Dark Carnival

by James Axler

  Ryan had flattened himself, hearing the shots hiss above him, crashing into walls, display cases and furniture. He was showered with splinters of wood and glass.

  "Reload?"

  "No. Back to Centerpoint. Come on!" A desperate urgency colored Traven's words.

  It took Ryan less than ten seconds to locate the killing spot at the side of the semiconscious girl's throat and open it with the whispering edge of the big panga. Another five seconds had him moving across the devastated room, stumbling over two corpses on the way, and picking his way quickly and carefully through the smashed window.

  Ryan was always careful around broken glass. He'd been in the building, years ago, when a tail gunner on War Wag Two had slipped climbing in through just such a window. The shards had ripped open the femoral artery in the inside of the thigh, and he'd bled to death before anyone could reach him.

  By the time Ryan was on his feet in the damp grass, adjusting to where he was in the darkness, he heard Traven a couple of hundred yards away, screaming to the sec guards, warning them of an armed intruder.

  But Ryan had cut away to the left, picking his way with faultless accuracy to the gap in the defenses of the Rainbow's End Retirement Complex. He climbed into the branches of the tree, then ran toward the heart of the ville, following the trail of Traven and the young man.

  His mind was filled with worry for the survival of Doc Tanner.

  There were two big strikes against his old friend. One was that Ryan had failed in his attempt to chill Traven and all members of his murderous gang. The two survivors would reach Centerpoint before him.

  And two, with just the two knives, he couldn't hope to do much against the squad of sec men who'd be confronting him.

  Which meant only one option. There had been the faint possibility of going again into that sodden shambles and trying to find a couple of the dropped Colts. Even if Ryan had succeeded without getting chilled by the sec guards, he'd have had a maximum of sixteen spaced rounds for close range, little use for the firefight that he knew was coming.

  "Gator Motel," he muttered.

  THERE WAS A BRIEF rain shower as he ran, barely enough to dampen the paths and make them glisten. The moon had broken through the cloud, throwing his shadow ahead of him.

  Ryan considered the risk of Traven and his last sidekick stopping to reload, then ambushing him from cover as he sprinted blindly past them. But that wasn't the way it went. Traven had heard six of his seven acolytes chopped down within two paces of him. If he was feeling anything, it would be terror. And an overwhelming desire to find somewhere solid, with reinforcements.

  Ryan reached one of the main trails that would eventually lead him to the motel and generated more speed, knowing that it could only be a matter of moments before Traven roused Greenglades ville against him. Against them all.

  The motel finally came into sight, shimmering in the moonlight. A young sec man was dozing in front of the main entrance. He heard Ryan's boots pounding on the gravel and sat up, reaching for the blaster at his belt.

  Without even breaking stride, Ryan swung the panga and hacked clean through the guard's slender neck and sprinted on. At his back he heard the pattering of blood and the hollow thunk as the severed head hit the ground.

  Krysty had felt him returning and was out in the corridor, his SIG-Sauer in her hand. Behind her, in the doorway, stood J.B., holding the Uzi. As Ryan slowed to a walk, struggling to control his breathing, he also spotted Mildred.

  All three of them were fully dressed, ready to move, ready for action. J.B. had the Steyr rifle slung across his shoulders.

  "How many you chill?" Krysty asked. "Gaia! You're awash with blood. You hurt?"

  "Not hurt. Didn't take out enough of them. One of the boys and Traven himself got away."

  "Where?" J.B. asked. "Centerpoint?"

  "Yeah."

  Mildred's face was set like stone. "They hurt Doc? If they have…"

  "Not yet. Got to move. Now. Real quick. Before they get organized. Come on."

  They'd only gone a few paces when Ryan skidded to a halt. "Who's got the radio?"

  "In the drawer," Krysty replied. "I'll get it." She saw Ryan hesitate. "Go on, lover. I can easily catch up with you. Run faster than you."

  When she took the small transceiver out of the drawer, it was switched on. And Jak was sending a message to Ryan.

