Excerpt
When the zeppelin hit the stormy sea the hot furnace exploded. Flames danced on the water, then hissed out, leaving boiling white smoke, charred lumber and stinking rubber in its wake. Waves crunched the decks and cabins, wadded up what was left of the helium-filled tubing as if it were onion skin paper. The rain cried on the remains. Lightning slashed yellow sabre cuts across the sky.
The corpses of the boiler room workers, par-boiled, popped to the top, bobbed on the waves like corks. Floating with them was the jar containing Cody's head. He was cursing violently, calling for Goober.
The waves shoved Cody up, dropped him in a trough of foaming water; he saw the corpse of Goober float by face down. Then the whitecaps turned his jar and tossed him; water ran down the speaking tube, joined the mixture inside his container. Cody licked at the water. Salty, of course. But it did kind of neutralize the pig urine.
For once, Cody was glad he didn't have a stomach; all he could feel was a kind of dizziness.
Nearby, clinging to planks, were Hickok, Annie and Bull. Cetshwayo and Frankenstein's monster were nowhere to be seen.
#
There were oil-fueled flames burning on the water. In the light they provided, Hickok, clasping his plank, saw the others. The dead boiler room workers, Goober popping about, Annie and Bull clinging to a plank together, and finally, the head of Cody, surfing the waves in his sturdy Mason jar.
Hickok paddled over to Bull and Annie, pulled his bowie knife from its scabbard, stuck it in his plank, said, "Bull, we got to get hold of Cody, then find a way to lash some of this junk together."
Bull nodded.
Hickok swam to Cody's jar, grabbed it, swam it over to Annie. Then he and Bull set about building a raft. It was tedious, but by dog paddling about, grabbing planks and cutting strips of floating rubber, they were able to fasten a half-dozen pieces of wood together.
By the time they finished jerry-rigging a raft, got Annie and Cody loaded on it, they were exhausted; the sun was burning through the haze, the rain was dying out, and the ocean was beginning to settle. Then the sharks came.
Hickok said, "No rest for the wicked, and the good don't need any."
Unconsciously, Hickok reached for his guns. But his sash was empty. They had been lost. He had even lost the bowie knife.
There were about a dozen of the beady-eyed bastards circling the makeshift craft. One of them came near, rolled on its side, showed its dark dead eyes. It opened its mouth to reveal a hunk of dark flesh dangling from its teeth. Part of an arm actually. They recognized it. It belonged to Cetshwayo.
"That not good," Bull said.
Cody, in his jar, was singing drinking songs.
"He's starting to lose it," Hickok said."
"It's the salt-water in the jar, mixed with his chemicals," Annie said. "And he could use a crank."
Hickok cranked him.
Cody went silent for a moment. Hickok held the jar in his lap, tilting it so he could look down into Cody's face.
"It's all right, pard. Or as good as it could be under the circumstances." Hickok turned the jar so Cody could see the contents of the raft. "We're the only survivors."
"All I want is a body so I can fight," Cody said. "If I can go down fighting, I'm all right."
Hickok placed Cody in the center of the raft, leaned back, waited for it to get hot and unbearable. He thought of food briefly, thought of water longer, then the flames on the water died and the sun rose high and hot and their flesh began to burn. The water in Cody's jar began to bubble.
