Ash Kickers

by Sean Grigsby

  “He’s not getting into a car,” I said.

  Renfro hummed. “Nice night for a stroll?”

  We made the block, and Blithe passed us, now headed in the other direction. We parked across the street in a fire lane outside a twenty-four-hour gym.

  “This is going to be a long night,” Afu said.

  A black hover-van pulled up and three people wearing ski masks jumped out. Blithe was able to get out a blip of a shout when the masked men put a silencing bag over his head and threw him inside the van.

  “What the fuck!” I said.

  “Looks like we weren’t the only ones looking for Blithe,” said Renfro.

  “Does this mean he really is in a cult?” Afu asked.

  The van sped off.

  “No, but this means our job has gotten a shit ton bigger than surveillance. Follow that van, Renfro.”

  The van was speeding, but not so much that it would draw notice from any patrolling cop cars.

  “They’re taking the freeway to South Parthenon,” Renfro said. “You still want me to follow?”

  If we didn’t, and these masked people did something to Blithe, we could be charged with something. Negligence? Failure to Act? I’d feel like shit one way or another.

  “Yes,” I told Renfro. “Get in another lane until you see them taking an exit.”

  “Maybe these guys are the real cult and they’re trying to take Blithe out so he doesn’t draw attention to them.”

  “There’s no cult, goddamn it!” But now I wasn’t so sure. “Anyway, we won’t know shit until these creeps get to wherever they’re going.”

  “You going to call the cops in on this?” Renfro asked.

  I knew I should.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. This isn’t what we signed up for.”

  “Renfro, I’ll let you know when to call Rankin.

  Let’s just see where this goes.”

  The van exited the freeway and Renfro slowed to follow behind. I had him stop at the corner while the van zoomed farther down the street, turning onto a path leading to the abandoned lumber warehouse.

  “I don’t like this,” Afu said. “Creepy van. People in masks. Now a run-down warehouse. This is some horror movie shit.”

  “Says a guy who fights monsters for a living.” I tried to smile, but this was giving me a weird feeling too.

  “Dragons are easy,” Afu said. “People are the scary ones.”

  “Renfro, stay here. Give it ten minutes and then call the cops. Me and Afu are going to go get a better look.”

  “Aww man!” Afu leaned his head back in defeat.

  “I can do that, Cap,” Renfro said. “But are you sure you don’t want to wait until the cops get here first?”

  “If this is the cult the cops keep droning on and on about, I want to see it for myself. And you and I both know how slow PD response is. If Blithe is in danger, I want to stop it.”

  Renfro nodded. “All right then. As long as you aren’t just trying to be a hero.”

  I left my seat and waited in front of the SUV as Afu took his sweet ass time.

  “This is kind of exciting, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Sometimes I just don’t understand you,” said Afu.

  “Come on, you big wuss.”

  Afu sighed and followed me toward the warehouse. We had to follow the chain link fence surrounding the property for about a hundred feet before we came to the path leading in. The hover van had been left just outside a wooden door that looked like it had been repeatedly assaulted by termites and spray paint.

  Keeping low, we moved across the lot and stopped at the van. They’d locked it and no one was inside from what I could see. That left the warehouse itself.

  “Do we have to go in there?” Afu whispered.

  I drew my fingers across my throat and put them to my lips. Smoke eaters didn’t have any official hand signals, but I’m sure he understood that I was telling him to shut the fuck up.

  Outside the warehouse’s front door, a sign had been posted in red and white:

  WARNING! This property is protected by armed droids.

  Afu jabbed a worried finger at the sign, but I shooed it away. The sign had probably been put up when the warehouse was still open. Nothing to worry about.

  Removing my helmet, I put my ear to the door. Afu raised his brow, asking if I heard anything. I shook my head. No voices, no screaming Terrence Blithe, not even footsteps or a cough. I opened the door slowly to keep its creaking swing to a minimum.

  Pitch dark lay before us but I wasn’t about to turn on a flashlight and kill the stealth we’d been fortunate enough to have. Afu’s heavy footsteps would end that eventually.

