Ring all the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
     --Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

As Dr Emil Skoda takes the off-ramp, the landscape around him starts
peeling away on either side in a speed-flattened montage of
badly-organized fields and ragged foliage: Heartland America by God,
right on down to its rusty heaps of farm machinery, cheapjack
aluminum-roofed houses and intermittent crappy plastic cereal-box-prize
roadside monuments. And even out here, he still can't escape the
beyond-embarassing Fourth of July bullshit he fled New York early to
specifically avoid; if any of these intersections calling themselves
towns contained enough streets to HAVE corners, he's sure he'd find
local diehard "patriots" sporting red, white and blue cardboard top
hats, Statue of Liberty tiaras and star-spangled suspenders on each and
every one.
     He snorts through his nose, readjusting the volume on his car
stereo. Tore out of the hospital parking lot two days ago with the
soundtrack for KANSAS CITY blasting, no word left with anyone; Gudrun
has the kids, like usual, and he has a few years' worth of racked-up
vacation time he's never really thought to take advantage of. Before.
     And if the D.A.'s office needs him for something, in the
meanwhile...well, they can just go find themselves another expert
witness to pick on, for a change. Look up Elizabeth Olivet again, and
see how *her* newly bleeding heart and heavily pregnant butt like it
back in the patented Jack McCoy hot seat. No patient information, no
standard examination time; just make like you can read the suspect's
MIND, or something, then take the tongue-lashing from Adam Schiff for
me, when it turns out none of it's actually *applicable*...
     Looking back, he can't really say which particular straw qualifies
as the final one, though Schiff calling him a phrenologist is definitely
up there. Or McCoy himself, doing the ruffled-eyebrow slow burn behind
the boss's back--ostentatiously overt in his righteous disappointment
that Emil hadn't exactly had his monster-radar online back when they
first threw him the latest serial killer's little blonde girlfriend,
especially now she'd turned out to be far more collaborator than
codependent.
     Well, and gee, Jack...who was it told you psychiatry was an exact
science? Exactly?
     (Not ME, that's for sure.)
     Which I guess means you maybe must've simply assumed it, you *ass*,
just like--
     (--oh, SO much else.)
     Running on empty, running on fumes--still FUMING, two whole days
into this impromptu return to his well-concealed roots. Practically
growling commentary to himself over the too-high music, as the scenery
whips by in flashbulb freeze-frames: Clumps of weeds and briar, overcast
peameal sky. One poplar exploding upright by the back door of some
ricketty barn, black against the dipping sun. Two barely-teenaged girls
selling home-made fireworks by the side of the road, right where the
asphalt turns to gravel...
     ...and there, a little ways on--a man, trudging slow against the
wind with his jacket collar up and his hands dug deep in his pockets,
broad shoulders braced against the growing probability of yet more
unseasonable rain. He's clip-haired and foursquare; not exactly tall and
not exactly *fat*, though he does project a definite aura of size,
weight, bulk. Looks lost. Doesn't look happy about it.
     Doesn't strike Emil--on closer examination--like the kind of guy
you really want to be around when he's not happy, either.
     But screw it. The wind is rising, that jacket's thin enough to
ripple and flap when he moves, and those boots were NOT made for
walking--
     (not *this* far, anyway)
     Not to mention, more importantly, that Emil is pretty much sick of
his own rotten company, at this point. Passenger'd be a welcome change
of pace, assuming he doesn't turn out to be some kinda...escaped
prisoner, or something.
     Emil snorts again, the thought almost drawing a smile: Huh, yeah.
     (Like THAT's likely.)

