Ash Kickers

by Sean Grigsby

  “OSAS or Sandusky?” I asked.

  Brannigan puckered his lips, thinking about it. “Both, I guess. They’re telling me the dragon emergence is going to happen within an hour. If it hasn’t already. No one in Sandusky has called anything in because it’s pretty much a ghost town, but we’ve put out an evacuation notice to be on the safe side.”

  “So if anybody is there, it’ll be a few nosy rednecks who listen to our radio traffic,” I said.

  “Hey, like I always told you: empires fall and seasons change…”

  “…but dumbasses are eternal,” I finished.

  “Also, the police and fire chiefs have asked all smoke eaters to be wary of any strange people around. They’re grasping at straws on this arsonist thing.”

  “Because arsonists can also cause earthquakes.” I rolled my eyes.

  “It doesn’t make sense to me either, but, if it puts their minds at ease, I’m telling you like I promised them I would. There might come a day when we need their help on something. Just focus on the dragon.”

  Something inside me could always tell when a dragon call was going to be good. Whatever was going down in Sandusky, it conjured goosebumps all over my body, and a pressurized heat filled my head, as if all my focus was coming to a single point right between my eyebrows.

  But damn. This time I was in charge. This time I had to follow protocol and put any dragons we might find to sleep, then cart their asses to a wraith enclosure. I had two people under my command. The added weight of responsibility doused the initial adrenaline surge.

  Abusing my position, doing my own thing and getting into another dragon fight would be an absolute no-can-do. Brannigan knew that. That’s why he promoted me. This was some elaborate, fucked-up lesson he was trying to teach.

  Well, the joke was on him and everybody else who might have been talking about me behind my back. I’d take my heftier pay check and follow every smoke eater procedure to the letter. Tamerica Williams was going to be the best captain in smoke eater history, even better than Naveena Jendal. Not just in Ohio, but every state in this burned down US of A.

  “Oh, and Williams?” Brannigan said. “Remember that water training we did in rookie school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re probably going to need it.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Seriously, Afu,” said Patrice. “I think you should have been a daycare worker.”

  “Don’t be mad that I have more of a motherly instinct than your triflin’ ass.”

  “Can we focus here?” I said.

  “Oh damn.” Patrice pointed ahead.

  Chubby whacks struck the windshield. It had started raining.

  We pulled into Sandusky an hour after leaving the Cub Scouts. Through sheets of water dumping from the sky I saw smoke drifting up over rooftops, but I couldn’t see the point of origin. The smoke was light and coming from somewhere close to the Lake Erie shoreline. If there was a dragon – and my gut said there was – it had fucked up by picking an uninhabited town to invade. I just hoped Brannigan was wrong and I wouldn’t have to go swimming, even though I was going to get wet either way.

  On the ride over, I’d done well to remain stonefaced and only spoke in order to give directions while Patrice and Afu continued to joke and talk about shit they were planning to do that weekend – first among them was coming out to see me DJ at Club Infinity.

  I wished I could relax, be the kind of captain I’d want to work for. But it was so damn overwhelming, and having Afu in the seat behind me didn’t help at all. I felt like I had to paint on an extra coat of professionalism.

  Brannigan had called Sandusky a ghost town and, while I knew what he meant, I was keeping a special eye out for any floating, electric spirits. The enclosures surrounding Parthenon City had pretty much put a stop to wraith sightings out in the wastes, but you could never be too careful.

  Most of the buildings in Sandusky had been turned to ash, but we were coming up on a cathedral that had stubbornly resisted the demons that had torched everything else. A sign said it was Saint Peter and Paul Catholic Church. Movement up high drew my attention in time to see a huge stone fall from one of the four pointy tops. The stone crashed against the street just outside my door, splattering grit-filled water against my window.

  “Damn!” Patrice shouted. “Was anything up there, Captain?”

  “No,” I said. “Just gravity, but be careful driving through here.”

