by Rex Miller
“I'd be willing to try."
“Tell you what, Mary, let's see if we can find out any more information by poking around out there at the construction site. We'll see what we can find out this evening. Maybe we can learn something that will point us in the right direction. Tomorrow—if nothing's changed—we can go rattle the bars on Mrs. Lloyd's lawyer's cage. Okay?"
“Yes. What do you think we'll find out there?"
“I don't have a clue. But all that traffic and massive concrete work and whatnot—there have got to be some plans around, maybe in a trailer or something. Surely we can get a better idea of what they're doing out there in the middle of the boonies."
“Won't it be guarded?"
“Typically a job site like that might have a guard—a retired cop glued to his TV, or a kid sitting around in the trailer getting high. They don't even make builders get construction permits on unzoned county ground—and if they do have a construction guard, he won't be any big thing.” He'd have good cause to reconsider the wisdom he'd just dispensed.
The first thought that occurred to Royce had been that they were building some sort of military airfield in the middle of nowhere—there was such a vast expanse of concrete. Poured concrete had covered much of the construction project, from the center of what had been the Lawley farm to the northernmost edge of Bill Wise Industrial Park. The great span of concrete reminded one of several airstrips viewed side by side.
But this was no airfield. The concrete formed a sublevel, a gigantic flooring and walls. A shallow-walled fortress? Some kind of NORAD deal maybe? A defense command to be housed in this immense subterranean bunker? For what purpose? The North American Defense Command was buried under the heart of Cheyenne Mountain, and impervious to nuclear strike. This one was only a few feet down—too vulnerable.
He tried to imagine a Disneyland for adults. What would it resemble? A fanciful landscape of spiraling turrets and minarets and geodesic domes as drawn by Alex Raymond? Perhaps this was the beginning of an environmental theme park, a showcase for earth-sensitive projects of research and development just as World Ecosphere, Inc., claimed. Maybe they'd had the misfortune to concoct a land deal at the worst possible time and place, coincidentally picking a small town targeted by a serial killer.
Royce turned to Mary, bundled up in sweaters and a heavy coat, and whispered, “Let's get closer.” She whispered okay and they moved as quietly as they could, going over the top of the embankment where they were parked, and down the fairly steep hillside that was adjacent to Russell Herkebauer's drainage ditch, and Lawley's northern ground.
There was a wood line at the base of the hill, and they stopped there, hiding in the trees.
“That's the place where we want to go, I think.” He pointed to a rectangular-shaped building about the size of a trailer-truck bed. “I think that's the office trailer.” There was a similar-size affair without side doors, which he knew was a place where tools were locked up at night.
He was starting to get up, almost ready to reach for Mary and tell her they were going to check out the trailer, when the first guard came out of the trees beside them. Royce grabbed Mary, shushing her and pulling her down all in one move, and only luck kept her from making a noise.
“Jeezus! I didn't see him at all,” he whispered, when the man and his dog were well away from the trees. Mary was frozen in terror, literally speechless. She tried to swallow. Realized, suddenly, she needed to take a breath.
“That was close,” she said, gasping.
An armed man, carrying what appeared to be, by its silhouette, a rifle, with a leashed guard dog, had been in or very near the wood line at the base of the hillside, not fifty feet from where they'd just come down the embankment.
“Right. Just stay chilly.” In a couple of minutes, scanning the dark shapes, he spotted a second man. This one carrying what was unmistakably a small machine gun of some kind. No dog.
“Come on,” he whispered after a bit, “we're going back.” In the vehicle he told her.
“That cinches it. You don't put guards with silent attack dogs and machine guns on an environmental research park. No way."
“What is this all about?"
“I don't know ... I know one thing.” She looked at him quizzically. “If the wind had been coming from the other way and that guard dog had picked up our scent—we'd have been in a world of bad news."
“Is that what happened to Sam, you think? He found out what they were up to?"
“Maybe so. We've got to get some help. Whatever this deal is, it's a lot bigger than you and yours truly can do anything about. And Marty Kerns—forget it!"
