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.”
“Got it,” Mildred said.
Krysty nodded in agreement, then said, “There may be other escape routes for the carny folk. Secret ways out that we don’t know about.”
“Makes sense,” Ryan agreed. “It means that you’re going to have to clear the way inside and outside the tent. Otherwise, they’ll just chill us with blasters as we come through the exit.”
“Mebbe Jak should come with us, then?” Mildred suggested.
Ryan looked at the albino, who was staring in the direction of the lion’s cage, which was outside the tent. “No,” he said. “We’re going to have our hands full in here when the shooting starts. Can’t do the job with less than four blasters.”
“Some of the ville folks aren’t gonna make it to the exit,” J.B. said softly. “One way or another, either from poison or stray slugs, innocent blood is gonna flow.”
“Some is better than all,” Krysty said.
“Way better,” Mildred agreed.
As the theme music resumed, Ryan swept his one-eyed gaze over the assembled crowd, their joyful faces, their anticipation of even more spectacular events to come. As they took their seats on the ground, some glanced at the windowless, rubber-coated walls of the tent without really seeing them, without understanding the implications of “airtight.” They had no clue that this was meant to be their death chamber.
“Stay together,” Ryan told Dean and the others. “Stay together, stick to the plan, and we’ll all get out.”