Flaming Zeppelins
Praise for
Zeppelins West:
“Irrepressible, irreverent and unpredictable, this hilarious fantasy with nostalgic touches of yesterday's SF shows off the narrative skills of an inventive author altogether comfortable in his metierâ¦.This novel is one big joyride from start to finish.”
âPublishers Weekly
Flaming London:
“Lansdale's homage to Twain, Verne and Wells is sci-fi fun at its boisterous, silly best.”
âPublishers Weekly,
starred review
“One of the wildest -alternate-worlds, rip-in-space-time, sf-pastiche romps this side of fifties B movies.”
âBooklist (Ray Olson)
“A folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace.”
“A zest for storytelling and a gimlet eye for detail.”
âEntertainment Weekly
“Like 10-alarm chili, Lansdale is pretty strong stuffâ¦a cult figure.”
âPeople Magazine
“Lansdale is a storyteller in the Texas tradition of outrageousness⦠but amped up to about 100,000 watts.”
âHouston Chronicle
“Lansdale is an American original with a storytelling style distinctively his own.”
âPublishers Weekly
“He may be violent, gruesome and shocking, but [Joe] Lansdale is also one of the greatest yarn spinners of his generation: fearless, earthy, original, manic and dreadfully funny.”
âDallas Morning News
“Lansdale's style is breezy, fun and full of black humor. To achieve this effect, he borrows from, praises, buries, and reinvents an impressive array of genres. The books are filled with noirish double-crosses and hidden agendas, droll observations, melancholy, and amateur sleuthingâall told in the author's distinctive, shit-kicking Texas twang.”
âEdge
“Be thankful [Lansdale] crafts such wild tall talesâ¦cunning, humor so salty it burns, and a fevered, cleansing imagination⦔
âChicago Sun-Times
“Lansdale writes about the poor, emotionally traumatized, violent and stoically heroic better than almost anyone. His characters can be off-the-charts weird, yet lovable in a strange S&M way.”
âMarin Independent Journal
“Reading him [Lansdale] is like riding the best tilt-a-whirl you've ever been on while still keeping your lunch down.”
âWashington Post
“Black humor and bad taste abound in Lansdale's Edgar-winning body of work⦔
âDetails
“The ever-prolific Joe R. Lansdaleâ¦certainly knows from fucked-in-the-head.”
âAustin Chronicle
Flaming Zeppelins
© 2010 by Joe R. Lansdale
Previously published by Subterranean Press in limited edition hardcovers as
Zeppelins West
© 2001 by Joe R. Lansdale, and
Flaming London
© 2005 by Joe R. Lansdale
This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidencial. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Cover design by John Coulthart
Interior design by Elizabeth Story
Tachyon Publications
1459 18th Street #139
San Francisco CA 94107
415.285.5615
Series Editor: Jacob Weisman
Project Editor: Jill Roberts
Printed in the United States of America by Worzalla
First Tachyon Edition: 2010
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ZEPPELINS WEST
IF VIEWED FROM BELOW, the twelve of them appeared to be brightly colored cigars. It seemed God had clumsily dropped them from his humidor. But fall they didn't. They hung in the sky, floated on, and from time to time, as if smoked by invisible lips, they puffed steam.
If you listened carefully, and they weren't too high, you could hear their motors hum, and if it were high noon and the weather was good, you could hear the John Philip Sousa band out on the promenade, blowing and beating to knock down the heavens or raise up the devil.
Inside the main cabin of the lead zeppelin, called
Old Paint
due to its spotted canvas, Buffalo Bill Cody, or what was left of him, resided in his liquid-filled jar, long gray hair drifting about his head. He waited for Buntline to turn the crank and juice him up. He certainly needed it. His head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton.
Problem was, Buntline was drunk, passed out beside the table where Cody's head resided in the thick jar with the product name MASON bulged out in glass at the back of him. He was grateful that Morse had put the logo at the back of him. The idea that he might look out at the world through the word MASON for the remaining life of his head was depressing.
Cody supposed he should be grateful that Doctor Morse and Professor Maxxon had put him here, but there were times when he felt as if he had given himself over to purgatory, or perhaps worse, a living hell.
