FantasticLand

by Mike Bockoven

  Can I tell you a little bit about Morgan? I feel like I owe it to her. She deserves a lot of credit. She and I didn’t much like each other when we started working together. I’m kind of direct, and on the job I’m all business. She was skinny and cute and always had a text message to answer instead of prepping the trays or refilling the supplies. She was 100 percent a social creature, and while that’s good for working fast food, you have a million things to do at a first aid station and not much time to do them. So we didn’t hit it off. But what I found as I kept working next to Morgan was that she had an inner strength I didn’t have. The more hot water she was in, the cooler she became and the more efficient and effective she got. I kind of operated on one level. She had slow, which was her speed most of the time, but then she could dial it all the way up to Super Morgan, where she could change IV drips and set casts and twenty more things at once. She was the one who kept my head in the game when I wanted to give up. And she was the one everyone wanted to see when they came in.

  We slept in the hut on a couple of cots we moved out of the shelter. Because of that and our proximity to both the Golden Road, the Exclamation Point, and where the Robots had set up camp, we got a front row seat to some of the raids. We could tell when the violence was escalating because we heard it, and if it wasn’t pitch dark, we saw it. Most nights it was fine. Morgan and I would either collapse onto our cots, exhausted, or if we were lucky, we would get to play cards or talk or even sing a little bit before bed. I play guitar and was kind of a Christian camp kid growing up, so I had my guitar in my locker at the park, and every now and then that came in handy. I would sing to folks who were suffering, and I like to think that helped. Still, like I said, Morgan was the one with the bedside manner, the popular one. Which was fine.

  All of the tribes wanted her for their own. The Pirates offered her a room with a view and “the best looking guys in the park.” Charming. The ShopGirls offered her weapons and sisterhood, the Robots tried to play it cool, but they were really hot to have her, and the Freaks, they were doing their own thing. Even sweet old Charlie from the Mole Men would come up from time to time, ask for our help, and then slyly suggest how great it was down in the tunnels. We kind of shrugged him off, but everyone wanted their in-house first aid person. But we decided that we had to remain neutral with this whole tribes business, and we were going to apply what care we could evenly and on a first come, first served basis. That was sort of working until Brock Hockney fired that cannon. After that, the tribes only looked out for themselves, so it was much, much harder to provide what little care we could.

  After the hurricane hit, we set up a first aid station near the center of the park, not far away from the Exclamation Point. There was a hut they used to sell sunglasses out of, and it worked fine for our purposes. We could see who was coming from every direction and what condition they were in, and we had a big awning to keep people directly out of the rain. Every day, someone from one of the tribes would ask Morgan or me to be part of their group. We always had the same answer: “We are caring for everyone in the park.” You could track how bad things were between tribes by how many times we had to say that. Three meant things were pretty bad and four times meant there was some fear behind it. Begging usually came after that. I was kind of hard about the whole thing, but Morgan would put her arms around people and say things like, “I know you’re scared, but everyone is scared, and there has to be some place everybody can go for first aid.” I saw her give some version of that speech probably forty times. Then folks started getting more insistent.

  It was the Pirates who started it. I bet you could have guessed that. Brock Hockney came to see us himself, which was kind of a rare thing, because everyone at the park knew who he was, and I knew some ShopGirls in particular who were gunning for him. He waltzed up, casual as you please, and basically said he didn’t care which one, but one of us had to come be the property of the Pirates. He didn’t put it like that. I think he used the term “exclusive contract,” like it was a transaction instead of an implied kidnapping. Luckily for us, he said we had a couple hours to make up our minds, and when some Pirates came back to “fetch” us, they found a couple of the ShopGirls and a couple of the Robots hanging around, and the implication was clear. We were neutral. Our little sunglasses hut was Switzerland. Everyone at the park got our bumbling attempts at medicine. Of course it didn’t stop there.

