Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (47 page)

The wheels still hung in place, revolving in the airflow. At least whatever else happened, Earl wouldn’t kill him once he got back to the ground. He turned to look over his shoulder.

The dirigible’s propellers still turned. But with every turn, they pulled the sturdy rope ladder deeper into the gears. A few more revolutions and the whole thing would be stuck fast.

If he’d had any breath left, he would have laughed too. But
that
had been the easy part.

He faced forward and pulled the plane up for a low pass over the field.

The two dozen motorcars were careening across the prairie meadow, some of them bouncing dangerously high over the grass tussocks. Half of them rumbled right under
Schturming
’s bow. The other half got in close to the stern. Twelve of them—six from each end—stopped long enough to spin all the way around until they were facing away from the Bluff and the other dozen cars.

Jael looked back again and raised her eyebrows, questioningly.

He gave her a nod. “Your turn, kiddo.” Then he eased the plane around for another climb.

Jael tossed the end of one of the long ropes out of the cockpit and let it slip down off the lower wing. She fed it out and kept feeding it as the Jenny screamed back over
Schturming
’s choking props. By the time they reached the motorcars on the far side, Jael had come to the end of the first rope and tossed it out. It hung, beautifully, right over
Schturming
’s propeller shaft, both ends nearly touching the ground below.

He swung the Jenny around to make another pass. Jael waited until they were once again lined up over the propellers, then immediately started spilling the second rope.

Below, the men from the motorcars ran to collect the rope ends and secure them to their bumpers.

Jael dropped the tail end of the second rope, and more of the motorcar drivers raced to secure their ends.

Now to get the prow equally trussed.

Inside
Schturming
, barely visible in the crack between the bottom of the envelope and the top of the gondola, men scrambled, most of them headed aft toward where the propellers strained and groaned against the net.

The dark spot, where the cannon had been, had disappeared.

By the time the significance of that sank in, Hitch was already over the top of the envelope, headed for the bow.

The cannon appeared on the far side. It trundled up its track, headed straight for the Jenny. Two men clambered after it. They were taking no chances with their aim this time—or maybe the pulley system for moving it around still didn’t work. At any rate, as soon as they saw the plane, they started shouting. The cannon stopped. One man reared it up to point at the Jenny. The other man fired her.

Hitch pulled on the stick. The plane pitched up. In the corner of his vision, the cannon exploded, and a great black ball hurtled at them. Every muscle straining, he willed the plane higher. An inch—just a bare inch—was all he needed to escape the dad-blasted thing.

With a mind-numbing thud of displaced air, the ball hammered past. From the feel, it was just beneath the fuselage. The Jenny bobbled in his hand, but that was it.

He held his breath all the way up over the top of the Bluff, then turned around and swept back. If those mugs reloaded and started shooting at the drivers on the ground, this whole thing could get messier than mud in a bare second.

The first set of drivers had caught the ends of the two ropes over the propellers and were securing them to their automobiles. Some of the other men were hurriedly chaining car to car to create a better anchor.

But they were too slow.

Schturming
’s tremendous buoyancy hoisted her skyward. She dragged the two foremost automobiles right off their front wheels. Another two seconds, and she’d be floating away with both the cars and their drivers.

The men—Griff chief among them to judge by his slouched fedora—scrambled among the cars, fastening the locks on the chains.

Schturming
kept right on going. She hoisted the first set of cars completely off the ground and hauled the second set forward yard after yard. The front wheels of the second set of cars inched off the ground.

Then the full weight of the train of twelve motorcars caught up with the dirigible. They yanked her to a stop. She bobbed for a moment, suddenly looking ridiculously flimsy for all her great size. The rearmost autos started up their engines, followed by all the rest. They hit reverse and started pulling.

Schturming
’s stern resisted for a moment, then slanted toward the ground. Her great bow tilted skyward, so that she hung diagonal in the cloudy sky.

That was Hitch’s cue—again.

Two more passes, two more ropes—and his and Jael’s part of the job would be finished.

They crossed in front of the high-ended front of the dirigible, and Jael dropped another rope to hang over the bowsprit projecting from the front of the ship. One more pass—one more drop—and that was it. Jael’s fourth and final rope zipped out of her gloved hand, the end flying.

She hung over the edge of her cockpit and watched it go—without a safety belt once again, durn her.

He circled for a final pass.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.

Zlo’s men scrambled all over
Schturming
—up her cannon track, across the walkway on top, out over the side of the gondola with ropes tied around their waists. Every last one of them had a knife in hand and was sawing away at the thick ropes. Even if Campbell’s crew got her on the ground, they’d have to secure her right away to keep Zlo’s men from snapping the ropes and letting the ship drift skyward once more.

“C’mon!” Hitch shouted.

The team of cars assigned to the ship’s front end secured the ropes. They’d already had the benefit of the time necessary to chain themselves together. In an instant, they fired up their engines and hauled
Schturming
back to level. And now she was well and truly stuck.

The four trains of motorcars lined up, six to each end of the ropes, and pointed themselves in opposite directions. They revved in reverse, tires throwing up mud, swerving a little—but hauling away nonetheless.

Schturming
started to droop. Inch by inch, minute by minute, then foot by foot, she sank.

At last, the earth rushed up to meet her. With a solid crunch audible even over the Jenny’s engine, she met the ground.

Hitch whooped and turned the Jenny around.

Now for the other tricky part. Zlo and his men were about as likely to give up the ship as Campbell was to play Santa Claus next Christmas.

Hitch put the plane down on the flat prairie—avoiding a few badger holes by the skin of his nose—then jumped out.

He jabbed a finger at Jael. “Stay there.”

