Slice

NEW CAIRO DRAIN

Locally it had once been known as the Iron Bridge, but like all the iron around here the exposure to the elements had eventually taken its toll, and as we all know rust never naps much less sleeps. When the Iron Bridge had rusted through to the point where it was long past being deemed unsafe, somebody from the county road agency came and made an assessment and work began. When the workmen were done after a summer's toil the rusting iron girders that remained were resting on huge, treated utility poles, X-braced, and it had become the Wooden Bridge. Then the flash floods came to eat at the banks.

But the county people had run out of money somewhere along the way toward completion, and they'd never gotten around to fixing the bridge right in the middle, nor had they rebuilt the sides. It was a nice potential Chappaquiddick as it stood there, some sixty feet above the ditch at highest watermark, no rails and no center, but safe enough in outward appearance to an approaching stranger.

They feared that vandals would take down the bridge out signs, cut the chains and steel cables, and stand around with fingers crossed waiting for some hapless civilian from the city. So the county came back and blew the whole center section of the bridge out. Only the drunkest party animal would fail to see the bridge was gone.

To Daniel, looking up and seeing the blown bridge's sides arching out from either bank, miniature sandbars, the tallest Johnson grass you've ever seen, gigantic trees and weeds hanging over the brown water, it was a green-choked world of paddies and tree lines and blown bridge and quasi-jungle, and it looked more like Vietnam than anything this side of the Philippines. And his sensors began blinking as he saw this blown artifact from his past. And he smelled Cong.

Up on the high bank two pickups were parked side by side. Three men were talking.

“Kenny caught a twelve-pound channel cat down there around the eddy?"

“Yeah? By the ferry?"

“Yeah. Worked all up an’ down there clean up to just south of Kerr's Store."

“D'jew do anythin'?"

“Hell!” The other man shook his head in exasperation.

“Three"—he laughed mirthlessly—"'n a couple of damn drum."

“Where was ya?"

“Number Thirty-Six."

“They in close,” he said.

“I was draggin’ ‘em off the bank."

“Get in there, boy,” the third man said with a knowing nod.

“Yeah."

“I put in off Whitetail and worked all the way back down that bank where the drain north of Clearmont Church is?” The other man nodded. “'N I shagged seven and some bluegill.” His head shook once in disgust.

“D'jew go crappie fishin'?"

“Naw. Me ‘n Cecil's goin’ tomorrow,” he said, and they talked about the fact it hadn't rained hardly at all for two weeks, and about the big later patch, and some new pre-emerge one of them had heard about, and they had got around to bait again about the time Chaingang came out of the water and heard the three Cong chattering away in their singsong Vietnamese monkey gibberish, and a huge hand holding a gleaming fighting bowie comes up out of the muddy waters like the fin of a silver shark, the back of the hand matted with hair as thick as an animal's pelt. A huge head followed silently out of the water, tiny, hard black eyes gleaming in the doughy, scarred face, sun-brown, hard, steel-muscled, fast now, quick and sure with every move, one of the most experienced assassins ever, easing his massive body out of the water. The boat pushed up against the shore a hundred meters back. Chain had gone into the water when the voices first carried down into the ditch, the Woodsman in one hand, the chain in the other, the big fighting bowie clamped in those shark teeth, frightening, misshapen teeth that had never known a cavity, clenched down on that lightly oiled razor-edged blade, holding the heavy knife in his teeth like a pirate—what did they call them?—like a cutthroat. He was a cutthroat easing along the bank in among the deep weeds, looking for a way to get up there where he wouldn't be seen.

He'd come about a hundred meters in the water and he saw the near-invisible path made by fishermen. You could see where they'd come down the bank when it was muddy. He instantly read the sign for three or four men, putting a small boat in, putting in here where they could walk out on a little mud bank in their boots, dragging the boat down through the vines and mashing down the grass and weeds with the weight of the boat, their bootprints here and there amid the boat tracks in the mud.

“...them fuckin’ Cardinals."

“Yeah, but shit you shouldna bet that's where you made your mistake. He does zat for a living. You work in the pot room for a living. You don't see him comin’ down ‘nair and tellin’ you how to pour iron, do ya?” The three men laughed.

“Hey, Cec,” the one said to the third man, who was getting out of the pickup.

“Huh?"

“Ja ever see so many taters as over'n that Dalton ground?"

“They go right ta Amalgamated."

“Zat right?"

