Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Swan Song
    Swan Song
    Swan Song
    Ebook1,143 pages21 hours

    Swan Song

    By Robert McCammon

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    • Survival

    • Hope

    • Post-Apocalyptic World

    • Fear

    • Desolation

    • Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland

    • Power of Friendship

    • Chosen One

    • Found Family

    • Mentor

    • Power of Love

    • Big Bad

    • Road Trip

    • Child in Peril

    • Survival of the Fittest

    • Community

    • Desperation

    • Leadership

    • Friendship

    • Death

    About this ebook

    New York Times Bestseller: A young girl’s visions offer the last hope in a postapocalyptic wasteland in this “grand and disturbing adventure” (Dean Koontz).

    A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
     
    Swan is a nine-year-old Kansas girl following her struggling mother from one trailer park to the next when she receives visions of doom—something far wider than the narrow scope of her own beleaguered life. In a blinding flash, nuclear bombs annihilate civilization, leaving only a few buried survivors to crawl onto a scorched landscape that was once America.
     
    In Manhattan, a homeless woman stumbles from the sewers, guided by the prophecies of a mysterious amulet, and pursued by something wicked; on Idaho’s Blue Dome Mountain, an orphaned boy falls under the influence of depraved survivalists and discovers the value of a killer instinct; and amid the devastating dust storms on the Great Plains of Nebraska, Swan forms a heart-and-soul bond with an unlikely new companion. Soon they will cross paths. But only Swan knows that they must endure more than just a trek across an irradiated country of mutated animals, starvation, madmen, and wasteland warriors.
     
    Swan’s visions tell of a coming malevolent force. It’s a shape-shifting embodiment of the apocalypse, and of all that is evil and despairing. And it’s hell-bent on destroying the last hope of goodness and purity in the world. Swan is that hope. Now, she must fight not only for her own survival, but for that of all mankind.
     
    A winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, Swan Song has become a modern classic, called “a chilling vision that keeps you turning pages to the shocking end” by John Saul and “a long, satisfying look at hell and salvation” by Publishers Weekly.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateOct 18, 2011
    ISBN9781453232163
    Swan Song
    Author

    Robert McCammon

    Robert McCammon (b. 1952) is one of the country’s most accomplished authors of modern horror and historical fiction, and a founder of the Horror Writers Association. Raised by his grandparents in Birmingham, Alabama, Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award–winning McCammon published his first novel, the Revelations-inspired Baal, when he was only twenty-six. His writings continued in a supernatural vein throughout the 1980s, as he produced such bestselling titles as Swan Song, The Wolf’s Hour, and Stinger. In 1991, Boy’s Life won the World Fantasy Award for best novel. After his next novel, Gone South, McCammon took a break from writing to spend more time with his family. He did not publish another novel until 2002’s Speaks the Nightbird. Since then, he has followed “problem-solver” Matthew Corbett through seven sequels, in addition to writing several non-series books, including The Border and The Listener. McCammon still lives in Birmingham.

    Read more from Robert Mc Cammon

    Related to Swan Song

    Related ebooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels

      Jun 19, 2019

      A list of books so scary you definitely won't keep them on your nightstand. The post Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      HOW TO… Install Google Play Store on your Amazon Fire tablet

      Jan 4, 2023

      What you need: Amazon Fire tablet (2018 onwards) Time required: 30 minutes What do Duolingo, Gmail and Firefox have in common? Despite being among the most popular apps on Android and iOS, none of them can be downloaded through the Amazon Appstore. T

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      8 Best Stephen King Books That Will Have You Gripped

      Mar 14, 2021

      To say that readers love Stephen King is a huge understatement. The most recent count of his total sales came to a whopping 350 million and his affable online presence, no-nonsense attitude to transphobia and right-wing politics, and extremely genero

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Crescent City

      Dec 1, 2021

      Crescent City
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hide

      May 18, 2022

      RELEASED 24 MAY 256 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Kiersten White Publisher Del Rey “The book you need after Squid Game!” yells the hype for Kiersten White’s latest. Well, sort of. In fact this well-written horror novel feels closer to The C

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sci-Fi Has Changed A Lot In The Past Decade — These 7 Reads Will Show You How

      Aug 16, 2021

      This year's Summer Poll is all about the past decade in science fiction and fantasy, so we asked critic Jason Sheehan to come up with his own list of the new sci-fi that's blowing his mind.

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Run Win 10 forever

      Jul 22, 2024

      Run Win 10 forever
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Just Trust Me: In Praise Of Strange Books

      Dec 23, 2017

      Author Victoria Schwab says she loves the books that can't be categorized, that fall between library-shelf categories, and that spark passionate debate among readers who either love them or hate them.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Worst Thing You Can Do Is Nothing

      Jan 10, 2023

      Stanislav did not want to join the army. It was his mother who said he must. Stanislav’s father didn’t argue. Father had once been brave enough to fly a fighter plane in World War II, but that had been a long time ago. One glorious act of bravery in

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nuclear Disaster Porn

      Jun 20, 2024

      THE END OF the world takes less than two hours in Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario. It begins one spring day when a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) erupts from a mobile launcher in North Korea. Before it hits the Pentagon, a

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Gone In 72 Minutes

      Jun 3, 2024

      by Annie Jacobsen (Torva, $40) Day in and day out, the American Secret Service trains its staff for nuclear war. If it ever happens, they will be more prepared than the president, who in Annie Jacobsen’s terrifyingly realistic scenario gets six min

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      '1983' Chronicles A Cold War-era Narrow Escape From Nuclear War

      May 2, 2018

      The incident was sparked by a routine NATO military exercise and occurred when mistrust and suspicion between superpowers America and the USSR was sky-high.

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Swan Song

    4/5

    1,046 ratings60 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Just finished this on audio and while I did enjoy it I agree with some of the reviewers that the character development was lacking. The epilogue was a little dissatisfying. Many compare this to King's [The Stand] but I have to admit I liked that one better.
    • 4/5
      I really liked this book. It took me a long time to finish it but I'm very happy that I stuck with it. And the narrator did a fantastic job.
    • 4/5
      Better than "The Stand" - most definitely not! I mostly enjoyed it and the writing style is very easy to read. For a long book I got through it very quickly. Some interesting characters but the end was a bit of an anti-climax and certain plot developments just faded away into nothing which was a bit puzzling. Worth a read but King did it better.
    • 2/5
      I am a big fan of the genre, but this book was a big disappointment for me. I can, however, see why many people seem to like it. The author is obviously skillful, and story has a nice flow to it. I was, at least in the beginning, in love with the basic premise. I especially liked the build up just before the nuclear holocaust, and the depiction of the event itself. As the book progressed I found it harder and harder to keep reading. There were just so many stereotypes, cliches, and I simply lost my interest.
      The biggest letdown were the characters. I just didn't care for them. They were not relatable or believable. After a while I was just turning pages to see how this will end, but I couldn't care less for the characters.
      If I hadn't read The Stand, maybe the whole impression would have been a bit more positive.
    • 5/5
      I picked this up because a friend recommended it and I was looking for something different. It's over 900 pages but hooks the reader right from the beginning. The earth has destroyed itself in a nuclear holocaust. This book focused on some of the survivors: Sister, a bag lady from NYC, Josh, a WWF-type wrestler, Swan, a young girl with an 'extreme' green thumb, and Roland, a geeky kid who's taken into the care of a Viet Nam veteran and taught survival techniques. There are others, both good and evil, who they come across as they wander the devastated landscape of what was the United States. The writing is tense and effective, always moving the plot forward. He's excellent at foreshadowing, hinting at some event to come and teasing it out for the reader. Some incidents are horrific, some are touching, but I can see I'm going to be thinking about this book for a long time. I'd really like to see it made into a miniseries.
    • 1/5
      Appears to me to be a total Rip off of Stephen Kings - "The Stand" - and definitely NOT as good - Read the ORIGINAL - before you give any stars to this crap
    • 4/5
      This book gave a good description of the humanity, good or evil, after the all out nuclear war that renders the earth an wasteland. The characters were well depicted with a bit of mytical power that bring hope to the humanity in the post-apocalyptic era. I do have problem with some of the details in the book. There was a seven years gap that seems randomly choosen by the author, and I am also not sure if the fuel reserve and ammunition can really last that long without careful planning and rationing beforehand. I expected people will reverse back to pretty primitive stage of life after the war. Despite these points, overall, the book is a good read albeit a bit on the long side.
    • 5/5
      REVIEWED: Swan Song
      WRITTEN BY: Robert R. McCammon
      PUBLISHED: June, 1987

      Another successful novel by author, Robert R. McCammon. Swan Song is a post-apocalyptic horror story following the survivors of a nuclear Armageddon. The characters are diverse and engaging, though many border on the stereotypical “too-good” vs. “too-evil.” However, I appreciated the variety of characters’ “Points of Views” by chapter, similar to Stephen King’s own post-apocalyptic novel, “The Stand.” The desolation and misery created by McCammon is emotional; you can feel the pain and weariness of the survivors as they trek across the ruined country. But that’s also offset by the perpetual hope and innocence of the girl, Swan, as well as the life lessons learned and perseverance by Sister and Josh and the others. The ending is very satisfying, even somewhat beautiful. Swan Song is a classic and recommended reading for anyone who enjoys dark fiction.

