Along the Cracks of the World

Part 1

I

“You with us, doc?”

Dr. Norman Miles’ head pulled to one side as he began to wake.

“We need to talk,” the voice said in a slight southern drawl.

Norman blinked in the early morning darkness.

He realized he was on his side in the desert, and as he went to sit up, he found that both his hands and legs were bound.

He blinked again, and the weight of his new reality washed over him.

He shuddered.

His research must not have gone over very well at all.

It was dark and cold, and the sun was only starting to cast pink shadows along the desert landscape, making it impossible to make out the face of the three figures standing above him.

He coughed, clearing his throat.

“As you can imagine, Robert and the team offer their sympathies,” the middle figure spoke with a near-gleeful delight in his just barely north of the Mason-Dixon voice.

Though difficult in the darkness, Norman was starting to make out the faces of the men before him.

He recognized the man in the center. The other two were soldiers. Army grunts from what Norman could see in the early dawn hours. Norman recognized him, but he did not know his name. He was tall and thin with a neat mustache. He’d seen the man walking with several of the generals during their inspection of the lab. The man was always dressed in civvies and seemed out of place.

Which is what had sparked a brief fascination with the man.

Norman’s one true joy was finding things out, and information on the man had been a thing to find out.

His search hadn’t yielded much.

He was Intelligence, and rumored to have a direct line to the president.

The man’s identity had puzzled Norman until he realized that the Gadget that they had built was going to end the world.

“Is this really necessary, my boy?” Norman chuckled as he assessed his situation and gathered his wits.

“Well,” the man smiled, bending down to pinch Norman’s cheek, “I reckon not this very moment, but it will be now.”

The middle man glanced over his shoulder and nodded at one of the men. Norman strained to see what was happening. The ropes held him tight, and he was not going to act like a child and squirm about in the dirt. Besides, the more Norman fought again the restraints, the more he realized he likely had more than one broken rib to contend with.

He heard a muffled scream, and he jerked his head over to see what was happening.

His life drained from his face as he saw through the shadows in the dark to see the struggling form of the love of his life.

Enid.

“Let her go! Please! God!” Norman cried out, straining and fighting to break free as the one of the men shoved her body to the Intelligence man.

Her face held white and blotchy from tears, and while she wasn’t crying now, her eyes were red and puffy from tears. She was bound and gagged, and her look of disdain for him chilled his heart.

All of this was Norman’s fault.

She’d warned him, and now, they both would pay the price.

Enid had always been his ultimate question.

From the first day she entered his classroom, the sole woman in a sea of feeble male minds. She changed him. She’d showed him that he had been answering the wrong questions.

And, she had warned him not to take his research to the generals.

“Please, just let her go. She is not to blame for this. She was against it. Please, just let her go.” His voice could not help but sound defeated. He’d tried to save the world, and it had cost him everything. It had cost him Enid.

“You should have listened to your wife. She’s a smart woman.”

“I know,” Norman glanced at her briefly to see her piercing gaze upon him.

The Intelligence man smiled, “I am afraid this bring me no great pleasure, but it just couldn’t be risked. Besides, you’ve been fighting with the brass for too long.”

“Is everything still on schedule? Did nothing I say matter?” Norman sighed hopelessly.

The shadows on the cool desert landscape shifted as the sun continued to rise. It was beautiful, and the life her would soon be extinguished. He’d spent too much time in the labs. He’d never truly appreciated the beauty of this young state.

It was too late now.

“This destruction will be on us all,” Norman sighed to himself.

“Doc, don’t look so upset. You riled Robert up, and a few others are whispering about your temporal fractal concerns. I read your report. And for the life of me, I think it is a bunch of gibberish. Personally, I found the consensus of the generals believable. You’ve been turned.”

“You may believe that if you wish, but I assure you—”

“—Dr. Miles, it don’t matter what I believe,” the Intelligence man interrupted, bending down toward Norman’s body, and Norman could smell a sweet acrid liquor on his breath. “In a few hours, you’ll be dust, and once again, our great nation will reign supreme the way God intended.”

“You don’t understand what you are doing—” Norman wheezed as hot dust blew into his face causing him to fall into a coughing fit.

“You’re right. I ain’t one of you eggheads. I’m only following orders. I was told to relay a message before we leave you. Robert says, ‘Pray to God that you are wrong. Pray, my friend.’ Quaint right?”

