Flaming Zeppelins Page 15

  Tin and Bert were trapped in the library. The water had flooded in and was already up to their chests. There were only moments left.

  “We’ve got to swim for the main hatch,” Bert said.

  “Never make it,” Tin said. “We’d swim, then the thing would sink and take us with it. There may be another way.”

  “What way?”

  Tin reached down, opened the compartment in his leg, took out his goods, pulled out the silver slippers.

  “Yes,” Bert said. “You can escape.”

  “Don’t be silly. We both can or neither of us can. And this just might work.”

  Tin pushed the shoes onto his feet. His toes poked through the tips, his feet pushed out the sides.

  The water was almost to their chins.

  “Hold me tight, Bert,” Tin said.

  Bert clutched him. “I love you,” he said.

  “And I you. If it works, there’s no telling where we will end up. It could be worse.”

  Bert looked at the rushing water, felt the sub start to tilt.

  “And it could be paradise,” he said.

  Tin clicked his heels.

  Nothing.

  “It’s not working,” Tin said.

  “It’s the water,” Bert said. “You probably have to click them harder. Give it all you got.”

  Clinging to one another, Tin moved his feet close together as the Naughty Lass tilted. He snapped his heels together with every ounce of metal and clockwork power he possessed.

  The sub went under spinning.

  But Tin and Bert were gone.

  Hickok and Annie, once on the submarine, feeling they were home free, found Bemo’s cabin and fell in bed together. They just couldn’t contain themselves. Blood and violence made them horny. They were making love when the bomb went off on the island. They thought it was in their heads.

  They were laughing at the joy of the moment when Doctor Momo’s boat hit the Naughty Lass.

  The boat collided exactly where their cabin was, ripped through. They never knew what hit them.

  They were cut in half in their bed by a slice of metal fragment from the boat.

  Far out at sea Ned swam gracefully.

  He had flung Cody’s head on his back, tying it around his neck with Cody’s long hair.

  He had not bothered to check on Cody. He didn’t know the water had shorted out the battery and breathing device in Cody’s neck. Unaware of this, Ned swam on and on with the shriveling head of his deceased hero nestled on his back.

  Two hours later the sharks took him.

  Exhausted as Ned was, there wasn’t even a serious fight.

  When Bull and Cat leapt from the sub, they were fortunate enough to clutch to a piece of Momo’s wrecked boat. A long seat cushion made of wood and leather.

  It supported them for a full day before falling apart.

  That night, they took turns with one swimming, holding the other up. Daylight, they continued the same program.

  The next night while Bull was swimming, holding the fitfully sleeping Cat, he looked up at the stars. They seemed to be the eyes of lost friends, looking down.

  He thought of Cody, Hickok and Annie. He was unaware of their fate, but assumed they were all dead. He thought little of Ned, Tin and Bert. He hardly knew them.

  Cat slept so deeply, Bull swam long after he felt he could swim.

  Next morning, as it was turning hot and the skin on his lips was peeling in strips, just when he considered it might be best to go under, Bull spotted something.

  Men on horses.

  They were coming across the water.

  They rode slowly.

  They clopped their horses right across the top of the water and the waves curled at their feet like greasy grass.

  As they neared he saw they were the faces of warriors he knew.

  Crazy Horse. He Dog. Spotted Calf and several others he did not know.

  Crazy Horse was dressed for war. He wore a dead hawk fastened to the side of his head. His face was painted with black dots and lightning bolts. His great white horse was decorated with painted hand prints, red and black.

  He Dog wore nothing.

  “My brothers,” said Bull in Sioux. “Why is it that you come here?”

  “We come for you, my brother,” said Crazy Horse.

  “For me?”

  “For you and your squaw.”

  “I would ask you what horse pussy feels like,” He Dog said, patting his mare’s side. “But I already know.”

  All the warriors laughed.

  “Here,” Crazy Horse said, and extended a hand.

  Bull took it.

  He was pulled onto the back of Crazy Horse’s mount.

