Swan Song (33 page)

Kempka picked up another bit of cocaine and let it drift back down. “Where did this come from, Colonel Macklin?”

“My stash,” Sheila said. She thought she’d seen all the repulsive things in the world, but even in the low yellow light of the two lamps that illuminated the trailer, she could hardly bear the Fat Man. He looked like a circus freak, and from each of his long, fat earlobes hung diamond-studded earrings.

“And this is the extent of that ‘stash’?”

“No,” Macklin replied. “Not nearly all. There’s plenty more cocaine, and all kinds of pills, too.”

“Pills,” Kempka repeated. His black eyes aimed at Macklin. “What kind of pills?”

“All kinds. LSD. PCP. Painkillers. Tranquilizers. Uppers and downers.”

Sheila snorted. “War hero, you don’t know shit about goodies, do you?” She took a step toward Kempka, and the Fat Man’s hand rested on the Luger’s butt. “Black Beauties, Yellowjackets, Blue Angels, bennies, poppers, and Red Stingers. All high-quality floats.”

“Is that so? Were you in the business, young lady?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She looked around at the messy, cluttered trailer. “What kind of business were you in? Pig farming?”

Kempka stared at her. Then, slowly, his belly began to wobble, followed by his chins. His entire face shook like a plateful of Jell-O, and a high, feminine laugh squeaked between his lips. “Hee hee!” he said, his cheeks reddening. “Hee hee! Pig farming. Hee hee!” He waved a fat hand at Lawry, who forced a nervous laugh as well. When he’d stopped laughing, Kempka said, “No, dear one, it was not pig farming. I owned a gun shop in Rancho Cordova, just east of Sacramento. Fortunately, I had time to pack up some of my stock and get out when the bombs hit the Bay Area. I also had the presence of mind to visit a little grocery store on the way east. Mr. Lawry was a clerk at my store, and we found a place to hide for a while in the Eldorado National Forest. The road brought us here, and other people started arriving. Soon we had a little community. Most of the people came to soak themselves in the lake. There’s a belief that bathing in the salt water washes off the radiation and makes you immune.” He shrugged his fleshy shoulders. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. In any case, I kind of enjoy playing King of the Hill and the Godfather. If someone doesn’t do as I say, I simply banish them to the dirtwart land… or I kill them.” He giggled again, his black eyes sparkling merrily. “You see, I make the laws here. Me, Freddie Kempka, lately of Kempka’s Shootist Supermarket, Incorporated. Oh, I’m having a real ball!”

“Good for you,” Sheila muttered.

“Yes. Good for me.” He rubbed cocaine between his fingers and sniffed a bit up each nostril. “My, my! That is a potent dust, isn’t it?” He licked his fingers clean, and then he looked at Roland Croninger. “What are you supposed to be, a space cadet?”

Roland didn’t answer. I’ll zap your big fat ass, he thought.

Kempka giggled. “How come you to be out in the dirtwart land, Colonel?”

Macklin told him the whole story, how Earth House had collapsed and how he and the boy had gotten out. Macklin made no mention of the Shadow Soldier, because he knew the Shadow Soldier didn’t like to be talked about to strangers.

“I see,” Kempka said when he’d finished. “Well, like they say: The best-laid plans often go shitty, don’t they? Now, I suppose you came here and brought this potent dust for a purpose. What is it?”

“We want to move into the encampment. We want a tent, and we want a supply of food.”

“The only tents that are here were brought on people’s backs. They’re all filled up. No room in the inn, Colonel.”

“Make room. We get a tent and some food and you get a weekly ration of cocaine and pills. Call it rent.”

“What would I do with drugs, sir?”

Roland laughed, and Kempka regarded him through hooded eyes. “Come on, mister!” Roland stepped forward. “You know you can sell those drugs for whatever you want! You can buy people’s minds with that stuff, because everybody’ll pay to forget. They’ll pay anything you ask: food, guns, gasoline-anything.”

“I already have those things.”

