarish, apocalyptic face, and the ancient voice answered, “I’ve always walked alone.”

Freezing fire leapt out of the uniform and sizzled over Roland’s head like a bolt of electricity. It slammed upward through a small air vent in the wall, leaving a hole in the metal grille that was at the same time burned and rimmed with dirty ice.

The empty Army of Excellence uniform, still molded in the shape of a man, collapsed to the floor, ice crackling in its folds.

“Thirty seconds,” the seductive voice intoned.

Sister saw her chance and knew what she must do. She shrugged off the shock and lunged toward Roland Croninger.

Her fingers gripped the wrist of his gun hand. He looked up at her, now totally insane. She shouted, “Swan! Stop the machine!” and tried to wrench the gun loose, but his other fist struck her in the face. She hung onto his wrist with all her strength, and the young knight of an infernal king fought her in a maniacal frenzy, getting his arm around her throat and squeezing.

Swan started to help Sister, but Sister was buying them precious seconds, and she must do what she could to stop the countdown. She bent to the floor and tried to rip up one of the cables.

Roland released Sister’s throat and slammed his fist into her mouth. His teeth snapped at her cheek, but she warded him off with an elbow and hung on. The gun fired, its bullet whining off the opposite wall. They fought for the weapon, and then Sister rammed her elbow into his chest and leaned forward, sinking her teeth into his thin wrist. He howled in pain; his fingers opened, and the gun fell to the floor. Sister reached for it, but Roland’s hand gripped her face, and his fingernails dug toward her eyes.

Swan couldn’t get the cable loose; it was sealed to the floor, and the rubber was too thick to tear through. She looked up at the black keyboard on the table at the room’s center and remembered what the old man had said about a codeword. But whatever it was had died with him. Still, she had to try. She jumped over the fighting figures and reached the keyboard.

“Twenty seconds.”

Roland clawed at Sister’s face, but she twisted her head away, and her fingers closed on the butt of the gun. As she picked it up a fist hammered across the back of her neck, and she lost her grip.

Trying to clear her mind, Swan stood over the keyboard. She typed, Stop.

Roland broke free from Sister and scrambled after the gun. He got it and twisted to fire at Sister, but she was on him like a wildcat, grabbing his wrist again and pounding at his misshapen, bleeding face.

“Fifteen seconds,” the countdown continued.

End, Swan typed, all her concentration on the letters.

Sister reared her arm back and smashed her fist into Roland’s face. One of the goggles’ lenses shattered, and he yelped with pain. But then he struck her a glancing blow on the temple, stunning her, and he flung her aside like a sack of straw.

“Ten seconds.”

Oh, God, help me! Swan thought as panic shot through her, and she clenched her teeth to hold back a scream.

She typed, Finish.

“Nine…”

She would have only one more chance now. She couldn’t waste it.

The prayer for the final hour, she thought. The prayer.

“Eight…”

The prayer.

Sister grabbed at Roland’s arm again, still fighting for the gun. He jerked free, and she saw his hideous face grin as he squeezed the trigger. Once… twice…

The bullets pierced Sister’s ribs and shattered her collarbone, and she was flung back to the floor as if she’d been kicked. Blood was in her mouth.

“Seven…”

Swan had heard the shots, but the answer was close, and she dared not turn her attention from the keyboard. What ended a prayer? What ended-

“Get away!” Roland Croninger roared, rising from the floor with blood running from his mouth and nostrils.

“Six…”

He aimed at Swan, started to pull the trigger.

Something pounded like judgment on the other side of the steel door, and Roland was distracted for a vital split second.

And suddenly Colonel Macklin rose, and with his last surge of life and strength he slammed the nail-studded right hand into Roland Croninger’s heart. As Roland was struck the gun went off, and the bullet whistled inches over Swan’s head.

“Five…”

The nails had plunged deep. Roland fell to his knees, the scarlet blood pumping around Colonel Macklin’s rigid, black-gloved fingers. Roland tried to lift the gun again, shaking his head from side to side, but Macklin’s weight drove him down, and he lay jittering on the floor. Macklin held him in what was almost a loving embrace.

“Four…”

Swan stared at the keyboard. What ended a prayer?

She knew.

Her fingers moved across the keys.

She typed, Amen.

“Three…”

Swan shut her eyes and waited for the next second to fall.

Waited.

And waited.

When the silken voice came through the speakers again, Swan almost jumped out of her skin: “Talons detonation holding at two seconds. What is your next command, please?”

Swan’s legs were weak. She backed away from the keyboard and almost fell over the bodies of Colonel Macklin and Roland Croninger.

