Shadows of Tockland

by Jeffrey Aaron Miller

  David climbed down from the ramp and helped Telly.

  “Okay, so who wants to drive, and who wants to man the gun?” Cakey asked, heading for the cab.

  “I’d love to man the gun,” Telly said. “Sadly, I don’t think I'm up to it.”

  “Fair enough, boss,” Cakey said. “Belle? David?”

  “I'd rather not do either,” David said.

  “I’m not climbing up on that thing,” Annabelle said, jumping down from the ramp. “I’ll drive.”

  “You’re not a good driver, lady.”

  “Neither are you,” Belle said, heading for the cab. “Truth is we need Gooty, but he’s gone. I can handle it.”

  “Fair enough.” Cakey beckoned David. “Okay, come on, kid. You’re on the gun. One last battle.”

  David frowned but climbed up onto the trailer and pulled himself up into the machine gun mount. A small plastic seat attached to a massive gun with twin barrels, it was an intimidating piece of machinery. David tried moving the gun around and found it heavy and unresponsive. One last battle, indeed. He buckled the seatbelt as the others climbed into the cab. After a cursory search, they found no key, so Cakey kicked off the key mechanism on the steering column and hotwired the ignition. Eventually, it started with a jolt and rumbled to life, belching smoke. Belle shifted the truck out of park, released the brake, and they were off, bouncing across the gravel yard. The concrete walls of the building rose up on three sides, but straight ahead, at the end of the courtyard, was a high fence with rolls of barbed wire on top. A single heavy padlock held the gate shut. A small guard shack sat to one side of the gate, but it was unmanned. Rifles scattered on the ground nearby suggested it had been recently vacated and in haste.

  “Hang on,” Belle said, rolling down her window and shouting so David could hear her.

  She slowed the truck and rolled up against the gate, touching it gently with the bumper. Then she slowly revved the engine, pushing against it. The gate creaked in protest and buckled, and, finally, the lock broke loose and fell onto the hood, and the gate flew open. Before them, a gravel road wound away from the palace of Joseph Mattock, rounded a small hill maybe a hundred yards away and disappeared. As they drove away, David turned back, taking in the high expanse of concrete rising up into a cloudless sky, looking like a sun-bleached carcass. He thought he saw a hint of soldiers on top of the building, moving to and fro, but either they did not notice the truck driving away or no longer cared. Smoke and clouds of dust and debris rose high into the sky.

  It was when they rounded the small hill and turned in the direction of the main highway that the final extent of the damage unfolded before them. A trail of wreckage and dead bodies ran right down the middle of the road, vehicles ripped to shreds, bodies flayed open and strewn about, grooves dug into the asphalt, trees splintered. A few stragglers remained, tending to wounds or searching the dead. Some of them were armed, and David pointed the machine gun at them, ready to return fire. But only a few even noticed the passing truck, staring blankly.

  A mile farther on, they found the creature. It lay on its side in a massive puddle of its own slime. Some of its tentacles had been ripped off and lay scattered about. The great yellow eye was pierced, either by ammunition or debris, and its beak-like mouth was broken. All about it lay piles of bodies and overturned vehicles. Here it had made its last stand, and here both sides had lost. In the distance, near the horizon, David thought he saw a hint of vehicles moving away. Did they yet know their precious general was dead? How would it change Tockland when they found out? Was a line of succession in place, or would they fight bitterly to determine a successor? All unanswered questions, and David found he cared little one way or the other, so long as he got far, far away from this place.

  They drove for hours down the highway, winding through a landscape of low hills. When they started seeing signs of civilization—a truck parked beside the road, a landfill full of Tockland trash, a small abandoned storehouse—they left the road and travelled across an open field of high grass. They drove all through the afternoon, until the sun was setting. And only in the early evening, bumping and bouncing along, the axles creaking, did they finally crest a hill and come upon the remaining might of eastern Tockland.

