Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure Read Online Free Page A

feet five and a quarter inches.
    Cane pole over his shoulder and wearing only his patched overalls, he ran through the crabgrass and the purple alfalfa flowers that bordered the road to the creek. The dampness of the earth under his toes crinkled up his legs, straight to his head.
    As Mama Nan would say, good sweet angels, wasn’t this the life! Seemed like the right moment to do a war whoop and a dance, for the fun of it. Problem with that was it involved saying something out loud. He opened his mouth, loosened his throat muscles, and waited. But speaking up felt wrong, even out here, where nobody could hear him. It would be kind of like cheating, since everybody wanted so much for him to say something back home.
    He hadn’t said hardly a thing since that day four years ago, half his whole life past. That was the day he’d gotten so scared and let the bad thing happen to the twins down by the creek. Evvy and Annie had been just babies then. He was supposed to have taken care of them. But he hadn’t, and they’d just about died. And Mama Nan...
    Sometimes her face from that day still flashed through his mind. Her eyes had been huge, her mouth open, gasping, like somebody had whacked her across the shins with the biggest stick they could find. She just stared at him and stared at him. And then words started coming out of her.
    He didn’t remember exactly what she said. But whatever she said had been right: it had been his fault.
    He had stood there, wet and shivering, on the creek bank. Nothing would move. No part of his body would work right. Not because anything was wrong with him—he wasn’t the one who’d just about died—but just... because.
    And then he’d stopped talking.
    But he didn’t like to think about that. Much better to enjoy the sunshine and the morning. Maybe one of these days, he’d finally say something again—and make Mama Nan happy with him. But for right now, it could wait.
    He set down his pole and rolled a somersault. Surely, God would know a somersault meant the same thing as a war whoop anyway. It was a sort of a thank-you for early summer mornings like this, when Mama Nan and Molly were baking and Papa Byron was starting up his rusty old tractor. If everybody was too busy to notice him, that meant he got to go fishing.
    When he reached the Berringers’ mailboxes—one neat and whitewashed and the other huge and rusty—he turned off the road into the trees that fringed the creek. His secret spot was on top of a flat boulder about a half mile down from the road. The rock had a round, hollowed-out spot on top, just perfect for sitting on.
    Nobody else ever came out here. Well, maybe the old Berringer brothers, since it was their creek, but they never came out in the early morning. They wouldn’t mind him fishing here. Or at least Mr. Matthew wouldn’t. Mr. J.W. though, he was kind of grumpy and scary sometimes, like when he’d shot at Mr. Matthew’s prize hen and spooked her out of laying for a whole month.
    Mr. J.W. hadn’t known Walter was hiding behind the fence post. Then, when he walked by and saw Walter, he winked and gave Walter a penny for hard candy. Walter still had the penny in a sock under his bed. Didn’t feel right somehow to spend a present from Mr. J.W. when he was afraid of him.
    That was another reason he liked to come out here in the early mornings. Less of a chance of meeting Mr. J.W. or anybody else—like all these murdering sky people everybody in town was talking about lately.
    Walter wasn’t supposed to know about that, of course, but he’d heard Mr. Fallon from the dry goods store telling Mama Nan. In the last few weeks, five dead people had been found roundabout. Nobody knew who they were, just that they were dressed funny—old-fashioned, kinda like Grandpapa Hugh back when he was alive.
    Two days ago, old Mr. Scottie, who always spent all day sitting inside Dan and Rosie’s Cafe on Main Street, swore up and down he’d seen one of the bodies fall