      Five out of Five stars
    • 2/5
      I love post-apocalyptic fiction, but this is absolute garbage.
    • 5/5

      One leading to another to another, I find I am wading through decades of old novels. I have been shoveling them into my gaping brain maw and chewing them up, enjoying every bite.

      One stands out a little from the others. It is having it's 30th birthday this year and holds sway in my view as under appreciated and overly influential to how my think meats process the world.

      My perspective post reread of Robert McCammon's Swan Song? As expected, it was every bit as good as the first time, with the exception of spoiled surprises.

      I was introduced to Swan Song in 2002(3/?) by a karaoke singing dirty old man (RIP: Dr Lou). He traded me for a Stephen King novel (Black House, sequel to The Talisman). King is important here because at the time, I was of the impression The Stand was an infallible masterwork of apocalypse. Two days after receiving Swan Song and 800 pages later, King was knocked to his knees and deposed of his throne. All hail the new king, McCammon.

      Swan Song opens with the introduction of various characters, including Sister Creep. Sister is crazy, drunk, and homeless. Not long after looking the devil in the eye at a screening of 'faces of Death' she finds herself boiled alive and dropped into a post nuclear wasteland. Following instinct, her remaining shreds of humanity, and faith, Sister begins a journey hide from the ultimate evil and save the survivors of our race.

      I will spare the internet a blow by blow of plot and characters on a 30 year old book. If you want that, head out to google and I am sure you can find other options.

      This novel is not simply a good read, I find that it influenced how I view large cities and even foot travel. Trigger statements might follow for some east coasters.

      Positive influence- At one point in the book, there was mention of the need for a good pair shoes. Through conversation it was stated "[...] take it one step at a time. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going." This stuck with me and I have since refused to wear unreasonable or uncomfortable shoes. This was even a restriction at my wedding, that I would only get hitched wearing comfortable shoes.

      Negative influence is worse. When I look at large buildings or cities, I cannot help but imagine the sheer volume of corpses mixed with rubble that I would have to climb over to escape a city post nuclear collapse.

      My reaction to this mind bendingly good book:
      * This tainted my view of the world. The taint itself is unusual, however. This novel left me with a strange feeling of hope, astonishment that the human race is so foolish, and a blatant desire not to be locked into a fate where my only choice is death. As there will always be a choice, I will walk and fight till my bones and sinews can no longer remain connected.

      King, you still hold a position next to the throne, but McCammon Frankenstein wrestled you to the mat and kicked your butt. While you were writing fever dreams of corn fields and rats, McCammon's corn fields were burning in the wake of Minuteman flames.
    • 4/5
      In many many many ways, this reminded me of Stephen King's The Stand. There are differences, but it is very similar. Nuclear war and the survivors are left to fend for themselves. A little girl named Swan has the gift of life (growing and planting) and the very bad man is looking for her.
    • 5/5
      Doesn't get much better than this. Even better than The Stand, which I loved.
    • 3/5
      Anyone who has read The Stand by Stephen King will find many similarities in style to Swan Song. It was a large book and had many interesting characters. I enjoyed the story overall but felt a little let down, maybe I went into it with too high an expectation. Would be likely to read another book by this author.
    • 5/5
      The good guys: Swan, Josh, Sister, Robin. The bad guys: The Man with the Scarlet Eye, Colonel Macklin, Roland. A final, edge-of-your-seat climax high atop a mountain in West Virginia. This book had me spinning through all 956 pages of action, never knowing what lay ahead! I laughed, I cringed, I cried.
    • 3/5
      Overall I would say this book would suit a fairly religious person despite the graphic action scenes. Good and Evil are fairly starkly defined. Not half as good as Stephen King's The Stand in my opinion.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book!! My brother and sister and I all read it in our teens and hold it as one of the best!
    • 5/5
      A different look at post-apocholyptic life. The good, the bad, and the ugly are not always what they seem. And sometimes something as insignificant as a chunk of melted glass can change the world.
    • 4/5
      Once upon a time, the Cold War made the U.S.A. a nation of nuclear neurotics. The probability of nuclear war was taken so seriously here that public schools drummed its terrifying possibility into our heads with such practiced, prolonged and one might say paranoid intensity that Armageddon might as well have already detonated deep inside our impressionable minds, enduring as we did, those what were supposed to be surprise but became oddly rote classroom disaster drills that gave everybody involved in the collective safety charade a short-lived sense of security even as they purported to "prepare" us for that inevitable blinding light and shockwave inferno that one day would incinerate us all into kiddie crisps. The question wasn't if an ICBM would pulverize us, but when?Swan Song, published and set during what turned out to be the Cold War's waning twilight of the mid-to-late 1980s, showcased the absolute worst possible scenario in the event of an all out nuclear blitz. Not just slow miserable death, but cruel physical deformities that were like outward manifestations of the bizarre metastasis overtaking so many hopeless and ravaged minds. I've read the nearly 1000 page novel twice. I love it. Kudos to Robert McCammon for taking what even around the time the Berlin Wall fell was a tired post apocalyptic premise and breathing some beautifully foul life into the oversaturated genre. I like it better than Stephen King's The Stand by far. Funny how it turned out for the survivors of the ensuing nuclear winters in the States that the likewise decimated Soviet Union had never been their worst enemy after all.
    • 3/5
      Swan Song is an epic post-apocalyptic novel similar in certain ways to Stephen King’s The Stand, but certainly not at the same level of awesomeness. The novel starts off with a nuclear holocaust, which wipes everything out. A group of characters who survive the bombings work toward each other all with the purpose of saving a mystical young girl called Swan, protecting her from the Man of Many Faces. McCammon assembles an excellent cast of characters, my favorite being the former professional wrestler known as Black Frankenstein, who really develops a bond with Swan.The plot in the novel is compelling and progresses well. The writing is also top notch. I thought the novel was fantastic for about 4/5ths of the way through. It was really shaping up to be one of my favorite horror/fantasy novels, and then the end absolutely falls apart. The last fifth of the novel was poorly thought out and a serious let down. It didn’t kill the entire novel for me, but it really knocks it down a couple of notches. Without spoiling the novel, I won’t give away what happens, but I found it absolutely preposterous and not worthy of the rest of the novel. I would still recommend the novel, but not as enthusiastically as I would if it had a better ending.Carl Alves – author of Blood Street
    • 2/5
      This book had me at first. I was enjoying it until it reminded me of the energizer bunny and kept going and going and going. Not only is this book extremely long (not in a good way) but the hokey religious tones are so abundant it made me cringe. The ending was so full of cliches (religious ones, some of the worst) that it had me changing my rating of three stars down to two. The writing is actually quite good except for the length and the tone the Author set wasn't bad either. If only it ended sooner and I wouldn't have wasted hours and hours finishing it to see what happened... it just wasn't worth it.
    • 4/5
      It took me ages to read this book but I am glad that I preserved with it until the end. I changed format in the end and read it as an audio book. Through this method I greatly enjoyed the book and found it easy to get to the end. I have a theory that it depends whether you read this book first or Stephen King's The Stand as to which one you enjoy the best. I completed reading The Stand many years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it which is why I would say Swan Song is good but not as good as The Stand.The two stories have many similarities throughout and the structure of the book is also very similar. The characters in this book are well written and totally believable I loved Swan, Sister and Josh and towards the end I considered them my friends as I really invested in what happened to them. Unlike The Stand there are less main characters in this book and I think that is one area where Swan Song has the advantage. At all times you can keep track of the characters and how they develop. The chapters are short and swap from one character to the next which keeps you wanting to read on. I have to admit to liking the book a lot more when these characters joined together and became one unit. The ending to the story is a little predictable and is the classic good versus evil. However, the predictability of the ending may be due to the fact I had previously read The Stand. Overall this is a classic novel which I urge anyone to read.
    • 4/5
      I read this book when it first came out and I really, really liked it. The process of transformation the characters undergo totally creeped me out then and creeps me out to this day. I didn't remember the name of the book until I saw it as a recommendation, but the story stayed with me and the minute I saw the pic of the cover, I had a flash of the picture I made in my mind all those years go and got creeped out all over again.
      I'm going to have to look up in the attic and pull this one down again for a re-read.
    • 3/5
      Included in the experience of reading a particularly wordy and thick book is the hunger and the desire to see and the feeling of wonder regarding how the said book will end. Tolkien knew how to end his books. Of course he had the luxury of appendices and posthumous notes. But he really knew when to stop. Robert McCammon, sadly, lacks this skill. His last concluding chapters use every muscle they have to try to make one forget the good work of earlier chapters. When a book begins with a nuclear holocaust, the room for a happy ending is not much. But if you believe in a post Ragnarok like post scriptum, then you may buy into the happy ending that was hastily worded. Anyway I remember the pulsating few reactions from some of the passages, like the mystery of the Friend, and the recovery of Sister Creep's sanity, and the feeble powers of Leona Skelton, and the stark madness of a criminally insane ward's residents unleashed, and the clash between the wild and lost men, and the unending winter, and you have a not bad book. And that is reflected in my rating.
    • 5/5
      I was introduced to this by a dear friend who as soon as she found out I thought The Stand was the be all to end all threw up her hands and said oh no you don't READ this! Boy am I glad she did. It sat hidden on my shelf for months before she finally politely asked for it back. So happy that it came out in Kindle so I can always have a copy. Earlier this weekend someone said they had finally finished The Stand and wanted a good Post-Apocalyptic book to read. Quickly myself and one other (Justin Bog of Sandcastles and Other Stories) suggested this one, and although others were suggested the requester is currently reading Swan Song. I cannot wait to hear how he feels about one of my top reads of my lifetime!