  Chapter Forty-One

  RYAN TOOK HIS rifle from J.B. and slipped it over his shoulder, though he already knew this wasn't likely to be a long-range firefight.

  The three friends raced toward Centerpoint. There had been another brief shower, and the air tasted cooler and fresher. A shot was fired at them from somewhere beyond Paraglide Paradise, but it went harmlessly overhead. They didn't stop.

  Ryan held up a hand as he saw the main lights of the entrance to Centerpoint ahead of them. He looked over his shoulder. "Where's… ?" he began.

  But Krysty was already close, running lightly toward them, the heels of her boots clicking on the tarmac path. She was carrying the radio in her right hand.

  "Message from Jak," she said, barely out of breath from her run.

  "What?"

  "Couldn't catch it properly. Faint and all broken up by static."

  Ryan was torn by the desire to try to listen to the radio and the certain knowledge that delay could prove fatal for all of them.

  "Hear anything?" he asked.

  "Kept calling for you, lover, and I'm sure I heard him say Dean's name, as well. Want to try to… ?"

  "No. No time." He looked around at the others. "Only one plan. Here it is—"

  A QUICK CALCULATION made it certain that Adam Traven couldn't have had more than about three minutes to make any effort to organize the defense of the tower. It was also reasonable to assume that he'd want to get up to the top as quickly as possible.

  Which meant the sec men who were milling around the main doors to Centerpoint would be like decapitated chickens.

  Using the sniper rifle, Ryan picked off four of them, each time with a clean head shot. The other half dozen scattered into the night.

  "Nice shooting in poor light," Mildred said admiringly.

  "Fish in a barrel with the Starlight scope," he replied, laying the SSG-70 on the ground.

  J.B. glanced behind them. "Think he'll call in some help?"

  "Doubt it. No time. Be after Doc, mebbe Boss Larry, too, now most of his plans are blown out the window."

  Ryan led the way, through the double glass doors with the brass alligator handles, across the main lobby toward the bank of elevators.

  "One's already up at the top," Mildred commented, pointing to the left-hand indicator.

  "Be waiting for us," J.B. said thoughtfully.

  There were five more cages, waiting silently, doors gaping open.

  Ryan looked at his companions for a moment. "All right," he said, "let's do it."

  HUNDREDS OF FEET above them, the vast room revolved slowly. Doc Tanner stood near one of the windows, forehead pressed against the cool glass, watching the dark world of Florida moving gently past him. He appeared to be lost in a mindless dream, but every one of his senses was on the alert. Since Traven and his panic-stricken cohort had burst from the elevator, Doc knew that life was measured in short minutes. Whatever happened, he was ready to go down with fists flying.

  Farther to the left Boss Larry Zapp was seated on his throne. With an enormous struggle during the previous night, his two mutes had lifted it onto a platform of stacked tables, then helped the bloated figure to be seated.

  Zapp had been inhaling such vast quantities of dreem that his face and the front of his maroon caftan were dusted pink. As far as Doc could see, the baron was barely conscious.

  His two attendants, shaven headed and muscular, stood patiently, one on each side of the throne.

  Near the elevators, crouched behind their blasters, were two of the youngest sec men in the ville. The appearance of Traven and the one survivor of the posse, both sh
outing and on the edge of terror, had freaked the guards, and their fingers twitched on the triggers of the Colts.

  Traven's boy, almost gibbering with fear, was sitting slumped at one of the round tables, head in his hands. Doc had noticed, from the pungent odor, that the youth had fouled himself in fright.

  Last was Adam Traven himself.

  His small figure was in a whirl of constant movement, dancing and singing, his glass-sewn jacket flaring around him.

  ONE OF THE SIX ELEVATORS rested on the top floor; the other five were in the lobby.

  Traven heard the whirring of the main drive gears and spun around, his Beretta gleaming in the subdued glow of the wall lights. "Here they all come," he drawled. "The little piggies ready for supper. Which one they using?"

  "All of them!" shouted one of the sec men. "They're all fuckin' comin' at us!"

