by James Axler
As if the carny master had heard the words, he pulled the pin on one of the grens and lobbed the armed explosive toward the tent’s only exit. The crowd ducked…as if ducking would do any good. A roustabout at the exit caught the grenade and pitched it outside.
“Three, two, one…” Crecca counted aloud.
The ground under Leeloo rocked from the explosion.
“Now, let’s have some real fun,” the carny master said. With that, he pulled the pin on a grenade, then tossed the gren one way and the pin the other. Swampies on the opposite sides of the circle caught the thrown objects. The one who’d grabbed the gren quickly flipped it to the one who had the pin. That swampie put the pin back in, disarming the explosive.
“Get the picture?” Crecca asked his audience. Then he started yanking pins and throwing the armed grens and pins around the circle. In a moment or two, all five were flying back and forth.
It made Leeloo dizzy to watch.
And she was plenty scared, too.
She was in the front row.
Everything was okay for a while, but when the juggling act fell apart, it did so on a grand scale. Somehow, all the pulled pins ended up on one side of the ring, and all the armed grens on the other, at the feet of a particularly grouchy-looking swampie.
He threw back his matted head and bawled, “Mama!”
All the grens all blew with a loud whack! Instead of steel splinters, multicolored confetti flew through the air, drifting down onto the audience.
When the crowd settled down, the Magnificent Crecca wound in the long chain that connected him to the baby stickie. He put the palm of his hand on the mutie’s hairless head, and said, “Sing, Jackson!”
Once again, the little stickie opened its lipless mouth, and beautiful music rushed out. Every a cappella note was in perfect pitch. Every word of the predark song was perfectly clear, and it was all in English.
After the first couple of bars, Jackson had the whole audience locking arms and swaying along in time.
Leeloo and Dean swayed, too, arm in arm.
The music was lovely and haunting, but the lyrics puzzled Leeloo.
She knew what the color blue was, but she had no idea what was meant by a “bayou.”
Chapter Thirteen
As the tent’s house lights went up and the carny intermission began, Ryan rose to his feet, as did the other companions. So far, there were no obvious signs of danger, yet he could whiff it, like the scent of a miles-distant cook fire riding on the wind. Only about half of the carny folk were visible and directly involved in the performance.
What the rest of the chillers were doing he could only guess.
And when he studied the roustabouts as they stared at the milling audience of farmers and shopkeepers, he saw both contempt and glee on their faces. The carny folk thought they knew what was going to happen to every person inside the tent, and they delighted in that secret, terrible knowledge.
It didn’t cross Ryan’s mind to wonder how human beings could be so callous and so unfeeling. He had lived in Deathlands all his life; he had seen and done things nearly as bad as what was planned for Bullard ville. Because he’d been there, because he, too, had wallowed in it, he understood the place of manifest evil, the heart of darkness. The difference between Ryan Cawdor and the carny chillers was that he had found his moral center, his personal bedrock, and he wouldn’t be budged from it. Not even in the face of ten to one odds. “As soon as the show starts,” he told Krysty and Mildred, “move for the exit. No matter what else happens, you’ve got to keep it open.”
“Got it,” Mildred said.
Krysty nodded in agreement, then said, “There may be other escape routes for the carny folk. Secret ways out that we don’t know about.”
“Makes sense,” Ryan agreed. “It means that you’re going to have to clear the way inside and outside the tent. Otherwise, they’ll just chill us with blasters as we come through the exit.”
“Mebbe Jak should come with us, then?” Mildred suggested.
Ryan looked at the albino, who was staring in the direction of the lion’s cage, which was outside the tent. “No,” he said. “We’re going to have our hands full in here when the shooting starts. Can’t do the job with less than four blasters.”
“Some of the ville folks aren’t gonna make it to the exit,” J.B. said softly. “One way or another, either from poison or stray slugs, innocent blood is gonna flow.”
“Some is better than all,” Krysty said.
“Way better,” Mildred agreed.