“Maybe you do,” Roland agreed. “But are you sure you’ve got enough of them? What if somebody in a bigger trailer comes into the encampment tomorrow? What if they’ve got more guns than you do? What if they’re stronger and meaner? Those people out there”-he nodded toward the door-“are just waiting for somebody strong to tell them what to do. They want to be commanded. They don’t want to have to think for themselves. Here’s a way to put their minds in your pocket.” He motioned to the snowy mound.

Kempka and Roland stared at each other for a silent moment, and Roland had the sensation of looking at a giant slug. Kempka’s black eyes bored into Roland’s, and finally a little smile flickered across his wet mouth. “Would these drugs,” he said, “buy me a sweet young space cadet?”

Roland didn’t know what to say. He was stunned, and it must’ve shown on his face because Kempka snorted and laughed. When his laughter was spent, the Fat Man said to Macklin, “What’s to keep me from killing you right now and taking your precious drugs, Colonel?”

“One simple thing: the drugs are buried out in the dirtwart land. Roland’s the only one who knows where they are. He’ll go out and bring you a ration once a week, but if anybody follows him or tries to interfere, they get their brains blown out.”

Kempka tapped his fingers on the tabletop, looking from the mound of cocaine to Macklin and Roland-contemptuously dismissing the girl-and then back to the Colombian sugar.

“We could use that stuff, Mr. Kempka,” Lawry offered. “Fella came in yesterday with a gas heater that sure would warm this trailer up. Another guy’s got some whiskey he lugged along in a tow sack. We’re gonna need tires for the truck, too. I would’ve already taken that heater and the bottles of Jack Daniel’s, but both of those new arrivals are armed to the teeth. Might be a good idea to trade the drugs for their guns, too.”

“I’ll decide what’s a good idea and what’s not.” Kempka’s face folded up as he frowned thoughtfully. He drew a long breath and exhaled it like a bellows. “Find them a tent. Close to the trailer. And spread the word that if anybody touches them, they answer to Freddie Kempka.” He smiled broadly at Macklin. “Colonel, I believe you and your friends are going to be very interesting additions to our little family. I guess we could call you pharmacists, couldn’t we?”

“I guess so.” Macklin waited until Lawry had lowered his shotgun, and then he in turn lowered the automatic.

“There. Now we’re all happy, aren’t we?” And his black, ravenous eyes found Roland Croninger.

Lawry took them to a small tent staked down about thirty yards from the Airstream trailer. It was occupied by a young man and a woman who held an infant with bandaged legs. Lawry stuck the shotgun in the young man’s face and said, “Get out.”

The man, drawn and gaunt, hollow-eyed with fatigue, scrabbled under his sleeping bag. His hand came up with a hunting knife, but Lawry stepped forward and caught the man’s thin wrist beneath his boot. Lawry put all his weight down, and Roland watched his eyes as he broke the man’s bones: they were empty, registering no emotion even when the snapping noise began. Lawry was simply doing what he’d been told. The infant started crying, and the woman was screaming, but the man just hugged his broken wrist and stared numbly up at Lawry.

“Out.” Lawry put the shotgun’s barrel to the young man’s skull. “Are you deaf, you dumb bastard?”

The man and woman wearily got to their feet. He paused to gather up their sleeping bags and a knapsack with his uninjured hand, but Lawry grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out, throwing him to the ground. The woman sobbed and cringed at her husband’s side. A crowd was gathering to watch, and the woman shrieked, “You animals! You dirty animals! That’s our tent! It belongs to us!”

“Not anymore.” Lawry motioned with the shotgun toward the dirtwart land. “Start walking.”

“It’s not fair! Not fair!” the woman sobbed. She looked around imploringly at the people who were gathering. Roland, Macklin and Sheila did, too, and they all saw the same thing in those faces: an impassive, uninvolved curiosity, as if they were watching television violence. Though there were faint expressions of disgust and pity here and there, the majority of the onlookers had already been shocked devoid of all emotion.

