A robust scream
split the heat-addled air. The trio of rookie police officers sitting at their
leisure leapt up as their companion in the middle of the street, whose job it
was to direct the road-enraged erstwhile Fair-goers toward a lane that would
not result in the untimely demise of the hordes of pedestrians that crossed the
equally busy street, halted all traffic, causing a cacophony of angry 4-letter
metaphors amid ill-intended horn-bleats.
A young woman
in short-shorts with a prodigious muffin-top beneath an almost indecent bikini
ran into the street and fell into the befuddled officers arms.
“Alive!” she
screeched in a perfect imitation of a horror-movie victim but with twice the
cellulite. “They’re alive!”
The heavyset Fair-worker
in the Indiana Jones-style hat and prescription sunglasses rolled his eyes,
lifted his hat from his balding pate and rubbed his stubbly sweat-soaked hair.
Heat plus alcohol plus fried food on a stick apparently meant crazy. Or so he
thought until, at that very moment, a morbidly rotund woman on a scooter came
rambling down the Fair avenue across the way, screaming in jelly-filled terror
as an eight-foot-tall anthropomorphic beaver topiary in jaunty haberdasher bore
down on her in a woefully small golf-cart.
The creature
roared its leafy-green rage as it caught up to her and with razor-sharp
buck-teeth of the finest oak bit off her head. Gouts of cholesterol infused
blood sprayed the creatures maw, giving it the briefest look of a Merry Bloody
Christmas.
The quartet of
officers reacted immediately, drawing their sidearms and aiming at the
gore-soaked leaf-monster. “DOWN!” screamed the traffic enforcer and fired off a
round harmlessly into the air to drive the point home. He was immediately mowed
down by a panic-stricken wall of motorists, along with the pedestrians who had
dropped to the street per the officer’s instruction.
Several things
happened at once: Two of the remaining officers unloaded their magazines at the
creature while the third pointed his firearm at the next wave of oncoming
car-panic and ordered them to stop by screaming in unintelligible rage. The car
he aimed at floored the gas and the officer fired twice. With the second shot,
the back of the driver’s head blew out, spraying the two children in the back
seat with gray matter. The car swerved wildly and slammed into the officer,
pinning him against the sign by which the heavyset Fair-worker had been
stationed.
The volley of
lead went largely wide of the evil topiary, and those that struck home whistled
through its leafy body. The flying lead did punch several large-ish holes in
the beaver’s hat, however, which caused it to fly into an uncontrollable rage.
It aimed its
golf cart at the revolving exit gate and opened the throttle. While it charged
the gate, the Fair-worker moved into the street, dodging fleeing vehicles and
swearing prolifically at the top of his lungs. When he reached his goal, two
terrified children, both under five, he scooped them up under his beefy arms
and straightened in time to catch a glancing blow from a swerving Lincoln
Towncar. He flew back and landed hard, but managed to shift the children so
they impacted his prodigious tummy. He stood almost immediately, coughing and retching
but still moving until he reached the side of the road. He dropped the kids and
vomited all over the ground. Chunks of apple and corndog floated in a sea of
frothy red goo.
The
underpowered golf-cart rebounded off the steel gate and flipped. The beaver
regained its feet with only a few broken twigs to show for it. It pulled itself
atop the rotating gate as the two remaining officers slammed home another
magazine and prepared to fire.
“No!” the Fair-worker
called hoarsely. “Fire! Use fire!”
“What?” the
female officer asked as her companion opened fire. The Fair-worker limped to her.
“It’s made from
branches and leaves,” he shouted over the report of the male officer’s gun.
“Not much to shoot at, but plenty to burn!”
“It’s coming,”
screamed the cop.
“It’s not like
we come equipped with flame-throwers.” The female officer screamed.
The angry
beaver bit down on the male officer’s arm as he tried to fend it off. The Fair-worker
ripped the female officer’s pepperspray off her belt and pulled a Zippo from
her breast pocket, as the creature, whose mouth was filled with cop arm, turned
on them. The Fair-worker flipped open the Zippo as the beaver grabbed the arm
from his maw and slapped the female officer across the face with the wet end
just as a huge gout of flame issued from the Fair-worker’s makeshift
flamethrower.
