Down Jersey Driveshaft (Book One of the Diesel Series 1)

by William J. Jackson

  No one complains. That figures. As usual, she'll have to do things herself.

  "Hey!" Cupping ebony-laced hands about her lips, she whisper yells at the projector room, "Roll the film!"

  The projector begins its clickety performance, but the image remains, growing clearer. The player wears the eight-legged 'D' insignia of the old Delaware Spiders. The diamond ball really is a heck of a gemstone.

  Something inside her gut says not to watch this anymore. But as the still image continues to dull the onlookers' minds, Frederica gets a tad miffed. Where's the movie? Where's the popcorn? She toys with her navy blue circular skirt with the bold peach border at the bottom. It matches her tight peach button shirt with navy blue cuffs and collar. Crank stitched the outfit herself from scratch. She loves this outfit.

  She loved this outfit.

  "Wait a minute..." her eyes expand in the darkness. "I made this dress for the dance in high school." She tugs at the shirt, it stretches not unlike elastic. The real shirt was cotton. Crank stretches the material further, watching it go out and out until her arm is perfectly straight. Strands of the material begin to droop down, melted wax on her lap. Peach puddles form on the floor.

  "Cos'è questo?" Her audible question echoes in this shrouded chamber, a fact her sharp ears pick up on.

  She's up on her boot-loving feet, fingers dripping tacky spaghetti strings, lungs grasping at short breaths. A woman enters the theatre, walking down the aisle and turning into the row of seats wary Frederica stands in. She walks right up to the young miss, who is too frightened by her circumstances to take notice.

  "Excuse me miss," the woman inquires. Crank writhes back, a coiled serpent. She looks at this new woman in the checkered wool dress with wide red belt on her hips. Crank raises her hands. This woman, this interloper, has gorgeous wavy blonde hair. But, this is unlike any female she's ever seen.

  Woman lacks a face. What makes for eyes are camera lenses, four of them, the two in the middle huge, the other two at the outside of the larger ones are miniscule black dots. It gives the center of her face an appearance like a wolf spider. The lenses zoom in and out at random. Her nose is long and slender, but lacks nostrils, only a line running down to and under the chin. No mouth is visible, but she sure is speaking. Aside from the nightmare appearance, she comes off as very mannerly.

  "Is this seat taken?" She motions at the seat next to Crank's, her open palm displaying tiny working, moving black gears that spit oil and have stained the fingers an oleaginous gray. Her nails are painted a lovely olive green.

  Crank takes three steps back until her back slams against the curtained wall. The woman cocks her head to the right while her multiple eyes zoom out several inches.

  "Don't come near me!"

  "Why not?" The woman talks like a little girl trying to sound adult, a light voice that every now and then remembers to increase in pitch. "It took a long time to find your frequency. Benny's was easy to gain, but isn't that the way with men? Shouldn't we talk, like ladies do?"

  "Diabola, you stay away from me!" Crank is too smart to question the cornucopia of crazy going on. It is what it is and let's leave it at that. She shifts her fear into first gear and bolts. Up over the seats she goes, vaulting like she was trying for the blue ribbon at Field Day in grade school.

  The mechanic tears out of the theatre, racing past the lobby to hit the doors for the street. Meanwhile, Lens Lady ambulates at an even keel, a steady journey while her gears extol the nasty virtues of petroleum on the carpeting.

  Frederica hits the sidewalk and comes to a dead stop. The whole of West Broadway is full of Lens Ladies, a macabre Avon convention just for her. Crank catches a quirky thought.

  "Any of you broads selling Heliotrope? I really miss it." She takes a slip of the pasta clothing to tie back her hair. Yeah, this is getting to be more like high school. Any second now, one of these dames will make fast with the cracks on Crank's accent, her boots and the classic 'go back to Italy' line. They won't let her run? Fine.

  She'll die fighting.

  "Will you really fight us all?" Crank gets the shivers. The lady from the theatre stands behind her. She forgot about her that fast.

  Frederica turns swiftly, swallowing as she looks this thing square in the, uh, face. "Oh, we can take it all the way, baby!"

