Flaming Zeppelins

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “But Straw, that filthy scarecrow, talked her into staying another day, to visit with us — me, the lion, and himself. She did just that.

  “Poor Dot. She didn’t understand that Straw’s obsession had grown renegade. And the lion followed along. He was up for whatever Straw wanted. Together they added up to bad.

  “I slept late the next morning, awoke to a sound. Down the halls of the palace I heard a muffled scream. I got up, went out. I heard scuffling in Dot’s room, and when I got there, well, Straw had her on her back and she was fighting him. I grabbed him and tore his head off. Then I ripped straw out of his chest, and jerked his legs and arms off. But it was too late for Dot. She had died from the assault. Her little dog, BoBo, lay in the fireplace, burning, its head twisted at an odd angle.

  “The lion shot at me. The bullets bounced off. He tossed the gun aside. So much for his courage. He bolted. I found him in his room cowering in a closet. I was so angry at the lion, I tore him apart, limb from limb. I was an absolute savage, no better than they.

  “Then it occurred to me that the palace guards would think I murdered the two to have Dot to myself; and that I then raped and murdered her.”

  “No offense. What would you have raped her with? You don’t have a… Well… You know.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered. They might have thought I did it with my hand. A substitute penis like a fireplace poker. Who is to say? I was frightened, bad as the lion. Know what I did?”

  “No, Tin. I do not.”

  “I took Dot’s silver slippers from her feet, put them on, and clicked my heels three times, just as the witch had told her, and I said, ‘get me home, you betcha.’ It worked. Everything went foggy. I seemed to be falling through space. I realized as I was swept away, I did not have a real home. Maybe I would go to Dot’s home. Or my original place of creation. Wherever that was. It did not matter. All that mattered was that I be away from the palace at XYZ.”

  “And you ended up here?”

  “Not quite. I awoke in a great heap of scrap metal. This was, in fact, my home. A place where metal was collected. Was I not a metal thing run by clockwork and gears? It so happened that Momo worked his way through scrap yards, gathering odds and ends for his laboratory, which at that time was in a place called London. That is how I came to be with him.”

  “That must mean you were first built in London but somehow were transported to XYZ. Then, back to London.”

  “There are no real answers. Just this stamp of a name on my foot.”

  Tin held up his foot. On the bottom was stamped: RETURN TO H. G. WELLS THIS METAL CHRONONAUT. Then there was an address.

  “Did you try the address?”

  “I did not. Momo had me. I was grateful at the time, and felt he was my savior. Besides. He was offering me a real heart. Not a watch. But let me tell you, he is a horrible man, Bert. He is soulless, even though he has a heart.

  “Do you know what he did in London? He disguised me in a hat, long coat and pants, horrible shoes, and we took to the streets of Whitechapel. He had a thing for women, Bert. Not unlike Straw. Except, he cut them up. He did horrible things to them, took pieces out of their bodies and took them home for his experiments. The police searched everywhere for him, but, obviously, never caught him. He wrote them taunting letters, calling himself Jack the Ripper. He dropped clues. He wrote in American vernacular. He played games with them. And then one day, he heard of an island in the Pacific, and he went there, taking me with him. And here I am now.”

  “What became of the silver slippers?”

  “I still have them. When I ended up in the metal yard, I removed them, hid them inside a secret place in my leg. Let me show you.”

  Tin touched what appeared to be a smooth place in his leg. It popped open. Inside were the silver slippers.

  “Yes,” Tin said. “I can see by your eyes that you have noticed the obvious. They are not very attractive and the toes are ripped out, the sides broken down. My feet were bigger than Dot’s. I have never tried them again. For one thing, I thought Momo was a noble man about noble experiments and he would give me my heart. I was naïve. I knew what he did to those women was bad, and still, I helped him. He was no better than Straw and Bushy, and I killed them. I was such a coward, Bert. I wanted that heart.”

  “With the shoes you could leave at anytime.”

  “I have been thinking of trying them on again, letting fate carry me where it chooses. Then you came along. Now I do not want to go anywhere without you. I thought…you might try them. That you might escape this madhouse.”

