Chaingang

33

ECOWORLD

The beast waited, having parked at the edge of the vast sprawl of construction. He'd spotted an old smokehouse and penetrated it, wrapped himself in cammo tarp and let the darkness close in around him.

He was waiting for his night eyes. It was still very black. Stars were barely visible out there in the measureless void. But he simply shut his internal engines down and relaxed, thinking of a time when he'd waited for a night ambush very far away. He pictured the mist that clung to the jungle floor, watching it swirl through the darkening foliage like a cottony, solid thing, as he waited for the ones he would kill. It was pleasant to fantasize about these things, and the time passed quickly for him.

The moon had come back out, and inside the small, ramshackle smokehouse he watched clouds move across the killer's moon, and remembered the house where Mrs. Irby lived, where he'd filled his tanks and watched dust motes falling like snow imprisoned in an antique paperweight. He was in a fine mood again, and with a massive grunt he lurched to his feet and waddled down toward the nearest concrete, the full weight of his weapons and munitions cases in hand.

There were two guards, and they were both imbeciles. Amateurs. He ignored them and went about his business. Setting timers on HBX haversacks, wiring the satchel charges, moving closer to the guards all the while.

His strange mind computed cone diameters, air cavity physics, jet energy statistics. One of his areas of expertise was improvised shaped charges utilizing high-velocity explosives.

He pulled a ‘nade from his voluminous coat and felt the notched spoon. Good. One of the short-fused jobs. He was just starting to fasten it to one of his bomb devices when the car shot by. An old junker of some kind—looked like a Ranchero—kids hot-rodding, he assumed.

The guard closest to the access road opened up with a machine gun, spraying everything in that general direction as the car sped by, and Chaingang flung himself behind the nearest concrete wall, the grenade falling to the ground—fortunately with the pin in place—and rolling.

Just as he started to peer around to see how near the guard was, here came another car, roaring out of nowhere! More gunfire whocked off the surrounding walls. These intrusions were not to be tolerated. Grimly Chaingang reached for the duffel and his long-range killing tool.

They were going too fast, even on the concrete, blasting through the Ecoworld construction project, every separation between the footings feeling like sledgehammers bouncing off the Ranchero's rusting frame. Happy was right on him.

“Oh, fuck!” A wall. It was ending—the fucking thing was dead-ending!

“Stop!"

“Stay down!” There was no room to maneuver or turn around, and Happy would plow right into them. He reached down and yanked the wire—by luck hit the one to the taillights—then mashed the brake, holding Mary and gritting his teeth for the crash. But Ruiz was damn good. He slammed him, but he was on his own brake, and the cars skidded to a halt.

“Run, Mary! Get behind the wall!” It was their one chance.

“I can't. The door's stuck. Oh God!"

“Come on—” He tried to pull her, got her arm but she was at an angle, and it took an instant longer than it should have to get her out on his side. Happy and Luis were on them. Both held MAC-11s. “Wait! She isn't part of—” He was in the middle of a shouted plea when Ruiz and Londoño were stitched in half, literally.

He and Mary were almost dead. They were greased. And suddenly two dudes with guns turn to bloody dead meat, right before their eyes.

Royce forced himself to move. Made himself kick one of the MAC-11 shooters away from the bodies. Picked it up. That's when he saw the giant. His skin crawled as he looked into the face of “Bigfoot,” the Goliath he'd seen on Willow River Road that day. If he thought the dude was big from across a blacktop, he was breathtaking up close. The largest man he'd ever seen, not just tall but big, a giant of a fat man with a weapon of some kind, looking at him with those same hard eyes; he could see them in a reflection of moonlight, and he'd never forget the look on that face as the huge man calmly began loading a magazine into his empty piece.

Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski never saw the guard. He was too occupied shooting these monkey intruders. But his warning sensors let him know the nearest guard, the one without the dog, was right in back of him, about to squeeze the trigger, when this other monkey man raised a weapon and fired a magazine off in the guard's direction, saving his life.

Chaingang clicked the next mag into his SKS, but by then the first car of monkeys was pulling away and he concentrated on the other guard. He had to get out of there soon. His inner clock was ticking at him. He saw the dog coming first and squatted down and got something, putting his weapon beside him. He took the dog from a balanced position, but it still nearly knocked him over—such was the power of the dog's spring at the moment of attack.

But puppy met with a terrible surprise. This was Chaingang fucking Bunkowski, heart-eater, doggie. And he caught the dog in his left hand, holding her by the throat, trying not to strangle her until he could work the cork off the hypo and tranq the bitch. Within a few seconds the attack dog's long, pink tongue was lolling out like she was dead.

“Ilsa! Where are you? Here, Ilsa!” Her master's voice.

“Doggie's asleep,” a deep basso profundo rumbled from out of the darkness as Chaingang blew the guard's head off his neck. “And so are you."

He grabbed the hundred-pound puppy in a fireman's carry, slinging her over one shoulder as if she were a sack of onions, and waddled off to his wheels.

Up on the service road he heard the monkey man shout something to him as he waved.

“Thanks, pardner!” it sounded like.

Chaingang, had Ilsa safely down the road when the south edge of Ecoworld blew into the cosmos.

Royce braked the second he saw the olive drab sphere at the edge of the concrete drive. He was frightened of it, but he was desperate for a weapon, and the MAC-11 was useless to him without a magazine full of cartridges. No amount of money in Christendom would have sent him back into that exploding hell for ammo. He chucked the thing into the backseat and stopped.

He prayed it wasn't a booby trap. It didn't explode when he picked it up, but he didn't start breathing again until he had it resting on the pile of blankets from the old musket. He made a nest for it, tossing the MAC-11 into the road ditch.

“Is that a hand grenade?” Mary asked quietly. She was afraid of very little now. The worst was behind them.

“Yeah,” he told her in a quivering voice. “It's a hand grenade. And I'm scared to death of the damn things."

“Well then...” she wanted to know, the way women so often do ... “why did you pick it up?"

It was a perfectly logical question. It made him lick his lips. He tasted salt.

“What are you going to do with it?"

“God knows,” he said.