ISSUE #9 | Full Story, "Ahead of Dragons"
WRITTEN BY DAVID BUSBOOM, AS SEEN IN PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #9
Illustration by Sam Rheaume
I’ve been trailing Doc Hausen for nearly a month. According to the information from Uncle Linnie, he’s built something in Utah that’ll bring a whole swarm of dragons down on his head. Good thing they can only read each other’s minds.
He’s headed east and laying low. I miss him by about five hours in Chicago and spend the morning going around to all the ticket officers, getting chummy with agents. Finally find out Hausen bought a ticket to Champaign, Illinois, so I fan on down there and cool. No dragon city hovering over this county.
I spot Hausen in the third joint I check. He matches Uncle Linnie’s photo: big man with a round, cheery face and smooth skin, very pink in person. His mouth is loose and wet and his eyes are light blue. I think his eyes are the smallest I’ve ever seen.
He’s kept the nature of his invention pretty close to his vest, but luck is the only thing that’s kept him alive. He looks scared, drinking lemonade with an electro-sword on his belt like a fat-handled wakizashi.
“Excuse me,” I say, extending a hand. “Dian Fox. Haven’t I seen you around Linnie Turtledove’s in Philly?” Uncle Linnie practically founded the Underground.
“Maybe,” he says, smiling. “What do you drink?”
“Whiskey.”
“Are you even old enough?”
“Twenty-one last week.”
Hausen waves to the bartender. “Whiskey for the lady.” He looks at me. “Have you been in town long?”
“I’ve just come down from Chi to check things out,” I say. “Things don’t look so hot. I’ll probably go back to Philly tomorrow, should you need a traveling companion.”
“How is it you know Mr. Turtledove?”
“He and Dad flew in the Great War. The one against the Germans, that is.”
“Ah,” Hausen says, small eyes blinking, round head bobbing in a slow nod. “That was a hard time for me here.”
Too late I remember the origin of his name, catch his faint accent.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt. “I meant no offense.”
He holds up an understanding hand.
“You weren’t even born,” he says, sighing. “Who’d ever have thought I’d long for those days back? Ignorant patriots are much easier to ignore than monsters from beyond the clouds.”
I buy him more lemonade and have my whiskey and we talk about Philly. I register myself with him as one of the boys, so to speak, and find out he’s taken a room at the Francis Hotel. I take a pedicab over to do the same, flip the register back a day or so and find Hausen’s name to make sure, then go up and wash and lay down to smoke a cigarette and figure out the details.
According to Uncle Linnie, whatever Hausen’s built is a weapon, one that could really help the Underground even the odds a bit. I can’t be sure of that, but it’s enough. The point is to get him to Philly, and into one of the two or three places he’ll be safe.
***
I must sleep a couple of hours, because it’s dark when I wake up. Somebody’s knocking at the door. I get up and stumble over, switch on the light, and open it. It’s Hausen, electro-sword and all. I mumble something about coming in and sitting down, and go over to the sink to splash cold water on my face.
When I turn around he’s sitting on the bed looking scared. I offer him a cigarette and he takes it with a shaking hand.
“Sorry I woke you up like that,” he says.
“S’all right.”
He leans forward. “I’ve got to get out of here—right away,” he says in a low voice. “I want to know how much it’s worth to you to help me out of Champaign tonight.”
The man’s more scared than I thought.
“Sure,” I say, sort of hesitantly.
“Listen,” he says. “I got here Saturday morning. I was going to stay here long enough to lay low, and then move on. The dragons have been on my tail twelve days, at least. They’re here. When I got back to the hotel a little while ago they were outside. They came in late this afternoon. I changed rooms as quietly as possible.”
He’s silent so long that I laugh a little. “So what?”
“I’ve got to duck, quick,” he goes on. “There’re two of them. They’ve been walking around. You said you were going back to Philly. I saw your name on the register when I came in, and remembered your offer to take me along.”
I check my watch. Not quite nine o’clock.
“There isn’t a train till midnight.”
“Can’t we rent a tandem freight bike?”
“Train’s faster. And safer.”
He pulls the biggest roll I’ve ever seen out of his pocket and skims off a couple bills. “If it’s a question of money….”
I shake my head with what I hope is a suggestion of dignity.
“Maybe we can get a bike tonight.” I get up and put on my oversized coat. “How about your stuff?”
“I have to sneak up to my room to get it,” he says. “I’ll meet you downstairs. I’ve already paid my bill.”
I go downstairs and check out. The clerk behind the counter is a big blond kid with glasses.
One of the dragons stands outside, just a few yards from the lobby entrance. It’s about nine feet tall, nude save the antigrav device belted around its waist. It doesn’t seem to notice me through the glass, but then it’s hard to tell with those faceted eyes. I get as close to the stairwell as I can and lean against the wall, waiting as modestly as possible.
This whole layout looks bad. What’s taking Hausen so long? Where’s the other dragon?
After about five more seconds I start getting nervous. As I open the door to the stairwell there’s a crash and a scream close together, someplace upstairs. The dragon seems as startled as me; it unfurls its full twenty-foot wingspan, and takes off. Probably communicating with its partner, the way they do—or at least trying to.
I can take trouble or leave it alone, only I always take it. Like a sap, I go upstairs, two or three at a time. The blond clerk is close behind me.
There’s a man in a long, woolly bathrobe standing in the corridor on the third floor, and he points to a door. We go in. Hausen’s lying face down in a pool of blood in the middle of the room. Beyond him, close to the wall, is the large body of a dragon, also face down, long tail and limbs still seizing. The big window is shattered inward.