  "Superb. My studies showed you will face down any of the feminine type. Why are you afraid of the males in combat?"

  Crank blinks. "Who told you I am?" She makes fists, bends her knees. Lady has three seconds to say something Einstein brilliant before Miss Musa pops out a lens.

  "I have your frequency. Motherville knows you now."

  The kid takes several big gulps and many steps backward. "Motherville huh? Why do you want Milkman?" She's praying a lead pipe will appear in her hand and glances down. Nothing.

  "I want what is mine as I develop."

  "Then take the engine out of La Donna. She's done for anyways!"

  "That was never mine. Merely...borrowed." Lady advances.

  "Stai indietro!"

  "Rifiuto. I have your frequency." Lens Lady runs quick as a doberman. The air fills with the simplest of noises.

  BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...BEEP

  Crank jumps up and lets her right boot interject into the discourse. Lady takes it in the face (for lack of a better word), but the blow has no effect. She neither bleeds nor displays any sign of being hurt.

  "C'mon, you freak! At least grunt!"

  BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...

  "Grunt. Is that sufficient?" Lady's got jokes. It's a dry, witless joke, but a joke nonetheless.

  Before Miss Musa can figure out what to do, the mob of lens ladies grabs her up. She soon realizes her mistake, turning her back on this army to deal with one foe. Hands by the dozen seize her at the arms and legs, her midsection and curl wads of Crank's hair in their lobster leg fingers. She's caught, she's done for.

  They pound on her body, a hundred organic jackhammers timing their blows every one-point-five seconds, striking at the same angle and with exacting force. But, the force transferred is neither pain nor welts. Ladies hit with heat. Crank is smothered as the weight of her attackers falls onto her petite body, pushing her face into the hot street. Yes, everything is hot, a sweaty, claustrophobic heat that even makes her toes beam heat.

  Why are her toes so hot?

  Frederica gasps for air. She looks up into a bright long light that burns her retinas. She can't move. Where are the ladies? What happened to the fight? She wriggles and fidgets until she's able to free one hand from the wrapping of blankets around her body.

  "Blankets?" Crank speaks with all the power of a diseased calf.

  She finds herself bundled like a babe in several layers of quilts, a tight swaddle hard to loosen. Rolling along the bed is her only course to take toward freedom. Her skin tastes fresh air as if for the first time, a cooling mint tingle enacting goosebumps along her arms and neck. Her toes are burning from too much warmth. Crank's body is a veritable collection of violet bruises to tarnish her silky milk skin, each bruise trying its ever-loving best to make getting up and walking difficult.

  Right away her keen mind knows her location. The room is called Bay One, an underground infirmary forty feet below the hangar. She's never been here before, but immediately checks a series of lockers nearby. Crank finds an ST uniform in her size, pressed to perfection. She can't very well go upstairs in her skivvies.

  "Are you well, dear?"

  Crank just about jumps out of her socks. "Oh! Yes..." She pounds her chest to get the heart going again. "Yes, I am fine. You are...?"

  "Vera Wentz. I'm ST's medical official for the Northeast. I've assessed your injuries and determined you're free to move about. But please, no heavy lifting." Vera dresses better than most. The crispness of her white lab coat borders on obscenity, as does her slick straight strawberry blond hair which curls up at the ends (a flawless 'C' bang hangs over her forehead). Her eyes aren't hazel, more
like they radiate a green aura of confidence. A dash of makeup only on the eyelids and cheeks, a painter's dab of vermillion lipstick sets off some fine features. Vera looks like the most intelligent and gorgeous woman in the world.

  "How old are you?" Crank asks with a clumsy tongue.

  "Fifty. Why do you ask?"

  "Oh, just small talk." Yeah, Crank wants to be her when she grows up. "What's our status? What happened to the ladies?"

  "We won the battle, if that's your concern." She gives Frederica the disapproving mother's stare. "There are no ladies here beside myself." She gives Frederica the disapproving up-and-down eye. Miss Musa would usually catch a fine attitude from such a judgment, but she's weary and her stomach is screaming for coffee and food. "Residents of Salem City are upstairs, laying their town's problems squarely at Special Technologies' feet. It's a real showstopper."