      ****

      ENTRANCED is the word I will use for this grand epic novel. Each and every time I read it I am completely moved and engaged. Each visceral moment, with its approachable characters I am engaged and magically stuck in the time, feeling the hunger in my belly, and the sand grate at my eyes and skin. The book goes in every direction. And unlike The Stand, which sits on an arguable fence as to whether it is an epic novel or not, this sits on no fence, it is in the pit and pureity of definitive literary Epic fiction within the sub-genre of Post Apocalyptic Horror.

      Evil, heroic (within the stories mythos) and benign threads and story arcs are woven into the overall tapestry of this tale. Numerous sub-plots easily coloring the flavor and experience of this book. And believe me, this is not just a great read this is an experience meant to be enjoyed over and over. Each time you do you will bite down into something else you missed when you were chewing to fast the last time, or to slow to enjoy the POP of that spicy flash of color. It never balances out, always leaving you feeling a bit topsy-turvy, sometimes the foam of your latte has the perfect swirl .. and the next moment destroyed by the plunk of a story devices spoon.

      If you love a dense read, if you have a love that goes beyond just a great book with The Stand and are tired of Young Adult Dystopia? Go grab this and hang on, because you are in for a ride!
    • 5/5
      My all-time favorite post-apocalypse book. Engaging characters, flowing plot, just a hint of the supernatural/divine. It's like The Stand, with all the extra stuff taken out. Except the world is destroyed by nuclear fire, rather than Captain Trips. The mainest main character is a girl, adorable and talented with a strange ability that makes her priceless in the post-apocalyptic world. The bad guy is super crazy. Some guy turns into a snake thing. There might be cannibals, though I should probably read the book again. There's romance that doesn't feel forced...

      Okay, this book is nothing like The Stand, other than the whole post-apocalypse thing. I mean, I have a fondness for The Stand, but "Swan Song" is the better book, hands down. The sad thing is that few people have read it.

      Considering that it was published in the 1980's, there are some dated concepts. But on the whole, a very solid story.

      Apocalypse, romance, desperate last stand, great book that I firmly recommend.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic book. Reminds me a lot of Stephen King's The Stand, although I'm not sure which book was written first.
    • 4/5
      Okay, I made it! Finished SWAN SONG tonight.

      If reading anything negative about this book would make your head explode, then stop reading now. You've been warned. Just my opinion, and I'm entitled to it.

      Overall, I would say this book was only about a 3 and a half star read for me. I can definitely see why so many people love it, and I imagine it would have been a hell of a lot better for me personally had I read this back in the late eighties as a teenager when the cold war was at its peak and nuclear winter was a widely accepted theory.

      Still, I did find a lot to enjoy in the book. The first couple hundred pages were my favorite, really like a time capsule back into the RED DAWN and DAY AFTER TOMORROW era. Though a higher level of suspension of disbelief was required than I expected from the book, I went with it and had a lot of fun. It was definitely more "BOOK OF ELI" than "THE ROAD" if I were to make apocalyptic movie comparisons.

      It began to lose me, however, around the point when the travelers arrived in Mary's Rest. The cast of characters expanded too rapidly for me to genuinely care about anyone, and the pace slowed to a crawl for the last third of the book. The random mix of reality and completely unexplained supernatural events subconsciously grated at me the entire way.

      And the events in WV towards the climax of the book? *sigh* I think that whole sequence could have been chopped and the book would have been the better for it. The entire ending felt like it went out it more of a whimper than I had hoped.

      McCammon can certainly craft a mighty phrase, though he does use eloquence sparingly (which is a good thing), and I ultimately preferred this version of THE STAND to Stephen King's, but both could have benefited by much tighter plotting IMO.

      Enjoyed reading with everyone, but glad to say I've experienced the mighty SWAN SONG and lived to tell the tale! It's probably not the book that is lacking in any way, most likely just my personal preference for reading material that is economical in its use of words, tightly coiled tales with little to no wasted space.
    • 5/5
      I first read Swan Song around the same time I read King's The Stand, and this was by far my favorite of the two. In fact, this is one of the few books that I have read more than once (three times so far!). The characters are mesmerizing, people you feel like you'd love to know in reality. The story, though post-apocalyptic, is one of hope and innocence and the struggle of good against evil, of the innocence of the hopeful against the adversity of some of the darker sides of human nature.Swan Song has been, each time I have read it, a page-turner. I cried whenever one of my favorite characters died or was ill, I was angry when the unsavory characters seemed to be getting ahead, and I cried again when I finished the book, simply because it was done.This one's in my Top 5!
    • 3/5
      Well! I set off reading Robert McCammon's novel, which had been recommended to me, with a thoroughly disparaging outlook. Even though I last read The Stand years ago, and have since consigned Stephen King's writing to the junk pile, the similarities between both apocalyptic epics are unavoidable, so I simply hopped on the 'rip-off' band wagon. And then, a few chapters in, I realised that McCammon is a fairly bad writer. Stephen King gets along more on vivid imagination than nuanced prose, but this young pretender is of the pow! boom! crash! range of Hollywood scriptwriters. The characters are cliched, and very, very familiar to anyone else who has read The Stand, and the action scenes outnumber any philosophical narratives about three billion to one. Also, the undated setting of the story is lodged firmly and irretrievably in the 1980s.And then something unusual happened - the longer I persevered with Swan, Sister, Josh, Colonel Macklin and the creepy ass Roland, the more I came to appreciate McCammon's novel, apart from and - dare I say - above King's standard version of events! There are some great moments in amongst the hackneyed devices and thinly veiled religious symbolism, which can only add to the experience. That blasted ring/crown, for one, and the 'inner faces' behind the truly revolting 'Job's masks', which some characters were afflicted with. I'm also a sucker for loyal animals and noble sacrifices, so Mule and Leona helped to win me over.What can I say? Swan Song is and is not The Stand, and I can't say I would ever try to read all 800 pages again, but I did come to know, if not like, some of the characters, and McCammon's message of peace and life over violence and death was well worth slogging through an American Boy's Own adventure to get to.
    • 4/5
      Review to come ...


      Just some initial thoughts (may be a spoiler if you haven't read this):


      Sister = Frodo
      Paul = Sam
      Rusty = Boromir
      Josh = Gandalf
      Swan = Aragorn
      Macklin = Saruman
      Roland = smeagol (still deciding on this)
      Man with the scarlet eye = Sauron

    Book preview

    Swan Song - Robert McCammon

    Swan Song

    Robert R. McCammon

    For Sally, whose inside face is as beautiful as the one outside. We survived the comet!

    Contents

    Book One

    One

    1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    Two

    6

    7

    8

    9

    10

    11

    Three

    12

    13

    14

    15

    16

    17

    18

    Four

    19

    20

    21

    22

    23

    24

    25

    26

    Five

    27

    28

    29

    30

    31

    32

    33

    Six

    34

    35

    36

    37

    38

    39

    40

    Seven

    41

    42

    43

    44

    45

    46

    47

    Book Two

    Eight

    48

    49

    50

    51

    52

    53

    54

    Nine

    55

    56

    57

    58

    Ten

    59

    60

    61

    62

    63

    Eleven

    64

    65

    66

    67

    68

    69

    Twelve

    70

    71

    72

    73

    74

    Thirteen

    75

    76

    77

    78

    79

    80

    81

    82

    83

    84

    Fourteen

    85

    86

    87

    88

    89

    90

    91

    92

    93

    94

    95

    About the Author

    BOOK ONE

    ONE

    The Point of No Return

    Once upon a time

    Sister Creep

    Black Frankenstein

    The spooky kid

    King’s Knight

    1

    July 16

    10:27 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time

    WASHINGTON, D.C.

    ONCE UPON A TIME we had a love affair with fire, the president of the United States thought as the match that he’d just struck to light his pipe flared beneath his fingers.

    He stared into it, mesmerized by its color—and as the fire grew he had the vision of a tower of flame a thousand feet tall, whirling across the country he loved, torching cities and towns, turning rivers to steam, ripping across the ruins of heartland farms and casting the ashes of seventy million human beings into a black sky. He watched with dreadful fascination as the flame crawled up the match, and he realized that there, on a tiny scale, was the power of both creation and destruction; it could cook food, illuminate the darkness, melt iron and sear human flesh. Something that resembled a small, unblinking scarlet eye opened in the center of the flame, and he wanted to scream. He had awakened at two in the morning from a nightmare of holocaust; he’d begun crying and couldn’t stop, and the first lady had tried to calm him, but he just kept shaking and sobbing like a child. He’d sat in the Oval Office until dawn, going over the maps and top-security reports again and again, but they all said the same thing: First Strike.

