Ash Kickers

by Sean Grigsby

  “You look a little young for a captain,” he said to me. “What did you do to get promoted so fast?”

  “Me?” I said, with a smile full of venom. “I’ve got a great ass and know how to kick ass, too.” I bent to the side, overdoing a look at Calhoun’s rear end. “You don’t seem to have much of one, so you must be great at sucking dick.”

  “Cap,” Afu said, clearing his throat. “We got to head out, yeah?”

  “That sounds like a great plan,” Calhoun said. “Go protect us all from the scary monsters rising from beneath. Meanwhile, we’ll be doing the grunt work, making sure every citizen here supports the greater good.”

  With a grand draw of his arm, Calhoun let the man and his son go as his soldiers cursed under their breath and hiked it back to their tarantula-looking shitmobiles.

  I turned the other way, broke through the line of smoke eaters. They’d been behind me, but they sure as hell didn’t have my back. “Thanks for the support, guys.”

  “That’s not our jurisdiction, T,” said Renfro. “I can handle flames and dragons, but I can’t live through a laser to the head.”

  They all followed me to Cannon 15, where I opened the captain’s door, but didn’t get inside.

  I huffed and turned back to the others with hands on my hips. It was something Sergeant Puck would have done right before giving us all an important speech.

  “The scalies didn’t burn away our decency, right? I mean, they can take our houses and ash, the dirt we stand on, but I thought we were at least upholding some basic principles in this dump of a country. The shit that just happened was wrong. And you all know it. This notion that it’s good to sacrifice freedom for security, it’s been kicked around since before Brannigan’s old ass was born, and I’m tired of seeing it thrown at us again and again every time something bad happens. That’s not us. And now we’ve got the cops having us follow people around like some fucking Gestapo agents. What’s happened?”

  I didn’t expect an answer. I was just regurgitating my mind, no, my heart onto the pavement between me and the other smoke eaters. And I was too tired to cry.

  “Better us than those assholes back there,” said Afu. “Ay, Tamerica?”

  “Yeah,” I said, beginning to nod. “Let’s wrap this phoenix shit up so we can run these army bastards out of town.”

  Afu pulled me to the side as the others went their separate ways. “This might not be the right time, but…”

  “But what?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well… we don’t really have anything to do tonight. Kind of in limbo, you know? So, I was thinking, how about that date?”

  CHAPTER 27

  “Fish out, fish it out!” Afu moved his arms as if he was the one holding the net, like he could help steer my hands to catch the slippery shrimp at the bottom of the tank.

  “Just give me a damn minute!” I said.

  I’d worn a red dress, one Afu had bought for me back when we were an item, and some matching pumps I’d borrowed from Mama. It wasn’t the most ideal attire for bending over any fish tanks, trying to catch our seafood dinner, but I’d forgotten Afu had mentioned it was that type of restaurant. I was better at catching dragons anyway – in any outfit.

  Afu had shown up in a blazer, jeans, and solid gray t-shirt. We’d met outside the restaurant, McCaffrey’s Catch ’n’ Fry, because I thought him picking me up would make it too much of a date.

  The squirmy shrimp I’d been hunting ran into a corner where I nabbed him with the net. “Gotcha, you little bastard.”

  I scooped it out and dropped it into the metal basket the restaurant had provided.

  “This might take all night,” Afu said, as I handed him the net. “I can’t eat just one shrimp.”

  “Go for a lobster. They’re way slower.”

  “Yeah, but they cost way too damn much.”

  “Then maybe you should have taken me to McDonald’s.”

  He shrugged and began going for one of the bigger lobsters.

  After thirty minutes of failing to grab enough food for dinner, we requested the staff do the catching for us and took our seats near the big window overlooking Parthenon’s midtown.

  Afu took a sip of water. “How can we catch a phoenix if we can’t even catch a crustacean?”

  “Maybe we should have brought the others here, made it a training exercise.”

  He reached out and grabbed my hand on top of the table. “I just wanted this to be the two of us.”

  Pulling my hand away, I pointed to the black candle on our table. “I like the color choice. Most fancy restaurants like this have white candles. Nice touch.”

  “I’m worried about Harribow,” he said.

  And I really wished he hadn’t. It was already taking all I had not to feel like shit for having a night out while yet another one of our people lay in a bed surrounded by propellerheads.

  “I’m worried about Brannigan,” I said. “And everybody else who had the curate. How do we protect them?”

  “By killing the phoenix.”

  “Yeah, but how do we do that? We can’t just let everyone burn. We told them the dragon blood would save them. Now, it’s just another thing to wipe us all out.”

  “You think that’s really the thing going on?” He stuffed a slice of bread into his mouth and ate the whole thing in one bite. “Is that why we’re not going crazy and bursting into flames. How can that bird make the blood do that?”

  This really wasn’t the conversation I wanted to be having.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s like a detonation, I guess. It was only supposed to be for the dragons, but we fucked it all up. I mean, Yolanda has always said we can do what we do because we have a little dragon DNA. I always thought it was bullshit.”

  “So… non-smokies don’t have, like, a biological filter?”

