Swan Song (78 page)

“Fall back! Fall back!” Lieutenant Thatcher commanded as bullets whined around his head and soldiers were wounded and killed on every side. Thatcher didn’t wait for the others to obey; he turned and ran, and with his third stride a.38 slug hit him in the small of his back and propelled him into a ditch on top of four other men.

The charge had been broken, and the soldiers retreated. They left their dead behind.

“Hold your fire!” Sister shouted. The shooting died away, and in another minute it ceased over on the eastern wall as well.

“I’m out of bullets!” a woman with a rifle said to Sister, and further down the line there were more calls for ammunition-but Sister knew that once the bullets everyone had for his own weapons were gone, there would be no more. They’re baiting us, she thought. Getting us to waste ammunition, and when the guns were useless they would storm the walls in a tide of death and destruction. Sister had six more shells for her own shotgun, and that was all.

They’re going to break through, she realized. Sooner or later, they’re going to break through.

She looked at Swan and saw in the girl’s dark eyes that Swan had reached the same conclusion.

“They want me,” Swan said. The wind blew her hair around her pale, lovely face like the fanning of brilliant flames. “No one else. Just me.” Her gaze found one of the ladders that leaned against the wall.

Sister’s arm shot out; her hand caught Swan’s chin and pulled her head back around. “You get that out of your mind!” Sister snapped. “Yes, they want you! He wants you! But don’t you think for one minute that it would be over if you went out to them!”

“But… if I went out there, maybe I could-”

“You could not!” Sister interrupted. “If you went over that wall, all you’d be doing is telling the rest of us that there’s nothing worth fighting for!”

“I don’t…” She shook her head, sickened by the sights, sounds and smell of war. “I don’t want anyone else to die.”

“It’s not up to you anymore. People are going to die. I may be dead before the day’s over. But some things are worth fighting and dying for. You’d better learn that right here and now, if you’re ever going to lead people.”

“Lead people? What do you mean?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” Sister released Swan’s chin. “You’re a natural-born leader! It’s in your eyes, your voice, the way you carry yourself-everything about you. People listen to you, and they believe what you say, and they want to follow you. If you said everyone should put down their guns right this minute, they’d do it. Because they know you’re somebody very special, Swan-whether you want to believe that or not. You’re a leader, and you’d better learn how to act like one.”

“Me? A leader? No, I’m just… I’m just a girl.”

“You were born to lead people, and to teach them, too!” Sister affirmed. “This says you were.” She touched the outline of the glass ring in the leather satchel. “Josh knows it. So does Robin. And he knows you were, just like I do.” She motioned out beyond the wall, where she was certain the man with the scarlet eye must be. “Now it’s time you accepted it, too.”

Swan was puzzled and disoriented. Her childhood in Kansas, before the seventeenth of July, seemed like the life of another person a hundred years ago. “Teach them what?” she asked.

“What the future can be,” Sister answered.

Swan thought of what she’d seen in the circle of glass: the green forests and meadows, the golden fields, the fragrant orchards of a new world.

“Now get on that horse,” Sister said, “and ride around the walls. Sit up tall and proud, and let everybody see you. Sit like a princess,” she said, drawing her own self up straight, “and let everybody know there’s still something worth dying for in this damned world.”

Swan looked at the ladder again. Sister was right. They wanted her, yes, but they wouldn’t stop if they had her; they’d just keep killing, like rabid dogs in a frenzy, because that was all they understood.

She walked to Mule’s side, grasped the rope reins and swung up onto his back. He pranced around a little bit, still unnerved by the uproar, and then he settled down and responded to Swan’s touch. She urged him forward with a whisper, and Mule began to canter along the wall.

Sister watched Swan ride away, her hair streaming behind her like a fiery banner, and she saw the others turn to look at her as well, saw them all stand a little straighter, saw them check their guns and ammunition after she’d passed by. Saw new resolve in their faces, and knew that they would all die for Swan-and their town-if it came to that. She hoped it would not, but she was certain the soldiers would return stronger than ever-and right now, at least, there was no way out.

Sister reloaded her shotgun and stepped back up on the dirt bank to await the next attack.

