by Rajan Khanna
“The Valhallans.”
She nods. She stares at me for a second, then shrugs. “I’m Coretta,” she says. “The big guy is Tomas, the smaller one Buzz. Sondra is the one with the glasses, also a hell of a fine doctor. And the girl is Ellie.”
“I’m Ben,” I say.
“Well, Ben. What do you say we look around for something useful?”
I shrug. “Okay.”
“Stay close to me, though,” she says.
I nod—best to keep in Coretta’s good graces for the time being, but I’m inclined to make her stick close to me. The first things I head for are the airship parts. There’s no real hull to speak of. Or maybe some of the large plates might have been part of a keel, but there’s what looks like ballonets, deflated, hanging from a rack. And some large tanks of lift leaning against a wall, which are probably hydrogen but may even be helium, judging by the look of them. They may even be from Gastown, before the Valhallans took it.
More exciting, to me at least, are the engines—propeller units—that are resting against the wall. They look like they’re from a smaller ship. They wouldn’t be enough to push the Cherub, or even the Valkyrie, but they look pretty good for what they are. Maybe a little dusty, but no signs of rust or deterioration. But there’s no real airship for them to push.
“You have airships here?” I ask.
“Not really,” Coretta says. “Some would come through from time to time, traders that we had relationships with, but nothing permanent. Lincoln intended this place to be a haven on the ground. Still, we had a few zeps who lived here. People who lost their ships or gave up the life for one reason or another. I think they were stockpiling parts to try to build into some kind of junker, to help us roam a bit farther.”
I finger the ballonet skins. They’re good, intact, but without a hull . . .
“Looks like they didn’t get far enough.”
We look some more, investigating some of the tools and machinery, before Coretta brings us back to the center and asks everyone what they found. Simple answer is: nothing useful. No food. No weapons, unless that means improvised clubs made up of metal rods or other bits of machinery. Already the grunting and shrieking outside sounds louder. That probably means more Ferals, attracted by the others, knowing that there’s something good inside the building. Like a giant can of meat just waiting to be opened up.
“We’re not going to be able to last long without food,” Buzz says.
“The lack of water will get us first,” Sondra says.
“So we need to figure out how to get out of this place,” I say. “Unless we get lucky and the Ferals decide to leave on their own. But I don’t expect that they will.”
“We can wait them out for a day,” Coretta says. “They may get bored and move on. Or some might, at least. I still have my gun. We have Ben’s.” I hadn’t forgotten. “We have some other weapons. We can wait and fight our way out if we have to.”
“And go where?” I ask. “Town’s burned out. Ferals may be hiding anywhere. Do you know of any nearby settlements or places we can take shelter?”
“What about the temple?” Buzz asks. “You said you were there.”
“There’s no food there. Or water. And I’m not convinced that the Ferals don’t have a way in there.”
Buzz steps forward. “Or maybe you don’t want us to go there.”
I meet his eyes. “Honestly, kid, I don’t care what you do. Go up there. Don’t go up there. But—” and saying this makes me realize that it’s true, “—I don’t want to die, or get eaten by Ferals, so I’d like to get as far away from here as possible. Hopefully somewhere with food and water.” I look at Coretta. “You have no vehicles?”
She sighs. “We had a couple of cars that were rigged up to drive, but they didn’t survive the attack.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” she snaps. “I’m sure.” She stands up. “I am the one who’s lived here for the past year, and I’m the one who was here when the bombs fell.”
“You checked everything?”
She gets in my face, her finger outstretched. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Coming in here, uninvited, asking questions? I can feel you working your way up to giving commands. You are only here for as long as we say you get to be.”
“Coretta,” Sondra says.
Coretta ignores her. “You’re starting to piss me off, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t just toss your ass out of the door.”
“Coretta . . .” More insistent now.
“In fact, why don’t you get your ass up and get ready to run.”
“Coretta!”
It cuts through the tension, and everyone turns to look at Sondra, wondering what’s going on, but she doesn’t need to answer. Because there’s the sound of groaning, of something under pressure, and then a loud crunch as one panel of the warehouse falls inward, and suddenly the sound of Ferals gets louder.
I start moving toward it (wondering, even as I’m doing it, why I am), and Coretta calls out behind me. “Stop!” I look over my shoulder to see that she has the gun out.
“Shoot me,” I say. “But I need to see what’s happening.”
When I get to the wall, I can see that this building didn’t escape unscathed the way that we all thought it had. Something, the concussion from the detonation or something else, caused the wall to fracture. At least one thin crack runs up and down the whole panel, from the ground to the roof. There might be more. With the pressure of the Ferals against the wall, it’s starting to shift. Already I can see shapes moving in front of the crack, near the ground. The Ferals can’t breach it yet, but if they keep pushing . . .
“We need to stay away from this,” I say. They might not be able to get in, but the Bug can. “There’s a crack. And it might get larger. We need to get out of here. Now.”
“How?” Buzz asks.
I return to the bits and pieces of vehicles. No airships, no, but there were some old hunks of vehicles. “Do any of those work? Or close to work? We would just need to get it moving and keep it moving. Steering is optional.”
