2~
The Opening Parade of the Pageant. It was like waking up to an endless celebration after the long, dull dream of static life.
The crowds had assembled in downtown's St. Gator's Square in kaleidoscopic throngs earlier that morning and soon, under the direction of specific revelers carrying torches and beating drums, the countless party-goers would be led in a highly visible and merrymaking procession along the path of narrow lanes and past enthralled on-lookers.
With a roaring cheer and a flourish of drumrolls, the parade slowly, yet playfully, surged out. Paraders high-stepped, cakewalked, or simply strolled to conserve energy, in either full costume, or just face paint, and somewhere in the swelling, moving mass of party animals, delegates from other cities and artists also marched along with jovial gusto.
Zydeco and jazz could be heard joyously playing in the streets and the good-natured whoops and hollers could be heard just above that. Parades of dazzling dressed krewes and mummers, looking like human peacocks, marched past the entertained people, proud in attitude and gloriously gaudy in appearance.
Being so close to the square, the nearby hotels' patrons could hear the revelries from the highest balconies and the thickest walls of their sumptuous suites.
To strut their stuff at the very start of Pageant was beyond electric for the citizens, and was just the beginning. Three full days of civic merrymaking and intrigue, and nights of mysterious motives and romance were open to them, so they certainly didn't mind the odd, overexuberant jostle in the crowd.
The Pageant of Gators had returned to the world.
On the other side of town, the music was loud enough to be heard by Marcie and Winslow in the middle-rear seats of the upper level of the green, open-topped, double-decker tour bus with the gold filigree, that cruised along the historical routes that cut through one quarter, passed by another, and emerged into still another in a scenic, roundabout way.
Marcie's ears heard the male tour guide's recitation of Gatorsburg's origins and its eventual founding, but her attention kept drifting back to the music, so near and powerfully enticing. From her earlier studying of the bus's route, the closest it would get to the parade routes would be during a moment when both routes paralleled near the borders of Head Quarter and Middle Quarter. She hoped that would be soon.
Winslow, however, sat in rapt attention to not only the guide's speeches, but to the idea of having a similar feature brought back to serve his park in some fashion. He wondered why he hadn't thought of this years sooner.
"Isn't this fun, Marcie?" Winslow asked her.
"Hmm?" Marcie mumbled, still listening to the siren call of the Zydeco.
"The tour. Isn't it fun?" her father asked again.
Marcie, hearing the word "tour" and remembering his suggestion yesterday on taking one, snapped out of her daze. "Oh, yeah, Dad, it is, but I'd like to check out the Pageant while it's just starting up. That is why we came here."
Winslow smiled parentally at her. "Oh, don't worry, Marcie. The celebration lasts for three days. You'll have plenty of time to party, but there's no sense in rushing things, now. Take you're time."
If it was anything else that Marcie wanted badly enough, she would have thought of someway to disobey such a statement, but a realization settled over her that he was absolutely right. She had time, so why blow through the vacation, simply because she was there? She had to admit that sometimes her youthful vigor could hinder things in her life, blind her eyes to better possibilities.
Marcie nodded at her father's wisdom, and said, "Okay." Then, she noticed that he was jotting things down in a notepad.
"Taking notes?" she asked him, conversationally.
Winslow brightened. "Taking great notes, in fact. Ideas are coming to me so easily, since I've been here, things I hadn't even considered before. Ha! Fleach's Folly Factory will be a masterpiece of family entertainment when I'm through."
Marcie smiled. "Glad to hear that. I guess travel does broaden the mind, even if its only three miles from home. Well, I won't keep you. Scribble away."
Winslow nodded. "Very well, then."
Marcie went back to looking out at the Southern-style scenery of the historic neighborhoods. The bucolic old homes and mansions, and the stately cypress trees that stood guard over them. It was a quiet time capsule of the Deep South, transplanted by the earliest citizens from there, leaving to stake their claims in the west, but sheltered in the comforting cloaks of Southern traditions.
Marcie mused. These peaceful parts of town were proving to be just as enticing, in their own way, as the celebrations that honored it.
Then, she thought of something that brought a bittersweet smile to her. As appreciative as she was to have her father along, she suddenly wished Velma was here with her to enjoy this. But, she wasn't. She would have to settle for relating her little vacation to her online when she came back home.
"I can't wait to tell Velma about all of this," Marcie said to herself. Then, she said, as if making a promise to her long-gone friend, "I'm gonna have fun for the both of us, V."
Marcie glanced indifferently at the chattering tour guide, who worked from his position up front where a forward section of the roof remained to enclose that end of the upper deck's passage to and from the lower deck and entrance.
