EL CAPITAN
CRAZY JOHN-JOHNS
El Capitan sits in the pilot’s seat, hunched forward because of Helmud on his back. Fignan is in the copilot’s seat, projecting bright maps of the surrounding territory. El Capitan’s scanning the horizon for Crazy John-Johns Amusement Park. He wishes he didn’t have to go back; they almost died there. In his mind’s eye, he can still see Helmud over his shoulder, stabbing each of the Dusts’ eyes as they blinked up from the earth, the big hulk of the ones that pulled themselves up from the dirt, and Hastings’ leg bitten by the teeth of a trap, how he ripped it free—his leg half gone. And his car—he loved that damn car; it’s stuck out there too.
Hastings? Did he survive surgery on his leg? Lots of things could have gone wrong—a clumsy surgeon accidentally snipping a main artery, a loss of blood, a lack of hygiene causing infection.
What if he’s dead?
Shit.
The landscape is still dusty and barren. Last time, he crash-landed. He’d like to do it right, but he’s already distracted. He’s thinking about what Pressia said—that one day, it might be possible for him and Helmud to be severed from each other. The vial has properties to regrow cells. These could be used on Helmud from the place where his ribs lock a little with El Capitan’s ribs and where his legs are melted into El Capitan. He imagines a procedure where Helmud is regrown bit by bit as they’re slowly, surgery after surgery, separated. Could it be possible?
Helmud has been a part of El Capitan for so long. What would it feel like to be alone again? He tells himself it would feel damn good. He wants to be that man—his own man. But there’s an ache in his chest every time he thinks of it, as if Helmud’s heart—which rides forever just behind El Capitan’s own heart—feels the betrayal and applies sharp pressure, heart to heart.
If it could work, would it allow Pressia to see him as a real person, a man who stands alone—someone she could fall in love with?
She and Bradwell are back in their seats. El Capitan wishes he could feel a twinge of hope that they’ll never get back together. But he also knows that he’s got no shot with Pressia—with Bradwell around or not.
Pressia’s got what she wants—the vial and the formula—and El Capitan has the bacterium. Back in his room, he asked one of the caretakers for strong tape, and he adhered the box holding the bacterium, flat and square, behind his back—right in front of Helmud’s chest. He says, “Check it, Helmud.”
And he can feel Helmud’s fingers pushing against the box. “Check!” Helmud says.
El Capitan doesn’t have his guns, but he’s the most armed he’s ever been in his life.
Crazy John-Johns starts to take shape through the ash. As he allows the buckies to take on air, the airship dips lower. He can see the elongated neck of one of the roller coasters jutting into the sooty clouds and the tilted merry-go-round, but the ash is too thick to see the giant cracked head of Crazy John-Johns himself—his permanent smiling clown face, bulbous nose, and bald head. The dust on the ground is too thick.
“Something’s wrong!” he shouts to Pressia and Bradwell.
“Something,” Helmud whispers.
Fignan lets out a series of nervous beeps.
“What is it?” Pressia calls to him.
He passes over the amusement park and then starts to circle back. A high fence surrounds the park, but the earth around it is shifting as Dusts tunnel up, pulling themselves from the dirt. Some are loping toward the fence while others claw at it. “The Dusts are rising up!”
The survivors are defending the park with beebees and darts. The Dusts’ weakness is their eyes—the spot where they’re most human. When struck in the eyes, they buckle and fall, and the other Dusts devour them quickly. “They can’t kill them fast enough. There are too many Dusts. Hundreds of them!”
El Capitan doesn’t see Hastings. He starts to feel a gnawing in his gut. Pressia has convinced him that they need Hastings. He’s a Dome insider—one of their own creations, Special Forces elite. But, of course, he’s been debugged and therefore compromised, but he could claim that all of that was done against his will. He can drag himself back to the Dome as the embattled messenger. He’s also an old friend of Partridge. He’ll take Hastings back in, right?
“I see Fandra!” Pressia shouts.
“And Hastings!” Bradwell calls out.
There they are—climbing up using the roller coaster’s rails as a ladder. Hastings is stooped and pale, but still tall and muscular. He’s wearing some kind of prosthetic hidden by his pant leg except for a wedge of metal—what’s now his foot. Weaponry embedded in his arms, he stops—wind-whipped, hooking his arm to the roller coaster—and fires at the Dusts. He’s a good shot and takes a few out. Their bodies spin and fall. But there are too many. Fandra is climbing up behind him. Her hair is as bright as a golden flag. She has it tied back, but thin wisps still bat around her face.
“You can’t land,” Bradwell says, “not down there with all the Dusts, so they’re coming up to meet us!”
He’s right. Hastings and Fandra are climbing to them.
“Do they want to airlift everyone out?” El Capitan shouts.
“Too many of them now!” Bradwell shouts.
Through the ash and dust, El Capitan sees darting bodies running through the amusement park. Bradwell’s right. There are more survivors than when they were last here. Fignan has extended his legs and is trying to gather data. He states an approximate count—seventy-two—male-to-female ratio, approximate ages.
“Not now, Fignan!” El Capitan says.
“Not now!” Helmud shouts.
It means more people have risked their lives to get away from the city—a bad sign. Something’s happened to the city. What now? El Capitan thinks. What now? He feels sick, a familiar wrenching dread in his chest.
“We need Hastings!” El Capitan shouts.
“Why are they attacking?” Pressia says. “The music was a deterrent. Where’s the music?”
