Ash Kickers

by Sean Grigsby

  “We’re working with police, but at this time we have no motive. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between the victims or the perpetrators themselves. We don’t want to scare anyone, but right now, we’re encouraging every citizen to be vigilant. Lock your doors. If you see something suspicious, or anyone who shouldn’t be in your neighborhood, don’t hesitate to report it.”

  The reporter asked, “You said some kind of accelerant was used. Do you know what specifically?”

  Rubbing the back of his neck, the fire chief said, “Honestly, an accelerant is the best thing we can guess at. We didn’t find any trace of gasoline or anything else, but there’s no other explanation as to how these fires grew so fast. Maybe an incendiary device, much like a bomb. I’m… I’m at a loss. I….”

  The last image of the fire chief was of him shaking his head, bunching his lips, and clearly holding back tears. He rushed away, waving off the reporters.

  Appearing again, the news lady said, “We’ve learned that one of the arsonists, Gerald From,” - a picture of a white guy came up “had recently moved to Parthenon City from Denver, just before it was destroyed in last month’s drake swarm. And it seems tension surrounding the arrival of immigrants is growing worse.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Sometimes I think the Feed tries to rile people up on purpose.” A driver named Holland’s voice echoed off the tile walls.

  Tucked fifty feet away in the shower at the very back of the locker room with my back under the high-pressure stream of water and I could still hear his loud ass. He was talking to another smoke eater named Feingold, and I guess they didn’t realize how much acoustics the locker room had.

  “Yeah, man,” Feingold said. “But one of those arsonists was a refugee.”

  “They’re not refugees.”

  “Sure they are. They left their cities to come here because we have things they want. I bet you anything the other two aren’t originally from here either.”

  “Feingold, you’re from fucking Kansas.”

  “Well,” a long moment passed, “that was years ago. This is a new problem.”

  “If it doesn’t involve a dragon,” Holland said, “it isn’t my problem.”

  “That’s not very compassionate.”

  Exiting the shower, I used my favorite big, fluffy towel to dry off. When I first came to Smoke Eater headquarters, I was worried about the coed locker room. Some female smokies even roomed with men during rookie training. Brannigan had shared a room with Captain Jendal. When I told Jendal – Naveena, I call her – that I didn’t feel comfortable about it, she said she understood my feelings, but that it was a way to make things fair for everybody and to instill that we were a unified force. We were to behave professionally. If two dudes could room together without fucking, so could members of opposite sexes. Several smoke eaters are transgender, too, so it just made it easier to say, ‘This is where we shit, shower, and shave. Period.’

  Although we can be crude, smoke eaters are held to an extremely high standard. Harassment of any kind would be handled with extreme prejudice. What that meant exactly, I didn’t know. It never came up. But heaven help you if you ever failed to put the toilet paper on the dispenser roll.

  I was about to get dressed when Holland’s voice carried through the locker room. “Holy shit, have you read your Feed messages?”

  “I don’t ever look at that stuff,” said Feingold. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Look.”

  I didn’t even have to guess. They were looking at Brannigan’s message about me getting promoted. I hadn’t even looked at it yet. I keep my holoreader in my locker when I’m on duty. Too many smokies have gotten their devices burnt or smashed carrying them around in their pockets on dragon calls. Being a captain would change that. I’d have to keep it on me all the time.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Feingold said.

  I wrapped the towel around my torso and crossed my arms. A hot ache formed in my chest. Feingold and Holland didn’t even know I was back here. I didn’t like being talked about, but if people were going to talk shit, I’d rather it hear out of their own mouths and have them look me in the eye while they did it. So, slowly, I walked toward where my fellow smoke eaters were having their little bitch session.

  “I know,” said Holland. “It’s such bullshit. You hear what she did today?”

  “Everybody’s talking about it. I’m sure the smokies in Memphis have heard about it. If I’d known wrecking a Slayer and nearly getting your crew eaten was how you got promoted, I would have done it already.”

  “I’m surprised that fat ass of hers can fit into a power suit.”

