Raise the Red Flag

by Eric Del Carlo

  He stood beside the window, letting the darkness thicken around him. Again he was struck by the negligent attitude of this camp. Inside this flimsy hovel, a supposed officer was unguarded, though these people were on—for them—a wartime footing. Hamilton had been listening closely and had heard no one else inside with Turnbull, who occasionally let out a phlegmy cough. Sometimes papers rustled when he wasn’t compulsively fidgeting with the crystal.

  Hamilton had put his bloodstained coat back on. Prichard’s handprint looked black in the dusk. It would probably be wise to secure another garment if he and J.C. were to be traveling on the ground, encountering who knew what on the road. It might be best not to be wearing a British Fleet captain’s raiment, however untidy. He told himself it was no betrayal to shed his uniform. An officer wasn’t the costume he wore. He was his spirit, his actions.

  And the time for action was now. He straightened up. He could go in this window and then immediately have to deal with the colonel in a very physical manner, either rendering him unconscious or killing him. Both those actions would likely raise some commotion.

  His other option was to walk boldly in through the entrance.

  Stepping around the little building to its front, he glanced up at the revolutionaries’ flag. It still seemed a queasy coincidence that Prichard’s red print on Hamilton’s whitish coat so replicated the basic design of the banner. Would this be the flag of the rebels’ nation should they succeed in their uprising? What an ugly, violent, primitive standard it would make. Certainly the rest of the civilized world wouldn’t take it or the country it represented seriously. An independent America would fail in its infancy.

  Hamilton, raising his hand to knock, realized he was actually conceding the remote possibility of American victory. Why would he even begin to think that achievable for this rabble?

  He knocked on the rough wood door. Without waiting for a reply from within, he entered. An electric lamp sat on a desk. An electricity generator whirred in the corner of the cramped quarters. A stout, nearly hairless man, with a slack expression on his face, hunched over an oblong box fronted with dials and glowing from within. The crystal. The man, who looked fifty years at the least, also had a bottle near at hand. Liquor. Hamilton saw where he’d repeatedly spilled on the papers scattered over the desk.

  Drunk. A drunk Colonel Turnbull. That would make things easier or far more difficult.

  Hamilton stepped forward as the bleary colonel beheld him. He gave the seated man a formal salute, even though he’d seen no one in this camp offer anyone else a salute. He said crisply, “Colonel Turnbull, my name is Archer. I was told to advise you on the frequencies used by the Brit military. With God’s grace and with men like you leading, our fight will succeed. With your permission, sir, I will adjust your crystal set so that you may monitor the enemy’s movements….”

  HE HAD been trained for emergencies, for outlandish contingencies, even. Certainly he was prepared for war. A soldier was shaped around this primary premise, and all else arose from it.

  But potential wartime scenarios were presented to officers in the course of their academy training, and unlike physical drills, these took the form of hypothetical exercises in the classroom. An instructor might postulate open hostilities with Spain, with Greece, with Kabulistan, and the lesson would proceed from there. Tactics were debated. Imaginary forces were marshaled and sent into battle. Certainly an uprising in the Colonies was discussed. It was a pet topic. A pastime, almost. Fleet boys were supposed to be in love with the notion, as it would mean a day and night course of aerial barrages on helpless American targets, while the Royal Cavalry and Royal Infantry would have to grapple on the ground in more manly fashion.

  Hamilton once saw a pair of officers in training—one Fleet, one Infantry—get into a nose-bloodying fistfight over which branch would prove braver in such a conjectured conflict. Both men received their commands before Hamilton did.

  Hamilton was done. He left Colonel Turnbull in his command hut. The stout man had passed out, snoring and facedown on his desk. He had never raised any objections to Hamilton’s presence or even to him commandeering the crystal set. Neither had anyone intruded on them while Hamilton absorbed the news being broadcast across the Airborne Fleet frequency.

  Now he knew. Now he had an official picture of this revolution. It was no joke.

