Ash Kickers

by Sean Grigsby

  “Go,” Afu said in a wobbly voice as the dragon tried to shake him off. “Patrice… has the cannon ready. I’ll be… right behind you.”

  Afu had tied a rope outside and laid it where I could grab hold. I engaged my thrusters, and snatched the rope. Hanging there, I watched my ex-boyfriend play rodeo on the leviathan’s head.

  “Quit playing with it,” I said. “Let’s draw it outside.”

  Then, as quickly as it appeared, the leviathan hissed and dropped below the water… with Afu still hanging on.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Y’all alright in there?” Patrice asked through my helmet.

  “The fucking dragon just dragged Afu underwater.”

  She said something else but I didn’t hear it. I was too busy grabbing my aqua respirator from another pocket. Brannigan had suggested that I might have to do some water aerobics shit like this. Well, here it was. I should have told Afu to be ready to swim. He was horrible at holding his breath at the best of times.

  Please be okay, I thought.

  I strapped the respirator around my nose and mouth, and then extended my therma-goggles to create a seal around my face. Smoke eaters can breathe smoke, sure. But water is a little more of a bastard.

  I let go of the rope and shot feet first into the lake.

  The water was as warm as a Jacuzzi, so I had a hard time detecting any blobs of heat signatures, but I could see a bit better than inside the house. I swam through chunks of wood and other debris. The back part of the structure had been completely ripped off. I passed over a cluster of glowing translucent sacks that were huddled together. Eggs. I didn’t have time to destroy them, and given leviathan biology, there was no way to know if they’d even been fertilized yet. The dragon had made only one wraith so far… that I knew about. Along the way, deeper into the lake, I bumped into the gnashed and boiled carcass of oldman Wilkins. His glow stick was still shining from his ragged hand.

  The only reason my power suit wasn’t dragging me to the bottom was because the thrusters sensed we’d gone into aqueous operations and puttered out a very low level of power to propel me through the water. I could have swum faster in my own skin, but at least I wasn’t sinking. Afu and the leviathan were nowhere to be seen.

  Swimming in an expanding circle, I tried to figure out how I would save Afu or get revenge on the leviathan if I couldn’t. Afu was too heavy to drag, and lasers were shit in water. I needed to get Patrice to come look with me. It would take too long – more time than Afu or I could afford – to search by myself. My respirator prevented me from radioing a call to him.

  What a shit captain I was turning out to be.

  Shifting toward the shore, I puttered along slowly until I got to where I could crawl out onto the beach beside the wrecked stilt house.

  “Patrice!” I called as soon as the goggles and respirator were off my face. “We need to look for Afu. He’s in the lake.”

  “Uh oh. Uh oh,” Patrice repeated in heavy breaths.

  Big splashes came from behind and I flipped around with my laser ready to sear off chunks of scaly flesh.

  Afu was on hands and knees, removing his own aqua respirator. I ran and grabbed him in a bear hug. He was almost as tall as me on his knees.

  I laughed, nearly crying. “Fuck, I thought it got you.”

  Then, realizing what it looked like I was doing, I dropped my smile, wiped my eyes, and backed away. “You didn’t kill it did you?”

  Afu quickly got to his feet and began chugging for the cannon truck. “No, it’s still out there. Probably coming–”

  The full force of the leviathan came roaring out of Lake Erie – an enormous gray snake of a dragon. It slithered onto shore, dripping its slimy spit onto our helmets. Instead of wings, it had blue-green fins on each of its sides.

  “Patrice,” I said low into my helmet mic.

  No answer.

  “We’re going to have to slay this thing,” Afu said. “It’s not like there’s a pool at the wraith enclosures to dump it in.”

  The leviathan snapped its teeth twice and raised its head to the rain, chugging out a bubbling call from its throat.

  “We can’t kill it,” I said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not even attacking us,” I said.

  The leviathan remained raised on its eel-like middle, singing its siren song like a drunken accountant on karaoke night.

  “Patrice, shoot this thing already. What’s the hold up?”

