Chaingang

17

MAYSBURG

When Chaingang pulled out from Jefferson Sandbar, which is where the local fishermen and boating enthusiasts “put in,” the beat-up brownish-yellow-orange Toyota was riding a mite low on the springs. The shocks were probably gone to begin with. And ... consider the weight load.

He took the bridge across the river, flowing with the traffic about ten miles over the speed limit. In a matter of minutes he'd passed through the center of Maysburg, Tennessee, via its “business route,” and was pulling up behind a Big 7 Motel, whose rather spacious parking lot had precisely one vehicle in it.

He parked beside the car, a Buick Regal belonging to one Conway Woodruff, Jr., a salesman out of Decatur, Georgia, who had been in his room for all of fifteen minutes, and was both surprised and annoyed to hear someone banging on his door.

“Yes?"

Inside his massive head Chaingang had his speech ready, and his friendliest shit-eating grin was plastered across his dimpled, beaming countenance. He had his usual line of confusing dialogue prepared. A bit of impromptu nonsense about how flat-out goddamn stupid he was for having left an envelope with some money in it taped to the bottom of the dresser drawer and how crazy it sounded but could he please come in and reezle frammen for a second?

The words would rush out in a storm of hot blasting confusion, startling yet nonthreatening, a fat comic bear's windy rhetoric infused with a kind of topsy-turvy logic, and while the unsuspecting party tries to respond to this intrusion, there is that awful coil of heavy chain snaking out of the huge canvas pocket, and it would all be over in an eye-blink.

The words stuck in his throat. Perhaps the cumulative effect of the powerful drugs had damaged his central nervous system. He'd been struck on the head at some point, because there was a place where his skull was tender to the touch, so perhaps that contributed to his inarticulateness. Or maybe it was just that he hadn't had much to say in the last couple of years.

Whatever the problem, nothing came to his tongue, so he brought up a juicy regurgitation and belched an expulsion of death-breath into poor Mr. Woodruff's face, pushing him back into the room, slamming the door behind him, and chain-snapping him in a blur of quick moves.

His computer was working well, if his speech center was not, and it notified him of the possibility of watchers to his flanks and rear. Tiny black marblelike eyes peered around the curtain. When he was satisfied that no one behind him was a potential threat, he took Mr. Woodruff into the bathroom and undressed both of them as if for intimacy, and—truly—what is more intimate than an organ donation?

Chaingang, naked, took his big fighting bowie and made three deep, precise cuts: the “autopsy Y.” Blood was everywhere. Fingers like huge steel cigars reached, ripped and opened Mr. Woodruff. He sliced the steaming heart loose and fed. Finally the scarlet roar of hot desire had abated. The delicacy was unusually sweet and tender. It had been such a long time, he'd almost forgotten the rush.

It didn't take long to exsanguinate the gentleman, and they took a nice shower together while he cleaned them both, pulling the gentleman back together with his all-purpose duct tape until he could get him loaded up for disposal. The bathtub and tile walls were easy to clean since he did not have to worry about traces in the trap.

He got dressed, went out to the Toyota and got plastic sheeting, one of the poncho halves, cord, and his Utility Escapes material.

The bed had not been slept in. He rumpled it, pressing in the indentation of a sleeping man. He wrapped his large bundle, which was somewhat lighter. The donor had given blood, for one thing, and there was the matter of a heart, which weighed approximately three quarters of a pound.

From Mr. Woodruffs clothing he took the driver's license and turned to the pages where his master motor vehicle blanks were tipped in. He selected the appropriate state, double-checking coded prefixes and license style, and removed the one he wanted. Not only had the authorities returned all his survival items, they'd upgraded them in some cases. There were new license blanks with the same small photograph of Daniel Bunkowski already affixed to each coded ID for all the states.

It was almost as if he were an employee of theirs. He expected that kind of arrogance from most monkeys, but not the sissy doctor, who purportedly understood that he had superior competency. What made them think he wasn't going to escape with this material, not to mention the munitions?

His mind sorted possibles: Perhaps they knew that MVB blanks were easily available both from street people and subculture bookstores. They might have realized that mail-order publications and other materials required a shipping time of several weeks. Maybe there was a time consideration attached to whatever motivated them to set him loose.

They'd inserted him into Vietnam in the 1960s, free to hunt and kill. He'd shown them that he could escape their plans to control or terminate him then, so what made them think he was under their thumb now?

He tried to examine, as objectively as possible, his various points of contact with the monkeys, beginning with his first adult jail time; through escape, evasion, revenge, recapture, the period of quasi-mercenary service, the bungled “abortion” by friendly fire, escape and evasion, more retaliation, the hunt by a detective who had become devoted to his destruction—when he was shot and almost killed, his wonderful time of recuperation and vengeance, and the child he'd sired—all the history that had brought him to this moment.

Where was the weak link? Had Dr. Norman learned something about him during their drugged sessions that had led to such arrogance on their part? What made them think that he would follow their agenda?

Daniel chewed it over as he added GM keys and Conway Woodruffs money to his billfold. He loaded up, and without encountering further problems, he and Mr. Woodruff left the Big 7 Motel for the last time.

He'd spotted the fairly deserted river access route on the Maysburg side of the bridge. Driving with tremendous concentration, he returned there next, the low-riding Toyota's camper filled with what appeared to be camping gear. Chaingang had almost no rear visibility, and he could hardly breathe cramped in behind the wheel, which he could barely steer for his huge gut and massive legs.

There were a few trucks and a car or two on the access road, but it looked good to him, as it ran parallel to the blue feature, and was country enough to do the trick.

He stopped and phoned a taxi from the nearest pay telephone, at a small auto repair place near the road. Found his voice and told them when and where to pick him up. Gave the motel as his destination. His name was Conway Woodruff. The salesman's keys and an appropriate ID were in his pocket.

Luck, or the power of evil, led him directly to a suitable bluff. His weapons cases and duffel bag were safely ensconced in the trunk of that big, beautiful Buick back at the Big 7.

He took pliers and wire and made certain the Toyota's crew were in for the duration, battened down the hatches, wiped prints out of force of habit, and ran the vehicle off the low bluff into the river. Nobody but the fish heard it sink.

By the time he waddled back down the road, he saw his taxi about to pull out and stopped it with a shout like a cannon shot, waving at the driver, who started down the road to meet him.

“Howdy, I got to sightseein’ out here and—"

“I just about drove off without ya,” the driver snarled.

That was all he needed to launch into a tirade about the cheap Detroit garbage the auto industry was cranking off the assembly lines these days, immediately finding a kindred soul. The two of them cussed and fussed, and by the time the cab driver deposited his heavy load back at the motel, they both agreed that the world was going to hell in a handbasket.

When the taxi pulled away, Chaingang unlocked his Buick Regal and went in search of some fast food, and then—secure lodging. He thought about checking in at a motel somewhere. After all, he had enough credit cards in his pocket. They identified him as Gordon Truett, Walter Smith, and Conway Woodruff, none of whom could put up an argument.

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.