Pilo Traveling Show (Pilo Family Circus #2)

20. BELOW

A sad business, what had happened to the lumberjacks—inconvenient too, for there were few left strong enough to pull the culprit cage along after Kurt's loping strides. Inspiration struck: "Wheels!" said Kurt, slapping his paws together in delight. "Put wheels on the bottom of it." He watched with glowing pride as the dozen or so summoned minions rushed to do just that. Kurt remembered the pokes from each one of them, and sought deep within for patience, forgiveness.

Kurt wore a tie-dyed muumuu. A woven band of flowers hung around his neck. Christianity had begun to bore him; it was time for a New Age phase. He would send the clowns up soon to capture some real live hippies for research.

The wheels were now on. With much greater ease, the cage trailed along behind until they came to the acrobat tent. A little earlier, he'd come out here with a shovel and found the stash buried there, just where the anonymous tip-off had said it would be. It was all so stimulating, this detective work! It got one's juices flowing, especially after the long confinement. "Knock, knock," Kurt cried at the acrobat tent door. "And, oh, ho ho, that's not one of those jokes where one replies, who is there?" It was just before dawn, but the acrobats were already up rehearsing, painting the image of ideal enthusiastic employees. Clever devils! Criminal masterminds. Kurt's eye fell on the george's favourites sign, and his smile pulled wider.

"Mr. Pilo!" one of the acrobats cried. The three of them rushed over, bowing and groveling most pleasantly.

"Hello, chaps," said Kurt, and here came his cunning plan. "I need three brave volunteers to test the structural integrity of my culprit cage. Care to do the honors?"

They could hardly wait to. One after the other they climbed in. "Very good," said Kurt. "Now just sit patiently while we find some more brave volunteers."

"Happy to help, Mr. Pilo," said one of them, bowing. "Any luck with the real culprits?"

"Aren't you clever!" said Kurt, but said no more. The acrobats glanced at each other uneasily.

Kurt pulled the same routine at the lion tamer, who gazed for a while at the caged acrobats. They looked just a touch wary now. Kurt's smile was serene. The lion tamer weighed the situation up, sighed heavily as if he knew just what was up and had long expected something like this. Into the cage he went, where he sat in the corner, his face in his hands.

Mugabo put up no more resistance than the others. "Cage treek now, new magic, pff," he muttered, but he went right on in. Kurt himself locked the door and loped off, gesturing for the cage to be wheeled behind him to the middle of the showgrounds for maximum public shaming. Only then did Kurt let on. "Your plan was bold, your wits were sharp. But your one mistake was posing for incriminating photographs!"

The acrobats looked at each other in confusion as Kurt loped away. "What the hell is he talking about?"

Kurt took a pleasant stroll during which he contemplated punishment—those performers had also poked him, albeit rather gently. For starters he would sit by the cage, staring at the guilty parties, studying treachery itself til he knew its every nuance, facet, and protestation of innocence. Til he could spot it from across the showgrounds before it reared its head, perhaps develop a pre-emptive punishment system. Then, he supposed, they'd need to be executed rather brutally—flesh eating ants, perhaps, or maybe via lawnmower as a message to the others.

And what was this? More excitement! Shouting—yes, panicked shouting, and the voices unfamiliar! Kurt prowled towards it to see. His smile slowly went flat, his brow furrowed in confusion. No show was scheduled for today, and yet, why, here were several tricks. Rather nervous looking, physically fit tricks who, breaking usual conventions, looked to be heavily armed with automatic weapons, grenades, pistols, protective gear, night vision goggles, and an unmistakable air of can-do spirit.

"Hm," said Kurt. How had this come to pass? Some mistake of the ticket collectors? And no one was turning the music box. Why, half the circus was still asleep. Kurt wrung his paws together, a touch unsettled. The tricks were in a rather impressive formation they'd clearly rehearsed, and were shouting orders at each other. Their guns pointed in all directions, with little beams of light from mounted torches, though none of them had fired a shot, not yet. "I had better turn that music box myself," said Kurt, at once proud of the idea. He went to do just that, breaking into a jog and a sweat.

