Axler, James - Deathlands 62 - Damnation Road Show

by Damnation Road Show [lit]

  The carny master had often wondered about the source of the Magus's horrendous appetites, which were as much a mystery as everything else about him. Did they spring from his being able to move back and forth through time? A consequence of some expanded, vengeful-godlike perspective he had acquired? Or were they the result of a progressive dementia brought on by the physical changes of decades of such travel? And then again, Crecca knew, it was possible that they had nothing whatsoever to do with time jumping. But rather, with the replacement of his various human parts with gear boxes and servo mechanisms. It was possible that as the Magus became less human physically, he became less human spiritually.

  That the creature demanded the carny audience always received a rocking good show before they were chilled was a case in point.

  Crecca knew there was no strategic need for this deception, this extra effort on the part of his crew. As soon as all the residents were seated, the tent entrance could have been sealed and the gas released. No pain, no strain. But because the Magus understood, and it seemed to the carny master, even fed off the dark, dark energy of human despair, he insisted that the exits remain open, even though the rousties not involved in the show were already systematically looting the ville; he insisted that the crowd be lifted up to the heights of joy before being dropped into the abyss.

  Only at the grand finale, when the floodlights in the tent suddenly went out, when the canisters were opened, when the center ring performers made their hasty exits; only when Mozart's Requiem began to boom at deafening volume from dozens of surrounding speakers, would the stunned audience realize it was all a trap.

  And that there was no way out.

  With glee, the Magus rubbed his palms together, his steel fingers clicking like castanets. "Oh, this is going to be good," he said. "This is going to be very good."

  Chapter Twelve

  Leeloo Bunny looked up at Dean, who sat close beside her, cross-legged on the ground. As the carny folk rushed around making last minute checks of their equipment, the boy seemed to be scanning everything and everyone with those intense eyes of his. She sensed a coiled tightness in him that she didn't really understand and couldn't put a name to. His mood under the circumstances seemed strange to her, though. For sure, it wasn't the same wild excitement she felt in the big tent with the big show about to begin.

  Dean caught her staring at him, and smiled.

  Oh, my, she thought as her heart melted into a small, throbbing puddle in the center of her chest.

  "Everything's going to be fine," he said.

  Leeloo felt a twinge of confusion. Since when was there any question that things were going to be fine?

  Then the recorded overture started up. Through surround speakers, "Tah-Rah-Rah-Boom-Ti-Ay" blared forth. No one in the audience knew the long history of the song, nor did anyone recognize this particular version as belonging to the Grateful Dead.

  The red-haired carny master jumped over the low bumper of the center ring and into the spotlight. Behind him trailed a naked baby stickie on a long chrome chain fastened to a choke collar.

  "Huzzah!" the Magnificent Crecca shouted a greeting to the crowd, throwing his arms open wide. "Welcome, Bullard ville, to Gert Wolfram's World Famous Carny!"

  The Dead's shambling, sour-note-filled opus swelled deafeningly, then faded to a whisper.

  "This afternoon," the carny master went on, "you will be treated to miracles and wonderments beyond compare. You will experience sights and sounds that you will take with you to your graves. Bullard ville, I give you the Fearless Flying Stickies!" Music up. Through the tent's loudspeakers, a live-recorded Jerry Garcia noodled up the chromatic scale, more or less, while eight male stickies in a line crossed into the center ring. They were all naked, except for broad, limp, brightly colored plastic collars that draped over their shoulders, chests and backs. The stickies did three turns of the ring, high-stepping in unison, skinny arms pumping in unison, genitalia flopping in unison. While they were strutting, roustabouts lowered a trapeze bar from the tent's peak. It wasn't lowered very far—just enough to allow it to swing freely.

  "What is that?" Leeloo asked Dean, pointing at the wheeled contraption being pushed forward from the wings by a half-dozen roustabouts.

  "A cannon," Dean told her. When she still looked puzzled, he added, "Like a giant longblaster. Shoots big slugs."

  Not in this instance, it turned out.