  They laughed, and I picked up my pace. All I had on was a towel, but I didn’t give a damn. I’d kick their asses anyway.

  “And they promoted the bald chick, too!”

  “Let me ask you something,” said Holland. “Do you think these women smokies can do the job just as good as us?”

  I rounded the corner and leaned against a locker. “I’ve breathed more smoke, slain more scalies, and trapped more wraiths in a week than either of you two punk bitches have done in your entire career.”

  Holland was dressed and straddling a bench, while Feingold was naked and held a towel in front of his junk. Both of them snapped their heads toward me, eyes wide. Feingold’s towel slipped. He cupped his privates with both hands.

  “And that’s not even counting the robots I chopped up when Rogola attacked headquarters and tried to kill us all,” I said. “Remember that? Oh, wait. You wouldn’t. Because you weren’t there.”

  Holland swallowed. Feingold remained frozen with a handful of nothing.

  “And like you saw in Brannigan’s message, I’m now a captain. That’s right, me. A black woman whose stellar booty fits perfectly in her power suit thankyou-very-much, who has no tolerance for bullshit and who now outranks you. So I’m going to give you three options.” For emphasis, I raised a finger for each. “I can either write up your asses, kick your asses, or both of your asses can go wash every single apparatus in the bay right now. What’s it going to be?”

  Feingold gathered up his towel and fought Holland to be the first out the door. Both of them shouted, “Sorry, Captain!” as they left.

  I sat on the bench and sighed.

  A while back, Brannigan had sent me a holobook about women in the fire service. Holland and Feingold’s gum-flapping was nothing compared to what the first female firefighters had to go through. For them, every single day was hell, just to do the job they loved.

  In the old days, when a woman firefighter would walk into a firehouse kitchen, all of the men would walk out. The women were ostracized, hazed, had their reputation shit on. Everyone said they were too weak to do the job, even civilian women.

  Thinking about it now made me feel guilty for wanting to leave smoke eating. Those women firefighters didn’t quit and they had to fight against more than just dissatisfaction.

  “The Captain is in the house!” the deep voice boomed through the locker room.

  I looked up and there he was, Afu Kekoa, my exboyfriend. His green duty shirt stretched across his chest as his dark tattoos peeked out from the collar and short sleeves. He’d tied his long black hair into a bun. That always used to turn me on.

  Used to. Right.

  I rolled my eyes at him and trudged back to my locker to get dressed. The propellerheads were waiting and I really didn’t want to get caught up in an exlover’s spat.

  Afu followed on my heels. “Hold up, teine.”

  Teine. It was one of the only Samoan words I remembered.

  “I’m not your girl,” I said, slipping on panties under my towel. Afu had seen me naked a hundred times, but I’d revoked that privilege.

  “What’s with the attitude?” he said. “You broke up with me, remember? I’m not the one acting like we can’t still be friends.”

  I turned my back to him as I pulled a duty shirt over my head. “Friends don’t go tell the chie
f that I lost my passion for the job.”

  “Ah, shit.”

  The locker room was silent as I finished dressing, tying off the last boot. Afu could have walked out, as far as I knew, even though his heavy steps were hard to miss. The man was built like a hover-train. But when I turned around, he was still standing there, hands on his hips and a slight, guilty smile on his face. At six foot three, he stood a good eight inches taller than me, and had shown, more than once, how easily he could lift me with one arm.

  “I’m just looking out for you,” said Afu. “I don’t want you burning out. You’re one of the best smokies on the job. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I thought Brannigan wouldn’t think less of you. That he’d be able to help. He’s probably seen this kind of thing before.”

  “What kind of thing?” I thinned my eyes. Maybe if I tensed hard enough, lasers would shoot out and set that long hair on fire.

  Afu shrugged. “I don’t know. Depression?”

  “I’m not fucking depressed. I’m bored and unsatisfied. There’s a big difference.”

