FOURTEEN
The big shepherd turned his mangled head to look at the dogs and cats behind him. A silent animal communique passed down the line. The animals began moving, slowly, because many of them had to drag themselves along using front paws, their crushed hindquarters useless. Wolves and coyotes had joined the group, and as was their way, they helped each other. A huge gray wolf with a missing back paw and a gunshot wound in his side joined the big shepherd. They looked at one another and made peace with body language and head movement. The animals moved toward the fairgrounds, the lights just visible in the distance.
Saint Francis was not pleased with this trek by those he looked after, but the animals would deal with that later.
Those who were so badly mangled that they could scarcely move at allâfor many of them, their condition brought on by the uncaring ruthlessness of Karl Steele, his perverted mind and deadly pickup truckâkept the procession to a slow crawl. They could feel. They had to give up part of the immunity granted them in their afterworld to make this quest. And part of that surrendering was the ability to feelâonce moreâthe searing pain that had eventually killed them ... although for some that final end to life had taken days. That agony brought on by human beingsâand not just Karl Steele. There were others like Karl, and on this night of retribution, they would pay.
The animals crawled, limped, staggered and pulled themselves on. But they did not whimper, did not whine, showed no outward signs of the terrible agony they were experiencing as they inched through the bloody trail left by those who fronted the pack.
Heading for the fairgrounds.
The carnival was in town.
* * *
Martin was the first to step out onto the midway. His pistol was in his holster; he had given the big mag to Ned, after the preacher had asked for it, assuring Martin that he could and would use it.
“I'm a preacher,” he told Martin. “But I despise the godless.” And he let that remark stand on its own.
Warily, cautiously, the group walked the length of the midway. Nothing happened. The dancing, laughing couples did not give them a second glanceâor in many cases, a first glance.
The two groups met in the center of the midway and Martin motioned Dick to head his group into the shadows behind the rows of tented concessions.
“Highway patrol car parked just outside the main gate,” Dick told them. “It's unmarked but the emblem is on the door.”
If Frenchy wondered why the man or men in the unit didn't come in and assist them, she kept it to herself. But meeting her dark eyes, Martin could see the puzzlement lingering there.
“And I think your father is here, Martin,” Dick added. “There is an old rusted-out pickup truck sitting on its rims just inside the gate. Two men inside. One of them is Doc Reynolds.”
Martin felt a hard surge, a myriad of emotions. But he knew he could not let them show. He knew that he could not show any signs of breaking. And he also knew that the others were watching him closely.
“I'll deal with that when it comes,” he finally spoke. “Right now, I'm open to suggestions. I don't know what Nabo wants of us. He told us the midway was the place where we'd bring an end to all this ...” Martin continued. “No. No, that's not right.
He
did not say that. I suggested it and he agreed. But we've wandered the midway and nothing happened.”
“Maybe he meant the shows, Dad,” his son suggested. “Maybe he meant we have to go inside those things.” He pointed through the tents to the House of Wax, directly across from them, then moved his hand up and down the midway.
All the group grew a bit uneasy at that thought. “I've never seen anybody go into those places,” Dick said. “Or,” he added, “anyone coming out of them.”
A roaring sound overrode the calliope, with screaming following that. The faint sounds of flesh being crushed and ripped could be heard.
“What was that? ...” Martin mouthed the words. They were not audible because of the roaring and screaming on the midway.
Martin stepped between the tents and stood rooted to the spot, like so many other sights over the past hours, this was just as mind-boggling.
A rusted, tireless, dirty pickup truck was bucking and lurching and snorting blue smoke, hammering its way up the center of the midway, the rims digging into the sawdust, the nose of the truck slamming into people, knocking them sideways, the bodies mangled and bloody. The fenders on the old truck were flapping like curved wings.
Two men in the truck: Doc Reynolds ... and Martin's father. Both of them grinning.
