Lehmann was above him before he could blink a second time. A boot slammed into his ribs. The butt of the German's sub-machinegun smashed into face.
Stunned and blinking more grit and blood from his eyes, Max found himself dragged towards the plane. He was thrown against the fuselage. A fist pummelled his face four, five times. Red spots filled his vision between the blackouts. Somewhere in the assault, the crunch of his shattered nose reached his ears.
The roar of the engine grew louder over the ringing in his ears. Max shook his head, returning to his senses.
"... Captain. How little you have understood. Die knowing that a God will be reborn in a matter of days and you were here, at the very chamber of its millennial slumber. Even now, your friends are nourishing the Burned One with their lifeblood." Lehmann pushed Max's face toward the whirring propeller blades.
"Song ... have you ... heard the song?" Max stammered around Lehmann's fingers, barely audible above the propeller roar. "Flute ... the flute."
Lehmann relaxed his grip just a little. Enough for Max to wriggle his head around to face the German.
"A servitor has come?" Lehmann's eyes drifted upward for a fraction of a second, focussed on some grand delusion. That was all Max needed.
He smashed his forehead into the bridge of Lehmann's nose. The crack of cartilage brought a grim smile of satisfaction to Max's face. With all this weight, he slammed his knee into the German's thigh, close to his bullet wound.
Lehmann grunted and buckled a second time but swung his sub-machinegun around on its strap. The two men wrestled with the gun only a foot or two from the propeller. Lehmann had his finger close to the trigger but Max had the better grip on the barrel. The engine roar, the hovering blades, and the struggle were all that existed for the combatants. When Max locked eyes with the German, he found an endless wellspring of hate and little else.
The men tussled in the stalemate until Max took a chance and landed a rabbit punch that stung Lehmann into loosening his hold on the weapon. Max pushed the MP28 into the propeller, which snapped the weapon from their grasp and hurled it yards from the biplane.
Max followed with a haymaker at the German but his blow was blocked by lucky reflexes. Lehmann kicked out at Max, unbalancing him for a few vital seconds. Spying Max's revolver beneath the wing, the German dived for it. Lehmann grabbed for the Webley but he recoiled as if stung, dropping it into the mud. He tried for it a second time before Max was upon him, succeeding in snatching up the weapon.
Max rounded on Lehmann as the German rose, the Webley trained on Max's heart.
Lehmann's face was bloodied and pale. His hand trembled as he held the gun. Max almost certainly looked worse.
"I have a plane to catch." The tremble in Lehmann's voice matched his hand.
Max unhooked his canteen from his belt and worked the lid loose with one hand. "Where did you take MacKenzie and the slaves? Where did you take those drums?"
Lehmann's tried to smile but couldn't. His arm and shoulder trembled with mounting intensity. His aim degenerated to the point where his hand—and the Webley—were dancing in crazy arcs.
"I will ... You. Will. Never know!" Lehmann stuttered. The Webley was flung from his hand at the height of a violent arc. "You will never—"
"Time to meet God, then, Mr Lehmann." Max pried the canteen lid free and tossed the contents at the German.
The ooze struck Lehmann's chest. He stood there for a moment, enraptured as the star-shaped mass writhed, expanded, and then sank into his shirt. The pause was deeper than the silence between the mountains, brooding, waiting to be filled. Even after hearing Pendle's scream, Max was still unprepared for the shriek that followed.
Unlike Pendle's, Lehmann's scream was not cut short. Even the biplane's propeller was drowned out by Lehmann's primordial scream. At first, he showed no physical signs of harm but when he clawed his shirt open, he revealed a dark mass of ooze, skin, and veins. Blood and white viscous fluid wept from Lehmann's torso as it puckered and contracted.
The German shrank to his knees, still shrieking, clawing at his chest and tearing out handfuls of ooze and strands of putrescent flesh. The dark matter extended down his torso and along his shoulders. When it reached his throat, his scream gurgled.
Max hobbled over to retrieve his revolver. It was especially warm in his grip. Heavy, too, like the weight of the world.
