Savant (31 page)
Back on another access road. Another knoll overlooking miles of monkey targets. Macroscopic floating vegetation weaves slimy green pleustonic mats across the surface of the water. A happy little goldfinch flutters across the road. Anything that is alive, he will sense it.
He looks up and sees, on a utility pole, a huge nest-probably built by sparrows but as big as two squirrel's nests placed end to end. Nearby a cluster of white gourds, bleached by the sun, hang from a pole. The holes are hotel rooms into which mocking birds, indigos, and others he cannot identify check in and out. He sees sign—animal and human sign—even from the moving car. The vibes are still.
If you see him perhaps you will have sensed him before-if only momentarily. When he lumbers into view, if he is on shank's mare, you will recoil as you're caught in a stinking downdraft of raw body odors and unspeakable vileness. If he is in a vehicle and catches your eye, look away. The heart-eater hungers for a kill.
In the front seat of the stolen car is a map decorated in circles. But Chaingang heeds neither azimuth nor monitor. He has slipped beyond graded rings or grids of probability. He is somewhere east of Oceanus Aethiopicus, south of Septentrio, north of Lis Incognita, on a heading west, his back and shoulder to the Mar del Norte.
Distance is no longer measured in miles but by bathymetry. He is a shark swimming in lazy dangerous circles, drawn by the smell of blood in the water as he goes down deeper into the land of the lost.
T
rask supposed that it was pointless to continue working on the notes about American violence, considering that he had no outlet for the research. But at this juncture it was as much momentum as anything that had kept him working on the story—if indeed it was a story. He was too logy to begin looking for another job yet, and he couldn't sit around watching television, so immersing himself in the homicides was a harmless obsession, he felt. He was razoring clippings and assembling his voluminous notes chronologically when a knock surprised him.
"Hey," he said through the opening in the door, astonished to see the attractive face of Barb Rose, of all people.
"Hi. Any chance I could talk to you for a second?"
"Yeah. Come on in." Why the hell not? He opened the door wide and ushered her in.
"Thanks. Feeling about the same?"
"Pretty much. I'm a little better. I don't get many colds or flu bugs but when I do…they take forever to shake. Have a seat." He pointed to the only available place besides his own chair where he was working, and was suddenly conscious of all the clippings and work-ups adorning his apartment walls. No reason to hide them now, he supposed.
"I'm not going to stay, hon. I just—" She held out a small bag. "Brought you something for your cold. Go ahead and have some while it's still warm."
"Thanks." He almost said—jokingly—what is it, a cup of hemlock? But he sat it on the little bar between the kitchen and living area and took the lid off the container. "Ahh! Smells good." Yellow thick broth of some kind.
"Chicken soup," she said, with a smile. "Fix you right up. I thought you might need some." She was rather self-conscious all of a sudden, and moved toward the door. "I'm going, Vic. I just wanted to tell you I heard about you leaving and stuff and wanted to say goodbye."
"Come on. Stay for a little while. Sit. If you don't mind the mess—and aren't afraid I'll give you whatever I've got. I'd appreciate the company." He meant it, surprising himself as he said it. Every time he was able to think clearly, he could see more and more what a total horse's ass he'd been. He thought he'd been particularly shitty about Barb.
"Okay. But just for a minute." She sat on the edge of the sofa. "I'll stay to make sure you eat that." She laughed warmly.
"Right." He got a spoon and tried some. "Umm. That's very good."
"We Jews are great believers in the healing properties of some good hot
chick
' n soup!" She gave the word a comedic emphasis. Trask took a few more spoonfuls. Tried not to slurp, but it was difficult. "This stuff is delicious." The more soup he ate the better Barb Rose looked to him. "I gotta say something to you before you leave. And not just because you brought me
chick
' n soup. I've been a real asshole. Toward you."
"You're right. What can I say?" She had a beautiful smile.
"Don't cover up your feelings like that, Barb. You gotta learn to say what you really think." They both laughed. "But I know I have. I can't explain it. I…"
"That's the past. Forget it. I wasn't always such an easy person to work with. We're a lot alike. Very competitive."
"Yeah. That's for sure. I haven't been thinking clearly…about a lot of things, of which—of whom—you were one. Anyway—hope you'll accept my apology."
