Smoke Eaters

by Sean Grigsby

  “A contract. Basic stuff. All smoke eaters have to sign it.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t sign anything I don’t read first.”

  Donahue shoved the holoreader into my hand. “Brannigan, I’ve got a tar scaly cleanup in Dayton to get to, and a report of a Fin Fang serpent in an abandoned factory in Columbus. I don’t have time for you to read a simple contract.”

  I thinned my eyes, but Donahue just stared back at me, impatient.

  “You guys aren’t Satanists or anything?” I asked. “I’m not signing over my soul or riding lawn mower?”

  Donahue smiled. “It just says we can’t fire you. The only way out is in a box.”

  I scrolled through the holographic paragraphs, watching them dance as they appeared and disappeared within the boundaries of the reader. Nothing crazy jumped out at me – blood orgies, mandatory union participation – so I signed the empty space at the bottom.

  “Great,” Donahue said, returning the holoreader to his side. “Sergeant Puck will get your uniforms to you. And a holoreader.”

  “Sergeant who?”

  “You can use the reader to catch up on the material in your dorm room at night, to make sure you’re in line with the rest of the rookie smoke eaters.”

  “Dorm? I’m not sleeping here. Wait just a damn–”

  “Come on.”

  He opened the door before I could retort.

  Standing in front of a holographic board covered in pictures of different types of scalies and illegible scribbling, was a woman dressed in the green smoke eater uniform. A black remote dangled in her hand, and her mouth was still open from her last statement. She had a head bigger than a fire hydrant, with a forehead and cheeks sunburned just as red. Her hair was pulled back with a green scrunchie, but several strands had come loose.

  That booming voice I’d heard was definitely not a man.

  “Sergeant Puck,” Chief Donahue said. “Sorry to interrupt. This is Cole Brannigan, our newest smoke eater recruit. Formerly a captain with the Parthenon City Fire Department.”

  There were only three rookies sitting at long, white tables – two men and a woman, all about half my age. One of the men flinched and blinked rapidly as if he’d been napping. Nostalgia hit me like a hover train. I remembered my own firefighter rookie class and the mind-numbing classroom hours. There’d been a hell of a lot more recruits, though.

  “More fresh meat for the scalies, huh?” Sergeant Puck said, in a bone-shaking baritone. “Thanks, Chief.” She lifted her chin to me and then pointed toward the other rookies. “There’s an empty seat next to Williams over there.”

  The only available chair was next to the female smoke eater, a thick, black woman who sat with a finger against her lips and eyes still on the floating dragon pictures.

  One of the male recruits, the freckle-faced one, grinned as I passed, as if my presence was equal to a dirty joke on a bathroom wall. The other rookie looked like a Samoan guy I was friends with back in high school. My friend had been a teddy bear most of the time, but you never wanted to piss him off.

  Intricate tattoos poked out from the neck of the Samoan rookie’s shirt, and he had tied his dark hair back with a rubber band. His top-heavy frame would have made him a great addition to a truck company in the regular fire service – made for breaking shit.

  You know why truckies cut holes in roofs? So they can look down at the engine company and see the real firefighters working. It’s a playful old joke. Us engine guys had to get our digs in somewhere. Long ago, Hollywood had only made firefighter movies and TV shows about truck companies. It made sense; people were more interested in firefighters carrying babies and climbing ladders. Watching water sprayed on flames wasn’t that interesting on the screen.

  But all of us smoke eaters in that classroom were the same.

  Donahue was gone by the time I took my seat and looked up to the front of the room. Everyone was staring at me. The only sound was the buzz of holographic pictures floating around Puck’s head and the freckle-faced guy snorting softly.

  The sergeant cleared her throat. “Brannigan, right? I’m going to tell you what I told these three from the first day, and they could benefit from a refresher.”

  I waited for her to continue. Freckle Face sighed.