  On numb feet he walked through the darkened camp. The people were no longer comical to him. The absence of day combined with what he had learned lent these folk a very sinister aspect. They seemed menacing figures, even as they engaged in the same lollygagging behavior as before. There was, of course, no saying if this were a typical sampling of the rebel forces currently playing havoc with British units all across the Colonies, but that greater army was making its presence decidedly known, according to what he had heard on the crystal.

  That set had no transmission capabilities, so Hamilton couldn’t have called for rescue or for a strike on this site, even if he’d known the map coordinates. For that half hour he could only listen, in mounting horror, to the dispassionate voice as it crisply relayed battle information on the Fleet frequency.

  It seemed much as that Ramona woman had said. There were sabotages and assassinations of key military and political figures. The governor of New Jersey, for instance, was confirmed stabbed to death at a banquet. A major bridge had been dynamited in North Carolina. Fires burned in many cities. An airship had been seized from a dock. Hamilton had winced at this, but it had turned out to be a different vessel than his, a GB-178, and it had been brought down when it opened fire on a shipyard in Virginia.

  The American Operations Headquarters in Richmond was still operational, according to the admirably unemotional dispatcher. Hamilton wasn’t certain he would have been able to keep up such a horrifying litany without a quaver or two creeping into his voice. But that was the English soul: stoicism, imperturbability, no matter the circumstances.

  There were skirmishes, raids, fast assaults, vandalizations. It was war, yes, but it wasn’t war as the Fleet or other branches had truly prepared for. There was no mass of troops to attack. The rebels had no fixed positions. They apparently sprang from nowhere, made their bloodthirsty onslaughts, and disappeared as utterly as they’d arrived. Certainly every foray wasn’t effective. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Colonial Underground personnel had been killed in action already. But the strikes were persistent and widespread enough to have seemingly shaken the whole of the British military posture in the Colonies.

  That meant, in at least a basic sense, that the revolutionaries were succeeding.

  Hamilton looked around for J.C. They needed to get away from here. Hamilton had committed a small act of pilferage when he’d exited the colonel’s office. He had taken the half-empty bottle with him and shoved it inside his soiled coat. He remembered that he’d wanted to be rid of the garment, but he didn’t know if there were extra clothes housed somewhere in this camp, and by now all he wanted was to escape the place.

  As if on cue, J.C. appeared out of the shadows at his elbow. Somewhere in the nearby dark, a fiddle was being scratched by an inelegant bow. J.C. said quietly, “Come along,” which was all Hamilton needed to hear. He followed his companion, entered a structure through a draping canvas, and was shown an electricar, which appeared packed with provisions.

  There was someone else at hand as well, a youth with bushy black hair who looked vaguely familiar. Hamilton started, but J.C. raised a placating hand. “Temporary ally” was all he said. Again, it was enough for Hamilton. The vehicle was smallish, but it would easily hold two. However, they were to be transported outside the camp in the car’s rear storage enclosure.

  Hamilton eyed the tight space dubiously a moment. But he trusted J.C.’s arrangements, however he’d made them. He climbed into the trunk, which opened like a chest. It was cramped enough for one. He looked up. J.C. and the other man stood together. They murmured a few soft words, then, much to Hamilton’s surprise, they kissed. It
was a gentle, unhurried, but unmistakably romantic touching of the lips. Tears shone in the dark-haired man’s eyes.

  J.C. got into the rear storage space. Hamilton and he had to jostle and squirm and entangle themselves so that the other man could shut the hatch, which he finally did with a metal clank.

  In the utter blackness of the enclosure, Hamilton, still stunned, was pressed flush with J.C. Rather than the nearness of the man’s body being arousing or even comforting, Hamilton felt a sudden clutching claustrophobia. Questions brimmed in his mind, but he bit his lip, hard. Who the dark-haired man was and what had passed between him and J.C. were queries that would have to wait.

  He felt J.C.’s breath on his throat. Every breath each of them took pressed them closer together. Hamilton’s knee was jammed between J.C.’s grasping thighs. J.C.’s arm was curled awkwardly around Hamilton’s left shoulder. They must look like rag dolls tossed together in a heap.

  The electric motor started up. The vehicle lurched. In the blackness they were borne along.

