The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead (27 page)

And then… there was nothing she could do.

Georgina pulled herself up onto the tender, struggled across the coal and then back into the engine. She grabbed the fallen shovel, a useless weapon, and she screamed. Whining as much as she wanted, she let her tears flow as she shovelled and shovelled and shovelled.

And then everything went black.

Miss Charlotte

It had been like a merry-go-round ride, and stuffing your face with ice cream, and running about in the hall of mirrors, and brandy butter from the bowl, and Uncle Jeremiah reading adventure stories and Christmas all rolled into one. They’d flown over the Graf’s enemies and dropped bombs, fired the Gatling guns that roared and spat tracer. Charlotte had been able to see the bullets hitting the train:
pop, pop, pop.

All the time, the searchlights had tracked back and forth like the spotlights in a theatre show. Charlotte had once seen a pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Uncle Jeremiah. With a shock, she realised that what she’d seen performed there was her own life, complete with Ugly Sisters, who tormented her, until finally she’d married a Prince and become a Princess.

The excitement had continued with the steam engine getting faster, but the railway line curved, so that the wind helped the Zeppelin. They’d caught up and soldiers, air marines, had leapt from the gondola to abseil onto the moving train. Charlotte had not been allowed to try that, for which she was both disappointed and grateful.

And then the train had come apart and the steam engine had sped away.

They gave chase.

Suddenly: “Achtung! Achtung!”

The forward view contained nothing but mountainside.

“UP!” Charlotte shouted, and she grabbed the controls from the terrified pilot. Up the airship went, a savage climb as everything fell, clattering and crashing against the back wall. The airship hit the rock, grinding and screeching, as they scraped up the cliff. Just when it seemed that they would be torn to pieces, they were floating free.

When they levelled and moved away, the steam engine had disappeared into the black maw of a tunnel through the mountains.

The spies had escaped and the Graf fell into a foul mood.

The Zeppelin came to a hover in an open field some distance from the train track and upwind. This was an important consideration, although no–one explained why to Charlotte, and it had involved some tricky steering. The carriages had taken a long time to slow and so the target field was changed.

Finally, ropes were dropped to tie the airship down and metal stakes, like large tent pegs, were hammered into the ground. The soldiers spread out, rifles at the ready as they approached the slowing remains to the train.

And no–one even thanked Charlotte for saving them all.

Chapter XIII

Miss Deering-Dolittle

The train carriages were still moving forward at speed despite the absence of any motive force. The engine had rocketed away, the angry huffing and belching smoke receding, and then it had vanished, swallowed by the tunnel. The rest of the train was heading that way and might even enter the tunnel too. Perhaps it would become becalmed underground?

Snakes of yellow smoke gathered, the slightest tendril made Earnestine cough and splutter, which was why she stayed on the access plate. The inside of the train was full of the nasty vapour.

Luck had been on her side: in the struggle as they’d both fallen, the soldier had struck his head against the metal footplate.

The unconscious man wore a strange mask, black with huge bug eyes and a snout of strange and deliberate construction. It seemed logical that any new weapon, like the yellow smoke, would have a counter device. So Earnestine leant over, undid the clasps and ripped the rubbery object off. It felt clammy, unpleasant and the idea of it enveloping her face did not appeal. She steeled herself and put it on.

It was claustrophobic: her breathing rasped and echoed, amplified in the enclosing chamber, the world took on an eerie hue, warped at the sides, but the stinging subsided.

The man’s coat and boots came off with some difficulty, because when she bent over, she felt sick and wrong footed. The lens in the bug–eye made objects move in waves contradicting her sense of balance. The coat, she realised just before putting it on, would look ludicrous with her bustle sticking out behind her. Earnestine decided to go the whole hog. It was disconcerting to take his trousers off though, wrong, and to leave him in his long johns was undignified. When she removed her dress, she felt a hard object hidden in a pocket: her ring, which she slipped onto her finger. Then she wrenched her dress off and flung it aside, the wind snatched it away and it danced by the side of the train. The bustle she just dropped. Speed was of the essence, other Bug Eyes would be coming. Through the window, with the lens distortion and the yellow smoke, it was hard to see along the corridor, but there seemed to be dark evil shapes moving towards her and–

The glass became the floor, or seemed to, as it came up and hit her forcefully. Hands grabbed around her throat grasping her. She hit out and her assailant stumbled back. The man had come round.

