“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.
It was gone in an instant. “Did you see it? Did you?”
“See what?” Robin looked at the ground, saw nothing.
But in the next moment, it happened.
They all felt it.
Heat, like the rays of a searchlight behind the clouds, slowly sweeping across the parking lot.
Sister watched the ground—and as she felt the heat spread across her back and shoulders like a healing balm she saw her shadow take form on the pavement, saw the shadows of Josh and Swan and Robin all gathered around her own.
With a mighty effort, she lifted her head toward the sky, and the tears ran down her cheeks.
“The sun,” she whispered. “Oh, dear God ... the sun’s coming out.”
They looked up. The leaden sky was moving, plates of clouds colliding and ripping apart. “There!” Robin shouted, pointing. He was the first to see a patch of azure before the clouds closed up again.
“Josh! I want to go ... up there!” She motioned to the peak of Warwick Mountain. “Please! I want to see the sun come out!”
“We’ve got to get some help for you before—”
She clenched his hand. “I want to go up there,” she repeated. “I want to watch the sun come out. Do you understand me?”
Josh did. He hesitated, but only for a few seconds, because he knew time was short. He lifted her in his arms and started up the side of Warwick Mountain.
Swan and Robin followed as he climbed through the rough t
errain of boulders and dead, twisted trees, carrying Sister up toward the turbulent sky.
Swan felt the sun’s touch on her back, saw the shadows of rocks and trees appear around her; she looked up and caught a hint of bright blue off to the left, and then the clouds sealed up. Robin grasped her hand, and they helped each other climb.
“Hurry!” Sister told Josh. “Please ... hurry!”
Shadows scurried across the mountain. The wind was still cold and whipped violently, but the clouds were beginning to break up, and Josh wondered if that last storm hadn’t been the final gasp of a seven-year winter.
“Hurry!” Sister pleaded.
They came out of the woods and into a small clearing near the peak. Rough-edged boulders were strewn about, and from this height there was a view to all points of the compass, the landscape around them fading into the mist.
“Here.” Sister’s voice was weakening. “Lay me down here ... so I can see.”
Josh gently put Sister on a bed of dead leaves, with her back molded into the smooth hollow of a boulder and her face turned toward the west.
The wind swirled around them, still carrying a bite. Dead branches snapped from the trees, and black leaves flew overhead like ravens.
Swan caught her breath as rays of golden light streamed through the western clouds, and for an instant the harsh landscape softened, its forlorn colors of black and gray turning to pale brown and reddish-gold. But just as quickly, the light was gone.
“Wait,” Sister said, watching the advance of the clouds. Whirlwinds and eddies moved in them like tides and currents after a storm. She could feel her life quickly ebbing away, her spirit wanting to bolt out of her tired body, but she clung to life with the same dogged tenacity that had helped her carry the glass crown mile after rugged mile.
They waited. Above Warwick Mountain the clouds were drifting apart, slowly unlocking, and behind them were fragments of blue, connecting like the pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle finally revealed.
“There.” Sister nodded, squinting up as the light spread over the land and up the mountainside, over dead leaves and trees and boulders and onto her face. “There!”
Josh shouted with joy. Huge holes were breaking open in the clouds, and through them streamed a golden light as beautiful as a promise.
From down in the distant valleys and hollows below Warwick Mountain other cries of joy echoed from the hillsides, where little communities of shacks had finally been touched by the sun. A car horn blew, followed by another and another, and the shouts grew and merged into a mighty voice.
Swan lifted her face up and let the wonderful, stunning warmth soak into her skin. She drew a long breath and smelled sweet, uncontaminated air.
The long twilight was ending.
“Swan,” Sister rasped.
She looked down at Sister, saw her radiant with sunlight and smiling. Sister lifted her hand to Swan; she took it, grasped it tightly and knelt down beside her.
They looked at each other for a long time, and Swan put Sister’s hand against her wet cheek.
“I’m proud of you,” Sister said. “Oh, I’m so proud of you.”
“You’re going to be all right,” Swan told her, but her throat was closing up, and a sob welled out. “You’ll be fine as soon as we get you to—”
“Shhhhh.” Sister ran her fingers over Swan’s long, flame-colored hair. In the sunshine, it gleamed with the intensity of a bonfire. “I want you to listen to me, now. Listen close. Look at me, too.”
Swan did, but Sister’s face was blurred through the tears. Swan wiped her eyes.
“The summer’s ... finally come,” Sister said. “There’s no telling when winter will be back. You’re going to have to work while you can. Work as hard and fast ... as you can, while the sun’s still shining. Do you hear me?”
Swan nodded.
Sister’s fingers tightened around the girl’s. “I wish I could go with you. I do. But ... that’s not how it’s going to be. You and I ... are going in different directions now. But that’s all right.” Sister’s eyes sparkled, and she looked over at Robin. “Hey,” she said. “Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
“How about you?” she asked Swan. “Do you love him?”
“Yes,” Swan said.