    The fire burned his fingers. He shook the match out and dropped it into the ashtray embossed with the presidential seal in front of him. The thin thread of smoke began to curl up toward the vent of the air-filtration system.

    Sir? someone said. He looked up, saw a group of strangers sitting in the Situations Room with him, saw the high-resolution computer map of the world on the screen before him, the array of telephones and video screens set in a semicircle around him like the cockpit of a jet fighter, and he wished to God that someone else could sit in his seat, that he was still just a senator and he didn’t know the truth about the world. Sir?

    He ran his hand across his forehead. His skin felt clammy. Fine time to be coming down with the flu, he thought, and he almost laughed at the absurdity of it. The president gets no sick days, he thought, because a president’s not supposed to be sick. He tried to focus on who at the oval table was speaking to him; they were all watching him—the vice-president, nervous and sly; Admiral Narramore, ramrod-straight in his uniform with a chestful of service decorations; General Sinclair, crusty and alert, his eyes like two bits of blue glass in his hard-seamed face; Secretary of Defense Hannan, who looked as kindly as anyone’s old grandfather but who was known as Iron Hans by both the press corps and his associates; General Chivington, the ranking authority on Soviet military strength; Chief of Staff Bergholz, crewcut and crisp in his ubiquitous dark blue pinstriped suit; and various other military officials and advisors.

    Yes? the president asked Bergholz.

    Hannan reached for a glass of water, sipped from it and said, Sir? I was asking if you wanted me to go on. He tapped the page of the open report from which he’d been reading.

    Oh. My pipe’s gone out, he thought. Didn’t I just light it? He looked at the burned match in the ashtray, couldn’t remember how it had gotten there. For an instant he saw John Wayne’s face in his mind, a scene from some old black-and-white movie he’d seen as a kid; the Duke was saying something about the point of no return. Yes, the president said. Go on.

    Hannan glanced quickly around the table at the others. They all had copies of the report before them, as well as stacks of other Eyes Only coded reports fresh off the NORAD and SAC communications wires. Less than three hours ago, Hannan continued, our last operating SKY EYE recon satellite was dazzled as it moved into position over Chatyrka, U.S.S.R. We lost all our optical sensors and cameras, and again—as in the case of the other six SKY EYEs—we feel this one was destroyed by a land-based laser, probably operating from a point near Magadan. Twenty minutes after SKY EYE 7 was blinded, we used our Malmstrom AFB laser to dazzle a Soviet recon satellite as it came over Canada. By our calculations, that still leaves them two recon eyes available, one currently over the northern Pacific and a second over the Iran–Iraq border. NASA’s trying to repair SKY EYEs 2 and 3, but the others are space junk. What all this means, sir, is that as of approximately three hours ago, Eastern Daylight Time—Hannan looked up at the digital clock on the Situation Room’s gray concrete wall—we went blind. The last recon photos were taken at 1830 hours over Jelgava. He switched on a microphone attached to the console before him and said, SKY EYE recon 7-16, please.

    There was a pause of three seconds as the information computer found the required data. On the large wall screen, the map of the world went dark and was replaced by a high-altitude satellite photograph showing the sweep of a dense Soviet forest. At the center of the picture was a cluster of pinheads linked together by the tiny lines of roadways. Enlarge twelve, Hannan said, the picture reflected in his horn-rimmed eyeglasses.

    The photograph was enlarged twelve times, until finally the hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missile silos were as clear as if the Situations Room wall screen was a plate glass window. On the roads were trucks, their tires throwing up dust, and even soldiers were visible near the missile installation’s concrete bunkers and radar dishes. As you can see, Hannan went on in the calm, slightly detached voice of his previous profession—teaching military history and economics at Yale—they’re getting ready for something. Probably bringing in more radar gear and arming those warheads, is my guess. We count two hundred and sixty-three silos in that installation alone, probably housing over six hundred warheads. Two minutes later, the SKY EYE was blinded. But this picture only reinforces what we already know: the Soviets have gone to a high level of readiness, and they don’t want us seeing the new equipment they’re bringing in. Which brings us to General Chivington’s report. General?

    Chivington broke the seal on a green folder in front of him, and the others did the same. Inside were pages of documents, graphs and charts. Gentlemen, he said in a gravelly voice, the Soviet war machine has mobilized to within fifteen percent of capacity in the last nine months. I don’t have to tell you about Afghanistan, South America or the Persian Gulf, but I’d like to direct your attention to the document marked Double 6 Double 3. That’s a graph showing the amount of supplies being funneled into the Russian Civil Defense System, and you can see for yourselves how it’s jumped in the last two months. Our Soviet sources tell us that more than forty percent of their urban population has now either moved outside the cities or taken up residence inside the fallout shelters....

    While Chivington talked on about Soviet Civil Defense the president’s mind went back eight months to the final terrible days of Afghanistan, with its nerve gas warfare and tactical nuclear strikes. And one week after the fall of Afghanistan, a twelve-and-a-half-kiloton nuclear device had exploded in a Beirut apartment building, turning that tortured city into a moonscape of radioactive rubble. Almost half the population was killed outright. A variety of terrorist groups had gleefully claimed responsibility, promising more lightning bolts from Allah.

    With the detonation of that bomb, a Pandora’s box of terrors had been opened.

    On the fourteenth of March, India had attacked Pakistan with chemical weapons. Pakistan retaliated by a missile strike on the city of Jaipur. Three Indian nuclear missiles had leveled Karachi, and the war was deadlocked in the wastes of the Thar Desert.

    On the second of April, Iran had unleashed a rain of Soviet-supplied nuclear missiles on Iraq, and American forces had been sucked into the maelstrom as they fought to hold back the Iranians. Soviet and American jets had battled over the Persian Gulf, and the entire region was primed to blow.

    Border wars had rippled across North and South Africa. The smallest of countries were depleting their treasuries to buy chemical and nuclear weapons from arms brokers. Alliances changed overnight, some due to military pressure and others to snipers’ bullets.

    Less than twelve miles off Key West, a trigger-happy American F-18 fighter pilot had sent an air-to-surface missile into the side of a disabled Russian submarine on the fourth day of May. Cuban-based Russian Floggers had come screaming over the horizon, shooting down the first pilot and two others of a squadron that arrived as backup.

    Nine days later, a Soviet and an American submarine had collided during a game of cat-and-mouse in the Arctic. Two days after that, the radars of the Canadian Distant Early Warning line had picked up the blips of twenty incoming aircraft; all western United States air force bases had gone to red alert, but the intruders turned and escaped before contact.

    On the sixteenth of May, all American air bases had gone to Defcon One, with a corresponding move by the Soviets within two hours. Adding to the tension that day was the detonation of a nuclear device in the Fiat complex in Milan, Italy, the action claimed by a Communist terrorist group called The Red Star of Freedom.

    Incidents between surface ships, submarines and aircraft had continued through May and June in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. American air bases had gone to Defcon Two when a cruiser had exploded and sank, cause unknown, thirty nautical miles off the coast of Oregon. Sightings of Soviet submarines in territorial waters increased dramatically, and American submarines were sent to test the Russian defenses. The activity at Soviet ICBM installations was recorded by SKY EYE satellites before they were blinded by lasers, and the president knew the Soviets saw the activity at U.S. bases before their own spy satellites were dazzled blind.

    On the thirtieth of June of the Grim Summer, as the newsmagazines were calling it, a cruise ship called the Tropic Panorama, carrying seven hundred passengers between Hawaii and San Francisco, had radioed that they were being stalked by an unidentified submarine.

    That had been the final message of the Tropic Panorama.

    From that day on, American naval vessels had patrolled the Pacific with nuclear missiles armed and ready for launch.

    The president remembered the movie: The High and the Mighty, about an airplane in distress and about to crash. The pilot was John Wayne, and the Duke had told the crew about the point of no return—a line beyond which the plane could not turn back, but had to keep going forward, whatever the result. The president’s mind had been on the point of no return a lot lately; he’d dreamed he was at the controls of a disabled plane, flying over a dark and forbidding ocean, searching for the lights of land. But the controls were shattered, and the plane kept dropping lower and lower while the screams of the passengers rang in his mind.

    I want to be a child again, he thought as the other men at the table looked at him. Dear God, I don’t want to be at the controls anymore!

    General Chivington had finished his report. The president said, Thank you, though he wasn’t sure exactly what Chivington had said. He felt the eyes of those men on him, waiting for him to speak, to move, to do anything. He was in his late forties, dark-haired and ruggedly handsome; he had been a pilot himself, had flown the NASA shuttle Olympian and been one of the first to walk in space wearing a jet pack. Contemplating the great cloud-streaked orb of the Earth, he’d been moved to tears, and his emotional radio transmission of I think I know how God must feel, Houston had done more than anything to win him the presidency.

    But he’d inherited the mistakes of the generations of presidents before him, and he’d been ridiculously naive about the world on the eve of the twenty-first century.