As the theme music resumed, Ryan swept his one-eyed gaze over the assembled crowd, their joyful faces, their anticipation of even more spectacular events to come. As they took their seats on the ground, some glanced at the windowless, rubbercoated walls of the tent without really seeing them, without understanding the implications of “airtight.” They had no clue that this was meant to be their death chamber.
“Stay together,” Ryan told Dean and the others. “Stay together, stick to the plan, and we’ll all get out.”
The Magnificent Crecca and his pet stickie once again entered the ring. “I trust you all enjoyed our first act?” he asked the seated mob.
Bullard ville applauded and whistled enthusiastically.
“Well, the second act of our show is even better. Without further ado, I give you the ever popular, always satisfying, Deathlands Last Man Standing! You all know the rules. No closed fists. No bared claws. And biting is optional.”
Over the years, Ryan and J.B. had seen versions of this particular entertainment many times before. Troupes of professional hand-to-hand fighters toured the larger gaudies along the main trade routes, giving exhibition bouts and offering paying spectators the chance to bet on the outcomes.
What made this particular bout different were the gene pools of the combatants who faced off. It wasn’t norm against norm, as was usually the case in the gaudies. In Wolfram’s carny, it was norm against mutie.
The first bout featured a giant of a man with a shaved head and spiraling, concentric brandings over his shoulders and upper back, the raised welts like an angry red shawl. His mutie opponent was a head shorter, but as powerfully built. He was completely hairless. Cascading down the back of his skull and along the ridge of his spine were thousands upon thousands of pale, six-inch-long, tentacle-like growths. This mane of flesh had erectile function, the individual, dermal villi moving in response to stimuli, rippling like a field of strange wheat.
Crecca gestured for the fighters to come together in the middle of the ring and shake hands. When they touched bare knuckles, the mutie’s mane flared instantly upright, like a spiky sail.
Which made the crowd ooh and ahh.
The contest consisted of three rounds, the standard for Deathlands Last Man Standing fights. The first three-minute round was “contact optional,” which meant that the fighters could move, feint and land open-handed blows whenever the opportunity presented itself. The second round was “contact mandatory.” Which meant that each fighter could move at will, but had to match the other blow for blow or be disqualified. The last round was toe-to-toe, with no moving whatsoever. If one of the combatants shifted his feet as he struck, or was staggered as he and his opponent traded full-power, forehand and backhand bitch slaps, the contest was over.
The final round was always bloody, always ugly and always a big crowd pleaser.
This case was no different.
A minute and a half into the third round, both fighters’ faces were drenched in gore from numerous shallow cuts on foreheads and cheekbones, their eyes swollen to slits. The bigger man seemed to have the upper hand, and was in fact grinning a wide, bloody-toothed grin as he smacked the mutie on the side of the head and made the creature’s mixed spittle and gore erupt in a pink mist. The mutie’s mane sagged lifelessly; his eyes were dull and vacant. It looked as if he was going down. The giant cocked back his arm for the finishing blow.
When the tables turned, they turned in an eye blink
.
As the hand shot forward, the mutie’s mane sprang fully erect. When the hand reached the target, the target had moved. Juking his head, the mutie caught the giant by the wrist and gave a perfectly timed pull, using the bigger man’s weight and momentum against him. The norm lost his balance and stumbled forward.
Contest over.
Well, not quite.
As Crecca rushed up to declare the winner, the giant let out a furious growl and scrambled up from his knees. From his expression it was clear the rules were off the table. But before he could rise to his full height, the maned mutie landed a wicked, cracking elbow shot to the middle of his face, which sent the giant to the ground, hard on his butt. He sat there for an instant, fists clenched at his sides, face contorted, trying to keep from passing out. Trying and failing. He slumped to his back, his arms and legs spread wide, his mouth drooping open and drooling blood.
The two other matches that followed were cut from the same melodramatic cloth.
Powerful fighters.
Lots of blood.
Sore losers.
In the last bout, the sore loser chased the winner out of the tent swinging a length of heavy chain.