  “You’re getting too scientific for my pay grade. Either way, we’ll get this figured out.” I grabbed a slice of bread from the basket and dragged a buttered knife across its surface.

  “This phoenix has gotten me thinking, though,” he said.

  “Hmm?” I kept my eyes on the bread, raking the butter here and there like a Zen garden.

  “About new beginnings. Old things being reborn. Like… you and me.”

  I dropped my knife.

  “You know,” he said. “How things can burn down but come back to life. It’s kind of beautiful.”

  Setting the bread aside, I cleared my throat. “I know you’re trying to be sweet or romantic or whatever, but it’s probably not the best analogy to use right now.”

  “Oh.” He looked out the window. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “I’m tired, Afu. I was so burnt out with catching dragons. I wanted something more exciting. But like they say, be careful what you wish for, because I got more than I can handle.”

  “But you’re doing great. I wouldn’t want any other captain.”

  I nodded. “That’s right. I’m your captain. And this…”

  Waving my hand over the table, even as the waiter brought over our seafood, I realized had been a mistake.

  “I have to go, Afu.”

  “Go? Our food just got here. I was going to take you to the arcade.”

  A lump formed in my throat. Tears stung at the corners of my eyes. I felt like shit. I wanted to have a good time with Afu. I wanted to be open to raising our relationship from the dead. But I just couldn’t. I suddenly felt the weight of everything, like it had always been there, but I only just figured out that it was suffocating me. Like a frog put in a pot, the heat turning up ever so slowly till the damn thing is boiled.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and left him there at the table.

  I slammed the door of my parents’ house and stomped up the stairs to my bedroom.

  “Tammy?” My mama called from the living room. “Are you okay?”

  No, I wasn’t okay. And I sure as hell didn’t want to talk about it.

  I flung myself onto
the bed and buried my face into a pillow. Blindly, I grabbed the remote to the holostereo and kept hitting buttons, surfing through music: a smooth jazz R&B groove, a dark rock song about selling your soul for love. Other beats, other melodies, searching for the right tune to drown myself in. None of them fit. They all just pissed me off, so I turned the stereo off and screamed into the pillow until the silence of my room won out.

  Three knocks came from my door before it opened.

  “Tamerica,” my mama said. “Can I come in?”

  I stayed still. After a few seconds, the weight of Mama’s body sank onto the edge of my bed.

  “Did your date go bad?”

  I turned over, showed Mama my red eyes and wet cheeks.

  “Oh, baby,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s too much, Mama. The world is crumbling and everybody expects me to keep going. To lead them. I’m supposed to be strong. I’m supposed to fight the bad stuff. But I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. You’re my girl. You can do anything.”

  “You’re not helping!”

  My daddy called from the first floor. “What the hell is going on up there?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Mama called back. “Finish your robot show.”

  I closed my eyes and let the tears fall wherever they wanted. Mama didn’t say anything for a long time. But I could hear her breathing. She began rubbing a hand up and down my arm like she used to when I was a little girl.

  “I remember when you were in fourth grade,” she said. “You were always a big girl, but always so beautiful and happy. But this one day you came home crying. They were having a field day the next week and some mean little boy told you that you’d never win the footrace because of your weight.”

  “Charlie Gunther,” I said. I’d heard the little bastard had grown up to die on E-Day.

  “I never remembered his name,” Mama said. “But what I do remember is coming to your room, just like now. I wiped your tears and you told me all about it. Do you remember what I said to you?”

  I vaguely remembered. Keeping my mouth shut, so I wouldn’t wail, I lay there waiting for her to tell me.

  “I told you that you were the strongest, most resourceful creation on God’s green earth, and that you could do anything that you put your mind to. I told you that giving up would only make that little boy right, and that if you gave it your best, you could have that mean little punk choking on your dust. And do you remember what happened after that?”

  “I trained with everything I had, ran every day. When we had the race, I smoked that bastard and everybody else.”

  “You came home with the trophy,” Mama said. “And I told you to never, ever forget what you did. And I guess I’m here tonight to remind you. You were born special. You were called to protect people who can’t protect themselves. Nobody said it was going to be easy, baby, but let me tell you something: my daughter, my Tamerica, doesn’t give up.”

  I sat up and hugged my mama. I cried some more, but this time it was because a determination had seized me and I told myself I was never going to give in. Not to the phoenix, the dragons, or anybody else. I soaked my mama’s shoulders in tears, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “Thank you, Mama.”

  “Sink or swim, baby.” She patted my back, the way only mamas can. “Sink or swim.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The police officer at the front desk shot a blast of cold air into his face from the tiny fan gun in his hand. It wasn’t doing much for him; poor guy was basically raining onto his holodesk. Fat drops flew from his forehead and chin, sailing through hovering digital keys and splashing against the screen. The sweat typed out gibberish.

  “Damn this summer,” the officer said. “Worst one I can remember. Sorry, our air conditioning is being repaired.”

  I looked to Afu and Renfro at either side of me and shrugged, not feeling whatever heat was punishing the cop and everyone else in the building. “We’re smoke eaters.”

  “Lucky you,” he said, wiping away the hologram keyboard like it was vapor in the air. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re here to see Detective Rankin,” I said.

