Smoke Eaters

by Sean Grigsby

  “No, I’m OK.”

  “I’ve got beer.”

  That gave me second thoughts. “Well, shit, I’ll take a beer.”

  After throwing the shirts into his bedroom and heading to the fridge, he came back with a cold one in each hand.

  We both took long swigs from our bottles. I was damn thirsty, for alcohol especially. The past-due liquor from the night before had tasted like vinegar, so I’d thrown it out.

  I also had a lot on my mind, things I was trying to sort before I said them. DeShawn was in the same boat.

  But, being the elder, and his officer, I broke the tension first, “I’m–”

  “Cap, I…”

  “You go first,” I said.

  “I’m quitting the department.”

  I sat there for a second, scratching at the beer label. “You always told me this was your dream job, since you were a kid. And you’ve never quit anything in your life, not since I’ve known you.”

  “There’s things you need to know.”

  “Like what?”

  He sighed. “Theresa and I were close. We were hanging out off the job.”

  “Yeah, it’s hit me hard, too. I keep thinking I’m going to hear her high-pitched squealing coming from around the corner at any minute. Those awesome cinnamon rolls she’d bake.”

  “No, Cap.” DeShawn shook his head, rubbing his face slowly. “We were sleeping together. Like, intimately. When her husband was at work.”

  Double damn.

  “Um.” I had no idea what to say. I thought I had problems.

  “And then the dragon burned her. Ate her. Almost killed me, too. It was like our number came up, you know. Like our sins had brought that scaly from underground to judge us.”

  I finished my beer, desperately wanting another one, but too ashamed to ask for it. “That’s nuts, dub.”

  “No,” he said. “The Bible says Satan is a dragon. And it all makes sense. I feel horrible about Theresa. But Mama P says I’ve been given a second chance and shouldn’t waste it. I’m going into the ministry.”

  If any beer had still been in my mouth, I would have spit it out. “Like a preacher?”

  DeShawn nodded.

  “What the hell happened in that house?” I asked. “We should have known there was a dragon way before they gave us the call.”

  He took a huge breath as he closed his eyes and tensed, like he was getting ready for an amputation. “Everything was normal. Smoke was hazy and growing, so we figured it must have been confined to the attic. We were looking for the attic entrance while the truckies made a search for occupants. Then we came around the corner and…”

  “And what?”

  DeShawn shook his head, stifling a laugh. “I thought I had gotten a whiff of smoke or something, seeing things. Hallucinating, maybe. But then Theresa pointed it out too. The TV was shooting white flames toward the ceiling, like a flamethrower. It covered the whole wall.”

  “That’s weird.”

  Dragons were always the cause of the fires they were involved with. They never showed up after one had already started.

  “Then the floor crumbled from under us,” Deshawn said. “Theresa fell in, and the dragon came out. Fire everywhere. Man, that roar… I hung on to the edge, and I didn’t want to move ’cause I thought I’d drop in too and get burned. Truck 1’s crew came into the living room then. That’s when the dragon killed them. The smoke got so thick. The heat. I just kept hanging on, hoping it wouldn’t see me. That’s when you crawled in and got me out.”

  “You tell all of this to the chief?”

  DeShawn stared at me. “All except the white flames and the television.”

  “You tell him you’re quitting?”

  “Not yet.”

  I tapped my fingers against the side of the beer bottle. “Sounds like there’s nothing I can say to dissuade you.”

  “You can’t.”

  I sighed. “Well, you were a damn fine firefighter. The brotherhood is losing a good one.”

  “Two,” DeShawn said, smiling. “With you retiring.”

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I’m actually going to stay on for a while longer.”

  Pity crossed his face, might as well have been a blinking neon sign. He hadn’t been a preacher for even a day and already had a knack for the holier-than-thou routine. “What for?”

  “Smoke eaters.”

  His face went from pity to fear before he looked at the blazing lamps around us. “You’re a braver man than me.”

  “No, I’m just crazy. Or stupid.”

