Flaming Zeppelins (7 page)

“I got a pretty good idea,” Goober said.

“Quick,” Cody said. “Back to my cabin.”

“I thought…”

“Just do it!”

Out on the promenade deck, the zeppelin began to roll back level. The Japanese planes were now closing for the kill. Bullets slammed the deck from all directions. Cetshwayo took a shot in the side, let out a yell.

Annie and Hickok grabbed him under the arms, hauled him onto the main deck, laid him down. As they did, a plane came by so close its dual wings edged only six feet from the promenade railing.

Bull, the only one left on the railing, slammed several shots from his Winchester into it as it retreated. At first he thought he had failed. Then the plane's motor cut and there was a whistling sound as it went into a dive. This was followed by an explosion and a flash of light.

Glancing over the railing to see if planes might be coming up from below, Bull was greeted with the sight of the glowing, dangling ladders.

“Damn,” he spoke to himself. “That how them follow so easy in dark. See ladders.”

Bull tossed the Winchester to his left hand, pulled his knife from under his jacket, moved around the railing hacking the ladders free.

The steam man had a fire in its belly. Cody had ordered it kept going until they were out of this business. He wasn't sure what he might need the steam man for, but he wanted to be prepared.

His jar fastened to the steam man, Goober inside to work the controls, Cody returned to the bridge. Calling commands to the midget, the powerful steam man's body shoved at the plane. The pilot, who they thought was dead, lifted his head just as the steam man managed to shove the plane through the wound it had made in the zeppelin's side.

“Sayonara,” Cody said.

The pilot just looked sad as the plane fell backwards, said in Japanese, “Typical.”

Cody, Goober and the steam machine were hurled backwards as the zeppelin, relieved of the plane's weight, leapt skyward.

Out on the promenade, Bull was slammed face down on the deck so hard his nose bled. Inside the main deck, the zeppelin's defenders experienced the same moment of surprise.

The advantage, although not immediately known, was that the zeppelin was now lost to the biplanes. They could no longer see it in the dark and the rain. They were also running out of fuel, so there was nothing left for them to do but turn back.

The downside was the zeppelin had suffered many wounds in its rubber skin. Helium had been lost. The bridge was damaged. The zeppelin had no pilot. The steam man had been damaged by the sudden rise of the ship; it had caused the steam man's legs to crimp, and it had fallen. Somehow, Goober had gotten the front of his trousers hung up. As the machine lay on its side near the gap in the wall, Goober said, “I'm coming out of this thing, Cody. I'm jammed up in here. It's pinching my pee-pee.”

Goober worked the trap door open, tore the front of his trousers loose and slipped out on the floor. He hastened to unfasten the clamps that held Cody's head in place. Finished, he clutched the jar under his arm as they stood looking at the wheezing steam man lying on its side.

Cody, peering through the glass, said, “I'm gonna miss that dude.”

“Not me,” said Goober. “It pinched my pee-pee. And it's hot. And it's hard work, too.”

“Give me a crank, will you?”

Below in the boiler room all was panic. The great furnace had been in the process of being loaded when the plane came loose and the zeppelin jumped. Flaming hunks of wood and coal had been tossed from the furnace; the three men in the boiler room were frantically attempting to put out the flames with small tanks of water.

It was pointless.

The zeppelin dropped as if the bottom had come out of the world, and the ocean, like rolling concrete, came up to meet it on the way down.

When the zeppelin hit the stormy sea the hot furnace exploded. Flames danced on the water, then hissed out, leaving boiling white smoke, charred lumber and stinking rubber in its wake. Waves crunched the decks and cabins, wadded up what was left of the helium-filled tubing as if it were onion skin paper. The rain cried on the remains. Lightning slashed yellow sabre cuts across the sky.

The corpses of the boiler room workers, par-boiled, popped to the top, bobbed on the waves like corks. Floating with them was the jar containing Cody's head. He was cursing violently, calling for Goober.

The waves shoved Cody up, dropped him in a trough of foaming water; he saw the corpse of Goober float by face down. Then the whitecaps turned his jar and tossed him; water ran down the speaking tube, joined the mixture inside his container. Cody licked at the water. Salty, of course. But it did kind of neutralize the pig urine.

