Highfire

by Eoin Colfer

  That much-needed minute was not forthcoming, however, as no sooner had the sonic vibration ceased than someone had hooked their fingers beneath the inverted gunwale and begun to heave.

  Someone, thought Vern. Three guesses.

  No normal human would be capable of lifting the boat, but Vern got the feeling that this woman would find the strength somewhere—like it was a tree trunk and he was her baby pinned underneath.

  And the momma was hell-bent on killing the baby.

  So not exactly your normal tree trunk–baby scenario.

  Vern could feel the gunk sinking into his pipes.

  Couple more seconds is all I need to be battle-ready.

  Granted, it would be a very short battle—no aerial antics or anything showy, just a quick burst. But it appeared that even a few more seconds were not in the cards, because the boat lifted with the groaning reluctance of a mouth opening for the dentist. Swamp glow crept into the gap, and Vern could see the oil on his scales trickling through the grooves.

  Come on, gunk. Do your job.

  With a final heave and a childbearing shriek, Jewell Hardy pushed the cruiser past the point of no return, revealing a prostrate Vern slathered with the oil from Bodi’s busted barrels.

  “Just a second,” said Vern. “I’ll be right with you.”

  “Death don’t wait in line,” said Jewell Hardy, which had a nice ring to it.

  And to be fair to the girl, with half her face hanging off and blood drenching her torso, she did seem like some class of a harbinger, and Vern was inclined to believe that this moment really was his last when Hardy was struck from behind with an oar and the blow caused her to momentarily hunch over.

  “What now?” she said. “Just what the fuck now?”

  And there was Elodie Moreau come from the shack, trying to help out, putting her own self in harm’s way for her son’s boss.

  “You just leave that old dragon be,” she said. “Ain’t you got no respect for endangered species?”

  Which handed Jewell Hardy her comeback on a plate. “Lady,” she said, shrugging off the blow, “you are something of an endangered species yourself.”

  Elodie went for another blow with the oar, but Hardy caught it and knocked the blade against Elodie’s forehead. Squib’s momma crumpled to the grass beside Bodi, where they lay like spent lovers.

  “Nighty night, sweethearts,” said Jewell. “Back in a sec.”

  She turned to the dragon and said, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mister Vern.”

  “Ain’t no problem,” said Vern, and sparked up.

  Jewell Hardy must have seen the spark because she endeavored to remove herself from the literal line of fire. Most of her made it, too, but not quite enough to save her life. Vern’s blast of howling flame charred her to cinders below the waist, and her heart had given up the ghost before she hit the mud.

  I got enough juice for one more blast, thought Vern. And I know just the recipient.

  SQUIB DROPPED THE grenade launcher and thought about his favorite book as he surfed on a keel plate that moonlit summer swamp night. The book was The Princess Bride, and the part was where one guy says to the other guy following a series of barely credible events how “inconceivable” might not mean what he thought it meant.

  Yup, thought Squib, though mostly he was screaming.

  The rocket-induced wave propelled him bodily toward the boat he’d just tried to sink and dumped him gasping like a fish on the deck. The boat took the shock, and the excess water sluiced out through bilge ports, but in spite of his name, Squib was too hefty to squeeze through one of them bilge ports and instead lay blinking the scum from his eyes.

  “Pennies from heaven,” said a voice. “Inconceivable.”

  Hooke is alive, and he can read my mind, thought Squib, and he wasn’t one whit surprised.

  HOOKE LIKED TO believe himself godless, but when nature dumped the kid on his deck, he couldn’t help thinking that some dark force was working in his favor and therefore an opposite force must surely exist.

  “Pennies from heaven,” he said. “Inconceivable.”

  The kid was a sorry sight, all mud-slicked and bashed up by recent events, but that didn’t inspire any feelings of sympathy in Hooke. What he thought was, Enough of this screwing around. No more strategy. I’m just gonna kill my way to the end of this situation.

  And so he grabbed at Squib. “C’mere, kid.”

  The kid backpedaled along the deck, but there wasn’t really anywhere he could go besides into the water, and Hooke aimed to close down that option.

  I’ll shoot him, he thought, but then, No, best not, not in an inflatable boat.

  “Let’s go, boy,” he said. “I got things to do.” And he bent low with grabby hands and dug his strong fingers into Squib’s lapels.

