The laboriously concocted dream of spider and balloon began to disintegrate, the bits and pieces dissolving into Chaingang's reality.
His powers were coming back, even as he rested. His flawless inner clock had repaired itself and was ticking again. The normally unflappable thermostat that regulated his temperature was back on the job, and he was ice cold. He snuggled down into the folds of the filthy bush tarp that encased him. The hunger that generally drove him was back with a vengeance, and would goad him awake soon, a raging and mad appetite that had a life of its own.
Chaingang's mighty mindscreen worked once again, and as it surveyed the ambient factors that affected or might chance to affect him, sensors filed sitreps to the computer terminal, as his brain examined shards of broken data through the healing neural system.
At the northernmost edge of the Mississippi alluvial plains, southeast Missouri's lowest point drops down in the shape of the devil's hoof, or, as the inhabitants prefer to analogize it, the heel of a boot. As vast ocean receded, glacial plains evolved into dense swamp, which grew large stands of timber. Much of this was cleared for farming as the Mississippi lowlands area became what is now known as the Bootheel.
The mindscreen imprinted lowlands, searched for trace and transfer cross matches, and printed the findings: “In the sandy fringe of rice paddies that borders the Annamese cordillera as it descends to the South China Sea, the lowlands shelter and feed the provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien.” It was odd, when one got down to it, one killing field was pretty much the same as another.
His hard black eye blinked open. A spider was crawling across him. He flicked it away.
He thought of the very fly Dr. Norman, smiling hideously as, across a wet green rice field, he saw the ma ‘n’ pa bait shop.
He got up. Pain savaged him but he simply bit down and ignored it, concentrating on matters of consequence. He found the car, a Pontiac as filthy as he was, rather well hidden all things considered. He stowed the huge bush tarp and started to get in the car, but his sensors nudged him. Leave the vehicle for the moment, they told him. He hoisted a duffel heavier than two ordinary men could carry, and headed in the direction of food.
He could think of only one thing: Surely they must possess a microwave. He had a mental picture of himself stuffing microwavable ham-and-cheese-sandwich packages, one after another, dozen after dozen, into the microwave, cooking them for a few seconds, opening the little door, eating, spitting plastic. Consuming huge bags of chips, pork rinds, packaged crunchy-munchies of dubious vintage, shoving Slim Jim Beef Jerky sticks into his mouth, feeding them into his maw like edible pencils shoved into an automatic pencil sharpener. Gobbling, sucking, swilling down liters of cold brand X cola—he had to stop. He was salivating and blowing like a St. Bernard waiting for the Pavlovian timer to ping. He had to jerk his mind off the food before he choked on his own saliva.
He fed, instead, operational options and potential threats to his brain: the construction project, bright with blue Amoco insulation; the farmyard with its rusty red pump and part of a wagon wheel beside a fake well; For Sale—Wellman Realty on the front lawn of an obviously occupied dwelling; a private drive flanked by the halves of two black rubber truck tires; Garberg For Assessor, Reelect Joe D. Davis County Commissioner—old leftovers from a hickburg political campaign. A kid blew by him with Wilson Pickett blaring from the truck radio. Custom Welding, and the word that had caught his eye on the sign 4 Comers Gas
This was not a town where men stared at one another, but even here they gawked at the apparition that quite suddenly materialized in their midst, a monster-sized thing that waddled in demanding food, paying for it with the dirtiest, funkiest pile of bills any of them had seen.
He resembled—what?—a cross between the Pillsbury doughboy on steroids and some mutation of Behemoth Wrestlemania that had gone terribly awry. Immense. Grotesquely ugly. A tower of hard, dirty, mean fat. Eyes that were like the heart of black marble, no dimension or soul. A killer's eyes in a baby's doughy face. Not a visage to inspire confidence.
Godzilla parted hillbillies and began snatching at racked foodstuffs, popping the plastic top and penetrating the foil seal of some Pringles with a finger the size and density of a steel cigar, then tapping out half an entire tube into a plate-sized mitt and consuming the whole thing in a single crunch, all but redlining on the ingestion of pure sodium.
They simply didn't know what to think. The monstrosity began tearing the wrappers off Mrs. Abner's egg salad and tuna melt sandwiches, not eating them but shoving them into the aperture in its face, sucking them down whole in nasty, wet glurps; opening a Dr Pepper on its teeth and chugging it; ripping open wax cartons of milk and orange and grape drink. They were experienced men, but this was beyond their experience. It eyed the guns, paid for the rampage of feeding, and waddled out the door in a noxious downdraft of sewer stench.
They were still discussing the apparition when, several minutes later, it reappeared, driving a battered, dirt- encrusted Pontiac the color of mud, lurching out into the parking lot and pumping unleaded into the car's gas tank. By the time he clomped back in to pay, they'd grown tired of speculating about him.
This was a place where hardworking men, or hardly working men in some instances, came to buy bait or ammo, swap guns or sea stories, drink a few brews, bitch or brag about crops and women, and they were not overly interested in their fellows. Chaingang would draw stares anywhere, but if there was a place he could halfway blend in, rather fortuitously he'd found it. The Gas Eats Bait shop had added its wares, as the sign outside showed, incrementally. Guns had found their way to this casual marketplace, and when the beast had calmed its hunger, slaked its thirst, and decided to chance tanking up the hot car as well, it was toward weaponry his attention was drawn.
The duffel was as much ordnance and firearms as anything else, but he never missed an opportunity to stock up on accessible tools when they were so easy to acquire off the books. There was a modest rack of shotguns and rifles for sale. He hated rifles and immediately dismissed them. A shotgun, properly reworked, could be a pleasantly effective up-close tool that was as disposable as such weapons could get. He passed over two expensive models for three used shotguns that could serve his needs: a Mossberg, a Remington, and a Winchester.
He asked to look at the Mossberg, and behind him a loud voice said, “That's a damn fine shotgun, son. That's my gun. I slayed me some damn birds with that sumbitch. If I hadn't got laid off at Ryker's I'd never sold it. Here I am doing $18,590, okay? This year Ryker's works me a hundred and seventeen hours more but they
