Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure

by K. M. Weiland

  That’d teach those pirates! Walter jumped and shook a fist. A whoop stuck hard in his throat, and that kind of hurt too. Death to pirates! They didn’t stand even a little chance.

  The air exploded. The balloon quavered, and near Hitch’s tail, a black blast of smoke puffed.

  Walter froze.

  Everybody started screaming and ducking all over again.

  Another blast pounded, and another, one after the other. Puffs of smoke chased behind Hitch’s tail, like huge smoke rings from one of Mr. J.W.’s cigars. The red plane ducked and dived. It rolled all the way over, as it screamed down and then back up again.

  Next to Walter, Mr. J.W. clenched his fists at his sides. “Durn furriners! They’re shooting at him!”

  Nan gripped Walter’s shoulders with both hands and stared upwards. “Hitch, you crazy fool. You always did have more backbone than brains.”

  The crowd swarmed all around. Half the people ran to their automobiles to try to get away. The other half stayed, hunching over and wailing, probably scared too much to move. Deputy Griff and Col. Livingstone were shouting and trying to direct everybody. Nobody listened.

  Clouds swirled out of the clear sky, and thunder blasted over their heads. Far behind, the twin propellers began blatting against the air.

  From behind, Jael and Earl shoved through the throng. They’d know what to do.

  Walter caught at Jael’s hand.

  She glanced down long enough to see him and stop. Her eyes sparked, afraid one minute, just plain angry the next. “Hitch cannot fly away from cannon and lightning forever!”

  “He’s doing a pretty good job so far,” Mr. Matthew said.

  Earl stopped in front of the Berringers and hollered to be heard, “He’s going to see if he can force it a little lower. We have to find a way to mark that undercarriage, so we can find it again if it gets away.”

  “Mark it how?” Mr. J.W. asked. “Paint?”

  Mr. Matthew shook his head. “Take too long to put enough paint on that to make it visible from far away.”

  Jael stared up, her whole body fidgeting. “If we could maybe be tying something to it...”

  “Have to be something awful big,” Earl said. “But not too heavy for us to lift.”

  Walter swung his head around to look. About twenty yards off, just shy of the grandstand, the scattered remains of the first lightning-struck plane still smoldered. One of its wings, almost as red as Hitch’s Jenny, flashed in the fading sunlight.

  His heart skipped and his stomach went all hollow for a second. He yanked on Jael’s arm.

  She turned her head—slowly, slowly, like the drip of sap in the crook of a tree—and finally looked at him.

  Still hanging onto her, he pointed.

  She followed his gaze, and then her face lit up. “Wing. He is right. If it is not burned, it is good color and not too heavy.” She started running, but she was slow again, wincing with every step.

  Earl and the Berringers took off after her.

  Overhead, the plane engines howled. More explosions slapped the sky, each one like a punch in the chest.

  The noise thrummed all through Walter’s body. His palms tingled, and he clenched them. He should go with Jael and the Berringers. It was his idea. He should help them. But he couldn’t make his feet move. Just like everybody else was screaming and carrying on from the outside, he was screaming on the inside.

  Schturming’s shadow shifted, and the sun poured its heat down on Walter through the only big crack left in the clouds. Sweat dripped off the ends of his hair and plopped against his face. He sucked in one deep breath and then another. If he didn’t move right now, if he didn’t do something, then he was nothing but a scared chicken.

  One of the planes winked out of the glare of blue sky in front of Schturming. It snarled through the air, the sound of its engine louder and deeper than the others. Hitch’s plane.

  Walter couldn’t suck in enough air through his nose, so he opened his mouth and gulped.

  The plane flew in from high above Schturming. Then, like the fall of an ax, it dropped its nose and dove straight at the open doors where Zlo and his men stood. Everybody inside, even Sheriff Campbell, scrambled. Zlo waved his arms. His bird got scared and flapped away from his shoulder. Schturming moved again, dropping low and shifting sideways, trying both to avoid Hitch and to swing the cannon around to face him.

