"Whyi" Sister asked, her eyes wide. "Why'd you lock us in herei"
"Because we're going to stay here until we die. The talons of Heaven are going to destroy all the evil... every bit of it. The world will be cleansed, and the world can begin again - fresh and new. You seei"
Colonel Macklin attacked the stainless steel door, hammering at it with his good hand. The insulation in the room soaked up the noise like a sponge, and Macklin couldn't even put a dent in the steel. The door had no handles, nothing to grab hold of. He turned on the old man and charged at him with his deadly right hand upraised for a killing blow.
But before Macklin reached him, Friend stopped the colonel with a short, sharp blow to the throat. Macklin gagged and fell to his knees, his eyes bright with terror.
"No," Friend said, like an adult chastising a naughty child. Then he lifted his gaze to the old man. "What is this placei What are these machines for, and where's the power coming fromi"
"Those gather information from satellites." The President motioned toward the mainframes. "I know what space looks like. I've looked down on the earth. I used to believe... it was such a good place." He blinked slowly as the memory of falling through the flaming whirlwind again stirred like a recurrent nightmare. "I fell to earth from Heaven. Yes. I fell. and I came here, because I knew I was close to this place. There were two men here, but they're not here now. They had food and water, enough to last them for years. I think... one of them died. I don't know what happened to the other one. He just... went away." He paused for a moment, and then his mind cleared again. He stared at the black box on the rubber-coated table and approached it reverently. "This," he said, "will bring down the talons of Heaven."
"The talons of Heaveni What's that meani"
"Talons," the President said, as if the other man should know. "Tactical Long Range Nuclear Sanitizer. Watch - and listen." He punched his code into the keyboard: aOK.
The mainframes began to spin their data tapes faster. Roland watched, fascinated.
a woman's voice - soft and seductive, as cool as balm on an open wound - filtered through speakers in the walls: "Hello, Mr. President. I'm waiting for your instructions."
The voice reminded Sister of a New York social worker who'd politely explained that there was no more room in the Women's Shelter on a freezing January night.
The President typed, Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, the lady of situations.
"Here is the man with three staves, and here the wheel," the disembodied computer voice answered.
"Wow!" Roland breathed.
and here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card
"Which is blank, is something he carries on his back"
The President typed, Which I am forbidden to see.
"What are you doingi" Sister shouted, close to panic. Swan squeezed her hand.
I do not find The Hanged Man, the President typed into the black box.
"Fear death by water," the feminine voice replied. There was a pause, then: "Talons armed, sir. Ten seconds to abort."
He pressed two letters on the keyboard: No.
"Initial abort sequence denied. Talons firing procedure activated, sir." The voice was as cool as the memory of lemonade on a scorching august afternoon. "Talons will be in target range in thirteen minutes and forty-eight seconds." Then the computer voice was silent.
"What's happenedi" Friend was keenly interested. "What'd you doi"
"In thirteen minutes and forty-eight seconds," the President said, "two satellites will enter the atmosphere over the North Pole and antarctica. Those satellites are nuclear missile platforms that will each fire thirty twenty-five-megaton warheads into the ice caps." He glanced over at Swan and looked quickly away, because her beauty made him yearn. "The blasts will throw the earth off its axis and melt the ice. The world will be cleansed, don't you seei all the evil will be washed away by the talons of Heaven - and someday things will start over again, and they'll be good, like they used to be." His face wrinkled with pain. "We lost the war," he said. "We lost - and now we have to start all over again."
"a... Doomsday machine," Friend whispered, and a grin skittered across his mouth. The grin stretched into a laugh, and the eyes danced with malignant glee. "a Doomsday machine!" he shouted. "Oh, yes! The world must be cleansed! all the Evil must be washed away! Like her!" He pointed a finger at Swan.
"The last of the Good must die with the Evil," the President replied. "Must die, so the world can be reborn."
"No... no..." Macklin croaked, clutching at his bruised throat.
Friend laughed, and he directed his attention to Sister, though he really spoke to Swan. "I told you!" he crowed. "I told you I'd make a human hand do the work!"
