P
A
R
T

O
N
E

         EPISODE 1: "OVER THE SEAS (part two) "           

[ PART ONE - Part Two - Part Three - Part four - Part five ]

      Johnny made a running leap and engaged his rocket boots, firing up and into the heavily clouded skies. All around him, the air sizzled as Gremlins crowded and jockeyed below him, firing their particle weapons up. But Johnny was not a vehicle flying that could not so easily dodge left or right. He was a man wearing rocket boots. He dodged left and dodged right with tiny movements, and he was very hard to track.

      His shoulder still smarted. The Gremlins had caught a glancing blow there, just as he had been escaping from the underground lair of Doctor Positron. He rotated his shoulder as he leveled off his flight, and he knew it would be a pain that would work out by morning. Johnny was only sixteen, and it was so easy to bounce back from these things.

      It was raining. It was pouring rain. And despite facing downward with the rain hitting the back of his head, it seemed to Johnny that he was getting a lot of rainwater in his mouth. He kept spitting it out. And despite having just come out from underground, he was drenched clear to the bone.

      He soared across the landscape, the particle weapons sizzling through the rain as the Gremlins ran clumsily after him. Clumsy, squat, stupid men who served Doctor Positron. They were no match for Rocket Johnny.

      He crested a small hill and there, rising out of the landscape, was the great metal satellite dish. Gosh! He hadn't seen it yet, not since he and his mentor had split up. It was huge! It angled up at the sky.

      There was a bright light coming toward him, up from the ground and through the sky. But he identified it at once and felt no fear. He spit more rainwater out of his mouth and angled his boots, dropping the power so that he hovered in midair.

      Joe Atomic had a pistol in each hand, as he stopped and hovered just in front of young Johnny. Johnny grinned at him and shouted, over the rain.

      “It's all done! I disabled the power relays just like you said!”

      “Excellent!” Joe Atomic said. His rugged face had rain running down it in rivulets. He wore a black fedora at all times, just like he always wore the rocket pack. The hat was soaking wet and doing nothing to stop the rain anymore. “Did you have any trouble?”

      “Just the dumb ol' Gremlins,” Johnny said, bravely, “But I showed them what for! This won't be a problem if that's all that Doctor Positron has to throw at us!”

      “Don't underestimate Doctor Positron,” Joe Atomic warned. “He is fiendishly clever. How else could he have constructed this radio transmitter?”

      Rocket Johnny looked at it. “What does it do, anyway?”

      Joe Atomic said, “When activated, it will send powerful radio waves to the moon, where they will reflect back into every radio in America! And then he will use his mind-control frequency to create an unstoppable army of minions out of American men and women for his own diabolical purposes!”

      “Then we've got to stop him!”

      “We shall, now you've disabled the power relays,” Joe beamed.

      Johnny went to say something else, but his mouth was full of so much rainwater, he nearly choked, spitting it all out. It was raining so hard now, so impossibly hard. He could barely make out Joe. And it was getting hard to keep his eyes open.

      “You're a good lad,” Joe Atomic said, clapping a hand on Johnny's shoulder with care. “You're the best sidekick a fellow could hope for.”

      “Thanks!” Rocket Johnny looked down toward the great radio transmitter, and he could see the armies of Gremlins populating around it. They had atomic cannons! Radio beams! Particle weapons. “This isn't going to be easy, Joe.”

      “It wouldn't be fun if it were.”

      In unison, they angled about and dove through the clouds and rain, and down into the fray that surrounded the radio transmitter. Particle beams and atomic cannon shots flared through the air around them, but they dove and wound their way expertly through the hail of fire.

      Then they split off from each other. Joe Atomic raced through a glass-encased control tower, just beneath the transmitter dish. Inside, the corpulent form of Doctor Positron was visible, with his glowing red eye-goggles and his transistor-powered robot hand.

      Johnny dove down into the Gremlins and swept along the terrain, punching and socking the goons as he went. He grabbed the barrel of the atomic cannon and hauled until  it was angled upward, and the shot fired up and through part of the transmitter's dish, shredding it like it was mere tissue.

      Johnny turned to dive back into the fight, but his mouth was full of water again and he had to struggle to spit it out this time and not half-swallow and choke. And why was that happening? Was it raining that hard?