  “Yeah, well, I was right, though. Brannigan didn’t think less of you at all. He promoted you!” Those big teeth appeared with Afu’s fifty-mile-smile, white as wraith fire. “Captain Williams. Wow. This is crazy. Just don’t go bossing me around too much, yeah?”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” I said, looking for a gap on either side of him to slip through. The big bastard took up the whole space between the lockers. “We won’t have to deal with each other outside of… these kinds of run-ins.”

  Afu’s two bushy eyebrows bunched together. “T, didn’t you read the Feed message?”

  Oh, hell no.

  I threw open my locker and grabbed the holoreader lying under a bra. With a finger press against the notification in the top right corner, Brannigan’s message floated up from the screen. My eyes darted over the message, too frantic to read the whole thing through. Congratulations to Captain Tamerica Williams, blah, blah, blah. Following transfers will take effect tomorrow…

  Shit. It floated there in holographic green. Official. Practically irreversible.

  The new crew of Cannon Truck 15: Captain Yours Truly, Dynamite Patrice Johnson as driver, and – I had to read it five times before I finally accepted it – Afu Kekoa as smoke eater.

  “And how about that?” Afu said. “They promoted your girl, Johnson. We’re going to be a hell of a crew. And we can all hang out off shift, like we used to.”

  I turned off the holoreader and shoved it into my pocket. “This isn’t right. This has to go against some kind of conflict of interest rule.”

  “We aren’t dating anymore,” Afu said. “And the way you’re acting, it’s like you don’t want to be friends either.”

  He looked sad. Puppy dog eyes came easy to Afu. What sucked is that it was always sincere when he did it. I don’t think he had a manipulative bone in his body.

  I relaxed my face, dropping the ache of irritation I’d built up in my cheeks and around my eyes. Could I work with Afu on a crew? Supervise him? Was I seriously thinking about this?

  “Tammy,” my mama would say, “looks like you don’t have much of a choice.”

  I tried, but failed, to conjure a smile. “This’ll be… fun.”

  Afu must have thought I was throwing an olive branch at his face, because he was grinning. Then again, Afu had the emotional memory of a goldfish. He never stayed sad or upset for long. Eventually, no matter what was happening, he’d revert back to his usual jolly-ass self. I hated that about him.

  “You still DJing at Infinity Saturday night?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Cool. I’ll come out. Buy my new captain a drink. Might have a bag of sparks with me, too.”

  Sparks. Little pills of bottled static.

  I didn’t do that shit any more. It was a safe drug, but after a while, I got weirded out about putting hologram tech into my body. What if someone could figure out a way to hack into it and make you do things? Afu had said I was paranoid, but he’d quit sparking while we were dating out of respect. I guess he’d returned to the habit. Well, I might not have been his girlfriend anymore, but as his captain I could put a stop to it quick, fast, and in a hurry.

  Afu turned and left me to the deafening quiet of the locker room, where I stood for a few more minutes before heading over to meet with the propellerheads.

  This may sound crazy coming from someone who traps dragons and ghosts for a living, but thinking about all the responsibility Brannigan had dumped on my shoulders, the void of the unknown lying in front of me like an endless pit, the people on my crew I had to look out for and make sure didn’t die, I was scared. I’d never been so goddamned scared in all my life.

  CHAPTER 5

  “You say it was right here?” Yolanda, one of the lead propellerheads, pointed a long metal pole at the ground. She wore enough gear for a two-week excursion and was monitoring at least three different devices. The sphere at the end of her pole chirped as Yolanda hovered it over glowing embers that clung to the ash like wet paint. We were back at the scene of my crime, where the smaug had burned away. It was too dark to see and too early to care.

  The embers on the ground looked like a neon stain in the outline of the smaug, like how cops used to draw a white line around dead bodies. The embers were yellow, glowing more eerily than natural. This wasn’t the usual type of fire – the embers would have faded already – and that included anything burned by dragon fire.

  “Yeah, the smaug was right here,” I said. “Can’t you see the radioactive dragon outline?”