He turned on the dying German, raised his gun, and fired twice: two rounds to the heart. Lehmann's gurgling stopped dead as he was thrown backwards. The mass eating his torso sizzled with blue-white electricity for several seconds. An odd mix of sulphur and brine fumes stung Max's nose.
The ooze on Lehmann's corpse had shrivelled into a burnt powder. At the edges where the ooze had merged with the German's flesh, a fine line of powdered blue-grey residue crystallised and glinted in the sunlight.
"Your Gods aren't for mankind." Max holstered his revolver.
Out of the corner of his eye, Max glimpsed Neville's approach from the base of the mountain trail. With the biplane close to deafening, Max limped out to meet Neville and his man.
"I should thank you, Mr Neville," Max said as he closed on the pair. He gambled on keeping his weapon holstered.
"Thank Manco, here, Mr Calder." Neville's smile faded. "You look like Hell itself, Calder."
"I feel like it," Max admitted. "So why'd you help me? I thought you were with them?" Max thumbed toward Lehmann's corpse.
"The Germans? I'm a business man, Calder, not a murderer. I did some work for Harris back when the NWI mine was in good trade, back before everything went to hell."
"So Harris isn't involved in this?" Max frowned.
"How would I know? He often talked with Muller and your friend there," Neville pointed to Lehmann's body. "You're welcome to go up there and ask Harris yourself but I left him raving about some flute. He tried to ..." Neville coughed and glanced at the mud. "Harris ain't in a frame of mind to talk, understand? Anyway, when the Germans came to collect you and your friends' things, I figured it was time to make myself scarce before they moved in on the rest of the help. The New World payroll is great but it ain't worth disappearing for."
"But what about—"
"But nothing. Listen up, Calder. I don't know what you've stumbled into and by the looks of Fritz over there, I don't wanna know. Me and Manco, we're headed inland for a while. Forget the name New World Incorporated, okay? Forget you were ever here."
"It's not that easy."
"Sure it is. Just—"
"Now you listen, Neville. Muller's men have taken MacKenzie and I'm guessing the people who once lived here." Max waved at the trading post. "They dug up something below the mountain." He pointed at Lehmann's body. "That was just the start. I have to stop them."
"Jesus, Calder. You were a little late in giving him mercy."
Manco crossed himself but kept his head bowed.
"It was what he deserved. New Word Incorporated's mercy is a hell of a lot less tender than mine."
Neville slumped and sighed. "They left early last night. Took off in that big zeppelin of theirs. Said something to Harris about a shipment going to the Wellington, moored at Callao. It's going to some Chinaman in San Francisco. Lang Fu. That name ring a bell to you, Calder?"
Max shook his head.
"Anyway, you can't miss the Wellington, it'll be the biggest cargo ship in port. If they trucked whatever it is you're chasing to the ship, your friend will be there."
"Thank you."
"Mr Calder." Neville rummaged through a pack strapped to one of his llamas, withdrew a crumpled slouch hat, and donned it with an air of pretension reserved for the higher classes. "A truck would have made the docks by now. Your friend might already be at sea."
"I'll catch them." Calder shook hands with Neville and Manco before hobbling for the Sparrowhawk biplane idling on the makeshift runway.
He pulled free the wedge from beneath one of the landing wheels. The plane immediately rolled forward under its own
power. In moments, he had clambered up the fuselage and into the cockpit, and was powering the throttle to full. The biplane was quickly in the air and soaring over the Huancucho valley.
The drumbeat staccato of the engine, the whirr of propeller blades, and gas fumes clogged his senses. The gale buffeting his face stung his cuts, pained his swelling skin, and stole the majesty from the mountain peaks as he soared among them, temporarily their equal.
Soon, the horizon would open up onto Peru's coastal plain, and with it, the Pacific Ocean beyond.
Soon, it was time to face Lehmann's God.
#
The Wellington was well out to sea, as Neville had guessed. Only a speck in the sky, reflecting the sun in Max's direction as he soared thousands of feet over the Pacific, had tipped him off. The zeppelin was the perfect navigation buoy. Its silver skin shone like a jewel floating through the heavens.
The sky was clear and blue, with only a handful of clouds stretched sparse above the ocean. Their shadows were thin strips darkening the water from blue to grey, leeching its vitality.
