Slice dje-5

by Rex Miller

  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.

  BUCKHEAD SPRINGS

  “Whatcha doin'?"

  “Umm, everybody I can,” he promised her, “and you're next. Pull up some mattress and park that gorgeous bod."

  “Okay. You've made me an offer I can't refuse. Here we come.” And a band dropped something small and fuzzy and gray beside Jack. “Herrrrrrrrre's Tuffkins!"

  “Well, hello, pal."

  Tuffy attacked one of the pieces of paper scattered across the bed.

  “MasterCard,” Donna said, “we're bored and we wants some hot action."

  “Did you say something about hot action?” She nodded. “You don't mean like THIS, do you?” And he jumped on her and began what he called a frontal nuzzling attack.

  “AAAK,” she screamed “Truce!"

  “Say what?"

  “Uncle! Help! Stop. I give. I'm not bored anymore."

  “Uhhhh. How about you, Tuffy? Are you bored?"

  The cat wisely ignored him.

  “Tell me the truth."

  “Yeah?"

  “Who's the sexiest woman you've ever seen—and don't say me."

  “Don't say me? Okay. No problem. I won't say me."

  “You know what I mean. But I want to know. First one who pops into your mind. Not counting present company. The real sex goddesses. Marilyn. Those kinda girls. Who was your favorite?"

  “Who wants to know?"

  “I wants to know. Me and my pal Tuffkins want to know."

  “Marilyn."

  “Who else?"

  “Bardot?"

  “Yeah. I can see that. Brigitte at fifteen was unbelievable."

  “My favorite Bardot was at forty, if you're serious. One of the loveliest pictures of a woman I can remember seeing was that shot of her next to the baby seal, talking about the seal-killers. She was about forty as I
remember, no longer the sex kitten, but doing something about animal cruelty. I recall she hugged this gorgeous seal and said whatever it was she said about the seal culls—the harvests or whatever those heartless assholes call them—and she said a line I still remember. She said they killed seals to make fur toys and coats for stupid women."

  “God"—Donna sat up in the bed—"you know, I remember that too."

  “She was one of the first big stars to say that. I don't know if it did any good. But it was such a strong indictment of those rich ... I don't want to say the word to you—you know the kind of woman—those hot-shit jet-setter Fifth Avenue sluts. Anyway, she went on to say to this little seal, she hugged it and said, But we'll get ‘em. Meaning the furriers or the stupid women or the guys who slaughtered the seals for a living. And I said right back to her, No baby, no you won't, but it's a lovely thought."

  “There's a lot more fake fur sold now. She may have helped, honey."

  “You don't fight city hall and win. You don't screw with human nature and prevail. You don't alter the course of evolution. We like to run everything out to the edge. Push it to the max. It's what will take us down. We'll find safe nuclear energy too irresistible. Or we'll keep building that first strike capability against the other guys and one day some nutcase will find a way to leave his or her mark on history with the push of a button. It's human nature."

  Donna wished she hadn't gotten this one started. He had seemed so gloomy and downbeat the last few days. He'd leave for the office, as she called it, in a good mood and come home that night bummed-out and depressed. She reached out and ran a soft band across the side of his face. “Ooooh. Barbed wire."

  “Yeah?” He smiled.

  “Not shaving today, are we?"

  “Just hadn't got the energy. I got a bad case of the lazies today,” he told her, scratching the kitten behind the ears.

  “Do you know something?” she said, leaning very close. “I've never told you this, Officer, but I've never kissed a man with a beard before."

  “That's a coincidence,” he said. “Neither have I."

  And she laughed into his mouth.

  STOBAUGH COUNTY

  Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowski's world was that strange and unexplainable twilight swamp in which there were moments of apparent normalcy. He was a madman, of course. Totally insane. But yet much of the time he functioned on what appeared to be a normal plane of existence. When he returned to the sharecropper's house, to get supplies from the hootch, he was still firmly planted in Southeast Asia and in the middle of a running mission. It was the high and tiny voice of his woman, the soft tones of Sissy Selkirk, now hugely pregnant, that pulled him back into the middle range between raving lunacy and what passed for humanity.

  “What happened to you?” The voice somehow pierced the fog of murderous thoughts, pulling at his consciousness like a tugboat trying to move a battleship. She tried again, “You're hurt. Howdja get cut?"

  “Eh?” He rumbled a monosyllabic grunt at her, then realized the battle dressing had come off and the wound was bleeding again. In just that second his twisted mind embraced three thoughts.

  First, he realized how stupid he had been to inflict a wound on himself over here, even jokingly, because the severity of the bacteria problem was an ever-present danger in this environment and ... Second, he knew even as he thought the idea that “over here” was wrong, that he was flashing back again, that this was another time and place. And third, he must have her buy a car. Put it in his name, trade the Caprice immediately. Thinking this because he knew in just that moment she'd have to go before long, even as he answered her, his mind calculating what sort of a response this human expected, forming his lips around the B-sound of barbed wire, saying, “Barbed-wire cut. Just a scratch,” moving away from her before the red tide could wash over him and he'd kill her for the hell of it, drag her back to that place under the bridge, put her in the car and be done with it. He knew now that he would have to kill her soon.

  “You want me to get some whatdya call it and put onnit?” the little voice said.

