“That guy’s a clown?” Spotty asked. “He looks more like a goddamn juggalo.”
“Well, there’s no way we’re going to be able to fight our way through,” said Vinnie Blue Nose. “We need to find a way to sneak on board.”
“Should we take a small boat and come at it from the other side?” Spotty asked.
“Where are we going to find a boat?” Jackie asked.
Rizzo stepped forward. “Allow me.”
He took off his orange polka-dot hat to reveal a smaller hat beneath. This one was red and white, striped like a candy cane. Resting on top of the hat was a chocolate cream pie. He set it on the ground and grabbed a string dangling from the tin. When he pulled the string, the pie exploded. In an instant, it inflated to the size of a boat big enough for four.
“It’s my life raft pie,” Hats said. “You know, just in case I ever get lost at sea.”
The clowns looked at Hats. Then they looked at the inflated boat. Then they looked at Hats again. The mook wouldn’t take the dumb smile off his face.
“Good job, knucklehead,” said Spotty. “Now how are we going to get it to the water without being noticed?”
The dumb smile faded from Hats’s face. “How am I supposed to know? I don’t even know if it floats.”
They looked at the boat and saw that it was slowly deflating.
“Follow me,” Vinnie said. “I’ll get us a boat.”
Chapter 23
Vinnie Blue Nose was probably the only person Earl ever met who actually looked cool in a duck-shaped pedal boat. There were two pedal boats, each with room for four people. Vinnie and Earl took one, Hats and Jackie the other; Earl’s family would fill the empty seats. They left Captain Spotty back at the car to act as getaway driver.
“Shouldn’t there be a ladder somewhere?” Jackie asked when they got to the ship.
Vinnie scanned the hull. “We’re going to have to find another way up.”
Hats shook his head. “I swear. You guys would be lost without me.” He pulled off his red-striped hat to reveal a leopard-print hat with a peacock feather dangling off the side.
“Is that a pimp hat?” Jackie asked.
“Of course it’s a pimp hat,” said Hats. “I’ve got every kind of hat there ever was.”
Inside the hat was another pie. This one was attached to a rope and a pneumatically powered gun. Hats aimed the gun at the top of the boat. When he pulled the trigger, the pie shot into the air and splatted against a wall on deck. Hats tugged on the rope. The pie was tightly adhered to its spot.
“It’s a glue pie,” Hats said.
Vinnie grabbed hold of the rope and pulled on it. When he thought it was safe, he started to climb.
Looking back at Hats, he said, “Tie up the boats before coming up. We’ll need them if we want to get out of here in one piece.” Then he continued climbing.
Earl went up next. Then Hats. They didn’t have any difficulty until it was Jackie the Grump’s turn. The clown was so fat and had so many weapons strapped to him that he couldn’t pull himself up.
Hats looked down at him from the deck of the ship and said, “Come on, Fat Boy, we ain’t got all day. Maybe you should stay down there so you don’t sink the ship.”
The two pedal boats were floating away.
“Hey, Hats,” Vinnie said. “I thought I told you to tie up the boats.”
Hats shrugged. “What the heck was I supposed to tie them up with?”
“Maybe the end of that rope we just climbed,” Vinnie said.
“Oh yeah,” Hats said, his face lighting up. “That would’ve been a good idea.”
They looked down at Jackie. The clown was exhausted and he seemed to be sliding back down the rope.
“Wait for him,” Vinnie told Hats. “We’re going on ahead.”
“Whatever you say, Skipper.”
“Don’t get yourself seen.”
Hats just tipped his pimp hat in response.
Chapter 24
It took Hats and Jackie five minutes before they got themselves seen. Vinnie and Earl were searching the cargo hold when they heard a commotion on deck, followed by gunshots.
“Wait here, I’m going to check it out,” Vinnie said.
Earl kept going. He wasn’t going to rest until he found his wife and daughters. He could sense they were near. He didn’t know how, he could just feel it. Perhaps it was their scent lingering in the air or perhaps he could hear them crying somewhere in the distance, so faint that they only registered in his subconscious.
