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  Soon she was going back on Sunday nights with him, and then they'd go to the Wednesday-night Bible studies, and before long they were regulars at the church socials, picnics, pot-luck suppers, fellowship classes, and she had given herself over to the Lord again. After a few months she got up in front of the congregation and confessed that she'd sinned and she asked the Lord to allow her to rededicate herself to Jesus. That evening Ed had proposed to her.

  What Ed lacked in imagination he made up for in intensity. Sex with Ed was what she was sure God had meant for it to be, a warm and honest coupling between marriage partners. She appreciated the biological beauty of the act as a release but neither she nor her husband had been particularly preoccupied with it. Physiologically, it had assumed no more import in their lives than any other bodily function.

  Once he had told her, "You know what I like about our love life?"

  "Everything, I hope," she'd murmured to him with a smile.

  That's right. Everything. But what I like about it most is you. Doing this with somebody else"—he shook his head—"it just wouldn't matter"

  "I feel like that too about you," she'd said, kissing him. Ed had made her a hot, loving, and complete woman. But now she had closed the door on that part of her life.

  She found some old cologne in an unfamiliar bottle and tipped it to a finger, sniffing and saying aloud, "Arpege," to the mirror. She had cleaned out the freezer, gifting a next door neighbor with all manner of perfectly edible garden goodies, catfish Ed had cleaned, some unknown tinfoil-wrapped and unmarked leftover surprises, all of which the lady surreptitiously dumped in the garbage. She headed for the silver, then changed her mind and broke out the Easy-Off and cleaned the oven until it sparkled.

  She made a shopping list, cut coupons, prepared a cup of decaffeinated coffee, and drank a third of it. Wrote a month-overdue thank-you note to someone she didn't know, took a long, hot bath, put on her best underwear, a long, suede skirt with high-heeled, leather boots, a blouse with a suede vest, and golden hoop earrings. Looked at herself, undressed, put on a ragged sweatshirt and her oldest blue jeans, threw out a piece of bric-a-brac that she was tired of dusting, retrieved it in a small rush of guilt, and decided she was spinning her wheels and quit for the day.

  She chewed something, grateful for the sound of eight-year-old chatter nearby, a lovely thing to hear, now audible only subconsciously like the sonorous murmur from the TV set with the volume turned not quite all the way down in the living room, and she struggled inwardly to keep from thinking any depressing thoughts. None of this feeling sorry for yourself, missy, she thought, as she remembered thinking while she cooked dinner tonight that her life's wholeness had somehow drained like the liquid from a broken glass.

  Daniel Edward Flowers Bunkowksi

  He has had extremely violent sexual fantasies for as long as he has memory. Because of his unique childhood they predate puberty. He fantasized in pitch-black, locked closets, inside a stifling metal box, chained under a filthy homemade bed, in a cell called the hole, in a thousand places, on death row in The Max, in The Nam on a hundred night patrols, on his lonely, wonderful one-man ambushes, on foot, in cars, in countless hiding places. He has the gifts of patience and stillness, and in his long, still waiting times he fantasizes unspeakable things.

  The tape deck in the stolen car is blasting the bridge from Manhattan Transfer's "Route 66" and he does not bother to turn it down. Smiling broadly, he thinks how unusual and enjoyable it might be to rape and kill an entire group. Pondering the difficulties as a theoretical challenge, he diagrams the acquisition of the necessary intelligence, thinking how easy it would be for him to insert himself into their lives just long enough to take them.

  He is capable of monstrous acts. He kills easily, effortlessly, with total pleasure. The place he is cruising through is on the outskirts of a small town in southern Illinois, "downstate" as they say there. The place is called Bluetown, a commercial error in judgment dating back to the post-Korean-fifties, when a group of desperate merchants who were watching their business desert a crumbling downtown and head toward the shopping malls, grasped at an all-blue theme as a cheap gamble. They had painted all their buildings blue and built their last-ditch hopes around an all-blue ad blitz, renaming their tiny community Bluetown, Illinois, and saturating media with blue bargains that were swept away by the onrushing tide of urban renewal and 1950s change.

