Down Jersey Driveshaft

by William J. Jackson

  "Yeah, yeah, that thing. It seems to be something she didn't want, right? She ejected it here."

  Fuse cuts in. He's snapping to it. "But, reports said she tried to get it back."

  Benny closes in, so Fuse steps back. "Right, but what if it wasn't because she needed it, but because she didn't want us having it? If it makes scrambled eggs out of time according to you guys, what could it do to her?"

  Crank and Fuse look at each other. Crank stops her walk. Fuse scratches his head. "Heh. All our focus has been on frequencies and direct action, not the why's and how's of a side item. Miss Musa?"

  Hands up in the air, Crank surrenders. "Okay, I've thought about how it might help us later, but not as a direct weapon against Motherville. I, um, overshot the mark."

  Benny punches the side of a truck and grins like a madman. "Hah! Score one for the common man! So what do you say? All for one?"

  There's a moment of lag. You know the one. When you ask an important question, and the seconds it takes to get an answer elongate into eons? Yeah, that's where Benny is, tapping his foot, watching centuries tick off.

  They crowd him, hands lifted and brought together.

  "All for one!" It is the cry that has mattered most thus far. They find resolve in the words, solace in brotherhood. Crank gleams looking at her guy. Benny gleams too, for he actually has found the fire. He wanted the next war. He got it and spent the duration crying. Not anymore.

  "We go in and rip her a new one. For Skinny, for Bobby, for Larry, the whole robot fighter group, Salem, the whole wide world. When we get there, I'll go in with Milkman, distract this broad long enough for Crank to ship her behind to the Dawn of Time." He sees his dead Great War buddies in the background, happy. "Like the guys and I yelled in the last war...'allons-y'!"

  "Allons-y!"

  She stands. In her Romanesque beauty, she stands. A gargoyle has fallen from its perch, some curved shingles with it, yet she stands. Her vaunted, gaunt cracked windows with the semicircle tops, a tingling white powder blows over her fat gray blocks of stone, but the Salem Free Public Library holds its own. Built like a bank, mistaken for a church for its proximity to Friends Cemetery, she stands. Salem endures.

  In the cemetery, appearing dead in winter, the mighty branches of the Salem Oak reach out from the bulk of an impervious trunk. Centuries old, they say founder John Fenwick broke bread with the Lenni Lenape Indians under the boughs of her great shade in 1675. Flanked by headstones great and small, the dead going back to the early days of colonization, she stands. Not one branch is split. Not a chip of bark fallen. Salem endures.

  The Harley Servi-Car police motorcycle putt-putts down Broadway. John Crowe takes it casual. He had to see for himself. Is there anything left of Salem after the blight? He had to, not just as a policeman doing his duty, but as a Salemite. The library's presence, the immutable stance of the town's great oak give him hope. Hope brings a tear to his eye, one that falls onto the shotgun balanced ever so gently on his lap as he drives.

  As the motorcycle is caked white and his toes hum from it, he comes to the central intersection in town: Broadway and Market. There's the courthouse, second oldest in America. The old girl had been rebuilt and reconstructed a lot over two centuries. Looks like she'll need another facelift. A column has collapsed. Windows blown out. The brick wall facing Market Street is blown in from a crashed Slick. But, folks are inside, hiding out. Some come to the hole on hearing an engine.

  "Slicks! We ain't done fightin'!"

  John comes to a halt and hops off. "Hold on now! It's me, Officer Crowe! Streets are clear, near as I can tell!" He approaches, shotgun pointed down somewhat. Townsfolk peek out.

  "What's the story, John? The robots still around?"

  "Word is they headed south and got shot up but good. Motherville took over Pea Patch Island. That's the last battle to come, I hear. Y'all okay?"

  "We're fine. Couple of us creep over to the bank now and again, check on the rest. Wall took a hit, but we just got some scratches. This survived though." They move back and bend over, and come up with a copper plaque:

  TO KEEP IN PERPETUAL REMEMBRANCE

  THE NAME OF

  JOHN FENWICK

  1618-1683

  MAJOR IN THE ARMY OF OLIVER CROMWELL

  PROPRIETOR OF THE SALEM TENTH

  FOUNDER OF SALEM, NEW JERSEY, 1675

  WEST JERSEY, 1681

  THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY THE SOCIETY

  OF COLONIAL WARS

  IN THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY, 1925

  Just about brings old John to his knees. He reaches into the hole in the wall and insists on taking it. It's a heavy load, a strain on the back, but hope makes him a superman. "Thanks a million...we stayed and we survived. The history is here. The land is here." An Indian bloodline makes him glad ancient Salem County thrives, her rivers and creeks will birth fish, trees will host osprey and bald eagle come springtime. Grass will grow. The sun will shine. Hell came and went. That means...