  The smallest of the eight stickies raced over to the muzzle and climbed down it, feet first. The music suddenly stopped and was replaced by a loud, recorded drum roll as the roustabouts used a hand-wheel to crank up and aim the barrel at the tent's peak.

  "Should we do it?" the carny master asked the audience. "Should we blow the little mutie bastard straight to hell?"

  The answer from the assembled residents of Bullard ville was a resounding "Yes!"

  Leeloo flinched when the cannon roared and flashed. Out of a cloud of dense gray smoke shot the little stickie, its spindly arms thrust forward. The pale, living missile arced high in the air. When the stickie's sucker fingers made contact with the trapeze bar, they locked on. It hung suspended, seventy-five feet above the center ring.

  "Hoopa!" the Magnificent Crecca said, again throwing his arms wide. "If one was fun, folks, how about three?"

  Bullard ville was all for that.

  As the trio of muties climbed, one by one, down the cannon barrel, packing themselves in on top of one another, the carny master baited the crowd. "I have to warn you, good people," he said, "this trick doesn't always come off exactly as planned. A little too much blaster powder. A bit of a breeze. Too much humidity in the air. Those of you sitting in the front row should be ready to move quickly if it starts to rain stickies."

  Leeloo flinched again when the cannon discharged. Even though she knew it was coming, she couldn't help herself; it was that loud. To her amazement, the three muties came out of the barrel in a living chain, the second and third stickies having fastened their sucker hands onto the pair of ankles in front of them. As the trio rocketed up into the air, the audience let out a single gasp.

  It didn't look as if they were going to make it.

  It looked as if they were going to come up mebbe a yard short.

  But the lead stickie stretched and stretched and somehow made contact with the feet of the little one hanging from the bar, and then all four of them swung from the trapeze, connected at the ankles.

  "Whew, close one!" Crecca proclaimed, flicking an imaginary drip of perspiration from his forehead. "Shall we go for four?"

  The audience shouted its assent.

  "Lower the sights," the carny master commanded his gun crew.

  The remaining naked stickies scrambled down the still smoking barrel as the roustabouts changed the point of aim to the legs of the lowest of the four suspended muties, some fifty feet above the center ring.

  Again, the cannon boomed and jolted, and another living chain of bodies vomited from its muzzle and hurtled toward the tent's peak. The crowd groaned in unison as the first stickie missed the legs of its target by a good five feet. The groan stretched on as the four-car, runaway mutie train arced past the steel tent pole and, veering off to the right, crashed sideways into the far wall of the tent. Still stuck together by sucker and secretion, the stickie quartet crashed in a heap on the ground. For a long moment, none of the muties moved. Then, one by one, they stirred, untangling and unsuckering themselves.

  Stickies were bastard tough to chill.

  A few in the Bullard ville audience—perhaps those who had lost loved ones to this particular subhuman species—actually booed the miraculous survival, but everyone else cheered the spectacle. Some folks rose to their feet to clap as the entire acrobatic troupe took their waggle-weenie bows in the spotlight.

  As thrilled as Leeloo was by the performance, in the pit of her stomach was a small knot of dread. She couldn't tell if the cannon miss had been on purpose or not, but she thought it hadn't. And that gave her the distinct feel
ing that the outcomes of the carny's acts weren't set in stone. That anything at all could happen, at any time, this afternoon. It was scary, but the fear made it all the more exciting.

  The carny master waved an arm toward the wings. Grunting from the strain, masked roustabouts pulled and pushed a trailer bearing a tarp-covered cage into the center ring. Alongside the trailer, four beautiful, long-legged women danced and mugged for the crowd. From the rear, their nearly invisible costumes made it look as if they were naked but for thigh-high, high-heeled, black leather boots.

  "Lesser carnies drag around carloads of snakes," the Magnificent Crecca bellowed. "They brag about how many deadly reptiles they've got and expect you to part with your hard earned jack. I'll tell you this for free. Numbers don't matter. It's size that counts. There's only one snake in this carny. It's been here since the very first ticket was sold. Bullard ville behold, Wolfram's Worm!"

