Savant

22

Shooter Price, SAVANT in his arms, had managed to escape unscathed. It filled him with self-confidence, to have so easily evaded an attack by an adversary as cunning and deadly as Chaingang. Those fucking shitheels had used his own tracker to locate him. But he had fooled them! He was alive and well, with his incredible weapon and plenty of rounds for her hungry maw, and he would show all of them what payback meant—starting with that fucking hippo.

Back in Illinois, Dr. Norman did not think of Daniel as a hippo so much as a huge, angry bear. He shuddered as he read of the killings, and of the attempt to get their sniper. Like maddened polar bears who have invaded the same huge ice flow, they were now circling each other in the dance of death. One, armed with a sniper weapon without equal, the other with presentience to warn him of danger; each seemingly invulnerable to attack from the other. But Norman knew, as he read the account, precisely what the outcome would be. He knew that there was no living human who could go up against Daniel and live. And he understood the prison wisdom that stated "Chaingang has nothing but his hatred." He was sure that the knowledge of the implant had only amplified that, if anything.

Bunkowski, the man, was precisely the reverse of Danny, the little boy. In Chaingang's world, he rules and you are the victim. The cons always said there were three codes inside: the penal code by which the prison operated, the inmate code by which cons coexisted behind bars, and the survival code. The last code transcended the others, the one that Chaingang practiced as a religion.

In Kansas City, Missouri, it was another day. The dawn had come up gray and wet-looking. Shooter felt tough and privileged. He did a few half-hearted push-ups, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He showered, shaved, and dressed with some care, dressing for success.

Price wore sandwashed bronze linen slacks from Côte d'Ivoire, a metallicized anaconda Western-style belt with verdigris-patina buckle by Mark Cross, and a River Crest Pro Shop pullover in mulled claret. He pulled on pale yellow silk socks from Neimann's, and antique gold, woven ostrich quill skimmers. The sniper as fashion plate. It wouldn't matter. He was going down in the pit, under full camouflage.

Shooter in Missouri and Dr. Norman in Illinois both began their morning with the same news. Neither man happened to turn on their respective television sets. Each read, with divergent reactions, the substantially identical accounts of the previous day's violence. One from local law-enforcement agencies' reports to the various data-collection terminals such as NCIC and VI-CAP. The other from the Kansas City papers.

"Six More Killed in Bloody Massacre" was the headline of the Star, and Bobby Price smiled when he read the stories under the subhead "Police Confirm Mass Killer on Rampage."

A lone gunman is believed responsible for six murders and one attempted murder in midtown Kansas City, Thursday, as the spate of bloody homicides continued, pushing the city's violent death record to an all-time high. In what were termed sniper killings, a man that witnesses called huge, over six feet tall, weighing between 350 and 400 pounds, is thought to have taken six more lives using a long-distance rifle of some type. Lieutenant John J. Llewelyn of the Kansas City Homicide Division of the Crimes Against Persons Unit said that he is believed to be using some kind of high-explosive projectiles such as rifle grenades.

Llewelyn confirmed that the killer's weapons and methods appear to match those employed in twenty-nine recent slayings. He's probably got automatic weapons, grenades, and is familiar with various explosives.

Kansas City Homicide has called in a special department of the FBI for assistance with the case, which may or may not be drug-related. The shootings and firebombings that resulted in thirteen dead in an attack on a biker gang's headquarters, and the grisly ritual mutilation and murder of three other bikers at Mount Ely, have lead to speculation that drug dealers may be involved with the slayings. The biker-gang members had a history of drug arrests, both for possession and distribution of drugs like crystal meth.

Fatally wounded Thursday were Mark Berkemper, forty-two, a professor at State Business College; a Jane Doe of approximately twenty-six years of age, Dick Thompson, thirty-three, an advertising consultant with Saveth-Blackman-Grant; E. L. Campbell, twenty-six, a driver for a lawn center, George D. Unwin, fifty-seven, U.S. Army, Ret.; and Phyllis Guthrie, thirty-eight, a clerk employed by the Kansas City Housing Authority. Neither the Kansas City Police nor the FBI would comment further as to any possible connection between these killings and what were called random murders. The deaths brought to 173 the number of homicides in the city since January 1.