  I instructed Patrice to drive us toward the flashing circle on the holoreader. When the truck stopped, we were sitting outside one of those stilt houses that hovered above the lake. Except the back half of this one was in the water and the house rested on the remaining front poles at a sharp angle. Smoke churned out of the broken windows and the doorless entrance while the rain flowed in.

  “Just great,” I said.

  It was much safer for a dragon to come to you. Any time you enter a structure where the dragons are waiting, you’re entering their domain. You’re at their mercy.

  With a touch to the button on the side of my helmet, my therma-goggles extended and rested over my eyes. The scene turned gray, except for a blue blob deep inside the house. The color of the blob told me what it was before I even saw the human shape.

  “What the hell?” I said. “There’s a person inside that house, but I don’t see any dragons.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be a ghost town,” said Patrice.

  With a stretch, I popped my neck. “Lots of shit is ‘supposed to be.’”

  “What’s the plan?” Afu asked.

  I retracted my goggles and stared at the broken stilt house. “Afu, you’re with me. First thing we have to do is get that idiot out of the house. Maybe they can tell us something. Patrice, you set up the cannon. When the civilian exits, put him in the back of the truck. If there’s a scaly in there, we’ll try to draw it out so you can get a clear shot.”

  “And what if you can’t draw it out?” Patrice asked.

  “Sink or swim.” It might have been tempting fate to say our unofficial smoke eater slogan near a large body of water. But since it was already said, I hopped out and told Afu to grab two extend-struts.

  While he grabbed the devices, I brought out my goggles and scanned the house and water again for dragons. Still nothing. Maybe my gut had been wrong. Maybe this had been an earthquake – there were still plenty of them – and some squatter had gotten themselves trapped inside the stilt house. Trying to stay warm, he’d lit a bonfire inside like a dumbass. No dragon here. Lucky for the squatter, I guess.

  “Where you want these struts?” Afu carried one on each shoulder. To the uninitiated, the struts would look like big rectangles of red metal with claws at each end.

  I grabbed one from him, a shit ton heavier than he made it seem. “Let’s prop these on the underside of the house.”

  We set the struts on the ground. The press of a button shot a claw deep into the dirt to keep the strut in place. The next button I pressed extended the other end of the strut into the house’s underside. Staying somewhat in sync, Afu extended his strut. Now we could enter the house without worrying about it crashing to the ground or sinking into the lake with us still inside.

  I power-jumped through the doorway. After another quick scan through the smoke, I stepped aside and waved at Afu to follow.

  When his boots hit the floor, the house shifted and whined like a dying whale. I gripped both sides of the corner I’d backed into, glaring at Afu. He had his therma-goggles extended and looked around at the dark, oblivious to the fact that the house had almost collapsed.

  It wasn’t Afu’s fault, of course. I had no suggestion for how a six-foot-plus Samoan could gently jump into a weakened, half-drowned house. And his abundance of muscle had gotten me out of a lot of scrapes… and under a lot more sheets than I could count.

  But fuck me, he was playing seesaw with an entire building.

  “Watch your step there, Tinkerbell,” I said.

  Retr
acting his goggles, Afu put two fingers to the brim of his helmet and said, “Just be careful not to get any of my fairy dust on you.”

  “That better not be an innuendo.”

  “Hey, wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we made all these dragons swallow clocks so we could hear them coming?”

  I rolled my eyes. The smoke had begun to dissipate as I called out to whoever was in the house. “Smoke eaters. Is there anyone in here?”

  The only response I heard came from the rain outside and unseen lake water bumping against the living room walls.

  “Great.” I turned to Afu. “Now we have to go find this fool.”

  As I reached up to turn on my helmet’s flashlight, I took a step forward and…

  …It was one step too many. My foot slipped against the steep angle and sent me to the floor. I slid fast toward the darkness. Afu flung one of his armored hands toward me, but I wasn’t quick enough to grab it.

  Distance is indiscernible in the dark. It felt like I slid for miles. My hand, still extended from trying to grab hold of Afu, caught against the edge of a doorway – at least, that’s what I was hoping it was, and not the tooth of a sea serpent.

