CHAPTER 4

 

Slocum drove away from the school and the carnage he’d wreaked there. The seemingly lifeless form of a seven year-old girl bounced on the passenger seat as he gained speed.

He wiped snot and blood from his nose. He knew it was broken by the shooting pain he experienced when his forearm brushed the tip. There were seeping cuts over both eyebrows and his eyes were beginning to swell. Slocum was no stranger to pain, and willed the rising tide of hurt from the front of his mind into one of its many dark recesses.

Slocum took a direct route to the viaduct which spanned the Des Moines River. He eased the station wagon off the street and onto an unpaved road near the railroad tracks, out of public view.

Slocum pressed a finger none too gently against the neck of the girl. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse weak, but she was alive. Slocum breathed a sigh of relief.

It was too early for death.

He drove the station wagon directly under one of the huge concrete pylons that formed the bridge’s legs. Parked near the wall was a beat-up Dodge pick-up truck. It was an inconspicuous vehicle in a part of the country where people made their living from one facet of agriculture or another.

Slocum got out of the Ford pulling the girl towards him across the seat by her legs. A faint groan emerged from the child’s lips. He took her roughly in his arms and carried her to the truck, opening the door with his elbow. He placed the semi-conscious child on the passenger seat as he’d done in the station wagon. Reaching past her and onto the truck’s floor, he grabbed a canvas tarpaulin and completely covered the inert girl. The key was already in the Dodge’s ignition, and a moment later he was pulling out of the gravel lot and back onto the street.

He shifted through the Dodge’s gears and picked up speed. He struggled out of the faded green army jacket and set it aside. Under it he wore a sweat-stained shirt, its ragged sleeves rolled up past thick, muscular forearms. A squatting bulldog wearing a campaign hat and a snarl sat above the letters USMC, tattooed on his right forearm. Slocum shrugged into a plaid work-shirt, pulling the collar up. He added a John Deere baseball cap in green and yellow, and wiped the blood from his face with a grease-stained rag. He finished by tucking his pistol into his waistband.

He was almost out of town. He passed the minimart and the First Presbyterian Church with its pointed roof. He reached over and removed the tarp from the girl. An ugly bruise was forming along the child’s jawline where he’d silenced her frantic struggling.

Slocum’s breathing got irregular for the second time that morning. His vision started to narrow, and within the confines of the warm cab of the Dodge he could smell the acrid scent where the little girl had urinated on herself.

The scent of urine.

He involuntarily rocked back and forth. Whining sounds emanated from his mouth. His eyes closed, and he remembered how his own urine smelled when his father struck him with the hickory switch. The smell of urine also brought back the sound and thunder of mortar rounds slamming into the earth, and the screams of the dying. He breathed deeply the familiar musk and became lost in a maelstrom of stark, hell-wrought images.

The crunch of gravel and the angry blare of a horn snapped him back to reality. The smell of urine vanished as he opened his eyes and straightened the steering wheel.

He’d faded again. The truck edged over the center divider, narrowly missing another oncoming pick-up truck. Slocum steadied his hands on the wheel. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs from his mind.

He squeezed a Pall Mall from a wrinkled pack on the dash and lit it with a worn Zippo lighter extracted from a hip pocket. On one side of the Zippo was engraved an eagle, globe and anchor.