“How long?” Norman asked once he caught his breath again.

The Intelligence man glanced at his watch and smiled. “You’ll have a good hour to think about your life before it all flashes before your eyes. My sympathies for your wife. Norman, you were warned. You have no one but yourself to blame.”

Norman said nothing, only glanced back to the form of his bound wife, sitting in silence and waiting for the world to end.

“It’s time,” the man said, as he and the soldiers turned to walk away.

“Wait!” Norman cried.

The Intelligence man paused and glanced back.

“What’s your name?”

“What’s it matter?” the Intelligence man grinned.

“I want to know.”

“Go on,” he told the military personnel as he began to walk back towards Norman.

“Norman, don’t make this any more difficult than it is.”

“Then, tell me.”

“Doc, I’ve gotta run. I have a life and a war to win.”

Norman let out a low vengeful, guttural scream, “You’ll burn in hell for this. It doesn’t matter if I am right or wrong. You’ll burn in hell for this.”

The Intelligence man smirked. “I tell you what, the name’s Shane. Shane Bartley. Look me up when I meet you there.”

With that, the man named Shane turned and walked away, grinning as he did.

Norman tried to sit up as he heard the sound of a combustion engine roar to life. He listened for as long as he could until the unnatural engine was lost to the howls of the wind.

Minutes stretched as Norman listened for the sound of anyone besides his wife and himself.

Crickets chirped. And, the wind tossed tumbleweeds along the edge of the ravine.

Norman screamed a wordless guttural scream and was met only with the silence of the nature around him.

There was no point to running anyway. No matter how fast they ran, they would be caught in the blast radius. Hearing the tires squeal on the desert sand as the men left had told him that much. No one was coming, and as the minutes ticked on, it would only ever be too late.

It was impossible to know if he had spent the last five seconds or the last five minutes maneuvering over to his wife to remove her gag. It was still too painful to look at her and be reminded that he was responsible for her death, not to mention that his research would be responsible for the death of existence itself. His rib also ached, and he was beginning to vaguely remember being assaulted as he entered his office for the last time.

The feeling of the butt of a gun against the back of his head had blurred his memories of the last few twelve hours.

He prayed he was wrong about what was about to happen.

But, he’d run the test again and again.

Every result was the same.

The end of time.

But, no one listened, or if they did listen, it had meant nothing.

The machine of war was already in motion.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Enid, to no one, and everyone.

The sun, on its way up, cast long shadows along the brush, cacti, and rocks of where they would die.

They were in a slight ravine, the rocks polished smooth from years of desert flash floods.

Norman’s stomach turned as he realized he was grateful that he would not die alone.

He felt sick at the thought and tried rolling toward Enid’s head to undo the gag.

Wood snapped on the ridge of the ravine.

Above, a roadrunner cocked its head at the top of the outcropping. It studied Norman, staring at him with its small beady eyes. Norman watched as it preened and spread its feathers as it darted back and forth of rocky ledge.

Norman squinted and realized that he saw someone behind the roadrunner.

A child.

God have mercy.

A child.

Norman stilled.

“Please, you have to . . .” he paused, wondering what was even the point. The roadrunner cooed and jumped down into the ravine only to speed away.

The young boy silently emerged from the dry bushes.

“Please, would you untie my wife?”

The boy did not budge from the ridge. He was dressed in overalls and dirt-stained shirt.

The light was still poor, and Norman was unable to read the boy’s expression.

“Please, son.”

The boy was visibly shaken and took a step back.

“Wait . . . please,” Norman’s hopeless and defeated voice squeaked out.

The boy paused and in a quietly asked, “Why y’all tied up like that?”

“Please, my wife,” Norman said unable to say anything else.

The boy slid down into the ravine. Dirt and sand kicked up as small rocks tumbled towards Norman and his wife. The boy was cautious and stopped feet away from Norman and his wife.

“My name is Norman. This is my wife, Enid. We . . . I told some people something they did not want to hear, and they got really angry. What’s your name?”

The boy paused again but slowly continued to untie the gag around Enid’s mouth.

In a low, slow voice, she began, “Norman, I tried to get away, but they came to the house.

There was nothing I could do. I’m so sorry . . .”