  Far away across the field, Jael and the others ran, dragging the wing directly underneath the airship’s huge shadow. Schturming hovered only twelve feet off the ground. Hitch had forced it down. It was low enough now.

  What Hitch had done... it could have killed him. He was so brave he didn’t even care about dying. He didn’t care he was in a tiny plane and the bad men were in a huge airship. He didn’t care they were shooting at him with a cannon or that they could light him on fire and knock him out of the sky with a bolt of lightning. Walter made himself unclench his fists.

  But maybe he would care if he found out Walter was so scared he couldn’t help anybody, couldn’t even move.

  Walter sucked in another breath through his open mouth. He lifted one foot off the ground. It came slow, and his other leg shook so hard he nearly fell over. He put his foot down in the dust, then lifted the other.

  Mama Nan grabbed at him. “Walter!”

  Now or never! He leaned forward, and he ran.

  “Walter, get back here!”

  She’d be mad at him again—and worried. But he’d make it up to her later. There were some things he just had to do.

  He pumped his arms and pounded his feet against the ground. Jael and the others would need a rope if they were going to tie the wing onto Schturming. Papa Byron always kept one in the automobile. He ran back through the cars. People jostled and pushed him. Miss Ginny Lou Thatcher shrieked his name and tried to grab his overalls strap. He ducked free and kept running.

  His hands shook as he hauled the rope out. But he could breathe steady now, and his heart pumped hard and firm. He turned and headed back. Across the line of the airship’s shadow, the sudden cool engulfed his sweaty skin. He ran to the back end of the ship, just under the propellers.

  Jael and the others crouched over the wing. She glanced up at him. “Rope! Good boy.” She pointed up. “There is door in floor—we can tie rope to its handle.”

  Earl finished ripping a hole through the fabric at the wing’s tip. He threaded the rope through and snugged the knot. Then he handed it to Mr. Matthew, who was the tallest of them. “Gonna have to get you something to stand on.” Earl whipped around to look at Mr. J.W. “Get your car!”

  Jael stood and used both hands to shove her blowing hair out of her face. “Walter can do it. He can ride on Matthew’s shoulders!”

  Mr. Matthew glanced at Walter. “How about it, son?”

  Walter couldn’t breathe again. He managed a nod.

  Earl grabbed him under the arms and swung him up to sit on Mr. Matthew’s shoulders. “You’ll have to stand up, kid! Can you do that?”

  Walter’s head didn’t want to nod, so he just planted both hands on top of Mr. Matthew’s hat and pushed himself up. Jael grabbed one of his ankles and Mr. J.W. grabbed the other.

  Earl handed up the end of the rope. “Loop it through that iron ring in that trapdoor. Pass the end back to me, and I’ll knot it off down here on the wing again. Got it?”

  “Bite it in your teeth!” Jael said.

  He bit the rope hard. If nothing else, maybe it would keep them all from hearing his teeth chattering. He pushed up from Mr. Matthew’s head, first one hand, then the other. Inch by inch, he straightened. Then he leaned his head back and looked up.

  The endless bottom of the ship hung a couple feet above his head. Its wood was sun-bleached and weathered, the paint stripped off in long shreds. It smelled of dry wood, like the split-rail fences around the hayfield. The whole thing swayed, creaking. The taut skin of the balloon thrummed in the wind like a flat palm against a drumhead. All around, the plane eng
ines shrieked. The cannon thundered rhythmically, joining the sharp scent of gunpowder with the gasoline fumes and the rain smell.

  He reached up with both hands. Don’t move, don’t move, he wanted to tell Mr. Matthew. But it wouldn’t do any good. Plus everybody would probably fall over from surprise because he’d actually said something. Then the plan really wouldn’t work.

  The tips of his fingers brushed the wood—smooth where it still had paint, rough where it didn’t. He took the rope from his teeth, carefully pushing the rough weave out with his tongue. Then he raised his hand again. The rope slid through the iron ring. He pushed it all the way through, then reached for the other end.

  Beneath him, Mr. Matthew wobbled. Walter clenched at the two ends of the rope and managed to stay upright.