“It should have
taken awhile to catch = wet wood often refuses to burn, but the evil topiary
lit up like a stoner on 4/20. Shrieks of rapidly evaporating water leaving
through microfractures in the wood filled the air like an inhuman scream as the
thing burned fast and hot and then out.
An elaborate
metal framework that served as the creatures skeleton clanged smoldering to the
ground. The female officer picked herself up and rushed to her companion’s
side. His arm was gone just above the elbow.
“How did you
know that would work?” she asked as she prepared a tourniquet. The male officer
was conscious but unblinking as shock took him.
The Fair-worker
glanced around at the devastation caused in only a few second, and he answered
honestly.
“Dungeons and
Dragons,” he said. “Plant monsters always hate fire.”
Gunshots from
inside the Fair precipitated more screaming.
“Sounds like
there’s more inside,” she said. “What happens if they don’t hate fire?”
The Fair-worker
smiled grimly. “My pregnant wife and kid are in there. They don’t hate fire
now, they will learn to.”
The gates the
beaver had previously failed to bust down burst at the seams as the 40-foot bus
slammed into it and crunched over the fat woman’s corpse and scooter.
“Jesus Christ!”
the female officer, whose name, we have learned, was Laura. “Are you fucking
blind?”
“Yes ma’am!”
the Fair-worker said somewhat gleefully. “Legally blind since 2006!”
“And why are
you driving?” asked Mike, the one-armed officer through gritted teeth.
“’Cuz you guys
won’t give me a gun!” the Fair-worker said cheerfully. “And neither of you were
listening when the driver gave the crash course.”
“This is
stupid.” Laura said as the bus bounced over a curb. “We should wait for
backup.”
The Fair-worker
slowed as a batch of Pronto Pup employees ran past and accelerated into the
rampaging merry-go-round toad that pursued them. They screamed and tried to
wave the bus down, but the Fair-worker kept accelerating.
“Kids and
preggos only!” he yelled out the open window as they shot past. The two
officers did not argue – they had all agreed to this ahead of time. The bus
swerved and clipped a roaring plastic 9-foot-tall gopher.
“Are you trying
to hit every one you see?” Mike gasped through the stabbing pain from his
severed arm.
“Hell yes,” the
Fair-worker answered and swerved hard to catch a bunny topiary that appeared to
be gnawing on a child-sized human arm. “I am driving a 14 ton tank and I’m
gonna’ use it!”
A small group
of children, all under 10, shepherded by a tall woman with no hips and huge
breasts came into view ahead. The Fair-worker pulled the bus alongside them and
opened the door.
“You pregnant?”
he asked. The top-heavy woman blinked.
“No,” she
replied automatically. The Fair-worker nodded.
“Kids only
then.” She stared at him as the children filed on.
“What am I
supposed to do?” she asked as the last kid stepped on. The Fair-worker
shrugged.
“Head for the
edge and hop the fence. Don’t go to the exits, some of the bigger bastards have
congregated there and are having a smorgasbord as folks try to leave.” He
closed the bus door and stepped on the gas without another word.
Not everyone
was so amiable. The Fair-worker had to forcibly remove two redneck Iron Rangers
who used two kids as a pretense to get the bus to stop. The Fair-worker ended
the confrontation by dislocating and resetting one of their arms.
“That’s
assault!” the man wept. Laura smiled at him sweetly.
“I’ll arrest
him later.”
There were plenty
of children and several more encounters as they enforced their rules. When the
bus was filled, the Fair-worker grudgingly brought them out the gates they had
smashed and released them into the waiting custody of the SPPD who were busily
establishing a perimeter. Mike disembarked too, and the sergeant tried to force
the Fair-worker to give up his search. He refused. The sergeant pulled his
sidearm, and the Fair-worker just laughed.
“What’s the
difference? Yu shoot me here, or I get eaten in there. At least in there I can
do some good.”
“Don’t be
stupid,” Laura snapped, and turned to the sergeant. “Sir, he has proven himself
more than capable, and I will go with him.” The Fair-worker grinned and the
sergeant lowered his weapon. He glanced at the Fair-worker sidelong.
“You licensed
to carry?”
The Fair-worker
shook his head. “Wouldn’t matter anyway,” he said. “But I have a few ideas…
think you can hook me up?”
