Thus perished Herzog, coward and tool, a victim of the very forces he himself had helped create.
And at the moment of his death, the masters he had cringed to and had served, sneering with scorn at him even in their mortal terror, were tremblingly descending the long metal ladder to the impregnable vaults of steel below.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE STORMING OF THE WORKS.
Plunged into the abyss of mist and flame by the attack of the Air Trust épervier, Gabriel had abandoned himself for lost. Death, mercifully swift, he had felt could be his only fate; and with this thought had come no fear, but only a wild joy that he had shared this glorious battle, sure to end in victory! This was his only thought—this, and a quick vision of Catherine.
Then, as he hurtled down and over, whirling drunkenly in the void, all clear perception left him. Everything became a swift blur, a rushing confusion of terrible wind, and lurid light, and the wild roar of myriad explosions.
Came a shock, a sudden checking of the plunge, a long and rapid glide, as the DeVreeland stabilizer of the machine, asserting its automatic action, brought it to a level keel once more.
But now the engine was stopped. Gabriel, realizing that some chance still existed to save his life, wrenched madly at his levers.
“If I can volplane down!” he panted, sick and dizzy, “there may yet be hope!”
Hope! Yes, but how tenuous! What chance had he, coasting to earth at that low level, to avoid the detonating bombs, the aerial shrapnel being hurled aloft, the poisonous gas, the surface-fire?
Here, there and yonder, terrific explosions were shattering the echoes, as the Air Trust batteries swept the fog with their aeroplane-destroying missiles. Whither should he steer? He knew not. All sense of direction was lost, nor could the compass tell him anything. A glance at the barometric gauge showed him an altitude of but 850 feet, and this was decreasing with terrible rapidity.
Strive as he might, he could not check the swift descent.
“God send me a soft place to fall on!” he thought, grimly, still clinging to his machine and laboring to jockey it under control.
Close by, a thunderous detonation crashed through the mist. His machine reeled and swerved, then plunged more swiftly still. All became vague, to Gabriel—a dream—a nightmare!
Crash!
Flung from the seat, he sprawled through treetops, caught himself, fell to a lower limb, slid off and landed among thick bushes; and through these came to earth.
The wrecked ‘plane, whirling away and down, fell crashing into the river that rushed cascading by, and vanished in the firelit mist.
Stunned, yet half-conscious, Gabriel presently sat up and pressed his right hand to his head. His left arm felt numb and useless; and when he tried to raise it, he found it refused his will.
“Where am I, now, I’d like to know?” he muttered. “Not dead, anyhow—not yet!”
A continuous roar of explosions shuddered the air, mingled with the booming of the mighty Falls. Shouts and cheers and the rattle of machine-guns assailed his ear. The glare of the search-lights, through the mist and steam, was darkened momentarily by thick, greasy coils of smoke, shot through by violent flashes of light as explosions took place.
Gabriel struggled to his feet, and peered about him,
“Still alive!” said he. “And I must get back into the fight! That’s all that matters, now—the fight!”
He knew not, yet, where he was; but this mattered nothing. His machine had, in fact, fallen near the river bank, in the eastern section of Prospect Park, beyond the Goat Island bridge—this region of the Park having been left outside the fortifications, in the extension of the Air Trust plant.
The trees, here, had saved his life. Had he smashed to earth a hundred yards further north, he would have been shattered against high walls and roofs.
Still giddy, but sensing no pain from his injured left arm, Gabriel made way toward the scene of conflict. He knew nothing of how the tide of battle was going; nothing of his position; nothing as to what men he would first meet, his comrades or the enemy.
But for these considerations he had no thought. His only idea, fixed and grim, was “The fight!” Dazed though he still was, he nerved himself for action.
And so, pressing onward through the livid glare, through the night shattered by stupendous detonations, he drew his revolver and broke into a run.
Strange evidences of the battle now became evident. He saw an unexploded grenade lying beside a wounded man who grasped at him and moaned with pain. Over a wrecked motor-car, greasy smoke was rising, as it burned. Louder shouting drew him down a path to the left. Masses of moving figures became dimly visible, through the mist. And now, stabs of fire pierced the confusion and clamorous night.