The clerk turns a beautiful shade of green and stands there, staring at the dragon. I roll Hausen over on his back, getting his blood on my boots. There’s a deep slash in his side, under the arm. He’s dead.
The dragon’s a little smaller than its partner outside, but that’s not saying much. A curved, fourteen-inch fighting claw extends from one heel, covered in blood. Its huge wings are half-spread over most of the body, but just under the base of one I can see the bloody tip of Hausen’s electro-sword protruding from its leathery back. The dragon’s blood is darker than Hausen’s.
The man in the shaggy bathrobe peeks in and then hurries across the hall and into another room. I hear him yell the news to somebody there.
I tap the clerk on the shoulder and point at Hausen. The clerk swallows a couple of times.
“He’s dead,” he says, and looks back at the dragon, hypnotized by its weakening convulsions.
Then about two dozen people come into the room all at once. The sheriff was in a pool hall across the street. He looks at Hausen, then at the clerk, then at me, and finally scratches his head and goes over to look at the dragon, careful not to touch. It’s now barely twitching.
The dragon must’ve surprised Hausen in his room while he was getting his things and spurred him, probably wanting what we did. His stuff’s all still here. The sheriff and a couple of deputies search everything.
All they find on Hausen is the roll he flashed on me—seventy-two hundred-dollar bills tucked into his pants pocket—and the usual keys, cigarettes, and whatnot. No letters or papers of any kind. There’s one big suitcase in his room, and inside, concealed under dirty clothes, is a miniature version of a dragon’s antigravity belt, affixed with some additional controls, two small nozzles, and a fuel tank.
“It’s a jetpack!” the clerk says.
“A jetpack?” says the sheriff.
But it is. An honest-to-God jetpack, just like from the Buck Rogers comic strips I used to read with Dad, before the sky ripped open over California.
“In a half-hour or so the dragons will descend on this place and tear it apart, for revenge and for this gadget,” I say. “It’ll be a cinch for them. I’ve got to take this out of here.”
“You?” the sheriff says.
I open my jacket, let him see Dad’s M1911 holstered beneath. Firearms of any kind are rare as cars now, thanks to the dragons. The old service pistol is my badge.
The sheriff understands, lets me grab the roll of cash and the jetpack—it’s a lot lighter than it looks. He helps me fasten the bulky thing around my waist, under my loose jacket.
“Get out,” he says, when it’s done. “Do you have a bike?”
“No.”
“Take mine.” He hands me the key. “The black police bike locked across the street.”
I screw down the back stairway and out the side door. I have to figure this out myself now. They have a complicated enough mess on their hands, and if I ride hard I can make it to Philly in four days or so.
Riding away from the hotel it looks like everybody in town is on the way there. What’ll they do when the dragons return? I don’t stay to find out, immediately starting east out of Champaign. Nothing chases me, and within the hour I’m following a discreet country road through a light drizzle.
I bend forward over the handlebars, my eyes moving regularly from the glistening road ahead to the small rearview mirror and back. I pedal steadily, pacing myself. There’s no sound but the roar of the wind and the singing of the tires. They screech on the wet pavement as I round a large, shallow curve.
My headlight catches a dragon standing squarely in the road.
I swerve, skid halfway across the road, jam on the brakes, jerk the handlebars hard over. The bike goes by the dragon at nine miles an hour, jostles over the gravel at the road’s shoulder and comes to a stop with a blown tire. I barely manage to keep from crashing. The dragon disappears into the darkness, but I know it’s still there. It spurred the tire on purpose.
I ditch the bike and look for the dragon; it might be the one from the hotel parking lot, but there’s no way to be sure. I reach into my jacket and draw Dad’s pistol—no use hiding now; with those feline ears and sensitive bug-eyes it’ll have a much easier time detecting me than I it.
I hear the sound of wings approaching and open up with the gun. The dragon comes down almost on top of me, bleeding from the chest and leg but still conscious and flapping, short beak open in a silent roar. I put two more bullets in its five-lobed brain and it stops kicking. The only sounds are the light rain and my own heavy breathing.
There are more coming. I don’t have any options. I holster the gun and throw off my jacket. I can’t help but laugh at what I’m considering. Then I think of Hausen, fighting to the death to defend this thing, traveling halfway across the country to ensure it got into the proper hands. My hands.
I don’t know how to use it, but maybe I can figure it out well enough to get to the next town. Trying to proceed on foot would be suicide.
I hear at least three pairs of wings flapping in the dark distance. They’re already here. I run east along the road, away from the wings, pressing buttons as I go, feeling like an avenger from the 25th century. The nozzles fire. It’s as if a great, trembling hand is dragging me up. My back and legs are hot.
I’m flying.
The wings are close enough now that I can hear them over the jetpack. I draw Dad’s pistol, almost crashing in the process, and fire blindly into my wake. One set of wingbeats grows frantic, then stops. The others continue, steady behind me. I keep firing, but they’ve moved out of the way. They’re getting closer.
I drop the gun. It’s spent anyway.
They’re going to catch me.
Maybe they’ll take me to one of their cities. The one over Chicago. Maybe they’ll just kill me, destroy the jetpack like they did all man-made aircraft.
But I don’t want to think about that. They haven’t caught me yet, and right now I just want to think about how it feels to fly ahead of dragons. I bet it’s how Dad felt in his biplane, back in ‘32.
Alive.
DAVID BUSBOOM is an Illinois based writer with work appearing in such publications as Shock Totem, Heroic Fantasy Short Stories, The Norwegian American, and The Saturday Evening Post. His debut novella, “Nightbird,” was published by Unnerving in 2018. More about him and his work can be found at davidbusboom.com.