Ash Kickers

by Sean Grigsby

  Our power suits had been built to withstand all kinds of hell, but opening that jar with my metal-covered digits was damn near impossible. Without a word, I handed the jar back to Yolanda. She twisted off the top and handed it back, trying hard, but failing, not to laugh. As I bent over to gather the coals into the jar, the heat pelted my face as if it were a full-on inferno. That was something new. Being a smoke eater, I could resist heat a lot more than the average person.

  “The heat coming off of these embers is ridiculous,” I said.

  “Really?” Yolanda said. “That is interesting. I’ll have to study the embers when we get back to headquarters. Then I can find out why. You haven’t been feeling weaker lately have you? Has any smoke felt hard to breathe?”

  She reached out to check my forehead. I slapped her hand away.

  “I’m not losing my abilities. The fire that burned up the smaug was more intense than the flames coming out of its mouth.”

  “Maybe certain dragons, like the smaug, have an anatomical booby trap if killed…”

  “Yolanda, I have to get back to headquarters.”

  “… like a surge of all their internal power bursting out at once. Maybe this has something to do with… but, no.”

  “What?”

  She tongued the back of her teeth. “OSAS has been picking up some strange activity recently. Seismic of course, but also a strong frequency coming from underground. We sent smoke eaters to each point of activity to check it out but, by the time they arrived, the occurrence had gone and also no dragon. Lot of residual heat, though. At first I just put it off as an anomaly in the monitoring system….”

  She was back in her own world, head twirling above the clouds. I was about to yell her name when my holoreader rang. It was Brannigan.

  “You ready for today, Captain Williams?” Chief ’s holographic head materialized above my holoreader.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just out here with Yolanda getting extra crispy dragon samples.”

  I pointed Brannigan’s head toward Yolanda. She waved, grinning so wide it made her cheeks puff out.

  “Hey, my favorite lady in yellow,” Brannigan said. “Williams, I appreciate you looking into this, but we need you back at headquarters. Slayer 7 was scheduled to give a presentation to some Cub Scouts, but they just caught a run for a slimy Shenron making its way from Louisville.”

  “So you’re sending me to tackle some kids.”

  “If it makes you feel better, you guys got the tougher job out of the two. You think dragons are mean? I sent the location to your holoreader. Basic stuff: what to do if you find a dragon egg, stop, drop and roll. You’ll do fine.”

  “I’ll be making Afu do all the talking.”

  “Perks of being a captain.” Brannigan smiled.

  “So why are you calling me and not dispatch?” “Well–”

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Brannigan.”

  “I know we say ‘sink or swim’ but it’s your first day as an officer – and you’re going to do great – I just want to be here for you, since I’m the one who put you in this situation. Sometimes you need a lifeguard.”

  Maybe I should have been glad I wasn’t being thrown to the wolves. Any captain would have told you they’d have loved having the chief act as a crutch for their first time being in charge. But I could walk just fine on my own, and I didn’t need a daddy looking over my shoulder. I already had one who stuck his nose into my business every chance he could. And a mama who did that, too.

  “Just do me a favor,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t make this a regular thing.”

  Brannigan’s digital head tilted to the side.

  “Watching over you or sending you to kids programs?”

  “Both,” I said.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Oh, yeah, baby!” Patrice ‘Dynamite’ Johnson, my new driver, clapped and laughed. The sharp sound of her connecting hands bounced off the walls of the apparatus bay. “This is the dream team right here.”

  Her green uniform looked fresh off the loom. As I jogged closer, I saw that the smoke eater emblem on her shirt – two crossed lances behind a dragon skull – had the glossy look of fresh embroidery. Where it had said Smoke Eater above her right breast the day before, it now said Driver. She stood next to Afu, who’d already stepped into his power suit.