      He opened his mouth to spit it out...and water rushed into his mouth again. Like someone had a pitcher of water they were pouring into his face.

      His boots were being affected too, he realized. He was getting more and more sluggish. The Gremlins had their stubby hands around his legs, not affected by the glowing power of the boots. They were pulling him down.

      He tried to fly harder, but couldn't. He called out for Joe Atomic, but the hero was elsewhere, saving the day. And besides, there was too much water in his mouth to call for anyone.

      The Gremlins closed over him, and he couldn't shout for all the water.

      All the water...

      Water... 
 
 

      # 
 
 
 
 

      When the ship's boilers had gone up, it had been a loud and violent explosion of air and sound. It had felt like someone had reached out and boxed Elliot Parks' ears, while at the same time kicking him with a heavy boot in the middle of the chest. He had just barely gotten to his feet when it had happened. He'd already been reeling, since only a moment earlier, the man named Joe had swept in a blur of motion low across the deck, scooping up William Meany and sailing away over the water. They hadn't even had time to react before the boilers, and the bombs, went up. But even now, Elliot couldn't get the image of William, bent and fluttering like a ragdoll as he was snatched away, out of his mind.

      Elliot staggered down the deck of the ship, which was tilting toward the sinking back end at an increasingly alarming angle. They were going down, and they were going down fast. The merchant marines, those who were alive, were busy getting lifeboats over the side and getting life jackets on everyone they good. There were four pilots gathered together, not counting Elliot.

      He looked them over quickly and then grabbed Gene Kappe's arm. There was blood in Gene's close-cropped blonde hair. He looked as dazed as they all felt.

      “Where's the Captain?” Elliot asked. He had to shout, to be heard over the roaring of fire and water, and the shouting of the sailors. “Where's Ellison?”

      “I don't...” Gene blinked. Frowned. Looked confused. Elliot suddenly wondered if the other man could even hear him. How close had he been to the explosions?

      Elliot let go of him and hurried to the door that led below decks. It was hard to stop, since he couldn't help but run downhill towards it, with how steep the ship was getting. He braced one foot on the wall beside the door, and he had to lift up to get it open. And getting down the stairs was like climbing down a ladder...

      “Captain!” he shouted, but the roaring of water rushing into chambers further aft and further below practically drowned out the words. He lost his footing and slammed into a heavily tilted wall. The lights had gone out, and all he had was what came in through windows and the doorway behind him.

      Think think think! Where had the pilots been? They'd been meeting in the galley, right? And when the whole ship was tilting downward, that meant that the room was...there.

      Elliot dropped and jumped down through the corridor, hanging onto the walls for dear life. He dove into the galley, which didn't have water coming in, although the window was already submerged.

      Captain James Ellison lay on his back with a heavy table just on top of him. He was pushing at it desperately, but his angle was lousy and he couldn't get it to move.

      “Cap!” Elliot splashed through puddles, worrying about where they were coming from. “You all right?”

      “Not dead yet,” Ellison grunted. “Help me get this off.”

      Elliot braced himself on the floor and the wall, grabbed the bench and heaved. At the same time, Ellison pushed against it, face going red with the effort. It creaked and moved, barely, but it was just enough that Ellison could haul himself out and away from the table. They let go of it and it clanked into the corner. Ellison leaned shakily against the wall.

      “We've gotta get out of here!” Elliot yelled, grabbing the Captain's arm to give him support. But even as he said it, he knew the problem: the door was up there at this point. And the puddles on the floor were becoming deeper and pooling in the angle between the wall and the floor meeting, since that was pointed down now.

      Most of the tables and benches were still bolted down, and they struggled to climb up them. Adrenaline and terror lent them strength and speed. Elliot balanced on the side of a table and reached up for the next bench...

      ...and it gave clean away in his hands, nearly clobbering him and Ellison both as it tumbled and fell back into the room.

      Hell. Hell...

      “Boost me up!” Elliot said. Ellison laced his fingers together and pushed the young pilot up towards the next table. Elliot reached up and stretched and barely, just barely, managed to get his fingers over the lip of the far edge of the table. He got a grip, struggled with it...

