The Tears of the Dead

[Jane]

(1997)

The Greyhound bus rolled to a dusty stop, a hot September sun beating down on the west Texas town of - Jane pressed her face against the grimy window, trying to read the sign. Somewhere between don't-give-a-fuck and who-cares, she decided. Good a time as any to get off and stretch her legs.

Gathering her backpack, the sixteen year old shoved her way up the aisle, stepping off the bus and blinking in the light. Passengers were milling about, and she walked into the truck stop to look for a pair of sunglasses. Her long mousy brown hair partially concealed her face as she slouched into the air conditioned building, wandering the shelves idly without touching anything.

Jane hugged her arm around her skinny body as she looked blindly at the spines of a display of outdated paperbacks. Despite the Indian summer heat she was wearing baggy black pants and a hoody, and she was starting to regret that decision. Turning her head to look around she found where the bathrooms were and made her way in that direction.

She splashed a bit of water on her face, a few long strands of hair clinging wetly as she stared at her reflection in the mirror. A fat woman from her bus was washing up in the sink next to her, but Jane studiously ignored her. How long had she been on that dammed bus?

Too long. Maybe not long enough. Jane closed her eyes, shuddering as air brakes squealed outside in the parking lot, transporting her momentarily back to her first car and a rainy night. Mouth open as she panted for breath, Jane realized that the bathroom had showers, and she hadn't had one in ages.

Digging in her pack she found a handful of quarters, and sequestered herself in a roomy stall, hanging her backpack on a hook out if the way of any potential spray. It only took a moment to strip off her lived in clothes and worn Doc Martens, and then she was huddled under the showerhead, the quarters fueling a stinging deluge of hot water.

She was still there when the Greyhound drove off, minus one passenger.

[Caiman]

Another bus rumbled its way into the desolate little town, kicking up a trail of brown dust that hung forever on the lifeless desert air. It was an old school bus, about two-thirds full size, covered in putrescent sea green paint that was peeling off the rusted fenders, and behind it jostled what looked for all the world like a circus trailer. Across its walls were several exotic landscapes crudely rendered in automotive paint - a misty jungle, an icy glacier, and a magma-filled cavern which might have been the artist's imitation of hell. But each wall also bore some variation of the legend: "Marvel at the genetic freaks of BARRANCA'S TRAVELING MUTANT PERFORMERS! Uncanny! Unreal! INHUMAN!"

Inside the bus's rattling cabin, the uncanny and inhuman lounged on the bolted-down second-hand furniture that replaced most of the original seats, more or less ignoring the passing desert landscape until they began to slow down in the vicinity of a scatter plot of building that could only generously be called a town. One man, a terrifying, feral brute with a wild mane of golden hair and a mouth full of sharpened fangs, looked up from his hand of beaten playing cards and out the greasy window at the passing ramshackle shops and houses and emitted a bubbling growl.

"You are fuggin' kiddin' me!" he roared, and he heaved up out of his seat and went jostling toward the front.

The hairless black man who had been sitting across from him - not merely brown-skinned, but obsidian black with an unctuous sheen - threw his cards down onto the table. "Shut up and play your hand, Wendigo!"

But Wendigo ignored him, steadying himself on the cracked and peeling seat covers as he prowled forward past two more members of the company - a lanky, gangrel man with slick amphibian skin and a pale woman with curling ram's horns sprouting from beneath her ebony hair. He didn't stop until he was directly behind the driver.

"Caiman!" Wendigo snarled. "What the hell is this?"

"It's our next stop," the driver replied, his voice a dry, rattling rasp.

"What, this one traffic stop shithole? There ain't enough money in this town to feed us, much less make a profit!"

"Got a friend here who does good advertising," Caiman replied. "Brings in customers from four counties. It'll be good enough."

"That's what you said about Laredo!"

"If you didn't make an ass of yourself in the tavern we wouldn't have been thrown out of Laredo. Sit your ass back down."

Wendigo flashed his fangs, then bit down on a guttural curse and stalked back to his seat. "Better at least be some soft piece of tail to squeeze in this dungheap," he growled.