“Steering works,” Tomas says, in his quiet, deep voice. “But they don’t drive. No engines or fuel lines.”
And of course we have airship engines, but no—
Wait.
“We should brace this crack,” Buzz says. “Get things up against it.”
Wait. Wait. Wait.
“Give me a hand,” he says to someone.
We have the skeleton of a ground car. Or truck, rather, looking at it. No engine. But we have the propellers of the airship. And ballonets. It looks like there’s fuel and . . .
The whole room creaks again, and the wall panel that was open just a hair a second ago now leans into the room, the crack even wider.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I stalk over to where Buzz and Sondra are, my hand automatically going to my holster, which is now empty.
Buzz moves forward, head out, aggressive. “We were trying to fortify the wall!”
“And how did that work out for you?” I shout back.
I’m thinking that I have no time for this fool of a kid when a hand, long-nailed and dirty, pokes through the gap between the wall plates, and I grab Buzz and pull him away.
He shakes free. “Get off of me!”
“Do you see the Ferals”—I point at the arms waving through the gap—“pushing their way through? Or are you too fucking stupid to get that?”
He shoves me, hard enough to force me back a step or two. The first thought in my head is, am I really going to have to fight this kid?
Then the little girl, Ellie, appears, and she puts a hand on his arm. “Stop, Buzz,” she says. He seems to settle for a minute. I’m relieved, but I see my revolver tucked into Ellie’s belt. I could probably get to it. It only has one bullet left, but I have more in my pockets. Not a lot more, but enough.
But then what, Ben?
The moment passes.
“We need to get out of here,” I bar
k. “Now.”
“How?” Coretta asks.
What I was thinking of before Buzz started fucking us comes back to me. “We build a junker. As quickly as we can.”
“What?” Several of them say it at once.
“We have that truck—”
“With no engines,” Buzz says.
“But we have the airship engines.”
“How is that going to work?” Sondra asks.
“We use the ballonets,” I say. “Fill them with as much gas as we can manage, attach them to the truck.”
“Will that lift off of the ground?” Sondra asks.
“No,” I say. “But it doesn’t need to. It will lighten the truck, with all of us on it, and let us go quicker. It will also give us a way to rig the engines up. We can use something as a frame to mount them on and lift them with the ballonets.”
“That sounds ridiculous,” Buzz says.
“Maybe,” I say. “But it should get us out of here. And moving. Does anyone else have a better idea?” I look around at all of their faces, blank or skeptical. “Please, if you have anything, speak up now, before the Ferals widen that gap and get in to kill us all.”
“It’s a stupid plan, Coretta,” Buzz says.
Coretta nods. “But it might be all we have,” she says. “How fast do you think it will go?”
“If I can tinker with the engines, and we’re not worried about keeping them for very long, at least seventy kilometers per hour, maybe more.”
“Is that fast enough?”
“It’ll depend on acceleration. I’m used to being in the air,” I say. “We’ll have more weight, and while the wheels will help us a little, they’ll provide some drag, so it will take us a little while to get up to speed. And the Ferals will be on top of us as we’re trying.” I shrug. “It won’t be easy.”
Coretta turns to her people. “I’m not your leader,” she says. “You all need to decide if you want to do this. But I think this is our best shot. Who is with me . . . us?”
Ellie moves forward and stands next to Coretta first. Then Tomas says, “Me.” Sondra nods and stands up from where she’s sitting on a wooden crate. They all look at Buzz. “Okay,” he says. “But I still don’t trust him.”
“Noted,” I say. “I’m going to need you all to help. If you know how to use tools, come forward now. I’ll need some of you filling the ballonets, some of you helping me to rig up the engines and the structures. And we have to move quickly.”
“Just tell us what you need us to do,” Coretta says.
So I do. I split them up, assign them to tasks. I keep Tomas with me, because he’s the strongest and because he knows his way around machines and tools. I assign Buzz to Coretta, because I think that he needs to be kept in line and she’s probably the one to do it. That leaves Ellie and Sondra together. I put them on the ballonets. Ellie listens to everything that I say with a serious face.
“I take it that none of these people are your parents,” I say.
She shakes her head.
“The attack?” I ask.
She looks at her shoes, thick black rubbery-looking boots that seem comfortable and practical. “My dad,” she says. “My mom died when I was little.”
I nod. “Same.”
She lifts her head up, her chin jutting out defiantly, and meets my eyes. “I’m not going to let them kill me.”
The trace of a smile lifts the corners of my mouth. “Same,” I say.
Sondra returns from straightening out the ballonets and the connecting ties. I show them how to fill them and how to check for holes. There’s enough extra to patch them if necessary. We’re not going for permanence here, just enough to get us free and to some other mode of transportation or safety.
“So, a doctor, huh?” I ask Sondra.
She nods. “For all of Phoenix.” Her face clouds over, and she returns to the ballonets.
“Well, I’m sure these people will be glad you made it,” I say. “And I’m sure there will still be work for you to do.”
“Isn’t there always?” she says.
“You been here long?” I ask.
