by Lola StVil
None of us speak. We’re all on high alert, trying to have our eyes in every direction at once. We walk between the ghost train and a row of hotdog and candy stalls. Rustling sounds come from inside the ghost train, and a clicking sound comes from the hot dog stall. It gets louder, becoming a loud clanking sound.
The wind howls all around us, whistling loudly and whipping our clothes into a frenzy. Dust and dirt from the ground blow around in the wind, battering our faces and getting in our eyes.
Behind us, loud carnival music bursts out. I turn to see the big empty wheel turning in a lazy circle. The tinny music rings out as the wheel spins.
“Fuck, I don’t like this place. I don’t like it at all.”
The team huddles closer together, an almost unconscious movement. I can see the fear in Atlas as she walks in front of us. Her shoulders are squared, the muscles tense, but she doesn’t slow her pace.
I quicken mine and reach her side. She throws me a dirty look, but she doesn’t protest that I’m beside her. She just turns back to the front and keeps walking.
A red cube sits on the ground in front of us. It’s not very big, no bigger than a box of chocolates. It squeaks slightly as we approach it, and I instinctively put my arm in front of Atlas, stopping her from walking into a trap.
There’s a loud bang, and the box bursts open, a cackling jack-in-the-box bursting out on its spring. Its ugly smile taunts us.
Atlas shoves my arm away and angrily kicks the box to one side. The tension in the air is almost unbearable.
“Guys? Do you get the feeling this is almost too easy? Like we’re walking into something?” Perry asks
He’s right. That’s exactly how it feels, but what other option do we have?
“Maybe you should shimmy up that,” Langston says to Perry, nodding at the roller-coaster tracks. “See what you can see.”
I’m not sure if she’s being sarcastic or not, but Perry nods and heads for it.
“Umm, guys. We have a problem,” Atlas says.
I’ve fallen back a step or two, watching Perry start to scale the coaster tracks. I turn back to Atlas. She stands, frozen, looking to her right. We’ve reached the end of the hot dog stands, and she looks down the side of them.
I step towards her, and I see it. A large, bull-like creature watches us. It’s bigger than a normal bull, standing at least twice as high and wider too. Its eyes glow red, and its flesh hangs in tatters from its bones.
Steam pours from its nostrils as it gives an angry snort. It rubs the ground in front of it with a large black hoof. It’s getting ready to charge.
“Run,” I shout, grabbing Atlas by the hand and running to the left.
I can hear the panicked breathing of the others as they run behind us. I don’t know where I’m heading. I don’t even know if I’m going in the right direction anymore—I just run, dragging Atlas along with me.
I turn past another booth and come straight to a dead end. Now we’re fucked. Atlas and I come to a stop. We turn to face each other; her horrified expression says it all. I’m sure I’m wearing the same look.
The others come to a stop one by one behind us as they see what we see.
“Oh shit,” Quinn says.
A scream pierces the carnival music that still plays, and we spin around. The bull has Langston in its mouth.
It stopped running, and right now, it’s not actually hurting Langston. It just holds her, waiting. We stand, watching. No one knows what to do.
“We have to help her,” Perry says, but he makes no move to do it.
With no warning, Atlas pulls her hand from mine and runs forward, dodging through the team. Why is she so damn quick to put herself in danger like this?
I run after her, but I’m too far away to grab her.
“Atlas, stop,” I shout.
She ignores me and leaps. She’s trying to get high enough to fire at the bull without risking hitting Langston. She doesn’t get far before she crashes back down to earth.
“What the… ?” I start.
“Fuck. It’s a no-fly zone,” Saudia says.
The bull drops Langston, who crawls towards us, whimpering. Perry sticks out his hand and helps her up.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
She stops whimpering, looking down at herself. She is covered in a thick layer of slime.
“Ughh,” she says, swatting at the stringy liquid and flicking it off herself. “I’m a mess.”
The bull fixes Atlas in its glare. She is on her bottom, frantically backpedaling as it takes a step towards her.
I know I’m not going to be able to reach her in time. The bull has lowered its head and opened its mouth. Another second and she’ll be bull food.
I push forward, but it’s no good. I’m too far away. I watch as everything seems to go into slow motion. The bull snorts as its face reaches Atlas. And then she reaches up and fires directly into its mouth.
It rears up, letting out a loud roar of pain. Atlas jumps to her feet.
“Look,” Regal shouts, pointing.
There’s an opening just before the dead end. We can get through it.
“Go,” Atlas shouts.
We don’t need telling twice. We all run for the gap. If we thought the bull was angry before, it’s nothing compared to this. It snorts and grunts and runs towards us.
I stop when I reach the gap. Regal and Quinn are already through. I stand to one side, half pushing Remy, Saudia, Perry, and then Langston through. I’m not stepping through there until Atlas is safe.
The bull is gaining on her, but I think she can make it. I reach my hand out to her, and she does the same. I grab her wrist and yank her through the gap and step through myself. It’s close. So close, I feel the heat of the bull’s breath on my neck, but we’re all through.
“Are you okay?” I ask Atlas.
“I’m fine,” she says.
She doesn’t exactly bite my head off, but she’s hardly the picture of grace either.