  Morgan was the one with the bedside manner, so it makes sense she was the one who was kidnapped. We slept together in the hut, and when they came for her, I was able to make enough of a ruckus to where a few barefooted ShopGirls heard and came running. They went after the Pirates and were able to get to them and to Morgan before they got across the threshold of Pirate Land or whatever they called it. Then, of course, the ShopGirls said we couldn’t treat Pirates anymore, and we gave them “the speech.” They sort of spit some threats at us, but deep down they understood, I think.

  The thing was, we didn’t just have the training—we had all the supplies. I would say we had 70 percent of the medical supplies in the park, which we moved to the hut really early on. So, of course, people started coming and robbing our supplies. Every tribe except the Mole Men and the Freaks did it at one point or another. Some were really brazen about it; others at least tried to make it seem like they weren’t stealing. Then we had a lot of people who begged. “Please help me,” “please help my friend,” “it hurts so bad.” We didn’t have pain medication beyond ibuprofen, so with a large number of cases we had to really work to get the “we can’t do anything for you” message through their heads. Some people didn’t take too well to that. It was the stress, I would tell myself, not anything personal. But then they started getting violent, and that’s a lot harder to rationalize. Morgan had her wrist sprained when a Robot grabbed it particularly hard, and a Pirate straight-up broke my nose. After that, Morgan and I had conversations about folding up the tent, but the thing was, we were doing some good, too. When there was no more ointment, we figured out how to mix up a paste that wasn’t half bad at treating rashes, using what supplies we could scrounge up. When we walked through parts of the park, we would get “thank yous” by the dozens. We got so many kudos that I started to think maybe our abilities were being built up a little much. Then after about three weeks, when we were sucking wind and running on fumes, we kind of, sort of started an armed conflict.

  There was a Pirate, of course it was a Pirate, getting treated for a small stab wound to the arm. A Deadpool walked up looking for something. I never figured out what, because they started punching each other and knocking everything over. I’d seen fights before in school and in the park, but this was a little different. This wasn’t “I’m fighting to prove something,” this was “I’m fighting to kill you.” It was so violent that we didn’t feel like we could handle it ourselves, so Morgan had found this bell, and every time we rang it, someone would come and help. We rang the bell and twenty seconds later we had two ShopGirls and a Robot there, and instead of asking how they could help, they grabbed the Pirate and held him down and they all took turns beating him and beating him. I remember, after every kick or punch he would try to get up, he would curse worse and worse, calling them every name in the book, until he started to gargle. I recognized that there was fluid—probably blood—in his lungs and that even if they stopped, they were probably going to kill him. The Pirate, I never caught his name, had a friend who had run off when the fighting started. By the time he got back with a few other Pirates, the first guy was dead. They beat him to death in the street, and I will remember this forever, they had taken turns kicking him in the head until they saw brain matter. It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought something like that would take.

  Then, of course, the Pirates made threats, and the other group made threats, and the long and the short of it was the Pirates swore they would shut us down. I am a religious person, so I prayed that night that moods would cool and we would be left alone, and sure enough, for two weeks
after that, we were left alone, and Morgan and I continued playing “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Women.” That’s what we called it because we were working with so little. And, as was our decision, we did not deny care, such as it was, to anyone. No one got turned away. The robberies even slowed down. I had no idea why this happened, so I attributed it to prayer. Then, toward the end, about four or five weeks into this whole thing, we got a visit from Mr. Hockney again. I later saw a worse side of him, but one-on-one he was always very cool and respectful to me. He walked in, flanked by about eight other Pirates, and said, “One of you ladies is coming with me. There will be no further discussion on this topic.” Then sat back in his chair and waited for us to talk.