  The illuminated indicators above each of the five sets of double doors were all showing movement. At the same time, the doors of the cage that had been standing empty on the top floor hissed shut, and that elevator began to move downward.

  "Can't be more than four of them. They'll have split up, one to a cage." A long pause. "Mebbe."

  There were twenty-five floors between Lobby and Roof.

  Doc Tanner turned slowly to watch the final act of the drama. "High farce, I believe it used to be called," he said to himself.

  He took a cautious half step to the right, considering trying to lose himself among the draperies and dusty banquettes, but Traven sensed the movement and screamed a warning.

  "You got a couple of minutes left, you old prick! Wanna make them seconds?"

  Doc lifted his hands and made an elegant, half-apologetic shrug.

  The big drive wheels stopped turning, leaving five of the cars stopped on the twentieth floor. The sixth elevator had also stopped at that floor.

  The boy sitting at the table started to moan, lifting his Government Colt and looking wildly around the room. "Traven!"

  "What?"

  "Let's chill them all and get out."

  "Get out! Our wings are a little on the fucking short side for flying."

  The elevators started to move again.

  "Going down, all of them," called one of the sec men, turning to Traven for orders. "Just watch them. It'll be a trick."

  Doc was close to Boss Larry, and he was startled when the monstrous figure opened its eyes and beckoned him with a jeweled finger.

  "What?" he whispered.

  "Some spurs come in the door, and some spurs come in the window," The voice was barely audible, but the layers of flesh peeled away and showed Doc an enigmatic, stoned smile.

  Traven looked back suspiciously, but his attention was distracted by the peculiar behavior of the elevators. Now they were all moving at random, some up and some down.

  Doc puzzled at the drugged man's comment. There was no way that Ryan and the others could get outside the tower and break in through the windows, and the elevators were the only way into the top floor.

  "Unless…" Doc said quietly.

  One of the cars reached the top, bringing a moment of suspense until the doors slid open.

  There was a burst of fire as the sec-men both started shooting, bullets sparking off the metal interior of the elevator cage. The empty cage.

  "Stupes!" Traven roared.

  The doors slid shut again, and the car started to descend.

  Farther along the row, another one arrived at the roof level, and again the door parted to show an empty box of dusty metal.

  "Keep watching! They're pressing the control buttons to bring them up and then down again. But they'll come bursting out of one soon. Real soon!"

  The youth at the table had stood, rocking unsteadily, eyes blank. Doc could almost hear the boy's brain churning emptily, like loose change in the pocket of a bored man.

  All of the elevator indicators had stopped three floors below the revolving room.

  "Here they come!" shouted the taller of the sec guards. "All at once."

  With only the smallest interval between them, every one of the cars was moving upward.

  The first one stopped, and the doors opened on nothing.

  And the second one.

  Everyone was staring intently at the entrance as the third one hissed to a halt. And people started to die.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  BOSS LARRY ZAPP had known what was going to happen. Even through his dream-broken brain, he'd still known enough about the jewel in the crown of Greenglades ville to be certain Ryan would work it out.

  If the elevators had ever broken down with a revolving restaurant filled with diners, there had to be a way of getting them all to safety.

  Ryan led the other three out from behind the filthy velvet curtain that concealed the emergency exit.

  Trained to stand and fight, the two young guards spun around and opened fire, falling to the floor riddled with bullets.

  Simultaneously the two mute servants of Boss Larry, moving with a bizarre synchronicity, stepped in to attack the last surviving member of the posse. Adrenaline and terror racing through his body, the boy opened fire on them, blasting holes in their chests at point-blank range.

  Mildred killed him.

  One .38-caliber bullet from her Czech ZKR 551 target revolver drilled smack between his narrow, foxy eyes, cutting neatly through his brain and exiting from the back of his head, taking a fist-sized chunk of skull with it.

  Five dead. Or down and dying.

  Traven moved with the reflexes of a cornered rat.

  Krysty fired twice with her stubby Smith & Wesson 640, both bullets taking chunks from a table as the little man dived beneath it.

