The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk

by Sean Wallace

  “Have you explored this ship?” she asked them. Diamond Lil shook her head, but Strawberry nodded.

  “That’s how I . . .” Strawberry wrapped her arms around herself as if she had gone cold. “After they . . . made me . . . and they . . .” She stuttered, squeezed her eyes shut, and bowed her chin to her chest.

  “Strawberry. It’s okay. Tell me.”

  “I woke in a small room,” she said in a voice just above a whisper. “Dark, cold. Like a closet. I was alone so I . . . left. I wasn’t going to stay, when I knew . . .” She looked back up at Dorothy. “It wasn’t right. I’m not right. I’m paint, for god’s sake. I thought if I . . . if I could get back to the Liberator.” She looked back the way they had come. “I thought I could press myself back into the metal. Go back where . . . where I belonged.”

  A painted pin-up, thinking actual thoughts and breathing actual air. Dorothy supposed it didn’t matter how such a thing was possible; it was, and they could only move forward.

  “All right.” Dorothy looked at Diamond Lil, whose eyes had gone wide with alarm at Strawberry’s words. “All right.”

  They made a slow and thorough search of the hangars adjacent to that which held Dorothy’s Corsair, discovering planes both broken and whole, and other pin-up girls peeled from their noses. The alarm Dorothy felt at the sight of them never lessened; each time was strange, new, because the girls should have been flat, without dimension, but they were not. They were wholly dimensional women, save for the lack of knowledge they possessed. No past, brought to life by the stroke of a brush, kindled into another form of life by the gremlins, but to what purpose?

  The women proved up to any task Dorothy assigned them, as if they had been waiting for such a purpose; the hangars on the deck were so numerous the women easily could have continued searching without cease, but Dorothy was painfully reminded that the time spent here was passing more quickly on Earth. It might not matter for these painted caricatures, but it mattered to her, to her family, and Minsky. The first time Dorothy had lost an hour in here, Japan had attacked the United States. What might come this time? She shuddered to think.

  The hangars appeared endless and Dorothy reminded herself this was but a fraction of one level. She was never not aware of the bulk of the vessel around them, of the number of hangars she had seen on her way out the first time through. How many planes, how many pin-up girls?

  At the end of the main corridor, an inclined ramp curved down, into the level below. Given the soot and oil splatters on the floor, Dorothy wondered if planes had been brought through here, but it didn’t make sense, given the way the gremlins had hauled her own on board.

  From below came the creak of protesting metal and a barked curse.

  She looked back at the pin-ups. “Wait here.”

  She watched with a little pride as the women flanked the ramp, guarding all access points behind her. Dorothy moved down the ramp, holding her pistol before her, and another curse echoed through the halls. She didn’t dare hope the voice was one she knew, but it somehow was.

  The nose of an aircraft was wedged into the corridor, as if someone had shared Dorothy’s own thought, but the P-51 Mustang’s wings were lodged into the wall, the ramp proving not wide enough after all. Under the broad wings stood Ruth Avery, hands wrapped around a wrench so that she could beat on the metal in frustration.

  “Avery?”

  The radar operator jumped at the sound of her name, whirling around with her wrench held high. Her face was streaked with oil and soot, but her plump cheeks still lifted in a smile, a smile that washed over Dorothy like sunshine.

  “Just me, Avery.”

  “Sakata!” She lowered the wrench, but didn’t move from her position under the wing. “Jesus, I thought—” Her voice broke. “I thought they got you, too. The Black Dragon was gone and Ina . . .”

  Dorothy closed the distance between them, recalling the way she had woken the first time here, both Ina and Ruth taken from the experimental Black Dragon. Guessing from what Minsky had told her, Ruth had only been here three hours, when in the world beyond months had passed.

  “Where’s Ina?” Dorothy looked beyond the Mustang, into the corridor that sprawled away from the ramp they occupied; everything was dark, broken, and vast.

  “Ina’s—” Ruth’s voice broke and Dorothy wasn’t sure she’d ever heard such emotion from the woman. “Ina’s gone.”

