The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk

by Sean Wallace

  There’s a moment of darkness, where I’m engulfed in dirt and earth. I can hear Robbie swearing, barking orders, and I can hear Jacqueline telling him to let me do my job. But they both sound miles away. Right now, all I can hear is the roar of Jules’s drill breaking through rocks millions of years older than her and I both, splitting apart the earth like an angry goddess.

  She’s just as magnificent as the first time Grandad ever showed her to me. And here I am, about to hand her over to a couple of thugs without even putting up a fight?

  I can’t go down this easy. I won’t.

  I won’t let them take her from me.

  Jules’s lights flicker on and I tighten my grip on the wheel. Strange, in the thunderous roar of the drilling I find myself able to think clearer than ever. Neither Jacqueline nor Robbie know how this machine works. I may not be able to try anything in this enclosed space, but I’m still the pilot. And we go where I say we go.

  I glance back down at the map. I’m too far out of town by now to go circling back, but if I tilt upward her just a little, eventually, we’ll surface. I glance over at Robbie, who’s looking fairly uncomfortable and queasy, and at Jacqueline, whose eyes are pinned on my speedometer.

  Well, she wanted to go fast, let’s go fast.

  I twist the lever, bringing us up at the slightest of inclines, and then I stomp on the pedal, letting Jules plow through the earth like it was tissue paper. I wasn’t lying when I told Jacqueline I’ve never seen how fast Jules could go – but now’s as good a time ever to find out. Twenty miles. Thirty miles. Forty. Fifty.

  “I’m gonna upchuck,” Robbie mumbles, pulling out a handkerchief and bringing it to his face.

  Sixty miles. Eighty. A hundred.

  “This is good for now. Keep this pace for an hour. I want to see how she fares,” Jacqueline says.

  I nod, and quietly calculate to myself, shifting the lever gently for her to tilt upward just a little bit more. I incline her only slightly – I can barely even feel it, and I’ve got the advantage of years of operating her. My two companions are oblivious to the shift. We barrel through the dirt, and the minutes tick by like hours. But they creep along slowly. Eventually Robbie stops complaining about feeling sick, though he still looks green. He and Jacqueline begin conversing, oblivious to the changing sediment as we get closer to the surface. I begin to notice the window creaking slightly, probably a shoddy patch job. Morons.

  “If it can handle this speed, not only will we be able to make more tunnels for steady clientele, but we could make special deliveries all over the states in this drill,” Jacqueline says to Robbie.

  “That’s a whole lot of clams,” Robbie whistles.

  “It opens up a great deal of opportunities,” she nods.

  “We’d probably have to pay off more airships to meet demand—”

  Suddenly, with a great crack and a blinding stream of light, Jules breaks through the surface of the earth. With such speed propelling her we go up in the air for a few moments before crashing to the ground with a thud, speeding forward over a rocky path. Robbie yelps and instinctively puts his arms in front of Jacqueline, and I stomp my foot on the breaks. We lurch to a loud stop, and I lean forward and kill the power to the drill.

  “What are you trying to pull?!” Robbie yells, reaching into his pocket for his gun.

  “I don’t know,” I lie. “I’ve never gone this fast before. I guess in theory, if we were going up at the slightest of angles, we were bound to breach eventually.”

  “Cool it, Robbie. He said before he’s never gone this fast before when I talked to him earlier. No harm done. Open the hatch. I want to see where we are.”

  Robbie stands up and opens the hatch, helping Jacqueline out first before turning to me.

  “Shake a leg,” he says.

  I stand up and pull myself out with him right on my heels. I hit the loose dirt and look around. We’re in a grassy plain, rich and green and full of trees. Robbie leads me forward as we follow after Jacqueline, who pushes through grass and foliage. After walking for a few minutes, the grass fans out into sand, and we’re staring down rolling dunes and into crystal blue lake.

  “Holy smokes,” Robbie says. “That’s Lake Michigan.”

  “That it is. I was keeping track of our trajectory on the map. We’re in Indiana now,” Jacqueline says.

