Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure

by K. M. Weiland

  The shadows blocked the light for an instant. The voices moved nearer, loud and growly. They said words like Jael sometimes said.

  A man in a round hat, with a big bird on his shoulder, strode toward the tarp.

  Zlo.

  Walter ducked back and nearly banged his head against the trapdoor’s sill.

  Another shadow crossed the room. A man with a youngish voice muttered, “Pozhaluista, otpustite nas.” He sounded like he was begging.

  “Zatknis’!” Zlo’s bellow rumbled all through the room. “Mi podozhdem poka svershitsya moi plan.”

  The floor of the tunnel shifted underneath Walter’s hands and knees. What was happening? Had Hitch come back? Was he fighting Schturming? Maybe he was knocking it out of the air? Walter tensed his arms and legs.

  The slant of the floor held steady.

  No, what was happening was they were turning. They were going back. To Scottsbluff. His heart leapt. But... why? Zlo had said everybody in town had two days to pay the ransom.

  Walter peeked around the corner once more.

  The younger man, in a red coat, stood back from Zlo and fidgeted one leg. He kept looking around the room, like maybe he wanted a magic door to appear and take him away.

  Zlo reached up and swirled the tarp to the floor. A machine almost as tall as Zlo himself, made of brass and tin and polished wood, sat underneath. It hummed through the dozen or so brass pipes sticking up from its backside.

  This was the weather-maker. It had to be.

  Zlo started poking at the round buttons set flat beneath three shiny panels that tilted upwards. The machine whirred harder.

  The red-coated man clasped his hands and threw his head back, a little like he was praying. “Pozhaluista, mi dolzhni idti!”

  Zlo stopped poking buttons and reached into his coat pocket. He came out with Jael’s pendant, turned its little crank with the leaf-shaped handle, and fit it into a slot beside the panel of buttons.

  “Pozhaluista—” the other man said again.

  Without looking at him, Zlo grabbed a brass lever—about the size of a baseball bat—and shoved it forward.

  The machine’s hum became a quiet roar. It vibrated all through the tunnel’s floorboards and buzzed in Walter’s sore shoulder joints. The hair on his head stood straight on end. He touched it, and it crackled.

  Outside, thunder rumbled.

  Zlo turned away from the machine and looked at his friend. The bird on his shoulder cawed and ruffled its feathers. Zlo parted his lips, and the silver caps on his teeth glinted in the lantern’s light. He didn’t say a word. He looked mad, but not one bit afraid.

  If Zlo wanted to, he could kill everybody. Walter’s teeth started to chatter. After he got the ransom, Zlo could flood the whole valley to get back at Hitch and Sheriff Campbell for capturing him. And nobody would be able to stop him. Walter’s stomach seemed to fall clean out of his body.

  Zlo turned around. A long brass pipe had been secured lengthwise to the wall. It ended in a funnel, kind of like a megaphone. Zlo spoke into it. “Derzhi kurs.”

  After a second, a tinny voice answered. “Tak tochno!”

  Zlo strode to his friend and clapped his shoulder, then pushed him around. They headed back across the room, leaving the lantern behind.

  Right as they passed his trap door, Walter pulled back. He dropped onto his elbows and smashed his hands against the top of his head, trying to squash down his static hair.

  Think. C’mon, think! Nobody down below—not even Hitch—could be sure what Zlo was planning. Only Walter. He was the only one who knew. And he was stuck up here, well and truly.

  If Hitch hadn’t crashed—and, of course, he hadn’t—then he’d come back and look for Walter. But without the wing to mark Schturming’s hull, he wouldn’t be able to find the ship. Unless... maybe Walter could mark it somehow.

  But with what? Nobody’d be able to see anything in the dark.

  Except light, of course. He looked up.

  The lantern sat on the floor in the big room, beside the door Zlo and his friend had left through.

  Time to pretend. Walter clambered out of the trap door and ran on tiptoe to grab the lantern. He glanced through the door.

