Savant (33 page)

"How much would you want to continue to board them, say, for a year? If you couldn't find homes for them?"

"Just the cost of the dog food, I suppose. We could donate the care and feeding." The vet had been carefully selected by Daniel, who had tried to find someone who genuinely cared about animals. His sense of it was that the puppies would do as well here as anywhere, until homes could be found. This was the second vet who'd taken twenty dogs. He'd told them they'd been rescued from the Rutledge, Missouri, Animal Auction, which was a notorious marketplace frequented by "dog bunchers," who specialized in selling large numbers of animals to medical laboratories.

The care for these forty mutts had severely depleted Chaingang's war treasury, but it was of no consequence. He found money absurdly easy to acquire and of no interest in itself. After paying for a warehouse full of dog food and medicine, and impressing the vets with the fact that he'd eventually be returning for an accounting of the animals' welfare, he proceeded to drive back into Kansas, and found himself once again on the dreaded Bunker of his childhood.

He'd removed forty-nine starving, dehydrated pups from Mr. Esteban's home. Three hadn't survived. Forty were in good hands. But he hadn't found other vets he trusted sufficiently to use—and his bullshit detector was second to none. Six dogs cavorted in the back seat of the Buick. He parked, opened the windows so that there'd be ample air for the puppies, and reached back into the furry tangle of wiggly bodies, selecting one, tucking it into his voluminous shirt and starting up the stairs.

Had someone been watching him—this behemoth making his way up the rickety stairs of the crumbling tenement—they'd have seen him apparently talking to himself. He was reassuring the little dog.

He knocked and heard an old woman's frightened voice. "Who is it?"

"It's me. The man who gave you money—remember?" he asked, rather unnecessarily. After a few moments, he heard her unchain the pathetic thing that held the door.

"Um?" She was less than overjoyed to see this nightmare, money notwithstanding.

"I wanted to stop and see how you were doing. Did those boys bother you any more?"

"No," She thought for a moment. "They never came back."

"I don't think they'll bother you again. I brought you a present. To replace your cat." He reached inside his shirt and got out something brown and wiggly, which he handed to her. The old woman took it like it was a lit firecracker, but smiled when she saw what it was.

"Oh! A little dog."

"You like dogs?"

"Uh-huh." It apparently liked her as it was giving her kisses on her wrinkled, veiny hands. "But I can't afford to buy dog food."

"That's all right." He pulled two cans from his voluminous pockets, and then handed her some money. "This will buy lots of food for you and your new pet. Don't forget to give him water and plenty of affection." Doctor Bunkowski found a dirty dish and put water in it, and spread a newspaper down. The old woman was petting the dog, somewhat dutifully, but he was certain they'd become fast friends.

"Thank you," she said, as he turned to leave. "Um. Wait." He turned back to her. "You asked about that lady who lived here. I asked my friend about her. She said she knows where she lives now."

"Mrs. Garbella?" he asked.

"I wrote it down somewhere." She went over to an old table and sorted through things for what seemed like an eternity. "Here it is." She held a scrap of paper out to him in her frail hand. The dog had found an old shoe and was busily chewing it to shreds.

He couldn't read her scrawl and made her decipher it for him. He mentally noted it and told her he appreciated it.

"Thanks for getting that for me." It was by far the longest, most uncharacteristic, and seemingly normal sequences of conversations—with the vets and this old hag—that he'd had in years. It made him think of the time they'd drugged him and freed him from prison, and he'd gone around acting like a monkey. It pissed him off totally.

He stomped out of the building ready to kick someone's ass to the fucking max.

The dogs were going nuts by the time he got the car started again. This was all he needed-he was busy trying to kill a professional assassin and he had
five fucking dogs
on his hands! Completely intolerable.

He forced everything out of his mind for the moment, concentrating on finding Mrs. Garbella. Within ten minutes he'd found the address the old woman had obtained for him—it was an empty lot full of rubble. It looked like a place where a building had burned to the ground in recent years. It was precisely what he'd expected—nothing. He shrugged and headed for his hideaway. He had to get rid of these dogs. Tighten up. Regroup. Get his shit together.