  The tarp was thrown back, revealing the twelve-foot-long, three-foot-wide mutie rattlesnake. Worm slithered into a vast, diamond-backed coil and, hissing like a volcanic steam vent, struck at the inside of the bars. At the impact, the cage rocked on its trailer. The snake's dripping fangs looked like a pair of back-curving, yellow scimitars jutting from its upper jawbone.

  "The good thing about Worm," the carny master said as he jumped on the front edge of the trailer and tiptoed along it to the middle of the cage, "is that he only eats twice a month." He had to shout the last part over the buzzing roar made by the snake's huge rattles.

  Leeloo sucked in and held her breath as Crecca took hold of the pin that held shut the cage door.

  Everyone in the audience saw him grip the pin, and everyone knew what was going to happen next.

  They couldn't believe their eyes, but they knew it was going to happen.

  "The bad thing," the carny master said, "is that it's a week past his dinnertime."

  With that, he jerked the pin from the hasp and leaped out of the way as the barred door swung open. Worm was a lot faster than he looked. He was out of the cage and on the ground before anyone could even scream.

  Then everybody was screaming.

  Bullard ville's mothers grabbed for their children; Bullard ville's menfolk went for their blasters.

  The folks closest to the rear started to run for the exit.

  Dean was up in the blink of an eye, thrusting his body between the huge snake and Leeloo. With his feet shoulder width apart, he held the cocked, nine mill Browning in both hands.

  "Don't shoot!" the carny master yelled over the din. "Everyone stay right where you are! Stay where you are and no one will be hurt. Everything is under control. The snake charmers are in position."

  With that, the recorded music changed to something slow and sinuous, flutes and drums, drums and flutes.

  Even the spectators halfway out the door stopped and turned to look.

  Leeloo grabbed hold of Dean's arm; she couldn't help it.

  The four beautiful norm women had surrounded the giant rattler, which now sat coiled in the middle of the center ring, its yard of rattles raised, buzzing mightily, its flat boulder of a head shifting as it tasted the air with a black forked tongue as long as a bullwhip. The snake charmers never stopped moving, never gave Worm a solid target to lock on to.

  Even so, perhaps out of anger and frustration, the snake struck anyway. It launched itself forward, mouth agape, hollow fangs oozing thick streamers of poison.

  The charmer that Worm had targeted did a hip feint and reverse, and with long legs jumped well out of the way.

  The crowd cheered the clean miss.

  Worm regrouped in the center ring, rattles buzzing even louder. The four women then took turns rushing at the flat, scaly head, drawing gaping strikes, and as they dodged and ducked the fang points, gasps rose from the audience. If there was so much as a stumble, if there was the slightest hesitation, one of the lovely women was going to die before their eyes.

  Every time the snake struck, it extended itself to its full length on the ground. As it lay outstretched, after a dozen or more futile launches, a pair of the charmers ran right up the middle of its back. The one in front held a contraption made of chain link and padlocks. Before the snake could draw its body back beneath itself, the women had their long legs astraddle its neck, and with their combined body weight drove its chin into the dirt.

  The crowd jumped to its feet, cheering.

  The charmer in front slipped the chain muzzle over Worm's broad snout, the muscles in her back jumping as she dug her heels in the ground and hauled back hard to seat the device behind his eyes. She locked the muzzle in place and dismounted with a flourish, pirouetting away hand in hand with her sister charmer.

  They got out of range just in time.

  Unable to open its mouth and free its lethal weapons, Worm went crazy, rolling and thrashing like a flesh-and-blood cyclone. It took many minutes for this display of animal power and fury to wind down. When the great snake had finally exhausted itself, with help of four burly roustabouts, the charmers dragged the defeated Worm back to its cage by the tail.

  As the cage rolled away, the carny master vaulted over the center ring's bumper and cried, "Bring on the swampies!"

