Read Online Swan Song by Robert McCammon - Free Book Online Page A

before Schorr could brake the cart. Schorr looked back, his smile slipping; he stopped the cart, and the Croningers saw that part of the ceiling the size of a manhole cover had collapsed. Exposed in the hole were iron bars and chickenwire. Schorr took a walkie-talkie from the cart’s dash, clicked it on and said, “This is Schorr, near the junction of Central and C corridors. I’ve got a drainage problem here, need a cleanup crew on the double. You read me?”
    “Read you,” a voice replied, weakened by static. “Trouble again?”
    “Uh… I’ve got new arrivals with me, Corporal.”
    “Sorry, sir. Cleanup crew’s on the way.”
    Schorr switched off the walkie-talkie. His smile returned, but his light brown eyes were uneasy. “Minor problem, folks. Earth House has a top-line drainage system, but sometimes we get these minor leaks. Cleanup crew’ll take care of it.”
    Elise pointed upward; she’d noticed the jigsaw of cracks and patches in the ceiling. “That doesn’t look too safe. What if that thing falls in?” She looked wide-eyed at her husband. “My God, Phil! Are we supposed to stay here for two weeks under a leaking mountain?”
    “Mrs. Croninger,” Schorr said in his most soothing voice, “Earth House wouldn’t be at ninety-five percent capacity if it wasn’t safe. Now I agree, the drainage system needs work, and we are getting it in shape, but there is absolutely no danger. We’ve had structural engineers and stress specialists inspect Earth House, and all of them gave it the okay. This is a survivalist condominium, Mrs. Croninger; we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want to survive the coming holocaust, right?”
    Elise glanced back and forth between her husband and the young man. Her husband had paid fifty thousand dollars for membership in the Earth House timesharing plan: two weeks every year, for life, in what the pamphlets called a “luxurious survivalist fortress in the mountains of southern Idaho.” Of course, she believed the nuclear holocaust was coming soon, too; Phil had shelves of books on nuclear war and was convinced that it would happen within a year, and that the United States would be driven to its knees by the Russian invaders. He had wanted to find a place, as he told her, to “make a last stand.” But she’d tried to talk him out of it, telling him that he was betting fifty thousand dollars that nuclear disaster would happen during one of their two-week timesharing periods, and that was a pretty crazy gamble. He’d explained to her the “Earth House Protection Option” which meant that, for an extra five thousand dollars a year, the Croninger family could find refuge in Earth House at any time, within twenty-four hours of the detonation of an enemy-fired nuclear missile within the continental United States. It was holocaust insurance, he’d told her; everybody knew the bombs were going to fall, it was just a question of when. And Phil Croninger was very aware of the importance of insurance, because he owned one of the largest independent insurance agencies in Arizona.
    “I suppose,” she finally said. But she was troubled by those cracks and patches, and by the sight of that flimsy chickenwire sticking out of the new hole.
    Sergeant Schorr accelerated the electric cart. They passed metal doorways on both sides of the corridor. “Must’ve cost a lot of money to build this place,” Roland said, and Schorr nodded.
    “A few million,” Schorr said. “Not counting loose change. A couple of brothers from Texas put the money into it; they’re survivalists too, and they got rich off oil wells. This place used to be a silver mine back in the forties and fifties, but the lode ran out, and it just sat here for years until the Ausleys bought it. Here we are, just ahead.” He slowed the cart and stopped in front of a metal door marked Sixteen. “Your home sweet home for the next two weeks, folks.” He opened the door with a key affixed to an Earth House insignia key