  Now the CHEAP!! USED FURNITURE!! signs hang from the fading blue walls of empty storefronts in the ghostly predawn as this monster of a man, squeezed behind the wheel of a stolen Mercury Cougar, drives through the place called Bluetown. He has a sore, throbbing ankle and his gall bladder is acting up again. He weighs close to five hundred pounds and he has taken three human lives in the last forty-eight hours. The steering wheel is digging into his gut as he drives gripping the wheel in those steel fingers, thinking about how he could easily find out where Janice Siegel lives. It is nothing personal with him, just a way of passing the time. But sometimes he will allow himself to take a fantasy daydream over the line and his head will feel funny and in the bloodroar he will do bad things.

  A sixth sense tells him to control himself and concentrate and he jams a powerful index finger into the tape player's stop/eject switch spitting the cassette out. He kills the audio. He listens intently, hearing the Cougar's tires sing on the wet pavement, and the sixth sense nudges him again. Quickly, with surprisingly fast movements for such an enormous hulk, he reacts to the nudge and wheels the car into a dark parking lot next to a store, braking, killing the engine and lights, scrunching down out of sight on the passenger side, driving down the street one moment, now hiding in the shadows the next, operating on those unerring vibes.

  He waits. Listening to the motor cool. Listening for what? A passing prowl car perhaps. He waits there in the dark shadows of a Bluetown parking lot. He waits for a long time listening and absorbing. Waiting. He shifts his weight and with a groan of springs sits up again and starts the car, pulling back out into the streets of Bluetown.

  Out on his spooky, one-man night patrols in The Nam he would concentrate fiercely on preparation. He, the one they called CHAINGANG, was never caught unprepared. He believed in the Soviet dictum "plan hard, fight easy." Except that he planned hard and fought hard and by God if he fought you at all, this mountain of kill fury, you were going to have to—as the saying went—gut up and buckle for your dust. When he focused on a target with his special brand of laser-keen concentration and meticulous preparation, he was a remarkable adversary.

  Each time he went out beyond the perimeter, whatever that might be, sprawling firebase or ragtag NDP, he itemized everything in his enormous ruck mentally. He carried a backbreaking storehouse neither you nor I could budge, in which would be packed an orderly array of every life-sustaining necessity from det cord to his precious freeze-dried "long rats," the goodies that let him have the slack to run free, untethered to Resupply and the idiots and amateurs who knew nothing of killing. And each time out he would painstakingly itemize each item. Not one to make mistakes, back then.

  Now, calming himself, becoming more controlled as he winds through the ghost of some long-lost businessman's folly with the funky and meaningless name Bluetown, squeezed behind the wheel of a hot Merc Cougar, he begins acting more in character. Itemizing automatically, he remembers the plates that he took last night in the suburbs when he dumped the woman's tiresome Datsun. He decides which pair he will change to as he smiles over the kill last night, his thoroughly enjoyable suffocation of the salesman whose vehicle he now drives.

  Wrenching his mind back to the current problem at hand, he brakes, pulling the Cougar over to the curb beside an abandoned gypsy storefront with the peeling legend USED RNITURE, and reconsidering, coasts into a narrow alley between the stores. With great effort he propels his bulk out from behind the wheel, and getting out of the car with a massive creaking of springs, he takes a small oil can and tool bag from his duffel and heads to the rear of the M
erc.

  He selects the most appropriate of the plates (he has memorized the current plate prefix and number code for all fifty states), gives the oil can a few squirts, and with bolts soaking briefly contemplates his current options. He then begins to unscrew the woman's rusted license plate bolts from out of the plates, and he substitutes a fresh tag.

  Completing that task, he then bends the plates into an unrecognizable metal accordion and locks them back in the trunk to be pitched into the next creek he crosses. He will repaint the vehicle tomorrow if circumstances permit, and the words MASKING TAPE, and NEWSPAPERS, are mentally added to a subconscious list of want items he has filed away, his shopping list. He slams his humongous body behind the wheel again and takes off, leaving the desolate streets as he found them, dead and blue.

