"Would you sit next to me and my dad if I asked you to?"
Leeloo's face lit up instantly. "Are you asking me?"
"Yes. I want to watch the show with you."
Though it seemed impossible before it happened, her face lit up even brighter. "That'll make it extra good," she said.
Chapter Ten
With both hands on the steering wheel, Azimuth wound out the Baja Bug on the long straightaway, loving the way the oversize off-road tires juddered, the vehicle's independent suspension gobbling up the ruined highway's ruts and rills. The engine howled at redline; in his rearview mirror was a wall of yellow dust. He had his APC-crew, polarized goggles up. The hot valley wind pressed against his face like the palm of a great gritty hand. Gobs of dried white spittle were stuck in the corners of his grinning mouth.
In his lap was a predark portable CD player, one of the perks of traveling with the carny; the headset earphones clamped down over his dreadlocks. His head juked and bobbed to Bob Marley's greatest hits. From playing the same compilation CD over and over, he had picked up some curious and archaic mannerisms of speech.
One of the best parts of Azimuth's scouting-advance-man job for Gert Wolfram's World Famous Carny was having plenty of wag fuel to burn in the Bug, no boss man hanging over his shoulder and the right to go as fast as he pleased. The other good parts happened when he arrived at the performance sites, where he was fed and liquored bastard well, and then fucked seven ways from Tuesday, all for free. This day, he was headed up valley, to Perdition's sister ville of Paradise at the northern end, where in two days the carny's next scheduled performance was to take place. Paradise was renowned for having the best gaudy sluts west of the Shens, both in terms of talent and raw enthusiasm.
Azimuth didn't see the rude barricade that completely blocked both sides of the road until he was almost on top of it. Made of a pile of broken chunks of concrete, it had a sign propped up in front of it.
"Fuckin' B!" he growled, taking his foot off the accelerator and locking up the brakes. As the Baja Bug slewed right, its rear end swinging out, he steered into the skid with one hand. With the other, he yanked the KG-99 handblaster from its leather scabbard under the dash.
The Bug was like an extension of his big, hard body. He could make it do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
Clutch in, hard, shifter dropped into third gear, as smooth and silky as a gaudy house sex sandwich, clutch popped out.
Its engine screaming an octave above redline, the Baja Bug's nose dipped sickeningly from the sudden deceleration, and Azimuth's stomach likewise lurched forward.
With the blaster's vented barrel sleeve braced against the rim of the missing windshield, and the Wailers still wailing sweet and mellow in his head,
Azimuth howled at the male figure standing beside the sign, "Doan mess wid me, mon!" He brought the Bug to a sideways skidding stop right in front of the tall, bearded man in wraparound sunglasses and a tattered straw cowboy hat. The skid made the big knobby tires dig in, and sent a wall of dust flying over the lone sentinel, who neither backed away nor jumped aside.
Azimuth jerked down his goggles and ripped off his headset, holding the sights of the KG-99 on the man. He poked the weapon out the passenger door's windowless frame until the dust cleared. "What you up to, mon?!" he shouted. "What you fuckin' wid me road for?"
The man in the sunglasses and straw hat raised his empty hands and started to walk slowly toward the passenger door. The sign leaning against the barricade was a delaminating, irregular chunk of plywood, a painted arrow pointing to the right. "There's a problem up ahead," he said.
"There be a bigger problem right here, mon, if you doan clear me way, and quick like."
"Got cave-ins up ahead," the tall man said. "The old highway has been undermined by the river."
"Ain't no river here, mon."
"You can't see it anymore, It runs underground now, in some places right below the road. Up ahead, the flowing water has eroded all the earth from under the road metal. Just the thin skin of concrete is left. It won't take the weight of your wag. The road will fall out from under you, and you'll either die in the crash or drown as you drop in the river and get swept underground."
"Fuckin' C!" Azimuth said, killing his engine and scrambling out the driver's door. He swung the handblaster up over the little wag's roof, and its welded-on bar of high-intensity floodlights, to keep the bearded guy covered as he moved for the front bumper. "Stay where you be, goddammit!"
He stormed over to the barricade and stared down the road, keeping the barrel of the KG-99 pointed at the sentinel's chest.