  “All right.” Earl sounded like he couldn’t breathe either. “That’s okay. Good job. Now pass it on down. Easy.”

  The cannon cracked again, bigger and louder. Beyond the edge of the ship’s hull, a blast of flame winked: a plane hurtled to the ground.

  The tremor rattled all the way up through Mr. Matthew’s body, and Walter swayed.

  Earl grabbed the rope’s end and hauled it the rest of the way down. “Get him off there! I can tie it now!”

  “Wait!” Jael said. “Look up, Walter! Can you pull open door?”

  He straightened back up long enough to wrap both hands around the large iron ring and pull on it. But it wouldn’t budge. A three-inch slot—like an odd keyhole—notched the wood beside the ring.

  “Look for my pendant! Is there anything you see?”

  Mr. Matthew was already reaching for him, a hand on either leg to help him down. Walter scanned the whole length of the ship. A haze of smoke from the explosions and the plane exhaust filled the air. If anything was there, it blended in against the wood and the shadows.

  The ship started to move. Ponderously, the tail swung around toward the grandstand.

  “Get him down!” Mr. J.W. yelled.

  Mr. Matthew hauled Walter off his shoulders and practically dropped him to the ground.

  The airship’s long shadow rotated, and the line of sunshine on the ground crept toward them.

  Earl yanked the knot tight. “There!”

  Walter stood up and turned to see.

  The wing skidded through the dirt. Then, as the airship started to rise, the wing flipped up off the ground. The free end spun around, headed straight toward his head.

  Earl leapt at him. “Watch it!”

  The wing caught Earl’s outstretched arm with a loud crack. The arm flopped, and Earl sprawled, taking Walter down with him.

  Twenty-Six

  ANOTHER PLANE CAUGHT a cannonball square in the tail. It spun a full circle in the air, then pitched nose down, screaming until it hit the ground in a splash of wood and metal. Hitch swooped into an Immelmann turn and hauled his Jenny back around through the haze of smoke and exhaust. He swiped the heel of his hand across the oil sheen on his goggles. Right after that last pass, the engine had started leaking pretty good.

  He couldn’t get close enough to Schturming to hook it. All things considered, that might be a good thing. The way it looked from up here, Earl was probably right about that being a pointless way to die. But that left him weaponless. If he’d kept his .45, at least he could have popped some shots at the envelope. That would have made him feel better even if it didn’t bring down the ship.

  Schturming’s propellers started chugging. The dirigible eased forward.

  He circled prow-ward.

  The rope ladder snaked around in the wind; they were letting Campbell climb back down, probably so he could carry their terms to the town.

  As Schturming moved out of the way, Hitch could see a huddle of people on the ground, faces raised skyward. Looked like Jael, Earl, and the Berringers. Hopefully, they’d had a sight more luck than he had.

  Schturming started to rise: it was leaving.

  So far, he’d scored exactly nothing up here. Jael hadn’t been kidding about that cannon. Through the smoke, it looked like some old piece from the early 1800s, wide-mouthed and mounted on a track that ran all the way around the lower side of the envelope. On either side of the prow, a big iron bell snuggled between the envelope and the ship. Whichever side he showed up on, that was the side where the bell started clanging. Everywhere he went, the cannon followed.

  What he needed was a wingman. He swiveled his head to scan the sky. Most of the planes had disappeared once the shooting started. Of those that had stuck around for the fight, at least three had been shot down.

  A flash of light blue, nearly blending with the sky, winked on the far side of the dirigible.

  Rick. Not his first choice for a partner, but at least they’d flown together.

  Hitch climbed over the top of the ascending airship and straightened the Jenny into level flight beside Rick. Beneath his goggles, Rick’s grimy face was set in a determined look. Hitch motioned to him. During their six months together, they’d come up with hand signals so they could communicate in the air. Cannons and dirigibles had never figured into those signals, but they’d have to make do.

  If one of them could distract that cannon long enough, the other could repeat the trick of diving at the open bay at the ship’s end. It had worked before to get Zlo to lower the airship. Maybe it could work again, and this time they could ram the thing right into the ground. See how Zlo’d like that.

