Chaingang (23 page)

“Hi-dee, Kenny hep you?” it sounded like the clerk said, eyeing this stinking giant from behind the counter.

Chaingang ignored him. No, Mr. Monkey Man, you cannot
hep me
. Kenny hep yourself? He examined the prices of things he didn't want, eyes immediately clocking the surveillance mirror, and positioning himself so that one of his hands was blocked by his bulk.

The master of playacting and misdirection held up a can of ravioli with his left hand, swiping chili with his right.

None of this stuff looked particularly edible. Berthalou Irby had spoiled him for these lesser culinary offerings. He wanted to go back to the Irby house, bag Mrs. Irby, shag the retard, and eat the rest of the stuff in the basement. It was a very real and strong pull, the kind that sometimes went over the line and nagged him into enacting a particularly attractive fantasy.

He picked up a package of American cheese, knowing Kenny Hepyou was watching his actions very closely, enjoying himself thoroughly as he dropped a packet of smoked ham into his voluminous chain pocket.

“You got any trella crane?” he rumbled.

“Beg pardon."

“Trella scrate. Where do you keep it?"

“Cellophane? You mean like Handi-Wrap?"

“Heinie wipe.” He opened a jelly jar and forced the top back at a tilt.

“It's over yonder. First aisle."

“Somebody done opened this here grape jelly, ‘n’ stuck their dick innit or whatever, ‘n’ screwed the top back on against the threads.” He was moving down the aisle toward the clerk. Feeling dangerous and lucky.

“What's that now?"

“Somebody dicked in your jelly back there yonder. Top looks like it's got trella scration all over it. Thought you'd like to know.” He shrugged, ever the helpful patron.

The clerk went back and saw the jelly.

“Kids come in here. They probably done it."

“Yids? Uh-huh.” Chaingang hadn't had this much fun in a long time. Not without actually hurting someone.

“Did you find the Handi-Wrap?"

“Why would I want to do that?” Chaingang asked, genuinely appearing to be puzzled, having just shoved two stroke books up under his jacket.

“I thought you said you was wanting some Handi-Wrap and—"

It was too much for him. He made a coughing noise and the huge tractor-strength steel snake uncoiled and put the clerk out of his misery.

Instantly, the second he saw the poor man fall into the potato chip bags, he was irritated with himself. He had forgotten, uncharacteristically, that he was driving a semilegal Delta ‘88 he'd gone to a great deal of trouble to acquire. Now he'd just put his ride, his hide, and his clean tags at risk so he could hurt Kenny. Not smart.

He hit NO SALE and cleaned out the big stuff, pulling the tray up and seeing checks and—surprisingly—a gold coin. He was always finding interesting treats. He tucked the small gold piece away as a lucky charm, went around and checked Kenny's wallet, and felt a tiny surge of pleasure seeing that it contained nearly six hundred dollars.

Moving with a burst of speed, he chugged out the door and hurled his quarter ton of weight into the poor front seat of the old car, grinding the ignition to life, and pulling out into the northbound lane. There were no witnesses. No traffic to speak of. But of course, the sky eye man would be duly recording his moves. Of no consequence.

He'd ordered, and within a few minutes, paid for, his little going-away present to himself. Later, when he'd had his fill of this community, he'd have a nice, fresh get-out-of-town ensemble all ready and waiting for him.

At the next roadside phone that presented itself, a Mr. Conway dialed—strictly by coincidence—Perkins Real Estate, calling from the Tinytown phone book chained to the wall. Asking about rental properties.

“I'm sorry,” an elderly woman's voice informed him. “This office is not presently open for business.” She referred him to a realtor in Maysburg and he called there, “hoping to rent a small trailer or farmhouse."

“We've got something about ten miles north of here. It's a two-bedroom. But it's not in very good condition right at the moment, I'm afraid,” a man's voice told him.

“That's all right. I'm not real fussy. I could even hep fix it up before the wife and kids get here. How much is it and—” He started to use the phrase “take occupancy,” edited his choice of words, and said, “Would I be able to move in right away?"

“It's only fifty a month, sir. The owners just want to keep it rented so the house doesn't deteriorate any faster than it has. And you know, you can't get insurance on a dwelling unless it's occupied—so that's why it's available. But it's really rough, I won't kid you about that."