"I doan see no fuckin' holes, mon."
"Around the curve," the bearded man told him. "By the time you'd have made the turn, it'd would have been too late. You'll be rolling over rotten ground. We lost an entire caravan this morning. Eighteen people and five wags. Swallowed up and gone in the blink of an eye."
Azimuth looked at the man carefully for the first time. He noticed how gaunt his face was under the beard, and how even though the sunglasses completely hid his eyes, they couldn't hide the suffering he radiated. Perhaps from losing family and friends to the sinkholes. Despite this, the scout remained suspicious. It was his job.
"And yon be in charge of warnin' people?" Azimuth asked dubiously. "You come from another planet, mon? Or mebbe you just lose your fuckin' mind?" He raised his left hand and pinched his index finger and thumb together. "I come dis close to chillin' you, mon."
"Someone had to mark the detour," the man in sunglasses said.
"Detour?"
He pointed to his left, to a two-rut track that ran perpendicular to the highway, leading off in the direction of the darkly forested, savage-looking mountains to the east.
"Looks like de wrong bloody way to me," Azimuth said. "And narrow as worm shit."
"The road loops up through the foothills and comes back to the highway on the other side of the cave-ins," the man said.
"Shit! I got me a whole damn carny mebbe a day behind on the road. Big wags. Trailers. Heavy loads. How dey gonna make it up dat pissy little track?"
"I'm no expert on that," the man said, "but I suppose it would depend on how good the drivers were. I'll tell you this, though, there's no turnarounds once you start up that way. You've got to go all the way to the end before you can come back."
"Fuckin' D!" Azimuth snarled as he lowered his weapon. Part of his responsibility as carny scout was to make sure the roads were passable for the convoy. The standard operating procedure in a detour situation like this, given the opportunity for ambush and robbery, was for him to leave a marker at the turn-off, which would indicate to those who followed that he had tested the alternate route, returned and marked it safe. Unknown to head roustabout Furlong and carny master Crecca, to increase his enjoyment of the many perks at the other end of the journey, what Azimuth actually did most of the time was to mark the route as safe, and if it wasn't, he would turn back and retrieve the sign.
When he leaned into the back seat of the Bug, Azimuth wasn't thinking about the potential risks to himself and his caravan: He had never heard of a problem along this stretch of road. The lack of water, the crushing heat, and the sheer distance kept organized chillers and robbers from setting up shop. And it would take a highly organized and large crew to threaten the carny. As he leaned into the back of the Bug, he was thinking about the various attractions of the Blue Moon gaudy in Paradise, and specifically a set of quadruplet sisters, aged nineteen, who worked in tag-team fashion, around the clock, until the customer cried for his or her uncle. On the Bug's floorboards was a collection of smooth, white quartzite rocks. He selected one of about three pounds and placed it at the foot of the barricade, next to the detour sign.
"What's that for?" the man in sunglasses asked him as he straightened.
"To let me people know I've gone ahead."
"How many folks are in the carny?"
"More dan sixty," Azimuth boasted. "And dat's widout co
untin' all de sideshow muties. It be de biggest damn carny in all de hellscape."
"Maybe I'll get a chance to see the show," the man said.
"You woan be disappointed, dats for sure," Azimuth said as he climbed back in the Bug's driver's seat.
Azimuth climbed back in the Bug and rescabbarded the KG-99. He cranked over the engine, then backed up to give himself room to make the right turn.
"Mebbe I'll see you den in Paradise," he shouted gleefully to the bearded man as he slowly drove past him. "Look me up at de Blue Moon gaudy. I be under a pile of blondes. Ha!"
The man just tipped the frayed brim of his cowboy hat in salute.
Azimuth pulled up his goggles and pulled on his headset as he rolled off the roadway and onto the track. He got the Bug into second gear, and had to keep it there as the trail wound back and forth through a series of tight switchbacks that climbed up and away from the predark interstate.
The bearded man hadn't been shitting him about there being no place to turn around.
