A Shield Against the Darkness
Page 10
Louis still had to find his way back to Cap Haïtien, where the Mon Dieu was docked, but he promised to see Jack and Doc off at the pier.
Jack paid the cabbie and the three walked back to the airship, passing multiple marine sentries on the way. When they arrived at the end of the pier, a crane was lowering the last of several wooden crates onto the dock.
Duke checked boxes on a clipboard manifest. He almost didn’t notice the trio approaching.
“Ahoy, Duke!” Jack hailed. “What’s in all the boxes?”
Duke looked up and smiled. “Edison sent us some smart uniforms, Captain.”
Deadeye pried open the last crate, eyes widening.
“As well as some rather spiffing gadgets and whatnot,” Duke added.
Deadeye reached into the crate and produced a rifle which looked as though it had popped out of the garden shed of H.G. Wells. He flipped a switch and a peculiar hum powered on. The Cherokee blinked and lit up, grinning like a kid in an ice cream shop for the first time. “I cannot wait to find out what this does,” he said conspiratorially.
Louie turned and shook Jack’s hand. “Best of luck in your journey, Capitaine,” he said. “I remain at your service.”
Doc leaned in and kissed the Frenchman’s cheek. “Goodbye, Louis.”
Louis smiled. “Madame.”
“Thanks for your help, Louis,” said Jack. “I wish we could stay awhile, or at least give you a lift back to Cap Haïtien, but the Luftpanzer is going the opposite direction, and we’ve got to run.”
Louis smiled his devilish smile, bowing as he backed away. “Ah, mon Capitaine. I have friends all over Haiti. I am sure I can find someone to give me a ride!”
Then he was gone, and Rivets was admonishing everyone to strip the crates and leave the empties on the pier to conserve weight. Duke hefted several folded garments into the hold. They were royal blue with white piping and had AEGIS and Daedalus patches sewn to the sleeves and chest. When Jack had taken off his RAF uniform at the end of the war, he’d sworn never to put on another, but he admitted the new jackets looked good.
Finally, supplies secured, they cast off the dock lines and closed the cargo bay door as the airship rose into the afternoon sky.
# # #
The jungle night was dark and still, with only the slightest dappling of gray indicating a moon above the canopy. Rattan palms and rubber trees thrust their sturdy trunks toward the sky, covered in orchids and epiphytes, surrounded by hanging heliconias. The ground here was wet, swamp-like. It smelled fetid. Not a bird called. Neither an ant nor spider crawled. There were no sounds in the night here.
This was a place of death.
Maria knelt in meditation within a powdered chalk circle, gathering the inner strength necessary for what was to come next. She focused on the solitary black candle at the head of the circle, probing the living memory of this place. A place that had seen natives massacred and conquistadors die of yellow fever. A place once sacred, but which had become a dumping ground—a convenient mass grave—forgotten and left to rot over the centuries.
Her eyes rolled back in her head and Maria shot to her feet, hands outstretched, reaching into the boggy soil, reaching backward in time. The spell consisted only of her power words and her will. It was not intended to be pretty, or even accurate. She simply needed to raise the dead.
A whole lot of dead.
“Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit,” she repeated over and over, reaching out, delving ever deeper into the past, into the soil. She felt her body grow ever lighter and eventually her feet left the ground.
“Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit.”
The swamp began to bubble and swell, tiny mounds erupting through the ground like boils. First a skeletal hand, then an arm, then the remainder of a body crawled out of its resting place, covered in the filth of ages past.
“Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit.”
One, then two, then five, then a dozen. Then two dozen. One by one, they shambled out of the ground and gathered around the clearing.
As Maria’s feet returned to the ground within the circle, so to did her eyes return to normal. She gazed out at thirty corpses, both Spanish and indigenous, in various states of decomposition. Corpses now standing upright, waiting for her to command them.
Maria’s lips drew into a tight smile.
