Chaingang

He sensed a rumbling and watched a big, loaded eighteen-wheeler thunder by, a real blacktop-buster, probably too heavy for the scales and staying on the back roads away from the ICC. Something—the trucker perhaps—galvanized him into action. The access road was not safe. He started the car and pulled back onto the road, heading deeper into the boonies.

In his mind he replayed the look of the gravel road where he stepped down into a ditch and found the dry culvert. The markings of the handy grain silos and the dump sites stirred another vista. He visualized the hidden pond. Reached for the remembered off-kilter hints of unseen observers.

It would be wrong to say that he felt the eyes of watchers the way he had in the hole at Marion. He perceived premonitions with his “sixth sense"; received inexplicable sensations; was attuned to warning vibes. Precognated.

Never had he felt a stronger indication of hidden manipulators. They were everywhere, and yet he could not see them, and he was THE VERY BEST AT SPOTTING WATCHERS. Why hadn't he seen them? They couldn't be present in such numbers and all be that good.

In that flash of understanding, he knew why. He knew. He floored the accelerator and sped down the blacktop, determined, with every ounce of his powerful mind on full, focused concentration. Inside his head he was analyzing possibilities, painting the Buick, substituting plates with the tags from a junkyard rust-bucket whose plates would allow him a bit of prefix-coded poetic license. Threat assessment and tin snips, evasion techniques and application of masking tape—dozens of disparate thoughts passed through his mind.

He pulled off the blacktop onto another access road, but this time it was near a wooded area that began with a grove of small trees, and became a thick, overgrown tree line. More dense woods appeared to border the back of the field, which was visible in the distance.

From the second he pulled onto the road, he felt safer, and he eased up on the gas pedal. They were up there. That's why he'd not scoped them out—the watchers. A sky eye of some kind. They were probably keeping track of him via aerial photography—he imagined what the state-of-the-art capabilities probably were. They'd known exactly where he was from the moment they shoved him off that truck in a deserted bean field, and they gave him weapons!

He had been placed here for a reason, of course. But what? Would the key be in the ones who had been cruel to animals? Hardly. Was he a lab experiment? They were cold enough. No. What, then? He wished for the presence of his sissy friend, Dr. Norman. Oh, the pleasant time Daniel would have had, extracting the man's knowledge and heart, in that order.

It was of no consequence. First things first, he thought, bringing the sharpness of his mind back to the matters at hand. He must find shelter and concealment.

He swung around the tree line, driving through an overgrown lane of mud ruts, and bounced along through open pasture, going much slower now, as he kept to the extreme right and the overhanging protection of the big trees.

Finally he reached the end of the path. He was almost at the far end of a second field, this one in obvious disuse. He could take the vehicle no farther—not without tearing out the bottom of it. He pulled off the pathway sharply, a ridiculous thing to do, surely, driving into tall weeds at the edge of the woods.

But whatever it was that guided him had served him well again. He stopped the car and got out. He was bracketed on all sides by thick woods, and could see almost no sky overhead because of the limbs of the huge oaks around the car. He'd sensed the one place there was a small opening in the trees and driven through it.

He could hear traffic noises in the distance and knew precisely where he was, as always, in relation to his map and the steps of his journey to this point. He was due east of Waterton, and quite close to Briarwood's main drag, but in woods that were inaccessible from any direction other than the one he'd just come.

Quickly he took an antipersonnel mine and “closed the back door,” also stringing some wire and setting out a pair of M49-A1 trip flares, which would illuminate any unwanted sneaker-peekers who chose to attempt penetration of his nighttime defensive perimeter. Cross his turf and fifty-thousand-candlepower illums would spotlight you for the minute or so necessary to dispose of you. A two-pound pressure or a cut of the wire would fire the devices, and you would be very, very sorry you had come to call.

He removed his belongings from the car and covered everything in a car-size cammoed bush-net he would use later, after the car was painted, and—mindful of the dry cold—began to cut sheets of the brown paper to mask off the windows and grillwork. Then he saw the edge of a concrete blockhouse, and the thrill of the find shivered through him.