In the Lone and Level Sands (8 page)

“Let him go!” Fred said. He raised his gun
and cocked it. Angus bit Barnum’s hand, but the doctor didn’t
flinch or loosen his grip.

Fred put his finger on the trigger and
pulled back, releasing a shell that broke off into a dozen smaller
pieces just before they entered Barnum’s side, tearing his clothes
and skin apart. Barnum let go, and Angus scampered away and hid
behind Fred, who was reloading the shotgun. Barnum stood up slowly
and looked at Fred through dazed eyes. Fred raised the gun once
more as Barnum took a few lackluster steps forward, then dove,
mouth open wide.

Fred fired another swarm of lead at Barnum’s
neck. The shot tore through and severed his head; his neck was
non-existent, save for a conglomeration of bloody flesh splattered
on the walls and floor. Barnum’s head landed on the ground next to
the bed. His body collapsed seconds afterward. Blood trickled out
of both pieces, soaking into the floor.

Fred went into the hall, where Ben and the
others were waiting for an explanation of all the noise they had
just heard.

****

“If there are any others
like him,” Ben said, “and the news is saying there
are
, we need to be
prepared. Do you have any boards or something to cover that broken
window?”

“I have some wood in the garage,” Fred said.
He left the room to get some boards, nails, and a hammer. The other
three worked together to block the other windows and doors with
furniture. They all returned to the main room together.

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Ben
asked Fred.

“My father taught me the art, a long time
ago.” He grinned. “On the farm, he’d set up dozens of empty whiskey
bottles on the fence, and then he’d show me how to blast them
apart.”

Sara gave him the stink
eye. “Fred, this is serious. Stop fooling! Why do you think
these…
things
would come all the way out here, anyway?”

“I reckon it’s the lights,” Fred said. “You
can see our house all the way from the main road.” He and Ben
finished boarding up the front window. “That’ll hold ‘em, but we
should go lights-out, for good measure.”

“Ben, do you think my parents are okay?”
Charlotte asked in a small voice as Fred turned out the light.

“I bet whatever is going on up there is
being taken care of by the authorities a lot better than here.”

“I think your parents will be fine,” Fred
said. “I don’t know them, but you’re a sensible girl. You could
have only got that from them. They’ll be fine.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said. “I guess
they’re probably safer than we are. Dad had bars installed on all
the windows, he never did like the idea of living near ‘hoodlums’,
but… Do you suppose that we could go to them in the morning? I hate
to ask—”

“Don’t worry about it one bit,” Fred said.
“The storm seems like it won’t quit just yet, but tomorrow, first
thing, we can go and make sure your folks are all right.”

“You would do that? Thank you so much!”

“It’s nothing. Now, let’s get some sleep.
I’ll help you move that bed out of the guest room so you don’t have
to sleep with the body.”

Ben moved the dresser in front of the broken
window for extra protection, and then he and Fred worked together
to move the guest bed into the master bedroom. They all wished each
other goodnight and settled down, but with their nerves all frayed,
they didn’t go right to sleep.

Charlotte grabbed Ben’s hand and squeezed it
tightly, hoping that somehow it would cause all of his misplaced
memories to flutter back to his brain. Unfortunately, no such thing
happened. Ben just let out a big yawn, and then smiled at her
before closing his eyes again. Charlotte sighed. She couldn’t fall
asleep, she had too much on her mind.

She was worried about her parents, worried
that those like Dr. Barnum had already broken into their house and
gotten them. She was also bothered by the fear that more in
Blackwater Falls would find a way into Fred and Sara’s. And of
course, she was worried about Ben, and their marriage. It worried
her that when she squeezed his hand, he didn’t squeeze back. All
she could do was work even harder than before to bring him back
around. But first, it was time to rest. Charlotte tried her best to
quiet her brain, and eventually fell asleep.

13

On a Carnival Ride

Max heard screams in the distance. He turned
to them and saw two children running around in circles, dodging
people, one chasing the other. He didn’t see their parents
anywhere.

