Swan Song (12 page)

And then-she didn’t know how much longer it was-she came down a ridge of debris and stopped in her tracks beside the crushed remnant of a yellow cab. A street sign stood nearby, bent almost into a knot, and it said Forty-Second. Of all the buildings along the street, only one was standing.

The marquee above the Empire State Theater was still blinking, advertising Face of Death, Part Four and Mondo Bizarro. On both sides of the theater building, the structures had been reduced to burned-out shells, but the theater itself wasn’t even scorched. She remembered passing that theater the night before, and the brutal shove that had knocked her into the street. Smoke passed between her and the theater, and she expected the building to be gone like a mirage in the next second, but when the smoke whipped on the theater was still there, and the marquee was still blinking merrily.

Turn away, she told herself. Get the hell out of here!

But she took one step toward it, and then the next got her where she was going. She stood in front of the theater doors and smelled buttered popcorn from within. No! she thought. It’s not possible!

But it was not possible, either, that the city of New York should be turned into a tornado-swept wasteland in a handful of hours. Staring at those theater doors, Sister Creep knew that the rules of this world had been suddenly and drastically changed by a force she couldn’t even begin to understand. “I’m crazy,” she told herself. But the theater was real, and so was the aroma of buttered popcorn. She peered into the ticket booth, but it was empty; then she braced herself, touched the crucifix and gemclip chain that hung around her neck, and went through the doors.

There was no one behind the concession counter, but Sister Creep could hear the movie going on in the auditorium behind a faded red curtain; there was the grating sound of a car crash, and then a narrator’s voice intoning, “And here before your eyes is the result of a head-on collision at sixty miles an hour.”

Sister Creep reached over the counter, grabbed two Hershey bars from the display, and was about to eat one when she heard the snarl of an animal.

The sound rose, reaching the register of a human laugh. But in it Sister Creep heard the squeal of tires on a rain-slick highway and a child’s piercing, heartbreaking scream: “Mommy!”

She clapped her hands over her ears until the child’s cry was gone, and she stood shivering until all memory of it had faded. The laughter was gone, too, but whoever had made it was still sitting in there, watching a movie in the middle of a destroyed city.

She crammed half a Hershey bar into her mouth, chewed and swallowed it. Behind the red curtain, the narrator was talking about rapes and murders with cool, clinical detachment. The curtain beckoned her. She ate the other half of the Hershey bar and licked her fingers. If that awful laughter swelled again, she thought, she might lose her mind, but she had to see who had made it. She walked to the curtain and slowly, slowly, drew it aside.

On the screen was the bruised, dead face of a young woman, but such a sight held no power to shock Sister Creep anymore. She could see the outline of a head-someone sitting up in the front row, face tilted upward at the screen. The rest of the seats were empty. Sister Creep stared at that head, could not see the face and didn’t want to, because whoever-whatever-it was couldn’t possibly be human.

The head suddenly swiveled toward her.

Sister Creep drew back. Her legs wanted to run, but she didn’t let them go. The figure in the front row was just staring at her as the film continued to show close-ups of people lying on coroners’ slabs. And then the figure stood up from the seat, and Sister Creep heard popcorn crunch on the floor beneath its shoes. Run! she screamed inwardly. Get out! But she stood her ground, and the figure stopped before its face was revealed by the light from the concession counter.

“You’re all burned up.” It was the soft and pleasant voice of a young man. He was thin and tall, about six feet four or five, dressed in a pair of dark green khaki trousers and a yellow T-shirt. On his feet were polished combat boots. “I guess it’s over out there by now, isn’t it?”

“All gone,” she murmured. “All destroyed.” She caught a dank chill, the same thing she’d experienced the previous night in front of the theater, and then it was gone. She could see the faintest impression of features on the man’s face, and she thought she saw him smile, but it was a terrible smile; his mouth didn’t seem to be exactly where it should. “I think… everyone’s dead,” she told him.

“Not everyone,” he corrected. “You’re not dead, are you? And I think there are others still alive out there, too. Hiding somewhere, probably. Waiting to die. It won’t be long, though. Not long for you, either.”

“I’m not dead yet,” she said.

