Without another word, Felicity set off down the tracks straight for the abandoned cart and the parking lot. Sonya was up and chasing her in a split second. I trailed behind, preparing for the knockdown drag out fight that was about to ensue.
“You said you'd do things my way,” Sonya reminded her. “Back when you asked me to risk my life to save your friends. Remember? You said you'd go along.”
“I am going along,” Felicity turned and shouted. “Do I look like I'm escaping?”
“Enough,” I shouted at last. “I can't take any more of the constant fighting between you two. Can you both just give it a rest for a while? At least until we know where we are?”
“I will if she will,” Felicity said, looking hurt that I'd yelled at her.
“I'm just trying to keep us safe,” Sonya threw back. I gave her a hard stare and she gulped down the rest of her complaints. “Fine.”
“Good,” I said, still not believing that I'd managed to get them to listen to me in the first place. “Now I say we search those cars for keys. We could save a ton of time, and maybe even keep me from getting hypothermia.” My teeth chattered as if driving the point home. I don't know if they felt sorry for me, or if they were just taking a break so they could come up with new insults, but both ladies nodded in agreement.
“Fantastic,” I said with a fresh shiver. “Let's split up so we can cover more cars.”
We spent the next thirty minutes or so going through the rows of parked cars, trying the doors to see if any were open or had keys still in the ignition. Sonya let me know that hot-wiring a car was not one of the many skills she possessed and so, short of finding a car ready and running, we were most likely out of luck.
On the positive side, I managed to get a new pair of clothes along the way. At the entrance to the circus was a straw man wearing a ringmaster costume consisting of black slacks, a tuxedo shirt and golden vest, black knee-high boots, a very warm red tailcoat with gold stitching, and row after row of unnecessary buttons. There was also a black top hat that I put on for fun, along with white gloves and a bow tie that I didn't. The clothing was a near perfect fit once I shook the scratchy straw out of it, but the boots were too loose to be comfortable. The cowboy boots I'd picked up in Gold Strike City seemed to chafe my feet with every step, and once I had them off I couldn't manage to bring myself to put them back on. I found a pair of sneakers in fairly good shape in one of the cars, and wore them instead. Felicity and Sonya found piles of unopened junk food in the cars, everything from chips and soda to water and candy bars. I dragged a blanket out of an open station wagon and the girls piled up the bounty, moving quickly between the cars and returning with treats.
We all sat in silence and tore into the small feast. I hadn't realized how hungry I'd grown. I shoveled chips and chocolate into my mouth, feeling my dulled senses sing back to life and the familiar warmth return to my body. The sounds of crunchy snacks being devoured and the rustling of plastic soon died back down, and the steady noise of the big top theme song on loop became the only sound we heard, raining down and blanketing us from the large black speakers over our heads.
“How is this possible? How can there still be lights and sound going, but no one around? It's not like they could've been going on and on since Z Day.” Felicity spoke first, saying what was no doubt on all of our minds. She seemed a little calmer now with food in her.
“I don't know,” I answered, feeling a million times better myself now that I had adequate blood sugar and warm clothes. “I guess it had to have been set up after the zombies, but I don't see how – or who would come to see them.”
“Unless someone came along and started it back up,” Sonya said, adding her two cents. Felicity and I turned our attention to her and waited for her to finish. “It makes sense right? So the circus is set up here in the middle of nowhere at a place where it will be easy to get all the animals and equipment off the tracks. It's safer for townspeople too, and there is plenty of parking. But then Z Day hits and none of them make it out. Eventually the power runs out and the fun stops. Until someone decides to gas the generator back up again.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Who knows,” Sonya shrugged. “Maybe to lure in survivors and attack them, or just because they could. Lord knows there've been plenty of things demolished in the name of sport since Z Day. Maybe someone came along and wanted to relive their childhood fantasy of running away to the circus. People will go to all sorts of lengths just to get back a little bit of how things used to be, or to chase down the ghost of a memory from before the world fell apart.”
“So they just got sick of it and wandered off?” For the first time all night there was no sarcasm in Felicity's tone.
“I don't know,” Sonya said softly. “Maybe.”
