The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk

by Sean Wallace

  “Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” I said.

  * * *

  Dawn came slowly, filtered through the haze of smoke and a sense of dread. Like the sky was a predator waiting to pounce.

  In daylight, the tank looked even more anthropomorphic. The engine heart burned, the cannons could be raised and lowered like arms. The articulated treads had bolts above them that looked very much like knees. A single, slotted viewport in the chassis stared like a cyclopean eye. The machine even carried a bandolier of spare shells across its chest, just to drive the point home.

  Pedro was stoking the fire back to life when an unmistakable, mechanical rumble shook in the distance – the sound of an army on the move. Enrique entered the personal tank through a hatch in the back of the chassis. The engine coughed back to life.

  Joe knelt at the rise sheltering the camp and stared through the binoculars. “It’s one of Franco’s patrols, coming this way.”

  Following the path of destruction from the crushed battalion, looking for the enemy that had done such a thing.

  Pedro laughed, as he seemed to in reaction to everything. “Now you can see first hand what Don Quixote can do!”

  I had a thought. “Let me come along. Let me ride with that thing.”

  Pedro looked taken aback. Even Enrique poked his head out of the hatch to look, though his expression was blank.

  “There’s barely enough room for Enrique – you can’t do anything there,” Pedro said.

  I talked fast. “I can write about it. Get you publicity back home – in American newspapers. Imagine if some big investor decided to make you an offer. You’d be famous – inventors of the most amazing war machine in history. Famous – and rich. But only if I’m able to write about it. Really write about it. First-hand testimony.”

  Pedro and Enrique regarded each other, and whatever secret signal passed between them, I didn’t catch it.

  “You can ride with Enrique,” Pedro said finally. “But only if you write about it. Get us those investors, yes? The money?”

  So much for the socialist ideals of the loyalists.

  I shrugged on my jacket, checking for my pencil and notebook. Joe came over and grabbed my sleeve. “You know what you’re doing?”

  “Sure I do. Just remember to tell everyone how brave I was if I don’t make it back.”

  “Brave? Is that what you’re calling it?”

  I grinned. “We can call it anything we want, we’re the ones writing about it.”

  I knew exactly what I was doing. I climbed up to the back of the machine, where Enrique held out his hand to assist me through the hatch in the chassis.

  Don Quixote had enough room for two – barely. Enrique settled onto a board that had been bolted in front of a control panel. There wasn’t a seat for me, so I perched behind the driver in a narrow indentation left by the hatch. My knees were jammed up to my chest, and I had to reach up to hold on to a bar welded above my head. The air inside was thick, close, and full of the stink of burned oil. The thing didn’t seem to have any ventilation – the armor was sealed up tight. The slit above the controls offered the driver the narrowest of views. I couldn’t see a thing, only the metal interior, scarred with hammer blows and smeared with soot. Sweat broke out all over me, and I had trouble catching my breath.

  Enrique didn’t seem to notice the burning air. He pulled on several of a dozen levers and turned a handful of toggles. The vibrations rattling through the machine changed, growing more severe. The engine throbbed beneath my feet, a burning furnace ready to explode.

  Then, the machine began to move. The chassis lurched straight up, like an elevator jerking hard to the next floor. Gears and drive belts squealed, treads rumbled, and the tank rolled forward. The motion was rough, jarring, like driving too fast over gravel, swaying this way and that as we passed over some rut or chunk of vegetation. Incredibly, we were moving. My teeth rattled in my jaw. Enrique sat calmly, his hands steady on the controls, moving levers in what seemed to be a random sequence. He was driver, gunner, mechanic, engineer and commander all in one. Any normal tank would have needed six men to do all those jobs. He turned another set of toggles, and a new set of gears engaged; the chassis tipped back, as if the machine was now looking skyward.

  I opened the hatch a crack to steal a look. The side-mounted gun turrets had ratcheted into place, aiming toward the approaching enemy. I shut the hatch again.