The boy silently began to untie Enid’s legs as Norman said, “Don’t. You have nothing to be sorry about. This is my fault. I should have listened. And, now . . .”

With her legs free, she moved into a more comfortable position, she looked up at the boy,

“What’s your name?”

“I . . . I . . . I don’t know anymore.”

She frowned up at the boy, “Oh . . . okay.”

“I guess my last name is still Starling.”

Norman smiled, seeing his wife’s hands freed. “Thank you, Mr. Starling.”

Norman watched the boy visibly cringe at hearing his name spoken by his wife.

Enid sat back against the rocks and made no attempt to untie him.

He deserved that.

He deserved worse.

The boy looked from Norman to his wife and back.

“Ma’am,” he finally said, turning to his wife, “do I untie him, too? I really don’t know what this is all about.”

“That’s fine,” she said, nodding and massaging where her wrists had been bound.

The sun was still rising, and Norman really wished he had kept better track of time.

Would death be in a minute? Five? Twenty? At this point, it was impossible to tell, which somehow made worrying about their impending fate worthless.

The boy walked behind Norman and began to untie his wrists.

The Starling boy appeared to be no older than fourteen.

Norman sighed knowing that any minute their lives would be cut short.

With his hands untied, Norman motioned the boy away, and he sat on a sandstone rock between Enid and himself, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

“Norman,” Enid began in a somber, steady voice, “I need you to know something.”

She paused, and he looked up to catch her eye. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything to her. He deserved to hear whatever she had to say.

“When I said I was sorry . . . that wasn’t to you,” she sighed and looked down at a small brown spider scuttling across her black leather pump, “You need to know . . . I’m expecting.”

“Oh . . . God, Enid . . . I–”

A blinding light cracked violently across the sky.

The end was beginning.

1

Klaxons wailed as Kit Starling ran towards the bulkhead door and out onto the iron deck.

The Riverhawk shuddered beneath his feet, sending Kit tumbling onto the sun scorched metal deck. A rumble, screams, and the emergency wails had sent Kit topside to see what was happening.

He groaned to himself, “Not again.”

The rusty mechanical wonder that had been his home for only a few months leaned to one side as voices called out.

“Secure the hydrogen tanks!”

“We are losing altitude!”

“Man the artillery! To port!”

Kit looked down at his standard issued coveralls to see them scratched but other than that unmarred. He’d probably earn another citation if they survived this.

A surprise hand reached out to pull Kit to his feet, and Kit looked up to see Rae Winn staring down at him. She was seventeen, only a year older than Kit and had recently risen to High Officer of their bunk deck.

The wind blew auburn hair into her face as the airship leaned to one side. She brushed it aside to show a tanned, freckled, but annoyed face of his immediate naval superior.

“You going to stay on your feet this time, your grace,” she grinned.

“Is it as bad as it seems?” he asked as he scrambled to his feet and rolled his eyes.

His shipmates had taken to calling him “your grace” upon learning he shared the namesake of the company that had changed the world with the launch of the airships, Starling Industries. Starling had been his family name, and the only thing he had to remember his parents, aside from a few tattered graphs.

It wasn’t his fault that the company was obsessed with naming things after birds.

“Oh, it’s worse,” she said, pointing at the clouds along the horizon.

Kit watched as she pointed across the bow to see seven Federation planes circling them, darting in and out of the dense white and grey cumulonimbus towers. From the markings, it looked like a Cutlass led the patrol and was accompanied by three Fed bombers and three KMS-6ers. The Cutlass was known for its bright red markings and pulled back wing design, a design stolen from the American Nighthawk design.

Everyone in the navy knew that the Nighthawks were far superior, known for their acceleration, control, and of course, the pilot who helped create the design, Katherine Nighthawk. All Kit wanted in life was a chance to meet his hero, and he’d gotten close.

Katherine and her Nighthawk squadron had once refueled on the Riverhawk. No one had bothered to tell him that she was aboard until it was too late, and it would have been a poor time to meet his hero since it had been his second week aboard the airship.

Suffering from airsickness was no way to meet one’s heroes.

“Well, at least we are not being shot at . . .” Kit said, trying to sound relieved.

“What do you think they were doing when they took out artillery and propulsion? If they are not shooting, that means they are planning to take the ship.”

“So, it is that bad,” he forced a smile.

