“C’mon, boy,” Moondog said as he tugged him toward a pink and green caravan, “you’re my good-luck charm.”
Milton grinned, and the two hastily wheeled their carts into the mouth of the horseshoe-shaped midway. They scrambled past a Loop-Die-Loop—a mechanical contraption composed of three eggbeater-like blades with coffin-shaped passenger carriages attached—and into a booth, identified by a sign as the MAUSOLEUM OF MAKE-BELIEVE PLAY-FELLOWS.
Inside the garishly painted booth were rows and rows of jars—soul jars, by the looks of it—like the ones Milton had stolen from Limbo’s Assessment Chamber. These jars were smaller than the Lost Souls Milton had used to escape from Heck, yet the souls themselves were similar, only thinner and far less substantial, like watered-down ectoplasmic broth. They were also strangely cheery.
One jar held what looked like wisps of dull-pink cotton candy while another held glittery globs and speckled, purple-gray goop.
Moondog was right: Everything is energy, Milton reflected. So why not imaginary friends? A child makes them as real as anything. And just because a kid stops believing in them doesn’t mean that energy just disappears. It moves on … ultimately settling here …
A female phantom’s scream ripped through the air. Milton spun around toward the woman as a monstrous flea-tick sawed through the canvas roof above her with its harpoon nose. The creature fell on top of the Bury-Go-Round—a small roller coaster with an abrupt end at a mound of dirt—fifty feet away from Milton and Moondog. The pair dashed through the mouth of a spacious tunnel with hinged wooden doors at the far end of the carnival. Lurid orange letters declared it the KILLING TIME ZONE.
The bloated, speckled flea-tick skittered toward the tent. Its amber eyes glowed weakly, like twin laser sights in the darkness. Its proboscis quivered until pointing directly at Milton. The jittery creature’s eyes flared.
“Let’s go!” Moondog shouted as he grabbed Milton and heaved him and his cart into the tunnel. He quickly upended the cart and spilled out dozens of metal scraps, forming an impromptu barricade behind them.
“What about your cart?” Milton asked.
“Blast the cart!” Moondog barked. “I can always spend another eternity collecting more junk!”
The swollen creature scuttled up to the mound of metal and stabbed through the shopping cart’s carriage with its snout.
“Why does everything always want me?” Milton mumbled, backing away with fear and disgust.
Moondog, with surprising strength, hoisted Milton up, set him into his shopping cart, and pushed him farther into the tunnel.
Inside, movie projectors cast glimmering, dull 3-D images onto the walls of the tunnel. As Milton raced past them—a passenger in his own cart—he saw a man shaving, a teenage girl waiting by a phone, a fidgety toddler in the backseat of a car, a businessman at the airport, boys loitering outside a convenience store, and dozens of other less-than-memorable memories.
“The Killing Time Zone,” Milton observed. “A place full of moments that were killed … wasted.”
The flea-tick flailed its front legs with frustration at the scrap metal and shopping cart barrier. Sweat trickled down Moondog’s face as he pushed onward.
“You’re really gettin’ the hang of bein’ dead, kid!” he puffed. “This place feels like a collage of time continuums. Boring little scraps of reality left on the cutting-room floor of life.”
A crash thundered through the tunnel, followed by a dozen or so scrabbling feet. Milton and Moondog charged down the tunnel as the creature, now joined by another, skittered ever closer.
“Stop!” Milton shrieked. Moondog screeched the cart to a halt. Its front caster wheels dangled off the edge of a precipice.
“I didn’t see that coming!” Moondog gasped.
Beneath them was a steep drop into what looked like a roller coaster of spooled time-space laid on a shimmering “track” of moments. All of the segments of track had one thing in common: hundreds of people staring at hundreds of television sets.
Milton turned. His mouth went slack with fear as three flea-ticks forced their bloated, disgusting bodies down the tunnel, taking peevish swipes at one another with their long snouts. The trio of overgrown parasites stopped and judged Milton and Moondog with their emotionless red eyes before rearing back.
“Get us out of here!” Milton shrieked.
The three plus-sized parasites sprang forward. Moondog hopped on top of the shopping cart, crowding in next to Milton, then kicked both of them off the edge of the tunnel with his workboot. They plunged down the track of residual, barely solid energy. Milton gripped the side of the cart as his stomach pitched into a somersault.