  Morgan launched into the speech, and the second she said the phrase “Everyone receives care,” Brock gave a little nod, and one of the Pirates took out a lighter and lit a stick he had been holding behind his back. It was dipped in gasoline or something flammable. I hadn’t smelled it because, to be honest, the cornucopia of smells polluting my nose was one of the fresh hells of that place. One day it would be 80 percent rotten hot dogs and 20 percent feces, and then another day it would be some other decaying meat and mold, and if we were lucky we got a sickly sweet smell out of the Fairy Prairie as all their snow cone machines started to leak. I didn’t smell the gas, and before I could say anything, they were lighting our tent on fire. I was never thankful for the weather in that place except for that day, because the tent was wet and had been for some time, so it took a while to light. For a second there, it was almost comical, that young man trying to get something to light and failing two or three times. It was less funny when he pulled out a pocket bottle of lighter fluid and sprayed it right on the tarp. That got ’er going. The tent was supported by a big fake palm tree that you could find in several sections of the park, and Morgan, bless her, immediately jumped up on top of the tarp and started trying to put the fire out. At that point, Mr. Hockney looked at me and said, “I want the one on the roof. She’s got balls. Kill the other one.” Then a couple of the Pirates started coming toward me.

  I … I like to think that my faith and my upbringing had helped me keep my fear at bay. Through four or five weeks in that place, I had faced blood and bones and no supplies and bullies, and I did it without ever freaking out. I had cried, twice, but that was over … other things. I don’t want to lie to you and say, “I had never been frightened before,” but I can confidently and truthfully tell you I had never been frightened like that before. The thing that did it was seeing the details of these boys’ faces. They were shiny and had a bunch of acne. They had scraggly beards. I remember the smiles underneath and how completely ugly they were. They were ugly all the way down. I didn’t pray right then, I was too afraid, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. Sometimes those mysterious ways involve an arrow that misses your head by inches but hits one of the advancing Pirates square in the chest.

  I saw the one Pirate go down, said a quick “thank God,” and immediately ran outside to both get out of the way and to see if there was anything I could do to help put out the fire. By then, the ShopGirls were firing more arrows, and the Pirates had drawn swords and run toward the girls who had fired. Outside the tent, Morgan had actually climbed on top of the tarp of the hut and was beating at the flames with a bloody towel we hadn’t washed yet. I screamed, “What are you doing?” and she yelled, “If this tent goes, those assholes win!” For Morgan, it was the principle of the thing, I suppose. Like I said, she was strong. So strong. She was unbiased, but she was not a fan of the Pirates. As she kept beating at the flames, I noticed there were a lot more than eight Pirates. There were more like twenty or twenty-five who must have been nearby or hiding, and they were all gathered around the guy with the arrow in his chest. I saw Mr. Hockney hold up a sword, and they all screamed as he brought the sword down. Later I learned this was part of the deal with the Pirates. If you were mortally injured, all your friends gathered around while you were put out of your misery. It’s a bunch of savage nonsense if you ask me, but I saw it happen with my own two eyes.

  Then the Pirates turned their attention to the ShopGirls. There was one archer and three others who were armed but had started retreating. Four more Pirates brandished sticks and set them on fire. Then I heard Mr. Hockney say, “Burn them out,” and the Pirates started walking toward the Golden Road, which wasn’t far away from our hut.

  Before they could get very far, the rest of the ShopGirls came out. By this point, they were in ragged shape and looked … well, they looked like they were ready to go to war. I remember thinking a ponytail can only do so much, and then I thought who am I to talk? I probably look worse. I could see two archers on the roof and it immediately became clear that they were going to start firing, so I jumped up on the flaming roof as fast as I could. My thought was if they were firing, I wanted to get behind the plastic tree, and I couldn’t do that down on the ground. Plus, maybe I could help with the fire. I pulled Morgan toward the tree, but she wasn’t having any of it. The fire wasn’t spreading quickly, but it was spreading, and she was doing everything she could think of to beat it back. I noticed she had lost her rag, and it was on fire, so she was trying to bail water that had collected at the top of the tarp into the flames. I should have helped her, but I took cover. At that point I heard a lot of yelling and looked toward the Golden Road to see the Pirates charging the ShopGirls, but then I realized it was more than just the ShopGirls. I recognized Robots and Deadpools there, too. The Deadpools, I had heard their numbers were below twenty because of the consistent Pirate attacks, so there was an alliance, apparently. I got to see the two groups, the Pirates and the three tribes fighting together, running at each other. And then, chaos.