"Not necessary. I thought you got a real bum deal at the station, by the way. Not that my opinion is worth anything. I suppose you know I'm leaving?"
"No. Leaving KCM?"
"Yep. Gave my notice a few days ago."
"I hadn't heard. May I ask where you're going?"
"New York."
"New York?"
"CNBC."
"All
right!
Congratulations. That's great."
"I'm pretty excited."
"You should be." He was happy for her. "That's wonderful, Barb. I'm jealous. How the hell did you get that—not that you're not good at what you do—but wow! New York!"
"It was weird. A guy we worked with in Memphis went out to the Coast. His specialty is business and entertainment news. And CNBC just hired him to create a new department and he called me."
"That's terrific. I'll bet Babaloo is grief-stricken!"
"Babaloo is Babaloo. He had the gig filled by the time I was out of his office. Ditto with yours. He knows a million young writers and broadcasters just crying to crack a market like Kansas City, so it's pretty easy. Even with the crappy money KCM pays." She gestured around the apartment. "I like your wallpaper. Who's your decorator—the
Kansas City Star?
"
"Yeah." He laughed. "I'm still wound up on this story and I can't stop. I don't have anywhere to go with it but—what the hell. Gives me something to do besides worry about what to put on my résumés."
She nodded. Got up from the sofa and eyed her watch. "Gotta run, kid. Let me know when you land somewhere. Okay?"
"Sure. I don't—I haven't even begun to think about a gig. But I can always get a thing reading news at a little station somewhere. You know—just to put beans on the table. I may not be in too big a hurry to relocate. I've been wanting to write for a long time—and I might try that while I've got the free time."
"Let's keep in touch," she said.
"I'd like that. Really." He moved around the counter and reached out to give her a friendly pat. She leaned in to the side of his cheek, making him wish that he'd shaved.
"I won't give you a real kiss because I don't want the flu," she said, smacking air. "But—bye, hon. Take care and get well."
"Don't be surprised if you get a phone call from me one day. Okay?"
"Okay," she said. He opened the door for her and she went out. "Have fun," she added, in the old-time radio lingo for goodbye.
"Likewise." He'd never really let himself think about how well-built this woman was. Barbra Rozitsky was a looker. He felt better than he'd felt in a week. "
Kill
'em in the Big Apple," he said to her departing back, and she smiled and waved.
He closed the door and finished his soup. Then he looked up a telephone number in the Rolodex on his desk, and pressed the buttons on his phone. After a few moments, a man's voice said hello.
"Hello. May I speak to Kit please?"
"May I tell her who's calling?"
"Her father," he said.
D
eath is alone. An impossible monster. A hybrid killer with a core as inhuman and beastly as can be conceived. Like an inexplicable strain of pathogenic bacteria, the core continues to evolve almost independent of the host being.
Death's thoughts are of food—burritos at the moment. But on other levels, its dark, poisonous, ectogenous malignancy continues to feed on information and remembered pain and pleasure, changing, growing, spreading within the vast host body. As it feeds and evolves it strengthens.
Death feels the changes and vibrates with the power. Hums with the virulent malignity that makes it stronger, more noxious and fatally toxic, more impervious to antidote.
Beneath the part that hungers for beef and cheese burritos by the bagful, visceromotor-nerve response quickens, sensations heighten, systems accelerate as they electrify and zap the phrenic controls.
Beneath the surface of the beast, there are the tiny paroxysms of microelemental transmutation that Dr. Norman would have given his eyeteeth to understand. With each quivering electrocharge there occurs down inside the core another subtle transformation.
Beneath the skin of the monstrous anomaly that the doctor persists in calling a physical precognate, the godless and godforsaken macrogrossness mutates. Modifies. Powertrips. Nurtures.
The mutating giant was born for the stalk. Its repulsive goals are abhorrently simple: vengeance and annihilation.
On its back, inert, it thinks of burritos, and of death-dealing. Its pleasant daydreams are of those upon whom he'll feed. The other food—that is a mundane biological need that intrudes on his deeper motives.
