Flaming Zeppelins (36 page)

In the distance, they could see the great tower clock, Big Ben. Ned glanced out and up, saw Rikwalk moving along a building top. Large as he was, he was moving quickly, shadowlike. Soon, he was out of sight.

“What say we point ‘er at the big clock,” Twain said, “and go.”

Many great Martian war machines hustled about the city, and our heroes went forward rapidly, trying not to get too close, trying to move in the direction of the tower as swiftly as possible, thinking Martian and hopefully looking Martian, but making sure they didn't get too close to their metal comrades so that they might be seen clearly through what remained of the view glass.

They saw a huge machine pause, turn its “head,” and look at them. It turned its glass-fronted noggin from side to side like a curious animal. The creatures behind the glass were practically pressed up against their windshield, trying to figure out what it was they were seeing.

nickbic. that is not some of us, it is not. i can see that, i can. earth goobers. that is what we see, it is.

you are right, sumbuma. it is not what it should be, but is what it is. booger things. creepy things that walk this ground. they are in one of our machines.

greenless things. let's make them pretty like us. give them two assholes.

yuk, yuk, yuk.

going to melt them good, is what we are going to do. can I do it?

you did the last.

did not.

did too.

did not.

They never finished their argument. Twain fired the ray from their machine, struck the Martian device solid. The windshield was knocked off whole. The machine twirled around on its legs so hard it practically braided them.

The machine went down.

“It was like before,” Twain said. “They appeared to be quarreling.”

Ned wrote:

QUARRELING CAN BE BENEFICIAL AND EVEN HEALTHY. BUT QUARRELING TOO MUCH, AND DURING TIMES OF STRESS AND IN TIMES OF NEED, IT CAN REALLY FUCK YOU UP. WITNESS THE MACHINE IN QUESTION. IT'S JUST SO MUCH JUNK NOW. IT IS BETTER NOT TO QUARREL. IT IS BETTER TO SIT DOWN OVER A DINNER OF FISH AND DISCUSS YOUR PROBLEMS. FEMALE SEALS ARE CONSIDERABLY MORE WILLING WHEN THEY HAVE FILLED THEIR BELLIES WITH FISH.

“I'll believe that,” Twain said, working controls, helping the machine race down the street.

Other machines and their occupants had witnessed the destruction of one of their own machines by another, and now they were rushing toward our heroes.

Our heroes had the lead and —

FIRST PHASE OF THE RACE

— they're off, and down the street they go, leaping, darting, weaving, and, oh shit, had to leap over some downed carts, and one tentacle went into a dead man's body, and that sucker is hung on the end of it now like a wad of chewy tobaccy on the bottom of a boot. It's throwing off our heroes a bit, and —

SECOND PHASE OF THE RACE

— here they come, the Martians, and there are seven machines, and those green, multi-tentacled, two-assholed sonsabitches, they can really work those things. Running their machines like goddamn deer, they are, closing, closing, closing —

THIRD PHASE OF THE RACE

— four to the right, three to the left, and, with a shake of the tentacle, our heroes' machine is free of the dead body, and now Twain and Verne, they've got their gears pushed all the way forward, and they're working the balance controls, and whoopie, sudden stop, and —

FOURTH PHASE OF THE RACE

— Martian machines go, oh shit, because the humans (one assholed mother-father-uncle-aunt-hive-fuckers) have stopped short, and they have tried to stop short with them, and the results are the big-double assed Martians are being smacked against their windshields.

squirty ass juice and sweaty nut balls, cries one.

One machine loses control, topples into another, their legs get entwined, down they go, thrashing about on the street and up against buildings like a stuck pig kicking out its last.

No time to help their comrades. they're down. way down. and frankly, they don't give a damn. they aren't big on sentiment.

Martians turn about angry, tentacles on those ray levers, baby, but the humans, they are gone. done took off like the proverbial and legendary spotted ass ape —

THE WINNERS!

— bounding along toward Big Ben they go, and inside the machine, Twain, he actually says, Wheeee!

