Ash Kickers

by Sean Grigsby

  I found the ladder to the roof and took a second to breathe before climbing. It had been a long night. My armored feet and hands clanked against each rung sounding like explosions in the thick quiet of the building.

  When I got to the door hatch, I raised it slowly with one hand and scanned the roof like a periscope. Patrice stood at the center of the roof with her back to me, head raised to the night sky, and her hands outstretched as if she’d recently taken up occult yoga as a hobby. Climbing onto the roof, I didn’t see a pentagram drawn around her, but a jar of ashes rested between her feet.

  “Patrice,” I said, barely above a whisper. “What are you doing with that jar?”

  She turned, only her head at first – and I seriously wondered if the damn thing would do a full 360 – but then her body followed and we faced each other, the jar of phoenix ashes now behind her.

  “It’s much cooler up here,” she said. Her voice was calm, relaxed, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “I’m sure you’re burning up pretty bad,” I said, daring a step closer. “Maybe the propellerheads can get something to keep you cool until your fever breaks.”

  “This isn’t a fever.” She shook her head and smiled. It was creepy as fuck. I’d never seen a pain-filled smile until then.

  “Whatever it is–”

  “It’s in my head!” Her nostrils and eyes expanded as she touched her temples.

  I raised my hands, palms toward her. “Okay. We’re here to help you, no matter what’s going on.”

  “None of you can help me.” She was crying now.

  “I want to try. You attacked Yolanda. I don’t think you’re in your right mind. Why did you take that key card? Why do you have those ashes? How did you even know where they were hidden?”

  “I see that fucking bird, Cap. The phoenix. It’s like the fire is running through my veins. I know I sound crazy, but it’s like… it’s like it possessed me, talking to me, even though I can’t understand those damn squawks. I know what it wants. I had to get its ashes. I had to bring them up here.”

  This was all my fault. Those ashes had poisoned her. She was hallucinating.

  “Just come with me.” I stepped closer. “The phoenix is dead.”

  I didn’t believe my own words as they came out. Something was influencing my driver, and she was too strong to let a microorganism pull her strings. The ashes in the jar glowed brighter, throbbing and pressing against the glass. They wanted out. It didn’t make any sense, but I couldn’t let Patrice open that jar. I had to try talking her down. If that didn’t work, I’d have to tackle her, drag her kicking and screaming back to the sick lab.

  Moving faster than I would have expected her to, Patrice bent over and lifted the glowing jar above her head. “I know what I have to do to end the pain. It hurts, T. It hurts so fucking much.”

  “Whatever you think you have to do,” I said. “I promise you, you don’t have to do anything. I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to. We have the best people in the state, maybe even the whole goddamned country that can make you better. Don’t give up, Patrice.”

  “I’m not giving up.” Her face softened. She swallowed, even though her grimace made it look like razor blades were traveling down her throat. “I’m moving on.”

  She smashed the jar against the roof floor.

  “No!” I shouted, but the glass had already shattered before I finished.

  Flames erupted from the broken shards, engulfing Patrice so fully and quickly that I lost sight of her. The fire spread in a flash of hot neon yellow. There was no way I’d be able to withstand it once I came into contact, and I would burn for days if I did. I took off toward the edge of the roof and power jumped as the flames lashed at my boots.

  My thrusters lowered me to the ground, but from that height, gravity moved me faster than I would have liked. I landed on my back, ejecting all the air from my lungs. Above me, the roof was a saffron inferno. I began to cry, but it was cut off by another wail. It wasn’t a wraith. And it wasn’t Patrice.

  The shriek clawed through the air, nearly splitting my ears. Up from the burning roof flew a phoenix that wasted no time hanging around. Its fiery wings streaked across the night sky, still visible as a glowing blob on the other side of the thick clouds that began to gather.

  Patrice.

  Patrice was dead. It was all I could think about, and after the hell I’d already been through that night, there was no way I could go on. I had one job. All I had to do was keep my crew safe, and I couldn’t even do that. What a piece of shit I was. But something inside me morphed out of misery and into a fury that would have given the phoenix fire a run for its money.

  I was madder than fuck and I had to do something about it.

  So I charged back into headquarters and shouted for Afu until I’d found him in the hallway leading to the roof access.

  “What happened?” He handed me my helmet. “I thought you would have already been on the roof, and then I heard that explosion and the shriek. It almost sounded like–”

  “The phoenix is back,” I said. “Patrice is dead. I’m going to murder that fucking bird and this time it’s going to be permanent.”

  My words hit Afu like a sledge hammer to the face. He fell against the wall. “What? Patrice… she died?”

  “That bird got into her head somehow, Afu.” The urge to fall down and cry beside him was intense, but the roof was on fire and this wasn’t the time to get leaky. I made myself stand straighter, cleared my throat. “Get focused. We have to evacuate the propellerheads and get all of the backup Slayer apparatus outside.”

  Afu wiped tears from his eyes with his armored fingers. “Lead the way, Cap.”

