Burning rubber, the emerald car tears down Highway 130. Deepwater, tiny box homes built for DuPont employees, is but a blur. Roy begins to understand mortality.
"She told me about her growth. She's...proud of it. Mind you, Crank, I'm not buying a robot being complex enough to handle human emotions--"
"I can. You should read science fiction to help expand on your logic. We have to imagine as much as we have to reason. But what you said explains a lot, her femininity. She relates as a woman, sees men as dull pawns. No offense." She casts a sympathetic eye his way.
"None taken. My wife would say something similar, were she here. But, other than rapid expansion, what does she want?"
"Maybe that's it. Freedom to grow without end. Maybe not. Any form of exponential growth is a bad way to go. Hopefully once we reach this antenna, we'll get more answers."
La Donna roars on. Down and roundabout but at the dawn of Pennsville fast as Bugs Bunny with a rocket pack. One hundred and twenty. One thirty. One forty-five...
"Press on, fellas. Press on."
Seems like ages ago two GI's woke up from an ear splitting bomb. They guess it was a bomb, anyway. Their three wounded compadres, though, survive but remain unresponsive. Fit to be tied, the duo abandon Fort Mott's broiling scabs to undertake a mission lacking sense or evidence. But they can't be idle, can't play sitting duck any longer. No one is coming.
A fighter plane raced by earlier, a plane afire, pursued by the enemy and crashing. They aim to find it, check for a survivor.
Why not? When nonsense drops down, humanity rises.
They covered the serpentine road out of the fort, accompanied only by blowing reeds, a few fearless crows. Now, beyond old Finn's lighthouse set up for an invasion from Spain that never came, they see the objective.
"See, Jake?" Thurman Willis is skinnier than a broomstick, but more wiry than a bobcat. The only weight on him is a thick mop of dirty blond hair. His olive drabs hang on his young bones. "All this wreckage, the skid marks. That Airacobra's gotta be in the trees maybe?"
Jake Goldman is dark in hair, eyes and mood. This calamity called Motherville is not the war he left his wee Jewish neighborhood in Chicago to fight. "I suppose. Nothing here but Slick parts. How'd the pilot fight 'em off? From my view he seemed about outta bullets."
This lone, maverick pilot must have gone down like a mad dog. Slicks are scattered all over, arms pulled out, crushed lenses, scissorhands rotating at bare minimum. Collisions have cracked the road surface. Naked trees are dressed in dancing flames. Diesel fuel discolors dead grass. Pastoral serenity of this riverside area is traumatized.
"Wait. What's that?" Thurman takes of the M1, as if the act will improve his hearing. "That screeching sound?"
Jake loads a clip into the top of his Garand, gains comfort from it in his hands. He's taking no chances. In the trees ahead, where debris piles high, flames and junk shift. "Come on! Get in this ditch!" He pulls the watchful Willis down to the thoughtless ground. They have a shallow hole and a field of blighted grass as cover.
"Maybe it's--"
"Shh! Load up!" Jake takes aim. The hill of junk shuffles. Observation reveals what remains of a barn, burning to nothing. Slick anatomy is tossed about by a large mechanical hand with spiked knuckles. Jake shifts his weight,nerves are getting the better of him. "We're not equipped to handle 'em on our own!"
"Just hold on. I think it's too big to be a Slick."
A barn wall bright orange with flame collapses. Behind a veil of ashes stands a man of metal. The body is too broad, headless at that, hands too large to be one of Motherville's children. This thing almost as tall as the smoking, splintered trees is American made.
"It's one of ours. The Airacobra! See the markings? Wait a minute! Grew limbs? Am I seeing right?"
Thurman smacks his buddy on the neck. "About time we got some good news! Woo-hoo!" He gives up the ditch to hit the ground running.
Jake follows, but walks and keeps his rifle at the ready.
Thurman dons his helmet and approaches the machine like it's an old friend. He waves like crazy. "Hey! Hey up there! You okay?"
Machine turns their way, screeching, throbbing engine, a panel falling off the rear. It moves like a flamingo, arms flat and held outward, thin legs. Bullet streaks leave long indentations, A panel of the forward fuselage is missing, revealing an overworked radial engine. One machinegun barrel is bent, propeller gnarled. Still, this aircraft with limbs staggers out of the carnage.