  I realize that while they’re both slightly behind me, neither one is particularly focused on me. I look out at the dunes and weigh my options. No way I could run. I don’t doubt Robbie was lying about how good a shot he is. Maybe I could turn and try to overpower Robbie? But Jacqueline has a holster too. I dig my hands in my pockets, trying to think of a better plan.

  And my fingers graze the tortoiseshell pen I found in the office.

  I don’t even have time to think about it. The pen is in my hand, I’ve spun around, and I grab for whoever’s closest. Everything passes in a flash. There’s a yell, an elbow hits me in the face, but I don’t let it shake me.

  And in the next instant, I’ve got my arms wrapped around Robbie and I’m pressing the sharp tip of the pen into his throat.

  “You slimy fucker! You think you can pull a shiv on me?! I’ll break your goddamn neck!” he barks, struggling against my grip.

  I stick the pen deeper into his skin, drawing blood. He stiffens and I hear a click. I turn around and face Jacqueline, who’s pointing her gun at me.

  “That was a quick draw, Lloyd. Didn’t think you had it in you,” she says.

  I pull Robbie up in front of me.

  “Put the gun down,” I say. “Or I’ll slit his throat.”

  “Don’t do it, Jackie. He doesn’t have the stones,” Robbie yells.

  “Hmm.What do you think’s going to happen here?” Jacqueline asks.

  “You’re going to put your gun down, and kick it away,” I say.

  “Like hell she is!” Robbie spits, kicking his legs. “I’m gonna tear you apart, miner. You’re dead. You hear me?! You’re fucking dead!”

  I glance over at Jacqueline, who’s staring at both of us with her unreadable eyes. In that moment, I realize something. Her expression is as unchanged, as emotionless as it was during our first meeting.

  “Robbie?” she says.

  He stops struggling and he looks over to her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The shot from the gun echoes out over the dunes, almost immediately followed by Robbie’s gurgled cry. In shock I let go of him and step back, and he falls to the ground. I stare over at Jacqueline in horror as she steps over to me.

  “Hope I didn’t startle you. You all right?” she asks, pointing the gun at me.

  I glance down at Robbie, at the puddle of blood pouring out of his head. She shot him. She killed him.

  “W . . . why did you do that?” I stammer.

  “Because either two things were going to happen. You were going to slit his throat, or he was going to break free and shoot you, and of the two, the latter seemed a lot more likely. Right now, you’re worth a lot more to me than he was. So I chose. It’s fairly simple.” Jacqueline says.

  “But . . . he was your . . .”

  I swallow. I can hardly form words.

  “He was,” she nods. “But he had a temper problem, and he didn’t know how to drive a drill. Shall we get going? I’d like to make it back to base sooner rather than later.”

  Jacqueline leads me back to the drill wordlessly, and she points her gun at me as I climb inside. She jumps in after me and closes the hatch, and silently I turn Jules on and we descend into the ground a few yards.

  “Apart from that unpleasantness, it was a successful demonstration,” she says once we’re back underground.

  I say nothing. I listen to the roaring thunder of Jules’s drill.

  “You seem disturbed Lloyd,” she notes. “I thought you’d appreciate the fact that I just saved your life.”

  “. . . You just . . . you didn’t even consider letting me go. You could have done what I asked and
I’d have let go of Robbie. But you just killed him. Like he was nothing,” I mumble.

  “Letting you go was not a choice, Lloyd,” she says. “And neither was giving Robbie the chance to break free and shoot you. I need your drill, and for now I need you. It’s a shame what I had to do. Robbie was a model employee, a close friend, and back at base I’ve got ten men who will be wrestling each other to the ground for the chance to replace him.”

  She says it like she says everything. Just stating the facts. I glance over at her, her blank emerald eyes, and she looks over and meets my stare. There’s nothing behind that stare. No guilt. No remorse. No anything.

  And she’s the most terrifying person I’ve ever seen.

  “I told you when we met I wasn’t a good person,” Jacqueline says.

  “. . . Do you care about anything?” I ask.

