Down Jersey Driveshaft

by William J. Jackson

  Tiny black capsules tickle water, swimming like tadpoles. Hand is successful. Perfect. Motherville feels her babes go off. They swim from her with but one order:

  ...REMODULATE...REMODULATE..REMODULATE...

  Crank holds a flashlight big as her head. Night has clocked in to work. It's dark, Crank is fatigued but fabulously bull-headed. Stories of Bobby flit through her mind, the tale told by Larry twenty minutes earlier when he came to give her some Joe. She's combed every inch of ground, her skin is cold. Every thought turns to going inside.

  But intuition pricks her neck. Doggone it! Crank trusts her insight, and follows it, whining all the way. A sinking feeling disturbs her gut, a cold wisp. Whatever it is, it leads her toward the river.

  The Moon is in hiding, black pitch makes the flashlight strain to reveal anything. Reeds, busted rowboats, aged wooden posts swollen with water, placed in the river long before her time. Salem is in the mouth of oblivion.

  Maybe Bobby is alive. Maybe. She shivers, not from cold, but the raw feeling that she actually hopes he isn't alive out there, unliving but also not dead, but...

  Luca died, but still looked alive. It's so hard to tell when they're gone like...

  Gone. The word sums up her whole existence. Luca, Bobby, Rudy. Supplies, security, sunny days. Skinny's soul, leadership, Benny's will. Her heart. The way Benny beat a man, for her sake or his own, or whatever. She loves Benny and now fears him, a tyrannical Romeo. Mechanics mean nothing. The future means little.

  The water is at low tide. She walks closer to the water's edge. Swirls of coffee colors, Eddies and whirlpools going down into another world no one ever sees. She fears it as much as she fears Motherville. Both are thieves. Thieves of life.

  Like looking into Slick lenses. There's nothing here. Gotta get La Donna prepped.

  One last look into the mire, she watches nothing and turns to prepare for the next battle

  At the bottom of the river, muddy hued, two-hundred Slicks look up at Crank's distorted, departing figure, their lenses unlit. Lined shoulder to shoulder, they observe, they wait.

  They listen.

  ...FOUR DAYS...FOUR DAYS...FOUR DAYS...

  ...DEATH AT 4:30.. DEATH AT 4:30...DEATH AT 4:30...

  Chapter Seventeen: Scratching Metallic Skin

  Blood stains are constellations, forming Orion on the office floor. Benny sees stars sitting in Traveler Coursey's shell-shocked chair. He remains so for minutes, for hours. Insomnia is his closest pal, in a popularity contest against Mister Migraine. Migraine wins the gold medal, and brings a gift basket of neck pains and remorse. About the only thing he's accomplished is tacking on a new office door.

  What was I thinking? The blues play on, Al Jolson like. He'd kill for some Chopin right now, but he never brought any tunes out of Pleasantville.

  Some time earlier he received the word from Doctor Wentz:

  "...the short of it is, Jack's dead, Coursey driven away to Salem Hospital, condition critical but the opportunity for full recovery high. I...did everything for Jack. But the gaping wounds and blood loss...if I wasn't distracted from Bay One by your, your, murderous rampage, this wouldn't have--!" Her hand ended the rant as it left quite the Bronx impression across the captain's face.

  That talk had been much longer, and her own face actually lost a shade of gorgeous in the lengthy discussion. Medical terms. Death. Grim Reaper. Part of Haskins' brain went on automatic acceptance, taking in casualty reports just like in the First War. The other half dwelt on the Traveler.

  Heh. Sent the bum to the same Hell as...

  Back to the present.

  Thoughts rally before being scattered by superior forces, the new information of the current day. Wake up! Gotta get serious! Nurse Lyle's appearance triggered an avalanche in Benjamin Haskins earlier. It's a gentle snowfall now. Lifetime of pain vanished faster than a scared rabbit. Funny how things work.

  War takes precedence. Shootings. Bobby drowning. Crying. Bloody fists. But, even here it's as much about the past as the present, déja vu. Can't dodge it. Can't decipher it either.

  On the floor, a mess of government data calls to him from the red stars. In the fog of pain, Benny sees these papers for the first time, and wonders if they might be relevant.