A massive mound of man sprawled on a filthy camouflage tarp, he turns the pages of
Utility Escapes
, seeing the name of the cruel stable owner, the daughter of a man who performs certain lab experiments, the father of the boys who killed the animals in the petting zoo, the man who joked of bleeding hearts, the buyer, the clown who keeps creatures in his trailer, the freaks he will ultimately find and dissect.
Look inside the wrinkled obscenity that is his mind: you will see a landscape so alien that it will shock you. What do you recall from the age of seven? Think back. Memories of Daddy? Begrimed in oily dirt, toiling in the garage, as you watch from the safe haven of Mommy's lap? Remember your sixth year? Watching Aunt and beloved Granny planting hollyhocks, Grandmother amid the larkspur? Can you conjure up a vague remembrance of age five? Perhaps you were alone in your crib and you made a noise with your mouth. Mommy and Daddy rush in to confront the early whistler. "It's baby!" Mother says. "He whistled!"
Look inside at the beast's first memory: darkness. Warm, soft, liquid darkness. Heat. Critical mass. Pain. An explosive force. Jarring shock. Sudden light. Dazzling, shattering, soul-rending brightness.
What can you ever hope to understand about such a being? From his first memory there is only pain.
He recalls the roar of madness and noise, the inundation of horror, the whiplash of overpowering reality, and he remembers being torn, thrust from his mother into the blazing world, ripped from a dark and warm womb of a screaming woman.
He remembers soaring aloft in the inescapable clutches of a powerful giant who holds him like a dragon, in long slimy claws, soaring into the blinding sky in a sudden nightmare of birthing cataclysm. Pictures the red deluge. The violent, concussive beginning in bright light as he was wrenched from the hot current of his mother's blood.
He can go back to the beginning but he chooses not to do so.
Superior Court of Kansas…in the matter of setting aside the adoption of Daniel
…vague fuzz of details blur. Mommy—dead at birth? An adoption that fails to take. A foster mother who says the baby must be
disciplined
The word inches across his mindscreen as he gazes, unseeing, at the pages of his Bible.
Around the word
disciplined
the edges are seared, blackened, where the child was subjected to the intense heat of a stove burner, cigarettes, matches, lighters, soldering iron—oh, the list is long and memorable. And those are his good memories. He has had enough of this. He has mutated to the power edge. Chaingang is up and moving to the Buick, which he has come to rather appreciate, now that he's made his peace with the seat controls. It is close enough to the hotsheets to make him continually wary, but when he first went back and moved his Olds from the parking lot of the mall, he affixed homemade plates to the Buick, which effectively protect it from the casual "wants and warrants" DMV check, or from the zealous officer or trooper who matches it to a recent sheet.
The assembly of a fake tag is remarkably simple—child's play, in fact, so long as you have the regional prefix key codes, which are changed each license-renewal period. Once the codes are known, fabrication of a plate is a few minutes handiwork. The easiest way to buy a couple of days' time with a spurious tag is to find a matching model in the area in which you wish to operate, fake their tag, and replace their plates with the fakes, putting theirs on your vehicle. And Chaingang knew a hundred more sophisticated variations on that theme.
But for all of that, he was sure that within twenty-four hours he'd be in another ride. The thing that watched over him kept him, in most instances, from taking imprudent chances.
The Buick cruises on a jagged northeast course, the Missouri River to the north, the Kansas City Stockyards a distant stench to the northwest.
Madison.
Belleview. H 11.
Tarkio. H 12.
Holly
Mersington. H 13.
Overpass.
Viaduct.
Hard eyes scan the rooftop vantage points. He sees a complex of industrial buildings that tug at him. At such times he is wide open to the inner clockwork that ticks within the nervous system, and he stops the car. Pulls his poundage from behind the wheel with a grunt of effort and scans.
The rooftops would be ideal for a sniper. A weapon with an effective range of two miles could smash down monkey men from Kansas to Missouri in an are of gunfire. His face beams at the pleasant contemplation of an unimpeded, wide swath of death cutting down the monkeys. He sees a beauty parlor—talk about bizarre misnomers, a dog kennel from the sound of the barking, an arts 'n' crafts store which appears to be closed. No sense of danger, but he is tugged forward and goes with it, moving closer.