The Amtrak Wars: Blood River

by Patrick Tilley

  ‘Just follow my ass, Brickman!’ shouted Kelso. ‘I’m aimin’ for the southeast corner of the lake. We can head west from there!’ His eyes met Jodi’s. ‘Providin’ this goddamn weather doesn’t beat us to it!’ He held the nose down and pushed the throttle wide open. ‘What a pisser!’

  Jodi didn’t say anything. She’d been here before.

  Swallowing his anger, Steve piled on the speed in an effort to catch up with Kelso. He knew they were obliged to change course but he was annoyed at having lost control of the situation. Kelso had played his part in the breakout from the Heron Pool but he had been nothing but trouble from Day One.

  When you were in the kind of jam they were in, the one thing you didn’t need were guys who were constantly backbiting instead of coming up with positive answers. Jodi’s long-suffering attitude had no doubt grown out of comradeship born in adversity but Steve’s patience was wearing thin. He mentally gave Kelso one more chance to shape up. If not, the red-headed loud-mouth would find himself surplus to requirements – and Jodi would have to decide whether to stick with a loser or join the winning team.

  He looked across at Clearwater and saw she had become tense and withdrawn. She sat hunched up in her seat, one hand braced against the side of the cockpit, the other on the centre console.

  Steve laid his left hand over it and gave a reassuring squeeze. ‘Hey, hey, relax! A little while back you were enjoying this. What’s the matter? You not feeling too good?’

  Her lips tightened, then she said: ‘I do not understand these things you talk about. Only that something is wrong and that there is much anger between you. Cadillac should have come with us. The two sand-burrowers would then have been free to go where they wished.’

  ‘You’re right. Would have made things a lot simpler. The idea was to split the risk so that – if this plane, or Kelso’s, powered down, one of you might still have a chance of getting home.’

  Her gaze steadied and her mouth relaxed a little. ‘We will all get home. Were we not born in the shadow of Talisman?’

  ‘You and Cadillac maybe. I don’t think he’s too bothered about the rest of us. Don’t worry about Kelso. Jodi and I will straighten him out. He’s one of these people who only feels happy when he’s complaining. But his heart’s in the right place.’

  And if I find it isn’t, I’ll put a hole in it …

  Clearwater turned her right hand upwards and took a firm grip on his. ‘I fear the White Death.’

  ‘You?’ The idea made Steve laugh. ‘C’mon! You’re not frightened of anything! You and Cadillac have seen more of this stuff than any of us! Kelso’s lived through three winters, Jodi’s survived one. It’s me who should be worried!’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘Naahh … I’ve got you, haven’t I? Trust me. It’ll all come out right in the end.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Clearwater. ‘Even if you and I don’t live to see it.’

  With the need to keep his eyes fixed on the plane ahead, Steve was not able to examine her face and gauge just what she meant by that cryptic remark. But it was not the first.

  Sensing she had unsettled him, she added, ‘I do trust you. My life has been placed in your hands. It is the will of Talisman.’

  Steve checked the weather to his right then brought his eyes back onto Kelso’s plane. ‘Why do we always have to keep coming back to that goddamn prophecy? Just for once it’d be nice to think I had something to do with the way you feel.’

  ‘But you do, golden one. You do …’

  ‘Yeah …’ Steve stared straight ahead. It must be great, he thought to have someone, you could rely on. Someone who genuinely cared, who did all the worrying, all the figuring out, and made sure nothing bad happened to you. Why was it he who always seemed to end up carrying everybody else?

  Perhaps that was the way it was for people who liked running the show. But Jefferson the 31st, the current President-General – who he’d met – ran the greatest show on earth. You could bet your last meal credit he didn’t give a damn about anybody lower down the wire. Including Steven Roosevelt Brickman. You could see it in the eyes. Jefferson was the kind of guy who could walk you all the way to the revolving door to his office, a smile on his lips, a fatherly hand on your shoulder – knowing that the hit-squad he’d ordered was waiting for you to step out of the turnstile.