•

Several minutes prior, Dean stood panting with his hand at rest on the sledgehammer. Deeby may have done it without this much exertion; the broken parts of the music box were scattered around his and Jodi's feet. This was one hell of a leap of faith in Jamie and Curls. He felt certain they'd messed it up, but there was no choice: they had to proceed as planned. "Check the veil," said Jodi. "Can you see through it?"

"Nope."

"I look like Emerald?"

"Yep."

Anything else in the small cramped space that looked like a spare part was also shattered, but Dean had seen these carnies fixing things and knew they were far from safe. In a couple of minutes, they might have the music box repaired.

He lit a match under the glass beaker, melted the powder within, drank it. "I wish, once my face paint goes on, to forget the past week spent with Jamie and to be filled only with a desire to impress any female I see. I wish when the face paint comes off, to have the memories returned." To Jodi he said, as he began to smear on the face paint Jamie had stashed for him, "You know what to do?"

"Yes, but your friend had better fucking hurry."

"I'm not going to argue with that."

Jodi held an ear to the door. "Something's going on out there . . . I hear shouting . . . I think they're here! Hurry up, go!"

The face paint was on. Dean looked into the hand-held mirror they'd brought, and Deeby gazed at his beloved. "Sup," he said coolly, popping a bicep.

•

Jodi swallowed, tried for Emerald's distant composure—she'd done a little acting in school plays but this, naturally, was a whole different assignment. "My love, there is but one way into my heart, and I will be yours eternal. Let none pass through this door. Prove to me your strength."

Debby spat on his palms, rubbed them together. "That is probably one of the weirder ways into a woman's heart that I have ever heard of. Wouldn't you rather hear some shitty beatnik poetry while sweat drips down my pecs and I promise you a whole bunch of stuff that's just never going to happen?"

His response was not quite what Dean had predicted, but she stuck to the script anyway. "It can only be this way. This is the only way into Emerald's heart. You want to impress me, don't you?"

"Whatever floats your boat. By heart you mean pants, right?"

"Whatever you like," she said, nervously listening to the sound of approaching footsteps. Deeby's shirt ripped as his torso inflated. Someone twisted the door handle; he snapped it off, crushed it in his teeth, glanced to see that Jodi had witnessed the display, then threw himself against the door. "Bring it on," he said.

"Hm! How puzzling." Kurt's voice. "To which employee have I the pleasure of speaking with? What might you be up to in there?"

"Shut up," Deeby explained.

"The situation is rather urgent," said Kurt in firmer tones. "We rather pressingly need the music box. Be a sport and let me in."

The door pushed an inch or two. Deeby let it give that much, then shoved it back. He screamed like a Viking, again checked Jodi for any sign of approval. She feigned a yawn.

A slow, "Oh, ho ho," sounded outside.

•

At first the marines whispered to each other that this was part of the drill, some kind of computer simulation—no other explanation was possible. Some virtual reality thing, like they did with pilots, though what in God's name the point of it all may be, none could guess. "Why do we bring live ammo for a computer simulation or VR?" someone asked, which pretty much shot that theory to death and made each of them realize, with slowly dawning understanding, that they were in a very weird place and, just perhaps, just possibly, in real trouble. One by one, safeties on their guns were snapped off. Weird faces began to peer out at them from doorways

and windows.

"Freeze! Get down on the ground. Get down, now!"

•

When Jamie returned to the showgrounds, four groups of marines stood in a roughly circular formation. The lights mounted on their guns pointed out in all directions. He counted twenty-two of them, but maybe others had ventured deeper into the circus. They were shouting but not shooting—probably a good thing for the moment. Someone yelled at him to freeze and get down, which was jarring since he'd gotten used to not being seen. Down here, where the troops were made a part of the circus reality, it would not be so easy to hide.

He did not freeze or get down—he dashed away as fast as he could, bounding in a few floating clown jumps defying physics, in part to show these guys they were not in a normal situation anymore. No shots followed—only various cries of "What the fuck was that?" and a clearly growing tension.