- Chapter 13 -
Doc determined a total distance of 1,237 miles to the Venezuela-Brazil border, which would take them just shy of 16 hours to complete at a cruising speed of 80 miles per hour. They could cut it down to 13 hours at top speed, maybe 12 with a good tailwind. Unfortunately the Daedalus was left fighting a crosswind all the way across the Caribbean Sea, and by the time they hit land, it had already taken them over 8 hours. Jack flew most of that distance, and was exhausted by the time the lights of Caracas were visible beneath them. The crosswind disappeared over Venezuela, and by the time Rivets took his turn at the stick, it was smooth sailing. Jack decided to hit the rack in his quarters, dead to the world for a solid four hours.
When he awoke, the morning light was streaming in through the gondola windows in shades of misty pink, blue and gold. Squinting against the light, Jack stumbled across the main saloon to the galley and began rummaging for something to eat. He found a couple of hard boiled eggs in the cooler, which he paired with a tin of corned beef and a chunky brown oat-and-raisin biscuit which resembled a rectangular cookie, but had the approximate density of a star. He poured a mug of hot coffee from the dedicated electric percolator, and sat down to enjoy his modest feast. He was used to field rations, and these were better by any metric.
Doc poked her head out of the bridge hatch, ducking into the galley. She regarded the haggard captain for a moment. Despite the lack of regular sleep, a steady diet of field rations and mortal danger, and a schedule that outpaced most military timetables, the man still retained his rugged good looks, especially in his new blue and gray uniform jacket, and the navy trousers with a golden yellow stripe down the leg. She smiled, taking her coffee to the table and settling down across from Jack as he took a bite from the oatmeal biscuit.
“Sleep okay?” she asked.
“And how,” he answered. “Like a really sleepy rock.”
Jack smiled, meeting Doc’s eyes across the sunbathed table. He’d been feeling an ever-growing sense of impending calamity since the close call at Oba’s fort, but hadn’t figured out how best to broach the subject. Still, her soft gaze filled him with a warmth and security he’d never known. In his youth, he’d worn bravado as his armor. After the war, he’d replaced it with professional competence. And now, peering into this frightening abyss, he didn’t even feel he could rely on that. But Doc made it seem unnecessary. Jack felt as long as they had each other’s six, there was nothing to fear. He wished he could put that concept into words, but he was painfully gun-shy when it came being vulnerable with Doc. She’d already broken his heart once. He’d gladly work alongside her if it meant soaking up all that was good about her company, but he wasn’t ready to offer up his heart as sacrifice—not again.
Doc shifted in her seat and cleared her throat, and Jack thought for sure that she’d been reading his mind.
“I’ve been thinking… about Paris,” she offered, a melancholy look falling across her face.
Jack instinctively reached across the table to take her hand in his. “You okay, Doc?”
She blinked away some tears and returned to meet his gaze.
“It was more than a good time, wasn’t it?” she asked.
Jack’s face became a comic mask. “Sure!” he said. “It was great! Why? What are you getting at?”
Doc looked away, then back at him. “I want you to know that turning you down was not an easy decision to make.”
His forehead furrowed. “Fair enough,” he assured her. “I completely understand. We had different lives…”
“It’s just that…” Doc began, trying desperately to find the words. “You remember I was telling you about—”
Jack squeezed her hand. “Hang onto that thought,” he smiled. “We’ll come back to it.”
Doc returned a wistful version of his smile and nodded, letting him slip away onto the bridge.
The sprawling green canopy of the Amazon jungle bore no physical indicator of an international border. They knew their location due to copious charts and a superb compass.
“Morning, fellas.” Jack said as he tagged Rivets out and slipped into the pilot’s chair, switching off engines and non-essential systems.
The mechanic trudged aft to his quarters. “Battery array’s fully charged, Cap,” he said. “You should be A-OK.”
Jack nodded. “Duke, what’s the news on the wireless?”
“Unfortunately,” Duke nodded, “we just received word that our contact Mr. Salyer was assaulted in Port au Prince just after you left the office.”