The cool feminine voice said, "Thirteen minutes to detonation."
Ninety-three
Josh and Robin came upon the dead soldier at the broken-open gate, and Josh bent down beside the corpse. Robin heard a hissing, sputtering noise but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. He reached out to touch the chain link fence.
"No!" Josh said sharply - and Robin's fingers stopped just short of the metal mesh. "Look at this." Josh opened the dead man's right hand, and Robin could see the chain link design burned into the corpse's flesh.
They went through the opening where the gate had been, while the fence's broken connections hissed like a nest of vipers. It was raining harder, and gray sheets of water whipped through the dead trees on either side of the road. Both of them were drenched and shivering, and the torn-up surface beneath them alternately gripped their boots in mud and then skidded them over icy patches. They moved as fast as they could, because both of them knew that Swan and Sister were somewhere ahead, at the mercy of the man with the scarlet eye, and they sensed time ticking rapidly toward the final hour.
Coming around a curve, Josh stopped, and Robin heard him say, "Damn it!"
Three soldiers, all but obscured by the rain, were descending the road and heading right at them. Two of them saw Josh and Robin and stopped less than ten yards away; the third kept going a few more steps until he stopped as well and gaped stupidly at the two figures in front of him.
Perhaps four seconds passed, and Josh thought he and the others had frozen into lead-boned statues. He couldn't figure out what to do - and suddenly the choice was made for him.
Like two bands of rival gunfighters meeting on a street at high noon, they started shooting without taking aim, and the next few seconds were a blur of motion, nerve-frazzling panic and flashes of gunfire as bullets screamed toward their targets.
"Ten minutes to detonation," the voice announced, and it struck Sister that the woman who'd made that tape was probably long dead.
"Stop it," Swan said to the scarred man who'd once been the President of the United States. "Please." Her face was calm but for the rapid beating of a pulse at her temple. "You're wrong. Evil hasn't won."
The President was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed beneath him and his eyes closed. Colonel Macklin had gotten to his feet and was beating weakly at the steel door, while Roland Croninger walked amid the computers, babbling to himself about being a King's Knight and lovingly running his fingers over the mainframes.
"Evil doesn't win unless you let it," Swan said quietly. "People still have a chance. They could bring things back. They could learn to live with what they have. If you let this thing happen - then evil will win."
He was silent, like a brooding idol. Then he said, with his eyes still closed, "It used to be... such a beautiful world. I know. I saw it from the great dark void, and it was good. I know what it used to be. I know what it is now. Evil will perish in the final hour, child. all the world will be made clean again by the talons of Heaven."
"Killing everyone won't make the world clean. It'll just make you part of the Evil."
The President didn't move or speak. Finally, his mouth opened to say something, but then it closed again, as it the thought had submerged itself.
"Nine minutes to detonation," the voice of a dead woman said.
"Please stop it." Swan knelt beside the man. Her heart was pounding, and the cold claws of panic gripped the back of her neck. But she could also feel the man with the scarlet eye watching her, and she knew she must not give him the satisfaction of seeing her break. "There are people outside who want to live. Please" - she touched the thin shoulder of his withered arm - "please give them the chance."
His eyes opened.
"People can tell the difference between Good and Evil," Swan said. "Machines can't. Don't let these machines make the decision, because it's going to be the wrong one. If you can... please stop the machines."
He was silent, staring at her with dead, hopeless eyes.
"Can youi" she asked him.
He closed his eyes. Opened them again, and stared into hers. He nodded.
"Howi"
"Codeword," he answered. "Codeword... ends the prayer. But... Evil must be destroyed. The world must be cleansed. Codeword can stop the detonation... but I won't speak it, because the talons of Heaven must be released. I won't speak it. I can't."
"You can. If you don't want to be part of the Evil, you have to."
His face seemed to be contorted from within by currents of pressure. For an instant Swan saw a flicker of light in the dark craters of his eyes and thought he was going to stand up, go to that keyboard and type in the codeword - but then the light died, and he was insane again. "I can't," he said, "Not even... for someone as beautiful as you."