  Leeloo had never seen a real swampie before, only heard tell. How dirty they were. How bad they smelled. How bastard mean they were. She was surprised at their small stature. They were heavily built for their size, though, with stout, stumpy legs, wide, blocky hips, stocky torsos, thick arms and hands, and big, bony heads. The weight of the bone of their foreheads and brows gave them all, male and female, a perpetually sour, scowling appearance.

  Even as they tumbled and rolled around the ring to sprightly, upbeat music of clarinets and cymbals, there was nothing playful or lighthearted in their performance. Somersaults, cartwheels, handstands, headstands, mutie pyramids, all were delivered with the same dour distaste.

  Crecca let the mirthless gamboling continue for a few more minutes, then stepped back into the center of the ring and waved his arms. The swampies stopped tumbling and circled around him. "Time for some juggling!" he announced. "Not red-hot coals. Not flaming torches. Not razor-sharp swords. But these…"

  He held aloft in either hand a clutch of small, round, flat-black-painted metal objects.

  "Frag grens," Leeloo said. "Those are frag grens."

  "Probably not real, though," Dean told her.

  As if the carny master had heard the words, he pulled the pin on one of the grens and lobbed the armed explosive toward the tent's only exit. The crowd ducked…as if ducking would do any good. A roustabout at the exit caught the grenade and pitched it outside.

  "Three, two, one…" Crecca counted aloud.

  The ground under Leeloo rocked from the explosion.

  "Now, let's have some real fun," the carny master said. With that, he pulled the pin on a grenade, then tossed the gren one way and the pin the other. Swampies on the opposite sides of the circle caught the thrown objects. The one who'd grabbed the gren quickly flipped it to the one who had the pin. That swampie put the pin back in, disarming the explosive.

  "Get the picture?" Crecca asked his audience. Then he started yanking pins and throwing the armed grens and pins around the circle. In a moment or two, all five were flying back and forth.

  It made Leeloo dizzy to watch.

  And she was plenty scared, too.

  She was in the front row.

  Everything was okay for a while, but when the juggling act fell apart, it did so on a grand scale. Somehow, all the pulled pins ended up on one side of the ring, and all the armed grens on the other, at the feet of a particularly grouchy looking swampie.

  He threw back his matted head and bawled, "Mama!"

  All the grens all blew with a loud whack! Instead of steel splinters, multicolored confetti flew through the air, drifting down onto the audience.

  When the crowd settled down, the Magnificent Crecca wound in the long chain that connected him to the baby stickie. He put the palm of his hand
on the mutie's hairless head, and said, "Sing, Jackson!"

  Once again, the little stickie opened its lipless mouth, and beautiful music rushed out. Every a cappella note was in perfect pitch. Every word of the predark song was perfectly clear, and it was all in English.

  After the first couple of bars, Jackson had the whole audience locking arms and swaying along in time.

  Leeloo and Dean swayed, too, arm in arm.

  The music was lovely and haunting, but the lyrics puzzled Leeloo.

  She knew what the color blue was, but she had no idea what was meant by a "bayou."

  Chapter Thirteen

  As the tent's house lights went up and the carny intermission began, Ryan rose to his feet, as did the other companions. So far, there were no obvious signs of danger, yet he could whiff it, like the scent of a miles-distant cook fire riding on the wind. Only about half of the carny folk were visible and directly involved in the performance.

  What the rest of the chillers were doing he could only guess.

  And when he studied the roustabouts as they stared at the milling audience of farmers and shopkeepers, he saw both contempt and glee on their faces. The carny folk thought they knew what was going to happen to every person inside the tent, and they delighted in that secret, terrible knowledge.

  It didn't cross Ryan's mind to wonder how human beings could be so callous and so unfeeling. He had lived in Deathlands all his life; he had seen and done things nearly as bad as what was planned for Bullard ville. Because he'd been there, because he, too, had wallowed in it, he understood the place of manifest evil, the heart of darkness. The difference between Ryan Cawdor and the carny chillers was that he had found his moral center, his personal bedrock, and he wouldn't be budged from it. Not even in the face of ten to one odds. "As soon as the show starts," he told Krysty and Mildred, "move for the exit. No matter what else happens, you've got to keep it open."