Wasteland Warlords Episode 2 - 7 Welcome to the Carnival

In the dune buggy, the last ten miles to Soledad Canyon flew by. They weren’t going to win any stealth achievements the way that beast was growling, but they were covering a lot of ground. Not walking for once was great, but Clay hadn’t realized how much he’d missed cruising along at highway speed with the wind whipping through his hair. Even with the bouncing suspension and dust blowing in his face, there was nothing like it. Everybody was in high spirits, hoopin’ and hollerin’ as Joe did donuts and ramped dunes. Even Bacon Bits was enjoying the ride.

“It is almost as pleasant as flying!” the teacup pig oinked, ears flapping in the breeze. “Of course, as a Great Blue Wyrm, I serpentine through the air, but you humans have certainly created an adequate substitute if one does not mind linear motion!”

“The map shows an old fire road up ahead,” Alex yelled at Joe over the engine. “It’ll take us right into the canyon.”

Joe shot her a thumbs-up, then floored it over a scrub-covered dune. They got a solid second’s air on that one. Clay laughed and Joe whooped. In the tiny child’s harness next to Joe, Chonk raised his paw and hedge trimmer and trilled like a kid on a roller coaster. All in all, the machine shed layover was working out better for morale than the GameStop had.

At least until they drove into the Canyon.

Then the brilliant midday sunlight dimmed to an eerie twilight half a day ahead of schedule, and the walls seemed to close in behind them. No clouds had appeared overhead, just an unnatural murk that darkened the world around them, like a movie scene that had been shot during the day and artificially filtered to look like night.

Clay got a prickly feeling down the back of his neck, like they were being watched from every angle. He released his harness and stood up in the shallow bed of the buggy, back against the roll cage to steady himself. He adjusted his grip on the M4 and watched for threats. Up front, Alex stopped calling out the directions and silently pointed the way. Joe hunkered down behind the wheel, brows furrowed and eyes constantly on the move. Chonk scooted as close to Joe as his little five-point harness would allow.

Only Bacon Bits seemed immune to the sudden weird gloom. The little pig was still laughing into the wind, ears flapping and tail wiggling.

“Feel that cool canyon air!” she squealed. “When I’ve been returned to power, perhaps I will set up a summer dungeon for myself here! You cannot deny it’s an excellent location. A little out of the way, but perfect for funneling unsuspecting prey into your trap.”

That was what Clay was afraid of.

They followed the canyon down, and in minutes the fairgrounds sprawled out in front of them.

Sun-bleached lights blinked and chased each other around rust-bleeding signs. Even from a distance, they could hear warped carnival music crawling out of some hidden sound system, none of the notes quite right, but none of them completely out of tune, either. A midway lined with garish tents flapped and fluttered in the breeze, the jumbo prizes swinging and swaying like hanged men dangling from gallows. Food trucks advertised greasy snacks and sugary drinks in sinister colors.

The Twisternado creaked and banged as it whirled along with an empty barrel. At the kiddie coaster’s biggest drop, a pair of trains had already been derailed, and a third was flying by at breakneck speed, wheels striking sparks on the tracks. High overhead, the Zipper’s cages rocked and tipped, a few hanging on by nothing more than a single bolt.

At the center of the sprawl loomed a massive metal structure folded out of a semi-trailer, which connected to a green and orange stripped big-top tent. Warped circus scenes had been airbrushed onto the black sides in screaming Day-Glo colors—stretched-out simulacrums of almost-familiar animals that seemed to move and shift when Clay wasn’t staring right at them; a magician shoving swords through a box containing his beautiful assistant in one light, blood leaking from the holes and her face twisted in agony in another; a big top full of excited spectators one second who were suddenly all burning in hellfire while their flesh melted from their bones in the next.

The entrance to this creepfest was in the center of the trailer, a door painted into the razor-toothed mouth of a laughing, demonic clown. Overhead, a cockeyed sign flashed SMILERFAX’S FUN HOUSE.

Except every now and then, when Clay’s eyes weren’t directly focused on the letters, he could’ve sworn they said SMILERFAX’S FUNeral HOUSE.

Solemnly, Joe drove them through the gravel parking lot, swerving around the few dust-shrouded cars that had been left there to rust. He stopped the dune buggy outside the empty ticket booth and shut it off.

In the silence left behind, screams—a weird combination of ecstatic and terrified—made uneasy goosebumps race along Clay’s arms and crawl down his spine. He strained his eyes in the half-light, but couldn’t find any carnival goers who could be making the sounds.

“This place is spookier than my meemaw’s doll room,” Alex said in a small voice.

“Nothing is creepier than her doll room,” Clay replied. He and Alex had been forced to sleep in her granny’s creepy shrine to porcelain dolls one Christmas Eve when all her family was staying over. He hadn’t slept a wink with all those glass eyes staring at him. But standing there looking out at that nightmare carnival, he wasn’t too sure the doll room was even in the same ballpark as this place.

“You guys just haven’t seen a carnival after closing time.” Joe white-knuckled the steering wheel as if they were drifting a sharp turn rather than sitting still. “This right here… this is why it takes a special kind of person to be a carnie. Any dingbat off the street can smoke a cigarette while pulling a lever all day. But when those midway lights go out…” He took a deep breath and let it out. “That’s where we separate the men from the boys.”

