Everybody Scream!

by Jeffrey Thomas

  They paid their way inside, and immediately met another group of girls from school: Colleen Narcisi from Modeling class, and Rena Tushkin and Diana Talmud. These girls had already attracted a few boys from school who’d been roaming in a separate group, shaven-headed hulking sportsters. One of them whom Fawn had told Heather she liked smiled at her and she cringed against Heather’s arm in pleasure, squealing softly in her friend’s ear. But minutes later as they noisily, excitedly chattered Fawn grew bitter at the way Colleen kept punching the boy on the arm and wrestling with him, tickling him, making contact in every childish way to secure his attentions. Fawn was also jealous of Colleen’s white leotard-tight sweat pants with the rear flap fully open. Her mother forbade her from wearing such pants even with panties on under the open or partly-opened flap. Rena wore red pants, also with the flap open and without underwear. Diana, prettier, was also more reserved. These three were too attractive, too much competition…Fawn wanted to get away from them now that Colleen had staked her claim on the cute sportster.

  Fawn urged Heather to buy tickets with her so they could begin right away on the rides, and Heather accompanied her to one of the ticket booths near the entrance while small hyperactive Cookie lingered to chat animatedly with the others.

  Mitch jogged his way to the front gate. One of his people, Dingo Rubydawn, a Choom, had bleeped him that there was a potential problem with a group of Red Jihad who wouldn’t give up their arsenal.

  There were fourteen of them, only three being females. The only obvious difference between the females, veiled and black-garbed like ancient nuns, was their height. Two were children, but from the age of four they were required to hide their hair; at five females were considered adult and at nine could marry...so these might have been wives taken out for a night’s entertainment on the kiddie rides.

  The boys, ranging from sixteen (when a man could take a wife) to about twenty, were not, Mitch was relieved to see, the army-uniformed bearded clones who wore the red martyr bandanas of the considerable warrior caste. The huge posters they left around town showed a mass of these types approaching the camera in waves, their faces turned in profile to look at something. At first glance this poster seemed to show the same man reproduced over and over again, until you saw slight variations such as the height of the gun barrel held in front of their chests. Mitch had seen more variation in the personality of cats, easily, and even in simple-minded cows, than he had in his experiences with the Red Jihad cult. This, he’d said as a policeman after a few dangerous near-confrontations, was what would happen if you gave insects a religion.

  The boys were starting beards, all wearing white shirts and dark pants. The shirts, never washed, were thickly crusted brown with dried blood–their own. The Red Jihad had a religious ritual by which a wound was opened in the top of a boy’s head at sixteen and the bleeding was a purification, a cleansing shower. “Miscreants,” “unbelievers” and “infidels” jokingly referred to this as a holy hole, and it was reopened every year on the man’s birthday. A complex machine which judged the man’s height in order to safely deliver the automatic gashing had been developed to keep up with each day’s steady flow. Herds of men poured through like cattle to be slaughtered, the smell of blood adding to the analogy. Islam was the fastest growing Earth-oriented religion, and Moslems numbered in the billions on Earth, but many of them disowned the extremist Red Jihad schism–which despite this fact was growing steadily itself. No one but Red Jihad members inhabited the harsh planet called the World of Faith. The governors of Oasis, both Earth colonials and Chooms, were becoming restless with the growing hordes of Red Jihad and feared that one day they would overwhelm Oasis as they had their World of Faith, or at least grow numerous enough to present the constant problem they presented on far Earth. There had already been acts of terrorism here, thus far mostly directed at extensions of the Canon, rather than political targets, over the past few decades. There had been a group of Red Jihad students occupying a tenement building on Forma Street, and although they had been fairly well behaved Mitch had learned to treat them as if they all wore explosives strapped to their bodies even when they didn’t.