“Help us!” the woman begged. “Please… somebody help us!”

Several of the people had guns, but none of them intervened. Macklin understood why: It was the survival of the fittest. Freddie Kempka was the emperor here, and Lawry was his lieutenant-probably one of many lieutenants Kempka used as his eyes and ears.

“Get out,” Lawry told the couple. The woman kept shrieking and crying, but finally the man stood up and, his eyes dead and defeated, began to trudge slowly toward the grim land of car hulks and decaying corpses. Her expression turned to hatred; she stood up with the wailing infant in her arms and shouted to the crowd, “It’ll happen to you! You’ll see! They’ll take everything you have! They’ll come and drag you out of-”

Lawry struck out with the stock of the shotgun. It crunched into the infant’s skull, the force of the blow knocking the young woman to the ground.

The infant’s crying abruptly stopped.

She looked down into her child’s face and made a weak choking sound.

Sheila Fontana couldn’t believe what she’d just witnessed; she wanted to turn away, but the scene had a dark hold on her. Her stomach churned with revulsion, and she could still hear the infant’s cry, echoing over and over in her mind. She put her hand over her mouth and pressed.

The young man, a corpse in clothes, was walking on across the plain, not even bothering to look back.

Finally, with a shuddering gasp, the woman rose to her feet, the silent infant clasped to her chest. Her hideous, hollowed-out eyes met Sheila’s and lingered. Sheila felt as if her soul had been burned to a cinder. If… only the baby had stopped crying, Sheila thought. If only…

The young mother turned and began to follow her husband into the mist.

The onlookers drifted away. Lawry wiped the stock of his shotgun on the ground and motioned toward the tent. “Looks like we just got a vacancy, Colonel.”

“Did you… have to do that?” Sheila asked. Inside she was trembling and sick, but her face showed no sign of it, her eyes cold and flinty.

“Every once in a while they forget who makes the rules. Well? Do you want the tent or not?”

“We do,” Macklin said.

“There you go, then. Even got a couple of sleeping bags and some food in there. Cozy as home, huh?”

Macklin and Roland entered the tent. “Where am I supposed to live?” Sheila asked Lawry.

He smiled, examined her up and down. “Well, I’ve got an extra sleeping bag over in the trailer. See, I bunk with Mr. Kempka, but I’m not funny. He likes young boys, couldn’t give a shit about women. What do you say?”

She smelled his body odor and couldn’t decide whose was worse, his or the war hero’s. “Forget it,” she said. “I’ll stay here.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll get you, sooner or later.”

“When Hell freezes.”

He licked a finger and held it up to catch the wind. “It’s getting pretty frosty, darlin’.” Then he laughed and sauntered off toward the trailer.

Sheila watched him go. She looked in the direction of the dirtwart land, and she saw the vague outlines of the young couple heading into the mist, into the unknown that lay beyond it. Those two wouldn’t have spit’s chance out there, she thought. But maybe they already knew that. The baby would’ve died anyway, she told herself. Sure. The kid was half dead already.

But that incident had knocked her off her tracks more than anything ever had before, and she couldn’t help thinking that a few minutes before there was a living person where a ghost was now. And it had happened because of her drugs, because she’d come in there with the war hero and the punk playing big shots.

The young couple disappeared into the gray rain.

As Rudy said, you cover your own ass. And in this day and time, those were words to live by.

Sheila turned her back on the dirtwart land and slipped into the tent.

Thirty-Nine - [Hell Freezes]

“Light!” Josh shouted, pointing into the distance. “Look at that! There’s light ahead!”

They’d been following a highway over gently rolling country, and now they saw the light that Josh pointed toward: a bluish-white illumination reflecting off low-lying, turbulent clouds.

“That’s Matheson,” Leona said, from her bareback perch atop Mule. “Lord A’mighty! They’ve got the ’lectricity on in Matheson!”

“How many people live there?” Josh asked her, speaking loudly over the rush and pull of the wind.