  “I didn’t sleep at all last night. Had to turn on all the lights, asked my mom to bring some lamps over. I can’t be in the dark. Not even a little. I see things crawling around.”

  “Like what?”

  “Theresa,” he said. “Headless and burned up, as clear as you sitting here beside me. I just know her wraith is going to come and finish what the dragon couldn’t.”

  I watched him rock back and forth. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

  He smiled. “I get my psych eval tomorrow, if you’re worried. But, yeah. I’ll be all right.”

  I wanted to say something to change DeShawn’s mind, or at least convince him that God wasn’t going to send a dragon or Theresa’s ghost to kill him for some infidelity. But before I could open my mouth, an air horn blasted from the street outside.

  “What’s that?” DeShawn jumped and turned toward the noise.

  “I’m guessing my ride.”

  DeShawn followed me outside where a big, black fire apparatus waited. It looked almost like an aerial ladder truck, but instead of a ladder, a huge laser cannon sat on top. The black paint glistened in the sun, and instead of the standard red and white lights, the truck had been outfitted with green and purple strobes and beacons. On the side of the truck, the words “Sink or Swim” had been painted in green.

  The lady smoke eater from the day before hopped out of the captain’s seat while the black man with red eyes circled from the driver’s side. They’d substituted their power suits and helmets for the green smoke eater dress shirt and navy blue duty pants.

  “Well if it isn’t the Wonder Twins,” I said. “Are you trying to start World War Four with that thing?”

  Angel smirked. “That’s why we don’t typically go joyriding through residential areas. Makes people nervous. But Chief D told us to come…” she looked at DeShawn’s duplex and the surrounding, meager neighborhood “…here to pick you up. So let’s get going.”

  “Is that a laser cannon?” DeShawn asked, his eyes glued to the monstrosity in front of his place. He looked like a five year-old boy visiting the firehouse for the first time.

  Foam’s eyes flickered red in the sun. “It is.”

  I waved a hand to my former firefighter. “This is DeShawn Peyton. He… was on my crew for a long time.”

  “James Renfro.” The guy I’d been calling Foam shook DeShawn’s hand.

  Angel stuck her hand out. “Captain Naveena Jendal.”

  I snorted.

  Naveena raised her eyebrow. “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just had different names for you guys in my head.”

  “Hm,” she said. “You can enlighten us on the ride. Let’s go.”

  I glanced at DeShawn, who was still ogling the cannon truck, and then turned back to Naveena. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

  Naveena huffed but followed me off to the side. “What?”

  “DeShawn, over there, is thinking of quitting the fire service.”

  “Condolences to the Brotherhood.”

  I smirked at a fellow smartass.

  “Can you take a couple minutes to show him around the truck?” I asked. “Maybe it’ll remind him how much he loves the job.”

  “We don’t give tours or do fire safety day at schools. That’s what your former career was about. Smoke eaters don’t do that kind of stuff. We’re too busy killing dragons.”

  “Well, I don’t get the
Secret Squirrel stuff, the public sure doesn’t like it, but he’s a firefighter, not some Joe Blow off the street.”

  Naveena cracked an indignant smile. “That’s something you’re going to have to get used to, Brannigan. We’re not the same as firefighters. Not even close.”

  “Potato, pa-ta-tow,” I said. “You owe me for sticking that suffocation bag over my head. I need to look over this truck myself, and the quicker you hurry this up, the quicker we can be on the road.”

  She turned with a groan and stomped back to DeShawn. “Let me show you around the truck. Looks like you’ve already pointed out the cannon.”

  “How long does it take to recharge?” DeShawn asked.

  Renfro bobbed his head, thinking. “About two minutes. That’s why we try to be as accurate as possible. But we try to slay the scalies while they’re still in the house, if we can. The cannon is a last resort.”

  Naveena went around the truck, opening every bin door, before coming back with hands on her hips. “Let’s hurry this up.”