    The economy, after a resurgence in the mid-eighties, had tumbled out of control. The crime rate was staggering, the prisons packed slaughterhouses. Hundreds of thousands of homeless people—The Ragtag Nation, as the New York Times called them—roamed the streets of America, unable to afford shelter or cope mentally with the pressures of a runaway world. The Star Wars military program that had cost billions of dollars had proven to be a disaster, because it was realized too late that machines could only work as well as humans, and the complexity of the orbital platforms boggled the mind and broke the budget. The arms brokers had fed a crude, unstable nuclear technology to Third World nations and mad-dog leaders thirsting for power in the seductive and precarious global arena. Twelve-kiloton bombs, roughly the strength of the device that had decimated Hiroshima, were now as common as hand grenades and could be carried in a briefcase. The renewed riots in Poland and the Warsaw street fighting the previous winter had chilled United States–Soviet relations to below zero, quickly followed by the collapse and national disgrace of the CIA plot to assassinate Polish Liberation leaders.

    We are on the edge of the point of no return, the president thought, and he felt an awful urge to laugh, but he concentrated on keeping his lips tightly sealed. His mind was grappling with an intricate web of reports and opinions that led to a terrible conclusion: the Soviet Union was preparing a first strike that would utterly destroy the United States of America.

    Sir? Hannan broke the uneasy silence. Admiral Narramore has the next report. Admiral?

    Another folder was unsealed. Admiral Narramore, a gaunt, wiry-looking man in his mid-sixties, began to go over the classified data: "At 1912 hours, British recon helicopters off the guided missile destroyer Fife dropped sonobuoys that verified the presence of six unidentified submarines seventy-three miles north of Bermuda, bearing three hundred degrees. If those subs are closing on the northeastern coast, they’re already within strike range of New York City, Newport News, air bases on the eastern seaboard, the White House and the Pentagon. He gazed across the table at the president, his eyes smoky gray under thick white brows. The White House was fifty feet above their heads. If six were picked up, he said, you can rely on the fact that Ivan’s got at least three times that many out there. They can deliver several hundred warheads within five to nine minutes of launch. He turned the page. As of an hour ago, the twelve Delta II–class Soviet subs two hundred and sixty miles northwest of San Francisco were still holding their position."

    The president felt dazed, as if this all were a waking dream. Think! he told himself. Damn you, think! Where are our submarines, Admiral? he heard himself ask, in what might have been a stranger’s voice.

    Narramore called up another computer map on the wall screen. It displayed a line of blinking dots about two hundred miles northeast of Murmansk, U.S.S.R. Calling up a second map brought the Baltic Sea onto the screen, and another deployment of nuclear subs northwest of Riga. A third map showed the Russian east coast, a line of submarines in position in the Bering Sea between Alaska and the Soviet mainland. We’ve got Ivan in an iron ring, Narramore said. Give us the word and we’ll sink anything that tries to break through.

    I think the picture’s very clear. Hannan’s voice was quiet and firm. We’ve got to back the Soviets off.

    The president was silent, trying to put together logical thoughts. The palms of his hands were sweating. "What ... if they’re not planning a first strike? What if they believe we are? If we show force, might it not push them over the edge?"

    Hannan took a cigarette from a silver case and lit it. Again the president’s eyes were drawn to the flame. Sir, Hannan replied softly, as if speaking to a retarded child, if the Soviets respect anything, it’s force. You know that as well as every man in this room, especially since the Persian Gulf incident. They want territory, and they’re prepared to destroy us and to take their share of casualties to get it. Hell, their economy is worse than ours! They’re going to keep pushing us until we either break or strike—and if we delay until we break, God help us.

    No. The president shook his head. They’d been over this many times, and the idea sickened him. "No. We will not deliver a first strike."

    The Soviets, Hannan continued patiently, understand the diplomacy of the fist. I’m not saying I think we should destroy the Soviet Union. But I do believe—fervently—that now is the time to tell them, and decisively, that we’ll not be pushed, and we won’t let their nuclear submarines sit off our shores waiting for launch codes!

    The president stared at his hands. The knot of his tie felt like a hangman’s noose, and there was sweat under his arms and at the small of his back. Meaning what? he asked.

    Meaning we intercept those goddamned submarines immediately. We destroy them if they won’t turn back. We go to Defcon Three at all air bases and ICBM installations. Hannan looked quickly around the table to judge who stood with him. Only the vice-president glanced away, but Hannan knew he was a weak man and his opinion carried no weight. We intercept any Soviet nuclear vessel leaving Riga, Murmansk or Vladivostok. We take control of the sea again—and if that means limited nuclear contact, then so be it.

    Blockade, the president said. Wouldn’t that make them more eager to fight?

    Sir? General Sinclair spoke in a folksy, down-home Virginia drawl. "I think the reasonin’ goes like this: Ivan’s got to believe we’ll risk our asses to blow him to hell and back. And to be honest, sir, I don’t think there’s a man jack here who’ll sit still and let Ivan throw a shitload of SLBMs at us without gettin’ our own knock in. No matter what the casualty toll. He leaned forward, his piercing stare directed at the president. I can put SAC and NORAD on Defcon Three within two minutes of your okay. I can send a squadron of B-1s right up to Ivan’s back door within one hour. Just kinda give him a gentle prod, y’see."

    "But ... they’ll think we’re attacking!"

    The point is that they’ll know we’re not afraid. Hannan tapped a stalk of ash into his ashtray. If that’s crazy, okay. But by God, the Russians respect insanity more than they respect fear! If we let them bring nuclear missiles to bear on our coastlines without lifting a finger, we’re signing a death warrant for the United States of America!

    The president closed his eyes. Jerked them open again. He had seen burning cities and charred black things that had once been human beings. With an effort he said, I don’t ... I don’t want to be the man who starts World War Three. Can you understand that?

    It’s already started, Sinclair spoke up. Hell, the whole damned world’s at war, and everybody’s waitin’ for either Ivan or us to give the knockout punch. Maybe the whole future of the world depends on who’s willin’ to be the craziest! I agree with Hans; if we don’t make a move right soon, a mighty hard rain’s gonna fall on our tin roof.

    They’ll back off, Narramore said flatly. They’ve backed off before. If we send hunter-killer groups after those subs and blow them out of the water, they’ll know where the line’s drawn. So: Do we sit and wait, or do we show them our muscle?

    Sir? Hannan prodded. He glanced again at the clock, which showed fifty-eight minutes after ten. I think the decision belongs to you now.

    I don’t want it! he almost shouted. He needed time, needed to go to Camp David or off on one of those long fishing trips he had enjoyed as a senator. But now there was no more time. His hands were gripped before him. His face felt so tight he feared it would crack and fall to pieces like a mask, and he wouldn’t want to see what lay underneath. When he looked up, the watching and powerful men were still there, and his senses seemed to whirl away from him.

    The decision. The decision had to be made. Right now.

    Yes. The word had never sounded so terrible before. All right. We go to—he paused, drew a deep breath—"we go to Defcon Three. Admiral, alert your task forces. General Sinclair, I don’t want those B-1s over one inch of Russian territory. Is that clear?"

    My crews could walk that line in their sleep.

    Punch your codes.

    Sinclair went to work on the keyboard console before him, then lifted his telephone to make the voice authorization to Strategic Air Command in Omaha and the North American Air Defense fortress in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. Admiral Narramore picked up the phone that instantly put him in touch with Naval Operations at the Pentagon. Within minutes there would be heightened activity at the country’s air and naval bases. The Defcon Three codes would hum through the wires, and yet another check would be carried out on radar equipment, sensors, monitors, computers and hundreds of other pieces of high-tech military hardware, as well as the dozens of Cruise missiles and thousands of nuclear warheads hidden in silos across the Midwest from Montana to Kansas.

    The president was numb. The decision was made. Chief of Staff Bergholz adjourned the meeting and came over to grasp the president’s shoulder and say what a good, solid decision it was. As the military advisors and officials left the Situations Room and moved to the elevator in the outside hallway the president sat alone. His pipe was cold, and he did not care to relight it.

    Sir?

    He jumped, turning his head toward the voice. Hannan stood beside the door. Are you all right?

    A-OK. The president smiled wanly. A memory of his glory days as an astronaut had just flashed by. No. Jesus Christ, I don’t know. I think I am.

    You made the correct decision. We both know that. The Soviets have to realize we’re not afraid.

    "I am afraid, Hans! I’m damned afraid!"

    So am I. So is everyone, but we must not be ruled by fear. He approached the table and paged through some of the folders. In a few minutes, a young CIA man would be in to shred all the documents. I think you’d better send Julianne and Cory to the Basement tonight, as soon as they can pack. We’ll work out something with the press.

    The president nodded. The Basement was an underground shelter in Delaware where the first lady, the president’s seventeen-year-old son, ranking cabinet members and staff people would—they hoped—be protected from all but a direct hit by a one-megaton nuclear warhead. Since news of the carefully constructed Basement had leaked to the public several years before, such underground shelters had started appearing all over the country, some dug into old mines and others into mountains. The survivalist business was booming as never before.

    There’s a subject we need to talk about, Hannan said. The president could see his own face, weary and hollow-eyed, reflected in the man’s glasses. Talons.