  "We will go on."

  Along the bank of the Delaware River, next to the grayish brown hills of Fort Mott, makeshift torches are welding, chop chop! Wrenches are pressed into hard service. All hands on deck. Milkman and her fighter plane partner need fixing. La Donna gets a front end redo. Labor. Sweat. Grease. Diesel. Grit. Crank. Torque. Burn. Refit!

  From the prototype X ship, please note the following memorandum:

  "Attention, Motherville. We are hopping mad and coming your way..."

  Chapter Thirty: The Scenic Route to the End Times

  There is a lonesome road at the edge of Fort Mott. It is devoid of welcome, lacking in hospitality. La Donna cruises down it with care, as if the road is hiding something. On her right, trees dwell in silence. To the left are the ubiquitous reeds of the Down Jersey area, the telltale sign that the Delaware River is right on the other side. During the rains, this uncared for, cracked road is prone to flooding. At the current hour, nightfallen, many deep puddles are made visible by the headlights. Crank drives ahead as scout, gripping the wheel, biting her lip. She knows a truck is right behind her, a truck holding Fuse, Goldman and Willis, each man girded for the last war. But she's first, her special ride outfitted with an open grill to let out the white essence of the dimensional device they all barely understand. On she goes, reaching and passing the narrow opening between a wall of bleak stone to their destination.

  Finn's Point Cemetery.

  The Point is a closed in realm of dead silence. Manicured grass. Headstones in off white in uniform rows. A passive house with a double roof rests off to the back right. At the left is a marble portico, and farther back, an obelisk with plaques at its base. Once upon a nightmare called the Civil War, Confederate men who died in the prison known as Fort Delaware were buried here. Supposedly, some Nazis held at the DuPont estate are six feet under this earth as well.

  But as this brief convoy rolls in to the gruesome sounds of shelling in the river, it's not graves they seek, and paying respects, sadly, will have to wait. The road to Motherville is this way.

  "There. Past the obelisk. See it?" Crank puts Fuse's rigged headsets to use. They reveal a tumultuous atrocity. The Black Road. Over the reeds and smattering of trees, busting through the stonewall at the other end of this memorial field it rests on the rubble. Smooth. Charcoal. Seamless. Stare at it long enough, and you can even see it undulate, carbon waves and rolls enough to sicken the stomach. No birds chirp. No owls stir, nor do bats fly by. Stillness.

  The G-505 passenger door creaks open as Roy gets out. "Such passive beauty, ruined." He wanders up onto the cut grass, observes no lights are on at the house. Roy meanders beyond the circular marble idol to the brave of the American Civil War, creeps between jutting fossil white headstones. "Is it, moving?"

  "What's the holdup?" Static initiates and ends the inquiry from Benny as Milkman growls overhead.

  Crank adjusts her aluminum headset. "Oh, nothing much. Just our first time observing a living street."

  After Mi
lkman, the thunderous engine of Jack, as Parks calls it, passes by at four hundred feet. "I don't know about you, but y'all might wanna drive over it before she works up an appetite."

  "Taking heavy fire! Repeatzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing zzzzzzzzzfire!" The outcry came from--

  "Wilkes!" From the ground, the caravan can hear Milkman roll hard toward Pea Patch. "Gotta go! No time for delays! We do this now!"

  "Are you sure about this?" Roscoe Turner strokes the Helldiver as if it's his pet. "I mean, I've used the M2 for some time now, know all of her nooks and crannies. You're a pilot after all." He manages a finger snap at his soon-to-be partner in the raid on the island.

  Carson Wilkes climbs into the tank, clutches the hatch. "So are you, Mister Turner. Besides, I like the weight of this old girl."

  "Fine. And it's Roscoe. We should be on a first name basis seeing as how we're going into the lion's' den together.'

  Wilkes pauses from sealing the hatch. Funny. Suddenly, he doesn't want to know another man, lest he look back and find him taken away as well. "Ah, right. Right." He drops the door and gets ready.