  By lifting myself up, I could see around Enrique’s head and catch a glimpse of the outside through the slit in the metal. The view was like flashing on individual frames of film without seeing the whole picture: a tank motoring toward us, artillery guns lined up, trucks circling, troops moving into position, and among them all the red and gold of the fascist flag.

  Enrique jumped up, throwing me against the back wall of the chassis. The driver pulled on a lever jutting above him, and an explosion burst, enveloping Don Quixote in a storm of thunder, the cannons firing. He pulled on a second lever, and a second shell launched. I ducked to try and glimpse what was happening through the slit, but I saw only smoke. I heard distant detonations, and screams.

  The Spaniard kept pulling on the overhead levers, and shells kept firing. He must have had an automatic mechanism loading ammunition. And if the Germans got ahold of that bit of technology . . .

  I tore a piece of paper out of my notebook, wadded up two small bits, and shoved them in my ears. That only cut out the sound a little; I could still feel every vibration in my bones. I was growing dizzy from it.

  The cannon acted like Gatling guns. Firing six-inch explosive shells, over and over. Enrique’s tank churned along the edge of the battlefield, swiveling the chassis to move the gun, raking the enemy with cannon fire. This second battalion didn’t last long.

  An occasional bullet pinged off Don Quixote’s armored chassis, but did no damage. The vulnerable bits of the mechanism were too well protected. Enemy artillery launched a few shells before Don Quixote’s cannon destroyed them, but the explosives detonated dozens of feet away. The personal tank’s small size and mobility made it difficult to target.

  This thing just kept getting more dangerous.

  Then it was over. The tank stopped rolling and settled on its treads. Enrique powered down the engine, which softened to a low growl.

  I opened the back hatch and tumbled out into the fresh air. Relatively fresh – the stink of gunpowder and blood rose around me. But at least there was a breeze. My ears kept rattling, seemed as if they would rattle for ages.

  Pedro and Joe ran toward us. They must have seen the whole thing – they’d have had a better view than I’d had. Joe had probably gotten some splendid photos.

  “Ha! You did it again, Enrique! Bueno!” Pedro called. Enrique was climbing down from the chassis more gracefully. “And you, Hank – did you get a good story?”

  I hadn’t written a word. But I had a good story.

  “Guys, both of you, get over here. Let me get a picture of you in front of the battlefield,” Joe said, gesturing the Spaniards together and pointing his camera.

  I leaned against the tank, Don Quixote. I had a story, but I didn’t know how to tell it. Or if I even could. Instead, I made a plan.

  Finding footholds on leg joints, gripping bolts, gears, and the window slot on the front of the chassis, I climbed to the front of the tank. Balancing there, I reached to the bandolier of artillery shells and pulled out two left over from the battle, tucking them in the pockets of my jacket.

  By following exhaust pipes, I found my way to the engine, and the fuel tank hidden behind armor plating under the chassis. A simple sliding door gave access to it for refueling. Enrique obviously wasn’t expecting sabotage.

  I jammed one of the shells between a set of pistons operating the tank’s legs, and dropped the second in the fuel tank. I twisted up a handkerchief into a makeshift fuse and lodged it in the fuel tank door. Then I lit a match.

  Wouldn’t give me much time, but I didn’t need much.

 
; I tried not to look too nervous, to draw suspicions, when I marched over to Joe and grabbed his arm. “We have to get out of here.”

  Joe had been directing Pedro and Enrique toward a photograph against the backdrop of destruction, and dozens of shattered bodies. The two men were grinning like hunters who’d bagged an eight-point buck.

  The photographer looked at me, confused.

  “We really have to get out of here,” I said.

  “Hey!” Pedro said. “You’re going write about Don Quixote, yes? You write about us? Tell everyone – we can win the war. They’ll see that we’re finally winning and send help!”

  “That’s right,” I said, patting my notebook in my jacket pocket even as I dragged Joe away, back up the rise. “I’ve got it all down, you don’t need to worry! In fact, we need to get back and phone this story to our editor right now. Can’t waste any time!”

  Pedro seemed to accept this explanation and waved us on our way, calling out blessings in Spanish. Enrique just watched us go, through glassy, goggled eyes; he’d never taken them off.