The sergeant
frowned. The Fair-worker’s grin widened.
Half an hour
later, the bus trundled through the gate. Two rose-festooned woodchucks leapt
out of hiding and charged. The bus slowed and the door opened. Twin sparks of
light flickered into existence and a moment later twin streams of flame doused
the attacking evil in cleansing cleansing fire. In moments, twin piles of ash
smoldered ineffectually at the Fair-woker and Laura. The Fair-worker snapped
the Zippo affixed to the end of the gas-filled Super Soaker closed. He blew
across the barrel.
“Works like a
charm,” he snarked. Laura glared at hi m.
“Just drive the
damn bus.”
He did so.
As the bus
circumvented the Great Big Sandbox (which a monocle, top-hatted cat the size
and temperament of a Buick had turned into the Great Big Litterbox – burying
great steaming piles of partially digested manflesh with the OCD fastidiousness
that represented his nature), a quiet hum could be heard below the roar of the
decades old buses engines. Confounded, Laura, the Fair-worker, and several of
their young passengers glanced about for the source of the noise. Even the cat
who had been eying the bus boredly, twitched its traffic-cone sized ears at the
noise.
Around the bend
just ahead, a lone scooter driven by a man in his late 80’s in a tan military
uniform adorned with stripes, ribbons, and medals. On his head, he wore a blank
VFW ball-cap and in his right hand he carried a wooden cane whose end was
sharpened to a wicked point.
The cat, seeing
smaller, weaker prey than the bus, shifted into pouncing position. The veteran
urged his scooter forward, pointing his makeshift sword at the cat.
“What the hell
is he doing?” Laura asked.
The Fair-workers
put the bus in park and grabbed the tire iron he had borrowed from the back of
the sergeant’s squad car. “The bravest thing I’ve seen all day. We should help
him.” But even as these words were uttered, the cat lost his patience and
bounded forward. Just as it was almost on the vet, the pervasive hum
intensified… and a veritable cavalry of scooter-riding octogenarians putted
around the corner behind the lone vet. Most wore aging military regalia, and
all were armed with bits of cane, walkers, or wheelchair. The cat skidded to a
halt and spun to flee the oncoming geriatric scooter horde, but instead met
with the descending tire iron of the Fair-worker, as well as the sneering
insults of a dozen or so children on the bus. The cat went down hard in a blaze
of rage-colored glory. When it was all over, young and old stared at each other
across the field of battle.
The leader of
the 1st Battalion Scooter Brigade, the first man they saw, spoke
first. “You savin’ kids?”
The Fair-worker
nodded. “You kicking ass and taking names?”
The old man
laughed. “I didn’t spend 50 years in the Marines for nothing. Where’d you
serve?” The young man laughed. “Nowhere. I’m a civilian, looking for my wife
and kid.”
The vet
snorted. “Crazy bastard.”
Other forces in
the Fair conspired against anthropomorphic evil as well. The firefighters
proved handy with flamethrowers, and the Farmer’s Union fired up a row of
threshers on Machinery Hill. The farmers formed a loose alliance with the
lumberjacks who had mounted the World’s Largest Working Chainsaw on top of the
Ronald McDonald House pale pink Cadillac convertible. The State Fair Police had
mounted a defense near the Grand Stand, but were suffocated by a cadre of
plastic inflatable Marvel, Disney, and Dreamworks characters, which the
Knitter’s Union then defeated with the copious application of needles. All
told, when the dust settled, the smaller creatures were defeated, but the
larger monsters… Fairborn and Fairchild, the 12-foot-tall beavers – concrete
replicas of the very topiary that had brought the Fair-worker and Laura into
the mess, seemed immune to fire and most kinds of damage. They had parked
themselves at the main gates and were slowly picking off anyone foolish enough
to flee the main entrance.
The North Gate
was guarded by a dozen or so 5-foot-tall concrete Peanuts characters. They
seemed less keen to eat people, though instead they mashed them into a sticky
paste, which they mixed with partially digested cheese curds and corndogs from
the stomachs of their victims and wore as sticky gore-crowns.