  Collecting each one adds years to Benny's life, but eventually he picks at them and flips across pages of the Traveler's red file, a shredded survivor of redacted nonsense and bloody butterfly smears. Benny creases pages, tries in vain to read what lies under black marker. Even the top secret file keeps secrets. Head throbs. But he gets enough to know that Coursey, and Special Technologies, has known too much for too long. This is not another file for building robots. A newspaper clipping clinches it:

  DELAWARE SPIDERS LOST IN FERRY ACCIDENT

  Larry got the year wrong, it's really from 1919, May the 9th. Benny remembers it now, because it was local, one of the few things that year to distract his attention from more personal issues. The Spiders were a brand spanking new baseball club, one he liked. Sparky Doggett. Man, what a hitter! He could've went pro, Phillies for sure.

  Their owner, Mickey Sills, wanted to get the First State into the Majors, for money, of course. Mick came out of Bridgeton, New Jersey, an old man from the early ball clubs before cushy gloves and litany of rules.

  That meant he had played poor, retired poor.

  He got some decent players for the Spiders, even a half Chinese catcher out of Newark (Choo? Chow? Brain hurts too much!), made small connections but never got them outside the Tri-State Area. Banging bats and heads upside walls. However, he did succeed in getting the Spiders well known on the Down Jersey side, playing against Negro League teams in Atlantic City and Camden. The club waltzed through Salem a few times.

  That's where it went wrong. Packed on the ferry headed back to Delaware, the old ship fell victim to an explosion as it neared Pea Patch Island. The big boom put fine slices into the thick wall of Fort Delaware, but main detail was the Spiders were dead and gone. End of story.

  But it wasn't. I've got a drowned kid taken hostage by a malevolent machine bringing up baseball teams of all things. Benny can't even work up the hate to get mad. He cashed in his rage in the fight and on the river. He's spent. And, I've got it in my hands, but no connection of the tragedy to Motherville. What kind of intelligence operation does ST run? This beast is in our home, our headquarters...my dreams, for crying out loud. They don't know where she came from or what she wants?

  Another set of papers reports on an incident in Japan. 1937:

  Though the incident did nothing to deter Imperial forces from retaining control of Nanjing, the matter itself is worthy of note.

  From the nineteenth to the twenty fifth of September, numerous Chinese women were subjected by the Japanese to a technological process loosely translated as 'remodulation'. Our agents were unable to ascertain to what purpose this process held. Was it to make them Japanese? Was it to turn them against their own countrymen? Where did the Imperial forces acquire the materials?

  What little we have to go on is Japanese scientists, having studied some of the demodulation objects, concluded it may in some way smooth the road to a successful takeover of the mainland.

  The end result proved pointless, as all women involved, having been force fed a black capsule, began declaring allegiance to a single, unseen Mother City or Mother Village. Confused at first, the Japanese were taken aback when the women broke free, generated their own capsules, ‘remodulated’ two soldiers and fled down the street before being shot and decapitated.

  The bodies were burned beyond recognition. Our men left China three days later to investigate a similar story coming out of northwestern India.

  To date, this is the fourteenth incursion of the enigmatic Mother capsule virus since its inception after the explosion of Professor Otlieb's laboratory in the Delaware River in 1919.

  Pushing down the nagging self doubt (Give up!), the silly random inklings (They're insane! To heck with these guys! Save yoursel
f!), he slaps papers into the file and lets it fall onto the desk. Useless junk. Motherville's been here and the world didn't do Jack about it. Meanwhile, she becomes big as the Axis. Why was he reading it, to get more outta less? Good for him. Now, what am I gonna do? Lab? Only thing on Pea Patch is the Civil War Fort, there's never been a...

  He squeezes his temple, a temporary maneuver to dampen the pressure. A sad short-term option by a short-term captain.

  The realization of being the highest ranking officer in ST now stymies reason. Benny waited for Wentz to declare him unfit for duty, a situation that never materialized. Instead, when she reported the conditions of the men, her last words after the slap unraveled his nerves...

  "You are in charge now, Captain. Try not to lose any more men on your watch. Not by the enemy’s hand, and especially not by your own!"

