by Marino, Andy
The first thing Wendell noticed was the smell. Anyone who worked closely with beetles was accustomed to the rancid odor of the gas they released after slurping up whiskey-sap. But the stench coming from his father was the tangy onion reek of someone who hadn’t washed or changed his clothes in a very long time. Samuel’s dirty-blond hair was much more dirty than blond, and it had twisted into a greasy clump surrounded by frizzy coils. His cheeks, mouth, chin, and neck were hidden by a thick beard, ornamented here and there with little bits of food. He wore the tattered remnants of an expensive suit, and a broken stopwatch dangled from his breast pocket.
“I’m leaving,” Samuel rasped. “Wanted to say good-bye.” He peeked up over the desk. “Who’s the little one?”
Wendell Dakota was speechless. His father sat back in his chair. For a while they just looked at each other until Wendell managed to ask, “Where are you going, Dad?”
“I made a mistake. A bad mistake. Long time ago. Last day of the war.”
“What mistake? What are you talking about?”
“Killed an innocent man.”
“Well, it was a war, Dad. I know it wasn’t pleasant, but you had to do things for the good of the Union. And you know what? That doesn’t excuse—”
Wendell cut himself off. He didn’t mean to sound so angry, but he couldn’t help it: his father had disappeared from his life because of his guilt about the war? That was what this was all about? He continued, trying to calm down.
“Why couldn’t you have told me this years ago, instead of just … hiding? I could’ve found you some help. Plenty of war veterans have nightmares and things of that nature.”
Samuel shook his head. His beard shed a sandstorm of cracker crumbs. “Living on earth is the nightmare.”
“Listen.” Wendell had regained some of his composure. “Let’s just relax. Let’s first get you into a bath. I mean, what in the blue skies have you been doing in there?”
Samuel reached up to scratch his neck, and Wendell recoiled in disgust. The old man’s fingernails were at least three inches long and had turned a sickly mustard color. Some of them had even begun to curl at the ends.
“I’m going to heaven,” Samuel explained. “I found a way to sneak past the gates. Won’t get in unless I fly there myself.”
On Wendell’s lap, Hollis squirmed and cried out. Wendell realized that he was clutching his son like he’d clutch the wheel of an airship in a storm. He tried to relax.
“Okay,” he said calmly. “Don’t do anything rash. Let’s talk about this.”
Samuel jumped out of his chair. “Nothing to talk about. Just saying good-bye.”
“Wait!”
But Samuel turned and rushed out of the office. Wendell couldn’t exactly chase him down with his newborn son in his arms. And anyway, he wasn’t sure it was necessary. The old man had clearly lost it, and come tomorrow, Wendell would break into the hangar with a team of nuthouse professionals. Maybe, with the proper guidance, they could salvage their relationship and Hollis could get to know his grandfather.
Wendell Dakota told himself this, but the truth was the encounter had deeply unsettled him. He stared at the accounting ledgers; the numbers swam together. Maybe he should go after him right now. What was all that talk about heaven?
He sat pondering the empty chair where his father had been sitting, half convinced he had hallucinated the whole visit. After a while, Hollis began to cry, and Wendell stood up to rock him gently. He went to the window of the office and looked out across the empty testing fields of the compound. Everyone was elsewhere, celebrating the end of another year that had promised—and delivered—so much progress to mankind. He wondered what the world would be like for Hollis.
Long after Wendell’s son fell asleep in his arms, he continued to stare out into the deepening Virginia night, his eyes coming to rest on the gloomy hangar that loomed over the field: Samuel Dakota’s self-made prison. He sighed—and almost dropped his son once again as a terrible CRASH shook the office. The baby’s eyes snapped open, and he resumed his shrill cry. Wendell’s first thought was: Bomb! But then he saw something dark growing out of the roof of his father’s hangar. He strained his eyes, staring in awe as the enormous shadow-thing clawed its way up into the sky. As it floated away in silhouette against the clouds, it became a cloud, camouflaging itself like a chameleon. But that was impossible. He blinked, and the shadow revealed itself to be an airship shaped like a long funnel. The claws he had seen were pieces of the roof splintering back as the ship crashed through. He strained his eyes to track its flight, but the night sky swallowed it up. He stood at the window for hours, seeing the shimmer of the vanished ship again and again in what always proved to be stars, until he was sure of one thing.