“You might as well be.” His chest expanded as he drew in a deep breath. “Smell that air! Isn’t it sweet?”

Sister Creep started to take a backward step. The man said, almost gently, “No,” and she stopped as if the most important-the only important-thing in the world was to obey.

“My best scene’s coming up.” He motioned toward the screen, where flames shot out of a building and broken bodies were lying on stretchers. “That’s me! Standing by the car! Well, I didn’t say it was a long scene.” His attention drifted back to her. “Oh,” he said softly. “I like your necklace.” His pale hand with its long, slender fingers slid toward her throat.

She wanted to cringe away because she couldn’t bear to be touched by that hand, but she was transfixed by his voice, echoing back and forth in her mind. She flinched as the cold fingers touched the crucifix. He pulled at it, but both the crucifix and the gemclip chain were sealed to her skin.

“It’s burned on,” the man said. “We’ll fix that.”

With a quick snap of his wrist he ripped the crucifix and chain off, taking Sister Creep’s skin with it. Pain shot through her like an electric shock, at the same time breaking up the echo of the man’s command and clearing her head. Tears burned fiery trails down her cheeks.

The man held his hand palm up, the crucifix and chain dangling before Sister Creep’s face. He began to sing in the voice of a little boy: “Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush…”

His palm caught fire, the flames crawling up along his fingers. As the man’s hand became a glove of flame the crucifix and chain began to melt and dribble to the floor.

“Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, so early in the morrrrning!”

Sister Creep looked into his face. By the light of the flaming hand she could see the shifting bones, the melting cheeks and lips, eyes of different colors surfacing where there were no sockets.

The last droplet of molten metal spattered to the floor. A mouth opened across the man’s chin like a red-rimmed wound. The mouth grinned. “Lights out!” it whispered.

The film stopped, the frame burning away on the screen. The red curtain that Sister Creep was still holding on to burst into flames, and she screamed and jerked her hands away. A wave of sickening heat swept through the theater, the walls drooling fire.

“Tick tock tick tock!” the man’s voice continued, in a merry singsong rhythm. “Nothing ever stops the clock!”

The ceiling blazed and buckled. Sister Creep shielded her head with her arms and staggered backward through the fiery curtains as he advanced on her. Streams of chocolate ran from the concession counter. She ran toward the door, and the thing behind her brayed, “Run! Run, you pig!”

She was three strides out the door before it became a sheet of fire, and then she was running madly through the ruins of Forty-Second Street. When she dared to look back, she saw the entire theater bellowing flame, the building’s roof imploding as if driven down by a brutal fist.

She flung herself behind a block of stone as a storm of glass and bricks hurtled around her. It was all over in a few seconds, but Sister Creep stayed huddled up, shivering with terror, until all the bricks had stopped falling. She peered out from behind her shelter.

Now the ruins of the theater were indistinguishable from any of the other piles of ash. The theater was gone, and so-thankfully-was the thing with the flaming hand.

She touched the raw circle of flesh that ringed her throat, and her fingers came away bloody. It took another moment for her to grasp that the crucifix and chain were really gone. She couldn’t remember where she’d gotten it from, but it was something she’d been proud of. She’d thought that it protected her, too, and now she felt naked and defenseless.

She knew she’d looked into the face of evil there in that cheap theater.

The Hack rain was falling harder. Sister Creep curled up, her hand pressed to her bleeding throat, and she closed her eyes and prayed for death.

Jesus Christ was not coming in His flying saucer after all, she realized. Judgment Day had destroyed the innocent in the same flames that killed the guilty, and the Rapture was a lunatic’s dream.

A sob of anguish broke from her throat. She prayed, Please, Jesus, take me home, please, right now, this minute, please, please…

But when she opened her eyes the black rain was still falling.

The wind was getting stronger, and now it carried a winter’s chill. She was drenched, sick to her stomach, and her teeth were chattering.

Wearily, she sat up. Jesus was not coming today. She would have to die later, she decided. There was no use lying out here like a fool in the rain.

One step, she thought. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going.

Where that was, she didn’t know, but from now on she’d have to be very careful, because that evil thing with no face and all faces could be lurking anywhere. Anywhere. The rules had changed. The Promised Land was a boneyard, and Hell itself had broken through the earth’s surface.