Of course, it doesn't matter. The winner gets dick.

And the losers, they are not in a mood, so to speak.

And furthermore, or meanwhile, as is said in the story trade, our erstwhile heroes approach the tower clock, and right off they see there's good news, and there's bad news.

Good news:

Rikwalk, going his own way, over buildings, down side streets, sneaky as a Paiute Indian in a war party, has made the tower clock. He's there.

That's the good part.

Now for the bad news:

Rikwalk has been seen. He's scuttling up the side of the tower, gripping a Martian by one of its legs. He has somehow broken into one of the machines (scuttled up it, smashed the glass with his fist, pulled out the Martian), and he's dragging the creature with him up the side of Big Ben.

He's a fast climber, Rikwalk is, and way up there he goes.

But there's more bad news:

Machines are closing in on him.

He works his way to the top of the tower, and there, holding the Martian, he begins to use the creature as a thrash rag, slinging him from side to side, bouncing him off of the clock tower, calling out names in English and in a language our heroes do not recognize.

Rays cut the air around him.

Zip. Zip. Zip.

Rikwalk can feel the hair on his body singeing, the rays are so close. He's so certain he's about to buy it, he can imagine his ancestral apes sitting on the limb of the great tree of life, dicks in one hand, the other over their eyes, their mouths open, but silent.

Rikwalk starts leaping up and down on the side of the clock, hanging on to it with one hand, dangling the Martian with the other, making primitive ape sounds.

“Ooohhh, oooohhhh, fucking shit. Ooohhhhh, oooohhhh. Eat my shit. Ooohhh, ooohhhh. Cocksucking octopussies.”

“We've got to help him,” Twain says.

Ned, who has his eye pressed against a smaller rear window turns, writes:

WE STILL HAVE MARTIAN MACHINES ON OUR TAIL.

“One thing at a time,” Twain said.

Verne says, “Turn it. Quick.”

And they do. Now they're facing the machines that are in pursuit. They fire rays. One of the machines takes a hit. It's charred on the side and part of the glass is melted out, but it keeps on coming.

The two that fell, they're still down, struggling to free their entwined tentacles.

A ray hits our heroes' machine.

It shakes. More of the glass falls out. Now there's just a sliver of glass in the right-hand corner.

Ned thinks: Must think of happy moments. Fish. Fish. Fish. Nookie. Nookie. Nookie. Fish. Fish…”

“Turn it back,” Twain says. “Run this thing like a bastard.”

And they do. Sprinting their way toward the tower.

“We'll have Rikwalk leap on top of us when we get there,” Twain said.

“I don't know that's such a good plan.”

“You come up with another, let me know.”

Their machine sprang across the vast expanse of bricks and cobblestones toward the tower; sprang so hard the tentacles extended out in front of it like arrows being shot. Cement and brick popped up, this way and that, snapping like shrapnel.

It was quite the show, the way that machine leaped.

The Martians had never seen anything like it. They didn't know the machines would do that, and they had built them.

got to give it to the humans, they are working that machine some good, they are, the one-assholed pieces of cosmic shit.

yes. (cough) damn. i'm getting a sore throat.

mind the controls.

i'm minding them.

mind them better.

are you trying to tell me how to (cough)…i'm not feeling so good.

now that you mention it, neither am i.

By this point, there wasn't much left of the Martian corpse in Rikwalk's hand, having slammed and smashed it against the side of the tower clock like he was dusting a rug. He threw the creature's remains down at one of the machines attacking him. But it missed and fell splattering into the street.

Primitive ape behavior had taken over. Rikwalk ripped off his pants. He grabbed his dick and shook it at them. He dropped his dick and shit in his hand and threw the shit. He hit the windshield of one of the stalking towers, blurring the sight of the Martians inside.

The others closed in around the tower. They couldn't miss with their death rays now. They lifted their heads, pointed their rays up.

Rikwalk waited for the big pop.

One moment, he thought, I am standing here, and the next moment I'll be nothing more than a blazing hairball with a hand full of shit (for he had filled up again).

