Chaingang c-3

by Rex Miller

  In the creek he could see a ribbon of scum along the edge by the nearest bank. Floating in the slime, a white plastic jug, part of a dead perch, and small twigs were discernible. Up on the bank he noticed pieces of rotting tackle and the brightness of expended shotgun shells. He registered these things subconsciously as he flipped through the pages of UTILITY ESCAPES, daydreaming, glancing back and forth at the map for inspiration.

  He'd driven to the bridge, crossed it, followed a small service road on the other side, finally stopping after a few miles near a deep, unmarked creek. He sorted options. Eyes scanning. Registering. Open to the inner sensors that directed his movements much of the time.

  Mr. Woodruff, as he'd signed the register, had spent a pleasant night and day in the VACANCY Motorlodge, the only name remaining on the chipped, painted billboard adjacent to the neon sign. The tab was a reasonable $31.90. The real Mr. Woodruff had paid.

  There would be a need to dump the vehicle. If he'd gleaned sufficient data about the salesman's itinerary, people would be asking questions about his absence very soon. One option was painting the car. Changing tags. He decided he'd prepare for that contingency and started the car, driving to a nearby hardware store and picking up the necessary items. Rather than shoplift the items—which he ordinarily would have done—he bought a few large spray cans of Krylon acrylic, plenty of masking tape, scissors, and a big roll of brown paper, which he preferred to newsprint. He'd work something out. He wanted to keep those wheels as legal as possible.

  He left the store and crossed the bridge to the Missouri side, moving toward Waterton on Maple, right on Park Street, turning back left around the small park, crossing South Main, turning due east on Oak Street. He kept going until he reached the boonies. A small county sign indicated a road number. He turned. Farmland. Another sip: BRIARWOOD.

  He saw woods, took a tractor turnrow access road, and cut down off the blacktop, killing the engine.

  In his duffel was a compact kerosene space heater and a one-man poncho hootch—but he was not about to spend another night outside on the ground. October had turned frigid.

  He sensed a rumbling and watched a big, loaded eighteen-wheeler thunder by, a real blacktop-buster, probably too heavy for the scales and staying on the back roads away from the ICC. Something—the trucker perhaps—galvanized him into action. The access road was not safe. He started the car and pulled back onto the road, heading deeper into the boonies.

  In his mind he replayed the look of the gravel road where he stepped down into a ditch and found the dry culvert. The markings of the handy grain silos and the dump sites stirred another vista. He visualized the hidden pond. Reached for the remembered off-kilter hints of unseen observers.

  It would be wrong to say that he felt the eyes of watchers the way he had in the hole at Marion. He perceived premonitions with his “sixth sense"; received inexplicable sensations; was attuned to warning vibes. Precognated.

  Never had he felt a stronger indication of hidden manipulators. They were everywhere, and yet he could not see them, and he was THE VERY BEST AT SPOTTING WATCHERS. Why hadn't he seen them? They couldn't be present in such numbers and all be that good.

  In that flash of understanding, he knew why. He knew. He floored the accelerator and sped down the blacktop, determined, with every ounce of his powerful mind on full, focused concentration. Inside his head he was analyzing possibilities, painting the Buick, substituting plates with the tags from a junkyard rust-bucket whose plates would allow him a bit of prefix-coded poetic license. Threat assessment and tin snips, evasion techniques and application of masking tape—dozens of disparate thoughts passed through his mind.

  He pulled off the blacktop onto another access road, but this time it was near a wooded area that began with a grove of small trees, and became a thick, overgrown tree line. More dense woods appeared to border the back of the field, which was visible in the distance.

  From the second he pulled onto the road, he felt safer, and he eased up on the gas pedal. They were up there. That's why he'd not scoped them out—the watchers. A sky eye of some kind. They were probably keeping track of him via aerial photography—he imagined what the state-of-the-art capabilities probably were. They'd known exactly where he was from the moment they shoved him off that truck in a deserted bean field, and they gave him weapons!

  He had been placed here for a reason, of course. But what? Would the key be in the ones who had been cruel to animals? Hardly. Was he a lab experiment? They were cold enough. No. What, then? He wished for the presence of his sissy friend, Dr. Norman. Oh, the pleasant time Daniel would have had, extracting the man's knowledge and heart, in that order.