Although the one-wag road was wide enough for even the biggest carny vehicle to pass, no way could even Azimuth back the Bug down it by himself. The turns were too tight and road's downward angle was too steep. Getting back down in reverse could be done, but it would take a very long time, at virtual crawl speed while men walking behind shouted directions for brakes and steering.
And if one of the wags in the line broke down, it would bottleneck the whole caravan.
Azimuth drove on doggedly, and didn't start to get an antsy feeling until he was about half an hour from the highway, and he saw the lower fringe of the forest ahead. He stopped the Bug in the sunlight, set the parking brake, ripped off his headset and got out.
Above him were towering, densely packed coniferous trees. The two-rut track made a turn just inside the edge of the forest and vanished in among the shadows and the dark, massively thick trunks.
"Bloody hell!" he shouted up at the wall of trees.
When he turned around to look for the highway, he saw it was the thinnest of thin ribbons running down the middle of the valley.
"You'd best no be fuckin' wid ol' Azimuth, mon!" he roared in what he knew to be the general direction of the barricade and the bearded man. '"Cause I be backin' down dis bloody snail trail an' fuckin' wid you right back!"
Kicking at the dirt with his steel-toe-capped boot, he hopped back in the Bug and headed into the shadows. In order to see, he had to switch on his headlights and roof lights. The road continued to climb and twist and turn around the huge trunks. Occasionally low branches whipped across his empty windshield frame. So far there was no problem with getting the big wags up the road.
The question was, would it ever return to the interstate?
As he continued on, Azimuth kept thinking that on the next turn, the track would wind back on itself and start to descend, but it showed no inclination of doing anything of the sort.
"You be takin' me to da summit, you rat bastard!" he cried out the driver's door window frame.
Azimuth told himself if that was the case, he would go no farther than the crest of the mountain. And once there, by hook or by crook, he'd find a way to get the Bug's nose turned the way he'd come. And when he got back to the sign and the barricade, he would pick up the bloody three-pound marker rock and use it to bash in the bearded man's head.
It occurred to him that there were no animals in these woods. No birds. Not even bugs. The heat was smothering, and there didn't seem to be enough air to breathe. Beyond the range of his head- and floodlights was a wall of darkness. Then he saw sunlight breaking through ahead. The backlit trees sent a wave of relief passing through him.
"About bloody time!" he said.
When the Bug crested the top of a rise, it rolled into the open. Azimuth stopped the wag and got out. Just below him was a small lake, surrounded by a dead zone of stripped, barkless trees and muddy bank. On the hillside below the body of water, on a shelf of flat land, was a small ville.
There was plenty of room to turn down there.
And as he watched the jumble of shanties and lean-tos, he saw a few people moving in and out. Folks he could ask about the best way to get back to the highway.
Feeling much better, Azimuth put on the headset and drove down to the lake. He paused at the shoreline to lean out the driver's door and look over the placid water. The sky reflected in it without a ripple.
Then something caught his eye.
A quivering shadow.
At first he couldn't tell whether it was something in the water or something in the sky reflected by the water.
It was in the water.
The spot of darker color began to grow, and as it grew it bubbled and churned. Silvery bits, like tiny mirrors, started to rise from the water, forming a churning cloud. Then came the pale green lightning, shooting the wrong way, from the surface of the churning water to the underside of the cloud.
"I be damned," he said, unable to take his eyes off the phenomenon.
The cloud got larger and larger and the lightning became more and more violent. When the strange ministorm started to drift across the lake toward him, Azimuth decided he had seen enough.
Even as he reached for the parking brake, the first of the pale spores swept over the Bug, angling in through the glassless window frames. They made a rustling, scratchy sound as they rained down on the sheet metal.
Azimuth sniffed at the air, once, and it was all over. His brain exploded in vibrating waves of color, color so pure and so intense that it obliterated everything else. He couldn't feel his body, which had gone rigid with shock.
The carny scout sat there for the better part of ten minutes, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, quietly convulsing. Ten minutes, ten hours, ten years, the concept of passing time ceased to be part of his mental framework.
When the deluge of colors finally faded, Azimuth came to. Out the empty windshield frame he saw someone appear out of the twinkling cloud and the falling, fine, pale snow. The someone was walking toward him. He automatically started to reach for the KG-99, but it wasn't there anymore. In the scabbard, instead, was a tropical flower with heavy, waxy red petals, a golden stamen and a perfume so rich and heady it made his mouth water.