“It sounds just fine.” It sounds like a fine shithole. “Could I look at it right now?"

“Yeah.” The voice paused. “Let's see—what time is it? Uh—where are you now?"

“Just over yonder a ways from your office.” Chaingang was really having fun with the monkeys. “I'm over by trella scrate's, and I could be over there in a few minutes. I could meet ya at the farmhouse or—"

“Nah, you better meet me here at the office and follow me out there. It's pretty hard to find—way out on an old gravel road in the country. I doubt if you could find it by yourself."

“Okay. I'll be there in a few minutes."

“Fine. And your name, sir?"

“Conway."

“Is that first or last?"

“Uh-huh,” Chaingang said, his face contorted by the rictus of a snaggletoothed grin. “See ya in a minute.” He hung up the phone and flung himself back into the car. Kenny Hepyou had turned it into a good day after all. The fun was just starting.

Disturbed in his slumber by ever-watchful sensors, the beast shakes his bulk loose from the folds of deep sleep, belches an eight-inch naval salvo of gas, scratches, yawns expansively as he pulls himself to his feet.

Infested repose gave this gargantuan monster physical rest, but it was a restless dormancy. He is awake in two filmy eye-blinks, and as the sleeping behemoth emerges from the swamp of nocturnal hybernation, he is aware of a vague layering of intelligence and trivia.

He scans the dossier page on Virgil Watlow, and the phrase “dog buncher,” the name for the scum who act as procurers for laboratories, tears a fingernail off inside his mind. In this dormant period some part of his brain has been relishing the memory of a woman at his second murder trial, and his mindscreen catches a fragment of her courtroom shrieking, the termagant's shrill “—and then and there, Daniel Bunkowski did proceed to strangle, bludgeon, and mutilate—” He savors the verbs, trying to taste her in his head.

But the sensors override all of this pleasurable trivia with the unmistakable urgings that he has learned to interpret as warnings. They came during his steep. Mental printout lighting the lip of his pocket of slumber with opaque, filtered rays of illumination. The beast, snoring away down in the shadowy hole at the bottom of his awareness, is somehow touched by this unexplainable phenomenon. It reaches down into his mysterious inner trench, and his subconscious moves him, trailing slime and mutant poisons, as he is nudged toward the light source. He is moving, on automatic pilot. Dressing. Not bothering to curse the bad luck that refuses to let him rest for a few days in his own rental home. Especially when he went to so much trouble to get the car, interface with the monkeys, play the game, talk the tall. But he would rather be safe than lazy. He can be lazy later, when Mr. Watlow has had a full manicure, pedicure, Chaingang cure. When all those bad teeth have been extracted. He wants to take his time with the
dog buncher
oh by Christ in Holy Heaven how he wants to RIP EVERY NAIL, TOOTH, HAIR, STRIP OF SKIN FROM THE DOGIE MAN.

Idly, to occupy his mind as he packs, he unscrews fuses, takes down trip wires; sorts the intelligence his mindscreen provided. Somewhere in all the analyses of meetings with realtors and dead convenience-store clerks, he will see the red flag. An unacceptable risk factor that has come to alert him in the night. Something he missed, that his sensors caught. And perhaps by then he will be long gone from this temporary haven.

In the car. Moving. He gives himself over to the vibes once again. That strange, powerful mind clicks, purrs; assessing, collating, accepting or rejecting what the eyes see and what the brain transmits.

His mindscreen searches for remote haunts where the ambience is just so. This plowed ground is too obviously arable, that chunk of bush insufficient protection in the wintry nights that will come. He registers a rusting metal sign: REELECT BUBBER (something) as he drives past eighty acres of early morning smoke and corn field stubble.

Rusty corn pickers. Hollow catalpa large enough to inhabit. Looming, twisted walnut trees stand by a decrepit tractor shed, against which eight giant tractor tires have slowly disintegrated. All of this flags his concentration. Across the road ten or twelve acres of tulip poplar, maple, and sycamore slowly inch their way up. The word NUSERY registers. He keeps moving. Searching. Hating.

He was in a funk. Parked. Irritated. The vibes were stubborn. His computer wasn't down so much as it was operating on the wrong level at the moment. He felt frustrated by his own warning devices.

