Down Jersey Drive-shaft

Chapter Twenty: Black Flak Snowflakes

LOSS IS ETERNAL...LOSS IS ETERNAL..LOSS IS ETERNAL...HELLO MILKMAN...DO YOU LIKE MY WAR?...

What thought goes through a man's mind when a robotic overlord invades his radio frequency?

I'm gonna die before I get to really know Crank...

The sky chokes from the Hand. Slicks, innumerable, undaunted, rise up into five helix columns, fingers eager to abuse what they touch. As they ascend, the fingers flick out lead love taps. Milkman evades a line of five, deflects two, soaks one. Benny guns the throttle, flicks the switch and let's rockets fly freely. Wherever fighters find space without Slicks are taken up by lines of fire.

Ungodly Slick Hand disperses amidst the BOOM! and CRACK! of aggravated detonations.

Chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug-chug go the guns from behind. Wilkes provides excellent backup as the duo bank left before angling upward to butterfly kiss the stratosphere. Robotic organs fly by, mingling in with black flak snowflakes from the boys down below, razor sharp ticker-tape parade. Cockpits take on a charcoal mascara.

"I can't tell if she's shaking from the debris hits...or the engine's power!"

"Keep her forward, Wilkes! Your fuselage only lost some paint, you big baby! Ready?"

Pause.

"Now or never!" Wilkes had pushed to fly one of the Helldiver's, not realizing it would put him square in Benny's sights for this suicidal setup. Up two fighters soar, fat S-47E and shining biplane trailed by debris, followed by a fuming spiral of fiends spitting death rounds.

Slicks, six in total, swerve up to pursue. They spit bullets upward, missing their targets, killing oxygen molecules.

Benny drops first. The maneuver is simple as can be: wobble the wings, feel the forces flex throughout the body as Milkman twists with the force of momentum. Then, swiftly, use the turn to propel the old girl into a bottom line nosedive. Air screeches around her broad, flat nose. She feels as if she's stretching while Benny's body compresses. The Earth summons Milkman to her bosom, to suckle on the milk of death.

At the last second over the river, Benny declines the invitation.

He banks so hard to the left the force makes his teeth chomp, blaze sharp pain in his skull. Benny hears every rivet in his plane quiver. Neck tightening, stomach lurching, he turns back to find Wilkes still playing shadow.

Alright, alright. Let's bring some gifts from America and Canada.

"Wilkes! Drop!"

Angling West toward a land of billowing brownstone smokestacks, they go. Milkman says goodbye to its full complement of HVARs. Wilkes allows his bomb to drop. The recipient of these gifts are the line of Brown brick factories sitting pretty along the Christina River. Boom. Boom. Boom! On such a rapid pass, it's hard to tell what flies in the air more, bricks, or Slicks. The destruction of human civilization fills Haskins with improbable mettle. Wilkes...

"Won't we need factories for later? What if this war drags--"

"Bank left!"

Both fighters hit their mark, narrowly evading a trio of Slicks in hiding beneath the trees below. Reddish-brown powder coats the land, obscures Slick visibility. They rise to greet their human foes, but move too late and are quickly mere blurs in the past. Fighters rumble from the detonations behind them. Wilmington is a small city, a factory town, Gunpowder Land. It will blow up nicely.

To his right, Benny now sees the war he left behind. The new guys are putting on one heck of a brawl in the sky. He can only guess how many, how few, of them are left alive. All about their glistening fuselages are charcoal bees, puffs of powder, trace lines to infinity. Haskins almost finds the sight, from a distance, soothing.