Another Codex Kalachnikova preview. This one is called "The Gathering of the Juggalos."
What? Did something else important happen recently?
Intermission: A Gathering of the Juggalos
Come. Listen.
There are none who would dare approach this great circus
tent, high in the folds of the Shattered Mountains bordering the great Grass
Sea. The Lords of the holdfasts, Stone
and Apple and River lords, even Scum Lords, do not venture into this place, nor
do their consorts, nor do their bastards or eunuchs. Even the Angels do not venture here. You alone must witness this, and understand
the bearings it has on the tale to come.
There are those who say that the gods were blinded by the
hellfire that was TEOTWAWKI, that the endless maelstrom of clouds obscure their
vision and block out the prayers of the mortals below. If that is true of any place in the vast
wastelands of Efrafa, it is true here.
No prayers are heard here; that much is certain.
The air is still thick with poisons in some places, even
now, hundreds of years after the great cataclysm. The baked dirt holds no life; the waters are
the same, save that they burn the flesh of any foolish enough to wade in their
alkaline depths. The landscape of the
shattered mountains is absolute stillness on the eastern side, and great
terrible storms that break constantly against the west side. You can heard the crashing thunder as the
churning brown clouds fling water, salt and the shattered ruins of an ancient
civilization against the mountainside.
From time to time there is a great rumble in the earth, and if you were
to watch for hundreds of years you could see the mountains spreading out as
their very roots are pulled apart by incomprehensibly old forces you cannot
perceive, let alone understand.
Perhaps they are demons, toiling in darkness far below the
earth. This is a place to believe in
demons.
Come. Look.
You have seen these before-multicolored wagons towed by
scrub ponies and hawgs and people. But
surely you have never seen this many.
You watch them pass by for hours, a train of them, each bearing the mark
of their tribes-green and purple Riddle Boxes, red and silver Great Milenkos,
Jekell Brothers, Ringmasters, even the secretive Butterfly tribe, with rainbow
banners hanging limp from their windows.
Surely you lose count after five hundred wagons go by, singing their
simple war songs and shaking rusty hatchets at the uncaring sky.
At the tail end of the train, you join them-you must! You smell their ragged, meat stinking
breath-the journey across the grass sea is long, and you can see chewed
legbones along the trail, both human and animal. The Gypsy Jokas travel day and night, at a
pace that is certain to be fatal for most.
A trail of torches winds up a tiny footpath in the mountains, vanishing
into the Stygian darkness of the other side.
The mountain is grueling, and the air grows cooler as you
rise above the Grass Sea. The trail
slithers precariously along the mountainside, and far below you can see
shattered wagons and bodies-human, and otherwise. By luck alone do you reach
the summit, after a day and a half of climbing.
It is surely luck-there are no miracles in this place. One final sign points you to your
destination, a great tent as large as the largest holdfast, stitched together
in a riot of conflicting colors and patterns that make your eyes ache. It stands in sharp relief against the drab
mountain, below the edge of a small bluff that blocks the wind and the constant
barrage of detritus from the howling storm.
And here you see more wagons, more than you could ever count, all left
haphazardly outside. The single path
through them is a churned track of ashes and mud by now, worn by countless feet
and wheels and hooves. From where you
are, you can hear nothing inside, but there is a deep rattle that vibrates your
teeth as you approach, and it grows stronger the closer you come to the big
tent.
Inside is a riot of cacophony and lights of half a thousand
colors. One of the traditional war songs
rings from a thousand throats and simultaneously from dozens of black boxes
that thrum with some arcane power. The
crowd of juggalos and juggalettes around you shake like madmen in time with the
music, shouting something about hunting chickens over and over in a
frenzy. Occasionally a scattergun or
pistol goes off at random, sometimes wreaking carnage in the ranks. At the very center of the circular tent
stands a great black box. Butterfly
tribe juggalos, quieter and more clever than their companions, move
purposefully around it carrying great wires and boxes and hoses. In the flashing light, they move like ghosts,
flickering and indistinct, seeming distant and unreal.
Perhaps responding to some tiny, unknown signal, the music
suddenly stops, and the c hanting dies down with it, though it does not quite
go away for a few minutes. Then the
lights stop as well, and darkness fills the great tent. You have enough sense to wonder if this will
be your grave, this strange carnival of horrors, but before you can flee you
see the center box light up-and two men appear within its confines.