Caiman said nothing more as he angled the bus toward the old, abandoned ranch with the field where local high school played its football games. It was flat and broad and relatively well-kept, and there were enough bleacher seats to hold the overflow of customers who couldn't get close enough to see into the ring from ground level.

Perfect spot for a freakshow.

[Jane]

Jane was lingering outside a diner as evening fell, scrubbed clean and wearing more weather appropriate clothing. Texas was hot and muggy, and currently full of delicious odors that were making her mouth water.

Unfortunately she only had two dollars to rub together, and the only thing on the menu she could buy was a Coke. She hadn't decided what to do next, except maybe look for a McDonalds or a Sonic or whatever they had that passed for fast food in this town, when she caught sight of a brightly colored flier on the gum stained concrete.

The girl bent down and picked it up, flexing it so she could read the faded xerox in the waning sunlight. There was some sort of carnival or something in town. BARRANCA'S TRAVELING MUTANT PERFORMERS, the paper read, proclaiming the mutants to be uncanny and all those other mutie buzz words.

Jane crumpled it up and tossed it away, her backpack heavy on her back with the sweatshirt stuffed into it, and stuck her hands in her pockets as she walked down the street away from the diner. Mutants. Horrible and awesome freaks of nature.

Just like her.

She barely realized she was doing it, but before long she had followed a growing throng of people to a ranch of some kind just outside town. She had to stop outside a large field where there were bleachers set up and people milling around inside. No money, no entrance. Jane hooked her fingers through the temporary chain link fence and tried to see what was going on inside.

[Caiman]

The ring had been an ingenious bit of engineering by Caiman's predecessor, the Barranca whose name still adorned the trailer. To haul out and assemble a platform each time they performed at a new venue would have been prohibitive, especially in those cases where their performances actually were prohibited by law. Instead, the trailer was the platform. The sides folded down level with the floor, and spare panels fit into the gaps to create a spacious octagon with expandable struts to stabilize the whole thing. Then the fence went up - eight-foot steel pylons at each corner of the octagon, joined together by chains to seal the fighters in. It was simple, elegant, and brutal.

The performers waited in the bus, which served as a sickeningly green room, wolfing down the last of their cheap, greasy dinners as Caiman strutted out into the octagon before the cautiously curious crowd. The bleachers were depressingly sparse, but there was a crush of guests crowding around the feet of the arena, close enough to see the glistening pattern of scales covering Caiman's craggy features.

He raised a microphone to his mouth, and his gravely voice momentarily overpowered the Marilyn Manson song screaming over the loudspeakers mounted on the roof of the bus:

"Ladies! Gentlemen! You are about to witness a clash of titans like nothing you have ever seen before! I bring before you an unnatural selection beyond Dawrin's wildest imaginations, of which I, grotesque though I may be, am the least bizarre. I give you the bestial. The Satanic. The terrifying. The alluring."

He reached out a scale-covered hand toward the rear exit of the bus, and Lilith emerged in a scandalous leotard that left very little to the imagination and very little of her ash-white skin unexposed. Already there were murmurs and shouts at her demonic elegance as she placed her hand in Caiman's and allowed him to parade her around the octagon, and here and there were whispers and scoffs of dissent - surely the horns couldn't be real. But as she waved and blew kisses to the crowd, there was a palpable shift in the atmosphere, an energy, an excitement, a hunger for something no one could really name.

Even on the still wind, Lilith's pheremones carried far. Caiman played the part of the stoic ringmaster, but inwardly he smiled. He already owned this crowd.

[Jane]

Jane could see a vendor selling hotdogs on the other side of the fence, and focused on him with an almost feral intensity. She walked around the fencing, and then found a break, where the chainlink was separated from a pole at the bottom and could be rolled back. She crouched down, shoved her pack through, then crawled after it, straightening and brushing off her pants.

Jane walked briskly along behind the bleachers, rounding the end and getting her first good look at the octagon that had been set up. A scaled mutant was addressing the crowd, a horned woman at his side. Somehow she forgot about her empty stomach, finding a seat on the uncomfortable metal bleachers and watching the show, transfixed.

[Caiman]

Against all the logic of the ringmaster profession, Caiman had not been exaggerating about his exhibition.

