“Won't it be guarded?"
“Typically a job site like that might have a guard—a retired cop glued to his TV, or a kid sitting around in the trailer getting high. They don't even make builders get construction permits on unzoned county ground—and if they do have a construction guard, he won't be any big thing.” He'd have good cause to reconsider the wisdom he'd just dispensed.
The first thought that occurred to Royce had been that they were building some sort of military airfield in the middle of nowhere—there was such a vast expanse of concrete. Poured concrete had covered much of the construction project, from the center of what had been the Lawley farm to the northernmost edge of Bill Wise Industrial Park. The great span of concrete reminded one of several airstrips viewed side by side.
But this was no airfield. The concrete formed a sublevel, a gigantic flooring and walls. A shallow-walled fortress? Some kind of NORAD deal maybe? A defense command to be housed in this immense subterranean bunker? For what purpose? The North American Defense Command was buried under the heart of Cheyenne Mountain, and impervious to nuclear strike. This one was only a few feet down—too vulnerable.
He tried to imagine a Disneyland for adults. What would it resemble? A fanciful landscape of spiraling turrets and minarets and geodesic domes as drawn by Alex Raymond? Perhaps this was the beginning of an environmental theme park, a showcase for earth-sensitive projects of research and development just as World Ecosphere, Inc., claimed. Maybe they'd had the misfortune to concoct a land deal at the worst possible time and place, coincidentally picking a small town targeted by a serial killer.
Royce turned to Mary, bundled up in sweaters and a heavy coat, and whispered, “Let's get closer.” She whispered okay and they moved as quietly as they could, going over the top of the embankment where they were parked, and down the fairly steep hillside that was adjacent to Russell Herkebauer's drainage ditch, and Lawley's northern ground.
There was a wood line at the base of the hill, and they stopped there, hiding in the trees.
“That's the place where we want to go, I think.” He pointed to a rectangular-shaped building about the size of a trailer-truck bed. “I think that's the office trailer.” There was a similar-size affair without side doors, which he knew was a place where tools were locked up at night.
He was starting to get up, almost ready to reach for Mary and tell her they were going to check out the trailer, when the first guard came out of the trees beside them. Royce grabbed Mary, shushing her and pulling her down all in one move, and only luck kept her from making a noise.
“Jeezus! I didn't see him at all,” he whispered, when the man and his dog were well away from the trees. Mary was frozen in terror, literally speechless. She tried to swallow. Realized, suddenly, she needed to take a breath.
“That was close,” she said, gasping.
An armed man, carrying what appeared to be, by its silhouette, a rifle, with a leashed guard dog, had been in or very near the wood line at the base of the hillside, not fifty feet from where they'd just come down the embankment.
“Right. Just stay chilly.” In a couple of minutes, scanning the dark shapes, he spotted a second man. This one carrying what was unmistakably a small machine gun of some kind. No dog.
“Come on,” he whispered after a bit, “we're going back.” In the vehicle he told her.
“That cinches it. You don't put guards with silent attack dogs and machine guns on an environmental research park. No way."
“What is this all about?"
“I don't know ... I know one thing.” She looked at him quizzically. “If the wind had been coming from the other way and that guard dog had picked up our scent—we'd have been in a world of bad news."
“Is that what happened to Sam, you think? He found out what they were up to?"
“Maybe so. We've got to get some help. Whatever this deal is, it's a lot bigger than you and yours truly can do anything about. And Marty Kerns—forget it!"
“If this is something to do with the government, maybe the FBI is in on it somehow. That would explain why they haven't done more about the missing people."
“Yeah. Let's get out of here.” He started the engine and they headed for the county highway that would take them over to Market Road, and eventually across the bridge into Tennessee.
“I got a bad feeling,” Royce said. “And I've got you in over your head, too. I've turned out to be some friend to you."
“You've been a good friend,” she said softly, touching the back of his hand. “I'm the one who got you in this mess, remember?"
Little did she know. Little did they both know. Royce had nothing to go by but his vibes and a lot of experience running games on folks, and having games run back on him, but one thing he knew: They were in deep shit. And everything he did, every new fact he gleaned, seemed to leave them in a more precarious situation, and knowing less than they knew before.
22
NORTH QUARRY BAYOU
The beast crosses an open field of wild pastureland, keeping close by the protective thicket that divides the piece of ground, a dense border of interwoven bushes, thorn-studded trees, and commingled vines. Moves in the direction of swampy bayou, dark glade, secret hollows made for hiding, killing, and burying.
From the distance you see a huge waddling clown man, fatso bear, limping a bit—if you look closely—favoring the tired right ankle that supports its share of the quarter ton, but begins weakening when the beast grows tired.
If you have the bad luck to view him from closer range, you will see he is not the grinning simpleton the stereotype suggests. Mean, hard, unforgiving intelligence flashes in the strange, doughy face. Eyes as cold as graveyard stones flicker constantly, registering every sign and movement of life. His breath mists in the cold air as his sensors scan for the presence of humanity.
Should he see your footprints or your recent tire tracks amid the Hereford cattle and water moccasin sign, he will lock on to your heartbeat and find you. His present mood gives new meaning to “obsessed.” Killing and torture have become a relentless and insistent need.
Last night he slept in a frigid box of a cramped automobile, and tonight he will spend it in a warm house—if he has to leave Mommy, Daddy, Bubba, and Sissy with RIPPED ABDOMENS, TORN KIDNEYS, BLEEDING HEARTS, AND PILES OF STEAMING DOG SHIT to do it. He sleeps inside tonight.
As he scans he thinks of BELLY BILE, GUT JUICE, VENTRICLES, VISCERA, OFFAL, FAT, SMILE, BLOOD, GUTS, GORE, GRUE, GOOP, CHITLINS, SHIT TUBES, RIPPED RENDERED DEAD FUCKING MONKEY PEOPLE.
The field is crossed and he is in dark woods. It is colder here. Cow flop. Snakeskins. Wet, green clumps of shadowed moss thriving in the rankness of deep, canopied murk. His sensors pick up his own sewer-main stench, the fragrance of pastureland manure, compost, humus rich with a mulch that he imagines as decomposed flesh—what a superior burial site!
Out of the cold shadows now he tops a ditch bank over a bayou. A viscous green scum lies across the surface of the water. He leaves his deep 15EEEEE indentations along the top of the bank. Follows a cattle path. Skirts the bayou. Reaches the edge of the world.
Chaingang peers over the side of the cliff. He is looking down into what appears to be a bottomless pit, an old marble quarry, fathomless, deep beyond measure, going down beyond visibility into the darkest, blackest core of the earth. He throws a rock in and listens, but does not hear it strike bottom.