  "Where's he gone?" J.B. shouted.

  "There!" Ryan yelled, seeing a flicker of movement in the darkness.

  Doc moved to one side, trying to see where Traven had gone, standing directly in front of the giant figure of the looming baron.

  But their target had vanished, scuttling on hands and knees through the shadows.

  Traven suddenly burst into sight almost at Doc's feet, grabbed the old man by the arm and jamming his Beretta into the side of his scrawny throat. Doc completely obscured Traven from the others' guns.

  "Let me go." Traven's voice was soft and gentle, pleading. "Or this stinking prick goes down like a sack of shit."

  "Mildred?" Ryan said quietly.

  "No," she replied. "Can't see an inch to hit. Terrible light."

  "Come on, quick," Traven pressed. "I don't have all night to wait."

  Behind him there was unexpected movement.

  Shoulder-length hair shining like spun silver, maroon caftan billowing around him like the bloody mainsail of a man-of-war, Boss Larry Zapp was standing up.

  Mildred was beside Ryan, and he heard her whisper, with an almost religious awe, "Mountain's come to Mohammed."

  Traven sensed the shadow that suddenly hung over him and he half turned, jaw dropping, eyes widening in horror.

  "Don't move, you lard-ass bastard, or you get it, too."

  Zapp's throaty voice broke the stillness. "Should've stopped this before it started. Stop it now."

  "Gaia!" Krysty breathed.

  Zapp simply leaned forward from his elevated throne until gravity took over. His fall seemed to defy all the accepted laws of science, and he toppled toward Traven with an infinite slowness.

  The barrel of the Beretta moved from Doc's throat, and the hand released his arm. Traven stared up at his nemesis, paralyzed.

  Ryan wanted to shout a warning to Doc, but his voice was constricted and frozen by the vision of doom.

  Of all the people in the revolving room, Doc was the only person who didn't know what was happening. His back was to Boss Larry. All he knew was that the immediate threat had been removed. With a convulsive shudder, the old man pulled clear and dived toward the nearest table.

  Traven never even tried to escape the tumbling figure.

  If Ryan ever tried to remember the scene in later l
ife, it always seemed to him to have happened in total silence. Boss Larry appeared to envelop Traven and flow around him. There was no sound of an impact. Just the little figure vanishing beneath the huge bulk of the baron.

  There was a moment of paralysis, with everyone standing where they were, watching.

  Ryan reacted fastest, bolstering his blaster and moving forward.

  That was when the shooting began.

  Fired out in the open the Beretta 95 would make a satisfying crack. But at the top of Centerpoint, its eight shots were spaced and muffled, almost as if Traven were shooting the gun underwater with a baffle silencer attached.

  Buried under Larry Zapp, the muzzle of the blaster pressed deep into the multiple slabs of flesh, the sound of the shooting was barely audible.

  Nor did it have very much visible effect.

  Larry's head was turned to one side, his cheeks seeming to melt into the carpet. His body twitched and rippled a couple of times, but it looked as if the eight bullets hadn't harmed him.

  Ryan knelt on the floor. "How you doing, Larry? You sure caught the bastard."

  "Did, didn't I?" A spasm crossed the face.'"Still feel him moving some. You better send… last train west. Do it for me, Ryan."

  "Sure. But you can do it yourself when we get you up and off of him."

  "No. He shot me, Ryan. Sort of felt it…deep down inside. Done for me. Sorry about—"

  His eyes became blank and still.

  "Gone," Ryan said.

  Doc rose to his full height and looked at the corpse of his savior. "I must confess that Mr. Zapp was lacking in certain areas of acceptable behavior, but he chose to depart this life in a most courageous and gentlemanly manner. And I salute him for that."

  J.B. shook his head. "Could leave Traven stuck under there."

  "Be poetic justice," Mildred agreed.

  "No." Ryan shook his head. "Evil dog like Traven needs putting away. Let's get Boss Larry off him."

  Traven was barely conscious, face suffused, mouth open as he'd fought against being suffocated by the dead baron's immense weight.