  Below the hill, in a vast sea of hard-packed dirt, lay the walled compound where they had first been caged. Belle slowed the truck to a stop, then reversed back down the hill and parked out of sight. Cakey climbed down out of the cab and gestured for David to join him. David unfastened his seat belt and climbed down.

  “Hopefully, they didn't spot us,” Cakey said. “What say we crawl up and have a look?”

  “Sure,” David said and pulled the pistol out of his pocket.

  They crept up the hill and perched beneath the high grass, side by side, gazing down on the compound. David saw the row of Quonset huts and the cages, some even now containing prisoners—men and women in tattered clothes, ragged and filthy, remnants of the sick. Military vehicles were parked in a rough semi-circle near the huts—armored trucks and transports, mostly—and many soldiers were gathered there, moving about frantically, pulling bodies from the backs of the trucks. The bodies of Tockland soldiers, recently killed, bright splashes of blood on dirty uniforms. They dragged the bodies out by their hands and feet, carrying them toward the huts. Others moved back and forth, waving their hands over their heads, as if trying to direct people, though it all seemed very disorganized.

  Soldiers with machine guns stood in the guard towers at regular intervals along the high wall, but the attention of all had turned inward. More soldiers appeared, some from the huts, some from vehicles on the far side of the compound. Everyone gathered around the wounded and dead, and the disorganization intensified.

  “The creature scared ‘em, kid,” Cakey said. “Their own weapon running amok, dearly departed General Mattock unable to stop it, unable to save them. That’s gotta cast a pall over their bright and shiny empire. I think we broke Tockland, my friend. Broke ‘em right into pieces.”

  “They still have a lot of weapons and a lot of soldiers,” David said. “Tockland is a big place.”

  “Yeah, but a broken people are a defeated people. We did that, kid. You and me.”

  “If they’re broken, maybe we can slip by without being seen,” David said. “Maybe there won’t need to be one last battle.”

  “I’d count on trading a few shots,” Cakey said. “But we’ll wait a little bit, see what they do. Besides, the sun's going down, and we'll have a better chance in the dark.”

  Cakey went back to the truck to tell the others what was going on. In the meantime, David watched the Tocklanders scampering to and fro. After the bodies were removed—dozens and dozens of them—the surviving soldiers returned to their vehicles, and a caravan was formed, a line that stretched from the compound's western gate all the way past the row of huts. As darkness descended, klieg lights bathed the compound in harsh, overlapping circles of white. Finally, the gate was opened, and the caravan headed out, following a path that led to the highway and then on toward Mattock's palace.

  “Well, there they go, off to discover that Tockland no longer has a Tock,” Cakey said with a smile, coming up beside him. “Let's hope despair overwhelms their instinct to preserve, and they all go wandering off into the wilderness in disillusionment and grief.”

  “Let's hope,” David said.

  “Okay, it's darker now. Once the caravan is out of sight, I say we try to work our way back to the highway and blaze past the compound.”

  “Why take the highway? It's more dangerous. Let's keep to the fields.”

  “We’re lucky we haven’t broken an axle or popped a tire. Better we have a smooth road, ‘cause we’re full throttle all night, straight out of Tockland and on till morning. The last crazy ride to freedom.”

  “Do I still have to man the gun?”

  “’Fraid so. Buck up, friend. You might just get to take the parting shot.”

  They headed back down the hill.
Cakey got into the cab, and David trudged back to the machine gun mount, pulled himself up and clicked the seat belt in place. Belle started up the truck again, backed away from the hill and turned toward the highway. The caravan had long since passed, disappearing in the distance to the west, soon to discover the ruins of their empire. The truck thumped up onto the highway and approached the compound. They would be passing along the northern fence. David counted four guard towers, one at either corner, and two evenly spaced in between. Each one was manned, and each one had a bright klieg light shining down, moving in elliptical patterns over the grounds and out onto the highway.

  As they approached, David turned the machine gun to face the first tower. The whole mounted gun felt clunky and oversized. The ammo was belt-fed, and the bullets, though David did not know ammunition size, appeared larger than any he’d ever seen. Belle killed the truck lights as they approached but picked up speed, the engine giving a loud, throaty growl. The first guard did not notice them, his attention fixed on the row of huts in the distance, shining his light from door to door.

