Masquerade

  by

  Heather Farthing

  Chapter one

  The world had ended.

  I suppose it doesn’t matter how.

  The first way it could have ended is with the computer, a wall-sized, steam-powered behemoth of glowing diodes and greenish screens. A supercomputer, built to help mankind, it instead decided mankind would be better off serving it, some as mechanically-enhanced soldiers, some as twisted genetic experiments.

  The nineteenth century denizens of Steampunk Singularity, it what is ordinarily the Metropolis zone of technology-themed thrill rides, are preoccupied with the service of their Master, of bringing new flesh for upgrades. People who wander there are likely to disappear, reappearing as a loyal and dutiful servants, body parts replaced by machinery, or distinctly nonhuman features, such as claws, tails, or fangs.

  The second way it could have ended is…to have just stopped.

  It could have been nuclear war. It could have been a mass coronal ejection. Perhaps it was some kind of disease or pollutant, and it every well could have been all or none. The point is: it ended, and left nothing but blackened ash behind.

  The buildings are crumbling. The trees are nothing more than brittle charcoal sticks. Bodies burn, but don’t decay. What little sun still shines is angry, red, and capable of leaving third-degree burns.

  The are some that would think that nothing could live in such a place, and they would normally be right, but yet something moves in the dark. Somehow, the plague doctor-like carrion birds have managed to survive, dressing themselves in full-body coats, flat hats, and snouted or beaked masks.

  Curious by nature, the carrion birds are fascinated by humans, our bare skin, or shiny jewelry, or the logos on our clothes. Masked and silent, sometimes the sneak up behind, sometimes they slide on their knees, kicking up sparks in their wake.

  Maybe, instead, the world ended with some kind of pathogen, not like the one that nearly closed the event and sent people behind masks. This pathogen, thought to be some kind of prion, is more insidious. Found in tainted cotton candy, popcorn, and circus peanuts, it began with laughter that never stopped, a wide grin, alterations to the pigmentation in skin and hair.

  The affected became clowns, driven mad by the disease eating their brain. Always searching for new acts and new playmates, the world has become one giant circus, and the performers aren’t picky about safety practices. Step one foot inside Psycho Circus and you’re the audience volunteer.

  The final way was through agriculture. Astro Adventure is usually the home of outdated sci-fi, flying cars and jetpacks, and stuff, 1950s values under a veneer of rayguns and martians. Then the animals decided that this wholesome family dynamic should be theirs, and so they took it, herding humans for fun and profit.

  Consider the way humans treat animals, for better or for worse. Now imagine that your beloved pet, curled loyally on your bed by your feet, has decided that a spay or neuter would improve your quality of life, or that it would be kinder to put you down, now that you’re getting on in years.

  Now imagine that the cows in the field have decided to throw a barbecue, and ask yourself: where did they get the meat?

  There’s also Lost Garden, set between Kiddie Carnival and Metropolis, where the imagined becomes real. While Kiddie Carnival becomes Psycho Circus and Metropolis is split between Steampunk Singularity and Soul Survivor, Lost Garden’s haunted roots have taken hold. They say the castle is haunted, and a headless horseman can be seen on the path to the pirate adventure.

  I’m a giggling mess after the dragon dark ride, the one in the castle. I’ve never been inside the park before, and it was everything I hoped it would be, even if the scares are a bit light this year.

  It’s about sunset now, and I’m getting ready for dinner. The diner just at the edge of Metropolis, where Soul Survivor meets Steampunk Singularity, is supposed to be really good. The burger’s are cheap, but to die for, and on Halloween, that really means something.

  The haunt sliders are out. They were originally designed as plague doctors, and I would be walking through a village that died out due to plague in a matter of hours, but someone found that distasteful, so the outside artist group they brought in had to suddenly retool everything at the last minute. The remnants still show, in their sparking canes and flat hats, the common design of the masks being largely birdlike.

  A female, with a black tulle skirt and a feather-print cloak, follows behind a group of men, watching them from the shadows. When they notice her, she drops to her knees and slides headlong toward them, stopping just short of knocking them over, her knees and the tip of her cane sparking.

  A taller one, a man with a vulture-inspired mask, slides toward the group in front of me, sending them scattering. Upon seeing their luminous blue bracelets, he loses interest, moving past them toward me, where he bows gracefully, dragging his cane along the ground to show me the sparks.

  A clattering in my ear makes me jump. It’s a smaller haunt slider with a more trench warfare-style gas mask, clicking the sheathes of his fingers together just behind my ears to startle me, which the three of them find hilarious, heaving with silent laughter. The photo opportunity with the vulture one was a distraction.

  The short one paces a circle around me, evidently examining my tail, then holds his hands up over his hat to mimic my eared headband. His costume looks familiar, the shape of the mask, circular filters on either side, and the faux leather coat and empty rucksack, a prop shovel slung through the loops. I think it’s the one that doesn’t stay on the hanger.