Roland sat up.

Blood bubbled in his lungs and drooled from his mouth, and his arm shot out and grasped Swan’s ankle.

She wrenched it free, and his body sprawled again. The bubbling noise ceased.

She looked at Sister.

The woman was propped up against the wall; her eyes were watery, and a thin line of blood had spilled over her lower lip and clung to her chin. She pressed her hand against the wound in her abdomen and managed a tired, vague smile. “We kicked some ass, didn’t we?” she asked.

Fighting back bitter tears, Swan knelt at her side. Again, there was a pounding on the other side of the door. “Better find out who it is,” Sister said. “They’re not going to go away.”

Swan went to the door and pressed her ear against the line where the metal sealed to the stone. She could hear nothing for a moment-and then there was a muffled, distant voice: “Swan! Sister! Are you in there?”

It was Josh’s voice, and he was probably yelling at the top of his lungs, but she could barely hear him. “Yes!” she shouted. “We’re here!”

“Shhhh!” Josh told Robin. “I think I hear something!” He bellowed: “Can you let us in?” Both of them had seen the black box with the silver key in the lock, but upon turning it to the left, Robin had been faced with a demand for a codeword that flickered off after five seconds.

It took a minute of shouting back and forth for Josh to understand what Swan was trying to tell him. He turned the key to the left and pressed AOK on the keyboard when the codeword demand came on.

The door unlocked and popped open, and Robin was the first one through.

He saw Swan standing before him like a dream, and he put his arms around her and held her tight, and he told himself that as long as he was alive he would never let her go. Swan clung to him, too, and for a moment their hearts beat as one.

Josh pushed past them. He’d seen Macklin and the other man on the floor-and then he saw Sister. Oh, no, he thought. There was too much blood.

He reached her with two long strides and bent beside her.

“Don’t ask me where it hurts,” she said. “I’m numb.”

“What happened?”

“The world… got a second chance,” she answered.

The computer’s voice said, “What is your next command, please?”

“Can you stand up?” Josh asked Sister.

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried. Oh… I’ve made a mess here, haven’t I?”

“Come on, let me help you up.” Josh got her to her feet. She felt light, and she left blood all over Josh’s hands.

“Are you going to be okay?” Robin asked her, supporting her other arm with his shoulder.

“That’s about the stupidest question… I’ve ever heard.” She was getting short of breath, and now the pain was lancing through her ribs. But it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all for a dying old lady, she thought. “I’m going to be fine. Just get me out of this damned hole.”

Swan paused over Macklin’s body. The dirty tape had unraveled from around his right wrist, and the hand with its nail-studded palm was almost severed from the arm. She ripped the rest of the tape away, then forced herself to work the long, bloody nails out of Roland Croninger’s body. She stood up with the brutal hand clenched in her own blood-smeared fingers.

They left the chamber of death and machines. The seductive voice asked, “What is your next command, please?”

Swan turned the silver key to the right. The door sealed itself, and the locks clicked shut. She put the key in the pocket of her jeans.

And then they helped Sister into the mine shaft’s car, and Robin pressed the green button on a metal wall plate next to the tracks before he climbed in. The noise of machinery grew, and the car rose toward the top of the shaft.

Sister lost all feeling in her legs as they were moving along the catwalk to the stairs. She clung tighter to Josh, who took more of her weight on him. Behind her she left a trail of blood, and now her breathing was forced and irregular.

Swan knew Sister was dying. She felt about to choke, but she said, “We’ll get you well!”

“I’m not sick. I’m shot,” Sister replied. “One step at a time,” she said as Josh and Robin eased her down the stairs. “Oh, Lord… I feel like I’m about to pass out.”

“Hold on,” Josh told her sternly. “You can make it.”

But her legs folded at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyelids fluttered, and she fought to stay conscious.

They left the aluminum-roofed building and started across the parking lot toward the Jeeps as the cold wind shrilled around them and the clouds hung low over the mountains.

Sister couldn’t hold her head up anymore. Her neck was weak, and her skull felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. One step, she urged herself. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going. But the taste of blood was thick and coppery in her mouth, and she knew where her dragging steps were taking her.

Her legs locked.

She’d seen something there on the broken pavement before her. It was gone now. But what had it been?

“Come on,” Josh said, but Sister refused to budge.

She saw it again. Just a brief glimpse and gone. “Oh, God!” she said.

“What is it? You hurting?”

“No! No! Wait! Just wait!”

They waited, while Sister’s blood trickled to the pavement.

And there it was, a third time. Something Sister had not seen in a very long while.

Her shadow.