  I stepped into the warehouse and Afu shoved his way in to stay at my side.

  That’s when the floor fell beneath us and we dropped like bowling balls. And it didn’t matter how silent I’d been before, because as I fell through the bottomless dark, I screamed and screamed and screamed.

  CHAPTER 29

  Darkness has a way of distorting time. Falling, too. So when you combine them, it can feel like a million eons while you drop to your death.

  But my ass landed on some kind of metal slide and I was zooming around curves before I fully realized what was going on. Afu’s giant feet kicked me in the head, and he was moaning as loud as I was screaming. By the time we’d reached the bottom of the slide, I’d composed myself enough to stop screaming and roll out of Afu’s way as he barreled off the track. A light was coming from somewhere, because I could actually see the floor in front of me. An electric chirping made me and Afu look up.

  Two droids stood over us.

  “Trespassing,” they said, pointing their arms at our heads. Laser guns sat on their robotic forearms, the barrels throbbing with green light, aching to be shot.

  “I knew we should have listened to that sign,” Afu said.

  I held my hands up so the droids could clearly see them with their digital blue eyes. “We’re smoke eaters. Just doing a precautionary sweep. We heard there might have been a dragon nearby.”

  The droids didn’t move, didn’t speak. All I needed was an opening and then I could blast them with my laser arm while Afu used his sword. But we were still on our asses and the droid’s had their weapons inches from our faces.

  “Oh, there are plenty of dragons down here,” a human voice said from behind the robots.

  A masked man walked toward us, carrying a laser lantern on the end of a stick. Three other people in black masks appeared behind him. They were carrying pistols instead of torches.

  “Thing is,” the man who’d spoken said, “there’s even more rats down here. On your feet, smokies. And out of those metal suits.”

  “What?” I didn’t know who the fuck this guy was, but I’d be damned if I’d be bossed around by some prick with a sock on his head.

  “I said get up and get out of those tuna cans!”

  Afu stood up before I did, but he was flexing his fists and looking to rip the man’s head off. Both the masked people and the droids aimed their weapons at him.

  “Don’t make us force you,” the leader said. I got to my feet and popped open my power suit.

  Afu shook his head. “Tamerica…”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “Do what they say.”

  With a groan, Afu unlocked his suit and stepped out. Two of the masked goons ran behind us and knocked the suits over.

  “Take their helmets, too,” the masked leader said. “We don’t want them calling for help.”

  Our helmets were ripped off. One of the creeps put mine on their head and tapped it with their pistol.

  The leader laughed. “You picked the wrong party to crash, Big Man and Little Girl. But maybe we can have some fun with this.”

  “What the fuck is going on here?” I asked. “The cops know where we are. They had us tail the guy you kidnapped. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  The others looked to th
eir leader, lowering their pistols an inch.

  That’s right, be worried, you dumb dickweeds.

  “Lady,” the leader said, “who do you think told us about ol’ Terry Blithe in the first place?”

  Never trust the police. Goddamn it, I knew this whole thing stunk, but I was just so eager to do the right thing.

  “So I’m guessing you’re not the arsonist cult,” I said.

  “We’re the ones who are going to make sure they don’t burn anything ever again. You and your soupedup dragon Slayers haven’t been able to do jack shit about it yet. And the army, hell, those guys are crazy!”

  In the dim light of the laser torch, I stared at the leader’s eyes poking out from the two, ragged holes in his mask, trying to figure out who he was.

  “Who are you people?” I asked.

  “Enough of this back and forth,” he said. “Move them to the pit.”

  Afu looked at me, no longer pissed, but worried. I was right there with him. Nothing called “The Pit” could ever be a good thing.

  They marched us down a dark path where rivulets of sawdust trickled onto my shoulder. There was brighter light and noise at the end of the path. We were somewhere deep under the warehouse, but these clowns had rigged it up to their twisted specifications, a fun house of horrors. A trapdoor and a slide? Who the fuck thinks of that?