  “I was getting suited up to look for Afu,” she said. “Stand by.”

  Afu put a hand to my armor and pulled me backwards with him, away from the crooning serpent. “This ain’t good,” he said. “Something isn’t right.”

  “I got this,” I said. “Just–”

  The lake surface exploded again.

  Slithering out of the water to snap and snarl beside the one leviathan came a second.

  “Hurry, Patrice,” I said. “There are two of them!”

  “I’m moving as fast as I can,” she said.

  The leviathans circled us, swollen bodies blocking either of us from escaping. Afu extended his laser sword, and I didn’t stop him. The dragon in front of me attacked, snapping for me with a hungry mouth. I power jumped out of the way and landed outside the scaly blockade.

  But now Afu was sandwiched between the twin leviathans and both of my weapons were useless unless I wanted to clip the dragons’ fins or coat them in foam – both of those weren’t going to do shit.

  “I have to kill them, T,” Afu said.

  There have only been a few moments in my career as a smoke eater where I didn’t know what choice to make. Oh, I’ve cautiously paused to evaluate a situation, hesitated even, but there on the Sandusky shore, watching two sea monsters surrounding my ex-boyfriend, I was at a loss.

  I hated being a captain already.

  “Cap?”

  “Fine,” I said. “We don’t have another choice.”

  Afu laughed and power jumped to get eye-level with one of the dragons. He wrapped himself around its neck and began plugging its flesh with his laser sword while I fired shots at the other scaly’s back.

  A few chunks of flesh dropped to the ground like charred fish, but it wasn’t doing enough damage to be fatal. Afu’s dragon fell to the ground. The other big eel-like monster hissed and flopped around to face me.

  A huge green laser flew over my head and pelted the remaining leviathan in the face. It swayed to and fro for a second before falling toward me. Afu dove out of the way in time, but I’d been too slow, only able to turn and land on my face. The dragon’s weight crashed onto me, beating me into the sand. Afu ran over and began digging granules away from my face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I grumbled, but gave him a thumb up. Not only had Patrice robbed me of a justified dragon slaying, but Afu had gotten one without me.

  Patrice sauntered over like the hero of the incident, singing a song that went, ‘You ain’t never seen a badder bitch than me.’

  “What’s next, Captain?” Afu asked.

  I turned my head toward him – or as much as I could with a fish-gut-stinking, unconscious dragon on top of me.

  “Get this fucking thing off me.”

  CHAPTER 9

  All smoke eater apparatus had been recently fitted with extendable hover-trailers that were stored underneath the chassis. They operated the same way the business end of a tow truck would. Patrice backed the cannon truck up to the sleeping leviathan and we slid the trailer under it. After the living, sleeping dragon was secured to the trailer with magnetic ties, the dead one burst into flames.

  Patrice flinched so bad, she fell on her ass. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Goddamn it,” I said. “Not this again.”

  “You seen something like this before, Cap?” asked Afu.

  I stared at the yellow flames and the disintegrating dragon. “Yeah. Same thing happened to the dragon I fought yesterday. I killed it and then poof. Al
l burned up into ashes.”

  Afu raised a bushy eyebrow as he looked at the leviathan strapped to our truck’s trailer. “This one isn’t going to do that is it?”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” I said. “Only seems to happen to the ones we kill.”

  I was about to tell my crew to hop into the truck so we could get the hell out of Sandusky, but an engine growl in the distance interrupted me.

  Patrice got to her feet and tried unsuccessfully to brush off the wet ashes that had caked onto the seat of her armor. “Now what?”

  A pickup truck rounded the corner and headed straight for us. Two men stood in the truck bed, carrying rusty poles with sharpened ends. The pickup truck parked just in front of us and the two men in the cab got out.

  “How do you do?” said the one who’d been driving.

  “Just fine,” I said. “But you guys need to clear out. This is a dragon scene and we’re closing it off for further investigation.”

  They all looked like miners that had just crawled out of a hole, wearing hard hats with lights strapped to the base. They were dressed in flannel shirts and dirty jeans, dressed too similarly to be a coincidence. These were uniforms in some weird way.

