The Company of the Dead

by David Kowalski

  He cleared the Eye of all but his senior agents. The remaining men, covert operatives placed among the stratolite’s crew when she’d first been cast to the winds, represented all the Patton’s services. He listened to their appraisals.

  There were at least eight Japanese squadrons inbound. A flight of rocket scouts had been spotted among their formations. There’d been some external attempts, from Dallas and Houston, to contact the Patton. All had been ignored, as per his orders.

  One communiqué piqued his interest. The flotilla of German stratolites secreted above the Japanese Home Islands had delivered their atomic stockpiles over Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  He reviewed his options. Their scarcity alleviated his task.

  More than a hundred Japanese planes were on their way. The Patton wouldn’t live out the hour.

  He gave orders to make west at full speed. All unnecessaries were to be jettisoned in order to gain the highest altitude. He dismissed the men, telling them that he was not to be disturbed. He shook their hands at the elevator vestibule and sealed the Eye’s entrance at their departure.

  He had everything he needed right here.

  He returned to the transmitter and dialled up the frequency that had earlier cut into Kennedy’s conversation.

  A voice, unexpectedly soft, unexpectedly sorrowful, answered his transmission.

  He ignored Malcolm’s wasted supplication. Joseph Kennedy was long gone.

  He spoke over her protests, saying, “Please listen to me very carefully. You need to ensure that all your electrical equipment is deactivated for the next thirty minutes. After that, you will be free to do as you will. Good luck, Malcolm.”

  She started to reply but something in her voice set the pain coursing through the parched void of his socket. He cut the broadcast.

  He reached for the remote and primed the atomics, setting the timer for twenty minutes. He removed two bottles from a flap pocket of his jacket and eyed them judiciously. He selected a handful of purps and downed them dry. He wished he’d thought to bring along a cigar.

  XXXVI

  April 29, 2012

  Red Rock, Nevada

  “For God’s sake.” She flew across the cavern floor towards the generator. “Don’t touch a damned thing.”

  Doc fell away from the machine.

  “Unplug it and make sure those damned explosives don’t have a dead man’s switch.”

  “Where is he?” Lightholler was asking. Fixed on the problem of Doc’s first insertion point, compass in hand, he was poring over a series of maps.

  “That wasn’t Joseph.”

  Lightholler looked up. Morgan left Shine’s side and approached them.

  “That was Webster.”

  The crash of stray blasts, the steady rattle of the cavern’s cracked walls, formed an eerie counterpoint to her words. Kennedy and Webster. The shock of their unholy alliance still hadn’t had time to sink in.

  “What did he want?” It was Doc who spoke. Witness to their dark pact, his voice trembled with rage.

  “It was a warning.”

  “A warning?” They were the first words Shine had uttered since talking to his father.

  “Heaven help us.” She shook her head, disbelievingly. “He’s going to use his atomics.”

  XXXVII

  April 29, 2012

  CSS Patton

  The timer read three minutes.

  Webster stood before the glass enclosure with his hands pressed against the frame.

  The stratolite was listing to port. One of the Eye’s scaffolding beams had been snagged. It dangled beneath the Patton, twisting slow, presenting Webster with a dazzling view.

  The Japanese air force could not be accused of tardiness.

  He removed the patch and held it between thumb and forefinger before letting it fall to the floor. The purple bottle, empty, rolled away from his feet to rest against the wall, then back again, making little chiming noises.

  The timer read two minutes.

  He had a nursery rhyme going round and round in his head and it went, gun mouth trigger.

  The pistol was cold to the touch. He placed the barrel against his forehead, enjoying the momentary relief of the chilled metal against his brow. He shifted the pistol with the intention of cooling the arid chasm of his mouth. That was nice. The floor lurched beneath him as another rocket detonated somewhere within the stricken stratolite’s bowels, so rather than a clean furrow through his brainstem the bullet shattered his palate to lodge under his frontal bone.

  His head hurt.

