“What? No! We cannot fly. You are only one who can pilot!” Her exhale whuffed through the pipe. “I am not leaving you, Hitch. Do not be crazy, not now!”
“Jael, this ship will crash. You have to get Walter out of here. If I’m going to do this, then I need to know the two of you are safe. He can fly the Jenny, I know he can. It’s not that hard, and he’s a natural. You’ll just have to handle the rudder for him.”
“He is little boy!”
“He can do it. Help him. You’ve got a better chance of surviving in the plane than you will up here!”
“Hitch—” Her voice caught.
He could almost see her expression, halfway between crying and wanting to punch him in the face.
“You need to live,” she said. “You wanted to start again. You wanted to be there for Walter. You cannot do that if you are dead.”
“I am starting again.” He looked out the window, his one good hand planted on the wheel. “This is my start.”
Forty-Eight
THE WIND BLARING through the big double doors in front of the Jenny made it hard for Walter to hear what Jael was yelling into the pipe telephone thing. But he caught the last part—about wanting Hitch to stay alive.
Her face twisted all up, and her eyes got big and scared. Whatever Hitch had told her, it must not have been him agreeing with her.
Hitch had told Walter to stay in the plane. But he couldn’t now. He just couldn’t. He grabbed the edge of the cockpit and scrambled over the side. They weren’t going to leave Hitch, not ever. Hitch had come all this way to rescue him, even after what had happened to Taos. Hitch was his friend, and he—he— Heat burned in his throat, and he gulped it down.
Jael ran back across the big room. The floor was mostly steady under their feet now, and, ever since she’d shut off the weather machine, she was walking better.
In the front cockpit, Taos propped his front paws against the rim and started barking.
Jael caught Walter and stopped him, a hand on each of his shoulders. “We have to go! We have to go!”
“No!” He planted his feet and pushed on her wrists. “We can’t leave Hitch!”
“We have to.” She tried to turn him around to face the plane. “We are going to crash if we do not!”
“But then he’ll crash! I don’t want him to crash. We can’t let him!”
“Walter.” She caught his chin. Deep lines creased her forehead. The silver specks in her eyes practically threw sparks. “Hitch is man of much bravery. He has to do this, and we—” Her voice faltered, and she firmed her jaw. “We must be letting him.”
He kept shaking his head, but his stomach went all hard and cold. His stomach knew she was right. It was just that his heart didn’t want to believe it.
She guided him toward the Jenny. “He wants you to fly us out of here.”
That stopped him short again. His two lungs felt like wings, fluttering away in his chest. “But I can’t—”
They reached the plane, and she helped him into the rear cockpit’s cracked leather seat. She paused, one hand on the rim. “He says you can do it. He says you are natural.”
Hitch had said that? Walter stared.
“So take breaths. Make yourself to calm down inside and remember all he has told you. You can do great things, Walter. And this is great thing.”
He didn’t believe he could do this. But if Hitch did—and Jael did—then that’d have to be enough. Little trembles rolled through his muscles. He’d do it for them. He clenched his fists to make the trembling stop. He’d do it for Hitch.
Jael untied the Jenny’s wheels and tailskid, then ran around to the propeller. “Tell me what to do!”
He took the breaths, like she’d told him to, and squinted at the control panel. First, the fuel had to be on. Then the magneto switches had to be off—or was it on? Sweat prickled his skin all over. Off—it was off.
He swallowed hard and scootched around to sit on his bent legs, so he’d be able to see the top of Jael’s head over the cockpit rim. “Okay!”
She cycled the propeller. Then she swung it again—and again.
Wait. Now the magneto switch had to be turned on. He leaned forward. His fingers were so slick with sweat he had to grab the switch twice before he could hang onto it. He flipped it.
She swung the prop again. With a snort, the engine blatted to life.
The floor slanted again. This time, the Jenny started inching straight for the doors. The engine started to fade out, like it was going to quit altogether.