  “Why would I go anywhere without you?” Bert said.

  Tin squeezed closer to Bert. “That is the sweetest thing ever said to me…goodness, I have done all the talking. Tell me your story.”

  “Not much to tell. Not here one day, here the next. Victor Frankenstein constructed me of dead bodies. Was disappointed with my appearance, and with what he had done. Laid a lot of guilt on me. You would have thought he was Catholic. Then he cast me out. I will not lie to you, I was pissed.”

  “About Frankenstein’s wife?”

  “We are both murderers, Tin. And both of our murders came from good intentions. You see, I was in love with Victor’s wife, and she with me. From the first time she saw me lying on a slab, it was there. She was a necrophiliac, you see. That is why she was attracted to my creator in the first place. He played with dead bodies…and, well, I was just…if you will pardon the pun, just what the doctor ordered.”

  “So you go either way?”

  “Until now…but as for Elizabeth, well, when it all went sour we were about the deed that we had done many a time behind Victor’s back — and I assure you, I am not proud of that. But this time we were doing it, she decides she wants to be dead like me. Or near dead. She is not planning on a permanent thing. So she says, ‘choke me,’ and I will not lie to you, I found it kind of appealing, so I choked her. And choked her. Only I choked too long and too hard. She died. I had to flee then, and Victor brought the hounds of Hell down on me.

  “Some months later, after fleeing all through Europe and elsewhere, I ended up at the Arctic Ice Skating Championships. A new sport recently designed by Hans Brinker, who was a noted winner of the old Silver Skates championships, and quite a looker, I might add. You remind me of him, only far more attractive.”

  “You flatterer.”

  “I was quite the skater actually. Victor taught me. Back when we were friends. I decided to enter the championships. You see, I thought I was home free. Had escaped Victor completely.

  “Turned out, he was right on my tail. In the midst of the championships, me in third place — and mind you, it was cold and we were all bundled heavily, so we looked like bears on ice — Victor and his thugs came out from behind an ice floe on skates and went for me. I fought back. Just natural. I tossed the two thugs about until they were unconscious, then there was only Victor. As we struggled, other skaters went by. I said to Victor as I held him by the throat, ‘You are going to make me lose this championship over some woman I did not even mean to kill and who was unfaithful to you, and in addition, you will be dead. Is this not silly?’

  “He agreed, of course, and then an amazing thing happened. I not only let him go, we began to skate together. Him encouraging me to skate well, to cross the finish line, and me skating for all I was worth. Soon I had left him behind, but I could hear his voice calling to me, encouraging, like a father. Then the voice went silent.

  “I turned, looked over my shoulder. Victor had fallen through a gap in the ice. I turned back, could see the finish line. It was cross the line or save Victor, who moments before had tried to kill me, only to turn and give me the encouragement I had always wanted from my creator. I had to make a decision.

  “Well, you know I turned and went back for him. How could I not. But fate, as it always does, turned against me. After skating perfectly for the entire contest, as I went back for him, allowing the other contestants to pass me, I slipped. That i
s the best I can explain it. One moment I am skating like a veritable arctic god, and the next, I have slipped. I hit on my butt, feet forward, and one of my skates struck Frankenstein in the face, hard. He let go of the edge of the ice, and was gone with a sound not too unlike Blurp. That was it. He was drowned.

  “Well, of course the way the crowd saw it, I deliberately skated back to him, jumped, slid on my butt so I could boot him in the face with a skate.

  “I was arrested. Shortly thereafter the Brinker committee decided the best thing to do with me was to sell me to a Japanese delegation that had attended the contest, and the next thing I knew, I was in Japan, being sawed on. That’s what happened to my foot. They were cutting off pieces of me to be made into an aphrodisiac.”

  “My goodness.”

  “My goodness indeed. I was rescued by Hickok and the others, and when we were shot down at sea by the Japanese, I was separated from them, partially eaten by a shark, and would have died had I not been carried along by dolphins for a goodly distance, and finally, with their assistance, reached this island’s shore, only to be rescued by Hickok and his friends once again.”