Gabriel jerked up his revolver, as he ran, the terrible weapon shooting bullets charged with hydrocyanic-acid gas.
A man rose before him, shouting.
Gabriel levelled the weapon; but a glimpse of red ribbon in the other’s coat brought it down again.
“Comrade!” cried he. “Where’s the attack?”
The other pointed.
“Gabriel! Is that you?” he gasped, staring.
“Yes! I fell—machine smashed—come on!”
“Hurt?”
“No! Arm, maybe. No matter! God! What’s this?”
Toward them a sudden swirl of men came sweeping, stumbling, shouting, in pandemonium.
“Our men!” cried Gabriel, starting forward again. “We’re being driven! Rally, here! Rally!”
Beyond, a louder crackling sounded. Here, there, men plunged down. The retreat was becoming a rout!
Yelling, Gabriel flung himself upon the men.
“Back there!” he vociferated. “Back, and at the walls! Come on, boys, now! Come on!”
His voice, well known to nearly all, thrilled them again with new determination. A shout rose up; it swelled, deepened, roared to majestic volume.
Then the tide turned.
Back went the fighting men of the great Revolution. back at the machine-guns, mounted in the breached walls.
Gabriel was caught and whirled along in that living tide. He found himself at its crest, its foremost wave. Behind him, a roaring, rushing river of men. Before the Inner Citadel.
Gathering speed and weight as it rolled up, the wave broke like an ocean surge over a crumbling dyke.
Down went the Air Trust gunners and the guns, down, down to annihilation!
Through the breach, foaming and swelling with irresistible power burst the tides of victory.
Silenced now were the Trust guns. The steam-jets had none to man them. Far aloft, a last explosion told the death story of the final épervier.
Here and there, from windows and corners of the wrecked and blazing plant, a little intermittent firing still continued; but now the hearts of these Air Trust defenders—scabs, thugs and scourings of the slum—had turned to water, in face of the triumphant army of the working class.
They fled, those mercenaries, and all the ways and inner strongholds—such as still were left—now lay open to Gabriel and his comrades.
Lighted by the blazing buildings and the vast fire torch of an oxygen-tank off to eastward, they stormed the final citadel, the steel and concrete laboratories, heart and soul and center of the hellish world-conspiracy.
Stormed it, as it began to blaze and crumble; stormed it, in search of Flint and Waldron, would-be murderers of the world.
Stormed it, only to see Herzog gnash his teeth upon the flask, and fall, and die; only to know that there, within the rock-hewn, steel-lined tanks, below, their enemies had still outwitted them!
The swift onrush of the fire drove the victors back.
“Out, comrades! Out of here!” shouted Gabriel, facing the attackers.
None too soon. Hardly had they beaten a retreat, back into the vast courtyard again, strewn with the dead, when a second oxygen tank exploded, overwhelming the laboratory building with tons of flying steel.<
br />
Leaping toward the zenith, a giant tongue of flame roared heavenward. So intense the heat had now become, that the solid brick and concrete walls, exposed to the direct verberation of the flame, began to crack and crumble.
Gabriel ordered a general retreat of the attacking army. Victory was won; and to stay near that gushing tornado of flame, with new explosions bound to occur as the other oxygen tanks let go, must mean annihilation.
So the triumphant Army of the Proletaire fell back and back still further, out into the wrecked and trampled Park, and all through the city, where shattered buildings, many of them ablaze, and broken trees, dead bodies, smashed ordnance and chaos absolute told something of the story of that brief but terrible war.
Ringed round the perishing ruins of the Air Trust they stood, these mute, thrilled thousands. Silence fell, now, as they watched the roaring, ever-mounting flames that, whipped by the breeze, crashed upward in long and cadenced tourbillions of white, of awful incandescence.
And the river, ever-hurrying, always foaming on and downward to its titanic plunge, sparkled with eerie lights in that vast glow. Its voice of thunder seemed to chant the passing and the requiem of the Curse of the World, Capitalism.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
DEATH IN THE PIT OF STEEL.
And Flint, now, what of him! And Waldron?
While the Air Trust plant was burning, crumbling, smashing down, what of its masters, the masters of the world?