No, no! He scanned the instrument panel. Now what? What had Hitch done now? The trembles came back and rumbled all the way through him.
Jael started running back to him. “Open throttle! Only small bit!”
She reached the rear cockpit and swung herself up and over. She dropped into the seat and scooted under him, so he was sitting on her lap.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“Put your feet on the pedals!”
She circled his waist with her arms and clamped both of them in with the safety belt.
Thanks to the slant of the floor and the Jenny’s own engine thrust, the plane was soon speeding toward the opening. The propeller passed through the doorway, then the wheels, and then—they were airborne.
His head spun. His hands froze on the stick.
The nose pointed toward the ground. The patchwork of buildings and roads was still far away, but it seemed close at the same time—so much closer than it should be.
“Take breaths, take breaths!” Jael hollered right in his ear. “The nose must come up!”
Right. The nose. He hauled back on the stick.
Please work! He wasn’t a pilot. He was only a little boy.
But the magic worked for him just like it had for Hitch.
Slowly, the Jenny pitched up. She was almost level. She was level. She was flying!
Walter whooped, and Jael laughed. In the front cockpit, Taos raised his head and barked.
Only little spits of rain spotted the windshield. The wind must be stopping too, because the Jenny wasn’t bouncing around like Schturming had been earlier.
“Bring her lower!” Jael shouted. “Be slow!”
He pushed the stick forward, just a bit. The Jenny bobbed down right away, like she’d been reading his mind all along.
Below, people packed the streets. They carried lanterns and torches—and guns and pitchforks. Their faces looked like little white dots as they peered upwards.
“Search for street that is empty!” Jael shouted.
He nodded.
Two streets over would have to do. He showed Jael how to use the rudder pedals.
“Are you knowing how to land?” she asked.
He shrugged.
Her hands tightened over his on the stick. “Gospod pomogi nam.”
That sounded like a prayer, so he said one too. Please let me land. And please don’t let Hitch crash.
They guided the Jenny in. The plane glided—one hundred feet off the ground, then fifty, then maybe only ten.
Jael was hollering again. The engine sputtered.
His heart beat so hard it drowned out everything else.
How did you know when it was time to touch the ground? What did you do then? Sweat slipped over his eyebrows and stung his eyes. He blinked fiercely.
Then, just like that, a wheel hit the ground. They smacked so hard his neck about snapped. The whole world went fuzzy. But then, almost as quick, the Jenny hopped right back up—and down again. Something that looked a whole lot like a wheel bounced away to the side.
They were so close to the ground. They couldn’t crash now.
Jael wrapped both her hands around his, and together they hauled back.
He yanked one of his hands loose long enough to cut the throttle.
Life crept by, one long breath after another. With every second, the Jenny’s high tail end rose a little higher. She was going to flip right over.
But she didn’t. Just when i
t seemed she couldn’t get any higher, the tail fell. It whomped back into the ground. Mud showered everywhere. Walter was jerked back and his head walloped Jael’s chin. Then he pitched forward and hit his forehead against the stick.
Lights speckled behind his eyelids for a second. Or more likely five seconds.
He opened first one eye, then another. His head throbbed on both sides, but that was about all that hurt. He craned a look back to Jael.
She clamped one hand over her bloody chin and stared at him, eyes wide.
She was alive. So was he. He looked over the edge of the cockpit. The plane had settled onto one wing, but she was settled. Taos scrambled out of the front cockpit and ran around the plane, barking.
They’d done it! Walter clawed the safety belt loose and piled out of the plane. His legs quivered like a still-wet calf’s.
People ran up the street, shouting. Sheriff Campbell, a storm lantern in one hand, ran at their front. Earl ran behind him.
Walter looked back to where Jael was standing up in the cockpit. “I did it!”
She grinned. “You did it!”
“I did it!”
He jumped up and down once, then threw himself forward into the dirt to turn a somersault. The pain in his head banged away louder than Evvy and Annie playing with Mama Nan’s pots and pans. But that didn’t matter right now.
