Down Jersey Driveshaft

by William J. Jackson

  Fuse had passed out saps, one for himself and six more for the soldiers, and they do the job remarkably well. He ended up one short. So, Miss Musa improvises.

  The remods are stiff and clumsy. Shock and surprise were their only allies. The Homefront War has begun playing an eerie version of Reveille. In the distance, monsters roar. Fighter planes finer than anything Man has ever built yawn and stretch along a makeshift airstrip bed. Fuse assesses Front Street. Crank takes out the final remod and heads for the hangar, issuing orders for some of the boys to drive the unloaded trucks. Fuse checks the pulse of every single remod laid out on the street.

  Barely there, but there nonetheless. Good. No murders on our part.

  By the time he finishes, he rises just in time to see gleaming arrows buzz off into the height of day. The air support is up and at 'em! Fighter planes sparkle like Liberty's torch. Fuse watches with pride, so much so he nearly gets struck by another shiny bauble, this one coming his way on the ground.

  La Donna! Crank's emerald monument to mechanized warfare screeches to a stop on solid rubber whitewalls. The lady moves like a chrome finish cheetah, bulkier, faster, badder, megalomaniac of motor cars. A white glow permeates the grill. Baby's got a brand new bag.

  "Hey, Fuse! We got Aerosedans inside. Hop in one and let's burn rubber! Radio says West Broadway is a conflagration!"

  He stares at soldiers pulling up in the canvas covered G-505 trucks, scooping remods up, cuffing them, putting them in the back. Crank tosses Fuse a set of car keys.

  He gets to getting.

  Back to the bug face mask, Benny grips the stick inside of Milkman. He tries to enjoy one feeling while punching out a nagging thought.

  The feeling? Exaltation. Oh. My! If Milkman outdid all others before, this is joy to the Nth degree. The handle on the controls is tighter. The old girl lifts off the ground at a forty-five degree angle like a star-tossed falcon. The engine almost, almost, blocks out thinking. Goodness, he may begin to believe he can take on the whole kennel with this puppy. Power vibrates him to the bone.

  The thought: Motherville wants him and his bond to Milkman. Why? Try not to think about it. Motherville wants us more than a nation or resources. Ignore it. Motherville won't stop until she has what she wants. Go away. Motherville is everywhere and you'll fly yourself, gift wrapped, into her clutches. Stop. She will devour the lot of you. What if she makes us dream while awake and we crash? Will the boys trust your idea, the one you didn't give them?

  Stop.

  Stop!

  "Benjamin!" Corporal Wilkes saves Benny's sanity by radio. "Are you sure this is what you want to do? No pep talk? No strategy?"

  "Negative! She's got all the plans anybody could ever want! I'm certain she wants to divide and conquer, make a ground war and air war!"

  "So we give her what she wants?" Gillette's voice vibrates like a badly played cello.

  "She schemes...we act! The four-thirty bit was a ruse. She's trying to kill us into complacency, us thinking she's a traditional computer running on set timers. So simple! Should have seen through it earlier! She learned human lying and human flanking! Talk is done! Go!"

  Plenty of time to kick yourself later...if you live.

  The Helldivers (Mailmen) zoom ahead. A couple pilots just got here minutes ago. Benny never had the chance to drill them. Heck, he can't recall their names. Man, what a sorry way to wage a battle...

  But it's hell time. The boys push out over the Delaware River. Hello, Irony. Doomsday is here and the river basks in sunlight, resplendent beauty, narrow before blossoming out to the Bay like the Betty Grable of water bodies. Gorgeous. Figures Nature would strut the red carpet on a day no one can stop to really drink it in.

  Flyboys take in the industry along the banks of industrial Northern Delaware, Ferris wheel and rural calm of Down Jersey. Fort Mott rests in green placid surroundings, and pilots sigh for joy seeing those M1 anti-aircraft guns are on its mounds. No birds are in the sky or resting in a tree. Bodies in green run around like rabid ants below, as if they know something is coming.

  Some things are coming. Wilmington, an abandoned city, hums louder than the fighters.

  Wilmington's business center is black against the sun, as are many of the brick factories along the smaller Christina River. This would be nothing odd, except for the tiny fact that shadows don't face light.

  They don't move in organized rows, either.

