ClownFellas (6 page)

The back door opened and a French clown stepped out, lighting up a curvy purple pipe that looked more like a bassoon than something you'd want to smoke. As they peeked out from behind the toolshed, Earl realized what Spotty was saying about the French clowns having a different style from the Bozos. This clown had puffy clothing that made him look more like a thirteenth-century court jester than a circus clown. His green sideburns curled like tentacles off the sides of his face. He wore a monocle over one eye and a pink patch over the other. A miniature umbrella poked out the top of his leopard-print hat.

As the clown blew smoke rings into the air, Vinnie Blue Nose screwed a silencer onto the top of his handgun, and loaded it with a clip of laughing bullets. Then he aimed it at the clown and fired.

The bullet hit the jester in the chest. He looked down at the blood leaking from his wound and immediately started to laugh. It was just a light giggling at first, then a deep chuckle. When he noticed Vinnie coming out from behind the toolshed, he was cackling at the top of his lungs. He dropped his bassoon-shaped pipe and tried to go for his gun, but was laughing so hard he couldn't get ahold of it before Vinnie Blue Nose put another bullet right between his eyes.

As Vinnie dragged the French clown's body into the bushes, Earl asked, “What the heck was that?”

“Laughing bullets,” Hats said. “Just as deadly as regular bullets but they also paralyze you with laughter. That is, until they kill ya.”

They waited a minute to see if any of the clowns inside heard the laughter, and when nobody came running they gathered by the back door.

“I want you to wait here,” Vinnie told Earl. “Grab anyone that gets past us.”

Earl agreed, though he had no clue how he would stop a clown thug if one came at him.

“Hats,” Vinnie said. “Smoke them out.”

“My pleasure,” Hats said.

The clown removed the massive yellow-checkered hat from his head to reveal a slightly smaller hat beneath, this one patterned with orange polka dots. Standing on top of the hat was what looked to be a coconut cream pie.

“Stand aside, gentlemen,” Hats said.

He opened the back door and tossed the pie into the living room. When it hit the floor cream-first, the pie exploded into a cloud of smoke.

“Let's go,” Vinnie said.

The Frenchies didn't know what hit them.

They charged through the door and fired into the smoke. French clowns laughed at the tops of their lungs as they were filled with bullets. Captain Spotty kicked down the front door and blasted the clowns with his gumball shotgun.

As Earl watched the chaos from the back door, he noticed the man escaping from his daughter's bedroom window. The clown's skin was striped blue and white, with sunflowers sticking out the top of his head like horns.

“Hey, one of them's escaping,” Earl yelled into his house, but the clowns couldn't hear him over the gunfire.

Earl didn't know what to do. He looked at the clown and said, “Hey, stop!”

The clown's eyes met Earl's. He recognized the vet. This was the man they'd been sent to kill. A sinister grin widened across the clown's face as he pulled out a machete.

“Wait, get back…,” Earl said, holding out his hands.

The clown was no longer trying to escape. He was coming for the veterinarian's head.

“I'm armed,” Earl said, pretending he had a handgun in his pocket, even though all he had in there was a balloon.

The clown charged the vet, raising the machete.

Earl pulled out his gun-shaped balloon and pointed it at the man. He had no idea what he was going to do with it, hoping his attacker wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a real gun and a balloon gun in the dim lighting.

“Stop or I'll shoot,” Earl cried.

Then he pulled the balloon trigger. The vet shrieked when it actually fired. A bullet came out of the top of the balloon and hit the clown in the lower abdomen. He dropped his machete and fell to the ground.

“How the hell…”

It wasn't possible. It didn't make any sense. Earl shook the balloon in his hand. There was nothing inside it. The thing was as light as a feather, filled with nothing but air. There was no way it was capable of firing a bullet.

“You got him,” said Captain Spotty as he stepped through the back door. “Good job, Doc. We accidentally killed all the ones inside.”

Earl didn't respond. He was still staring at the balloon gun.

“Where's the family?” Vinnie Blue Nose asked the wounded Frenchman.

The clown spit in Vinnie's face. Then Spotty kicked him between his legs.

As Vinnie calmly cleaned the spittle from his face with a handkerchief, he said, “You're going to tell me where your people took this man's wife and three daughters or your death will be slow and painful.”

“It's too late,” the Frenchman wheezed. “You'll never see them again.”