As he passed through a cloud shadow, Max flexed his fingers to stave off the wind's icy touch and regain some feeling. He would need to draw on his dexterity soon enough. He wrapped his fingers around the Sparrowhawk's machinegun triggers in anticipation, willing warmth to return. His pulse hammered in his ears even above the propeller drone.
The zeppelin loomed larger as he approached from above and behind. Despite the gulf of distance yet to be closed, finer details appeared such as the airship's tail fins and the hint of a control gondola. The zeppelin hovered like a tyrant over the Wellington. The two giants ploughed a northward course at matching speeds. Two smaller dots buzzed in a lazy arc in the skies around the zeppelin, one at ten o'clock, the other at 2 o'clock. Observing the biplanes' patrol crystallised a plan in Max's mind.
Max closed his eyes and rolled the flightstick forward. The sudden weightlessness threatened to empty his gut, the rapid descent with eyes closed bringing spirals of vertigo. But with his dive came other sensation: memory fragments from a lifetime ago of aerobatics over eastern France and high gravity banking under machinegun fire; the tinny staccato of enemy gunners desperate to rip his Sopwith Camel to shreds; the endless wind and the comparative silence as the last Jasta pilot merged with his Albatross in fiery wreckage on the muddy fields below.
He snapped his eyes open at the bottom of his dive, sucking in a deep breath and appreciating the expanse of the Pacific with fresh eyes. Forgotten were the memories. So, too, were the aches of his battered body, at least for the moment. The sky and the sea merged together in a horizon of blues, but the only thing to remain constant was the NWI biplane he was lining up in his gun sights.
Max held the first Sparrowhawk in his sights but allowed his approach to run sloppy. He banked to the right as the zeppelin and the cargo ship came within range, adopting the circumnavigating patrol of his target. However, instead of easing off the throttle, he powered to attack speed.
His attack run took him directly between the Wellington and the zeppelin. He disregarded the two behemoths and sharpened his vectors.
Even with him bearing down, the other pilots must have believed him to be Lehmann returning from the grim business that kept him in Huancucho. He felt a moment's satisfaction as his target broke its flight pattern an instant before he opened fire. But the last minute correction was too little, too late. Max's machineguns cranked into life, blazing through the propeller, the interrupter gear allowing red hot rounds to escape in that hair's breadth of a gap before the next blade momentarily blocked the gun's muzzle.
The NWI Sparrowhawk was torn to shreds under the barrage. The tattered aft fuselage and upper wing were shorn away under the force of a hard turn. Max's second burst caught the dying craft as it stalled. The pilot jerked in the cockpit and slumped. A heartbeat later, the plane disappeared in an explosion as the fuel tank and engine simultaneously caught fire. The Sparrowhawk's remains sprayed across the Pacific.
The other biplane had spun into a defensive roll but Max flew through the smoke and was stalking his opponent. The NWI pilot weaved around for a firing position but Max pre-empted him. Throwing his plane into an ascending turn, Max gained a superior line.
Tracers filled Max's field of vision but splayed well wide of his wing tip.
With a rush of blood, Max threw his plane into a barrel roll. The horizon spun like a whirligig but the enemy fell within his sights. He clamped down on the trigger as the sky filled with more tracer fire. Impacts on his lower wing jarred his control of the flightstick, but he continued to hold the trigger down, punishing the enemy all while.
Max eased out of the roll with part of his wing blasted away but the NWI biplane was a ball of smoke. He watched with dispassion as the plane and pilot spiralled out of control. As it smashed into the ocean, more lines of much heavier tracer fire filled the sky around him. Again, Max barrel-rolled to shake his assailant, but he quickly realised the fire came not from another aircraft but from the deck of the Wellington. While shaking the ship's assault, more gunfire sprang from nowhere, this time slamming into his plane's tail fin and clipping the rudder. A forward-mounted machine gun placement on the zeppelin's control gondola had sprung to life and was tracking him as he turned for a strafing run.
Max's thoughts tumbled with possible lines of attack and choices between targets, but the rattling and unresponsiveness of his Sparrowhawk decided his course. He probably had one chance in this gauntlet and one chance only. Any more damage and the plane would be scrap.