“Shut up,” Rae said, “and let’s move.”

The klaxons wailing stopped, and Captain Timothy Hale’s grizzled voice rang out from the loudspeakers, “Lay down arms and report to the main decks. Prepare to be boarded. This is not a drill.”

If they were to be boarded, then that meant the Riverhawk would fall into Federation hands, and he’d likely be sent to a Federation workcamp.

That was not exactly the future he had in mind when he signed up for the Navy.

He hadn’t even been airborne that long.

“C’mon,” Rae said, grabbing Kit by the arm and dragging him to the stairwell leading into the bowels of the ship.

“Wait, the Captain said to–”

“–Please, don’t finish that sentence,” Rae said, cutting Kit off. “Please, tell me you have memorized the latest codes.”

Kit blushed.

He had not.

In fact, he had not even looked at the last three code books. All three were in a wooden crate at the foot of his bed. He’d felt so off lately that he hadn’t even bothered to pick them up.

“Let’s assume I did, but I want to see if you know them,” he said as nonchalant as possible.

She frowned and pulled him by the gray coveralls down the stairs, “If this were a drill, I would have you scrubbing the underside of the boilers for weeks . . . but because we are about to be boarded, I will settle for just hoping I can report you later”

Kit swallowed hard.

This had been the third attack on the Riverhawk since he had joined the crew less than a year ago. The first time had been during his early bout of airsickness, and the second time had been a disappointment, too. A bulkhead door had swung back unexpectedly, and Kit had woken up in the infirmary with a knot on his head that had earned him a whole new nickname.

Though fortunately, that one did not stick.

“Unicorn” seemed slightly less worse than “your grace.”

Rae and Kit descended in a breathless silence until they emerged onto G Deck with its red warning lights casting shadows on the narrow metal corridors. Rae had been aboard the airship for two years and had become accustomed to the thinner air of the higher altitudes. Kit was still adjusting. But anytime one’s adrenaline was pumping at this high of an altitude, breathing became labored and painful.

Rae glanced back at Kit, “Do you remember your assignment during Training Op 06?”

Kit felt a rush of relief before his eyes widened. He knew that exercise. “Wait, we are going to smoke ‘em out?”

“Looky there, Starling. You may be useful after all.”

Kit smiled and prayed to the Tempest that he could prove himself this time. For someone who shared a name with the company that launched the US airship fleet, he had sure been a lousy crewman so far.

Rae opened the next bulkhead, and Kit watched the chaos of the room before him. All of G deck was unloading smoke grenades from wooden crates that lined the back wall of the small enclosure. No more shells rocked the Riverhawk, but the noises in the room reverberated in an earsplitting cacophony along the metal walls. Kit recognized his three bunkmates prying open another box.

Roger was squat, rotund, with a wispy red beard. He was jovial, but for the most part, he kept to himself. Ralph was the jokester of the bunch, and he made fast friends with everyone, though he made it clear that Roger was his underling, a suggestion that only made Roger shrug or roll his eyes. David was loud and argumentative, especially for such a small adolescent. He was extremely scrawny, and Kit hated that he shared the top bunk space with the lad. He had his own bed, not like H desk, but in a cramped room, most people became close friends to whoever shared the same level of bunk space.

Kit and David were apparently not most people.

“Are you going to do something?” Rae asked, glaring at Kit.

He looked towards Rae and blushed. “Oh, yeah. Of course.”

He ran over to his bunkmates to pry open the remaining crates, dodging the occasional rolling grenade and sweaty crewman.

“Look who decides to show up?” Roger grinned as he shoved the smokers into Kit’s unprepared arms.

A smoker immediately began to fall but was caught by an annoyed David. “Please, for the love of the Tempest, try not to smoke us out. We are your friends.”

With David, the word “friend” was such a loaded term, and with Kit it was even more loaded than with anyone else on board.

In Kit’s wild imagination, he imagined that David was a Fed spy sent to find out his connection to Starling Industries. Kit’s imagination tended to run wild, especially in moments of stress. And aboard an airship, it was always stressful, especially when said airship was about to be boarded.

Kit was trying hard not to picture Fed troopers storming their little storage room and being marched off to the death camps, even though the death camps were just vague rumors.

Kit found it too easy to imagine the piles and piles of bones, skeletons of former airmen like him.