  Behind them waited Cannon Truck 15. Its black storage bins were outfitted like every other smokie apparatus, but with the added artillery of a big-ass cannon on top, kind of like a fire department aerial ladder if the ladder could shoot dragons out of the sky. The cannons used to be awesome and lethal, able to level twelve story buildings. Now they were Sandman lasers like all the rest. The truck also had a smaller barrel, on the underside of the big one, which shot a metal chain net. It was manually cranked, which would be handy if it got hit with an EMP and lost power.

  I blew Patrice a kiss she snatched out of the air and tucked into a pocket that wasn’t there. “You got you a new uniform, Patrice?”

  “New clothes for a new promotion.” She turned around and wiggled her ass.

  “Enough of that shit,” I said. “We’ve gotta go.”

  “Alright, T.” Patrice smiled and hopped into the driver’s seat. “I mean, Captain Williams.”

  The truck’s engine snarled as Afu gave a thumbs up. “This is going to be fun.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say that would sound more like a captain than an ex-girlfriend, so I tucked in my lips and gave him a single nod. As usual, Afu didn’t catch anything amiss and climbed into the back seat with a shit-eating grin.

  I did a quick walk around of the truck, opening bins and looking over our equipment. The previous driver had done a great job keeping it clean and maintained. The purple and green lights, the black paint of the truck body, the conical length of the cannon, it all glistened. When I got to the front, I noticed a glossy black square in the center of the grill. I had never seen it on any of the rest of our fleet, and I knew Slayers and cannons inside and out.

  When I leaned in for a closer look, the truck’s sirens whooped. I must have jumped ten feet in the air.

  “Motherfucker!” I covered my ears and glared at Patrice through the windshield.

  “Sorry, Captain.” She wasn’t a damn bit sorry. She bounced in her seat, cackling. “I was just checking the audible warning signals.”

  “You ever do that again,” I said, “and the next audible warning signal is going to be the swift sound of my foot up your ass. Let’s go.”

  Patrice continued laughing.

  Opening my door to the awaiting captain’s seat, I hesitated. This was it. Placing my ass in that seat was officially taking the responsibility thrown at me. Thankfully, my body climbed into the rig before I could talk myself out of it.

  My door shut with an explicit click and Patrice zoomed us out of the bay and into the open air, where the sky was filling with fat clouds that looked like moldy cauliflower. I tried not to take them as a bad omen.

  “Maybe it’ll storm and we won’t have to do this stupid presentation,” I said.

  “Cappy?” Patrice asked. I was nowhere close to being comfortable with someone addressing me as Captain, or any of the cute shortenings of the title. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I guess that would help.”

  All smoke eater apparatus are equipped with a holoreader that receives alarms. It shows us where to go and sometimes they even send a short profile on the suspected type of dragon. Firefighters back in the old days had to memorize their districts.

  I poked at the device’s floating keys to get the Cub Scouts’ address.

  “What are your expectations of us, Captain Williams?” Afu asked from the back seat.

  “Don’t fuck up,” I said.

  After Patrice leaned over the steering wheel and laughed loud enough to break the windshield, I amended my answer.

  “Look, this is all new to me,”
I said. “I would have been happy staying a smoke eater the rest of my life. Money is good enough in any position and I didn’t want any of the headaches of supervising other people.”

  Patrice raised an eyebrow and took a few glances my way.

  “Yeah, even cool people like you. So, we’ll take every call individually and do what we do. You see something I need to know about, say something. We’re a team. I don’t want puppets waiting for me to pull on their strings. I know y’all and what you can do. We’ll be alright.”

  “Damn,” Patrice said. “She’s even sounding like a captain now, Afu baby.”

  “Well, hell yeah,” said Afu. “She sounded like a captain the whole time we were dating.”

  Don’t respond to that, I told myself. Instead, I told Patrice the directions to the Cub Scouts.

  If Patrice heard me, she didn’t acknowledge it. “Afu, you need a strong queen telling you what to do, anyway. I’m surprised your big ass can put your power suit on the right way.”