  “Just one thing,” she says. “And it’s the only thing in this world worth caring about.”

  I open my mouth, but suddenly, there’s a loud crunch from outside, and Jules bucks hard. We lurch forward.

  “What was that?” Jacqueline asks.

  Her gun hovers close to my face, and I swallow, leaning forward and pulling a lever.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  Jules lurches forward again and suddenly she comes to a stop, her drill whiring away out of control in front of us. I suddenly become aware of the groaning glass of the windows. I look up and see the sediment pushed up against the window.

  That shouldn’t be happening. Jules clears a tunnel ahead of her. Aside from small pebbles and clumps of dirt and debris, there shouldn’t be anything pressed up against the windows. I squint at the pale sediment pressed up against the creaking glass.

  Sand.

  The sand dunes. I drove her into the sand dunes.

  “Lloyd. What is going on?” Jacqueline asks again.

  Back during the gold rush, there were so many ways people died in their mobile drills. Drilled down too deep and got swallowed up by the magma in the earth. Drilled into lakes, into tar. Drilled into dirt too loose to work through. I’ve always been careful, never went down too far, but always drilled deep enough under loose ground and kept my eye on the map.

  Until this very instant.

  I gently ease Jules into reverse and start to back her up. The treads roar beneath us, but we hardly move an inch. There’s not enough friction. I stomp on the brake, trying to get some torque.

  And the glass cracks.

  There’s a flash of white as the sand pours in around us. Jacqueline lifts her arm to protect herself from the wave of sand and broken glass, and I get a big mouthful of it. I sputter as the glass splinters apart and more sand rushes in around us. Jacqueline is standing, trying to twist the hatch open, but the weight of the sand pushing down around Jules is too much. She’s sinking.

  This is the only chance I’ll get.

  I swing my legs out of the sand collecting around my waist and I take a deep breath. I throw myself forward into the torrent of sand, closing my eyes and pulling with all my might. I’m blind to everything around me, and I can hardly move, but the jostling from the drill is at least making the sand looser, and I propel myself forward. I can feel a hand wrap around my ankle, but I kick it off quickly and pull myself forward. Somehow, I’m able to get my footing on the tilting window frame, and I frantically push myself forward, trying to swing my arms, grabbing for something, anything.

  And my fingers wrap around a wad of roots.

  I grasp the knotted roots and yank on them, and although whatever plant is above comes sinking down, it provides me with enough momentum to pull myself up, and break through the sandy surface.

  I gasp in air as I yank myself into a bed of dried grass. I gulp in air, coughing as bits of sand make their way into my lungs, and thank every deity there is that roots can grow so deep in ground with little water. When I’ve finally caught my breath, I open my eyes.

  A few feet away from me, there’s a large dip in the sand, and it pulsates, no doubt propelled by Jules’s drill only a few yards below. I watch the sand throb and die down as Jules sinks away beneath my feet.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, waiting. At some point, I pulled myself up off the ground, and walked off down the dune. I don’t know what propelled me to keep going. I walked by the lake, following its shoreline until I found a small cluster of buildings. A restaurant. For a while, I just stood there, staring over at it. I felt so empty. So numb.

  I still feel numb.

  Finally, I dig myself out of my stupor and walk over to it. I reach into my pocket, pull out some change, and stuff it into the payphone slot before pushing the numbers. The phone rings and I stare back out at the lake, at the dunes. At the blue, unforgiving water, the miles of rolling sand, the darting shadows of the airships up in the sky, the final resting place for my drill. My Jules. The love of my life.

  She’s gone.

  A voice clips on to the other end of the phone.

  “Around the World Curios. You’ve reached the front desk.”

  “Hey Alma,” I say, my throat sore and hoarse from all the sand I swallowed. “Do you think one of your brothers could give me a lift?”

  It’s been a week since I lost her. It didn’t get any easier.

