Read Dunc and Amos Hit the Big Top for Free Online Page A

the screen, which was still around his face and kept him from seeing.
    At a dead run he drove the top of his head straight into the support arm of a rearview mirror on another truck parked nearby, and his mind exploded in colors and stopped thinking of anything and everything except pumping his legs and running.
    Amos was on full automatic.

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    It was probably just as well that Amos was running on full automatic. Things happened that he was better off not knowing.
    He moved fast. Years of answering the phone through disaster after disaster, trying to make it on that all-important first ring, had given him skills far beyond those of normal people. On more than one occasion he had dreamed that he was answering the phone and awakened to find that he had run out of his room, down the stairs, through the living room, and picked up the real phone to answer the dream ring—all without awakening.
    Nobody, not even Dunc, could catch him.While the guard was still running around in little circles, Amos ricocheted off the mirror, hesitated while his thinking stopped and his instincts took over, and within two steps was again running full speed.
    He cut to the right through the area where the campers were parked, catching his form and pulling it into a near classic movement—knees well up, spit flying out of the side of his mouth, eyes glazed and straight ahead (normal, although this time it was from the blow to his head)—and ran full on into Blades.
    “Hey! How’d you get out?”
    Amos didn’t hear him, and there was no way Blades could slow him down or catch him.
    He bounced off Blades, knocking him down, and was out of sight between cars in an instant.
    Dunc was in back of Amos, not gaining but moving with good speed, so fast that he ran up to Blades just as the man was getting up. Dunc was moving too fast to turn, and at the last possible instant he jumped, trying to clear Blades, but he was just a bit too low, andhis foot came down directly on top of Blades’s head.
    Dunc compensated, lunged, putting all his weight on Blades’s head, and powered over, jamming Blades’s head down between his shoulders so hard that Blades’s eyes crossed, and he dropped on his face.
    The lunge slowed Dunc. He had been almost holding his own with Amos, but now the half-beat required to push Blades’s head down into his chest caused Dunc to lose two steps, and when he looked up, Amos was gone.
    Still, Dunc thought it was not so bad. But he had not seen Amos hit the mirror bracket, did not know Amos was running on automatic.
    Dunc remembered the plan and assumed Amos would go for the authorities, try to find the police.
    The security guard.
    There was a security guard by the ticket booth to keep people in line, and Dunc was sure that was where Amos would go.
    He gave up following Amos and cut to the left, headed for the ticket booth to find Amosand tell the security guard what was happening.
    It was too late.
    When Dunc rounded the corner of the big top, he found the front area jammed with people. The crowds waiting for tickets were packed back to the parking lot, and Dunc couldn’t see either the security guard or Amos anywhere.
    He stood on a small stool for a few minutes, scanning the crowd, but he still didn’t see anything and was about to jump down when he recognized somebody.
    Melissa.
    She was getting her ticket and moving to the front opening on the tent.
    And he knew.
    Seeing Melissa triggered his thinking and he knew.
    Amos wasn’t coming to look for the security guard.
    Something must have happened. There hadn’t been time, or he got his wires crossed, and Amos would go to the service truck and then head for the trapeze.
    Dunc knew.
    He wheeled around, cut in front of the crowd, and ran into the tent just as Melissa passed through the opening with the rest of the crowd.
    Of all the directions where Dunc didn’t want to look for Amos, most of all he didn’t want to look up.
    He looked up.
    There, standing on the small