by Sean Grigsby
When I pulled away, Afu was grinning as wide as a Cheshire cat.
“Now get the hell up there,” I said. “I’ll try to cover you with some laser fire. Stay in radio contact. Renfro, try to stay smooth, but don’t let up on the gas.”
My driver nodded and my smoke eater climbed out of the window.
“Holy Jesus!” Afu’s voice crackled over the radio. “This thing is huge.”
“Don’t worry about killing it,” I said. “We just need it off our truck.”
I lowered my window and began to lean out. The ground surged a few feet away, launching a popper out of the ground. I blasted the dragon with a few lasers and dropped it midair. Our truck’s rear dual wheels ran over the dead popper, and the ensuing bump tossed all of us like ragdolls. Seeing it from my side mirror, the dragon burst into yellow embers in our wake.
“Fuck, man,” Afu said. “Watch your driving!”
I placed my ass on the open window and looked toward the truck’s roof. Afu clung to the emergency light bar. Above him, the blue dragon I’d seen galloping in the enclosure flapped its massive wings, eyes focused on the city.
“I’m going for it,” Afu said. “Keep her steady.”
On wobbly legs, Afu slowly began to stand. He reached over his shoulder and brought out his laser axe. The sound of the laser must have caught the dragon’s attention, because it roared and tried to lift the truck again.
Fight or flight hit Afu hard and, thankfully, he chose to bury his axe in the nearest scaly limb. Blood misted across Afu’s face and helmet but he kept hacking until the dragon let go with its claw dangling by a thin strand of flesh. In its retreat, the scaly attempted to snap its teeth at Afu, but I was ready with my haymo grenade.
Streaks of blistering light sliced through the dragon’s neck and Afu leaned away to avoid being cut by the haymo’s propellers. The blue scaly burst into embers before it ever hit the ground, and our speeding cannon truck made it look like we were releasing an armada of fireflies off our roof.
“Ouch, ouch!” Afu slapped at his power suit. “Hot shit!”
“All right,” I said, giving Afu a thumbs up and a smile. “Get back in here.”
I had Renfro slow the truck to let Afu climb back in and then it was back to speeding after the dragons and the phoenix.
“Where’s Naveena?” I asked.
“We’re over here,” her voice said.
I leaned forward to look past Renfro and saw Naveena’s Slayer truck tearing across the ash to get on the road behind us.
“Dear God,” Renfro said as he looked ahead. He was able to see the horror better than all of us with his red eyes. But even I saw more than I cared to.
Parthenon City was lit up like a glistening jewel in the night, and roaring, clawing, and flapping their way between us and nearly a million innocent people was the largest stampede of dragons I’d ever seen in my life.
CHAPTER 33
“A two-headed purple thing just flew by my window.” Mayor Ghafoor was panting from my holoreader. “What’s going on out there? Where are the smoke eaters?”
“We’re on our way,” I said. “You need to evacuate the city.”
“Do what?”
“Evacuate the city,” I repeated. What part of that did she not understand?
Ghafoor’s hologram wrenched her face into a scowl, as if I’d given her a big spoonful of medicine. “I… I can’t do that.”
“You’re the mayor, goddamn it! Have the army get people out, since you’re so keen on using them. I’m telling you one last time, there are hundreds of scalies headed right for the city, the phoenix on top of that. If you want to go down as the last mayor of Parthenon, that’s your fuck up, but I won’t let you get people killed because you didn’t want to do anything.”
Ghafoor’s digital green eyes stared too long. I had other things on my mind besides talking to the mayor, something that shouldn’t have taken more than a minute. I almost thought there was a glitch in the network and her image had frozen, but then she closed her eyes, sighed, and said, “Alright. I’ll do my job. You just do yours.”
And then she was gone, hanging up like an angry teenager.
I groaned. “This is why I prefer dealing with dragons over politicians.”
“Well, we’ve got plenty of them on our hands now,” said Renfro.
