Flaming Zeppelins (30 page)

Rikwalk goes through it, comes down in a place he doesn't know. The boat isn't there, and he doesn't know where in hell it went. Another exit?

Actually, he comes out, not down. Because in spite of going up, coming through the rift, the exit is to the side, sort of, and it has this ripple effect going. Like a heat wave.

Rikwalk falls out, hits the ground, the orange-red rip closes up like a tear in a persimmon pushed together by a cheating fruit salesman.

Now there is just this thin as razor-edge, orange-red line in the air, and when Rikwalk reaches out to touch it, hoping to go back through, to take his chances, try and fall down into the waters of his lock, the line vibrates and tightens like an old maid who's considered the deed then changed her mind.

No more split.

No more glow.

Not even a line, man.

“So you see,” said Rikwalk, “the rips came and went at first, and then some of them started staying. You could see holes in the sky, and sudden rips in the air right before you. All sorts of people and things came out of them. Some of the stuff I saw made the hair on my ass stand up.

“I decided to look about at first, and for a moment, I thought I was still on my world. But it was a horrible world of the living dead. They walked about. They attacked people.”

“Living dead?” Verne said. “What do you mean?”

“Mellie. Apes to you. The dead were rising from their graves and they were trying to kill the living, eat their flesh.”

Ned wrote: WOW. FLESH-EATING APES WITH BIG DICKS THAT SPEAK ENGLISH.

“The dead,” Rikwalk said, “they are not sweet to smell. And there's no reason I can offer to explain their rising. You died there, you came back. A virus maybe. Caused by the splits in space and time, perhaps. I don't know. But let me address this matter of speaking English. On my world, this language you call English is Mellie. I have no explanation for it being the same language. A few words, expressions are different. But it's mostly the same. Why? Shit, I don't know. It just is. But from a few books I've seen here on board ship — and I'll explain my being on the ship earlier as I come to it — we have a better approach to spelling.”

“I think we all get the idea,” Beadle said. “Sort of. Just go on with your story.”

Rikwalk nodded. Said: “So there I am. Pursued by the living dead, shuffling along, their hands held out, the hair on their faces falling off, their tongues thick and black. And I'm running like a bastard. They're after my ass. Want to eat me. Or kill me and turn me like them. If they don't eat all of you, you get up and you're hungry. And we're not talking wanting a slice of doonbar loaf and two pieces of bread.”

“What's a doonbar?” Mr. Twain said. “Is that English?”

“Sorry,” Rikwalk said. “That's one of the different words. It's kind of like a turkey. Only not.”

“Close enough,” Mr. Twain said. “Go on.”

“They want Mellie flesh. No cooking. No seasoning. On the hoof, fresh and hot. And when you turn, when you're like them, even if your legs are cut off, you'll crawl after your prey.”

“Was everyone on that world dead?” Twain asked.

“No. There were plenty dealing with the problem, same as me. Let me tell you something interesting. After a short time, people went back to work. Like always. They just carried weapons. You see, you could kill them if you burned them or cut off their heads. So people carried big knives. Thing about the dead, they're not very strong and they're not very fast, and smart isn't even a minor factor in the equation. On a smart scale of one to ten, they're not on it… Yes, Ned?”

Ned held up his pad.

THAT'S SCARY.

“Yes, it is, Ned,” Rikwalk said. “It's even scarier when they're chasing you.”

“But that doesn't explain how you're here,” Twain said.

“No. It doesn't. So I'm on this world that isn't my world, but it's similar, and I'm doing the best I can to survive, and the sky, it starts to be marked all over with rips, like lesions. And finally, one day, sick of it all, sick of dodging and fighting, I stepped into one of the rips.”

“That shows you have some real plums,” Twain said.

“Or that I'm stupid. I could have fallen anywhere. Up, down, sideways. Actually, I did end up anywhere. I stepped through a slit in time, and fortunately, did not fall, just stepped sideways, ended up in Beadle's world.”

“Couldn't the dead follow?” Verne asked.

“They did. They followed me in. A few of them. I dispatched them. The wound in the sky closed. True, another wound would open somewhere else, but there was no telling where it would lead. Back to the dead world. My world. Your world. Any world. Shortly thereafter, I met Beadle, John Feather, and Steam.”