  It was of no consequence. First things first, he thought, bringing the sharpness of his mind back to the matters at hand. He must find shelter and concealment.

  He swung around the tree line, driving through an overgrown lane of mud ruts, and bounced along through open pasture, going much slower now, as he kept to the extreme right and the overhanging protection of the big trees.

  Finally he reached the end of the path. He was almost at the far end of a second field, this one in obvious disuse. He could take the vehicle no farther—not without tearing out the bottom of it. He pulled off the pathway sharply, a ridiculous thing to do, surely, driving into tall weeds at the edge of the woods.

  But whatever it was that guided him had served him well again. He stopped the car and got out. He was bracketed on all sides by thick woods, and could see almost no sky overhead because of the limbs of the huge oaks around the car. He'd sensed the one place there was a small opening in the trees and driven through it.

  He could hear traffic noises in the distance and knew precisely where he was, as always, in relation to his map and the steps of his journey to this point. He was due east of Waterton, and quite close to Briarwood's main drag, but in woods that were inaccessible from any direction other than the one he'd just come.

  Quickly he took an antipersonnel mine and “closed the back door,” also stringing some wire and setting out a pair of M49-A1 trip flares, which would illuminate any unwanted sneaker-peekers who chose to attempt penetration of his nighttime defensive perimeter. Cross his turf and fifty-thousand-candlepower illums would spotlight you for the minute or so necessary to dispose of you. A two-pound pressure or a cut of the wire would fire the devices, and you would be very, very sorry you had come to call.

  He removed his belongings from the car and covered everything in a car-size cammoed bush-net he would use later, after the car was painted, and—mindful of the dry cold—began to cut sheets of the brown paper to mask off the windows and grillwork. Then he saw the edge of a concrete blockhouse, and the thrill of the find shivered through him.

  He chopped his way through the multifloral rose bushes and poison ivy, impervious and invulnerable to either thorn or itch, and accessed a small door. It took him a few moments to realize what he'd found. The sound of a 75-horse outboard starting rumbled from him as a coughing laugh escaped his innards.

  The adjacent field, not tillable, had been empty for a purpose. Once upon a time it had been a parking lot for cars. Doubtless there would be a couple of entrance/exit through-ways somewhere to the south of him on the other side of the neighboring field.

  He was too pleased to fool with the painting. He decided he would postpone that job until the morrow. He unpacked the space heater from his duffel and began cleaning out the inside of the long, thin concrete shelter.

  Within the hour Chaingang Bunkowski was eating dinner inside his comfy, cozy new hideout: what had once been the concrete block projection booth for Briarwood's Tinytown Drive-in Theatre.

  It is a cold but clear morning and Chaingang is up early, stiff from the night's sleep inside the abandoned projection blockhouse that was by turns suffocatingly hot or freezing cold. The space heater left something to be desired. The stiffness has settled in his lower groin.

  Sunrise was a streaked palette of reds, golds, and powder blues. The air
was crisp and clear. The birds were singing. He was so horny, he'd fuck a bush if he thought a snake might be in it. Chaingang horny: every woman's worst nightmare come true.

  He uncovers the car, still unpainted, camouflages his belongings, checks and resets his perimeter security after having moved the vehicle, and takes off in the direction of Waterton.

  His strange mindscreen rushes many things past his awareness: memories of isolation and sleep deprivation, long vigils and torturous fasting, abstinence and celibacy. Silence and hunger. He feels the warmth in his loins. In his computer he watches himself:

  A slave candidate, both arms extended, is gripped by the elbows. He steps into his own shadow. Narco-hypnosis. “I am the lamp of darkness. Flame of the Illuminati. “Debilitating fear. An altar built of human skeletons—ah, yes! CRUCIFIX AND AMULET. PUDENDA BOUND IN STRING. Ritualistic pleasures recalled.

  He remembers alkaloids and henbane. Symbolism and ceremony. Stimuli and exhortations. The turn-on of a sex slave sacrifice. Sabbath eve at the gate of death. Chaingang's mind sees these things.

