"Jesus," whispered Kurtz.
There had been no driver, the engine car was empty. But the following three cars, each styled like a passenger or freight car in miniature, but each also open to the air and just big enough for two children to sit in comfort or a single adult in discomfort, butt on a low cushion and knees high, had been carrying passengers. Kurtz had counted eight corpses propped up in the passenger carsfour dead men, two dead women, and two dead children.
"Jesus," Kurtz whispered again. The train was audible on the other side of the hill through the bare trees and rustling leaves now, heading back toward the burned mansion and then around again in its closed loop. There must have been a line switch thrown somewhere to keep the train looping around this hill, its metal throttle lever taped in the open position.
No dead man lever , thought Kurtz and resisted the urge to laugh.
He crossed the tracks and headed downhill toward the lighted midway, pistol at his side, trying not to break branches or step on more leaves than he had to. But any sound that he made was lost under the tinny carnival music that grew louder as he grew nearer. Right now, speakers were blaring with an organ version of "Pop Goes the Weasel."
The sight of the midway when he arrived was too surreal through the night vision goggles, so he took them off again. The images remained surreal in moonlight and midway glow.
Somewhere nearby a generator popped and sputtered. The broken, rusted Ferris wheel moved creakingly, in spurts and fits, but it turned. There were a dozen or so working lights on its frame, where scores had once burned when Cloud Nine was new. But those few were enough to illuminate the half dozen adult corpses riding in the four remaining passenger benches on the creaking wheel. Two had slumped forward against the rusted restraining bars.
The merry-go-round was turning ponderously. The music came from there, from a boom box set up in the center of the creaking, groaning circle. The broken horses and shattered zebras and headless lions were not going up and down, but five of them had ridersa dead woman with a bullet hole in her blue forehead slumped forward against the vertical pole rising out of the golden palomino; a male corpse with three black holes in his Eddie Izzard T-shirt lay sprawled stiffly across the lion with the missing lower jaw; a little girl no older than five, part of her skull missing between braids, slumped against a giraffe's long, splintered neck.
The merry-go-round turned round and round to the musk in the rustling woods.
Kurtz tried to move from shadow to shadow, his finger clammy against the trigger. He could smell popcorn. Popcorn and something sticky-smellingeither fresh blood or cotton candy. The lawnmower exhaust stink of the train wafted down as the locomotive rumbled by just
up the hill again.
The bumper car pavilion was still shattered and flooded, dead leaves blowing across the rubber-streaked floor, but a single floodlight illuminated the pavilion, showing where a man and a womanlong dead from the looks of the sunken eyes and gums pulled back from the teethsat in one of the upright cars. The male corpse had his arm around the female corpse and the brittle bone-fingers seemed to be pawing at her shrunken breast under the tattered rags of what had been a pink sweater.
"Holy Christ," Kurtz whispered to himself, mouthing the words but making no noise. He raised the Browning in both hands and proceeded stealthily uphill, past the patch of grass where he had almost made love to Rigby King less than thirty-six hours earlier, past the fallen plywood front facade of the funhouse where a faded clown's face looked up from the grass, past the funhouse ticket booth where a male corpse had been propped up behind the wiremesh of the ticket cage. This corpse had had a clown's face painted on it and was wearing a red rubber nose. Its white shirt had a row of bloody holes across the chest.
Kurtz approached the shack he and Rigby had peered into. This new building was the epicenter of the night's madness. The big gasoline generator was running just beyond the shack, somehow powering the various lights and motors turning the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round.
Kurtz moved from tree to tree approaching the shack, his gun extended. He tried to breathe shallowly through his mouth, tried to listen. The porch of the little shack creaked slightly as he stepped onto it He moved to one side of the doorway and peered in. There was a lantern glowing in there and a figure lying on the cot in the corner. Kurtz pulled the goggles down out of the way, the better to use his peripheral vision. His mouth was dry.
The wind came up then, blowing leaves across the moldy midway, rattling branches in the bare trees. Because of that noiseas well as the repetitive, tinny carousel music from the boom box, as well as the creaking and groaning of the Ferris wheel and the putt-putt of the train making yet another round uphillKurtz didn't hear or see the dead clown in the ticket booth sit up, turn its white face, and step outside.