“Steam?” Passepartout said.

“Perhaps it's best if I let Mr. Beadle take over the story,” Rikwalk said. “Then I'll finish, and then we'll all finish with a look in the hold.”

“The Dark Rider,” Beadle said. “He was the problem.”

“With what?” Twain asked. “What kind of problem?”

WHO THE FUCK IS THE DARK RIDER?

“Bad language, little seal,” Mr. Verne said.

I'M SORRY. BUT WHO THE FUCK IS THE DARK RIDER?

“The rips in the sky, tears in the universe,” John Feather. “You name it, Dark Rider was behind it all. If he wasn't sticking his dick in someone's asshole, he was poking it through time, waving it in space.”

“Interesting expressions,” Verne said. “Very American sounding. You are American?”

“Where I come from, we are Americans. But I have no idea if the America here is the same.”

“Well, you speak American,” Twain said. “I should know. I'm American. You cuss like an American. Only Americans truly know how to cuss. Cussing is an art, and not to be used without intent and discrimination. My wife cussed, but bless her soul, so poorly it was hardly worth hearing. It requires true training and timing to cuss properly.”

“You and Verne exist in our world,” Beadle said. “I thought I should mention that.”

“Really?” Twain said.

“Yes. You write books.”

“Same alike here,” Twain said. “But I must apologize. You were talking about this Dark Rider fella.”

“We don't know much about him. But not long ago, we went back to where we battled him. Went back after we recovered and repaired Steam, and we found his diary. You see, we defeated him. It's a long story and I don't want go into it, but we did. We left the scene of the battle, recovered, went back and found the diary.”

“Again,” Twain said, “sorry to interrupt, but who is Steam?”

“I'm coming to that,” Beadle said. “As I said, I won't tell you the whole of mine and John's story.
²
But I'll tell you some. I'll give you some background. I'll link to Rikwalk's tale. The world Rikwalk came into was as chaotic as the world of the dead. Maybe more so. On our world, time and space were ripping and collapsing at an alarming rate. Maybe it's like that on a lot of other worlds, but this one, strange as it is to me, is nothing like what our world became. There are fewer rips. Less collapsing.

“Me and John Feather were part of an organization. I formed it. There was me and John, two others. You need not know them, know all the past. But we were trying to set wrongs right. When our world started coming apart, all manner of things came through the rips, and we decided to use our man of steam to correct them.”

“A steam man,” Twain said. “We have dime novels about such things. Steam horses. Steam this and steam that. Jules here, who is far better than a dime novelist, has written about such. I have been in such a machine. A boat designed by Jules, built by Passepartout. It ran at extraordinary speeds. It also came apart.”

Ned wrote furiously. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH DIME NOVELS. I LIKE DIME NOVELS. I SELDOM THINK OF FISH WHEN I'M READING A DIME NOVEL. WHEN I READ FLAUBERT, I THINK OF FISH A LOT. I LIKE MR. TWAIN'S AND MR. VERNE'S NOVELS. I DON'T THINK ABOUT FISH WHEN I READ THEM.

“Point taken,” Twain said. “And thanks for the compliment.”

“Yes, Ned,” Verne said. “Thank you.”

“Sorry, Beadle,” Twain said. “Done it again. Please go ahead. You were saying about correcting the bad things on your world with the use of the steam man.”

Beadle nodded.

“Steam was a big metal man. He didn't have brains. Didn't have a heart. Didn't have courage. He was a machine. Built forty feet tall, not counting his conical hat. He was twenty feet wide and tin-colored. Powered by steam. Puffed steam when he walked. He was strong. He could tear trees up by the roots, toss big boulders, wade furious streams. You see, we were his heart, brains and courage, me and John Feather, our two friends. It saddens me so much to think of them I can hardly speak of it. It was the Dark Rider who killed them.”

“The Dark Rider was our nemesis,” John Feather said.

Beadle nodded. “I believe he is responsible for the rifts in our world, and for that matter, all the worlds. Time travel was not meant to be. It makes holes in the fabric of time, makes it look like Swiss cheese.”

