New Title 1 (4 page)

One final trip back to the freak show.

Jack’s tentative plan was to drive across the grass in the darkness and pull right up to the tent, duck under the flap, splash Scar-lip with gas, light a match, and send it back to hell.

But as he took the narrow road out to the marsh, he began to feel a crawling sensation in his gut.

Where were the tents?

Slewed his car to a halt on the muddy meadow and stared in disbelief at the empty space before his headlights. Jumped out and looked around. Gone. Hadn’t passed them on the road. Where—?

Heard a sound and whirled to find a gnarled figure standing on the far side of his car. In the backwash from the headlights he could make out a grizzled and unshaven old man, but not much more.

"If you’re looking for the show, you’re a little late. But don’t worry. They’ll be back next year."

"Did you see them go?"

"Course," he said. "But not before I collected my rent."

"Do you know where—?"

"M’name’s Haskins. I own this land, y’know, and you’re on it."

Jack’s patience was fraying. "I’ll be glad to get off it, just tell me—"

"I rent it out every year to that show. They really seem to like Monroe. But I—"

"I need to know where they went."

"You're a little old to be wantin' to run off with the circus, ain't you?" he said with a wheezy laugh.

That did it. "
Where did they go?
"

"Take it easy," the old guy said. "No need for shouting. They’re makin' the jump to Jersey. They open in Cape May tomorrow night."

Jack ran back to his car. South Jersey. Only a couple of possible routes for a caravan of trucks and trailers: the Cross Bronx Expressway to the George Washington Bridge would take them too far north; the Beltway to the Verrazano and across Staten Island would drop them into Central Jersey. That was the logical route. But even if he was wrong, the only way to Cape May was via the Garden State Parkway.

Jack gunned the car and headed there, figuring sooner or later he'd catch up to them.

5

Took Jack two frustrating hours just to reach Jersey. Midnight had come and gone and Cape May was still better than a hundred miles away. The limit on the Parkway along here was sixty-five. He set the cruise control on seventy and kept his foot off the gas pedal. If he had his way he’d be doing ninety, but that could put a cop on his tail and the last thing he needed was a cop.

His head ached. He’d had the radio on earlier and some station had played "You Keep Me Hanging On." Now it kept droning through his brain, Diana Ross’s voice like a power saw hitting a nail.

He’d figured a train of freak show trucks and trailers would be next to impossible to miss, but he damn near did. He was a good hundred yards past the New Gretna rest stop when something familiar about the motley assortment of vehicles clustered in the southern end of the parking lot registered in his consciousness.

He slowed, found an

OFFICIAL USE ONLY
cut-off, and made an illegal U-turn across the median onto the northbound lanes. Half a minute later he pulled into the rest area and found a parking spot near the Burger King / Nathan’s / TCBY sign where he had a good view of the freak show vehicles.

At this hour on a Wednesday morning in May, the rest area was fairly deserted. Except for a few couples straggling back from Atlantic city, Oz’s folk had the lot pretty much to themselves. But why this rest area of all places? This was the only one Jack knew of that had a State Police barracks for a neighbor.

But he’d come this far . . .

Jack opened the trunk and stared at the gasoline can. Then he pulled a silenced P98 .22 from where he’d hidden it beneath the spare. Teeny-tiny caliber, but at least it was quiet. He stuck it in the waistband under his warm-up and walked toward the Oddity Emporium vehicles.

Counted two eighteen-wheelers and twenty or so trailers and motor homes of various shapes and sizes and states of repair. As he neared he heard hammering sounds; seemed to come from one of the semi trailers. Two of the dog-faced roustabouts stepped from behind a motor home as Jack reached the perimeter of the cluster. They growled a warning and pointed back toward the food court.

"I want to see Oz."

More growls and more emphatic pointing.

"Look, he either gets a visit from me or I walk over to the State Police barracks there and have
them
pay him a visit."

The roustabouts didn’t seem to feature that idea. Looked at each other, then one hurried away. A moment later he was back. Motioned Jack to follow. Jack lowered the zipper on his warm-up top to give him quicker access to the P-98, then started moving.