"As you may know," he said into his lavalliere, "Today is the start of the Pageant of Gators, our town's three day celebration honoring the humble and noble alligators that literally overnight created our fine Gatorsburg. The first Pageant started in 1903. Remembering how he loved Mardi Gras in his hometown of New Orleans, Salvatore A. Mander, the wealthy owner of Mander's Moccasins and Footwear, decided to open his new store and his new line of alligator skin boots with a parade down Main Street."
"The event was such a success," he continued, "That the city council decided to make it a yearly celebration, to give thanks to the bounty of alligators that created Gatorsburg, calling it the Pageant of Gators, which we still call, to this day."
Marcie had expected to hear more verbiage from the man, but the shocking boom of an explosion from the guide's direction woke her and the other passengers up from their collective ennui.
The blast shoved the tour guide to the floor and drove those in the seats near the passageway out of the green cloud bank, and back towards the others seated mid-way and rear of the upper deck.
Their flight instantly crowded the deck, as those ahead ran into those in the back, who didn't know what was going on, colliding and crushing the middle seaters.
Below, the bus driver had long since stopped the vehicle after the sound and the passengers of the lower deck were too confused and scared to move from their seats. However, above, in the loud, smokey confusion, a ragged-robed, skull-faced figure shuffled out of the green haze, cackling wildly at his mischief.
"Not afterwards, mes amis!" cried Pretre du Marais, as he slowly moved towards the back, herding the already frightened passengers into a tight, increasingly panicked mass. "Such empty praise for so a noble creature. Ze Pageant has been a sham and a mockery to the alligator since its corporate beginnings. I will put an end to the lie, by this Pageant's end. Mark my words, you thoughtless fools!"
Marcie, from her seat, was being pressed by Winslow, who was, himself, getting crushed against by the panicked people. She craned her neck up and around to try and see past the heads of the passengers, to get a look at who was doing this.
She finally managed to see the maniac clearly, just as Pretre du Marais ceased his stalking and lifted his staff, pointing it at the people with a flourish. "In ze meantime," he said. "Let ze Ghosts of Gators Past enlighten you." Then, he startled everyone by leaping over the side of the deck.
If anyone was curious as to where the shaman/priest went when he dived, however, they were quickly distracted by something far more attention-grabbing.
Coming from the sides of the bus, people could hear a growling hissing sound, and those who sat where the windows would be, looked over the sides, and were greeted by the horrific sights of alligators clawing and climbing upward against the lower deck's window frames, eager to get at the fleshy victims exposed on the open deck.
As the above passengers screamed in shock and horror, they also heard screams of terror rise suddenly, from the lower deck, as if a hole from Hell opened up from down there, releasing the wails of the damned, and adding them to their own.
The bus driver, still buckled in his seat, craned his head around in time to see the horror-stricken mass of passengers behind him surge with a herd mentality for the front doors.
He moved his hand over to his seat belt buckle, preparing to free himself and stand up to face the mob, to do his job and protect the riders in his care, but he couldn't even leave his seat in time before the wind was instantly crushed out of him, as he was pinned between the steering wheel and the fearful weight of desperate bodies.
His foot stumbled back onto the accelerator pedal and his hand flopped against the gear shift, setting the bus back to Drive, as questing arms and hands thrust past his unconscious body to find the switch on the dashboard that opened the main doors.
The bus lurched into motion, and Marcie felt a hand grip her arm like a steel band. It was her father, trying to get her away from her window seat, while at the same time, trying to push through the masses that choked the aisle, themselves trying to get from the sides of the bus and rush down the passageway.
"Come on, Marcie!" Winslow urged. "We have to get out of here before we're eaten alive!"
Marcie managed to glance over her side of the bus. Apparitions of alligators did appear, approaching her, and then, just as suddenly, they vanished, revealing the moving street and the approaching crest of a hill below.
She blinked her eyes clear for a moment and she didn't understand why she was seeing such a thing. Despite her blinking, the gators appeared once again, then faded away, once more. She blinked one more time, and this time, the gators didn't come back.
"Wait, Dad!" Marcie tried to tell him through the cacophony. "I-I don't think..."
Whatever Marcie was going to say next died in her throat at what she saw from her high vantage point.
Aided by the upper deck's height, she stood and leaned over the side, and could see, from beyond the approaching hill, the crowds and the Pageant's opening parade moving along the street that crossed the hill's base.
