Red Circus: A Dark Collection

by John L. Campbell

  A four lane interstate crossed this wasteland, an unfolding ribbon of gray, slowly softening under the brutality of the sun. The road was empty except for a large scorpion that hesitated at one sandy shoulder, then scuttled across to the safety of the far side. Silence.

  In the distance, a wink of sunlight on chrome. A long pause, and then the bright flash of metal again, closer. An object appeared, a tiny red blur on the gray ribbon. It was approaching.

  On the shoulder, the scorpion felt the vibrations and skittered down the embankment, away from the road, seeking the shelter of a rock. Across the desert came the muffled strains of country western music. The object sped closer. Definitely red, now. Definitely fast.

  Soon it revealed itself to be a car. Not just a car, a bright red Eldorado convertible. A hurtling chunk of vintage steel. A land shark. The Cadillac rocketed past the scorpion, leaving a jetstream of hot, oil-tainted air. Waylon Jennings filled the space with his voice for a moment, then faded as the land shark moved on.

  The polish on the Eldorado was so high that it mirrored the landscape it passed. The chrome gleamed enough to blind a man, and the hubcaps appeared t slowly turn backwards, like the props on an aircraft. The top was down, and the white leather interior baked under the open sky.

  The driver wore an immaculate white suit with diamond cufflinks. A white tie was at his throat, and gleaming white shoes rested on the floormat and kept the accelerator down. Mirrored sunglasses hid the man’s eyes, which were fixed on the road ahead. He had long, straight black hair which would have reached the center of his back if it were not blowing out behind him. His face was tanned but not burned. No sweat stood on his forehead, and his suit was as dry as the desert around him.

  He had been through worse heat than this.

  His long fingers drummed on the steering wheel in time with the radio, and an enormous gold and diamond ring on one hand flashed like the chrome of the land shark. The Cadillac hit an abrupt rise in the highway, which set the enormous car bouncing like a ride in an amusement park. The man smiled, and his teeth were perfectly straight, perfectly white.

  The road began a long descent into a wide valley, and a mile ahead the man could see a sun-baked road marker. In front of the sign was a dark blob. His smile widened and he urged the great red beast faster down the slope.

  The speedometer needle was long past giving any accurate indication of speed.

  The blob transformed into a person squatting under an impromptu canopy made from a large white shirt. The person sat on a backpack, and wore shorts and a purple tank top, a black bandana tied around the head.

  A thumb stuck out as the red beast approached.

  A quarter mile out and the man got a good look at the hitchhiker. A woman. “Baby!” he screamed, and stood, head above the windshield, both hands gripping the wheel, both white shoes jamming the brake to the floor.

  The rear tires on the Eldorado locked and left a trail of Goodyear on the soft asphalt. A cloud of rubber smoke billowed behind the shimmying car, and over the squealing of the tires the man screamed, “Baby! Baby! Baby!”

  It was a miracle the car didn’t roll. It slid sideways a bit, frame rattling and suspension shaking, then ended its long slide by shuddering to a halt not ten feet from the astonished hitchhiker. The driver slammed the Caddy into park and stood on the seat itself, gripping the top of the windshield. He leaned out over the hood, long hair hanging in his face, and waggled his tongue at the woman. “Hellooooo Baaaaabbyyy!”

  The woman was on her feet, one hand gripping the searing metal of the road marker, oblivious to the pain. She stared in shock and fear at the lunatic before her.

  “Gotcha!” the man yelled, and leaped over the windshield, white shoes skidding across the broad hood. The woman screamed and turned to run. Her feet got tangled in the backpack and she went down hard, her face slamming into the hot sand and rocks of the shoulder. Her stomach came down on a bigger rock, blowing the wind out of her.

  The driver was upon her a moment later, grabbing her by the heels, dragging her backwards through the sand, over the backpack, over the asphalt. The woman wheezed and clawed at the ground, and one nail came away as she dug at the soft road surface. The driver tightened his grip on her ankles, then hefted her with impossible strength and let her dangle upside-down for a moment before slinging her into the back seat of the Eldorado like a sack of dog food. Her head rammed the side of the car as she bounced in, knocking the sense from her.