"Think I'm in one piece! Is the speaker working! 'ZZZZRRRRRZZZZT!"
GI's clasping their ears answers the question. In the cockpit of the beaten machine, Delvin Parks removes an asphyxiating helmet to rub a brow tortured by a migraine. The other gloved hand traces a crack in the cockpit glass. "Dang, I'm shot up six ways to Sunday." Young bones ache. At the last minute, switching to robotic mode threw the Slicks off their victorious game. Using the woods and a barn as cushions while wrestling a swarm of violent propeller-bots required a degree of dexterity Parks never knew he had. Down the road he views over a hundred yards of crash combat. "Heh. Three point landing."
A minute after kicking the hatch open, Parks climbs out and down, seeing the two soldiers below as he descends. "Man, oh man! Fuselage busted. Armature One's lost the main power cable. Hey y'all, watch that dangling cable! Live wire!" Parks hops to the ground. Legs quiver. Feels like he hasn't walked in days.
"Wow! You looking to get a medal?"
"Nah, man. Tryin' to survive is all." He pauses, waiting for the white soldiers to express a problem with him. He had heard other fellas out of Tuskegee got it rough from their Caucasian peers. When they don't, the migraine lessens. "You guys from the Fort Mott battle?"
"Yep." Jake removes his helmet.
"How'd we do? Looked bad from above but, we're here, right? How many made it?"
Jake grabs tufts of hair on his scalp, hurls the helmet. Thurman massages his rifle.
"Us. Us and uh, three others. That's it."
Delvin falls back but plays it cool, as if he's sitting down on reassuring earth. "Oh? Man. Sorry. I can't believe it's that bad..." Hands support a head unable to support the weight of the war.
Thurman sees these two disparate souls collapsing, but he can't succumb. Kid's straw outside, diamond within. "How about your boys in the fancy fighters? They must have made it."
Parks comes to some. "Communication went by the wayside once the stinging noise happened. Lost Teller, of that I know." He pauses to give a silent memoriam for a truly brave warrior. "The others either gotta be back at base, stuck in Delaware or..." He scans the sky. No dogfights. Is it a good sign or a bad one?
"I hear you." Thurman offers a hand up. Parks takes it. "Figure we need to go back and protect our fellow brothers."
"Yeah'" Parks wipes off his pants, studies his plane. "You know what? Baby's still good for walking and most of my guns work. We need every piece of firepower we can get. Y'all wanna ride?"
Jake looks up at the machine, its gashes and dings. Looks like a veteran from the last three wars, not a newly minted war machine. "I don't know. Thurm?"
"We gotta wait first." Thurman, ever alert, eyes the road. Those ears discern a rumbling.
"Wait why? Slicks ain't gonna wait for us."
Thurman walks into the middle of the road, raising his hands. "We got a car coming our way."
He's right. A car of metallic green, speckled bone white, is blazing their way like a V-1 rocket.
You've got to be kidding me.
Bomb and rockets are loaded. Planes are full, loaded onto LSM DE-17-X. But serenity has offered Benny more frustration. Turner is right. No fifty-cal bullets.
If the ship sinks and we need the planes to fight--
On a good note, Doctor Sadie Zafra can clean and bandage a wound like a pro. But Benny being here, sitting on a desk with his pants down in front of another woman feels awkward. She patches up the Brown Bear. He regroups, turns to hide a face flush with embarrassment.
<
br /> "Traveler Haskins?" Doctor Zafra's interruption, a question echoing off the factory walls, startles Benny but good. She noticed the shame, didn't she?
"Oh! Doc, it's a bad idea to sneak up on a man while he's distracted, especially these days. What can I do for you?" He studies her face, realizing every glance is a knowing comparison of the Doc to Crank. Her eyes are humongous balls of white glass with sepia tint, giving a softness to an otherwise plain face.
"I worked with Doctor Sorbonne on poly-planar dynamics and extrapolations of waveform pattern disruptions." She stares as if awaiting...
"I don't know what any of this means, Doc." Whew! It's not about uncomfortable scenarios, but confusing scientific jargon. Benny feels his head is about to hurt even more.
"Basically we hypothesize other dimensions, more than one universe existing, separated by energy fields."
Blank.