He parked Cannon 15 at the corner of Main and St. George, where a smart-car had been squished and thrown onto its side. The few citizens who’d seen the dragons coming were running back into office buildings or trying to drive off in their cars. I didn’t know which option was worse, but the people still out in the open were in Shitsville.
I opened every bin on the truck and surveyed the arsenal at our disposal. A loud roar and a crash of glass made me jump but I resisted the urge to turn away. Gawking at the destruction wasn’t going to fix it, but cutting into some dragon flesh might. I attached a laser axe to my back and slung the Impulse foam gun over my shoulder.
Afu met me at the front bumper with his laser sword extended and an activated axe in his other hand. “What’s the plan?”
Renfro joined us as Naveena and Calvinson jogged over from their Slayer truck. That’s when I got a lay of the land.
Firelight reflected off shiny steel and darkened windows from multiple points. Dark smoke drifted into the moonlight from somewhere deeper downtown. Growls, roars, and squawks echoed down the streets, while scaled shadows swooped to disappear around corners or nosedived to snatch some unlucky bastard off the sidewalk. Bulging shapes stomped over cars like living monster trucks. Something large had slammed into buildings as if they were made of toy blocks. A fast food restaurant’s electric sign crashed to the ground, shattering in a cascade of plastic and electricity.
I was in over my head.
How the fuck was I supposed to tell these people around me what to do when I’d never experienced anything like this? There’s a controlled chaos to every dragon call, a burning of adrenaline, a constant worry in the back of your mind that you might very well fuck everything up, even if you give your damnedest. But this… this was a goddamned apocalypse.
I looked at Naveena, who held her laser sword at the ready while waiting for my orders. Passing the ball to her would be the right move. It’s what Brannigan wanted. She had more experience, no fear. She’d make every dragon in this city her bitch and never break a sweat.
I don’t know if she saw the fear in my eyes, or just believed that this was my moment, my time to pass through the fire, because she nodded to me and said, “You got this, T. What do you want to do?”
Fuck it. Let’s do this.
“Alright. Renfro and Calvinson, you guys man your guns. Renfro, you can stay put here. Blast anything that you think you have a good shot at. The phoenix is going to make it difficult to keep these bastards unconscious, so, if you can, use your laserfire to finish them off. We also need your eyes to spot any danger we might not see. That goes for everybody. Stay in radio contact, and if you see something, for the love of sweet baby Jesus, say something. Calvinson.”
The rookie jumped at his name. He was shaking in his power suit.
“You paying attention?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He swallowed.
I pulled out my holoreader and brought up the city’s map. “I want you to get on the other side of this mess, or at least as best as you can. Stage your Slayer at… 7th and Chester. Do like Renfro and blast these sonsabitches at will.”
“But,” Calvinson said. “But if they don’t stay asleep, my suit has a sword. Not a laser gun.”
“Then you’re going to be getting a lot of exercise getting on and off that truck.”
Calvinson took a slow breath to calm his nerves.
“Just be safe,” I said. “As soon as other companies arrive, I’ll send them over to you, but until then, you’re on your own. We all are.”
“What about us?” Afu swung his axe through the air.
“You, me, and Naveena are going on foot. We�
��ll make our way to the center of the city until we get to the convention center.”
“But that’s like two miles away,” Afu said, eyes widened.
“Yeah,” I said. “And we’re going to slice through every fucking dragon we see on our way there. That’s the plan, people. We’re ditching the standard operating procedure and getting back to slaying. We don’t have the time or people to worry about being humane. Does anyone have a problem with that?”
They all shook their heads. Naveena grinned.
“What?” I asked her.
“Nothing, Captain. I wouldn’t change a thing. Sink or swim.”
“Sink or swim,” we all responded.
“Help!” a man screamed above us.
A flapper – an ugly pterodactyl-looking dragon – swooped around the block, carrying a man dangling upside down in its talons. He was wearing a gray hoodie, and jeans that were about slip off his ass and drop him into the pavement.