A clown was working down there. His back turned. Earl came up behind him and pointed his gun at the man’s head.
“Don’t move,” Earl told him.
The clown turned around. He was calm. He wore a black-and-white-striped shirt with a red beret on his head. He had a five o’clock shadow permanently coloring his face as if it were clown makeup.
“Or what?” the Frenchmen said.
Earl looked at his balloon gun. He realized it wasn’t very threatening. “I’ll shoot you.”
“With what? Your balloon?”
Earl pointed the gun over the clown’s shoulder and fired. The bang was enough to make the clown flinch, but just barely.
“I’m looking for my wife and three daughters,” he said. “I know they’re down here somewhere. Tell me where and I’ll let you live.”
The clown nodded over Earl’s shoulder. “They’re in one of the crates behind you.”
Earl looked back. There were too many of them.
“Which one?” Earl said.
As he turned back, the clown poked a needle into his balloon. It popped and fell to the floor.
“Oops,” the clown said.
Earl’s mouth dropped open. The clown pulled a handgun from the back of his pants. But before he could point it at the vet, Earl whipped out his balloon knife and drove it deep into the clown’s chest.
The Frenchman tried to pop the balloon knife with his needle, but his hand went limp before it could make contact.
“Ridiculous…,” the clown wheezed.
His eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground. Earl pulled the balloon out of the man’s chest. It was still intact. Just like the gun, it was a mystery how the balloon could pierce solid flesh. It was full of air.
Earl looked back at the crates and called out to his family. “Laurie? Mandy? Are you there?”
No answer. He went deeper into the cargo hold.
“Vicky? Are you in here?”
He heard an army of footsteps running across the deck above him. More gunshots.
“Dad!”
It was Mandy’s voice.
“Mandy! Where are you?”
“Daddy, I’m in here!”
Earl followed the sound of his daughter’s voice until he came to a crate. It was sealed tight. He had to shove his balloon knife between the boards to pry it open. When the wood splintered apart and the crate opened up, Mandy came running out and wrapped herself around his waist. There were other girls inside, all around her age. They looked hungry and sick. None of them spoke.
“Where are the others?” Earl asked his daughter. “Where’s your mother?”
The little girl’s eyes were red and dehydrated from crying so much.
“Help me find them,” he said.
The other girls didn’t stick around to help out the veterinarian. They took off running out of the cargo hold. Earl hoped they were smart enough to jump overboard rather than trying to go through Coco de Merde and his men. They wouldn’t get very far otherwise.
Mandy held her father so tight that he couldn’t walk. She cried into his knees and wouldn’t let go.
“Help me find Mom and your sisters,” Earl said.
He took his daughter by the hand and led her through the maze of freight.
“Laurie? Vicky?” They called out.
After some searching, they found another crate filled with older girls, mostly teenagers. When they opened it up, the girls all took off. Many of these t
eens were strung out, already addicted to laughy-gas or some other clown drug. A few of them didn’t even seem to know where they were.
When Earl entered, there were only two girls left. Vicky was in there cradling his teenage daughter, Sarah. Vicky was crying and rocking the teenager. Neither of them could speak.
Earl knelt to her. “Vicky, what happened?”
“Is she dead?” Mandy cried.
When Earl felt his teenage daughter, he realized she was still alive but in bad condition. Somebody had hit her over the head with some kind of blunt object. She had a concussion.
“We have to go now,” Earl told Vicky. “Let’s go.”
Vicky wouldn’t move. She shivered. Her eyes glossed over.
“Snap out of it, Vicky,” Earl said. He clapped his hands in front of her face. She looked up at him, her lips trembling.
He helped them to their feet, Sarah staggering as if she were heavily intoxicated.
“Where’s your mother?” Earl asked them.
Vicky cried when he asked the question. A memory she didn’t want to remember had clearly flashed into her head. “They took her,” she said, between gasps.
“Where?” Earl tried to get her to focus as he held Sarah upright.