Martin stood in the shadows, not exposing himself to the dead eyes of the driver. The others gathered around him, silent, watching the carnage on the midway. As the calliope pumped out music, men jumped onto the hood and into the bed of the truck, clubs and stakes in their hands. They hammered on the top of the cab and on the hood.
Holland, grinning wildly, spun the wheel and sent half a dozen flying off the truck. Some crashed into the crowds, sending more to the sawdust; others flew into poles and onto the wooden counters of the concessions. The sounds of bones breaking could be heard. The old pickup truck roared to the end of the midway, turned around, and stopped, the engine running, the broken lights like deadly eyes, the grill looking like a shark's mouth about to rip and mangle its prey.
The music stopped. The angry crowd, all of them waving clubs of some sort, faced the growling old rusted truck, shouting curses at it and its occupants.
The driver's side door squeaked open and the dead, leather-like shell of a man stepped out. “We're doing this for you, boy!” the old man clacked and whistled the words. “They'll eventually stop us. And when they do, it's all up to you and your group. Go with God, boy. I'll see you years from now.”
Martin felt the sting of tears in his eyes. Turning his head, looking at his son, he saw the boy was crying, tears running down his face for a grandfather that he had never known.
Holland stepped back into the truck and slammed the door. When he did, one fender finally gave up and fell off, the sawdust quickly soaking up the blood that dripped from it. Holland gunned the engine and ground the transmission into gear. He floorboarded the pedal and the truck lurched forward. The crowd would not move.
Nabo's voice boomed over the loudspeakers. “Get out of the way, you fools!”
The crowd stood their ground, yelling curses at the men in the truck. They were still yelling and cursing as the truck slammed into them, knocking men and women to both sides and into the air.
“It's so ... senseless!” Janet said, her eyes taking in all the gore that splattered the sawdust and the concessions. “Why? They're rushing like lemmings to their deaths.”
“Senseless?” Ned spoke over the roaring of the pickup truck, the screaming of the people and the almost maddened howling of Nabo. The minister's voice was very calm. “Not at all. It's simply more grist for the devil's mill, that's all. Probably that's all it ever was. Nabo pulled in any unsuspecting carnival people with the promise of revenge.”
“Pulled them in!” Her voice was horror-filled. “But they were all
dead!”
“We shall never know what voices speak to and from the grave until we hear the dirt shoveled over us,” Don said.
“That's awesome!” Jeanne looked at him, all the love in her being shining at him through her eyes.
The cowboy blushed.
The pickup truck came roaring back down the midway, coming with a full head of steam, rolling over people, knocking them bloody and battered to either side. Doc would occasionally reach out of the open window with his heavy cane to bash a head.
But it was Doc's turn to meet his Makerâfor the first time. Who knew whether he would come back, like Holland.
Fat Binkie ran up to the truck as it had slowed after impacting with half dozen men and women and shot the old doctor in the head with a pistol.
“I killed the old geezer!” Binkie shouted, dancing around on the midway, his beer belly jumping up and down like a sack full of Jello.
John Stacker, Karl Steele, Robie, Hal and the others applauded and cheered. Binkie took a bow on the bloody midway.
He was still bowing and grinning when Holland backed the truck up and ran him over.
He stopped grinning and started howling as the rims crushed his legs.
Holland, cursing the devil and all who followed him, did a state trooper turnaround in the middle of the midway and began wreaking his vengeance with gruesome results.
Around and around in an ever widening circle he roared, the rear rims kicking up sand and sawdust as they dug down, spinning as they searched for traction. He ended the earthly lives of too many for Martin and the others in his group to count, and tore down concessionaires' tents on both sides of the midway.
Then the old pickup stopped abruptly. It had run out of gas. The mob stormed the truck and jerked the bony old man out of the cab before Martin could react.
The cheering crowd hacked him into dry dusty pieces with knives and fire axes, beating him into nothing with clubs and iron stakes.
But they failed to notice a leather-like object, with fingers attached, pull slowly away from the screaming mob and slip under the old pickup. The hand, wrist and forearm slipped behind a rim and waited.