Ryan hardly noticed. His attention was elsewhere. Whenever a roustabout came or went, he tracked him or her to see what was being carried. Whenever a trailer moved in or out, he watched it closely. So far, everything that had come into the tent had gone out again.
Well, almost everything.
The only trailer that hadn’t moved sat on the other side of the center ring. It had been there, in the same spot, when the companions had entered the tent—an oblong box on a wheeled bed, with a facing mirror wall on which was painted a mural of predark circus scenes.
When the competition ended, the carny master announced the next act. “Friends, prepare yourselves to witness the strangest thing you will ever see. Something so unusual, and so startling that I guarantee you will never forget it as long as you live.” Then he waved to the wings and gave the order, “Roll in Baldoona.”
The cage containing the two-headed scalie was dragged on its trailer into the center ring. When it was in position, one of the moving crew tossed Crecca a long, metal-tipped pike and he used it to viciously prod the great lump of scale-covered flab.
In outrage, Baldoona’s heads snarled and squealed respectively.
“Bastard fat, isn’t it?” Crecca said to the crowd. “And if you’re all wondering how it got that way, you’re all about to find out.” He turned to the wings again and shouted, “Bring in his dinner!”
Two roustabouts trotted in a half-grown pig that weighed roughly one hundred pounds. It walked like a dog beside them, with a long, coiled leash of rope around its neck. The men used some kind of white grease from a tub to coat the pig’s body head to foot, then they tied the end of the rope to a stake that had been pounded deep into the dirt. When they walked away, the pig tried to follow them, but was brought up short by the end of the rope.
“I don’t want any of you to panic when we let out the scalie,” the Magnificent Crecca told his audience. “Pig is its favorite food, so it won’t pay you any mind until it’s done. And there’s another thing…old Baldoona knows there’s a time limit.” On cue, a pair of roustabouts carried what looked like a giant stopwatch to the tent pole and hung it from a hook there, in plain sight of all the seated spectators. Obviously predark, it had a black minute hand and a thin red hand that counted seconds.
“Baldoona has to catch and eat as much of the pig as it can before the clock’s alarm goes off,” Crecca continued. “Once the bell starts ringing, it knows it either steps away from the carcass, or it gets the shit kicked out of it by my rousties.”
With that the music swelled, a different theme now, a happy but tension-building, tick-tock song. One of the crew very carefully opened the scalie’s cage door, and the carny master started the time clock.
There was much laughter and thigh slapping from the crowd as the obese mutie pursued the greased but tethered pig around the center ring. The act’s opening antics were undeniably comical, but once Baldoona got a firm grip on the animal’s left rear hock, things quickly took a turn in a different direction.
Some things are harder to watch than others.
Baldoona ate the pig from the feet up, its adult head attacking at the front, baby head working on the rear, both mutie mouths gobbling for all they were worth, with the pig shrieking like a steam whistle the whole time. It didn’t stop shrieking until the adult head bit out its heart.
When Ryan looked over at his son, Dean was shielding the face of the little girl from the ville against his chest, a gentle hand resting on her slender shoulder. The boy wasn’t looking at the macabre spectacle; he was glaring at the carny master.
A look that Ryan knew well.
It was his look. His legacy.
Cold fire.
The two-headed scalie, its faces, necks and massive, flabby chest smeared with gore, was threatened back into its cage by four roustabouts with clubs and the carny master with his long prod.
As Baldoona was rolled out, it gripped the bars in both hands and belched sonorously in defiance. Then another tarp-covered cage was rolled in.
“You all have heard the legend of the Wazl bird,” Crecca said. “A ferocious mutie strain found only in the darkest, grimmest mires of Deathlands. Half crocodile, half condor. All chiller. The legend says the Wazl can’t be tamed, can’t be taught, can’t be defeated. It lives only for the joy of tearing apart living flesh and drinking living blood. It drops out of the night sky like a meteor and takes the unwary from behind with talons and teeth. It is my honor and privilege, dear Bullard ville, to present to you, the Wazl!”