One of the roustabouts stayed behind. As Jack followed the other on a winding course through the haphazardly parked vehicles, he saw a crew of workers trying to patch a hole in the flank of one of the semi trailers. He pulled up short when he saw the size of the hole: five or six feet high, a couple of feet wide. The edges of the metal skin were flared outward, as if a giant fist had punched through from within. And Jack was pretty sure that fist had been cobalt blue with yellow eyes.

Shit! He closed his eyes and slammed his fists against his thighs. He wanted to break something. What
else
could go wrong?

The roustabout had stopped ahead and was motioning him to hurry. Jack did just that, and soon came to the trailer he recognized as Oz’s. The man himself was standing before it, watching the repair work on the truck.

"It got loose, didn't it?" Jack said as he came up beside him.

The taller man rotated the upper half of his body and looked at Jack. His expression was anything but welcoming.

"Oh, it's you. You do get around."

"Had to feed it, didn't you? Had to bring it up to full strength. Damn it, you knew the risk you were taking."

"It was caged with iron bars. I thought—"

"You thought wrong. I warned you. I’ve seen that thing at full strength. Iron or not, that cage wasn’t going to hold it."

"I admire your talent for stating the obvious."

"Where is it?"

For the first time Jack detected a trace of fear in Oz's eyes.

"I don't know."

"Swell." He glanced around. "Where's that guy Hank?"

"Hank? What could you want with that imbecile?"

"Just wondering if he was bothering it again."

The boss slammed a bony fist into a palm. "I thought he'd learned his lesson. Well, he'll learn it now." He turned and called into the night. "Everyone—find Hank! Find him and bring him to me at once!"

They waited but no one brought Hank. Hank was nowhere to be found.

"It appears he’s run off," Prather said.

"Or got carried off."

"We found no blood near the truck, so perhaps the young idiot is still alive."

"He is alive," said a woman’s voice.

Jack turned and recognized the three-eyed fortune teller from the show.

"What do you see, Carmella?" Oz said.

"He is in the woods. He stole one of the guns and he carries a spear. He is full of wine and hate. He is going to kill it."

"Oh, I doubt that," Oz said. "Going to get himself killed is more likely."

Jack understood taking a gun, but not the spear, then he remembered the pointed iron rod Hank and Bondy had used to torture it. Neither would do the job. If Hank ever caught up with the rakosh, he wouldn't last long.

He stared at the mass of trees rising on the far side of the Parkway. "We've got to find it."

"Yes," Oz said. "Poor thing, alone out there in a strange environment, disoriented, lost, afraid."

Jack couldn’t imagine Scar-lip afraid of anything, especially anything it might run across around here.

"Where’d the rakosh break out?"

"About a mile back. Right near mile marker fifty-one-point-three, to be exact. We stopped but could not stay parked on the shoulder—we’d have had the police asking what happened—so we pulled in here."

"We’ve got to find it."

"Nothing I'd like better, although I have a feeling you'd prefer to see it dead."

"Very perceptive."

"An interesting area here," Oz said. "Right on the edge of the Pine Barrens."

Jack cursed under his breath. The Barrens. Shit. How was he going to locate Scar-lip in there—if that was where it was? This whole area was like a time warp. Near the coast you had a nuclear power plant and determinedly quaint but unquestionably twentieth century towns like Smithville and Leeds Point. West of the Parkway was wilderness. The Barrens—a million or so unsettled acres of pine, scrub brush, vanished towns, hills, bogs, creeks, all pretty much unchanged in population and level of civilization from the time the Indians had the Americas to themselves. From the Revolutionary days on, it had served as a haven for people who didn't want to be found. Hessians, Tories, smugglers, Lenape Indians, heretical Amish, escaped cons—at one time or another, they'd all sought shelter in the Pine Barrens.

And now add a rakosh to its long list of fugitives.

"We're not too far from Leeds Point, you know," Prather said, an amused expression flitting across his sallow face. "The birthplace of the Jersey Devil."

"Save the history lesson for later. Are you sending out a search party?"

"No. No one wants to go, and I can't say I blame them. But even if some were willing, we've got to be set up in Cape May tonight for our show tomorrow."

"That leaves me."