  No, not lapels. Some kind of crackly hide.

  “Is this—?” said Hooke. “Are you wearing a dragon suit?”

  The nine-fingered boy showed some dexterity and stuck a thumb in the middle of the granny knot securing the suit around his waist. With one jerk the knot unraveled, which surprised Hooke almost as much as the existence of the suit itself.

  “Well, if that don’t beat all. David fucking Copperfield on a stick.”

  Squib slid between his legs and was gone over the side so fast that all Hooke could do was chuckle.

  “Gators will get him,” he said, but he didn’t give much weight to his own words. The darned kid had as many lives as fingers. Like a fucking roach.

  Then again, I killed roaches before.

  Jing Jiang climbed down off the prow. There were tears welling in her eyes. “I lost Timberlake,” she said weepily, and it took Hooke a second to catch on.

  “Your weapon?”

  “‘Weapon’?” said Jiang. “‘Weapon’? Timberlake was a friend of mine. Timberlake was a friend of the whole damn country.”

  Over her shoulder, Hooke saw fire on the island and thought, Uh-oh. We awakened the beast.

  And he draped the dragon skin over his shoulders.

  “I lost Timberlake,” screamed Jing Jiang, “and you’re playing dress-up?”

  Hooke pulled his Vern hood over his eyes, thinking, I must look like a big goddamn devil.

  “Hail Satan,” he said. “I’m gonna kill Vern the old-fashioned way.”

  And then he followed Squib overboard.

  Hooke didn’t mean it—not about going overboard; that was on purpose.

  And not about killing Vern; he absolutely meant that. That was an if it’s the last thing I ever do kinda statement.

  About Satan. He didn’t mean it about “Hail Satan.”

  Regence Hooke worshipped no one but his own self.

  VERN MANAGED A three-second blast.

  His aim was a little erratic, shearing the Irish moss right off a row of cypress over on Honey Island, but at least one final second of dragon flame landed on Hooke’s boat, melting it and anybody on it to a memory. One second might not sound like much, but it’s a long time to be on fire, as Jing Jiang might have testified to if she hadn’t been so incinerated. In fact, in the name of honesty, truer to say that Jiang wasn’t incinerated as such, because Vern’s final second was a bit breathy, as the last second often is, so the temperature dipped considerably, meaning that Jing Jiang was actually asphyxiated by melted plastic rather than burned outright, which was not really any comfort to the sniper.

  Dragon flame was clean. Being cocooned in liquefied plastic? Not so much.

  Vern kept on pumping till his molars sparked like an empty Zippo; then he keeled over into the mud and thrashed a little like he was making a swamp angel.

  Bodi Irwin, trying to attend to Elodie, had something to say about the thrashings. “Vern, come on, dude. I been shot here, and Elodie’s out cold. Quit spasming. You’re tail-lashing me.”

  “Show some gratitude, Green Day,” said Vern, though he did calm down with the tail. “I saved your hippie ass. And you ain’t dying, in case you was wondering. If you was dy
ing, you would be gone already. Plus you’re talking up a storm.”

  “It ain’t hardly a storm, stringing a few sentences together,” argued Bodi. “And you ain’t exactly keeping mum your own self.”

  Vern snorted. “You was afraid of me a minute ago. I miss those days.”

  “Yeah, well, a ruptured torso puts things in perspective.”

  Vern patted his stomach, which was now concave. “Perspective, Green Day? From which perspective ain’t a dragon scary?”

  “I’m still scared, Vern, but I’m more anxious.”

  Vern sniggered. “About Elodie?”

  Bodi elbowed the dragon. “Screw you.”

  “She’s a hell of a woman, if you like that species.”

  Bodi picked the hair from Elodie’s forehead, taking a peek underneath. “This ain’t the time, Vern. I been shot. You’re close to a skeleton, and Elodie’s knocked senseless.”

  “Check on her then,” said Vern. “Lemme take a second here, then I’ll retrieve our boy.”

  Bodi had a barman’s experience with checking on casualties, so was soon satisfied that at least one of them wasn’t going to die anytime soon, though Squib’s momma would have a bruise the size of a lily pad and could probably do with a couple of staples to the bridge of her nose.

  “You see what happened to Squib?” he asked the dragon.

