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.