  Turner opts to take the Helldiver in robot mode, preferring stealth to a noisy propeller. Hungry tank treads eat up the deck of Ship X, the plane jogging right behind. Off to the End.

  Seconds pass. They stroll over the sparse land. Pea Patch doesn't leave much to the imagination. A good deal of it is sand held together by patches of dead grass, a bulbous sandbar. The fort is in view, ominous, shadowy at the south end. The duo take a roundabout course toward it, driving northwest then sidetracking northeast, the beachhead where the Black Road stretches out into night.

  "Did you see that?"

  "No, Wilkes. What is it?"

  There is not a thing to disturb the eyes, save for obscuring dust, darkness, a stray and shoddy flier to promote the hostilities. In the wind she blows, an image of young boys toting ham radios and .22 rifles up a hill of livid spare parts. Cue the flag waving:

  ARE YOU A MAN -- OR A MACHINE?

  IT TAKES GUTS TO FIGHT EVIL-

  HUMAN GUTS!

  TURN FEAR INTO RESOLVE! NO GUTS, NO GLORY!

  Wilkes brings the M2 to a halt. He moves back inside, rubs his eyes, and then presses them against the rectangular bar of the periscope. Deflated hoses. Broken glass. Corpses. "The fort. It's..."

  "It's what?" Turner lets the Helldiver gallop ahead, getting a hundred yards closer than Wilkes. "I don't see anything but darkness and--"

  "The shadow! The shadow is moving! Our bombardment from the ship never touched it! Get back, Roscoe! Get--!"

  Boom. The shot travels up, ignites the shade long enough to take note of the figure. They can't call it. It isn't man nor is it Slick. Digits. Lenses. Gigantism.

  "Mortar! Move it, move it, move it!"

  The Helldiver squats, pivots and makes for the safety of..."There's nowhere to hide!"

  Sweat pours down Wilkes' face. A few minutes in, first shot fired, pressure bears down by the ton. "We move ahead!"

  Turner continues running toward the M2, the heavy thwack of wide automaton feet impacting soft ground. "What?"

  "Turn around! Go towards it!" The treads dig, pulling the tank forward at maximum speed.

  The two machines meet, but Wilkes keeps driving. Turner stops dead. "We don't know what that thing--"

  Goldenrods of chemical holocaust with borders of black smoke wail from a hole of atomized turf, thirty feet from the Helldiver. Turner gets one mechanical arm up to guard the cockpit. Sand scrapes the fuselage, reveals plain titanium under what was a swell paint job. The cockpit makes tiny noises. Ping. Crick. Ching! The glass cracks from a tiny chip. Turner lifts one leg up over the other, drops down the wing phalanx shield and watches the explosive daylight go away. The plane rumbles. A bolt, vibrated loose, tumbles down to his boot.

  "Turner? Turner? Roscoe!"

  "I'm fine. Hot and stuffy as hell, but fine." His skin burns underneath. It's like an oven in the cockpit now. No time for stalling. The plane makes tracks fast. Good thing, for in the past half second of the conflagration, the thing in the dark has launched three more rounds.

  Wilkes is closing in on the target, driven by rage. He's got the M2's Wright engine expelling hot fumes, twenty-six miles per hour of forced charge, coughing and choking on those fumes as they rise up into the tank to further fuel his outrage. He makes some lights of his own along the way, the M3 anti-tank gun rocking the tank as it rolls.

  The small island is a series of dust devils from the force of fire, from the hard drop of empty shells and pulverizing treads. Armor-piercing rounds slam against the black edge of Fort Delaware. No walls tumble, though powder sifts out between cracks in the fortress. Ahead of the back blasts of fallen mortar shells there are only the echoing bangs of metal on metal. Wilkes grinds the brakes while taking a few more shots. The repercussion of shot goes on, as if each were fired into a canyon.

  Dust settles. Opening salvo ends as the final big shell strikes the ground. Turner reaches the M2. Two machines stare into a vacant space, and wait.

  "Oh. Oh no."

  The weapon walks into view. Side to side, arthropod gesticulations. A black leg swivels left, followed by another. And another. Above them, an identical limb, but facing skyward, three bulky lenses on rotating mounts between the limbs. Every pair of limbs. Bloodshot. Emerald. Amber. She's beyond definition. Inside both machines, breathing stops. Wilkes pulls all the levers on instinct, making the robotic form of the tank ready. A whiff of axle grease. The huff of hydraulics. Blackboard squeal of mobile armor plating.