The computer voice said: "Eight minutes to detonation."
across the room, Friend waited for Swan to crack.
"The power source," Roland said, part of his mind comprehending what was about to happen and shunting it aside, another part repeating over and over that he was a King's Knight and that he had finally, at long last, come to the end of an arduous journey. But he was with the true King, and he was happy. "Where's the power source for all thisi"
The President stood up. "I'll show you." He motioned toward another door on the far side of the chamber. It was unlocked, and he led Roland through. as the door opened Swan heard the roaring sound of water, and she went through to see what lay beyond it.
a passageway led to a concrete platform with a waist-high metal railing, which stood about twenty feet over an underground river. The water rushed from a tunnel along a concrete-lined spillway, dropped off a sloping embankment and turned a large electric turbine before it streamed away through another tunnel cut into solid rock. The turbine was connected by a network of cables to two electric generators that hummed with power, and the air smelled of ozone.
"Seven minutes to detonation," the voice echoed from the other chamber.
Roland leaned over the railing and watched the turbine going around. He could hear the crackling of power through the cables, and he knew that the underground river supplied an inexhaustible source of electricity - plenty to drive the computers, the lights and the electric fence.
"The miners found this river a long time ago," the President said. "That's why the complex was built here." He cocked his head, listening to the river's noise. "It sounds so clean, doesn't iti I knew it was here. I remembered, after I fell from Heaven. Fear death by water." He nodded, lost in his memories. "Yes. Fear death by water."
Swan was about to ask him to type in the codeword again - but she saw his blank expression, and she knew it was useless. There was a movement from the corner of her eye, and the grinning monster in a human mask came through the doorway onto the platform.
"Godi" Friend called, and the President turned from the railing. "There's no other way to stop the satellites, is therei You're the only one who could - if you wanted to. Isn't that righti"
"Yes."
"Good." Friend lifted the machine gun and fired a burst of bullets, the sound deafening in the cavernlike room. The slugs marched up the President's stomach and chest and knocked him back against the railing, where he clawed at the air and danced to the gun's deadly rhythm. as Swan put her hands to her ears she saw the bullets slam into the man's head and knock him off his feet. He toppled over the railing as Roland Croninger gave a scream of hysterical laughter. The machine gun choked on an empty clip, and the President hit the water and was swept into the tunnel and out of sight.
"Bang bang!" Roland shouted merrily, leaning over the blood-spattered railing. "Bang bang!"
Tears burned Swan's eyes. He was gone, and so was the last hope of halting the prayer for the final hour.
The man with the scarlet eye tossed the useless weapon over the railing into the water and left the platform.
"Six minutes to detonation," the voice echoed.
"Keep your head down!" Josh shouted. a bullet had just ricocheted off the tree Robin crouched behind. Josh fired across the road at the other two soldiers, but his shot went wild. The third soldier lay on the road, writhing in pain, his hands clenched around a stomach wound.
Josh could hardly see anything through the rain. a bullet had plucked at his sleeve as he dove for cover, and he thought he'd wet his pants, but he wasn't sure because he was already so wet; he didn't know, either, if he or Robin had shot the third soldier down. For a few seconds bullets had been whizzing past as thick as flies at a garbage men's convention. But then he'd leapt into the woods, and Robin had followed an instant later as a ricocheting slug grazed his left hand.
The two soldiers fired repeatedly, and both Josh and Robin stayed under cover. Robin finally dared to lift his head. One of the men was running to the left to reach higher ground. He wiped rain from his eyes, took careful aim and squeezed off his last two shots. The soldier grabbed at his ribs, spun like a top and fell.
Josh shot at the remaining man, who returned the fire and then leapt to his feet, sprinting wildly along the edge of the road toward the electrified fence. "Don't shoot!" he screamed. "Don't shoot!" Josh aimed at his back, had a clear and killing shot - but he held his fire. He'd never shot a man in the back - not even an army of Excellence trooper - and he was damned if he'd start now. He let the man go, and in another moment he stood up and motioned Robin on. They started up the road again.