  Dingo and two of the town-hired uniformed men from the Fog Agency had the group detained peacefully off to one side, their tickets already purchased. Mitch took inventory: five automatic assault rifles with grenade launchers and laser targeting scopes. Holstered pistols on all eleven males, plus one with a grenade belt. Rough kids, but still not one of the hover cycle-riding warrior bands. “I’m Chief of Security,” Mitch said as he strode up to them, flipping open his badge. “What’s the problem, folks?”

  The apparent leader sneered at him, eyes bulging. Ants can’t smile, thought Mitch. “I have seen others with guns go unharassed! We will not have our weapons taken from us and we will not be denied the right to enter!”

  “Alright, now just listen to me a second. We just wanna take the rifles, okay? We’re not singling you out…we confiscate what we feel to be unnecessary firepower…you still have enough for self defense. Automatic fire and grenades create too great a risk to bystanders; we already had a boy die today…”

  “Our enemies are many–we will not go about as sheep.” The leader, Garnet noticed, had some blood crusted in the channels of his ear, his hair stiff and matted. He’d had his birthday recently, and probably picked at the scab as these younger men were likely to do to keep the blood flowing. Maybe his ten-year-old bride, her dark and lovely eyes peering up at Garnet timidly over the top of her hijab veil, found his bloodied appearance sexy.

  “Well look–why don’t we collect all the rifles but one? You can take turns guarding one-another while the others are having fun. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?”

  “We don’t have to bargain with you, demon ghost!” snarled a sixteen-year-old, bayoneting a finger at Garnet, his face more furiously stamped even than that of the leader.

  The Red Jihad were said to be unafraid to die–to die for their God was the ultimate honor–but Mitch was willing to bet that he could easily make this scrawny punk very afraid to die if they were left alone together. Or at least, make him beg to die for a reason other than to serve his deity. Mitch wanted to spit in his face. To spit in a Red Jihad’s face was to cause him to become sullied forever, unable to enter heaven. Mitch ached to find out if the rumors were true that the Earth government had robot satellites that could fly in and spray the cities of the World of Faith with artificially-produced but organic, actual saliva, in the event that such measures became necessary. That would dampen their passion for martyrdom. But Mitch contained his hatred.

  “Look, you don’t need all that firepower in here.”

  “People mock us, challenge us,” the leader said.

  “I know, that’s what I’m afraid of. But we take their big guns, too.”

  “We do not surrender our guns!” snapped the furious teenager.

  The leader raised a staying hand. “We will give you all our rifles but one. But the pistols and grenade belt stay with us.”

  “No grenades, please...come on. This isn’t a battleground, it’s a carnival.”

  “I will compromise only if you compromise!” the leader growled.

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Garnet held up both hands. “Fair enough. Just take it easy in here, alright? Everybody’s here for fun, that’s all.”

  Dingo collected and tagged the four rifles, locked them in the gate shed’s large safe-like weapons rack. The Red Jihad members moved along, sullen and proud. Mitch met the eyes of the little girl again. He couldn’t read them but they weren’t hostile. Red Jihad women who refrained from wearing the veil or dressed indiscreetly, colorfully, often had acid thrown in their faces by bands of idealistic teenage boys such as this one. Mitch felt like gathering her up in his arms and running off. He had a ten-year-old niece who loved him and drew happy-faced horses for him and who smiled without a veil.

  Red ants, he thought, scowling after them. They reminded him of the Bedbugs, who, thou
gh less violent, were just as mechanical, just as devoted to their mysterious faith, and just as closed off from all other thought, tribes and beliefs, even as they moved amongst them.

  Some great philosophers, great religions urged that one must undermine their identity to liberate the spirit, to release the selfish hold on one’s self. But if this were the way the spirit was liberated, then the spirit was a fanged murderous demon and he’d rather be obsessed with his own particular, idiosyncratic, individualistic/materialistic being. Not being a Christian and not meaning it in a Christian way, Mitch nevertheless thought that the Red Jihad branch might have spirits but they didn’t have souls. Whether the soul was an actual existing energy or state, or else only an abstracted symbolic concept, he would leave to the Theta researchers, but the word still served its purpose for him…

  Fawn folded up her long strip of tickets, counted off the amount needed for the Screamer, the first ride which had caught her attention, mostly because of the loud music and the DJ’s chatter: “Okay, we’re about ready to speed it up now…you look ready to me. Are you ready to go faster?”

