Everybody Scream! (10 page)

Traffic was congested, as if these suburban, tree-lined roads where deep-city streets. “We’re close,” observed Noelle, sitting up on the headrest of her seat, the convertible top again open, craning her neck as the patient autopilot computer urged the vehicle at a crawl. “I think I can hear it.”

“This looks like it’s gonna be a pretty low budget affair,” sneered Bonnie.

“It’s a fair, not Paradise.” Paradise was a world-renowned circus-carnival-entertainment center-vacationland in the far province of Kai-hany.

An old Choom woman on the front porch of an aging wooden house sat watching the crazy slow parade of diverse vehicles, a large cat on her lap also watching. “Goober-land,” said Bonnie, bulging her eyes back at the woman.

“Looks like a really nice spot to live,” Noelle said. “Quiet. Trees…”

“You look awful young for a hundred-ten, girl,” Bonnie remarked. “
Move
, for Chrissakes!” She pounded her palm on the horn’s button. “Why stick this thing way out here? We’re practically out of town.”

“The only clear spot big enough,” said Noelle.

“They could have had it on the roof of the Canberra Mall, right in town.”

“And compete with the carnival
in
the Mall?”

“I’m just making an example. Here we go–geesh.” They rounded a bend, and up ahead they saw the traffic was taking a sharp turn left where a traffic robot was waving its arm, a yellow light flashing on its chest. A sign announced: “WELCOME TO THE NINETEENTH ANNUAL PAXTON FAIR.” A lesser sign went on: “Midway, rides, food, live entertainment, crafts, art, agricultural exposition and contests.”

“Alright, so how much of this thing is cows and gourds?” Bonnie said.

“I don’t know.”

“There aren’t any farms in Punktown.”

“There’s a few big farms on the outskirts I can think of. Two I know for sure–my dad used to take me to buy vegetables and pumpkins for Halloween.”

“Yeah, but they’re big business-type factory farms.”

“There’re farms out beyond Punktown, in littler towns. You don’t have to live in Punktown to enter. It’s just a convenient meeting spot. Probably hardly any of the agricultural stuff is from town.”

“This should be positively Dark Ages.”

“Nobody forced you to come, Bonnie.”

“A
real
Punktown expo would have awards for the best gold-dust, best seaweed, best home porn-vid, best tally of customers by a prosty–they could have the people buy tickets to ride!” Bonnie laughed. “Now
that
would be a fun fair!”

“Come on, don’t spoil it. You can go to the Mall anytime, but this is old-fashioned. It’s quaint.”

“Quaint. Is it a fair or a museum?”

“Maybe it is a museum a little, but people should stay in touch with the past…the old way of doing things, making things with your own hands.”

Bonnie scrunched up her tanned face. “
Why?
”

Vehicles with wheels bounced and rumbled, dipped and crackled over the dirt and stones of the huge lot created for parking, its far boundaries bordered by trees. Bonnie had a hovercar which floated a few feet off the ground, but still cursed to see the dirt parking lot ahead on the right. A second robot stood at its mouth, waving and pointing. Some people, though, were parking in smaller grass lots on either side of the road or on the sides of the road itself, and filed in a pilgrimage on foot. Bonnie slammed her horn at a family walking directly in front of her car, received a glare from the arrogant teenage son and his girlfriend. “There’s a spot,” said Noelle.

“I want to get up close–I don’t wanna walk all that way. Is the parking free?”

“Yup–I guess.”

The impatient robot waved them into the giant lot, pointing down a particular corridor of vehicles. “Blast you,” muttered Bonnie, and instead wormed her way closer to the path which rose ramp-like up a steep hill to the carnival. Above the crowns of the bordering trees on the hill reared a Ferris Wheel, and the Double Helix. Loud sounds, loud music.

“Good thing we came early,” noted Noelle, taking in all the cars, and a few school-type buses.

“
Nyah!
” Bonnie cried, accelerating forward. Noelle screamed and fell into the back seat. The hovercar shot into a prime parking spot ahead of another vehicle, which slammed on its brakes to avoid hitting them. A group of Asians inside poked out their heads to scream in a language they didn’t know.

“Blast
off!
” Bonnie yelled.

“You want to get us
murdered?
” Noelle whined, scrabbling into a sitting position in the back seat.

The car of Asians spun out its tires, raising a dust cloud, and moved along. A beer bottle was flung out in its wake but missed Bonnie’s car by a wide margin. “Greasy slants,” Bonnie snorted.

“They could catch up with us in the carnival,” said Noelle, climbing out of the car.

Bonnie got out after raising the convertible top “Ease up, girl. We’re here to have fun, right? Come on.” And Bonnie started across the crunchy gravely dirt.

Noelle ran several steps to catch up with her. They started up the ramp, which was paved but cracked, weeds growing through fissures. Trash in the tall grass to either side. Louder sounds, louder music, a blended and blurred graffiti of noise, just ahead, just out of sight. For those sounds were a thing that could be seen; the noise
was
the carnival, all of the carnival one big sprawling noise machine, noise taking the visible forms of bright lights, bright colors, cotton candy and cheap teddy bears. A world built of solidified noise, like the deep city…all just over the hill.