  When Bull looked down, Catherine lay asleep in a field of blue waving grass. He Dog climbed down, picked her up, and lifted her onto his horse. Spotted Calf reached over and held her sleeping body upright while He Dog climbed up behind her and held her with one hand and held his bridle with the other.

  “Do not ride too close,” Sitting Bull said.

  He Dog laughed.

  The riders tugged at their reins. The horses lifted their heads and rose to the sky, their legs working the air.

  When Bull looked back, there was only the sea.

  “You’re awake.”

  Bull sat up. He was nude with a sheet over him. A man wearing a heavy blue coat and watch cap, smoking a pipe, was looking at him.

  “Where am I?”

  “On board a ship. We found you and the woman at sea. We sent out a smaller boat, pulled you inside, brought you here.”

  “So, did not die?”

  “No,” said the man.

  “Woman?”

  “She’s all right. We have her in another cabin.”

  “No horses on water,” Bull said. “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. Bull thank you.”

  “That’s all right… Are you the famous Sitting Bull?”

  Bull nodded.

  “I saw you in The Wild West Show once. You and Buffalo Bill. Just relax. You’re on your way home now.”

  The man rose and went away. Bull lay back and pulled the sheet up under his chin. He closed his eyes. He dreamed briefly of the riders. Then he dreamed of Cat, and what they would do when they regained their strength.

  The thought of it made him feel stronger already.

  Somewhere, in a time out of joint, there’s an island and a beach. It’s a better island than the island of Doctor Momo. It is full of trees and animals and the beaches are wide and made of pristine white sand.

  Surrounding this beach is water more beautiful and a brighter turquoise than that of the Caribbean. The waters are full of fish. At night two moons race across the sky and the black between the stars is always filled with burning red comets.

  The silver slippers hang from the limb of a tree bursting with fruit.

  Tin and Bert live there.

  Bert has fish and fruit to eat.

  Tin uses oil made from plants and fish to keep himself functional.

  All day they talk and walk and at night they lie together.

  The sun comes up. The sun goes down.

  The moons come up. The moons go down.

  The Tin Man’s chest feels warm, as if a heart beats there.

  Bert, the monster Frankenstein built of dead bodies, feels very much alive.

  And the two of them together, feel rich and full of soul.

  Before my career as a best-selling novelist, I lived an active life. I knew Captain Bemo, Doctor Momo, Buffalo Bill — still my hero — Annie Oakley — a peach of a woman — Wild Bill Hickok — a man’s man… well, a seal’s man as well — Sitting Bull — who invented the word stoic — I knew many others as well. I cruised beneath the seas in the Naughty Lass. I lived on the island with Doctor Momo when he made his beast men, and I am, in fact, a product of his handiwork. I even knew Tin, who came from a world far away, and I knew the Frankenstein Monster, who was one hell of a fine fella.

  And I was
there when the Martians came, and all the horrors that accompanied them. I was a companion of Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as the great novelist Mark Twain. I knew his friend, Jules Verne. I knew H. G. Wells. I knew the Lost Island. And I knew London when it was in flames. In my life, I have eaten many fish.

  —From The Autobiography of Ned the Seal,

  Adventurer Extraordinaire

  Part One:

  Invaders

  One: A Dark Moment for Humankind

  ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY MILLION miles across the vast expanse of blackness and prickly white stars, on the planet we call Mars, the red sand shifted, and out of it rose a magnificent, blue-black, oily machine with twenty-six enormous barrels. The barrels were cocked and loaded.

  The barrels fanned wide, greased gears rotated and lifted them into their trajectories. Then there was a sound in the thin Martian air like twenty-six volcanoes erupting simultaneously. The great guns spat shiny silver cylinders dragging blue-red flame toward our Earth at a blinding speed.

  From Earth the eruption was noted by astronomers, but there were no definite conclusions as to the cause. Nothing like it had ever been seen.

  Twenty-six objects sped toward Earth. They were observed in our day and night skies as twenty-six flaming streaks.

  They all smacked the Earth or its waters. Several in America, several in Europe, one just outside of London, one in a lake in Darkest Africa, another in India, several in the Siberian wastes, four in the Atlantic, four in the Pacific. One in the Sandwich Islands.