He opened his eyes, determined to take it head on.

Then he saw bounding toward him another Martian machine. Behind it came five others. In the distance, lying in the street, he could see two others struggling to extricate themselves from one another.

The machine running toward him was the one containing his friends.

He raised the shit-filled hand, said, “Howdy, and so long.”

The Martian machines had the clock surrounded now.

They aimed their rays.

And Big Ben struck the time.

That close, the whole earth shook.

Rikwalk certainly shook.

And he fell.

The rays blasted the air where he had been.

Rikwalk let go of the handful of shit. He wasn't that fond of it anyway.

He grabbed at the side of the clock tower, slipped (shit is greasy), grabbed again, and this time he caught a ridge, and hung there. Rikwalk dangled like a comma in a sentence.

“Help!
” he said.

The Martians were surprised by the ape's sudden drop and his loud yell. They tried to refocus their attack. And would have too, but now, things had really changed.

Not only were our heroes coming —

But so was Steam.

Only he didn't know it yet.

You see, Steam was pressed up against the other side of the clock tower all the while.

Way it worked was like this:

The Martians thought he was part of the tower. A kind of statue standing next to the entryway. Standing tall. A symbol that let loose a bit of smoke from its top from time to time.

They didn't know he had fire in his belly. They didn't know he could move.

Steam stood there, hands on his hips, in plain sight all through the night and through the morning, like a statue, being passed by the Martian machines. The Martians had looked at him as if he were part of the clock tower.

Inside, where Beadle, John Feather and Passepartout waited, Beadle said, “Sometimes, I'm so smart I amaze my own goddamn self.”

“You the man,” John Feather said.

But that was then and this was now, and Steam, he moved.

Because, you see, inside of the metal man, Passepartout said, “That yell. No one sounds like that but Rikwalk. That's his strange voice. I'd know it anywhere.”

“Then we have to help him,” Beadle said. “No matter what the cost.”

Beadle and John Feather put their hands on the controls, moved them. Steam stepped away from the clock, turned and walked around the edge of the tower, in the direction of the cry.

Simultaneously, all about and above them, the sky began ripping open in rips of red and blue, purple and yellow, and one rip of a very nice color that was somewhere between green and blue.

“It's happening,” Beadle said, seeing the rips through the stained-glass eyes of Steam. “Worlds are coming asunder.”

“We must concentrate on the matter at hand,” Passepartout said. “All else can wait, or happen without us.”

“Oh, it will do that all right,” Beadle said. “See there.”

Passepartout looked.

A large boat came sailing out of one of the rips, hit the street, slid, crashed into a building across the way.

“That's just the beginning,” Beadle said. “Just the way it started on our world. And look there.”

One of the Martian machines, near the blue rip, was straining against something unseen. Then it seemed to stretch. And then —

— it was sucked up through a crack in the sky like liquid through a syphon hose.

Old cracks were closing, and new ones were opening.

“The rips still have a hard time staying open,” Beadle said.

“If our experience is a common one,” John Feather said, “that will change.”

But there was no more time for discussion. They had rounded the clock tower. Now they were looking directly at Martian machines. The machines had congregated at the front of Big Ben. Their round heads and their thick windshields were lifted skyward, toward what dangled from above.

Rikwalk.

Steam looked past them at the machines racing toward them. One of them was manned by none other than their friends Twain, Verne and Ned the Seal. They were clearly visible through the hole where the glass had been.

The Martian machines near the clock tower were so intent on their hanging prey they had not even noticed Steam's arrival. Steam grabbed the nearest machine by one of its vining legs, jerked it off the ground, and gripping it with both metal hands, began to swing it.

Steam whirled it over his head, came around and struck another of the devices full smack-a-doodle. The Martian machines slammed together hard, exploded glass, green ichor, assholes and tentacles.

The remaining machines turned on Steam, who stood holding one metal tentacle. Rays were fired. One ray struck the metal behemoth in the neck, sliced through it like a hot knife through butter, came in like a burst of light through a bullet hole, hit Passepartout in the head.