  Pure naked power … At the level the P-G was operating on, it must give you a real buzz …

  As the two planes lost height, the grey wall of cloud began to tower over them like a giant tidal wave that threatened to swallow them without trace. The strong north-westerly wind that provided its motive power was driving the snowflakes forward from its leading edge as they fell in their countless millions.

  Steve glanced at the gyro compass. He was currently tailing Kelso on a heading of two zero zero. They had lost altitude steadily and were now down to nine hundred feet. It was clear that Kelso wanted to maintain visual contact with the ground; a wise decision in the circumstances but if they were to avoid being engulfed they would soon have to swing onto a more southerly heading.

  He consulted his map and tried to find a matching feature on the lake shore beneath. And then it happened. As his left index finger edged over the folded sheet of plasfilm towards navref Benton Harbour, map and ground coincided and he glimpsed the squat, rectangular outlines of a boat moored to a wooden jetty. It was not one of the massive wheelboats that visited the trading post, but it was still of appreciable size, with a paddle wheel running across the full width of the stern.

  Colour and detail faded rapidly beneath the first wash of snow. In perfect visibility, Steve might have seen the upturned face of the figure standing on the bow deck as a pale dot set against the dark wooden planks but not today. Izo Wantanabe saw the two Skyriders pass overhead but those aboard did not see him.

  Steve didn’t need to. There was only one place the boat could have come from – Ne-Issan. The Iron Masters had put it there, and had built the square jetty to which it was moored. Its positioning far beyond the present borders of Ne-Issan must have taken place several weeks, if not months, ago. The boat and its invisible crew could only belong to domain-lord Yama-Shita; it was his family who held the exclusive licence to trade with the Mutes. But Yama-Shita had been dead for a week – killed by Clearwater during the break-out. Did the dead-faces down there know that? Or know that his assassins had escaped?

  Steve thought it unlikely, even though the Iron Masters used carrier pigeons for urgent long-distance communication. The Yama-Shita family were probably still reeling from the shock and were more likely to be concerned with fighting off bids from envious rivals anxious to grab a slice of their trading empire than alerting their front men in the outlands. For the moment, anyway.

  No. The real question was more basic: Why would a boatload of Japs be moored near the southern end of Lake Michigan in the second week of November? Had Hiro Yama-Shita got some kind of extended operation going with the Plainfolk Mutes in this area?

  The need to press onwards, ahead of the advancing snow made detailed observation impossible but Steve had not seen any on-shore installations out of his side of the cockpit, and neither had Clearwater. The boat’s occupants might be armed but they were sitting ducks. Steve toyed momentarily with the agreeable notion of capturing it and making a slow but stately progress to the trading post at Du-aruta. They would be assured of absolute safety at sea, coming ashore only for timber to feed the boiler – the source of power and warmth. The problem of what to eat could be solved by catching fish like the Iron Masters did.

  Winter would give way to the time of the New Earth. Freed from the grip of its icy fingers the soil would burst open as the buried seeds awoke. New pink grass would put a warm blush on the face of the world and as the air softened with the approach of spring they would linger off Du-aruta until the M’Call delegation joined the other Plainfolk emissaries near the end of May for the annual round of trading with the Iron Masters. Then, before the massive th
ree-storeyed wheelboats steamed into view, they would beach their stolen vessel in full view of the waiting Mutes.

  Steve pictured the faces of the Plainfolk as he lead his party ashore. Yes … a lot better than walking to Wyoming. And if Kelso got lippy he’d end up tied to the paddle wheel …

  ‘Steve!!’

  Clearwater’s cry snapped him out of his reverie. Kelso’s Skyrider had disappeared. Visibility was now zero. The cockpit was surrounded by driving snow.

  Steve rolled the Skyrider to the left, held the nose down and slammed the throttle wide open. The snow started to thin, then fell behind as they outraced the bank of cloud. He knew they had gained only a temporary respite. The only way to avoid it was by flying south-east – back towards Ne-Issan – the one place he didn’t want to go.

