by Rex Miller
59
When he awoke after another prolonged respite he was in a strange place but felt none of the warning signs that alerted him to impending threats to his safety. The humans had left him. He remembered the awful color slides all too vividly, and he saw what they'd left behind, a recorder with a cassette in it. He touched nothing.
He walked outside, feeling around for his chain, which he'd left in the pocket of his fatigues. Where were his fatigue pants and why was he wearing gray suit trousers? There was his newly appropriated Plymouth. He opened the trunk and found the tarp-wrapped duffel. The weapons case was intact. He checked his SMG, made a cursory inventory of ordnance and ammo, patted his pocket and felt the bulge of chain, and realized he'd hallucinated the gray trou, took another step backward and fell right on his vast fat ass.
The sensation of falling was heightened by a rush of Alpha Group II through his life-support system. Neurons picked up strange signals as the molecular pump that regulates dopamine gave him a flood of something that produced a floating feeling. The spark plugs of his engine misfired as he tried to zoom in on his surroundings.
He was sitting on cracked tarmac. An overgrown parking lot. No. Runway. The sign on the safe house where he'd had his little drugged briefing read Feld's Charter on a peeling board. Overgrown runways. Blue around him on three sides. The edge of the little shithole, no doubt.
Chaingang made it to his feet again, slammed the trunk, got in and started the car, drove until he found a pay phone. Looked up Shtolz, regained his senses, looked up Royal, tried both numbers. Man was gone. Looked up the Neo-Nazi security outfit and tried there, logic over discretion.
“New Agers,” a guttural voice sneered.
“Is Dr. Royal present?"
“Huh?"
He repeated the question, and some punk told him he had the wrong number, slamming the telephone receiver down.
He made a note of all three addresses and got back in the car, passed out cold, but regained consciousness almost instantly. He sat, poleaxed by the punch of the drug, and finally shook it off sufficiently to drive. The combination of the recent car mishap and now this. He was barely functioning.
He decided he'd kill for a cold one. Where was he, what was he doing? Something about a puppy, little children, open brainpans.
Numerical analysis.
Symbolic math.
Parsing of equations.
Random solution purging.
Charting abstract algebraic transformation nodes—no problem. His was a mind that could command virtually any situation, and assimilate and retain any understandable fact, but figuring out where he was had proved to be beyond his grasp.
He drove until he ran into water, turned, drove some more. Put gas in the tank. Showed the nice service station man his three addresses and inquired which was nearest. The pleasant chap pointed him toward the skinheads’ hangout.
There were four toughs lounging around the storefront office. Under ordinary circumstances Chaingang could have kicked their collective butts to Mars, asked his questions, and planted the last survivor. As it was he meekly knocked, entered, and smiled pleasantly, his attitude toward the youths rather loving and open.
“—so this fucking bear grabs the rabbit and goes, do you get shit on your fur when you wipe? And the rabbit goes no, so the bear picks him up and wipes his ass with the fucker!” The young men with shaved skulls laughed uproariously.
“Yeah?” one of the punks asked. The one who'd just told his joke sat on a scarred table piled with papers. Behind him a black, red, and white flag sported a Germanic-looking eagle and the name NEW AGERS. Boxes of white-supremacist nonsense were piled everywhere in lieu of chairs.
“May I speak with Dr. Royal, please?"
“Hey, tubby, you the guy called a while ago?” one of the others sneered.
“Yes."
“You got wax in your ears? What the fuck's wrong with you, asshole?” He was a big one, right in Daniel's face. The skinhead didn't like the fat fuck's looks. He was old but had a haircut kind of like theirs, sort of making fun of them, coming in and asking shit about the doc when he'd done been told. “You a tough boy?"
“Yes,” Daniel said, pleasantly. The kid slapped him. Hard. Right across the face. Chaingang put a hand up to ward off further blows and that was all it took. The four of them were on him with fists and boots. One of them had recently been hurt during a ruckus after their parade, and they weren't swallowing any more redneck horseshit.
They pounded the crap out of Daniel, the second real kick-ass beating he'd had in his adult life, and when they got tired they dumped him out in the alley, which was the hard part. Beating him up was a snap, but carrying the fat son of a bitch was nigh impossible for the four of them. Bunkowski as dead weight was a pallbearer's nightmare.