  The two in the bed hopped to the ground and jogged over to form a line with the others.

  Removing his helmet and holding it under his arm, the guy who’d been driving scanned a finger over me and my crew. “You guys smoke eaters?”

  I looked to the leviathan on the hover trailer, our black and purple cannon truck, and a shrugging Afu and Patrice in their power suits. “Yeah. We are. But like I was saying–”

  “I’m Harold Pinch,” he said. “These are my men. We’re volunteers.”

  Ah, I thought. Jolly volley firefighters. Makes sense.

  “One of our guys,” Harold said, “Wilkins is his name, came out on his own when we first felt the quake. He’s not all there in the head, but he’s passionate about the job. Wondering if you might’ve seen him.”

  Shit.

  I stepped closer to Harold and kept my voice down. “He was wearing a cartoon bikini shirt.”

  “Yeah,” Harold said in a gruff smoker’s voice, not trying to be as discreet as I was, “he never took that stupid thing off.”

  Sometimes you just can’t take a deep enough breath before giving bad news. “I hate to tell you this, and I tried like hell to save him, but… Wilkins passed.”

  Harold dropped his head. The other guys in his mining unit – or whatever the hell they were – caught the gist and either kicked the ground, covered their mouth with a grimy hand, or loosed a whispered swear word.

  “How’d it happen?” Harold asked, nearly crying.

  “I…” Did he really want to know? “Well, he was in the house over there for some reason and a dragon got him. This one right here, in fact.”

  Harold cleared his throat and straightened his stance. “Has his wraith shown up yet?”

  Now that was a weird question. “Um… yeah, but we took care of it.”

  “We’d like to have it, please,” Harold said, as serious as could be.

  “Captain, we should get back, yeah?” Patrice said, trying to help get me out of the heartbreaking bear trap I’d stepped into.

  Afu added, “Yeah, we need to hurry before the Sandman wears off.”

  “Look,” I told Harold, “we really have to load up. I’m afraid I can’t release his wraith to you. It’s for public health.”

  “That’s his soul!” Harold shouted. “You don’t have the right to it. If any part of him is staying in this life, it should be helping his brothers in the cause he cared so much about.”

  The others nodded and shouted their agreement.

  Oh boy.

  “Harold,” I said, “I get it. Volunteer firefighters like you have the same camaraderie as smoke eaters, but–”

  “We’re not firemen,” Harold said.

  “Oh.” I blinked, confused. “Sorry, I thought you said you were volunteers.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re volunteer smoke eaters.”

  Patrice’s laugh cracked over the Sandusky ash like a bolt of lightning. Afu was doing only a little better with an armored hand over his upturned lips.

  “What’s so funny?” Harold was now pissed.

  “Don’t mind them,” I said. “It’s just… we’ve never heard of volunteer smokies.”

  He raised his chin. “We’re the first.”

  “Okay,” I said, throwing in the towel. “That’s not my jurisdiction to decide, but we’re going to get out of here.”

  “Hold up,” he shouted to my turned back as I made my way to the cannon truck. “Give us Wilkins’ wraith! And what’s with these embers burning? You just going to leave ’em like that? They could start a fire.”

  “Don’t touch those,” I yelled back.

  “We out?” Patrice asked, following beside me.

  “Hell yes,” I said. “I’m done with these wastelander wannabes.”

  When I got into my seat, Harold was yelling for the others to jump into their truck. Patrice floored it and had Cannon 15 zipping down the road out of Sandusky, but a minute later Harold and his goons were racing along my side of the truck.

  “Give us Wilkins!” Harold shouted through his window.

  The guys in the bed of the truck pumped their weapons in the air while Harold and the man next to him continued to shout angrily.

  Now, I don’t know if it’s because my daddy had told me stories about what used to happen in this country to people of my particular pigmentation at the hands of people who looked and acted just like Harold and the other rednecks, and it definitely didn’t help that I’d just fought two dragons and didn’t get the release of permanently ending either of them myself, but whatever the case, I wasn’t about to take any kind of bullshit from these motherfuckers.