  Vern hiked himself up on his elbows, thinking there was probably more oil underneath the Pearl cruiser or in the swamp pools hereabouts, and if he could just swallow a few quarts . . .

  “He went in the water. After that I was busy getting beat on.”

  “Maybe you should take a look-see now?”

  “Yeah. I surely would, if you could stop detaining me with conversation.”

  Bodi did not rejoin, preferring to lie back beside Elodie and put pressure on his own wound. The Lord knew he had thought about them lying parallel like this, but without the bullet hole and lily pad bruise.

  “Guess I’ll take a look-see then,” said Vern, rolling onto his stomach. “Might have to drag this old carcass.”

  But he never had to drag the old carcass because Squib came lurching out of the water by the splintered remains of the landing.

  “Momma?” he called. “Momma? Vern?”

  “Heh,” said Vern. “You ain’t even in the circle of trust, Green Day.”

  Then he raised an arm weakly. “Yeah. Everyone’s alive, Squib. I done saved ’em all. You shoulda seen me.”

  “The alligators look like sleeping turds,” said Squib, sniffling.

  It was plain that the boy was close to all-out bawling.

  “I wanna hug my momma in just a second,” he said.

  “Just a second”? wondered Vern. Why the delay?

  Squib squatted down, elbows on knees with the loose joints of childhood, which was pretty graceful, and then ruined the effect by throwing up a quart of swamp water onto the keel of Bodi’s inverted cruiser. It was one of those effortless pukes, no painful retches: just open mouth and unleash the torrent.

  “Shit, boy,” said Vern. “You musta gone in with both ends wide-open.”

  “I been thrown in twice,” said Squib. “My insides ain’t nothing but swamp.”

  Vern had to laugh. Nothing funnier than watching a youngster throw up. It was a shame Squib hadn’t been drinking, as then the dragon could’ve delivered a lecture, too. But puking would have to do.

  “Get it out, son.”

  Squib wiped his mouth. “Nah, I’m done.”

  “You sure? Sometimes there’s a round two.”

  But Squib did not oblige, and instead, Vern was forced to deal with the uncomfortable truth that he was lying exposed out in the open in the aftermath of an epic shit storm with the Feds one county south keeping their eyes peeled for exactly this class of a blip on the thermals.

  Highfire, son, he thought to himself, you don’t wanna stop being mythical and start being real.

  This was surely true, as being real was only one step away from being extinct. Lying prostrate in the mud with holes in his wings and a head wound bubbling on his forehead, Vern had to admit that the one step between him and extinction was feeling like a baby step this fine morning as the sun threatened to push through over the gulf.

  “Momma,” said Squib. “Momma—your face . . .”

  “That looks bad,” said Vern, “but it’s cosmetic—”

  And then things got balls-nasty one more time because it looked like the Swamp Thing was coming out of the river. But it wasn’t the Swamp Thing; it was Regence Hooke wearing Vern’s skin like a cloak, limbs all blackened where they poked out.

  Vern’s response to this apparition was to unleash his junk and take an arcing piss.

  The Swamp Thing sloughed off the algae and weed fronds to become, of course, Regence Hooke, blackened and blistered, but infuriatingly, undeniably alive.

  HOOKE HAD FELT the heat of Vern’s dragon fire moments earlier as he leaped from the RIB, but not as severely as he might have without Vern’s own skin to protect him. Even so, his pants were frizzled away, and his hands scorched black.

  Coulda been a whole lot worse, Regence, he told himself. A dragon suit? Fuck me.

  Hooke wasn’t the greatest of swimmers, but he plugged away, dragging himself through the murk-of-dawn swamp, trying to ignore the logjam of dazed alligators off his port side.

  That’s one for the Discovery Channel, he thought. Shit, maybe I should board one of those brutes and paddle ashore.

  But he didn’t want to risk waking the big lizards. It would be a shame to be eaten by a gator on the way to beat up a dragon.

  Anyways, it wasn’t more’n two pulls before his boots touched down and all Hooke had to do then was negotiate the submerged tree knuckles and dips of the swamp bed on his way to shore. He kept himself low, just peeking out enough to breathe. His sopping attire killed any buoyancy he might have had, so it was easy to keep himself mostly hidden. He saw Squib, that little pain in his ass, crawl ashore and throw his guts up. He saw the first rays of slanting morning sun catch Vern on the snout. That boy was tuckered the hell out and couldn’t even manage a hug for his little familiar. And there was Bodi Irwin, all shot to hell. He might make it or he might not, but either way he wasn’t up for fisticuffs right at the moment.