    It’s not time for that yet. His stomach had knotted. Not nearly time.

    "Yes. It is time. I think you’d be safer in the Airborne Command Center. One of the first targets would be the roof of the White House. I’m going to send Paula to the Basement, and, as you know, you have the authority to send whomever else you want there. But I’d like to join you in the Airborne Center, if I may."

    Yes. Of course. I want you with me.

    And, Hannan continued, there’ll be an Air Force officer aboard with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Do you know your codes?

    I know them. Those particular codes were among the first things he’d learned after taking office. An iron band of tension gripped the back of his neck. But ... I won’t have to use them, will I, Hans? he asked, almost pleadingly.

    "Most likely not. But if you do—if you do—I want you to remember that by then the America we love will be dead, and no invader has ever, or will ever, set foot on American earth. He reached out and squeezed the president’s shoulder in a grandfatherly gesture. Right?"

    The point of no return, the president said, his eyes glazed and distant.

    What?

    We’re about to cross the point of no return. Maybe we already have. Maybe it’s way too late to turn back. God help us, Hans; we’re flying in the dark, and we don’t know where the hell we’re going.

    We’ll figure it out when we get there. We always have before.

    Hans? The president’s voice was as soft as a child’s. If ... if you were God ... would you destroy this world?

    Hannan didn’t respond for a moment. Then, I suppose ... I’d wait and watch. If I were God, I mean.

    Wait and watch for what?

    To find out who wins. The good guys or the bad guys.

    Is there a difference anymore?

    Hannan paused. He started to answer, and then he realized he could not. I’ll get the elevator, he said, and he walked out of the Situations Room.

    The president unclasped his hands. The overhead lights sparkled on the cufflinks he always wore, embossed with the seal of the president of the United States.

    I’m A-OK, he said to himself. All systems go.

    Something broke inside him, and he almost cried. He wanted to go home, but home was a long, long way from this chair.

    Sir? Hannan called him.

    Moving as slowly and stiffly as an elderly man, the president stood up and went out to face the future.

    2

    11:19 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time

    NEW YORK CITY

    WHACK!

    She felt somebody kick the side of her cardboard box, and she stirred and hugged her canvas bag closer. She was tired and wanted to rest. A girl needs her beauty sleep, she thought, and she closed her eyes again.

    "I said get outta there!"

    Hands grabbed her ankles and hauled her roughly out of the box onto the pavement. As she came out she shouted in indignation and started kicking wildly. You bastard sonofabitching bastard lemme alone you bastard!

    Shit, lookit that! said one of the two figures standing above her, outlined in red neon from the sign of a Vietnamese takeout restaurant across West Thirty-sixth Street. He’s a woman!

    The other man, who’d grabbed her ankles above her dirty sneakers and hauled her out, growled in a darker, meaner voice, Woman or not, I’m gonna stomp her ass.

    She sat up, the canvas bag holding her worldly belongings clutched close to her chest. In the red wash of neon, her square-jawed, sturdy face was deeply lined and streaked with street grime. Her eyes, sunken in violet-tinged hollows, were a pale, watery blue and glinted with both fear and anger. On her head she wore a blue cap that she’d found the day before in a split-open garbage bag. Her outfit consisted of a dirty gray printed short-sleeved blouse and a baggy pair of brown men’s trousers with patched knees. She was a big-boned, fleshy woman, and her stomach and hips strained against the coarse material of her trousers; her clothes, as well as the canvas duffel bag she carried, had come from a kindly minister at the Salvation Army. Under the cap, her gray-streaked brown hair hung untidily around her shoulders, parts of it chopped off here and there where she’d taken scissors to it. Stuffed into her canvas bag was a melange of objects: a roll of fishing line, a tattered bright orange sweater, a pair of cowboy boots with both heels broken off, a dented mess tray, paper cups and plastic eating utensils, a year-old copy of Cosmopolitan, a length of chain, several packages of Juicy Fruit chewing gum and other items buried in the bag that even she’d forgotten were there. As the two men stared at her—one with menacing intent—she clutched the bag tighter. Her left eye and cheekbone were bruised and swollen, and her ribs hurt where she’d been pushed down a flight of stairs by another indigent woman at the Christian Shelter three days before. She’d picked herself off the floor, stalked up the stairs and knocked two teeth out of the woman’s head with a roundhouse right.

    You’re in my box, the dark-voiced man said. He was tall and skinny, wearing only a pair of blue jeans, his chest shining with sweat. His face was bearded, his eyes filled with shadow. The second man, shorter and heavier, wore a sweaty T-shirt and green Army surplus pants pocked with cigarette burns. He had oily dark hair, and he kept scratching his crotch. The first man prodded her in the side with the toe of his boot, and she winced at the pain to her ribs. "You deaf, bitch? I said you’re in my fuckin’ box!"

    The cardboard box in which she’d been sleeping lay on its side amid a sea of oozing garbage bags, a symptom of the garbage strike that had clogged Manhattan’s streets and gutters for over two weeks. In the suffocating heat of one-hundred-degree days and ninety-degree nights, the bags had swollen and exploded. Rats were having festival days, and mountains of garbage lay uncollected, blocking off traffic on some streets.

    She looked dazedly up at the two men, the contents of a half bottle of Red Dagger percolating in her stomach. Her last meal had been the remnants of chicken bones and the scrapings from a discarded TV dinner. Huh?

    My box! the bearded man shouted in her face. "This is my place! You crazy or somethin’?"

    She don’t have no sense, the other one said. She’s crazy as hell.

    Ugly as hell, too. Hey, whatcha got in that bag? Lemme see! He grabbed at it and yanked, but the woman emitted a loud howl and refused to give it up, her eyes wide and terrified. You got some money in there? Somethin’ to drink? Give it here, bitch! The man almost tore it from her arms, but she whimpered and hung on. Red light sparked off an ornament around her neck—a small, cheap crucifix attached to a necklace made of linked gemclips.

    Hey! the second man said. Looky there! I know who she is! I seen her panhandlin’ on Forty-second Street. She thinks she’s a damned saint, always preachin’ to people. They call her Sister Creep.

    Yeah? Well, maybe we can pawn us that trinket, then. He reached to tear the crucifix off her neck, but she turned her head away. The man grabbed the back of her neck, snarled and balled up his other hand to strike her.

    Please! she begged, about to sob. Please don’t hurt me! I got somethin’ for you! She started rummaging through the bag.

    Get it out, and hurry! I oughta bust your head for sleepin’ in my box. He let her head go, but he kept his fist poised and ready.

    She made little weak whimpering noises as she searched. Somewhere in here, she muttered. Got it somewhere.

    "Put it right here! He thrust his palm at her. And maybe I won’t kick your ass."

    Her hand closed around what she was looking for. Found it, she said. Sure did.

    Well, put it here!

    Okay, the woman replied; the whimpering was gone, and her voice was as tough as sunbaked leather. With one blurred, smooth motion she withdrew a straight razor, flicked it open with a snap of her wrist and slashed it hard across the bearded man’s open hand.

    Blood jetted from the gash. The man’s face went white. He gripped his wrist; his mouth contorted into an O, and then the scream came out like the sound of a strangling cat. At once the woman was on her stocky legs, holding the canvas bag in front of her like a shield and swiping again at the two men, who tumbled back into each other, slipped on the garbage-slimed pavement and went down. The bearded man, blood streaming down his hand, came up holding a piece of wood studded with rusty nails; his eyes gleamed with rage. I’ll show you! he screamed. "I’ll show you right now!"

    He swung at her, but she ducked under the blow and slashed at him with the razor. He staggered back again and stood looking dumbly at the line of blood that leaked from his chest.

    Sister Creep didn’t pause; she turned and ran—almost slipping in a pool of ooze, but regaining her balance—with the shouts of the two men ringing out behind her. Gonna get you! the bearded one warned. I’ll find you, bitch! You just wait!

    She didn’t. She kept going, her sneakers slapping the pavement, until she came to a barrier of a thousand split-open garbage bags. She crawled over it, taking the time to pick up a few interesting items, like a broken salt shaker and a soggy copy of National Geographic, and stuff them into her bag. Then she was over the barrier, and she kept walking, the breath still rasping in her lungs and her body trembling. That had been close, she thought. The demons almost got me! But glory be to Jesus, and when he arrives in his flying saucer from the planet Jupiter I’ll be there on the golden shore to kiss his hand!

    She stood on the corner of Thirty-eighth and Seventh Avenue, catching her breath and watching the traffic pass like a stampeding herd of cattle. The yellow haze of garbage fumes and automobile exhaust stirred like the stagnant matter atop a pond, and the wet heat pressed in on Sister Creep; beads of sweat broke and ran down her face. Her clothes were damp; she wished she had some deodorant, but the last of the Secret was gone. She looked around at the faces of strangers, daubed the color of wounds in the glare of pulsing neon. She didn’t know where she was going, and she hardly remembered where she’d been. But she knew she couldn’t stand on this corner all night; standing out in the open, she’d realized a long time ago, brought the demon X rays jabbing at your head, trying to scramble your brains. She began walking north, her head ducked and her shoulders hunched, in the direction of Central Park.