She had no idea what had caused such destruction, but a terrible thing occurred to her: What if everywhere was like this? She let the thought go before it burned into her brain, and she struggled to her feet.

The wind staggered her. The rain was falling so heavily that she couldn’t see beyond four feet in any direction. She decided to go toward what she thought was north, because there might be a tree left to rest under in Central Park.

Her back bowed against the elements, she started with one step.

Thirteen - [Lights Out]

“House fell in, Mama!” Josh Hutchins yelled as he struggled free of the dirt, rubble and pieces of snapped timbers that covered his back. “Twister’s done gone!” His mother didn’t answer, but he could hear her crying. “It’s all right, Mama! We’re gonna be…”

The memory of an Alabama tornado that had driven Josh, his sister and his mother into the basement of their home when he was seven years old suddenly broke and whirled apart. The cornfield, the burning spears and the tornado of fire came back to him with horrifying clarity, and he realized the crying woman was the little girl’s mother.

It was dark. A weight still bore down on Josh, and as he fought against it a mound of rubble, mostly the dirt and broken wood, slid off him. He sat upright, his body throbbing with dull pain.

His face felt funny-so tight it was about to rip. He lifted his fingers to touch his forehead, and a dozen blisters broke, the fluids oozing down his face. More blisters burst on his cheeks and jaw; he touched the flesh around his eyes and found they were swollen into slits. The pain was getting sharper, and his back felt as if it had been splashed with boiling water. Burned, he thought. Burned to hell and back. He smelled the odor of fried bacon, and he almost puked but he was too intent on finding out the extent of his injuries. At his right ear there was a different kind of pain. He gently touched it. His fingers grazed a stub of flesh and crusted blood where his ear had been. He remembered the explosion of the pumps, and he figured that a hot sliver of metal had sliced most of his ear clean off.

I’m in fine shape, he thought, and he almost laughed out loud. Ready to take on the world! He knew that if he ever stepped into a wrestling ring again, he wouldn’t need a Frankenstein mask to resemble a monster.

And then he did throw up, his body heaving and shuddering, the fried bacon smell thick in his nostrils. When his sickness had passed, he crawled away from the mess. Under his hands were loose dirt, timbers, broken glass, dented cans and cornstalks.

He heard a man moaning, remembered PawPaw’s burning eyeballs, and figured that the man was lying somewhere to his right, though his ear on that side was clogged up. The woman’s sobbing would put her a few feet in front of him; the little girl, if she was still alive, was silent. The air was still warm, but at least it was breathable. Josh’s fingers closed on a wooden shaft, and he followed it to the end of a garden hoe. Digging into the dirt around him, he found a variety of objects: can after can, some of them broken open and leaking; a couple of melted things that might have once been plastic milk jugs; a hammer; some charred magazines and packs of cigarettes. The entire grocery store had caved in on top of them, spilling everything into PawPaw’s fallout shelter. And that’s surely what it was, Josh reasoned. The underground boys must have known he might need it someday.

Josh tried to stand, but he bumped his head before he could straighten up from a crouch. He felt a ceiling of hard-packed dirt, planks and possibly hundreds of rough cornstalks jammed together about four and a half feet off the basement floor. Oh, Jesus! Josh thought. There must be tons of earth right over our heads! He figured they had nothing more than a pocket of air down here, and when that was gone…

“Stop crying, lady,” he said. “The old man’s hurt worse than you are.”

She gasped, as if she hadn’t realized anyone else was alive.

“Where’s the little girl? She okay?” Blisters popped on Josh’s lips.

“Swan!” Darleen shouted. She searched for Sue Wanda through the dirt. “I can’t find her! Where’s my baby? Where’s Swan?” Then her left hand touched a small arm. It was still warm. “Here she is! Oh, God, she’s buried!” Darleen started digging frantically.

Josh crawled to her side and made out the child’s body with his hands. But only her legs and left arm were buried; her face was free, and she was breathing. Josh got the child’s legs uncovered, and Darleen embraced her daughter. “Swan, you okay? Say somethin’, Swan! Come on now! Talk to Mama!” She shook the child until one of Swan’s hands came up and pushed weakly at her.