Spotty kicked him in the bullet wound.

“That's not the question I asked,” said Blue Nose. “But if you want to play this the hard way, we'll play it the hard way.”

Vinnie pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. Then he took a small pouch out of his coat pocket.

“If I were you I'd start talking,” Jackie the Grump told the Frenchman.

The wounded clown watched Vinnie open the pouch. “What is that?”

Vinnie turned over the pouch and poured a tiny amount of its contents on the Frenchman.

“Weapons-grade itching powder,” Vinnie said. “This much will make you feel like you're being eaten alive by fleas.”

At first, nothing happened. The French clown just spit at him again. But then the itching crept into the folds of his paper-white skin. He scratched his neck, then his chest.

Vinnie poured a few more shakes of the powder onto the wounded man. “This much will make you feel as if you have the worst case of chicken pox anyone has ever experienced in the history of the disease.”

The Frenchman cried out and scratched furiously, his fingernails thrashing against his body, trying to itch every part of his body all at the same time.

“The next dose will itch so badly that you'll literally tear your own skin off trying to get it to stop. And the dose after that, you will be begging for me to kill you.”

Before Vinnie could tip the pouch of powder, the French clown held out his hands and begged him to stop.

“I can't take it anymore!” cried the wounded clown. “Get the stuff away from me!”

“You have three seconds,” Vinnie said.

“It was Coco's idea,” the clown said.

“You mean Coco de Merde?” Vinnie asked.

“Who's Coco de Merde?” Hats asked.

Vinnie shook his head. “An up-and-comer in the French mob who's recently made a name for himself. He's been rising through the ranks pretty quickly as of late. Very ambitious.”

“Ambitious enough to go after Don Bozo?” Spotty asked.

“
Stupid
enough to go after Don Bozo.”

The wounded clown scratched at his crotch as the itching powder went down his pants and got into his bullet wound. “He's the one who came up with the idea to use the zoo doctor to kill your boss. It wasn't me. I was just following orders.”

“You still haven't answered my question,” Vinnie said, holding the pouch closer to the man's wound. “Where's his wife and daughters?”

“They're still alive,” said the Frenchman. “Coco's got them down at the docks.”

“What are they doing at the docks?” Earl asked.

“They're being sold,” he said.

“What do you mean being sold?” Earl cried.

“That's how Coco earns for the family. He sells women into the sex trade, usually runaways. They'll be shipped overseas. Nobody will ever hear from them again.”

“You monster!” Earl screamed.

The vet kicked the clown in the ribs, but the clown was scratching so furiously that he didn't seem to feel it.

“We have to get them before the boat leaves,” Vinnie said. “Let's go.”

“It's too late. There's no way you'll get to them in time.” The Frenchman laughed. “By tomorrow, they'll be hooked on laughy-gas and doing
anything
for
anybody
to get their next fix. You'll never see them again.”

“Son of a bitch…” Earl grabbed Vinnie's pouch of itching powder and dumped its entire contents on top of the Frenchmen.

They left him thrashing, screaming, and tearing at his own flesh as they walked out of the yard.

“Here, use this,” Hats Rizzo said, tossing the clown back his machete. “It'll help with those deep-down itches.”

Hats giggled like a madman as the French clown hacked into his own body with the machete, slicing off layers of skin and scooping his insides out.

When they got to the docks, they saw a group of French clowns loading crates onto a ship.

“How many of them are there?” the capo asked Spotty.

“A couple dozen,” Spotty said, with his ear against his pet cockroaches.

“Any sign of my wife?” Earl asked.

“The ship is too big for my scouts,” Spotty said, allowing the roaches to crawl back into his coat. “We'll have to search it ourselves.”

A clown in a brown trench coat was ordering around the men loading the ship. He had black-and-white swirly patterns on his skin and long yellow hair.

“There he is,” Vinnie said. “Coco de Merde.”

“That guy's a clown?” Spotty asked. “He looks more like a goddamn juggalo.”

“Well, there's no way we're going to be able to fight our way through,” said Vinnie Blue Nose. “We need to find a way to sneak on board.”

“Should we take a small boat and come at it from the other side?” Spotty asked.

“Where are we going to find a boat?” Jackie asked.

Rizzo stepped forward. “Allow me.”

