Wasteland Warlords Episode 2 - 10 Sweet Tooth

Then Clay was on his knees with his cheek flat on the strike plate of the strength tester game. Joe was positioned the same way opposite him on the plate. This time instead of being tied down by cord cobras, they were locked head-first through a pair of guillotines. The blades glinted in the moonlight.

Alex stood over at them with the sledgehammer in hand.

“I must say,” Bacon Bits snuffled from somewhere nearby, “I am somewhat offended I was not the one chosen to give Alex pause. However, I appreciate not having my life endangered.”

“Aw, short stack, I didn’t know you cared about me so much,” Joe said.

“This is bullshit.” She looked at the head of the sledge. “There’s not even enough room between you guys for this thing to land. You’re dead either way.”

Straining his eyes, Clay found the timer already ticking down, the numbers plummeting like someone taking a swan dive off a twenty-story building.

“It’s all right,” Clay said, trying to reassure her like she had him. “Joe and I’ll pull our heads back—”

“Naw, that ain’t gonna do it. You gotta think outside the box, short stack,” Joe interrupted. “Think like a cheater, like the opposite of the honorable karate man.”

The timer kept up its headlong plunge.

“C’mon, crazy,” Clay said, “I know you can do this.”

Alex pressed her eyes shut and took a deep, calming breath. “Screw it. Sorry if this kills you guys,” she said softly, steadying her hands on the hammer handle.

She stepped back, then sprinted toward Clay. Leaping, she sprung off the guillotine blade over his neck. Her opposite foot landed higher on Joe’s guillotine, and she kicked off again. She ran up the last couple feet of black and white tower and directly walloped the bell with the sledgehammer.

It rang a heartbeat before the countdown struck zero.

She hit the ground in a three-point martial hero pose, head snapping up to make sure they were still in one piece.

The guillotines dismantled themselves with a mechanical whirring, releasing Clay and Joe, and disappeared into the sides of the Ring the Bell game.

“Easy peasy,” Alex said weakly, her shoulders heaving as she huffed and puffed.

Clay gave her a hand back to her feet.

“I guess that was kind of impressive,” he said. “An MMA fighter probably would’ve done it better, but if that’s the best a martial artist can do…”

She elbowed him in the ribs. “That was so impressive it counts as two saves. We’re tied now.”

“My ass we are.”

Joe hefted Bertha onto his shoulder and looked toward the FUN HOUSE. The facades had flipped over to their demonic visions of melting faces, unknowable animals, and blood.

“Check it out,” Joe said. “The price of admission changed.”

Just past the demonic clown mouth, the cutouts for the panda, cape, and inflatable hammer had been replaced with cartoonishly perfect cutouts of a chainsaw-wielding man with a racoon perched on his shoulder, a petite little pixie of a woman, and a lanky guy packing an M4.

On the FUN HOUSE door, the little heart-shaped hole seemed to wait expectantly. Clay glanced at the overflowing trashcan behind the door. Had that been there on their first pass?

“It is no matter that I have been once again left out.” Bacon Bits turned away from the cutouts and lifted her snout to the sky.

“You weren’t left out,” Alex said, picking up the pig and sticking it in the front pocket of her vest. “You’re just hard to see in cut-out form.”

Bacon Bits perked up. “Of course! I should have known one as infamous as the Great Blue Wyrm would not be required to stoop to walking through on these silly hooves.”

Together, they stepped up to their corresponding cutout.

“This is it,” Clay said, steeling himself. “We ready?”

“Ain’t never been more ready,” Joe said, wrapping his fingers around Bertha’s starter cord. “Time to show this carnival who the real carnie is.”

Clay nodded and the three of them stepped through…***

…And were right back at the beginning of the carnival. Overhead, the heart-shaped metal archway said Feed the heart or taste its deadly bite. . . . in bloody neon. The lighting looked almost angry, as though enraged at their audacity to miss what was right in from of them. And still the dots were four black lights slashed across with white stripes.

“What the crackerjacks!” Joe kicked the dirt in frustration. “I hate puzzle games! This is like high school all over again! It can’t get any worse than this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Alex pointed down the midway. “Those’re going to be way worse.”