“I did it!” He opened his mouth, and, for the first time ever, yelled as loud as he could: “I DID IT!”
Hitch had been right about him.
Hitch... He craned his head back to see the sky. Where was Hitch? Clouds filled up every cranny of the sky. But no Schturming. He spun all the way around, head back as far as it would go.
The rumble of running feet drowned out any chance of sound.
People shouted and shrieked.
“The boy, he’s safe!”
“Would you look at that?”
“Where’s Hitch?” That was Earl.
“Everybody stand back!” Campbell shouted. He wore a bandage over his forehead, and the corners of his lips were pulled back, like a bear on the prod.
He stalked right up to Jael, still standing in the plane. He grabbed her arm and hauled her down. “This woman is under arrest!”
Earl looked about ready to spit. “Oh, for cryin’ out—”
Walter ducked through the swarm of people and latched both hands onto Campbell’s arm. “Let her go!”
Campbell stared, probably a little shocked Walter was talking. But he dropped the lantern instead of Jael and used his freed hand to grab Walter’s shirtfront. “Where’s your rescuer now?” He turned back to Jael. “He gets you both stuck up there and then abandons you to your own devices, is that it?”
Walter clenched both hands around Campbell’s fingers in his shirt and tried to pry them loose.
Jael stood up straight, like the storybook queens, and stared down her nose at Campbell. “You know that is not true.” She faced the crowd. “Hitch stayed in Schturming to save us—to save all of you! So it would not crash and kill you!”
With a fluttery whistle—kind of like a tremendous kite—Schturming broke out of the clouds and passed over their heads. For an instant, its shadow blocked out the gray trickle of new morning light. Black smoke gushed from the cargo bay’s open doors. The fire must have spread.
Earl spun to face the crowd. “Buckets? Hoses? You got a fire brigade in this town?” He turned around and jogged past Jael. His eyes found hers. “He ain’t dead yet. If there’s any chance at all, that ol’ bushwhacker spirit of his’ll get him out of this alive.”
She started after him.
Campbell snarled and snatched her back. “If he’s unlucky enough to survive this, he’s going to be in more trouble than even he knows what to do with.”
Walter finally yanked free. He glanced at Jael. He should stop and help her.
She caught his eye and shook her head. “Go!”
That was all he needed. He took off running. His feet, in his pinched party shoes, slapped through the sloppy mud of the road. He’d help carry buckets—or bandages—or anything, if it’d help Hitch stay alive.
Forty-Nine
SCHTURMING WAS HOLDING altitude about as well as a lump of lead. Faint wisps of smoke trickled into the wheelhouse. Fire was gnawing at her from somewhere below decks. All it’d take would be one spark on one hiss of gas, and the whole thing would go up in flames.
Hitch ignored the blood trickling from under his shoulder bandage. No chance at all of getting completely clear of the city. Pretty near the only thing he could do now was find a crash site where she’d cause the least amount of damage.
And he knew just the place.
He muscled the wheel around, hand over hand, and managed to turn the prow a couple degrees. That’d be enough. They were almost there.
Schturming whisked over housetops, maybe only twenty feet above the chimneys.
Through the windshield, a two-story frame house with a dormer roof loomed on the edge of town. Campbell’s house.
But not for long. Hitch spared a tight grin.
He hauled the wheel back to center. The bowsprit lined up with the dormer window like the sight on a .22.
Only thirty feet to go.
Didn’t matter how hard that wheel spun now. Schturming couldn’t help but hit Campbell’s house. That was Hitch’s cue to leave if he wanted any chance of surviving the crash.
He let go of the wheel and backed away two steps. Then he turned and ran.
He blasted across the wheelhouse, hurdled the stairway railing, and landed halfway down the circular steps. He ran back down the length of the ship to the engine room in the stern and Jael’s hidden closet next to the entrance. He yanked the door shut, dragged her thin mattress over him, and dropped to the floor in a fetal ball.