  “Hey, I’ve been doing this longer than you,” said Afu.

  “Just not as good, bro. That’s why I’m in the driver’s seat and you’re back there getting ready to be assaulted by a bunch of five-year-olds.”

  Afu laughed. “I’m never getting promoted. I don’t want to sit on my ass behind a wheel. I want to be in the action. You got me fucked up if you think I want anything less.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to set myself up for retirement. I’m going to find me a good man, have lots of babies. Maybe get a house out near one of those new settlements outside the city. Hell, I’ll even raise sheep.”

  “Why not chickens?” Afu asked. “Who the hell wants sheep? There are all kinds of stories about dragons eating people’s sheep.”

  Patrice shook her head hard and fast. “No way in hell. I hate birds. Especially chickens. And maybe the department will let me keep my power suit, so dragons won’t fuck with my farm.”

  This banter went on for the next thirty minutes, while I sat there trying not to listen to any of it.

  It was a Saturday, and the Cub Scouts met at a small metal building in the northern part of Parthenon City. When we pulled up, a large group of kids and a lone adult stood outside. The Cub Scout leader was a tired-looking woman in a gray sun dress and flip flops.

  Patrice turned on our emergency lights and hit the air horn a couple times. The kids went wild, breaking away from the adult and waving their tiny arms like limp noodles in the air.

  Patrice slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the oncoming horde. “Are these little bastards trying to get run over?”

  “Just park here,” I said.

  We hopped out and the kids immediately started talking all at once.

  “My daddy is a garbage man.”

  “Do you keep a pet dragon at your house?”

  “I want to drive the truck!”

  A taller kid, older than the others, way too old to be a Cub Scout, strolled up to the back of the group. “Are you guys in league with the po-po?”

  He wore a green t-shirt showing off the rapper, Daddy Doody. If nothing else told me this kid was a little shit, his taste in music sure did. He smirked, as if what he’d said was hilarious, but I didn’t understand what the hell he was getting at. I decided to ignore him.

  “Afu,” I said. “This is your show.”

  My smoke eater smiled proudly. Afu loved kids. I was sure he wanted at least four of his own. Our relationship had ended before we’d crossed that wobbly bridge, but it would have been one of many other nails in our coffin. I didn’t want kids. Never have. I would have gone and gotten my uterus scooped out if it didn’t cost so much. Plus, the procedure would have taken me out of dragon slaying for at least a month.

  “All right, everybody,” Afu said, raising his arms to get them all calmed down. “How are you doing?”

  All the kids shouted, “Good!”

  The older jerk in the back said, “Bored.”

  The Cub Scout leader took our arrival as an opportunity to lean against the chain link fence and puff on her bubble vape. She was going to be no help.

  “We’re the Ohio smoke eaters,” Afu said, “and we’re here today to talk to you about some important things you need to know.”

  “You guys came to my school,” one of the kids said. “You told us all about it.”

  In a mishmash of cute voices, the others shouted, “Me, too!”

  “Then this should be easy,” said Afu. “Now, first I want to talk about what you do if you’re in your house and you feel the ground shake.”

  “Get out of the house,” one of them responded.

  “That’s right. You want to get out of your house as quickly as possible. Dragons like to emerge inside homes. So if you’re outside you’re safer. You also want to talk to your parents about having a meeting place, where everyone knows to go. Where’s somewhere your family can meet up?”

  “The mailbox!”

  “Very good,” Afu said. “The mailbox is a great place to meet and make sure everyone is out of the house.”

  “Unless the dragon eats your parents.” The older kid snickered.

  The Cub Scout leader shook her head as she exhaled a blue bubble.

  The smaller kids whined, clearly upset at the thought of Mommy and Daddy dying upon the teeth of scalies.

  “Well, it’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Afu said, trying to console the younger scouts. “And if the house is smoky before you can get out, you want to do what?”

  “Get low to the ground!”

