Everybody Scream! by Jeffrey Thomas Page B

sounds, loud music.
    “Good thing we came early,” noted Noelle, taking in all the cars, and a few school-type buses.
    “ Nyah! ” Bonnie cried, accelerating forward. Noelle screamed and fell into the back seat. The hovercar shot into a prime parking spot ahead of another vehicle, which slammed on its brakes to avoid hitting them. A group of Asians inside poked out their heads to scream in a language they didn’t know.
    “Blast off! ” Bonnie yelled.
    “You want to get us murdered? ” Noelle whined, scrabbling into a sitting position in the back seat.
    The car of Asians spun out its tires, raising a dust cloud, and moved along. A beer bottle was flung out in its wake but missed Bonnie’s car by a wide margin. “Greasy slants,” Bonnie snorted.
    “They could catch up with us in the carnival,” said Noelle, climbing out of the car.
    Bonnie got out after raising the convertible top “Ease up, girl. We’re here to have fun, right? Come on.” And Bonnie started across the crunchy gravely dirt.
    Noelle ran several steps to catch up with her. They started up the ramp, which was paved but cracked, weeds growing through fissures. Trash in the tall grass to either side. Louder sounds, louder music, a blended and blurred graffiti of noise, just ahead, just out of sight. For those sounds were a thing that could be seen; the noise was the carnival, all of the carnival one big sprawling noise machine, noise taking the visible forms of bright lights, bright colors, cotton candy and cheap teddy bears. A world built of solidified noise, like the deep city…all just over the hill.

    At first there had been the intense dam-like build up of bodies, but after the gates were opened and the initial, anxious flood had burst in, the river flowed forward steadily at a more relaxed pace. The KeeZees were at the gate, to give potential troublemakers something to think about from the start. In fact, one of them had seized and tranquilized, already, a teenage Hispanic boy who had fought with a Choom boy when the gates first opened and elbows began to jab and shoulders to butt. A knife had come out, down by the boy’s leg where he figured no one could see him use it clearly, and he cut the Choom boy’s buttock deeply. The first arrest and first med patient of the day.
    Mitch Garnet was there at the start also, with a large number of the security team the town had hired; big black-garbed, black-helmeted men with long black riot sticks that could give cattle prod-like charges of varying intensity. Most of these men were in their forties and big-bellied. The perfect men to chase a fleeing teenage mugger or brawler, Mitch sneered inwardly, watching the gathering of them glower meaningfully at the influx of varied fair-goers. They wore two guns each–one on the hip and one in a shoulder holster; one to kill, one to tranquilize. The tranquilizers worked fast, but some beings were immune, some punks took drugs that nullified the effect, many people wore body armor, jackets with bullet and ray-proof mesh sewn in. Mitch’s silver windbreaker contained such a mesh. He would carry a clip or two of tranquilizer bullets, but mostly he stuck to the explosive shells. He’d rather make out all the pain in the ass forms to establish justifiable homicide than to risk being a homicide himself, or risk innocent bystanders becoming a background of targets.
    Standing off to one side, a cup of icy soda in hand, Mitch scrutinized the people filing up to the gate, which was not charged now, although where it ran off to left and right as a high meshed fence it became charged, completely surrounding the fairgrounds, with a tell-tale hum and a distinct blue glow to dissuade the foolish. But not every fool would be dissuaded from trying to break in; after all, the charge had to be kept low in case small children free of their parents approached it. The town security boys had a video map in their trailer which showed the outline of the fence, and this would flash