***

Forty-eight breathtaking hours plus of running, walking, hitching, and
this guy with the fruity beret and the pimpy sideburns has to be the
first REAL white man Vern Schillinger's seen up close since the walls of
Oswald State Correctional first started to come down around his ears.
Took a nigger tourist to get him to the next town (radio blasting rap,
instead of the news) and a Hispanic-of-some-derivation truck-driver to
get him to the next state, while the third ride seemed white enough
'till Vern spotted a "Temple Ben-Adam" parking sticker on the back
window; God DAMN, he hates getting fooled like that. Had to beat the
slick Jew fuck down at the next truck-stop and confiscate all the useful
parts of his wallet--cash, condoms, sympathy-courting family
pictures--just to wash the taste of it from his mental mouth.
     But it was well worth the potential contagion, all of it, to
finally put even one mile...or a hundred, or a hundred
thousand...between himself and Oz.
     Minutes later, Vern stood at a sink in the men's room of a local
strip-mall, washing out that suppurating human bite on his forearm from
where he'd impulsively grabbed for Tobias Beecher's hair as the
mess-hall lights went out, and gotten the bitch's too-sharp teeth
instead--
     (yet *again*)
     A hiss, a SNAP, a pain-filled roar--then Chris Keller elbowing in,
pulling his precious wittle Toby-baby back into a laughably protective
embrace as the rioting human tide swept Vern back out of reach. Last
thing he'd heard as a "guest" of the state had been Beecher howling with
delight, sending his usual demented mantra high above the earthquake's
rumble, the walls' crack and the banshee shriek made by five floors of
contact doors decompressing simultaneously: *Aw, hell YEAHHHH,
motherFUCKER!*
     (Sieg heil, baby!)
     Yeah: Sieg fuckin' *heil*.
     The ensuing rush for freedom broke whole gangs apart at the seams,
member by member: Robson went south, kicking and cursing--hey, shit,
wait UP--while the current took Vern in the exact opposite direction,
barely giving him enough time to register which hacks were on point,
which gun-towers still standing, exactly *where* that most obvious rift
in the yard fence fronted onto. He vaguely remembered the O'Reilly
brothers clearing the way, with Cyril the retard--already bleeding from
a gashed-open forearm--holding the last of the razor-wire open for Ryan
to snake through; behind them, Adebisi was going blow for blow with that
stone dyke freak C.O. Howell and getting about as good as he gave, as
Pancamo and the fat fag who'd emcee'd last year's boxing matches shoved
a stolen laundry-cart through the gap.
     And that crowd-wide wave of sudden, hysterical NEED running wild
all through him, part by part by part. Those words in his blood, like a
pulse: Gotta get damn well *out* this time, Vernon, no matter WHAT it
ends up costing. Right here, right or wrong, right--fuckin'--
     --*NOW.*
     Vern slathered a palmfull of soft pink soap into his wound, swore
long and loudly against the resultant sting, then tamped the whole thing
down with a pad of paper towel and a torn-off section of his own
shirt-tail. Telling himself, impatiently:
     *Well, and here you are--so who gives a runny shit about Beecher
now, anyway? Or Keller, either?*
     You're out and gone, they're...wherever. Got your own fish to fry,
buddy--
     (SOMEwhere)
     Briefly, Vern wished his former prag the joy of...his *other*
former prag; shit, Keller could have the educated little fuck-bitch.
Just one more side-benefit of escape, when you thought about it: In a
best-case scenario, he'd probably never have to see Beecher again, one
way or another--
     (Never.)
     *Hrrarrr.*
     'Cause there it was, yet again. That same nameless *something* he'd
spent the last four years feeling his way 'round, whenever the endlessly
back-bouncing Beech-ball hove into sight. That same vivid jock-itch
spark, adding a sombre jolt to the realization; three years of looping,
Beecher-centric plans, all those dreams and lists, those epic plans of
reconquest and revenge all swept down the drain in one brief
micro-minute--just as all those unexpected *options* suddenly opened up,
with none of the old gang left (even the ones you usually barely
tolerated) to share them with.
     One more severance, bone-snap-quick. Another...
     (Andy-like)
     ...amputation.
     It'd cut the guts out of him, just for a second. Like someone'd
pulled his batteries when he wasn't looking; grabbed the map and run,
leaving him stranded under an unfamilar sky. Scratching his head like an
idiot in the middle of downtown Nowheresville, USA, and struggling to
remember just exactly what--the FUCK--came next.
     And if it was Oz, he *would* know. But out here, where you seemed
to need a brand new strategy for every fresh interaction, all the OLD
instincts went straight out the window. No back-up to keep him safe, no
one to look good--or weak--in front of; nothing he'd used over the last
four-to-seven (with ten more on top, for bad behavior) that applied.
Here he was, *free* at fuckin' last, but the face he saw peering
sullenly back at him looked less victorious or gleeful than sunken,
bruised, shucked of all normal signifiers. Stripped down to lumpy,
prison-pale skin over rapidly aging bone, all scrubbed and clean and
somehow...
     (naked)
     ...unnatural.
     But, then again--when there was nobody left around worth holdin'
the game face FOR, anymore...maybe that was when you realized what you'd
spent years thinking was only "natural" might have always been anything
*but*.
     So: New rules and regs to keep by, new plans to plan out, in order
to make the most of his time in this strange new/old world. Having
always been--well, not exactly *content* to just serve his time and go,
but it'd worked pretty good as a basic fall-back policy, thus far--Vern
knew shit-all point nothing about post-jailbreak protocol, not even
who'd be likely to be handling the investigation: McManus and Glynn in
conjunction with local cops, the FBI, the damn U.S. Marshalls?
     He'd made himself a fugitive, plain and simple; might already have
dogs and fleets or helicopters after him, his name and face on every TV
broadcast or newspaper front page, roadblocks checkin' truck-backs for
traces of him from here to Honolulu. And though his record alone
disqualified Vernon K. Schillinger from being considered "most dangerous
offender" on this particular list of escapees, Oz WAS max security,
which always tended to set the boys (and girls) in blue's collective
teeth on edge. Besides which, simple *facts*'d certainly never been
enough to stop any uniform with a badge and an attitude from just
shooting cons on the run cold before, under similar circumstances.
     He needed somewhere to hole up, some kind of cover; needed to be
somebody new for long enough to figure out where he was GOING, at least,
if nothing else. Sort of thing blood usually did best for, all told--
     --but then again, these days, as Vern was also--painfully--aware...

