Abney Park's The Wrath Of Fate (7 page)

From that I knew we were looking for a car alternator (which creates voltage from a spinning axis attached to your car motor), and a golf cart motor (which converts electricity into forward thrust). Somehow, all these parts would be repurposed by Dr. Calgori in order to fix the Airship, and hopefully allow more stable travel.

Actually, the first part of this scavenger hunt was going to be tools. You can’t pull the alternator out of a pale blue ‘74 Mustang Gia with Victorian-era tools, so our first stop was going to be the shop.

We headed by flickering lantern light over to a series of garages. The least run-down seemed the most promising, so Daniel and I lifted open the massive rolling garage door. Inside was a series of tool benches that Daniel headed towards, but I stopped, mesmerized by a vintage 1936 Chang Jiang motorcycle and side car. I had dreamed of this bike all my life, and here it stood before me, right in the middle of my big adventure.

This isn’t a “fancy” bike. It’s not expensive, or powerful, or luxurious. But it is exactly the kind of thing you’d see a 1940s tomb raider speed away from Nazis on. It wasn’t on Dr. Calgori’s list, but we were here stealing stuff, right? Typically, I wouldn’t jump to stealing something so quickly, but this week we seemed to be about bending rules a bit. Context seemed to be reshaping my morality.

To be completely honest, this did start a “problem”. Later that night crew helped themselves to a lot of devices and trinkets from the twety first century, probably following my lead. This did come in handy later on, but I’m still stunned how fast all the rules drop from your mind when your world gets a little off its beaten path. Is this what causes looters to loot? Rules of life change, so you stop following your morality? Anyway,
lets hope this isn’t habit forming.

“Daniel, I think we will need this,” I said, pointing to the motorcycle.

“That on the list?” Daniel asked.

“Not sure, but it won’t hurt to have,” I said.

“What is it, some sort of small wheeled, motorized Boneshaker?” he asked.

“Um. I have no idea what that is, but yes, we need it. I need it,” I said.

“Okay, let’s push it out to the hook,” he said.

I started to push on the handle bars, and suddenly the bike growled at me. At least, that’s what appeared to have happened. In truth, the bike wasn’t growling, it was a large brown dog in the sidecar.

Daniel reached for the dog’s collar, but the dog bared long, yellow teeth and snapped. So I tried talking lovey-dovey to it, “Eh dare, widdle doogy. Wanna get out? Out? Down! DOWN!!”

The dog laid back down into the sidecar, its head on its paws.

“Fine, we’ll take the dog, too,” Daniel said.

GREASE

Three days later, Lilith Tess stamped furiously into the cabin, covered in engine grease from her ratted red pig-tails to her bare feet. She was smaller and younger then the rest of the crew, a fact that she reveled in, since in her mind youth, beauty, smallness, intelligence and success were all the same thing. She wore a flared, pleated skirt, and a tiny corset, which would have looked inappropriate on an adult woman’s figure, but on her
just-past-girlish
figure it looked closer to a cheerleader uniform then lingerie. She dropped a five pound crescent wrench on the floor, and the resounding
clang
was still echoing as she began to unbuckle the various harnesses she was wearing.

“Finished the cleaning?” I asked, not looking up from a book the Doctor had given me (a handwritten book on piloting this airship), while holding the main captain’s wheel in my spare hand.

“Yeah, and I’m gonna be scrubbing bugs off my goggles for a week! Not to mention that it will take
forever
to brush out my hair,” she said. “Hey, watch what you’re…”

While reading, I was also holding the Captain’s wheel inattentively with my other hand, and trying to wrap my head around what handle created lift, what lever tipped the nose up or down, and which throttle pushed us left and right without changing our direction. There were so many handles, chains, levers, and wheels, it could take weeks to learn. I would have been better with a keyboard and mouse, or an xBox controller. “Honestly, no one was cross-trained on this?” I asked Tanner.

Tanner quickly glanced at the newly-repaired window behind where I stood, the spot where blood had been hastily cleaned from the floor, and said unconvincingly, “Um, nope,” and then added in a monotone, “Thank god we have you.”

“Look, this plan is lame. I don’t have a damn thing to do in it!” Lilith said.

“Well, we don’t need you for this one. This is a
small
plan, and it only needs a couple people,” I said, wondering who this girl was, and exactly how she became a member of the crew.

“Maybe she could hold on the rope?” Tanner broke in. “She really should be included.”

“What? Jean Paul is going to hold the rope,” I was baffled. “It needs to be someone strong enough to…”

“She could do Kristina’s part,” Tanner volunteered, while Lilith stare at me defiantly, hands on her hips.

