With the rising sun in their eyes, they couldn’t tell which direction the mutants were facing. They just saw the sunlight reflecting off their shiny bald heads. Jean threw a butcher knife at one of the freaks and that was the end of that. When the deformed clown turned to face them, their friends saw the knife sticking out of his back and then the attacking clowns lost their element of surprise.
“Breakfast is coming…,” said a giggling freak with a distorted clown face three times too big for his body. His teeth alone were like ivory bricks.
Jean threw his remaining butcher knives at the freak clowns. One of them at a big-headed mutant, which barely pierced the skin of his massive red scalp, and the other at a long skinny clown seemingly made of pink taffy who caught the blade in his piranha-like teeth. The gang of freaks glared at the French clown with cold bug eyes. Then they giggled and squealed with delight.
“Hold it,” Vinnie said, skidding to a stop. “Fall back.”
When Jean stopped, he nearly tumbled to the ground. He was a sloppy runner. He didn’t seem very experienced at walking on his feet at all, as if he spent all his time every day riding a unicycle. “What’s wrong?”
Blue Nose realized it was suicide charging them without getting the jump on them first. They had to have killed two of them in the sneak attack to stand a chance against all six.
“Let them chase us,” Vinnie said.
“Why? Let’s just attack.”
“It’ll spread them out. Some of those freaks are fast and some are slow as snails. We let the fast ones come to us first and kill them before the slower ones get to us.”
“Okay, but we don’t lead them to François,” Jean said. “We lead them away.”
Vinnie nodded and crossed the street, leading the mutants in a new direction. He was careful to head for a wide-open desolate area. He didn’t want to run into another group of freaks and get attacked on both sides. That was one big problem with Vinnie’s plan. The other was leaving Jimmy Bozo with the wounded juggler. Who knew what the clown prince would do on his own.
“Here,” Vinnie said when they entered a large crumbling lot.
“This is no good,” Jean said. “We should lead them into an alley where they’d be forced to fight one or two at a time.”
“No, our biggest advantage over them is our speed,” Vinnie said, catching his breath and sizing up the mutants approaching them. “An alley would limit our movements and give them the upper hand. We’ll still be able to fight them one or two at a time as long as we don’t let the slow ones catch up.”
The first mutant to arrive was the tall wiry clown with the knife in his teeth. He giggled as he ran, his long arms stretched out wide enough to hug a truck.
“I’ll get this one,” Jean said. “You get the next.”
Vinnie nodded. He ran past the wiry clown and charged the one with the knife in his back. The clown was a brick wall, bulbous muscles and a frizzy green Afro with large black eyes and tiny nose and mouth. A real creeper of a clown, giggling in a little schoolgirl’s voice.
Blue Nose went straight for his legs, dropping all his weight on the creature’s ankles. The freak crumpled to the ground.
“Tickle me! Tickle me!” the mutant cried as he rolled in the crumbling asphalt.
Vinnie lowered the cleaver into the mutant’s face, splitting his nose in two.
“Tickle me!” The freak grabbed Vinnie by the throat, strangling him with both hands as Vinnie chopped at his distorted face.
“Tickle me!”
It took five swings before the freak loosened his grip. Then Vinnie used the meat hook to finish him off.
“Tickle…,” the mutant said, gargling blood as he died.
“Go for the legs,” Vinnie said. Their malformed bodies gave them horrible balance.
But when Vinnie turned around, Jean was in trouble. The mutant clown’s wiry arms were wrapped around the juggler like blue-and-pink-striped boa constrictors. The juggler was lifted off the ground, kicking his feet in the air.
“Jean!” Vinnie ran to him.
Vinnie was surprised how helpless the juggler was when he wasn’t on his unicycle working in tandem with his twin brother. Jean and François had trained to become masters at certain fighting techniques, but were completely inept at fighting any other way.
Before Blue Nose could get to Jean, the wiry clown pulled the Frenchman back toward his mutant friends. It was almost as if the freak knew Vinnie was trying to separate them in order to fight one at a time. The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by the freaks. Four of them boxed in Vinnie as the wiry clown wrapped his rubbery arms around Jean’s neck. The juggler couldn’t even gasp as the life was being squeezed out of him.
Not only was Vinnie horribly outnumbered, but more freaks were coming into the lot toward him. A large muscled mutant carried a metal rod with one end sharpened. He charged through the lot, aiming it at Vinnie’s head. Although Blue Nose thought there was a solution for every problem, his options had run out. The best he could hope for was taking one or two more of them out with him.
“Well, that’s the end of that,” Vinnie said.
His only consolation was the thought that maybe Jimmy Bozo would survive. If he ditched the wounded juggler and took his time sneaking out of The Sideshow, moving just one building at a time, it was possible he could get out of there on his own, even with his wounds. It was unlikely, but possible.
Surrounded by the giggling fun-house freaks, Vinnie composed himself. He raised his cleaver and meat hook, pointing them at the ferocious maniacs. On his cleaver hand, his wedding ring glistened in the morning sunlight.
He looked deep into the candy jewels on the gold ring. “I’m sorry, Samantha.”
As the freaks closed in on him, a spear was hurled into the air. It impaled Big Head through the chest. At first, Vinnie assumed that it was an accident. The mutant running toward him had thrown the spear and had to have been aiming for the trespasser. But then Vinnie saw the hat on the mutant’s head, the clover sticking out the top.
“Bernie?” Vinnie asked.
The mutant tipped his hat once at his old boss, then ripped the metal rod out of Big Head’s rib cage. The two of them back-to-back, the other freaks didn’t stand a chance.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
“I saw Jimmy’s car wrecked in Sideshow territory,” Bernie said in his distorted mutant voice. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
Vinnie targeted the legs of the freaks as his mutant friend speared them through their giggling faces. When it was only the stretchy freak left, Vinnie came up behind him and cut his throat with the meat hook. Jean fell to the ground, gasping for air. He looked up at Bernie as if he was about to attack.
“He’s with us,” Vinnie told the French clown. “He used to be a part of my crew.”
“Even if he was your friend, Sideshow Freaks shouldn’t be trusted,” Jean said. “We should go.”
Vinnie looked at Bernie. The ogrelike clown looked like he’d been through Hell. His body was caked in dirt and weeds. He smelled like rotting snake eggs and fish oil. Vinnie couldn’t imagine what his old friend must have gone through over the past few years living as a freak in The Sideshow.
“I’m not like the others,” Bernie said. “I’ve retained most of my sanity.”
“Let’s just go,” Jean said, cradling his aching throat.
Bernie looked at Vinnie. “Come with me. I can help you.”
The juggler shook his head. “You can’t trust him.”
“It’s not far,” Bernie gurgled.
Vinnie nodded at the mutant. “Let’s go.”