  As they approached the second guard tower, the guard glanced in their direction, stared dumbly for a second, as if unsure of what he was seeing—and, really, how many strange vehicles passed by openly in Tockland? Then he started, fumbled with the gun for a moment and swung it in their direction. David opened fire first, but the kick of the gun caught him by surprise, and, after a short burst, he lost his grip on the handles. Bullets ripped through the roof of the guard tower, missing the guard by feet, but it was enough to make him duck down.

  The truck picked up speed, approaching the third guard tower. The guard in the third tower fired at them, bullets hitting asphalt just to the right of the cab. David returned fire, leaning into the gun to keep it from jumping out of his grip. Bullets made a crooked line up the side of the guard tower, and the guard dropped out of sight, clutching his chest. Now a klaxon awoke in the middle of the compound, the same high wail they’d heard that terrible morning in Fayette, rising up and up like a screaming voice. A few Tockland soldiers appeared in the doorways of some of the huts, but most had gone with the caravan.

  The guard in the fourth tower took a shot at them. David heard a bullet hit the side of the crane behind him with a loud clink. He ducked down behind the gun, aimed high without looking, and pulled both triggers. All of his shots went wild, bullets sailing off into the darkness. The guard fired again as the truck passed by. Bullets hit all around him, sending up sparks from the trailer, the metal skirt around the tank, the crane. David returned fire, still hiding behind the gun, trying to track the guard by sound as they passed. He heard his own bullets hitting metal, but when he looked, he’d missed the guard tower completely and hit part of the fence instead.

  But they were past the guard tower now and heading off into the night. The guard shone his klieg light at them as they retreated. David gave him a final wave, and then they were gone. The compound shrank into the distance, a murky patch of light in a sea of shadows beneath a starry sky. Of the few soldiers who remained in the compound, none bothered to give chase.

  Belle waited until they were well out of sight of the compound before turning on the truck lights. When she did, David saw the highway stretching out in front of them until it merged with the night sky, an unimpeded track leading away from Tockland. He reached past the gun and hammered on the roof of the cab. Belle pulled the truck to the side of the road, and David clambered down out of the machine gun mount and slipped into the cab, squeezing in beside Telly.

  “Good shooting, kid,” Telly said, his voice slurring a bit. “Thought we were goners. Can you imagine, make it all this way and get shot right there at the end?”

  “You got the parting shot,” Cakey said. “I envy you, David, but you earned it.”

  Belle put the truck back in gear and headed down the highway.

  Epilogue

  A Brand New Show

  David peeked through the curtain, squinting as a brilliant beam of early afternoon sunlight glinted off the polished stage. Annabelle had four plates spinning, and she danced from one pole to the other to keep them going. A small cluster of people stood in the grass below the stage, simple folk in burlap shirts and linen dresses, faces shadowed by broad-brimmed hats, clapping appreciatively. One small child leaned against the edge of the stage, her chin resting on her grubby hands, watching with wide eyes and beaming with joy.

  “Patience, Disturby,” Cakey said, leaning in close to whisper in his ear. “You’re up next, but give Belle her full set.”

  “Just looking,” David replied. “Not a big crowd.”

  “It’s a small village. What d’you expect?”

  “It’s not that,” David said. “Most of them are still waiting on Telly. It’ll go on all afternoon, maybe all evening. Some will miss the whole show.”

  “That’s as it should be,” Cakey said. “A brand new kind of show, right?”

  “Right.”

  Scrounging up materials for the new kind of show had been no easy task. From the stage to the curtain to the props to the healing tent, all of it had required quite a bit of begging, deal making and hard work to acquire. But now here it was, and well worth it, David thought.

