Butcher (35 page)

He had the radio on low. He dug at his ears, twisting his huge bull neck back and forth, trying to get his hearing to kick back in. The words, “Royal Clinic in Bayou City,” got his attention, faraway-sounding and scarcely audible, and he cranked the volume up enough to catch the end of the news item.

“—Dr. Royal is in satisfactory condition and resting comfortably at—” he paid great attention to the hospital name.

One more loose piece of business and he'd leave this low-rent shithole. He jerked his head savagely and the second and third vertebrae cracked like whiplash.

T
he nurse on station 3 at Delta General answered her phone. “Oh, yes, Dr. Howard.” It was the chief of staff of the hospital.

“Has the specialist from Barnes showed up yet?"

“No, sir,” she Said, having no Idea what he was talking about.

“His name is Dr. Fine. He has lost his identification but if, er, when he shows up, it's all right. I can vouch for him. It's all right for him to see Dr. Royal."

“Okay,” the nurse said.

“I don't think I've ever seen Dr. Fine. Could you tell me what he looks like?"

“You won't have any trouble recognizing him. He's very large. Big man. I want him to take a look at Dr. Royal."

“All right, sir, we'll watch for him,” she said.

The doctor thanked her and handed the receiver back to the enormous beast that held a giant blade over his left nipple.

“Excellent job, Dr. Howard. You may take the rest of the night off,” Bunkowski rumbled, circling around in back of the thin, balding man and smashing a bottomfist to the gleaming pate. As the chief of staff of Delta General fell forward, Chaingang grabbed the man with his left hand and sawed through the carotids with the right, then cleaned the massive fighting Bowie on the doctor as a crimson pool spread.

With the big blade tucked away out of sight, he waddled unerringly toward the elevators, having been briefed on the layout of the hospital, and on Dr. Royal's room location, by the head man himself.

Chaingang was in a positively radiant mood. He was leaving Turdburg, Misery, and the world looked simply delightful. If there was anything he loved, it was professional men: doctors, lawyers, chief executives, and such—but doctors foremost. He loved them. He loved to kill them. They represented monkeydom at its zenith. He loved to waste them randomly, to make their deaths as ignominious as possible. Once, in a similarly buoyant mood, he'd killed a dentist with his own floss.

Daniel's primary goal in life was to hurt the monkey people until they died, but since his own operation his focus of rage always returned to one man, Dr. Norman, who'd supervised the Walter Reed implant team. The bull's-eye on which he concentrated was the sissy in charge of the bonebreakers at Marion. He would force Norman to remove the fucking implant and then he'd ... He had to jerk his mind off the feast, he was salivating badly, drooling like a Neopolitan mastiff watching poodles at the dog show.

Seeing Chaingang up close could be a devastating experience if one weren't prepared, and the nurse on station 3 had been expecting big, not super-gigantic. She almost soiled her panties when something freaky large and rather sour-smelling suddenly towered over the desk, telling her it was Dr. Fine.

“What?” she almost shouted in panic. “Oh, yes! Dr. Fine. We're expecting y—” She was starting to get up but the huge monstrosity was telling her he knew where Royal's room was, thanking her in this booming basso profundo, waddling off down the hall as if he owned the place, the largest white coat she'd ever seen flapping open in his wake.

Had she inspected that coat closely she'd have been alarmed to discover a regular doctor's coat, size XL, split under the arms and up the center of the back, and spliced with white sheet that had been neatly glued in place. It wasn't Brooks Brothers but it got the job done.

The patient in 394 was half awake, when a mastodonsized person in a white coat, with the nametag Fine, intruded upon his thoughts.

“You must be Dr. Royal,” the stranger bellowed, an idiotic smile across his ugly countenance. “I'm Fine, and how are we this lovely evening?” He moved near the prone man, taking what appeared to be strips of cloth from his pockets.

The man started to tie strips of cloth to the sideguards of the hospital bed, as if he were preparing restraints. All of Shtolz's defense mechanisms were instantly attuned. He knew whatever this was about it was bad and he made an effort to leap from the bed, but although he was strong and in excellent condition for a man of his age, the heavyweight towering above him could not be measured by any ordinary rules of biornechanics or biokinesiology. Inhuman paws the size of bedpans forced him back in their steely grip, and he felt his wrists being imprisoned by the strips of stout cloth as he struggled.