“Every damn tater. That's a syndicate operation. They got about six thousand acres they buy. Dalton's got—what?—maybe 650 to 750 right there. Another five hundred up yonder.” He gestured. “'Course they only buy irrigated fields. Ya got to have all them pipes laid and that—it's all by the numbers."

“Yeah, I figured that was a big-chip operation when...” He trailed off. The first man thought he'd heard something, but when he turned to look in the direction of the sound the darkening sky rumbled and they all looked up at the sight of the blessed rain they needed.

“All damn right!"

“Finally!"

“Speakin’ of irrigation...” They laughed. “We finally goin’ to get some of that there wet stuff."

“Boy, I'll tell ya,” the second man said, “I've never seen anything like this last year f'r lack of moisture. I was watching that—"

They never would know what he'd been watching because the last two or three chain links smashed into his left temple and he made a noise and fell to the ground as the other man, the first man, who was by himself, instinctively moved back and the blade of the fighting bowie stabbed into him and he screamed and the third man was very fast and he was out of the truck and running hell for leather toward the road and Chain rested a huge iron bar of forearm up on the truck closest to him and squeezed off a shot low and another not rushing taking all the time in the world that sixth-sense thing telling him there was no traffic coming and pulling the next shot up a little and catching the man in the right leg and then missing again but catching him with the next two in the back.

The others he put away with the bowie in two fast carotid-artery slashes, saving that last .22 round. Jogging up and starting to put the round into the runner but deciding not to.

“You look near death's door,” he told him with a grunt, whispering it to the man in a friendly, concerned tone as he took hold of an ankle and drug him back to a copse of trees until he could figure what was what. He didn't even get to slit his throat. He looked at the man, who was already dead then, and said, “I think you're gonna bleed to death.” And he went back and drug the other two out of the path made by the two adjacent pickup trucks, and his mind was going a mile a minute.

It had been a while since he'd indulged himself with this kind of a kill. Three humans at one time. Usually he did so inside a home or away from prying eyes. The butcher boys he'd carved up back in Chicago. But you don't take down this many out in the open. Too much gravedigging. Too many trucks. Too much chance of a passing motorist. He started moving, squeezing his soaked body up into the nearest pickup and turning the key, grinding it to life and roaring down off the bank onto the nearby road, pulling it into the first turn-row he came to and wiping the wheel, keys, all the surfaces he might have touched, the door handles, leaving the keys in it and jogging, back up to the second truck. He pulled it right behind the first one. Still no traffic coming along. So far so good. He ran back, breathing a little hard now but not feeling it the way he would have six or seven months back. He had to admit it. He felt good.

He started working on the blood trails and then decided he'd leave that temporarily. The rain would help him some. This was a monsoon rain. It would pull the water up to the banks and beyond. He had to get out of there. The big man would not allow himself the usual luxury of digging a grave. This big a mass grave would take time he did not have. He started dragging the three bodies down the bank through the tangle of vines and weeds, rolling, sliding, pulling, horsing the three corpses down by the water, taking note of the mashed greenery and blood trails as he did so.

Perhaps it was the fact his clothing was still soaked from the water or the rain that was coming down on him as he worked, but something gave him the idea of trying the water. He went back in, splashing down next to the deep bank then going over his head and breaststroking powerfully toward the bridge underwater. Suddenly one of his fingers struck something metal as he swam, and be came up for air, nursing a sore hand. He'd almost run into the girder headfirst. He assumed that's what he'd hit—part of the old bridge.

He took a mighty chestful of air and dove again, this time opening his eyes. The water was quite dark and muddy but he could make out a shape and then he realized what it was and came back up. It was a car or truck of some kind, a junker somebody had probably either pushed or driven off the bridge long ago. He dove again and powerful muscles strained and he was able to wrench a door open underwater. It would be perfect for a temporary holding cell.

Chaingang went back to get the bodies. One at a time he took them into the water and down below the bridge, pulling them down underwater with him and stuffing the corpses into the vehicle. It was extremely difficult work and the bodies were a lot harder to manipulate than he'd anticipated, but he eventually managed it, moving with the supple sureness of a natural athlete, the effortless fluidity of a competent stage actor, and the awesome strength of a power lifter. The three bodies were soon tucked out of sight.

Later he'd come back with wire, goggles, and a torch, and he'd do the thing right. And it would be then he'd learn of a wonderful subaqueous surprise down there waiting for him in the watery graveyard of the metal elephants.