Butcher

New Madrid Levee

How long had the beast been asleep? How long had he been in these weeds? He clawed at filthy skin covered in dried blood and insect welts. He needed food, a hot shower, more food, a bath. Other powerful, gnawing hungers flowed through him with a heat that he could taste.

Daniel Bunkowski tried to assimilate. Concentrate. Motivate. Nothing operated. He peered, blinking like a bear coming out of hybernation, a one-eyed bear who'd definitely seen better days.

To see wildlife, to see nature in the raw, become unconscious in deep weeds. The wildlife will sense that you are no longer a threat and go about the routine business of survival, assuming the weeds in which you slumber are far enough from the beaten path.

He vaguely recalled regaining consciousness and seeing a mink, of all things. He remembered cattle egrets, abundant and ghostly, static across a pasture laden with mist. The word Presley in the distance—hallucinated? No. Simply a common local trade name. A rusty Delta Corn sign made of tin crowned a barbed wire fence. He saw rabbit sign nearby. All of this through a thick sleeve of serious pain.

Beaver are far below in a still ditch about to overflow its banks, but he intuits their presence and eventually sees the dam, testing his operational eye. He makes the first demands on his system, tries again to remember.

Squirrel nests sit high in old oak overhead. Deer sign, lots of game sign; the nearby water and food supplies draw animals, and abundant roadkill marks the proximity of wheeled traffic.

A couple of very young mockingbirds, one on a rock, the other on a post, cry for food in unison.

Mother comes, pokes something in one of the open maws, gone even as the food is transferred, already busy at first light, scrounging food for the babies. A good mother. Not like some—human ones for instance.

'Dan?” A voice echoes.

“Dan?'

A red wave washes through the fogbank. 'How did it feel?' One of the imbecile shrinks at Marion. 'How did it feel, Dan, to have your mother allow the Snake Man to sexually molest you in that way?'

'Dan? ... Why do you take their hearts, Dan?' Had he really escaped or merely hallucinated it? Presley's Farm Market was real enough.

He watched for signs of the monkey men in the immediate perimeter, and as he faded back into sleep, his battered topsy-turvy computer did its best to survey and report:

Mink.

Egret.

Cattle.

Beaver.

Squirrel.

Deer.

Roadkill.

Mother.

The folks back at Marion Pen ... Dr. Norman.

Breakfast, in other words, not to mention lunch and dinner.

His mindscreen fought itself, working overtime while the huge beast slept again, his gyro standing a death- watch for Dan.

The beating had been severe, and where he'd shrugged them off in the past, this one he could not. He'd escaped by luck, pure will, and raw animal power. Addled, suffering from a number of serious aspects of trauma ranging from blood loss to concussion, he realized it was miraculous his bumbling, wounded escape had got him out the sally port, much less this far.

His survival instincts were not those of a normal man, to be sure. Surviving was a religion about which Chaingang was most devout, and his drive was that of a fanatic. It was the part of his life-support system that had saved him countless times.

Spanish had tried to hurt him and been partially successful—no small achievement in itself. Daniel could not see clearly. The vision in his left eye, where he'd been struck, had suffered badly. In the rearview mirror of the stolen car he'd surprised himself by pulling his left eyelid down and watching a sudden spill of blood overflow the eye onto the cheek. He was injured, and the potential damage level was high.

He'd seen cattle egrets, rusty farm signs, nests high in century-old oaks through mashed lashes of the right eye, occluded oculomotor response, a haze, a foggy day in London town. Peering intently through the petroleum jelly of pain he misattributed the source.

Had he been driving when the wheel of whirling white light tightened into a shaft of brightness that short- circuited his surge suppressors, overloaded his mainframe, and transported him back inside?

He dreamed he was inside looking out, but instead of towering walls, rolls of razor wire, and sharpshooters, he sees a distant highway billboard from another state, the state of misery: Southeast Missouri Farmers Have A Friend At Security Trust.

The haywire computer sees it in his mind, registers the word security, and scans the words of a forgotten manual:

“Possessing no offensive capability patrols must rely extensively upon security measures, both administrative and tactical.'

(1.) En route to area of operations: false landings, feints, and circuitous routes.

This eludes him.

(2.) In objective area: proper organization for movement, cover, concealment, camouflage; light, noise, and odor discipline.

He tried to force a fart and could not.

Odor discipline. He had practiced the martial technique known as the Breath of Death for many years, as it was particularly well suited to a man kept chained, manacled, and in a biter mask. He had learned controlled halitotic/periodontic-type exhalation, and various expectoration techniques.

Every con in the Max, D Seg, had his own handcuff key. There was a guy who made them for dust, a pro who ran a metal lathe and could turn out a tiny steel key that would pop a Teflon Smith & Wesson set quickly as you could say it. Bunkowski had one fashioned out of hard plastic that he carried in his stinking hidey-hole crease under the blubber that overhung his groin.

Chaingang allowed a blow to knock him to the cement floor where he released the key and palmed it. He'd practiced with the black box on a thousand times, and Spanish was getting so worked up he could have done anything with his paws so long as they were behind his back.

When everything was in place and Rodriguez was catching his breath, Chaingang made his move. His brain held another fragment of gold: something he'd overheard about Captain Lawler and one of the cons, but he switched it to Rodriguez's sixteen-year-old sister, and, with the biter off, blood dripping into his mouth, he croaked out what the boss bull had done one day while he was strip searching her.

Spanish lost his head and began punching wildly at the handcuffed man. Chaingang took what he had to, and allowed the tiny piece of plastic straw to drop into position from where he'd held it during the rain of vicious head blows. It was loaded with a fleshette made of melted sprue and feathered in rodent hair. Chaingang had personally eaten the mouse that he'd used for the fletching.

Summoning up the Breath of Death from the center of his guts, hauling an immense tubful of air into the lungs with such force that it also caused his testicles to ascend, he spat the miniature dart into the left eye of Spanish Rodriguez, coming after him like an enraged rhino, Chaingang Bunkowski—loose! Immobilizing the guard in a reversed skein of cuffs and restraints.

He had no intention of killing the man. No, he wanted to keep this boy alive. He knew the kind of dues that would be paid when they had to tell Dr. Norman his boy had broken out again. Shit rolls downhill, and Rodriguez would be in line for all of it.

Other details of the escape blurred.

There'd been another major piece of luck. The guy on the D Seg gate had been there about ten minutes, a transfer from the infirmary over on minimum security side, and what with one thing and another,