Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (28 page)

"Thus employing the element of surprise," Sam said.

"Surprise and distraction. We could leave a couple of men here, to make some sort of demonstration, and draw the attention of the Dutch in exactly the wrong direction."

The two of them discussed the idea at length, with others in the company chiming in with suggestions. Then Sam said: "It might work. I think it
will
 work, if we execute it correctly. But that would leave us in possession of a train containing a Chinese Cannon—what do we do with it once we have it?"

"Drive it down toward Chicoutimi," said Julian.

"For what purpose?"

"It depends on the state of the fighting. If the rail happens to cross into territory held by our forces, we can deliver the Cannon to them—and be feted as heroes, no doubt. Failing that, we can destroy the Cannon and render it useless to the Dutch."

"Destroy it how?"

"Put some sort of fuse on those shell-casings and blow it all up, I suppose.

We might even turn the entire train into a sort of bomb—set it on fire and send it hurtling into Chicoutimi."

"Hard on
us,
 though, that scenario."

"We can leap off at the closest approach to our lines, and make our way home." Julian smiled. "If nothing else, it might save us a few miles walking."

It was that humble suggestion that clinched the issue. We were all tired of walking, and the idea of riding a captured enemy train even halfway home was a pleasant one to contemplate.

All of us agreed to the plan, at least tacitly, except Major Lampret, who insisted that we were lunatics and mutineers for undertaking this battle without his consent, and that there would be "consequences" if we carried it out, assuming we weren't all killed by our own foolishness. But Lampret's credibility had been so thoroughly undercut that he was easy to ignore.

I was in favor of the attack, and my only disappointment when it was approved was that Lymon Pugh and I were assigned to provide the "useful distraction."

I asked Sam what he wanted us to do.

"Wait here until the rest of us are in place. I'll signal you when it's time to begin the proceedings."

"Begin them how, though?"

"Just make a noise of some kind—nothing too belligerent, just something that will draw all eyes. It needn't be anything fancy—the firing will commence at once."

The Dutchmen were beginning to harness up their mules, so we had to move quickly. Lymon and I watched the other men of the company scuttle away, backs bent and weapons ready, to their hiding places a few hundred yards to the east.

Lymon said, "You'd better orchestrate this thing, Adam. I don't know how to distract a Dutch soldier, except by shooting at him. Maybe you can call out to them in their own language."

"Perhaps I would, except I don't speak it."

"You have that letter you bought from Langers's Lucky Mug. I've seen you reading it over and over."

"But not for the sense of it. And I can only guess at the pronunciation, based on what I've heard from Dutch prisoners. They wouldn't believe me for a second."

"They don't have to
believe
 you—Sam's instruction was only that we should obtain their
attention.
 Look there!—Sam is already waving his hand—

I believe the time is ripe—go on, Adam,
call out to them
!"

I was flustered by the rapid progression of events, and I could think of nothing to do except to adopt Lymon Pugh's suggestion.

I cleared my throat.

"Louder!" Lymon said. "Make yourself heard!"

I cupped my hands around my mouth and cried out,
"Lieftse Hannie!"

"What's that mean?" Lymon asked.

"I don't know!"

"They can't hear you. Wasn't there something about Americans being no better than dogs?"

I racked my brain.
"Fikkie mis ik ook!"
 I shouted, so loudly that the obdu-rate syllables pricked my throat like thorns.
"Lieftse Hannie! Fikkie mis ik ook!"

That did the trick. For one fragile moment—a fraction of time as motionless as a bug in amber—every Dutch soldier looked in my direction, and each one wore an identical expression, of
confusion
 bordering on
bewilderment.

Then a barrage of rifle fire began to cut them down.

At the end of the ambush we had taken a two-car train, a Chinese Cannon, and three prisoners, and left a score of dead Mitteleuropan soldiers scattered about. The prisoners consisted of an artilleryman and two civilian engineers.

They were not cooperative, and had to be bound and tied.

Everything that had been taken from the train we put back in place.