Eighty-Three - [A Five-Star

General]

With darkness came the bone-numbing cold. The bonfires chewed up wood that had been the walls and roofs of shacks, and the defenders of Mary’s Rest warmed themselves, ate and rested in hour-long shifts before they returned to the wall.

Sister had four shells left. The soldier she’d killed lay about ten feet from the wall, the blood icy and black around what had been his chest. On the northern perimeter, Paul was down to twelve bullets, and during one brief skirmish just before dark the two men who’d been fighting on either side of him had been killed. A ricocheting slug had driven wood splinters into Paul’s forehead and right cheek, but otherwise he was okay.

On the eastern side of Mary’s Rest, Robin counted six shells left for his rifle. Guarding that section of the wall, along with Robin and about forty ether people, was Anna McClay, who’d long ago run out of bullets for her own rifle and now carried a little.22 pistol she’d taken from a dead man.

The attacks had continued all day, with lulls of an hour or two in between. First one side of the barricade would be hammered at, then another sprayed with gunfire. The wall was still holding strong, and it deflected most of the fire, but bullets were knocking chinks between the logs and occasionally hitting someone. Bud Royce’s knee had been shattered by a rifle bullet that way, but he was still hobbling around on the southern edge, his face bleached with pain.

The word had gone out to save ammunition, but the supply was dwindling, and the enemy seemed to have enough to waste. Everyone knew that it was just a matter of time before the walls were stormed by massive force-but the question was: On what side would it come?

All this Swan knew as she rode Mule across the cornfield. The heavy-laden stalks swayed as the wind hissed through them. In a clearing ahead was the largest of the bonfires, around which fifty or sixty people rested and ate hot soup ladled from steaming wooden buckets. She was on her way to check on the many wounded who’d been taken to shelter inside the shacks for Dr. Ryan to help, and as she passed the bonfire a silence fell over the people who’d gathered around it.

She didn’t look at any of them. She couldn’t, because-even though she knew Sister was right-she felt as if she’d signed their death warrants. It was because of her that people were being killed, wounded and maimed, and if being a leader meant having to take that kind of burden, it was too heavy. She didn’t look at them, because she knew that many of them would be dead before daylight.

A man shouted, “Don’t you worry! We won’t let the bastards in!”

“When I run out of bullets,” another man vowed, “I’ll use my knife! And when that breaks, I’ve still got teeth!”

“We’ll stop ’em!” a woman called. “We’ll turn ’em back!”

There were more shouts and calls of encouragement, and when Swan finally did look toward the bonfire, she saw the people watching her intently, some silhouetted by the flame and others illuminated by it, their eyes full of light and their faces strong and hopeful.

“We ain’t afeared to die!” another woman said, and other voices agreed with her. “It’s quittin’ that scares the tar outta me, and by God, I ain’t a quitter!”

Swan reined Mule in and sat staring at them. Her eyes filled with tears.

The skinny black man who’d been so vehement at the town meeting approached her. His left arm was bound up with bloody cloth, but his eyes were fierce and courageous. “Don’t you cry, now!” he scolded her softly, when he got close enough. “It ain’t for you to be cryin’. Lord, no! If you ain’t strong, who’s gonna be?”

Swan nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Thank you,” she said.

“Uh-uh! Thank you.”

“For what?”

He smiled wistfully. “For lettin’ me hear that sweet music again,” he said, and he nodded toward the cornfield.

Swan knew what music he meant, because she could hear it, too: the wind moving between the rows and stalks like fingers brushing harp strings.

“I was born right close to a cornfield,” he said. “Heard that music at night, just before I slept, and first thing in the mornin’ when I woke up. Didn’t think I’d ever hear it again, after them fellas messed everythin’ up.” He looked up at Swan. “I ain’t afraid to die now. Uh-uh! See, I always figured it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees. I’m ready-and that’s my choice. So don’t you worry ’bout nothin’! Uh-uh!” He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and his frail body seemed to sway to the rhythm of the corn. Then he opened them again, and he said, “You take care now, hear?” He returned to the bonfire, offering his hands to the heat.