Samuel Dakota, the father of human flight, was never coming down.
26
THE SMELL DRAGGED Hollis up out of darkness. The smoke ignited a cough that racked his body. His rib cage felt poorly assembled, bone grating against bone at odd angles. He coughed again, retching violently. All at once, he was painfully, regrettably awake and alert. He was stretched out on his side, covered in dust. He lifted a broken piece of wood off his leg and examined it. Buffed and shiny. A floorboard from the promenade.
The promenade?
Hollis pushed himself to his feet and fought a brief rush of nausea. He was on the bridge. Or what was left of it. All around him, the nerve center of the ship was reduced to splinters, broken glass, and frayed wires. Borders had been dissolved, walls shifted and crushed, so that it was difficult to tell where the bridge ended and the corridors began. He had been thrown clear of the platform and suspected he was somewhere near the back of the room, which had the bombed-out feel of a condemned building, its guts exposed and helpless.
The air was filled with poisonous smoke and drifting ash—and beetles as big as his fist. He watched in slow, dreamlike fascination as a monstrous insect floated past his head. Its pincers were the length of his thumbs, its belly round and inflated to the size of a baseball. Dozens more flitted in and out of the smoke like black balloons. The smell was worse than the lift chamber; it was as if he were buried inside a pile of spoiled vegetables.
He recoiled in horror as a mutant half-beetle appeared in front of his face, its belly and rear segment completely gone. Then the rest of it blinked forth out of thin air and the beetle became whole. Hollis rubbed his itchy eyes.
What was that?
Hollis pulled his torn shirt up to cover his nose and mouth. He was aware of other people moving through the smoke; human-shaped impressions appearing, silhouettes receding. He couldn’t make himself call out. The very idea of opening his mouth made him retch again.
There was a persistent high-pitched ringing. The volume felt connected to his stomach, and louder meant sicker. Covering his ears just made it worse: it was coming from inside his head.
Something big brushed against his back. He spun away, imagining a human-sized beetle, pincers squeezing his chest, jaws enveloping his face. There was a sharp pain in his heel, and he remembered, just before he lost his footing, about the ridiculous loafers. He tumbled blindly to the edge of a jagged hole in the floor. A credenza appeared to have been jammed down into it at an angle by some giant hand. Its glass doors were shattered except for one, which still sheltered a pair of sky-boots.
Right in front of his face, huge beetles were rising up out of the hole in grapelike bunches, flickering in and out of existence, floating up into the sky.
The sky?
The siren in his head forced him to close his eyes. The last thing he saw before the world went dark was an eye patch. It was lying on the floor next to him. He had seen it before. Somewhere.
* * *
MAGGIE’S HANDKERCHIEF covered her nose and mouth. She was slapping Hollis in the face and calling his name. Once he was able to hear her voice and feel her hand on his cheek, he sat up. Some of the smoke had cleared. The wreckage wasn’t as bad near the viewing windows, but the floor was str
ewn with rubble. The stabilization gauge had disintegrated, leaving a web of thin metal crutches to support nothing but air.
Maggie helped him to his feet. The siren was piercing. She seemed to understand that real conversation would have to wait. Instead, she pointed to the switchboard, which was intact and serving as a rallying point. His mother was addressing a group of hijackers. For a moment, Hollis’s relief beat back the noise in his head to a distant, muted wail. He pointed himself in the general direction of the switchboard and tried to walk. The siren returned. Pain rooted him to the floor. He swayed, and Maggie tightened her grip on his arm.
“Easy there.” Her voice was trapped at the bottom of a well. “Don’t worry about her. Some of those men are on our side now. Or maybe there ain’t no sides anymore.”
Hollis watched carefully. Behind his mother, Chester was holding a blueprint of the ship. She pointed to a spot on the floor plan, and three hijackers ran off. She was giving orders, and they were obeying.