  This is your chance, Regence, he told himself. This right here is the golden opportunity people are always talking about.

  Sure, his Delta Force plan had gone completely ass-ways, but here was a shot at redemption.

  Hooke counted to five, then waded ashore.

  Squib never heard Hooke coming up behind him, being too busy boo-hooing over his precious momma. But Hooke knew the little seven-toed bastard would be like a gnat if he wasn’t swatted, so he improvised a move, one of those maneuvers that he just knew was gonna work out before he even set himself in motion.

  He could visualize it.

  This is gonna be cool, he thought, and reached one of his massive hands beneath the gunwale of Bodi’s boat. Making sure to lift with his knees, he hauled the craft maybe three feet up on one side, then whistled. “Hey, kid.”

  Squib left off his bawling for long enough to check out the whistle, at which point Hooke palmed him under the boat and dropped it on him like a coffin lid: the second time in as many minutes the cruiser had been used as a prison.

  “Oh-ho,” he crowed, “sa-weet. Whaddya say, Vern?”

  The dragon’s response to this was to take an epic piss.

  “What the hell you doing, Vern?” asked Hooke. This wasn’t no way for his nemesis to go out, pissing on his friends.

  “You make me nervous, Constable Hooke,” replied the dragon, “and when I’m nervous, I pee.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Hooke, not really buying it, suspecting something. “You pee.”

  He peered around, looking for the blindside move, but everything seemed clear. The boy was banging on the hull, yelling about his momma and doing damage to his own eardrums. Bodi Irwin was bleeding out, and pr
etty Elodie Moreau sure wasn’t pretty no more. As for the mighty Vern, he was on his ass, pissing on Bodi and Elodie.

  “You squirt away, lizard. Either you let it out now, or I’m surely gonna beat it outta you.”

  Bodi, finding a smidge of gumption somewhere, started pawing at the shotgun by his side.

  “No, sir,” said Hooke, snatching the weapon away and checking the load. Empty. “I am done with inconveniences. You just lie still, and I promise to kill you quick.”

  “Ain’t you got no soul, Regence?” Bodi rasped, his face cherry-red with indignation. “This here is the last of his kind. You wanna be the man who robbed the world of magic?”

  Hooke spat in the mud. “Magic? Magic, old man? Your ‘magic’ is ass-deep in swamp mud pissing on your flank. I think the world can survive just fine without that kind of enchantment.”

  This was a good point, and as much as Bodi blustered and rasped, he came up short regarding an answer.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Hooke. He cast around, looking for something in the blossoming light of a summer morning, the sun bleeding into the sky from out on the gulf and mosquitoes calling it a night.

  “Aha,” he said, like a movie psycho who’s just come upon the biggest knife in the kitchen. But it wasn’t a knife he’d discovered but the top half of Jewell Hardy, which was bled pale in the scrub.

  “Shit, Vern,” he said, peeling off her weighted gloves. “You done a number on this girl. I liked her, too, so that’s coming out of your ass.”

  “Sure, Hooke,” said Vern, whose tank was apparently empty. “You’re gonna be the one. After all these years, it’s gonna be Regence Hooke. Dream on, Constable.”

  Hooke tugged the gloves on as far as they would go on his massive hands. “A little O. J., right? I know. But still, it should be enough to do you in, Vern. You ain’t got nothing left. No fire, no flight. Shit, you don’t even got no piss anymore.”

  Vern grinned weakly, and blood bubbled behind his teeth. “I got one thing, shitface.”

  Hooke set himself up, planting his feet on Vern’s wings, squatting low and snapping off a right hook to Vern’s jaw.

  “What’s that, lizard? What’s the one thing? You ain’t gonna say ‘friends,’ are you?” Hooke laughed. “Because I’d say your friends are just about as fucked as you. Five seconds after I beat your head off, I’m gonna take care of them, and what’s more, it’s gonna look like you was responsible. I’ll be a goddamn hero, sheriff of whatever goddamn ward I choose. Shit, I might even run for mayor.”