Her stomach felt like it bottomed out into her knees. Once the bus reached the hill, it would become a battering ram, it was as simple as that, and even if the spectators managed to get out of the way, in time, the floats, and everyone on them, would be sitting ducks.
'Why was the bus driver still driving?' she thought, but there was no time for answers now, and no way to calm everybody and help get control of the situation.
Plus, it didn't help to see her father wrenched away from her side and disappear into the wave of bodies looking for escape.
"Mar-Marcie!" was all she could hear before he was gone.
"Dad! Dad!"
Ponderously, the bus was still in motion, closing in on the hill. People on board would die, and more would be added when it hit the parade, her brain screamed at her. If she was clear-headed enough to act, then she had to. As much as she hated to think it, her father had to wait.
Standing on her seat to get a clear view of the deck, Marcie could see people crammed into the shelter of the partially roofed forward section that opened to the stairway that led to the lower deck.
Reaching into her the inner pocket of her wool jacket, she grabbed a couple of Discourager capsules, aimed and threw them against the inner side of the side window of the shelter. The capsules broke, releasing their horrid, burning stink into the crowd, who reacted satisfactorily to Marcie, by scattering from the shelter and back to the open area of the upper deck for air.
With an opening made, Marcie made an apology to the passengers and began to ungainly walk, hop and leap on their heads and shoulders, getting clumsily closer to the shelter.
With angry, confused people in her wake, Marcie jumped down from the last passenger's shoulders and landed in the cleared aisle just before the shelter. Quickly, she ran down the winding staircase, and witnessed barely contained chaos.
Passengers were crammed where the driver sat, and, in fact, she couldn't even see him. Those that didn't have room to panic up front, crowded against the windows, beating against them and trying to claw them apart with sore, red hands.
'What's going on up front,' she thought. 'Why was the driver still driving the bus?'
"Hey! Bus driver! Hey, stop driving!" Marcie yelled, as she stumbled and tip-toed past the frightened humanity in the aisle.
She made it halfway across the bus, then reached into her jacket again, took out another pair of Discouragers and threw them over the heads of the people in her way. Cracking open against the ceiling, they rained noxious chemicals over the throng's heads and faces.
They wailed as they began to spread out and away from the driver's area and back towards the seating area.
Marcie fought her way through the subdued, returning passengers, like a salmon upstream, finally reaching the out-cold driver.
"Well, that explains things," she said, examining him.
Residual Discourager mist was starting to make her eyes smart and water, but by blinking, she could just see the hill's crest inching up towards them, from the bus's panoramic windshield.
Knowing that she didn't have time to unbuckle the driver before they went over the crest, Marcie pulled the man into an upright seated position, so she could have room to reach over and grab hold of the unfamiliar steering wheel.
"Okay, I've got steering," she nervously said to herself. "Gotta get control."
Risking not seeing anything outside of the bus, Marcie looked down into the dark space of the pedals and saw the driver's foot planted halfway on the accelerator. She managed to reach his foot with her own, and kick his away, but not before the bus finally rolled over the peak of the steep hill and coasted down.
People who knew that the bus was free-wheeling down the hill and building up more speed with every passing second, wailed anew, which didn't help Marcie's teary concentration in trying to steer this multi-ton beast.
Her outstretched foot tapped and fumbled uselessly for the brake in the dark well under the dashboard, going more by feel than sight, which was already hampered by the Discouragers.
Outside, the speeding bus was devouring yards by the second, and the distressing fact that as it built up speed, the kinetic energy released when it finally slammed into something, or several someones, would be devastating, was not loss on her.
She looked up from her pedal search and saw the parade closing in, and her heart jumped hard in her breast. They were too close. Much too close.
She banged on the bus's horn, but she needn't have bothered. Patrons alerted by others across the street, had already looked from the entertainment and saw the killer bus rumbling straight towards them. They scattered from the foot of the hill, like athletes.
'That takes care of the spectators,' she thought. 'But not the floats.'
Her foot hit and finally found the brake, but she fought her impulse to use it fully. As a driver, she understood that she had to somehow turn away from the floats as she applied brake, to slow down this monster and save the paraders.
As someone who understood science, she knew she had to do all of that carefully, to defeat the massive momentum the bus had gained, or the bus would turn too sharply and flip over, certainly spilling and killing everyone on the upper deck, including her father.
Holding her breath and wrenching the steering wheel around fast, Marcie aimed the bus for the curb at the foot of the hill, to give herself the widest angle to maneuver with.
The bus bounced from hitting the curb, but had enough space to turn and roll parallel to a pink and white float sporting a large, proud-looking gator on top.