“Then ... that’s half the battle won right there. You two hold onto each other, and you help each other ... and don’t let anybody or anything pull you apart. You keep going, step after step ... and you do the work that has to be done while it’s still summertime.” She turned her head, and squinted up at the black giant. “Josh?” she said. “You know ... where you have to go, don’t you? You know who’s waiting for you.”
Josh nodded. “Yes,” he finally managed to say. “I know.”
“The sun ... feels so good,” Sister said, looking up at it. Her sight was dimming, and she didn’t have to squint anymore. “So good. I’ve come ... a long way ... and I’m tired now. Will you ... find a place for me to rest up here ... so I can lie close to the sun?”
Swan squeezed her hand, and Josh said, “We will.”
“You’re a good man. I don’t think ... even you knew how good you were. Swan?” Sister reached up with both hands and cupped them around Swan’s beautiful face. “You listen to me. Do the work. Do it well. You can bring things back ... even better than they were. You’re a ... natural-born leader, Swan ... and when you walk, you hold yourself strong and proud ... and ... remember ... how much I love you....”
Sister’s hands slipped away from Swan’s face, but Swan caught and held onto them. The spark of life was almost gone.
Sister smiled. In Swan’s eyes she could see the colors of the glass crown. Her mouth trembled and opened again.
“One step,” she whispered.
And then she took the next.
They stayed around her as the sun warmed their backs and thawed out their muscles. Josh started to close Sister’s eyes—but he didn’t, because he knew how much she loved the light.
Swan stood up. She walked away from them and dug her hand into her pocket.
She brought out the silver key, and she climbed up on a boulder and walked to the edge of Warwick Mountain.
She stood with her head held high, staring into the distance. But she was seeing more armies of fighting and frightened men, more guns and armored cars, more death and misery that would still be lurking in the minds of men like a cancer waiting to be reborn.
She gripped the silver key.
Never again, she thought—and she flung the key as hard and as far as she could.
Sunlight winked off it as it fell through space. It bounced off the limb of an oak tree, hit the edge of a boulder, fell fifty more feet into a small green pond half hidden by underbrush. As it drifted through the water and into the leaves at the pond’s bottom it stirred up several tiny eggs that had been hidden there for a long, long time. Shafts of sunlight stroked the pond and warmed the eggs, and the hearts of tadpoles began to beat.
Josh, Swan and Robin found a place to let Sister’s body rest; it was not sheltered by trees or hidden in shade, but lay where the sun could reach it. They dug the grave with their hands and lowered Sister into the earth. When the grave was filled again, each of them said whatever was on his or her mind, and they ended with “Amen.”
Three figures came down off the mountain.
95
SUNLIGH HAD TOUCHED THE camp of the Army of Excellence as well, and each man, woman and child there saw what was exposed.
Faces that had been hidden in twilight now emerged monstrous. The light hit the grotesque demons on the carved steps of the Central Command trailer, fell upon the trucks with their cargoes of bloodstained clothing, illuminated the black trailer where Roland Croninger had tortured in his quest for truth, and men who’d learned to live for the sight of blood and the sound of screams shrank back from that light as if pinpointed beneath the eye of God.
Panic ruled the mob. There were no leaders now, only followers, and some men fell to
their knees and jabbered for forgiveness, while others crawled into the familiar darkness beneath the trailers and curled up there with their guns.
Three figures walked through the howling, sobbing mass of humanity, and many could not bear to look at the face of the girl with hair like fire. Others screamed for Colonel Macklin and the man they’d come to know as Friend, but they were not answered.
“Halt!” A young, hard-featured soldier leveled his rifle. Two other men stood behind him, and a fourth came out from behind a truck to aim his pistol at Josh.
Swan regarded each of them in turn and held herself tall and proud, and when she took a step forward, all of the soldiers moved back except the man who’d spoken.
“Get out of our way,” Swan said, as calmly as she could manage, but she knew the man was scared, and he wanted to kill somebody.
“Fuck you!” the young soldier sneered. “I’ll blow your head off!”
She tossed something to his feet, into the steaming mud.
He looked down.
It was the black-gloved hand of Colonel Macklin, its palm and nails smeared with dried gore.
He scooped it up, and then he grinned crazily as the realization hit him. “It’s mine,” he whispered. “It’s mine!” His voice grew louder, more frantic. “Macklin’s dead!” he shouted, and he lifted the hand for the others to see. “It’s mine now! I’m in command! I’ve got the pow—”
He was shot through the forehead by the soldier with the pistol, and as the false hand fell to the mud the other men went after it, fighting like animals for the symbol of power.
But another figure leaped amid them, flinging first one man back and then another, tearing the gloved hand away and holding it in his own grasp. He stood up, and as his mud-smeared face swiveled toward Swan she saw the shock and hatred in his eyes; he was a brutal, dark-haired man in an Army of Excellence uniform—but there were bullet holes across the front of his shirt and dried blood around the heart. The face seemed to ripple for just a fraction of a second, and then the man lifted one dirty hand to either shield himself from the sun or ward off the sight of Swan.