A sense of vast relief possessed them both, at first, as the steel door clanged after them.
Now, for a time at least, they realized that they were safe, safe from the People, safe from the awakened and triumphant Proletariat. Even now, had they surrendered, they would have been spared; but nothing was further from their thoughts than any treating with the despised and hated enemy.
Foremost in the mind of each, now, was the thought that if they could but stand siege, a day or so, the troops of the government—their government and their troops, their own personal property—would inevitably rescue them.
With this comforting belief, together they descended the long steel staircase to the trap-door, passed through this, and climbed down the metal ladder to the vast storage-vaults.
Here, everything was cool and quiet and well-lighted. Not yet had the electric-generating plant been put out of action. Though all its workers had either been drafted into the ranks of the Cosmos mercenaries, or Herzog’s regiments, or else had fled to hiding, still the huge turbines and enormous dynamos were whirling, unattended. Thus, for the first few minutes, in their living tomb, down over which the ruins of the now white-hot laboratory-building had crashed, the world-masters had electric light.
Reassured a little, they descended to the very bottom of the first huge tank.
“God!” snarled Flint, as he breathed deeply and glared about him. “The curs! The swine! To think of this, this really happening! And to think that if we hadn’t got here just in time, they’d actually have—have used violence on us—”
Waldron laughed brutally, his body still trembling and his face chalky. His laugh echoed, hollowly, from the metal walls.
“You old fool!” he spat. “Canting old hypocrite to the last, eh? Violence? What the devil do you expect? Rosewater and confetti? Violence was all that ever held ‘em, wasn’t it? And when they slipped the leash, naturally they retorted—that’s all! Violence? You make me sick! Damned lucky for us if we get through this yet, without violence, you whining cur!”
Flint, for the first time hearing Waldron’s honest opinion of him, failed even to note it. All his panic-stricken ear had caught was the note of hope, of survival.
Clutching eagerly at Waldron’s sleeve, he cackled:
“If we get through? If we get through, you say? Then, in your opinion, there is a chance to get through? They can’t get us here? We surely shall be rescued?”
“Bah!” Waldron flung at him, some latent spark of courage still smouldering in his sodden breast, whereas old Flint was craven to the marrow. “You nauseate me! Afraid to die, eh? Well, so am I; but not so damned paralyzed and sick with panic as all that! If you’d taken less dope, the last twenty years, you’d have more nerve now, to face the music! World-master, you? Eh? Playing the biggest game on earth—and now, when things break bad, you squeal! Arrrh! You called me a quitter once, you mealy-mouthed old Pecksniff! We’ll see, now, who quits! We’ll see, at a show-down, who can face it, you or I!”
Waldron’s brutality, the hard, savage quality that all his life had made him “Tiger” Waldron, now was beginning to reassert itself. His first sheer panic over, a little manhood was returning. But as for Flint, no manhood dwelt in him to be awakened. Instead, each moment found him more abject and more pitiable. Like an old woman he now wrung his hands and groaned, hysterically; and now he paced the steel floor of the vault that was destined to be his tomb; and now he stopped again and stared about him with wild eyes.
On all sides, sheer up a hundred feet or more, the smooth steel sides of the vast oxygen tank rose, studded with long lines of rivets.
Near the top a dark aperture showed where the six-inch pipe joined the tank; the pipe destined to fill it, when Herzog’s last process—never, now, to be completed—should have been done.
The huge floor, 150 feet in diameter, sloped gently downward toward the center; and here yawned another pipe, covered by a grating—the pipe to drain the liquid oxygen out to the pumping station.
So deeply set in the rock of the Niagara cliff was this stupendous tank, and so cunningly surrounded by vacuum-chambers, that now no faintest sound of the Falls was audible. All that betrayed the nearness of the cataract was a faint, incessant trembling of the metal walls, as though the solid ribs of Earth herself were shuddering with the impact of the plunge.
Old Flint surveyed this extraordinary chamber with mingled feelings. It surely offered absolute protection, for the present—or seemed to—but his distressed mind conjured alarming pictures of the future, in case no rescue came. Death by starvation, thirst and madness loomed before him. Nervously he recommenced his pacing. Another terribly serious factor was to be considered. He had now been three hours without his dose of morphia, and his nerves were calling, tugging insistently for it.