  Downstairs, I pounded on the sealed watch room, shouting for the propellerheads to open up, that it was me, until they finally relented and raised the titanium walls. When I told them that the roof was on fire, they tried to throw out ideas for putting the fire out, but I dismissed that shit and told them to get behind the wheel of something in the bay and drive it far enough away not to get burned, making sure to grab any tech they wouldn’t want to see burned up.

  Afu ran around the corner carrying Yolanda. “She’s still out of it, but I think she’ll be okay.”

  Then we were all set.

  It was a mass exodus of metal and tires. I headed straight for Jet 1, because if we had a flaming bird to take down, our plane would be the thing to do it. Trouble was, I didn’t have the first fucking clue on how to even drive the jet out of the bay. I snagged a propellerhead who said he knew enough to get it outside.

  Sitting in the cockpit, I made sure to study everything the propellerhead did as we moved the massive plane outside, where glowing light and dancing shadows flickered on the asphalt. The fire had extended into most of the building.

  Our headquarters had been fortified to resist dragon fire. This was not the same thing. The building never had a chance.

  With all apparatus and staff evacuated, everyone watched Smoke Eater headquarters go down in flames. A few of us cried or cursed – most of it came from me and Afu, given how most of the propellerheads liked to keep a stoic disposition, but even a few of them showed more emotion and anguish than I’d ever seen from them before.

  This was our second home, where we spent at least a third of our lives. Hell, most of the propellerheads never left. And now it was all gone.

  The rising sun brought with it an armada of Slayer apparatus, a long line of them moving down the only path cutting through the wasteland ashes, back home from dealing with a three-headed dragon.

  When Brannigan jumped out of his chief’s truck, he lost all sense of his position, nearly pulling his hair out and charging toward the ever-growing flames until the heat was too much for even a smoke eater to take.

  He turned and looked at all of us who’d escaped. “What in the fuck did you idiots do?”

  CHAPTER 18

  A week later, Mayor Ghafoor allowed the smoke eaters to respond out of the fe
w fire stations throughout the city, but that meant we were all spread out. No more of the “one building for all” approach. I wondered when the city would rebuild our headquarters. The impression I got was that some higher-ups felt we were the dumbasses who allowed our building to burn down, and that we would have to make do with what little we were offered.

  Afu, the eternal optimist, thought maybe our new work environment would be a good thing, that we could get along with the firefighters who we considered our evolutionary predecessors. But when you shove a bunch of A-type personalities together in a small building, who have just a slight difference in job description… well, we had a lot of shit-talking and four-lettered shouting matches that festered into full-blown fist fights.

  Usually what set it off was a firefighter making a crack about how we let our headquarters burn down. Brannigan had tried to be diplomatic and determined that both sides had started different forms of shit in each firehouse, but I was there, heard it with my own ears, and had even thrown the first punch.

  On the plus side, both smokies and hose-draggers alike didn’t run off and tell Mama about these brotherly scuffles. We kept it all in house, and despite the initial turmoil and confusion of whether an incoming call was for a dragon or a hover-car wreck, tensions seemed to be thinning.

  Nobody likes change at first.

  We got several phoenix sightings called in. We didn’t doubt the validity when a citizen said they saw, “a huge goddamn chicken that looks like it ran through an even bigger bonfire.”

  But every time we rushed to the scene, the phoenix was gone, leaving only a few scorch marks on the ground. It was a good thing we were there though, because every single time, we found a half-eaten pile of yellow embers, and then more dragons would emerge on the spot.

  Some smokies shrugged it off as a coincidence. The pessimists among us speculated that the scalies had found a way to come after us, as if they had a concept of vengeance. The realists, like me, knew the phoenix had something to do with it. It was like catnip for scalies. The way the leviathan had behaved that day outside Sandusky, waking from a Sandman nap…

  Either way, the propellerheads were working their asses off, coming up with a solution to extinguishing the phoenix’s unkillable fire.

  We gave Patrice a nice funeral, and it reminded me that the old days weren’t all fun and scaly corpses. Some of the corpses had worn power suits. Her body was never recovered, of course, because she’d burned away. So, we put together a quick memorial using her helmet. And, unlike a dragon-caused fatality, there had been no wraith. A rumor started going around, about how Patrice had somehow transformed into the new phoenix. I put a nip in that bud quicker than shit through a wyvern. Not only was it not true, but it would make me hesitate the next time I stood in front of the bird if it somehow was true.

  I’d never seen Brannigan cry until that day at the funeral. I’m glad it was him who had to talk to Patrice’s family. I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Leaving earlier had probably made me look like an asshole, but I didn’t care. I just couldn’t handle it. I walked into my house, past my parents arguing in the bathroom as my mother tried to lift him onto the toilet. In my room, I shut the door and began punching at shelves and walls indiscriminately until I passed out on my bed in a blubbering mess.

  I didn’t leave my room for two days, and my parents were smart enough to let me be.

  Renfro asked to transfer to my crew as driver, which bumped up Naveena’s rookie to sit behind the wheel of her rig. It was the fastest promotion in smoke eater history, even counting Brannigan’s and mine. Naveena had tried calling Sergeant Puck out of retirement, but in her gravelly voice she responded, “I’d rather swallow a pregnant hydra and poop out its babies!”

  So Naveena was stuck with two rookies.