Each one shocked and enraptured the audience. There was Shiva, the tall, gaunt man with four spidery arms. He wore no shirt so everyone could see the rippling of extra pectoral and deltoid muscles under his taut, bronze skin as he juggled a quartet of swords, two of which he swallowed. Then came Newt, small, scuttling, with muddy green skin that glistened under the bright lights, and sticky hands and feet that were natural for climbing, and a flat, flexible tail from which he hung from the highest chain in the octagon fence.

The Tar Man was stranger than either of them. He was massive, with the physique of a bodybuilder, and his skin was black like pitch, but down his arms it shone and rippled as if he really were made of black tar, and then before everyone's eyes his hand flattened out, bubbled over, and expanded into a massive sledgehammer that hardened a moment before he struck it against the nearest steel pylon with a CLANG that made everyone flinch away, or worse, judging from the sudden stiff way one man went to excuse himself from the front row. With a shocking pearly white smile, the Tar Man shook his arm, and the hammer extended into a flexible whip, which he snapped at Newt's tail and made him jump, and then he snared Lilith with it around the waist and reeled her in from across the octagon for a kiss.

"My friends," Caiman rasped as the sounds of scandalized voyeurism began to die, "you have seen the strange and beguiling, but you have not yet seen the truly terrifying. You have not yet seen the blurring of the line dividing animal and man, the fusion of feral ferocity and cold, calculating intelligence. The Indians say that when a man in the wild eats the flesh of another man, he is cursed to wear the skin of an animal, and to crave human flesh the rest of his days. I give you that beast of legend now. I give you - the Wendigo!"

Wendigo prowled out from the tour bus, as tall as the Tar Man, but lithe and predatory, with thick, wild hair that resembled fur, with black, emotionless eyes and massive hands that ended in savagely hooked claws. He was clad in rough leathers and animal pelts, and he stalked the edges of the cage as if selecting his prey. Then he seized the chains of the octagon fence and roared, and the spectators in front of him nearly trampled one another in their retreat.

Caiman laughed into the microphone. "These performers, my good human beings, are not here merely so you can admire their good looks. You have seen my freaks of nature. Now you will see which of them is the strongest. Who would you like to put to the test?"

The crowd was uncertain at first, except for those few who had seen Barranca's Mutants before and knew what to expect - they began shouting the names of their favorites as the mutants goaded them on.

Lilith looked on, coiled in the Tar Man's embrace but still fueling the crowd with her gifts. And then she smelled something - the feedback of another mutation rippling back across her own, small and subtle, hiding somewhere out there under the garish floodlights. She pulled away from the black, viscous whip and stalked to the wall of the octagon, gripping the chain just below her chin and staring out into the darkness shrouding the back corner of the bleachers.

[Jane]

Jane had drawn her knees up against her chest, compacting her 5'8" frame into something much smaller as the freaks had paraded into the octagon. They were exotic and terrifying, equal parts intriguing and unsettling.

She couldn't look away as the four armed one and the Newt were paired off to fight, and then her eyes were drawn again to the pale woman with the curling horns. Her skin was almost white in the lights, her body lithe and womanly in a way Jane was sure hers would never be. Their eyes met, and Jane stared out from the darkness that covered her, unable to look away.

The woman, Lilith, suddenly moved, stalking across the octagon away from the edge, back to the arms of the ringmaster as the two mutants who were to fight got ready. Jane blinked, her eyes suddenly watering as though they'd been open too long. She couldn't have been looking at her... how could she have seen her in the dark?

Her stomach growled, but Jane just clutched her knees tighter to her body, trying to silence it.

[Caiman]

The display was savage and brutal, and before it was over, the audience was positively salivating. The fighters pulled some punches, and the more elaborate throws were thoroughly choreographed, but there were enough genuine body blows and chain-rattling collisions to justify the continued suspension of disbelief. The art, of course, was in the pacing. Under Caiman's expert showmanship, the tension and expectations increased with every knuckle-bleeding bout until Wendigo finally threw the Tar Man oozing to the mat and was crowned the champion of the night.