Chaingang's equilibrium, a wild thing at best, was maintained by a bizarre system of interlocking defensive mechanisms that were the emotional equivalent of a surge suppressor.

Just as there were those dangerous sights, smells, and tactile sensations that could send him off into a boiling fury, there were sounds that grated on his psyche worse than the vilest curse: a hallway scream, a certain footfall, the cry of an animal in pain, a ripping sound of masking tape, a taut guy wire struck by a hammer just so—any number of noises could push him over the edge.

Banging noise. Loud, harsh voices. Guffaws. Rednecks in the field. The abrasive sounds reached out for him. Something moved beneath his vision arc. He looked down as the grasshopper jumped. The next time it moved, he was over it, and the insect was captured in a hand that was roughly the diameter and density of a bowling ball. The fingers, like steel cigars, held the thing, its hind legs scissoring for traction.

Squoosh! It was much the same with that first cut that exposed the internal human organs. The ritual itself gave pleasure, pleasing him the same way a child is pleased and riveted by the pulling apart of a grasshopper, and the gooey, gross-out look and feel of its exposed ventriculus.

Again the loud hammer strike on steel and the grating human voices. The eyes scan large walnut trees, searching hungrily for nutmeats, walnuts, squirrel sign, dog tracks, deer prints. He retrieves a long-distance killing tool from his duffel. Moves off in the direction of the voices, carefully threading the noise suppressor in place. That is his idea of a pun—this is a noise suppressor that he is about to utilize. A field-expedient noise suppressor.

The monster's computer does not react to the noise that carries, or the snatches of conversation and laughter.

“Nitrate.” The jarring sound of the hammer.

“—got two tanks of beans over at the other place."

His mind sees two magic Butler grain silos, but the computer ignores this vision. He is memorizing mnemonics and equations for the computation of induction and capacitance. Trying to tap into himself—see the thing that is so jarringly off kilter.

“—it's gone up, too. I just don't know what—"

Capacitance:

“—damn girl run away with him, and we got the boy to look after, so—"

The property of an electrical nonconductor that permits the storage of energy as a result of electrical displacement when opposite surfaces of the nonconductor are maintained at a difference of potential
. He tries to scan.

“It's getting too tough out there to cut."

IFPEC is his induction mnemonic. He cannot think for the noise of the hammering on metal. This monkey man will pay for intruding on his concentration, he thinks, recognizing his petulant mood and not caring.

“You oughta see what (something) got docked for moisture. I mean—"

The bolt moves in between a huge index finger and thumb. One up the pipe.

“I don't like throwin’ em out the back."

“Never seen anything like this year."

Safety off. Finger in the trigger housing.

“I put down potash and phosphorus on that ground over by the other place, ya know?"

“Yeah."

“That fertilizer is up seventy a ton. I was gonna put wheat in behind it."

“Fuel cost me fourteen hundred dollars more this year,” the man pounding on something behind the combine said, “and two days later I swear if it don't drop nine cents."

Both in view now. This is what they mean by targets of opportunity. He keeps moving, stepping out where they can see him clearly. The one with the hammer turns.

“Hey,” he snarls, in a cautionary warning tone. Trigger pressure.

BAM.

BAMABAMABAMABAM.

BAM.

BAMBAMABAM.

Nobody near us to see us or hear us
, he whistles, waddling across to the bodies.

The hammer of justice. His face is contorted in a maniac's parody of a smile. The hammer is dwarfed by his fist.

Italians have a joke they sometimes tell in restaurants and at the dinner table. Ever eat any
Sicilian chicken
? No? It's the same as regular chicken, but all the bones are broken.

WATERTON

R
oyce Hawthorne had kept his bargain with the phonemen who were supposedly watching over him. It was time to call in the cavalry. He'd done his part. It was their turn now.

Sitting across from his old girlfriend, he felt a lot of different things tugging at him in several directions at once: He knew he was changing. He already felt like a different man from the one who was looking to pack his nostrils a few days ago. There was one upside to being scared shitless all the time—you didn't have time to worry about staying high.

The thing that cocaine does is, it tricks the brain. The great rushes of fear that Royce had been experiencing had acted as a kind of neural blocker to his addiction, and his system was working overtime to rebuild the bridges he'd burned with the seductive white lady. He felt like he wouldn't go that route again, if he could just stay alive.