“Thirteen, fourteen thousand. It’s a regular city!”

“Thank God! They must’ve fixed their power lines! We’re going to have hot meals tonight! Thank God!” He started shoving the wheelbarrow with new-found energy, as if his heels had sprouted wings. Swan followed him, carrying the dowsing rod and her small bag, and Leona kicked her heels into Mule’s sides to urge the horse onward. Mule obeyed without hesitation, glad to be of use again. Behind them, the little terrier sniffed the air and growled quietly but followed nevertheless.

Flickers of lightning shot through the cloud cover over Matheson, and the wind brought the rumble of thunder. They’d left the Jaspin farm early that morning, had walked all day along the narrow highway. Josh had tried to put a saddle and bridle on Mule, but though the horse stood docilely, Josh couldn’t get the damned things on right. The saddle kept slipping, and he couldn’t figure out how to get the bridle on at all. Every time Mule had even grumbled, Josh had jumped back out of the way, expecting the animal to buck and rear, and finally he gave the job up as a lost cause. Still, the horse accepted Leona’s weight without complaint; he had also borne Swan for a few miles. The horse seemed content to follow Swan, almost like a puppy. And off in the darkness, the terrier yapped every once in a while to let them know he was still around.

Josh’s heart was hammering. That was one of the most beautiful lights he’d ever seen, next to the glorious flashlight beam that had speared through the basement. Oh, Lord! he thought. A hot meal, a warm place to sleep, and-glory of glories!-maybe even a real toilet again! He smelled ozone in the air. A thunderstorm was approaching, but he didn’t care. They were going to rest in the lap of luxury tonight!

Josh turned his face toward Swan and Leona. “Lord God, we made it back to civilization!” He let out a loud whoop that put the wind to shame and even made Mule jump.

But the smile froze on Leona’s face. Slowly, it began to slide off. Her fingers curled through Mule’s coarse black mane.

She wasn’t sure what she’d seen, wasn’t sure at all. It had been a trick of the light, she told herself. A trick of the light. Yes. That’s all.

Leona thought she’d seen a skull where Josh Hutchins’s face had been.

But it had been so fast-there and then gone in an eye-blink.

She stared at the back of Swan’s head. Oh, God, Leona thought, what’ll I do if the child’s face is like that, too?

It took her a while to gather her courage, and then she said, “Swan?” in a thin, scared voice.

Swan glanced back. “Ma’am?”

Leona was holding her breath.

“Ma’am?” Swan repeated.

Leona found a smile. “Oh… nothin’,” she said, and she shrugged. The vision of a skull beneath the skin was not there. “I… just wanted to see your face,” Leona told her.

“My face? Why?”

“Oh, I was just thinkin’… how pretty you must’ve been.” She stammered at her own error. “I mean, how pretty you’re gonna be again, once your skin heals up. And it will, too. Skin’s a real tough thing, y’know. Sure is! It’ll heal up pretty as a picture!”

Swan didn’t answer; she remembered the horror that had stared back at her from the bathroom mirror. “I don’t think my face’ll ever heal up,” she said matter-of-factly. A sudden awful thought struck her. “You don’t think…” She paused, unable to spit it out. Then: “You don’t think… I’ll scare people in Matheson, do you?”

“Of course not! And don’t you even think such a thing!” In truth, Leona hadn’t considered that before, but now she could envision residents of Matheson cringing away from Josh and Swan. “Your skin’ll heal up soon enough,” Leona assured her. “Besides, that’s just your outside face.”

“My outside face?”

“Yep. Everybody’s got two faces, child-the outside face and the inside face. The outside face is how the world sees you, but the inside face is what you really look like. It’s your true face, and if it was flipped to the outside you’d show the world what kind of person you are.”

“Flipped to the outside? How?”