  What had that kiss meant? Hamilton bit his lip harder, tasting blood. A second, even more perilous question floated behind that urgent inquiry. What did the kisses mean that Hamilton had shared with J.C.? That one in the New Orleans saloon had obviously been a part of the subterfuge. But when they’d kissed again inside the latrine just a short while ago… that had felt genuine. He had thought real emotions were at play.

  The intense adolescent jealousy was consuming him by the time the electricar halted. He could hear words exchanged. No raised voices, no sounds of alarm. A moment later the vehicle resumed speed. J.C. said nothing the whole while, and though they lay so very entwined, Hamilton felt impossibly distant from him. He might be back here with a sack of potatoes.

  Time was difficult to gauge, but it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before the car stopped again. Footsteps crunched, and with another clang, the trunk sprang open.

  J.C. hopped out. Hamilton emerged more slowly, eyeing the other male, their evident collaborator. He owed this man thanks, of course, and he dutifully put out his hand. They shook. Hamilton waited, with prickling anxiousness, to see if he and J.C. would kiss again. He realized it was the tears that had appeared in the man’s eyes that bothered him as much as anything else. They bespoke of strong feelings. Did the man love J.C.? Did J.C. love him?

  More adolescent nonsense, but Hamilton, to his private chagrin, found he couldn’t help himself. He furtively licked away the dot of blood from his lip.

  The two men didn’t kiss a second time. J.C. was given the ignition key to the vehicle, and the man with the dark hair simply turned and started off into the night on foot. Hamilton didn’t ask if he was going back to the fortlike camp or to some other destination.

  Hamilton looked at the electricar. It was truly a bounty. He saw the supplies—food, water, clothing—piled behind the seats. The dial next to the steering wheel indicated its battery was almost fully charged. They could cover quite some distance in this contraption.

  J.C. grinned. It was his same old grin, impudent, fetching, lighting up his pretty face. But to Hamilton it seemed like stone, the product of some indifferent sculptor’s hasty handiwork. His emotions felt flattened. The numbness of the night was now all-consuming. The Colonies were in rebellion, and J.C. had kissed another man, right before him, with no more consideration than if Hamilton had been a cat or a stick of furniture.

  “You got someplace in mind to go?” J.C. asked, apparently blithely unaware of Hamilton’s inner turmoil.

  Hamilton made to remove his bloodstained coat. Then he remembered the whiskey bottle and drew it out. J.C.’s eyes lit, and he snatched it unceremoniously out of Hamilton’s hand, upending it and drinking several consecutive swallows. He let out a relishing sigh afterward.

  When Hamilton had his coat off, he hesitated a moment, then flung the garment out into the surrounding darkness. He took a jacket of roughly cured brown leather from the bundle of goods and put it on. It fit well. He slipped his pistols into the two side pockets and liked the weight of them there.

  J.C.’s question still hung in the air. “Hamilton?” he finally asked, a first disturbed note in his voice.

  Where to go from here? Hamilton said, “Let’s make for Chicago, shall we.” He held out his hand for the key. “I will pilot.”

  J.C.’s grin renewed itself as he passed over the key. He jumped happily into the passenger seat, guzzling more of the colonel’s liquor. Hamilton got in behind the wheel and started up their vehicle.

  ELEVEN.

  THE BOOZE was very welcome. It brought back the French Quarter, the never-ending bacchanalia, the swirl of people and their inebriated purposeless gaiety. Hamilton didn’t want any of the liquor and was apparently intent on doing the driving, so Jonny was free to slouch back and tip the bottle to his numbing lips.

  In New Orleans he’d had Kane, before that relationship went sour, and he’d had Malcolm, who had been diverting enough. But the Quarter also reminded Jonny of the time before all this revolutionary disruption. He found himself wishing all that rebellious talk had stayed just talk. Impotent grousing he could handle and even occasionally participate in. The violent overthrow of the Brits was another matter. It was unsettling, on a primal level, to know the continent was being reshaped all around him. Win or lose, Americans would pay a heavy price for this uprising.

  And what would happen to Hamilton? Jackyank or not, he was a Brit. Worse, a soldier. If he fell into enemy hands, he would be in mortal danger.