She wouldn’t, of course, but he had to at least try. She wasn’t likely to cotton to whatever ended up happening with Zlo, Campbell, and the pendant.

He didn’t much cotton to it himself, but there it was anyway.

He firmed his mouth and ran through the tall, sparse grass to where
Schturming
lay hogtied, like a roped heifer. But she wasn’t wallowing or bellering. She lay still—even her props were still—save for the creak of her buoyancy straining against her anchors.

The men who had been manning the cannon and sawing away at the ropes had disappeared. Matter of fact, the whole thing looked mighty deserted all of a sudden.

Except for the drivers of the cars—and Earl and Livingstone—the rest of Campbell’s men had already piled out. Rifles and pistols in hand, they surrounded the downed ship and crept up to her.

Campbell looked over his shoulder at Hitch—then past Hitch for a second, which probably meant Jael was following after all. “Let’s go,” he said. “You got a gun?”

Hitch pulled his knife from the back of his boot. “This’ll do.”

They crept up to the main hangar doors, at the bow-end of the ship’s bottom level. At a nod from Campbell, a business-faced Griff—who seemed to not even notice Hitch’s presence—and three other men holstered their pistols and moved forward to haul the doors open.

The doors gave without a catch and rumbled open to reveal the dark cavern into which Hitch had crashed the Jenny during the first big storm. It was packed with supplies, but they had all been lashed to the walls and ceiling. Only a box or barrel here and there had fallen and spilled open during the tussle. Nobody showed his face.

Hitch’s back crawled. He flexed his grip on the knife.

Campbell nodded again to Griff.

“Wait,” Hitch said. “I’ll go.”

Griff stepped back and let him, without so much as a glance.

So that’s how it was going to be.

But not for long. Soon as Zlo was under lock and key, Hitch was gone. If Griff wanted to forget about him then, so be it. Hitch could do his own share of forgetting.

He inched up to the corner of the door and looked inside. The whole thing settled a little farther, listing to starboard, so the door hole was a good four feet off the ground. Timbers groaned. But still nothing man-sized appeared inside.

He hoisted himself up through the hole—and about got whacked in the face.

Thirty-Seven

A TWO-BY-four whistled past Hitch’s head, and he barely ducked in time. He got his feet moving even before he had time to straighten up and catch a full glimpse of what he was facing. He churned forward, arms wide, knife in front of him.

His arms closed around a body. He thudded to the ground with his shoulder in the guy’s gut, and together they skidded down the slope of the floor. He kept his knife hand wide to prevent it getting pinned. From out of the shadows, footsteps thundered all around him. Outside, Campbell’s posse hollered and charged.

Hitch squirmed on top of his victim. With his free hand, he pinned down the wrist holding the two-by-four. He used it to brace himself and jumped a knee up to land in the guy’s stomach. The whoofed exhale sounded mighty familiar.

He pushed the knife against the man’s throat.

Sure enough, Zlo glared right back at him, his mouth drawn in a snarl.

“You lowdown snake,” Hitch said. “Where’s my dog?”

“Your dog is gone. I have dropped him out of
Schturming
.”

“I don’t believe you. Why would you bother?”

Zlo managed a shrug. His throat bobbed against Hitch’s blade. “What you call... practical? I will strike my enemies any way I can.”

A growl built in Hitch’s chest. He tightened his hand on the knife. “Believe me, you’re not the only one.”

Zlo jutted his chin.

Footsteps clomped up from behind. “That’ll do,” Campbell said.

Hitch blinked hard. He looked back. The sounds of the skirmish had already died down. “What happened?”

Campbell pulled him up and snapped handcuffs onto Zlo. “Seems these boys don’t put up much of a fight after all. We had ’em outnumbered right from the start.”

It was over? His brain struggled to catch up to speed. How could that be? He looked around. Nestled in the corners, between barrels and boxes, white faces with whiter eyes stared out at him. Dozens of them at least. Strips of ripped cloth covered their mouths.

Looked like Scottsbluff wasn’t the only thing Zlo was holding hostage.

Hitch skidded down the slant of the floor to the first of the victims, a middle-aged woman with a purple kerchief knotted over her hair. Everyone’s clothing was strange—foreign but also old-fashioned. The women wore wide skirts down to the ground, like Jael had been wearing when she’d jumped out over the lake.

The woman’s eyes got even wider as he approached. She started fighting the rope that tied her hands behind her back. A nearby man, about her age, made a lunge at Hitch.

Apparently evil Groundsmen were still worse poison than Zlo.

Hitch stopped and raised both hands, the knife still in one of them. “Whoa. I’m not going to hurt her. Just going to cut her loose.”

Campbell clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Leave ’em be. Save us from cuffing them again until we can get this all sorted.”

“You’re going to leave them tied up? They’re sure not on Zlo’s side.”

“I don’t know that yet, and neither do you.” Campbell gestured for the posse to come forward. “Get these folks out of here. We’ll take ’em all to the jail.”

“You better have a mighty big jail.”

Campbell stopped one of the approaching deputies. “Start searching the upper levels. And watch yourself. Chances are Zlo’s got more men waiting up there.”

It took them another couple of hours to completely clear the ship. A few of Zlo’s men popped out of corridors, but Campbell’s posse managed to overpower them with only a few busted knuckles and noses. No sign of Taos—or the revolvers Jael seemed to think Zlo’s men would have.

It was almost like Zlo had wanted to be caught. Or maybe not
wanted
exactly. But at any rate he’d resigned himself to the situation. He knew Walter had seen them out here, so he knew trouble was probably coming. If he couldn’t get out of here with that busted prop, then he might have figured out something else. Like give up quick and easy and make some other play. But what?