“It doesn't make sense,” Felicity replied. “Why go to all that work just to walk away from it?”
“Sure it does,” I said. “Think about it. Someone stumbled onto this place just like we did. Maybe even one of the military guys saw it from the train and decided to come back here when he went AWOL. Who knows?”
“Right, but…” Felicity started, but I cut her off.
“Let's just go with this for a minute,” I said, holding up my hand. She smiled and nodded for me to finish.
God I love her, I thought, feeling better about the direction things were heading in, for no reason at all.
“Go on,” Sonya prodded.
“Right,” I said, plowing on. “So whoever it was, they decide to crank things back up. They bust their hump to get the place running, but after wandering around for a while, maybe instead of feeling better, the whole thing just reminds them of all that they've lost. Instead of making them happy, it just makes them all the more sad about the reality of life as we know it now.”
“Exactly,” Sonya chimed in.
“It's not like they're going to go around shutting out all the lights and turning off the machines, is it? I mean there's no reason to anymore at that point. It doesn't matter if the circus runs twenty-four hours a day, because it's not like they're paying for it. So they steal a car or wander off and just leave it going full blast.”
“Then we came along,” Felicity said, joining in the fantasy.
“Right,” I said. “You realize that somewhere inside that carnival there has to be a set of keys that fits one of these cars.”
“Xander,” Felicity said in a small voice, “we can't risk going in. What if there are zombies inside, or worse? What if the guy who cranked this place up is just taking a break to turn the other victims he lured into his freak show into lampshades? There's just too much that can go wrong.”
“I know we'd be taking a chance,” I protested, “but the rewards are too great not to give it a try. It will take the rest of the night, and well into tomorrow, to manually operate the handcart.”
“I don't know,” Sonya replied, shaking her head. “I'm with Felicity Jane on this one, Xander. It's too risky. What if the power goes out once we're inside? There are too many unknown factors that could go wrong.”
“Besides,” Felicity said, eager to add to the list of reasons my plan was a bad idea. “We can always siphon gas from the cars to get the handcart running again. If we spend an hour collecting petrol, we can be to Paradise City by morning.”
“And then what? I'm not sure you recall the luck we had last time we were in that part of the world. You got a free body modification in the form of an arrow piercing through your arm, and I nearly got turned into a zombie.”
Don't say it in front of her, I thought, shooting a look at Felicity. Don't mention to Sonya that there is a cure for the zombie plague. She'll either think you're crazy, or demand to know where it's being kept. Either way you'll come off as crazy. Why did I even bring that up?
To my great relief, Felicity didn't say a word.
“If we get back on that thing and start chugging along, we're going to be sitting ducks,” I continued. “Eventually we're going to roll into tr
ouble. There's no way to avoid it. At the very least, we lose control of our choices. At worst we end up being killed and eaten. And let's not forget how much protection the handcart offers in the event of another zombie horde. Zilch!”
“Go on,” Sonya said, as I came to a dramatic halt.
“All I am saying is that if we can find keys to start one of these cars we'll be much better off. Not only will it shelter us from the elements and pesky things like, I don't know, arrows and bullets, but it will also allow us to control where we end up. Is it risky? Sure. No doubt about it. But the rewards are much greater. I say it's worth taking the chance.”
They stared at me as I wrapped up my pitch, looking back and forth from each other to me as if they were thinking about my argument, but I knew it was already decided. It just made too much sense not to give it a shot.
I got up and shook the dust off my new ringmaster outfit.
“It's settled then,” I said with a certain finality, grateful that they weren't starting up new arguments with one another. “Follow me ladies.”
I turned and sauntered over to the front of the circus tent, the music growing louder as I went. I felt confident that good things were in store. Sure we had trouble, but we always managed to stay ahead of it or find a way out of it. Things were definitely looking up. We'd ditched the bikers, outran a zombie horde, and I'd finally found some clothing. I even kind of liked my new duds.