  "We got Slicks, fellas! Hope you said your prayers! Wilkes, you're with me! The rest of you, keep loose and keep as many of them with you! Keep the fight over the marsh between Salem and Elsinboro!" Benny and Wilkes pull ahead, two Aerial torpedoes hoping to paint the town red.

  Aqua sky contracts a cancer.

  Thousands of black cells rise to swarm eight bold leukocytes.

  So, Salem is besieged by robotic citizens. The city is swarming with cabs from Redden's and A & H, terrified guys zigzagging to rescue folks from the clutches of their own loved ones. Cars have crashed, policemen are encircled by attackers at the corner of Seventh and Grant, right next to where Alan Pierce set his stunning Victorian home on fire. Firefighters would be racing here to put it out, but they're busy fighting each other to the death. The situation is more grim than ever before. It's an exercise in stunt driving.

  Remodulated now non-Salemites are hitting people with just about anything: pots, steak knives, heavy duty staplers, automobiles. You name it. An elderly man lies in his driveway on Oak Street, legs pinned under the wheels of his Studebaker truck. His beloved son David is in the driver's seat, eyes dead as graves.

  So is it creepy to hear Fred Astaire singing Cheek to Cheek?

  Crank thinks so as she stalks down Broadway taking in the carnage. She's trying not to break down in tears. The sheer number of people sundered by Motherville is unnerving. Crank witnesses a little girl in a red dress and blotched pearl shoes coming after a limping man with a set of shears, and slams on the brake.

  Fred's velvet lilt carries from a record player next door as Frederica exits the car, fists at the ready. Creeping up on the kid is easy considering her focus on the man. The poor guy falls over, begging for the girl to stop.

  Oh my. His own daughter.

  Crank gets the kid by the wrists, knocking the shears out of her hand to impale the snowy grass. Slapping on the cuffs is easy too. Crank looks around nervous as she locks down the girl, sitting her in the back of La Donna next to a slinky stack of handcuffs.

  "Sir, are you okay?"

  The man shivers. He's in a thick sweater, so it's not winter's chill drumming his bones. He shakes his head no.

  "Can you make it to City National Bank?"

  He manages a nod. Crank looks back. Kid has her face pressed against the window, staring. Yeah. Creepy.

  "Go there. Tell anyone in their right mind to go there, too. We have GI's there forming a perimeter. They'll have medical supplies."

  He sits holding his legs. The world is an unknown to him.

  "Go. Now!"

  He gets up and takes off. Crank gets in the Stylemaster and watches the maddened streets. Order rolls up in the form of a G-505 military green glory. Soldier's put remods at gunpoint, making them think twice. Apparently Motherville sees her flesh bots as more worthwhile than Slicks and seeks to preserve them. Surrenders begin, slothy, clockwork hands up. Citizens get carried away on cots. Fred's done crooning.

  "Frederica Musa," says the girl. The tone is grackle squawk radio static. Crank angles her mirror to stare at the kid.

  "That's the name, Toots."

  The girl is invisible. Her eyes show who's really doing the gabbing. "This is Mother--"

  "I know who I'm looking at. What do you want? Girl talk?"

  "Would you like to have more dreams?"

  Crank almost spits. "What?"

  "You like my dreams. My readings of your mind are proof. The world is too flat for you. Dreams entice you. Six dimensional. My dreams are ambrosia. I make it easy, Frederica Musa. Allow me to swallow you w
hole, style and substance."

  "Heh!" Crank smacks the dashboard. "Is this like three wishes or something? Listen you strega malato, I get by just fine on my own! I'm a modern gal! Keep your dreams. They'll give you comfort after we find your carcass and drop it in the deepest part of the Atlantic."

  "But..."

  Crank rolls her deep eyes. "But what?"

  "What if I'm already there?"

  Oh, baby. Talk about bringing the worst out of a dame. Crank shoves open the car door and drags out Motherville Dupe Number One Thousand to take it to her. Punch to the gut? Done. Kick in the shin? Done. Wallop the gut again? Encore!

  The dupe collapses while Crank hunches over her, raining down rabbit punches on the kid's chest and abdomen. It's all about the rage until Fuse pulls up to a screaming halt. Newsflash: for a technical whiz, he's a terrible driver.

  "Mechanic Musa!"

  Crank looks up, mouth open. Queen Anger abandons her to face reality only with her buddy Caught Red Handed, and when did he ever get anyone out of a fix?

  "Uhhh...this isn't...me...beating up a...child?" Emotions swirl inside, ones that help not in the least.