Leona smiled. “Well, God hasn’t figured a way to do that yet. But He will. Sometimes you can see a person’s inside face-but only for a second or two-if you look close and hard enough. The eyes give away the inside face, and likely as not it’s a whole lot different than the mask that’s stuck on the outside.” She nodded, looking toward the lights of Matheson. “Oh, I’ve met some mighty handsome people who had monstrous ugly faces on the inside. And I’ve met some homely folks with buck teeth and big noses and the light of Heaven in their eyes, and you know that if you saw their inside faces the beauty would knock you right to your knees. I kind of figure it might be like that for your inside face, child. And Josh’s as well. So what does it matter about your outside face?”

Swan pondered for a moment. “I’d like to believe that.”

“Then take it as true,” Leona said, and Swan was quiet.

The light beckoned them onward. The highway climbed over one more hill, then began to curve gently down toward the town. Lightning jumped across the horizon. Beneath Leona, Mule snorted and whinnied.

Swan heard a nervous note in the horse’s whinny. Mule’s excited because we’re going to find more people, she thought. But no, no-that hadn’t been a sound of excitement; Swan had heard it as distrust, edginess. She began to pick up the horse’s nervousness, to feel a little wary herself, like the time she’d been strolling across a wide golden field and a farmer in a red cap had yelled, “Hey, little girl! Watch out for rattlers in them weeds!”

Not that she was afraid of snakes-far from it. Once, when she was five years old, she’d picked up a colorful snake right out of the grass, run her fingers across the beautiful diamonds on its back and the bony-looking ridges on its tail. Then she’d set the snake down and watched as it crawled unhurriedly away. It was only later, when she’d told her mama and gotten a rear-blistering whipping in return, that Swan had realized she was supposed to be afraid.

Mule made a whickering sound and tossed his head. The road flattened out as it approached the outskirts of town, where a green sign proclaimed, Welcome to Matheson, Kansas! We’re Strong, Proud and Growing!

Josh stopped, and Swan almost bumped into him.

“What is it?” Leona asked him.

“Look.” Josh motioned toward the town.

The houses and buildings were dark; no light came from their windows or front porches. There were no streetlights, no headlights of cars, no traffic lights. The glow that reflected up off the low clouds was coming from deeper within the town, beyond the dead, dark structures that were scattered on both sides of the main highway. There was no sound but the shrill whine of the wind. “I think that light’s coming from the center of town,” he told Swan and Leona. “But if the electricity’s back on, why aren’t there lights in the house windows, too?”

“Maybe everybody’s in one place,” Leona offered. “Like at the auditorium, or City Hall or somewhere.”

Josh nodded. “There ought to be cars,” he decided. “Ought to be traffic lights working. I don’t see any.”

“Maybe they’re savin’ the ’lectricity. Maybe the wires aren’t too strong yet.”

“Maybe,” Josh replied, but there was something spooky about Matheson; why were there no lights in the windows, yet something at the center of Matheson ablaze with light? And everything was so still, so very still. He had the feeling that they should turn back, but the wind was cold and they had come so far; there had to be people here! Sure! They’re all in one place, like Leona had suggested. Maybe they’re having a town meeting or something! In any case, there was no turning back. He started pushing the wheelbarrow again. Swan followed him, and the horse that bore Leona followed Swan, and off to the left the terrier kept to the tall weeds and ran ahead.

Another roadside sign advertised the Matheson Motel-Swimming Pool! Cable TV!-and a third sign said the best coffee and steaks in town could be found at the Hightower Restaurant on Caviner Street. They followed the road between plowed fields and passed a dark softball diamond and a public pool where the lounge chairs and umbrellas were blown into a chain-link fence. A final roadside sign announced the July Firecracker Sale at the K-Mart on Billups Street, and then they entered Matheson.

It had been a pretty town, Josh thought as they walked along the center line. The buildings were either made of stones or logs, meant to resemble a frontier town. The houses were made of brick, most of them one story, nothing fancy, but nice enough. A statue of somebody on his knees, one hand covering what might’ve been a Bible and the other extended toward the sky, stood atop a pedestal in a district of small shops and stores that reminded Josh of that Mayberry show with Andy Griffith. A canopy flapped over a store with a barber pole in front of it, and the windows of the Matheson First Citizen’s Bank were broken out. Furniture had been dragged out of a furniture store, piled in a heap in the street and set afire. Nearby was an overturned police car, also burned to a hulk. Josh did not look inside. Thunder growled overhead, and lightning danced across the sky.