At first there had been the intense dam-like build up of bodies, but after the gates were opened and the initial, anxious flood had burst in, the river flowed forward steadily at a more relaxed pace. The KeeZees were at the gate, to give potential troublemakers something to think about from the start. In fact, one of them had seized and tranquilized, already, a teenage Hispanic boy who had fought with a Choom boy when the gates first opened and elbows began to jab and shoulders to butt. A knife had come out, down by the boy’s leg where he figured no one could see him use it clearly, and he cut the Choom boy’s buttock deeply. The first arrest and first med patient of the day.

Mitch Garnet was there at the start also, with a large number of the security team the town had hired; big black-garbed, black-helmeted men with long black riot sticks that could give cattle prod-like charges of varying intensity. Most of these men were in their forties and big-bellied. The perfect men to chase a fleeing teenage mugger or brawler, Mitch sneered inwardly, watching the gathering of them glower meaningfully at the influx of varied fair-goers. They wore two guns each–one on the hip and one in a shoulder holster; one to kill, one to tranquilize. The tranquilizers worked fast, but some beings were immune, some punks took drugs that nullified the effect, many people wore body armor, jackets with bullet and ray-proof mesh sewn in. Mitch’s silver windbreaker contained such a mesh. He would carry a clip or two of tranquilizer bullets, but mostly he stuck to the explosive shells. He’d rather make out all the pain in the ass forms to establish justifiable homicide than to risk being a homicide himself, or risk innocent bystanders becoming a background of targets.

Standing off to one side, a cup of icy soda in hand, Mitch scrutinized the people filing up to the gate, which was not charged now, although where it ran off to left and right as a high meshed fence it became charged, completely surrounding the fairgrounds, with a tell-tale hum and a distinct blue glow to dissuade the foolish. But not every fool would be dissuaded from trying to break in; after all, the charge had to be kept low in case small children free of their parents approached it. The town security boys had a video map in their trailer which showed the outline of the fence, and this would flash in an area where the fence had been cut or disturbed. They dealt with most of those incidents.

One by one the people would purchase their tickets at a booth, from a person behind protective clear plastic, and one by one they would be admitted through a narrow archway with a revolving subway turnstile. A door could slide shut to block the archway, operated from inside the booth, if need be. Inside the arch were the eyes of weapon scanners. However, these were not put to use. Mitch wasn’t happy with it, but he wasn’t running the fair. Yes, it would be a major pain to confiscate weapons, tag them, or make arrests for the possession of too conspicuous or threatening illegal items; yes it would make for many tense situations and would turn away many potential patrons, even discourage many from coming in the first place, but it burned Garnet to think that these gun-toting punks and scum could go anywhere they wanted unchecked, undisturbed. Only on extreme occasions could he approach a person for bringing in a weapon, such as when a young gang boy had a shotgun slung over his back, or an assault rifle in his hand. On the other hand, he’d been told to let bikies have their way, and whole troops of them sauntered in, fat and leather-coated, with slung shotguns and machine-guns, beers in their hands.

Mitch had been wanting to nab one of these new fucking Martians with their prominent guns all season, but either they came through with no guns visible and had them tossed over the fence, or they got over or under the fence themselves. Mitch had started to run after two of them who he saw with their big guns inside the carnival but one of the KeeZees grabbed his jacket and held him back.

One of the town security boys had been shot dead early in the season but no one had come forward to say who’d done it. The ray bolts that had obliterated the man’s head had come from a gun such as those ridiculously over-equipped monstrosities toted by the Martians.

Now Mitch watched gang boys strut through the archway-turnstile one by one with pistols holstered at their hips or ribs, and could not step forward to stop them. His blue eyes were streaming ice cubes of frozen hatred.

Pulling the little string to ignite his cigarette, Bern Glandston watched the behinds of the two teenage girls ahead of him, one with a baby in a stroller. Their hair was frosted violet and blue, respectively, with a luminous dye which would show up better tonight. They had on tight transparent plastic pants with nothing underneath. Bern wished they’d turn around so he could see if their pubic hair matched their head colors. One went through the turnstile. Bern noticed the weapon scanners, and was glad he’d left his pistol in the
Scarab
. The girl with the stroller passed through, and then him. He pocketed his ticket, kept walking after the girls. They stopped at two thin, hard-faced gang boys in clear jackets made of plastic, an imitation of the clear rubbery leather taken from a huge amphibious creature that was quite popular now, but more expensive than plastic. Bern took his eyes off the girls, branched off past them on their left, but as he did so his eyes fell on a pistol holstered at the hip of one of the boys. His eyes darted to the other boy. A sawed-off double-barrel shotgun in a pouch buckled at his hip and tied around his thigh.

Removing the cigarette from his mouth, Bern halted in his tracks and turned around to watch a few people squeeze through the turnstile. The fifth person to come through was a Choom man in a t-shirt and cutoff jeans with a snub revolver holstered on his beaded belt. The weapon scanners said nothing about it.

Jesus. Now if he wanted to go back to his car he’d have to pay for re-admission, right? To hell with it. He turned to the carnival. The two gang boys in bogus clear leather, bony and mean-bodied inside, were looking at him.

“Pumpin’ shoes, man,” one of them said, spitting appreciatively on the ground by Bern’s feet.

“Oh…yeah…thanks.”