Vinnie Blue Nose came into the cargo hold and ran to Earl.
“Come on,” Vinnie said. “We’ve got to get out of here. They called in backup.”
But Earl was focused on his daughter. “Where’s your mother, Vicky? Where’d they take her?”
“They took her away,” she said. “The other boat.”
Earl’s eyes widened. He nearly dropped his daughter.
“We need to go,” Vinnie said, helping him carry Sarah.
“Where’s the other boat?” Earl asked. “They said my wife’s on a different boat.”
Vinnie didn’t slow down in order to talk. “There’s no other boat out there.”
“There has to be.”
“If there was, it’s already gone.”
“It can’t be gone,” Earl said. “We have to find her.”
“There’s no time,” Vinnie said. “We need to go.”
Earl resisted, pulling his teenage daughter away from the clown. “I’m not leaving without her.”
Vinnie straightened his suit. “You have to forget about your wife and focus on your daughters now. If you don’t, none of them will make it out of here.”
Earl shook his head, tears tickling his eyes.
“Save your daughters,” Vinnie said. “Think of what your wife would want.”
Earl thought about it for only a second longer. Then he sucked it up, picked up his teenage daughter, and carried her out of the cargo hold. His other two daughters followed close behind, holding on to the back of his pant legs.
Chapter 25
When they got on deck, Earl wondered just what kind of man Vinnie Blue Nose really was. There were bodies everywhere, all of them filled with laughing bullets—one of them lying with half his face blown off, using his dying breath to giggle at the rising moon. Blue Nose had taken them out single-handedly.
“Don’t look,” Earl said to the youngest daughters as they walked through the corpses. “Close your eyes.”
Vicky had no problem closing her eyes tight, but Mandy wouldn’t do it on her own. Earl had to cover them for her.
Mandy said, “Daddy, why’s it all slippery?”
“Never mind that, honey. Just keep moving.”
They couldn’t swim for it, so they headed for the ramp leading down to the dock. Along the way, Vinnie used his silencer to take out two more French clowns who were looking for them.
“Why are people laughing, Daddy?” Mandy asked.
“Because they’re really happy, baby,” Earl said.
When they ran into Hats Rizzo, he was hiding behind a lifeboat. His acid squirt gun hadn’t been fired at all.
“Where’s Jackie?” Vinnie asked Hats as he pulled him out of hiding.
“How the heck should I know?” Hats said. “He never made it up the rope.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Last time I saw him he was swimming back to shore.”
“Have you seen Coco de Merde?”
“Does he have yellow hair and a brown trench coat?”
“Yeah.”
Hats Rizzo pointed over his shoulder. “Then I think he’s right behind you.”
Vinnie turned around to see the sunny-haired scumbag leading a group of French clowns across the deck, searching for the intruders who’d killed his men. The Bozos ducked behind the lifeboat where Hats had been hiding.
“What do we do?” Earl asked.
“We’re going to have to run for it,” Vinnie said.
“There’s at least twenty of them. We’ll never make it. Not with my daughters.”
Vinnie looked at the condition of the vet’s teenage daughter. She was still in bad shape, barely conscious. They weren’t going to be able to run very fast.
“You still got your emergency pie?” Vinnie asked Hats.
“Yeah, right here.” Hats removed his pimp hat to reveal a small mincemeat pie resting on top of a miniature cowboy hat. “I’ve been saving it for an emergency.”
“Well, it’s an emergency.” Vinnie took the pie from Hats. He nodded at Earl. “Get ready.”
Chapter 26
When Coco de Merde and his men came in range, Vinnie slid the mincemeat pie across the deck. It opened up like a package and a machine grew out of it and unfolded into a turret gun. How such a massive machine gun fit inside the pie, or how Hats was able to carry all that weight on his head, Earl had no idea. He plugged his youngest daughter’s ears as it opened fire.
“Now,” Vinnie yelled.
As the turret gun pie oscillated from side to side, emptying bullets into the French clowns, Earl and his daughters took off running in the opposite direction. Hats and Vinnie soon followed.