The paraders on the float, all girls, representing all-star students from Gatorsburg High, were caught off-guard by the bus's sudden appearance, and screamed at the near broadside, as Marcie fought to keep the wheel turning and forcing the bus away from the vehicle.
When the bus settled into its turn and slowed, not coming any closer to the float, Marcie put all her weight onto the brake, lurching the heavy vehicle to a blessed stop.
Marcie, experimentally, put the bus in Park, then turned around to face the passengers so she could judge their condition. All around the seating area, people were littered about the chairs and aisle, moaning and breathless from their fearful exertions, but they seemed quieter, more calm to her.
Policemen rushed over, frantically knocking on the front doors, and Marcie, finding the door controls, let them in. As they began to lead passengers out of the bus's lower deck, Marcie slalomed past them and ran back upstairs to the upper deck.
There, it was more off the same. Bodies recovering, yet cluttering the seating area of the upper deck, haphazardly.
"The police are here," Marcie called out to them. "Everybody go downstairs so they can take care of you."
Slowly, the people closest to her got up, walked unsteadily past, and descended the stairwell. Soon, the others behind them began to shamble past, and as the deck began to clear, Marcie could see Winslow seated on a window seat with his leg propped up across its aisle-side neighbor.
She jogged over to him. His glasses were askew, as were his clothes and hair, but she was thankful to Heaven that he was still alive.
"Are you all right, Dad?" she asked.
Winslow straightened his sitting to be more comfortable while speaking. "Oh, Marcie. Where were you? I thought the alligators had gotten you. I couldn't find you at all."
"I had to stop the bus," she told him,
"By yourself?" he asked, aghast.
"Yeah," she shrugged, ignoring his concern. Then, she looked down at his favored, extended leg. "What happened to your leg?"
"I sprained it in the aisle when everybody was trying to leave the bus. I'll be fine." Winslow said, then he looked around, bewildered. "Wh-Where are the alligators?"
Marcie took a seat across the aisle from Winslow's two. "I don't think there were any to begin with, Dad, but whoever that guy was, he's a menace," she said, quietly, taking a breather.
Marcie finally exited the bus, supporting her father under his arm and seeing the police cordon and the crowds that formed on the street, bringing the parade to an early, if temporary, stop.
She was about to wave a policeman over, when a gracefully aged, platinum blonde woman in a well-tailored suit walked through the police-barricaded crowds with an air of authority that suggested that there were few places she was barred from.
"Excuse me, but are you the one who stopped the bus?" the woman asked, as she approached father and daughter.
"Yes," Marcie answered her, wondering if she was a reporter.
"I want to thank you," the woman said, offering her hand. "My name is Priscilla Blanchard. When you stopped that bus from hitting the float, you saved my grand-daughter."
Marcie shifted her weight under Winslow, shook the soft, manicured hand, and digested the impact of her actions this day. "Wow! I didn't know, but I'm happy your grand-daughter is safe, ma'am. I'm glad everyone's safe, as a matter of fact, but you'll have to excuse me, ma'am. I have to get my father to a hospital. He was hurt."
"Please, allow me to repay you in kind. Let me take you father to the hospital," Blanchard offered, seeing the hobbled man.
Winslow quickly spoke up for himself after that exchange. "I don't need to go to a hospital, Marcie. I simply need to soak my ankle in hot water and Epsom salts, and then wrap it up. Hospitals are far too expensive."
Marcie was used to his fiscally conservative protestations, but she was unsure of his grousing when he was actually hurt and such frugality could cost him his health. "Are you sure, Dad?"
"Of course," he placated. "Just because you're incapacitated, it doesn't mean you can't save money."
Marcie sighed to herself. "Of course." Then, she returned her attention back to Blanchard. "Anyway, I'm glad I was able to save your grand-daughter, ma'am."
Blanchard slipped a hand into her jacket and produced a smooth white card, giving it to her. "Then, before I take my grand-daughter home, please, accept my card, and allow me to take you back to your hotel."
Marcie asked, suspiciously. "How do you know we're staying in a hotel?"
"Simple," Blanchard said to her. "The Pageant's here, tourists are everywhere, and you don't sound like you're from around here, anyway."
Marcie thought about that. She might not have been conscious of it, but she and her father were probably carrying on like the biggest tourist rubes in town. She shrugged and accepted the card. "Good point and thank you."
"You're welcome," Blanchard said, leading them from the cordon, and pleased to reciprocate the rescue. "My limo is on the other side of the street."
"Limo?" Marcie and Winslow asked in unison, as they followed her.