“There, there, now, Dr. Royal, please don't excite yourself. You're going to need all your strength.” As the second wrist was being secured Shtolz decided he'd try a bloodcurdling scream, but it was as if the gigantus had read his mind. “Take two of these and call me in the morning,” Chaingang said, stuffing a couple of the strips into the man's mouth.

The scream for help came out a muffled “Nnh!"

“What's that? Oh, don't be alarmed at the precautions. I don't want you flailing around during the operation. Surely you must have had to tie the dogs and cats and little babies down before you worked on them, right? Well, old boy, same deal. Just relax, and look at the bright side,” he said, affectionately, reaching under his T-shirt and pulling out the largest knife Emil Shtolz had ever seen. The bright side of the blade glinted frighteningly.

The surroundings, the sounds of a busy hospital, the pervasive smell of Betadyne, all the ambient elements that had been so reassuring to Shtolz a moment before, were now threatening to him.

“How do you feel about discorporation, Dr. Shtolz?” The word hung in the air between them, rank and offensive as the beast's smell. “Personally, I don't see a future in it. Oh—hey! You're not Jewish, are you? Good. I only operate on Aryans."

With that, a quarter ton of punishment on the hoof raised a massive, muscled arm and chopped the top of Shtolz's head off.

Clearwater County Jail

R
aymond Meara is alone, in the jungle. Inverse perspectives shimmer and restructure, fractionating in the intense heat that crashes into him, plugging his nostrils so that he cannot breathe. He struggles to his feet and plunges through the thick foliage, breaking through to a clearing that he recognizes as the landing zone in the shadow of Monster Mountain.

A phantom rises from the Perspex and pierced steel like a heat mirage off baking macadam. It whispers to him.

“Bounty Hunter One, this is God Six Actual, do you read me, over?"

“Um. Yeah. Right. Uh, loud and clear, God. Is it really you, God? Where are you? I can't see you. Over?"

“I'm right here in the trailer, Bounty Hunter One. Come in. Door's unlocked."

It is the mobile home, sunk into the base of the mountain, roofed, reinforced, packed in a cozy, sandbagged berm. Meara opens the door.

“Come in, my boy."

“Thanks,” Ray says, entering the dark mobile home. A figure sits in the shadows waiting.

“You're just in time for breakfast,” it says, as Meara fumbles for a light switch. The smiling, decomposed remains of Dai Uy McClanahan holds out a scorched, dented skillet, proffering food. Meara gets a glimpse of black and silver, some blackened mess in the pan. “Come and get it while it's hot, boy,” the thing says to him. He realizes now that the voice is not McClanahan's, but belongs to the wall-size monster who comes out of the shadows behind the corpse. Chaingang!

“Brains and eggs!” Meara's own scream is his alarm clock.

“Hey, Ray,” the turnkey sang out cheerfully through the bars. “You sleep good in our hotel?” He was unlocking the cell.

“Like a fuckin’ top,” Meara said, a sack of screaming nerve ends and lousy luck.

“Well, that's good,” he was holding the cell door open, “but looks like you're outta here."

“Huh?” Meara was on his feet.

“Come on, let's go. You're going home, man."

What the fuck? Meara was still sleep goofy, but he moved out. “Say what?” he asked, softly, but swallowed the question so as not to jinx the spell.

He had to go through the formalities of checking out of Heartbreak Hotel, but within minutes he was blinking in the bright sunlight, listening to his young lawyer run it down for him.

“—the book alleges that Doc Royal had been a Nazi, or so they're saying. We'll have to have our own translation made of it but that will come later. You'll still have to stand trial for the shooting but I doubt if there's going to be much of a climate for prosecuting or punishing you.” Ray heard the word justifiable for maybe the fifth time. “Royal was killed last night. Decapitated in his hospital room.” Meara tried to assimilate the information. “So I guess they figure—” Perhaps he read the absence of understanding in Meara's eyes. Stephen Ellis took Meara to his truck.

The young attorney told Meara what he'd heard about Royal's murder.

“There was a witness who saw the killer. He also killed and mutilated the chief of staff of Delta General. Big, fat guy, she said, supposedly a giant. They think it's the serial killer who may have been responsible for some of these random murders around here."

Meara shivered.