Sister closed her eyes as the voice announced five minutes to detonation. She was dizzy, and she reached out to the wall for support, but Swan grasped her arm and held her steady.
"It's finished," Sister rasped. "Oh, my God... everyone's going to die. It's finished." Her knees started to buckle, and she wanted to slide down to the floor, but Swan wouldn't let her.
"Stand up." Still the other woman's body sagged. "Stand up, damn it!" Swan said angrily, and she pulled her up. Sister looked blankly at her and felt the twilight haze that she'd lived in as Sister Creep beginning to close around her.
"Oh, let her fall," the man with the scarlet eye said, standing across the chamber. "You'll die all the same, whether you're on your knees or your feet. Do you wonder how it'll happeni"
Swan didn't give him the satisfaction of answering.
"I do," he went on. "Maybe the whole world'll split apart and go spinning off in pieces, or maybe it'll be as quiet as a gasp. Maybe the atmosphere'll rip like an old sheet, and everything - mountains, forests, rivers, what's left of cities - will be flung off like dust. Or maybe gravity'll smash everything flat." He crossed his arms and leaned casually against the wall. "Maybe it'll shrivel and burn, and only a cinder will be left. Well, nobody can live forever!"
"How about youi" she had to ask. "Can you live foreveri"
He laughed, softly this time. "I am forever."
"Four minutes to detonation," the cool voice promised.
Macklin was crouched on the floor, breathing like an animal. as the four minute mark was passed a terrible, mournful moan came from his injured throat.
"There's your death knell, Swan," the man with the scarlet eye said. "Do you still forgive mei"
"Why are you so afraid of mei I can't do anything to hurt you."
He didn't reply for a few seconds, and when he spoke his eyes were fathomless. "Hope hurts me," he said. "It's a disease, and you're the germ that spreads it. We can't have disease at my party. Oh, no. It won't be allowed." He was silent, staring at the floor - and then a smile skittered across his mouth as the computer voice said, "Three minutes to detonation."
Rain smashed against the aluminum roof as Josh and Robin reached the long shedlike structure. They'd passed the Jeeps and the corpse of Brother Timothy, and now they saw the entrance to the mine shaft in the dim yellow light. Robin ran ahead up the steps and along the catwalk while Josh followed. Just before Josh got to the shaft, he heard a thunder of what sounded like baseball-sized hailstones slamming on the roof, and he thought the whole damned place was about to cave in.
But the din abruptly ceased, as if a mechanism had been switched off. It was so silent Josh could hear the shriek of the wind outside the walls.
Robin looked down the slanting mine shaft and saw the tracks. Some kind of conveyance was at the bottom. He looked around and found the metal plate with the red and green buttons; he pressed the red one, but nothing happened. a touch of the green button, and at once machinery rumbled in the walls.
The long metal cable that stretched down the tracks began to reel itself up.
"Two minutes to detonation."
Colonel James B. Macklin heard himself whimper. The walls of the pit were closing around him, and from far away he thought he heard the Shadow Soldier laughing; but no, no - he had the face of the Shadow Soldier now, and he and the Shadow Soldier were one and the same, and if anyone was laughing, it was either Roland Croninger or the monster who called himself Friend.
He clenched his left fist and beat against the sealed door - and there, in the stainless steel, he saw the skull staring back.
In that instant he clearly saw the face of his soul, and he teetered on the edge of madness. He hammered at that face, trying to smash it and make it go away, but it did not. The frozen fields where dead soldiers lay heaped and broken moved through his mind in a grisly panorama. The smoldering rums of towns, burning vehicles and charred bodies lay before him like an offering on the altar of Hades, and he knew in that moment what the legacy of his life would be, and where it had led him. He'd escaped from the pit in Vietnam, had left his hand in the pit in Earth House, had lost his soul in the pit carved into the dirtwart land, and now would lose his life in this four-walled pit. and instead of crawling from the mud and standing on his feet after the seventeenth of July, he'd chosen to wallow in filth, to live from pit to pit, while the greatest and most hideous pit of all opened within himself and consumed him.