  There were all kinds of guesses as to the source of these objects, but no one knew at the time that it was the beginning of an invasion from Mars, or that more flashes of light would follow.

  And no one knew about another problem.

  The very fabric of time and space was in jeopardy.

  Two: Huck Bites It and Mark Twain Moves Out

  In the Casbah of Tangier, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, sweaty as nitroglycerine, drunk as a skunk and just as smelly, resided in his stained white suit on a loose mattress that bled goose down and dust, and by lamplight he pondered the loss of his shoes and the bloated body of his pet monkey, Huck Finn.

  Huck lay on the only bookshelf in the little sweat hole, and he was swollen and beaded with big blue flies. A turd about the size and shape of a fig was hanging out of his ass, and his tongue protruded from his mouth as if it were hoping to crawl away to safety. He still wore the little red hat with chin strap and the green vest Twain had put on him, but the red shorts with the ass cut out for business were missing.

  Twain was uncertain what had done the old boy in, but he was dead and pantsless for whatever reason, and had managed in a final gastronomic burst to stick that one fig-sized turd to one of the two books on the shelf, Moby-Dick, and his distended tongue lay not far from the other book, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, written by Twain’s good friend Jules Verne.

  Huck, bookended by sea stories, lay in dry dock.

  Twain rose slowly, bent over his pet and sighed. The room stank of monkey and monkey poo. With reluctance, Twain clutched Huck by the feet, and as he lifted him, the tenacious turd took hold of the heavy tome of Moby-Dick and lifted it as well. Twain shook Huck, and Moby-Dick, along with the turd, came loose. Twain then peeked carefully out the only window at the darkness of the Casbah below, and tossed Huck through the opening.

  It was a good toss and Huck sailed.

  Twain heard a kind of whapping sound, realized he had tossed Huck with such enthusiasm, he had smacked the wall on the other side of the narrow alley.

  It was a cold way to end a good friendship, but Twain hardly felt up to burying the little bastard, and was actually pissed that the beast had died on him. Huck had wandered off for a day, come back sickly, vomited a few times, then set about as if to doze on the bookshelf.

  Sometime during the night, Twain heard a sound that he thought was the release of his own gas, but upon lighting the lamp, found it in fact to be Huck who had launched that sticky, fig-shaped turd. He saw the little monkey kick a few times and go still.

  Twain, too drunk to do anything, too drunk to care, put out the lamp and went back to sleep.

  A few hours later, hung over, but sober enough to wonder if it had all been a dream, lit his lamp to find that Huck was indeed dead as the Victorian novel, but without the shelf life. Flies were enjoying themselves by surveying every inch of Huck, and due to the intense African heat, Huck had acquired an aroma that would have swooned a vulture.

  No question about it. He had to go.

  With Huck dead and tossed, Twain decided to pour himself a drink, but discovered he had none. The goatskin of wine was empty. Twain dropped it on the stone floor, stood on it, hoping to coax a few drops to the nozzle, but, alas, nothing. Dry as a Moroccan ditch in mid-summer.

  Twain removed his coat, shook it out, draped it over the back of the chair, seated himself. He sat there and thought about what to do next. He had sold all of his book collection, except 20,000 Leagues, which was signed, and the be-turded Moby-Dick. He didn’t even have copies of his own books.

  It was depressing.

  When he was strong enough, he rose and made coffee in his little glass pot. It was weak coffee because there were only yesterday’s grounds left, and the biscuit tin contained only a couple of stale biscuits which he managed to eat by dipping them in the coffee.

  By the time he had finished breakfast, light was oozing through the window and he could hear the sounds of the Casbah below. Blowing out his lamp, he recovered Moby-Dick from the floor, wiped it clean with a cloth and the remains of the coffee. It left a slight stain, coffee, not shit, but he hoped it wouldn’t damage what value the book might have. Tangier was full of readers of most anything in English (except his books, it seemed) 20,000 Leagues.