  “This is on-the-job training,” Puck said. “If we get a call to back up a dragon fight, we all go, ready or not. We can’t hole you newbies away while the few smokies we have kill themselves needlessly. Got that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  She nodded, seeming to be satisfied, and brought up a diagram of a dragon, kind of a scaly anatomical chart. The drawing showed the dragon’s muscles and organs, the way the bones curved at different points in the spine.

  “We’re going to take a minute, for Brannigan’s benefit, to briefly cover basic dragon anatomy.”

  Freckle Face groaned under his breath, but Puck must not have heard him.

  “Brannigan,” Puck said, “do you know how dragons breathe fire?”

  “Some kind of organ?” I shrugged. “I don’t remember. I’ve watched a few nature shows, but I mainly read about ancient dragons,” I said. “Quetzalcoatl and that sort of thing.”

  Puck wrinkled her nose. “Quetza-what?”

  “Quetzalcoatl. Aztec god that was a winged serpent. They’d sacrifice–”

  “Shut up, Brannigan. I don’t care.” Puck rubbed her temples before zooming the hologram to an organ in the middle of the illustrated dragon’s body. “The supra ignis gland here, which connects to the epiglottis. Our propellerheads are still studying how fire–”

  Williams, beside me, raised her hand.

  Puck groaned. “What, Williams?”

  “What about those hard things on the sides of its body?”

  “Side plates,” I said. “They help the scalies move underground.”

  I did remember that part.

  Puck actually looked impressed. “Very good, Brannigan. But don’t speak unless you raise your hand.”

  The big guy with the tattoos stirred awake and raised his arm. “It’d be a good place for wings.”

  “Well,” Puck said, “despite what some of our propellerheads have theorized, dragons don’t fly. Come on Kekoa, even ten year-olds know that.”

  “I never heard of a sergeant in the fire service,” I said.

  “I just knew you were going to be a problem.” Puck gave a frustrated laugh and rubbed her oily face. “Smoke Eater Division is different from the fire department. I earned my title, and whether you realize it yet or not, I outrank you. You are no longer a captain. You are a piece of shit rookie, and for getting off topic and wasting my time, you’re going to give me fifty pushups.”

  I hadn’t heard that kind of talk since my first year as a firefighter. In a way, it brought back good memories. But she couldn’t have been serious.

  The other rookies stared at me, waiting. Freckle Face laughed.

  Puck snapped her head toward him. “Shut up, Thomlin, or you’ll be right beside him. Hurry up, Brannigan. Time is our greatest resource, and you need to pay up.”

  She and Donahue were real clock Nazis. I knew full well how response time to an incident was critical, how every second counted. But this was ridiculous.

  I didn’t want to let the other rookies think the “old man” couldn’t do a measly fifty pushups. And hammering them out would be a nice “fuck you” to Sergeant Puck. I got into position on the floor and began the exercise. I’d quickly done three when Puck stopped me.

  “Hold it right there, Brannigan. Stay in that position.”

  I was at the top of the pushup, arms fully extended, basically in a plank, already starting to tremble from the exertion.

  “We do pushups differently around here,” Puck said in a sing-song voice. “We do everything different. You’re a smoke eater now. We’re going to have to sweat the firefighter out of you.”

  Not in a million years, I told myself.

  “When I tell you,” Puck said, �
�you’ll go down. When I say ‘up’, then you push up. Not before. Ready?”

  Not really.

  “Down.”

  I went down. For a second, the pain eased and I was in a better position, but then the soreness kicked in again, and I began shaking from the effort to stay off the ground.

  Damn it, say “Up!”

  After an eternity, Puck finally shouted, “Up!”

  It went on like that for several more minutes. I wasn’t even counting after the twelfth pushup. The room was silent, besides my blood pounding in my ears. Sweat poured down my face, and I swore I was about to black out. It had been a hell of a long time since I’d worked out that hard. The fire department required us to do an hour of physical training every shift, but that usually constituted a few bicep curls and walking a couple laps around the firehouse.

  When Puck said, “Up!” followed by “Forty-eight,” my energy renewed.

  Puck made the last two drag on longer than the others, but I was too close to give up. After the last pushup, I hobbled back into my seat and glared at Puck, letting the sweat pitter-patter onto the table in front of me.