  “Stop the truck,” I told Patrice.

  She did. And when Harold’s truck stopped beside us, I let him have it.

  “Now look here,” I said. “I’m starting to feel threatened. So, if you sonsabitches don’t leave us alone, my crew and I will use everything at our disposal to fuck you up. Do I make myself clear? You’re obstructing our duty.”

  Harold frowned, thought about it for a second. A rusty pole versus a laser sword should have been a no-brainer. “We’re going to talk to your chief about this,” he said.

  “Feel free to do so,” I said, resting my arm more comfortably on the window frame. “But you better heed the words painted on the back of our truck and keep back at least three hundred feet.”

  After securing my wraith remote inside our truck’s lockbox, I flicked two fingers toward the road ahead. Patrice nodded at the signal and we were back on our way with a leviathan in tow.

  Unfortunately, Harold and the wannabe smoke eaters followed just behind.

  CHAPTER 10

  “These white boys aren’t backing off,” Patrice said, taking glances at the side view mirror.

  Groaning, I looked into the reflection on my side. Sure enough, Harold and the boys were keeping their distance, but steadily following, all of them glowering like kids in the back seat who’d been told to shut up while grown folks were talking.

  Brains in mirror may be smaller than they appear.

  “There isn’t much we can do,” I said. “They can talk to Chief when we get to headquarters. If I know Brannigan, he’ll give them a swift kick in the ass.”

  “And that’s if he’s in a decent mood,” Afu said.

  Patrice shook her head. “Still makes me nervous having a tail like this.”

  “I’ll call Brannigan,” I said.

  Cannon 15’s holoreader beat me to the punch, chirping with an incoming call. With pitch-black hair hanging to her shoulders, Captain Naveena Jendal appeared. Yolanda paced behind her. Something in me wanted to hang up on my old captain, claim it was a mistake if I ever saw her in person again. I knew I’d have to face Naveena at some point, and hear again how I’d screwed up on that smau
g call.

  But instead of ending the call, I said, “Um, hi.”

  “Are you guys all right?”

  A big bump vibrated from behind the cannon truck. I was about to cuss out some rednecks for ramming my apparatus, but looking in the mirror, Harold’s truck hadn’t changed position.

  So what the hell was it?

  “Cap,” Afu said. “I think the leviathan just moved.”

  My throat tightened. “Hold on, Naveena,” I said, leaning out of the window for a look at our quarry. The leviathan lay as unconscious as ever. Maybe we’d just run over a big rock in the road. I told Afu as much.

  “Sorry,” I said, turning back to Naveena’s hologram. “Now what were you saying?”

  “I’m checking to see if you guys are okay.”

  I tried to answer politely. Naveena and I had been on tons of calls together and spent a bunch of time hanging out off shift, too. But it felt like she was sticking her nose into my business, seeing if the new captain wasn’t already fucking up.

  “We’re good,” I said. “We’ve got some obnoxious hicks claiming to be volunteer smokies following us, but they’re no biggie. Snagged a leviathan, though. Bringing it back now.”

  Yolanda turned and ran over, nearly shoving Naveena out of the holofield. “You caught a leviathan?”

  “Would’ve been two,” I said. “But Afu had to kill the other one and it burst into flames like the smaug.”

  Yolanda scrunched up her entire face. “Well, that makes no sense.”

  “It happened once. Why not a second time?

  Maybe this is a new scaly trend taking off.”

  “Yeah,” said Yolanda, “but leviathans don’t have any EMP ability and their ignis gland is packed inside a bladder full of water. This throws out my hypothesis.”

  “We’re getting off track,” said Naveena. “The reason we called to check on you–”

  “Goddamn it!” I yelled. Another bump from behind. I again leaned out of the window, and this time the leviathan was definitely moving, writhing against its restraints. “Shit. I’ll have to call you back, Naveena.”

  “There’s something following you underground,” Yolanda shouted.