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and hit the gas so hard the rear tires showered a dozen people with mud. A moment later there was a heavy crunch and then the reporter was running with the cameraman following. On the road a woman in a waitress uniform lay sprawled in the road as the taillights of the car dwindled in the rain.
“Are you seeing this?” cried the reporter. “That car just ran over a woman.”
“Is this shit real?” asked the roustabout again.
“It’s real,” said Rob.
“This is crazy,” said one of the jousters. “That’s close. That’s like fifteen miles from here.”
“I know,” Rob said and cast a troubled eye toward the door.
The groom said, “It doesn’t make any sense. What kind of virus makes people do this kind of thing?”
“Maybe it’s a—” but that was as far as Rob got. There was a series of loud pops and they all whirled toward the door. “What the hell?”
There was another wave of them. Sharper now, closer.
“Someone’s shooting.”
But it was more than that. Beneath and between the shots, wrapped inside the fist of the storm, there were screams.
Suddenly the whole bunch of them were scrambling up from the table and crowding through the door into the rainy darkness.
The shots were louder but sporadic. A handgun, thought Rob. Not a rifle. Not automatic gunfire.
They peered through the rain, trying to orient themselves.
“There!” cried the groom, pointing down the long, wide avenue of the jousting field. The colored banners whipped and popped in the gusting wind. The field was turning into a muddy lake. On the far side of the field the horses neighed and whinnied with anxiety.
Rob took a few tentative steps onto the field and for a few seconds he couldn’t see anything.
Then there were three more shots. Three muzzle flashes that created a brief strobe-effect that revealed struggling, staggering figures. The screams came from there, and Rob’s mouth opened in horror as he saw staff members from the fair fighting with dozens of people. Strangers. Someone was firing, but there was only one last hollow crack and the gun fell silent.
The screams increased.
Some of the men—the groom, the roustabout, and a few others—immediately began running toward the melee. They all had friends there.
But Rob caught the arm of the jouster.
“No,” he said urgently. “There’s too many.”
“Christ, we have to do something…”
“I know. Come on.”
Rob dragged him toward the prop shed, which was bolted to the side of the greenroom trailer. Rob fished the key from his pocket, jammed it into the padlock, threw the lock and chain into the mud, and yanked the doors open. With only a quick worried glance at the jouster, Rob began pulling items from the shed. He pressed a broadsword into the jouster’s hands and then, almost as an afterthought, pulled a rondache shield from the rack and handed it to him.
“The fuck, man,” growled the jouster, holding up the sword, “it’s not even sharp.”
“Yeah, but it’s fucking heavy.” He grabbed his own long-sword—an exquisite replica of the ninth-century Viking Sæbø sword—and another of the round shields. Then he and the jouster turned and began running.
Some of the strangers were sprinting or staggering across the field toward them. They howled like animals. Their bodies were pale and wrong, and some of them had terrible wounds on their faces and arms and throats.
“Jesus Christ!” cried the jouster as two of them closed on him, racing forward with waxy white fingers.
The jouster was frozen in shock and indecision, so Rob shouldered him out of the way. He smashed one of the strangers in the face with the shield and struck the other one across the face with the flat of his sword.
The blows were heavy, backed by a lot of muscle and mass, powered by fear and a surge of adrenaline. The strangers staggered, slipped in the mud, and fell.