  He was on the floor and there was something in his eye. Something was dribbling into his socket. He wiped it away in futility and all the while the white and grey and red matter slid down his forehead into his eye.

  He glanced at the clock but it had to be all wrong because it was running backwards.

  He glanced at the gun in his hand and said, “Oh.”

  It was hard to gather his thoughts. It felt like there was a hole in his head and all of his thoughts were billowing through the hole in his head and sliding down the front of his face into his mouth. He spat into his palm and examined the contents, brain, blood and slivers of cartilage, and said, “Crap.”

  He giggled and drooled, “The enemy of my Kenemy is my fiend.”

  That brought the smile back to his face.

  Outside the window, shiny silver pixies danced and the cloudscape streamed fast-purple-slow.

  Malcolm was riding him, looking down upon his beaming face.

  There you are. He smiled.

  He had a nursery rhyme gurgling at the top of his skull, spiralling out of the hole in his head, and it went, pop goes the weasel.

  XXXVIII

  April 29, 2012

  Red Rock, Nevada

  The hush that followed that great final quake was thick and heavy.

  The carapace, grimed and dull beneath a pall of dust, hummed softly at full charge. Tecumseh and Hayes stood with Shine beside one of the machine’s struts. Tecumseh, eyes closed, had a hand resting against the machine. His lips were moving and Malcolm was unsure as to whether he was offering consolation or prayer.

  For her own part, it was all she could do just to breathe. Each inhalation seemed to come at the bequest of some hidden authority that had to remind her, cajole her, to draw the next shuddering breath. Each became a drawn-out sigh, but there were no tears.

  Doc Gershon had explained to her that the first staging point—that initial skip before the long leap back in time—placed them within a small radius of their current position. Lightholler, Morgan and Gershon were at the maps now, searching the adjacent vicinity, slicked red with blood in both space and time, for that dry spot to land.

  She didn’t imagine for a moment that this little ark would be encountering any doves.

  They were rolling up the maps. Gershon cleared his desk. He removed the spool from the printer and turned off the computer. Lightholler had a large trunk with him; he lugged it heavily towards the underside of the carapace. Shine had to help him lift it through the circular hatch.

  They adjusted the soiled garments of their uniforms, buttoning up shirts and securing the straps of their helmets. Gershon put on a helmet. It looked like dry land wasn’t in the offing.

  Tecumseh and Hayes moved to another console next to the generator.

  Lightholler approached her. “Are you ready, Patricia?”

  She nodded numbly.

  He led her beneath the carapace’s shell.

  She felt the ghost dancer’s eyes upon her with each tentative step. Firm arms hauled her into the belly of the machine. The sterile sweep of its white curving bulwarks was a stark contrast to the cavern that had been her world for such an interminable time. Six seats were arranged, two before and four behind the hatch, on a raised dais. There were sealed lockers arranged along the walls and a console that occupied a full third of the cabin. A single keyboard was embedded within. The paucity of equipment was slightly disturbing.

&nbs
p; Above the keyboard, through glass unseen from without, she saw Tecumseh staring up at the machine. The air had a metallic tang to it. She tasted the electricity’s dance. Part of the view screen was devoted to a computer readout, but the numbers that flashed emerald across the screen meant nothing to her.

  Lightholler directed her to one of the four seats at the carapace’s hindquarters. He secured her with a thin strap of black leather and took the adjacent seat for himself. Morgan and Shine silently took their places alongside.

  Beside her, a smaller console had been etched into the metal. Two palm-sized discs lay beneath a sheath of clear plastic. One was green, the other a dull shade of red. Some design, a subtle twirl, was carved into the surface of the green disc. If the disc could spin, she would see a whirling vortex with no centre. She decided that it was a rebus; an enigmatical representation, to any seated here, of the journey to come.

  Doctor Gershon took a seat at the lower tier. The chair next to him remained empty.

  Her glance shifted from the seat to Tecumseh’s expectant gaze below.

