Chaingang

There, too, he was betrayed by those who used him as an executioner. There, also, his masters would have placed him in the gravest peril, telling him he was free to take his pleasures against humans, and—but for his gifts and skills—they would have allowed him to perform their bidding and then exterminate him.

For the first time since the drugs were administered to him in the penitentiary, he appreciates the possibilities, and the body of the beast makes an involuntary coughing noise in its slumber.

Early morning. Daniel is awake in a buzz that is partially caused by the teeming culvert that is a breeding ground for insects, and in part by a massive headache—a throbbing, pulsating thing that robs him of his powers of concentration.

He gathers up duffel and weapons cases and clomps away from this place, the radio call sign “Magic Silo” echoing as he passes a pair of Butler Grain Silos, then three more, standing like a kind of mini-Stonehenge at the edge of an adjacent field. He would ordinarily just flash a mental picture of them and file it in the computer, but does not trust himself in this addled state, and he takes time to dig out his Boorum and Pease Accounts Receivable Ledger that has been with him since his last prison bit. He calls it UTILITY ESCAPES, and it is nearly filled with maps, plans, charts, meticulously rendered drawings of safehouse structures and traps—his idea book which he treasures as one draws comfort from a family Bible.

Long ago he memorized all the material in it, but he derives sustenance and inspiration from it—it is The Word. He reads it for solace, for pleasure, for renewed power, for positive reinforcement; he has faith in it.

He finds a felt-tipped pen, obviously brand-new, removes the cap, and with a reasonably firm, steady hand adds the appropriate landmarks to his ledger, marking them on map as well. The silos are of interest. It is very lonesome here in the boonies, and there are truck and tractor marks, but nothing else since the last rain, he sees. The galvanized sheet metal tells its own story. From these signs he sees safety. One of the doors begs him to bust its easy lock, step up, squeeze in, and pull that door to. Magic silos? Maybe so. An emergency home away from home.

The deep slough where he'd hunkered down in the culvert for the night bisected thick woods, and in the center of it, not fifty meters from the overgrown, leafy ditch banks, a pond of stinking mud and stagnant rainwater hid like a surprise. It was also added to both the scale map and the ledger page. He looked on field expedient burial sites as presents.

Fifty meters. Let's see—what was that in feet? He tried to recall the key from a military map. Was there one on the map he'd just looked at and folded up incorrectly? He unfolded it and refolded it slowly, weaving back and forth a little. His huge feet looked very far away for a second and he felt light-headed. He rubbed at his eyes, shook his head, tried to shake the cobwebs loose. He poured water from his canteen, splashing it in his face.

That was better. He walked a few steps and decided he'd better sit down a moment and dropped to the ground heavily, as puzzled as he was angry. Bees and hornets and wasps and mud daubbers built nests in his head.

He forced himself to think. His entire life had been a triumph of will over matter, and he would think his way out of these ... horse latitudes that would render him impotent.

Fifty meters: ten meters, a decameter, would be 32.81 times 5, or 164.05. Was that feet or yards? Feet. Divide by 3: 54.68333333. Half a hectometer? Fifty meters—109.3666666, the number of the great beast. The inside of his head felt like a honeycomb. He pushed himself to his feet.

By afternoon he had reached the large body of water that encroached from the western edge of the map they'd given him, and he was in a bad way. Something was wrong. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe something else. He fought to think and to keep moving.

The blue features each had a number. This one was numbered thirty-one. He knew it was the river long before he saw the fast-moving current.

He froze at the embankment and saw the man. He looked like one of the little people, waiting down in a tunnel, a cleverly designed hidey-hole. One of the ghost warriors. He waited.

If you could have ridden by on a log at that moment, letting the river current pull you, you'd have seen quite a sight up there on the bank. There was a little bite-size chunk, a gouge, in the bank, and sitting squarely in that hole was an old man. An old man in faded work clothes, who had a couple of lines out, bank-fishing for cat.

But above him and to the right as you floated by, you would have seen a huge, grinning fat man, carrying a massive load of some kind, looking down at the old man who was contentedly fishing.