  When we got to the larger area at the end of the path, I stopped so I wouldn’t fall off into “The Pit.” The room looked like an underground circus, full of other masked people stomping their feet on shoddy stands. A portable electric generator rumbled off to the side, powering yellow-tinted work lights that had been strung up to illuminate what lay in the center of the room.

  “The Pit” was a small circle that could have been a miniature version of FreeEnergy Stadium. Terrence Blithe stood below us, up against the wall, gripping it with both hands and moving his terrified face from one fist-shaking creep above him to the other. The masked audience was shouting, almost chanting, but none of them said the same thing. Some shouted, “Our city!” while others hollered at the top of their voices, “Burn ’em out! Burn ’em all out!”

  This whole damn scene was too crazy for my mind to comprehend. No doubt, I was scared shitless, but my fear had a conjoined twin in the form of unadulterated rage.

  The people at our backs shoved me and Afu into the pit.

  We landed on cold dirt. I was able to roll, smoothing the fall. Afu landed flat on his front.

  He coughed and brushed dirt from his face. “What the hell, man!?”

  I grabbed his arm and helped him up.

  Terrence Blithe scooted against the edge of the arena to get closer to us. “What’s going on? Please help me!”

  “Just relax,” I said. “We’ll get out of this.”

  What I really wanted to tell him was that we were in as much shit as he was. But public service workers don’t have that kind of luxury. We had to be the ones who remain calm. It can get really fucking annoying.

  “Why are they doing this?” Blithe asked.

  “You’re not in a phoenix cult are you?” Afu asked. “What?” Blithe said. “No! Wait, you mean they think I’m one of those arsonist people?”

  “If it makes you feel better,” I said, “they probably just don’t like you because you’re an immigrant.”

  “But I’m an American!”

  “A New Yorker. An immigrant to Parthenon City.” I looked at Afu. “You know who these assholes are, right?”

  Afu glanced at the churning bodies above us, who might have been foaming at the mouth if their masks weren’t concealing their faces. “It’s those PC First jokers.”

  I should have recognized that voice behind the mask; the way he’d said “rats.”

  “Brothers and sisters,” Duncan Sharp’s voice boomed over the rabble.

  He stood above us on some kind of rinky-dink podium, and I noticed that, below him, and directly in front of us, was some kind of doorway in the arena’s wall.

  “Brothers and sisters,” the leader said again until they’d all quieted down. “I thought we were going to have a nice time, gathering together and ridding this city of one more leech. But fate had other plans. If you’ll look into the pit below you, you’ll notice that we have two new visitors.”

  The masked crowd booed.

  “They came into our house,” the leader said, “wearing their fancy armored suits, wielding their high-tech weapons. I take that as a threat, don’t you?”

  Pissed-off cheers responded.

  “They say they’re smoke eaters, the same people who are supposed to protect us, not intimidate us. But they want to protect the people coming to our city, taking our food and healthcare. Clogging our streets with their filth. Look at them down there in the pit. They don’t look like smoke eaters to me. Do you know what they look like?” Sharp paused for effect. “They look like rats!”

  The crowd began chanting, “Rats, rats, rats,” over and over.

  Sharp raised his arms. “Let’s show them what we do to rats around here.”

  The door I’d spotted in the pit’s wall opened in front of us. Afu grabbed my arm as Blithe put himself behind us, using our bodies like a shield for whatever was coming out of the door.

  I focused on getting my breath under control while I searched the dark in front of me. Glowing green eyes appeared, blinking and staring back at me. Black smoke began to flow from the door, followed by a low, rumbling growl.

  Several of the masked assholes in the stands above us began to cough. They pulled out pocket respirators and secured them to their noses and mouths, having to lift the bottom of their masks to do so.

  “Blithe, cover your mouth with your shirt,” I shouted over my shoulder.

  It wasn’t ideal, but this was dragon smoke, and a thin bit of fabric was better than nothing. Whether Blithe covered his face or not, I didn’t know, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the door.