For once, Cody was glad he didn't have a stomach; all he could feel was a kind of dizziness.

Nearby, clinging to planks, were Hickok, Annie and Bull. Cetshwayo and Frankenstein's monster were nowhere to be seen.

There were oil-fueled flames burning on the water. In the light they provided, Hickok, clasping his plank, saw the others. The dead boiler room workers, Goober popping about, Annie and Bull clinging to a plank together, and finally, the head of Cody, surfing the waves in his sturdy Mason jar.

Hickok paddled over to Bull and Annie, pulled his bowie knife from its scabbard, stuck it in his plank, said, “Bull, we got to get hold of Cody, then find a way to lash some of this junk together.”

Bull nodded.

Hickok swam to Cody's jar, grabbed it, swam it over to Annie. Then he and Bull set about building a raft. It was tedious, but by dog paddling about, grabbing planks and cutting strips of floating rubber, they were able to fasten a half-dozen pieces of wood together.

By the time they finished jerry-rigging a raft, got Annie and Cody loaded on it, they were exhausted; the sun was burning through the haze, the rain was dying out, and the ocean was beginning to settle. Then the sharks came.

Hickok said, “No rest for the wicked, and the good don't need any.”

Unconsciously, Hickok reached for his guns. But his sash was empty. They had been lost. He had even lost the bowie knife.

There were about a dozen of the beady-eyed bastards circling the makeshift craft. One of them came near, rolled on its side, showed its dark dead eyes. It opened its mouth to reveal a hunk of dark flesh dangling from its teeth. Part of an arm actually. They recognized it. It belonged to Cetshwayo.

“That not good,” Bull said.

Cody, in his jar, was singing drinking songs.

“He's starting to lose it,” Hickok said.

“It's the salt-water in the jar, mixed with his chemicals,” Annie said. “And he could use a crank.”

Hickok cranked him.

Cody went silent for a moment. Hickok held the jar in his lap, tilting it so he could look down into Cody's face.

“It's all right, pard. Or as good as it could be under the circumstances.” Hickok turned the jar so Cody could see the contents of the raft. “We're the only survivors.”

“All I want is a body so I can fight,” Cody said. “If I can go down fighting, I'm all right.”

Hickok placed Cody in the center of the raft, leaned back, waited for it to get hot and unbearable. He thought of food briefly, thought of water longer, then the flames on the water died and the sun rose high and hot and their flesh began to burn. The water in Cody's jar began to bubble.

Annie thought of Frank. For a long moment she remembered how he held her. Hickok held her, too. He was a passionate lover. But there was an urgency about him, a desire to get on with the act. Frank wasn't like that. He was slow about his business. God she missed him.

She opened her eyes, looked at Hickok. He had his eyes closed. His long hair was wet and matted. His clothes clung to him, drying slowly in the sun. She thought he was gorgeous.

She closed her eyes, tried to grab back her memories of Frank. But this time, they wouldn't come. She thought of Hickok again, back on the zeppelin, in her cabin, in her bed.

Bull looked out at the great expanse of water and thought of the Greasy Grass. Greasy Grass was what his people called the Little Big Horn, where Custer and his soldiers died. The Greasy Grass had looked like a sea of grass, and this ocean, right now, looked much the same way.

The Greasy Grass. What a fight.

Bull thought: Bad day for white guys. Big day for red guys.

He wished he had participated, but it was over by the time he tried to join the fight. He had always felt slighted by that.

Bull closed his eyes, saw Crazy Horse standing before him, wearing only a loin cloth, lean and strong with braided hair. He wore war paint. Spots on his body. He had the corpse of a hawk fastened to the side of his head.

He thought of how Crazy Horse had died. Held by his own people, bayonetted by soldiers.

“Sorry, friend,” he said softly in Sioux. “I will soon join you.”

Buffalo Bill dreamed of women. All the women he had known and loved. He dreamed last of Lily Langtry. Her long white limbs, her thick dark hair, the darker patch between her legs.

God, at least Louisa could have let him finish. She already had him dead to rights. What would another half a minute have mattered?

Oooooh, that was one evil woman.

Yeah. He had made up his mind. He got out of this pickle, he was divorcing that bitch.