That night he fed and watered the dogs and gathered them around him in the small stone enclosure, telling them all the bad things were over. He told them about the bad man, and how he was gone now, and how some of their brothers and sisters—the ones he'd tried to feed with an eyedropper—had gone to sleep. Huge hands that had killed many hundreds of times cuddled and stroked the five little dogs.

He shared his body heat with them under the massive tarp, willing himself not to roll over on them by accident while he slept.

He dreamed of the crucifixion and his mindscreen conjured up images of recent cross killings in the Persian Gulf, Mexico, Central and South America; most of them were torture killings with political overtones. He dreamed of Dr. Norman.

"I know many things, Dr. Norman. Chemistry, math, the general sciences. I know of the medical conclusions reached by your colleagues in the Reich Phylogeny College during World War Two: that the cause of death from a crucifixion is suffocation, since one cannot exhale sufficiently when the arms are held up for long periods, and the facility of expelling carbon dioxide from the lungs becomes impaired.

"I know that to crucify properly one should employ expedients such as driving a wooden peg into the upright, so that some of the body weight is taken between the legs. Nailing the feet to the upright also supports the body and prolongs the suffering. Would you like to learn more about this subject, Dr. Norman?"

The enormous figure under the tarp, five tiny dogs packed in around him, smiles in his sleep. He begins snoring like a couple of chainsaws, which momentarily frightens the pups, but they settle back in around his falling and rising mound of belly.

He dreams of eradication, escape, and survival. In a vision black as the darkest midnight, he pictures a white, virgin piece of paper—blemishless white, smoother than the surface of a lake of milk.

Inside the whiteness, it is hot. Burning white fire. An incandescence of white hot vengeance scorches the raw borders of the dream.

Heat envelops him in a sphere of perfect, infinite white fire. The beast punctures it with the sharp edge of his imagination, and the white, milky balloon bursts, as he allows the blackness of his dark thoughts to fill the sphere, cooling it with its inky liquidity. A stream of black fills the round whiteness of the mental image as the ebb of black water would rise in a tub of perfect white, rising as it cools upon touch, and the curve of the black is an essence that stills his beating heart and slows each loud, deep, ragged breath from his mighty lungs.

The snores abate. A subtle change in his rhythms begins. There is an imperceptible and inexplicable slowing of his life force. Slower, the measured
thu-bump, thu-bump
of his heart beats slower, as he wills, slows, wills the strong pulse down to a crawl.

Willing his heartbeat and respiratory system to slow, becoming a silent, still, invulnerable mass. Efficient. Ruthless. Precise. The breathing so slow and measured.

He waits now for the red mist to come, and dreams of the taste of another fresh human heart.

Shooter Price could make out a large yellow van. A pack of people walking together. A blue over white Mustang. A maroon T-Bird on which he could read the vanity plates.

"
The removable accessory vault, which is located in the butt of the stock, forward of the shoulder recoil pad, contains spare brush and bore cleaning rod, lubricant, patches, lens tissues, spare eyepiece shield, Allen wrench, spanner
—" An autographed picture of Annie fuckin' Oakley. He saw a girl in red shoes. Her bright red high heels were like splashes of fresh blood against the dull gray background of pavement. He squeezed one off for the corps.
Ouch!
Girl fall down go boom.

He could make out a sip for the Happy Time Day Care Center. A billboard. The Laco brought an orange-and-white warning sip up close:

"Dumping oil or waste in parking lot violates state and federal laws. Offenders will be prosecuted. Fines can be up to ten thousand dollars. Please help us Stop Pollution" He loaded another APEX (X) in and did his part.

He swings over the parking lot of the truck stop. A figure on a nearby slope catches his eye from the middle of a half-acre garden plot. Flapping arms, large brimmed hat, his crosshairs touch the image of a garden scarecrow and he squeezes.

Moves, scans. "
Under emergency conditions clean water can be substituted for bore cleaning fluid
…" He's back in the sniper hide on Hospital Hill Park. It is a bad mistake. Chaingang is there, too, and this time when he squeezes, he is observed.

Price sees another college girl. SAVANT kisses the curve of breast, gentle swell of tummy, and he imagines a pouting bulge of unshaved cat under that pair of blue jeans and he squeezes one off for the commandant.
Yeah!