(None of the heavy parts of the Chinese Cannon had yet been unhitched.) This was indeed a fine haul, if we could get it into American hands. Fortunately one of the men of our company—a long-haired mechanic named Penniman, from Lake Champlain—had studied trains, and understood the theory of steam-driven engines well enough that he could discern the use of the controls even though they were labeled in a foreign language. While he got up pressure in the boilers the rest of us policed the area, collecting Dutch rifles and pistols from their former own ers.
Then Julian and I went to join Sam in the cab of the engine, while the rest of the company found room for themselves in the heavily loaded boxcars.
⁴²

This had all gone very smoothly, and would have been a complete triumph except that, as it turned out, one of the Dutch soldiers had been "playing dead," and had secreted his rifle beneath his apparently lifeless body. Just as soon as Penniman released the brake and the train began to move, this troublesome Mitteleuropan grabbed up his weapon and fired on us. Bullets flew through the cab, and Penniman was lightly injured. Sam cursed and took up his own rifle. He leaned around the coal hopper and fired three shots. I thrust out my head long enough to see the Dutch rifleman retreat into a thicket of skeletal, leafless trees.

We would have kept on rolling without further incident, I suppose, since the artilleryman could hardly have followed us, except that the door on the rear boxcar rolled open and Major Lampret popped out of it, shooting his own rifle wildly. "Brake up!" Sam cried disgustedly, and Penniman did so. The train vented steam-clouds into the cold air.

I managed to discern more of the action despite the veils of mist that obscured it. Apparently Major Lampret had decided to demonstrate his courage, which had been so severely questioned in recent days, and to restore himself to command. Perhaps he deemed the odds respectable—himself against one desperate Dutchman. Or it may be that his motives were sincere and patriotic, if misguided. In any case, his act of bravery or stupidity produced no good result. The Dutch infantryman fired back, and his defense was more calculated than Lampret's attack. Major Lampret took a bullet and slumped to the ground.

At this point Julian astonished me by leaping out of the engine-cabin and running toward the place where Major Lampret had fallen.

Sam was equally astonished; but he kept his wits, and shouted, "Fire on the enemy! Give cover!"—while doing so himself. Other men of our company began to follow his example, though none of us was willing to make himself as vulnerable to the Dutchman's bullets as had Julian.

I fired my rifle, too, though part of me felt frozen in the event, watching Julian dodge and dash toward an injured a man who had once threatened to imprison him. When Julian reached the Major he didn't hesitate, but thrust his hands under Lampret's inert arms and began to drag him back to the train.

Geysers of icy dirt flew up around Julian and the Major—these were the impacts of hostile bullets, each one coming closer to its mark. Then the Dutchman gave out an audible cry from the thicket where he was hidden, and threw up his arms and fell forward; and on this occasion his death was not feigned, but entirely authentic.

Several of our men jumped from the train to help Julian with his burden.

Soon the Major was safely aboard. Major Lampret had been badly hurt—the artilleryman's bullet had passed through his shoulder, leaving ugly wounds on the front and back of him—but he was breathing freely, and there seemed to be a decent chance that he might recover if he received prompt medical attention.

If Major Lampret had meant to establish his courage by this act, the attempt was a failure. I supposed it was brave of him to go after the Dutch soldier the way he had. But Julian's bravery in the rescue was more conspicuous, especially as it was aimed at saving the life of a man he despised; and this was what drew admiration from the other men, while Lampret received only the most cursory attention in his suffering.

Lampret remained unconscious, and just as well, or his jealousy might have killed him on the spot.

The gunfire and the damage to Major Lampret made our journey down the hillside more eerie than triumphal. It was a feeling exacerbated by the land around us, for our captive train soon passed out of the winter forest into a Stygian realm of churned and frozen craters, cutwire fences festooned with corpses, and the blackened frames of burned-down farm houses. The fighting had been fierce in our absence.

We began to calculate our options. From here the railroad ran straight to the embattled town of Chicoutimi. As far as we knew, that locality remained in the hands of the Mitteleuropans. But Julian found a Swiss spyglass among the articles left behind in the engine cabin, and he pointed it ahead of us, looking very distinguished, it seemed to me, in his battle-scarred uniform, with his long hair flowing out behind him. After a time he began to smile. The smile broadened. Then Julian handed the spyglass to Sam. "Look ahead, Sam—focus on the church tower on the hill."