  The word was worse than “dead”, or even “taken.” Each conveyed something slightly different and “gone” was terrible, it kept too much hidden. Ina was simply no longer here, and Dorothy bowed her head, trying to be okay with this idea. She’d had more than a year to come to terms with leaving them behind, but never had. This loss was like a fresh blow in her gut, robbing her of breath.

  “Did you find the Black Dragon, Sakata? Did you—” Ruth’s mouth twisted and she shoved the wrench into a pocket. She closed her eyes, letting her head rock to the side, and a pained expression creased her filthy face. “They say they’re stuck, can you hear that racket?”

  Dorothy didn’t hear anything, but for the distant rumble of what might have been an engine. “My plane is a level up, Ruth. We should—”

  “Blow this thing sky-high,” Ruth whispered. “It’s the only way out, for everyone. Everyone.” Her eyes rolled open and she stared at Dorothy. “How can you not hear that? Incessant sizzle in my head. They’re close. Did you see them? Like black water and tree bark. Not Germans. You said—” Her brow creased. “You brought a plane? They’re stuck and we can unstick ’em – c’mon!”

  As Ruth grabbed Dorothy by the arm, Dorothy decided explanations about time discrepancies could wait. Ruth hauled her up the ramp, maintaining a swift pace until she saw the pin-up girls guarding the top. She startled at the sight of them, then hauled Dorothy right on through.

  “Plane. Now. Tell me it’s loaded.”

  “Tell me what you’re hearing, Avery,” Dorothy countered, pulling arm free of the woman’s hold.

  Ruth seemed unable to hold still. She paced a circle around Dorothy, watching the pin-up girls all the while. “Ever since we got here, crackling in my brain.” She scrubbed her hands through her hair, eyes swinging back to Dorothy. “Ina heard it too – before they . . . They made her fall to pieces, Dorothy.” Her voice hitched and she pressed the back of one hand against her mouth before continuing. “Made her crumple like an old mushroom, stretched her thin, tried to talk with her mouth, but—”

  She broke off, her entire body heaving as though she meant to vomit. She strode away from the pin-ups and Dorothy, shaking. Dorothy glanced at the other girls, none of which seemed inclined to follow Ruth; they only watched in silent confusion. Dorothy followed Ruth, feeling time running out as they lingered here.

  “Ruth, tell me.”

  “They’re stuck!” Ruth spat the words and it was plain to Dorothy how difficult speech was becoming for her. Every word was forced, spittle wetting her lips. “Inside my head, inside our atmosphere, inside them.” She cast a venomous look at the pin-ups as they began to walk closer. “The gremlins will be inside everything given long enough and they just want out. Tell me you have a loaded plane. Tell me.”

  Dorothy looked at the pin-ups with new eyes – the pin-ups were the gremlins? She watched the way they moved as a group, not seeing only Strawberry and only Diamond Lil, but the whole group of them. Throughout, every motion was mirrored, the flow of water and not the motion of individuals. Dorothy grasped Ruth’s arm and pulled her closer, moving down the hall she and the pin-ups had cleared only minutes before.

  “An explosion knocks them out?” Dorothy asked. Keeping hold of Ruth with one hand, she drew her pistol with the other. She recalled Strawberry’s words, “Go back where . . . Where I belonged.” Was that all the gremlins wanted?

  “Blow it s-sky-high,” Ruth said.

  With the pin-ups closing in, Dorothy tightened her hold on Ruth’s arm and ran, trusting she would keep the pace. She did. Behind them, the p
in-ups moved with a whispering sound, water over leaves, and Dorothy tried to shut it out, even as she felt it creeping into her mind. The sound was cold fingers prying at the edges of her skull until she screamed out.

  Out, the sound said.

  Stuck, the sound said.

  You abominations, the sound said.

  Dorothy wheeled around and fired on the women.

  As one, the women broke apart in an explosion of black water. Improbable gowns and hairstyles and heels burst apart as they flooded the deck, no more real than they ever had been. The water did not change form, did not rise up to confront Dorothy and Ruth, so Dorothy kept running toward the hangar where she’d left the Corsair.

  “Sweet salvation,” Ruth whispered when she saw the planes in the hangar. “I got the Mustang.”