He shook his head to try to dissipate the image.

“Sorry,” he muttered meekly.

Four loud pulses from the loudspeaker brought the entire crew to a standstill.

In the silence of a creaking and rusty leviathan, Kit thought he could make out the sounds of a spray of bullets, but he wasn’t sure. Aside from basic, he’d never even been close to a gun and with most metal being set aside for air-runners, very few crew members were allowed to carry.

All eyes turned to Rae as she climbed atop several empty smoker boxes.

“Alright, in case anyone doesn’t recall the procedure,” Rae’s eyes turned towards Kit, and he tried to sink into the shadows of the taller cadets, “Once the Feds descend into our bowels, they are on our turf. If you see any Fed movement, find a squawkbox and report to me. Marilyn will distribute assignments. You won’t be armed. The smokers will way you down enough as is. You gotta move fast. If the Feds go trigger happy, know you are our only shot of salvaging the Hawk. Any questions?”

No hands went up.

“Good, break into bunk groups and confirm floors and corridors. Keep your eyes and ears open. Tempest speed.”

Kit followed Roger, Ralph, David, and six other cadets into the corner of the store room.

Rae’s second, Marylin sauntered over to the cadets with her notepad. Her hair was short and cropped high, and Kit, like everyone else had been doing since he’d come on board, could not take his eyes off of her plump red lips. Marylin always made Kit deeply uncomfortable in ways that he was not sure how to process.

She grinned at Kit as she began, “This ain’t no drill, dolls. Only the Tempest can save you now.”

“Some pep talk,” David muttered, rolling his eyes.

Marylin ignored him as she passed out a torn scrap of paper to each of them. Kit flipped it over. Corridor 2A. Kit closed his eyes to picture the route.

“Know your routes?” Marylin asked as Kit’s eyes flashed open.

Kit nodded with the others.

“Swallow her down,” Marylin grinned.

“Wait? What?” Roger’s mouth gaped, a familiar expression.

“The paper, short breath. We can’t have the Feds tracking y’all.”

“But, how would—,” Kit began, though he was cut off by a lurking Rae.

“—Please, tell me that Kit here wasn’t questioning your orders.” Rae grinned maliciously as she walked up to the bunk mates.

“No, ma’am,” Kit blushed.

Kit could hear the other boys snickering beside him as his face grew hotter than even he was used to. This was not what he needed.

“Good. Mari, they ready?”

“Do we have a choice?” Marylin replied solemnly, then grinned before continuing, “Do they?”

For an instant, Kit watched sadness swallow Rae’s eyes in a sharp contrast to the grin she wore.

“Tempest speed and good luck. Dismissed.”

Marylin bellowed in a surprisingly low booming rumble that made all the bunk groups disperse quickly, “Load ‘em up, boys!”

Each cadet loaded the pockets of their coveralls with two smokers in each pocket. And, with eight large pockets, once loaded down, mobility was difficult, and they all looked like they were covered in large egg-sized tumors. Kit had hated this part of training, though in training, they were always loaded down with pockets of sand and disciplined based on the amount of sand that escaped during the drill.

The lights in the room flashed to green and then to red, casting deep shadows along the room and on the faces of the crew.

Rae jumped atop an empty crate, “We are out of time. Go! Go! Go!”

The room emptied as quick as a Nighthawk dancing across the sky.

Cadets split off in every direction.

In the red shadows of the rusty corridors, Kit quickly lost track of his bunk mates, their footfalls echoing behind him and into the corridors leading their various strategic smoker targets.

Kit found himself alone in the corridors of the creaking metal wonder.

Though, it didn’t matter.

He wouldn’t see them again until this was all over, either in the mess hall or in the storm of the Tempest.

Kit continued as quick as he could, which while not as slow as some of the cadets was certainly slowed down with his lumbering from his pockets full of grenades. All other personnel, aside from the young cadets, would be topside, which made the usually crammed deck eerily empty and as silent as possible for the airship.

While he knew he wasn’t much of a cadet, at least not yet, he still knew every nook and cranny of the Riverhawk, and that included the quickest route to Corridor Two.

He paused.

The emergency lights danced on the steel walls with red and black shadows and lights.

He was nearly to the stairwell leading to A Deck.

A muffled voice stopped Kit in his steps as his footfalls continued to echo through the empty corridor.