  It would be just enough money for a real meal of fruit and olives, and a bit of wine, as well as the rent. Which seemed pointless.

  What after that? There was no place for him to work, and his new novel was going about as well as his life had. Everyone he knew and loved was dead. Well, almost. There were a few friends, Verne among them.

  Twain searched about and found his missing shoes, then he grabbed a big white canvas bag and stuffed it with a few belongings, his manuscript in progress, gathered up the two books and headed out into the Casbah. As he climbed down the narrow stairs and rushed into the street, he came upon Huck’s body being feasted upon by dogs.

  The biggest of the dogs, a mongrel with one eye and scum around it, wrestled Huck away from the others, and darted down the street with his prize, the monkey’s tail dragging on the flagstones.

  Twain sighed.

  Perhaps when he died, that was what was to become of him. Tossed in the street, eaten by dogs.

  It was better than being savaged to death by book critics. The sonsabitches.

  The street stank of yesterday’s fish and today’s fresh fish. Blood dripped from the tables and gathered in little rust-colored pools and slipped in between the grooves in the stones. The reek of ripe olives bit the air and chewed at Twain’s nostrils. He wandered the crooked streets, which just six months ago he would have found harder to navigate than the Minotaur’s maze, and came upon Abdul laying out his sales goods on a worn but still beautiful Moroccan rug of blue, green and violet. Among the items on the rug were a few books. Twain recognized titles he had written, books from his very own collection. Each one of them reminded him of the few coins he had contributed to drink and women, mostly drink.

  Abdul eyed Twain with his bag and two books under his arm.

  “My friend. More books. You can see I do not need them.”

  “These are my last books, Abdul. I sell these, I’m taking the ferry to Spain.”

  “And what there? You should stay here among friends.”

  “You old pirate. You’ve given me little for what I’ve sold you. These are fine books.”

  “They are not worth much.”

  “I sold you cop
ies of my own novels, signed.”

  “Alas, they are not worth much either. Perhaps had they not been signed.”

  “Very funny, Abdul. If I didn’t feel like an elephant had sat on my head, I would give you a good old-fashioned American ass whipping.”

  Abdul pulled back his robe and revealed in his belt a curved, holstered blade with an ornate handle of jewels and silver.

  “Well, maybe I wouldn’t,” Twain said. “Will you buy the books, Abdul?”

  “Promise you have no more?”

  “I promise.”

  Twain squatted, laid them on the blanket Abdul had stretched out on the ground.

  “What’s this stain on Moby-Dick?”

  “A fig got squashed on it. My monkey did it.”

  “Where is Huck?”

  “He leaped out of the window this morning and committed suicide. Landed right on his head.”

  Abdul looked at him.

  “Even monkeys fall out of trees,” Twain said.

  “Very well, I will give you…”

  “In dollars, Abdul.”

  “Very well, I will give you four dollars.”

  “Jesus Christ, the 20,000 Leagues is signed to me by Jules Verne. The both of us certainly have some coinage for collectors.”

  “Okay. How about I give you ten dollars?”

  “How about you give me fifteen?”

  “Deal.”

  Three: A Ferry Ride, an Injured Seal

  It was more money than Twain expected to receive for the books, so he bought some figs, a skin of water, and boarded the ferry to Spain. It took most of the day, and the sea was choppy. Twain lost his figs and water early on, throwing them up in a brown stream over the side.

  As he leaned over the railing, watched the water churn below, he considered losing himself as well, but gradually came to his senses. He realized that he was feeling better as the wine wore off, realized too this was the first time in six months he had been truly sober.

  It wasn’t a great feeling, but it really wasn’t that bad either.

  Upon arriving on the coast of Spain, he and the passengers, as well as a dozen goats and a cage of chickens, disembarked. It felt good to be on solid ground, and after buying some coffee in a little outdoor cafe, fending off a half-dozen souvenir peddlers and a fat Spanish whore who wanted to sell him a quickie, or for half the price, squeeze him off between her legs, he decided to splurge another coin and catch a cart ride to where Verne was staying, working on yet another successful novel.