On the horizon about 75 torches come into view. A rowdy crowd of homeless Drunks and Hobos are yelling, waving burning sticks, throwing bottles at the perimeter of the Barstowe European Circus, that is camped outside the ruined town of Bagdad beach.
Clowns with clubs and shovels come running out to meet them. Almost as if by floating down from the ether, The Abyssinian, The Arabian and the Hindu Aghori emerge at the front of the group of savage Carnies. With a roar the Borrachos charge forward in a tumult of violence. Bloody Clowns and stumbling Drunks fight it out tooth and nail.
The Three Middle Eastern Sages walk amongst the riot. Slapping Borrachos down, plunging jeweled daggers into their lungs and hearts. Not aggressive, more like the work of disinterested butchers. In the firelight their features seem inhuman, Golden eyes and unnaturally long teeth. There is silence as the beaten and bloody Clowns roll around in the dirt with the last surviving Borrachos.
In the distance comes a scream, a series of shrill war cries and the thunder of horse hooves beating the earth in a great multitude. Gun shots and sounds of glass breaking come from the other side of the Camp. On horseback, hundreds of Mexican female Rebels come smashing into the Circus encampment with rifles and swords. Tossing bottles stuffed with burning rags onto carts and crates.
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The evil Sages sneer and like fearsome birds of prey. Unfurling great wings from under their black cloaks. They take to the sky faster than the eye can see, disappearing into the cloudless night. The Soldaderas hack and hit Freaks and Clowns from horseback. Some swing improvised weapons with large stones wrapped in a leather throng to dash the brains out of Carnies, some weald whips with barbed and weighted ends like a Roman scourge, still others utilizing farm equipment like hatchets, scythes and iron gears from a mechanized cotton loom.
A couple of the Soldaderas stop and look up at the sky. Screaming and diving from their mounts as the Three Sages come violently down from the starry sky. Lifting victims up to great heights while ravaging them with fangs, dropping them when limp. Striking others with jeweled daggers so quick women think they have been shot as a hole erupts a torrent of blood from their breast bones. Several have scrambled between carts and boxes to uncover tripod machine guns.
Martiza being one of the more experienced has a belt fed machine gun roaring into the sky like great anti aircraft cannons in the great war. As this is happening a Mexican Marine, of the Huerta faction loyal to the Government has stumbled into the fray. Dashing back to report “A Raid by Pancho Villa and Zapata’s forces against a civilian Carnival!”
At the sight of Machine guns, the Three Sages retreat to the night sky. Maritza thinks where she has seen them before, they remind her of the Eastern Wisemen from a Nativity play. Although clothed in black turbans, in the heat of the desert she almost felt like she see crowns and jewels of some antiquity she can’t name. Some far distant culture of the silk road only dreamed of by the orientalist fiction she read as a schoolgirl. She remembers a story of 3 Wisemen from the East following the Star of Bethlehem to the nativity.