  A weak chorus of, “Yeah!”

  “I didn’t hear that! I said, do you wanna go faster?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Alright, then…everybody screeeam!”

  Fawn looked up into the face of a passing boy in a dark-stained shirt, wide eyes blazing at her. He spat a glob of mucus in her face, then spat out the words, “Satan’s whore!”

  “Hey–oh God! You…” But Heather gripped her arm.

  “Easy. Don’t look at ‘em. I’ll get ya some water and napkins.”

  “Blasting freakies,” Fawn moaned, horrified at the substance on her skin. “They should spit in Colleen’s face if they want to get mad at our kind.” The little ten-year-old glanced over her shoulder back at her and Fawn wanted to give her an obscene gesture but restrained herself.

  After the Screamer, Fawn and her two companions rode in the hover bumper cars, and after that they found a double dissecto booth. Fawn fed a munit into a slot, one of the doors folded open, she stepped inside with little Cookie. One munit a minute. The dissecto booth was actually a variation on a medical scanner. As little as one’s clothing could be made to disappear in the mirror-like full-length screen, or one layer of skin, or all the skin down to the muscle, every organ put on display, or the moving, giggling skeleton laid completely bare. Fawn and Cookie laughed giddily at their raw pink muscles, at their laughter-convulsed intestines. Fawn turned her skull from side to side.

  Cookie fed more munits, punched keys, adjusted dials until only their two hearts floated free in space, or their eyeballs, or their breasts (what little they had), finally punching their skeletons back in and hitting another button which gave them a poster-sized photograph of their skeletons’ pose. Cookie rolled it in a tube and as the screen went dead they stepped out to find Heather and Rena and Diana Talmud talking with a man, Colleen and the cute sportster having mysteriously vanished, maybe to practice their own dissection.

  The man, in an expensive blackish-green silk suit and string tie, seemed to be flirting most strongly with Diana, while Heather and Rena looked on amused. The guy had this stupid friendly grin like he really thought he would get somewhere with Diana.

  “If ya don’t believe me then come on and I’ll show ya,” the man was saying. “I’ve never played that game without winning a nice stuffed animal. I’ll win ya a big teddy bear, how about that?”

  “I’ve got more stuffed animals than I know what to do with, thanks,” Diana smirked dryly.

  “Then I’ll win ya a t-shirt.”

  “Blast off, huh?”

  The other girls exploded into laughter, even Fawn, Cookie hysterical. Heather only smiled pleasantly. Del’s grin drained away. He was mortified.

  “Hey, I’m only trying to be friendly.”

  “I’ve already got a father, pal, I’m not looking for a father figure. I’m not stupid. Go pick up some other daughter figure.”

  “I think you mistake my intentions,” Del murmured, straightening up grimly. A lie, but meant to preserve him a tiny bit of dignity.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Diana smirked. The others giggled, though Fawn was a little afraid he might turn psycho and pull out a gun.

  He didn’t. Without another word he walked away.

  The girls broke up more loudly than ever.

  “What a sleazy operator,” Diana sniggered.

  Hector Tomas wearily trudged up the path of the steep hill, a great plateau upon which the noisy carnival city was built. He had a full dark mustache and heavy-lidded mournful dark eyes, wore his old black plastic Theta researcher jacket but with his ID badge unpinned. Under that he wore a gun. It was a nice one: government issue special agent’s sidearm with no report, no recoil, and fast-acting plasma bullets. The Theta research group he had worked with had been commissioned and funded by the Earth colonial government to carry out their explorations and investigations. He himself had never needed a gun such as this during his explorations, but in the explorations of some of his fellow researchers special weapons had been utilized, or else those researchers might not have returned alive to their own dimension or plane of existence. He had never been to the place nicknamed Meatland by his fellow researchers, from which only two of the first full exploration teams had returned (out of five), with one of the two teams now on permanent disability leave for mental trauma. But he had been to dangerous places, encountered dangerous things. And yet, one didn’t have to cross over to encounter dangerous places and things...hence the gun tonight.