Clay followed her gesture. Once again, the MUST PLAY games had changed, this time morphing into roided out versions of their formerly deadly selves. As if potentially dying wasn’t enough of a threat, they had turned into what amounted to sentient meat grinders for the game player and whoever’s neck was going to be on the line. At the milk crate throw, a series of snapping bear traps dangled from the ceiling while a pair of industrial strength pitching machines now flanked the milk cans, pointing toward where the player would be standing. And instead of baseballs, spiked metal balls sat inside the automatic feeder basket.

The other games were no better.

At the target shoot, there were now 240 medium machine guns instead of aKs, and the Test of Strength had sprouted eight electrical cord tentacles, which all wielded oversized metal mallets taking turns slapping down on where the player would be standing. The Carnival wasn’t trying to subtly rig the game anymore—it was now a kill or be killed situation, and Clay didn’t think they could survive another round. Alex may have been an Incant, but she was still pitifully low-leveled in the grand scheme of things, and Clay and Joe didn’t have the weapons or the skills to take out the army of sentient cobra cords.

“Nobody can survive that. Not even you,” he finally said to Alex. There was something off about this. Obviously, the Carnival could’ve killed them several times over but hadn’t. Why? “We’re going about this all wrong. There’s some key piece we haven’t figured out yet, something Smilerfax wanted to get across.”

“What he wants to get across is a sharp knife across our necks,” Alex said. “And that’s something I don’t mind missing.”

Joe’s mouth popped open. “Can she use ‘across’ twice in a sentence?”

“If they’re used correctly, I’m in the clear.”

“Judges?”

“Not right now.” Clay shut his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. There was something here, he knew it, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. What in the hell had they missed?

What had changed on their play throughs?

Obviously, the games had gotten deadlier every time. That stupid messed up ellipsis had changed color after that first time, and the games’ color schemes had changed with them. The sign over the archway kept changing, too.

The heart hungers.

The heart’s darkest desire is the sweetest food.

Feed the heart or taste its deadly bite.

Feed the heart. The heart-shaped archway didn’t make any sense. They’d gone through it twice now—basically feeding it—and they kept landing back at the beginning. Not to mention its bite had gotten deadlier each time, so that couldn’t be the answer.

What about that little heart on the FUN HOUSE door? It’d been there both times, but they hadn’t found anything to put in it.

The heart’s desire…

“The sweetest food is the heart’s darkest desire,” Clay said, snapping his eyes open. “How could we have missed it? It’s literal. The must-plays were just a distraction. We walked right past the real key to this place both times.”

“What are you talking about?” Alex asked, brow creasing as she looked at him.

Clay spun around to face his brother. “Joe, what makes the most money at a carnival?”

“Obviously the concession stands,” he replied with a shrug. “Some people get motion sick on rides, and some people think they’re too good to waste their money on rigged games, but I don’t care who you are, everybody likes a snack. Especially carnie food. One smell of that funnel cake and people are lining up around the block.”

“Exactly.” Clay shoved through the turnstile and headed for the food stand. “Tajira said Smilerfax took this place over because he had a deep-fried sweet tooth. Think about it. What’s darker or sweeter than a deep-fried Oreo?”

“Sugar with more sugar on top,” Joe volunteered, catching up to him.

“That’s sweet but not dark.” Alex ran to keep up with their long legs. “Black on white on black—that’s the part of the pattern you were talking about, Clay, the part we couldn’t find.”

“Because we were too focused on the prizes.” Clay stopped at the concession stand window. That spotlight had flared back to life, illuminating the powdered-sugar sprinkled Oreo concoction. Now that he’d worked out the answer, the whole carnival seemed to be pointing the way, from the 19-second clocks at all the games, denoting the exact cost of the Widowmaker, to the Finally finding the heart’s desire – priceless… at the bottom of the price list. Hell, it even had the correct form of an ellipsis. “Smilerfax didn’t care about the prizes, he wanted us to find the overpriced, artery-clogging snack that he loved so much it killed him.”

Joe gasped. “Just like Mom.” He put a hand on his heart and bowed his head. “They’re eating deep-fried Oreos with Jesus now.”