  The driver bounded back into the front seat and hooked an arm over the headrest, looking back at his dazed and bloodied passenger. “We’re gonna have fun, fun, fun, baby, baby!” He dropped the transmission back into drive and jammed the accelerator to the floor. Tires squealed and the land shark shuddered back to life, fishtailing then straightening as it roared off down the road.

  An hour later, a black Ninja motorcycle slid to a smooth stop at the highway marker, its big engine thrumming powerfully as it idled, like a strong animal awaiting the command to attack. The rider stepped off, his black boots crunching over to the shoulder. He squatted next to the backpack, his leather jacket creaking, and flipped up the smoked visor of his helmet.

  His eyes were a watery, washed-out blue, and wisps of soft blond hair poked out from under his helmet. His skin was creased and weathered, and when he squinted at the tracks in the sands, a hundred age lines creased at the corners of his eyes. He scooped a little dirt up in one gloved hand and sniffed at it. His eyes hardened.

  In the next moment he was mounting the Ninja. He slapped the visor back into place, gunned the throttle and shot off in the direction of his quarry.

  He prayed he wouldn’t be too late.

  Again.

  Randy Travis was crooning so loudly that the speakers in the Eldorado threatened to vibrate out of their mountings. The driver wailed with him, hair flying back from his head, face tilted towards the sun. The Caddy wandered across both lanes as the driver looked skywards.

  In the back seat, the woman moaned. The driver stopped his off-key singing at once and snapped his head around to look at her. The Eldorado wandered onto the left shoulder, vibrated, then drifted back to the center of the road.

  “Wake up, sunshine!” the man screamed, and he grabbed a fistful of her hair and hauled her across into the front seat while she shrieked. The woman crammed herself against the passenger door, pulling her scraped knees up to her chest. She shivered, and stared in horror at her captor.

  The driver flashed her a white grin and turned the radio off. Hot air whooshed into the car, the only sound other than the roar of the big engine. The driver started to walk two fingers over the hot leather towards the woman. She shrank further against the door, and grabbed for the handle.

  The walking fingers stopped, and he arched his eyebrows over his sunglasses. “What, at this speed?” The eyebrows wiggled up and down. “You’d bounce over the desert like a skipping stone.” He grinned at her, then leaned forward and screamed “DO IT!” Spittle flew from his lips.

  The woman saw the blurring landscape, knowing he was right. But what was waiting for her in the near future? Might this not be better? She looked at the grinning man and took her hand off the handle. He brayed laughter and pounded the chrome ring on the wheel, sounding the horn in long, obnoxious bursts.

  The woman had been on the road a long time, and had encountered her share of crazies, but what kind was this one? A nut? Obviously. Dangerous? Proven. Murderous? That was the question, wasn’t it?

  “Look, I don’t know what you want, but please…”

  The driver flashed that toothy white smile and backhanded her face so hard it rocked her head to the side.

  “Oh shut up, will you?” He laughed and pounded the horn. “What I want? Everything!” He looked at her as if that should explain it all. She wiped a trembling hand over her bloody lips. “Everything,” he said quietly, and the grin vanished. His voice changed from triumphant lunacy to a pouting little boy. “He got everything, and I got no
thing. A fucking lamb! Can you believe that shit? A fucking lamb!” The lunacy crept back into his voice.

  The woman squeezed her eyes shut and wished it all away. When she opened them, she was still in the convertible, but the madman was speaking softly again.

  “I worked as hard as he did, harder even. It wasn’t fair.” His shoulders slumped, and he mumbled again, “wasn’t fair.”

  The convertible was losing speed, as if his passion fed the gas. In a way it did, for the Caddy sped up again as the driver straightened in his seat. “So I killed him!” he screamed, and pumped a fist up and down in the air, yelling, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Fucking offed him, you know?”

  The woman tried to make herself as small as possible.