When he looked up from the dash, the approaching man was close enough to make out. A thin black man with a snake nest of dreads and a baggy, crocheted, red, yellow and green hat. He was smoking a fat, foot-long, ganja stogie. Azimuth madly scrabbled on the floorboards at his feet for the CD's protective case and, finding it, stared at its much faded color picture.
"Fucking Z!" he exclaimed, tearing off the headset. He hardly noticed that even without it, reggae music was still hard rocking inside his brain.
"What's shakin', mon?" Bob Marley asked, leaning his skinny elbows on the window frame of the driver's door.
"You are, mon. You are."
"Soon you be, too," Marley said, laughing as he took a tremendous pull on the stogie, and then blew a fog of thick ganja smoke straight into the carny scout's upturned face.
The hot smoke blinded him and made his eyes run with tears. Over the sound of his own strangled coughing, Azimuth clearly heard Bob Marley say, quite close to his ear, "You gon sit dere an' cry like a l'il girl, or come meet de fellas in de band?"
Chapter Eleven
The Magnificent Crecca chained Jackson to one of the tent's steel stakes, then raised a flap at the rear of the candy-striped enclosure and ducked under it. Before him was a short tunnel made of the same airtight fabric as the main tent. The passage ended in a flight of metal steps that led up to a door set in a sheet-steel wall. A heavy rubber gasket and metal plate sealed the seam between the wall and the edge of the tunnel.
As he mounted the steps, the carny master felt that special unease once again. Fighting back a combination of vertigo and nausea that accompanied absolute dread, he knocked twice on the door.
From the other side, the familiar, thready voice called for him to enter. Crecca opened the door an
d looked in on the Magus's private viewing box. The twelve-by-eight-foot room sat on a trailer inside the perimeter of the main tent. The box wall that faced the crowd was made of one-way mirror glass, painted around the edges of the frame with a scene of predark clowns and lion tamers. The center of the picture window was clear; beyond it, in the bright lights of the main tent's floods, the people of Bullard ville were filing in to their doom. Seated before the window in a fully reclined reclining chair, his metal-and-flesh legs comfortably crossed, was the steel-eyed monster.
"Don't just stand there," the Magus barked. "The light's ruining my view. Come in and close the door."
The carny master did as he was ordered. Being trapped in an airtight box with the creature was much, much worse than being in the same wag salon with him. The unusual smell given off by the Magus—scorched machine oil and fleshly decay—was a thousand times more concentrated. That, coupled with his proximity and the fact that there was nowhere to run, made Crecca go soft in the knees. Conscious of that fact that the last time he had been in the Magus's company his body had betrayed him, the carny master made an extra effort to maintain a tight sphincter.
On the other side of the mirror window, Ryan Cawdor and his party were being ushered down to the front row by a pair of nearly naked female roustabouts. There were no seats. The audience sat on plasticized tarps spread on the ground. This made the cleanup much easier. The red-haired beauty sat next to Cawdor. On his right sat his son and a young girl from the ville. Beside the girl was the albino, then the black woman, the man in the fedora and the old one.
The Magus swiveled in his recliner. As he turned to face Crecca, his wide smile, half white bone and half stainless steel, curdled the carny master's blood.
"I want this to be a very special performance," the Magus told him. "I want the entire crowd on its feet, cheering at the moment the lights go out and the music swells."
Crecca knew the Magus could see in the dark. He had had some kind of microminiature infrared sensors built into his steel eyes. So as not to miss a thing. Even the Magnificent Crecca, a born chiller, a leader of other chillers, a man who had personally opened the nozzles on the poison-gas canisters more than once, couldn't stand to watch the final agonies of so many. The times he had been forced to remain in the viewing box, to stand beside the laughing thing in the recliner, to wear a pair of predark, Soviet night-vision goggles, he had shut his eyes tight against the horror. Because of the goggles' lenses, the Magus couldn't see his lack of enthusiasm.
Axler, James - Deathlands 62 - Damnation Road Show Page 7