“If this is something to do with the government, maybe the FBI is in on it somehow. That would explain why they haven't done more about the missing people."
“Yeah. Let's get out of here.” He started the engine and they headed for the county highway that would take them over to Market Road, and eventually across the bridge into Tennessee.
“I got a bad feeling,” Royce said. “And I've got you in over your head, too. I've turned out to be some friend to you."
“You've been a good friend,” she said softly, touching the back of his hand. “I'm the one who got you in this mess, remember?"
Little did she know. Little did they both know. Royce had nothing to go by but his vibes and a lot of experience running games on folks, and having games run back on him, but one thing he knew: They were in deep shit. And everything he did, every new fact he gleaned, seemed to leave them in a more precarious situation, and knowing less than they knew before.
22
NORTH QUARRY BAYOU
The beast crosses an open field of wild pastureland, keeping close by the protective thicket that divides the piece of ground, a dense border of interwoven bushes, thorn-studded trees, and commingled vines. Moves in the direction of swampy bayou, dark glade, secret hollows made for hiding, killing, and burying.
From the distance you see a huge waddling clown man, fatso bear, limping a bit—if you look closely—favoring the tired right ankle that supports its share of the quarter ton, but begins weakening when the beast grows tired.
If you have the bad luck to view him from closer range, you will see he is not the grinning simpleton the stereotype suggests. Mean, hard, unforgiving intelligence flashes in the strange, doughy face. Eyes as cold as graveyard stones flicker constantly, registering every sign and movement of life. His breath mists in the cold air as his sensors scan for the presence of humanity.
Should he see your footprints or your recent tire tracks amid the Hereford cattle and water moccasin sign, he will lock on to your heartbeat and find you. His present mood gives new meaning to “obsessed.” Killing and torture have become a relentless and insistent need.
Last night he slept in a frigid box of a cramped automobile, and tonight he will spend it in a warm house—if he has to leave Mommy, Daddy, Bubba, and Sissy with RIPPED ABDOMENS, TORN KIDNEYS, BLEEDING HEARTS, AND PILES OF STEAMING DOG SHIT to do it. He sleeps inside tonight.
As he scans he thinks of BELLY BILE, GUT JUICE, VENTRICLES, VISCERA, OFFAL, FAT, SMILE, BLOOD, GUTS, GORE, GRUE, GOOP, CHITLINS, SHIT TUBES, RIPPED RENDERED DEAD FUCKING MONKEY PEOPLE.
The field is crossed and he is in dark woods. It is colder here. Cow flop. Snakeskins. Wet, green clumps of shadowed moss thriving in the rankness of deep, canopied murk. His sensors pick up his own sewer-main stench, the fragrance of pastureland manure, compost, humus rich with a mulch that he imagines as decomposed flesh—what a superior burial site!
Out of the cold shadows now he tops a ditch bank over a bayou. A viscous green scum lies across the surface of the water. He leaves his deep 15EEEEE indentations along the top of the bank. Follows a cattle path. Skirts the bayou. Reaches the edge of the world.
Chaingang peers over the side of the cliff. He is looking down into what appears to be a bottomless pit, an old marble quarry, fathomless, deep beyond measure, going down beyond visibility into the darkest, blackest co
re of the earth. He throws a rock in and listens, but does not hear it strike bottom.
No stairs or steps or paths lead down into the quarry. How has the rock been retrieved? He idly speculates on this oddity, initiating a query about the queer quarry, smiling broadly at the potential of this gaping, grand invitation. What a mass monkey grave this would make!
By nightfall he is on the other side of the black hole, snug and warm in Frank and Lucille Stahly's farmhouse. He has the heat cranked up, a big bowl of chips and Mrs. West's Party Dip in his lap, and his muddy boots rest on Lucille's coffee table, waiting for them to return home.
He'd slipped the cheap lock in about eight seconds, found the small farmhouse empty, dirty dishes in the sink and on the breakfast table, and the bed unmade. Within a half hour or so he knew what there was to know about the people who lived here, and was waiting patiently for the party to get under way.