"oh, ho ho!" came a familiar booming voice rolling across the showgrounds and stirring awake the last of the sleeping carnies. Then, a thump. Kurt attempting to break down a door? Deeby had to be holding him out this very second. The troops meanwhile just stood there, unsure what to do. Some looked outright paralyzed. An apparent leader tried and failed to make radio contact with his superiors. Equally perplexed carnies watched them from doorways, struck dumb and mute by the bizarre sight. Heavily armed tricks? That was a new one. Only the newer circus recruits understood what they saw, and in one or two of them stirred previously dead hopes of rescue from the show.

But the armed tricks had not quite figured out they were in a war zone yet. Jamie ran to the clown tent, not sure what he'd have to do to kick things off. He went to Gonko's room, opened a chest and dug around inside. Plenty of useless junk, one or two weapons . . . an antique pistol. Perfect! An old bottle of reeking moonshine. Flammable? He spilled a small puddle, lit a match, and up went a tiny ball of fire. This, he thought, will do nicely. He stuffed a rag in the bottle's neck, ran back to the shouting marines, aimed the pistol above their heads . . . Click, click. The damned thing didn't fire. He lit the rag, screamed a war cry and hurled the Molotov cocktail at the nearest formation.

One of the marines stopped, dropped, rolled as a lick of flame crawled up his pants. Jamie cursed; he'd not meant to actually hit them—just scare them. Two others opened fire in his direction, and it kicked things off better than he could have hoped.

•

In teams of four the marines ran through the showgrounds. Their shouts rang out from inside huts and caravans. Doorways were kicked down. Most carnies were too startled to fight them, but several had booby-trapped their homes once word had spread of Gonko's murderous trip through the neighborhood. A few marines fell back, clobbered by falling axe heads rigged by string webs to the tops of doors. Thus, the massacre began.

Over at the music box hut, Kurt had (as he'd have put it) "lost his temper." He did not look human any longer—sharp scales and ridges tore to shreds his tie-dyed muumuu. Yet he could still not push the door in—Deeby held it firm, muscles bulging absurdly, calling out taunts. "That all you got? Bro, you clearly lift . . . like a total bitch!" Kurt rammed the door so hard the whole hut shivered, but Deeby held it. He said, "Give it up, this is just going to embarrass you. For some reason, my girl is impressed by this kind of thing. Give me something to work with here."

Kurt swung his head toward the firing guns, screamed so loud the ground shook, then charged. He tore through a team of four marines before they had time to shut their flabbergasted mouths. But the team behind them saw what had happened to their friends, and opened fire. Bullets peppered Kurt's hide, knocking off bloodless chips like they'd shot at stone. He held a marine's corpse as a shield and backed quickly away, til he was hobbling toward the tunnel to the realm beneath.

Mugabo helped to heat things up quite literally. When a marine found the culprit cage, he yelled at those inside to freeze, and get down. The acrobats and lion tamer obeyed, but Mugabo resented it. "You freeze," he retorted, already short tempered by this latest outrage, "you geddown."

A warning shot was fired over his head. "Freeze! Get down!" a nervous marine screamed at him.

"Freeze? No thank," Mugabo snarled, splaying his fingers. "No freeze. How bout burn!" And he did just that, unleashing a torrent of fire. The troops who saw it no longer seemed to care about who, or what, they fired upon. Their formations lost order; they screamed and fired at anything moving. A thunderstorm of gunfire, and the lightning flash of muzzles engulfed the showgrounds.

Jamie hid on the roof of the clown tent, looking down on the scene through a growing cloud of smoke. His every impulse told him to flee to the surface for safety, but Shalice's words played in his mind. Even if these guys shot everyone down here, it would change nothing in the long term—the clowns would return soon enough, and Kurt had already escaped below. So he tried to watch and make sense of the confusion. By now, all the carnies were aware of their danger. A great stampede broke out, scattering all over the place, but since the way to the lift was blocked by marines (and most of the carnies had no pass-outs anyway), the crowd generally headed toward the Funhouse, just as Kurt had done. Jamie supposed that made sense—maybe it was the only place to hide. Maybe the marines would follow them down there and blast away the big bosses, the demonic things that could not stand solid reality. Would that wreck the house, as Shalice had put it? Could bullets even hurt those things?

Maybe, maybe not, but too much physical matter in their presence? Like a flood of panicked carnies, and the marines, if they followed them down there? Maybe that would hurt them . . .

