cursory, and suspiciously inept.
He heard Dr. Norman's admonition “You will be protected ... twenty-five mile radius of—” again, and these things triggered the sense of a hidden pair of eyes. He waited for the word to nudge him.
W A T C H E R came back into focus. Only the suggestion of something: surveillance, an eye on high, an unseen manipulater. That was it—he was sensing their manipulation. It angered him this morning, to find himself doing a suit's bidding. It enraged him to think they considered him so easy to control. He would show them what control was, before this was over. He would feed their control to them, tear it from them with steel sawteeth, fill their orifices with it. Small wonder they gave him weapons.
He had spent the night in a place the map indicated was Willow River Slough. It had turned surprisingly cold. At first light, wrapped in everything he owned that wasn't a tool, food item, or weapon, he waddled back half a klick or so and took down his cop-traps. During the night he'd amused himself watching a two-story frame house. It had caught his eye because it appeared empty of humanity.
Chaingang returned to the site where he'd hunkered down for the night, repacked his gear in weapons cases and duffel, and continued to surveil the lonely home until the sun went under. He killed time by rigging a crude man-trap which he would leave as a parting gift—a surprise for whoever might chance to blunder along. The house continued to appear devoid of people.
As he stood waiting in the last rays of the setting sun, cold and pissed, one of the things that had been pulling at him finally inched into view. There was something in the thick growth of wild honeysuckle beside him. Gingerly he reached a huge paw in and found the soft mass of rags and twigs. Until he pulled it out, he thought it might be an odd bird's nest of some kind, but he saw in his hand a mass of wriggling newborn mice. It had been the tiny heartbeats he'd sensed.
His bloodlust had grown to such proportions that he almost choked on his own saliva flow as he popped one of the rodents into his mouth, chomping it in two and crunching it as if it were a piece of popcorn. It tasted foul and he spat it out, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and flinging the murid hors d'oeuvres away from him.
Why would he—this lover of animals—try to eat a baby mouse? Because he was so
The early darkness settled around him. He took a deep breath and gathered up his belongings, waddling up out of the slough toward the isolated house.
He knocked at the door forcefully. Rang a silent doorbell. No reaction. In the distance a dog barked, but it was across the field from him. He penetrated the flimsy lock and closed the door behind him.
His powerful flashlight's beam stabbed into the blackness, illuminating a room full of genuine American antiques. Chaingang, whose disinterest in monetary values—not to mention aesthetics—was organic and complete, registered the possessions in his computer.
Swiftly he moved through the house, first determining the downstairs was empty, then negotiating the stairs in measured, surprisingly quiet footsteps as he eased his massive bulk up to the second floor of the old home. Nobody home, as he'd surmised.
He began with the upstairs bedrooms, working his way through the closets, bureaus, and trunks, looking for those things that always piqued his interest. By the time he'd made his way back downstairs, he knew a bit about the house and who occupied it.
Berthalou Irby, 67, female Cauc, widow of farmer Everette Irby, lived here with their only child, a retarded forty-one-year-old daughter named Imogene. Mrs. Irby had kinfolk across the river in Tennessee, and a sister in Bella Latierre, Louisiana, where they had gone to visit. He gathered they would not be coming back within the week.
Counting insurance, farm proceeds after sharecropper deductions, Social Security payments, medical disbursements, certificates of deposit, bonds, and other income sources, Berthalou Irby was getting by on somewhere between sixty-five and seventy-five thousand dollars income per year, one tenth of which she tithed to the Holy Trinity Church of Waterton.
The heat had been turned down and the house was like a tomb. He kicked it up to roasting and removed his clothing, careful not to track excessive dirt on the fine antique rugs. He'd already decided not to trash the house, his usual MO, for a variety of reasons—all of them self-serving.
Nude, he took his massive fighting bowie, and went in and took a steaming hot shower.
Once, during a period in which he was institutionalized, he'd heard a conversation about a motion picture in which somebody is stabbed while taking a shower. He was not a stupid man, and a thought tried to enter his head to the extent that such a scene was now ready to be played in reverse should an intruder enter this bathroom. But the thought was too close to normalcy and he rejected it as superfluous.
He realized this house had pleased him, bringing him from a bad to good mood almost instantly.
Nude but for his bata-boots, the heat feeling wonderful on his body, he ventured down into the basement to find the best treat of all—Mrs. Irby's food pantry! The larder was incredible. This woman liked to eat.
The canned goods alone dumbfounded him. He stood, awestruck, trembling with pleasure at the gold mine of edibles.
One wall of the large cellar was wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling Ball mason jars of canned foods, every jar with a neatly printed label. No art lover walking through the MOMA or the Tate or the Louvre ever thrilled at the beauty of a masterpiece the way the beast filled with appreciation at the colors and textures of such a display of food. No cocksman ever eyed an eighteen-year-old starlet with more unbridled desire than Chaingang felt as he lusted for munchies.
The beauty and diversity, the symmetry and promise of pleasure, the sheer size of such a display—it was beyond anything in his experience.
What a picture it would have made, the gigantic fat slob of a killer, mother-naked except for his combat booties, standing in front of the rows of waiting food: baked apples and applesauce, stewed tomatoes and potatoes, green peppers and green beans, corned beef and beef roast, chow-chow relish and piccalilli, cabbage and cauliflower, lima beans and pinto beans, baked beans and black bean soup, ham and pork sausage, grape jelly and apple butter, blackberries and peaches, pears and juice, peas and carrots, asparagus and broccoli, okra and squash and turnips and corn—everything cannable from chopped beef in gravy to Mrs. Irby's chili!
He selected his dinner with the confidence of a gourmet, his mind taking each item through chopper, blender, pressure cooker, jar lifter, funnel, ladle, food mill, water-bath canner, strainer or colander, into those beautiful capped and dome-lid jars.
Back upstairs, still nude, he cooked everything in a huge metal pot, black beans and beef stew, brussels sprouts, corned beef and cabbage—all simmered together, filling the kitchen with smells so rich, he almost fainted. He found a container of whipped cream in the freezer and ate a jar of baked apples with topping as he waited for dinner to cook.
Folding his tarp into a huge napkin and hotplate, he ate directly from the big cooking pot, ladling great slurps of food into his maw and swallowing it down without seeming to chew it. Devouring it—inhaling it—absorbing the food directly into his life-support system.
Afterward, belching expansively, he searched for beer or whiskey. Found cooking wine and tried some but spit it out. It was bitter. Baby mouse wine. Finally he located and prepared a rich cup of coffee, making it with three heaping spoons of Maxwell House and a preposterous amount of sugar.
After double-checking his security, he turned two of the smaller lamps on in the house, ones that would not change the dark exterior appearance of the home, and he flipped through a couple of magazines, yawned, went into the downstairs bathroom and defecated. Tried the old woman's bed. Didn't care for it. Went in and plopped down on the retarded daughter's bed and was sound asleep within thirty seconds, snoring like a pair of chainsaws.
In his untroubled slumber a three-headed dog named Cerberus came and stood guard, watching over him while he slept. Man's best friend at the Gates of Hell.
The sturdy old home had been built back in a time when carpenters were artisans who took great pride in their craftsmanship, and in what they did for a living, rather than simply working to earn a living. The home was relatively soundproof, so he did not hear the light patting of raindrops on the roof over the second floor. But as the curtain of heavy rain drew nearer, the beast came awake just as thunder crashed in the field beside the farmhouse.
Pleased he was not sleeping out in the thunderstorm, he immediately fell back into deep sleep, waking up