And then it was over. The spectators dispersed, not entirely certain of what they had seen, but almost universally they agreed it had been remarkable. Sensational, yes, carnal, certainly, but there were worse ways to spend an evening and a ten dollar cover charge. And word was the troop was performing again the following night, and that some guys were organizing a few wagers on the side. That was how it always went, Caiman knew. The first appearance in a town was to generate word-of-mouth. The second appearance was to reap the rewards before the word-of-mouth reached state authorities.

The fighters retreated to the bus to nurse their injuries - after that they would be free to enjoy whatever meager pleasures a town with two traffic lights had to offer. But Lilith had quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and a leather jacket and slipped away unseen, carefully managing the emotions of the people she passed so they didn't raise a fuss. The horned woman picked her way through the dispersing crowd toward the bleachers, where she saw rail-thin teenage girl trying to be inconspicuous in the shadows under the rusted metal scaffolding. The emotions rolling off of her were sharp and strident, even with all the background noise of the crowd behind her. Loss. Desperation. And a special sort of alienation that Lilith knew very personally.

She curled her arm around a slanted steel support and spoke in a rolling exotic tone that betrayed no secrets: "Did you enjoy the show?"

[Jane]

Jane started, her heart thumping loudly in her chest as the performer surprised her. "Uh, yeah. It was... great." She held onto the metal supports, half a hotdog in her other hand.

After a moment she dropped her gaze to the food, but didn't move. "I... I was going to pay for this." Her toe nudged her backpack, on the ground by her feet.

[Caiman]

Lilith laughed and tilted her head. The glow from the stadium lights played over the ridges in her curling horns.

"No, you weren't," she said, though she didn't seem to be terribly concerned about it. "Do I frighten you?"

[Jane]

"A little," Jane admitted, her mouth dry. "I was... I was gonna come by... after everyone left." Her eyes tracked beyond the impressive woman to where the last stragglers were being shown out of the fenced field.

"I thought... I mean..." Her body started trembling, hunger and exhaustion combining with stress to try to undo her completely. Jane hung her head, long hair concealing her face. "I'm a mutant too. I don't have anywhere to go and I thought maybe..."

Her voice trailed off, and she muttered, "It was stupid. Sorry."

[Caiman]

Lilith studied the girl. She sat at the center of a storm of emotions, most of them turning inward, retreating from the world so no one could see them and take advantage of them. But Lilith could see them, a beautiful swirling spectrum of fear and loneliness. Gently she pressed her own influence against the storm to soothe it, to put the girl at ease.

"It's not stupid at all," Lilith said. "Like seeks like. It's what brought us together, chere."

She waited until the girl lifted her eyes, trembling, and then she reached a pale hand toward her. "Come with me. You're hungry, yes? I'll get you something to eat."

[Jane]

She reached out her hand, as if to take Lilith's, but stopped before making contact, dropping her hand to her side. Jane bent over and scooped up her battered pack, the promise of food overwhelming her natural shyness as she slung it over her shoulder and followed the horned woman out from under the bleachers. "Thank you," she said, looking about her as they stepped out into the open.

The other woman smiled at her, leading her towards the bus, and Jane felt a knot of nervousness build in her stomach next to the gnawing hunger. She was going to meet the other mutants. She was simultaneously terrified and excited, the mix of emotions inside her combining to make her feel a little nauseated.

[Caiman]

Wendigo and Tar Man and Shiva had already cleared out, leaving Newt picking at his wounds and Caiman counting bills. Newt had his own first aid methods involving his own sticky saliva, which, he swore, had powerful medicinal properties. Not that anyone else had ever taken him up on his offer to try it. He was slapping viscous gobs of the stuff over a row of pock-marks left in his shoulder by Wendigo's claws when Lilith climbed up into the bus with a bewildered, willowy girl in tow.

The amphibious mutant popped his bulging eyes at the newcomer. "She's a little young for you, ain't she, Lily?" he drawled.

"Do you have somewhere better to be right now?" Lilith said icily.

Newt sniffed. "Huh, in this dust bowl? Not bloody likely."

Lilith folded her arms and gave him a slim smile. "I'm sure you'll find somewhere."