He took off his orange polka-dot hat to reveal a smaller hat beneath. This one was red and white, striped like a candy cane. Resting on top of the hat was a chocolate cream pie. He set it on the ground and grabbed a string dangling from the tin. When he pulled the string, the pie exploded. In an instant, it inflated to the size of a boat big enough for four.

“It's my life raft pie,” Hats said. “You know, just in case I ever get lost at sea.”

The clowns looked at Hats. Then they looked at the inflated boat. Then they looked at Hats again. The mook wouldn't take the dumb smile off his face.

“Good job, knucklehead,” said Spotty. “Now how are we going to get it to the water without being noticed?”

The dumb smile faded from Hats's face. “How am I supposed to know? I don't even know if it floats.”

They looked at the boat and saw that it was slowly deflating.

“Follow me,” Vinnie said. “I'll get us a boat.”

Vinnie Blue Nose was probably the only person Earl ever met who actually looked cool in a duck-shaped pedal boat. There were two pedal boats, each with room for four people. Vinnie and Earl took one, Hats and Jackie the other; Earl's family would fill the empty seats. They left Captain Spotty back at the car to act as getaway driver.

“Shouldn't there be a ladder somewhere?” Jackie asked when they got to the ship.

Vinnie scanned the hull. “We're going to have to find another way up.”

Hats shook his head. “I swear. You guys would be lost without me.” He pulled off his red-striped hat to reveal a leopard-print hat with a peacock feather dangling off the side.

“Is that a pimp hat?” Jackie asked.

“Of course it's a pimp hat,” said Hats. “I've got every kind of hat there ever was.”

Inside the hat was another pie. This one was attached to a rope and a pneumatically powered gun. Hats aimed the gun at the top of the boat. When he pulled the trigger, the pie shot into the air and splatted against a wall on deck. Hats tugged on the rope. The pie was tightly adhered to its spot.

“It's a glue pie,” Hats said.

Vinnie grabbed hold of the rope and pulled on it. When he thought it was safe, he started to climb.

Looking back at Hats, he said, “Tie up the boats before coming up. We'll need them if we want to get out of here in one piece.” Then he continued climbing.

Earl went up next. Then Hats. They didn't have any difficulty until it was Jackie the Grump's turn. The clown was so fat and had so many weapons strapped to him that he couldn't pull himself up.

Hats looked down at him from the deck of the ship and said, “Come on, Fat Boy, we ain't got all day. Maybe you should stay down there so you don't sink the ship.”

The two pedal boats were floating away.

“Hey, Hats,” Vinnie said. “I thought I told you to tie up the boats.”

Hats shrugged. “What the heck was I supposed to tie them up with?”

“Maybe the end of that rope we just climbed,” Vinnie said.

“Oh yeah,” Hats said, his face lighting up. “That would've been a good idea.”

They looked down at Jackie. The clown was exhausted and he seemed to be sliding back down the rope.

“Wait for him,” Vinnie told Hats. “We're going on ahead.”

“Whatever you say, Skipper.”

“Don't get yourself seen.”

Hats just tipped his pimp hat in response.

It took Hats and Jackie five minutes before they got themselves seen. Vinnie and Earl were searching the cargo hold when they heard a commotion on deck, followed by gunshots.

“Wait here, I'm going to check it out,” Vinnie said.

Earl kept going. He wasn't going to rest until he found his wife and daughters. He could sense they were near. He didn't know how, he could just feel it. Perhaps it was their scent lingering in the air or perhaps he could hear them crying somewhere in the distance, so faint that they only registered in his subconscious.

A clown was working down there. His back turned. Earl came up behind him and pointed his gun at the man's head.

“Don't move,” Earl told him.

The clown turned around. He was calm. He wore a black-and-white-striped shirt with a red beret on his head. He had a five o'clock shadow permanently coloring his face as if it were clown makeup.

“Or what?” the Frenchmen said.

Earl looked at his balloon gun. He realized it wasn't very threatening. “I'll shoot you.”

“With what? Your balloon?”

Earl pointed the gun over the clown's shoulder and fired. The bang was enough to make the clown flinch, but just barely.

“I'm looking for my wife and three daughters,” he said. “I know they're down here somewhere. Tell me where and I'll let you live.”

The clown nodded over Earl's shoulder. “They're in one of the crates behind you.”

Earl looked back. There were too many of them.