  Applying a touch of right rudder, he brought the Skyrider back onto a heading of 180 degrees – due south – and peered through the canopy. It was now streaked with melting snow. ‘Can you see them?’ His own eyesight was extra sharp but he had discovered that some Mutes were able to get a visual fix on moving objects at amazing distances – like birds of prey.

  Clearwater searched the sky ahead of them.

  ‘Hang on …’ Steve made the plane weave from side to side, dipping the left wing then the right to provide her with a better all-round view. The southern end of Lake Michigan which lay just beyond his right shoulder fell under the shadow of the advancing snow cloud.

  Looking down, Steve saw the sand dunes and swamps that had repossessed the area once drained and flattened under the concrete bases of steel-making plants and petro-chemical complexes. Poisonous effluents and sulphurous smoke-stack emissions in the pre-Holocaust era had turned the area into a wasteland but nine centuries later, the waters of Lake Michigan were as clean and blue as when the first 17th century French fur trappers had canoed down the Wabash.

  Clearwater flung her arm across the cockpit in front of Steve’s face. ‘There!’

  He followed her pointing finger. Several hundred feet below them, a winged speck was heading south-west. Kelso and Jodi. Any minute now they would be running out of gas and they would both be searching for a reasonably safe place to put down.

  ‘Don’t lose sight of them,’ said Steve. He switched on the plane-to-plane channel. ‘Breaker One to Breaker Two. What’s your fuel state? Over.’

  It was Jodi who replied. ‘Breaker Two. We’ve had zero on the dial for the last six minutes but the motor’s still – uh-oh, correction. It just cut out on us. Over.’

  ‘Okay, hang in there. I know you’ll be fighting gravity from here on in but try to find a spot that’s big enough for both of us. We’ll be coming in right behind you.’

  ‘Roger Wilco. Dave says he can’t wait. According to the map there’s a hardway running east to west. We’re aiming for that. Breaker Two over and out.’

  As Jodi went off the air, the plane ran into another blinding flurry of snow. A knot formed in her stomach. ‘Are we gonna be able to get down?’

  Kelso wrestled with the controls. ‘Kaz – that’s the one thing you can be sure of. Whether we walk away is another matter entirely.’

  They broke out into a relatively clear patch of sky. Two hundred feet below them they saw the vague outline of the hardway – the remains of US Highway 30. With the coating of snow thickening by the minute, it was impossible to gauge what condition it was in and without power they could not make an exploratory low-level pass. Once again they were wrapped in a swirling white cloud, the flakes turning to translucent sludge as they hit the canopy. The slipstream blew the sludge into ragged waves that crept slowly up the windshield. Jodi and Kelso leaned forward and peered through the gaps, trying to get a clearer view.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ shouted Kelso. ‘I’m gonna make a downwind landing!’ He selected full flap. ‘Pull your straps tight!’

  Without power, any turn has to be made nose down to avoid a stall which, at low altitude, is usually fatal. Putting the snow behind their tail increased the forward visibility a little but decreased the speed of the air flowing over the wings, robbing them of valuable lift and increasing their rate of descent.

  The snow-covered hardway came up to meet them at an alarming rate before Kelso could line up the nose properly.

  ‘Dave! For crissakes –!’

  BLUMMFFF! Jodi’s skull and spine collided with a sickening jolt as the three plump tyres flattened onto the axles then bounced the plane back into the air on the north side of the hardway. Trees loomed up ahead. Kelso kicked on some right rudder to bring the nose round. With the Skyrider now close to stalling speed its response to control movements was mushy but with the help of a stream of invective from Kelso, it wallowed back towards the centreline of the makeshift runway.

  ‘Okay! This is it!’ Kelso tried to correct the drift to the right but the controls no longer responded. Jodi braced herself as they dropped through the last fifteen feet like a stone.