  Just in time for the Thing to charge. She rears up off the base limbs onto her side. Then, one over the other, she rolls forward, a wheel of limbs and firing cannons, continuous mortars, lifeless eyes. Six stories of destruction, coming their way.

  They bolt. Turner snaps the propeller to life for extra pull and drops the lower wings for lift. On the run, the instinctual urge to move into humanoid form dissipates. Wilkes jumps and drops back to earth in tank mode, grinding every gear she's got.

  "Taking heavy fire! Repeatzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzing zzzzzzzzzfire!"

  Once the road is taken, the scenery falls by the wayside. In the distance, the sullen illumination from a crescent Moon peeking out makes wisps of white on dappling waves. To the convoy's left, Pea Patch Island is a centrifuge of meteoric pandemonium. They can feel the hum of war, pulses from explosions, the wavering of the Black Road beneath. La Donna bobs up and down.

  It's like driving on the stomach of a sleeping cat. Crank rambles ahead at top speed. The truck behind her gets smaller and smaller in her rear view mirror. Come on. Keep up!

  She slams on the brakes. Her eyes caught the movement, just in time. a man, blindfolded, climbs up onto the Black Road, whining, ragged. La Donna swerves around him, just missing his hip. Crank pulls a hard figure six out what could have been a nosedive into the Delaware River.

  "Che diavolo stai facendo?" She's out of her baby, crowbar in hand, her question powering out like a gunshot.

  "I don't understand," the guy fumbles about the road on his hands and knees, grasping for, something. Maybe nothing. "Help me, please!"

  Crank creeps his way, crowbar held like a bat awaiting the pitch. "Talk fast or I knock your block clean off this road and into the drink! Are you remodulated?"

  "What's...I was on Pea Patch. We were. But, I'm the only survivor. I swear." There's God awful terror in his voice. Nerves are shot to pieces. Manhood extinct.

  The crowbar lowers. "Then, I guess you're with us." Crank looks around. Nothing but serene night, pristine water and a whirlwind of disaster. She waits. Soon, the broken man scratching roadway is illuminated and shadowed by the approaching headlights of the Army truck. Brakes squelch.

  Fuse steps out and down. "Crank! What's going on?" He's packing heat.

  "Got a survivor here." She sounds concerned, but..."Somebody's gonna have to take him. Drive ahead. Get to the boys." No sooner does she utter the words do the planes swo
op down on the island, releasing ream after ream of buzz-saw fire upon some flailing obscuration. Crank gulps. "They can't afford to wait."

  "You sure?"

  Baby steps. Crank takes baby steps to reach this poor soul. She looks up at the truck and nods. Fuse climbs back in. The G-505 rumbles around La Donna and surges on. Crank extends her free hand until it touches his forearm. "You can come with me." The man takes her hand. It lacks any strength. She guides him to the passenger side and pops open the door. He gets in, sobbing without tears. Crank slams the door shut, watches the truck make the bend in the Black Road that runs her down to the last remaining trees the island has left. Soon, those trees will be gone as the umbral weapon ravishes Nature. Crank glances down at the broken human in her car, up to the cataclysm, and feels Death telling her the time has come.

  She slips back around to the driver side, tucks the crowbar along the seat, and gets in. Door shut. Steering wheel gripped but good. Crank realizes she is breathing through her mouth, agitated, frightened. Steering wheel squeezed for dear life. She reaches under the seat, coming up with a circlet of rosary beads. The vestige of her mother. She bites her lip. Crank slips the rosary around her wrist.

  "Calm down. Calm down." She whispers it five more times before flooring the accelerator.

  Guy is pinned to the seat, hyperventilating. "Ah! I...thank you for saving me! If we survive, I owe you one!"

  She goes three seconds to round the big bend to the war zone before answering. "No problem, because I doubt we will. What's your name?"

  "Vue. I'm Vue."

  Sounds quirky, but life is oh-so too short right now to split hairs. As they drive on, the flames are all there is to see, detonations the dominant sounds, heat searing into the once cold auto. In her mind panic and determination duke it out. I'm too young to die. Il mio Dio ci libera dal male...

  "Well, Vue, I hope you got right with God!" Pedal to the metal, into the hell they roar.

  "Yes! I am very much..."