  Darkness filled the room beyond. Wind gusted through it and spattered raindrops against his face.

  He looked up toward God. Please don’t let anybody be in there. ’Cause if they were, they’d sure as spitting see him move the lantern.

  He snagged the lantern’s thin metal handle and darted back across the room. He shoved the lantern in first, then clambered after. His heart hammered all the way through his body.

  The cannon filled up almost the whole tunnel, so he had to lift the lantern over its wheel, then slither over it himself. He pushed the lantern ahead of him, on the floor, and scootched under the barrel. Good thing he was so scrawny. Any bigger, and he’d’ve been stuck right there. A line of sweat trickled heat down his forehead. He swiped it aside with the back of his arm.

  The black tunnel stretched out in front of him. Somewhere down there, maybe he’d find a window. If he could put the lantern in the window, maybe just maybe Hitch’d be able to see it.

  He started crawling, and he kept right on crawling—until he heard a dog’s muffled whine. Goosebumps scattered his skin, and he stopped short.

  Taos. Could that be Taos?

  Walter’s heart jumped with the first happy thought since Zlo had taken Aunt Aurelia.

  Maybe, just maybe everything could still be all right. If Taos was here and if Hitch could somehow come save them both, maybe everything could be all right after all.

  Forty-Three

  HITCH STAGGERED THROUGH the doorway into the cellblock. They were way up on the fourth floor of the brand new courthouse the county had built for Campbell. Rain rattled against the roof. Griff’s hand against his shoulder guided him toward a cell.

  Another deputy pushed a handcuffed Jael to keep her walking on by.

  As she passed Hitch, she reached out and brushed her fingers against his.

  His body reacted on instinct, his head moving in her direction.

  She looked straight at him, her eyebrows furrowed hard at that crossroads somewhere between outrage and concern.

  Her look pierced him. He snapped awake, out of the chaos of his jumbled thoughts, and drew a shuddered breath.

  “You are not all right?” she said.

  Who cared if he was all right? At this moment, the only thing he needed to figure out was how all this had happened. How could it be true? He had a son? And that son was Walter—who had probably fallen to his death only a few hours ago? Dear God in heaven.

  “Did you know?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. Her bedraggled, wind-whipped hair flailed against her cheeks. “No. I would have told you.” She gave Griff a sidelong glare. “They should have told you.”

  The deputy assigned to her pushed her forward. “Come along.”

  She turned her glare on him instead. “And what am I in custody for?”

  “Sheriff says you’re an accomplice.”

  Like enough she didn’t know what an accomplice was, but she tossed her hair back. “Your sheriff is criminal.”

  Still, she let him herd her away. She was limping again, whether from the storm or her bare feet or something she’d pulled during her aerobatics earlier in the evening.

  Griff touched Hitch’s elbow and guided him down the corridor. “This way.”

  Almost every cell was packed with the Schturming refugees who had been left behind when Zlo’s men had broken him out.

  Hitch let himself be guided. His mind churned in a nauseating blur of exhaustion and new adrenaline. He had a son. He was a father. Celia’d had a son. He and Celia had had a son together... and nobody’d ever told him.

  He clamped his eyes shut as he walked. The past week scrolled through his head like a moving picture. Walter running through the cornfield as the Jenny zipped overhead. Walter peeking underneath the fusela
ge the day they met, when he’d wanted so bad to bum a ride. Walter playing with Taos. Walter holding that sign advertising rides. Walter sitting in Hitch’s lap during his first flight, his hands clamped tight on the stick. Walter turning somersaults afterwards.

  Of course the kid was his son. Whose else? He’d even thought how, if he’d had a son, one like Walter wouldn’t have been too far off the mark.

  And then there was Walter saying the first words he’d said in years—and saying them to him. And Hitch had sent him running like a whipped pup, as if Taos could have mattered more than him.

  A groan tore up his chest.

  Tonight, for the first time, he was a father.

  No, scratch that, he’d been a father all along. For eight years. Tonight was maybe the first time in all those years he wasn’t a father anymore.