  "Shower?" The voice remains weak. Crank doesn't like the sound of that at all.

  "In the back. Everything's ready back there. You suffered from the chills and we had to soak you in hot water for a few hours before the papoose style blanket roll. Your body took quite the hit in the river, so please take it easy. War is, not the place for females, though I doubt you'll take the advice of a highly respected doctor."

  Crank salutes Vera (who stares, confused), and makes her way to the rear.

  The shower feels at once so soothing and so agonizing. She cradles her tender breasts, rubs her sore back and wishes she had more than two hands. With her eyes closed, hair draped over her face, in Crank's mind the brown river gets closer as faceless women beckon her to jump in.

  Jump in. Let go.

  She gets out in a hurry and dries off. ST has a warm air dryer installed in a corner of the shower room. Its huge fan blows out cold at first (much to her surprise!) before bringing in room temperature wind to dry off the body. She looks at herself, her pale body now looks disturbingly like a carpet someone threw red wine at, dark blotchy stains with road map streaks. Not attractive!

  She steps out of the dryer, noticing some slick cat has placed a roll of bandages and a pair of scissors on her folded uniform. She gets to work. Pull. Cut. Place. Ouch! Seal. Repeat. Ouch again! Now half mummy, Crank places on the uniform in slow, huffing motions. Once it's on, she dares to stretch...and regrets it. Eyes now open, she heads back into the infirmary.

  Bobby Meyer is staring at her. Crank jumps back, clutching her shirt as if it were a shield. When did he get there? Why is he handcuffed to the bedrail?

  Bobby's face is so very pallid. His expression is lifeless, devoid of...

  "Oh no."

  "Oh yes, sad to say," Doctor Wentz is behind a desk in the corner. "This young man has been remodulated. Only the pleas of a man called Skinny Bubba (the Doc says it like it's a plague) allowed Mister Meyer to return inside the Hangar. I for one, find it an opportunity for closer inspection of Motherville's processes in the human body, a live specimen." Suddenly there is life in Wentz's voice.

  It conflicts drastically with the dread in Frederica's heart. She is feeling on her belt for a gun holster but doesn't find one. Bobby's eyes grow wider, a razor thin smile crosses his face.

  "The radio is trying to kill you," he says. Crank gulps, but saliva is stuck in her throat. Doctor Wentz grabs a clipboard from the end of the bed, and jots down some notes before returning her attention to the mechanic.

  "It isn't fitting for women to enter combat," Miss Wentz states, a cold calculation to her tone. "You are considerably young, and should take into account the possibility of combat ruining your chances of successfully bearing children. Have a good day, Miss Musa."

  Crank withholds the urge to show the medical official one of her fingers. Instead, she glues a fake smile on her pretty face.

  "Sure thing." Crank turns to find the stairs, trying to forget the look on Bobby's face, the doctor's haughtiness, the war, etc. She manages two steps to freedom when...

  "I have your frequency now," states Bobby.

  A rat made of ice runs down Crank's spine and chills her bowels. Her hands shake. She thinks of Benjamin Haskins, of dead Ninny on the windshield, of a hundred hands bleeding fuel.

  "And I'll have yours soon enough." Without looking back, Crank storms up the stairs, and goes on the prowl for the strongest cup of coffee possible.

  Chapter Ten: The Left Turn on Questionable Lane

  Her body's been rubbed the wrong way, so Crank finds sneaking about in slow motion behind a standing mob difficult at best. The hangar is brimming with men and women, suits, blouses and skirts of frustrated bodies, hands waving while lips cry out for answers.

  "Our major traffic comes along Route Forty-Nine, but you've gone and blown up the bridge!"

  "What about our children's education? No one's gonna send them to school with these - these things flying around!"

  "You're lettin' a Negro run around our town with a gun? And he was a good Negro too, until you people got a hold of him!"

  "Most of our businesses have shut down. Are you going to pay for the city's woes?"

  "Some of our folks are acting strange, distant. Others have up and vanished! Are these robots, these Slicks as you call them, responsible? One of 'em wandered into Endicott-Johnson, one arm missing. Tore up a lot o' good shoes before the police shot it down! Took an awful load of shotgun shells to do the job! Who's payin' for the damages?"