The South Gate
was held by the police (armed with the Fair-workers makeshift flamethrowers and
batons) and the East Gate was held by a sixteen-foot-tall Fiberglass Hartford
and a Giant Cow. They only ate one in four fleeing Fair-goers, feeding the rest
to three bovine heads mounted on a billboard on the southeast corner of the
Fair.
A Fiberglass
Angus and Black Angus Bull, both roughly 12-foot-tall wandered the grounds in
the company of a trio of topiary stallions.
The Fair-workers
and Laura ran afoul of the latter more often than not, to the point where the Fair-worker
would curse vilely when they spotted them, and the creatures would drop whoever
they were chewing and charge the bus.
After the fifth
such encounter, the quintet of evil caught the bus from behind. The Fair-worker
cursed and accelerated. They, he spotted something that made him blanch.
“Hold on!” he
yelled.
“What are you
doing?” Laura screamed as he slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel to the
left. The old bus screeched, skidded and swerved to a halt, rocking on two
wheels to the right, then all four, then teetering on two wheels on the left,
just as the Black Angus Bull slammed into the side, knocking it back onto four
wheels. The side panel crumpled and the plexiglass window spider-webbed but one
of the bull’s horns had snapped off, and its head had an oblong concavity to
it.
The Fair-worker
grabbed the 20-pound sledgehammer they’d pulled from one of the Fair work-crew
trucks. “I’m sick of this shit,” he growled. “I’ll distract the bovine brigade,
you light up all the pretty ponies.”
“What can we
do?” asked one of the older kids, name of Mickey. He’d seemed eager to fight,
but neither Laura nor the Fair-worker had allowed it.
“Stay on the
bus!” they said together Once out the door, the Fair-worker gave the sledge a
practice swing.
“What the Hell
was that with the bus?” Laura asked. Their foes had not figured out that the
door was on the other side of the bus and were trying to find a way inside.
“Saw it in a
movie once,” he replied.
“With a BUS?
And we agreed only to attack if we had to!”
He shrugged.
“Same physics, bigger numbers. And trust me: We have to.” He stepped around the
bus.
She grimaced.
“That might be one of those things we should, y’know, discuss,” she flipped
open her Zippo and ignited it.
As soon as the Fair-worker
stepped around the bus, the Fiberglass Angus and the Black Angus Bull turned
and the Bull roared. Being that it had no breath and its cranial cavity was
partially caved in, it was a broken sound made of pure malice. It was a
terrifying sound to someone who had not experienced what they had experienced,
but the Fair-worker just screamed back. His scream was high-pitched but no less
terrifying – for while the creatures were made of malice, the Fair-worker’s
scream tapped into a visceral well of hate and anguish that connected every
living thing that had ever experienced the soul-wrenching ache of fearing for a
loved one’s life.
All men break,
but not all men break the same. Many shatter and spend the rest of their days
picking up the pieces, but some break off with sharp edges that can be focused
into a razor sharp weapon.
Women tend not
to break – they react and move on.
The Fair-worker
charged before the fiberglass monsters had a chance to. He was reckless but not
stupid however, and brought the 20-pound steel head with adrenaline augmented
strength down on the left shoulder joint of the Black Angus Bull. It easily
smashed through the thick fiberglass, but merely bent the chicken-wire mesh
beneath.
The topiary
stallions descended, but Laura lit one up and the other two scattered. The
plastic barrel of the Super Soaker melted under the intense heat (not for the
first time) and she ripped the Zippo off the jury-rigged weapon and sloshed the
cartridge against her ear – maybe three-quarters empty.
The Fair-worker
reached into his back pocket and froze when his wire cutters were not there. He
got the head of the sledge up just in time to mitigate the bulk of the impact
from the charging Fiberglass Angus. It was still sufficient to knock him into
the side of the bus, however, which knocked the wind from his lungs.
Laura cursed
and pulled her fully-extended, cloth-wrapped baton from her belt and soaked the
cloth with what remained of the gas. The remaining two stallions were drawing
closer as their companion burned down, and with the Fair-worker pinned down by
the Fiberglass Angus, the Black Angus Bull was lopsidedly heading her way.