Darkness had fallen early and he'd enjoyed his quiet vigil, eating the entire contents of the Stahly's fridge, drinking some wine he'd found, and resting his bones. He amused himself reading, in his mind, “Eating One's Dead: Susu and the Southern Massim."
It was nearly seven-thirty when he heard the pickup truck crunch along the gravel driveway. He was on his feet, moving through the darkened house, standing against the wall behind the kitchen door and away from the windows, frozen motionless, willing his vital signs to a halt, his killing chain dangling from his right hand. Waiting silently.
“They pulled three truckloads out when melons were going for nine cents, and then, see, the early winter set ‘em back—and so they started givin’ ‘em away by the truckful, and trying to wholesale ‘em out to these roadside vendors."
“If everybody had knowed about it, they would have come out and got some. They shoulda’ told the folks in town.” A woman's loud voice.
“John said he was (something) that'd been shipped too early to turn sweet."
“That's right."
The sound of the door unlocking.
“He asked me if we wanted a bag of broccoli. They had about ten bags that was damaged coming off a truck from Mem—” He took the man down with the first chain-snap, catching him across the left temple and forehead, killing him instantly, reluctantly almost. He could listen to monkey talk for hours sometimes, fascinated as he was by the extremely prosaic nature of their endless blabbing about melons and broccoli and damaged veggies. He hated them for their ways but was intrigued by their mundane, weak lives and superficial thought patterns, because, deep down, he was one of them.
The man was ordinary in appearance. The woman, ample-bosomed and rather big-boned, was an attractive lady in her fifties. She immediately began to fight him, and he was surprised and amused, a barking cough of laughter escaping as he subdued her as gently as he could, opting to knock her out with his frying-pan-size fist.
“Stop!” the woman screamed, regaining consciousness, feeling great weight on her, the nakedness and stench of her attacker adding to the blind horror. A stocking bit into her mouth.
“Now, now, Lucille,” a deep basso profundo rumbled hotly in her ear, “it's going to be all right.” She felt as if her back were breaking. The monster was in her and she almost passed out trying to fight him. Her wrists and ankles were bound to objects she could not see, blindfolded as she was and spread on the living room floor, tethered to the stove and other pieces of heavy furniture.
The heaviest furniture of all was on top of her, on her back, one hand cupping her breast, another squeezing her right hip, stabbing into her from behind.
“Oh, Lucille,” he rumbled, as she gagged with nausea and fear, “You're a live one."
23
SOUTH OF WATERTON
“What time did Big Boy check into this location?” the civilian at the monitor screen asked. Big Boy was their in-house name for Chaingang Bunkowski.
“Just a second. Let me get the log.” The warrant officer took a clipboard down and read it for a few moments, then read the time to the man in front of the screen. “Seventeen twenty-two thirty. Yesterday."
“Occupants arrived when...?"
“Nineteen twenty-eight."
“Jesus. The bastard's still in there with ‘em.” He made a note on a manifest in front of him and keyed a switch on his console. Then cut the switch and double-checked his code-pad. Big Boy was “Friendly” on the one-time voice pad. He opened his microphone again and gave the radio call sign for the disposal team:
“White Tracker to Natural Athlete, you copy?"
“Read you, White Tracker. Over."
“Friendly's got an overnighter in North Sector Four. Check your directory under four hundred and eleven Yankee. Please confirm. Over.” There was a pause while Natural Athlete asked White Tracker to wait one, and they looked up the skinny on a location in North Sector Four, and then ran down the “grids” in the Yankee quadrant. Their directory confirmed the location of the residential listing under the name Stahly, Frank, at four-one-one Yankee.
“Natural Athlete calling White Tracker. We confirm—that is a rog."
“Okay. We'll let you know when Friendly is outta there, and you guys can be standing by with the meat wagon, you copy? Over."
“We copy. Over."
