Anyway, Dixon was dead now and had at least one person to mourn him. Pil wasn’t crying, but her body was hunched with sadness. However, the world afforded her just ten seconds to grieve.
Screams filtered in through the gaps between the cottage’s scarred wall slats. A few came at first, but dozens more joined within a few seconds. I hustled back to the door that led outside. That might sound foolish, but it was sound tactical thinking. Outside I could see whatever was happening and do something about it, hopefully something smart. Inside the oracle’s shack, I knew nothing and couldn’t go anywhere. I was as helpless as a chick in the shell.
When I stepped outside, so many people were screaming and banging into each other, it sounded like surf against a cliff—too loud to be anything but plain noise. I saw thirty or forty people lying on the dirt, not moving. A hundred more ran, tripped, and bled in every direction. I couldn’t see more than a fourth of the fair from where I stood, so the situation was probably a lot more dire.
Halla touched my shoulder from behind and shouted, “Where is your servant? I need him to stand in front of me.”
“Let’s find him and get to our horses, if they’re still alive.” As I said it, Pil ran past us and off around the corner of the building. Since that was the direction we needed to go, I chased after her.
I rounded the corner and nearly tripped over Pil as she scooted backward on her butt faster than I could trot. I jumped over her and met a little hairless dog, about the size of a chicken. It must have been chasing Pil, but now it scrambled toward me instead. It looked wrong somehow. Another dog followed it toward us.
As I slashed at the creature, I realized it had only two legs. My cut didn’t just kill it. The blade sliced right through the dog, and with a piercing pop, it flew into pieces smaller than my thumb. A blast of repugnant, bile-smelling air blew into my face, and some of the pieces hurtled thirty feet away. I peered hard at the other creature as it jumped toward Halla’s face. It jumped high, and I saw it flap just before she destroyed it. It wasn’t a dog—it was a ragged, featherless chicken.
I checked behind us and saw Pil swing a big knife and slam a chicken to the ground before stomping it into pieces. The creature made a gigantic, foul-smelling pop. Another chicken chased a teenage boy right past us. Now that I knew it was a chicken, I could see it wasn’t just naked—it was missing some bits of flesh here and there. The horrible chicken was also missing feet, eyes, and a beak, but it had no trouble jumping onto the boy’s head and knocking him to the ground. I ran toward this leaping death-chicken, which was pecking at the boy’s eyes. Something zipped through the air from the middle of the fairgrounds and hit the ragged chicken on the back. Instead of hurting it, an empty spot on the chicken’s back had filled in.
I skewered the chicken and dragged the boy to his feet while trying to figure out what the hell I had just seen. Five people lay nearby, unmoving with blood leaking from their bellies. I could see three more hideous chickens chasing terrified, scrambling fairgoers. I understood it then, even though I didn’t want to know such a thing.
Before the attack, the chickens had been dead, which was horrible but not shocking. But they hadn’t just been dead. They had been killed, cooked, chewed up, and swallowed. Now somebody was reuniting each dead chicken’s body and doing it in such a rush that pieces shot straight out of people’s stomachs, careless of what they tore up on the way to reunite.
“God damn!” I shouted. “I hope Whistler didn’t eat breakfast!”
Halla stared at me. “I do not think that is our greatest concern.”
Pil squinted at me. “Who’s Whistler?”
I shouted into Pil’s face, “Where do they sell the love potions?”
She nodded and ran off into the hell of the breakfast chickens with Halla and me following. I destroyed three more awful chickens in less than a minute, one of which Pil hurdled, before we reached the magical doodads stall. Whistler stood in front of it clinging to his sword with such fervor his arms shook. Bea and the pretty peasant woman crouched behind him in the stall, the woman holding a sturdy stick. When we drew close, Whistler swung wildly at Pil, who threw herself on the ground. Whistler glared at me with crazy eyes.
“Whistler!” I shouted. “Don’t cut me in two! Look! I have skin and hair and everything!”
He didn’t speak, but the Bea ran out of the stall and grabbed his sword arm. She said something in his ear, and he let her pull his arm down. Then Whistler pointed past me with his other hand and screamed, “Mother kick me in the nuts! Look! Look out!”
I turned and found out that chickens were not the only creatures that people had been eating for breakfast. A burly, skinless, eyeless pig rampaged through the crowd. For a beast without teeth or claws, it created a surprising amount of carnage. The flesh-gaping monster pointed its snout straight at me and charged, but it tangled itself among the bodies, living and dead. The pig tumbled and skidded sideways across the bloody mud.
That was lucky. It would’ve been luckier if the repugnant pig hadn’t had three friends who seemed to hate all mankind just as much as it did.
Fighting a trio of unclean