“Got him!” Afu said.
He climbed on top of the truck and power jumped toward the scaly. The flapper got out a screech before Afu slung his laser axe through the air and severed the dragon’s legs. The civilian fell, but Naveena had already run over and caught him in her arms, cradling him like a baby.
Naveena set the man down saying, “Get the hell out of the city and tell everyone you see the same.”
The man ran off, repeatedly saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
The flapper spiraled into a descent until it smacked into a fire hydrant and lay there, bleeding and shrieking. If we didn’t hurry and shut it up, more flappers would be on their way to defend one of their horde. Afu wasted no time and removed the dragon’s head with a swipe of his sword.
I grabbed his axe off the street and handed it to him. “Let’s try not to toss away the only things that are going to keep us alive tonight.”
“You got it, boo.” Afu winked.
We didn’t have time for me to tell him to keep the endearments to himself, so I began running down the street. Calvinson drove off to his destination and Renfro shouted good luck to us as we rounded onto St. George Avenue.
The way ahead was clear of people, dragons, and otherwise. At first I was glad for the break, but then I realized that meant the scalies and the phoenix were closer to their goal then we were.
“We can take Third,” Naveena suggested. “It’s downhill, so we can power jump to the next block.”
Breathing heavy, I gave her a thumbs up. When we got to 3rd Street, we were greeted by roars, but they weren’t coming from dragons.
At least a dozen people, some pulling at their hair or ripping their shirts off, rushed away from us down the hill. They looked like regular folks fleeing for their lives, but that thought was quickly put to bed when one of them burst into flames and kept running.
“Holy shit!” Afu said.
I power jumped toward the woman, who began throwing her flaming arms around as if she were fighting off a ghost. My landing got her attention along with the rest of the soon-to-be-flaming crazies.
I blasted the woman with my foam gun, having to hold her back with my other arm as she took swipes at my helmet. It was hard not to look into her burning, angry face, so I coated it with foam. In my periphery, the other pyro-zombies were moving in on me, running like they were in a hundred meter dash and ready to rip my throat out.
The first one to reach me pulled me away by the shoulder. When he grabbed the Impulse gun the strap pulled against my throat, choking me. I bent low and twisted around to face him. My first extinct was to blast the fucker with my lasers, but I had to stop myself. These were innocent people – phoenix crazy as they were – I couldn’t kill them. But my hesitation got the man, screaming at the top of his lungs and face flushed red, to launch himself at me as if he were a dragon. I blocked his attacks with crossed, armored arms. He bit at my face and clawed against my metal. Taking out dragons was easy. How the hell was I supposed to incapacitate another human without blowing a hole through him or slicing off an appendage?
A high-pitched howl rang down the street. Afu flew in and ripped the wild man off me. With a quick jab to his jaw, Afu dropped the civilian to the street.
Naveena dropped in between us and looked at the man lying on his back. “Damn, Afu.”
“What?” Afu said. “He’s still breathing.”
I squatted over the woman I’d covered in foam. “Well, she’s not.”
Carefully, I lifted her chin to see if that would open the airway, but her chest remained still. There was nothing we could do for her. Emergency triage protocols said that anyone who couldn’t breathe on their own was considered dead. Black tag.
There was nothing to tag, though, because a second later the woman’s body smoldered into ash and blew away with the next gust of wind.
“My God,” Naveena said. “What are we going to do?”
“Hey.” Afu looked around the street. “Where are the other–”
Five more crazies ran out from behind a smoking car and jumped onto Afu, dog piling him and bringing him all the way down.
“Oh shit, oh shit!” Afu screamed.
Naveena extended her laser sword and stepped forward.
“No!” I said. “These are people. Just grab ’em.”
“And then what?”
The pile of people clawed with their hands and gnashed their teeth like wraiths that hadn’t shed their skin yet. They covered Afu so I couldn’t see him anymore. I rushed to grab the one on top, but stopped short when one of them in the middle burst into flames.