“We just have to feed the heart.” Clay reached into the food stand, watching out for any traps that might spring at the last second, and lifted the Widowmaker out on its grease-stained paper plate. “Literally.”

The thick black snakes of electrical cord lined the midway. Alex and Joe fanned out to protect Clay’s sides, but this time the cord cobras didn’t attack. As the deep-fried cookie concoction passed between them, the electrical beasts lowered their heads in peaceful reverence. The warped, eerie carnival music took on a strangely uplifting note—something between a worshipful dirge and a heavenly choir.

The demonic clown mouth even seemed to be smiling as Clay passed under it.

At the FUN HOUSE door, Clay stopped and started feeding deep-fried Oreos through one at a time. When the plate was empty, he rolled its edges together and tipped in the remains of the powdered sugar, then tossed the plate into the trashcan by the door.

The door sprung open again, and the maniacal laughter sounded, bright and clear as a starburst.

Clay raised his M4. “Moment of truth.”

“We know you’re dying to lecture us about rifles going first,” Alex said. “So this time we’ll let you take the lead. Don’t worry, I’ll swoop in afterward and save your life.”

“Says the lady who’s still behind by one.” Before she could answer, he stepped into the shadows.

And stepped out into a light so brilliant he had to shield his eyes. Instead of being redirected back to the start, he found himself beneath the stripped canvas of a circus big top. Garish spotlights shone down on a raised circular platform in the center on the unnatural tent. There was no sign of Smilerfax, which was a relief—it seemed Tajira had been telling the truth and he really was dead—but they did spot his throne. A gaudy thing constructed from a carousel bench seat and flanked by a pair of formidable-looking carousel animals—two stripped Cheshire cats, with overly large smiles.

Grease-stained and powdered sugar encrusted plates were stacked high around it. Smilerfax really had loved him some sweet-fried goodness. A little too much.

There was also loot. Stacks of gold and silver coins piled into heaps. Magical weapons and armor, strewn carelessly about, as though they were a second thought.

Joe let out a whistle.

There was enough treasure here to set them up for three lifetimes. With a haul like this, they could go back to Camp Liberty and live like kings. Hell, they could probably sell the haul to any of the mercenary groups that operated out here and head back to civilization with enough to buy back everything Alex’s cancer had stolen from them. House, truck, business, dojo. All of it, and none of them would never need to work another day unless they wanted to.

It was tempting. Normalcy. The easy life.

Thing was, Clay didn’t want that anymore. And now that Alex was an Incant, it probably wasn’t even possible. If they went back over the wall, the government would eventually come snooping around and find out about Alex’s powers. Hell, even Clay’s meager magical abilities would set off some red flags. Once that happened, life would change. The government wasn’t in the business of letting unregulated Incants run around without supervision.

No, he, Alex, and Joe would bag what they could of Smilerfax’s treasure hoard, but the real prize they were after wasn’t money, it was power. And to get power, they needed to kill a couple of Dungeon Lords. For that, they needed to complete Tajira’s quest.

Clay found what they’d come for resting on the armrest of Smilerfax’s throne. A plain-looking saltshaker that could’ve come out of any cafeteria or diner on the planet.

He picked it up and inspected it with the Monocle of True Seeing.

╠═╦╬╧╪

Greater Saltshaker of the Troll Gourmet

Effect 1: Perfectly seasons any food item.

Effect 2: Perfectly protects against oversalting.

Salt is the true key to Flavortown, but it is a double-edged weapon. The right amount brings out bursts of brilliant flavor, but too much can spoil even the tastiest of dishes…

╠═╦╬╧╪

“Whoa,” Alex said as she stepped into the treasure hoard.

“We’re gonna need a bigger backpack,” Joe said, staring in slack-jawed amazement at the piles of glittering gold.

Clay held up the saltshaker. “Got what we came for.”

“But you bloody buggers ain’t leavin’ here with it.” The Aussie Gearhead slammed the FUN HOUSE door violently behind him. “Maybe if you lot die real nice for me, I’ll bury you with your precious little saltshaker.”