There was a clanking, and Dr Blaikley and the others were gone. The pain was creeping back, and he could move his limbs slightly. His hand stung where Dr Blaikley had touched him.
His lungs expanded, and he tore another breath from the air, feeling the fires raging inside his chest.
There were sprouts of pain all along his jaws now.
He sat up, and realized he was not in an infirmary room. He was in a cage.
IV
'You've messed with the Good Ole Boys one time too many, guitar man.'
Robert E. Lee Chamberlain was going to fulfil a longstanding ambition by killing him, Elvis realized. But first he was going to make a long, boring speech about it.
Elvis looked around. The indentees were sat down on the ground, their chains between them. Good Ole Boys with guns chewed toothpicks, and tried to look cool behind their Sterlings.
Krokodil was just standing, a little away from the car, her hands out where everybody could see them.
'Got any songs you wanna sing, guitar man?'
Chamberlain was pointing his automatic. The girl he had shot earlier wasn't crying any more, just pressing her ragged ear flat against her head. It was about time they had a slave revolt down here in Georgia.
'How about 'John Brown's Body,' massah?'
Chamberlain sneered, and shot the ground by Elvis's feet. He raised a divot. Elvis wished he hadn't flinched, but knew he had. He had the feeling he'd be seeing Jesse Garon pretty soon.
'How d'you feel without your nigra buddies to help you out, guitar man?'
Elvis didn't say anything. Chamberlain had taken a severe humiliation back in Memphis thanks to Gandy, Big Bill and the Dollman. This wasn't going to be over until the Good Ole Boy thought he had paid the Op back for that.
'I've got orders to put you out of the game, guitar man. Orders from Judgement Q. Harbottle himself.'
'The big man?'
Chamberlain grinned. 'Yeah. The big man. You should be flattered. Usually, Judgement has better things to do than bother with pissant solos who screw up field Ops. You've been a regular 'skeeter, bitin' and botherin' us. But he says we gotta make an example of you.'
He waved at the indentees.
'You'll be real pleased to know that after we do the business on you and your lady friend, we're gonna let these nigras go free as birds.'
Chains chinked as the indentees shifted. They knew better than to trust Chamberlain.
'The important thing is not that you get a .45 headache, but that these coloured boys see you check out. You've got quite a rep with the swamp trash. They reckon you're some kind of a hee-ro. But with your brains shot out through your greasy hair, I reckon you'll jus' be another piece of dead shee-it. These nigras will spread the word that the guitar man got blown away, and the Good Ole Boys won't get so much rebelliousness from the 'denties. Killin' you is gonna accomplish a lot of things…'
He brought the gun up to bear, and Elvis could see the rifling on the inside of the barrel.
'…but it's also gonna give me a li'l piece of harmless amusement.'
Elvis wasn't sure how what happened next happened, but he lived through ten seconds, and was able to breathe again…
Krokodil moved faster than was possible, and Chamberlain swung around to take a shot at her. It went wild. A Good Ole Boy was on the ground, blood coming out of a hole in his throat. Another was up in a tree with a broken back. A hoodhead was holding his ripped guts to his belly.
Krokodil was cartwheeling, her hands bloody and buzzing.
Elvis was in the grass, moving on his elbows. A shot fired overhead. Chamberlain was out to get him.
Krokodil was wrapping a hoodhead into a pretzel shape. Someone was speeding the hell out of the area on a cyke. That might well be a smart move.
There was another shot, and dirt lifted before Elvis's face.
He was down flat by the Cadillac now. A bullet spanged off the bodywork.
Two Good Ole Boys came at Krokodil with electroprods. She put a hand to her face and shifted her eyepatch. A sizzling beam struck out and the two GOB men fell screaming, their heads on fire. Krokodil had an optic burner implanted to replace her missing eye.
Half of the indentees had tried to make a break, dragging the other half with them. A Good Ole Boy with a scattergun jacked in some shells and was ready to bring them down, but Krokodil was behind him, her elbow nutcrackering his neck, and he fell like a broken doll.
She had the scattergun. It went off, and a bloody stetson rolled past Elvis's cover spot.
Most of the enemy would be out of the action by now.
Elvis pulled the car door open, and squirrelled into the passenger seat. He saw Chamberlain through the windscreen. A slug flattened uselessly against the bulletproof glass, and Chamberlain ejected an empty clip, fumbling in his jacket pocket for a spare.
Elvis pulled what he wanted out of the dash, and stepped out of the car.
Krokodil wasn't even breathing heavily. The last of the hoodheads was dead at her feet, still spasming.
Chamberlain had the clip out now, but froze.
Elvis held up the voodoo doll.
'You don't believe in magic, do you?' he said.
The Good Ole Boy rammed the clip into the gun, and sighted at Elvis.
'Careful, you might hit the dolly.'
Elvis gripped the doll, feeling the wood strain and crack. Chamberlain looked uncomfortable. His face was red again.
'It's all psychosomatic, you know.'
He pulled his tie loose, and his collar button burst.
'It just depends on the victim's credulity.'
Chamberlain coughed, and tried to speak. He couldn't.
'You and me, we're not like that, are we?'
Chamberlain threw the gun away.
Elvis dropped the doll in the grass, and Chamberlain spluttered, clutching his throat, cursing…
Krokodil walked over to the car. She seemed almost bored. There was blood on her face and clothes, and several smoke-blackened holes had appeared in her jacket. She pulled the garment off, and wiped her face and hands with it. Her body was bruised, but the skin didn't seem broken at all. She was not self-conscious about her nudity, Elvis saw. She moved like a living statue, and again the Op wondered how much of her was the original girl.
She took an identical suit out of her hold-all, and stepped into the loose pants.
'Enjoying the view?' she said, not at all nastily, but without any invitation either.
'Sorry, ma'am,' he gulped. He had been staring. Even Chamberlain, who was drawing in quick, chesty breaths, had been fixing his eyes on her.
She slipped on her jacket and knotted the sash at her waist. With a touch of the vanity she hadn't hitherto suggested, she ran a hand through her unbound hair, tidying it a little. She adjusted her eyepatch over the burner, smiled tightly and said 'Ready?' to him.
She slipped into the car, and waited.
Whatever trouble she had been expecting on the journey, this was only a minor instance of it. Elvis was not quite scared by that.
Chamberlain was looking for his gun. Elvis saw it glinting, and kicked it across to the indentees..
A man picked it up, and pressed it to his ankle-lock.
'No,' Elvis said, 'you'll blow your foot off.'