  “Now we can get back to the lesson,” Puck said, turning back to the holographic board. “We only have thirty minutes left in the day, thanks to Brannigan. Let’s move on to the different known types of dragons and their weaknesses.”

  This caught my attention, despite mainly focusing on catching my breath. Sergeant Puck began talking about different broods and how every year different types of dragons would appear, meaner and more dangerous than the last.

  Wyrm dragons worked their way into high-rises and set different floors on fire.

  Williams, the recruit to my left, handed me a slip of paper. Those pushups suck. That’s why we call her Sergeant Puke, the note said.

  I lifted my sweat-soaked face to her. She smiled quickly, a pencil to her lips, and then turned back to the sergeant, who expanded a drawing of a long, snake-like dragon. With her free hand, Puck dragged a picture of a towering inferno – the Chrysler Building in New York. I’d heard about the incident, seen it on the Feed. It had to be the worst dragon-related disaster to hit the country since the beginning. The picture showed the building just before the top half fell to the street below. A scattering of glass and fire circled the point of breakage like a ring.

  “This is what a wyrm can do,” Puck said. “So far, the best way we know to kill ’em is to–”

  The holographic pictures disappeared, and in their place flashing red covered the screen. Speakers in the ceiling blurted out a grating alarm. The other three recruits covered their ears.

  Amateurs.

  “Shit,” Puck muttered.

  She grabbed each side of the red-flashing screen and shrunk it into her palms. Reading something on the screen, she put her back to us. When she turned around, her face was grim, and she stared right at me.

  What did I do now?

  “Prepare to suit up,” Puck shouted.

  The other recruits jumped from their seats and stood at attention. I did the same, with less enthusiasm, although my heart raced like it was my first structure fire.

  “Some smokies need our help just outside of Buzzard’s Roost,” Puck said. “Looks like you’ll get to see some poppers firsthand. Sink or swim.”

  Chapter 7

  “What the hell is a popper?” I jogged behind Williams on the way to the apparatus bay.

  “Poppers,” she said, breathing as heavily as me. “Plural.”

  The other two rookies had jogged ahead of us and were already in their power suits and climbing into a black rig with “Slayer 3” painted on the side in green. It carried no laser cannon or anything else that I could see. I guessed it was solely for transporting manpower.

  The bay looked like a multi-airplane hangar and even had an old jumbo jet collecting dust at the far end. Multiple oil-stained spaces lay empty at each side of Slayer 3. The bay door split open with a hum.

  Puck pulled up in a hover cart that heaved to and fro when she jumped from it. “Brannigan. Williams. Hurry up and get your power suits on.”

  I looked down at my sweat-soaked “Firefighters Find ’Em Hot and Leave ’Em Wet!” T-shirt and old pair of jeans. Williams ran toward the driver’s side of the truck.

  I followed behind. “I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Put this on.” Williams lifted a bin door.

  A shiny, green power suit waited inside with a helmet hanging above.

  “I’m trying to tell you,” I said. “I’ve never put one on!”

  Williams huffed. “Watch me.”

  She hefted the power suit from her bin and set it on the ground. It stayed upright like one of the fire droids I’d seen the day before. With her back to it, Williams slipped into the power suit like a onesie. It instantly enveloped her, finishing with a loud click. The tips of her boots and the elbows glowed orange.

  “That’s it.” She secured her helmet, which, to my disappointment, worked like every other one since the dawn of protective headwear.

  The helmet looked much like a traditional firefighter’s helmet with a rear bill – originally meant to shed water – except it also had two metal pieces that would extend over the wearer’s ears, reminding me of a Roman centurion helmet.

  I took out my power suit.

  It wasn’t as heavy as I’d expected. I stepped backwards into the suit, slipping my arms and feet into the right holes, and then it felt like a robot was grappling me from behind. The suit’s inner lining, including the gloves and boots, cinched around my body, and when I heard that same click, I moved my arms and legs to get a feel for the suit. The metal was only a tiny bit more cumbersome than my own body. One size definitely fit all.