  “Hank, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Just keep walking.”

  The explosion came as we passed into the next bowl of a valley. Good timing, there. We missed the brunt of the shockwave. But the force of it still knocked us both to the ground.

  “Christ, what was that?” Joe scrambled to look behind us. A dome of black smoke was rising into the air.

  Maybe the two Spaniards had had a chance to get away. Maybe they’d been knocked clear by the initial blast. But probably not.

  We watched as the cloud expanded and dissipated. “Maybe that thing wasn’t as well built as they thought,” I observed.

  Joe looked at me. “Then we were lucky to get out of there,” he said, deadpan.

  “Yes, we were, I imagine.”

  We kept walking.

  A winter breeze was blowing, and my jacket didn’t seem able to hold off the chill. I wasn’t sure we were walking toward the truck. For all I knew, that second battalion had confiscated or smashed it. It didn’t matter. We just needed to dodge Franco’s troops, get across the river, then get out of Spain. I listened for the sound of tank treads, truck motors, of a thousand marching bodies, but the world was silent. Wind rustling through dried brush, that was all.

  “I think they could have done it,” Joe said after a half an hour of walking. The Ebro River had appeared, a shining strip of water in the distance. “I think they could have beaten back Franco with that machine, if they’d had enough time.”

  “Then what? They build more, or sell the design to a real manufacturer, and then what? You really want to see those things stomping all over Europe in the next war?”

  “What next war? There isn’t going to be a next war, not after the Munich treaty.”

  I stared at him. Everyone kept telling themselves that. As if this whole debacle in Spain wasn’t the opening salvo. “Let me see your camera a minute.”

  Joe, bless him, handed it right over. I popped the cover and yanked out the yard of film he’d shot, exposing the film, destroying the pictures.

  “Hey!” Joe said, but that was all. I closed the cover and handed the camera back. Somehow, deep down, the photographer must have understood.

  That was why we were all here, wasn’t it? Doing our part to make the world a better place?

  The Little Dog Ohori

  Anatoly Belilovsky

  The young soldier jumps to his feet, snaps to attention.

  “At ease, Comrade Corporal,” the officer says. “And please, sit down.” A white coat hangs off the officer’s shoulders; it hides her shoulder tabs, leaving visible only the caduceus in her lapel.

  The soldier hesitates. The officer leans against the wall; her coat falls off one shoulder, revealing three small stars. The soldier’s eyes widen.

  “Begging Comrade Colonel’s pardon,” he says, and sits down. The movement is slow and uncertain, as if his body fights the very thought of sitting while an officer stands.

  “Sit,” the officer says, more firmly now. “This is an order.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Colonel,” the soldier says, sees a small frown crease the officer’s face, and adds, “I mean, Doctor.”

  The officer smiles and nods. A strand of graying hair escapes her knot and falls to her face; she sweeps it back with an impatient gesture.

  “Carry on,” she says.

  The soldier hesitates again.

  “That’s an order, too,” she says and points to the caduceus in her lapel. “A medical order.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” the soldier says. “I only came to visit; I’m not here as a patient.”

  “She is,” the doctor says and tilts her head at the hospital bed.

  The soldier turns to face the dying woman in the bed, leans toward her, takes her hand, and whispers to her in a language the doctor does not understand.

  * * *

  Cold.

  Lying on the riverbank in a puddle of blood and melting snow, she listens for the sounds of gunfire, the roar of engines, the clatter of tank tracks, anything to say she is not alone. She no longer feels her hands, though she can see her right hand on the trigger of her Tokarev-40, the index finger frozen into a hook. She no longer feels pain where the shell splinter tore into her belly, only cold. Cold comfort, too, in the bodies scattered on the ice beyond the riverbank, eleven black specks against relentless white, eleven fewer Waffen-SS, eleven plus two hundred and three already in the killbook makes two hundred and fourteen fewer who could threaten . . .

  Her mind’s eye projects a glimpse of Selim’s face against the night, then all is dark again.