It is startling, but the crowd seems to expect it-chants of FAMILY FAMILY FAMILY fill the air around
you, shaking the very walls of the tent.
They appear to be at least ten feet tall, and both have the same paitned
faces as those that surround you, black and white with grinning white
teeth.
They shout WELCOME JUGGALOS, and though their accent is
archaic and bizarre the gathered marauders respond immediately by
screaming. Juggalettes are flinging
their shirts away, and juggalos are waving spears and scatterguns in the
air. The music starts again, but this
time it is obvious that the two wizards are directing it-they point and chant
and leap in a strange dance, spitting their venomous words into small black
wands and causing them to echo from every thrumming felt covered box in the
tent. The lights resume their flashing,
filling your world with chaos. Between
songs-for it is clear that they are singing from the box-they speak of family,
togetherness, kinship and trust. You are
cogent enough to realize the irony.
As the wizards in the box continue their spell, you become
aware that the response is programmed-that this has been done many times
before. Even the responses of the crowd
are coming from the black boxes, magnified a hundred times and distorted to
come from every direction. And you
realize than that this is a play, an act, and that each response from those around
you has been carefully cultivated for generations, like the finest hemp fruits.
The thought chills your blood, but you cannot flee yet. There is more for you to see.
The music fades slowly, leaving a whine in your ears and a
vaguely guilty hardon at all the exposed juggalette tits. The thinner wizard, the one called VIOLENT
JAY sits down within the box and speaks into his magic wand. He tells them Juggalos, listen up for a very
special message from the Hatchet Man.
The Hatchet Man never steers you wrong.
And both wizards disappear in a blink from the box, replaced by a new
face, one quite different from the others.
The lighting is different in the box now, and the wizard
looks strange-he is spindly and pale, wearing only a blue gown of some unknown,
flimsy material. His face is painted
with markings that match no known Gypsy Joka tribe, or perhaps resembles that
of the Butterfly tribe but poorly rendered and distorted. His hair is fine and pale, and his eyes are
huge and weepy, thick with strange fluids.
He harangues the Jokas for awhile, in a strange, clumsy
parody of the two wizards that appeared before him. He tells them that the two immortal
sorcerers, Violent Jay and Shaggy Too Dope, have given him instructions to arm
them against the enemies of Shangri-Lah, who was even now gathering his dread
forces in the Tex Arcane. The Hatchet
Man spoke of a redneck chicken bitch who would bring ruin on their
civilization. He spoke at length of doom
and horror-and then he offered solutions.
A light comes on, focuses on a small knot of men dressed in
black with armor and ayears, their
faces painted with Butterfly tribe markings-but few juggalos are this well
armed or healthy. Around them are over a
hundred massive green crates, each marked US ARMY in the ancient speech. The Jokas are not naïve; they know what is in
those crates, and in anticipation the crowd surges forward hungrily, but a
sharp shout from the Hatchet Man stops them in an instant. The Butterfly tribe juggalettes flit and fawn
around the black clad newcomers, several draped over each arm, casting
something in the air that glitters in the light.
You’ll get your chance, he says. The Butterflies have the maps. They have summoned warriors and weaopns from
the sky using the ancient sorcery known as HALO, warriors who could show them
how to use the artifacts in the crates.
Find this redneck chicken bitch and kill him. Kill his family. Burn his holdfast.
Then the music starts up again, the Hatchet Man vanishing
and the two god-kings taking up their place as if nothing had happened. Any further meaning is soon lost in the
frenzy.
Your mind is reeling now.
You make for the back of the tent, shoulder aside Jokas who chant along
with the war songs of old, stumble a few times on broken bodies. You cannot comprehend what is happening, but
you know you must seek escape from this place of madness and violence and
magic. Breathing hard, your breeches
damp, your eyes dazzled, your ears ringing, you flee into the shattered
wasteland-and count yourself lucky.
Away from the tent is peaceful only by comparison; the storm
breaks thunderously around you. A
porcelain bowl shatters on a rock next to you.
Salt stings your eyes and traces burning lines in your skin. The maelstrom above snarls its displeasure as
you defy it, on into the western wastelands, death howling above and
behind. A great tangle of metal hurtles
from above; you see its shape and your mouth gapes open in astonishment. You’ll never know it was the back end of a
school bus, flung into the maelstrom by TEOTWAWKI; you know it only as the
wrath of the angry voodoo wizards in the box.
Salt dries up your saliva, and your death tumbles closer.
Come. Taste.