“Quit.” Swan’s voice was a hoarse, slurred whisper. “Wanna sleep… till we get there.”

Josh crawled toward the man’s moaning. He found PawPaw curled up and half buried. Carefully, Josh dug him out. PawPaw’s hand caught in the shreds of Josh’s shirt, and the old man muttered something that Josh couldn’t understand. He said, “What?” and bent his head closer.

“The sun,” PawPaw repeated. “Oh, Lord… I saw the sun blow up.” He started muttering again, something about his bedroom slippers. Josh knew he couldn’t last much longer and went back to Darleen and Swan.

The little girl was crying-a quiet, deeply wounded sound. “Shhhh,” Darleen said. “Shhhh, honey. They’re gonna find us. Don’t you worry. They’ll get us out of here.” She still didn’t fully grasp what had happened; everything was hazy and jumbled past the moment when Swan had pointed to the PAWPAW’S sign on the interstate and said she was going to bust if she couldn’t go to the bathroom.

“I can’t see, Mama,” Swan said listlessly.

“We’re gonna be all right, honey. They’re gonna find us real…” She’d reached up to smooth back her daughter’s hair and jerked her hand away. Her fingers had found stubble. “Oh, my God. Oh, Swan, oh, baby…” She was afraid to touch her own hair and face, but she felt nothing more uncomfortable than the pain of a moderate sunburn. I’m okay, she told herself. And Swan’s okay, too. Just lost some hair, that’s all. We’re gonna be just fine!

“Where’s PawPaw?” Swan asked. “Where’s the giant?” She had a toothache all over her body, and she smelled breakfast cooking.

“I’m right here,” Josh answered. “The old man’s not too far away. We’re in the basement, and the whole place caved in on-”

“We’re gonna get out!” Darleen interrupted. “It won’t be too long before somebody finds us!”

“Lady, that might not be for a while. We’re going to have to settle down and save our air.”

“Save our air?” Panic flared anew. “We’re breathin’ okay!”

“Right now, yeah. I don’t know how much room we’ve got in here, but I figure the air’s going to get pretty tight. We might have to stay in here for… for a long time,” he decided to say.

“You’re crazy! Don’t you listen to him, honey. I’ll bet they’re comin’ to dig us out right this minute.” She began to rock Swan like an infant.

“No, lady.” It was pointless to pretend. “I don’t think anybody’s going to dig us out anytime soon. Those were missiles that came out of that cornfield. Nuclear missiles. I don’t know if one of them blew up or what, but there’s only one reason those damned things would’ve gone off. The whole world may be shooting missiles at itself right now.”

The woman laughed, the sound edging toward hysteria. “You ain’t got the sense God gave a pissant! Somebody had to see all that fire! They’ll send help! We gotta get to Blakeman!”

“Right,” Josh said. He was tired of talking, and he was using up precious air. He crawled away a few feet and burrowed a place to fit his body into. Intense thirst taunted him, but he had to relieve himself, too. Later, he thought, too tired to move. The pain was getting bad again. His mind began to drift beyond PawPaw’s basement, beyond the burned cornfield toward what might remain out there, if, indeed, World War III had started. It might be over by now. The Russians might be invading, or the Americans pushing into Russia. He thought of Rose and the boys; were they dead or alive? He might never know. “Oh, God,” he whispered in the dark, and he curled his body up to stare at nothing.

“Uh… uh… uh.” PawPaw was making a stuttering, choking noise. Then he said loudly, “Gopher’s in the hole! Amy! Where’re my bedroom slippers?”

The little girl made another hurt, sobbing sound, and Josh clenched his teeth to hold back a scream of outrage. Such a pretty child, he thought. And now dying-like all of us are dying. We’re already in our graves. Already laid out and waiting.

He had the sensation of being pinned to the mat by an opponent he’d not planned to meet. He could almost hear the referee’s hand slap the canvas: One… two…

Josh’s shoulders shifted. Not yet three. Soon, but not yet.

And he drifted into a tortured sleep with the sound of the child’s pain haunting his soul.