The shopping cart plunged down through countless living rooms, dens, and basements—a chain of people lounging on couches staring blankly at flickering screens. The “ride” began with clean-cut families sitting, enrapt, before large boxes broadcasting warped black-and-white images of cowboys and Indians. The shopping cart sped through the shimmering vignettes, each one fading behind Milton and Moondog just as it was experienced. The tracks leveled out, and the shopping cart whizzed past shaggy-haired people mesmerized by colorful images of spaceships and war.
“Brace yourself,” Moondog cautioned. Up ahead was a series of loop-the-loops. The cart jerked as they entered the tight coils of time. The g-force bent Milton’s neck so that his chin was jammed into the top of his chest. Around him was a repetitive blur of cop shows and sitcoms.
“Must … be … reruns,” Moondog muttered.
They shot past the loop-the-loops and ascended steadily along the track, entering each bit of wasted time as if flipping through a stack of moving postcards. Milton looked behind him, past Moondog’s whizzing white mane. The flea-ticks stumbled down the track, their barbed, spindly legs slipping on the insubstantial clusters of time energy. They tried sucking, in vain, the vaporous wraiths of moments around them.
Milton and Moondog climbed upward, streaking through images of teenagers lying on their stomachs, feverishly playing a variety of video games—first Pong, then Pac-Man, then Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Halo in ever-quickening succession.
“Uh-oh,” Milton murmured as he saw the track abruptly end up ahead. “I think we’re running out of time.”
7 • DROP-DEAD GORGE-OUS
“HOLD ON!” MILTON yelled as he and Moondog, hunkering down tight, sailed off the track. The airborne cart shot through the end of the tunnel, spinning like a corkscrew for a few dozen feet, until it burst through the canvas of the confusement park tent. Milton’s stomach felt like he had swallowed a child’s wind-up toy.
A shred of the coarse, sturdy cloth snagged on the cart’s sawtooth bumper. The gash in the side of the tent widened as Milton and Moondog hurtled back into the Wastelands.
“Grab the canvas!” Moondog ordered as they plummeted outward and, unfortunately, downward. Milton hugged the fabric while Moondog clutched the rough cloth with his long, yellow nails. The shopping cart tore free and plummeted forty feet to the ground, where it smashed to its original, prewelded state of castaway parts.
Milton winced as he and Moondog, their arms wrapped tightly around the stiff canvas, swung down and slapped into the side of the tent. The impact knocked the wind out of Milton, and the fabric cut into his palms, but he held on for all he was worth. They hung suspended in the air as a crowd of PODs gathered beneath them, their carts laden with newly acquired curiosities.
The confusement park tent creaked and buckled as the disintegrating canvas pulled itself apart.
“Let go!” Moondog bellowed. Milton and Moondog tumbled down the steady slope of the tent and fell to the ground.
Jack was a hundred yards away with a mass of PODs—nearly all of them—staring gravely at the tent. He waved Milton and Moondog forward with his lanky arms.
“Beat it out, Popsicle!” he yelled. “The sky is falling!”
Milton turned around to see the towering tent crumple behind him. Moondog grabbed Milton’s h
and, and the two ran briskly as Savage Bumble’s Tragical Confusement Park collapsed in a fluttering heap of shredded canvas skin and splintered wooden bone.
Panting, Milton surveyed the PODs’ shopping carts. They were bulging with exotic new wares—a bewilderbeast pelt and a creepy ventriloquist dummy, for instance. This motley group of wandering phantoms was many things—eccentric, spooky, touchy—but one thing it wasn’t was wasteful.
“Where did those big sucker bugs go?” Milton asked Jack.
The lively POD leader—pushing a cart stacked with jars of Make-Believe Play-fellow souls—looked toward the rumpled mess of tents.
“Just after we, like, scattered, they left us alone and pulled an Amelia Earhart … a total disappearing act.”
“Well, they sure didn’t leave us alone,” Milton said.
A horrid popping sound came from the crumpled mass of canvas. Milton noticed great lumps pushing up from inside the tent, like five kernels of testy, oversized, parasitic popcorn.