  A few of the bins contained the same kind of equipment we carried on our fire engines and ladder trucks: jugs of water and cups, forcible entry tools, pike poles. But most of it was a completely different world, right out of science fiction.

  “This is my power suit,” Renfro said, pointing to it inside the bin. “We step into the boots and slide into the arms. The suit does the rest, sealing in the front. Our thrusters allow us to jump up to fifty feet every thirty seconds or so.”

  The suit was a monster, made of metal but not the clunky armor of the knights of old, or even what some classic videogames had envisioned as a symbiotic human and robot war machine. By the way I’d seen the smoke eaters maneuver, it couldn’t have weighed terribly much.

  Renfro got into his suit to show us how it closed around him. There was an emblem on the chest – two crossed lances over a dragon skull.

  “Renfro’s suit has a foam gun and a plasma repeater,” Naveena offered no further explanation of the weapons. “Mine has a laser sword.”

  “What about those?” DeShawn nodded to the, by comparison, ancient-looking tools in the large rear bin.

  “Those are backup,” said Naveena.

  Renfro took out a large, black iron lance. “Some dragons can send out an electromagnetic wave when they roar, as you guys saw the other day. If it hits our equipment, poof! Then we have to go old school.”

  I pointed at Renfro. “That roar didn’t hurt your suits, though.”

  “Because dragon EMP doesn’t spread in a circle,” Naveena said. “It’s focused like a beam.”

  “Cool.” DeShawn rubbed a hand over a harpoon gun, smiling.

  Maybe there was still hope for him. God could have him long after his fire career was in the books, when he died in his sleep at ninety-nine or one hundred.

  “All right,” Naveena said. “Enough of the gun show. Let’s go. Brannigan, you can close the bin doors.”

  It had been a long time since I’d been treated like a rookie, but I nodded agreement and stepped over to DeShawn. “You’re a good man, DeShawn. No matter what you think you’ve done.”

  I held out my hand.

  DeShawn shook it, but didn’t look up at me. “Thanks, Cap.”

  I watched him go back inside his duplex, where the lamplight poured out to shame the sun. When DeShawn closed his door, the cannon truck’s air horn blasted behind me.

  I flinched. “Shit!”

  “Hurry it up,” Naveena called through her window. “You’re late for training.”

  Chapter 6

  “Have you guys ever heard of white flames shooting out of a TV?” I asked Naveena and Renfro as we rode through a desolate landscape.

  “Nope,” Naveena said, keeping her eyes on the barren road.

  I’d never been that far out of the city on Highway 42 since the dragon emergence. Most people didn’t travel anymore. It was too dangerous with the potential for random dragons popping up. And the roads were terribly neglected, so what was the point?

  The holoreader manufacturers went into high gear a few Christmases ago, promoting expanded, full body holographics so you could visit with family for the holidays without leaving your local ash heap. The American road trip was just another thing the scalies killed.

  Most of the city’s surrounding towns had been burned to ash, not counting a few caravans of nomadic rednecks and RV fanatics. We were driving through the largest of the quarantine zones and Parthenon City showed no desire to rebuild that far out. The idea was that a ring of ashen waste surrounding the city would cut down on dragon incidents.

  It was bullshit. There hadn’t been a drop in scalies. I’d have even said they were on the rise.

  “Why do you ask?” Renfro had been more approachable than Naveena on our long drive to wherever we were headed.

  “Just something DeShawn said.”

  Ahead, through the ash like a ship through fog, appeared a huge building, similar to a smaller Pentagon – when it was still intact and operational. More of the compound became visible as we crested a rise in the road. In an adjacent field, a small cabin stood a hundred feet in the air on metal stilts. Below, a running track circled a vacant, concrete square.

  My already sore muscles and bum knee ached with weariness.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  Naveena turned around in her seat. “You’ve been here before.”

  “Ohio’s Smoke Eater Headquarters,” said Renfro, once again the only one I could rely on for understandable information.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I should have guessed.”

  Renfro parked the truck just outside the front steps – two separate stairways that curved up toward large, glass doors.