His own were right ahead of him, in the same
line. They were waiting to get on a gliding machine, which would
lift them up and spin them around in circles as they lay on their
stomachs. Right behind him, a pair of teenagers was sneaking some
make-out time between slow trudges of the line, their parents also
nowhere in sight. Max wondered what it would be like to have a
girlfriend. He figured at this rate, he’d never find out.

From the line, Max could see the various
sideshow booths. The one closest, which was the only one Max could
see into, involved a man who juggled chainsaws. “The World’s
Sharpest Chainsaws,” the ads on the booth proclaimed. Max
remembered seeing the show one year and recalled the ringleader
demonstrating this apparent fact by slicing an anvil in half. Max
wondered if it was genuine or some kind of trick, but he knew he
wasn’t going to find out anytime soon.

Finally, it was the Greenwalds’ turn in
line. The parents wouldn’t ride, of course; they would watch from
behind the metal fence surrounding the ride and wave with each turn
of the gliders. This would be the extent to which they let the
children be on their own.

The carny was motioning for more people to
enter the ring and take the next available glider, in pairs of two.
He looked despondent. He was fat, balding, and middle-aged, and his
face lit up when he saw Max.

“Ain’t you a little old for these things,
kid?”

“Aren’t you a little old to be working this
job?” Max replied. The man’s smile faded, and he went back to
waving people in.

The Greenwald children paired up and found
their gliders. August went with Julie, and Max would be riding with
Tim. The boys got into a blue glider. Max made sure Tim was
strapped in firmly. August did the same for Julie, despite Julie’s
cries that she could handle it herself.

Max watched the couple from the line get
into the glider behind his, a white one. The angle of the ride
always had him either looking at the ground as it spun below, the
sidelines (which made most people dizzy, but they had to do it from
time to time or risk neglecting whoever was waving to them) or the
people in the glider behind him. In this case, it was the young
couple, so Max would get a downward, spinning look at everything he
would never be and could never have. Story of his life.

The ride got going. It wasn’t as fun as it
once was, but Max tried to enjoy it. His parents probably expected
him to look with every pass, but he would get motion sickness if he
did. Reluctantly, he looked at the couple in the glider behind him.
They were apparently trying to see how long they could go around on
the ride while still making out. Max found this a lot less amusing
than the two seemed to, and looked away.

Max heard screams again.

When he looked back, the white glider was
covered in red speckles, the boy’s head was slouching and shifting
slightly in the breeze, and his girlfriend’s mouth was covered in
blood, a piece of flesh still dangling from her gnashing teeth.

First he felt disbelief. Max looked again,
but the horror remained. He heard another scream, and looked in the
direction he thought it came from, though the spinning of the ride
made pinpointing it impossible. Outside the railing, people were
running. Others were attacking those near them. Max looked at Tim,
who was riding with his eyes shut. The screams didn’t seem to
bother him; he must have thought they were screams of joy.

It’s probably better that way.

Max looked at the glider ahead of him and
saw that August and Julie were both fine.

“August!” he called, but there was no reply.
Either August couldn’t hear him, or she had already focused on the
panic spreading on the ground.

Max looked at the railing around the ride.
He didn’t see his parents anywhere. He passed the carny’s booth,
and the carny was gone. With no one to shut down the ride, Max
wondered how long he and the rest of the riders would go on
spinning around before somebody came to help them. Meanwhile, the
screams were growing louder and more numerous.

He looked back down at the glider behind
him. The teenaged boy’s head was now hanging by a thread and
flopping wildly around. Just when Max thought he couldn’t have
picked a worse time to look back, the last remaining shreds of skin
and muscle snapped, and the boy’s head fell to the ground below and
rolled to a rest on the hay-covered dirt.

Max threw up, closed his eyes, and waited.
He had no idea how much time passed. It felt like he was dreaming.
He opened his eyes to the ground spinning by, and saw the boy’s
head looking up at him. He didn’t throw up again, nor did he turn
away. With every pass, the boy’s head seemed to whisper long-lost
secrets to Max, and if he turned away he might miss out on life
itself. The expression on the face was not one of sorrow, nor one
of fear. The dead boy knew no sorrow or fear, and never would. His
face knew only relief, and from this, Max got a feeling he couldn’t
identify at first. Or maybe he just didn’t want to accept it.