She flicked the
Zippo twice with no result and glanced up to see the Black Angus Bull bearing
down on her. She bit her lip and flicked it again and this time the makeshift
torch lit. She brandished the burning brand just in time to see Mickey, armed
with the Fair-worker’s wire cutters, leap off the top of the bus and slide into
the hole created by the Fair-worker’s hammer. The cutters disappeared into the
hole as Laura swung the torch back at the charging stallions. They both caught,
but collapsed into her as the Black Angus Bull’s front left leg buckled and
collapsed. Laura screamed in pain as Mickey rode the bull down.
Meanwhile, the
Fiberglass Angus was grinding the Fair-worker against the bus. The heavyset
man’s prodigious waist shielded him from the worst of it, but he felt more than
one rib crackle under the pressure.
When Laura
screamed, the Fiberglass Angus turned her way, allowing the Fair-worker to
bring the sledge up. He fought through the agony in his chest to take the
hammer in a two-handed grip just below the head, with the handle pointed to the
sky. He brought it down on the back of the bowed head of the creature, which
cracked a hole in the brittle fiberglass, but jarred the hammer from his hands.
The mesh beneath snapped, smashed between the hammer and the Fiberglass Angus’
steel frame spine.
He reached in
and grabbed the things frame where its head joist connected with its body as it
bucked. He could feel ragged metal under his palm where the joint was weakened
from unaccustomed movement. The wire fragments from the broken chicken-wire bit
and tore his flesh as he reached his other arm through and braced himself
against the creatures back with his feet. The thing bucked and roared as he put
pressure on the joint, ignoring the pain of his ribs and the mesh digging into
his arms, but before long, the tortured metal gave out and the Fiberglass
Angus’ head fell away from its body, and it’s unnatural life-force escaped its
body. It did not so much collapse as stop moving, but the Fair-worker did.
He crawled to
his sledge and used it to stand. The Black Angus Bull was still twitching but
seemed immobile as Mickey helped Laura to her feet. The stop, drop, and roll
method had saved her life, but her left arm as black and raw and badly burned.
He hobbled over to the Bull and brought the hammer down on the same joint that
killed its Fiberglass brother with surprising strength considering how much
pain he was in. It stopped twitching. He pushed his Indiana Jones hat further
back on his balding head and put his hand on Mickey’s shoulder.
“From now on,
your name is Short Round.”
“…why?” Laura
asked.
“Is it
because I’m Asian?” Mickey asked. Mickey
wasn’t Asian. The Fair-worker tried to laugh, but coughed instead.
“Go back to the
bus,” he croaked and turned away.
“Where are you
going?” Laura inquired. He pointed to the wreck of a State Fair minivan which
had run headlong into a steel lamppost.
“Just over
there. I want to check something out.” He walked over, using the sledge as a
cane. It was evident what had happened: A wooden statue of a bear had attacked
the driver through the side window, the driver had crashed into the pole.
Whether by design or by accident, it was hard to say, but she had hit the pole
at great speed and the bear had not survived – its splintered head still lay in
the driver’s lap. The driver moaned as the Fair-woker drew near. She was alive.
He breathed a painful sigh of relief.
He carried her
onto the bus, his eyes leaking with pain and exertion. She was maybe ten years
his junior in her early twenties, a slim full-breasted brunette. She did not
wear a State Fair shirt, but wore a State Fair badge on a State Fair lanyard.
“She your
wife?” Laura asked incredulously.
“Nope, she’s a
friend,” he replied, setting her into a seat. Laura considered confronting him
on this for breaking his own rules, but quickly recognized the futility in it.
What he had done just now, facing the Angus’ had been for her.
Without another
word, he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned on the bus. It squealed in
protest, but turned over. He aimed the bus south and back to the relative
safety of the police.
The Fair-worker
had three fractured ribs and lacerations practically shredded his forearms, but
as soon as he was bandaged, he was seated next to the young woman. He did not
move until the EMT declared her stable. Both of her legs were broken and she
had a nasty bruise on her head, but she would live. When he heard this, he
stood and squeezed her hand and started to leave, but she gripped him hard and
spoke his name. She pulled him close and whispered in his ear. As she spoke, he
aimed his gaze north over the trees, directly at the Space Tower.
He kissed her
forehead and straightened, heading for the bus, but Laura, her arm freshly
bandaged, cut him off.
“Paramedics
said you refused painkillers,” she said.
“Yup,” he
replied. “Dulls the senses.” He moved past her.
