Fun World Page 2
Nearly choking on his words, Eric replied, “I love you, too, sweetie.”
Suddenly, a cheerful attendant with an unbelievably annoying grin appeared out of nowhere. “Move forward, please. First row. Enjoy the ride, and remember: it’s a happy little world out there!”
As Eric stepped forward, the relief of finally making it to the front of the lengthy line washed over him. The feeling waned somewhat when he glanced back over the crowd still waiting for the ride. Something seemed off, and it wasn’t in the “this place sucks” kind of way that he knew all too well; this was different. Although he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, he sensed a distinct shift in the crowd’s energy. The incessant chatter became louder and more agitated, while many of the lighthearted facial expressions began to show the first hints of concern. Whatever it was swept through the queue like a wave heading toward the front of the line. A subtle yet distinct sense of unease blossomed in the pit of his stomach. What the hell is going on? Perhaps most unsettling of all was the chorus of kids who continued singing as though nothing had changed.
…And you’ll never get down
It’s a happy little world!
Throughout his life, Eric had made it a point to always trust his gut feeling; it had rarely led him astray. Unfortunately, acknowledging his instincts and being able to act upon them didn’t always go hand in hand. He felt the weight of the crowd pressing in behind him, as if to remind him that there was nowhere to go but forward.
As he and Lila approached the waiting boat, Eric cast a wary glance over the crowd. He caught sight of a commotion out of the corner of his eye. Near the middle of the line, a man lunged toward the person standing directly in front of him. The pair crashed to the ground, knocking over an adjacent couple in the process. A small part of Eric was envious that someone was taking the initiative to do what he’d wanted to do for the past hour and a half. Although the crowd obscured much of what was happening, the disturbance had a distinct ripple effect as people scrambled to distance themselves from the scuffle. Warning bells sounded in his mind; something definitely wasn’t right. Even in the lawless environment of a theme park waiting line, some behavioral standards were still generally respected. The blatant act of unbridled aggression he’d just witnessed, however, kicked those standards squarely in the balls.
Water gurgled past the waiting boat as he and Lila settled into the seat. Even though Eric could no longer see what was happening in the line, he couldn’t pull his mind away from what he’d witnessed. He stole tentative glances over his shoulder, hoping for another glimpse of what was taking place. A baby in the row behind them squealed with delight as they pulled away with a splash. As the boat rounded the first bend, Eric saw an elderly man who’d been swept up in the melee climb back to his feet. Standing on unsteady legs, the old man turned his head slowly as though still dazed from the altercation. When Eric finally saw the man’s face, the warning bells in his head morphed into full-blown sirens.
“What the hell?” Eric muttered aloud.
The man’s face was red with blood and somehow appeared off. Before he could get a better read on the situation, the boat was plunged into complete darkness.
Sensing her father’s tension, Lila said, “Don’t worry, Daddy. I’m right here.”
The comment brought a smirk to Eric’s face. He was impressed that his little girl had picked up on his uneasiness, though he knew she had no idea what he’d just seen. In truth, he wasn’t even sure of what he’d just seen. Even so, her innocent words warmed his heart, and he put his arm around her to give her a little squeeze. No one else in the boat seemed the least bit alarmed, which made him wonder if he’d misjudged the entire situation. Before he had a chance to think more about it, the doors ahead of the boat opened to reveal an insane world overflowing with bright colors and dancing animatronic characters of all kinds.
If Eric thought the singing children had been overbearing before, the increased volume inside the attraction took it to a whole new level. Figures from every race and creed twirled and curtsied, all moving in unison in a highly choreographed production clearly designed to overwhelm the senses. The air was alive with sound as the ride’s omnipresent jingle crescendoed with a thousand tiny voices singing as one.
Welcome girls and boys
To this land of joys
Full of things of wonder
And marv-e-lous toys!
Where there are no frowns
And you’ll never get down
It’s a happy little world!
The tension coursing through Eric’s body was palpable, and he struggled to maintain a relaxed demeanor. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin the ride for his little girl. While he found the constant activity all around them highly disconcerting, Lila appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the entire experience. Like wave after wave of an animatronic army, every new troop of dancing puppets pulled Eric’s eyes in another direction. How this ride doesn’t give kids nightmares I’ll never understand. The puppets’ eyes alone are creepy as hell!
The singing dolls’ high-pitched chatter grated on his eardrums like a squealing fire alarm, while the flashing lights left him feeling as though he might be on the verge of an epileptic fit. By comparison, waterboarding seemed like an unusually humane method of torture. Even in the face of the overwhelming sensory barrage, Eric couldn’t shake the sense of dread coursing through his body. He peered over his shoulder and scanned the shadows of the ride’s darkened displays, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Who was he kidding—the whole damn place was out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, he saw nothing to justify his growing unease. No sooner than the song reached its merciful conclusion, it began again. It was loud, constant, and pervasive. It was all he could hear…at least at first.