  “Yeah,” he forced himself to say. He must not allow himself the great pleasure of exploding in a scarlet tide and stomping this cow and her unborn child out in one stomp of fifteen-quintuple-E bootprint. He had gone to all this trouble so he would be able to kill freely, and later so that he could safely approach the hated cop EICHORD and introduce him to the tearing and pulverizing delights of Chaingang's special world. He must not blow his cover now. At least wait until the idiot dropped her frog. Find the cop with a woman and baby as his shield.

  “Okay,” she said, surprised and delighted that he would allow her such a privileged intimacy. She ran in to find something to put on his wound, which he noticed was beginning to coagulate again. She came running back out and he was gone. He had taken off back toward the big ditch and his nighttime business.

  When he finally got back under the bridge that night, shining the underwater light on his grisly work, he was delighted to find that there was a mini-junkyard of rusting vehicles submerged under the bridge. At one time some back-yard tinkerer, or perhaps some thief in the spot-and-steal game, had used the bridge as a convenient dumping grounds for the stripped junkers that were not worth hauling off for their weight in iron. As he wired his three new friends in place as a precaution, then wiring the doors of the rusting enclosure itself, he decided that he'd come back and create a very special graveyard right here in what he'd think of as the final rusting place of the metal elephants.

  For weeks he worked by day and killed by night. Each day quitting earlier and driving farther, ranging out more and more, but almost always bringing his victims back to be placed under his beloved wooden bridge. He was killing with a serious vengeance now, goaded by the annoying yet tolerable ambiguity of the girl's constant presence, an irritant he had himself caused to exist and that—for the time being—he could do nothing about.

  He would see her only briefly. Occasionally at a mealtime, or when his biological needs would force him to notice her proximate presence and he'd summon her to her knees for a quick head job. Then he'd be out the door, slamming the thing in a rage, driving wherever his killer vibes took him. He'd come back after his night business, sometimes wet as if he'd sweated through his clothing, but back to her to sleep beside her in that placid, soothed state that always settled over him after he had slaked his angry hunger with a living human's heart.

  Sissy thought he probably went out and “went into bars and got into fights,” as previous men in her life had done. She was beginning to find the last weeks of pregnancy unpleasant. It was hot in the sharecropper shack, and hotter still outside. Even in the shade she suffered. She had some swelling of her fingers and her ankles. The hotter it got, the more her ankles swelled. It was if she had literally traded with her man: the more weight he lost, the bigger her stomach got. The stronger his ankle, the weaker hers became.

  One day she came waddling up to him while he was cutting weeds and said, “Sorry to bother ya.” He looked up at her. “But can you take me to see a doctor."

  “You having it?"

  “Huh uh. I don't feel so good. I feel like I'm gonna puke and my feet are killing me and I'm hurting here an'...” She started to go on with a whole catalog of problems. He sighed disgustedly and dropped the weed slinger, motioning for her to follow him as he headed for the car.

  In town the doctor said to them, “This here,” he was talking about her sickness, “is prob'ly just, uh"—he started to say psychosomatic but caught himself in time—"nothin’ to worry over. Step on the scales here."

  “Okay.” She obliged.

  “Yeah.” He marked something on a chart. “Step down.” She did so with an effort—each movement was a massive expenditure of energy. “You've gained about six and a half pounds, maybe seven. Perfectly normal. Your blood pressure is only slightly elevated. The diastolic, uh, lower reading is ninety. I wouldn't worry, really. You're doin’ fine."

  “I'm so h
ot alla time I feel like I'm gonna faint."

  “Just git a lot of rest,” be told her with a chuckle. “Remember, you wanna keep eatin’ good. You're eating for two.” He'd only said that two thousand times.

  “Come on,” Daniel told the girl as she waddled back out to the car, “we'll go get you some pizza and have a picnic.” He beamed in a vocal tone so solicitous and warm that she looked over at him.

  “Yeah,” she said, beginning to cheer up with his tender, loving offer, “that sounds good.” And she settled back beside him, Chaingang's baby inside her like a seven-pound basketball.

  Without exception, each week of his prolonged agony and self-imposed starvation on the fat farm, Daniel had allowed himself one meal as a reward. He would often take Sissy with him and they'd drive in and feast on cheeseburgers, nachos, fish platters, whatever fast-food place caught his eye first would find him as a customer. They gravitated toward places with drive-in windows, as the size and appearance of “that there new man works for Hora” was already a topic of discussion within the tiny agricommunity.

  It was close to his weekly treat time and he pulled up at the busy drive-in window of a Pizza Palace. He'd phoned ahead while Sissy was at the doctor's.

  “Yes, sir. Welcome to Pizza Palace. May we take your order?” the squawking intercom asked him.

  “We called in an order. Name's Selkirk,” he told the box.

  “Yes, sir. It's ready. That'll be $18.90, please drive to the window.” He drove the Caprice up and pulled out a fistful of disreputable-looking crumpled bills, counting off nineteen in fives and ones. His massive sunburned arm shoved the money up into the window. Sissy loved to touch him on the arms and back and he sometimes let her. His muscles were rock-hard. His arms, legs, back, neck—all looked as if they'd been carved from solid hardwood. There was not an ounce of fat anywhere except on his belly, chest, and haunches.