"Hard to see in this mist." The valley through which we traveled was foggy in places, and a leaden overcast had blunted the blue sky. "But that must be the church tower—riddled with artillery impacts—it's not very clear ..."

"Turn the side- wheel with your thumb," Julian said, "to bring it into focus."

Sam fiddled with the adjustment, cursing. "The Swiss are too clever by half—too clever for their own good. I don't think—ah!
There.
"

Then Sam smiled, too.

"What do you see?" I demanded. "Don't make a secret of it!"

"Only a flag on the church tower."

"Well, why shouldn't there be a flag on the church tower?"

"No reason at all. What distinguishes this flag is that it has thirteen Stripes and sixty Stars." He put down the spyglass and said more gently, "Our forces have taken Chicoutimi."

Thus it was only a matter of slowing the train and rumbling into Chicoutimi with our prize.

A Dutch military train arriving from the east might not be the most welcome sight among American troops, Sam reminded us. We had already passed a couple of pickets, who had taken hasty shots at us. What we needed was some convincing signal of our amity.

"Major Lampret is a Dominion Officer," Julian said. "Don't they carry American flags with them at all times, for funerals and prayers?"

We stopped in an isolated place long enough for Julian to visit the men in the boxcars, who gave a spontaneous hurrah when he told them Chicoutimi had fallen, and to procure a flag from Major Lampret, who carried one folded inside his shirt.

Julian came back to the engine of the Dutch train, but he didn't enter the cab. Instead he tied the flag to a charred tree-branch, which he found on the ground, and clambered onto the front of the engine, perching himself on an iron shelf just below the lantern-lens.

"Go in slowly," he called back to Penniman.

The train lurched forward as Penniman released the brake, almost tumbling Julian onto the tracks, then proceeded more smoothly.

And that was how we arrived in the newly-captured town of Chicoutimi.

A fine snow had begun to fall, and the afternoon was theatrical in its shifting scrims of sun and cloud. We rode all the way into the depot with Julian up front like a patriotic ornament. His uniform was ragged and dirty, and his face was alabaster with the cold, but he grinned irrepressibly and waved the Sixty Stars and Thirteen Stripes before the hundreds of infantrymen and cavalrymen who assembled at the sight of our smoke. The engine passed down a corridor of these astonished soldiers before it finally hissed to a stop. Then the doors of the boxcars were thrown open, and a great and jubilant outcry rose up, for it was obvious to every spectator that we had captured a Chinese Cannon all intact.

The scourge of cholera caught up with us later that month. Many brave men who had survived injury and starvation all the way up the bloody Saguenay were taken to their graves by the disorder. The stench, incon ve nience, and tragedy of the disease made life unpleasant for all of us, sick or not, and eventually most of us did get sick, though we did not necessarily die. I did not, for example—and I was as sick as anyone.

The human mind edits from memory its feverish interludes, and I can recollect very little of January or February of 2174. When I came to myself, what astonished me most—apart from my emaciation and general weakness—was that I had been transported without my knowledge from Chicoutimi to a field hospital in Tadoussac, and from there to the Soldier's Rest, a recuperation-house in the City of Montreal. I learned that many men I knew and liked had died in the outbreak, and that saddened me. But there was good news, too.

Sam, Julian, and Lymon Pugh had survived the disease, though they were sickened by it; and all three of them were here in the Soldier's Rest, also recuperating. Out of all of our small circle the sickest had been Julian; the doctors said he had come close to dying; but he was well enough now that he could sit up, and take medicinal soups and such. Sam and Lymon were in even better mettle, and would be leaving the Rest within days.

And there was another bright light on the horizon, which served to improve my mood. That was the prospect of our release from the Army of the Laurentians. The Draft Act of 2172 specified a single year of involuntary service (though an Aristo could contribute an indentured man "for the duration"); and although we were strenuously canvassed to re-enlist we resisted that temptation (except for Lymon Pugh, who felt the Army, despite its manifest dangers, was a more attractive option than the meat-packing trade). This meant that as early as Easter I would be able to leave here with Sam and Julian, and we would be bound for New York City—as civilians!—just as we had intended when we fled Williams Ford, though with a heightened sense of the injustices and opportunities of life.