In the brief pause before the song restarted, Eric heard the sound of frantic splashing coming from behind their boat. The addition of at least two different people screaming created a grim soundtrack that stood in stark contrast to the ride’s otherwise jovial atmosphere. No sooner than they registered in his ears, the harrowing sounds were drowned out by the obnoxious theme song. Eric tried to convince himself that the screams had been those of joy, though if he were being completely honest, he knew that wasn’t the case.
Any doubt as to the nature of the screams was quickly dispelled when a middle-aged woman in the back of his boat gasped and yelled, “Oh my God! What is she doing to him?”
Turbulent water churned violently in front of the boat behind them. The ride’s flashing lights intermittently highlighted limbs flailing out in desperation. Eric’s first thought was to jump in and save the poor soul from drowning, but another gut feeling immediately quashed the idea of any such heroics. He reasoned that the water was surely quite shallow, making it unlikely that someone would actually drown. As if to confirm his suspicion, a man catapulted out of the water, his head rising nearly three feet before splashing down and disappearing beneath the surface. Only then did Eric notice the disturbance on the trailing boat, which had been largely cloaked in darkness up to that point.
What he saw when the boat emerged from the shadows left him utterly speechless. A man in the front row let out guttural cries of pain as a woman in the seat behind him leaned over and…
It took Eric a moment to comprehend exactly what the woman was doing—she was biting him. No, it was much more than that. He recalled the time when a little boy in Lila’s preschool class had bitten her out of frustration. Even though it had been a clamp and release affair, the deep bruising on her arm had remained visible for nearly a week. This lady, on the other hand, latched on and jerked her head from side to side like a pit bull trying in earnest to rend the flesh from the man’s neck. Dark blood spurted from between her clamped jaws, painting the man’s shirt a deep crimson red. Eric instinctively shielded Lila’s eyes from the grisly scene.
Before the annoying song could complete another pass, several more passengers joined in the attack. The trailing boat rocked violen
tly under the assault. Screams and snarls blended seamlessly with the irksome melody, making it sound as though they were part of some macabre remix. Eric was shocked to see that no one onboard was fighting back; in fact, no one did anything at all. They’d either accepted their fate or were simply stunned into inaction. He closed his eyes momentarily as the man whose neck had been torn open shuddered a few times before slumping over in his seat. When Eric reopened his eyes, he had to do a double take. No longer lying limply in a pool of blood, the ravaged man had joined into the fracas, attacking the boy next to him with the same jerky, unnatural movements the woman had displayed.
“My God. What the hell is going on? Why aren’t they doing anything? They’re like fish in a barrel,” Eric muttered as he glanced around in stunned disbelief.
The sea of shell-shocked expressions told him that the circumstances on his boat would likely be no different. In that moment, the true gravity of the situation slammed into him like a Mack truck. He cursed the fact that he’d entered the park unarmed. Checkpoints at every entrance prohibited weapons of any kind, though their lax approach to security screening would’ve been a breeze to bypass. A blade hidden in the bottom of a backpack or a gun tucked away in a stroller could easily be ferried through undetected. Nevertheless, there he was without so much as a club to defend himself. Yet another example of ‘safety measures’ that are far more likely to get me killed than actually protect me…
SPLASH!
This time the sound was much closer. The lights pulsed in time with the song’s cadence, the attraction completely uninterested in anything happening within its shadowy bowels. In between periods of darkness, Eric saw something truly terrifying under the flashing lights. Trudging through the chest-deep water was the man with the ruined throat. Although their boat continued inching forward, its slow speed wasn’t enough to keep the man from steadily gaining ground. His wet clothes, partly drenched in blood, left a ruddy brown trail in the water behind him. The man’s vacant gaze didn’t seem to register that fact or anything else for that matter. Eric watched as the other passengers in his boat began to stir in panicked disbelief, unwilling to accept what was clearly happening right in front of their eyes.
“Everybody stay calm,” Eric said, though calm was the furthest from how he felt. “We need to get off this boat right now. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with that guy, but a few seconds ago he was the one being attacked. Now he looks like some sort of zombie—”
The moment the word left his mouth, he realized how crazy it sounded. It was impossible, yet he couldn’t come up with any more logical explanation for what he was seeing. He was a trained medical professional and he knew zombies didn’t exist; they were merely the stuff of movies and fantasy. Even so, there was no denying—or explaining—the monster trudging toward him. Just because he’d never seen something didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. There were plenty of things he’d never witnessed with his own eyes that he simply accepted as reality. He considered himself to be a levelheaded guy that evaluated all the information before drawing a conclusion. If it walks like a duck, it’s a damn duck. All of these thoughts flooded his mind simultaneously, and he felt as though he might be overtaken by an impending wave of vertigo.
Eric’s words had no appreciable effect on the rest of the boat’s occupants, leaving him to wonder if they’d even heard him over the ride’s maddening tune. With the bloody, deranged man growing ever closer, there was little time to waste. It wasn’t that he didn’t care what happened to the other passengers, but Lila’s safety was his number one priority. He surveyed the surrounding area in search of any avenue of escape. Through the barrage of lights and beyond the sea of frenetically dancing dolls, he saw a glimmer of hope.
