The wing whipped out again, smooth like a beetle’s wing case, but with a jagged outer edge tipped with a long thin barb. Rust glimpsed purple webbing at the underside of the wing. Then came the head of the thing, solidifying out of the dark as it moved closer to the bars. While the hopper nymphs had oval-shaped heads, this new form had protracted skulls and a large neck-frill the texture of calcified bone. A ‘cap’ of iridescent purple exoskeleton fed down between the eyes – which were the same black pustules that belonged to the nymph form, but greatly enlarged. Head feathers spiked out from the neck-frill, exotically pinkish. Mother Nature’s poison signifier. Filamentous antennae fluttered through the bars. The pincers were bowed tusks of shimmering black.
A second head loomed alongside the first. Rust kept her fangs on display. She backed slowly away from the cage. What had happened to the divide bars that separated the cage in two and kept the hoppers apart? Rust’s gaze zigzagged between the ooze at the rim of the cage and the stumps of the dividing bars, wilted like wax. Her brow swelled. Were the front bars also thinning at their base, liquidised by the new drip of mucous?
Below, the elevator rig started up again. The huge bugs rounded on their surroundings, kicking out with tremendous long hind legs that thwacked the floor so the whole wagon vibrated.
“Nasty crawlers.” Rust maintained eye contact while making her retreat. Passing out of view, she scampered noiselessly back to her cage.
Hauling back the bolt, she bounded inside.
“Pig!” She pawed the robust shape of the sleeping man.
“Let me sleep some, woman!” Pig Heart adjusted his position and fell back asleep, snores breaking out one side of his mouth in spit bubbles.
“The shitter must drag itself out my stink bed now.” She kicked him. “Hoppers have grown big and black. Real ugly.”
Pig Heart’s watery weak eyes shot wide. “Hoppers gone black, you say?” He struggled to sit upright, face twisting against the pain, and rested his elbows on his knees. He stayed still and appeared to listen. The noises came again – the distinctive click-clack accompanied by the heavy drag of razored wings through the sage.
“We gotta warn the others,” he said in a sharp whisper.
“Bring us in real quiet, Das.” D’Angelus shifted his trekker’s hat further back on his head. He squinted up at the huge circus tent billowing in the air overhead. His lips tucked back.
But Jaxx caught the sense of something dangerous. He’d tracked Cyber Circus on instinct, but now he detected a new scent – fustiness which reminded him of animals in close quarters.
“Something’s amiss.” His gaze snatched every which way. The desert was empty except for the dirigible, the strengthening dust cloud and the burrower, which sledged on, spraying dust either side and leaving a deep trench in its wake.
“Time to shoot that bird from the sky!” exclaimed D’Angelus, all smiles.
“Stretch string’s all out, plus we’re better off maintaining speed to keep up with the circus rather than offloading the men to work the cannons,” Das offered. He kept a tight hold on the burrower’s steering rod, the red-lensed goggles he wore giving him an insectile appearance.
“Gotta use the Duster in the nose of this old gal then.” D’Angelus unbuckled his harness and reached up to yank on the roof hatch, drawing it down and sealing them in.
“If we’re gonna stand a chance of aiming the thing right, we’ve gotta dive. But it can’t be deep, else we risk striking down into the Rongun mines.” Das took a hand off the wheel and scrubbed the base of his neck nervously.
D’Angelus shrugged. “We don’t need to dive deep. Just enough to get a steep trajectory on the upturn so we can fire into the sky when we surface.”
“We’re not alone,” said Jaxx suddenly. He hadn’t known the fact before he said it aloud.
His words went unheeded. D’Angelus clipped back into his harness. He glanced at Jaxx, flashing his customary dead man’s grin.
“May your spirits bring us luck, Siriense!”
Up front, Das stretched a hand to the bank of variegated mechanisms and revolved a large dial by its short brass handle. With a colossal engine roar, Wanda Sue tipped and started to burrow under.
Descending on the lift rig, Pig Heart hollered down at the lower platforms.
“For the love of the Saints, we need a handler up here! Hoppers have gone locust on us!”
He’d devised a more sophisticated plan originally, one which had involved bargaining the information with Herb in exchange for his reinstatement as chief pitchman. But then Rust had directed his attention to the wilting bars at the front of the hoppers’ cage and that had clinched it for him. The nymphs had shed their passive skin and metamorphosed into a more violent life form – Black Locusts. Which meant one thing to Pig Heart. The two locusts were attempting to break out of their cage in search of a swarm.
His cry filtered through the decks like nerve gas. Panicked voices arose as the lift rig arrived at the canteen level, where the creatures’ handler stood waiting. The man had collected two whips and indicated Pig Heart and the wolf girl aside.
“You may as well stay down here.” He gestured to the crowded canteen. “Once hoppers go locust, we ain’t got much hope except to gas and dump ‘em.” Throwing back his shoulders as if steeling himself to the task, the man pressed the ‘Up’ lever on the rig. “I got a can of gas stored with the roos’ feed,” he shouted down as the lift started its ascent.
“Bare man’s gonna need more than a can of gas to kill those crawlers,” hissed Rust. “There’s blood to be shed. Its stink lies in the air.”
“Shut your yapping, Rust.” Pig Heart glared at her. “Talk like that’ll as good as curse us.” He shivered though, in spite of the swelling heat inside the circus tent.
“Where’s Herb?” he shot across the canteen. His question was met with coughed bursts of ‘traitor’ and mumbled curses. Pig Heart’s old pitch crew hadn’t forgiven him for selling Nim out. “Aw, come on you shitters!” he cried, exasperated. “Ain’t there one of you on board who remembers the way it went ten years ago, huh? What it was like to lose so many good folk to the creatures once they turned?” Pig Heart dragged a hand across his glistening nostrils. His weak eyes turned glassy. “One of you motherfuckers needs to fetch Herb while Rust and me head on up and help the handler to gas ‘em before a swarm gets wind of their scent.”
He froze as a man’s wail sounded from the zoo level. The sound visibly cut through every person below. The canteen darkened a moment as a huge black shape swept down and around the vast expanse of the circus tent. A second beast swooped down, the remains of the handler’s torso suspended from its bloody claws. The hind femora clutched and lengthened. Wings – black, glossy and speckled with calcified spit – beat achingly slowly.
“By the Saints, we need to get those fuckers out of the tent!” Pig Heart glared at Rust. She was trembling – the wolf in her having a better idea of the danger they were in than all the men on the pitch crew.
Cyber Circus understood the violent potential of the two black locusts in its belly. The tent shuddered and tipped sideways on a steep axis as if trying to shake the locusts out the open bottom of the tent.
But now the locusts had shaken off their peaceable nymph sensibilities, they were ravenous. One swept in and around the living quarters and the platforms. The handler’s torso landed alongside Pig Heart, discarded in preference for softer meat. Screams filled the hull as the second locust slipstreamed in behind the first, the rabid pair tearing chunks out of the rails, floor grids, tables and integral structure of Cyber Circus. An eerie whine escaped the calliope as the tent pendulumed. Pitch crew clung to the fixtures, lay flat on the gangways up in the Gods, tucked children into their arms, and held onto the circus for dead life. Some lost their footings, tumbling out into the ether with terrible, pitiful cries. Others were picked off by the voracious locusts.