  She listens, and hears a friendly sound.

  The little dog Ohori is barking.

  “Help . . .” From a throat parched raw through desiccated lips, one of the last small drops of strength drains into the word.

  The barking stops, but silence does not return. There is a noise like leaves fluttering in the wind.

  No, wait. It’s winter; a white cloak for camouflage in the snow. No grass to hide, no leaves to whisper.

  Whisper.

  “Is she . . . ?”

  A woman’s whisper, in Russian.

  “I don’t know.”

  Another voice, a woman, too, or a goddess.

  “Please . . .” Another drop of strength, gone, but now she can see Selim again, him with his great happy crooked smile. She tries to touch it but it is out of reach. Could this be Ogushin, the taker of souls, or the nine-tailed were-fox Kumiho? She can no longer tell what is real and what is not. There is only strength enough to hope:

  . . . Please, little dog Ohori who brings lost loves together . . .

  The darkness deepens . . .

  . . . please, angel Oneuli who watches over orphans, please, Sister Sun and Brother Moon . . .

  . . . please. If only for a moment . . .

  . . . please let me see my family again . . .

  “Were you close, the two of you?” the doctor asks.

  The soldier opens his mouth, closes it again. His eyes grow distant, focus far away.

  “Sorry,” the doctor says. “Stupid of me to ask.”

  The soldier nods. The doctor takes it as “Yes, we were close,” not “Yes, stupid of you to ask.”

  The woman’s breathing is becoming ragged: a burst of rapid gasps, then slow breaths, then rapid again.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor says. “It won’t be long now.”

  The soldier reaches into his tunic pocket, brings out a tattered notepad.

  The doctor bends forward to look at it. “Her diary?”

  “Her killbook,” the soldier answers.

  “Ah,” the doctor says. “I see.”

  The captain’s name, Kryviy, is Ukrainian.

  “Age?” he says.

  “Nineteen,” she answers, a pang of guilt for lying.

  “Ethnicity?”

  “Uzbek,” she says. A smaller pang.

  “Why do
you want to enlist?”

  This is a question she does not expect. This question wouldn’t ever be asked of a man. Or a Great Russian.

  She rifles through a list of plausible lies, and settles on a partial truth: “I want to be a sniper.”

  The captain looks up from his notes. His ice-blue eyes aim at her face. “Sniper?” he says. “Can you see well enough, with those . . .” He squints in imitation of her features.

  She looks out at the sunbaked desert beyond the open window. Some distance away, a truck approaches, raising a plume of dust behind it. She points in its direction.

  “Truck number 43-11,” she says, and looks at the captain again.

  The captain stands up, approaches the window. He watches the truck approach, squints, this time in concentration, and leans out the window.

  “I see the 11,” he says slowly, then, after a pause: “Yes. 43-11.” He returns to his chair, crosses a line off his notes, and writes another. “You’ll do,” he says, and shouts: “Next!”

  The woman’s hand tightens, just enough to see the tiny twitch. The soldier puts the killbook in her hand. Another twitch.

  The doctor leans against the doorjamb. The wood plank creaks. The soldier looks up.

  “It took an hour to pry her from that riverbank,” the soldier says. “Two nurses from the Medical-Sanitary Battalion. In the dark. Under enemy fire.” He shakes his head. “And then they dragged her back to the Division hospital, three kilometers away.” He touches his chest; two of his medals ring together. “No matter what I do, I’ll never be their equal.”

  The doctor’s hands are in the pockets of her tunic. Her fingers itch for something – a cigarette, a scalpel – she worries at the knots in the pocket’s seam, rolls specks of lint into a ball. Surgery is easy, she thinks. Listening is hard.

  She looks at the killbook. “I’ll remember her name. Heroes should never be forgotten.”

  The soldier raises his head, looks straight at her. She sees the hesitation in his eyes, and the crystallization at a decision.

  “That’s not her real name,” he says slowly, and looks at the dying woman again.

  The doctor does, too. She compares the dying woman’s features with the soldier’s, her trained mind catalogs the differences.