If Scar-lip got too much of a head start, he’d never find it . . . which Jack could live with unless the drive to kill Vicky was still fixed in its dim brain. Seemed unlikely, but Jack couldn’t take the chance.

"You’re not seriously thinking of going after it."

Jack shrugged. "Know somebody who’ll do it for me?"

"May I ask why?" Oz said.

"Take too long to tell. Let’s just leave it that Scar-lip and I go back a ways, and we’ve got some unfinished business."

Oz stared at him a moment, then turned and began walking back toward his trailer.

"Come with me. Perhaps I can help."

Jack doubted that, but followed and waited outside as Oz rummaged within his trailer. Finally he emerged holding something that looked like a Gameboy. He tapped a series of buttons, eliciting a beep, then handed it to Jack.

"This will lead you to the rakosh."

Jack checked out the thing: a small screen with a blip of green light blinking slowly in one corner. He rotated his body and the blip moved.

"This is the rakosh? What’d you do—rig it with a LoJack?"

"In a way. I have electronic tell-tales on our animals. Occasionally one gets loose and I’ve found this to be an excellent way to track them. Most of them are irreplaceable."

"Yeah. Not too many two-headed goats wandering around."

"Correct. The range is only two miles, however. As you can see, the creature is still within range, but may not be for long. Operation is simple: Your position is center screen; if the blip is left of center, the creature is to the left of you; below center, it’s behind you, and so on. You track it by proceeding in whatever direction moves the blip closer to the center of the screen. When it reaches dead center, you’ll have found your rakosh. Or rather, it will have found you."

Jack swiveled back and forth until the locator blip was at the top of the faintly glowing screen. He looked up and found himself facing the shadowy mass of trees west of the Parkway. Just as he’d feared: Scar-lip was in the pines.

But this’ll help me find it, he thought.

And then something occurred to him.

"You’re being awfully helpful."

"Not at all. My sole concern is for the rakosh."

"But you know I’m going to kill it if I find it."

"
Try
to kill it. The pines are full of deer and other game, but the rakosh can’t use them for food. As you know, it eats only one thing."

Now Jack understood. "And you think by giving me this locator, you’re sending it a care package, so to speak."

Oz inclined his head. "So to speak."

"We shall see, Mr. Prather. We shall see."

"On the contrary, I doubt anyone will ever see you again."

"I’m not suicidal, trust me on that."

"But you can’t believe you can take on a rakosh single-handed and survive."

"Wouldn’t be the first time."

Jack headed for his car, relishing the look of concern on Oz’s face before he’d turned away. Had he sounded confident enough? Good act. Because he was feeling anything but.

Jack hurried to the food area and bought half a dozen bottles of Snapple, plus an Atlantic City souvenir T-shirt, a ciggy lighter, and a newspaper. Then he moved his car to a far corner of the rest area by the

RIDESHARE INFO
sign and emptied the Snapple bottles onto the asphalt.

Shame to waste the stuff but it seemed Snapple was about the only thing that came in glass bottles these days.

He pulled a glasscutter from his burglary kit and began scoring the flanks of the bottles. A trick he’d learned from an old revolutionary. Upped the chances these babies would shatter on contact.

He began tearing up the shirt. Then he opened the trunk and fished out the gas can and a flashlight. He filled the bottles with gas and recapped them.

He gently placed the six gasoline-filled bottles into a canvas shoulder bag and worked sections of newspaper between them to keep them from clinking, then threw the pieces of T-shirt on top.

6

Jack trained his flashlight beam on the scrub at the base of the slope. He’d crossed the southbound lanes and trotted down to the 51.3 mile marker and stopped at the tree line. He was looking for broken branches and found them. Lots of them. Something big had torn through here not long ago.

He stepped through and followed the path of destruction. When he was sure he was out of sight of the highway, he stopped and pulled out the electronic locator. He was facing west and the blip was at the top edge of the screen. Had to move. Scar-lip was almost out of range.

He pressed forward until he came to a narrow path. A deer trail, most likely. Flashed his beam down and saw what looked like deer tracks in the damp sand, but they weren’t alone: deep imprints of big, alien, three-toed feet, and work-boot prints coming after. Scar-lip, with Hank following—obviously behind because the boot prints occasionally stepped on the rakosh tracks.