  Dorothy let her go, running for the Corsair she’d brought in. And if the Mustang failed? Had been sitting too long? It was only three hours, Dorothy told herself. Only three. Beneath her feet, the deck rumbled and Dorothy launched herself at the Corsair’s wing. The plane felt more steady, even if the craft around it was protesting.

  Much as it had been the first time, Dorothy had no time for proper pre-fight checks and prayed the plane would do its job. “Hold together, baby,” she whispered as if those words had become part of the ritual. She glanced out the windows to Ruth, and, with the radio still dead, gestured with two fingers toward the end of the hangar. They would taxi out the way she had before, but this time, they’d leave a souvenir. Or five.

  The Corsair was fully loaded – she had insisted and Minsky hadn’t balked – and Dorothy could see the Mustang was, too. Whatever the gremlins had tried to access in an attempt at communication or travel, they hadn’t tried the countless weapons on the aircraft they’d swallowed. Perhaps it was easier to understand and manipulate hands and mouths, but as this idea crossed Dorothy’s mind, the cold press against her skull returned and with it, the scramble of gremlin hands inside her.

  Screaming did not dislodge the sensation; her awareness of the plane dwindled even as it began to taxi forward, and all that remained was the cold seep of black water against her bones. Inside her skull, every thought was buoyed by the brack.

  Just out, the brack whispered.

  Split the sky, the cold demanded.

  Dorothy pushed the sensation away, as if sweeping back a blanket on a hot summer’s night. It was heavy and clung, but she kicked free. Nausea drenched her and the world threatened to go black again.

  “Y-you can vomit or you can f-fly this goddamn plane, Sakata,” she said, if only to hear her own voice.

  The familiarity erased the sibilant strangeness of the gremlins, the edge of the hangar sharp and abrupt, and the Corsair was falling – flying. She couldn’t tell which until she felt the air as she had never felt it before, a living and breathing thing much as she was. A living and breathing thing that she knew how to move through. She dived down the corridors of metal, the Corsair steady under her control. At her side, Ruth followed her lead.

  The gremlin vessel was as Dorothy remembered, an obstacle course of metal and peril. But her hands were steady on the stick, guiding the Corsair as if they had flown the course a hundred times before. She thought of Ina, of other possible pilots within the structure, but pressed these notions back; if she stopped to consider all the reasons for not blowing this thing to hell, they would never stop it from swallowing more and more aircraft.

  Black tendrils of barely contained water made themselves known before Dorothy few much further. They obscured the windshield for a long breath before pulling themselves together into arms. Impossibly thin, oblong, naked; the gremlins Dorothy remembered from her first time aboard began to whisper their demands in chilled tones. She could not help but notice the way they avoided the propellers – as if they had learned a lesson from the first time.

  Dorothy fought to follow the curving corridor, mindful of only that, of needing to drop the bombs before they exited. She could not yet see daylight around the curve, could see no end to the course, and told herself to stay steady, stay true. The gremlins swarmed in more numbers now, blackening her windshield until she could not see. She refused to let panic tighten her hands; instead, she let loose a missile, which corkscrewed deeper into the ship and burst apart in a cloud of gremlins. They fell shrieking, dissolving as if they had never been. The others withdrew to study from a distance, rushing in her wake.

  “Good to know,” she said.

  She banked around the next curve and saw the exit she had been seeking; daylight burned bright path down this corridor, the blinding warmth allowing Dorothy to breathe easier. How much time would have passed? What of her family and the camps? Her throat tightened.

  At her side, Ruth gave her the thumbs up and Dorothy echoed it. They were good to go, and she let Ruth loose her bombs first, following quick on her tail. The shadow of the Mustang swept over the Corsair as they flew toward the portal, and then, a rushing tide of gremlins.

  Dorothy could not tell if they were trying to push the plane out or pull her back in; she felt a final ghostly coldness cross her skull and drain down her neck as she dropped every bomb she carried into the metal maw behind her. As the bombs began to blossom in the belly of the beast, the coldness departed as if swallowed.