Stupid girl, she thought.

They fought, her camisole ripped under his grip as he held her with one hand, the other drawn back to punch.

She wrenched her neck as she dodged and the man’s hand went through the glass panel. Earnestine slipped and fell beneath the man as he roared with pain. He loomed above her, both terrifying and ludicrous with his shirt tails, but Earnestine was at his mercy. A thick enveloping morass of yellow vapour streamed from the broken glass: the man swatted it aside like a bothersome insect and then spluttered and coughed. His eyes bulged wide as he recognised the danger. He focused on Earnestine and came down to grasp the bug–eye with both hands, to tear it from her and to put it on himself.

Earnestine threw her arms around the head and tried to twist into a foetal position to stop him unfastening the mask. They struggled, tearing and fighting and clawing. The man’s face was right up against her, his breath casting a mist on her alien spectacles, and all the while he coughed, spat and choked, his spittle flecking her vision as if he was dragging her beneath the waves.

A cough: her vision was splattered with red blood, globules of it, thick and vile. The man became desperate, overpowering her, but it was a last fling. Earnestine pushed him off, but the man’s fight was directed towards himself now as he clawed at his face in agony. His skin blistered before her artificially wide eyes and the surface of his face broke as pustules formed and burst. He died, convulsing to his last wheezing gasp.

Hurrying, almost panicking, Earnestine scrabbled for the clothes, the trousers were baggy, the belt didn’t have enough holes, so she tied it, the boots were loose and went on easily and finally, with utter revulsion, she rolled the man’s body to the edge. It hesitated on the metal lip, the man jerked, brought to a parody of life by the wind, before he tumbled into the air, hit the rails racing below and then disappeared, a splattering cracking as the carriage thundered on inexorably.

Earnestine entered the train, wading through the pea–souper that had invaded every nook and cranny of the carriages. A dark shadow at the far end raised its arm and Earnestine responded in kind. The thing tilted, bowing towards her, and she did the same: it was a nod, exaggerated because the bug–eye prevented the neck from moving properly. She squeezed past him and moved on, wanting to be as far away as possible from the scene of her crime. A fleeting thought of his remains staining the underside of the carriage made her shudder. The vile breath of her victim still reeked inside the bug–eye making her retch. She needed fresh air and fought the desire to pluck the black mask off.

The Bug Eyes had gathered in the restaurant car.

The chief amongst them, his black leather coat open slightly to reveal a spangle of medals, shouted and berated his underlings: his German words sharp, guttural and distorted by the snout of his mask.

The
rat–a–tat–tat, rat–a–tat–tat
of the wheels on the track had become a
chuck–chunk–chunk…. chunk
. Just when Earnestine thought it was over, there was another, and then an agonising wait for the next, until the wait stretched forever. The carriage had stopped.

When the Bug Eyes filed towards the back of the train, Earnestine joined them. They moved from carriage to carriage passing the corpses of the innocent passengers frozen in their death throes. Earnestine couldn’t look and focused on the black shape in front, falling into the marching step when space allowed.

There wasn’t another carriage, and the line of soldiers turned to clamber down to the ground. All around a pall of yellow smoke drifted out and settled on the surrounding fields, a stain of death and desolation indelibly infecting the countryside.

The men marched off, down a long winding path through the woods and out into an open space. Tethered to a tree, the massive airship strained at the cables as a ground crew struggled to keep the beast down. The men formed an orderly queue and Earnestine found herself in their midst. The front man went forward under the airship and waved his arms above him, and then he climbed the air upwards towards the gondola.

A second man ascended.