  I remained still for a second, trying to gather myself and inspect my surroundings. When I moved my boots, they trailed water. So, I was nearly in the lake. Other than that, I couldn’t see shit. I nearly slipped when I extended my goggles, but they showed nothing waiting in the water to gobble me up. I was ready to try to climb back toward Afu when a muffled voice, as cold and wet as the lake below me, spoke.

  “It’s very patient.”

  “Tamerica!” Afu’s voice echoed from high above.

  A blue blob crept toward me. I was hanging on the outer door frame of the kitchen, and had to bump my helmet into my shoulder to retract the goggles.

  In the middle of the kitchen, a wrinkled hand held a glass stick filled with glowing, pink liquid. His other hand held tight to a hammer he’d plunged into the wall. The man shook the glow stick and raised it to illuminate a masked face. The man wore an ancient firefighter air-mask, the kind with a breathing tube that looked like an elephant’s trunk. White tufts of beard poked out from the mask’s underside.

  “Sir,” I said, “are you alright?”

  “One of them came for me as soon as I got here. I always knew it would be this way. But it’s patient. It wants me to come willingly.” This dude looked and spoke like a wannabe wizard. He was wearing one of those novelty t-shirts that made it look like he was wearing a cartoon bikini with women’s breasts. Holes were scattered throughout the fabric.

  “Are you saying a dragon attacked your house?” I turned to face him better, making sure I didn’t lose my grip and sink into the water.

  He shook his head. “Not my house. I’m a volunteer. This today is going to make me just like you, though.”

  I hated dealing with crazies.

  “But this is my town,” he said. “Mine. I’ve claimed the whole thing, and I welcome the beast from the lake. I don’t want to fight it anymore.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Whatever you say. What’s your name?”

  “James Wilkins, the Third.”

  “Okay, Mr Wilkins. Let’s get you out of here.”

  “I can’t.”

  I huffed through my nose. “I know it’s a tough climb. But I have a power suit. I can jump us out of here.”

  “No, no, no!” His voice was angry now, and he was shaking his fist holding the glow stick as if he was stabbing somebody with it. “You just want all the glory for yourself. I have a right to face the dragon same as you!”

  “Just relax.”

  I’d been fortunate in my career to have only had to rescue a few of these damaged individuals. Alcoholics or pill heads, usually. They were always uncooperative and dragged a quick operation into an all-night headache.

  “It’s here!” The man pointed toward the water, where my boots were submerged.

  I shifted my weight in order to turn on my helmet’s flashlight. The light beam struck the water below me, where smoke bubbled into the house from below the surface. I’d never seen shit like that before. It was a definite phenomenon, but I was more concerned with what was pushing the smoke out of the water. I scraped my boots against the slick floor to keep them out of the lake.

  Extending my left hand to the old man, I said, “Sir, you better come with me right now or you’re going to die.”

  In the glow stick’s pink light, he removed his mask and smiled, showing teeth the color of dirty paintbrush water. He hacked against the haze of smoke as he said, “Looks like… you’re the one… out there hanging like… a worm on a hook.”

  Oh hell no. I was ready to leave this son of a bitch and jump back out to where it was safe in the rain.

  But that wasn’t the smoke eater way. And I would have hated to mark a civilian death on my first day as a captain, especially when I could prevent it, even if this idiot thought he could survive without an air mask. I’d just have to knock him out and drag him from the house against his will. I power-jumped to sail into the kitchen, but something very big burst from the water below me and threw me off course.

  The kitchen’s door frame had barely enough room for my boots to stay atop, but that’s where I landed. Bare wall was the only thing my hands could claw at; if I didn’t want to fall into the lake, I had to keep flat and lean all my weight against it.

  Slowly, I turned my head toward the water.

  A huge head, like a seahorse, rose from the water. Against my helmet’s light, its scaly skin shimmered where it didn’t resemble dead, human flesh. But this was no water-logged cadaver, and it sure as shit wasn’t a seahorse. It had a long, thin snout with rows of needle-like teeth visible from the sides of its closed mouth – like one of those angler fish or a gharial crocodile I’d seen at the zoo as a kid. Its eyes were pure white, like it was blind and the body was long and curved like a snake, no arms or legs.