“She’s good,” Maggie said. “Course, without Castor, these guys would probably follow a cow off a cliff, but still.” She began to wave. “Hey! Lady! Found your kid over here!”
Maggie’s face began to join her voice, slipping into a distant fog. Hollis thought he might have said something about needing to lie down. His mother was okay. Castor was gone. He could take a little rest.
* * *
“UP YOU GO, HOLLIS.”
His mother’s voice. He was kneeling down near the edge of the hole. He blinked the world into place. His mother was stooped, propping his body up, trying to help him to his feet. She smelled like burnt hair. Had he passed out? How long had his mother been holding him like this?
“Hollis?” Her voice was a muffled roar. She planted a gentle kiss on his forehead. “No? Not yet, then. Okay. We’ll get you some help.”
He could see over her shoulder. There was Chester, talking to some passengers on the bridge. People he recognized. A woman in a frilly nightdress, a man in a trenchcoat. He was supposed to know their names.
He met his mother’s eyes, imploring her to understand. I’m sorry I let them take you away. Was he actually forming words? I’m sorry I ran. He thought he might be making a strange noise, harmonizing with the wailing in his head.
“… and you’ll see that he stays right here?”
Hollis felt himself being handed off to Maggie. His mother said something else, something about a doctor, then she thanked Maggie and was gone.
“I ain’t holdin’ you if you’re gonna be dead weight.”
Hollis nodded weakly. This time his scratchy voice came out. “I can sit up.”
Maggie let him down easy, until he had arranged himself cross-legged on the floor with his chin propped on his fists. Together they peered into the hole. She gave a low whistle.
“You and me and Chester were lucky. That thing didn’t even come in through the bridge but it still tore it up bad.”
“We hit something?”
“Something big. The rest of the ship can’t be too pretty.”
But Hollis was barely listening; he’d spied Rob’s transmitter bag dangling from a broken floorboard.
“I gotta get down there,” he said, fighting a wave of nausea as he lifted his head.
Maggie followed his eyes. “Nah—let him find his own way. That’s how it’s gotta be at a time like this.”
Hollis shook his head.
“Then I’m coming too.”
“Listen—” He cleared his throat. “Maggie. Listen to me.” His voice was returning. “Life-ships. Ask my mother where to go. Take Chester and get in one.”
She snorted. “They’re for them. For the passengers.”
“As of right now, you’re first class, you ride with anybody. Tell my mother I said that.”
“Tell her yourself.”
“Maggie,” Hollis said, surprised at the strength of his voice, “please go.”
She regarded him with her good eye and straightened the kerchief on her head. Her eyes scanned the bridge, and after a moment, she nodded. “Deal. But you take this”—Maggie tucked the Cosgrove Immobilizer into his satchel—“so you don’t have to go killin’ anybody.”
“Get out of here.” Each word sank Hollis further into exhaustion. “I’ll see you on the ground.”
She grabbed him by the chin. “Don’t forget about us.”
Then she was gone, skirting around a barricade of fallen cabinets. Hollis slung his stepbrother’s bag over his shoulder and dropped into the hole, hanging on to the ruined floor by his fingertips. With great effort, he worked his way along the edge until he was hanging above a king-size bed. Then he let go.
* * *
HE WAS SITTING UP in bed next to a toppled dresser. The stateroom was a museum of things that no longer mattered: fine china, custom-tailored suits, priceless antiques. The noise in his head was a faraway drone.
He remembered that he’d been pointing a gun at Rob. They’d been pointing guns at each other.
A gang of beetles floated past. It was easier to think of them as living things when they were so big. There were parts of them he had never noticed before. Fine cilia, once microscopic, now as long as his hair. When they were gone, he climbed out of the bed. His shoulder felt heavy; he was carrying two satchels.
The gun in its holster was slouching beneath his right hipbone.
In the sitting room, Rob was bent over the sofa, holding a stocking to a nasty gash on a young woman’s forehead. On the floor by his feet, another stocking was soaked in blood.
“Rob.” His voice had returned to a dry whisper.
