“Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhh!”
For an instant, Patty wasn’t sure who was screaming; then she realized the ape-man’s tape was caught in a loop and was playing the same ugly cry over and over again. She held fast to the man’s gun hand with her left hand, while with her right hand she went for his eyes with her finger nails. She felt the nails part flesh, then tear sickeningly into his sockets. His screams were worse than the ape-man’s.
Patty spun away from the man, who was now groping blindly around, and grabbed the gun from his limp hand. She turned back in the ape-man’s direction just as the first man was shoving it off him, his gun coming up.
Patty shot first. Once, twice, as many times as she could pull the trigger until the distinctive click sounded, and then she kept on pulling in her panic. Ten feet before her the gunman let the pistol slide from his grasp. He looked more confused than anything else, as a pool of blood gushed from his upper chest. His head collapsed suddenly, but his eyes stayed open. The second man was still wailing, clutching desperately at his ruined eyes.
Patty pulled herself together again. These two weren’t the only ones left. More would be following them into the fun house, and she had to make use of this darkened labyrinth of a hiding place.
She crossed through the manufactured swamp area, complete with its eerie night sounds and moist, fetid walls, and realized she was still holding the spent pistol in her hand. She dropped it and felt strangely naked. Listening intently for sounds of pursuit, she kept walking, but the fun house’s taped sound effects made it almost impossible for her to hear anything.
Patty approached the chamber of horrors and crossed a threshold that triggered the monsters into motion. The mummy lunged from an upright crate. Frankenstein’s monster walked an unvarying path — forward and back — thanks to a spring connecting him mechanically to the wall. Dracula rose from a coffin that opened with a squeal and a whine.
The coffin! Maybe, just maybe…
Patty dashed over to it and stripped off the spring mechanism that opened it mechanically at regular intervals. The coffin top began to drop down suddenly, nearly crushing her hand. Chewing down her pain, Patty pushed herself into the coffin and squeezed the waxen vampire figure to the side. Then she closed the lid back down, the darkness swallowing her.
Zandor reached the Ferris wheel just after Blaine. Together they threw pieces of the shattered wooden platform and steel housing away to clear a path into the debris.
“Patty!” Blaine yelled as he dug through the mess. “Patty!”
At last he could see into the ruins of the chamber containing the Ferris wheel’s works. A single shape lay there, partially entombed by ruptured and splintered parts.
John Lynnford coughed out dust and dirt when Blaine reached him. His face was mined with cuts and lacerations.
“Where’s Patty?” Blaine demanded.
“They saw us under here,” Lynnford muttered, “so she left. To save me.”
“When, dammit?”
“Four minutes ago, maybe five. She went in the direction of the fun house.”
Patty regretted her strategy instantly. It wasn’t just dark in the coffin, it was black — and the figure’s poorly kept wax smelled like death itself. The coffin trembled slightly. Footsteps, lots of them, were thundering into the chamber. There were voices, too, rising in muffled fashion over the chamber’s sound effects. There would be no chance of escape at all, if the enemy lifted the coffin’s lid.
Frantically Patty began to feel about in the blackness for a weapon, but all she could come up with was the screwdriver she had used before. She took it from her pocket and held it tight with a sweat-soaked hand.
The footsteps were coming closer. The coffin trembled a bit more. She willed the lid not to open, but the lid began to rise, slivers of half-light puncturing the blackness of her tomb. She froze for a moment, then plunged the screwdriver outward at the blurring figure. A steellike hand grabbed her wrist in midair as the coffin opened all the way.
“Hope you don’t mind if I wake you up, Countess,” said Blaine McCracken, Zandor the strongman was peering over his shoulder.
Blaine helped a trembling Patty from the coffin, who then embraced him.
“I liked you better as a blonde,” he said, easing her away. “Tell me, what brings you to Rio?”
“Information, McCracken, and none of it pleasant. I found out what the victims all had in common. They were all adopted, each and every one. And many had extensive dealings with the Japanese.”
“Including your father?”
“Most certainly. But that’s not all. I asked the system to generate a list of potential victims based on the profile. I remembered that’s what you asked for.”
“Why is it I think you found some names I’m not going to like hearing?”
“Because I did, McCracken. One, anyway: Virginia Maxwell.”
Chapter 26
“Head of the gap,” Blaine muttered, all the levity gone from his expression.
“I told Sal, and he tried to warn her. Next thing I know he’s calling me at sunrise to tell me someone tried to kill him and I’m next on the list. I just made it out.”
“I should have known, dammit. I should have caught on…”
“Caught on to what?”
“Later. Once we’re out of here.”
McCracken’s face was grimly set as he led Patty through the fun house.
“Sal sent me down here to tell you. He said you’d know what to do.”
“I’ve got a few ideas.”
“What’s it all mean, Blaine? What’s going on?”
They emerged into the night air, and Patty saw John Lynnford being carried across the midway on a stretcher. She rushed over to him.
“You’ve looked better,” she told him, taking his hand.
Lynnford grimaced. Bandages soaked with blood were wrapped tightly around his shoulder.
“Keeps me from thinking about my leg, anyway,” he joked, managing a weak smile. “That’s a first in quite a while.”
McCracken caught up with them and checked Lynnford’s wound. “Bullet passed straight through. Minimal bone damage, by the look of it. You’re lucky.”
“And you’re Blaine McCracken.”
“Ah, once again my reputation precedes me!”
Lynnford’s eyes swept the midway. “All of it deserved, apparently.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lynnford propped himself up on his good arm. “For what? You saved my circus. You saved her life.”
“All in a day’s work.”
“You’ll still need help getting out of the country. Even more so now.”
“Suggestions will be entertained.”
“I’ve got a few.” Lynnford winced in pain. “Just let me get patched up a little.”
“No sweat,” said McCracken, his eyes falling on Reverend Jim. “I’ve got someone else I’ve got to see.”
Reverend Jim met him halfway. They both looked at the cluster of his boys gathered around a pair who lay still in the night.
“We lost two,” Hope said sadly. “Edson and one of the older ones.”
Blaine’s stomach sank. “Both dead, thanks to me.”
“It wasn’t your fault. If they had done what you said—”
“It was my fault, all of it. They were doing fine in your world. They weren’t ready for mine.”
“Can’t say I ever met another sort who was.”
“But that didn’t stop me from using them, did it?”
“It was what they wanted, governor.”