  I smile politely, forgetting I’m wearing a mask, as I move through the crowd. The taller vulture has found new prey, the shorter one is posing, leaning against a park bench, pretending to examine a blackened skeleton to the delight of picture-taking onlookers.

  The smoky, ruinous wasteland of Soul Survivor gives way to the cobblestone streets and Victorian facades of Steampunk Singularity. The smell of popcorn from Psycho Circus fades away, giving way to the greasy, fried foods of the 80s-style diner.

  Between it and me is a carriage pulled by a beautiful, black stallion. His legs from the knees down are glass and clockwork, with gears and pulleys. He turns to look at me, revealing a spiraled, glass and bronze horn, and the metallic sheeting that makes up the left side of his face, a single red light inside a camera-like aperture where the eye should be. He stands next to a sign that reads “Repairs while you wait,” and then a list of body parts and pricing.

  One great, black hoof stamps the dirt. I’m impressed, because I didn’t know it could do anything but turn its head. Air blows out of its nose in agitation, raising steam in the chilly October air, another convincing effect.

  A woman has her skirt pulled up over her knees, revealing brass and clockwork under glass casing, not terribly different from the horse.

  “I can’t feel my legs,” she whimpers.

  “Funny,” I smile politely, waiting for the crowd to move so that I can move on.

  Beyond her, a soldier in a dark blue greatcoat shoves someone, who must be plant, against a wall, raising his brass rifle and firing. The squib goes off to great effect, and what looked like a regular parkgoer drops to the ground.

  Apparently startled by the noise, the horse raises up on his hind legs, screaming. Transfixed, I watch how convincing the moment is, the ripple in the muscle. Whoever their outside consultants were, they really outdid themselves.

  The horse comes down in slow motion, like it’s actually moving forward, like I might actually get hit. I’m swept into strong arms, smelling strongly of leather and pumpkin spice, pushed to the cobblestones just in time for the horse to clear us, shooting off into Soul Survivor at breakneck speed, heavy leather covering me to protect my head.

  That seems…really dangerous. All the power to them if they made a fully-independent robot, but letting it shoot off into the crowd like that seems like a lawsuit Wonderland isn’t going to want to deal with.

  “Flesh for the Master!” a soldier shouts, discharging is rifle into the air, sending the crowd scattering.

  I climb off the ground, dusting myself off. A hunchbacked mutant with extra, stunted arms on its back slams a meaty fist into the nearest parkgoer, shouting the same battlecry.

  Have I wandered into some kind of show? Shouldn’t there be a warning?

  The one that knocked me out of the way, it’s the short haunt slider, the one with the World War Something-era gas mask, coughing lightly, probably from the smell of gunpowder.

  “What’s happening?” I ask him. “Is this part of the show?”

  “This isn’t us,” he replies, sounding worried.

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  A mutant with one large arm dragging the ground lifelessly grabs at me, sending me back to the ground, pain erupting from my back, chanting, “Flesh for the Master!” Hissing, I spray venom toward his eyes, but it’s the haunt slider, lashing out savagely with his shovel that drops the creature, dazedly moaning about its master.

  A volley of gunfire goes off somewhere. There’s screaming, now, the smell of blood. A smell of burning and ash like black snowfall is blowing on a frigid breeze from Soul Survivor. Something with a human head and eight spiderlike legs made of rebar is striding purposefully towards us, pausing to spin its head in a circle, casting a red light from its eyes.

  “Flesh for the master!” it cries mechanically.

  “Get behind the diner!” the haunt slider insists, pulling me up and pushing me toward the glowing neon.

  A nozzle emerges from the spider’s mouth. Flames erupt. Flesh burns. People scream.

  “Flesh for the master!”

  Without another word or second glance, I follow the haunt slider into an alcove where the restaurant hides the entrance to the service tunnels, where parkgoers won’t see it. The good news is: that means we’re out of the flow of the crowd. The bad news is: the door doesn’t have a knob on this side.

  “What was that?” I whimper. “You’re going to get someone killed!”

  “That’s not us,” he repeats, still holding his prop shovel. “That’s…”

  He stops talking long enough to cough behind his mask, and press a button on his shovel, extending it from about a foot to just long enough for him. Without completing his thought, he jams it into the doorframe, about where the knob would be on the other side, and wedges it open.

  “That’s cool,” I tell him. “I thought it was just a prop.”

  “It is,” he replies, sounding a bit confused or distracted, pulling it out of the door and pressing the button. The shovel’s handle slides in on itself, putting it at its original length. One of the edges on the bowl is serrated, I hadn’t noticed that before.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” I ask, patting down my hips with a stab of panic. “I think I dropped mine…”

  Using his shovel, he taps one of his metal knee-plates.

