Clown Wars: Blood & Aspic by D'Lacey Joseph & Drysdale Jeremy

Author:D'Lacey, Joseph & Drysdale, Jeremy [D'Lacey, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-24T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20: You can’t use that. You’ll have my arm off

Kaboom soon realised that if she kept quiet, her pursuers wouldn't know where she was. At the same time, she could hear them sploshing through the Wetlands and shouting to each other even more clearly. She stopped running, crouched down and wondered what to do. She had to get back to the stilt-house where she’d seen Mojo and Stitches. The moment she had that thought, she heard a loud:

“Shhh!”

The wet footfalls and yelling ceased.

“We’ll do better if it can’t hear us coming,” said a voice. “If we can get close enough to key in, then we’ve got it.”

Key in?

Kaboom had images of huge keys thrusting towards her through the mist. She pushed the idea away. They were quieter now but they weren’t silent, whereas Kaboom, even with her huge feet had already completed years of creep training over all manner of surfaces. The skill allowed Clowns to appear suddenly in the middle of an audience or sneak up on each other in the annual, Burb-wide pie fights. She listened for clumsy squelches and stole between them, following all the while the smell of smoke and cooking from the stilt-houses.

Despite her prowess with stealth, Kaboom had never trained in a place where roots grew below the surface of water. When she caught her toe on one and lost her balance she tried to fall as silently as possible but the splash was the loudest noise in the Whole Circus.

She felt more than heard, the attention of something living turning her way through the swirling vapours. Its awareness made contact with her. In that exact moment, her face began to heat up and her muscles twitch and clench. It made regaining her feet almost impossible. Using pure willpower, she stood up but the weird feelings in her body got worse. Everything that had ever annoyed her, every time she hadn’t got her own way, every time she’d been clumsy and broken something, every time someone had hurt or insulted her; it all bubbled up in her memory now and she felt a childlike, illogical fury rising inside her.

Nearby someone shouted:

“Got it! Keying in now!”

Whoever it was knew where she was. If only she could care about that more than she cared about every incident that had ever upset her, she could move. As it was, she felt like the top of her head was about to blow off with rage. A scream of frustration bubbled and swelled into her throat.

“AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!”

She didn’t recognise the screech because she’d never made such a noise before. Nonetheless she knew it was her own voice. The voice of whomever was nearest jangled with excitement.

“It’s here! Right over here! It’s going to blow any second!”

No one was being quiet any more. Kaboom heard splashing feet approach from every direction. The anger within her was so huge now that it could no longer stay inside. She was going to lose control, fall back down into the marsh and beat the sodden ground with her feet and fists, weeping tears of wrath.

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