  A flashlight drone flew down to hover behind us, whirling blades keeping it in the air. Yolanda had sent it fifty feet above to get an aerial view of the scene. It shined its light wherever Yolanda’s gaze went, wirelessly connected to her goggles, and now it blinded me as the propellerhead tilted her head in my direction. I held up a hand to block the light.

  “Come on, now,” Yolanda said. “I’m a scientist. I don’t assume anything, even when it seems obvious.”

  I’d gone straight to Yolanda after I’d left the locker room. Not only was she one of the few other black women at headquarters but she was also, in my opinion, the smartest of the propellerheads. She’d basically invented ieiunium curate from dragon blood, and reverse-engineered the nonlethal laser cannon we’d gotten from Canada to create more for every apparatus in our fleet. But I didn’t hold that against her. A lot of people would say she singlehandedly brought on the current period of peace.

  When I’d gone to talk to her about the smaug, Yolanda was busy in the watch room, helping other propellerheads monitor seismic activity deep below Ohio. Some goober had named it OSAS, for Ohio Seismic Alert System. It was how we were able to detect possible dragon emergences. Yolanda had expanded the technology by shooting monitor needles deep into the ground at different points all over the state. It had cut smokie response time in half.

  She’d listened to what I had to say about the smaug, but said she would have to get back to me about it later. So I went to check in on my former engineer Zhao. He lay in a lab room in nothing but his boxers. Blue, sticky ieiunium curate had been slabbed all over his reddened body.

  I apologized my ass off, but he only laughed and said, “That was the most action I’ve gotten since rookie school. Plus, this blue stuff will have me back to normal tomorrow. No hard feelings. Pinkie swear.”

  His words had taken the edge off my guilt, but I still felt like shit. I’d gotten him burned and tossed around inside a ton of metal. He might have already let it go, but I wasn’t going to.

  I’ve always been hard on myself.

  Exhausted, I’d gone to my room and fallen asleep without bothering to take my uniform off. I was going to be wearing it in a few hours anyway as a captain. At five o’clock in the morning a loud rapping hit my door. My shift roommate, Jessica, only grumbled in her sleep as I got up to see who the hell was inviting a punch in the face.

  Yolanda s
tood there in full yellow-coated propellerhead attire, a pair of goggles strapped around her forehead. “You ready to show me where this dragon burned up?”

  I’d seriously considered slamming the door in her face and grabbing another hour and a half of sleep. But I was feeling penitent about what I’d done to Zhao, and the smaug had been turning to ash in my dreams all night anyway.

  A few minutes later, I’d stepped into my armored power suit, had it seal itself around my body with a click, and was looking over what remained of the smaug.

  “You know you didn’t have to bring your power suit,” Yolanda said. “We’re just gathering data.”

  Said the woman wearing enough gear to send someone to Mars.

  “I don’t feel right out here in the ashes without it. Plus,” I tapped the side of my helmet, “I like to stay in radio contact if any good dragon calls come in.”

  Yolanda nodded and the hovering drone bobbed its light in sync, wobbling in the air. “I guess that kind of dedication is what will make you a good captain. Congratulations, by the way,” she said, as if I’d just told her I’d had a great cup of coffee that morning.

  That’s how most propellerheads were; not really aloof, just “meh” about anything non-sciencey, especially the red tape of smoke eater administration.

  “Thanks, Yo-yo,” I said. “So what are you thinking happened to the smaug?”

  “I’m picking up a butt load of voltage in these embers,” she said, studying her holoreader. “First hypothesis that springs to mind is that the dragon’s EMP reacted with the haymo grenade you threw. Maybe the ignis gland, as well?”

  “You don’t sound convinced by that.”

  The sky began to lighten in the east. I’d have to be getting back to headquarters soon for my first day as a captain.

  “Well, it just doesn’t make any sense,” said Yolanda. “And we don’t have a dead smaug to study. We just have these never-ending embers.” She dug into the pack hanging from her shoulder and tossed me a jar. “Mind scooping some of that up for me?”