“Oh no,” Jack gasped. “And the Cross?”
“It’s gone missing,” said Duke.
Jack’s brow wrinkled into a troubled road map. “All right,” He said finally. “Let’s get a radio reading.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Doc entered and took her seat at the nav station as Duke powered up the radio detector, sending out the familiar deet-deet-deet-deet in ever widening waves.
“Nothing, sir,” Duke announced, disappointed. “At least nothing of Luftpanzer scale.” Then he paused, squinting at the amber glass screen. “Hang on. Picking up several small aircraft about fifty miles south-southwest of our position.”
The first impact shook the Daedalus from stem to stern, rattling the crew. Duke threw Jack a concerned look. “What the devil—??”
“The heck was that?” Jack worried aloud.
Doc strained to look out the side starboard bridge windows. “Something hit us!” she exclaimed.
Jack leaned back to look at Duke. “I didn’t hear shooting—that had to have been ground fire. Anti-aircraft!”
Rivets reappeared at the bridge hatch, red-faced and wide-eyed. “Oh, I’m not a happy man!”
A second impact rocked the bridge, and it took a moment for everyone to regain their bearings.
“Duke,” Jack urged. “Can you get a read on where these are coming from?”
Duke shook his head. “Negative. Signal can’t penetrate the forest.”
Jack hit the TALK button on his console. “Deadeye?” he called. “Whatcha got topside?”
The gunner’s voice crackled back in his ear. “Uh, Cap?” Deadeye said. “I’m not sure how to explain this…”
The call was interrupted by the staccato bass drum of the Hotchkiss. He was shooting at something, but there were no flying targets around, no incoming gunfire.
“Explain what, Charlie?”
Then Deadeye was back on the radio, and the urgency in his voice was something Jack hadn’t heard since Italy. “You might want to power up the engines and climb.”
The Hotchkiss stuttered again, and a third impact shook the Daedalus.
As Doc steadied herself on the console, she caught a glimpse of something zoom past the ship, careening off in a spiral trajectory over the jungle. Impossible, she thought. It couldn’t be.
“That couldn’t be what it looked like,” she offered.
Jack did his best to peer out from the bridge windows, but he’d obviously missed that last one. “What did it look like?”
Doc lowered her tone. “Like a man, strapped to a rocket.”
Jack threw a bewildered glance over his shoulder in Doc’s direction.
“There goes another!” Duke pointed.
The strange shape of a human being tied to a four-foot-long incendiary rocket whistled past them into the sky, arcing down and disappearing into the green.
Jack and Doc both saw it that time. And they both noticed something peculiar about this projectile. The human portion was skeletal, desiccated, dressed in haphazard rags.
“Except it wasn’t a man,” Jack said.
Doc finished his thought. “It looked like a dead body.”
Another impact shook the bridge.
Rivets could no longer contain his shock, anger and disbelief. All three manifested aloud. “Who in the living blazes is shootin’ dead bodies at us??”
“I think we know who,” Jack stated. He was quickly back to business, which was another thing Doc loved about him. “Duke, cut the detector. Firing up the engines. Full power, maximum lift.”
Engines spun up in their electric whine, the twin thrust pods tilted to a 90 degree angle, and the Daedalus rose vertically into the air.
“I don’t know what Crowley is pulling,” said Jack, “but I’m not sticking around to find out.”
Doc stepped forward to lean in over the back of the pilot’s chair. “Jack,” she said quietly. “It could have just been the wind, but it really looked like the last one… well, his limbs were moving.”
Jack swallowed and pretended not to hear her. The thought was too horrible and strange for this early in the morning, and he’d only just had breakfast.
Still the strange projectiles came, one in three making impact with the hull, the rest disappearing into the rainforest. Eventually the Daedalus pulled up out of range.