“Can’t hear it over the engine,” El Capitan says. The music kept the Dusts at bay. It was only the stupid plinking notes of an amusement park theme song. Dinky dinks and diddly dinks… But the survivors used it as a deterrent, broadcasting it on old speakers before opening fire. The Dusts had come to fear it.
“We can’t hear the music,” Bradwell says. “We’re locked up in here.”
El Capitan touches a button and the seal of a small side window breaks and the window lowers a few inches. He hears movement, probably Pressia and Bradwell rushing toward the open window.
At first there’s only the rush of air. But then they hear a scream. Then another. “There’s no music,” she says.
“Without the music…” El Capitan shouts, and then he whispers what they all know: “They’ll die.”
He passes over Crazy John-Johns, this time so low he can see the twisted, melted faces of the horses on the merry-go-round. And now he can make out some Dusts ramming their heavy bodies into the chain link, pounding amid the beebee gunfire, small dirt clods spraying from their chests and shoulders. A dozen of them lean into the fence, which bows under their weight.
Then the fence gives, popping up from its posts and folding over on itself. The Dusts crawl over it into the park itself.
The survivors start screaming and pouring from one side of the park to the other.
“Goddamn it!” El Capitan says.
“God!” Helmud shouts.
He hears Pressia shouting, “What the hell are you doing?”
Bradwell bolts in through the cockpit doorway. “They’re in,” he says.
“I know,” El Capitan says.
“God!” Helmud says.
“We’ve got to get in close to the roller coaster,” Bradwell says. “And we need a way to pull Hastings in.”
“And Fandra,” El Capitan says.
Pressia walks into the cockpit too. “She won’t come with us. She won’t leave the others. I know her. She’s climbing up for a reason, but it’s not to run away.”
Bradwell is looking out the windshield. “You better hurry.”
“I’m going to get in as close as I can,” El Capitan says.
“Close,” Helmud says.
El Capitan lets more air into the buckies. The airship lists momentarily to one side—Pressia and Bradwell stagger and then hold on to the walls. The wind is strong, coming in from the west. He banks into it. “If I lower the landing prongs, he can grab hold.”
Hastings has reached the top of the roller coaster; Fandra is beside him. They’re both holding tight. The ashen wind roils around them.
“In this wind,” El Capitan mutters, “it’s just going to be harder to get in tight.”
“You can do it, Cap,” Bradwell says.
“I crashed it last time. I crashed!” Jesus! He crashed. They could have died. He remembers the ground running close below them. He braced for the landing, and things went black.
“Bradwell’s right,” Pressia says. “You can. We know it.”
“We know it,” Helmud says.
El Capitan tightens his grip on the wheel and leans forward. He circles again. The Dusts are roaming the park. A few are hunched over a body—a survivor? Another Dust? They’re feasting.
Up ahead, Hastings and Fandra are waiting at the top of the roller coaster, their clothes rippling.
And then they wobble. They look at one another and then below.
“What’s wrong?” Pressia says.
“The Dusts,” Bradwell says.
El Capitan sees that they’ve gathered at the base of the roller coaster. They’re bashing it with their shoulders.
“We can’t leave Fandra,” Pressia says. “We can’t abandon them.”
“What other options do we have?” El Capitan says.
“It’s too terrible to imagine how they’ll all die. Too terrible.” Pressia’s eyes well up, and she covers her face with her one hand and tucks the doll head under her chin. El Capitan wants to comfort her, but he can’t; even if he could take his hands off the controls, he wouldn’t touch her in front of Bradwell.
But just as the horror of it all starts to wash over El Capitan—these Dusts devouring survivors in the bombed-out amusement park—a few tinny notes fill the air. Fignan. He’s playing back a recording that he must have captured the last time they were here.
They all turn and look at Fignan, who detects the sudden attention and quiets down.
“Fignan!” Pressia cries. “You’ve got it!”
Fignan flashes his row of lights proudly.
“And he can blast it louder too,” El Capitan says to Bradwell. “Can’t he?”
“Blast it,” Helmud says.
“Yes,” Bradwell says, “but—”
“We’ll have to hand him over,” Pressia says.
“Wait,” Bradwell says. “There has to be another way.”
“But Fignan can save them!” Pressia says. “Who knows what happened to their system.”
“But we can’t hand him over,” Bradwell says. “He’s got important information. He’s one of a kind.”
“We have to. They’re going to die. They need him.”
And then Fignan’s lights pulse and again the little tune rises up from him—light and soft and quick.
“Get to the door in the cabin,” El Capitan says. “Be ready to pull Hastings in and lower Fignan down. I’ll find a way to hold this thing steady.”
“Keep playing, Fignan,” Pressia says, picking him up and carrying him out of the cockpit. “As loud as you can.”
“Careful with him,” Bradwell says, following her out. Fignan has become his loyal companion, an old friend.
Fignan gets louder and louder until the notes are shrill and piercing, even over the growling engines. El Capitan releases the four long legs that steady the ship on the ground. Hastings is still coded for strength, agility, speed. Hopefully he’s strong enough—after his loss of blood, his loss of a limb—to grab hold. The landing legs buzz loudly and then lock into place.
El Capitan feels a gust of wind whipping in through the cabin. Pressia and Bradwell have gotten the cabin door open. El Capitan allows the buckies to take on more air. The airship lilts and sways and glides toward Hastings, who’s locked his legs—one real, one prosthetic—on the final rung of the roller coaster, now swaying from the frantic Dusts beating it below. El Capitan won’t be able to see if he slows the airship enough for Hastings to grab hold. It will happen under the hull.
In his final glimpse of them, Fandra is looking at the Dusts below, and Hastings stretches out both arms, reaching up.