The whole ship shuddered. Then, almost as if the momentum had to catch up with the feeling, she slammed hard. That’d be her prow ripping through Campbell’s roof.
His good shoulder thudded into the closet door. Hammers and wrenches from Jael’s hanging bag clattered down on him.
The ship kept skidding. A sensation like fingernails against slate grated up the floorboards all through his body. And then she was pitching forward. He went weightless for a moment.
The prow battered into the ground and hurled him against the door. The latch gave way, and he hurtled down the floor’s steep incline. Halfway across the room, he thumped into the dawsedometer where it was bolted to the floor.
The ship skidded even farther: another weightless sensation, followed by another tremendous thud. She toppled onto her port side.
Hitch caught hold of the dawsedometer and kept himself from toppling with her.
Any second now, she was going to burst into flames and burn like the devil’s bacon.
He looked around. With the floor slanted like this, he’d never be able to climb back up to the door in time.
Thick smoke wafted in from the cargo bay and grated in his lungs. He coughed.
Out of the corner of his eye, gray daylight flashed. Only a few yards back from the dawsedometer was Jael’s “door in floor.” Without the pendant, he could hardly have unlocked it, but the crash had already done the work for him: the trapdoor hung open, its hinges completely busted.
That’d do—and how.
He scrambled around to the topside of the dawsedometer and barely managed to catch a handhold on the nearest of the engine’s pistons. Every muscle in his body screaming, and his right arm refusing to hold his weight half the time, he dragged himself up. His hand found the edge of the trapdoor, and cool air wicked against the sweat on his skin.
He heaved himself over the ledge. This end of the ship had run aground in Campbell’s yard, but the front end was still wedged in the roof. From the porthole, it was only a ten-foot drop. He hit the ground, lost all his breath, and got up dizzy.
Run. That was the only thought in his head. He sure as gravy hadn’t made it this far to blow up with his feet on firm gro
und.
He spared one glance at the wilting envelope. Both arms pumping, lungs heaving, he ran across Campbell’s yard, turned the corner around the picket fence, and sprinted down the road.
From behind, a sound whuffed, like a thousand birthday candles blowing out. Heat engulfed his back, the hairs on his neck singeing. Light like high noon splashed shadows everywhere. A great crackling blotted out every other noise, even the slap of his feet against the road.
In front of him, people packed the street. Half of them stopped and stared, shouting and screaming. Some turned and ran. They were probably out of range back there, but better safe than sorry at this point. A handful of men with sloshing buckets broke through the crowd, headed toward the wreck.
Earl, a bucket in his unbroken arm, led the charge. From across the road, he caught sight of Hitch and stopped to hang his head back in relief.
Hitch’s lungs burned hotter than the fire behind him. He slowed up and looked back.
Sure enough, Schturming had plowed through Campbell’s dormer roof. Three times as big as the house, she leaned upended in the yard. Fifty-foot flames chewed through the skeleton of the envelope. Right in front of his eyes, the whole structure crumbled into ash.
Without the gas to consume, the flames subsided. But they’d already crawled across the yard and up the side of Campbell’s house.
Hitch crouched, hands on his knees, and rasped in breath after breath. Every single one made him want to cough, but he kept pulling them in.
“Hitch!” That was Jael’s voice.
He jerked his head around, back toward the crowd.
Campbell had Jael by the arm and was stalking toward him.
Jael grinned. Walter ran beside her, lugging a bucket in both hands. She grabbed his shoulder and pointed at Hitch.
A smile split the boy’s face. He jumped up and down, bucket and all, water splashing all over the dark front of his party suit.
Thank God. They’d made it. Hitch dropped to both knees. Thank God, thank God, thank God. And bless that crazy, cranky Jenny. Somehow, impossibly, she’d gotten them both back to the ground in one piece.
Campbell let go of Jael. “Hitchcock!” He looked like he wanted to barrel across the road and pummel Hitch. But every few steps, he had to stop and gape at his house.
Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure Page 43