      There was a creak and a crash, and then the table and bench which Ellison was standing on shuddered and gave away in a split second. Ellison jumped and wrapped his arms around Elliot's legs as, below him, the table and bench smashed into the other furniture at the corner of the room, splashing the gathering water in a fine spray all around the room.

      Elliot's fingers were on fire, and his left wrist exploded in a white-hot moment of sheer pain. He ground his teeth together and gasped out, “Climb!”

      But there was no need to say anything. Ellison was already hauling himself up, clumsily trying to get grips on Elliot's legs, grabbing a fistful of Elliot's jacket and hauling up on that. Elliot choked as the collar pulled back against his throat, but he ground his teeth and he held as tight as he could to the top of the table. Or he tried to. His fingers were slipping, they were shrieking in pain.

      At the last moment, Captain Ellison shoved himself violently off Elliot's back and caught the edge of the table, just as Elliot's hands gave way and he started to slide. Ellison reached down and caught him by the collar, jerking him to a halt. It was just enough time for Elliot to get a grip on the top of the table and haul himself up. They managed to brace themselves against the bench and the table, both of them heaving for breath.

      The door was another bench up. It may as well have been a mile away. They were exhausted, in pain, and there was just no way to get up there fast enough. They'd be breathing water by the time they got to the door...

      “Well, this is a pretty lousy way to go,” Ellison said, in between panting for air.

      “We can make it!” Elliot snapped. But he made no move to get up. They couldn't make it. Didn't mean they wouldn't try, but...

      ...the issue became entirely moot when, through the open door, a coil of rope fell and landed on Elliot's head. And through the door, the broad face of one of the American pilots, a big guy named Ernie Cooper, appeared.

      “Grab it! We'll haul you up!” Ernie shouted.

      They didn't have to be told twice. Elliot grabbed the rope and up top, Ernie began to haul the rope, bracing himself against the door frame. He was a big guy, Ernie, almost too all and broad for the fighter pilot cockpits in which he worked. He spent his free time working out, which made him a big man in every direction. He hauled Elliot, who was not that big at all, up with ease. And then the two of them braced against the door and hauled up Captain Ellison.

      Ernie would haul himself up the rope to the next easy spot and then brace and help the other two up. They moved through the severely slanting ship rapidly. They got to the stairs and they struggled up it, using the rope, Ernie, and the railing to get up. It lent them speed that water was beginning to flow from the below-deck, running down the tilted wall in a greater and greater torrent. The galley, Elliot realized, would be filled in no time.

      In moments, they were on the deck, where Ernie grabbed life-jackets and thrust them at Elliot and Ellison.

      “The life boats had to put down, everyone's gone but us!” Ernie shouted. “We've gotta jump!”

      Elliot got his life jacket on, and then peered down into the seething bubbling water that surrounded the sinking back of the ship. And despite the fires and water and sinking...he hesitated. It wasn't the height, or even the falling...it was the rolling, utterly black waters...

      Ernie took care of his hesitation for him. He shoved Elliot, hard, and sent him sprawling down, down, down....and then the water swallowed him, cold and salty and dark. It was almost as sharp a shock as the explosion had been.

      As he bobbed up through the water and toward the surface, two more bodies broke through in a great cloud of bubbles: Captain Ellison and Ernie Cooper jumping off the ship.  As he broke the surface, Elliot just gaped for a moment at the massive bulk of the ship, now angled strangely and sinking quick. It was so huge, so massive and menacing at this angle.

      “Swim!” Ellison shouted.

      All three of them swam, trying to move frantically away from the great hulk that churned and bubbled and sunk away beneath the waves, behind them. They couldn't swim fast, not with the great waves that rolled up and around them. They would fight through, or over, great black waves, only to be caught unprepared by the next one which would sweep them back.

      Just up ahead from there was a lifeboat, full of men, some of them with flash lights. They were pointing and yelling and waving at Elliot and the others, which was a relief, in that it meant they'd been seen. All around them, Elliot caught sight of other black-shaped people in the water, only the colors of their life vests visible in the darkness.