“Sorry. I shouldn't be talking so much. I can imagine how you must feel, between the pneumonia and what you went through back there,” Ellis said.

Ray was in bad shape, true enough, with losing Sharon by far the worst of it, but that wasn't why he shivered. It was what he knew that he could never talk about, his all-too-intimate knowledge of Dr. Bunkowski, the pioneer in organ surgery without anesthetics.

Bayou Ridge

T
he water was not in the house yet. Maybe six to seven inches away from overflowing the top step. He'd come right up the back drain ditch through the middle of his beans and tied the boat to his doorknob, an odd feeling. This morning he looked out, trying to see how much it had pushed in, but he couldn't tell. The sun off the water was blindingly bright.

He looked around, trying to decide if any of his belongings were worth saving. Perfectly decent appliances and furniture would be ruined. He'd think about it. Study on it. Probably have to move the stuff out in the next twenty-four hours if he was going to do it at all. More rain in sight.

If the river pushed on in, at the very least it would fill the house with mud and crap when it finally went down. He'd cleaned mud out of a place once before. You couldn't hardly live in a place after the water got it bad. Be a damn shame. It was a well-made old house. Oh, well, he shrugged. Whatever was meant to be.

The ground would be there when the water went away. He'd still have the farm. That was something.

He was sitting in the living room with a drink, all the windows open, looking out at what was his private lake now, when he saw the tiny speck come through the willows by the Southeast Mark Road Bridge. He watched the speck become a boat with three men wearing hunting clothes, cammo jackets, and caps. He saw a couple of guns, it looked like.

Ray was in the door as they putted up the ditch in a big, ritzy fiberglass job. It was the Jarrico brothers and Doug Seifer.

“Hey."

“Hey,” Meara said.

“You about to drown?” Seifer asked.

“Pretty close. You boys huntin'?"

“Yeah,” one of the brothers said. “This morning."

“I'll be back in a minute,” Doug said, scrambling up on the prow of Meara's boat and from there to the steps. They went inside.

“Welcome home."

“Thanks."

“I got this dude owes me,” Seifer said, cryptically, taking something out of his pocket and handing it to Meara. “Check it out.” It was a photocopy of a legal-looking document, like a property abstract. Meara read the heading. I 48-99 Clearwater County Survey/C1. Trench “N” R-25-26-E.

Ray immediately recognized what it was. Thirty-six squares and rectangles split by a black and white dotted highway line that was the set-back levee road, with a blue element to the south and east, in a familiar configuration. Each one of the rectilinear stairstep plots was some farmer's ground.

“You're there,” Doug pointed, unnecessarily. “You're Number One."

“Yeah?"

“Guy was working for Milas."

“Milas Kehoe?"

“Yeah. That's from an abstract. He had a geological survey run on your property a long time ago. Over at the flat and down in your woods. Came in the back way and took samples. When you was in jail, he brought a crew in on a pontoon boat. Came right up into your back woods and sunk a test drill. I reckon you're sittin’ on some oil."

“Oil,” Meara repeated.

“They had Sandy ridin’ shotgun, too, way I hear it."

“SanDiego?"

“Yeah,” Seifer said. Meara watched his big jaw muscles tighten around a smile. “I knew you'd enjoy that. Anyway, Kehoe figured you'd do some time for Royal. He was fixin’ to buy this. He hired the skinheads and Sandy to come in on the thing against you. Hear tell, he's rightly ripped.” They both laughed.

“Way she goes,” Meara said.

“You could probably sue that shoat and who knows what? Win a box full of money or somethin'."

“I think I've had my share of tryin’ to get even, Doug, ya know?"

“I hear you there. Anyway, thought you'd want to know. Better sink a well down in them woods, man."

“Thanks."

“Oh, here.” He handed Meara ten folded twenty-dollar bills. “These won't bounce. Sorry it took so long."

“Hey, no big deal."

“If you want to do anything about our friend,” Seifer drooped his eyelids and raised his shoulders, “I'm willing to throw in with you."

“Nah.” He shook his head. “Revenge just doesn't cut it. I finally learned that the hard way, Doug."

“Okay.” Seifer started for the door.

“But thanks, pard. You've been a good friend,” Meara said. Seifer got back in the boat and they pushed off toward the drainage ditch, the motor loud over the expanse of water.