"Imagine our universe as a whole is a droplet of water on a leaf. Other droplets represent other universes. Each may have varying physical laws, and are kept apart by their surface tension, as it were. We call them waveform patterns."
Hands on hips, Benny tries to follow, hoping comprehension somehow will lead to ammunition he can use. "Uh-huh. So, what does the leaf represent?"
Her head lurches back. "Most people don't think to ask that."
He heads for the entrance. "Yeah well, they say I'm a big lug, but even I have my moments. Go on."
"We detected a pattern disruption any time up to twelve seconds before Motherville appeared on Earth. Granted, she had done so numerous times before and we were--"
"Behind the eight ball?"
"If it means a lot of catching up to do, yes. While she destroyed our detection equipment, even the Exotic Planes Institute, we did uncover her pattern is more frequent in relation to her expansion, though the disparity remained."
Benny watches Wilkes, Turner and Gray prepping the ship. She's a long, narrow vessel with a flat deck for heavy cargo. It rises at the front, with the bridge atop several decks back at the rear. On the platform are Milkman, the Helldiver and two M2 tanks: medium armor, high stiff turrets, seventy-five and thirty-seven millimeter guns jutting out. They look dull, the tanks that is, treads have seen action somewhere in the world. Ship starts running. Benny snaps out of it. "You said disparity?"
Doc hisses. "Yes. Despite her successful raids, Motherville's sudden appearances worldwide are typically off the mark, defying explanation."
"Heh! Well, that broad has a lot of tricks, so don't let her fool you."
"We did not. We knew these planar apertures must expend enormous sums of energy. With what she has collected in her own reality, plus the richer energies here, Doctor Sorbonne theorized the expenditure is not the problem."
Planar apertures? Energy rich? "Okay, Doc. This is all well and good, but unless this has anything to do with stopping her, killing her--"
"Motherville is drunk." Zafra snips off Benny's sentence to paste on her own ending, flavored with bitter impatience.
Benny looks down at the lady as she bites her lip. Apparently he's pissed her off, but isn't sure how and doesn't have all day to figure it out. So, on with the show. "Drunk?"
"She has never had this much energy to feast on. Even in a machine this must have repercussions. A flooded engine will not start. Also, we feel she garners more from humans, but just how so..."
"Dreams," Benny whispers, an icicle chill crawls down his back. "She enters our dreams in Salem." The horrible past tries to resurface. Benny, mentally, kicks down into the abyss of forgetfulness.
"If that is so, such emotional resonance would only confuse her more. And, it would further feed her lust for growth."
The mind of Haskins snaps shut on the case. "I think you've got it, Doc. We're not fighting an organized military. That's why things are so screwy. Even that 'attack at four-thirty' jazz was, what? I thought she was just out and out lying. But no. Oh. An attempt to right her own ship. Look stable. Maybe even a moment of clarity between seeing pink wind up elephants."
"Perhaps. Motherville wants to be free, but it's at our expense. Like any drunkard, the liberation is worth the cost. Cause and effect mean little. Have you ever seen a drunk in a fight, even a car crash?"
"I may have been one of those, once or twice. The carefree attitude."
"Yes. She is intoxicated, having the time of her life. She can't see how it hurts others. If she had any empathy, it has been drowned out by the continual intake of power."
Benny limps along the gangplank. The river below holds a pristine calm. It contrasts the whirling, bold spin of the Salem River he's come to love flying over. Doc follows behind.
"So, she'll need to harness this power, right? I mean, where's it being stored? In our world (pause- he can't believe he's asking this Looney Tunes question), or hers?"
Zafra loses her scientific assurance. "We're-- I'm not sure. Not yet, anyway."
"Benny!" Wilkes comes running out of the ship. "We've managed to hail the guys at the Hangar. They asked if we can see the 'Hand', some kind of antenna Motherville erected near Pea Patch Island."
Benny almost slaps his messed up leg. "That's the ticket! Gal has to have mechanisms large enough to absorb and emit signals. Go big or go home. Turner! Hey, Turner!
High up on the bridge, a figure steps out on the railing. "Ready?"
"Let's get going and find this antenna lickety split!"
"Aye aye!" No sooner does he vanish, the slender ship lumbers forward.