Unlike the memories of the worst go-round at the merciless hands of Spanish Rodriguez, or the aftermath of the bad accident, the recollection of this ass-kicking actually had a feelgood side effect. He came to in a pulpy, turnip-headed state of joyous bliss at first, as some body chemistry unlocked by his physical defense mechanisms blended with the Alpha Group II. The end product was sort of a heroin high. Eventually, still on the nod, he found the car, managed to get in, and started the damned thing.
He wheeled out into the light traffic, his mind a whirlpool of confusion. He tried concentrating on reading signs and watching the vehicles: Gas For Less; a silver Acura; bread; cigarettes; Just Add Bacardi; a maroon Gran Prix; Burlington Northern—Hydracushion—Santa Fe; a log truck; a red Celica; Raymond Meara; a Nissan Stanza—RAYMOND MEARA cut through the junk from out of nowhere. He kicked the thing into a hard illegal U and roared back. It was Meara. From a hundred years ago in the Nam. Alive and getting into a beat-up pickup, that bastard Meara!
Only four SAUCOG survivors made it back to the world counting Chaingang: Michael Hora, a dead fucking sniper named Bobby Price, and this boy. He was sure it was Meara. If it was—there was the answer to his ordnance resupply needs. Old Ray would have some goodies stashed round and about here and there.
The last time he'd seen Meara alive and well had been back at base camp where a worthless fuck named McClanahan had briefed them down in his private trailer. The man had offered them up to the little people as a sacrifice, and his mind's eye pictured the two flags and pennant furled around the tall bamboo flagpole above the berm hole that led to his air-conditioned bomb shelter, the U.S. flag, South Vietnam's buttwipe, and the pirate skull flag of their phony recon outfit. The fucked-up monkey men playing soldier.
It took an eternity for Meara to get wherever he was headed, but Chaingang had tremendous patience and he used the time to nurture himself on the poisons that coursed through him, taking the bruises and humiliation of this latest beating and using it to forge new strength. Tailing Meara to the water's edge was child's play. Nobody could stay on a vehicle or a subject the way Bunkowski could. He lagged way back, now and then allowing the red dots or yellow headlights to wink out briefly, but the sudden stop almost made him overrun his man. He was barely able to wheel into a gravel side road in time. Meara was getting into a boat.
Chaingang was out of the ride and moving—a waddling run—surprisingly fast, faster in fact than anyone alive had ever seen him move. He could run very fast for very short distances, and his tree-trunk legs of steel propelled him down the mud road. Meara had his back to the road and was yanking on an outboard motor lanyard when he heard the deep rumble in his ear.
“Don't move anything if you want to live,” Chaingang said, puffing. The smell alone might have cut through and warned him, but Meara stunk a little himself. The voice, once heard, was not one a person ever forgot.
“Right,” Meara said, chilly.
It was a professional frisk job, and when Chaingang Bunkowski patted you down it was almost a sex act. He got the ERMA .22, the pocket knife, even Meara's keychain.
“Listen up. You know who I am?"
“Yeah. Bunkow—"
�
�Good. Nobody gets hurt here. I need resupply: grenades, claymores, satchel charges, haversacks. What have you got and don't fuck with me, I'm paying.” Money scattered over Meara's shoulder, symbolically.
Meara did not give up his ordnance because of any particular threat, but because of who was behind him. When fucking Chaingang materialized suddenly, thundering up behind you in huge splayed bare feet, big as a sewer culvert, demanding claymores and grenades, you did not screw around, you gave up the claymores and grenades even if you had to go home and make the freaking things. Meara didn't need the pain. He knew the monster personally. He'd seen some of his work. Up close.
“In my barn. Buried under the floor of the barn. I'll dig them up."
“Good. Let's go.” The voice carried on the water's edge. A quarter ton stepped daintily down into the small boat and it damn near capsized before he could center his weight. Meara got a glimpse of something in Chaingang's right paw, but he did not let himself look directly at the man or his weapon. Pistol. Bowie the size of a large machete. Chain. What was the difference? If he decided to hurt you with something that was it.