  He knew the hate was well earned. Walking up to the office he casually observed Larry flinch when Benny got too close to him, saw as Crank, supposedly intent on talking more, never looked his way, only rolled under La Donna for the overhaul. Benny wasn't Patton to his men. More like Himmler.

  The desire to be chief, to lead men, degenerated from long sought goal to dreaded resignation. Heh, and leading guys who think I'm worse than any blitzkrieg. Fine commander I'll be. At least Skinny will be with me. If he doesn't shoot me first. Who am I kidding? Guy's in mourning!

  The office. It isn't his style. Too formal, too regulated. Benny arranges the desk, figures on getting some cleaner for the blood...

  Something's gotta give.

  The telephone rings. He jumps and punches the desk. None of that halts the ringing.

  Benny picks up the receiver. "Hello?"

  "Operator. I have a call for you from a private number "

  "Ah, okay. I accept." Who is this?

  "One moment, please."

  Click. Silence. Buzz

  "Hello. Am I speaking with Captain Benjamin Haskins?" The voice is an older man, serene and raspy. Static invades the connection.

  Great. I've got Eisenhower on my case now.

  "Who is this?"

  "Good man, good man. Reveal nothing until it's time. This is Wentworth Fish, Chief of Special Technologies. I believe it's time we had a discussion, in light of recent events."

  Benny slides the telephone away from his ear. God help me.

  "Yes, sir. Let's do that. My eyes are in serious need of opening." He rubs them for emphasis, then his whole big mug.

  "I should say so. But first, allow me to congratulate you on the promotion."

  Gulp.

  "Pro--promotion?"

  Static toys with proper communication, the delay in response multiplying Benny's migraine to make even his tongue hurt. The lights in the office are too bright. Jumping up, he drags the telephone and it's long straight cord over across the other side and flicks the light switch off. Relief!

  "Hey! I mean, uh, are you still there?"

  "Yes, Traveler Haskins. I am."

  Double header gulp.

  "So, do you usually promote guys for violence on the inside? I mean, Coursey was a prick, but..."

  "Mister Coursey kept in communication with a German bundt for added information. But that's a tale for another time. Shall we commence with what little we know, and how best to proceed?"

  Benny leans, nope, falls. Benny falls back into the chair as he barely makes it back to the desk. "Bundt? He's a sympathizer?" It seems so, what's the word? "That's convenient."

  "Please. Motherville is much more an imperative than the Third Reich."

  "Really. How so?"

  "They fell to her first. Then Japan. There is us, and the New World, or so I think. A man named Otlieb did experiments on a yacht in the Delaware many moons ago. His great discovery is our national burden. Shall we discuss terms?"

  For an eternal moment of time, Benny is not on this Earth. He hits the male nowhere zone. No thought, no feeling. Just a black, open everywhere leading to nothing. He's pre-Big Bang, before Man, history and nonsense.

  Snap a finger. He's back.

  "Gone? It's us versus a whole planet of robots?" He'd give his right arm to cry out the anguish right now.

  "Oh no, son. Not that at all. That's not how Motherville conquers. She's had time, you see. Time to observe, to watch. Command structures, politics. She knew the Axis would fall easiest because they would see her as a weapon. Take her right into their inner sanctum. Done in a few weeks. But once she gets that, she slows, even stops. Maybe she gets confused, I'm not sure. She hunts leaders, that one. Me ever since Zeroes crashed into San Francisco and San Diego a day after Doolittle's Raid. Those events were blacked out from the press, to avoid panic. But they fell each time I was in those cities. All I know now is I hide, for she has sought me out for some years. This call will be brief."

  Benny sees his migraine fall away as clouds, revealing a mental picture. Berlin under a buzzy sky of Slicks bearing swastikas, Nazis praying to whomever for a worthwhile weapon to fight back, an Übermilchmensch. Tokyo seats a robot on the throne, Slicks run kamikaze missions on U.S. warships. Tokyo Rose is Motherville in pink lipstick (Robots don't have lips! Pay attention!)...GO HOME JOE...GO HOME JOE...GO HOME JOE...

  "Sorry, sir. Lost touch for a minute. This chick is awfully haphazard for having so much intelligence. So, what do we do?"

  "Hold the line."

