The Amtrak Wars: Blood River

by Patrick Tilley

  Clearwater didn’t utter a sound. A secret combination of true grit and mental discipline rendered Mutes – with a few exceptions – almost totally impervious to pain.

  ‘Christo! That sounded terrible. You okay?’

  She eased herself slowly into an upright sitting position and rubbed both kneecaps. ‘I’ll tell you after I’ve tried to walk.’ She searched for the lever that opened her side of the canopy. ‘We must find Cadillac –’

  Steve grabbed her shoulder and held her down. ‘You stay right there. I’ll go check what’s happened.’ He slid out quickly, landing with his weight on his right foot. The wound in his thigh gave him a sickening reminder that she wasn’t the only one who might not be in the best shape for an overland expedition.

  He shut the canopy and checked to see what they’d run into. The mangled tail-boom section of Kelso’s plane was caught against the rear wheel struts. They had also passed over an unseen but unyielding projection – probably a rock – which had mangled the tips of the propeller blades.

  Well done, Brickman … Opening the hatch of the cargo bay, he rummaged through the bag of odds and ends they had brought with them and pulled out a straw poncho – one of the items of clothing issued to Mute slaves by the Iron Masters. Lowering the visor of his crash helmet, Steve leaned against the howling wind and hobbled down the hardway towards the wrecked Skyrider.

  The buckled fuselage pod with its rear-mounted engine and one and a half wings lay hard up against a huge tree – now a dark silhouette against the white landscape. The impact had shaken the snow off the branches, dumping it on the wreck below. There was no sign of movement and no sound.

  The canopy release handle on the port side was jammed. Steve broke open the emergency rescue panel behind the cockpit and used the spiked axe to prise the canopy open. The hinges were warped and stiff. Steve forced it upwards and saw that the other half had shattered. Snow was blowing in, covering Kelso’s body. Jodi’s had twisted towards the point of impact. Her left arm was bent over her chest, the other lay across Kelso.

  Steve leant in and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Jodi …?’

  Her head rocked slowly against the bulkhead as she started to come round.

  ‘Hi. How’re you doing?’

  Jodi’s eyes fluttered open. It took a few seconds to get her eyes into focus. Her brain took a little longer. ‘I, uh … uhh …’ Her painted hands fumbled ineffectually with the release clip of her harness.

  Steve undid it for her then loosened the chin strap of her crash helmet and eased it off. ‘Does it feel as if anything’s broken?’

  Jodi moved her arms and legs. ‘Nuhh … think I’m okay. It’s just my neck.’ She raised her head gingerly. ‘Oww –!’

  ‘Here – lemme have a go at it.’ Steve massaged the muscles and bones at the top of her spine, causing her to gasp with pain.

  ‘Hey! Go easy!’

  You’ll survive. It’s gonna hurt for a while but everything seems to be in place.’

  Jodi carried on where Steve had left off. ‘Can always give myself a shot, I suppose. Dave and I picked up some morphine jabs and a few packs of Cloud Nines when we raided the beach store.’

  Steve nodded towards Kelso. ‘We may need all of that for him – assuming he’s still with us. ‘C’mon, shift your butt.’ he gave Jodi a helping hand as she climbed stiffly out of the cockpit. They saw Clearwater limping unsteadily towards them.

  ‘Looks like another candidate for the sick parade.’ Jodi’s teeth were chattering with cold but she could not help laughing at their predicament. ‘What a mess! Still, I s’pose things can only get better.’

  Steve was already inside the cockpit checking Kelso’s heartbeat. ‘He’s alive … Dave! Dave! Can you hear me?’

  The big man gave an answering groan. Steve lifted the visor of Kelso’s helmet and saw his eyelids pressed tightly together as he mastered a wave of pain. The alloy ribs and plating on his side of the cockpit was ripped and mangled and Kelso was pinned underneath from the hips down. Steve realized it would take a while to free him.

  ‘Is he hurt bad?’ asked Jodi.

  ‘Can’t tell yet but it don’t look too good.’

  Clearwater reached them and leaned against the cockpit sill, breathing in and out through clenched teeth.

  ‘Welcome to the A-Team …’ said Jodi.