  Gershon was awaiting some signal from the medicine man. He grasped a lever protruding from his console and inched it forwards. The discs in his console began to pulse slowly.

  She turned to Lightholler, afraid for a moment to speak aloud in this place.

  His look, eager and hopeful, was an invitation.

  She said, “Wouldn’t Joseph want us to take Tecumseh in his place?”

  Lightholler’s face broke into a dark smile. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  She looked out to Tecumseh, across an expanding gulf of space and time. The medicine man appeared to meet her gaze firmly and she knew. To each, it seemed as though the other had gone entirely from the world.

  THE FIRE SERMON

  I

  Stage 1

  Doc had talked about winging the first stage, saying that the labile state of the chronogeography in the region made insertion a risky prospect. Pressed to speak English, he told Lightholler that a radius of the last two hours and ten miles was likely to pitch them into the centre of a battlefield. That’s what had given Lightholler the idea.

  He thought only he had heard the delicate sound, faint and distant, of an eggshell cracking. His companions’ eyes told him it was no delusion. Yet the screen still showed the cavern’s interior: Tecumseh, a frozen effigy before the screen.

  Doc called out, “Get ready, I’m blowing the hatch. This is only for calibration, so you’ll have sixty seconds, max.”

  Nothing changed.

  According to Doc, the brain compensated for the abrupt shift in time and space by filling in the gaps with old information.

  There was the slightest sensation of rocking. It was hard to believe that they had moved at all.

  “Get ready.”

  Lightholler was at the locker. He pulled the trunk heavily onto the floor.

  Shine and Morgan were reaching for weapons. Their hands fumbled among the ordnance.

  Lightholler’s weapon was a thick and bulky cylinder in his arms. Morgan shot him an incredulous look before lifting his own choice from the stockpile, a ghost-dancer assault rifle.

  Shine cradled a machine-gun.

  Lightholler caught one glimpse of Malcolm’s bewildered expression. Behind her, on the screen, the cavern was melting. Veiled sunlight and a stony stretch of desert superimposed itself in a bizarre double exposure.

  He dropped through the hatch.

  Shine and Morgan were beside him on the ground. His vision swam as nausea contended with dizziness to see which might incapacitate him first. Shine’s father had come through with the coordinates but Doc’s timing could have been a little kinder. They’d been pitched into an inferno. Roasting wind whipped frenzied flames as a Dragon tank crested the ridge.

  Major Kennedy faced the monstrosity on bended knees.

  Shine fired short bursts to no avail. Morgan’s rifle chattered uselessly against the tank’s ribbed underbelly. Lightholler hadn’t fired a weapon since Nashville. He put the rocket-launcher to his shoulder and took the shot.

  The Dragon, perched on the ridge’s edge, seemed to crumple inwards as if clenching the missile. It slid back over the escarpment with a roar.

  They dragged Kennedy’s prone form to the hatch. With Malcolm’s fervent hands clutching at his face and chest, they hauled him through the opening. Lightholler boosted Morgan through the threshold and reached across to Shine.

  Shine bent to kiss to his dead father’s brow before accepting Lightholler’s hand.

  Doc’s voice was a strident bellow from within, urging him back.

  Lightholler gripped the hatch’s sides. Hands reached under his arms, dragging him up. His feet clear of the hatchway, he heard a voice—quite clear and strangely familiar—issue from a radio nearby.

  “Major, are you there? Please respond, over.”

  II

  Stage 2

  “Why here?” Kennedy was nursing the scalded weal of his right shoulder.

  Malcolm was still staring at him with wide eyes. He turned, catching her look, and his face softened.

  Shine was smiling too.

  On screen, the desert liquefied to a verdant sea of shifting green.

  “I had to do the calculations from scratch,” Doc said. “The only maps I had were the ones you’d left in your office. This was the only region I could get a fix on.”

  Outside, shades of green and brown resolved into rich, leafy woodland.

  “Where are we?” Malcolm asked.

  “New York.” Kennedy turned to hide his evident dismay.