Price laughed at the crude police composite sketch that was prominent in both papers. The eyes and mouth were all wrong. Gangbang was even fatter and uglier than the drawing. He read the other account in which he was described as a "motorist."

"The so-called Crucifixion Killer," the caption under the drawing began, "as described by witnesses to a high-speed car chase that ended in gunplay in midtown Kansas City Thursday."

After killing at least six more persons with what are believed to be rifle grenades, the giant-size mass murderer attempted to shoot another motorist, who was able to elude him after the killer first tried to ram his car, then fired at him as he fled on foot.

Shortly after the car chase, the escaping motorist's car was struck by a truck, in the vicinity of 28th and The Paseo. At this point, the killer fired approximately fifty rounds from a silenced machine gun, failing to hit the fleeing motorist. The driver of the truck was not injured.

Witnesses told police that the huge man, who wore a dark blue shirt and green trousers, then threw a grenade into the motorist's empty vehicle, and sped away in a late-model red car. No one was injured in either the attempted shooting or subsequent explosion.

Shell casings found in the vicinity may be tied into the recent biker-gang slayings as well. Detective Sergeant Marlin Morris told reporters the abandoned car's registration is being checked to determine the motorist's identity."

If Chaingang wanted to find him, he thought he'd make it as easy for him as he could. He'd bring the fat piece of shit out in the open and blow him into a million pieces of rendered lard.

He called a cab and asked to be driven to a car-rental agency. After he'd fixed himself up with a ride, he loaded his best girl and drove to the concealed sniper hide near Hospital Hill Park.

Oddly, he thought, it made him hot to consider how much power he had at this moment, assembling the weapon in his camouflaged gun pit. The cops wanted him, SAUCOG wanted him, fucking Chaingang wanted him, but he was like The Invisible Man—untouchable, unseeable, and all-powerful. What a turn-on! He could do any damned thing his heart desired and get away with it. Who was left to stop him?

"This round is particularly effective against vehicles, buildings, walls, barricades, and other hard targets." He loaded a SHARP-HEX round into the breech.

"Red Rock Match Grade ammunition…" His mind went blank. He felt a wave of nausea that came over him and vanished as quickly as it had lapped up against his senses. He peered into the Laco scope.

He saw a youth in a black car, maybe a Trans-Am, gone now behind a truck. A black man wearing a dark jacket; a fellow in work uniform, standing on the bumper of a trailer truck. Another peered under an open hood. He moved to other visions: a couple of people talking on the street; a nurse; the crimson of a sweatshirt on a jogger attracts him like a red flag waved at a bull, and as he focuses he spots a movement near a cement mixer. A man steps out and Price flings him into the air from a mile and a half away. "Way to get some!" What was once a man has now become paint, and it drips from the blasted belly of the cement mixer. The exploded man has become a red-and-silver streak. They sound like comic-book superheroes to Shooter: The Exploded Man and The Red and Silver Streak, in this adventure-filled issue of Gangbang Comics! He loads an antipersonnel round and peers into the 40X scope. A used-car salesman stands with a prospective customer under a row of pennants in front of a dealership. A woman walks to her car flanked by a Safeway bagboy. Shooter lets the crosshairs touch him. Keeps moving. Passes over a maintenance man in shirt and jeans, working beside the roadway.

"I exorcise thee, unclean spirit…tremble, 0 Satan, enemy of the faith, thou foe of mankind who hast brought death to the world." He sees the chocolate-over-beige prefab of an armed forces recruitment center. He sees a uniform and squeezes. He prays for Chaingang to find him now. "In nomina patris…" His mind wanders.