“Afu!” Naveena charged in where I had hesitated.
Then the whole pile exploded. Every one of them turned into a human bonfire. I blasted the pile with my foam, while Naveena grabbed them, one by one, and chunked them off Afu.
I couldn’t breathe. My heart beat so fast that it felt like my entire power suit was thumping, about to fall off from the quake of my pulse.
Then the pile rose, and Afu stood up, covered in foam and soot, tossing the last dead psycho from his shoulders.
Afu spit and wiped his mouth with the back of his armored hand. “Why is it always me?”
Above us, in adjacent skyscrapers, windows blew out, churning fire into the night. Out of one, a flaming human shape fell, twisting in an almost beautiful ballerina twirl before it hit the street, scattering flaming guts and body parts across the street. They soon turned to ash.
The city shook. Cracks rippled through the asphalt under our boots.
A wave of exhaustion coated me like syrup and I took a knee, holding on to the side of Naveena’s power suit so I wouldn’t fall over in the rumble.
The bottom three floors of the tallest building near us exploded in a shower of concrete and steel. A roar stabbed my ears, and there, clawing out of the toppling building, was the ice dragon.
“Take cover!” I shouted, and began running the other way.
Afu and Naveena followed as clouds of crushed skyscraper filled the air, the street, everything in front of and behind us. I couldn’t see shit, and my smoke eater lungs only helped so much against the particulates.
“Afu! Naveena!” I shouted.
“Here!” they both said.
Afu was somewhere behind me and to my right. Naveena sounded like she was a mile away, her voice echoing from my left.
The street shook with heavy steps, the unmistakable sound of a dragon on the move, getting closer. A growl followed it. It was on the hunt.
“This is Captain Williams,” I cast through my helmet radio. “We are in desperate need of reinforcements. Where the hell are you guys?”
“We’re almost to the city,” someone responded. “This is Captain Kiesling. ETA, two to three minutes.”
Fuck, Kiesling. We could be squished, frozen, and eaten in half that time.
“I need the first unit on scene to assist Slayer 5 at 7th and Chester. Everyone else get your ass over to 3rd Street. You can’t miss it.”
“10-4,” Kiesling respon
ded.
“Where is Brannigan?” Naveena asked.
What great timing.
I coughed as I felt my way through the fog. “He ain’t coming.”
“What!?”
White, icy light flickered throughout the debris cloud like lightning, followed by the thunder of a scaly roar. A thick whooshing came next, slow at first, but building speed. The smoke began to clear, and I was glad to finally be able to see farther than my arm could stretch. But the improvement in visibility was dashed against what I was now able to see.
The ice dragon’s blue and white head appeared first. Teeth like icicles hung over its lips. Dark shadows at each side of its body heaved up and down and when the clouds gave way, it showed me what I already knew. Dragon wings. The thing was about to go airborne. All four of its claws were already off the street.
“Renfro!” I shouted into my radio. “We need you to aim toward 3rd Street. We’re about to have one take flight.”
“Kind of busy right now,” Renfro said. Heavy breath and laser fire accompanied his voice through my helmet.
With another roar, the dragon flicked its tail and rose twenty feet higher. It sailed over our heads, wings blasting us with an air current that almost tossed my helmet off. It turned the corner and was gone, heading for the convention center.
“After that dragon,” I said.
“We can’t outrun it,” said Afu.
I looked around the street. One of the few hovercars parked on the curb hadn’t been crushed. Its door was splayed open. The engine looked to be running.
I pointed toward it. “Afu, you drive. Me and Naveena will ride on top.”
CHAPTER 34
The small car hit a bump in the street, nearly throwing Naveena and me off the roof.
“Goddamn it, Afu!” More than likely he couldn’t hear me, but I said it all the same. “I just remembered you can’t drive for shit.”
Ahead of us the ice dragon’s tail, which looked like a crystal fan at the end of a snow-covered log, flicked from one side of the street to the other, smashing into office buildings and concrete pillars of parking garages.