Before Martin could react, Dick and Audie had grabbed him, holding him, preventing him from running out onto the midway.
“Nothing you can do, Martin,” Dick told him. “Except get yourself killed. It's like Doc said: they bought us some time. And they sure knocked down the odds for us.”
Frenchy led him away, back behind a concession. She put her arms around him and he responded, drawing from her woman's strength. They stood for a time, each seeking and taking comfort from the other.
Frenchy pulled away and looked up at him. “Why don't they just come after us and end it, Martin? They could easily overwhelm us.”
He shook his head. “Maybe that isn't in the rules, Frenchy. I don't know.” The sight of his father, bony and leathery and grinning his death's head grin would not leave his mind. The image was sharp and clear.
“They've pulled old Doc Reynolds out of the truck and are having a good time chopping him to bloody pieces,” Dick said, joining them.
“Did any of them see you?” Frenchy asked.
“Looked right at us. Some of them waded through the gore and got close, grinning at us. Didn't make a hostile move. I'm getting a funny feeling that we're really going to win this ... warâfor want of a better wordâbut we're going to lose it all in the long run. Does that make any sense to either of you?”
Before either could answer, the lights of the midway dimmed and then went dark. The gloom settled around the embattled little group, enveloping them, almost smothering in its too real touch.
The music from the calliope began, a slow melodious tune.
“Now what?” Frenchy muttered, standing very close to Martin.
“Martin?” Ned called. “You people better see this.”
They made their way to the space between the concessions, the passageway illuminated by a strange glow from the midway floor.
Martin almost lost it. All his cold control almost shattered at the sight before him. Looking at the others, he could see that their reservoir of strength was shrinking; the dam of resilience leaking badly.
The dead were dancing.
In the dark.
Dark except for a strange illumination emanating from their bodies. As the macabre dance continued, a greenish glow sprang from the grinning townspeople as they slowly turned in the bloody, gore-covered sawdust. The ladies pirouetted gracefully and the men bowed in a strange dance of the dead.
The scene was so hypnotic, so spellbinding; the music from the calliope so low and soothing that Martin and the others could not take their eyes from the midway bathed in eerie light.
Ned uttered a strange cry; a choking pain-filled exclamation. Martin literally had to tear his eyes from the dancing dead and turn to see why the almost silent scream from the minister.
Eddie was standing behind the minister, his face a tortured and altered head of a beast. Blood leaked from a heavy and fanged jaw.
Ned's neck had been ripped open. The one savage bite had almost decapitated the minister. Eddie was holding the minister upright in his thick hairy arms, the massive muscles having torn his jacket into rags as they had grown. He roared, the jaws opening wide, and took a bite out of the pastor's head, the long teeth penetrating skullbone.
Mark's crossbow twanged. The bolt, coming at full strength from only a few yards away, tore into the lawyer's side and disappeared into the man-beast's body, the ribbed arrow destroying the heart.
Both beings dropped to the ground. Eddie lost his hold on the minister as death reached his clawed hands. The thud of the bodies was lost in the music that filtered through the gloomy light.
“Goddamn you all!” Young Ed screamed his shock and outrage at the dancers in the sawdust.
Before anyone could stop him, he ran onto the midway, the .30-30 rifle in his hands.
His sister, Missy, and Karl Steele were on the boy as he shoved his way through the gory dancers. They brought him down.
With a presence of mind that belied his age and his circumstances, Ed looked back at the group, terror in his eyes and etched on his face, and threw the rifle with all his strength. Susan caught the weapon, eared the hammer back, and shot Missy in the chest, the recoil of the .30-30 jarring her back on her heels.
Missy jerked as the lead struck her, then turned her head and grinned at Susan as her face changed into a snarling demon. She reached down and tore out the boy's throat. Ed jerked in pain and the beginnings of death as his blood gushed out onto the sawdust.