  "If you only knew how little..." Benny scrubs the face raw again, "how little we have to throw at her. I saw her amassing forces over Wilmington."

  "I've been briefed in full. Benjamin, but you need do two things. One, preserve Salem City. Second, when the opportunity presents itself, a way in, take to Wilmington. She is there because the architects of Special Technologies are there, captives. When she first appeared it was in the Delaware River, but slyly, she sent out the capsules. Far and wide they travelled to laboratories for study while the East Coast remained peaceful. We were played for suckers. They were probes, probes to study us worldwide before she opted to strike."

  "I need more."

  "More is on the way. By land and air. Trust in that. I have greased the gears. No matter how often I relocate, I keep ST afloat. Before the four-thirty deadline it will arrive. Strike like lightning, Jim Thorpe in speed and execution. Ninety members of ST remain. I am sending twelve to you. Use them wisely."

  "We've been hearing of this backup for a good while but...sir, I ah...yes, sir." Youthful faces come to mind. The boys from World War One, so nice, so long since dead. Their eyes are shockwaves of terror telling Benny NO MORE! NO MORE INVADERS! NO MORE TO BOYS DRENCHED IN FOREIGN MUD AND THEIR OWN BLOOD! END IT AND LIVE! END IT AND LIVE! He so wishes they'd stay dead quiet. But they're right.

  He wishes, for once, that the dead would leave him be.

  Patriotism doesn't well up in Haskins, but civilization does. The self same cool determination to thwart tyranny, to put a hand out at the approach of hostiles.

  "It stops here."

  "What's that, son?"

  "Oh, something me and the guys said at the start of each takeoff. Yeah." He drifts. "I'll brief the fellas and make the right moves." Level of confidence in the voice is absolute zero.

  On the other end of the line, a commotion of voices rises. "It would seem I've been on the telephone for too long, Benjamin. Perhaps, God willing, we will discuss things again, without a war between us."

  "Wait! In 1919, I flew over a castle in Germany and saw black boxes that moved on their own. Was that related to Motherville?"

  ...

  "Indirectly. I must go. Take care, son. May we live to see another day."

  Click.

  The Brown Bear rests the receiver on the desk, not the hook. He presses back against the chair, twists the armrests into submission. He doesn't hear the receiver begin to buzz because it's still off the hook.

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  "È cosa testarda!" The wrench reverberates along the concrete floor before scraping to a stop at the wheel of a tool chest. Crank
rolls her head, cracking her neck. She looks up to the blinding yellow lights along the ceiling, bends backwards. Stressful times are making even the fine art of auto body mechanics a pain in her you-know-what. So much for relaxation. "You stripped the bolts?"

  "Don't start with me, Crank." Larry's mood isn't much better.

  "Well who did then?"

  "Who cares? We got precious little time to whine, doll. We'll get 'em off so you can shove whatever you please into your pretty little car." He skips over to swipe the wrench and give the bolts some manly persuasion. "Just needs a man's touch. Firm. Sound. In the right spot."

  Bang. He connects and knocks one out, then another. In between turns Larry can hear the mashing brakes sound of Crank's grinding teeth. Bang. Bang. Done.

  He lets loose the arrogant smirk. "There ya go, sugar. Uncle Larry always comes through."

  The wrench is ripped from his hand. "Thank you, brutto anatra. I can't do anything without a man, right? Now install the HVAR launcher, and you better not strip the bolts or blow us up!"

  "Hey, hey! Don't go gettin' sore on me cuz all the wrong guys want ya but the right one don't. An' anatra's a compliment, right? Right? Crank?"

  Frederica is gone, fists propelling her ahead, moving past the stairwell on to, somewhere, but she's sidetracked.

  "Crank."

  Benny. His baritone growl titillates as much as frustrates. Her shoulders hunch. Her protector, so wonderful and so terrifying. She wants to sock him and surrender to him and shoot him and lick his face and...

  "Yes?" She deadpans as best she can. Benny is at the top of the stairs, a bulky shadow of tension.

  "Got a telephone call. From the Chief. Think we oughtta talk about it since we have the rank and all."

  "Talk to Corporal Wilkes. I'm busy and mad at you for almost killing a--nevermind."