Chaingang feels the danger claw at him but he cannot see any evidence of Shooter. The first thing he sees is a flight of sparrows who jump when the sign far below them explodes. He hears the noise of impact. Sees the sign—or rather sees where the sign was. Target practice. Shooter is up on the hill somewhere, the little fuck. He stares with full bore concentration, double-barreled vision trying to spot the sniper.

The hide is well done—he'll give him that. Had Shooter not popped the cap on another round be probably would not have found him. But he saw something. A puff of smoke or a branch disintegrating as another high explosive round blew through the shrubbery. He could see the gun pit. He was moving fast, those big hard tree-trunk legs churning moving him faster than anyone alive had seen him move.

Unfortunately, Shooter saw him as well. Caught the elephantine killer lumbering up the hill at him and yelled with delight as he slid the empty brass out, inserted a round, and firmly snicked the bolt closed. Eye to the Laco. Crosshairs on the humongous target, which was too fat to even zigzag, like shooting ducks on a pond—an easy squeeze and his worries were over.The big weapon gave him a satisfactory thump as it tooked Chaingang Bunkowski off the count. All Shooter could see on the grass was fresh blood!

Daniel had been shot several times, including a couple of up-close-and-way-too-personal incidents. He wasn't a virgin, as these things go. But there had never been any pain like this.

It was chain pain. The sort of pain he had inflicted many a time—where there's nothing for a few moments and then, as the numbness begins to wear off, it's such a screaming terrible hurting that you think you'll pass out from it. Imagine the pain from a hundred chain whippings.

He had to bite down on it or it would kill him. He had been hit by SAVANT, but his warning system had jerked him to the side just in time, and he'd taken a bad shoulder wound, high on the left shoulder just above the Kevlar vest. Three inches to the right and it would have blown his head off. In his mind, he fixed all his powers on that one point of focus, as he worked his way, on his right side, back to the car and his duffel.

The body is divided into four quads, subdivided again. The small section where he'd taken the hit was walled off inside his brain. He had to stop the pain. Isolate it there. He imagined the shoulder floating above him, freezing the rest of his upper torso in ice. Cutting off the flow of blood from the pain, slowing his vital signs as he made it to the Buick.

There was an up side. He was alive. Functioning. He didn't have the dogs with him—they'd been left at his hideout. This mess was going to be over. He would now do away with a long-time enemy. Battle dressing. Fighting to keep his mind chilly. He had to stay calm. There was a lot of blood but he liked blood. No problem. Bandaged himself and then wrapped some duct tape over the dressing—he was going to be doing some heavy work, he felt sure.

Got the line tracker out of the duffel. The photo interrupter eye had been tampered with. The robot was now a slightly modified toy. It no longer resembled what the store had sold; It was now rather deadly. He got out his coil. Det cord. Clacker. Three-in-one.

Keys. No problem with the right side of his body at all. Experimented with the left as he started the car. Not bad. He could stand it.

He bit down on the pain as if it were a big, mean steak sandwich. Chewed up the hurt and swallowed it. Drove away from the scene of this accident, around the hill that led to the street above the gun pit.

Parked. Got out. Shooter was still scanning the brush below with the weapon. Biding his time on lock and load. Patient and ready.

Chaingang got out and put the line tracker in place. Doused the can of oil on the wheels and bearings. Put it in place and started off to get an angle on the hide which was less than a hundred feet away. If Shooter had seen him crawl to the car he would feel another shot hit him soon. But he made it to the nearby trees and nothing struck him down.

He was close now. He gritted his ugly shark's teeth and switched on the remote control. The line tracker started forward, and momentum carried it straight ahead, tracking no line at all but moving silently on the oiled wheels, rolling in the direction of the gun hide, a Claymore mine wired to the base of the tracker. As the killer robot neared the gun hide, Chaingang triggered the clacker, and the commanddetonator fired out nearly seven hundred steel balls in a sixty-degree forward arc. Shooter was down in the hide when it went off, and the projectiles missed him, but his reflexes were lightning fast and he whirled and squeezed one off in the direction of the blast.