“I think it’s quite pleasant,” Bacon Bits said, little head swiveling this way and that as she admired their surroundings. “A bit small, but this Smilerfax has done an excellent job using the natural ambiance. And, as you can see, everything is still functioning in his absence.” She waved a hoof at the crazily tilting rides. “That’s the mark of a true dungeon lord: delegation and seeding. I myself had a floor boss for every level of my dungeon and contingencies set up to continue spawning mobs no matter what.”

Alex frowned out at the carnival. “So you’re saying there are probably some free-roaming monsters in there even though Smilerfax is dead?”

“Oh, most certainly!”

“Great.”

“We’re going in hot either way.” Clay hopped out of the buggy and did a quick check that his extra magazines, combat knife, and the Wand of Inferno were still in place, along with the handful of magicka and health potions in his drop pouches. Alex and Joe piled out and followed suit while the animal half of their party looked on.

Weapons out, reloads ready, they headed for the ticket booth. On the side of the little shack, a faded sign demanded they Check out our midway! Must-play games! Delicious treats! Eat your heart out!

The ticket booth’s windows had been smashed out, and the shadows inside were so deep that the shards of plexiglass clinging to the frame looked like the last couple decaying teeth in the jaws of some ancient beast.

“If there’s going to be a jump scare anywhere, it’ll be there,” Alex muttered.

Clay had to agree. It looked as if there should be a cobweb-covered skeleton manning the till. He kept the windows covered as they approached.

Nothing jumped out at them, which only served to make them more uneasy.

Just past the ticket booth, a turnstile had been set up beneath a heart-shaped metal archway. In bloody-red, buzzing neon across the top, where the gates of hell would have said, Abandon all hope ye who enter here, were the somehow more ominous words, The heart hungers. . . .

Instead of the standard three periods for the ellipsis, the words were followed by four multicolored lights. A blue one, a green one, pink one, and a black one with a white stripe across the middle.

Alex shot Clay a grin. “How bad is that fourth period bothering you, grammar Nazi?”

“Technically that could function as a complete sentence, so using a period followed by an ellipsis is fine,” he said. A corner of his mouth turned up. “But, yeah, a lot.”

“That there is a puzzle clue if I’ve ever seen one,” Joe said. “Someone write that down—blue, green, pink, black and white combo.”

“It’s four lights, Joe, I think we’ll remember it,” Clay said. Besides, with a name like Smilerfax the Enigmatic, he figured there was going to be a helluva lot more to the puzzles than a simple color pattern.

“You think that now,” Joe said, scratching B, G, P, B&W into the grease and dust on Bertha’s engine case with his thumbnail, “but when you’re caught up in the swirl and sugar rush of the carnival, buddy, all bets are off.”

A dark shadow flashed in Clay’s peripheral. He looked up just in time to see the sign had gone off. They went back on before he had a chance to say anything. No one else seemed to have noticed.

He shook his head. There was nothing weird about that. Lights went off and on all the time out here in the IZ; electricity was hard to come by in the wasteland. No reason to start jumping at shadows.

Still, he watched the buzzing neon for another few seconds. It didn’t flicker again.

“Clay, you coming?” Alex and Joe were headed for the turnstile, Bacon Bits and Chonk in tow.

“Yeah.” He shook his head like that would clear away the doubts and caught up to them.

The turnstile shrieked in protest as they forced their way through its rotating arms.

The cool night breeze picked up as they stepped into the abandoned midway, the wind whining eerily. The game tents flapped, prizes swayed in the yellow light of the bare bulbs, and the desert grass waved. Coils of the thick, black extension cord snaked haphazardly across the ground beneath their feet, crisscrossing and tangled in the dead grass. Sugar-scented air blew in from the food trucks.

Bacon Bits took a deep snuffle. “What is that intoxicating aroma?”

“Diabetes.” Clay eyed the prices on a stand for deep fried Double Stuft Oreos.

The Single Stint – 5.00

The Triple Bypass – 9.00

The Widowmaker – 19.00

Finally finding the heart’s desire – priceless…

“I like cookies as much as the next person, but deep frying them is where I draw the line,” Alex said. She almost tripped on an overloaded surge protector wound up with duct tape. “Geez. This place must’ve been a lawsuit waiting to happen back in the day.”

“Aw, look at him!” Joe cooed at Chonk. The mechacoon was across the way, chittering up at a tentful of motheaten jumbo stuffed pandas. “The little trash panda recognizes his giant trash cousin! Want one of these big guys, Chonkie-chonk?”

“Don’t you dare,” Alex snapped.

Joe stopped with his hand halfway to a blue and white panda leg.

“I had one condition going into this job, short stack. You all knew what you were getting into when you agreed to it,” he said. “Besides, I know how carnies think. They didn’t put these prizes out here so nobody would ever take one.” He gestured to the stack of metal milk bottles, set up in a pyramid three bottles high. “You just have to step right up, win the game, and the stuffed teddy’s yours, fair and square.” He picked up the trio of waiting baseballs.

“How about you try to get us killed after we find the saltshaker,” Clay suggested. “For now, let’s focus on getting what we came here for.” He jerked his chin at the looming FUN HOUSE. “Tajira said the saltshaker was probably in Smilerfax’s hoard.”

“Fine, if you’re going to believe someone who’s never run a carnival before.” Joe tossed the balls back onto the stand.

Together, they started for the demonic clown mouth at the end of the midway.

A slithering hiss cut through the carnival music like a sharpened cleaver.

The thick cords crisscrossing the grass reared up like pissed off cobras and shot toward them in a blaze, bodies sawing through the grass with impossible speed. Looked like Bacon Bites was right after all—even with Smilerfax gone, there were some nasty surprises waiting for them.