  The joke was lost on Clearwater. She turned towards Steve and waited for him to acknowledge her presence.

  The acknowledgement, when it came, lacked the easy charm that many of his admirers found so irresistible. ‘What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay in the plane!’

  ‘Where’s Cadillac?!’

  ‘One thing at a time!’ snapped Steve. ‘We got a badly injured man here!’

  ‘But Cadillac may be hurt too!’

  ‘Make up your mind! A little while back you told me everything was gonna be okay ’cause you were both protected by Talisman!’

  ‘Ohh, Sweet Mother! You’re as pig-headed as he is!’ Momentarily forgetting she had two badly bruised knees, Clearwater stamped her right foot to vent her frustration and almost fainted from the searing pain that filled her leg from hip to ankle.

  Jodi caught her as she swayed and sat her down on the sill. ‘Easy now, just … hang in there, okay? We’re on his case.’

  Steve clambered out of the cockpit. He shared Clearwater’s concern but temper tantrums he could do without. ‘Jodi – that hole in the canopy is proving a real pain in the butt. We need some kind of cover to keep the snow off him while we get him out.’

  ‘How about using the hatch off the cargo bay?’

  ‘Brilliant…’ Steve fished the axe out of the cockpit then, adding a dash of acid, he said: ‘And if it turns out Cadillac’s still in one piece, we can ask him if he’d care to give us a hand.’

  Clearwater met his narrowed eyes but refused to take the bait.

  Steve got to work with the axe. The cargo door was designed to lift upwards, but with the plane lying on its belly and tilted towards them, the release catches were pinned against the ground. After chopping through the hinges, Steve used the axe handle to lever the curved panel open far enough to get one foot on the top edge then he and Jodi trampled it to the ground.

  Clearwater helped Jodi to pull out the bulging, overweight bag of swag Kelso had slung in on top of their passenger. As they lifted it clear, Cadillac’s limp body slid into view, head first, face down.

  Fearing the worst, Steve turned him over. There wasn’t a mark on him. His eyes were shut, but he wasn’t unconscious. He was fast asleep – snoring contentedly.

  With a cry of exasperation, Clearwater scooped up a handful of snow and rubbed it over his face then, when he didn’t respond quickly enough, she stuffed a second helping down the front of his tunic.

  ‘Yyyu-ughhh! Wha – wha’s happening?!’ Cadillac hoisted himself up on his elbows, bonked his skull on the low roof of the cargo bay and fell back clutching his forehead. ‘Shee-ehh!’

  While Steve worked to free the bottom edge of the hatch, Clearwater and Jodi hauled Cadillac out and stood him upright. His legs were still rubbery. The Mute had drunk so much sake at Long Point they’d practically had to pour him into the cargo hold. But with hindsight it had proved to be the safest way to travel. It was amazing. The sole injury he’d sustained was the bump he’d collected on waking up.

  Pulling the sodden front of his tunic away from his chest, Cadillac draped an arm across Clearwater’s shoulders and gave her, then Jodi, a lop-sided grin of recognition.

  Jodi watched as he took stock of his surroundings, ending with a puzzled stare at the dark grey sky from which white flakes were dropping silently onto his upturned face. His sodden brain finally worked out what was happening. ‘Snow,’ he said. ‘It’s snowing!’

  Incomprehension gave way to understanding followed by a wave of cautious elation. Cadillac seized both girls by the arm. ‘Where are we – Wyoming?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Steve. He wre
nched the battered cargo hatch clear of the fuselage. ‘But you’re getting warm …’

  The wind picked up again and the snowflakes – now as big as communion wafers – began falling thicker and faster than ever.

  Chapter Three

  When Kelso had been heavily sedated and prised loose, it was immediately obvious that his right arm and leg were broken but without x-rays and an examination by a paramedic, it was impossible to tell if he had additional internal injuries. Once again, Clearwater came to their rescue. Using a previously un-revealed gift allied to her powers as a summoner, she was able to ‘read’ what she called ‘the fire devils’. Laying her hands gently on Kelso’s body, she located the fractures in his upper arm and thigh and found he also had four cracked ribs. Worst of all, he had a broken hip-joint – or perhaps a fractured pelvis.