  “No guards?” I asked. “With all the secrecy you guys are so fond of, that seems a little lazy.”

  “No one’s stupid enough to go this far away from the city.” Naveena let down her pitch-black hair, and when she turned to me, a thick curl of it fell to the side of her eye, ending just beside her lips. “And everyone here is the guards. We can take on any scaly or trespasser with the same amount of ease.”

  I cleared my throat and looked away, pretending to study something outside the window. A woman with a down-do always did something to me. Call it an Achilles’ heel.

  I hoped Sherry would call me back soon.

  “Well, go on in, rookie.” Renfro smiled.

  “You guys aren’t coming with me?”

  Naveena sputtered her lips. “We have to get back to more important duties. I had my fill of you ten miles back.”

  “Thanks for the ride, Renfro.” I winked at Naveena before I shut the door.

  She thinned her eyes and turned away. “Sink or swim.”

  I was halfway up the steps, knee aching like a sonofabitch, when my bladder decided it wanted to empty the beer I’d had at DeShawn’s house. I’d needed to piss the whole ride over, but now I’d crossed the point of no return.

  It took slow, steady steps, but I managed to get through the building’s front doors, my head swiveling for the nearest bathroom. Instead, I found a smiling, orange-shirt-wearing Chief Donahue.

  “Brannigan!” He stuck out his hand. “Good to see you. Welcome to the Smoke Eater Division.”

  I shook his hand quickly. “Yeah, great. Where’s a bathroom?”

  “The bathroom? It’s…” he cocked his eyebrow then looked around “…right down that hall. First on your right.”

  I was dancing the Pachanga at this point. “First on the right. Got it.”

  To hell with my bum knee; I ran. A green-shirted smoke eater holding a mop jumped at my charging through the door, but I paid him no mind as I hustled to the urinal. After too many minutes of wonderful relief, I cleaned up, told the smoke eater he missed a spot, and met Donahue back in the foyer.

  This time I was able to take in my surroundings without a bladder threatening to rupture. The ceiling was high, and two upper floors were visible behind Donahue, between a pair of green, marb
le columns. Statues were displayed at each side of the nearby stairs. The one on the left depicted a warrior woman piercing a dragon’s throat. An open mouth full of teeth and claws on the stone woman’s chest suggested the dragon didn’t like it too much. The one on the right showed a shirtless, muscled man riding a winged scaly like a jet ski.

  “Not very accurate.” I pointed to the flying dragon. “Dragons can’t fly.”

  Donahue laughed. “What do you want from us, Brannigan. These weren’t commissioned. Probably from some theme park originally.” He looked me over, like a new statue he was considering. “You good to go? Or are you going to have to take a potty break every hour.”

  “Getting old sucks.”

  “Only if you let it. Follow me. I’ll get you up to speed.”

  I jogged after him.

  He led me down another hall where the overhead lights were spaced enough to allow patches of darkness between the lit areas. We were clomping along so fast that my knee was about to pop as the transfer from light to shadow almost mimicked a strobe light. Donahue’s false right leg pounded the floor like a blacksmith at the anvil.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Training,” Donahue said.

  “Seriously?” I huffed as I continued to follow. “Today? How’d you even schedule me in?”

  Donahue stopped at a door where a man’s voice boomed from the other side. “That’s the thing. We had to drop you in the middle of a class already mid-session.”

  “What?”

  Donahue shrugged. “Sink or swim, Brannigan.”

  “What does that even mean? We fight dragons, right? Not giant squid.”

  Donahue had pulled out his holoreader, tapping a few buttons. “There are all kinds of dragons, and they can pop up anywhere. Even Lake Erie. But ‘sink or swim’ is our motto. It means we jump in and learn as we go. We don’t have the luxury of waiting until we’re ready. Not that we’re reckless. There are too few smokies for that.” He held out the holoreader to me, green-glowing words hovering in the air above the device. “Scroll down and sign at the bottom.”

  “What the hell is that?” I stepped back as if the words would bite me.