"The removable accessory vault, located in the butt of the stock, forward of the shoulder recoil pad, is accessed by removal of the butt base plate, and by releasing the serrated latch detent which is housed in the upper edge of the recessed butt chamber. Slide the base plate forward and grasp the lip inside the base plate, pulling the accessory vault down and out."

"That's how I get into your butt," he whispers into the black hole of his own madness.

The implant was all but forgotten for the moment. It was less than a sublevel awareness, excepting those moments when he felt a fleeting tingle of alien discomfort somewhere between the giant roll of fat at the back of his immense neck and the top of his scarred, hard skull. He would take these ones who needed killing step by step: Mr. Price, Mrs. Garbella, Dr. Norman—his sissy friend The concept that Norman would be monitoring his movements on a distant electronic screen could have upset his gyro, and he would not let that happen again. He was doing Dr. Norman's bidding, on his team for the moment, and their immediate goals were not antithetical.

Chaingang knew that he would prevail over the sniper with his miracle gun, all else being equal. But it was vital to act with celerity now, since Shooter Price was obviously far over the edge, and the police were under the impression that he—Daniel—was the sniper. One more preposterously intolerable event in a chain, which he would now begin to break.

There was no real wilderness anymore. Not this close to urban civilization. You could still find rough, raw chunks of empty space, but not true isolation. There was always the chance of running into somebody. It was no longer possible to get back of beyond—vestiges of humanity appeared everywhere. He hated them so, the stupid monkey men on this planet of dumb apes. He loathed their loud noises, happy laughter, and blank faces full of self-assuredness and herd mentality. He longed for the cleansing of isolation.

He had found a momentary pocket of quiet, where he could plan, plot, prepare—soak up the stillness and solitary joy of seclusion. The monkeys were far away.

The building was stone, a small rectangular structure approximately the size of a small tool shed. Solidly made, but for the roofing, which he had easily restored. The railroad spur that had once existed through these woods was long gone and Mother Nature had reclaimed the bed on which the tracks had rested. Thick near-impenetrable woods surrounded him.

There were others in these woods, but he sensed no monkeys at the moment; rather, there were roving packs of dogs, wild mongrels he imagined, coyotes and their cousins, coyotelike hunters, whose signs and conversation he'd seen and heard nearby. Deer. Other small animals. Humanity had been limited to a single light plane flying over the distant treeline. It was perfect for him.

He felt alone and rather safe in his cozy hideaway, and was pleased he'd discovered it without undue exertion. He found such places by logic, processes of education/deduction, luck, vibes, and something transcending intuition but akin to it. These places pulled him.

Neither vehicles nor mantracks touched the surrounding woods near his small stone sanctuary. No hoof or boot prints gathered water in 15EEEEE super-extra-wide heel marks. No sign of human life hung twisting in a bush or tree limb, to place his safety in possible jeopardy.

If you knew where to walk and were extremely cautious, you could go a few hundred meters and find the red Buick sedan registered to the late Eileen Todd's parents. It resided under a car tarp, inside a rotting barn that hadn't been used for anything in many years. The barn was decorated in rusting POSTED NO TRESPASSiNG and KEEP OUT warning signs. Obviously private property. Again, the structure had been restored by its latest occupant. If you dared you could breach his security system and find the vehicle, camouflaged, hidden inside. But you would have cause to regret such a discovery.

You would have every reason—though probably not the time—to rue the day your woodsy picnic had led you to this ancient shell of a barn.

The vehicle inside had been hidden by someone who had studied demolition the way others study for the bar, or study medicine—a postgrad student with a doctorate in explosives and concealment. Your untimely discovery would transform you, noisily, into a wet shower of unidentifiable red offal.

High explosive, not purchased with his ill-fated auction profits, but recently purloined, is wired to a short-fused frag, but with the ordinary M-26 fuse replaced with a 308-G, the so-called ADD or Anti-Disturbance Device. There were other tremor-sensitive security treats now waiting in these environs, guarding his back door—as it were—from the unlucky meandering monkey.