  His computer prints out the date for him. It is Halloween. All Souls’ Day is coming. Dia de los Muertos—Day of the Dead. A closed tribunal of the Imperial Chamber. The Blockula Sabbats. The path of the rose. Night of convocation. Moon of diamonds. Court of the Holy Vehm. It excites him to remember.

  In his mind he drinks from a bowl of blood. Sniffs the overpowering fragrances of myrrh, cinnamon, calamus cassia, olive oil, aloes, storax—the rich incense of sudden death. Death itself can enjoy a fantasy.

  “In the name of the cruciform, I swear to sever all blood bonds ... Astarot, Beelzebub, Beliar, Bhowani, Baal Ammon of No, Himavati, Kumari, Priestess of Shiva, Kali the black one, Menakshi, Rabbana ... Benedictus Deus qui dedit nobis signum. Kiss the maiden of iron."

  A beautiful woman, head shaved, eyes blindfolded, nude on an altar in a pentagram of flame, bleeding into a bowl. All sustenance derives from water, fire, sap, waste, and odor. “I pollute with my semen.” Foreplay. The beast once dabbled in the occult arts.

  No wonder he must have a woman. It is Halloween. How the memory of an absurd ancient ritual amuses him, but also hardens his need.

  The sky eye is temporarily forgotten. He is rolling down Oak, turning on Jefferson—the main drag of the town Waterton, turning again on Maple and again on Park. He has seen a woman lock her car. She is young. It is broad daylight, but Chaingang cruises her. He waves. She enters a small shop. Waterton Pharmacy.

  He parks. Out of the Regal and waddling in after the woman. He sees her now, doing something behind a counter. Long, shiny hair, huge earrings, too much lipstick. But a long neck and wide mouth.

  Whatever fog or incapacitation had been rendering him inarticulate appears to completely burn off in the sexual heat of the moment. He is almost back to his old self again.

  “G'morning,” she says, in a loud, chipper voice.

  “Happy Halloween,” he says. He moves back in the direction of the long drug counter, where he senses another human presence. Peers into the sanctum sanctorum. A man in a white smock sees him.

  “Can I help you?"

  “Can I get datura stramonium or metaloides without a prescription?"

  “What's that now?” He is nearer. Chaingang's huge hand is on the private door. The pharmacist is used to being in charge. He has never seen this man who is already inside the private area.

  “Please—"

  “Do you have any almond-wood or essence of tantic Himavati?” He plays with the man and chain-snaps him before he can answer. Turns instantly as the druggist falls in a heap, moving back out the door—which he can barely squeeze through—saying loudly in the direction of the unconscious man, “—appreciate it. I'll be back to get it in a minute."

  Smiling. The smile a frightening mask. Waddling up to her.

  “Hi.” Friendly bear. “Are you going to have a big Halloween?"

  “Nope. We're gonna stay home this year.” Says something about her daughter.

  “I've seen you around town before,” he says. “What's your name?” A big smile.

  “Trish Clark,” she says. Trying to hold her breath so as not to have to inhale any of the foul reek of body odor that is so stingingly strong on the man.

  “How much are those, Trish?” he asks politely, as his eyes scan the street for watchers. She turns to see what his big finger is pointing at and sees nothing more. A shower of black, blue, red, and golden stars explodes inside the blindness of her mind, die as they are extinguished in inkiness.

  He has her long hair, dragging the inert body back to the back. Dragging her over her employer's form. Now returning to lock the door and turn the OPEN sign to CLOSED.

  Checking the register first. Surprised at what he finds. He can dump the Buick and buy a nice used car.

  She is very sexy, even in her slack-jawed position, and he pulls her to him to bestow a serpent's kiss with teeth meant only to wrest meat from bone.

  “Trick or treat,” he says, lowering his bulk onto her.

  18

  SOUTH OF WATERTON

  It took a three-way clearance to get past the guards at the control center: one had to pass visual, palm-print, and spectrographic ID checks, and as the honcho liked to say, “everything from a metal detector to a bullshit detector.” There were detection devices visible as one made one's way past the armed guards in the hallway, but neither the visible detectors nor the visible guards were the ones with the real teeth.

