James Axler - Damnation Road Show

Of course Crecca had heard about the man with the eye patch.

Every triple-stupe droolie who wasn’t deaf had heard about him.

The gaudy houses up and down Deathlands were full of stories about that particular coldheart. About how he had run with Trader in the bad, bad old days. About how he had matured into a full-blown, human chilling machine. Norms. Muties. It didn’t matter to him. Rumor had it, because of that rad-blasted single blue eye, he could only see things one way: his way. Not a man to cross, unless you were looking to book a quick ride on the last train west. More convincing than the always exaggerated whore-shack gossip, Crecca knew that even the Magus, Gert Wolfram’s steel-eyed, half-mechanical former business partner, wanted no part of him.

Showing no emotion, the carny master said, “So, you think he’s One Eye Cawdor?”

“Damn straight!” Furlong exclaimed. “Right down to the zigzag scar on his eyebrow where the knife cut took his peeper!”

His outburst disrupted the rhythmic, wet snoring coming from the corner behind him. Furlong jerked his head around at the sound of chain rustling on the floor, making double-nuking-sure he was out of reach of the little stickie’s needle teeth and sucker fists. The relief on his face when he turned back was almost comical.

Crecca had to admit that the latecomer fit Cawdor’s description. “What would he want with us?” he asked.

“Mebbe he knows what we’ve been doing,” Furlong suggested. “Mebbe he wants to take our booty.”

“With a force of seven?” Crecca said incredulously, stroking his red chin beard. And seven was being real generous, considering one was old and brain-fucked, and another was so young his balls hadn’t even dropped yet. On the other side, the carny master had a virtual miniarmy, fifty-nine-strong, all hand selected and personally trained by him, hardened, efficient chillers who took pride in their work.

Only one creature in all of Deathlands had the power to make that bloodthirsty bunch wet their pants. And do his bidding.

The Magus.

The Magus had done things to people that gave even Crecca’s chill crew wake-up-sweating nightmares. Things that made the objects of his unwanted attention squeal like pigs and offer their own children’s lives in exchange for a quick and merciful death.

If the Magus had ever had an ounce of mercy in him, he had had it cut out a long time ago. Cut out and replaced with clockwork metal gears.

The new and improved carny operation was large scale, large profit and held together by fear and greed—the hellscape’s twin wellsprings of motivation.

That someone was after the accumulated spoils of mass murder came as no surprise to the Magnificent Crecca. With a setup as sweet as this one, he’d known it had to happen, sooner or later. It had happened later rather than sooner due to the fact that Deathlands folk generally kept their heads down and minded their business. They had more than enough trouble just making it through another night, without looking for a little something extra that belonged to strangers.

“I think we ought to take them out tonight,” Furlong said, his dark, close-set eyes eager beneath bristling black eyebrows. “I can send a couple of my best boys to chill them all while they’re sleeping.”

Being the head roustabout in the most famous carny in Deathlands didn’t require much in the way of smarts—just straightforward, dependable brutality. The Magnificent Crecca sometimes wondered if Furlong could tie his own bootlaces, or if he had to bully someone else into tying them for him.

For years prior to his promotion to carny master, Crecca had worked for the late Gert Wolfram, but never as a roustabout. He had been an advance scout and collector of specimens for the fat man’s menagerie of living oddities. He trapped wild muties in the Darks, using rope snares or pitfalls. In and around the villes, he bought or kidnapped the tame ones. He’d find a particularly disgusting freak that he knew old Wolfram would like, then he’d shove a bag over its head and steal it from the bosom of its loving family. If the family caught him in the act and objected too strenuously, he chilled the whole lot of them. He was paid by the pound in those days. Wolfram had a thing about the size and weight of his attractions, said “the big uns” drew better crowds—a rule of showmanship that the new carny master still followed. While on the road, Crecca often had to force-feed his severely depressed captives at blasterpoint to maintain their redemption value. If they still wouldn’t take nourishment, he ditched them to make room for more profitable cargo. Dumped them in the middle of nowhere to starve or be eaten. Their lives weren’t worth the price of a centerfire bullet or the trouble of resharpening a bone-nicked knife blade.

“What are you going to do with the bodies afterward?” Crecca asked his head roustabout.

“Drag the pieces of shit outside the berm and bury ’em on the plain.”

“And tomorrow morning nobody’s going to notice seven people who upped and vanished?”

Furlong shrugged. “Somebody might notice, but there’d be no proof, so what could they do?”

“What if one of them yells out as your boys attack or gets hold of a blaster? What then?”

Furlong was silent under knit brows, straining to come up with a good answer. He might as well have been trying to explain gravity. But he was too stupid to see the futility of the effort.

“Bullard ville’s gonna be the best pickings we ever had,” Crecca told him. “If we try anything on One-Eye and his crew and it goes sour, it will queer the whole deal. And I won’t risk that.”

The hairy man started to restate his case for a surgical strike, but Crecca cut him off. “Do nothing,” he said. “Do absolutely fucking nothing. Understand?”

It took a long moment for this to sink in, but Furlong finally, reluctantly nodded.

“Get out,” Crecca said, dismissing him with a wave of his hand.

After Furlong left, the carny master assured himself that even if One-Eye had come to pay them a visit, that even if he knew about the spoils of mass murder, it didn’t matter. Cawdor didn’t know how the chilling was done. He couldn’t know because there had never been a single survivor left to tell the tale. Cawdor and his six fellow travelers would die like dogs along with the rest of the Bullard ville hayseeds.

Crecca twisted the ends of his goatee into a point. It was too bad about the bitch, though. Her mutation—the squirming strands of flame-red hair—wasn’t flashy enough for her to make a sideshow attraction, but she had real potential as a sex slave. Ah, well, the carny master thought, sex slaves, even ones with legs as long as hers, could be had anywhere.

He reached in his tailcoat side pocket and took out a small beige cardboard box. On the box were printed the words Choco Duds. He shook a few of the predark candies onto his palm. They looked like ossified rat turds. Their milk-chocolate coating had crystallized to a floury white. More than a century of storage had turned once soft caramel centers to amber glass, unchewable by norm teeth and jaws.

Crecca flicked one of the Choco Duds across the cabin. It hit Jackson on the cheek with an audible whack. The stickie’s eyes popped open at once. It sniffed the air, mewled in delight, then rooted in the heap of rags until it found the treat.

Jackson had no trouble eating the pellet. The dead eyes begged for more.

“First we’ve got work to do,” Crecca said, getting up from his chair. He put a videocassette in the player and powered up the TV.

Jackson watched his every move with rapt attention.

Loud, hard-driving, backbeat-heavy music erupted from the speakers, and bright colors and dancing females appeared on the screen. Crecca fell into step with the lead singer-dancer—a dewy-eyed, teenage blonde with a bare midriff—and her troupe of four bare-bellied dancers. Their moves were complex and violent. And there wasn’t much room to work. Tails of red satin coat flapping, the carny master pivoted left and spin-kicked right.