  Malcolm peered at the forming image on the screen, as if half-expecting to find a squad of Brandenburg shock troopers bursting through the tree line at any moment. “When are we?” she asked fearfully.

  Doc scrutinised his monitor, then turned to face them. “Near as I can tell, we’ve jumped two hundred hours, give or take.”

  Morgan struggled with the maths. This sudden roller-coaster, tacked onto the end of long days of terror, hardship and loss, left his mind numbed.

  “Nine days,” Shine said. “I thought stage two was a fortnight.”

  Doc said, “Next time, you plot the fucking insertion.”

  Lightholler chuckled faintly.

  Kennedy’s eyes shifted across the group with faint amusement. He addressed them all. “Thank you.” The quiver in his voice told of his own sufferings.

  “I’ve never been to New York,” Malcolm said, “but I don’t recall it being known for its greenery.”

  “We’re in Central Park,” Lightholler said. “Again.” He shot Kennedy a pointed look.

  Morgan said, “We had a shit of a time getting out of here in the first place.”

  “Well, you can relax then,” Doc said. “Final insertion’s in three.”

  “Three minutes here’s about all I could stand,” Morgan said.

  “Did anyone pay attention to my explanations?” Doc asked. His lighter tone failed to undermine the reproach.

  Kennedy sighed wearily. “That’s three hours, Darren.”

  Malcolm said, “Let me take a look at that shoulder.”

  III

  Lightholler emerged from the hatch to give the surroundings a cursory glance. Fortune had placed the carapace on a small grassy sward enclosed by a thick clutch of elms. He could make out the occasional worn stump of stonework through gaps in the foliage. Here and there, a rusted twist of fencing was apparent. This was the zoo. They were at the south end of the park.

  Only certain regions of Central Park had been preserved by the Eastern masters of the city. The rest had been allowed to surrender to the whims of nature. Straying from the overgrown pathways into the wilder portions of the park wasn’t recommended. The zoo’s former denizens had borne progeny, and encounters weren’t unheard of.

  It was late morning.

  He wanted to sprawl in the grass. A cool breeze played among the leaves. A bird flew overhead where clouds gathered, disappeared above
the tree tops, and then repeated the exact same manoeuvre.

  He moved away from the carapace, away from where time hissed and spat like boiling fat.

  Three hours would return him to the Waste Land. Finesse on Doc’s part might permit the strangest encounter yet. An appointment with Doctor Wells in the desert. Would he be sitting there picking the brains of a dying man, or would they catch him in the act of burial? Either way, Shine would put him in the ground.

  Secret hope urged a late arrival. This should be decided at sea, Lightholler mused, with ice as the sole witness. Concluded in the safe harbour of New York, with the original Titanic’s silhouette a welcome addition to the city’s skyline.

  There was the sound of soft footfall and he looked up. Morgan and Kennedy were standing by the carapace. Morgan had a long grey coat over his uniform.

  Kennedy said, “Let it go. It’s too risky.”

  Morgan’s reply conveyed infinite sadness. “I can’t, Major. He’s out there somewhere. We can’t just abandon him.”

  Kennedy said, “He’s lost.”

  “So were you.”

  Kennedy placed a hand on Morgan’s shoulder. “Darren, listen to reason. He left with us on the Shenandoah. He sailed with you on the Atlantic. He never disappeared in New York.”

  Lightholler approached them. There was a strange discordant buzzing in his head. He realised what day this was.

  Morgan persisted. “And on April 15, 1912, the Titanic was lost, taking with it two-thousand-four-hundred souls, so what the fuck are we trying to do here? Why are we bothering? If we’re here to make a difference, let’s start now. And if we have to end a life in order to fix the future, then let’s save one as well.”

  “John?” Kennedy turned to Lightholler. The look on his face, the whole twisted expression of his body, was a plea.

  “It’s going to rain.” The bloodlust still curdled at the base of Lightholler’s brain. “What exactly did you have in mind, Darren?”