Swan urged Mule forward, and the horse trotted across the field. As well as looking in on the wounded, Swan wanted to check on Josh; the last time she’d seen him, early that morning, he’d still been deep in a coma.

She was almost across the field when bright flashes of light leaped over the eastern wall. Flames gouted, and mingled with the blasts was the high sewing-machine chatter of guns. Robin was on that side of the wall, she realized. She cried out, “Go!” and flicked the reins. Mule took off at a gallop.

Behind her, at the western wall, Army of Excellence infantry and vehicles were surging from the woods. “Hold your fire!” Sister warned, but the people around her were already shooting, wasting ammunition. And then something hit the wall about fifteen yards away, and flames leapt, fire rippling over the icy glaze. Another object struck the wall a few yards closer; Sister heard glass shatter, and she smelled gasoline an instant before a burst of orange flame dazzled her. Bombs! she thought. They’re throwing bombs at the wall!

People were shouting and firing in a bedlam of noise. Bottles full of gasoline, with wicks of flaming cloth jammed down into them, sailed over the wall and exploded amid the defenders. Glass broke almost at Sister’s feet, and she instinctively flung herself to the ground as a sheet of fiery gasoline spewed in all directions.

On the eastern side, dozens of Molotov cocktails were being thrown over the wall. A man near Robin screamed as he was hit by flying glass and covered with flames. Someone else threw him to the ground, tried to put out the fire with snow and dirt. And then, through the maelstrom of leaping flames and explosions, machine gun, pistol and rifle bullets hit the wall so hard the logs jumped, and slugs ricocheted through gaps between them.

“Let ’em have it!” Anna McClay thundered. The orange firelight showed her hundreds of soldiers between the wall and the forest, crawling forward, ducking into trenches, hiding behind wrecked vehicles and then firing or flinging their homemade bombs. As others around her fell back to get away from the flames, she shouted, “Stay where you are! Don’t run!” A woman to her left staggered and went down, and as Anna turned to retrieve the wounded woman’s gun a rifle bullet zipped through a hole in the wall and hit her in the side, knocking her to her knees. She tasted blood in her mouth and knew she’d bought the farm this time, but she stood up with a gun in each hand and lurched to the wall again.

The storm of bombs and gunfire rose in intensity. A section of the wall was aflame, the wet wood popping and smoking. As bombs burst on all sides and glass fragments whirled through the turbulent air Robin kept his position at the wall, firing over it at the advancing soldiers. He hit two of them, and then a bomb exploded on the other side of the wall right in front of him. The heat and flying glass drove him back, and he tripped over the body of a dead man behind him.

Blood streamed down his face from a gash at his hairline, and his skin felt seared. He wiped blood out of his eyes, and then he saw something that drove a freezing bolt of fear into his stomach.

A metal claw attached to a heavy rope suddenly flew over the wall. The rope was drawn taut, and the tongs of the crude grappling hook dug between the logs. Another hook came over, lodging nearby; a third grappling hook was thrown, but it didn’t find a purchase and was rapidly reeled back to be tossed again. A fourth and a fifth grappling hook dug into the wall, and the soldiers started hauling at the ropes.

Robin realized at once that the entire section of the wall, already weakened by bullets and flames, was about to be pulled down. More grappling hooks were coming over, their tongs jamming tightly between the logs, and as the ropes went taut the wall cracked like a rib cage being torn apart.

He scrambled to his feet, ran toward the wall and grabbed one of the hooks, trying to wrench it loose. A few yards away, a husky, gray-bearded man was hacking at one of the ropes with an axe, and beside him a slim black woman was sawing at another rope with a butcher knife. Still the bottle bombs exploded along the wall, and more grappling hooks strained.