  “Right…probably would have broken it…”

  As the spider-thing approaches, I follow him inside, stepping down a ramp toward the service tunnels. The lights come on automatically, responding to our movement, lighting up the room in sickly florescent lighting. He slams the door closed, leaning against it, still holding his shovel one-handed, trembling slightly, gasping for breath and coughing lightly.

  “You shouldn’t have come into work with a cough…” I mumble.

  He draws in a ragged breath, a plume of candy corn-scented gas emanating from the side filters in his mask. I taste blood, tangy and metallic, under the sweet vapor. Hit the Road, Jack is playing over the speakers.

  Something slams hard against the door, making him jump. Next to the ramp is a mostly-empty vending machine. Acting on impulse and instinct, I start trying to push it, just enough to tip it. The haunt slider appears by my side, lifting from the bottom. It topples over, pinning the door closed, the plexiglass front cracks and all the snacks knocking loose.

  Coughing, the haunt slider moves to the folding table in the center of the room, leaning on it, groaning in pain and rubbing his throat and chest, like you do when you have a bad cold and lots of congestion.

  His hands are shaking, his shoulders trembling. He looks like his knees might give out at any second, but he manages to hold himself steady, but just barely.

  “What’s happening…to us…?” he asks vaguely, staring down at his upturned palms, flexing his fingers, like he’s never seen them before.

  A wracking coughs send spasms throughout his body, driving him to the floor. A bit of red sprays with the amber of the burning leaves-scented smoke pouring from his mask, dissipating into the air.

  “You might breathe better without that,” I tell him, kneeling beside him to help him get the mask off, hands at the straps holding it to the back of his snood.

  His fingers wrap around my hands, the metal sheathes cool against my cheap Halloween gloves. The leather clings to his hands like a second skin, supple and buttery, as he pushes me away.

  “No…touching…please…”

  His voice is hoarse and raspy, the vapor still with a bloody taste, autumn leaves giving away to pumpkin spice.

  “How are you doing that?” I ask, looking for tubes to connect to some kind of sprayer, maybe inside his rucksack. Wouldn’t that be bad for his back, during his sliding?

  “He…just…does…?”

  Looking a bit dazed and somewhat confused, his focuses on the overturned vending machine. He scrambles to his feet and with a powerful kick from feet that don’t quite look right, smashes the plexiglass in, then starts filling the inner lining of his coat with snack cakes and candy bars.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Something’s wrong…” he mumbles, pausing in his scavenging. “We feel…what’s happening…to him?”

  The hoarse rasping in his voice fades into something more like poisonous fog crawling insidiously across a barren wasteland. He’s staring at his hands again, confused, but then shakes his head and goes back to filling his pockets.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  He looks up at me with a moment of something approaching clarity.

  “We know you…you’re the girl with the vacuum…that puts him back on…his hanger when he falls…”

  A shiver runs down my spine, causing my hood to spread again. It’s possible he’s seen me on the job, as he was getting into costuming, but that has to be some of the creepiest way to phrase that imaginable.

  There’s a phone by the door to the tunnels. I grab for it, dialing the emergency line. It rings…and rings…and rings, and then disconnects.

  Must be a busy night. I didn’t even know they could do that.

  “Was…that…helpful…?” the masked man asks, having finished emptying the already sparse vending machine.

  “No, not really.”

  He pauses, falters, as if having forgotten what he’s supposed to be doing, then shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. I see the remote on the tabletop and grab it, turning the television on as he moves to the refrigerator, loading up on water bottles.

  The television lights up with a news broadcast, something about civil unrest, which is pretty common these days. It describes rioters disguised as Halloween merry-makers, and then the feed cuts out abruptly.

  Something heavy slams against the door, making me jump. The haunt slider, driven by some sort of compulsion, continues his scavenging.

  “Hey,” I tell him, placing my hand on his shoulder.

  “No…touching…please…” he wheezes through candy corn smoke, never looking up.

  I have no idea where he’s putting those water bottles. They just disappear into the coat, apparently adding neither weight nor bulk.

  “They’re going to come through the door,” I whimper. “We can’t stay here.”

  He falters. The coughing has stopped, but he still doesn’t look right. He seems distracted. I’ve only known him for, like, five minutes, but it seems like he’s…not himself.

  I give him a harder shove, which draws his reproachful attention. He stares at me, a capsaisin smell like cutting fresh peppers showing his displeasure.

  “We gotta go,” I plead. “It isn’t safe…”

  Never looking away from me, he places one more bottle in his coat, and then retrieves his shovel from the floor next to him. His vapor fades from candy corn to a purplish mist of lavender and chamomile, and he holds his shovel defensively, nodding to me in a placating sort of way.

  I feel the tension relax. Already I feel a bit calmer, whether it’s the sight of him ready for action, or the calming effect lavender is supposed to have.

  Taking point, he opens the door to the downward incline of the tunnels. Someone screams and something else roars, but we’re caught between a rock and a hard place, and the only direction is forward.