  Smoke eaters always get the coolest gear.

  Williams nodded. “OK. Afu can show you how to power jump. He’s better than me. Now let’s go!”

  I grabbed my helmet and followed her into the rig. The other rookies glared at us as we took our seats. Williams pointed to my helmet and then her head. I took the hint and put it on.

  “Brannigan.” Sergeant Puck’s voice barked into my ears from speakers inside my helmet, even though she was seated at the wheel. “Since you can’t seem to move your old ass fast enough, you owe me fifty more pushups when we get back. If you survive.”

  Freckle-faced Thomlin laughed.

  Firefighters avoided talk about not coming home. It was bad juju. Apparently, there was a thing or two I could teach Puck about tact.

  “Williams,” Puck said. “You’ll be right there with him. Fifty for you, too.”

  My fellow recruit dropped her head, looking more terrified about the pushups than the dragons we were headed for in Buzzard’s Roost. The truck rumbled into the sunlight and we rolled onto Highway 71 faster than you could say “Dead silent in Slayer 3.”

  “How old are you?” asked the bulky recruit I guessed was Afu. He stared at me, waiting on an answer.

  I smiled – it shows confidence, according to my body language book. “Just a little over the same number of pushups I keep racking up.”

  Afu laughed and stuck his hand out. “Afu Kekoa.”

  “Cole Brannigan.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Afu said.

  I offered my hand to the freckled guy named Thomlin, but he kept his arms crossed and looked at my hand like it was a dead scaly. So I made a circle with my extended hand and shook a “jerkoff” gesture.

  Afu snorted and Thomlin glared at him. The big recruit cleared his throat and dropped his smile.

  “How do the jet packs work?” I asked Afu.

  Thomlin rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, you have something to add, Gingerbread?” I leaned forward, arms on my knees.

  “It’s not a jet pack,” Thomlin said.

  “Not really,” Afu added. “All you have to do is jump, and the suit will launch you a little farther. But if you want an extended jump, just hit the button on the side of your left index finger.”
r />   I looked down at my armored hand. Sure enough, there was a large black button where Afu said it would be.

  “I’ll show you how to deploy your sword when we get out of the truck,” Afu said.

  Thomlin groaned. “We won’t have time.”

  “What’s your problem?” I asked.

  Thomlin sneered and shook his head, not like he was saying “no,” but that he was appalled I kept talking to him. “I just don’t know why you’re here.”

  “I’m going in blind here, but I’m a smoke eater, same as you.”

  “You’re also older than dirt, and too full of yourself.”

  “Thomlin!” Puck shouted through our helmets.

  The feedback stabbed at my eardrums.

  “Quit being an ageist dick and tell Brannigan what poppers are. We’re almost there.”

  Thomlin waved a hand in front of him, as if he was casting the information like seeds. “Poppers are dragons.”

  “I gathered as much,” I said.

  “They pop out of the ground,” he added. “That’s where they get their name.”

  Shit, this guy was going to be as useless as tits on a dragon.

  “All scalies come out of the ground, dub.” I said.

  Thomlin wrinkled his nose, twisting his freckles into weird shapes. “Dub?”

  Old habits die hard. “Never mind. It’s what we called each other. In the fire department.”

  “This isn’t the fire department.” Thomlin spit the words.

  “You ever play Whack-a-Mole?” Afu asked.

  I nodded.

  “This won’t be too different. At least, from the video Sergeant Puck showed us.”

  I blinked a few times, piecing together what he was saying. “You mean you’ve never fought these types of dragons before?”

  “This is the first call we’ve gotten to join in on,” Williams said.

  Oh, boy.

  Thomlin had already drifted from the conversation, looking out the window.

  “Hey!” I snapped my metal fingers at him, and it sounded like blades crossing. “We’re a team. If you hold back information just because I was walking into dangerous situations while you were still a load in your mom’s uterus, we all could get killed. Drop the asshole routine and get in the game.”