There was a loud grinding sound, and Max
felt the ride slow down. He passed the carny’s booth and saw his
parents inside, looking worried. The ride finally came to a stop.
Max looked down but saw only dirt; his glider had not stopped above
the boy’s head.

Parents rushed in through the gate, and some
hopped over the railing. They got to their children, pried them
from the ride. Max saw a small child in one of the gliders crying,
his parents nowhere to be found. Then, Max’s own were upon him.

“Max, are you all right?” Andrew said.

“I’m fine, we’re fine,” Max replied. Then he
regained his thoughts. “That kid over there, should we help?

“What can we do?” Julie said. “He’s not one
of us.”

One of
us
, like the world consisted of two
parties: The family Greenwald and everyone else.

“Good, everyone is okay,” Andrew said,
ignoring Max and Julie. Max turned to see the stray child. He had
managed his way out of the glider and was just standing there,
crying and rubbing his eyes with his fists. Max pegged the child at
no more than five years old.

A fleeting shadow passed, there was a
strange hiccough sound, and the boy and the crying were gone.

Max wanted to believe that one of the boy’s
parents had rushed by and scooped him up, the sound was just the
interruption of his crying, and the boy was now filled with glee,
clinging to his mother or father for dear life as the two left the
madness that had once been a carnival. But deep down, Max knew
better.

He looked around. There were bodies lying
limp throughout the carnival grounds, and it was difficult to tell
the people attacking from those fleeing. The ones eating others
were easier to spot.

Max finally identified the feeling he had
gotten from seeing the expression on the glider boy’s detached
head. It was envy.

14

At a Funeral

Charlie’s funeral was held on Friday, June
21
^st
at the Cavalry Cemetery near their home. Reverend
Patterson was giving the sermon, and it was beautiful. Martha sat
on a chair in the front row, her hands laced in her lap. Her eyes
welled up, though no tears fell. Charlie wouldn’t have wanted her
to cry for him.

“
M, don’t cry for me. I’m not worth your
tears, you know.”

The words echoed in Martha’s ears. When had
he said that? Martha thought about her life with Charlie. It was a
long road, and looking back, some parts were foggy.

She glanced around the cemetery. There were
so many people. It reminded her of the night her parents had
finally allowed her and Charlie to openly date. There was a concert
that night, Elvis Presley. Seeing the mass of people now was like
looking at a picture of the mass of people then.

****

The concert space was full of people when
Martha and Charlie arrived, but they had no trouble getting inside.
They slid past people just standing, chatting. There were snack and
drink stations around, and Martha and Charlie decided to visit
those first. Charlie bought her a big hotdog covered in relish and
ketchup. Martha smiled and gave him a little hug.

“Thanks, Charlie,” she said.

“No prob, M.” He smiled back and scarfed
down a giant pretzel he had bought. “I can hear instruments from
backstage. Sounds like they’re getting ready! You stoked?”

Martha’s excitement won over the anxiety she
felt about sneaking out with Charlie while her parents were at a
dinner party. “Yeah I am!”

Martha and Charlie stood near the front. It
wasn’t long until the entire place was full of loud, pushy people.
Charlie looked down at Martha with a big grin on his face as the
announcer came onstage. He opened with a bunch of lip-flapping, and
after what seemed like a few decades, he arrived at the point:
Introducing the King.

“We’ve got a stellar show prepared for
tonight. Performing the songs you all love: Elvis Presley!”

The man turned to the left and pointed
behind him with one hand while gripping the microphone with the
other. Elvis moved to the front of the stage quickly; with every
step he took, he oozed confidence and that sex appeal that made all
the chicks melt. He scanned the crowd, smiling and waving at his
adoring fans. Presley’s Martin D-28 hung loosely over his broad
shoulders. He gripped the neck with one hand and rested his fingers
lightly on the strings.