  “Oh, right, right, right.” The officer stood and put a half-eaten burrito in his mouth. He gave us a summoning wave and mumbled over his food. “He’s out back. Follow me.”

  The officer led us past tired looking human police at their desks and a couple of droids that were doing twice the work in half the time, typing up fifty-page reports in less than a minute. One day we were going to have a droid-novelist and no one would be able to stop him.

  After a long walk down a short hallway, we came to a large blue door that looked more like a loading gate. The officer pressed his thumb to a pad and the door lifted outward.

  Rankin stood there, puffing on a bubble vape, but quickly popped the green orb he’d blown into the air and, like a hot-heeled Houdini, swapped it out with a metal toothpick.

  “Oh, you’re here,” Rankin said.

  “Eight o’clock, like you said.” I shook his hand.

  The desk clerk swallowed some of his chorizo and waved as he walked back inside. “I’ve got more pounds to shed sitting in this goddamned inferno.” The loading door closed and now it was just the detective and us smoke eaters under an orange street light behind the tall, blue building the cops called home.

  “Where’s the other captain and her crew?” Rankin asked.

  “They’re short a guy,” Renfro said. “Captain Williams asked them to work on looking into any phoenix sightings while we do this thing for you.”

  I gave our surroundings one more glance. Felt like Jack the Ripper would pop out from behind a trash can. “So what’s with the secret squirrel shit, Rankin? Why are we out here?”

  “It’s just the few of us who know about this little operation. I don’t want the press getting wind of it and I sure as shit don’t want to hear about all the legal hoohaw from any desk riders.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache coming on. “Are you saying you conned us into something illegal?”

  “No, no.” Rankin rolled his metal toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Well, not really.”

  “Good lord, Ralph,” Renfro said.

  “Mayor’s approved it,” Rankin held his hands up in defense.

  “That doesn’t mean shit to me,” I said. “She also approved the army to roll in here and rough up innocent people.”

  “And I’m trying to prevent more of that,” Rankin said. “That’s why I came to you first. I’m stretched thin and out of options. And more than likely this isn’t going to produce any results, so you have nothing to worry about.”

  I groaned. “Just tell us what to do.”

  “Alright,” Rankin said. “Pull out your holoreader.”

  He sent a file from his device to mine. Afu and Renfro squeezed in beside me to get a look. A white man’s picture appeared in the air. He was somewhere in his twenties, fresh-faced and probably grew up in a cul-de-sac. He looked like many things, but a cult member wasn’t one of them. Then again, neither did any of the other supposed arsonists.

  Rankin pointed his toothpick at the man’s face. “His name is Terrence Blithe.”

  “He looks harmless to me,” said Afu.

  Rankin shrugged. “He just moved here from New York. He’s got a record, but only some minor protesting stuff, nothing I’d normally worry about, except he’s also some kind of whiz with pyrotechnics. He did all of the fireworks for New York’s big events. Plus, he also recently received a dragon blood infusion and likes to attend group meetings for his various interests. I mean, a lot of meetings. Like, he has an addiction to them. Too bad there’s no such thing as a Groupaholics Anonymous.”

  “That doesn’t sound like enough to go on,” I said. “And everybody loves fireworks. How did you find out so much about him?”

  Rankin rubbed the back of his neck. “We have our ways.”

  “Never t
rust the police,” I said under my breath.

  “Are you sure you want us doing this, Ralph?” Renfro said. “If this blows up in our face…”

  “You’re just going to keep an eye on Blithe, okay? Look at it this way, if you’re right about there not being a cult, then we can move on and you can tell me you told me so. Oh, and I should tell you not to engage him, unless it’s to save somebody’s life. Fair enough?”

  I huffed. “Alright, where can we find him?”

  “So what’s the more bullshit job?” Afu asked me as we sat, wearing our power suits, and crammed inside an SUV the police department had provided. “Nabbing dragons alive or this?”

  “This,” I said, staring down the street at the community center Terrence Blithe had entered forty-five minutes before. “At least with the dragons we didn’t have to wait around for them to finish their Art of Wood Carving class.”

  “I always thought about taking a cooking class,” Renfro said.

  Afu hummed. “Me and Tamerica went to one about a year ago. It was fun.”

  I glanced at Renfro out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to make a face.

  The cooking class had been fun. Afu and I had made ravioli with alfredo sauce, which confused the instructor, who’d told the class to use marinara. That’s just what we were like, especially together – always coloring outside the lines.

  I kicked the floorboard. “This is so stupid.”

  “Class is letting out,” Renfro said.

  I turned and watched the clusters of people making their way down the community center steps. Most of them were older ladies, so it was easy to spot our prey.

  “Okay,” I said. “There he is.”

  “I still think it’s going to be pretty obvious he’s being followed,” Afu said. “This SUV is bright white.”

  “That’s why we have the best driver in the department behind the wheel. You can be covert, right?”

  “I guess,” Renfro said.

  He waited until Blithe had walked around the corner and started the SUV. We eased into a slow speed until we came to a red light. Blithe kept walking in the dark by himself