  Not good. Not good at all …

  Steve was tempted to put an end to him there and then. The alternative was to carry him all the way to Wyoming, but by the time they got there – assuming they ever did – he would be beyond even the amazing skills of Mr Snow.

  It was a stark choice that might yet have to be faced if their situation deteriorated and it was bound to cause dissension. Steve knew that Jodi would fight to keep him alive until the last moment. But then maybe, if he was in Kelso’s place, he would be glad to have someone close at hand with the same protective feelings.

  In the meantime, the only thing they could do was to apply splints and bandages to his broken limbs, secure his hip-joint from further dislocation by strapping his body to the door of the cargo hatch, keep him warm and dry, and heavily sedated.

  Thanks to Kelso’s decision to plunder the beach store at Long Point they had a supply of bandages, medicine, food and fire and – best of all – several mirror-foil emergency blankets. But their long-term survival was threatened by totally inadequate footwear and clothing and the lack of shelter.

  Steve had already taken steps to deal with the latter problem. In order to free Kelso they first had to ease the fuselage away from the tree using branches as levers. The broken port wing was now propped up by those same branches, tilting the plane over so that the starboard wingtip touched the ground. Kelso had been moved, underneath as soon as he had been disentangled and now lay wrapped in two of the foil blankets on a floor made of smaller branches cut from neighbouring pine trees. The soft ever-red foliage gave off a sweet reassuring smell when crushed underfoot.

  Under the direction of Cadillac and Clearwater, more branches were laid at an angle against the front and rear edge of the wing. When several more layers had been applied and interwoven to keep out the snow, the result was a snug, wind-proof little hideaway into which they crawled to silently nurse their various aches and pains.

  Compared to the scale of Kelso’s injuries, the week-old arrow wound in Steve’s right thigh was a minor inconvenience but he would not regain full use of his leg unless he gave it proper care and attention. Clearwater was temporarily crippled by two bruised and swollen knees and the whiplash injuries to Jodi’s neck had left her extremely sensitive to any jarring of her spine. Without a pain-killer, even walking was now a disagreeable exercise, forcing her to tiptoe around like Doctor Caligari. That left Cadillac as front runner – a situation Steve was not at all happy about but one he was going to have to live with.

  Despite the injury to her neck, there was nothing wrong with Jodi’s legs but it would be two or three weeks before his own and Clearwater’s would be strong enough to face a thousand mile hike – carrying Kelso all the way. Steve knew that putting their feet up for so long was a luxury they would have to forego; the most they could allow themselves was two or three days – not to rest, but to prepare for the journey ahead.

  They had to keep moving. If Karlstrom’s electronic ears hadn’t picked up their panic-stricken air-to-air exchanges, he would soon learn they had taken off with almost empty tanks. All he had to do then was draw a circle on the map. And it wouldn’t take long for someone of his intelligence to figure out which part of the circle they were most likely to be in.

  There was the added, and quite unexpected, threat posed by the presence of Iron Masters at Benton Harbour – only sixty or so miles from where they had landed. Since he had been able to see the wheelboat it was reasonable to assume that someone on board might have seen the two Skyriders passing overhead. Even if they didn’t know what they were looking at, their curiosity would be aroused and if they were linked by carrier-pigeon to the Yama-Shita household the news would travel fast. Iron Masters were compulsive scribblers; a constant stream of paperwork flowed back and forth through the government-run postal system and the parallel private networks of couriers – some of them winged – employed by each of the seventeen domain-lords.

  Steve and his companions had given the Yama-Shita family ample cause to regret their involvement with flying machines. The domain-lord’s relatives might confuse a report about the two Skyriders with the rocket-powered gliders he and the others had used to escape from the Heron Pool.

  Given the time of the year, the present weather and the distance now separating them from the family’s headquarters at Sara-Kusa the possibility of intervention from that quarter was remote but there was no point in taking chances – especially with an unknown number of Japs moored just up the coast. From here on in, pursuit by the agents of AMEXICO and the Iron Masters were factors that had to be considered when evolving what political and military strategists called ‘the worst case scenario’: it would be foolish to base their future moves on anything else.