  I made two trips to two police stations in two different states. They collected Robbie’s body and after a few days they dug Jacqueline out of the sand. They called me in to identify her at the morgue. Some vile, vindictive part of me wished it hurt her when I first heard. That she died screaming, gasping for air, and that her face would be contorted in pain and fear like those on her mink stole. But her expression in death was the same in life. Blank. Unreadable. Uncompromising. It didn’t feel like a victory, or justice, knowing I made it and she didn’t. It felt like nothing.

  They dug as deep as they could, but they couldn’t find Jules. She sank too deep, and her drill was still on full blast. She could have drilled right through the crust of the earth by now. The heat would have warped her beyond function or recognition.

  Back in Illinois, the cops were able to find the tunnel through the speakeasy down in Twin Pike. They raided the rumrunner’s base, and it made the headlines statewide. That didn’t feel like a victory either – one less place for me to find a drink.

  And I’ve been doing a lot of drinking these days. Luckily some of the boys down at Marla’s were kind enough to supply me with plenty of moonshine and hooch. It’s damn horrible, but it’s better than being still with my thoughts.

  I wake up to a pounding at my door, and immediately I moan when I open my eyes. I feel sick and nauseous and my head feels like it got run over by a freight train. I battle my way out of bed, trying to pull on my slacks as I make my way to the door.

  “Hold your horses, I’m coming,” I mumble, slamming the door open.

  She stands at the doorway with a parasol in one hand and a basket in the other. She’s wearing a long peach-colored dress, mother of pearl buttons dotting the bodice. Her sleeves hang off her shoulders, exposing her pale skin, and her shinny penny hair is done in a braid, cascading down her side. She smiles up at me with warm, brown eyes, and I can’t help but melt.

  “Alma,” I whisper.

  “Hey there Prospector,” she says.

  “Heh. Well, not so much anymore,” I say, feeling a ping of sadness. “Looks like I’m out of a job.”

  Her face falls, and she reaches out and touches my hand.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . how have you been?” she asks.

  I know it must be pretty obvious how I am. I haven’t shaved in days, and I must stink of bootlegged alcohol. But still, she’s trying to be nice.

  “I’m Jake,” I say, forcing myself to smile.

  “You’re a bad liar. Here, I brought you some soup,” she says, passing me her basket.

  “Thanks Alma, that’s really swell of you,” I say.

  “That’s me,” she says grinning. “So, if I were to ask you when the last time you went
outside was, what would you say?”

  “. . . I don’t exactly remember,” I shrug.

  “Why don’t you save the soup to heat up for later and take a little walk with me?” Alma says. “Some fresh air will do you good.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but Alma’s shoving the basket inside my door, grabbing me by my hand, and pulling me out into the street.

  “Come on. Let’s ankle!” she says.

  I sigh, and trudge along in time with her, blinking in the sunlight and the airships darting across the sky. Alma moves her parasol over me.

  “Sun a little too bright for you?” she asks, chuckling. “That’s what happens when you’re blotto twenty-four seven.”

  “I’m not blotto. I just was last night,” I sigh.

  “You are aware it’s late afternoon?” she asks.

  “. . . I am now,” I mumble.

  “My brothers said you threw up on the ship when they brought you home. Was that your first time in one of them?” she asks.

  “It was,” I say. “It . . . wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, though. I just . . . wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I can’t imagine you would be. They told me all the details that got left out of the papers. I’d have come down sooner but I needed to man the shop. I just . . . I’m so sorry, Lloyd. I know how much you loved that drill.”

  I nod. For a while, we walk forward quietly.

  “It was my grandfather’s,” I say gently.

  “Huh?” Alma asks.

  “My grandad,” I say. “He bought it back during the gold rush, used it to mine for gold in Sacramento. He was good with it. When the gold got picked clean, he was hired by the Central Pacific Railway to help clear the tunnels. They tried to just buy the drill off of him, but he refused. And once they saw how good he was with it, well, they begged him to come on board. He was as resilient as they come.”

  I chuckle to myself, thinking of Grandad.

  I miss him so much.

  “He’s the one who named her Jules. Not me. I remember being just a kid, sitting on his lap while he read me Journey to the Centre of the Earth. It’s still my favorite book,” I say, smiling.