“Sounds like they’re trying to feed on those lo-cal locals … the wraiths,” Moondog said. “That won’t keep them occupied for long.”
Cody licked beads of sweat away from his upper lip.
“Where should we go?” he asked.
A gust of wind thinned away the clots of mist clinging to the horizon. Milton could see a plump, swollen hill in the distance. Atop the mound was a walled fortress, with what appeared to be a castle hovering above, gently wobbling in the breeze. Greasy smoke billowed out from the fortress’s parapets. The tendrils—dense bacony plumes—beckoned with their delicious scent.
Madge, a POD with skin like chapped animal hide, sniffed the air with relish.
“You can’t go wrong following the smell of bacon,” she remarked as she adjusted the tight denim cutoffs that were a few generations too young for her.
Milton took off his glasses, fogged them with his breath, and gave them a quick swipe with his sleeve.
He squinted through a thinning patch of mist until an arched gate came into focus. The gate was, for all appearances, a gaping golden mouth. Two bulging brass tubes, like long, shiny sausages, were welded into lips, while the inside of the wide portal was lined with sharp, polished spades resembling teeth. Milton could just make out words written on the golden arch above: UNWELCOME TO BLIMPO. ZILLIONS AND ZILLIONS SERVED.
“Blimpo!” Milton exclaimed. Blimpo was the circle of Heck reserved for well-upholstered children. It was undoubtedly where Milton’s best friend, Virgil, had been sent after Milton’s escape from Limbo. This was the friend who had sacrificed any chance he had of leaving Heck so that Milton could. Ever since, Milton’s memories of his big-hearted friend had been tainted with guilt.
And, just as wiping a smudge from his glasses had brought Blimpo into focus, suddenly all of the shapeless thoughts and feelings crowding Milton’s head and heart came together with crisp, clear urgency.
“I need to get in there,” Milton said.
Moondog laughed.
“You want to break into Blimpo? What are you, a glutton for punishment?”
Milton, his eyes bright, smiled.
“Maybe,” he replied. “I just know that I have a big friend in there who I left behind, and I owe him a big favor. I also know that I’m not doing anyone any good out here.”
Jack put his hand on Milton’s shoulder.
“You’re either very brave or you just flipped your wig, Popsicle. Maybe that’s what bravery is all about: just not knowing any better.”
The air seemed to split with the sound of tearing canvas. Milton spun around to see the flea-ticks lashing out at the fallen big top with their barbed legs.
“Those suckers are done with the diet platter,” Moondog said. “And they want some serious food.”
Jack nodded and turned to the mob of PODs looking to him for direction.
“We’re cutting out!” he yelled.
The PODs surged away from the remains of Savage Bumble’s Tragical Confusement Park in a single-file line, slogging up the swell along a path outlined by dead briars. A sign nestled in a gap of the hedge read YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE WASTELANDS AND ENTERING THE WAISTLANDS.
The smell of bacon grew headier with every step. Milton could see something surrounding the bulging mound of Blimpo up ahead: a moat of some kind. From his vantage point, it appeared to be filled with a shimmering pink, undulating liquid. However, with every step, the liquid looked more like … meat. And, as the group of vagabonds neared, Milton could hear lapping rumbles and moans, like a million empty, protesting stomachs.
Moondog surveyed the moat with his sightless eyes. “Someone’s been sneaking a peek at my nightmare journal,” he muttered.
Milton neared the moat and gasped. Filling the chasm surrounding Blimpo were hundreds of glistening pink zombielike creatures. Their gaping, toothless mouths were in constant motion—like newly hatched chicks at the sight of a mother bird returning to the nest—and their round, bulky bodies were covered with glistening bumps. The creatures climbed over one another, trying to free themselves from the moat, but kept sliding back into the pit, giving the chasm the look of a lava lamp bubbling with mewling meat.
A POD toward the end of the procession screamed. Milton whipped his head around. Behind them in the distance, he could see several fat, dark blobs hopping in the mist above the flattened confusement park.
“Well,” Moondog sighed, “it looks like we are royally—”
“Food,” interrupted Jack, who had been staring at the moat, deep in thought.
“What was that?” Milton asked.
