Free Quick Fixes: Tales of Repairman Jack by F. Paul Wilson

enemies. You’ve never seen anything like him and never will anywhere else. Guaranteed.” He spotted Jack. “Here, you. Get behind the rope. This thing’s dangerous! See those claws? One swipe and you’d be sliced up like a tomato by a Ginsu knife! We don’t want to see our customers get sliced up.” His eyes said otherwise as he none too gently prodded Jack with the pole. “Back now.”
    Jack slipped back under the rope, never taking his eyes off Scar lip. Now that it was up front in the light, he saw that the rakosh didn’t look well. Its skin was dull, and relatively pale, nothing like the shiny deep cobalt he remembered. It looked thin, almost wasted. It stared at Jack a moment longer, then it looked down. Its talons retracted, slipping back inside the fingertips, the arms dropped to its sides, the shoulders drooped, then it turned and shuffled back to the rear of the cage where it slumped again in the corner and hung its head.
    Drugged. That had to be the answer. They had to keep the rakosh tranquilized to keep it manageable. Even so, it didn’t look too healthy.
    But drugged or not, healthy or not, it had remembered Jack, recognized him. Which meant it could remember Vicky. And if it ever got free, it might come after Vicky again, to complete the task its dead master had set for it last summer.
    The roustabout had begun banging on the rakoshi’s cage in a fury, screaming at it to get up and face the crowd. Jack turned and headed for the exit. He knew what had to be done.
    Scar lip had to die.
     
    Friday
    Jack parked his Corvair at the edge of the Monroe meadows at around midnight and waited in the front seat for the circus to bed down for the night. Chilly. An autumn mist had formed, hugging the ground. No moon above, but plenty of stars. Enough light to get him where he wanted to go without a flashlight.
    At least Vicky wasn’t frightened anymore. Jack had hated lying to her, but seeing the relief he her eyes when he’d told her the rakosh she’d seen had really been a man in a rubber costume had made it seem like the right thing to do. He’d told her every last rakosh was dead. A lie, but only a temporary lie, just for a couple of hours. By morning it would be true.
    Things quieted down by one a.m. Jack waited until two, then went around to the Corvair’s front and removed a pair of gallon cans from the trunk. The gasoline sloshed heavily within as he strode across the uneven ground toward the hulking silhouette of the freak show tent. The performers’ and hands’ trailers stood off to the north by the big eighteen wheel truck.
    No guards in sight. If any were about, they were probably concentrated around the menagerie area. Jack slipped under the canvas sidewall and listened. Quiet. A couple of incandescent bulbs had been left on, one hanging from the ceiling every thirty feet or so. Keeping to the shadows along the sidewall, Jack made his way toward Scar lip’s cage.
    His plan was simple: flood the floor of the rakosh’s cage and douse the thing itself with the gas, strike a match, then head for the trailers shouting “Fire!” at the top of his lungs. He knew from experience that once a rakosh started to burn, it would be quickly consumed. He just hoped the performers and roustabouts would arrive with their extinguishers in time to keep the whole tent from going up. He didn’t like the plan, didn’t like endangering the tent or anybody nearby, but it was the most efficient and direct plan he could come up with on such short notice. He had to protect Vicky at any cost, and this was the only sure way he knew of killing a rakosh.
    He approached the cage warily from the blind end, then made a wide circle around to the front. Scar lip was stretched out on the cage floor, sleeping, its right arm dangling through the bars. It opened its eyes as he neared. Their yellow was even duller than this afternoon. Its talons extended only part way as it made a half hearted, almost perfunctory swipe in