Uncrashable Dakota (25 page)

*   *   *

“UP YOU GO, HOLLIS.”

His mother’s voice. He was kneeling down near the edge of the hole. He blinked the world into place. His mother was stooped, propping his body up, trying to help him to his feet. She smelled like burnt hair. Had he passed out? How long had his mother been holding him like this?

“Hollis?” Her voice was a muffled roar. She planted a gentle kiss on his forehead. “No? Not yet, then. Okay. We’ll get you some help.”

He could see over her shoulder. There was Chester, talking to some passengers on the bridge. People he recognized. A woman in a frilly nightdress, a man in a trenchcoat. He was supposed to know their names.

He met his mother’s eyes, imploring her to understand.
I’m sorry I let them take you away
. Was he actually forming words?
I’m sorry I ran
. He thought he might be making a strange noise, harmonizing with the wailing in his head.

“… and you’ll see that he stays right here?”

Hollis felt himself being handed off to Maggie. His mother said something else, something about a doctor, then she thanked Maggie and was gone.

“I ain’t holdin’ you if you’re gonna be dead weight.”

Hollis nodded weakly. This time his scratchy voice came out. “I can sit up.”

Maggie let him down easy, until he had arranged himself cross-legged on the floor with his chin propped on his fists. Together they peered into the hole. She gave a low whistle.

“You and me and Chester were lucky. That thing didn’t even come in through the bridge but it still tore it up bad.”

“We
hit
something?”

“Something big. The rest of the ship can’t be too pretty.”

But Hollis was barely listening; he’d spied Rob’s transmitter bag dangling from a broken floorboard.

“I gotta get down there,” he said, fighting a wave of nausea as he lifted his head.

Maggie followed his eyes. “Nah—let him find his own way. That’s how it’s gotta be at a time like this.”

Hollis shook his head.

“Then I’m coming too.”

“Listen—” He cleared his throat. “Maggie. Listen to me.” His voice was returning. “Life-ships. Ask my mother where to go. Take Chester and get in one.”

She snorted. “They’re for them. For the passengers.”

“As of right now, you’re first class, you ride with anybody. Tell my mother I said that.”

“Tell her yourself.”

“Maggie,” Hollis said, surprised at the strength of his voice, “please go.”

She regarded him with her good eye and straightened the kerchief on her head. Her eyes scanned the bridge, and after a moment, she nodded. “Deal. But you take this”—Maggie tucked the Cosgrove Immobilizer into his satchel—“so you don’t have to go killin’ anybody.”

“Get out of here.” Each word sank Hollis further into exhaustion. “I’ll see you on the ground.”

She grabbed him by the chin. “Don’t forget about us.”

Then she was gone, skirting around a barricade of fallen cabinets. Hollis slung his stepbrother’s bag over his shoulder and dropped into the hole, hanging on to the ruined floor by his fingertips. With great effort, he worked his way along the edge until he was hanging above a king-size bed. Then he let go.

*   *   *

HE WAS SITTING
UP
in bed next to a toppled dresser. The stateroom was a museum of things that no longer mattered: fine china, custom-tailored suits, priceless antiques. The noise in his head was a faraway drone.

He remembered that he’d been pointing a gun at Rob. They’d been pointing guns at each other.

A gang of beetles floated past. It was easier to think of them as living things when they were so big. There were parts of them he had never noticed before. Fine cilia, once microscopic, now as long as his hair. When they were gone, he climbed out of the bed. His shoulder felt heavy; he was carrying two satchels.

The gun in its holster was slouching beneath his right hipbone.

In the sitting room, Rob was bent over the sofa, holding a stocking to a nasty gash on a young woman’s forehead. On the floor by his feet, another stocking was soaked in blood.

“Rob.” His voice had returned to a dry whisper.

With quick-draw speed that seemed to surprise him as much as Hollis, Rob spun around, gun drawn, pointing at Hollis’s chest. His face was sporting a bruise under one eye and a jagged scrape along the jaw.

Hollis was too weak and slow to do anything but display his empty hands.

“Please,” was all he could say.

Rob didn’t move.

The surge of fear and adrenaline turned up the noise in his head. Hollis’s knees buckled, but he stayed up. Slowly, he reached across his body and removed Rob’s satchel from his shoulder. He held it out as an offering.

