He was going to fly.
"Chocks away."
"Chocks away."
"Contact!"
Mealy, the Hell's Angel with three fingers missing from his left hand, swung the propeller of the Sopwith 1 1/2-Strutter, bellowing, "Contact!" as he did so.
Several of the other Last Heroes stood around the biplane, watching intently. Ryan was in the observer's cockpit of the old air wag, wearing a pair of blurred goggles, peering out through the dust. He saw Riddler standing next to Zombie, the two men talking animatedly about something.
The leader of the bikers had stayed close to his lieutenant during the preflight preparations. A couple of times it seemed as though the fat brother was going to say something to Ryan, but Zombie was always there at his shoulder. And whatever it was remained unsaid.
"Swing it again!" Layton shouted as the engine coughed and spluttered. A cloud of blue-gray smoke jetted from the side of the engine, but the propeller refused to move.
"Contact!" Mealy yelled, pulling down on the polished and varnished wooden blade. This time the engine fired, hesitantly, then with a full-throated roar. A great jet of wind blew back, and Ryan was grateful for the goggles.
Krysty and J.B. stood watching at one side of the makeshift runway. Lori had chosen to stay back in the hotel to rest. Jak had decided to go scavenging around the ville. Doc and Rick had just arrived, walking slowly together, their walking sticks tapping in unison.
Most of the instruments on the panel in front of Ryan had been adapted and altered from their original condition, and Layton had pointed out to Ryan that very few of them actually worked.
"I read they used to call this flying by the seat of your pants," he had said, giggling. "Well, if that's right, then I sure should be a great pilot. I reckon I got the biggest seat of the pants in the whole of the Deathlands!"
He turned in his seat and gave Ryan the thumbs-up sign. The plane began to roll forward slowly, ready to turn into the wind for takeoff. Ryan relaxed, checking that the straps were safely buckled across his chest.
For the first time he was able to look over at the tumbledown remnants of the theme park. It was in a worse condition than he'd imagined. Ryan knew about these places and their so-called "white-knuckle rides," that people had gone with their children and paid good jack to go on spiraling rides in miniature wags with the main purpose of being frightened.
To someone born and reared in the Deathlands, where every waking moment was tight with potential danger, it seemed a bizarre way of spending jack and passing the time.
"Here we go!" the baron's nephew yelled.
Ryan found that his mouth had gone dry with nerves. Flying was something that he'd always wanted to do, never imagining for a moment that he'd be able to do it. Now, here he was, racing along, faster and faster, the ruined buildings of the Sierra Sunrise Park smearing into one another.
"Fireblast!" he shouted, suddenly feeling the exultation of lifting off the earth.
He was flying.
It was one of the truly wonderful moments of Ryan Cawdor's life.
The wind raced by and the earth opened up under them, the sky tilting at a crazy angle as Layton banked the ancient air wag first right then left. Beneath the Sopwith biplane Ryan could see the ville of Snakefish unfolding like a living map — the houses along Main Street and the neat gardens at their backs.
They were flying along only a hundred feet above the ground, enabling him to pick out the individual shops and homes. There was Ruby Rainer's rooming house, with her diminutive figure hanging some washing on the line. He saw her shade her eyes as they soared by.
Ryan stared at the shadow of the plane, trailing beneath them across the dry earth. He glimpsed someone walking hurriedly from the front of the Rentaroom, but he couldn't make out who it was. There'd been the glint of startling blond hair, but that was all.
The engine coughed then picked up again. The air wag dipped and climbed, soaring skyward. Ryan wasn't a great lover of poetry, but he recalled a line that Doc had once quoted. Something about a bird.
"Morning's minion, dapple-dawn-drawn falcon." That was it. The lightness of spirit was utterly wonderful.
The engine coughed, cleared, spluttered. Revived again. Coughed once more. Died.
In the startling quiet, Ryan was aware of the wind as it whistled through the frail struts and bracing wires. Then he heard Layton Brennan's voice, loud and clear. "Oh, fuck!"
"Can't you start her again?" Ryan shouted, glancing over the side and seeing that they were out over the rough landscape of the desert, around five miles from the nearest edge of the ville. And descending fast.
"No chance. Sorry 'bout this. We're going' down, Ryan. Could be hard and bumpy. You'd better hang on real tight."
It still didn't seem to Ryan that there was any real danger to either of them. The air still floated around the plane, and the ground looked safe enough from that height. And they didn't seem to be moving very fast.
Two hundred feet.
Layton was struggling to turn the plane around and head toward the ville, where there was level ground for an emergency landing. But they were losing altitude fast.
The round, jowled face looked back at Ryan, the eyes invisible behind the goggles. The creaking of the leather flying suit was audible in the unreal silence.
"Fuel's run out. Can't have been more than a couple of gallons put in. That bastard Mealy was in charge. He's sabotaged us, Ryan!"
Less than a hundred feet.
It was now obvious that they couldn't hope to reach Snakefish. They were going to have to put down among the dips and hollows of the mesquite desert.
Ryan guessed they were down to twenty or thirty feet. As they dropped lower, their speed seemed somehow faster. And for the first time he realized that they were in serious danger. The lightly built plane, with its frail fuselage, would crumple like paper when they hit. Unless Layton was good enough or lucky enough to put them down easy.
The fat young man could have been good enough, but he wasn't lucky.
"Here we go!" he shouted.
The wind had died away, and there was a faint crackling as the undercarriage brushed through the low scrub. Ryan readied himself, one hand on the release buckle of his harness, knowing that death in any crash could often come from being trapped and burned.
They were moving appallingly fast. Quicker than he'd ever been. Or so it seemed in those last blinking seconds before the impact.
Layton managed to get one of the wheels down, but it dug immediately into the soft sand, making the air wag slew around. The tip of the propeller snagged a boulder and the whole craft lurched sickeningly forward onto its nose.
Ryan's head was filled with the noise of splitting wood and snapping wires. He thought he heard a scream, but it could have come from him.
He was enveloped in darkness.
Chapter Thirty
Ryan hadn't slipped completely into the stygian depths of unconsciousness.
Despite the crushing force of the impact, he'd managed to brace himself. The straps across his chest held him tightly, making his ribs creak. He found himself dangling, upside down, with something warm and sticky running down his forehead, over his face, behind the broken glass of the goggles and into his good eye, blinding him.
His nostrils were filled with the overpowering stench of spilled gasoline, and he could feel the chill of it, soaking through his pant leg. His right ankle was twisted and held in place by some part of the plane that had been rammed backward in the crash. And he could hear someone moaning.
Apart from that sound, there was a deathly stillness. His ears had been battered and deafened by the racketing of the engine, and only now was his hearing slowly returning to normal.