“Sarge said you
were done after that last stunt,” she fell in step beside him.
“Still haven’t
found my wife and kid,” he shot back. “Not done yet.”
“Who is she?”
Laura asked, gesturing back at the girl. “Your mistress?”
He did not even
slow. “Nope.”
“You need to
stop,” she grabbed his arm. He whirled.
“Then stop me.
You have the training. I have no doubt you can put me down. Why don’t you stop
me?”
She just
stared. He was right, big and strong as he was, injured as she was, she could stop him. But she had only ever met one other
man as stubbornly determined as he was, and that was her husband. And she found
she did not want to stop him.
“Sarge has the
keys,” she said lamely. “Maybe I can-” she stopped as Short Round sidled up to
the Fair-worker and dropped the keys into his hand. The Fair-worker grinned.
“You coming?”
he asked, and headed for the bus. Laura looked at Short Round.
“I suppose he
already told you to stay here,” she said. Short Round nodded enthusiastically.
“I told him to
fuck off,” he scampered after the Fair-worker. Laura sighed and followed.
“She texted me
before she left in the van, probably ten minutes before all this started.
That’s how I knew sort of where to find her.” The Fair-worker explained. “She
was going to meet my wife and kid.”
“What did she
say to you before we came out here?” Laura inquired.
The Fair-worker
grimaced as he veered around the Haunted House. “She told me she thought they
were safe. And then she asked me why the Space Tower ride was still aloft.”
Laura peered
out the buses window. “Those poor people…” The Fair-worker shrugged.
“Maybe,” he
said. Laura shot him a sidelong glance.
“Maybe?”
“I got to
thinking,” he said. “This kind of attack is too random for specific revenge,
and too localized to be a terrorist attack, did you notice how they don’t leave
the Fair? And too… specialized to be anything but personal.”
“So?”
The Fair-worker
sighed. “If it were me? It would have to get pretty damn personal to do
something like this, and if I had the power to pull something like this off, I
wouldn’t want to just do it… I’d want to see it.”
“And what
better view than the top of the Tower…” Short Round supplied.
“What if you’re
wrong?” Laura asked.
“Then we save a
bunch of scared people that really have to pee.”
“Who could pull
something like this off?” Laura mused. There was a long pause.
“Voldemorte?”
Short Round asked. The Fair-worker laughed.
“Or Sarumann,”
he added. Laura scowled.
“Oh come on!”
the Fair-worker cajoled. “It’s funny!”
“It would be,”
she retorted, “if you were wrong. But what can a one-armed cop, a badly injured
civilian, and a kid do against a full-on wizard.”
There was a
pause.
“Remember that
gun you haven’t gotten to use?” Short Round smirked.
“They don’t
like it when you shoot at them,” quipped the Fair-worker. “I worked that one
out myself.
“Oh shut up.”
They stood at the base of the Space Tower, just outside the
bus. The compartment remained aloft, rotating slowly.
“Think it’s
guarded?” Laura asked.
“Doesn’t look
like it,” Short Round replied.
“I would think
so,” the Fair-worker added. “If only as an early warning system.”
But it wasn’t.
They climbed the spiraling walkway to the Tower itself unmolested. Even when
Laura leapt the boundary to the control booth and the Fair-worker stepped
gingerly over, there was nothing and no one to challenge them. A pool of
coagulating blood greeted them at the door.
“Keep a weather
eye, Short Round,” the Fair-worker instructed in a passible pirate patois.
Short Round rolled his eyes but did as he was told.
Laura drew her
sidearm and took up position next to the door as the Fair-worker took up a spot
across from her. She counted to three silently with her fingers and he yanked
the door open on “3.” All that was there was a slightly mortified corpse with
maroon-colored drying blood at each of its orifices. It was wearing a State
Fair shirt.
The Fair-worker
gave the corpse a once over and then shouldered it aside. Laura winced.
“Doesn’t that
bug you?” she asked, stepping in. He was scanning the instrument panel.
“What, the
corpse?” he replied distractedly. “Not really. It’s weird, cat vomit and dog
poop makes me gag like crazy, but human remains doesn’t bother me.”
“You are a sick
man. Do you know how to use this thing?” she asked.
“Not really. I
was kind of hoping for a big red and green “up/down” switch.”