“Are you alright, Langston?” she asks.
Langston nods mutely.
“Nice job leading us up a blind alley,” Regal says to me.
“Yeah? Well, I didn’t see you do any better. Why? Oh, that’s right. You hung back and let someone else take the risk.”
Regal doesn’t get a chance to answer me. The wall behind us shakes as the bull throws itself at it. Cracks appear.
“Oh, fucking hell. That thing doesn’t quit, does it?” Perry says.
The gap we’ve stepped through has brought us into what was once a fun house. The floor beneath us is spongy, but at least it’s not moving.
I say it to myself too soon. The haunting music of the big wheel stops, and instead, the fun house comes to life. Circus music starts to play, and the spongy floor beneath us starts to shake.
The wall behind us takes another hit, and the cracks become a hole big enough for the bull’s head.
“Let’s move,” Atlas says.
We make it to the other side of the shaky platform easily enough. Next, we come to a barrel that rotates quickly. It should be a simple matter of crawling through it quickly enough not to get lifted into the air, but it isn’t. The barrel is lined with wicked-looking spikes.
I walk up to it and grab one in each hand, trying to hold the barrel still. I manage, but it’s a strain, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to hold it.
“Go,” I say through gritted teeth.
The barrel is narrow and only two people can fit through it at once.
Perry and Remy go first, followed by Quinn and Regal, then Saudia and Langston. Only Atlas is left. She looks at me, then at the barrel.
“You might want to hurry,” I say.
She nods and scrambles through. She clears the other side, and I let go. My arms are aching, and I shake them out.
The bull crashes through the wall and begins making its way towards me. It no longer runs. It walks slowly, menacingly, not taking its eyes off me. It knows I’ve got no way out and i
t’s playing with me. Predator and prey. It’s so much more unnerving than it was when it was running.
“Are you coming or what?” Regal snaps behind me.
I turn away from the bull, surprised to see that Regal has stopped the barrel from the other side. It wouldn’t surprise me if he lets go when I’m halfway across, but I decide to take my chances.
I scramble through. It’s wobbly, but Regal keeps his grip until I climb off.
“Thanks,” I mutter grudgingly.
Maybe I won’t torture him quite so much before I kill him.
We run across the next section of rickety flooring and reach the edge of the hall of mirrors. The bull has reached the barrel. It doesn’t pay any attention to the spikes; it just walks through, its hooves protecting it from damage.
We enter the hall of mirrors. I’m immediately disorientated. Everywhere I look I see myself and the others reflected into infinity. Some reflections are fat, some skinny, some long, some short, and some are just downright weird.
Remy is at the front of the group, and she walks tentatively forward, her hand raised in front of her. She taps the glass until she finds a gap.
“Everyone, form a chain so no one gets left behind,” she says.
The team locks hands. I’m not one of the team, and I don’t expect to be accepted as such, so I hang back. Saudia is at the back of the chain. She grabs my hand with an irritated sigh.
“You make it really hard to like you; you know that,” she says.
“I’ve been told,” I reply.
We make our way through the mirrors, conscious that we’re moving way too slowly. With the bull behind us and the time limit we have, this is the worst possible way we could have come.
“This is taking too long,” I shout.
“You got any better ideas?” Remy shouts back.
“Yeah,” I say. “Everyone get down.”
I don’t wait to see if they’ll do as I say or not. If they don’t, well then, they’ll only have themselves to blame if they get sliced to shreds.
I fire from both palms. The path of mirrors in front of us disappears in a loud smash, and the glass tinkles to the floor, leaving us with a clear path to the other side.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I start away from the team, but then I remember how Saudia reached back and found my hand when she didn’t have to. I offer her my hand.
“See, I can be nice when I want to be,” I say.
She rolls her eyes but she takes my hand, and I pull her to her feet.
“Now where?” Perry asks.
Before we can get our bearings properly, a red light flashes on the wall up ahead of us. The bull bellows behind us and begins to charge.
“It’s not coming for us; it’s going to the light. Get back,” Atlas shouts.
We jump back into the steps where the mirrors were. If that light had come on a few seconds ago, we would have all been trampled.
The bull runs past us, not giving us a second glance. Its head down, it charges at the light, which is now flashing on and off. I guess there’s some truth in the whole red rag to a bull. Even for unearthly bulls like this.
It hits the wall running full speed and goes straight through it, taking a huge chunk of the wall with it. We hear the crash as it falls to the floor outside of the fun house. We watch as it staggers to its feet and walks off into the distance.
It doesn’t look back. It seems to have forgotten all about us.
“This place is freaky. Let’s get out of here,” Quinn says.
“Yeah, before bully there comes back,” Perry agrees.
We walk to the hole made by the bull. I reach the opening first. It’s not flush with the ground, but we only have about three feet to jump down. I quickly scan the area.
We’ve reached the end of the carnival. A long street stretches out in front of us, the houses all abandoned, the windows like blank soulless eyes. No one moves or makes a sound. Even the wind has fallen away.
It’s eerily calm, and I don’t like it one bit, but we have to keep going.
