Buran had concentrated his will and power to an incandescent point of blazing fury, slipped the goggles over his eyes and brought it down slowly. He had fumbled the approach the first time and a man lay crumpled on the ground as proof, but the rest of the pilots stood stiffly and silently at attention. Now he eased the blazing point around the metal staple that held their chains to the rock, teasing at the boundaries of the spell, probing for patterns. Occasionally one man or another would twitch as a shock played across their nerves, but discipline held them firm.
One of his men shouted in alarm, and he quenched the scintillant arc before pushing the goggles up and looking around. One was pointing at the rock where the enemy had lain. A blood-stain marked the spot, but there was no sign of the body. He opened his mouth to berate the stupid inobservant fool, but another shout spun him around. The other guard was pointing down the lane at a boiling plume of dust, a cyclone that sprang up from the ground instead of dropping down to it.
His hand reached reflexively for his wand as figures emerged from the dust cloud, and when he saw what they were doing he stood frozen in shock.
Over the prairie came a mob of men, as precisely disciplined as a drill team but in furious motion. No real men could have moved so fast; the effect was like watching a video on fast-forward. First came a row with shovels, scooping and grading. Behind them were dimly-glimpsed wheelbarrows – a pickax? – and behind that, baulks of wood and gleaming rods of metal, the whole slamming down as fast as men could run forward with another rail.
As the procession grew nearer the men faded into ghostly half-presence, the dust thinned and the shining twin rails solidified. In moments they were surrounded by a crew of ghosts, mouths stretched open in mirthless grins, eyes sewn shut, tools slung over withered shoulders. By some trick of perspective he could see a tiny, tiny engine laboring at the far end of the tracks, so far away it surely should be over the horizon but somehow was not – it was accelerating now, growing larger as it came. There was a sound now like the panting of a great beast, a growling rumbling roar topped by a screaming whistle that grew louder… louder…
The locomotive towered now over their heads, rods pumping and wheels flashing. It both roared by and came to a stop without ever braking, its long black length cased in streamlining and its black plume of smoke shot though with escaping steam. The engineer was barely visible but the fireman straightened from his work, waving a skeletal hand to skull’s brow, unhinged jaw dangling in the joyous scream of a fleshless grin. Buran forced his eyes away, refused to let them rest on the macabre spectacle of ghostly workmen, focused instead on the gleaming blackness of the tender and on to the cars behind.
The first car was paneled in rich dark wood, picked out in brasswork and gilt paint, windows funereally dark and blank as eye sockets. The second car was a flatbed, surmounted by a complex arrangement of vertical pipes and a small boiler at the far end. From the third car came a swarm of gaily clad corpses, bright colors setting off the deathly pallor of their complexions and the raccoon-like bruises around the eyes, blackened tongues lolling over shriveled lips.
As one, the ghastly throng turned. One figure strutted down the flatcar and seated itself at the colossal organ, others took their places at bass and drums and guitars. All sound stopped – Buran found himself holding his breath – and the figure at the organ shouted, “Thank you ladies and gentlemen! And welcome now, the King of Carnival, the man-made Rex of the virtual and actual, the Lord of Light and the Dark Spaces of your Secret Desires! All hail His Excellency…
Frankenstein!”
From the organ came an old, familiar bass pulse – da da da da, da da-da daaaah, da-da-da daah-da! The drums and guitars kicked in, the bass picked up the beat and hidden speakers pulsed to Edgar Winter’s ‘Frankenstein’, organ screaming now into wailing synthesizer licks. The crowd broke into a giddy joyless celebration, a madcap capering with deadness in their eyes, mouths stretched in tetnic, molar-baring grins, hands raised over their heads in salutation. From the platform at the end of the first car a gigantic figure stepped into view, crowned in a fountain of rhinestones, garbed in priceless furs dyed a tacky purple, green and gold, strands of beads in one hand and a giant golden go-cup in the other.
It was Frankenstein, no doubt – huge, greenish of skin with lank black hair and thin black lips pulled back over perfect white teeth, flesh seamed with sutures and eyes as shiny, black and dead as opals. He threw his arms wide, embracing the crowd of dancing dead, and they spoke for the first time, roaring their approval and abasement, ghosts and zombies all now capering to the driving beat.
Buran looked around himself in horror. Nothing he could conceive of could muster this much sheer, raw power, much less throw it all away on gaudy spectacle and pointless, empty show.
What, he wondered,
is this thing! What could it possibly
want!
(he has posted about this in the general AAR Forum, in case anyone wonders). Will this tale survive this disaster too? 