“You forgot this. I won’t tell Delia.”

Rob flinched at her name. “You were going to shoot my dad.”

“I swear, I wasn’t. I couldn’t do it.” How could he possibly explain himself with a fuzzy head and the barrel of a gun two feet from his heart? “Be careful with that. Put it away.”

He swatted a ghostly half-beetle from his face, hand brushing the fuzz sprouting along its pincers. The beetle glittered like crinkled aluminum and faded away. Hollis wondered if he’d gone insane. Crazy did tend to run in his family.

“Just put down the gun, Rob.”

“You take yours out of that holster and throw it on the floor.”

Hollis took a deep breath. “You first.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“A gigantic Christmas light of a beetle just sailed by, Rob. Then it
disappeared.
And that woman’s bleeding. Shooting me’s not helping anyone.”

In his hand, Rob still held the stocking. He glanced at it, then over at the pistol. “My dad gave this to me.” He shook his head and looked blankly at Hollis. “My dad gave me a gun.” He laughed. “We really have no idea what’s going on in our parents’ heads, do we?”

Hollis thought of his father. If only they could have had one more year together, or two, or three. He’d have asked his father why he never replaced the old, rickety spectacles that always slid down his nose. He’d ask all sorts of things about airship design and Samuel Dakota. And he’d write the answers down so he could keep his father’s words forever.
Swear.
Hollis thought of his mother, who had married Jefferson Castor, of all people. Why? Simply because he’d been nice to her? Because he’d been so helpful when she suddenly found herself alone? Rob was right, it was impossible to really know.

“Your dad wore those yellow suspenders that one time,” Hollis said. “With the birds on them. Just that one time. Then it was back to pinstripes.”

The lights flickered. Hollis braced himself for the plunge into darkness, but they came back on. Rob put the gun in his pocket and took the satchel from Hollis’s outstretched hand.

Hollis’s vision swam. He was dizzy with relief. Behind Rob, the woman was saying something about girls. Over and over again: “my girls.”

Hollis tried to calm her down while Rob wiped her forehead.

“She needs water,” Rob was saying. “We have to find some water.”

The bathroom wall was gone. Inside, a porcelain tub had been reduced to what looked like a pile of broken plates. Then he forgot why he had come in here in the first place. The man was lying facedown, wearing his dressing gown and clutching a toothbrush. His eyes were open.

Dr. Wellspring
, Hollis thought. Then he found himself very close to an eye, a mustache, a spot of blood in the corner of a mouth.

*   *   *

THE LITTLE GIRL
slung over Hollis’s shoulder twisted the tail of her toy pig.
Pop goes the weasel.

She felt heavier than a skinny six-year-old should be. He was in no shape to be carrying anyone, but they didn’t have a choice. This particular first-class corridor had been lined with Ming Dynasty showpieces encased in glass; now the carpet was full of shards.

“Junie?”

“My name is Jessie.”

“I’m Junie!” said the girl Rob was carrying.

They were in a single-file procession. Mrs. Wellspring, the stocking wrapped around her forehead, shuffled numbly between Hollis and Jessie, Rob and Junie.

“You’re going on a little ride, okay? You and your sister and your mother. And you have to be brave.”

“I am brave. Are we going to crash?”

“This ship can’t crash,” her sister said. “Don’t you know anything?”

They turned a corner. A pair of Pekingese bounded past their legs, wild-eyed and panting. An overturned mattress leaned against the wall. A man with an attaché case at his feet was straightening his tie in a crooked mirror. The tinny chime of a music box playing “Airship to Paradise” drifted out of an open stateroom door. Hollis peeked in. Empty.

“We’re almost there, Mrs. Wellspring,” Hollis said, even though she hadn’t said anything at all.

In front of the life-ship hatch on the port side of the first-class deck, they bumped into an angry mob. The old man Rob had dubbed Swallowtail Ovaltine was brandishing his cane like a sword, standing before the open hatch. A few men had formed a rough line, just out of his range. The air was tinged with menace—they were getting ready to rush him.

“You men stand down!” Ovaltine said. “God almighty, is there not a gentleman among you?”

“My wife and children are not boarding that ship without me,” said a man in a bowler with a boy at his side—the master magician.