When Earnestine was closer, she saw that they were really climbing a rope ladder, a thin fragile set of rungs strung between black wires. Instinctively, she backed away and the man behind her swore when they collided. Left and right there were fields, open and offering no protection from rifle fire.

She did not want to climb into the belly of that whale above, but she realised she’d have no choice in four… now, three climbers’ time.

Her assignment was to reach London and warn them, not join the Aerial Corps of the enemy.

She was under the airship now.

She’d have to risk it.

She was at the front.

A Hauptmann signalled her forward and she ran across the uneven grass and grasped the flailing rungs.

The men ahead climbed the ladder at the end rather than straight on, so Earnestine copied them. It can’t be that difficult, she thought, just a case of one leg, then the other. The ruby ring felt solid in her palm as she grasped the metal tube that formed the rung. Luckily, the bug–eyed mask prevented her from really seeing down. In fact to look down, she had to turn her head to one side and stare sideways–

She stumbled.

One leg after the other meant that she was now very high.

She found her footing and concentrated on each hand and leg movement until she was grabbed from above and hauled into the gondola. She wasn’t sure where to go as the man ahead of her had climbed with far more expertise and speed, but the next man barged past her, ripping off his rubber mask as he went. Earnestine followed him and he went to a stairway which led up above the gondola. This made no sense to Earnestine, but then she found herself coming up into a huge metal structure. It was like she was in the depths of a ship walking along the keel with struts sweeping up and around. This was the inside of the airship’s main body. She’d assumed that this was filled with hydrogen to lift the vehicle, but now she saw that there were balloons inside the airship hanging from above… no, these balloons were lifting the whole airship aloft: it was the metal frame that dangled from the balloons.

Air sailors were quartered here in a strange reversal of normal naval tradition: the officers were below in the luxurious cabins, whereas the crew were above living in the mechanisms of the Zeppelin itself, sleeping in hammocks slung between the metal gantries.

The floor shifted and the air sailors grabbed handholds and leant into the slope. Earnestine tumbled over to much hilarity before edging her way to an unoccupied area. There were a few empty berths, those Bug Eyes that Earnestine herself had seen off perhaps, and she hunkered down in one and removed the smothering mask.

The other airmen were also removing their garments – the stale smell of sweat… no, perspiration – horses sweat, men perspire and women glow. Earnestine didn’t feel much glow: she felt cold and rancid. She couldn’t stay here, she knew that, so she slipped the mask back on and eased her way back along the walkways.

As she went a few choice remarks in German were thrown her way. She waved and smiled, realised that any facial expression under the mask was pointless, and hurried on.

Down the steps and into the gondola was easy enough and the rope was still dangling from the exit. No–one was around, so all she had to do was shimmy down and disappear into the dark French countryside until they took off and–

“Achtung! Passen Sie auf!”

“Ja!” Earnestine replied, muffled somewhat by her mask.

Earnestine jerked in shock when she heard the Graf speaking.

“So, mein Liebchen, let us have some schnapps.”

Earnestine turned away, keeping her back to him as he moved past. Charlotte, dressed in some ridiculous military uniform, followed in his wake: silly girl – silly, silly girl.

Below Earnestine, where the rope dangled, the ground rippled in the distortion of the bug eyes, magnified, closer, then suddenly plummeting down. Giddy, Earnestine grasped a handrail and the ground resolved into a strange model–like landscape moving gently underneath.

They were airborne already.

“That would be lovely,” said Charlotte, using that giddy, silly voice that she reserved for times when chocolates and sweets were on offer. Thankfully the Graf and Charlotte went past and into one of the cabins further back along the gondola.

Going down the rope was suicide: she was trapped.

She was going to have to find somewhere to hide.

Upstairs were the quarters for the Aerial Ratings. Sooner or later someone would ask why she was wearing a bug–eye, or they’d ask her to join them in a hand of cards, or for a meal, or almost anything, and it would be in German.

Towards the bow was the control room.

This left only the cabins.