  My brain, even in a paralyzed quicksand of fear, raced through the information I’d learned in class with Sergeant Puck so many years ago. The dragon was a Scuttlepreen… no, something with an ‘L.’ Lewdalien? Leviathan! That’s what this type of dragon was called. It wasn’t as big as they could get, but it probably hadn’t eaten in a long time either.

  Fucking Brannigan, jinxing me with a water scaly. The leviathan locked its eyes on me. It opened its mouth and puffed out a blast of steam, instantly turning the house into a sauna. Slithering its middle forward and rearing back its head, the scaly was about to either snatch me in its jaws or boil me. I raised my laser arm and took aim.

  Before the dragon or I could attack, old-man-Wilkins, hiding in the kitchen, shouted a greeting: “Welcome! Welcome!”

  The leviathan rasped and flicked its slimy neck toward the inside of the kitchen.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Over here. You want me, not him.”

  I shot my lasers, but the scaly had already thrust its head into the doorway. My shots flew over the dragon, blasting holes into the roof. Gray daylight poured in, providing a touch more visibility. The leviathan snaked out of the kitchen with the old man clamped between its jaws. Wilkins, the dumb bastard, was still holding on to his glow stick.

  “I’m going to be a wraith,” he screamed. “I’m going to live forever!”

  Rumbles of gas sounded from inside the scaly’s belly, expanding the skin, stretching the scales to where they would rip, before the pressure escaped the leviathan’s mouth, steam hissing like a cappuccino machine. Billows of boiling vapor bombarded the crazy old man as he coughed up blood. His scream matched pitch with the high-pressure heat.

  I’d been wrong about how the leviathan liked to attack. Turned out it snatched and steamed at the same time. The steam removed any sight I’d gained from the holes in the roof. I looked back toward the front door. Afu wasn’t there.

  “Cast!” I shouted into my helmet’s radio. “Afu, where the fuck did you go?”

  “Hold on,” he said. “I’m coming back.”<
br />
  Hoping to get lucky, I blasted a few laser rounds, but they only illuminated the steam in brilliant blue before disappearing. None of the shots would have been fatal, but maybe they’d make the dragon secondguess attacking me.

  A different kind of light responded to my lasers. White and flashing like electric flames, casting the leviathan’s shadow from behind the steam. A bloodcurdling shriek came next as the light formed into a single, floating body.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said.

  The old man’s wraith flew from the steam, clawing and screeching toward me, fast as a bullet. I power jumped out of its way, but had nothing to grab hold of. I flew upward, but when the arc reached its peak, I hit the slanted floor and slid back toward the leviathan and the oncoming wraith.

  Punching open the metal pocket in my leg, I ejected a wraith remote and aimed as I slid down the middle of the house. The wraith rushed to meet me. It was like a horrible game of chicken. The ghost roared and spread its arms. I roared back. All it took was a press of the remote’s trapping button and a coil of light sucked the wraith up easy peasy. Wilkins’ dragon-formed spirit was gone in a blink.

  But it wasn’t over. When the ghost vanished, I saw what was waiting for me at the end of my slide. The leviathan rested its chin against the floor, mouth wide open, ready to receive me. I spread my legs and planted a foot on the dragon’s top and bottom jaws. My first instinct was to shoot foam in to the scaly’s throat, but that would only result in scalding wads of bubbles being shot back at my face. Lasers or a haymo would be great if I was trying to kill it – and oh, did I want to – but I had to prove to Brannigan that I could do the job. The new way.

  Power jumping was the only option I had left, but the thrusters were still charging. The leviathan didn’t need to recharge its steam and my mind was scrambling for a way out.

  A joyful war cry came from above me.

  Afu sailed over my head and landed atop the dragon’s head. His power suit clinked as he pounded his armored fist into the dragon’s eye, holding on to one of its rounded horns with the other hand.