“Then you are a coward, sir!” the old man yelled. He swung his cane back and forth. “You’re all cowards!”

“Why should we split up our families?” another man shouted back. “I don’t see anybody here giving orders.”

“It’s not supposed to crash!” whined the magician. “You said it can’t, Daddy!”

“For God’s sake, man, shut that boy up.”

“Well, he’s right, isn’t he? Ten to one, this airship is the safest place to be right now.”

“I’d rather be in here than out flying in one of these flimsy air boats.”

Everybody was screaming at once. Irate fingers poked the air. In Hollis’s arms, Jessie began to cry. He looked at Rob. He sympathized with the crowd—why
should
families have to split up? Everybody knew the rule—women and children first—but how rigidly was it supposed to be enforced? And who was going to enforce it?

While he was turning it over in his mind, Rob calmly handed Junie to her mother. He pulled out his pistol and fired a shot directly into the wall next to the hatch. The report was deafening. Instantly, the corridor was silent. Fearful eyes were trained on Hollis and Rob.

“General Ovaltine’s got it right,” Rob said. There was a confused murmuring. “Women and children first. Can anybody here fly a life-ship? All you really have to do is keep it from hitting something.”

“I was in the army,” volunteered a man wearing three jackets and holding two suitcases.

Hollis wanted to speak up—people were beginning to recognize him—but the pistol shot was echoing in his brain. The edges of his vision were hazy. His forehead felt very warm.

“If you men…,” he began. Rob, seeing him falter, took Jessie and lowered her gently to the floor, where she wrapped her arms around her mother’s leg. “If you want to make yourselves useful, you’re needed at the other hatches. Some of you head starboard—there are more ships over there. Help where you can,” he implored. “Please.”

Most of the men, thoroughly shamed, dispersed. Hollis leaned against the wall as Rob helped the three Wellsprings through the hatch and into the canvas-topped ship. He noticed Rob was shaking with exertion. The eerie poise that had compelled him to fire his gun had deserted him. Hollis realized that there was nothing to stop those men from simply climbing aboard a different life-ship.

“I know that,” Rob said as they moved to the next hatch, and Hollis realized he must have spoken aloud. Rob was running, Hollis was struggling to keep up. “I know that, but what else are we supposed to do?”

*   *   *

CLARISSA JUNIPER
refused to leave Edmund’s side.

The plush expanse of the Junipers’ stateroom carpet was soaked in alcohol. Evidently they had set up miniature drink-mixing stations throughout the vast Presidential Suite, most of which were now in ruins. The couple had also piled the cushions from half a dozen scattered sofas into a cozy nest, which is where Hollis and Rob discovered them.

“I advise you to get to a life-ship,” Hollis said wearily. It was difficult to muster any urgency for people who were obviously not going anywhere.

“I appreciate the suggestion, young Master Dakota.” Clarissa Juniper poured herself another martini from a shaker and offered one to Rob, who declined.

“I only drink hot lemonade.”

She shrugged and topped off her husband’s glass.

“Let no one accuse Edmund Juniper of failing to play the man’s game to the very end,” Edmund said, winking at Hollis and adding olives to a toothpick.

“Man’s game?” Hollis asked Rob, heading back to the stateroom door. The whole incident was making him feel feverish, and he was eager to be moving along.

“Gentleman’s game, I think he means,” Rob said. “Honor, or courage, or something like that.”

As they left the Junipers behind, Hollis could hear Edmund calling after them. “If you happen to pass this way again, we’ve just run out of olives!”

*   *   *

HOLLIS WAS STARTING
to feel better. The ringing had receded to a distant ping. He showed Annabel and Arthur Reynolds how to fasten their belts and was about to discharge life-ship twenty-six when something underneath the seat caught his attention.

It was a woman’s bonnet pulled low over a hairy face.

“Get out of there, sir.”

“I will not.”

“Women and children first,” Hollis said. It came out like a sigh. The phrase didn’t even sound like English to him, he’d been repeating it so often.

“I will be frank with you—I am very frightened.”

“So is everyone else.”

“But you see,” pleaded the face beneath the seat, “I’m convinced there won’t be enough life-ships left over for the men.”

“There are seats for every passenger. What kind of airship company do you think this is? You just have to wait, that’s all.”