  “Why would dolphins help you?”

  “I cannot say for sure. I think they helped me for one reason, and one reason only. They don’t like sharks. And, they are in fact, often mistaken for them.”

  “An amazing story.”

  “As is yours.”

  “Bert?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think we could snuggle?”

  “Of course,” said Bert.

  Ned was nervous. Assigned to assist Cody in his cabin, he found that he was all flippers. The attached thumbs seemed worthless. He couldn’t hold anything without dropping it. The whiskey Cody wanted to taste, the hose that pumped out the waste box, everything Ned touched he fumbled.

  “Take it easy, Ned,” Cody said. “I won’t eat you. Though, under certain circumstances a seal steak might be acceptable.”

  Ned blinked his big black eyes.

  “Just a little joke,” Cody said.

  Ned relaxed.

  “So, you’re quite the fan of my little adventures, huh?”

  Ned nodded.

  “Well now,” Cody said, feeling well tucked into his element as a teller of tall tales, or as many had called him, a goddamn liar. Cody said, “Did I ever tell you about the time I fought off half the Sioux nation? Why of course, I haven’t. We’ve just actually met, haven’t we? Well, climb up in that chair there and let me give you the story. First, let me say I have a motto. ‘Do right.’ And I have a little motto goes with that. ‘Do right ‘cause it’s right.’ How’s that, huh? Good, is it not?

  “Well, now, once out on the plains, all by my lonesome, ‘cept for my horse, Ole Jake, I was beset upon by the entire Cheyenne — what’s that?”

  Ned had raised a flipper, halting the story. He adjusted his glasses on his nose, quickly lifted up the notebook and pencil that hung about his neck on a chain. He had written: SIOUX NATION. HALF OF THEM.

  “Ah, yes,” said Cody. “Wrong adventure. That was another time, actually. Not nearly as hair-raising as this one, even though there were more of them. Why I bet there were three times the number of Sioux as Cheyenne. But this time I meant to tell you about, it was Cheyenne, and I was on my horse, Will.”

  Ned’s note pad went up again. JAKE.

  “Yes, of course. Jake. Not Will. Totally different horse. So there I was…”

  It was near dark when Cody ceased telling stories, drinking whiskey that Ned held to his lips, and having it pumped from the waste box by the enraptured seal.

  Finally Cody became too tired to continue. He nodded off. Ned placed a blanket over the container that held the great frontiersman, then, turning down the lamps, curled in a chair and slept, thinking happily of Buffalo Bill.

  As Ned and Cody slept, and the zeppelinauts remained in their rooms, locked in by Momo’s assistant Jack, a great storm struck a ship out on the ocean, some twenty miles west of the doctor’s island.

  The storm was a real piss and vinegar of a churning belly-whirler. It bullied the ocean, shoved it, slapped it, threw it high and made it foam. It pushed the sea so hard great valleys of water were built. Then the storm collapsed the walls, tumbled them down, sprayed wide and wet.

  The ship popped and bobbed, tossed and rolled. The sea lathered against its sides like custard. Inside the ship, inside a coffin, the dark man had just laid himself down to sleep. It was not the sleep of the living, but a different kind of sleep. A sort of hibernation. There was no breath. There was no heartbeat. There was only sleep.

  But in the moments before the strange condition claimed him, he thought of his country of blackly wooded mountains and shadowy forests, and of what had been.

  Many years past he had been a powerful ruler. A man feared and respected. Now, through a series of circumstances involving murdered priests, tripping over a holy relic, the cursing of God, he had been cursed in return. But not with words. With the curse of the undead.

  He had made the best of it, had learned to love it, then hate it, then love it again. Now he felt nothing but the need to exist in his undead condition. And to do that, he must have blood, for the blood is the life.

  But on his way to the Far East to taste Asian food, a storm had lost them on the deep blue for way too long, and when it ended they were drastically off course. During this time he lay down in the ship’s hold in his coffin — thought by the captain to contain the body of an eccentric American who wanted to be buried on Asian soil for some reason or another — and waited.