I could get used to wearing a top hat, I thought, as I walked into the entrance of the main tent. What I saw next froze me in place, the feeling of dread overwhelming me. Ringed by stained bleachers was a bloody stage with various human remains strewn across it. There was a pole on either side of the raised platform, and chained to these by heavy ropes of metal chain that connected to solid metal neck collars were two giant sized zombie men. The smell of metal and rotting flesh mixed with the stale smell of beer and cigarettes. Glancing down again I saw a trail of what looked like kids’ fingers leading to my feet. There must have been at least fifty little pieces of twisted bone and nail. I fought back the urge to throw up, but I couldn't stop the rising feeling of bile in my throat. I could hear Sonya and Felicity moving slowly behind me. I tried to wave them off with my hand, but I could no longer speak for fear of blowing chunks the minute I opened my mouth. A loud buzzing in my ear confirmed that the veil of dark moving objects stirring over the mutilated parts of corpses were indeed flies.
I've got to warn them, I thought. I've got to stop Felicity from seeing this before it's too late. She can't see the dead bodies of children. It's not right to make her see that twice in so few days.
Before I could do anything, I heard a loud gasp behind me and knew it was too late. I heard Felicity's soft, trembling voice speak behind me.
“Xander? What is this place?”
I leaned forward, no longer able to fight back my physical revulsion. The last thing I heard, as I began throwing up the salty sweet contents of my stomach, was the blast of the shotgun going off.
Chapter Eighteen
Felicity screamed and ran toward me, grabbing me by my shoulders. The top hat I'd been wearing flew off my head; pieces of the black felt were showering down over my hair and mixing with the puke, spent cigarette butts, and crumpled up money. I felt Felicity covering me with her body, protecting me from a possible second shot. I turned my head in time to see a biker with greasy black hair, and a scar running down his face, fleeing down the aisle that curved away from us. Sonya was on him before I had time to catch my breath and yell out. With two quick hops she was in the stands and right on his tail. She brought him down at the edge of an exit row by kicking his feet out from underneath him. The biker howled as he went tumbling with a jarring clatter, presumably from smashing into something hard and metallic. I looked back over to the bench behind me where he'd been sitting. There was a shotgun resting on the seat, now at eye level with me. Smoke coiled out of the right barrel. On instinct I shot my hand to my head, then brought it back looking for blood. I didn't seem to be hit anywhere. The shot had missed me by less than an inch.
If I hadn't leaned over to throw up just when I did, that guy would have blown my head clean off, I thought. I wouldn't have even known what happened. I'd just be gone, no chance to say goodbye to Felicity or Moto or Benji.
I stood up and anger flooded through me, giving me new strength. It spread through me like hot lava burning away my fear and filling me with the need for vengeance.
“Are you okay? Are you hit?”
I turned to see the fear in Felicity Jane's eyes, and it only fueled my new hatred.
“Yeah,” I said, doing my best to hold my powerful rage in check. “I'm fine. He missed.”
“I've got him,” Sonya announced behind us. I turned back after holding Felicity's stare for an extra moment. I marched over to where Sonya had the biker pinned down and squirming on the ground.
“Lemme go! Lemme go!” the dirt covered would-be assassin crooned. There was a fresh wound on his head from where he'd careened into a pole in his failed attempt to escape.
“You heard him,” I calmly said. “Let him go.”
I smiled at Sonya as she stared at me in shock and confusion. She let go of his jacket and he leaped to his feet like a jack-in-the-box, his eyes nervously darting around in search of a new exit plan.
Before he could get his bearings, I lunged forward with lightning speed and delivered a hard punch right between his eyes. The force of the impact knocked his uncertain legs clean out from underneath him again. For the second time in just minutes, the biker lay bleeding in the dirt. I walked forward slowly and he held up his hand.
“Okay man, okay! You win all right? I'll do whatever you want! Please, just don't hit me again!”
“You can start by telling me who you are and why you tried to blow my head off,” I said, standing over him and drawing my shimmering katana blade out for emphasis.
You should cut him in half for what he just did, a dark voice in my head told me. What if you'd let Felicity go in first, the voice continued. She'd be dead right now because of this monster. Do it. It's what he deserves, the voice screamed, but I fought it back with all the effort I could muster.
“My name is Sydney,” he stuttered out, “but they call me Skeeter now.”