“Which one?” Earl said.

As he turned back, the clown poked a needle into his balloon. It popped and fell to the floor.

“Oops,” the clown said.

Earl's mouth dropped open. The clown pulled a handgun from the back of his pants. But before he could point it at the vet, Earl whipped out his balloon knife and drove it deep into the clown's chest.

The Frenchman tried to pop the balloon knife with his needle, but his hand went limp before it could make contact.

“Ridiculous…,” the clown wheezed.

His eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground. Earl pulled the balloon out of the man's chest. It was still intact. Just like the gun, it was a mystery how the balloon could pierce solid flesh. It was full of air.

Earl looked back at the crates and called out to his family. “Laurie? Mandy? Are you there?”

No answer. He went deeper into the cargo hold.

“Vicky? Are you in here?”

He heard an army of footsteps running across the deck above him. More gunshots.

“Dad!”

It was Mandy's voice.

“Mandy! Where are you?”

“Daddy, I'm in here!”

Earl followed the sound of his daughter's voice until he came to a crate. It was sealed tight. He had to shove his balloon knife between the boards to pry it open. When the wood splintered apart and the crate opened up, Mandy came running out and wrapped herself around his waist. There were other girls inside, all around her age. They looked hungry and sick. None of them spoke.

“Where are the others?” Earl asked his daughter. “Where's your mother?”

The little girl's eyes were red and dehydrated from crying so much.

“Help me find them,” he said.

The other girls didn't stick around to help out the veterinarian. They took off running out of the cargo hold. Earl hoped they were smart enough to jump overboard rather than trying to go through Coco de Merde and his men. They wouldn't get very far otherwise.

Mandy held her father so tight that he couldn't walk. She cried into his knees and wouldn't let go.

“Help me find Mom and your sisters,” Earl said.

He took his daughter by the hand and led her through the maze of freight.

“Laurie? Vicky?” They called out.

After some searching, they found another crate filled with older girls, mostly teenagers. When they opened it up, the girls all took off. Many of these teens were strung out, already addicted to laughy-gas or some other clown drug. A few of them didn't even seem to know where they were.

When Earl entered, there were only two girls left. Vicky was in there cradling his teenage daughter, Sarah. Vicky was crying and rocking the teenager. Neither of them could speak.

Earl knelt to her. “Vicky, what happened?”

“Is she dead?” Mandy cried.

When Earl felt his teenage daughter, he realized she was still alive but in bad condition. Somebody had hit her over the head with some kind of blunt object. She had a concussion.

“We have to go now,” Earl told Vicky. “Let's go.”

Vicky wouldn't move. She shivered. Her eyes glossed over.

“Snap out of it, Vicky,” Earl said. He clapped his hands in front of her face. She looked up at him, her lips trembling.

He helped them to their feet, Sarah staggering as if she were heavily intoxicated.

“Where's your mother?” Earl asked them.

Vicky cried when he asked the question. A memory she didn't want to remember had clearly flashed into her head. “They took her,” she said, between gasps.

“Where?” Earl tried to get her to focus as he held Sarah upright.

Vinnie Blue Nose came into the cargo hold and ran to Earl.

“Come on,” Vinnie said. “We've got to get out of here. They called in backup.”

But Earl was focused on his daughter. “Where's your mother, Vicky? Where'd they take her?”

“They took her away,” she said. “The other boat.”

Earl's eyes widened. He nearly dropped his daughter.

“We need to go,” Vinnie said, helping him carry Sarah.

“Where's the other boat?” Earl asked. “They said my wife's on a different boat.”

Vinnie didn't slow down in order to talk. “There's no other boat out there.”

“There has to be.”

“If there was, it's already gone.”

“It can't be gone,” Earl said. “We have to find her.”

“There's no time,” Vinnie said. “We need to go.”

Earl resisted, pulling his teenage daughter away from the clown. “I'm not leaving without her.”

Vinnie straightened his suit. “You have to forget about your wife and focus on your daughters now. If you don't, none of them will make it out of here.”

Earl shook his head, tears tickling his eyes.

“Save your daughters,” Vinnie said. “Think of what your wife would want.”

Earl thought about it for only a second longer. Then he sucked it up, picked up his teenage daughter, and carried her out of the cargo hold. His other two daughters followed close behind, holding on to the back of his pant legs.