     ...he was almost out of family.
     Last time the Old Man'd deigned to throw a few fresh scraps of
Schillinger-related information Vern's way, one of the things he'd let
slip was how he thought Hank--Heinrich Junior, Vern's sole surviving son
and heir--might be hanging around upstate, along with some cow-faced
slut he'd knocked up. So that was where Vern was heading, one ride at a
time; be easier if he could just look her up in the phone-book, but
given the sorry state of most small-town shit-holes, he'd bet the girl
in question probably didn't even have a phone.
     And...yes, okay, he *did* want to play on-the-run Granpaw for a
second or two, why not? Look in, at any rate. Check to see whether or
not the kid had his--
      (or Andy's)
      --eyes.
     Outside, the sky loomed half-dark, rapidly casting over. Vern
strode down the highway-side with his bit hand shoved forearm-deep into
the pocket of his stolen jacket, toothmarks stinging like a motherhump.
Making for the horizon, and trying hard not to think about...
     ...well, anything much, he guessed...
     ...while he did it.
     After which, an hour or so later, *this* guy arrives. Pulling up on
his left as Vern turns to give him a narrow stare, only to meet eyes
pale as his own--grey-tinged, annoyingly calm under sandy no-brows.
     "What happened?"
     Automatically, the excuse he'd been practicing for the last five
miles slides straight to the tip of his tongue, smooth as key meeting
lock. "Goddamn wife took my Goddamn truck, left me here to Goddamn well
walk home. Goddamnit it."
     And: *That's right, my life's just a country 'n' western song in
the making--pretty entertaining one, too, I'm sure. 'Specially for a
high-toned, car-havin' prick with Jew York plates like yourself.*
     "That's tough." A proffered hand, grip office-worker smooth, but
surprisingly strong: "Emil Skoda."
     "...Hank. Rausch."
     "Huh, 'kay. Anywhere I can drop you, Hank?"
     Vern shrugs. "Anywhere's got a phone. 'Less that's gonna be some
kinda...problem for you."
     Leaving it lie, then, without further elaboration. Waiting for the
bait to take. And watching as the guy narrowed his own eyes, surprised
to see a certain unexpected--but obviously native--shrewdness flicker
behind those level pupils: Oh, uh *huh*.
     A twinge of warning. Options being weighed, decisions made--yeah,
c'mon, buddy. Play samaritan, 'till dumpin' my ass at the next stop
suits you better. I mean...worst comes to worst, you can probably take
me, right? Right?
     (Riiiight.)
     The guy shrugs himself, finally--a weirdly familiar gesture, though
Vern can't quite think how. "Can't see how it would be."
     And sits back, popping the lock on the passenger-side door. Telling
him to--
     "--hop in."

***
End Part One