“There!” he said, pointing toward the subtle red glow of a sign on the far wall of the ride’s enclosure. Although he couldn’t make out the words, he knew that it had to be an exit.
The display’s edge was only three feet away from the boat’s left side. Scooping Lila into his arms, he said, “We’re getting off. You ready, sweetie?”
It was a rhetorical question. Eric knew they had to move if they wanted to survive, and he had every intention of getting his family out of the park safely. The notion made him think of Melanie, and he prayed the madness hadn’t found its way to the resort. She’s fine, Eric. There’s no way this thing—whatever it is—could’ve spread that far. You need to focus on now. Although he was far from convinced, he managed to push Melanie out of his mind for the time being.
Not bothering to count to three, Eric leapt across the small gap with Lila in his arms. The low wall intended to hide the display’s floor obscured one of the puppet’s metal motor housings until he was already airborne; by then it was too late. Pain shot up his leg, his ankle twisting as he landed on the uneven surface. Although he managed to toss Lila to the side, his momentum sent him hurtling headlong into the plywood façade of a cartoonish Indian mausoleum.
CRACK!
The flimsy wall splintered under his weight, and Eric came down hard on the concrete floor, sending up a cloud of dust and debris all around him. Colored lights flashed before his eyes, and he wasn’t sure if they were part of the attraction or the result of a mild concussion. He grunted in pain as he slowly rolled over.
“Daddy!” cried Lila. Her tiny, worried voice sounded exceedingly small in comparison to the noise spewing forth from the ride.
Mouth agape like a fish out of water, Eric tried desperately to reply but found it impossible. Speaking required air, and the impact had taken all of his away. With his diaphragm in spasm, it felt like his lungs were stuck in a suffocating version of a Chinese finger trap. The more he struggled to breathe, the tighter his chest felt. After what seemed like an eternity, the tiniest wisp of air finally crept into his lungs. Relief trickled into his body as the veritable stranglehold subsided.
“Lila,” he murmured hoarsely.
Remembering the man who’d been pursuing them, Eric panicked when he saw a shadow of movement near the breach in the plywood wall. Doggedly, he scrambled to his knees in preparation for the approaching threat. As the light shifted and his vision cleared, a silhouette came into focus.
“Lila!” he said more forcefully.
The little girl burst from the shadows, running full tilt before leaping into his arms. The impact knocked him back and gave him flashbacks of slamming into the ground moments ago. His ribs ached, but he didn’t care as long as his little girl was safe.
“Daddy, I’m scared. There’s…”
The angry snarls coming from behind her were more than enough to finish her sentence. Squinting through the dust swirling in the multicolored lights, Eric zeroed in on the source of the feral sound. Several more shadowy figures lumbered in their direction. Still dazed from the fall, he struggled to wrap his mind around what was happening. The sign! He suddenly remembered the thing that had spurred him in this direction in the first place. He spun around, his eyes locking on to the red glow coming from the wall at the back of the display.
“Come on. We need to move, now!” he said.
Lila couldn’t have agreed more; she grabbed his hand and began pulling him toward the sign. Eric’s body groaned in protest to the sudden demands thrust upon it, but there was nothing for it. Knowing he had no choice but to push past it and keep moving, he forced the pain from his mind. Anyone who saw him hobbling through the darkened display could’ve easily mistaken him for one of the very monsters currently pursuing them. When the sign came into focus a moment later, his heart sank: Not an Exit—Puppet Hydraulic Maintenance.
Eric clenched his teeth in anger. Why the hell would you draw attention to something that wasn’t an emergency exit? His internal tirade was cut short by angry snarls and the sound of something stumbling clumsily through the darkness. He spun to see the man with the ravaged throat along with the woman who’d attacked him bearing down upon them.
To his left was a dust-covered mannequin of an adolescent boy dressed in fade
d and tattered lederhosen. A toothy smile starkly contrasted the rest of the doll’s grimy face, which was missing an eye. Judging from the thick layer of dust blanketing the abandoned figure, it hadn’t been disturbed since being exiled from the Happy Little World long ago. For the briefest moment, Eric sarcastically wondered if the mausoleum he’d smashed through had been constructed specifically for the worn-out doll. I must be concussed…
Although it was the creepy mannequin’s startling appearance that initially caught Eric’s attention, his primary interest was the large, red-and-white-swirled lollipop clasped in its little hand. He only hoped the thick sucker stick protruding from the large plastic candy proved to be as sturdy as it looked. Pulling with both hands, he grunted as he freed the oversized confectionary replica from the cyclops’ grasp.
Having trained in boxing and Muay Thai for many years, Eric knew how to strike, and he understood the power that could be generated through body rotation. Without pause, he spun around and slammed the lollipop into the man’s temple, sending him teetering to the side. The plastic sucker exploded into a hundred tiny pieces, leaving Eric gripping only the heavy wooden stick that gradually tapered to a dull point where the faux candy had been. Undeterred by the clubbing her companion just received, the mangled woman pressed forward.