  Waiting, the dark man became hungry. He could hear the heartbeats of the crew, could in fact hear the blood rushing through their veins, like water through viaducts. Above it all he could hear the new storm. One more powerful and ferocious and determined to consume them than the one that had driven them off course. Compared to this, that storm had been a high wind.

  He was disappointed. He had plans. He had tasted what Britain had to offer, had not cared for it. Except for young women with powdered necks and perfumed ears, the place was a disappointment.

  He had gone to savage America, had not cared for it much either. Too many men in smelly buckskins and shit-stained longjohns. Worse, too many women in smelly buckskins and shit-stained longjohns. The West was glamorous not at all.

  So now he was set to try Asia.

  Along the way, however, he could not contain himself. He had been forced to feed on the sailors. He had been so famished he had ripped out their throats and sucked them dry, instead of milking them slowly night by night.

  It was a part of his nature he hated. As much time as he had on his hands he would have thought by now he would have learned to be patient.

  He had instead sucked the life out of most everyone on board, save a handful of crew and the captain. Last time he had seen the old man he was lashed to the wheel, fighting the storm. He still lived, but barely. The dark man could hear his heartbeat and the slow slush of blood in his arteries. The beat of his heart was erratic. He was frightened both of sea and what lay below in the hold. He didn’t understand it, but he knew it was horrible.

  The dark man knew all this and reveled in it. Cursed himself at the same time. He had, by feeding so violently, left himself in dire straits. Without sufficient crew, he could be lost at sea.

  The ship tipped and righted itself a half-dozen times, but the last time the wave was too big and the tip was too far, and over it went. The sails were snatched away, the mast cracked against the sea, turned to splinters. Water rushed into the ship, filled it from top to bottom. It began to sink.

  The captain and remaining crew abandoned ship, but were instantly swallowed by the waters and taken down deep and away.

  Under the ship went, sawing back and forth beneath the ocean. Then, out of an open storage hatch, up popped the coffin. It shot to the surface like a cork, bobbed in the sea.

  It bounced and heaved for hours. Then, suddenly as it had begun, the storm di
ed down and the ocean went smooth. The coffin washed toward the island of Doctor Momo.

  The tide moved it onto shore. The lid popped, slid sideways. A hand grasped it, pushed it off. Slowly, a hand grasped either side of the coffin, and a mustached, white-faced man with angular features, wearing a dark outfit with a black cloak lined with red, rose effortlessly from the box, stood, turned his red eyes toward the jungle.

  Out there, in the jungle, Momo’s creations saw the coffin and the man. They were bunched up behind a clutch of trees. The Lion Man said, “Is that a man?”

  “It walks on two legs, does it not?” said the Sayer of the Law.

  They watched as the tall man stepped out of the coffin and waded after the coffin lid. He was making a terrible noise in a language the beast men did not recognize.

  Finally, after much thrashing and falling into the seawater, the dark man was able to rescue the lid, drag it and the coffin onto the beach. He paused a moment to kick a crab loose from his ankle.

  “I know you’re out there,” he said to the jungle. “I can smell your blood, hear your heartbeat. I can smell your breath and your unwiped asses.”

  The man smiled at the darkness. His teeth were white and shiny. Like the beast men, he had long canines.

  The Sayer of the Law edged out of the woods. “Are we not men?” he said. “Not to run on all fours, that is the law. Not to roll in dead things, that is the law.” (The Quoter was overcome with joy; that was the part he had left out the other day when quoting to the newcomers.)

  “Not to…”

  “Silence,” said the tall man. “You bore me.”

  The others came out of the jungle now. The pig-faced creature snuffled about the dark man, trying to intimidate him.

  “Do not speak to the Sayer of the Law that way,” said the pig in his choked voice. “It is not the way of men.”

  In answer, the dark man grabbed the Pig Man by the neck, and with one violent rip, tore the creature’s throat out.