Jason tried to bring the machete down on the back of Witney’'s head, but the blade had been wired to his wrist so it came loose and fell onto the boat dock. The noise brought George to his senses. He turned just as Jason reached out, pulled an entire window frame away from the wall of the fake cabin and brought it crashing down around the old man's head. The killer Kept his hands on the wood and shook the window like a prospector panning for epileptic gold, ramming and splitting the shards of glass in and out of Witney's face. The old man screamed as the razor pane pierced his eyes, tore up his teeth and slashed into his arteries. His body juddered and stiffened as Jason transmitted the full force of his psychopathic wrath into the sheet of cracked glazing. Then Jason lifted the frame high above his head, the old man's feet kicking and twitching above the stage, and threw the window and George Witney into the front row of the audience.

The showman hit the ground in a shatter of mulched and heaving flesh.

Alice fell to her knees and screamed. And behind her, the flame- haired Brookes turned to his friends and shouted, "Cool!

   Chapter 11

The crowd clapped and cheered as Jason held Sparx and Vincenzo up in the air. The killer had straightened the first two fingers of his hands into V shapes, plunging the left V into Vincenzo's eyes and the right V into Sparx's. Then he'd stood erect on the boat dock and lifted the bleeding victims off their feet in a murderous victory salute. Now he waited until the showmen finally stopped pissing and shtting themselves, and shook them off his hands.

Vincenzo went crashing into the cabin wall, bringing the whole fagade down on his head, while Sparx landed in a snap of broken wood that used to be a paddle.

And still Eli Brookes didn't think he was getting his money's worth.

"Turn it up!" he shouted. "We can't hear anything!"

Alice looked up from where she was kneeling on the ground. "You fcking little bstard!" she screamed.

As she got up and started to rush towards Eli, every light in the carnival suddenly went out. The moon now held sway over Harper Field and panic went running through the crowd like a virus.

Jason grabbed the Camp Crystal Lake sign and broke one end of it into a mess of splintered teeth. Then he dropped down among the audience and thrust the puncture board in and out of their meat bags. Ravaging their faces, spilling their intestines, ending their lives —riding the horror like the charnel mongoloid reaper he was born to be.

Judge ran to the generator that stood behind the huge eighteen- wheeler. The diesel engine was still grinding away, but he was appalled to see that someone had severed all the power cables. Suddenly a sharp bang came from inside the trailer.

"Who's there?" he called.

The only answer he got was another loud crash.

He picked up a wrench lying next to the generator and crept forward, the screams from the crowd adding impossible tension.

"I'm warning you." He counted to three before raising the tool and jumping in front of the open trailer doors.

There was no one inside.

"Damn!" he gasped.

He turned to go back to the generator when Glo suddenly stabbed him through the stomach with her hunting knife. She laughed and came at him again and again, the sharp steel point cutting into his face, his chest, the hands he tried to shield himself with. He collapsed onto a stack of crates as she came tearing forward with laughter and the repeated downfall of the blade. Stabs of silver, shining in the moonlight, snatching at his flesh until all life faded from his eyes. And then she stabbed him in the throat.

And laughed.

Alice fought her way through the fleeing crowd. A couple of men with handguns tried to stop Jason, but managed only to wound and kill some of the other townsfolk. Everyone else was running for their vehicles, turning the far side of the field into a madhouse of horns, revving engines and crumpled metal.

Suddenly, a dead body hit the ground in front of her.

It had been tossed through the air by Jason, who was using an iron railing from the Jack the Ripper display as a spear.

Alice had to find a way to stop the maniac. The carnival was finished, but Jason Voorhees was still her meal ticket. If only she could... suddenly she saw the body of her father and a tunnel of sadness drew her towards his horribly violated remains. She didn't know if she was emboldened by liquor or numbed by grief, but she had started to move towards him, towards the chaos, when she was spun round and punched in the mouth.

"This is all your fault, you stupid btch!"

She collapsed onto the dirt and saw Kenton Freely standing over her. He had a gun in his hand.

"You wanna say goodbye to the old bstard?" he snarled.

Then he hauled her to her feet, slapped her across the face and threw her down onto her father's body. Her hand fell on the window pane wrapped around the dead man's head and she screamed. Freely was out of control.

"Suck George's d#ck," he ranted, pointing the gun at her, "and I'll let you live."

"Are you fcking insane?" she cried.

Tears were flooding down Alice's face and her lips were thick with mucus. She could feel her father beneath her and was suddenly overcome by remorse at all their wasted years.

"Do it!" shouted Freely, as the diesel store exploded.

Clouds of flame, three stories high, rose behind the long storage truck. From short distance the heat wave was so intense, Kenton had to look away—which is why he didn't see Jason standing right behind him.

The cast-iron spear was rammed into Kenton's sphincter, pushed up into his bowels and then shoved out, in a shower of droplets, through his abdomen. He barely had time to scream before Jason took the pole in both hands and then hoisted his body up in the air like a banner.

"Arggh! For God's sakes!" shrieked Kenton, the gun falling from his hands. "Please! Help me!"

His limbs bobbed up and down, undulating with the killer's footsteps as Jason roamed unbound among the fleeing and the dead.

"Please!" cried Freely, gargling with bloody tracheal asphyxiation. "Help me!"

Alice climbed dizzily to her feet and tried to make sense of what was going on. Then she saw Kenton impaled on the end of the spear like a trophy puppet—and laughed.

"Alice!" he wailed, "Please! Help me! For God's sakes! Please!"

There was only one round left in the revolver and Jason was walking straight towards her. She took careful aim and...

"Argghhhhhhh!"

She shot Kenton in the balls.

Jason halted—the slug had gone straight through into his enormous chest—before tossing both the spear and Kenton onto the spreading fire. Freely screeched and yelped. He railed at every injustice he'd ever had to suffer at the hands of all those two-faced bastards who'd screwed up his life—people like Alice and her father people like Jason. Kenton cursed every damn one of them as he writhed and blackened and dripped and melted and died.

Alice's laughter grew even more hysterical and was threatening to spill over into madness. Jason was coming for her now and she was completely and utterly defenseless.

   Chapter 12

Jason stared at the body parts. He turned and looked left at Glo's body. He turned and looked right at Pamela's head. He turned his head left again. He turned his head right again.

Alice ran screaming up behind him and smashed the Camp Crystal Lake sign—the selfsame board he had just used to claim dozens of lives—across the back of his head. The wood splintered into pieces, and numbing shock forced Alice to drop what was left of the weapon. But Jason stood his ground, completely unfazed.

He turned and started to walk towards her.

By now Alice was a picture of violence. Her long dress, her hair and her pilot's jacket were all thick with the red liquidity of Glo's destruction, and even her skin was now so uniformly crimson as to render her many tattoos invisible. She didn't understand at all what had taken place between Jason and the girl he'd just slaughtered, nor could she work out why Jason seemed so interested in the mummified head; but his intentions now were unmistakable, and Alice ran for her life.

What the hell does someone do when forced to flee from the person they need the most? Jason wanted to kill her, she had no way of stopping him, she was terrified of him. And yet she needed him. Fueled by alcohol and desperation, she searched for a weapon or a solution, but everywhere she looked there was only death—the fire from the trucks; a field full of corpses. Some casualties were still alive, and were begging her for help. Her boots felt even heavier as she ran past them.

   Friday the 13th: Carnival of Maniacs, chapter 13