“Tempest,” Kit cursed under his breath as the voice stopped.

His mind raced.

No one should be down here with him.

The voice stopped, and Kit craned his neck around the corner to peer into the stairwell.

Elongated shadows were cast down into the metal shaft. A long shadow of a gun barrel was visible in the dark red lights.

Kit listened in silence and tried to melt into the metal walls of the Riverhawk.

Tempest, he mouthed under his breath as he heard non-English voices above him.

His mind raced.

How in the rusty storms did the Feds get down to G Deck so fast?

He had an idea.

He wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, but it was the only idea he had.

As silently as possibly, he unzipped the left breast pocket of his coveralls and gripped the smoker inside.

He could now make out two distinct voices.

To Kit, one sounded German or Russian, though Kit had never actually hear a German or a Russian speak before. It didn’t matter they were Feds, and he was not going to let them take the Hawk.

Without pulling the pin, Kit softly tossed the smoker into the stairwell and listened as it began to roll down the stairs.

One of the men above him shouted, “Vas-y! Vas-y! Vas-y!”

Kit slunk back into the shadows as he heard the rush of footsteps descend down the stairwell.

They moved like a blur as they passed G deck and descended down into the depths of the airship.

“It worked!” Kit exclaimed as his eyes widened.

The rush of footsteps now below him stopped.

Panic washed over him, and he pulled two smokers from his coveralls, pulled the pins, and tossed them down the stairs as he ran up towards A deck.

Behind and below him, he could hear the low hiss of the smokers emitting their noxious fumes. The Feds below him gasped and shouted, but he heard them lumbering toward him as he scrambled as quick as he could up the metal incline.

A shocking plink caught him off guard, and Kit covered his ears to try to block out the echoing gunshot.

They’re firing at me! Kit internally screamed as he ran and glanced up to see that he was at C deck.

Another plink against the walls of the stairwell, Kit looked over his shoulder as he saw the blue and whites of the Feds almost within arms length. Their eyes were red and bloodshot, and they had a thick frothy foam sputtering from their mouths from the smoker.

A Fed, one with a wide scar across his cheek and forehead, reached out for Kit, and Kit dropped to the ground.

The Feds’ bloodshot eyes widened as they tripped over Kit rolled into a ball on the B deck access point.

The man with the scar slammed into the bulkhead, and his body collapsed in an unconscious heap. The other Fed, a tall, lithe blonde man stumbled into the silence and darkness of the corridor.

Kit gasped, unrolled his body, and slunk against the wall of the corridor.

He panted, sweat dripping down his brow.

The blonde Fed didn’t come back into the stairwell, and aside from the usual creak and groan of the airship, there was only silence.

Kit reached out for the scarred man’s rifle and found the barrel still hot.

This was going to kill me.

His eyes widened at the thought.

He found the base of the rifle. It was loaded. The safety was off. He switched it to on.

Now armed, Kit stood along the wall and nudged the crumbled man with the barrel of the rifle.

The body didn’t budge from its unnatural position.

Is he dead? Kit wondered as he moved the rifle to ready position. Tempest, the other one.

He couldn’t let a Fed just wander the Hawk. He was never going to hear the end of this from Rae. Perhaps going against orders and engaging the enemy was not his best decision he ever made.

Kit held his newly acquired rifled tight and called into the hallway, “I’m armed.”

His voice was much weaker than he would have preferred.

Still, Kit was armed, and the other man didn’t seem to be.

His pulse quickened as he peered around the bulkhead and into the corridor.

He sighed in relief as he saw the blonde man lying prone on the ground.

For a second Kit, considered running up to A deck and just dropping the smokers in their designated vents.

Though, since he’d survived this Rae would certainly kill him if he didn’t ensure these two were out cold and put out a call on the squawkbox.

Cautious, he approached the body and nudged it with the barrel of the gun.

It didn’t move, and Kit sighed in relief, feeling his body relax.

A low rumble began down the corridor, and Kit turned to look down the darkened metal walls.

And before Kit could react, scream, or run, the Fed sat up, pulled the rifle from Kit’s hand, and plunged a dagger into his leg.

Stunned to silence, he glanced at the Fed now holding a rifle and then to the pool of red spilling into his coveralls.

“Tempest,” he winced.