“They really
overcomplicate things, don’t they?” she said sarcastically.
“Engineers
these days,” the Fair-worker sighed.
“So if the
operator is dead, how did it get up?”
“Maybe the
wizard killed the operator once they were up,” the Fair-worker posited.
“Okay, but our
arrival was far from subtle, big banged up bus and all. If the wizard can kill
from a distance like that, why aren’t we dead?” Laura reasoned.
The Fair-worker
conceded the point.
“Hey,” came
Short Round’s voice from the open door, “if that dude’s dead, how come he’s still
pushing buttons?”
Laura and the Fair-worker
looked down. The corpse’s hand had moved from where it had fallen to press and
hold a red button. They jumped back and Laura put two rounds in the corpses
head.
“I hate
zombies,” she growled. The Fair-worker grumbled as he shoved the hand away.
“Make one
Indiana Jones joke and it’s lost, but thanks to one romantic comedy about
zombies, and suddenly everyone is an expert.” The button was red with worn
engraved white lettering. “HOLD” it said.
“Hey guys,” called
Short Round, “it’s coming down!”
“Oh shit,” the Fair-worker
moaned. “I just remembered that there are two exits to the compartment – on
opposite sides.”
“You couldn’t
have mentioned that before?” Laura pressed the HOLD button and held it.
“It’s stopped
now!” called Short Round.
“Think I could
drive the bus up to block one of the doors?” the Fair-worker mused.
“Not without
bringing the walkway down on my head,” Laura shot back. The Fair-worker thought
a moment. Then a huge grin split his bearded face.
“Don’t move,”
he said. “I’ll be back.” And he ran out. Laura glanced at the button, the
re-dead-ified zombie, and then up at the ceiling, imagining the slowly rotating
compartment above.
“Where else
would I possibly go?”
Twenty minutes
later, a low rumble invaded their perception. A moment later, Short Round
laughed.
“What is it?”
Laura called. Short Round came in.
“You gotta’
see,” he said and took over holding the button. Laura flexed her fingers and
stepped out. The Fair-worker had found a two-wheeler handcart and was just
setting a handicap-sized port-a-potty in place in front of the door. As it
dropped into place, she heard a decided slosh and splatter. He grinned tiredly
at her.
“Now we let it
come down. Station Short Round here to shout if they manage to get past the
port-a-potty while you and I cover the other door.”
Laura shook her
head. “You are a sick, twisted, brilliant man.”
The Fair-worker
tipped his Indiana Jones hat. “Accept no substitutes.”
Five minutes
later, they were in position, watching the compartment slowly descend. Laura
glanced at the Fair-workers profile.
“What do you
know about wizards?” she queried.
“Real wizards?”
he asked. She nodded. “Less than nothing. You?”
“Same.”
There was a
silence. She felt him sway on his feet.
“What’s up?”
she said, not looking at him. The compartment had almost settled into place.
“Adrenaline
wore off,” he replied tersely. “Tired. Hurt.”
“Pissed?” she
prompted as the compartment came to a stop.
“Furious,” he
replied. The doors slid open…
An elderly
woman with a walker stumbled out, weeping.
“Thank you!”
she cried. “Thank you so much!”
Several more
filed out, espousing their gratitude. The Fair-worker and Laura started to
relax, when Laura spotted something that made her smile. She called the Fair-worker’s
name.
“That your wife
and kid?” she asked, pointing out an obese pregnant woman and an equally pudgy
little girl. The Fair-worker’s smile could have lit a room. The girl broke free
of her mother’s hand and ran toward the Fair-worker.
“Daddy!” she
cried. Tears slipped from the corners of the Fair-worker’s eyes as he dropped
to his knees.
“Hey Little
Man!” he exclaimed, opening his arms. Laura’s grip tightened on her sidearm.
Little Man?
The gun snapped
up to point at the fat child. Laura called his name, her voice taught with
sudden strain. “STOP!”
The little girl
screamed and ran back to hide behind the fat woman. The Fair-worker whirled on
Laura.
“What the Hell
are you doing?” he snarled.
“Do you have a
son or a daughter?” she asked tersely.
“What?” he
screamed.
“Do you have a
son or daughter!” Laura screamed back.