“Less than a year,” she says. “I used to be in a settlement out east. Was a doctor there. Then . . . the Virus got in.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“I ran. Wandered for a bit. Then I heard about Phoenix. That it was welcoming newcomers. That it gave people a fair shot. I figured I could barter my way in. Been here ever since.”
“They welcomed everyone?” I ask.
She nods. “As long as you were willing to work hard for the community. That was the chief guiding principle of the town, according to Mr. Lincoln. It didn’t matter what you did before, what your past was, as long as you worked for the community and helped your fellow townspeople.”
“And what if you didn’t?” I ask.
She meets my eyes. “Then you couldn’t stay,” she said. “Lincoln was kind. He was generous. But he didn’t tolerate troublemakers.”
“Seems like I might have liked this man,” I say.
“Everyone liked him,” Sondra says.
I’m about to say something about the Valhallans, but I don’t. It’s clear that these people are grieving. Just being here feels intrusive somehow.
I make sure Sondra is doing okay with her part and then move on to Coretta. She and Buzz are working on the bed of the truck. Buzz glares at me as I approach, but he doesn’t say anything. Coretta looks up from where she’s bolting a metal rod into the frame of the truck. “Like this?” she asks.
“Looks right,” I say. “You do any working with machines before?”
She shakes her head and wipes away some perspiration with her sleeve. “I’m more of an administrator.”
“That get you very far?” I ask.
“Here it did,” she says. “I was a teacher, I guess you could call it. Back where I started.”
“Teaching what?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Reading. History, such as I knew it. Really anything I could learn.”
I help her move the next rod into place. “Why aren’t you still there?”
She holds the bottom of the rod as Buzz bolts it in. “They stopped valuing my teaching. It wasn’t bringing in any food. Or fuel. And so I had to go.”
“They kicked you out?”
She pushes a stray piece of hair out of her face. “Let’s just say their feelings were clear on the subject. I wandered for a bit, like a lot of the people here, and then I heard about this place. Phoenix. And Lincoln Carter. He had printed these pamphlets and convinced some airship captains to carry them, couriers, too. He would give a bonus to anyone bringing new people in.”
“He encouraged people to come?”
Coretta sits back. “He wanted to build something new. A place built on hope.” Her face darkens. “I told him more than once it was a risky proposition, but he always convinced me that it was worthwhile. He brought me in to help plan the town, help set up a system that would work for us.”
I help her with the next rod. “It sounds incredibly fragile.”
She sighs. “In a way it was. But we made it stronger. The people who came here, they really wanted something new. Most of them, at least. Those who didn’t, we dealt with as we needed. Lincoln gave everyone a second chance. Always. But after that . . .” She inhales deeply, then lets it out. “He may have been an idealist, but he wasn’t blind to the world we live in.”
“Sounds like a pretty great man.”
“He was,” she says, without hesitation, with complete conviction. “Which I guess is why they came for him.”
“How did they even know about him?”
She hangs her head. “Lincoln and his pamphlets. At first it was getting people to come to Phoenix. But once we had our thriving community, he wasn’t satisfied to stop there. He always said he wanted that feeling of hope to spread outside our walls. He saw other settlements being terrorized by the Valhallans, saw what they were doing everywhere. He . . . he started speaking out a
gainst them.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Some of our people warned him not to. Said we shouldn’t attract their attention. But Lincoln wouldn’t listen. He said we should stand up against tyrants.” Tears fill her eyes. “And, God help me, I agreed with him.”
I put my hands on her shoulders. “This isn’t your fault,” I hear myself saying. “The Valhallans are evil. They’re terrors. And they need to be stopped.”
She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yeah. Well. Who’s going to do that?”
I don’t have an answer for her, so I leave her to her work and return to Tomas.
* * *
Tomas and I work on getting the engines hooked up and suspended from a frame that will sit on top of the rig that Coretta and Buzz are putting together. “You know engines?” I ask Tomas.
“A little,” he says. I’m getting the impression that he doesn’t talk much.
“What did you do before coming to Phoenix?”
He looks up at me, his face mournful. “Not a lot of good,” he says, then returns to his work. I shrug and go back to it too. Then he says, “I done some things I’m not too proud of. Did what I thought I needed to do to survive. But it ate at me. Then I hear Lincoln. The word he’s spreading. And it seems like he’s offering, well . . . a second chance. A chance to . . . to move in a different direction. So I came here.” He shrugs. “Now things are different.”
I nod as I digest all of this. “That’s great,” I say. But I’m wondering what that means for him now. If this place and that man gave him that second chance, that new life, what happens now that everything’s fallen to shit?
We don’t talk much more. We just work. The storehouse has an acetylene torch, which we use to weld the frames together. It’s really the one thing allowing this to all come together. I work with Tomas, who seems to know how to use it, and together we build the frame and attach the engines. It’s an ugly construction, solar panels bolted on in places, fuel lines hanging free. Thankfully, there’s some fuel here that works in the engines. They kick up quite a bit of noise, and it revs the Ferals into a frenzy, but they work and that’s all I care about at the moment.