Crecca threw back the tarp, exposing a pair of huge, featherless bird creatures. Their bodies and wings were covered with what looked like thin, aged, well-tanned leather; their long, straight, reptilian beaks were lined with tight rows of serrated teeth; their tri-talons black and curving like great fish hooks. As the two creatures took in the crowd, and the crowd’s fear, their eyes were full of savagery and insane fury.
First one of the muties opened its maw and let out a shrill, sawing cry, then both of them were doing it. The noise required no explanation from the carny master; its meaning passed through the ears and into the marrow.
It was the Wazls’ call to taste blood.
A moment later, a large, strangely attired figure stepped into the center ring. A steel-mesh fencing mask concealed the man’s face and head, his body was protected by a chain-mail suit, his hands and arms by mesh gauntlets. He wore a monumental black codpiece strapped to his hips.
Of all the bad ideas ever come to fruition, letting the Wazls out of their cage was right up there with the nukecaust.
But from what had gone before, Ryan knew, as did everyone else in the crowd, that that was exactly what was going to happen. The only question was, how? Six roustabouts used long metal poles to trap and pin the Wazls against the inside of the bars. The bird creatures’ screams of outrage drowned out the music from the tent’s speakers, and made many of the Bullard ville folk cover their ears with their hands. Once the Wazls were securely pinned, the cage door was opened and the man in the steel helmet and suit stepped inside.
The mutie birds wanted him.
They snapped their beaks and hissed in blood lust.
The man bent, spread his arms and took hold of the birds’ ankles, trapping both feet of both birds in his gauntleted hands.
The Wazls didn’t like that one bit, and it was all the roustabouts could do to keep them hard against the bars.
“Are you ready?” the Magnificent Crecca asked the man in the cage.
His reply was a nod.
“Then fly!” the carny master cried.
The instant the roustabouts let off the pressure on their prods, the two mutie avians exploded out the open cage door, their long, leathery wings snapping like unfurled sails caught in a shifting gale. Behind them came the man, out of the cag
e and into the air.
Chaos erupted inside the carny tent.
The Wazls shrieked even louder. Dragged down by their two-hundred-pound burden, they flew low and fast, circling the walls of the tent. The man’s heels, as he was carried aloft, grazed the heads of the stunned spectators.
People screamed.
People threw themselves flat on the ground.
The lizard birds beat the air, raising clouds of dust from the dirt floor. As they flew, they tried to bite their rider, cocking their heads this way and that, looking for an opening to wound, to maim, to chill. The gauntlets protected the man’s hands and arms, and the birds couldn’t get at his head and continue to fly. Their instinct to fly away was stronger than their need to be rid of him.
Around and around, the three of them circled. Ryan marveled at the man’s grip strength and stamina. They were all that kept the Wazls from feasting on the audience.
Gradually, the birds’ frantic, sweeping spirals grew narrower and dropped in altitude. Their cries became desperate and despairing. As the man was borne around, his boot heels cut furrows in the dirt. When the Wazls were finally exhausted, they just dropped from the air, crash-landing in the center ring. The man took a hard landing, too, bouncing forward on his face and chest. He didn’t loosen his grip, though.
Before the Wazls could recover from the impact, a dozen roustabouts set upon them with long poles and ropes, trussing their beaks and legs together, then carrying them on the poles back to their cage.
Their rider removed his steel mask and took a low bow.
The crowd jumped to its feet, cheering.
Amid the tumult, something on the far side of the center ring caught Ryan’s eye. Something flashed behind the mirror wall of the facing trailer. And for a fraction of a second, the silver, reflective glass became vaguely, hazily transparent, as if through a pall of oily brown smoke.
Then it was over.
In that frozen moment Ryan glimpsed a ghostly figure, whose afterimage was burned deep into his brain. Spindly limbed. Slouching. Menacing. Even if he hadn’t seen the glare of the light on the steel, he would have known who it was.
