Chaingang

Moving with a burst of speed, he chugged out the door and hurled his quarter ton of weight into the poor front seat of the old car, grinding the ignition to life, and pulling out into the northbound lane. There were no witnesses. No traffic to speak of. But of course, the sky eye man would be duly recording his moves. Of no consequence.

He'd ordered, and within a few minutes, paid for, his little going-away present to himself. Later, when he'd had his fill of this community, he'd have a nice, fresh get-out-of-town ensemble all ready and waiting for him.

At the next roadside phone that presented itself, a Mr. Conway dialed—strictly by coincidence—Perkins Real Estate, calling from the Tinytown phone book chained to the wall. Asking about rental properties.

“I'm sorry,” an elderly woman's voice informed him. “This office is not presently open for business.” She referred him to a realtor in Maysburg and he called there, “hoping to rent a small trailer or farmhouse."

“We've got something about ten miles north of here. It's a two-bedroom. But it's not in very good condition right at the moment, I'm afraid,” a man's voice told him.

“That's all right. I'm not real fussy. I could even hep fix it up before the wife and kids get here. How much is it and—” He started to use the phrase “take occupancy,” edited his choice of words, and said, “Would I be able to move in right away?"

“It's only fifty a month, sir. The owners just want to keep it rented so the house doesn't deteriorate any faster than it has. And you know, you can't get insurance on a dwelling unless it's occupied—so that's why it's available. But it's really rough, I won't kid you about that."

“It sounds just fine.” It sounds like a fine shithole. “Could I look at it right now?"

“Yeah.” The voice paused. “Let's see—what time is it? Uh—where are you now?"

“Just over yonder a ways from your office.” Chaingang was really having fun with the monkeys. “I'm over by trella scrate's, and I could be over there in a few minutes. I could meet ya at the farmhouse or—"

“Nah, you better meet me here at the office and follow me out there. It's pretty hard to find—way out on an old gravel road in the country. I doubt if you could find it by yourself."

“Okay. I'll be there in a few minutes."

“Fine. And your name, sir?"

“Conway."

“Is that first or last?"

“Uh-huh,” Chaingang said, his face contorted by the rictus of a snaggletoothed grin. “See ya in a minute.” He hung up the phone and flung himself back into the car. Kenny Hepyou had turned it into a good day after all. The fun was just starting.

Disturbed in his slumber by ever-watchful sensors, the beast shakes his bulk loose from the folds of deep sleep, belches an eight-inch naval salvo of gas, scratches, yawns expansively as he pulls himself to his feet.

Infested repose gave this gargantuan monster physical rest, but it was a restless dormancy. He is awake in two filmy eye-blinks, and as the sleeping behemoth emerges from the swamp of nocturnal hybernation, he is aware of a vague layering of intelligence and trivia.

He scans the dossier page on Virgil Watlow, and the phrase “dog buncher,” the name for the scum who act as procurers for laboratories, tears a fingernail off inside his mind. In this dormant period some part of his brain has been relishing the memory of a woman at his second murder trial, and his mindscreen catches a fragment of her courtroom shrieking, the termagant's shrill “—and then and there, Daniel Bunkowski did proceed to strangle, bludgeon, and mutilate—” He savors the verbs, trying to taste her in his head.

But the sensors override all of this pleasurable trivia with the unmistakable urgings that he has learned to interpret as warnings. They came during his steep. Mental printout lighting the lip of his pocket of slumber with opaque, filtered rays of illumination. The beast, snoring away down in the shadowy hole at the bottom of his awareness, is somehow touched by this unexplainable phenomenon. It reaches down into his mysterious inner trench, and his subconscious moves him, trailing slime and mutant poisons, as he is nudged toward the light source. He is moving, on automatic pilot. Dressing. Not bothering to curse the bad luck that refuses to let him rest for a few days in his own rental home. Especially when he went to so much trouble to get the car, interface with the monkeys, play the game, talk the tall. But he would rather be safe than lazy. He can be lazy later, when Mr. Watlow has had a full manicure, pedicure, Chaingang cure. When all those bad teeth have been extracted. He wants to take his time with the dog buncher oh by Christ in Holy Heaven how he wants to RIP EVERY NAIL, TOOTH, HAIR, STRIP OF SKIN FROM THE DOGIE MAN.