  I can only tell you flashes of what I saw. Any sort of “this happened, then that happened” would be me imagining things. There’s no story here; it was just a bunch of folks hacking away at each other. I used this word before but it was barbarism. I saw a girl I had seen at a Bible study hit a guy in the head with a baseball bat, and I saw his head tilt sideways at an odd angle, which meant part of his spine was broken. I saw two people on fire trying to put each other out in immense panic and pain. I saw three Pirates standing over a girl, stabbing her and pulling at her flesh, and then, one second later, one of the Pirates get an arrow high up on his neck. I remember one boy crying and screaming as he was stabbed, yelling, “NO, NO,” over and over again like it would somehow stop his attackers, like he was losing a game and just realized how much was at stake. I remember seeing a sword fight, an honest to God sword fight, between Brock Hockney and the leader of the ShopGirls, I don’t remember her name. It’s very different when the two combatants are actually trying to stab each other. There’s nothing pretty about it and there’s a lot more cursing. Hockney, I remember, had all he could handle because the ShopGirl, she was savage and fierce and just swinging and swinging. I didn’t see how that fight ended, but I could also tell that all around them, the Pirates were winning most of the fights they were in. They fought in clusters of two and three, and they were better prepared and seemed to … I don’t know how to put it … they seemed to not be fighting scared. They were clearly the aggressors and everyone else was trying not to die.

  I didn’t get to see that much of it because the fire had spread. Once it hit the main section of tarp, it really picked up. Morgan had joined me behind the tree, and we gave up on the tarp. We tried to jump down, but the problem was there wasn’t a good place to jump off. I hadn’t realized how high up we were. We ran from one spot to another, and while we were making up our minds, we heard the first set of gunshots. It was a really quick series of pops, and then a pause, and then another series of pops. I was just above two Pirates getting ready to stab some guy I didn’t recognize when I saw one of them just drop. It was as quick as a light turning off, just pow and he went to the ground. I didn’t see any blood or anything, just his body drop in this odd way. Then I heard another round of pops, and the other Pirate was on the groun
d, and was screaming for help. At one point, I heard him yell something about bleeding out, and I looked over the edge, and his leg was covered in blood, and I thought I saw some spray, which is never a good sign. Then the pops continued, and more Pirates went down. No one seemed to know where they were coming from, but somebody was somewhere shooting Pirates, and they were doing a pretty good job of it from what I could tell. Morgan and I finally committed and jumped off the top of the tent, and she landed funny on her ankle. As I was getting her up I heard a weird noise, kind of like a really fast zip of air, and didn’t think much of it until Morgan and I got out of harm’s way.

  We ran to one of the concession stands just off the World’s Circus and we both kind of collapsed. You’ve probably guessed by now that she was shot, but it was more of a graze. It caught her outside thigh a bit, and there was some blood but nothing serious. I started to take her pants off to look at it, and she stopped me and said, “It’ll be fine. Let’s just watch.” So we did. We sat down, hidden by a glass case that used to hold candy, took some deep breaths, and watched our tent, which had been our home for something like five weeks, burn. And Lord, how it burned. At one point the entire tent was ablaze, and the hot air underneath it swelled, and the whole thing just took flight, a flaming tarp, and it flew for about twenty feet and landed on the ground and continued to just burn and smoke. It was beautiful. And of course the blaze was the backdrop for the fighting, which had ended really quickly after the shooting started. Pirates were dragging their friends back to the Cove, and everyone was helping someone. It was kind of like the fever broke at that moment. There had been so much blood and so much hate, and then someone with some guns came in and changed the outcome of a battle, and it felt, to me, like everyone lost their taste for killing each other after that. There were no more shouts of “revenge,” no more battle cries. It was quiet until those cops came in a couple days later. The tarp was still smoldering when they got there.