He knew with whom he was in league. He knew. and he knew also that he was damned, and the final pit was about to close over his head.
"Oh... the waste... the waste," he whispered, and tears ran down from the staring eyes. "God forgive me... oh, God forgive me," he began to sob as the man who called himself Friend laughed and clapped his hands.
Someone touched Colonel Macklin's shoulder. He lifted his head. Swan did her best not to flinch from him, because there was a tiny flicker of light deep in his eyes, just as there'd been a small flame in Sheila Fontana's bit of glass.
For a soul-awakening instant, Macklin thought he saw the sun in her face, thought he saw all that the world could have been. Now all was lost... all was lost...
"No," he whispered. The pit hadn't closed over him yet... not yet. and he rose to his feet like a king and turned toward the mainframe computers that were about to destroy the wounded world.
He attacked the nearest machine, battering frenziedly at it with his nail-studded palm, trying to shatter the smoked glass and get at the spinning data tapes. The glass cracked, but it was reinforced with tiny threads of metal and would not let his hand through. Macklin fell to his knees and started ripping at one of the cables on the floor.
"Roland!" Friend snapped. "Stop him - now!"
Roland Croninger stepped behind Macklin and spoke one word - "Don't!" - that went unheeded.
"Kill him!" Friend shouted, coming forward like a whirlwind before the nails in Macklin's palm tore through the rubber cable into the wiring.
The true King had spoken. Roland was a King's Knight, and he must follow the word of the King. He lifted his .45. His hand was shaking.
and then he fired two bullets into Colonel Macklin's back at point-blank range.
The colonel fell onto his face. His body twitched, and then he lay still.
"Bang bang!" Roland wailed. He tried to laugh, but the sound came out strangled.
"One minute to detonation."
Ninety-four
Friend smiled.
all was in hand. It had turned out to be a fine party, and now it was to be finished with a fireworks display. But the place to watch such a show was not here, in the basement seats. He saw that Sister and the little bitch were down on their knees, clinging together, because they knew it was almost finished. It was a pleasant sight, and he had nothing else to prove here.
"Fifty seconds," the countdown continued.
He let his gaze move over Swan's face. Too late, he thought, and he swept the weakness aside. Outside this place there would still be bands of people, more settlements to visit; the fireworks display might crack the world in an eye blink, or it might be a slow decay and consumption. He didn't fully understand all that nuclear shit, but he was always ready to party.
In any case, she would be here, out of his way. The glass ring, or crown, or whatever it was, was lost. Sister had given him a good run, but she was on her knees now, broken. "Swani" he said. "Do you forgive mei"
She didn't know what she was going to say until she said it, but as she opened her mouth he put his finger to his lips and whispered, "Too late."
His already-charred uniform had begun to smoke. His face had started melting.
"Forty seconds," the computer's voice said.
The flame that was consuming the man with the scarlet eye was a cold burning. Both Sister and Swan shrank away, but Roland stood awed, his teeth chattering and his eyes gleaming behind the goggles.
False flesh sizzled away and laid open what was beneath the mask - but Swan averted her eyes at the last second, and Sister cried out and shielded her face.
Roland watched and saw a face that no human being had ever witnessed and lived to tell about.
It was a suppurating sore with reptilian eyes, a seething and diseased mass that pulsed and rippled with volcanic fury. It was a maddening glimpse into the end of time, at worlds afire and the universe in chaos, black holes yawning in the fabric of time and civilizations scorched to ashes.
Roland fell to his knees at the feet of the true King. He lifted his hands toward the cold flame and begged, "Take me with you!"
What might have been a mouth opened in that nightmarish, apocalyptic face, and the ancient voice answered, "I've always walked alone."
Freezing fire leapt out of the uniform and sizzled over Roland's head like a bolt of electricity. It slammed upward through a small air vent in the wall, leaving a hole in the metal grille that was at the same time burned and rimmed with dirty ice.