  Yolanda and I took Jet 1 out every so often to hunt for the firebird. I always asked to ride along, learning each button and gizmo in the cockpit, the basics of flying, and a lot I didn’t want to know about Yolanda. Most of it was about how she felt like Patrice’s death was somehow her fault. I told her it wasn’t, even though I knew it wouldn’t put her mind at ease. How could a mind like Yolanda’s ever be at ease? Propellerheads twirl a bit faster.

  “I shouldn’t have been wearing my key card,” Yolanda said after explaining the altimeter. “I should have listened to Afu. He was right about the phoenix.”

  “Patrice would have found a way into the lockbox one way or another,” I said. “The phoenix made her attack you. If it’s anybody’s fault, Yolanda, it’s not yours.”

  Because it was mine.

  After that, I made sure to ask as many questions about flying as I could to keep Yolanda’s mind off Patrice. One day, before we set to fly out, Yolanda held out a piece of paper to me.

  “What ancient shit is this?” I asked.

  “It’s the guy I was telling you about. Herjold. His address. Brannigan cleared it for your crew to pay him a visit and see if you can learn anything, because what we’re doing now is getting us nowhere.”

  And that’s why Renfro, Afu and I were riding quietly down Newitz Avenue, chasing another wild goose.

  “I still can’t believe she’s gone.” Afu’s booming voice broke the silence, making me jerk in my seat.

  More quietly, almost hoarse, Renfro said, “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “Yeah, well that’s life,” I said.

  I watched the buildings fly by outside my window, but I could sense my crew’s heads turn sharply toward me. If Afu’s voice had been the thunder, then my statement was the lightning.

  Afu huffed.

  That just pissed me off. I spun around and slammed my hands on top of the truck’s doghouse. “What?”

  “You make out like you’re some badass all the time, but I know the real you, not the front you put on for everybody else.” Afu shook his head and looked away. “You’re like a scared princess, building up your emotional castle walls, so nobody sees how torn up you are inside. Not even yourself.”

  “Don’t call me a princess, you damn ogre. I’m just being real. You’re the one who’s always so fucking happy all the time. I take things for what they are and keep moving forward, because I have to. That’s why we were never going to work out. You live in a fantasy land.”

  I’d never seen Afu angry. Not even while he was fighting a dragon. But right then, he lost it. “Well I sure as hell ain’t happy now! I’m glad we’re not together, and I’m transferring to another crew as soon as I can.”

  Quiet.

  I thought the cab had been silent before, now it was a void.

  Renfro cleared his throat. “This the house up here?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Number 18. Guy named Harold.”

  “I thought it was Gerald,” Renfro said.

  “Whatever it is.” I tossed the piece of paper Yolanda had given me. “I can’t read her chicken scratch. She should have just sent it to my holoreader like a normal person.”

  Harold or Gerald’s house was a bungalow pinned between “dragon proof,” self-building houses on either side. I knocked three times against the polished cherry door as Renfro and Afu waited behind me.

  A short, bespectacled man with a white-haired horseshoe on his head answered. “I’m not interested in buying a holostereo.”

  The fuck?

  “We’re not selling anything,” I said.

  He grunted. “Then I’m not interested in giving the imaginary friend you pray to any money either.”

  “Are you Harold?”

  He cleared his throat. “Herjold.”

  Renfro tapped his fingers against my shoulder. “I told you it was Gerald.”

  “Herjold!” the old man said. “And who’s asking?”

  I still didn’t understand what to call him. “If you can’t tell by our uniforms, Mr Her… Ger….”

  “Oh, for the love of Pete!” He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Just call me Stephen. Herjold is my last name.”

  “We’re with the smoke
eaters,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s right. Yolanda told me you might come by. Come on in. You guys like coffee?”

  “I’m good,” I said.

  Afu shook his head no.

  “I never say no to coffee,” said Renfro.

  The inside of the house was old, dark and dusty. And if it weren’t for the darkness, the presence of dust would have been more noticeable. Books were everywhere: on shelves along the walls, on the coffee and end tables, even stacked on the floor.

  “Go on,” Stephen grumbled, waving a hand toward a couch covered in, you guessed it… porcelain dolls. “Have a seat there. Just move ’em out of the way. Carefully!”

  Afu, blinking with confusion, scooped up the dolls in his arms and set them in a corner. While Stephen was getting coffee from the kitchen around the corner, all three of us sat squished together on the couch.

  Renfro leaned over and whispered, “What are we hoping to get out of this guy? I don’t think he’s left his house in thirty years.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” I said.

  Afu watched the dolls in the corner as if they’d stand up and attack him.

  “Hope instant coffee is fine,” Stephen said as he returned with a cup in his hand. He handed it to Renfro.

  “Free is free,” Renfro said.

  Stephen curled his lip. “Nothing in this world is free.”

  I gave Renfro a look, but my new engineer was focused on drinking his coffee.

  “Damnedest thing.” Stephen threw a pile of newspapers off an old orange chair and sat. “That mud had to be boiling hot. You didn’t even wait for it to cool.”

  “Benefits of our condition.” Renfro raised the cup to our host.