Still baffled, I said, “Yeah, but Kristina cooks. This plan needs someone who cooks, and Lilith doesn’t…whoa!” The cabin was slowly starting to tip. The portholes along the left side were filling with pink sky and white fluffy clouds, and the on the right, hills.

“Little to the left,” uttered Tanner. “And perhaps level it off as well, Captain?” He caught a shot glass just as it rolled off the bar, and stuck it in his waist coat pocket.

“Yeah, that’s just
fantastic
piloting…” Lilith jeered, and stormed out.

“I got it, I got it…” I glanced out the periscope that substituted for a front window on this lower bridge. The
Ophelia
also had a flying bridge on deck, but this was less windy, and therefore afforded easier reading. “It looks like we are nearly there anyway.” I grabbed a brass handle on the ceiling, and yanked it down. There was a far-off
wooshing
sound, and a sickening drop. Far below in the endless acres of dirt and prairie grass, a small diner could be seen slummed like a beaten dog, with a flickering sign post reading, “Momma Chiffon’s House Of Lard”.

“I heard you’re looking for musicians or something for tomorrow night.” Lilith had come back in, and stood facing me as if nothing in the world should have my attention but herself.

“Not ‘or something’, but yes, we are looking for musicians,” I said, trying not to make eye contact with her.

“Well, I dance. Beautifully. Mesmerizingly. I can dance while you play behind me – as my band.”

“Thanks, but we aren’t really looking for a dancer. Honestly, at this point, we are just trying to be as close to what is expected of us so we’ll get paid. I’m not really trying to make a bunch of big changes, this is just the easiest way I can think to get $500 for groceries for the crew.”

She stood glaring, so I asked, “Do you sing?”.

“I’m sure I can,” she said.

And Tanner added, “I’m sure she’s a great singer!”

“Well, we can try that, in moderation, if you really need to help.” But I was beginning to realize this girl was going to be trouble.

A few minutes later, a small bird sitting on the roof of “Mamma Chiffon’s House Of Lard” watched as the sky filled with a massive copper-colored Zeppelin, covered with patches, rust, dangling ropes, and emitting regular puffs of steam and smoke from various vents and chimneys.

From somewhere under the dangling ship-shaped cabin – a mismatched composite of what might have been trailer homes, submarines, part of a Victorian glass green-house, and what must have been the original navel construction – a hatch opened. Out of it came a rope ladder on which hung Jean-Paul. Upon reaching the roof top of the diner, he thrust a long greased hose down the kitchen chimney and started feeding it in yard by yard.

Down in the kitchen, Mamma Chiffon was barking orders at the new cook she’d hired the day before. “Girl, ain’t nobody driving this highway gonna order a frilly thing like that. These people want chicken fried steak. They want waffles and mashed potatoes, they ain’t gonna be ordering your high falooting pastries! I mean, what’s this crust made out’a, layers a’ wax paper??”

“Filo,” corrected the girl – tall, knobby-kneed and pig-tailed. It was Kristina. Behind her back, she stealthily grabbed the greasy hose, and guided it into the fry vats – all without Momma Chiffon noticing. Once the hose was in the grease, and as soon as Momma turned her massive behind toward her, Kristina gave three tugs on the hose, and quietly headed toward the back door.

The large slurping noise went unnoticed (as it was hardly out of place in this restaurant) and the vats began to empty.

Out in the gravel lot, Kristina swung one leg over my vintage motorcycle, and pulled a helmet out of the motorcycle’s sidecar. A large brown dog took the helmet’s place. She revved the already running engine once, and sped off down the gravel highway.

Momma Chiffon heard this, rolled herself around and noticed the kitchen was empty. She also noticed the fry vats were empty, and a flicker of movement drew her eyes to the ceiling just as the hose slipped back into the chimney hole. None of this made enough sense to her to inspire an immediate reaction, and as she stood there trying to decide what flavor of mad to become (her default emotion), the sound of barking dogs and surprised red-necks started echoing from outside. She ran to the back door, and hearing what sounded like massive outboard motors roaring from above her, she looked up in time to see a huge tail-fin slip out of view behind the roof’s overhang.

Men were running from the diner to their rusted pick-ups, grabbing their requisite guns from their requisite rear window racks, while stubby pit bulls and Dobermans ran in circles barking at the sky.

A few shots were fired, as the huge oval silhouette slid over the parking lot and headed down the road. Trucks and bikers filled the lot with dust as they sped out after it.

Not too far down the road, Kristina and motorcycle screamed in angry acceleration, as Jean-Paul came up behind her on the still dangling rope ladder and attached a huge hook to the bike. Slowly, motorcycle, sidecar, girl, man, and the dog with ears flapping in the wind lifted from the dusty road and glided upward into the silent crimson night.