“Stop them!” Coco yelled to his men, but they were busy diving for cover or getting torn up by the blitzkrieg of bullets.
Coco did not jump for cover. He raised his hands into the air, moving them up and down, then side to side.
Earl looked back and saw the French clown’s movements. “What’s he doing?”
Bullets fired directly at Coco, but they didn’t hit him. They bounced off what appeared to be an invisible barrier.
Hats held on to his mini cowboy hat as he looked back at Coco. “He’s miming!”
“Just keep moving,” Vinnie said.
Coco de Merde continued miming the invisible wall until the turret gun ran out of bullets. Then he stepped forward, kicked the pie gun out of his way, and mimed something else with his hands.
“What’s he doing now?” Earl asked.
Hats cried, “He’s miming a machine gun!”
Bullets poured out of the invisible gun as Coco stepped toward them. Although there was no sound coming from the gun in his hands, they could hear the bullets as they whistled through the air and tore through the deck. Earl couldn’t move fast enough with his daughters. They had to duck for cover behind a cargo crate.
The French clown laughed. “I presume Don Bozo is still alive, no? His death was all a ruse?” Earl recognized his voice as the man he’d spoken with on the phone. This was definitely the guy who kidnapped his family. “Well, it’s no problem. I’m happy to settle for killing you, Mr. Blue Nose—street boss of the Bozo Family.”
While Coco was busy speaking, Vinnie stood from cover and fired two laughing bullets directly into the clown’s chest. Coco staggered back, looked down, then wiped the flattened slugs away. They hadn’t broken his skin. Vinnie aimed for Coco’s face and pulled the trigger, but the gun only clicked. He was out of ammo.
“Good thing I already mimed a bulletproof vest.” Coco fired his invisible gun until Vinnie returned to his hiding spot. “That’s one of many reasons why Le Mystère is superior to you Bozos. You can’t mime, you have no acrobatic talent, you lack imagination and wonder. All you do is t
hrow your pies and honk your noses.”
Vinnie double-checked his pockets, but he didn’t have any more laughing bullets.
“I’m out of ammo,” he said, as Coco fired more rounds at them. “What have you two got?”
Earl held up his balloon knife. “I only have this.” The second he held it out, a gust of wind blew it out of his hands. They all watched it as it rose up into the air. “Never mind…I’ve got nothing.”
“I got my squirt gun.” Hats handed the weapon to Vinnie.
Vinnie tilted it up, inspecting the fluid tank. “What’s it filled with?”
Hats smiled. “Toxic waste.”
“That’s not going to kill him very quickly.”
“Yeah, I prefer dealing a long, painful death to my enemies. Get hit with a splash of this, and it can take weeks or months to die.”
Hats smiled proudly at his sadistic yet completely ineffective weapon.
“It’s useless,” Vinnie said.
As they spoke, Coco de Merde continued firing at them, stepping casually across the deck. The invisible gun seemed to have limitless ammo. All Coco had to do to was mime a longer ammunition belt to feed into the weapon and he’d be able to fire it all day long.
Coco said, “Little Bigtop doesn’t need you Bozos anymore. You’re old, outdated. The future of clowning belongs to Le Mystère.”
“What about pies?” Earl pointed at the miniature cowboy hat on Hats’s head. “Do you have another pie under that?”
Rizzo removed his final hat to reveal a mini white-frosted cupcake beneath.
“What’s that?” Earl asked.
Hats took a bite out of it. “It’s coconut.”
“Coconut?”
“It’s delicious.” Coconut frosting coated Hats’s nose after he took a second bite.
“Mr. Blue Nose, they say you’re the luckiest clown in Little Bigtop,” said the French clown as he reached their hiding spot. “And that nobody’s ever been able to beat you in a game of poker.”
Vinnie had no other choice but to use the squirt gun. He nodded at Hats and Earl, telling them to get ready to run.
“But it looks like your luck has finally run out,” Coco said. “Your full house is a good hand, but it does not beat my royal flush.”
ClownFellas Page 6