And what would they do about it, those powerful but frail entities? Maybe they'd fly into a blind panic, maybe they'd run. And if they ran, maybe they'd come up that tunnel, up here into the showgrounds. In which case . . .

In which case, Jamie suddenly knew what he had to do.

•

"Am I done yet?" said Deeby. "Has your heart been won over by my ability to prevent this particular piece of wood from moving too much?"

A bullet tore through the wall. Jodi yelped as pain bit her arm, but it was just a graze from a ripped piece of wood. She had no idea what to do. Stay and hide? Run for it? Call for help? Dean might know. He'd told her what to do to bring him back. It was not easy staying in character, but she took a handkerchief and said, "Yes, my love. Let me wipe the sweat from your face."

Deeby swept her up in the crook of one arm, checked his watch impatiently as she began to rub off the makeup. He said, "Easy! You're rubbing a little hard there. Hurry up with the smooches, then we can kink it up. Whatever tasty treats I got coming, I think we can agree I've earned it."

"You have," she said, and cleaned the last of the face paint off him.

•

For several minutes Jamie tried to spot a fallen marine—it would do no good to wander around dressed as a clown. There were a few lying inert, possibly dead, but in each case their team stayed with them. Finally a group of them rushed off, chasing some fleeing carnies, white fire flashing from their guns.

He leaped, floated down, dragged the body to the shadows of the freak show, ignoring Dr. Gloom's "What'sss all thiss ruckusss?" He stripped his clothes, stripped the dead marine and put on the poorly fitting uniform, which left his navel and shins exposed. He looked more like a Mardis Gras parade marcher than an actual soldier. It might save him from any long-range fire, but up close it would be clear he was an imposter. Reluctantly he wiped off the face paint, removing the protection and power it granted him.

He ran to Shalice's hut, where Dean had left the gate pieces. Along the way bodies were slumped on the ground, torn by gunfire, and some of the homes had begun to burn. The fortuneteller's bullet-ridden body was draped over her table, and the crystal ball had been knocked to the floor. The sights barely registered. He took the gate pieces over his shoulders, and headed to the Funhouse. Some gunfire barked out, but it was muffled, which he knew meant some of them had probably dropped down the tunnel in pursuit of fleeing carnies. Others waited at the tunnel's top.

"Get down there!" the apparent commanding officer yelled, followed by a string of numbers and letters Jamie could make no sense of. A burst of black smoke wafted up the opening. "Go!" the leader screamed. Down went the rest of the marines, their leader taking the rear. Cries and gunfire carried up soon after.

Jamie ran in, lay one part of the gates flat on the ground on each side of the tunnel, the arching piece on top, not needing to physically connect this roof piece to the rest, as Dean had explained. Jamie was amazed at how serene, calm, and easy he felt. JJ had done him a favor, back in the clown tent with the axe held high, showing him death and making him face it. It was not new. Otherwise maybe his hands would forget the angles and numbers on the gate pieces' dials. How he admired the fearless, competent little machines his hands had become.

And it was done, and Jamie was once again completely useless down here. What more was there to do? He could not affect what happened down that tunnel; if he jumped down he'd be shot or maybe killed by something demonic. If the "upper management" fled through the tunnel, the gates would send them out to the physical world, up to the campsite where, like a man held under water, the environment would destroy them. If it worked, it worked; if not, the world had made its choice. Jamie decided to leave, and let the world decide for itself.

Except Dean had the pass-outs. Maybe he'd have to take them off a corpse.

"Dean?" he called, unable suddenly to remember where the music box hut was. So he wandered randomly through the smoke and ruin. "Dean? Jodi?"

It seemed a long time before two lonely figures trudged through the wreckage towards him. "Dean," Jamie's voice was dreamlike. He noted he was probably in some kind of shock. Jodi's blank stare said she was the same way.

Dean patted his back. "It worked, bro. I think it worked. Good job."

"We probably got all those soldiers killed."

"Hear that? They're still shooting down there. And they're better equipped for all this than we are. Yeah, maybe they won't make it out. We can't change that now, and if they die, they'll die saving God knows how many people. Okay? Deal with guilt later. Let's get back home and work out what the hell we're going to tell everyone."

***