With quick-draw speed that seemed to surprise him as much as Hollis, Rob spun around, gun drawn, pointing at Hollis’s chest. His face was sporting a bruise under one eye and a jagged scrape along the jaw.
Hollis was too weak and slow to do anything but display his empty hands.
“Please,” was all he could say.
Rob didn’t move.
The surge of fear and adrenaline turned up the noise in his head. Hollis’s knees buckled, but he stayed up. Slowly, he reached across his body and removed Rob’s satchel from his shoulder. He held it out as an offering.
“You forgot this. I won’t tell Delia.”
Rob flinched at her name. “You were going to shoot my dad.”
“I swear, I wasn’t. I couldn’t do it.” How could he possibly explain himself with a fuzzy head and the barrel of a gun two feet from his heart? “Be careful with that. Put it away.”
He swatted a ghostly half-beetle from his face, hand brushing the fuzz sprouting along its pincers. The beetle glittered like crinkled aluminum and faded away. Hollis wondered if he’d gone insane. Crazy did tend to run in his family.
“Just put down the gun, Rob.”
“You take yours out of that holster and throw it on the floor.”
Hollis took a deep breath. “You first.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“A gigantic Christmas light of a beetle just sailed by, Rob. Then it disappeared. And that woman’s bleeding. Shooting me’s not helping anyone.”
In his hand, Rob still held the stocking. He glanced at it, then over at the pistol. “My dad gave this to me.” He shook his head and looked blankly at Hollis. “My dad gave me a gun.” He laughed. “We really have no idea what’s going on in our parents’ heads, do we?”
Hollis thought of his father. If only they could have had one more year together, or two, or three. He’d have asked his father why he never replaced the old, rickety spectacles that always slid down his nose. He’d ask all sorts of things about airship design and Samuel Dakota. And he’d write the answers down so he could keep his father’s words forever. Swear. Hollis thought of his mother, who had married Jefferson Castor, of all people. Why? Simply because he’d been nice to her? Because he’d been so helpful when she suddenly found herself alone? Rob was right, it was impossible to really know.
“Your dad wore those yellow suspenders that one t
ime,” Hollis said. “With the birds on them. Just that one time. Then it was back to pinstripes.”
The lights flickered. Hollis braced himself for the plunge into darkness, but they came back on. Rob put the gun in his pocket and took the satchel from Hollis’s outstretched hand.
Hollis’s vision swam. He was dizzy with relief. Behind Rob, the woman was saying something about girls. Over and over again: “my girls.”
Hollis tried to calm her down while Rob wiped her forehead.
“She needs water,” Rob was saying. “We have to find some water.”
The bathroom wall was gone. Inside, a porcelain tub had been reduced to what looked like a pile of broken plates. Then he forgot why he had come in here in the first place. The man was lying facedown, wearing his dressing gown and clutching a toothbrush. His eyes were open.
Dr. Wellspring, Hollis thought. Then he found himself very close to an eye, a mustache, a spot of blood in the corner of a mouth.
* * *
THE LITTLE GIRL slung over Hollis’s shoulder twisted the tail of her toy pig. Pop goes the weasel.
She felt heavier than a skinny six-year-old should be. He was in no shape to be carrying anyone, but they didn’t have a choice. This particular first-class corridor had been lined with Ming Dynasty showpieces encased in glass; now the carpet was full of shards.
“Junie?”
“My name is Jessie.”
“I’m Junie!” said the girl Rob was carrying.
They were in a single-file procession. Mrs. Wellspring, the stocking wrapped around her forehead, shuffled numbly between Hollis and Jessie, Rob and Junie.
“You’re going on a little ride, okay? You and your sister and your mother. And you have to be brave.”
“I am brave. Are we going to crash?”
“This ship can’t crash,” her sister said. “Don’t you know anything?”
They turned a corner. A pair of Pekingese bounded past their legs, wild-eyed and panting. An overturned mattress leaned against the wall. A man with an attaché case at his feet was straightening his tie in a crooked mirror. The tinny chime of a music box playing “Airship to Paradise” drifted out of an open stateroom door. Hollis peeked in. Empty.