  If he’d been faster tonight—if he and Jael had gone for Walter first, instead of Aurelia—if he hadn’t lost his temper with Walter after Zlo had taken Taos—if he hadn’t come back home—if he hadn’t left. All these useless ifs. At the end of every single one of them, Walter was still unaccounted for and probably dead.

  He stopped short of his cell, yanked his elbow out of Griff’s grip, and turned to the wall. He smashed his hand into it once, then again. His knuckle split open and streaked blood across the wall.

  Griff grabbed at him. “Hitch. Hitch—stop it. This isn’t doing anybody any good.”

  Hitch spun on him, fist still clenched. He nearly swung at Griff’s head.

  But what good would that do at this point? Another fight. One more for the history books. What good had any of those fights done? What had they proven? That he was right and his brother was wrong? What good would a fight do Walter now?

  He dropped his fist and stepped backwards, into the open cell. He watched Griff the whole way. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

  Griff watched him right back, but his expression wasn’t so certain anymore.

  “You didn’t think I had a right to know something like that?” Hitch said.

  Griff reached for the cell door. His hand trembled. “You left. You left your family. You lost your rights when you did that.”

  “You think I wouldn’t have come back if I knew?”

  Griff’s gaze charted Hitch’s face. Slowly, he shook his head. “We thought it was best for the boy.”

  “That he never knew his father?”

  “He thinks Byron’s his father.” He wouldn’t look Hitch in the eye. “Are you really going to tell me you’d have come back, settled down, given him a home? You’re telling me the life he would have had, getting dragged around the country, living hand to mouth would have been a better upbringing than what he’s getting with Nan?”

  Yes! The boy was his son.

  But the words caught in his throat.

  He would have come back, picked up his swaddled infant, and flown right back out. Griff was right about that.

  So then what?

  He’d spent the last nine years chasing freedom through the skies. A baby would have chained him down as sure as a farm. Walter was nobody’s fool. He’d have figured that out. He would have realized a long time since that his father was no hero. Hitch Hitchcock was just a no-account wanderer. He had no roots, no responsibilities, no convictions.

  Griff inhaled. “I’m not saying what we decided was right. I’m just saying...” He watched the floor.

  Then he clanked the door shut. “What you said back there about Campbell being the one we should arrest... That true?” His mouth stayed hard, but something in his face was vulnerable, searching.

  Hitch looked him in the eye. “What do you think?”

  Griff opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded. “You’re stuck here for now—probably until a hearing. But I’ll see what I can do.” He left. His footsteps thudded down the corridor.

  Hitch backed up, one step after the other, until the low bunk hit his legs. He sank down on it. His hands bumped into the thin mattress beside his thighs, and he left them there, limp. He leaned back until his head hit the wall. Overhead, rain hammered against the ceiling. Shadows shifted in the corners.

  Walter was out there somewhere, either up with Zlo or dead on the ground.

  Please let it be Zlo. His throat cramped, and he closed his eyes. Never thought he’d pray for that. But please let it be.

  Because, God help him, he didn’t know what he’d do if it was otherwise.

  He had a son, and hadn’t something in him known it all along? He loved the kid already. He’d loved him from the first time he’d met him. Taos had known. Somehow the dog had seemed to see it all before Hitch had even gotten a clue.

  If things had gone the way he—and Griff and Nan—had wanted them to, he’d be on his way out of the state right now. He’d have left without even knowing.

  That wasn’t even close to being all his fault. They’d had no right to keep this from him. They’d misjudged him every step of the way, never even tried to understand where he’d been coming from, what kind of wrath he’d been trying to stay clear of.

  But they were right about one thing: he had been that close to leaving his family one more time. Dear God. Just like he’d done before. He’d given it all up without a second thought, because it was hard, because he was afraid, selfish, too downright blind stupid to see.

  He raised his head and let it fall back against the wall. Pain splashed through his skull.

  And now it was too late.

  He thumped his head against the wall again—and again.