To the right of Robin’s position, Anna McClay had emptied both of her guns, and now she saw the grappling hooks and ropes coming over the wall. She turned, looking for another weapon, heedless of the bullet in her side and a second in her right shoulder. Rolling a dead man over, she found a pistol, but there was no ammunition for it; then she discovered a meat cleaver that someone had dropped, and she used it to slash at the ropes. She cut through one and had almost severed a second when the top three feet of the wall was pulled down in a crash of logs and flames. A half-dozen soldiers rushed at her. “No!” she screamed, and she flung the cleaver at them. A fusillade of machine gun bullets spun her around in a macabre pirouette. As she fell to the ground her last thought was of a carnival ride called the Mad Mouse, its little rattling car rocketing around a bend in the tracks and taking off into the night sky, up and up with the fiery lights of the carnival burning in the earth below her and the wind whistling past her ears.

She was dead before she came down.

“They’re breaking through!” Robin heard someone shout-and then the wall in front of him collapsed with a noise like a human groan, and he was standing exposed in a space that a tractor-trailer truck could have driven through. A wave of soldiers was coming right at him, and he leapt aside an instant before bullets tore through the air.

He aimed his rifle and shot the first soldier who rushed through. The others scurried back or hit the ground as Robin blasted away at them-and then his rifle was empty, and he couldn’t see the soldiers anymore for the smoke that whirled off the burning logs. He heard more cracks and groans as other sections of the wall were pulled down, and flames leapt high as the bombs exploded. He was aware of figures running all around him, some of them firing and falling. “Kill the sonsofbitches!” he heard a man shout off to the left, and then a figure in a grayish-green uniform ran out of the haze. Robin planted his feet, turned the rifle around to use it like a club and struck the soldier in the skull as the man passed him. The soldier fell, and Robin discarded his rifle in favor of the other man’s.45 automatic.

A bullet sang past his head. Twenty feet away a bottle bomb exploded, and a woman with burning hair, her face a mask of blood, staggered out of the smoke; she fell before she got to Robin. He aimed at the figures flooding over the broken wall, firing the rest of the.45’s clip. Machine gun bullets plowed across the ground a few feet from him, and he knew there was nothing more he could do there. He had to get away, to find another place to defend from; the wall on the eastern side of Mary’s Rest was being destroyed, and soldiers were pouring through the holes.

He ran toward town. Dozens of others were running as well, and the battlefield was littered with the bodies of the dead and wounded. Small bands of people had stopped to make their own desperate stands, but they were quickly shot down or scattered. Robin looked back and saw two armored cars coming through the smoke, their turret guns flashing fire.

“Robin! Robin!” someone was calling over the chaos. He recognized the voice as Swan’s, and he knew she must be somewhere close.

“Swan!” he shouted. “Over here!”

She heard Robin’s answer and wheeled Mule to the left, in the direction she thought his voice had come from. The smoke stung her eyes, made it almost impossible to see the faces of people until they were a few feet away. Explosions were still blasting just ahead, and Swan knew the enemy soldiers had broken through the eastern wall. She saw that people were wounded and bleeding, but they were stopping to turn and fire the last of their bullets; still others, armed only with axes, knives and shovels, ran forward to fight at close quarters.

A bomb exploded nearby, and a man screamed. Mule reared up on his hind legs and pawed the air. When he came down again, he kept sideslipping as if one half of him wanted to run in one direction and the other half the opposite way. “Robin!” she shouted. “Where are you?”

“Over here!” He still couldn’t see her. He tripped over the corpse of a man whose chest was riddled with bullet holes; the dead man was grasping an axe, and Robin spent a few precious seconds working it loose from the hand.

When he stood up, he was face to face with a horse-and it was a toss-up as to who was most startled. Mule whinnied and reared again, wanting to break loose and run, but Swan quickly got him under control. She saw Robin’s blood-smeared face and held out her hand to him. “Get on! Hurry!”

He grasped her hand and pulled himself up behind her. Swan kicked her heels into Mule’s flanks, wheeled him toward town and let him run.

They came out of the thick smoke, and Swan suddenly reined Mule in. He obeyed, his hooves plowing into the ground. From this position, Swan and Robin could see fighting going on all around Mary’s Rest; fires blazed on the southern side, and over on the west they saw soldiers streaming through huge holes in the wall, followed by more armored cars and trucks. The noise of gunfire, shouting and screaming was whipped back and forth in the wind-and at that instant Swan knew Mary’s Rest had fallen.