Ned wrote: THAT'S CHEESE WITH HOLES IN IT. I LIKE CHEESE. NOT AS MUCH AS FISH, BUT IT GOES WELL WITH FISH. DO YOU HAVE ANY CHEESE OR FISH? I ENJOY A STORY BEST ON A FULL STOMACH. I HAVE EVEN BEEN KNOWN TO EAT OLIVES.

Everyone present admitted they had neither fish nor cheese nor olives.

VERY WELL. BUT, IF YOU THINK OF ANYTHING YOU MIGHT HAVE THAT A SEAL WOULD EAT, AND IN MY CASE THAT'S QUITE VARIED, PLEASE SPEAK UP. REALLY.

Beadle went on with his story.

“We fought this horrible man who traveled through time, and we defeated him. Forcing him through a rip in time, where we hope he will forever be trapped. When it was over, we got out of there. Meaning the place where we had been tortured and the both of us nearly died, this place where the Time Traveler had been holed up with a group of monster men called Morlocks. We went away from there and licked our wounds and repaired Steam, and when me and John were strong again, we went back.

“The Time Traveler was dead, or lost, out of the way, and we had suffered great indignities at his hands, and at the hands of his Morlocks, but still, we went back.”

“Couldn't help ourselves,” John Feather said.

“Couldn't,” Beadle said. “We went back to maybe see if he had somehow survived. But the rip, it was closed up, and there was no sign of him. But in the rubble of what had been his hideout —”

“— it was rubble because Steam destroyed it,” John Feather said. “With me at the controls.”

“Yee haw,” Bull said.

“That's right,” Beadle said. “Yee haw. We found what was left of the time machine in the rubble, and we dug it out and pulverized it. We found the diary.

“From the way it read, he had once been whole. His mind good, but the time travel, the things that happened to him, they changed him.”

“He turned evil as an old boll weevil,” John Feather said.

“That's right,” Beadle said. “And all that time traveling, bringing the Morlocks through time, it punched holes in the fabric of things. Anyway, there we were, with the diary, looking through the rubble, and we decided to leave, and the world tore open.”

“The bottom fell out,” John Feather said.

“And we dropped through,” Beadle said. “Splashed in the ocean. But we were lucky. We were near the shore and Steam landed on his feet. The water was up to his neck, but his feet were on the bottom. The water didn't get in. He was built airtight and we had done a lot of repairs. The fire didn't go out. We were able to walk him toward shore.”

“This is where I must butt in,” Rikwalk said. “Somehow, I came through the same rip with them. Or right behind them. I was on their world already, and I remember seeing the man of steam from a distance. I didn't want to get close, not knowing them. And I saw them go through the rift, and I thought, shit, bad luck for them. And then the rip widened. And I started to run, but it widened faster than I could run, so I was sucked in too. I fell in the ocean, swam toward shore. I saw the steam man ahead of me. Beadle and John Feather were inside Steam, though, of course I did not know that, nor did I know them at the time. Steam was walking onto the shore, moving toward the curtain of mist. That catches my story up for now. Please, Mr. Beadle, Mr. Feather. Continue.”

“But then luck turned on us,” John Feather said.

“Seems to be the story of our lives,” Beadle said. “Turning luck, mostly turning for the bad. There were pirates on the shore. You know the boys. You've met them. They quickly surrounded Steam, and using ropes, they were able to take him down. You see, we had used what steam he had left to fight the current and make shore. He just didn't have the strength. And they got Rikwalk.”

“They saw me swimming,” Rikwalk said, “and it was a battle, that current, and when I came onto the shore I was so weak I couldn't stand. I crawled, gasping for air. They pounced on me like fleas. If I had had my full strength, I would have killed them all. But like Steam, I had used all my reserves. They chained me. They fastened me to the wheel. And then they whipped me. I really didn't have a choice but to help them.”

“We were all in a weak condition,” Beadle said. “And for the most part, John and I were already weakened. Our battle with the Dark Rider. The torture. Our world coming apart. We were quite the mess. Then Steam playing out. We were at the pirates' mercy.”

“I suppose the pirates arrived out of time and space from some other place, through a rip in time,” Mr. Verne said.

Beadle nodded. “So I believe. They made slaves of us for a week. They had us bury gold, they made us help them make their grog. My guess is after they had enough barrels of grog for their ship, we would have been disposed of. Lucky for us, they drank what we made as fast as we made it.”