“We’re food … or at least you are,” he explained. “But food can either be a meal or … bait.”
“Oh, I get it,” Moondog said, rubbing his beard and nodding.
“Can someone fill me in, then?” Milton said.
“You’ll lead the stampede,” Moondog said. “Get those hopping nasties snapping at your heels, right to the edge of the moat, then …”
“Then?” Milton asked.
“Then you either turn on a dime or get drawn and quartered.”
Jack hopped up on top of his cart and yelled through his cupped hands.
“PODs!” he shouted. “I suggest we make like a tree and leave!”
Jack leaped down and pushed his cart off toward the chasm, his loyal phantoms close behind, kicking up clouds of dust that whorled across the horizon in little twisters. Milton, startled by the sudden burst of speed, raced to join Jack, who whooped with excitement, sounding as exhilarated as Milton was frightened.
Dark shadows flashed before them. Milton looked above at the uniform haze that served as “sky” in this realm: a murky, perpetual twilight, or dawn, depending on your outlook. The flea-ticks were hopping in great leaping strides alongside a few terrified phantoms at the back of the line. They did indeed only have eyes—and red, creepy ones at that—for Milton.
The roiling chasm was now only a dozen yards away.
“You gotta make like an egg and … scramble,” Jack said as he sprinted onward. “But, before you go, here …”
Jack held out his pendant to Milton.
“Just a way of getting in touch with me,” Jack continued. “If you ever need us … just rub the pendant. That seems to activate it. Then Divining Rod can lead us straight to you.”
“Thanks,” Milton said as he took the pendant and held it tightly in his hand.
“Now it’s time to … fall back, Popsicle,” Jack explained. “One cart at a time … until you’re the last. Take my cart and then, when you’re right at the lip staring down at the big pink uglies, push it over and make yourself scarce … ball yourself up and hide in the dust.”
“You make it sound … so easy,” Milton replied, panting.
“Hey, life and death are easy,” Jack replied. “It’s us crazy cats who do the living and dying that make it all complicated. Now, don’t lose my pendant, see? It’s a borrow. I’ll see you soon, and you can lay it back on me, got it?”
; Milton nodded while he quickly slipped the necklace over his head, never breaking stride. He took Jack’s shopping cart and fell back. Cart by cart, the shiny gray snake of PODs coiled along the chasm’s edge. The flea-ticks hopped closer, becoming more erratic, confused by the clouds of dust and bacon smoke. Milton leaned into the cart and ran for all he was worth.
Milton’s pendant dangled into the barbed-metal mesh around the lip of Jack’s cart. He tried to raise his head for one last glance at the colossal parasites pursuing him, but the pendant caught on a gnarled tangle of spikes. The shopping carts ahead began veering abruptly to the left, one by one, until Milton was only a few yards away from the moat’s edge. Sweat trickled into his eyes as he struggled to tug himself free. Finally, the chain broke. Milton shot a frantic look over his shoulder. The flea-ticks were crowded together, a dozen yards away, in one nasty, bristly lump, fighting over which would be the one to take Milton as its prize. Their red eyes smoldered, crazed with bloodlust. Milton could see, from his unfortunate vantage point, that each of the creatures had a collar around its neck with the inscription THIS FLICK PROPERTY OF HECK. IF LOST CALL 1-976-666-BUBB.
“Bubb!” Milton shouted as he shoved Jack’s cart into the pit of globby, glistening pink creatures. He dug his sneakers into the dirt and fell down to the ground in a great cloud of dust.
Coiled up in a ball with his borrowed navy peacoat pulled up over his head, Milton peeked above. The five fat, monstrous parasites sailed overhead, as if in slow motion, and plunged into the pit. Milton crawled to the edge of the chasm and peered with horror at the gruesome scene.
The flicks’ harpoon mouths stuck into the sides of the ravenous, roly-poly creatures in the moat. They swelled as they fed, stretching to capacity until their skin became translucent. The flicks tried to flee, but the slimy creatures in the pit held on to them—trying to eat what was eating them—until the flicks popped like balloons.
A wave of stink gushed out of the chasm, like someone had put moldy cauliflower and skunk blood in a big blender and set it to pew-ree.
Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck Page 5