  She manages to slink behind the crotchety tangle, the citizens of Salem City. Crank slips right by them for the dome door, coffee on her mind. The folks are uproarious, cries going out at, not to, Johnathan Coursey, to help them understand what's going on. It's a hornets nest alright, and she can't even see the blond tree that is poor Coursey through the forest of complainers. Crank does, however, detect the clear shame and tension in his voice between the yells of the Salemites.

  Softly, she opens the igloo door, and creeps in. The empty room does not smell of black gold. Hastily, Crank prepares a pot. Waiting for percolation is maddening. At least the dome is insulated enough to keep out roars from an entire municipality. She hunches into a chair, groans, and waits.

  Waiting becomes sleeping. By the time the mechanic is aware, the coffee is abysmally bitter. Too worse for wear, too pained for regret, she drinks it anyway. The sting of the brew places a dagger into every taste bud. It also reminds her vaguely of Italy, what little of it she recalled from age six, walking through the streets of Pomplona with her father. The scent returns her to ancient buildings and faraway cultures. The taste makes Frederica realize a hamburger would be perfect with her coffee.

  Into the refrigerator she goes, scouring the racks for whatever the boys ate last night. Oh yes! Someone made hamburgers. Somebody always makes hamburgers or macaroni and cheese. A quick warming in the oven, and soon two patties are nestled between slices of bread with a dollop of ketchup and a slice of red onion from a local Victory Garden. She bites, she chews, she sips. She's in heaven.

  On the first bite of the second burger, Crank nearly chokes to death. Behind her, inside of the igloo's floor, a voice speaks to her. She hacks and spits out her masterpiece meal. Eyes expand. Shoulders hunch. Adrenaline removes the pains.

  "I didn't just hear the wall talking!"

  "You're right. It's me, Skinny!" a familiar voice whispers like a lion's purr.

  "And," Crank chooses not to turn around, "how are you talking to me from inside the wall?" She pleads to God for this not to be some Motherville trick, her nightmare following her into the day.

  "There's a secret tunnel. Didn't you know?"

  Lips curl into an angry pout, brows crease as she resumes eating, taking a predatory chunk out of the hamburger. She turns around, noticing an inch gap in the floor made by a trap door. The soft eyes of Skinny Bubba are looking square at her.

  "Oh, so you boys are keeping secrets from me now, huh?" She storms across the floor as Skinny raises the trapdoor higher.

  "C'mon Crank! It's not even like that!" He starts to yell before remembering to dial it down
to a bad impersonation of whispering. "Coursey told us about it right after the battle. Seems ST built this hangar underground in the Twenties long before they ever made this building over it. Strange stuff going on. We're down at the other end trading war stories with the new boys. Benny's in a bad way. You wanna come, avoid those crazy white folks? No offense."

  "None taken. I'm not white, I'm Italian." Crank pours another round of Joe, snatches her burger off the plate, and creeps into the tunnel. It's a short set of six steps leading into a narrow concrete cylinder, lit overhead by some rather unappealing yellow Edison bulbs. She studies this tunnel while Skinny leads the way, holding her breath as the first inhalation takes in the faint perfume of mildew. Everything about it, from the wiring to the piles of dust confirms the tunnel is not a recent addition. "ST was formed in the Thirties, not the Twenties!" Her whisper echoes up and down the way, causing Crank to smother her mouth in hot coffee.

  "Yeah, I know. But we're havin' a good discussion about it out where this leads. Now we can add your brain to it. Follow me."

  Crank is stuffed on disappointment and ground beef. Surely the tunnel leads outside, where she can feel the sun on her face, the cold wind of winter pinching her cheeks. But no, the hole in the ground terminates into an even larger hole in the ground, a secondary mechanics shop with all the fixings. The ceiling is twenty feet or so over their heads, the ground a dirty concrete sloping slightly toward the center to a circular brass drain. Tools are in abundance, as well as work tables and the same sad yellow lights to illuminate.

  But the giant blocks partially covered in tarpaulins are what attract Frederica's inquisitive eyes.

  "These can't be - -?"