Chapter XVI: The Last Ride

By the time darkness swallowed Boron, the carnival had gone silent.

It was an unnatural silence for a place built around noise. The Big Top no longer shook with applause. The games had stopped ringing. Food stands sat abandoned beneath strings of flickering bulbs, their counters still covered with half-eaten treats and forgotten prizes. Somewhere beyond the gates, warning bells continued sounding through Boron as the infection moved farther into the surrounding settlements.

One by one, the carnival rides had stopped.

The Ferris wheel had been abandoned first. The carousel slowed until its painted horses finally stood motionless beneath the lights. The smaller attractions went dark as workers fled the midway or barricaded themselves inside whatever shelter they could find.

Eventually, there was only one machine still moving.

The Tilt-A-Hurl.

At first, nobody thought much of it. In the confusion surrounding the outbreak, shutting down a carnival ride wasn't exactly anyone's greatest concern. Someone had probably forgotten the switch. Perhaps the operator had fled with everyone else.

But the Tilt-A-Hurl wasn't simply running.

It was getting faster.

The old ride had been part of the carnival for decades, a beautifully restored contraption of crimson-painted steel, polished brass, hand-painted cars, and hundreds of warm incandescent bulbs. During ordinary evenings, families gathered around its wooden railing to watch riders spin wildly across the platform while music played from speakers mounted near the operator's booth.

The people of Boron loved it.

The Carney hated the name.

The children adored it.

Tonight, nobody was laughing.

Several riders were still aboard when the outbreak reached that section of the midway. They had heard the screams like everyone else. They had seen people running between the tents. They had watched food stands overturn and families rush toward the gates.

The operator pulled the brake.

Nothing happened.

He tried again.

The ride continued.

Someone killed the power.

The lights went dark for perhaps two seconds.

Then every bulb surrounding the Tilt-A-Hurl illuminated at once.

The machine began turning again.

Without power.

That was when the operator ran.

The riders weren't so fortunate.

The safety bars refused to release.

People pulled at them. They kicked at the doors. They screamed toward anyone still close enough to hear.

The ride kept spinning.

Round and round.

Faster each time.

Whatever had awakened inside the Tilt-A-Hurl seemed almost delighted by their panic.

The music returned next.

Not the cheerful melody that normally accompanied the ride. This sounded slower, warped somehow, as though the machine remembered the song but had forgotten how it was supposed to sound.

Notes stretched unnaturally between rotations.

The speakers crackled.

Then something that almost sounded like laughter came through them.

By then, nobody remained near the ride to hear it.

Hours passed.

The carnival disappeared beneath autumn fog while the Tilt-A-Hurl continued spinning beneath the moonlight. Its bulbs illuminated the empty midway in flashes of crimson, cream, and gold.

Every other attraction was dark.

Every other machine was silent.

Still it turned.

Somewhere around midnight, one of the survivors hiding inside the Big Top noticed the lights moving through the canvas.

Someone looked outside.

Then immediately closed the flap.

Nobody volunteered to investigate.

There had been enough impossible things for one evening.

The people of Boron would eventually blame The Stranger for nearly everything that happened that night. They would blame his treats for the infection, his deception for the panic, and his disappearance for leaving them without answers.

But The Stranger hadn't touched the Tilt-A-Hurl.

Runecorp hadn't built it.

The virus hadn't awakened it.

Whatever lived inside that machine had been there long before the apple cart arrived in Boron.

Perhaps it had always been there.

Perhaps all the laughter, all the screaming, all those years of people climbing willingly into its cars had fed something nobody knew existed.

And perhaps, on the first night the carnival finally stopped...

it simply decided that it wasn't finished.

Near dawn, the old electrical generator serving the midway finally died.

Every remaining bulb across the carnival went black.

Except those surrounding the Tilt-A-Hurl.

They burned brighter.

The machine continued spinning.

The riders had stopped screaming hours ago.

But the safety bars remained locked.

The warped carnival music continued playing to an audience that was no longer there.

And through the abandoned midway, beneath the distant warning bells of a dying Boron, one final invitation crackled from the empty operator's speaker:

"Who's next?"