Clowns, p.24
Clowns, page 24
part #20 of First Contact Series
“Fuck,” Breezy says. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
“And you killed him. You killed Buster.”
“I know. I fucking know that, okay?” Breezy yells at her, exasperated. She’s trying to do the right thing. She’s trying to correct her mistake, but nothing is working. Olivia feels for her. They’re both trapped, and not just physically. Circumstances have conspired against them.
Outside, a bullhorn sounds. “Come out, Breezy. We know you’re in there. You’re surrounded. Bring the call girl out with you. No one has to get hurt. This doesn’t have to end in tragedy.”
“Fucking Johnson. It’s all a lie,” she says to Olivia. “He’s the one behind all this. He bitched about this President. He’s the one that wants to get rid of them. And he’s played me for a goddamn fool.”
“Who’s Johnson?” Olivia asks.
“He’s the director of the Secret Service. He kept all this from the President, and now he wants to replace him.”
“Kept what from him?” Olivia asks as flashlights illuminate various spots around the tent canvas.
“The aliens.”
“What aliens?” Olivia asks, screwing up her face. “You mean the clowns?”
Breezy says, “Not so fucking dumb now, am I?”
“Oh,” Olivia says, raising her hand to her forehead and pressing hard, wanting to block out her pounding headache. “We’re dead. We’re so dead.”
“Yep.” Breezy walks toward the back of the tent. “But the asshole out there lied. He wants us to feel helpless, but we’re not. We’re not surrounded.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they’re not going to shoot themselves. They’ll set up a field of fire facing us. They want all the bullets going one way. That will force them to leave the rear without effective cover fire. They’ll rely on helicopters to track us as we pull back.” Breezy points at the back of the tent. “What’s out there?”
“Ah, there are a bunch of circus trailers—the old wooden horse-drawn kind. They’re in a meadow that leads down to trees by the river.”
“Good, good,” Breezy says, pulling back the heavy canvas and staring into the long shadows being cast by the setting sun. Rain comes down in waves. Thunder rumbles overhead. A helicopter circles above the tent. Its harsh searchlight illuminates the opening, forcing Breezy back.
“What’s the plan?” Olivia asks.
“Stay alive,” Breezy replies. “Make contact with the clowns.”
“I don’t understand,” Olivia says. “Why did you rescue me? Why are you even in here with me? You shot Buster! You’re one of them! You should be out there. What changed?”
“This is not about taking sides,” Breezy says. “That’s our problem: our undying loyalty to the tribe. No one wants to admit a mistake, but—fuck—this could cost us the goddamn planet!”
“So fuck the tribe,” Olivia says.
“Fuck the tribe,” Breezy says. “We’ve got to do what’s right.”
Outside, headlights wash across the canvas. From their size and spacing, they’re either trucks or large SUVs. Red and blue emergency lights ripple back and forth over the vast empty tent, causing a confusing kaleidoscope of color within the big top. Breezy finds a power board by a control desk for the circus. There are a bunch of circuit breakers with labels.
“Oh, I recognize these,” she says, which confuses Olivia.
Shooting Gallery
Balloon Pop
Laughing Clowns
Rollercoaster
House of Horrors
Lucky Bingo
Ring the Bell
Carousel
“Let’s light things up,” she says, flicking the various switches. The spotlight within the big top comes on, but it’s the sideshow alley that erupts with colors and noise. Music begins blaring from the speakers. Carefully choreographed sequences of lights sparkle, bringing the old fairgrounds to life. A prerecorded voice bellows into the night.
“Step right up! Step right up! This is the greatest show on Earth!”
“Confusion is good,” Breezy says to Olivia. “It’ll make them nervous—keep them guessing.”
Olivia asks, “And us?”
“We need time and space. We need to get out of here and figure out our next steps. I sure could use a few dead clowns about now.”
“Dead ones?”
“Never mind.”
From behind them, someone yells, “Drop the gun!”
Breezy turns, firing at a flashlight in the aisle between the bleachers. The shot is deafening within the confines of the tent. Olivia doesn’t know if Breezy hit anyone—she’s too busy crouching and covering her ears. There are several more shots, but they seem to come from different angles. It’s the slight variation in the bone-shaking boom that has Olivia drop to her knees. She bends over, making herself as small as possible, crouching by one of the metal tent poles.
Breezy’s hit!
Red mist sprays out from her shoulder. Bits of torn flesh scatter across the sawdust. Her left arm hangs limp. She returns fire, crouching on one knee, but when she turns one way, someone shoots from the other direction. Blood explodes from the top of her thigh, causing her to fall sideways. She screams, collapsing on the sawdust. Olivia clings to the pole between the two center rings, trying to hide behind it as she kneels in the dirt.
Outside, the storm grows. The canvas flexes, surging in and out. It’s as though the tent is alive—it’s breathing with the changing air pressure. The poles around the edge of the tent lift. They sway in the wind, being held down only by loose ropes and straining wires. The thick aluminum poles at the heart of the big top shake. Loose tent flaps swing back and forth, slapping the sides of the tent.