By midday the sharks had become so bold it was necessary to use one of the two planks they had kept for paddles to fight them off.

All Hickok could think of was one of them coming up from below, hitting the center of their leaky, poorly lashed raft, sending them all into the ocean to be sorted out by hungry sharks.

The evil fish came more often. Hickok and Bull fought them back constantly, banging at their snouts, poking at their eyes. Bull wounded one of them bad enough it bled. The others turned on it, biting, ripping, pulling at strands of gut.

“Maybe reservation not such bad idea after all,” Bull said. “Wish Bull fat ass there. Not here.”

“I'd rather fight a whole parcel of Sioux than deal with this,” Hickok said. “No offense.”

“Fuck you, Hickok.”

The day burned on. They ached from thirst. Then, as night was about to fall, they saw the fin of an enormous shark.

No. A whale.

But whales didn't have fins like that.

Huge. Slicing the water like some kind of prehistoric fish, speeding directly toward them.

Rising from the water, spilling bubbles over its side, it revealed a long snout and bulbous black eyes. The brute crackled with illumination.

“What are you waiting for,” Hickok yelled at it. “Eat us or go away.”

The strange beast made a creaking noise. A flap opened in its top and, like Jonah freed, a man scrambled out of it. He was lanky, bearded, wore sailor-style clothes and a fur cap. He had a large revolver strapped to his hip. His arms hung impossibly long by his sides.

“Ahoy,” he said in an exotic voice. “You people seem in a bad way.”

The insides of the great fish hummed. Behind them lay the eyes of the fish, which were actually a great, tinted, double-bubbled water shield. Before them was a long hall.

The sailor who had spoken to them and helped them onto the craft, sealed the round lid above them with a twist of a wheel. Two more sailors appeared. They looked just like the first sailor. Lanky, hairy, and long-armed. Close up, it was revealed they did not wear beards at all. Nor were those things on their heads hats. It was part of their heads. They had sharp teeth. They seemed to be large monkeys with good backbones.

They were carrying white fluffy robes. The first drew his revolver and pointed it at them.

“Put them on,” he said.

“The guns aren't needed,” Hickok said.

The one with the gun ignored him, said, “Take off your clothes. Put the robes on.”

“I beg your pardon,” Annie said.

“We will avert our eyes,” the sailor said.

“Like hell you will,” Hickok said.

The sailor pointing the pistol cocked it. “Please,” he said.

Bull and Hickok, Cody's head under his arm, turned their backs for Annie while she undressed and slipped on the robe. Next, passing Cody's head to Annie, Hickok and the others slipped on their robes.

Later, Annie admitted that the sailors had been most polite, actually averting their eyes while she changed. Hickok thought they were certainly unlike any sailors he had ever heard of.

Once in the robes, the sailors escorted them down a long hallway tricked out in thick red carpet. They entered a large room that housed a magnificent library; the smell of books was rich, laced with the stench of cigars, a bit of spilled whiskey, a hint of perspiration and the stout stink of fish. There was a soft-looking red velvet couch and cushioned chair, a mahogany desk and a wooden chair. And the source of the fish smell.

A seal was perched in the stuffed chair, tail curled, holding a book with its flippers. It wore glasses on its nose, and a large, square, metal hat. It was obviously engrossed, flicking not a whisker or turning its head to observe them. Beside it, in a bowl, were the remains of several sardines — heads and fins.

As they watched, one of the seal's flippers moved, turned a page.

Bull, Annie and Hickok looked at one another, looked back at the seal. Hickok, who had ended up with Cody's head, lifted the jar so Cody could see what they saw.

“You don't see that often,” Cody said.

“I think he's actually reading that book,” Annie said. “And it looks as if he has thumbs on his flippers.”

“Oh, I assure you,” said a voice, “he is reading the book, and those are thumbs of a sort.”

They turned, saw a tall gentleman dressed in a soft white shirt, blue velvet trousers, woven sandals. He was nice looking with wide-spaced eyes, a large forehead, dark skin, and silvery hair.

All of the sailors, save one, disappeared. The remaining sailor edged backwards out of the way, but at service. He was the sailor with the gun. He dropped it by his side, but made no move to holster it.