He banked in a wide arc until he was on the ship's starboard side. The NWI zeppelin had drifted in the high winds well to port but was powering up its engines. Inch by inch, its nose encroached over the Wellington's aft section.
Max dived low, shielding his run as best he could from the zeppelin's guns. The Wellington's aft-mounted machine gun blazed into life, slicing through the air and his wings with equal disregard. Max weaved and opened his own machineguns. Another chunk of wing was torn away under fire but he held his course, raking the Wellington's machine gun placement and deck with everything he had. The plane was being sheared apart around him until a few lucky shots caught the NWI-uniformed machine gunner. The man was thrown to the deck in a spray of blood.
Max turned hard to bring him parallel with the ship but the plane was sluggish. With nothing to lose, he continued raking the Wellington's deck. A timber crane carrying a lifeboat buckled under the onslaught and fell across the deck. The boat slammed onto the deck, was thrown free of its ropes, and hurtled over the far side. The ocean and the side of the ship filled his vision in a swell of blue and black.
Max's Sparrowhawk slammed into the water. The impact drove the air from his lungs. The engine was abruptly cut dead. Ice cold water flooded over him, numbed him, and overwhelmed his senses as he reeled from the crash. In a heartbeat, he sank with the plane's fuselage.
For one endless, confused moment, the Pacific cocooned him more completely than the mountains of Peru ever could. He gasped for breath against the water compressing him, kicked himself free of the sinking wreckage, and kept on kicking. He soon broke the surface next to a floating chunk of fuselage. The zeppelin soared above him. The twin barrels of the airship's fore-mounted machinegun swivelled from side to side but with Max merely a speck in the water in the blind spot directly below, the gunner was unable to fix on a target.
Mustering his reserves of strength, Max swam towards the mast of the crane that had slumped from the Wellington's deck into the water. A rope and pulley was still attached and anchored to the deck, and with these, he scaled the side of the ship. The zeppelin overhead blocked out the sun. Its fan turbines revved to turn in its attempt to locate Max but the breeze battled it to a standstill.
Confident in the zeppelin gunner's blindness, Max slipped over the Wellington's rail. The moment his boots hit the deck, a vibration thrummed up through his legs and nearly shook his heart to a stop. Nausea and that sense of v
ertigo from his dogfight returned but twice as strong and entirely unwholesome. The pit of his stomach crawled with worms. He shook the feeling off and withdrew his Webley, which was charged with electricity enough to numb his hand.
He strode forward, past the battered corpse of the machine gunner that had shot him from the sky, and sought the source of the vibration below decks. Max moved between barrels and boxes on deck but found nothing stirring: none of Muller's men and none of the crew. He penetrated into the main decks, but time after time, found nothing but wide-open hatches and empty compartments. His instincts took him into the bowels of the ship, down steel stairs and ladders, through bottlenecks that could have easily held an ambush, all the way to a final closed hatch marked 'Cargo Hold'.
The instant he opened the hatch, Max gagged on fumes of brimstone and the stench of human excrement and something even more odious, like the putrefaction of long-dead corpses. He descended the grille stairs into the gloom, his sleeve held over his nose as makeshift protection against the stench. Laughter and chanting carried up the stairs but so, too, was a more familiar tune, one that plucked at the edges of his sanity. He tightened his grip on his Webley, seeking courage in the weapon's heat.
He pried open the hatch at the base of the stairs and stopped dead. His heart and mind were both momentarily derailed, each unable to withstand the spectacle filling the cargo bay. He buckled against the doorframe and jammed his knuckles into his mouth to hold the bile down. Even that wasn't enough. He vomited what little his stomach held against the wall and then dry reached for long moments afterwards.
Muller and his men didn't appear to notice. The fat German and his cohorts frolicked merrily to the incoherent song of an invisible flute. The tune filled the expanse of three cargo holds that had been opened up to form a huge open area, larger than the cavern below Huancucho. Muller and a dozen or so men danced an oddly stilted jig on the mezzanine deck immediately in front of Max. Burning candles were strewn about the place and occult symbols had been painted on the floor in various bodily fluids.
Requiem for the Burning God Page 5