Deadeye’s voice crackled over the comms. “Cap? I could use some help up here. And if Doc could come too…”
Jack and Doc exchanged a brief look, then Jack was unstrapping from the chair, hitting the TALK button. “On our way,” he answered. “Duke, you’re on the stick. Rivets, I want you in the engine room to make absolutely sure those batteries stay full and the props keep spinning.”
Rivets disappeared toward the engine room, Duke took over at the pilot’s console, and Jack and Doc went to the ladder just aft of the bridge hatch. Doc paused a moment, remembering something.
“You go on up,” she said. “I’m right behind you.”
Doc turned to the locker directly opposite the ladder and opened it. The strange looking weapon Deadeye had been playing with at the docks in Port au Prince stood inside. She grabbed the Tesla gun and slung it over her shoulder, returning to the ladder and climbing for the roof hatch.
# # #
Jack unlatched the top hatch and swung it open. Although in the tropics, the wind at 10,000 feet was cold as it whipped across his face and down the airship’s dorsal envelope. He quickly lowered the goggles from his leather flight helmet, staggering for balance as he made his way to Deadeye at the gun emplacement.
Doc was right behind him, her boots finding purchase on the other side of the guns.
Jack clapped Deadeye on the shoulder to get his attention. The marksman turned goggled eyes to look at his captain.
“Whatcha got, Charlie?” Jack yelled above the whistling wind.
“Dunno, Cap!” Deadeye answered. “Looks like those zombis we saw in Haiti, but a lot more dead!”
Doc looked downrange from the Hotchkiss guns and saw a shape moving up the spine of the ship.
“Problem is,” Deadeye explained, “they’re not!”
Suddenly the shape was coming at them like a savage lioness, growling and screeching, foamy spittle dripping from its dead mouth. It scanned them with milky yellow eyes that peered out of deep sockets, leathery flesh tearing away in small chunks by the wind. Its fingernails were long and sharp, its skin tone a pale, sickly gray-green. And strapped to its back was the rocket that had brought it there, now just dead weight.
Doc pointed out the rapidly approaching ghoul, and Jack nodded. She unslung the electric carbine from her shoulder and powered on the main switch. The hum of the rifle’s power cell was inaudible over the steady white noise of the wind, but the light display told her the device was ready. She aimed the gun at the creature and pulled the trigger. A brilliant blast of blue-white lightning erupted from the metallic ball at the end of the barrel, tearing the ghoul into
three equally-portioned, writhing masses, each of which flew off into the airship’s wake.
Deadeye gave a thumbs up to Doc, who signaled Jack to turn around.
Another ghoul had made impact with the side of the Daedalus, and had clawed its way onto the spine. Jack spun around, drawing both pistols and emptying three shots apiece into the thing, which was enough to dislodge it and send it spinning away to the forest below.
Deadeye pointed behind Doc, who turned to see another ghoul shambling toward the three of them. The Tesla carbine sparked again, sending a tendril of lightning to its target, ripping the ghoul apart.
“These aren’t Vodou zombis, Jack!” Doc yelled over the wind. “These are some kind of resurrected dead!”
Jack wasn’t sure of the full implications of what she said, but he nodded anyway. This was her wheelhouse. He noticed Deadeye swinging the guns toward another ghoul scrambling up the spine near the rear port stabilizer, and flagged him to wait.
“Don’t waste the incendiaries!” Jack shouted. “I’ve got it!”
He waited until the creature had cleared half the distance between them, gave it three bullets from each pistol and watched it fall to the canvas. It slid down the curvature of the airship’s envelope and was flung away by the wind.
“I don’t see any more, Cap!” Deadeye announced, looking around them.
“They don’t seem so tough, but I wouldn’t want to let them inside. We need to find someplace to tie up and make a hull inspection!” Jack hollered through the biting air current.
Then Deadeye saw it. Perhaps three miles distant, spread across the tree canopy, lay a huge structure.
Jack noticed Deadeye’s gaze and looked himself. His eyes wide with surprise, he flagged Doc to have a look.