The flat little automatic that I’d reclaimed from the cops was in the glove compartment, and I took it out and put it, plus two spare clips, on top of the car. The clip in place was full, and the bullets were illegal hollow-points that made an entrance wound the size of a tenpenny nail and an exit wound the size of a cantaloupe.
The bucket full of water and towels had been wedged on the floor between the backseat and the backrest of the front seat. I drew out one of the sopping towels and wrung it out over my head, soaking my shirt and shorts, and then twisted the excess water out of the others and went to work.
First, two wet towels, one on top of the other, wrapped tightly around my torso from armpits to crotch and fastened to each other and to the T-shirt with the heaviest of the safety pins. Then one towel, wound diagonally, around each of my arms and legs and pinned to my shirt and shorts. I had to leave open areas over my knees and elbows to give me bending room, and it took a little time to get it right. By that time I was as wrapped in white as Claude Rains in the middle reels of The Invisible Man.
I dipped the extra-large sweatpants into the bucket, gave them a squeeze, and climbed in. The towels didn’t look all that bulky, given the size of the pants. The zippered sweatshirt, dripping wet, followed. Finally, I took one of the three plastic slickers from its little package, shook it out, and slipped into it. It had a sash instead of buttons, making it easier to get out of, and it reached almost all the way to my feet. If he sprayed me and threw a match, the fumes just above the surface of the plastic would ignite first, followed almost immediately by the plastic. I figured it would burn through in a couple of seconds, but at least it gave me one skin I could shed, and it would keep the gasoline from saturating cloth. I tucked the two spare slickers into the front of the wet sweatpants, tugged the drawstring on the pants tight to keep the spares in place, tied a simple one-tug bow in the sash on the coat I was wearing, slipped the flat automatic under the right wristband of the sweatshirt, and started up the hill. The two extra clips were in the shirt’s single pocket, hard to get to through the coat. I hoped that would be my biggest problem.
It was 7:09, and I was late.
Halfway up the dirt track, I realized I had added at least twenty pounds to my weight and invented the world’s first portable steam room. The slicker held the moisture in- which was one of the things it was supposed to do, prevent evaporation-and by the time I reached the fence, I was pouring sweat. The sun, which was finally on the verge of dropping behind the ridge of hills to the west, seated through the transparent plastic like a microwave through freezer wrap. When I’d thought this through, if my mental processes at the time could be so charitably described, I’d known I would be hot. I hadn’t known I’d be exhausted.
The fence poked a few holes in my armor and tested the limits of my flexibility, but I barely noticed. It was 7:11, and the Incinerator was nothing if not punctual.
There must have been five thousand people enjoying themselves in the hollow below me. As I worked my way down the dry brush of the hill at an angle, I saw that most of them were in contemporary clothing; the medieval motley was apparently reserved for employees and nostalgic party animals. An edge of shadow was moving across the bottom of the large bowl that held the Chivalry Faire, and historically incorrect colored lights were blinking on here and there. With the night would come the Master of the Revels, in his cap and bells and black rubber trench coat.
But where was he? It was almost quarter after, and nothing seemed to be amiss. I didn’t want to blunder into the crowd without having any idea where to find him, so I sat down next to a large, desiccated clump of sage and surveyed the scene.
The parking lot beyond the Faire, on the other side of the hollow, was already plunged into shadow. Between it and me were the main gates, through which people were still arriving, and the tall castles and ye quainte village. Studded here and there among the medieval set pieces, like walnuts in the crown jewels, were artifacts of the twentieth century: trailers that served as dressing rooms for the costumed help, Porta potties, ticket booth, a large catering truck, electrical generators. At the near periphery of the village was an area reserved for food booths, and on the far side was a concentration of carnival rides that had been gussied up with Arthurian trappings for the occasion. People squealed as they rode a small roller coaster painted to look like a dragon or whirled in cups that, for the moment, were supposed to be wine barrels. The largest of the rides was a haunted house bristling with cardboard turrets to turn it into a haunted castle, and the smallest was a six-foot pyramid made of rubber sheeting stretched over a padded metal frame, up which eight or ten very small children were trying to climb. As they bounced back down, their shrill squeals of laughter cut through the deeper noise of the crowd. Looking around, I suddenly saw children everywhere.
Above the Faire, the sloping hillsides that formed the hollow were packed with dry, explosive brush, the perfect fuel. My best guess was that Hoxley intended to crisp all five thousand revelers, children included.
A sharp smell overrode the acrid scent of the sage, and I recognized it as me. I tried to tell myself that it was just sweat, but any pack of dogs, smelling the fear on me, would have torn me to pieces, plastic and all.
Seven-eighteen.
Where was he!
Something was nagging at me, some detail I’d seen and had filed away in a part of my brain that had either shut down or gone to the end of the oxygen line so the areas needed to keep me alive could function without interference. I felt as I had when I’d seen Hoxley’s face in my mind’s eye on Caputo’s show, and now, as then, I couldn’t get whatever it was back again. The only thing to do was disregard it and trust some obscure little glop of gray matter to deal it faceup when it was needed.
I stood and stretched, yawning from sheer nerves. Originally, I’d planned to go in through the main entrance, figuring that Hoxley would be watching it from wherever he was, but when I’d blundered up against the fence I’d decided to improvise and see if I could see him before he saw me. Well, I couldn’t see him, and the time had probably come to go back to Plan A. For all I knew, he was delaying the show, waiting for me.
Feeling broader than a billboard, I walked straight down the hillside, making no attempt to conceal myself. I was frantically fishing my memory, a dangerous diversion for someone walking downhill wrapped in twenty pounds of wet towels. What had I seen, and when had I seen it? From the top of the hill or sitting next to the sage? The thought nagged at me and distracted me, and I hoped that whatever Hoxley did to announce himself wouldn’t be too subtle.
By now I was at the edge of the crowd, and folks were glancing at me in a way that informed me that I looked very odd indeed. In fact, people parted to let me through. Children pointed at me. I smiled reassuringly at a five-year-old girl, and she broke into tears. Weary, sweating, scared half out of my wits, I envied her the luxury.
The smell of food slapped me in the face. A guy in a leather apron was flipping unrecognizable pieces of mud that a sign identified as Joustburgers. Next to him, a fat man in a leather apron was carving thick slices off Ye Kinge’s Jointe, which I thought was pretty rude. All around me people stopped chewing and making change to gawk at me. I waved harmlessly, like some ogre on a parade float, and grinned at everyone. I’d never smelled so much food in my life.
Food. I stopped dead. A man behind me bumped up against me and, as I turned around, gave me a startled glance, apologized profusely, and melted into the crowd. I barely saw him. I knew how Wilton had gotten Mommy and Daddy out.
I’d seen it from my first vantage point. It sat over to the right, behind the crooked turrets of the haunted castle, and I looked above the plywood roofs of the medieval town to find the right turret. One turret looks pretty much like another to me, but the haunted castle had a distinctively striking tackiness that made it easy to spot. The turrets seemed to be made out of papier-mache and spray-painted, and one had a pronounced leftward tilt. Even by the relaxed standards of the Faire, it was an amateurish job.