The motor caught and they were moving into darkened trees. Meara would have at least considered taking a shot when they moved through the darkest overhang of willows and big oak, had it been anyone else, from Jesus San Diego to Jesus himself. But there was never even a glimmer. You didn't think such things in Mr. Bunkowski's presence. The Dai Uy had drilled him good on the essentials long before they'd met. “Never fuck with him; never speak to him by name; never eyeball him; but above all, never fuck with him."
Ray'd been a spear carrier, a half-assed merc, but he knew how good this fucking brainiac was. The problem was, even after he'd given up the goods, there was no way Meara would walk away from this. His brain worked at triple time and a half during the silent boat ride.
They reached the other side, Meara cut the motor, tilted up the propeller, and they coasted into a flooded road ditch until the keel scraped muddy bottom. Chaingang hopped out, agile as a mountain goat but for his bad ankle, grabbed the coiled rope in the bow and pulled the boat, gear, Meara, and the outboard up onto land as if the whole shebang weighed fifty pounds instead of five hundred and fifty. Meara got out and they headed up the road toward his barn, the barefooted beast waddling along behind him.
Chaingang could technically get resupplied simply by communicating his needs to Dr. Norman, his hated nemesis. He was never without weapons. There was a haversack of military high explosive in his duffel, and some shaped charges and det gear. The weapons case in his back-breakingly heavy mobile house included such goodies as a submachine gun; a customized mail-order hybrid, which he carried broken down, barrel and shroud, firing assembly, crudely stamped receiver, overlarge trigger housing, and grips shaped to accommodate one of his massive mitts; as well as a small supply of partially-loaded magazines of 9mm military ball ammo. Why aggravate himself to steal a used Winchester, then Remington, shotgun? And why this business with Meara?
Because Chaingang was a planner. He believed in the soldierly axiom that if one planned hard, one fought easy. He had hard plans for Dr. Norman and whomever else might be in the line of fire, and when he was finished in this floating turd of a hickburg, he wanted his munitions and weaponry cocked and locked. He was always going to pick up disposable shooters, such as the bait shop shotguns, and when he saw Meara, a notorious ordnance freak, he smelled instant resupply. These punks, who'd had the temerity to assault him when he was befuddled by the drug, and the elderly Nazi needed killing. He would stock up with field expedient necessities.
Meara was convinced he had one chance: boogie. They reached the barn, went inside its dark confines, and he made his move, McClanahan's unforgettable warning echoing in his head.
“Some stuff on this side, some stuff under those corner boards,” he told the man, and bent to start unearthing the first silenced AK-47. The second he saw the huge shadow move toward the other side of the barn he took off running for his life. The shot never came, which was almost as scary as if he'd felt lead whacking into him, but Chaingang was smart. He knew it would take x amount of time to unearth the munitions and if he fired, one: he might not hit Meara, who was a fast runner; two: the shot might compromise the time he had to resupply. He analyzed Raymond Meara as a low-priority threat and decided, since the fool could hardly go to the cops about illegal guns he'd hidden, to let him go. Also, the drug's aftereffects still exerted some gentling influence on the killer. He wasn't really paying for the stuff, so perhaps this was quid pro quo.
As he was digging and pulling up goodies, he heard Meara splashing around out in the water nearby. The sound was oddly touching to him for reasons he'd not have been able to verbalize, even if he'd cared to, but as he loaded up for grizzly he dug around in his pockets and found a little trinket, which he tossed into the empty cache hole. He was paying for the goods after all. Next time old Raymond was down in the barn he'd discover a token from his good buddy Daniel—the smaller of the rocks belonging to Porky Pig's late and lamented Skunkie. Maybe $25,000, give or take, but meaningless to Chaingang.
Would he have whacked Ray had the asshole not been smart enough to run? Is bird shit white?
Fifty minutes later the big man was back at the water's edge. Somebody else who lived on or near Bayou Ridge had a big metal V-boat with a monster muscle motor on the back. Not rinky-dink like Meara's tippy piece of shit. Chaingang stepped carelessly into the larger boat, nearly sinking it, and deposited his heavy load of goodies, then his own heavy load, choked the motor, yanked the starter with a vengeance, and the thing wisely started on the first pull.