  ***

  Hitch must have slept, because after what seemed an ageless wandering through gray and frantic dreams, he woke up and peeled open his sticky eyelids. He was still hunched against the wall. Cramped muscles held his spine in a curve. He raised an arm, and pain jagged through his shoulders. He let the arm fall.

  The rain still pounded on the roof; it had pounded all the way through his nightmares. A trickle of light spilled down the corridor and cast a man’s shadow slantways across the cell’s floor.

  Hitch looked up and up, until he found the craggy face, shadowed under a fedora, a toothpick in the corner of the mouth.

  Campbell. Come to twist the knife, no doubt.

  Anger heated Hitch’s stomach. He let the heat growl up into his throat. But he stayed slouched against the wall. No more games. Campbell always won those.

  This wasn’t a game anymore anyway. Somewhere along the line—maybe as long ago as the beginning—this had become a war.

  Campbell pulled the toothpick from his mouth. He looked old, the lines around his eyes strained, as if he hadn’t slept all night. But his jaw was granite.

  “I reckon you know why you’re here,” he said.

  “Because you let Zlo take your town right back from you. Can’t hardly lock yourself up, can you?”

  If possible, the set of Campbell’s jaw got harder. “You’d best not climb on a high horse. There ain’t a sheriff in this country’d say you’re a model citizen.”

  “What do you call a model citizen?”

  “A man who abides by the rules.”

  “You mean your rules.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  Hitch shoved himself away from the wall. Pain slashed through his cramped back, and he stifled a wince. “What do you want?”

  Campbell tapped the toothpick against the crossbar. He rasped a whisper, even though few of the men in the surrounding cells spoke English. “I want you to know that if you finish telling your brother what you started to last night, it makes no matter to me.”

  “What?”

  “Who do you think the judges around here are going to believe?” But a flicker in his eye said he wasn’t as sure as all that. Maybe.

  Hitch stood up from the bunk and took a couple steps toward the bars. “You don’t really think I’m going to sit in here and take the rap?”

  “I don’t see that you have a choice.” Campbell investigated the chewed tip of his toothpick. “But you could earn
one.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I still got a job opening for an enterprising flyer. I’ll get you out of jail. Give you back your wings.”

  “You don’t say?” Hitch took another step toward the bars. Less than a foot separated him from Campbell. “From threats to bribes. Seems like maybe you haven’t got this town as sewn up as you’d like me to think. If that’s the case, I don’t need your help to get out of here, do I?”

  “Either you stay locked up in jail for the rest of your life—or you get one chance to go back out there.” Campbell pointed down the corridor, toward the door. “Under the sky and in the wind, with your plane in one hand and your life in the other. Leave town, fly anywhere in this country. That’s what you want. We both know it. Locked up here in a jail cell, sitting in one place every day for the rest of your life, that ain’t your style.”

  Freedom. Sweat itched in Hitch’s palms. He could be back in the air and out of this mess in the space of one word. That’s what Campbell was offering.

  No. That’s what Campbell wanted him to think he was offering. That road was a whole lot of familiar by this point. That road had led him here.

  “You think I’d leave?” His throat tightened around the words. “Now that I know about Walter?”

  “The boy’s dead. It’s a shame, but there it is.”

  “No.” He rubbed his hands against his pants. “They haven’t found him yet, and until they do, he’s not dead and I’m not leaving.”

  Campbell narrowed his eyes. “You make the call to stay in here, and I guarantee you’re going to stay for the rest of your sorry life.”

  Hitch let out another laugh, just to taunt him. It was about the only weapon he had right now. “If I get out of here, the first thing I’m going to do is find my son. The second thing I’m going to do—the second thing is to come back here and find you.”

  The crags of Campbell’s face went rock hard. He lowered the toothpick. “Now, that’d be a mistake.”

  “I didn’t do it a long time ago. That was the mistake.”

  Campbell’s mouth worked. Finally, he drew in a deep breath and bellowed over his shoulder, “Milton, bring the keys!”

  A young deputy hurried down the corridor.