“Ten-four. Y'all have fun now. This is White Tracker out.” Christ. He wouldn't have their job for anything. Uncle Sugar didn't have that much money.
The man who was occasionally Christopher Sinclair sat behind a metal desk in his office within the Control Center. Names meant nothing in his line of work. He was one thing in the Clandestine Services interagency directory, another thing where he got his personal mail. His own name—that had been buried long ago. The names he used were worknames. Part of the business he was in. They meant about as much as did titles. His happened to be “chief of section,” which—in this situation—meant chief scapegoat.
The project had begun for him during the COUNTRYSAFE operation, which had been, in his view as well as his boss's, an unmitigated disaster. That had been far away in another time and place, and his name had been Robert Newman back in those halcyon Vietnam days.
There were forces within the service as well as within the embassy that conspired to mitigate, not to mention distort, the failure that was to be officially perceived as a success. He'd been called upon to draft a CYA memo, a cover-your-ass document that would—in carefully drafted and oblique language—present the debacle's best face.
“We are not the KGB,” he had written, contending that while we could mount a small commando mission, call in a well-placed air strike, bring a carrier into the South China Sea, or mine the Gulf of Tonkin, we could obtain from neither the military or private sector “expendable assets who have proven to be highly adept at sensitive assassinations."
When push came to shove, we had no expertise at hiring cold-blooded killers who excelled at their special craft. “Uncle Sam is not,” he was pleased to observe, “in the murder business."
There were those operations that demanded the services of such monstrous horrors as the legendary Chaingang Bunkowski, around whom the COUNTRYDAY operation had been structured. Serious and vital hits, among them being the most delicate and important missions entrusted to the Action Unit, demanded pro-level wet work of the highest degree of skill. The elite military units and the usual roster of “cowboys” simply would not do.
But COUNTRYSAFE, a different (but related) ill-conceived, covertly mounted op originating in the secret swamps of the intelligence community, had not lived up to its name. If anything, it had put the country in the gravest peril.
During the blizzard of cables and CYA memoranda in the wake of the op, a man doing R & D in one of the service's Midwest shops, a Dr. Norman, happened to access certain correspondence from workname Robert Newman, née Christopher Sinclair, to his superiors. Norman knew a like mind when he encountered it, and an alliance was formed during those Southeast Asian War years that would stand the test of time. Both of them, to be sure, were Chaingang Bunkowski believe
rs.
Someday they knew there would be a chance to restructure the unit in a domestic setting. To create, perhaps, a hard-core cadre capable of sensitive wet work: counter-terror, spike teams, orchestrated assassinations, either state-side or wherever covert missions were set into place. With Mr. Bunkowski at its center, such an ultrasecret unit was potentially capable of the most terrifying efficiency.
But planning for these things and implementing them would prove to be an all-consuming challenge that would become a kind of awful obsession. The initial problem was in the emerging technologies: They had the level of weapons development that was required even back in the sixties, but there was (1) the matter of finding drugs or some other reliable, scientific means of controlling their “assets,” and (2) the problem of monitoring the operations. One could not just turn a Chaingang, Bunkowski loose—however great the temptation—because although he could perform the mission, there was too much danger he could evade his keepers.
By the time the technologies finally caught up with their lifelong dream, in the early nineties, the problems had shifted. Now there was the matter of Chaingang's weight and his advancing age.
No accurate birth records survived, but Dr. Norman was sure he'd been born in late 1949 or early 1950. He was middle-aged. Could he physically perform as he had when he was eighteen? The answer to that was clearly yes. It had taken a small army to capture him some two and a half years ago.
The weight was the primary concern. He'd lost all the excess weight once, in the 1980s, when he'd hoped to completely alter his appearance, but had promptly regained a the original poundage and more. At five hundred pounds—give or take—how many years were left to him?
The problem was therefore to train other Chaingangs who could take his place. This was the time to begin the comprehensive on-the-job film and tape record of the most prolific mass murderer in history, to observe him at work, record his every technique, amass a visual catalog that chronicled his every MO, so that others could learn his extraordinary “art."