  “Yep,” Afu said. “Heat and smoke rise, so you want to get as low as you can while you’re making your way out of the house.”

  Oh, fuck. The older kid raised his hand.

  “You have a question?” Afu pointed to him.

  “Yeah, what happens if one of these refugee arsonists breaks into your house and locks you inside?”

  Afu looked like he’d been kicked in the nuts. “That’s not–”

  “And they burn you up. And all your toys.” The older kid was addressing the little ones, trying to scare them.

  It was taking all I had not to jump in and put the little bastard in his place.

  “That’s just scary stuff on the news,” Patrice said. “And we handle dragons.”

  The older kid pointed to my driver. “Why is she bald? Did a dragon burn her hair off?”

  I waved at the Cub Scout leader, trying to get her attention. She moved lazy eyes toward me.

  “You mind if I take this older one around the truck.”

  The woman flapped her hand. “He’s all yours.”

  “Come with me,” I told the Daddy Doody fan. Smiling like he’d earned a prize, the kid ran a greasy hand along the side of our truck. I led him to the other side while Afu started in on what to do if you see a wraith.

  “I’ve seen all this stuff before,” the kid said. “You guys come to my school every year.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Toby.”

  “Well, Toby, have you ever seen this?” I raised the door to the bin housing my power suit.

  “Duh. The dumb guy talking to the little kids is wearing one. It’s not that special.” He looked me up and down. “How do you get your big butt inside one?”

  I grinned, swallowing the scream that wanted to break out. Popping open a pocket on my power suit, I ejected a wraith remote and handed it to him. “Know what that is?”

  “No.”

  I grabbed his thumb and pressed it into the red button at the base. “Don’t let go of that. It’d be very bad for you.”

  “Why?” His question dripped with attitude, but he kept his thumb pressed to the button.

  “See, what you’re holding is a wraith trapping remote. The black button traps the ghost. Can you guess what the red button you’re pressing does?”

  His eyes widened.

  I nodded. “If you let go of that button, it’s going to release the wraith I caught earlier today. If that happens, I
’ll jump over this truck to get the other kids to safety. The other two smoke eaters will help me. I don’t think your Cub Scout leader will want to stick around. That’ll just leave you and this nasty dead thing out here to get to know each other better. Can you feel it buzzing under your thumb, just waiting to get out, biting and slashing anyone who’s around?”

  Toby swallowed and stared at the remote.

  “I don’t like you scaring the other kids,” I said. “I don’t know why you have such an attitude problem, and I frankly don’t care. Now, if you want me to take that remote from you and prevent an unnecessary bloody mess out here in the parking lot, you’re going to do what I tell you. For the rest of the presentation, I want you to be on your best, and I mean best, behavior, alright?”

  Toby said nothing. I smiled. “Now say, ‘Yes, ma’am” Toby trembled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Careful now.” I pressed my thumb to the button and pulled the remote away.

  His breath shook as if I’d just defused a bomb in front of him.

  “Now get back to the other scouts and remember what I said.”

  When he disappeared to the other side of the truck, I let go of the button. The remote’s display showed it empty of any wraiths.

  Fucking kids.

  I returned to where Afu was talking about never touching or playing with a dragon egg, to go straight to an adult and tell them about it. I doubted these kids would ever have to heed that warning. The enclosures had made it unlikely, and before that, wraiths guarding dragon ash heaps had dissuaded anyone from going on an egg hunt.

  Patrice leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Whatever you did to that kid, it worked. He’s shook.”

  I smiled and looked at Toby. He stood straight, listening attentively to everything Afu said.

  My holoreader rang and I climbed back into the captain’s seat of the truck to answer it. Again, Brannigan’s head appeared.

  “Ready for me to make your day?”

  “We’re back to killing scalies and no more of this Sandman bullshit?”

  “Nice try. Wrap up your thing with the Cub Scouts. OSAS is picking up seismic activity in Sandusky – God, I hate that name.”