He pointed to his biker vest. It bore the Alphas’ symbol on the front, and a patch that read PROSPECT.
“They ought to call you Coward. That sounds about right for a guy who just tried to blow my brains out without so much as a fair warning,” I said, turning my blade over in my hands as menacingly as possible. “Care to tell me what that was all about, Skeeter?”
“I was left here to watch over the place,” he squealed, his eyes darting around like mad. “I was given strict instructions to take out anyone I didn't recognize, anyone not wearing their colors.”
“Who else is here?”
“Just me,” he spat out as quickly as he could. “Just me man. I swear.”
“If you're lying to me it's going to come out,” I warned him. “And when it does I won't be as patient as I'm being right now, but I will take my time on you. I can promise you that. So I'm gonna ask again, one last time, who else is here?”
“I'm not lying,” he whined, looking like he might just wet himself on the spot. “You gotta believe me. Another tribe showed up last night during the final show of the evening. The big chiefs had a sit down with a lot of shouting. The next thing I knew they were all taking off, their guys and ours too. I'm still patching in so I got left on guard detail with a single shot to defend the tents. That's all I know.”
“Where did they go? You must have heard something.”
“All I heard them say was that they were tracking someone and they needed backup. For all I know they could return any minute now.”
I turned and shared another dark stare with Felicity.
It's us they're looking for, I thought. This is connected to us.
“Or they could be dead,” Sonya suggested. “You
might be joining your friends sooner than you think.”
“Hold on now,” Skeeter pleaded, holding his hands up high. “I was just doing what I was told man. Last night was my first night on duty. Like I said, I'm a new recruit.”
“Which brings me to my next question,” I scowled, moving slowly closer to him, sword still in hand. “What exactly is this place? Those look like the fingers of little kids.”
I turned and pointed with my katana to the stage.
“And those look like two massive zombies with fresh blood on them,” I accused, my voice trembling with rage again.
“I don't know man,” Skeeter defended himself, no longer making eye contact. He looked like he was resigned to being killed any minute. “I told you I'm new.”
“There is crumpled money on the ground,” I shouted. “What do you mean you don't know?! You've been killing kids for sport while people bet on it!”
“No man! I just go where I'm told. I'm just following orders,” Skeeter said guardedly, still not looking up, his head lolling from side to side, while his greasy curtain of matted hair swayed back and forth barely concealing his guilty eyes.
“Get up,” I demanded. He stumbled to his feet, still not able to look me in the eyes. Sonya came over and steadied him, taking his arm and making him face me. “Let's take a closer look.”
I began to walk to the platform, ignoring the terrified look on Felicity's face. From behind me I heard Sonya roughly shoving Skeeter forward.
“You heard him, mosquito,” she jeered. “Get moving.”
Skeeter let his feet drag like a little kid who didn’t want to go to the dentist. The sound of it irritated me more than his sniveling, and once again I felt the desire to chop him into equal halves and use his corpse to feed the moaning beasts on stage. I walked up onto the platform, nearly slipping as I stepped into a puddle of dark red blood gone cold. I walked cautiously up to one of the zombie giants. He must have been a body builder in his former life, before he'd been bitten. He stood over six and a half feet with a broad chest the size of two regular men. He was a wall of pure muscle honed over the years, maybe even decades. His eyes had crusted over in a milky shade of white, but he expertly sniffed the air as I approached, sensing that I was there. I could see bite marks on his shoulders and neck that hadn't healed. They almost looked planned, as if someone had intentionally taken an innocent man just for his size, and forced him to become this horrible mindless killing machine against his will, then set him loose on unsuspecting children. I heard the wooden stairs groan as Skeeter approached, Sonya behind him pushing him along. I turned to see Felicity looking scared and not speaking, her eyes big and wide, as she waited to see what I would do next. The zombie lunged at me, stopping inches away from me with a ghoulish, bloodcurdling howl that washed over my face like a cold, rotten breeze from an uprooted cemetery. Felicity gasped, then went silent again. I turned back to Skeeter.
Zombie Attack! Box Set (Books 1-3) Page 47