The empty army of Excellence uniform, still molded in the shape of a man, collapsed to the floor, ice crackling in its folds.
"Thirty seconds," the seductive voice intoned.
Sister saw her chance and knew what she must do. She shrugged off the shock and lunged toward Roland Croninger.
Her fingers gripped the wrist of his gun hand. He looked up at her, now totally insane. She shouted, "Swan! Stop the machine!" and tried to wrench the gun loose, but his other fist struck her in the face. She hung onto his wrist with all her strength, and the young knight of an infernal king fought her in a maniacal frenzy, getting his arm around her throat and squeezing.
Swan started to help Sister, but Sister was buying them precious seconds, and she must do what she could to stop the countdown. She bent to the floor and tried to rip up one of the cables.
Roland released Sister's throat and slammed his fist into her mouth. His teeth snapped at her cheek, but she warded him off with an elbow and hung on. The gun fired, its bullet whining off the opposite wall. They fought for the weapon, and then Sister rammed her elbow into his chest and leaned forward, sinking her teeth into his thin wrist. He howled in pain; his fingers opened, and the gun fell to the floor. Sister reached for it, but Roland's hand gripped her face, and his fingernails dug toward her eyes.
Swan couldn't get the cable loose; it was sealed to the floor, and the rubber was too thick to tear through. She looked up at the black keyboard on the table at the room's center and remembered what the old man had said about a codeword. But whatever it was had died with him. Still, she had to try. She jumped over the fighting figures and reached the keyboard.
"Twenty seconds."
Roland clawed at Sister's face, but she twisted her head away, and her fingers closed on the butt of the gun. as she picked it up a fist hammered across the back of her neck, and she lost her grip.
Trying to clear her mind, Swan stood over the keyboard. She typed, Stop.
Roland broke free from Sister and scrambled after the gun. He got it and twisted to fire at Sister, but she was on him like a wildcat, grabbing his wrist again and pounding at his misshapen, bleeding face.
"Fifteen seconds," the countdown continued.
End, Swan typed, all her concentration on the letters.
Sister reared her arm back and smashed her fist into Roland's face. One of the goggles' lenses shattered, and he yelped with pain. But then he struck her a glancing blow on the temple, stunning her, and he flung her aside like a sack of straw.
"Ten seconds."
Oh, God, help me! Swan thought as panic shot through her, and she clenched her teeth to hold back a scream.
She typed, Finish.
"Nine..."
She would have only one more chance now. She couldn't waste it.
The prayer for the final hour, she thought. The prayer.
"Eight..."
The prayer.
Sister grabbed at Roland's arm again, still fighting for the gun. He jerked free, and she saw his hideous face grin as he squeezed the trigger. Once... twice...
The bullets pierced Sister's ribs and shattered her collarbone, and she was flung back to the floor as if she'd been kicked. Blood was in her mouth.
"Seven..."
Swan had heard the shots, but the answer was close, and she dared not turn her attention from the keyboard. What ended a prayeri What ended -
"Get away!" Roland Croninger roared, rising from the floor with blood running from his mouth and nostrils.
"Six..."
He aimed at Swan, started to pull the trigger.
Something pounded like judgment on the other side of the steel door, and Roland was distracted for a vital split second.
and suddenly Colonel Macklin rose, and with his last surge of life and strength he slammed the nail-studded right hand into Roland Croninger's heart. as Roland was struck the gun went off, and the bullet whistled inches over Swan's head.
"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 prayeri
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, pleasei"
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 wei" 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 therei"
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 ini" 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 happenedi"
"The world... got a second chance," she answered.
The computer's voice said, "What is your next command, pleasei"
"Can you stand upi" Josh asked Sister.
"I don't know. I haven't tried. Oh... I've made a mess here, haven't Ii"
"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 okayi" 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, pleasei"
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 beeni
"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 iti You hurtingi"
"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 iti Did youi"
"See whati" 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 mei"
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 terrain 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."