    Her nerves were jangling from her experience with the two heathen who’d tried to rob her. Sin was everywhere! she thought. In the ground, in the air, in the water—nothing but rank, black and evil sin! And it was in people’s faces, too, oh, yes! You could see the sin creeping over people’s faces, hooding their eyes and making their mouths go crooked. It was the world and the demons that were making innocent people crazy, she knew. Never before had the demons been so busy, or so greedy for innocent souls.

    She thought of the magic place, way over on Fifth Avenue, and her hard, worried frown softened. She often went there to look at the beautiful things in the windows; the delicate objects displayed there had the power to soothe her soul, and even though the guard at the door wouldn’t let her pass she was content to just stand outside and stare. She recalled a glass angel in the window once—a powerful figure: the angel’s long hair was swept back like holy, glittering fire, and her wings were about to unfold from a strong, sleek body. And in that angel’s beautiful face the eyes shone with multicolored, wonderful lights. Sister Creep had journeyed to look at that angel every day for a month, until they replaced it with a glass whale leaping from a stormy blue-green glass sea. Of course, there were other places with treasures along Fifth Avenue, and Sister knew their names—Saks, Fortunoff’s, Cartier, Gucci, Tiffany—but she was drawn to the sculptures on display at the Steuben Glass shop, the magic place of soul-soothing dreams, where the silken sheen of polished glass under soft lights made her think how lovely Heaven was going to be.

    Somebody jostled her back to reality. She blinked in the hot shout of neon. Nearby a sign announced Girls! Live Girls!—would men want dead ones? she wondered—and a movie marquee advertised Born Erect. The signs pulsed from every niche and doorway: Sex Books! Sex Aids! Boom Boxes! Martial Arts Weapons! A thunder of bass-heavy music came from a bar’s doorway, and other pounding, discordant rhythms strutted from speakers set up over a strip of bookstores, bars, strip shows and porno theaters. At almost eleven-thirty, Forty-second Street near the rim of Times Square was a parade of humanity. A young Hispanic boy near Sister Creep held up his hands and shouted, Coke! Poppers! Crack! Right here! Not far away, a rival drug seller opened his coat to show the plastic bags he was carrying; he yelled, Getcha high, you’re gonna fly! Do it deep, cheap cheap cheap!

    Other sellers shouted at the cars that slowly drove along Forty-second. Girls in halter tops, jeans, hot pants or leather slacks hung around the doors of the bookstores and theaters or motioned for the drivers to pull over; some did, and Sister Creep watched the young girls being swept away into the night by strangers. The noise was almost deafening, and across the street in front of a peep show two young black men were grappling on the sidewalk, surrounded by a ring of others who laughed and urged them on to a higher level of violence. The burning hemp aroma of pot floated through the air, the incense of escape. Switchblades! another vendor yelled. Blades right here!

    Sister Creep moved on, her gaze warily ticking back and forth. She knew this street, this den of demons; she had come to preach here many times. But the preaching never did any good, and her voice was drowned out in the thunder of music and the shouting of people with something to sell. She stumbled across the body of a black man sprawled across the pavement; his eyes were open, and blood had pooled from his nostrils. She kept going, bumping into people, being shoved and cursed at, and the neon glare all but blinded her. Her mouth opened, and she shouted, Save your souls! The end is near! God have mercy on your souls!

    But no one even looked at her. Sister Creep plunged into the swirl of bodies, and suddenly an old, gnarled man with vomit on the front of his shirt was in her face; he cursed at her and grabbed for her bag, yanking several items out of it and running before she could get a good swing at him. You’re goin’ to Hell, you sonofabitch! she shrieked—and then a wave of freezing cold gnawed at her bones and she flinched. The image of an onrushing freight train bearing down on her streaked through her mind.

    She did not see who hit her, she simply sensed that she was about to be hit. A hard, bony shoulder thrust her aside as easily as if her body had turned to straw, and in the second of contact an indelible picture was seared into her brain: a mountain of broken, charred dolls—no, not dolls, she realized as she was flung toward the street; dolls had no insides to burst through their rib cages, no brains to ooze from their ears, no teeth to grimace in the frozen rictus of the dead. She hit the curb and a cab swerved to avoid her, the driver shouting and leaning on his horn. She was all right, just the wind knocked out of her and her hurt side throbbing, and she struggled to her feet to see who’d hit her such a blow, but no one was paying her any attention. Still, Sister Creep’s teeth chattered from the cold that clung to her, there on the hottest night of midsummer, and she felt her arm for what she knew would be a black bruise where that bastard had collided with her. You heathen shitass! she yelled at nobody in particular, but the vision of a mountain of smoldering corpses lingered behind her eyes and a claw of fear clutched at her stomach. Who had that been, passing on the sidewalk, she wondered. What kind of monster dressed in human skin? She saw the marquee of a theater before her, advertising a double feature of The Face of Death, Part Four and Mondo Bizarro. Walking closer, she saw that the poster for Face of Death, Part Four promised Scenes From The Autopsy Table! Car Wreck Victims! Death By Fire! Uncut And Uncensored!

    A chill lingered in the air around the closed door of the theater. Come In! a sign said on the door. We’re Air Conditioned! But it was more than the air conditioner, she decided. This was a dank, sinister chill: the chill of shadows where poison toadstools grow, their ruddy colors beckoning a child to come, come take a taste of candy.

    It was fading now, dissipating in the sultry heat. Sister Creep stood in front of that door, and though she knew that sweet Jesus was her mission and sweet Jesus would protect her, she knew also that she wouldn’t set foot inside that theater for a full bottle of Red Dagger—nor even two full bottles!

    She backed away from the door, bumped into somebody who cursed and shoved her aside, and then she started walking again—where, she didn’t know, nor did she care. Her cheeks burned with shame. She had been afraid, she told herself, even though sweet holy Jesus stood at her side. She had been afraid to look evil in the face, and she had sinned yet again.

    Two blocks past the forbidding theater, she saw a black kid toss a beer bottle into the midst of some overflowing garbage cans set back in the doorway of a crumbling building. She pretended to be searching for something in her bag until he’d passed, and then she stepped into that doorway and started looking for the bottle, her throat parched for a sip, a drop, of liquid.

    Rats squealed and scurried away over her hands, but she didn’t mind them; she saw rats every day, and much bigger ones than these. One of them perched on the edge of a can and squealed at her with furious indignation. She tossed a cast-off tennis shoe at it, and the thing fled.

    The smell of the garbage was putrid, the smell of meat that had long since gone bad. She found the beer bottle, and in the murky light she rejoiced to see that a few drops remained. She quickly tilted it to her lips, her tongue struggling into the bottle for the tang of beer. Heedless of the chattering rats, she sat down with her back to the rough brick wall. As she put her hand to the ground to steady herself she touched something damp and soft. She looked to her side; but when she realized what it was, she put her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.

    It had been wrapped up in a few pages of newspaper, but the rats had chewed that away. Then they had gone to work on the flesh. Sister Creep couldn’t tell how old it was, or whether it was a boy or a girl, but its eyes were half open in the tiny face, as if the infant lay on the edge of sweet slumber. It was nude; someone had tossed it into the heap of garbage cans and bags and sweltering filth as if it were a broken toy.

    Oh, she whispered, and she thought of a rainswept highway and a spinning blue light. She heard a man’s voice saying, Let me have her now, lady. You’ve got to let me have her.

    Sister Creep picked up the dead infant and began to rock it in her arms. From the distance came the pounding of mindless music and the calls of the vendors on Forty-second Street, and Sister Creep crooned in a strangled voice, Hushabye, hushabye, little baby don’t you cry.... She couldn’t remember the rest of it.

    The blue light spinning, and the man’s voice floating through time and distance: Give her to me, lady. The ambulance is coming.

    No, Sister Creep whispered. Her eyes were wide and staring, and a tear trickled down her cheek. No, I won’t ... let ... her go

    She pressed the infant against her shoulder, and the tiny head lolled. The body was cold. Around Sister Creep, the rats chattered and squealed with frustration.

    Oh God, she heard herself say. And then she lifted her head toward a slice of sky and felt her face contort, and the anger flooded out of her as she screamed, Where are you? Her voice echoed off along the street and was drowned by the merry commerce a couple of blocks away. Sweet Jesus is late, she thought. He’s late, late, late for a very important date, date, date! She began to giggle hysterically and cry at the same time, until what came from her throat sounded like the moaning of a wounded animal.

    It was a long time before she realized that she had to move on, and she could not take the infant with her. She wrapped it carefully in the bright orange sweater from her bag, and then she lowered it into one of the garbage cans and piled as much as she could on top of it. A large gray rat came close to her, baring its teeth, and she hit it square with the empty beer bottle.

    She couldn’t find the strength to stand, and she crawled out of the doorway with her head bowed and the hot tears of shame, disgust and rage coursing down her face. I can’t go on, she told herself. I can’t live in this dark world anymore! Dear sweet Jesus, come down in your flying saucer and take me with you! She leaned her forehead against the sidewalk, and she wanted to be dead and in Heaven where all the sin was blotted clean.

    Something clinked to the sidewalk, ringing like notes of music. She looked up; her eyes were blurred and swollen from crying, but she saw someone walking away from her. The figure turned the corner and was gone.