  Out on the highway again he drives carefully, but with the rapid flow of dawn highway traffic, keeping it as close to sixty as the rest of the rapidly speeding cars and trucks will permit, trying to stay within a string of vehicles as much as he can without going to extremes of speed. At this hour a car moving at the legal fifty-five would probably be as conspicuous as one doing ninety, so he lets his heavy foot press the accelerator a little closer to the floor.

  Driving on one level, planning on another, lucid, coolly introspective, he methodically dissects, probes, examines—all with a cold objectivity unusual in even the extreme precognates. Rocking down the highway, crammed into his borrowed wheels, listening to the endless hum of the white line, the hypnotic white that never ends, humming between the wheels as he excogitates.

  He knows, just as he always knew in Vietnam, in prisons of one kind or another, exactly the degree of danger to which he's exposed himself. Analyzing his recent carelessness and general ineptitude, he intuitively can feel himself being pulled down into a viscid pit of jeopardy that is taking him under like quicksand.

  Three hours and ten minutes later he's whipping the Mercury down off a blacktopped levee access and beside an old, railless wooden bridge over an apparently deep drainage ditch, crashing through the chained gate that sports a rusty, CLOSED—DO NOT ENTER warning sign, and slamming to a stop in a cloud of sandy dust. Large, prominently placed admonitions nailed to ancient oaks and cottonwoods advise NO TRESPASSING, as they oxidize in the moist, cool shadows.

  He limps back to the demolished gate, covering his tracks with a leafy tree limb, and with hard-eyed concentration does his best to right the gate again, restoring it to some semblance of its original state of disrepair. The broken chain and padlock lie in the nearby grass and he hefts the chain, liking the weight of it, thinking how easily he could put a human to sleep with it, but he repositions the chain back on the broken gate, the lock still attached and dangling from one end.

  He fastens the whole thing to the gate with a couple of lengths of rusting fence wire and returns to the car. Years of experience have taken over and he moves now as he did on night jungle stalks, giving himself to animal instinct, each decision viscerally made, choices assessed and arrived at instinctively, deeply controlled, as he operates on some alien wavelength, responding to vibes, following the silent drum of the hunter and hunted.

  The Mercury bounces along the overgrown pathway that now is beginning to buffet the underside of the chassis with hard stubble that feels as tough as corn stalks. He perseveres, roaring on undaunted through he tall, wet weeds, being forced to slow finally as the pathway becomes more and more difficult to follow as it winds its way down around the levee and heads toward the nearby river.

  Now running parallel to the riverbank the path such as it was all but disappears, and the stolen car is splashing through even taller wet weeds, and then actually running in water, almost to the floorboards in the lower spots; and still he keeps going. He is driving through very deep water now, driving as he always does by following a secret magnetic pole, some inner compass, going with the flow, barely moving as water sloshes back over the chrome grillwork and threatens to drown out the motor.

  Yet Daniel Bunkowski keeps on straight ahead, keeps pushing it, keeps moving, driving without apprehension, quite calm in fact, oblivious to the rising water. And then, sure enough, the vehicle is back on higher ground and the windshield-high weeds part as he drives up beside a trio of dilapidated summer cottages that sit waterlogged alongside the riverbank in an overgrown fringe of tall watergrass.

  He senses that he is alone here, and his ability to detect the presence of other human life is quite uncanny, having kept him alive in Southeast Asia time and time again. He stops the vehicle and quickly prepares a crude camouflage of weeds and the huge, folded cammie-cover he carries in his ever-present duffel bag. He is deciding how he will set his people traps, and at this he has no equal. He is the absolute master of the final surprise.

  He imagines, reasons, PRECOGNATES how they will come as he looks down the trail toward the winding levee road and the wooden bridge. He makes the estimates in his computerlike mind. How long he has before they find him. Not long. How many will come. Many. How they will make their play. Several clear options. He is in harmony with his physical being, and at one with the terrain as he meticulously rigs the traps that begin alongside the camouflaged Mercury Cougar.