  A large, clawed foot shot out of the dark and landed with a heavy thud. It was emerald green, the scales glistening under the arena’s work lights. Next came a green snout and a head covered in white horns. The dragon snorted and jets of black smoke shot from its nostrils, filling the pit.

  Above us, several of the PCF people leaned over the edge of the arena with stun poles. The ends sparked with electricity, causing the scaly to growl and jerk its head away before cowering lower. It had firsthand experience with those poles. How many people had been where we stood, facing the same scaly?

  In an instant, the dragon shot out of the door. Blithe screamed through his shirt behind us, but Afu and I stood our ground. The scaly must have wanted a chase, because it stopped short and hunched down, trying to get a read on us.

  It was a wyvern, meaning it only had two legs. Its wings had been cut off, leaving only charred stumps where it had most likely cauterized the wounds itself. I slew dragons for a living and even I thought that shit was cruel.

  “Blithe,” I said. “Stay back and let us handle this.” “You don’t even have any armor!” he said.

  “He’s right,” Afu said. “We’re practically naked.”

  “Yeah, well, if this thing is going to eat us, I don’t want to make it easy.”

  The wyvern roared and dug its claws into the dirt. It charged. It snapped its jaws toward me, leaving its neck open for Afu to grab hold of. Heaving Afu a few inches off the ground, the wyvern tried to lift its neck and pull away. I began wailing on its head, dodging its teeth with every punch. Smoke blasted from its throat and into my face, but I inhaled it as easily as spring air and blew it back at the dragon.

  Afu grunted under the strain. “This approach isn’t going to last long.”

  “I don’t what else to do without our…”

  The wyvern’s slimy, green tail squirmed between Afu’s legs.

  “Watch out!” I screamed.

  The dragon’s tail snapped like a whip, slamming into Afu’s nether regions and sending him sailing into the far wall of the arena. I dove out
of the way as the scaly did a death roll in the dirt, blasting fire from its mouth indiscriminately.

  “My nuts,” Afu said in a puny, high-pitched voice.

  I sat him up and grabbed each side of his face. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live.”

  The PC First assholes were chanting, “Burn the rats!”

  I looked up and glared at Duncan Sharp. His head bobbed up and down as if he was laughing under his dingy mask and respirator.

  I’d give him something to laugh about.

  “How strong are you really, Afu?” I asked. “Huh?” He scrunched his face, annoyed that I wasn’t more concerned about his balls.

  I made like I was kissing his cheek and whispered my plan into his ear.

  When I pulled away, Afu shrugged. “I’ll give it try.”

  Behind us, Blithe was cowering where we’d left him, and the wyvern had just taken notice. It was gearing up for another charge, so I fought against my exhaustion and ran.

  Jagged teeth came inches from Blithe’s head before I slammed into the wyvern. I hadn’t hit it hard enough to knock it over, but it was enough to save Blithe a decapitation. I raised my arm to follow up with a punch, but the dragon twisted its neck around and bit at my hand. I flinched and nearly fell over. I turned and ran toward Afu who’d ripped off one side of the arena door, holding it like a shield.

  “Now!” I shouted.

  Afu dropped into a squat and placed the metal sheet on top of him, creating a make-shift ramp. The PC First mob shouted chants of murder as I hopscotched over flames that flew at my heels and ran onto the metal door. The wyvern followed. With a jump, I landed as hard as I could onto the edge of the ramp. Afu helped to heave from the bottom, and like a catapult, we launched the wyvern, still blasting flames, into the stands.

  Duncan Sharp’s mask caught fire. He screamed as he beat his palms against his burning face, fumbling through the crowd to get away from the dragon. The other assholes weren’t as lucky as their boss. The wyvern flattened two of them as it rolled over to get to its feet, then snagged another guy in its mouth. The one being eaten kicked their legs violently as if it would do any good. Once the dragon bit down, it put a stop to those dancing feet. A few chews later and there was no more of the masked person, legs or anything else.