Further on, they found a used car lot. Trade at Uncle Roy’s! the sign urged. Under rows of flapping multicolored banners were six dusty cars. Josh began to check them all, one by one, as Swan and Leona waited behind and Mule grumbled uneasily. Two of them were sitting on flat tires, and a third’s windshield and windows were shattered. The other three-an Impala, a Ford Fairlane and a red pickup truck-seemed in pretty good shape. Josh walked to the small office building, found the door wide open, and with the light of the bull’s-eye lantern located the keys to all three vehicles on a pegboard. He took the keys out to the lot and methodically tried them. The Impala wouldn’t make a sound, the pickup truck was dead, and the Fairlane’s engine popped and stuttered, made a noise like a chain being dragged along gravel and then went silent. Josh opened the Fairlane’s hood and found that the engine had been attacked with what might’ve been an axe, the wiring, belts and cables hacked apart. “Damn it!” Josh swore, and then his lantern revealed something written in dried grease on the inside of the hood: ALL SHALL PRAISE LORD ALVIN.

He stared at the scrawled writing, remembering that he’d seen the same thing-though written in a different hand and in a different substance-at the Jaspin farmhouse the night before. He walked back to Swan and Leona, and he said, “Those cars are shot. I think somebody wrecked them on purpose.” He looked toward the light, which was much closer now. “Well,” he said finally, “I guess we go find out what that is, right?”

Leona glanced at him, then quickly away; she wasn’t sure that she hadn’t seen the skull again, but in this strange light she couldn’t tell. Her heart had begun to pump harder, and she didn’t know what to do or say.

Josh pushed the wheelbarrow forward. Off in the distance, they heard the terrier bark a few times, then silence. They continued along the main street, passing more stores with broken windows, more overturned and burned vehicles. The light pulled them onward, and though they all had their private concerns they were drawn to that light like moths to a candle.

On a corner was a small sign that pointed to the right and said Pathway Institute, 2 mi. Josh looked in that direction and saw nothing but darkness.

“That’s the asylum,” Leona said.

“The asylum?” The word lanced him. “What asylum?”

“The crazy house. You know, where they put folks who go off their rockers. That one’s famous all over the state. Full of people too crazy to go to prison.”

“You mean… the criminally insane?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Great,” Josh said. The sooner they were out of this town, the better! He didn’t like being even two miles from an asylum full of lunatic murderers. He peered off into the darkness where the Pathway Institute was, and he felt the flesh ripple all up and down his backbone.

And then they went through another area of silent houses, passing the dark Matheson Motel and the Hightower Restaurant, and they entered a huge paved parking lot.

Before them, every light illuminated and blazing, was a K-Mart and, next to it, a similarly lit Food Giant supermarket.

“God Almighty!” Josh breathed. “A shopping center!”

Swan and Leona just stared, as if they’d never seen such light or huge stores before. Dark-sensitive photon lamps cast a yellow glow over the parking lot, which held perhaps fifty or sixty cars, campers, and pickup trucks, all covered with Kansas dust. Josh was completely stunned and had to catch his balance before the wind knocked him over. It was running through his head that if the electricity was on, then the freezers in the supermarket would be operating, too, and inside would be steaks, ice cream, cold beer, eggs, bacon, ham, and God only knew what else. He looked at the brilliantly lit K-Mart, his brain reeling. What sort of treasures would be in there? Radios and batteries, flashlights and lanterns, guns, gloves, kerosene heaters, raincoats! He didn’t know whether to laugh or sob with joy, but he pushed the wheelbarrow aside and started walking toward the K-Mart as if in a delirious daze.