Ropes come loose. The whole tent begins to rock in time with the surge of the wind howling overhead. The power goes out, plunging them into darkness. Lightning crackles through the sky, illuminating the night.
Breezy is lying on her back with her good arm stretched out over her head. She fires upside down, which is perplexing to Olivia. A body falls between the gaps in the bleachers.
Another shot from another angle blows out her right knee cap as she lies on her back with one leg slightly raised. Blood and bone spray across Olivia, catching her hair and staining her face. She screams. Breezy returns fire, but she’s rolling in agony, shooting blindly at the bleachers. She’s swearing. There’s a near-constant stream of expletives as she doubles over in pain on the sawdust.
Breezy drops the gun, leaving it lying in the bloody mud. With her good hand, she tries to stem the flow of blood from her leg. She’s in excruciating pain.
Olivia rushes to her. She grabs an old bandana from where it’s been shoved between the ropes running up the central pole. It’s greasy, but it’s all she’s got. She tries to apply pressure to the leg wound, but Breezy’s knee is a mess of shattered bone, torn tendons and blood-soaked muscle. Olivia presses hard, wanting to stem the flow of the bleeding. Breezy joins her, pushing her hands hard against Olivia’s and fighting the blood loss from a severed artery. It’s futile. Blood oozes between both of their fingers.
“This is it. It’s over,” Breezy says through gritted teeth, but something’s wrong. The storm rages outside. The gods are angry. Lighting flashes in staccato. Thunder rumbles through the air, but there’s no more gunfire. No one’s rushing them.
There’s movement in the shadows. In the half-light, Olivia sees something unnatural. Something rushes along the bleachers, but it’s not human. The curve of its back, the motion of its legs, the lope and gait—it’s a primate, but which species? It’s too small to be a gorilla, too big to be a monkey.
“What the hell?” Olivia mumbles. The creature jumps, leaping effortlessly for twenty feet before coming down on a cop. There’s screaming and gunfire, but it’s not directed at the two of them. It’s coming from outside the tent.
“Pull back. Fall back,” is yelled. The silhouette of a tiger is visible on the hood of one of the patrol cars outside. The headlights of a distant truck illuminate the animal as it leaps. The big cat pounces, landing on someone sheltering by a van and drags them into the darkness.
One by one, the lights on the various police vehicles go out, sweeping from her left to right, moving up toward the entrance on the brow of the hill. There’s screaming. A body is thrown into the outside of the canvas. The shape is unmistakable, having landed sideways. It slides to the ground and is pulled away.
Gunfire competes with the thunder, but it loses the battle, slowly falling silent.
Around the edge of the tent, poles lift off the ground. Ropes snap. Support wires break. They ping and twang, causing metallic sounds to resonate through the central metal poles. Olivia looks up. The storm ravages the big top. The canvas tears. Rain pours in, drenching her clothes.
Olivia crouches, leaning over Breezy, trying to shelter her as she bleeds out. The wind howls around them. One moment, they’re inside a massive tent. The next, it’s gone. In the blink of an eye, the big top is ripped from the ground and sent tumbling into the distance, catching in the trees.
The sideshow alley is in chaos. The rollercoaster has collapsed. The roof on the House of Horrors has been peeled off by the storm. Signs lie scattered on the grass. Several police vehicles have been flipped on their sides, tossed by the storm swirling around them. Trees have snapped in half. It looks like a tornado hit the fairgrounds.
Rain lashes Olivia’s face. Mud soaks into her jeans. She can barely see, but she has to look. She has to understand what’s happening. Bodies lie strewn in the fields.
A solitary figure walks toward her. Olivia keeps her trembling hands on Breezy’s shattered knee. She wants to run. She wants to spring to her feet and sprint toward the forest, but she can’t. It’s not fear that keeps her there. Whether she likes it or not, she can’t abandon Breezy. If Olivia is going to die, so be it, but it won’t be due to cowardice.
“I’m not scared of you,” she yells into the storm, but it’s a lie. She’s terrified. She’s calling out in a futile effort to instill bravery into her trembling hands.
A clown steps forward with jagged teeth.
“You should be.”
Rain sweeps over his dark hair. His face is pale. Blood drips from his mouth. Although he’s wearing white gloves, the bones in his forearms are visible. There’s no skin. No muscle. Bullet holes pepper his chest, but there’s no bleeding.
Breezy is either unconscious or dead. Her eyes have rolled into the back of her head. Her body is limp.
Olivia’s never been brave. She’s never stood for anything other than her bank balance. From her late teens onward, her ethics were defined by pretty clothes and sparkling jewelry. Buster changed that—and yet he didn’t. The change was always there, waiting beneath the surface, longing for the real her to awake. Buster knew that. He believed in her, and now she believes in herself—not her looks or her ego. Buster was right. She’s more than a facade, more than pretty clothes and youthful looks. She’s human.