  One of the elements that makes Bunkowski such an inordinately dangerous killer species is his automatic pilot light. It is on again now, and as he finishes rigging his people traps he automatically and subconsciously begins retracing his route of the past twenty-four hours, stealing the plates, the exit out of the blue ghost town, the squirting of the oil on the bolts that held the license plates, the manner in which he scanned the street, positions of dead bodies, finger-and footprints, residue of skin under fingernails, microscopic traces of fabric, the most minute forensics feed into his on-line terminal.

  Each minute detail is viewed under the magnifier of his trenchant analysis: credit cards, blood trails, parking spaces, it all floods back across his mental viewscreen as he sets his booby traps. In his mind he is also Killing again, coldly now, on automatic pilot, taking each one down as he feels the snap and crunch of bone, the gasps of asphyxiation, the final signs of ebbing life. He is driving again, mentally winding down the hillside, breaking the gate, wiring it back together, retracing each moment of the past day and night, relentlessly probing, dissecting, looking for the forgotten mistakes, the tiny flaws, the hidden tripwires.

  He finishes and selects one of the cabins where he will make his hideout. He is light on his feet like a fat man dancing, a five-hundred-pound ballet star, easing toward the steps with grace and agility, an incongruous daintiness—if that's the word—to his precise movements as he cautiously negotiates the rotting steps leading up to one of the tar-paper shanties. Watching him you might see him as an oafish, dancing grizzly, smiling blimp of a man, grinning clown daintily stepping on the rotten boards.

  The decrepit cabins stand, somewhat precariously, on a random system of stiltlike creosoted poles sunk into concrete and mired in the muddy silt. The support poles are fairly sound but the cabins are falling apart and he must remember to be very careful where he walks. He goes up the side of the steps, with that intensity of concentration that so often marks his actions, missing nothing, sensors on full scan, alert for any noise, scent, or movement.

  He pops the lock with no effort and opens the swollen screen door, then jimmies open the wooden front door and is hit by an incredible foulness of rotting fish smell and stuffiness. The odor is palpable and vomitous. He hurriedly snaps the locks on all the shutters and props them open with the poles he finds scattered about the cabin. The dead fish aroma is overpowering, but it triggers a memory of a kill in Vietnam and he finds himself grinning from ear to ear remembering one night's work with nostalgic pleasure. He loved killing the little people. He smiles at the pleasant memory of the little man he bled dry that night.

  With all the shutters up and a gentle breeze blowing through the cabin the stuffiness airs out sufficiently so that he can stand to finally come back inside, and he reenters the
cabin, a small, crude affair of three simple rooms. A sleeping area which is closed off by a filthy curtain, and a larger main room with a table and a few chairs, adjoined by a kitchenette of sorts. The tiny cooking area contains only a sink with a hand pump, and an empty icebox that stands under some shelves.

  He sets his big sack and duffel down and begins lining up his goodies on the shelf. His milk jug filled with fresh water. A sack of apples. Canned meats, chili, beef stew, canned vegetables, Spam, a quart of Wild Turkey which he will drink a little later. He will take it straight and at room temperature, polishing it off in an hour or so, in order to go to sleep with just the suggestion of a buzz. He can and does drink phenomenal amounts of booze without becoming intoxicated.

  He opens up a can of Vienna Sausages and eats a handful in a single bite, washing them down with a couple of quarts of water. He makes the only noise or sound he has made since arriving, a huge, expansive, resounding, thunderclap of a belch that shatters the silence like the rumbling blast of a foghorn.

  "BBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" Followed by a contented "Ahhhhh," and an expulsion of halitotic air.

  The cabin's interior is that of a typical deserted fishing shack. A bed, a table, three small chairs, a folding cot, a folding chair, a coal-oil lantern that is about empty, a couple of fishing poles, and a cheap rod and reel, nothing much of interest. A banged-up tackle box sits in one corner with a small boat paddle made from a broken oar. There are a few grimy paperbacks and newspapers scattered around the place. No blankets, towels, nothing of a homey nature, indicating the cabin had not seen any use for some time.

  He thinks the place smells as if it had not been opened for several months. The fish smell is still extremely strong and he pours a large glass full of whiskey and drinks it down in two gulps, shuddering as he swallows each time. He doesn't like the taste of whiskey, only the way it warms him inside when it hits. He wishes for ice. He wishes he could wash.