  Steve, who now sat huddled together with Jodi, Clearwater and Cadillac in front of the fire can, warmed his hands alongside theirs and shook his head as he reflected on their predicament. Why did it get more difficult and more complicated instead of easier and simpler? When would it ever end? And why had he ignored all the warning signals and walked into this mess in the first place?

  The answer was locked away somewhere inside him – maybe held by the stranger whose whispered voice he heard from time to time. With Uncle Bart’s connections, a safe, comfortable desk job in the Black Tower could have been his for the asking but that would have been too easy. The example set by Poppa Jack and his own need to measure himself against the brightest of the best had led him to become a wingman. And that, in turn, had led him to discover his affinity with the overground, a mind-blowing experience which released feelings that had shaken his previously unswerving allegiance to the Amtrak Federation and left him wondering where he really belonged.

  Steve had always believed himself to be smarter than his classmates, had enjoyed pitting his wits against the system but why did he have this insatiable desire to know everything, to be Number One? Why him and not the next guy? What had given him the idea that he was some kind of super-hero who could solve any problem and triumph over impossible odds? Where had this arrogant certitude come from? It was insane. And how had he – who from an early age had cultivated a steely detachment – become involved? Why had he begun to care about what other people felt and what happened to them? What the hell difference did it make? The Plainfolk believed it was all going to happen anyway: ‘The Wheel turns, The Path is drawn …’ Mr Snow, Cadillac and Clearwater had all trotted out that line at one time or another. But it didn’t explain anything – like who had drawn The Path. Talisman? Mo-Town? The Sky Voices? And who had given whichever one of them it was the right to interfere?

  The same question could be asked of the First Family. Perhaps that was the reason why he couldn’t let go: run for cover, take the soft option – and why he also felt so torn and confused. He would like to have been comforted by the thought that he had a friend out there, watching over him, ready to extend a helping hand, shoulder some of the burden but he still couldn’t bring himself to really trust in anybody or anything. There were times when he even began to have doubts about Clearwater. If you dug deep enough, everyone had an angle. And what really went against the grain was the idea that someone else – be it a per
son like the President-General, or some imagined power like Talisman – had already planned each move he would make in life and that he, Steven Roosevelt Brickman, could do nothing to change the future course of events.

  Like many young men, Steve was confusing the material world – external reality – with the world of the spirit. And as there were no books in the Federation and the only moral philosophy – spiced with a large measure of self-interest – was dispensed through the Federation’s televideo network by the First Family, he was unaware of the nature of his dilemma and a key pre-Holocaust quotation that might have helped to set his mind at rest: ‘We may not be master of our own destiny but each of us is the captain of our soul’.

  Regardless of our physical or material circumstances, whether we are fated to be showered with good fortune or dealt the cruellest blows (or a mixture of both) we have the power within us to make the conscious decision to retain our humanity, the ability to love, and our sense of what is right and just, and true.

  When Jodi had gone back down the hardway to pick up the trail bags from Steve’s Skyrider, she had used her newly acquired knowledge of the nav-systems to get a fix on their present position. The undamaged cockpit contained an inertial plotting device which automatically monitored speed and direction throughout the flight. Since it had logged the coordinates of Long Point, it was able to work out where it was now. When the latitude and longitude readout was applied to the map, she was able to tell Steve they had landed a few miles to the east of navref point Merriville, Indiana.

  Their flight had taken them into the next time zone. The on-board digital display had adjusted itself automatically, leaving their wristwatches running an hour fast – something she failed to notice. Not that it mattered; they had other more pressing concerns. But for the record, it was now 1416 hours Central Standard Time and it snowed steadily for the rest of the day.

  Nine hundred miles to the southwest, the clocks aboard The Lady from Louisiana were still set to Mountain Standard Time. Colonel Marie Anderssen had signalled her safe arrival at Santa Fe and would soon board the inbound afternoon shuttle for Houston/GC. So far, The Lady had made good headway, maintaining an average speed of 18 miles per hour. She had succeeded in crossing the Arkansas River west of an old reservoir without having to decouple the wagons, and was now heading towards Lamar, the last navref point before the Colorado/Kansas state line.