  The driver stared at her from behind his mirrors. “Cain rose up,” he said evenly, then went into a laughing fit. When he stopped, he seemed to be in a tremendous mood, a wide grin on his brown face.

  “He wanted to punish me, right? Not this kid! ‘Fuck this shit,’ I said,” and nodded vigorously at her. “Land of Nod my ass!” He whooped and jammed down the horn ring, holding it there.

  The land shark roared past a sign which read, GAS FOOD PHONE NEXT EXIT.

  “Then He found me.”

  The woman was confused. Was this the same He or another He? Why are you even listening? she silently screamed.

  “He said I had done right. He said He would help me, would show me things.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “And He did!”

  The woman tried to hold back tears and looked out the windshield. Ahead of the Eldorado, moving towards them, was a white car with a light bar on the roof. She risked a look at the driver, who had one arm crooked out the window, and had either not seen the highway patrolman or didn’t care. As the cruiser sped closer, Karen jumped up and started waving her arms, screaming as loud as she could. “Help! Please, God, help me!”

  The highway patrolman was fiddling with the radio, looking for something other than that country western shit. He barely registered the red car, didn’t see the screaming woman, and his radar gun sat silently in its mounting. As the vehicles passed, the trooper cursed and snapped the radio off, wishing all manner of vile things on country music singers in general.

  The Eldorado driver looked over at his passenger. “Feel better?”

  She looked back at the receding trooper car. Its lights didn’t come on, it didn’t turn around, it just kept moving away from the speeding Caddy. She sobbed.

  The driver balled up a fist and punched her in the ribs, and she collapsed with a cry.

  He went on as if nothing had happened. “He showed me the gate, held my hand as I went through. It was hot. So very hot.” He paused, as if feeling the heat. “He gave me clothes, told me things. He gave me this,” he gestured at the car, “showed me how it worked. He promised me power.”

  An off-ramp slid up on the right, and the driver brought the land shark off the highway, up the incline, then turned right at the top. The engine dropped from a roar to a grumble as the Eldorado glided into the parking lot of a combination gas station – restaurant – motel. They stopped and the driver grabbed the woman by the hair again, pulling her face close to his. “Now we’re really gonna have some fun.” He took his sunglasses off and tossed them out of the vehicle.

  The centers of his eyes glowed a cherry red.

  The woman screamed.

  David was gaining. The Ninja sliced through the desert air, eating up the miles. He was warm inside the helmet and leather jacket, but knew he had to blend in. That was part of the test, too.

  Why he had been chosen was a mystery he didn’t understand, but it was something to be obeyed, not questioned. His task was clear, but the means of accomplishing it were less so, as he had learned. David had been following his quarry for nine days, and the trail was brutally plain. Painfully so. His target had left a trail of death and pain since he had come through the gate. David had arrived by other means.

  Sadness choked him as he thought of the things his quarry had done. The family of four in Reno. The sight of those two children lying dead in their own blood had nearly driven him to a frenzy of hatred, but he had controlled himself. He wasn’t supposed to feel hatred, that was part of the test, too. He suspected it was most of the test. But he wasn’t supposed to be able to feel sadness, either.

  David urged the motorcycle on, praying for the speed of the wind. Praying that this time, he might be able to save a life instead of look at one that had been wasted. He longed for the confrontation.

  The state trooper had found a radio station he could stomach, and was a little embarrassed he had thought such hateful things about something as trivial as music. It wasn’t like him. His radar gun began working again shortly after passing the Eldorado, and now it picked up the Ninja immediately. He looked at the blinking number in surprise. Was that even possible? He picked out the black motorcycle at once, the only vehicle on the road besides his. It slid down the road like a black blade, at a speed the trooper had never encountered from anything that didn’t fly.

  The Ninja knifed past him in a dark blur, and the trooper slowed the cruiser, preparing for a U-turn. Abruptly the radar gun went dark, and an odd peace came over him. For some reason he was suddenly reminded of how good it had felt when he had donated some of his time to help out those handicapped kids in Elko last year. He smiled, deciding he would do it again this year. He continued down the highway, forgetting about the motorcycle completely.

