# Read the first page of Swan Song by Robert McCammon Read the opening of Swan Song by Robert McCammon free, no signup. Won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/swan-song-robert-mccammon - Genre: Post-apocalyptic horror - Year: 1987 - ISBN: 9781453232033 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781439156735&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781453232033 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781453232033 ## The opening 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. ## Books with a similar feel - [Carrie by Stephen King](https://uncovered.ink/read/carrie-stephen-king.md) - [The Queen by Nick Cutter](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-queen-nick-cutter.md) - [The Hunger by Alma Katsu](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-hunger-alma-katsu.md) - [The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-only-good-indians-stephen-graham-jones.md) - [Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia](https://uncovered.ink/read/certain-dark-things-silvia-moreno-garcia.md) - [Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix](https://uncovered.ink/read/horrorstor-grady-hendrix.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.