  The fist in the air awaiting the next strike is clumsily hidden behind her back.

  Fuse runs and pulls her off the child. "Have you lost your senses? This girl is a victim of advanced mind control!"

  "Well she--"

  "Wait." Fuse watches as the little girl rolls over on hands and knees. Coughing, wrenching, she vomits. It's the hard heaving kind, the turn-your-stomach-inside-out-looking-for-spare- change-in-the-crevices sort of wretch. Kid finishes the task and curls into a fetal drool. Fuse plays physician.

  "Eww! Well, she's definitely subdued. Wait! Crank, do you see that?"

  Crank at first shakes her head. Negative, sir! She's not staring into vomit pools. But then, even from far off, she gets it. A black rod is in the pool, one bearing wires and a faint yellow light. Face wrinkling in disgust, she flicks it onto the grass using her boot.

  Fuse picks it up with a handkerchief. He holds it right up to his face. Crank forces down her lunch watching him work.

  "Aha. Yes, this is considerably more refined than the other control capsules I've collected. See here, the creases? Almost as if it began small, and then grew inside the body..."

  "Take your word for it." Crank drifts away, leaning on La Donna for support. Watery vision beholds the fury of Motherville and the human race. Crying children. Sobbing mothers with welts and lacerations. People praying out loud. GI's storming one house after the next. An old lady meanders down the road, neither herself nor remodulated. Events have taken their toll. She's checked out. Fire from homes and cold air make for mixed feelings. Motherville hasn't merely attacked Salem. She has usurped families. Crank walks away.

  "Crank! Are you well?"

  "Yeah, Fuse. I need to breathe. To ah, see someone."

  Fuse raises his eyebrows. "Now? In all this? Fine. Rendezvous at National Bank. I need to find a bigger place to lock up the remodulateds while I work on a frequency jammer."

  She lets out a breath of tension. "Um, yeah. Yeah. You know what? Try Salem Coal, Ice and Storage on Fifth. Walk-in freezers and containers. That ought to do."

  "Thanks. Be careful out there."

  A swift nod and Crank is in her baby mashing the accelerator. She careens down the road, braking in front of Heppinstall's Pool Hall. A pay phone sits outside, ignored by the chaos farther behind. She runs to it while watching her back.

  A series of nickels gets swallowed by the machine. Crank gets the operator, a lady whose voice rings operatic from stress.

  "Can you get me Avalon Five-Four-Six? Yes, I'll hold."

  Waiting is limitless. Crank perceives small dogs wandering aimlessly down the way. Across the street, houses sit abandoned, doors wide open, clothes lying about. She trembles.

  "Hello?" A weak voice comes through the crackling line.

  "Papà? Sono io, Frederica! Stai bene?" She holds her breath to avoid hyperventilating. Crank can't believe this much time slipped by since her last call. But these broken families in town...

  "Vivo, mi piccolo. My English is better now. We can try it, yes?"

  Giggle. Her father got most of his battered English from Crank as she went through school. Well, when he wasn't working fourteen-hour shifts, that is. "Sure, Pop. Sure. Has Avalon seen any Slicks?" She gulps some more.

  "Ah, no. These things, they are not here after us. You, little one? You are away from them?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

  "Freddi..."

  "I'm in the thick of it, Pop. It's bad, the worst even. Trying to keep my feelings straight, be brave, but...I called to see about you, not to talk about me." She knows her face is flush from embarrassment. Doggone parental scolding.

  "You are in trouble. Death is close to you, I think. But I do not worry."

  You don't? "You don't?" Crank loses her voice. "Why not? Because I...killed Luca?" A certain weight falls off. She's never said it out loud to her old man before now.

  The line splits into fireworks. She removes the receiver from her ear, counts to twenty. "Pop? Pop? Pop!"

  "....EEEEEEEEEE...you...smarter...eeeeeeeEEEEEEE than Death."

  "You think so?" Kid's blushing again.

  "Your mother...heh. Almost died eight times when we married. A survivor, she was. Wagon crash. Fever. Childbirth. Drowned twice. More times. She fight. Ah. Fought? Stay alive. A silly thing, the pneumonia, took her finally. You, Freddi, you will outsmarteeeeeeEEEEEEEEEE!"

  A klaxon sounds from far off. Fuse must have brought one of those as well. Crank catches a case of the frozen spine.