  Rick pursed his lips, frowning hard. Either he didn’t understand or... he didn’t want to be a wingman.

  Even Rick couldn’t really be that petty and short-sighted. Hitch hadn’t dinged his pride that hard.

  “Ah, come on!” Hitch shouted into the wind.

  As if he’d read Hitch’s lips, Rick grinned and saluted with two fingers. Then he peeled off to climb skyward.

  The cannon circled around to bear on Hitch again.

  He dove hard and whipped under the dirigible. A floating red wing, like an amputated limb, flashed in his windshield, and he skidded to the right. The Jenny tore through the narrow tunnel of open space between the undercarriage and the ground. He dared one glance over his shoulder at the dangling wing. That had to be Jael and Earl’s handiwork. At least this little sortie wouldn’t be a total loss.

  Wouldn’t be any kind of loss at all, if he could help it.

  He burst back into the sunlight and pulled the plane into as steep a climb as he could manage, engine whining. A few more yards and he’d be able to level out and charge straight into that bay. He leveled out, throttle all the way open.

  Something hit him. Like a giant outstretched palm, something caught the Jenny and swiped her aside. He slid through the air and wrestled with the controls to try to keep her straight and level. With only a couple dozen yards between him and the ground, he had zero room to maneuver.

  The something hit him again.

  Ahead, Rick’s blue plane floundered just as hard.

  A cold rush of air bit into the side of Hitch’s face. Wind. He craned a look over his shoulder.

  Zlo stood at the edge of the doorway, one hand propped against the frame. He seemed to be grinning.

  That dirty mug. He’d turned on the storm.

  Only an hour ago, the sky had been blue as cornflowers, the few clouds searingly white. Now, thunderheads swirled in overhead. The wind tossed the plane like she was a baseball. If it got any worse, his wings could stall and smash him to the earth.

  He had to land, and fast. The round was over. Zlo had won hands down.

  He growled deep in his throat and let the wind grab the plane for a second. That was all it took to whip her around, away from Schturming’s heading. In his wake, the cannon boomed. But that was the least of his problems right now.

  What he needed was another empty field where he could put her down.

  The Jenny scudded on the wind, covering the miles way faster than she should have.

  The black blot of a burnt haymow showed the field where the lightning had hit Jael th
e other day. It’d have to do.

  He overflew it, then hauled the Jenny around. Landing with her nose to the wind was about the only way to keep any kind of control over her. She bobbled her landing anyway, skidding around in a ground loop, and nearly pitching over. The propeller chewed dirt and clanked to a stop, splintered to its hub.

  In the sudden engine silence, he whooshed out a breath. His hands shook, and he looked around. From every direction, dark clouds tumbled in to close off the valley.

  He climbed out and took a look at the engine. Other than the busted propeller and the oil leak, the plane was holding up all right. But “all right” wasn’t going to get him back into the air. Even should the wind die down, she wasn’t going to be able to fly back to camp.

  A rusty jalopy, the bobbing headlights held on with baling twine, screamed up the road alongside the irrigation ditch. Jael drove, jerking the wheel dramatically every time she made a correction.

  In the passenger seat, Earl hugged one arm to his chest. “Slow down! You trying to break my other arm? The brake—step on the brake!”

  Jael must have stomped it with both feet. Dust boiled up behind the rear tires, and the whole car swerved, first to one side of the road, then the other. It skidded to a stop, left front wheel about two inches over the edge of the ditch. Both Jael and Earl bounced in their seats.

  Hitch ran over. “What do you think you’re doing? She can’t drive!”

  Earl’s shoulders sagged. “You’re telling me, brother.” He still held his left arm cradled against his chest.

  “What happened to you?” Hitch asked.

  “Arm’s busted.”

  “So you come tearing out here instead of finding somebody to set it?”

  “You were about to crash my plane—again. You think I was going to just sit back there?”

  Hitch opened the door. He reached to steady Earl’s good elbow.

  Earl dodged and, with a grimace, eased himself out. He hobbled over to the plane, his face the color of flour paste. “What’d you do to her this time?”