Down in the woods, where a freezing Raymond Meara was hiding, the sound of his neighbor's Evinrude was the loveliest thing he'd heard in years. It meant, a, that enormous bastard was leaving, and b, he wasn't taking Ray's boat.
Then again, he thought, he'd stay down in the woods a while longer, just in case that had been the sound of Chaingang laughing.
60
Bayou Ridge
Meara was fucking freezing. Chaingang be damned, he had to get out of the water. Silently as he could, he worked his way around to where he could see the boat. It would be just like that fat shit to start an outboard and send another boat out into the backwater with a wired throttle and ... Paranoia was getting the better of him. If Bunkowski had wanted his ass in the grass he'd be planted. Meara looked into the boat and didn't see any new holes but—who knew? He pulled it up a bit further and staked it.
On the way back he saw his .22 in the mud. That settled it. Unless the big boy had tampered with his piece he wouldn't leave a weapon around somebody he was going to plant. Meara wiped it off, racked the thing back, and a .22 slid into the pipe. He removed the mag, ejected the live round, cleared it, peered up the spout at moonlight. Put the magazine back in and reloaded the weapon. He noticed he was shaking a little.
The house looked and felt empty. Spooky but empty. He made himself go down to the barn while he was gutted up for it. Nobody home. In the open weapons cache he spotted something shiny and picked up his paycheck. It appeared to be real enough but, again, who knew?
He went back to the house, built a roaring fire, changed into dry clothes, and sat huddled up in bed with a pile of blankets on, the .22 still in his right fist. Shit. You could probably put a round into the big boy's brain and he'd still rip your pump out. He put the piece away and went to bed, but the shakes kept him from sleeping. He couldn't get warm.
He got up and brought his blankets in and sat huddled close to the blazing wood stove. Burning up and freezing simultaneously, dead tired and too stoked to sleep. Chaingang in his fucking life from out of the black. How had he found him? Why had he come to look for him? What did it mean? Suddenly he remembered a couple of news stories about recent Bayou City killings and shuddered as he perspired profusely under the blankets. There'd be no reason for him to bother Meara again. He'd taken what he wanted.
Ray thought about being with Sharon aga
in. He wanted to show her how much she meant to him. He wondered if she'd like the ring. On the other hand ... Jesus! Think where it might have come from. Who wanted to know? Perhaps he could sell it or trade it to a jeweler and...
He woke up drenched in sweat, still in front of the stove, inside a wet cocoon of blankets, sick inside as if he were coming down with a bad virus, gripped by a terrible headache and the notion that it was later than he thought. He cursed aloud when he looked at the clock.
Eleven o'clock. Eleven in the fucking morning? He hadn't slept past nine in years. He had a distorted memory of having dropped off to sleep around five-thirty. His neck and head felt as if Fritz von Chaingang had held him in an iron claw all night long. He felt like hammered shit. He got up, sat back down, and tried to think.
Meara got up again, with some effort, and looked out the window. Judas! It was raining. He flung clothes on, pulled hip boots on, and topped the ensemble with a poncho, hurrying outside and slogging down the road to the boat. It was a short walk, as the water had pushed further in, and he was relieved he'd pulled the boat up thirty feet into the drain ditch. It was already sitting anchored out in the backwater, and by that evening he'd have to come in through the woods and tie up in the field behind the house. Thank God his folks had built on a high knoll.
It was the richest kind of bottom land one found in the Bootheel, but it could be costly to farm there. Backwater alone could push in during wetter years, leaving in its postdiluvian wake a stinking mudhole covered in water-logged trees. Even if they didn't blow the levee, this much water already meant Meara would spend a butt-kicking month hauling logs, picking up chunks, and doing the hard manual labor that would be necessary to farm in the flood's nasty aftermath.
Ray was not one to complain or give in to illnesses. He thought most people ran to the doctor for the least little thing, and he believed a man could will himself to stay well. When he felt bad he'd toss back a straight shot, chase it with a big glass of cold orange juice, gobble a few aspirin, and drive on. This was something else. He was sick as a dog, so much so that it was overpowering his efforts to reclaim the boat, and he shook it off as best he could.