  Oh no...

  "Pop? Are you there? I'm...I'm scared, Pop. I met a great guy and...and...that's not why I called. They’re coming any minute and I'm seeing people..." Sniff! "...like Luka, but, more and I...doubt...ah...I can't think my way around it and..."

  Done. Crank can't speak anymore. The day (days!), emotions and beating up a child have sanded down her wooden block of joy just that quick. The klaxon finishes it off. Benny was dead on. The War sinks in and everything else fades.

  "Piccolo, you will save the day. God will move you."

  Don't cry, Crank. Don't do it.

  "I know this. In my heart, my love." The line flubs with a new distortion. Pop Musa is shedding tears. Cough. Choke. Cry.

  Waterworks! Frederica hugs the telephone and sinks to the ground, holding her knees. Life is nothing more now than teardrops and wiping eyes. Klaxon catches a sore throat. In the distance the horizon fades to black. Buzzing cutsapart the sense of hearing.

  "You will win."

  Crank slithers up the phone booth to stand as the sky takes on to a worrisome shade of dread. Buzzsaws overshadow the klaxon, as if every sawmill in the country took to flight.

  "I...gotta go, Pop. Ti...ti amo tanto!"

  "E to amerò sempre. I am fine. Your aunt is fine. Kill this monster when you see her. She...took my son...EEEEEEEE...not you. Be as we raised you. Go do good for others."

  Slicks cover the lower Western skyline. Daytime surrenders. Loss is at hand. The end is nigh, carried on the back of a murderous iron horde.

  "Do you hear me, Freddi?"

  Emotional breakdown fractures her conscious mind into disparate worries. Benny must be in that mess. What if he's dead already?

  Her heart spasms.

  What if they bomb the hangar or Fort Mott before they launch an adequate counterattack? What if she, here on the other end of town, is the sole survivor? God, their numbers look infinite...

  "Piccolo!" Pop's cough from straining to yell is the smack Crank needs. She wipes her face clean.

  "I have to go, Pop. I gotta...I have to see this through."

  "Questa è la mia ragazza."

  (That's my girl.)

  Crank hangs up, says goodbye to the Sun as the Blot covers half the sky. Its shadow falls over her car. She shrinks from it for a second, hands in her jacket pockets, head squishing into her neck.
It's a humbling sight to behold. Motherville is dead serious. But look! Flak strikes black in the distance. Fort Mott is still there. More shot explodes upward just down the road, rockets red glare, the whole works. Tanks are still here. Hope lives and breathes.

  Come and run with me, says Hope. Watch what happens.

  Frederica gets in the driver's seat, slams the door shut. Key turns in the ignition. On Park, she floors the accelerator and rocks back and forth in her seat while rear tires squeal like joyous hogs at a slop buffet.

  Work up the anger. Drop kick the whining.

  Relearn how to breathe. Stare down the fleet coming your way. Face it. Face the situation. Own up to it. She is here and she will not leave without the fight of fights. Find yourself in the morass.

  "Smarter than Death? Okay then." Sniff! "C'mon, Death. Let's play checkers." Super machine gun chug-zips out of the trunk.

  Park...shift...Drive! La Donna's back end slides left before full tilting down Broadway, into the maelstrom.

  Let's go, baby...

  Chapter Twenty: Black Flak Snowflakes

  LOSS IS ETERNAL...LOSS IS ETERNAL..LOSS IS ETERNAL...HELLO MILKMAN...DO YOU LIKE MY WAR?...

  What thought goes through a man's mind when a robotic overlord invades his radio frequency?

  I'm gonna die before I get to really know Crank...

  The sky chokes from the Hand. Slicks, innumerable, undaunted, rise up into five helix columns, fingers eager to abuse what they touch. As they ascend, the fingers flick out lead love taps. Milkman evades a line of five, deflects two, soaks one. Benny guns the throttle, flicks the switch and let's rockets fly freely. Wherever fighters find space without Slicks are taken up by lines of fire.

  Ungodly Slick Hand disperses amidst the BOOM! and CRACK! of aggravated detonations.

  Chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug go the guns from behind. Wilkes provides excellent backup as the duo bank left before angling upward to butterfly kiss the stratosphere. Robotic organs fly by, mingling in with black flak snowflakes from the boys down below, razor sharp ticker-tape parade. Cockpits take on a charcoal mascara.