“A son!” he
roared. “A little boy who is slim like his Momma and blond like me you crazy
bitch!”
Laura’s gun remained
trained on the fat woman, but she could see that she had visibly slimmed and
the child was now an equally slim little blond boy.
“That isn’t
your family,” Laura told him. He looked as if he was going to argue, but then
turned.
“My wife is
deathly afraid of heights, If you are truly her, tell me again what you said
when I suggested you take our son on this ride.”
The
miraculously slimming fat woman smiled nervously at him and eyed the gun.
“You wouldn’t
ever suggest it because you know I never would in a million years.”
The Fair-worker smiled, but there
was hate in his eyes. “Wrong,” he rasped. “I suggested it as a joke and my wife
said that you couldn’t pay her to go on that ride.”
The slim/fat
woman sighed. “I hate glamers,” she said. “So unpredictable. You see what you
want to see, and she sees only her perception of what she thinks you see.” The
guise around the woman and child shimmered and faded. In their place stood a
tall, broad-shouldered man and a waifish young girl.
“What do you
see?” Laura asked.
“Tall woman and
a dog.”
“Stop fucking
around!” Laura shouted. The wizard’s shoulder slumped.
“Very well.”
The guise shimmered again. In place of the fat/slim woman and tall man/woman
stood a short, pock-faced man in his thirties, and behind him stood Fairborn
the Beaver in all his 15-foot tall glory.
“Beaver?” Laura
asked.
“Beaver. RUN!” The Fair-worker whirled and scooped the
elderly woman up in a princess carry.
“KILL!” the man
screamed and Fairborn charged, but Laura had already pulled the trigger. A
ragged hole appeared in the man’s chest, and he crumpled to the ground… but
Fairborn never slowed. His maw opened and Laura threw up her uninjured arm in a
useless gesture of defense. The giant teeth came down, but suddenly an aluminum
walker was jammed into its mouth.
“Run!” the Fair-worker
bellowed as Fairborn chomped down, rending the walker to pieces. Laura turned
to run as Fairborn lurched toward them again, but then the bus slammed into
him. The concrete beaver flew several dozen feet and slammed into the
bondshell, shattering on impact.
“Last stop,
everybody off!” Short Round screamed happily from the driver’s seat.
Laura, in spite
of herself, laughed.
Denouement…
The plague of anthropormorphic
animalia did not last long. The wizard died at 7:52 pm that evening, ten
minutes after getting shot. That same moment, everything that ought not be
moving, stopped.
Not long after encountering
the Fair-worker and Laura, the 1st Battalion Scooter Brigade
happened upon a pregnant woman and a 4-year-old by holding off a host of life-sized
stuffed Minions from a popular Dreamworks movie with fry grease and kabob
skewers. They asked them along and the boy had an insatiable love of things
that scoot, so at around 7:30 pm, this woman and boy were deposited safely into
the hands of the police at the South gate. They were reunited with their
husband and father a little after 8 PM.
The Fair-worker,
Laura, Mike, and everyone else involved in the State Fair Massacre were
debriefed by the Federal government and made to sign an ironclad
confidentiality agreement for which they were richly compensated in a payout
the government called “recompense for physical and mental damages.”
Laura and the Fair-worker
were both awarded medals which they could never show anyone ever. The Fair-worker
and his family moved to New Zealand, 10,000 miles away from anything resembling
a State Fair. Laura accepted a super-secret government job and went completely
off the grid.
The news called
the “incident” an act of domestic terrorism which basically meant a US citizen
flipped his shit and killed a bunch of people. No accurate account of what
happened was ever taken.
Of course the
man responsible little was known and it was unlikely to be discovered as he was
killed while attempting to escape. His true motivations are still under
investigation.
The State Fair
opened its doors two years later with a brand new, somewhat remarkable policy: “No
artificial representations of people, animals, or characters of ANY kind.” While
the reason for this was much debated, it was enforced with draconian efficiency.
Within, n statues, topiaries, or anthropormorphic animals could be found.
The Space Tower
has been torn down and a memorial stands in its place, citing all the names of
those who lost their lives in the massacre, and a very nice commemorative
plaque thanking the nameless heroes of that day.
And as for
Mickey “Short Round” Bowen? Well who else would write this shit down?