  At the top of the hill, finally, he swooned–weak, and tired. That made him nervous. He had been rationing his illegal anti-sleep pills until he could make the buy tonight, and had also been cutting back on his sedatives due to this rationing, so the sedatives wouldn’t smother him without the electric fence of the anti-sleep drug to hold them at bay. He had been foolish to wait so long…he couldn’t wait any longer, whether the drugs had been acquired for him or not. The first thing Hector did once inside the gate was buy a soda and wash down his last two anti-sleep pills together.

  The jolt came after only a minute. He found new strength and calm. He could go on now.

  But he had to go to LaKarnafeaux immediately, get that errand and its attendant suspense over with–then he could relax, browse around, go to see what cows had won prizes, what grotesque gourds had been shaped in suburban gardens. Maybe even play a few games. Because Hector loved carnivals; they brought back his boyhood. More innocent times. The bustle of life, people squirming everywhere like bugs under a rock uncovered.

  “La vida es un carnaval,” he muttered to himself.

  Hector’s new enthusiasm dwindled somewhat. The seething life reminded him of the less material–but no less busy–seething of another sort of life he had witnessed in crossing over. There, too, he had encountered women, men, fast-moving children swarming in all directions, plus nonhuman things occasionally mixed in. He had talked with some of those people…

  Hector stopped by a trash barrel to drop in his empty cup and to survey the loud activity around him, the firefly swarms of light, the tracer bullet exchanges, the neon lightning storms, the people illuminated by all the fireworks like a reflecting, rolling ocean, children scattering madly like billiard balls. The comfort came back a little. Blissfully ignorant they were, and lucky not to have seen what he had witnessed, lucky not to have even seen photographs of Meatland as he had. All the activity, noise, the tents and trailers and structures, though temporary, made them feel safely insulated; a fortress. No, it was best that the majority would never read the scientific publications or watch the programs on the educational channels which showed the terrain of Meatland, the gently rolling hills red and grooved like bare muscle, with red liquid bubbling in rotten sores, all under a sky of red with black clouds swirling like ink in water. An endless landscape of mindless but organic matter. And it was good they would be mostly ignorant of the denizens of Meatland, the quick thin
gs that had reared out of the bubbling sores to chase and catch those hapless researchers, all wrinkly folds of shiny crimson flesh with no faces but for huge mouths filled with saw-blades of yellow teeth.

  And it was good that they wouldn’t know that Meatland was right here, right now, in the same space as this carnival, this carnival built over it, hiding it with all the lights and noise.

  But Hector knew. He moved on.

  Pearl let Del in. They were happy to see each other. She made him a coffee.

  They sat in the small parlor area of her trailer with the carrousel horse Del and Sophi had given her mounted on the wall.

  “I missed your day show,” apologized Del. “I’ll make tonight’s–I promise.”

  “I’m going to sing Blue Blues,” Pearl told him.

  Del smiled, nodded, looked at his coffee. “Thanks. You do it well.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No–I’m honored. Really. You do it beautifully; from me it sounds like I’m gargling gravel.”

  “Stop that. It’s stronger if it isn’t too pretty. It came from your heart. I could never compete with that. I can’t even write lyrics–God, how I envy you.”

  “This is a really cute trailer.” Del looked over his shoulder.

  “I’m going to miss you and Sophi this winter.”

  “We’ll come see you.”

  “I feel safe around you.”

  Del smiled at her. “We care about you. We want to help you.”

  “You have–you gave me a new life. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You gave yourself a new life–you have the talent.”

  “Del…can I prevail upon you for another favor? A huge, huge favor?” She could see the light squirm in his eyes. “I hate to…ask…after all you’ve done…”