  The driver held the woman close as he forced her around to the trunk of the big car. He made her open it, and when the lid sprang up she moaned. Sitting in the cavernous space was a single item, a long-handled axe, its head sticky with blood and human hair.

  He grinned at her, then slammed her forehead into the trunk lid. She collapsed into one of his arms, and he snatched the axe up with the other hand, enjoying the weight and feel of the smooth, hickory handle. He strode towards the glass front doors of the restaurant, dragging the dazed woman with him, his face split by a broad smile.

  In his head he heard thunder, as if all the denizens of Hell were standing and applauding, calling his name.

  He pushed the woman through the doorway, then dragged her into the restaurant itself. A waitress standing behind the register looked up from counting her tips, saw him, and promptly dropped the handful of bills and coin. The man in the white suit let the woman drop to the floor, then drove the axe into a cigarette machine, destroying it. There were cries of alarm and surprise from the patrons, but when they saw the grinning man standing up front, gripping an axe, they fell silent.

  The man in white stepped over the woman’s limp body and slowly walked to a booth where an elderly couple sat, coffee and danishes before them, eyes wide with terror.

  “Cain rose up,” he said pleasantly, and took the axe handle in two hands. Everyone in the restaurant screamed and started to move. Everyone except for the old couple, who only watched, helpless, as he brought the axe back for the swing.

  There was the sound of a boot scraping the tiled floor, followed by a slap of leather as a gloved hand grabbed the axe handle. The axe flew from the man’s grip and went sliding across the floor to bounce against the front door.

  The man in the white suit spun, a fist raised. His rage quickly drained away as he found himself staring into watery blue eyes, eyes so filled with wrath that he felt as if he would be burned to a cinder. His mouth fell open, and his hands dropped to his sides.

  The restaurant emptied of customers at once, including the elderly couple, who found enough of their youth remaining to hit a fire exit at a dead run. David removed the black helmet, letting it fall and bounce on the tiled floor. His blond hair cascaded down around his shoulders. He held the man in the white suit with his eyes alone.

  The man shook, his hands clutching at one another, his lower lip quivering. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice.

  David’s hands were large and strong, and he pointed a single finger. “Who are you
to challenge His word?”

  The man in white cowered, terrified of those pale eyes and their promise of punishment. His knees buckled, and he sagged to the floor. “He made me do it.”

  David unzipped his leather jacket, slowly removing it. The air shimmered around him as the road had shimmered from the heat of the desert, but this was not heat. It was light. “Who are you to defy His command?” David asked, his voice deep and resonant.

  The man in white was babbling an apology behind his hands as he hid his face from the light.

  David cast the leather jacket aside.

  On the floor, the woman swam up out of her unconsciousness, vaguely aware of the tiles beneath her, very aware of the throbbing in her head. There was an intense white light coming from somewhere, and her skin tingled. She heard a deep voice boom, “You shall be judged.” She struggled to raise her head, and what she saw convinced her she must already be dead.

  Her captor lay in a crumpled, wailing heap on the floor nearby, clutching pathetically towards a bright, white glow. She peered into the light, squinting at its brightness, though it was not painful to look at. Within she thought she saw a pair of billowy, white wings. She blinked, but the image persisted.

  David reached down and lifted the weeping man to his feet, the strength in one hand more than enough to throw his quarry through a wall if he chose. He gathered the man to his chest, and the man in the white suit was swallowed up in the brilliant light, screaming as he went.

  The woman saw a face in the light, a man with pale blue eyes. He looked at her gently, then said, “Go in peace.” The light faded, and then it was gone. She stared at the empty space for several minutes before regaining her feet. Then she pushed out into the reality of the desert afternoon.

  Parked near the doorway was a gleaming black motorcycle. Perched on the throttle was a snowy white dove. It stared at her for a moment, then took flight.

  She watched until it vanished among the clouds.