The kid gritted his teeth, gathering his Power, and a meat cleaver rose from the bar. Sullivan just shrugged, Spiked, and the injured man lofted to the ceiling and rebounded off a steel beam in the roof, then Sullivan let gravity return to normal and the kid fell, crashing in a moaning, broken heap at his feet.
Sullivan returned the.32 to his pocket. He removed his handkerchief and wrapped it around his hand to stop the bleeding. The white quickly turned red. It hurt like a son of a bitch. He spotted his Colt near the kid and picked it up, limping onward.
Two down, but how many others were there? Sullivan was feeling woozy. He was losing blood. Had the others heard the gunshot? Would they be waiting for him?
He crossed another empty hallway. The control deck was up a short flight of metal steps at the end. The coast appeared to be clear. Sullivan checked his Power. There wasn't a whole lot left. He should have just shot the talky Mover again and saved the juice.
There was only one way in, so Sullivan moved up as quietly as possible for a man of his stature. If he hadn't been so worried about running low on Power, he would have given himself the weight of a dainty ballerina and made no noise at all. He set his boot down carefully, so the steps wouldn't creak. The space around him was a mass of darkened pipes and shadows. This section wasn't meant to be seen by the passengers, so UBF had saved the money on making it pretty. This end of the dirigible was noisy and vibrating from the front propellers and the wind. It was possible that the pilot of the stolen blimp hadn't even heard the guns.
Creeping forward, Sullivan could see a man sitting in the driver's seat. He could just see the back of a balding head. The captain's chair was empty. He went a little further around the corner, until he saw a second person, a woman with long blonde hair at the radio operator's station. She had her back to him and seemed intent on whatever she was listening to.
"All-points bulletin. The state police are just waiting for the storm to pass so they can get some biplanes up," the woman said. She had a touch of an accent like some of the eastern European immigrants Sullivan had served with in the First. "They think we're heading for Canada."
"Good thing we had Heinrich kill the spotlights," the driver said. "Canada? Please. That's like they took Vermont and made a whole country out of it, only more boring, and without the good maple syrup." His voice was deep and smooth, almost like a radio news man.
Sullivan couldn't see Delilah, and she was the one he was worried about running into at close range. He stepped into the room and aimed his gun at the back of the pilot's head.
The girl at the radio turned and spotted Sullivan. "Uh, Danny, we've got company." Sullivan realized she was rather attractive, probably thirty, with her hair bounced up like they were doing in the new color picture movies. "There's a large man pointing a Colt at you… and he looks mad."
The pilot chuckled, but didn't bother to turn. "No need to be rude, Jane. Hello there. My name is Daniel Garrett. You can call me Dan. Pardon me for not standing and greeting you properly, but we're at two thousand feet and climbing and these winds are getting worse. I'm trying to keep from plowing this unwieldy beast into the ground and being the death of us all."
"Is that a threat?" Sullivan asked. "Because I can get out and walk."
Dan laughed. "Oh no, friend, nothing of the sort." His voice was calming. Sullivan felt like this man was a likable sort, a real reasonable guy. "Please, lower that gun and relax. I'm trying to drive this pig here, and I could sure use a hand. I'm sure we can work out this misunderstanding."
The Colt bobbed down. Yes, this was just a misunderstanding. No big deal. They could always sit down and talk it out over a drink. Dan seemed a decent sort. He reminded Sullivan of an old friend, not that he could think of who specifically.
The entire front of the cabin was glass, and Sullivan could see nothing but blackness. Then lightning struck and he could see again.
Sullivan frowned. He'd felt this kind of intrusion before, though this one was a lot more subtle, a lot more cunning. "You're in my head." The Colt came back up. "Get out of my head, Mouth."
"You're sharp…" Dan said. "I thought you Heavies were supposed to be dimwits."
"Not all of us." He kept the gun on the driver, but kept one eye glued to the blonde. In this crew, he wouldn't have been surprised if she'd started tossing undead flaming grizzly bears at him or something. "I don't have time for your games-"
"No kidding," said the girl. "You've got a three-inch laceration on one leg, a puncture in your hand, a minor concussion, two injured vertebrae in your lower back, and you've just picked up a nasty cold, though you won't know about that until tomorrow morning. And you really need to quit smoking."
Sullivan sighed. "I'm gonna ask this one time, then I'm gonna beat you until I'm bored. Where's Delilah?"
A painted fingernail tapped his shoulder. "Right behind you, Jake."
She'd been hiding between the pipes, Sullivan realized as he Spiked, but Delilah had already been channeling her Power, increasing her strength tenfold as she grabbed Sullivan by the shoulders and slammed him through the duralumin bulkhead and out the side of the airship.
Didn't see that coming, Jake thought before blacking out, hurtling through the dark night.
It was the cold that finally brought him back to consciousness. Jake Sullivan gradually awoke, coughing at the bottom of a hole. He was on his back, soaked to the bone, encased in freezing mud. Water was falling down the hole, splashing him in the face, and every inch of his body ached. He was dizzy and wanted to puke, but he knew that was just the blood loss talking.
Not sure where he was, or how he'd gotten there, Sullivan pulled himself out of the mud. Roots and bits of rock were stuck in what was left of his clothing. His right hand still didn't want to close, and he was surprised to find that he still clutched the Colt in his left, though when he looked at it, found that he only had the badly crushed frame. The slide was just gone. It looked like the magazine had exploded under the pressure and the magazine spring was dangling out the bottom like a half-gutted fish. Jake tossed the ruined Colt in the mud with a splash, saddened by the loss of such a good piece.
He checked, and found that he was totally out of Power, utterly drained, and feeling unbelievably weak. It took him nearly ten minutes to crawl to the top of the hole, finding purchase on severed roots and bits of leaking pipe. Finally he crossed the top, where he discovered five splintered railroad ties and one side of a railroad track that had bent into a U before shearing. On top of that was the broken floor of an empty freight car, and above that was a perfect Sullivan-shaped hole through the freight train's metal roof.
That's a first, he thought as he crawled out from under the railcar and rolled onto his back into a puddle. He was in the middle of a train yard. The North American logo was right over his head. He'd fallen two thousand feet, blasted through a train car, dug an impact crater, and still nothing felt broken. Somehow he'd used up the last of his Power unconsciously before impact. He must have gone real dense. He hadn't known he could do that, but then again, he didn't routinely fall off blimps.
A shape appeared. "Looks like we got us another filthy hobo."
There was a second voice. "I'll fetch my beatin' stick."
Sullivan grunted. It was gonna be a long night…
Chapter 3
As soon as the idea was introduced that all men were equal before God, that world was bound to collapse. Behold the failed America, a culture steeped in rot, their magics used publicly in the streets, without control, even allowed to the despicable Jew.