The liquid in the jar, what Professor Maxxon called activated urine â it actually did contain a quarter pig urine, the rest was one-hundred-proof whiskey, and an amber chemical called Number 415 â kept his head alive, but it couldn't keep his brain from feeling dull, sleepy even. To think right, to have the juice he neededâ¦well, he needed Buntline to turn that goddamn crank.
Through the cabin's louvered windows, Cody could see it was high morning and the sunlight was warming up his jar. He had the horrible feeling it would heat up so much the liquid would boil and cook him. He wondered how the rest of him was doing in Morse's laboratory in Colorado. They could preserve the body all right, and they could make the heart beat, and of course they were keeping his brain alive here, but did it matter? Would head and body ever reattach?
It was too much to think about.
The lip of the brass mouth horn was fastened just inside his jaw, and when he bit down on it and talked, his voice, due to the liquid, gurgled, but he could be heard, thanks to Morse's device fastened tight in the center of his throat. He called, “Buntline, you dick cheese, get up.”
Buntline did not get up.
“I'll have you tossed off this goddamn craft.”
Still no Buntline.
Cody gave it up. When Buntline was truly under a drunk, which these days was most of the time, you couldn't wake him with a toot from Gabriel's horn or a kick from Satan's hoof.
Cody closed his eyes and tried to think of nothing.
But as was often the case, he thought of whiskey, women, and horseback riding. A trio in which he could no longer participate.
Wild Bill Hickok awoke from Annie Oakley's beautiful ornate bed with a hard-on like a shooting iron, but Annie was gone. The bed was still warm from her and smelled of her sweetness and the sheets were wet in the center where they had made love.
Hickok suffered a tinge of guilt because he was glad Frank Butler, her former husband, was dead. Frank had been a good man, but death had certainly opened up opportunities that Hickok now dutifully enjoyed. The drawback was Annie still pined for Frank, and sometimes, after their lovemaking she would arise early to sit out on the enclosed zeppelin deck so she could feel guilty and no longer a child of God.
Hickok thought God was a fairy story, so, unlike Annie, that didn't worry him. He felt worse about Frank's memory. He thought Frank a hell of a guy, not as famous as himself, or Cody, or many of the others on board, including Annie. But like Annie, he had been a human being superior to them all.
What had made Frank good was Annie. Hickok was looking for that in himself. When he was with Annie, he felt as Frank must have, that he was worthy. That there was more to him than his speed with guns, his skill with cards, his way with whores.
Jesus, he thought. What am I thinking? I need to get the hell out of this Wild West Show and back to the real West. Away from Annie and her goodness, back to gunfights, card games and stinky whores like Calamity Jane â mean as a snake, dumb as a stone, crooked as a politician, with a face like the puckered south end of a northbound mule.
It was safer that way. You didn't get high-minded. You didn't have to stand by any morals. Calamity didn't smell good and when she left a wet spot it was something to attract insects and stick them to it, like flypaper. A woman like that you didn't attach to.
But a moment later, dressed in a long-sleeved, red wool shirt, buckskin pants and beaded boots, his long blonde hair and mustache combed, his face washed, Hickok went looking for Annie.
Annie Oakley, Little Miss Sure Shot, twirled her dark hair with one hand, thought of Wild Bill Hickok and their lovemaking, and hated to admit he was far better in bed than Frank had ever been.
But a lady wasn't supposed to think about such matters. She turned her attention away from that and back to Frank, and though she missed him, knew she still loved him, his image failed to come into total focus.
It faded completely when she saw Hickok coming along the deck toward her. His tall figure, shoulder-length hair, the manly nose, the cut of his hips and shoulders, made her a little queasy.
Out here on the zeppelin deck, covered by glass and wood and curtains, she thought perhaps she could think clearly. That away from his charms she could work up the courage to tell him it was over. That she would now do what she was supposed to do. Wear black till her grave and never love another man.
What courage she had summoned to do such a thing, dissolved as he sat in the deck chair beside her.
“I woke and you were gone.”
“Can't go far on this craft. I'm easy to find.”
He laid his hand on top of hers. “I suppose that's true.”
She gently moved it away. “Not in public, Bill. I'm going back to my cabin now. To be alone. Perhaps we'll talk later.”