The green-skinned mutant looked mutely at her, then over at Caiman, who didn't bother looking back. "Fine. Okay, right. I can see where I rank in the general order of things." He threw his shirt over his shoulder, stuck his hands to the ceiling, and crawled over top of Lilith and Jane's heads. He dropped to the floor on the other side, pausing to give Jane a look of indifference. "Pleasure meetin' you, missy."

Caiman had still not looked up from his money-counting at the table. Lilith tugged on Jane's hunger and curiosity just enough to ensure she wouldn't bolt.

"Caiman," the horned woman said, "I've offered this girl a meal. She says she's a mutant."

The scale-skinned man looked up slowly, met Lilith's eyes, then glanced over at the withdrawn girl behind her. "She does. Well. Far be it from me to turn down a mutant in need."

He nodded toward the box at the end of the table. "There's still half a pizza in there. Got some drinks in the cooler over there. Help yourself."

[Jane]

Jane had watched Newt's exit with wide eyes, but the mention of pizza was enough to unglue her feet from the floor. She sat on a worn down couch, backpack on her lap, and lifted the lid of the pizza box to find half a pepperoni pie, just as promised. It was room temperature and she almost reverently lifted a slice, then started eating as fast as she dared.

"Thanks," she said around a mouthful, hand covering her mouth so as not to offend her hosts with an errant display of see-food. She swallowed hard, her too-big bite descending her throat slowly, and looked up to find Lilith extending a glass bottle of Coke toward her, its sides covered with condensation. Jane took it, popping the top with her bare hand, her adrenaline pumping enough that it took no effort and she didn't even notice the cut the metal cap gave her palm.

After a long swallow of soda, she liberated another slice of pizza from the box on the table, glancing sideways at the scaled mutant, Caiman. He was ignoring her, still counting money. Lilith was watching her, her expression unreadable, and Jane dropped her gaze, concentrating on filling her stomach.

It was bizarre, to be among these people, and be accepted. Not looked at as some bizarre accident of nature. If anything, the mutants around her were more freakish than she was.

She blinked, remembering her mother's horrified face the last time she'd gone home. Still covered... in dirt. When she'd found out what had happened to Hannah, and Lizzie. But nothing hurt more than that look her own mom had given her. No, nothing was more freakish than she was.

Jane blinked again, a few tears that had welled up in her eyes falling to the pizza in her hands.

[Caiman]

Lilith edged into the seat across from Jane and very gently rested her arm across the girl's narrow shoulders. She knew how emotions worked, and that a tender touch generally enflamed them rather than soothed them, even without the encouragement of her own empathic gifts.

"It's okay," she whispered, and while Jane's head was bowed, she aimed a quick glance at Caiman, who nodded, a lease of permission. Lilith ran her long fingers up through the girl's hair, an almost motherly gesture.

"We understand. We've been there. You're a long way from home, aren't you?"

[Jane]

Jane nodded mutely, half-eaten pizza forgotten in her hand. Lilith's touch brought forth a choking sob that she tried to contain, a surge of emotion that burned behind her eyes and formed a hard lump in her throat.

Still, even with the woman's arm around her, Jane sat stiffly upright, her downcast face a mask of misery. "They don't want me anymore," she managed, another tear escaping down her cheek. "They buried me -!" Jane sucked in a ragged breath, knuckling her eyes with a fist.

[Caiman]

Lilith rubbed her hand up and down Jane's back. The shirt was so thin it might have been a molted skin, and she could feel the bumps of the girl's spine and ribcage under her taut flesh. But even now the girl was resisting the show of compassion - trembling, but like a tree standing in floodwaters. Lilith caught a meaningful look from Caiman, and she carefully withdrew her arm.

Caiman set the bills down on the table and scribbled some figures into a little dogeared notepad. "What's your name?" he rumbled.

[Jane]

She was breathing slowly through parted lips, and lifted her eyes to the scaled man's, holding his gaze for a moment before looking down again. "Jane," she answered uncertainly, "Jane Meyer."

She scrubbed at her face, her emotions just barely under control, and still bubbling under the surface.

[Caiman]

"Jane Meyer," Caiman repeated. "It's a good name. An ordinary name."

His flat, yellowish eyes slid over the girl from top to bottom. "What are you looking for?"