He has the big map out in front of him, covered in lightly drawn circles. A huge circle surrounds the immediate Kansas City, Missouri, area where Robert "Shooter" Price has chosen to die. The heart of his killing zone has been computed, measured, marked. A series of concentric rings make a pleasantly uniform design as they encircle this heart's edges.

Each of the smaller circles is divided by two lines bisecting each ring's diameter. Each reticulation has the appearance of the crosswires inside a sniperscope. The circular patterns are areas where Price has killed or where he might kill next. Every sector or quadrant of the reticle marks has a grid designation. These grid designations are graded.

Chaingang Bunkowski and Shooter Price once hunted together, at least in theory, as part of the same spike team. Bunkowski recalls the little punk's arrogance. He knows precisely how he will behave now. Without the mobile tracking technology to depend on, he will have no recourse but to try to entrap his enemy. Price will know he cannot hope to find him in a dense population area such as this.

Unless he would have a photograph, or would contact the police and various reporters to correct the poor likeness authorities are using in trying to I.D. him, only his size presents a problem. He does not think Shooter will provide the police or media with such help. He is an arrogant twerp, who will think he and his powerful rifle will be enough to accomplish Chaingang's demise. This belief will kill him.

The zones with the best or highest grades of likelihood are now to be analyzed by his mental computer. Chaingang knows old Kansas City, and to a great extent, he has been able to familiarize himself with the new aspects of the town—the tall buildings, the new structures of note, the streets and sprawling population areas that have only existed in recent years.

He was through here during a killing spree some three years prior to his most recent release from prison, and even in that time he sees industrial parks, freeway changes, and large construction projects that were not there before. And always, it seems, the monkey men work on their ridiculous highways.

Diminutive Shooter, for all his misplaced confidence, has a certain degree of experience in these matters. He will know that the moronic cops will be dutifully watching the taller buildings, water towers, overpasses, and similarly obvious vantages. He will be reticent to utilize such areas, except as possible entrapment sites.

On the other hand, Shooter appears to have gone even more gunny-fruit than he was before, perhaps due to an abuse of controlled substanoes—Chaingang remembers a certain proclivity for pharmaceutical cocaine—or other atrophy of the mental faculties. In news accounts subsequent to the most recent snipings, there is mention of one of his sniper hideouts having been discovered, in an empty office within the Kansas City Convention Center. The actions of a person whose mind has snapped cannot be predicted.

The beast studies his map and open ledger, making notations, figuring probabilities, eliminating locations, refining his plan of attack. The word Civilization snakes across his mindscreen and he sees the adjectival root word and its forms, the noun and its variations, and the ironic definitions of the word. It slithers away from him, leaving him with the pleasure of his lonely thoughts of destruction.

Power will come with preparation. He tastes the power-hunger even more than the thirst for Price's spilled blood. In a coil nearby is a yard-length weight of tractor chain. A steel snake waiting to strike, to smash out and demolish, more deadly than any mamba. The chain is inches from his massive killing hand.

Eyes black as midnight, hard pig's eyes, set in a doughy face pale as dawn's light, stare unblinking at the pattern of circles. He tastes the coppery salt of his own mouth's fluids; sharp, misshapen teeth biting through the skin of his lip in fierce and determined concentration. Willing his mind to find the scent of the little faggot shit. Willing his hatred down into the mighty fingers shaped like thick sausages that reach out for the snake and clench it in a strangling vise of a deathgrip. He must get power—raw killing power. Plug into it. Make himself invulnerable in its shielding cloak.

Ice and fire. Bloodlust and the soul of a killing machine in one. Desire to deal death that fills him with heat, but in his monster's heart he is as cold as a shuddering winter chill. Deep inside he lets the rage catch, and the heat propels him out, pushing him toward the monkeys to slake whatever appetites have become inflamed.

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