The clown asks Olivia, “What do you want?”
“Answers.”
On either side of the clown, there are circus animals, only like him, they’re dead. Their fur is motley. The skull of one of them is visible in the crack of lightning rushing through the clouds. Blood drips from the canine incisors of a baboon.
“Help us,” she says.
Another clown walks up behind the first one. Her eyes are different colors. She holds her fingers to her lips, saying, “Ssss-shush!”
“Why?” Olivia asks. The rain hides her tears.
“Can’t you hear it?” the dead clown asks.
Olivia looks up. The clouds above her swirl with the formation of a tornado. Dark funnel clouds reach down from the storm. A vortex engulfs the fairgrounds. Bits of timber and broken branches fly past, circling out beyond them.
“Can’t you see it?” the female clown asks.
“Yes,” Olivia says, feeling her heart beating out of her chest.
Black metal breaks through the cloud cover. It’s smooth. There are no angles or edges, no rivets or panels. The storm rolls around the alien spacecraft, consuming it. The underside is as black as obsidian glass.
Fallen poles lift off the ground. Loose ropes rise like streamers. Cages roll across the field, joining the chorus of debris swirling around them. Clumps of sawdust, bits of grass and straw rise with the two women.
Olivia feels herself being drawn toward a single point of light amid the darkness. It shines like a star. Earth drops away. The trees swaying in the forest slip below her. Olivia holds Breezy to keep her from drifting away. The lights of Washington, D.C. are visible through the driving rain. The Potomac winds through the landscape beneath them.
A helicopter races along, staying low over the river. Red and white navigation lights reveal its path as it traces the Potomac. The chopper banks. Its rotors barely miss the treetops. Already, Olivia and Breezy are high above it, looking down on the craft as its spotlight comes on. Vast swaths of the fairgrounds are illuminated. The spotlight sweeps over dozens of bodies and several overturned police vehicles.
The clowns smile.
Revenge
The blinding light around Breezy forces her to open her eyes.
“You’re awake,” Olivia says, seeing her move and rushing to her side.
Breezy squints, trying to take in where she is but the brilliant white light reflecting around her makes it impossible to focus. There’s no respite from the light. Every surface is akin to a spotlight. The floor, the walls, the ceiling—if there even is a floor, wall or ceiling—are as white as the driven snow.
“Where am I?” she asks. Her throat is dry. She puts her hand out, pushing against what feels like a bunch of pillows. There are no rigid, hard surfaces. Everything’s elastic. It’s as though she’s in a gigantic foam pit. She sits up, and the foam behind her inflates, responding to her motion and keeping her upright.
“Trippy, huh?” Olivia says, dropping down on her knees. White foam surrounds her legs. “It’s like walking on marshmallows in here.”
“Where are we?”
“Dunno,” Olivia says, “but look at your knee.”
It’s only then Breezy realizes she’s not in pain.
“What the…?”
The blood that soaked into her jeans has dried. Torn threads lead down to clean, clear skin. She reaches out, taking hold of her leg, suddenly realizing her left shoulder has also been healed.
“How did they?” Breezy asks, still shielding her eyes with one hand. She squints, struggling to make out Olivia’s pale form in the saturated white light.
“I don’t know,” Olivia says. She’s squinting as well, but she’s not covering her eyes. “You were like that when I woke.”
“We were out cold? For how long?”
“How would I know? Your guys took my phone. It could have been hours, minutes, days, seconds. Hell, it could have been months. I dunno.”
“I don’t understand,” Breezy says. “You’re not a clown, right?”
“No.”
“So what do they want with you? Why did they rescue us? Just because we were there in the tent?”
The light around them fades. As darkness descends, the material they’re sitting on becomes transparent, allowing them to see the lights of Washington stretching out below them. It’s as though they’re floating on a cloud. From the layout of the buildings and the grids marked out by streetlights, they’ve got to be at least ten thousand feet up above the city. Breezy’s flown in and out of Ronald Reagan Airport on the south side enough times to recognize Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling from the air at night.
The dome of the nation’s Capitol building is visible to the northeast, with the National Mall stretching out before it. The Washington Monument looks small at this altitude. It rises over the grass parklands around the mall. The Lincoln Memorial at the far end of the mall is illuminated with spotlights. They’re several miles south of the White House, but it’s clear that’s where they’re heading. Arlington drifts by beneath them.
“How are they not seeing this?” Breezy asks. “We should be lighting up on radar.”
In the distance, a flight of six F-35 Lightning fighters soars over the city. Like the UFO, they remain below the cloud cover. There are four of them in formation, with two hanging back a few hundred yards. Their afterburners make for a deliberate show of force. If they were on a combat patrol, they’d be separated by several miles and flying at entirely different altitudes in stealth mode. The Pentagon wants them to be seen, but that presents Breezy with a problem. They’re not aware of the spacecraft closing in on the White House. If they were, they’d be engaging the UFO. Either that or running.