  The main wheel on her side of the plane hit the ground first. The undercarriage strut had survived the first punishing blow but this second impact tore it loose. The Skyrider crashed forward onto its nosewheel, buckling the supporting strut and driving it upwards through the fuselage. The right wheel landed on the sloping, overgrown grass verge, tilting the Skyrider further over to the left. The tip of the wing on Jodi’s side was ripped to pieces as it came into contact with the ground. She tried to steady herself as the plane slewed round, jolting and bouncing over the uneven surface of the hardway. There were sharp cracks and rending noises as other parts of the plane to the rear of the cockpit broke loose. The Skyrider spun around once on its belly then slid sideways along the axis of the undamaged starboard wing into the snow-covered undergrowth on the northern side of the hardway.

  Jodi could now only see where they’d been and not where they were going but during the ground-loop, she had caught a whip-pan glimpse of several more clumps of trees. Her internal radar sensed they were now probably on a collision course. She dropped her chin onto her chest and hugged her arms. If there was an afterwards, she knew they would discover there was more than enough room for half a Skyrider to pass between the trees but by Sod’s Law they were bound to hit one. She was not disappointed.

  With the fine tuning only Destiny can provide, the leading edge of the starboard wing lost its top coat of paint as it scraped past the rim of the trunk of the last tree of the last clump at a neat tangent, leaving Kelso’s side of the cockpit to take the full impact.

  KERR-RUNCH!! Jodi was held in her seat by the safety harness but her head was thrown back against the bulkhead with a force that not even her crash helmet could absorb. In the split second before she lost consciousness, the last thing her mind registered was an overwhelming sense of relief: she might die, but she would not burn …

  The weather was even worse when Steve and Clearwater arrived on the scene but with their lighter all-up weight, they still had some gas in the tank. Skimming perilously close to the tops of the trees, Steve flew up and down the highway, searching for Kelso’s Skyrider.

  Now flying into the teeth of a full-scale blizzard, Steve had to give his full attention to keeping the plane on course. He had to rely on Clearwater but even her sharp eyes missed it on the first two attempts. She spotted it as Steve made a third, westward, pass.

  ‘There they are!’

  ‘Good! Keep your eye on it!’

  ‘But, ohh – its wings are broken!’ She turned around in her seat, pressing her face against the canopy. ‘And nothing moves!’

  ‘In this weather, they’re better off staying inside,’ said Steve, trying to sound optimistic. He hadn’t seen the wreckage for himself but it didn’t sound too promising. On the other hand, there was no point in worrying about what might or might not have happened to Jodi, Kelso and Cadillac. The first thing they had to do was make a safe landing themselves.

  Banking to the left, he flew eastwards roughly parallel with the hardway, passing the Skyhawk on the downwind leg. Its charcoal
-grey outline was fast disappearing under the snow. Another thirty seconds on the cockpit’s digital clock took him three quarters of a mile down the road and clear of the trees.

  As he circled round and prepared to land, he spoke to Clearwater over the radio channel that linked their headsets. ‘Okay! I’m gonna be busy trying to keep this thing lined up on the hardway so give me a shout when you see ’em. Should be any second now!’

  Clearwater unbuckled her safety harness and sat on the edge of her seat, bracing herself against the instrument panel.

  Forward visibility was atrocious. The ground on all sides was now completely blanketed with snow and the sky was full of it. The instruments told Steve he was flying more or less straight and level at just under fifty feet but his stomach told him they were being buffeted up, down and sideways by the gale-force gusts of wind. The only reliable guide to where the ground ended and the sky began were the dark sheltered recesses of the trees where the inner branches met the trunks.

  ‘Now! Now!!’

  Steve waited till the wheels touched before cutting the motor. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the front half of Kelso’s Skyrider wrapped around a tree as they flashed past, rocking and juddering along a six-lane highway that had not been resurfaced for over nine hundred years. It was like rollerskating over corrugated iron. He pulled the brake lever back as far as it would go, locking the two main wheels. And just as he was wondering what had happened to the other half of the Skyrider, they ploughed into it.

  Steve, who had received a split-second advance warning from his resident guardian angel, threw his arm across Clearwater’s chest and yanked her backwards. He succeeded in stopping her going head first through the canopy but the sudden deceleration caused everything from the waist down to slide forwards off the seat. Her knees crashed against the instrument panel with a sharp, bone-cracking noise that made him wince.