  The Corsair burst from the vessel into blue skies and Dorothy spied Ruth’s Mustang already a fair distance ahead. Dorothy moved toward her, and they turned in tandem, wanting eyes on the massive storm. Dorothy expected the entire thing to erupt in a violent tornado of fire, but the explosions were more contained than that, rocking the entire thing loose rather than destroying it outright. Every bomb they set off ignited another inside the vessel, each explosion vaporizing the clouds that cloaked it.

  The clouds disintegrated to reveal what looked more like an untethered and floating city than a singular ship. Dorothy had never seen its like – it was larger than four air carriers – dozens upon dozens of structures crafted from space-worn metal rising from a ragged platform of roaring engines. The dark walls were occasionally pierced by what appeared to be windows, some glowing with light, while smoke vented from spires and other rooftop structures. The base of the city vessel exhaled a massive cloud of black smoke as a fighter squadron screamed its approach. The radio crackled back to life.

  Dorothy was jolted from the strange poetry of the whole thing by the idea that it might be shot down in the wake of its uncloaking. She reached for her headset, struggled to get it on, to tell them to stop, but even as she did, she saw the upward motion of the ship city. It churned more smoke and debris as it went, clawing a wide path of black smoke across the summer-blue sky, and before the fighters could intercept, it was gone. The entire world shuddered as the vessel burst through the atmosphere, dead planes trailing in its wake.

  Without the city ship’s influence, the planes plummeted to Earth. Dorothy could only watch from a safe distance as they did, guiding her own plane back to Mines Field. In her headset as she neared, she heard the now-familiar rumble of Minsky’s voice.

  “—everything going to take you eight months, Sakata?”

  She closed her eyes for a long moment, only breathing as the plane rumbled around her. She knew landing would change everything and she didn’t want everything to change. She wanted, very much, to keep flying until she ran out of sky, and then go a little further.

  “I’m usually . . . much quicker,” she eventually said, his laughter like thunder in her ears.

  When she landed, everything was much as she had left it; the war was not over and her people were not free, even if she had rattled the gremlins loose. London, Tokyo and Berlin had all reported clear skies ever since Dorothy’s “recon” mission; sometimes, Dorothy told Minsky and Avery over a beer one night, recon took a little longer than normal. Sometimes.

  Dorothy wanted to ask Minsky about the camps, but their administration was out of his hands. She saw how this weighed on him, his eyes saying things he often could not; she saw how it bowed hi
s shoulders and set his jaw every time their paths crossed. She supposed it should have been enough that her own family was free, that for her effort they had been allotted a small house with a beautiful garden, a soft lawn, and a view of the ocean. Her parents were safe and so too her aunt, but it wasn’t enough.

  Despite all she had done, they took her license and considered her an enemy alien, ineligible for flight. And she knew they watched her. Whether through Minsky or other means, they watched, just as she always watched the skies.

  Ruth was given much the same; Ruth, who couldn’t wrap her mind around the time variance between Earth and the gremlin vessel. She felt as though the world had moved on, so stayed in the skies as much as they let her. Even among the WASPs, she was a strange creature, often found talking to herself. Voices in her head, she might have said, if they wouldn’t have yanked her planes for the honesty. When she and Dorothy drank, it was in a shared silence that neither found uncomfortable or in need of breaking.

  It was no surprise then, that it was Ruth and Minsky who found her after she’d stolen her way into a Mines Field hangar, planning to take a Black Widow on a little night flight. She was admiring the lines, so like the experimental XD-2 she and Ruth and Ina had taken up, but sleeker, darker, more ready for war.

  She looked at them and they at her, and if they ever contemplated telling her no, if they ever contemplated tackling her to the ground and turning her over to the MPs, they didn’t say a word. Ruth slid under the plane’s belly, cracked the hatch, and stepped inside. Dorothy looked at Minsky, eyebrows raised. Some of the horror was gone from his eyes, even if she felt it still lingering about his edges; he needed this as much as she did. To fly, to be free for a little while.

  “Pretty certain we haven’t got all night,” he said. He opened the hatch to the front compartment and climbed inside, taking the gunner’s seat.

  Dorothy cranked the propellers, then followed Minsky inside, stowing the ladder and securing the hatch before buckling herself in. There was a low tremor in her hands, that old excitement she’d always known after climbing into a cockpit. She pulled the shoulder harness tight and exhaled.