      The ship sunk behind them. Elliot imagined, in terror, all the sea stories he'd heard about the ship creating a huge suction as it went down, hauling with it any unlucky survivors who were in vicinity. He could picture being pulled deeper and deeper into the  black and bottomless depths, the great bulk of the ship below him, nothing at all above him except hundreds of feet of water. The panic that the image caused was almost enough to make him forget how to swim.

      The life boat got to them, though, and there was no suction pulling Elliot down. Nothing but cold Atlantic waters, chilling him to the bone. Rough hands grabbed him by his life jacket, or his shirt, and they hauled him into the boat and dumped him on the bottom. Ellison and Ernie Cooper splashed into the bottom of the boat next to him, a moment later.

      As Elliot spat out water, and struggled to sit upright he realized that there was a fourth person sodden and lying on the bottom of the boat. A moment later, he recognized the stirring figure.

      John Hansa. And his rocket boots.

      He was struggling to push himself up, and was spitting out a lot of water and shaking his head. Beside him, Gene Kappe was also freshly wet: it looked like he had gone in and gotten Hansa.

      Elliot sat...and eventually spoke. It felt like it had been an eternity since he had said anything. In reality, it had all happened in just a few minutes, he realized.

      “Did...everyone get out?” Elliot rasped out.

      One of the sailors, a bald and grizzled man with a brown beard, scowled and said, “Ship had a crew of twenty-seven; we got fourteen, plus you flyboys. Everyone else was lost. Probably kilt when it blew up.”

      “Was it sabotage?”

      “Yeah...a bomb. That flying guy.”

      “Why us?”

      “Christ.”

      “What have we got for supplies?”

      “I'm freezing...”

      Everyone talked all at once, the eight or nine men crammed into the small life boat. There was another life boat, Elliot realized, just a little distance away, bobbing up and down on the waves.

      Elliot met Hansa's eyes, as the other man looked up and around. He looked bleary and unfocused, and there was blood coming out the corner of his mouth, diluted with salt water. He didn't seem to notice.

      “You have to go up,” Elliot said firmly. “He took Willy. You have to go get 'im!”

      “I can't, Parks,” Hansa said, focusing on his words. He shook his head.

      It was such a simple thing, but it fueled Elliot and warmed him with white-hot anger. He lunged forward, grabbed Hansa's jacket and pulled him close and shouted, “You have to go up! You have to go get him! Or else gimme those boots and I'll do it myself!”

      It snapped John Hansa out of his shock. Suddenly, he grabbed Elliot's hands, just by the thumbs, and pried. It was a moment of pain, and then Elliot let go, despite trying to hold on. John Hansa twisted his hands back and shoved him, and Elliot stumbled back into the other side of the life boat.

      “I can't go up!” John snapped, eyes ablaze, “I can't fire off my boots in this boat, I'll burn every one of you to a cinder and blast up the boat! And I can't exactly get into the water and launch, now can I? And anyway, I don't know which way he went!”

      Captain Ellison sat next to John Hansa, running his hand though soggy hair. He put a hand on Hansa's shoulder to calm him down.

      John subsided. He added, more quietly, “We aren't too far from the rendezvous point, word on the ship was. That was a big damn explosion in the middle of the night. We need to just sit and wait. It's all we can do.”

      “East,” Ernie Cooper piped up. He was sitting cramped among the sailors, a big man in a small boat. “I saw him, before hell broke loose. He had William over his shoulder and they was heading east.”

      John nodded. “Good. That's something, at least. But I still can't go after him. I would if I could. I'm sorry.” He looked over at Elliot and said, firmly, “We'll get him back, though. Don't worry.”

      Elliot scowled and looked down at his boots. They were soaking wet, of course. Everything was. And he had just realized that his head was ringing, a high-pitched sound in his ears.

      Finally, he said, “Wait for what? Rendezvous point for what exactly?”

      A smile of what looked like relief spread across Captain Ellison's face. He brushed wet hair out of his face and pointed behind Elliot.

      “Rendezvous with that.”

      Elliot turned around.

      Looming up out of the black ocean, in a place where there had definitely not been one before, was the great  black hulk of a ship... 

          ROCKET JOHNNY         

OVER THE SEAS
P  A  R  T     T  W  O 

<< PREVIOUS PAGE   |   HOME   |   NEXT PAGE >>

[ PART ONE - Part Two - Part Three - Part four - Part five ]