I jump down and turn and wait until everyone is down. We set off down the street. We have only reached the second house when there’s a strange whirring sound. It comes from all around us.
“What is that?” Saudia asks.
“Wings,” Atlas says, pointing into the air.
I look where she’s pointing. A swarm of giant angry wasps float in the air in front of us. I turn around, and there are more behind us. More crowd in on either side of us. We’re surrounded. The bull was never meant to catch us. It was meant to herd us here. And we fell for it. We are screwed.
The wasps surround us, keeping us in place. None of us move. I think we’re all afraid that a sudden movement will break the spell, as it did with the bull, and we’ll be attacked.
These aren’t like any wasps I’ve ever seen before. Each one is the size of a pit bull terrier, and their angry buzzing is loud enough to make me want to cover my ears with my hands.
“Brace yourselves,” Langston whispers.
She doesn’t give anyone a chance to react. She throws her hands up, and a series of sparks fly from them. The sparks unite in the air and come down to surround us. Langston has formed a shield.
Her movement had the effect I knew it would. It angers the wasps. They dive at the shield, banging against it over and over again.
“We need to make a plan and quick. The shield won’t hold forever,” Langston says.
“What the hell are these things?” Atlas says in quiet awe as we stand in place.
“They’re wasps,” Perry says.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Atlas hisses.
Quinn gives Perry a look.
“They’re Jungong Wasps,” Quinn explains. “They’re not like normal wasps. They work as a pack. Their stingers fire a torpedo-shaped pellet into you. If you get stung, you’ll feel an intense pain that will momentarily paralyze you. As soon as you come to your senses, remove the pellet. If it stays in, you die.”
“I thought they were an urban legend,” Saudia whispers.
“Me too,” Quinn agrees.
“But they can be killed, right?” Atlas says.
“I hope so,” Quinn says.
A screech comes from Remy and grabs the group’s attention. Her face is deathly white. Tears stand in her eyes and her mouth hangs open. She looks up at the shield.
“Remy, what is it? Are you alright?” Atlas asks, a frown of concern creasing her forehead.
Remy doesn’t answer; she just shakes her head. Her whole body is trembling.
“She’s had a phobia of wasps ever since she was stung as a kid,” Regal explains.
The wasps are still throwing themselves at the shield, and I can see it starting to falter. Sparks fly, and the shield bends inwards where they attack.
“We only have seconds before they get through,” I say.
The team follows my line of sight.
“Okay. We fight back-to-back,” Atlas says. “Work as a team and cover each other. Form a circle around Remy. She’s not going to be able to fight them.”
No one argues. Personally, I would have preferred Atlas to be in the middle of the circle, where she would be safer, but I know she would never agree to that and there’s no time to argue.
Just as Remy is ushered into the center of the circle we’ve formed, the first wasp breaks through.
“Get ready,” Atlas yells.
The shield disappears in a wash of sparks. One spark catches a wasp in midair, and it falls to the ground, its legs twitching as it dies. They can be killed. That’s good. We’re outnumbered, but we stand a chance.
The rest spare no thought for their fallen friend. They attack us, swooping down all around us.
We all begin firing into them as one. Dead wasps rain down around us, but there’re so many of them that we don’t get a second to think. We just keep firing.
They attack all sides at once, but they seem to be focused on trying to get
to Remy in particular. It’s like they can smell her fear and they want to torture her. Her terrified screams have stopped, replaced with a blank expression of intense fear. She lies on the floor in a fetal position.
A wasp makes a nosedive into the center of the circle, and Saudia spins to cut it down before it can reach Remy. She hits it and it goes down, doing the death twitch, but she’s broken our defensive circle, and just like that, we’re pushed apart, each of us surrounded by our own swarm.
I lose sight of the others as I battle the wasps that are diving down at me. I fire into them, and they drop dead in a steady stream, but for every one I kill, it seems two more appear. I’m being pushed back, and I don’t like it.
A scream tells me someone has been stung. I can’t identify the voice, but I feel a pang of fear at the thought of it being Atlas. It reignites me, giving me more speed and power than I thought possible, and I blast through the wasps quicker than they can come.
I spin around and take in the scene before me. Saudia lies on the ground, her face frozen in agony. The scream must have come from her. Perry and Langston have managed to get close to her, and they cover her. I hope the paralysis is temporary, as in only a few seconds, as they’re not going to be able to hold them off for much longer.
Atlas, Regal, and Quinn have managed to form a loose triangle around Remy. They fire into the wasps one after the other. I can’t help but smile to myself when I see the look of steely determination on Atlas’s face. She’s not taking any prisoners, and I kind of think she might be enjoying this.
Saudia jumps to her feet. She pulls a long green rod from her arm. The stinger. She throws it away with a look of disgust and rejoins the fight.
I can’t work out why the wasps are leaving me alone, but for the most part, they are. Then it hits me. It’s not that they’re leaving me alone; it’s just that I’m the furthest away from Remy. They are still targeting her in particular, and I can see it’s a methodical attack.
They’re not going after her because they sense her fear. There’s another reason. I don’t know what it is and I don’t have time to stand and debate it. I run towards the team. The faster we can blast the swarm away, the faster we can move on.