Benny wonders when is the last time he's been on a ship. It's a good day for sailing on the high seas. The cold is dying down. Perhaps this voyage will be--
"What's that?" He surveys the deck but finds everyone is still.
Wilkes copies. "Yes. A buzzing sound, coming from...oh no."
Sadie's scream pierces the buzz. Benny takes a hold of her as she clutches her face, stark raving mad from fear.
There are Slicks in the air, dark blots, coming fast. Must be ten or twelve of them.
"Arriving from our rear..." Benny sees the guns on this ship marked X. Not a single one is prepared or loaded, much less facing aft. Muscles bulge. He shoves Sadie towards the hatch. "Get inside! Tell them to go full speed! Now!" He hobbles first to one if the tanks. Might be able to get in, aim a gun...
Wilkes beats him to it. "Benny, I've a wee amount of tank training. I'll handle one. Go and--"
Benny's already gone. Gone, that is, toward Milkman. He's in the hot seat, plugged in and has the old girl on the run. In a crunch of gears the machine scales decks like a clumsy King Kong. Slicks are in firing range as Benny gets to the top of the ship.
Rounds froth up the river as the first six robots go over. Tank fires at their tails, nicking one at the feet. The second wave, a clear five figures, dives much lower. Milkman invites them to taste a fresh double scoop of explosive.
Rockets away.
Two bots bite the big one, while three dip into a triangle pattern.
They swoop by in a clang and a chug. Two out of three are tossed off course but remain parallel to each other. Something has them by the throat. Milkman.
In a daring, suicidal move, Milkman jumps up and takes the offensive by the reins. Slicks One and Two are stymied, ceasing their barrage to deal with the current dilemma. Off and away from X they sputter, two black flies weighed down by an ornery beetle.
This is the dumbest thing I've ever done! Milkman's rocking up and down is enough to give Benny motion sickness. On the upswing, Slick propellers miss dicing up the cockpit hatch by a nose. On the downward jerk, the stomach lurches. Gotta think my way out of this death trap fast. He flicks the ignition. At the rear, a robust propeller in a mighty protective ring bursts to life. Milkman seems to float up and back. He can feel the drag, his engine heading southwest, theirs northeast. But Slicks don't have enough horsepower, even in tandem. They fly on the cheap.
Milkman shows them how it's done, ruining their trajectory. One has its engine give out. Two breaks out
of the hold only to find it is veering for the Delaware marshlands. Milkman lets go and waves goodbye.
That's when Benny sees the Hand. It's expansive, with a disjointed ring of metal surrounding the island, a gothic bridge curving into Jersey, into the Pennsville woods. My God.
Then, Milkman falters. The blue-brown waters of the Delaware are coming up fast.
Shoot! Forgot to extend the arms back into wings! He jams the switch to initiate the change, practically punches it. Legs ahead. Arms to the side and level. One check. One check...
C'mon, wing. Straighten out! The right limb is bent at a forty-five degree angle. Not getting any lift that way. One wing sends the plane into a spiralling dive. Benny jams the switch again, toggles the emergency override. Limb fidgets and only fidgets as the End grows larger and inevitable--
Chapter Twenty Seven: A Crash Course in Doomsday
BANG!
Third punch to the console where the toggle switch sits, and the wing straightens out in a shrill howl. The snap it generates shoves Milkman hard right. Benny pulls the stick back into his gut ‘til his back cries. Plummeting at a twisting thirty degree angle. Not good.
"Lift!" Teeth grind. Arms are tighter than bowstrings pulled taut. Fingers lose feeling. "Lift, darn it!"
Milkman wobbles like a slow spun top. She angles up, but there's the river, churning and welcoming all who enter.
Feet push against the floor of the cockpit til they go numb. Benny doesn't want to meet his Maker yet. Pull. Pull. PULL!
POP! Milkman slams it bottom on the water, skidding like a kid on skates for the first time. Resistance is unbelievable. Benny guns the engine, wobbles the stick to straighten her out. But the popping continues over his head. RIP! There goes the hatch, shredded off as if by a giant hand. Wind and ice cold water creep in. Milkman leans. If it had wheels, this episode would already be over. But the legs folded over the bottom act like hydrofoils. Not quite as good, but enough to keep the plane afloat. Benny keeps wiping water from his visor. He's soaked. But one more pull, and the terrible dragging sensation ends.
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