  He looked beyond the stage, beyond the thirty or so people gathered below, to the small tent some distance away. It was a crude and tattered thing, stitched together from scraps—yellow and brown and blue—staked to the ground beside the truck. The tent flap was drawn aside and pinned open, and David saw the shadowy shape of Telly inside, sitting behind a small table. He had a line of people that started at the table and followed a snaking course outside all the way around the truck and thirty yards across a field toward the first houses. Paragould was the town, a recent settlement built on the ruins of a much older one, but the sick had come from far and wide. Word had spread quickly after the first day. Hundreds of miles east of Tockland but the whole region was overrun with sick, as the snaking line made all too clear. It was exactly the kind of place the Klown Kroo needed to be.

  A sign leaned against the side of the tent, a crude thing made of salvaged bits of plywood clipped together with bent nails, covered in bright red lettering. Healing Draughts, it read. Telly had insisted that the word was spelled drofts for the longest time, and even after he agreed to David’s spelling, rationalized it by saying, Well, I guess we can call your misspelling intentional. Telly doled out the healing liquid sparingly, one cup at a time. There were a lot of sick people to heal, and they might not get to them all. But it was something. Now that Mattock no longer had access to an endless source of sickness—as, indeed, he had no access even to his own life—it looked as if the terrible plague that had eaten away at humanity was finally waning, at least in this part of the world.

  Yes, the Healing Draughts would run out eventually, but David had an idea that his new vision for The Klown Kroo would endure in one form or another. They had all seen it now, and there was no turning back. Performing could be about more than just feeding the internal obsession, more than just the craving for a spotlight and a burst of applause. Heck, maybe they could change the world. Why not? It was crazy thinking, sure, but a better kind of crazy than David had ever known.

  “Ah, God, I wish Karl and Gooty were here to see this,” Cakey said with a sigh. “Gooty, in particular, would have loved your new show. Healing the people, that woulda been right up his alley. I miss ‘em, kid. I miss ‘em both a lot.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “Me, too.”

  Annabelle had reached the finale of her act. Four plates spinning on top of bamboo poles, a fifth plate spinning from the end of a shorter pole stuck between her teeth. The audience applauded, the little girl leaning on the stage giving an excited cry. Then Belle caught the plates in her hand, one by one, and ended with a curtsey.

  “Looks like you’re up,” Cakey said, clapping him on the back. “Go knock ‘em out, kid.” He paused, tapping his chin. “Figure of speech, of course.”

  Annabelle slip
ped through the curtain, blowing her breath out between her lips and shaking her head.

  “Almost dropped one,” she said, setting the plates down on one side, the bamboo poles on another.

  David was still standing there, peeking through the curtain at the line of sick people waiting their turn at Telly’s tent. The severity of the boss’s sickness, brief though it was, had left him with some side effects. He talked a little slower, was not quite as quick-witted and had a bit of a funny gait when he walked. The loss of physical prowess meant he got tired easily. But his new role in the show seemed to agree with him. He never complained, and he slept well at night.

  Annabelle slipped an arm around David’s waist and briefly pressed herself against him, hip to hip, rib to rib.

  “I like this,” she said. “This is the way it should be.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know…two weeks, David,” she said. “Two weeks until you turn eighteen.”

  “Yeah,” David said again, blushing furiously. She had made a game of reminding him about his birthday at every possible moment, usually with a wink, a nudge or a sly look. He had no idea if she was picking on him, or if there was something real behind it. He still hadn’t figured the girl out, and it drove him crazy.

  “It’ll be some party,” she added. “Just you wait and see.”

  “Belle, quit getting the kid worked up and let him get out on stage,” Cakey said. “These dear, sweet rubes are waiting for him, Disturby Dave, The Clown Who Falls Down.”

  David laughed, took a deep breath to calm his suddenly frazzled nerves and headed through the curtain. The bright sun had created a spotlight for him on the stage, and David stepped into warmth. The rubes gathered below clapped at his entrance. Smiling faces, eager, anticipating. And it was that perfect moment all over again. The perfect moment that went on forever.

  David bowed. Round off into a back handspring. That was the opener. It got them every time.