“Rotten luck,” he grumbled, “that I’ve got none with me!” Even there, in the imminent presence of disaster and death, his mind reverted to the poison, more necessary to him than food.
Waldron now had grown fairly calm. He stood leaning against the steel ladder, down which they had descended. Choosing a cigar, he proceeded to light up.
“Might as well be comfortable while we wait,” said he. “I only wish we had a couple of chairs, down here. Oversight on our part that we didn’t have some steel ones put in, and a line of canned goods and a few quarts of Scotch. The floor’s a bit damp and cold to sit on, and I want a drink damn bad!”
Flint swung about and faced him, pale and shaking, tortured with fear and with longing for his dope.
“You—you don’t think it will be long, eh, do you?” he demanded. “Not long before we’re taken out?”
Waldron shrugged his shoulders and blew a long, thin arrow of smoke athwart the brightly-lighted air.
“Search me!” he exclaimed. “To judge by what was happening when we made our exit, the Plant must be a mess, by this time. We seem to have been checked, even if not mated, Flint. I must admit they caught us by surprise. Caught us napping, damn them, after all! They were stronger than we thought, Flint, and cleverer, and better organized. And so—”
“Don’t say ‘we,’ curse you!” snarled Flint. “Blame yourself, if you want to, but leave me out! I knew there was trouble due, I tell you. I saw it coming! Who’s been trying to crush the swine completely, if not I? Who’s worked night and day to have those bills put through, and who had the army increased, and conscription started? Who’s driven the President to back all sorts of things? Who’s forced them? Who made the National Mounted Police a reality, if not I? Damn you,
don’t include me in your blame!”
Waldron shrugged his shoulders, and smoked contemplatively.
“Suit yourself,” he answered. “If we both die, down here, it won’t matter much either way.”
“Die?” quavered the old jackal, suddenly forgetting his rage and peering about with furtive eyes. “Did you say die, Wally? No, no! You didn’t say that! You didn’t mean that, surely!”
Waldron smiled, evilly, joying in this abject fear of his hated partner.
“Oh, yes, I did, though,” he retorted. “It’s quite possible, you know. In case our government—yours, if you prefer—can’t get troops through, here, or a big general revolution sweeps things, inside a day or two, we’re done. We’ll starve and stifle, here, sure as shooting!”
“No, no, no! Not that, not that!” whimpered Flint, shuddering. “I can’t die, yet. I—I’m not ready for it! There’s all that missionary work of mine not yet done, and my huge international Sunday School League to perfect; and there’s the tremendous ten-million-dollar Cathedral of Saint Luke the Pious that I’m having built on Riverside Drive, and there’s—”
“Cut it!” gibed Waldron, spitting with very disgust. “If your time’s come, Flint, you’ll die, cathedrals or no cathedrals. Your Sunday schools won’t save you any more than my investments will—which have largely been wine, women and song. As a matter of fact, if it comes to starvation, if we aren’t rescued and taken out from under the red-hot wreckage that’s on top of us, I’ll outlive you! I can exist on my surplus adipose tissue, for a while; but you—you’re nothing but skin and bone. You’ll starve far quicker than I will, old man.”
“Don’t! Don’t!” implored the shaking wretch, covering his eyes with both trembling hands.
“Moral, you oughtn’t to have been a dope-fiend, all these years,” continued Waldron, cuttingly, determined that now, once for all, his despised partner should hear the truth. “How you’ve lived so long, as it is, I don’t understand. When I tried to marry Kate, and failed, I reckoned you’d pass over in almost no time—and, by the way, that’s why I was so insistent. But you’ve disappointed me, Flint. Disappointed me sorely. You still live. It won’t be long, however. Down here, you know, you simply can’t get any dope. In a little while you’ll begin to suffer the torments of Hell. You’ll die of starvation and drug ‘yen,’ Flint, and you’ll die mad, mad, mad! Understand me! Mad, for morphine! And I, I shall watch you, and exult!”
The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack 01 Page 135