  The honcho led the VIP civilian into the deadlock between the two nine-and-a-half-inch steel-sheathed doors, a “lock vault” in the jargon, and they stood there for a few long seconds waiting for the duty sergeant to pop the inner door.

  “Evening, sir,” the duty man said smartly.

  The honcho nodded and escorted his guest past a desk where a rather attractive woman sat, staring at them as they strode by. Neither rank nor civilian brass impressed anyone inside the control complex. There were no salutes here. The attractive woman was too busy to salute, for example. In her left ear she was listening for the order to execute, which in this case was a literal order. It would mean that the individual or individuals who had just gained admittance to this highly secret chamber were not to be allowed to leave. There was no such order, and she removed her right trigger finger from the .22-caliber pistol concealed under the desk. She happened to be a world-class handgun champion, and she'd miss her period before she'd miss a head shot at that range.

  “Who has him?"

  “Red tracker."

  “Good.” They walked over to the appropriate cubicle where a civilian sat with his hands on a control console and his eyes glued to an electronic display.

  “That's the subject. That little blip right there,” the honcho explained. “Probably gone nighty-night, but—” he shrugged “—one never knows. We stay on him right around the clock. Change these monitor teams constantly. Helluva lot of manpower, but it pretty much assures us that he doesn't take off. He's in a twenty-five-mile radius of protection—that's his kill zone. And if he sets one big toe outside it..."

  “You guys pick him up?"

  “No, sir. We dust him right there."

  “How do you keep an eye on him? It looks like there would be so many places he could go, you know?"

  “We've got two hundred people in place. Eyeball surveillance. Every move recorded—sound-on-film. Overflights. Infrared. Satellites—he belongs to us every second. We own Big Boy."

  They watched the tiny, glowing pinpoint of light with a mixture of unspoken anxiousness and proprietary pride. There was a kind of pioneering feeling inside the control center, a sense that one was part of a history-making endeavor.

  The COMSEC and NEWTON SECURE systems interlinked with the on-line terminals served by OMEGASTAR, the mobile tracker that had been developed to monitor the man who was the core of SAUCOG'S continuing experimental research program.

  Inside his weird brain a microscopic servomechanism (one that had cost a
millionaire CEO his job when a Japanese firm beat his San Jose chip company to the punch and delivered the goods to Uncle first) happily rested, sending out its perpetual emission to whosoever might receive it.

  Whosoever, in this control complex, watched the glowing screens of the Omni DF MEGAplex Secure Tranceiver Auto-lock locator Relay unit and movement-detection monitor.

  Every telephonic, radar, infrared, seismic, satellite capability known to engineering science (and whose battery never needed replacing) tuned in, hooked up, plugged in, switched over, clicked on, and down-linked the signal from the eye in the sky—the cyclops that received the continual transmission that emanated from inside Chaingang Bunkowski's head.

  Owning “Big Boy” was one thing. But taming him—ah, that was an altogether different can of worms.

  19

  WATERTON

  According to the official record, the incident report, Officer Harold Schaeffer was “investigating locked premises, gained entrance to Waterton Pharmacy at approximately 10:39 A.M., at which time I found the decedents.” But Marty Kerns had the tape where Harry Schaeffer, crying, throwing up, on the job for eighteen months, had stepped into one of the worst multiple homicide scenes in memory, run in flat-out panic, mashed the handset of the two-way, all radio procedures and call signs and codes thrown to the wind, and screamed, “Oh, Jesus, help, Christ, there's two dead people maybe more. Waterton Pharmacy. There's blood everywhere and they're all cut up—Jeezus somebody help me! Hurry!" Not exactly “One Adam Twelve requesting backup.” And this about a hundred feet away from the chief's office.

  Bob Lee, the pharmacist, and Trish Clark. Both corpses mutilated. Huge footprints in the blood. No witnesses. Perpetrator had come in about the time they opened and somehow done the deed without any screams being heard, or passersby observing anything going on. If Mabel Dietz hadn't gone on so about having to get her prescription, and Mrs. Lee saying that her husband had gone down to open up the drugstore “over an hour ago,” it might have been noon before the bodies were found.