  Enemy hands? Jonny blinked out at the passing night. Was he thinking of his own people as the enemy? Not that he was any revolutionary—he’d been truthful with Hamilton about that—but he was certainly American. Or, at the very least, Colonial. Where did his loyalties lie… if he really had any?

  The liquor kept these questions from troubling him too deeply. Hamilton had found a road of sorts. The electricar was equipped with lamps that shone beams of light out ahead. Another black country night had closed in, with no citified glow to soften the sharp, icy points of the stars.

  “You know which way we’re going?” he asked idly. He had gotten general geographical information from Gus and had passed it to Hamilton. He was still vaguely dismayed that they’d traveled so far in that doomed airship. Those craft could cross seas, he knew, reach the other continents and their foreign lands. Machines had made the world far more accessible. They had improved the general lot. Too bad people were the same selfish, greedy creatures.

  It took him a moment to realize Hamilton hadn’t answered his question. It wasn’t an important one, of course. Even he could spot the North Star and see they were heading northward, which was where Chicago lay.

  “Hamilton?” He looked to the man, finding his eyes set on the rough track—possibly an old wagon trail—and a brooding deadness to his expression. “Something wrong?”

  Still no reply. Jonny reached over, meaning to touch his arm, but the car jounced, and his reflexes were somewhat muffled by the alcohol, and his hand alit on Hamilton’s thigh.

  “Don’t touch me!” Hamilton said sharply, and then his features resumed their stolid cast and he said tonelessly, “Don’t touch me while I’m driving. We’re going north. Is there anything else you need to know?”

  It was nothing like the semiplayful caustic banter they’d engaged in previously. Jonny was annoyed. This reminded him of the miffed behavior of adolescence, of squabbles and spats he’d had with his earliest lovers. But why would Hamilton be acting so—

  Oh. Gus. They had kissed, and Hamilton had seen. At the time Jonny hadn’t thought anything of it. What was a kiss? Even the sex with Gus wasn’t anything especially important to him. It had been a necessary ploy, a means to secure this very vehicle they were riding in. Christ almighty, Hamilton was jealous?

  His first impulse, which was to tease the man, vanished before it could even fully form in his mind. Jonny felt a sudden keen sensitivity cutting through the haze of the booze. Hamilton’s fe
elings mattered.

  “I’m sorry,” Jonny said. Emotion had tightened his throat.

  “Sorry for what?” Hamilton said flatly, eyes remaining on the road.

  “Sorry for being… inconsiderate. I had to give something to get this car, and I didn’t have anything but myself. Hell, that’s more or less all I’ve ever really had in this lifetime….”

  “No biographical woes, if you don’t mind.”

  Jonny caught himself before he responded tartly. He tried to see this from Hamilton’s point of view. From what he knew of the man’s life, it had been a lonely one, with few opportunities to express his natural inclinations with other men. It made sense that his emotional equipment would be less sophisticated. The Brits might dominate the world with their modern technology, but this man was still in the Iron Age as far as feelings went.

  “I had to do it, Hamilton.”

  “It’s Archer. At least for the time being.”

  “Archer. See? Always good to have an alias handy. And J.C.? That stands for Jonathan Callahan. Jonny.” It seemed necessary to offer the man something.

  Hamilton finally shot him a glance. “Jonny,” he said, then returned his eyes to his driving. He kept up the stone-faced front.

  Again Jonny was annoyed. This time he decided to let some of it out. “Okay. Yeah. I made a stitch with that Gus fellow. I had his spout in my mouth, and then he wanted mine in his. Want to know something, Archer? I had to picture you to come with him. That’s right. It was his sucking mouth, but it’s your damned face I imagined shooting into!”

  He turned away, suddenly flushed, narrow chest rising and falling rapidly. He was feeling some of that adolescent testiness himself, apparently.

  The brakes sighed, and the buzzing vehicle eased to a halt. He heard Hamilton shift in his seat, and then a hand gently cupped his shoulder and squeezed. “I… I’m the one who’s sorry. Maybe if I’d had a little warning, I—No. Never mind. I’ve behaved like a child. Sorry… Jonny.”