    Sister Creep saw that several coins lay on the pavement a few feet away—three quarters, two dimes and a nickel. Somebody had thought she was panhandling, she realized. Her arm darted out, and she scooped up the coins before anybody else could get them.

    She sat up, trying to think what she should do. She felt sick and weak and tired, and she feared lying out on the street in the open. Have to find a place to hide, she decided. Find a place to dig myself a hole and hide.

    Her gaze came to rest on the stairs across Forty-second Street that descended into the subway.

    She’d slept in the subway before; she knew the cops would run her out of the station or, worse, haul her off yet again to the shelter. But she knew also that the subway held a warren of maintenance tunnels and unfinished passageways that snaked off from the main routes and went deep beneath Manhattan. So deep that none of the demons in human skin could find her, and she could curl up in the darkness and forget. Her hand clenched the money; it was enough to get her through the turnstile, and then she could lose herself from the sinful world that sweet Jesus had shunned.

    Sister Creep stood up, crossed Forty-second Street and descended into the underground world.

    3

    10:22 P.M. Central Daylight Time

    CONCORDIA, KANSAS

    KILL HIM, JOHNNY!

    Tear him to pieces!

    Pull off his arm and beat him to death with it! The rafters of the hot, smoky Concordia High School gymnasium rang with the combined yelling of over four hundred people, and at the gym’s center two men—one black, one white—battled in a wrestling ring. At the moment, the white wrestler—a local boy named Johnny Lee Richwine—had the monster known as Black Frankenstein against the ropes and was battering him with judo chops as the crowd shouted for blood. But Black Frankenstein, who stood six feet four, weighed over three hundred pounds and wore an ebony mask covered with red leather scars and rubber bolts, stuck out his mountainous chest; he gave a thunderous roar and grabbed Johnny Lee Richwine’s hand in midair, then twisted the trapped hand until the young man was forced to his knees. Black Frankenstein growled and kicked him with a size thirteen boot in the side of the head, knocking him sprawling across the canvas.

    The referee was scrambling around ineffectually, and as he stuck a warning finger in Black Frankenstein’s face the monster shoved him aside as easily as flicking a grasshopper; Black Frankenstein stood over the fallen boy and thumped his chest, his head going around and around like a maniac’s as the crowd screamed with rage. Crumpled Coke cups and popcorn bags began to rain into the ring. You dumb geeks! Black Frankenstein shouted, in a bass boom that carried over the noise of the crowd. Watch what I do to your hometown boy!

    The monster gleefully stomped on Johnny Lee Richwine’s ribs. The young man contorted, his face showing deepest agony, while the referee tried to pull Black Frankenstein away. With one shove, the monster threw the referee into the turnbuckle, where he sagged to his knees. Now the crowd was on its feet, paper cups and ice flying, and the local policemen who’d signed on for wrestling arena duty stood nervously around the ring. Wanna see some Kansas farmboy blood? Black Frankenstein bellowed as he lifted his boot to crush his opponent’s skull.

    But Johnny snapped to life; he grabbed the monster’s ankle and threw him off balance, then kicked his other leg out from under him. His thick arms windmilling, Black Frankenstein hit the mat with a force that made the floor shake, and the crowd’s noise almost ripped the roof off.

    Black Frankenstein cowered on his knees, his hands up and pleading for mercy as the young man advanced on him. Then Johnny turned to help the injured referee, and as the crowd shrieked Black Frankenstein bounded up and rushed Johnny from behind, his huge hands clasped together to deliver a hammerblow.

    The frenzied screaming of the fans made Johnny Lee Richwine whirl around at the last instant, and he kicked the monster in the roll of fat around his midsection. The noise of air expelled from Black Frankenstein’s lungs sounded like a steamboat whistle; he staggered around the ring with drunken, mincing steps, trying to escape his fate.

    Johnny Lee Richwine caught him, bent and lifted Black Frankenstein’s body on his shoulders for an airplane spin. The fans hushed for a second as all that weight left the mat, then began to shout again when Johnny started twirling the monster in the air. Black Frankenstein bawled like a baby being spanked.

    There was a noise like a pistol shot. Johnny Lee Richwine cried out and began to topple to the mat. Legs busted, the man who was called Black Frankenstein had time to register before he flung himself off the young man’s shoulders. He knew very well the sound of popping bones; he’d been against the boy’s trying an airplane spin, but Johnny had wanted to impress the home folks. Black Frankenstein slammed into the mat on his side, and when he sat up he saw the young hometown wrestler lying a few feet away, grasping at his knee and moaning, this time in genuine pain.

    The referee was on his feet, not knowing what to do. Black Frankenstein was supposed to be stretched out, and Johnny Lee Richwine was supposed to win this main event; that’s how the script went, and everything had gone just fine in the run-through.

    Black Frankenstein got up. He knew the boy was hurting bad, but he had to stay in character. Lifting his arms over his head, he strutted across the ring in a torrent of cups and popcorn bags, and as he neared the stunned referee he said in a quiet voice very much different from his villainous ranting, Disqualify me and get that kid to a doctor!

    Huh?

    "Do it now!"

    The referee, a local man who ran a hardware store in nearby Belleville, finally made a crisscrossed waving motion that meant disqualification for Black Frankenstein. The huge wrestler made a show of jumping up and down with rage for a minute as the audience hooted and cursed at him, and then he stepped quickly out of the ring to be escorted to his dressing room by a phalanx of policemen. On that long walk, he suffered popcorn in his face, a pelting of ice and spitballs, and obscene gestures from children and senior citizens alike. He had a special fear of grandmotherly old ladies, because one had attacked him with a hat pin a year before in Waycross, Georgia, and tried to boot him in the genitals for good measure.

    In his dressing room, which was a bench and locker in the football squad room, he stretched as many of the kinks out of his muscles as he could. Some of the aches and pains were permanent, and his shoulders felt as tight as chunks of petrified wood. He unlaced his leather mask and looked at himself in the little cracked mirror that hung inside his locker.

    He could hardly be called handsome. His hair was shaven right to the skull to allow the mask a good fit, his face marked by the scars of many ring accidents. He remembered exactly where each of those scars had come from—a miscalculated turnbuckle blow in Birmingham, a chair swung too convincingly in Winston-Salem, an impact with the edge of the ring in Sioux Falls, a meeting with a concrete floor in San Antonio. Mistakes in timing caused real injuries in professional wrestling. Johnny Lee Richwine hadn’t been balanced well enough to support the weight, and his leg had paid for it. He felt bad about it, but there was nothing he could do. The show must go on.

    He was thirty-five years old, and the last ten years of his life had been spent on the wrestling circuit, following the highways and county roads between city auditoriums, high school gyms and country fairs. He was known in Kentucky as Lightningbolt Jones, in Illinois as Brickhouse Perkins, and in a dozen states by similar fearsome aliases. His real name was Joshua Hutchins, and tonight he was a long way from his home in Mobile, Alabama.

    His broad, flat nose had been broken three times and looked it; the last time, he hadn’t even bothered to get it set. Under thick black brows, his eyes were deeply set and the pale gray of woodsmoke. Another small scar looped around the point of his chin like an upside-down question mark, and the hard lines and angles of his face made him resemble a war-weary African king. He was large to the point of being freakish, a curiosity that people stared at when he walked the streets. Ridges of muscle bulged in his arms, shoulders and legs, but his stomach was dissolving to flab—the result of too many boxes of glazed doughnuts consumed in lonely motel rooms—but even carrying a spare truck tire of fat around his midsection, Josh Hutchins moved with grace and power, giving the impression of a tightly coiled spring about to burst free. It was what remained of the explosive force he’d commanded when he was a linebacker for the New Orleans Saints, many years and a world ago.

    Josh showered and soaped the sweat off. Tomorrow night he was due to wrestle in Garden City, Kansas, which would be a long, dusty trek across the state. And a hot trip, too, because the air conditioner in his car had broken down a few days earlier, and he couldn’t afford to get it fixed. His next paycheck would come at the end of the week, in Kansas City, where he was to participate in a seven-man free-for-all. He got out of the shower, dried off and dressed. As he was putting his gear away the match’s promoter came in to tell him that Johnny Lee Richwine had been taken to the hospital and that he’d be okay, but that Josh should be careful leaving the gym because the hometown folks could get a little rough. Josh thanked the man in his quiet voice, zipped up his traveling bag and said goodnight.

    His beat-up, six-year-old gray Pontiac was parked in the lot of a twenty-four-hour Food Giant supermarket. He knew from the experience of many slashed tires not to park any nearer the wrestling arena. While he was so close to the market, Josh went inside and emerged a few minutes later with a package of glazed doughnuts, some Oreo cookies and a jug of milk. He drove away, heading south on Highway 81 to the Rest Well Motel.

    His room faced the highway, and the rumble of passing trucks sounded like beasts prowling the darkness. He turned on the Tonight show, then took off his shirt and smeared Ben Gay on his aching shoulders. It had been a long time since he’d worked out in a gym, though he kept telling himself he was going to start jogging again. His gut was as soft as marshmallow; he

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1