Smoke Eaters

by Sean Grigsby

  “Twenty pushups for not raising your hand, Williams. And no, nothing they threw at it penetrated its scales. This wasn’t too long after E-Day, and they didn’t have the benefit of lasers like we do.”

  I raised my hand, and waited for Puck to point to me. “How in hell are we supposed to kill something like that?”

  “Smokies on the coasts are developing reinforced ships armed with laserfire. And we’ll be practicing with our water suits next week,” Puck said.

  What?

  Puck filled the rest of the day with more of the same lectures: different types of known dragons and how to kill them, or, how to prevent them from killing you. Some dragons, like the Leviathan, shot boiling steam from their nostrils. Others produced toxic slime from holes in their back or shot spikes from their tail.

  I asked how our ability to breathe smoke and resist heat would help fight those kinds of weird bastards. Puck said that they were unique dragons, and that we’d spend most of our time fighting the true-blue fire-breathing variety, but that it was helpful to know about the others just in case.

  She also gave me fifty pushups for my trouble.

  After that, we practiced shooting lasers and foam, and cutting cardboard dragons with laser swords. Instead of wearing a full power suit, we were provided with the weaponed arms for practice. I sucked at shooting lasers but wasn’t too shabby with the sword. But since none of us were deemed to be proficient, we all had to run a mile and a half around the track.

  We were so tired, none of us cared about privacy as we shared the shower room and let the hot water comfort us for a solid half hour.

  I avoided my dorm room as long as I could, or, more specifically, I was trying to avoid Naveena. I felt like an ass for what I’d said, and didn’t want to admit it or have more opportunity to act like an ass.

  That night, I sat in the common room studying scalies on my holoreader, while Afu and Williams watched the Feed stream on the wall – some reality show about robot cops cleaning up the mean streets of Scottsdale, Arizona. I wasn’t sure “reality show” was the appropriate genre. Robots: reality?

  Afu laughed hard, spitting out his popcorn, when a robocop gave a noncompliant perpetrator a wedgie.

  Thomlin walked by, laughing at something on his holoreader. When I looked up, he held it so I could see myself telling the fire droid from Buzzard’s Roost to get out of the way before slashing at the screen. I’d seen the clip at least a dozen times.

  “Way to make us look good, Brannigan,” Thomlin said, walking away and laughing as he reloaded the video clip.

  A bunch of the smoke eaters had gotten a kick out of it, and I thought I looked pretty badass in my power suit. Plus, it had pissed Rogola off, which made it ten times better. So I sliced some droids. I didn’t see what the big deal was.

  The news came on after Afu’s robocop show.

  “Protesters gathering outside Parthenon City Central Fire Station,” the newswoman said.

  I sat up and stared at the wall, where the video showed at least a hundred people carrying holographic signs and shouting. My old chief was outside the fire station with a few police officers, trying to get the crowd calmed down, failing miserably.

  The newswoman continued. “After Mayor Rogola shared video of smoke eaters destroying city property at a wildfire in Buzzard’s Roost, many Parthenon City residents have taken issue with the smoke eaters and their methods.”

  “Why the hell are they protesting the fire department, then?” Afu said.

  “Because we’re technically a part of the fire department,” I said. “And they’re too scared to drive all the way out here to yell at us.”

  Afu shook his head. “This pisses me off, man. That news lady didn’t even say we were there because of dragons. We’re not the bad guys. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  The news cut to a shot of Mayor Rogola in his office. “Haven’t I been telling you about these loose cannons? I tell you this now, I’m making it my personal mission to…”

  “Can you turn it off?” I asked Afu. “I can’t look at that idiot without my blood pressure shooting through the roof.”

  Afu changed it to a home renovation show that featured homes destroyed by dragons.

  On my holoreader, I pulled up the smoke eater contract I’d signed, since everyone kept telling me to read it.

  The first section outlined how I couldn’t be terminated, but also how I couldn’t quit. I had to read that part again to make sure I wasn’t seeing things in the floating text.

  Apparently, if I left Smoke Eater Division, they retained the right to secure every credit they paid me while I was on the payroll. All the work I’d put in would be for nothing if I left. It sounded ludicrous, and I couldn’t see any court approving, but, then again, I had signed the damn thing.

  The rest of the contract talked about how I couldn’t reveal smoke eater methods to the public and that I would leave all communications with the media to the chief. Well, I’d already screwed that pooch.

  I was to stay at headquarters for the entirety of my training, with weekends off, that would conclude with a graduation in just under three weeks. They sure weren’t giving me much time to learn everything.

  After that, they’d assign me to a crew, and I’d work the standard firefighter-type schedule of twenty-four hours on, forty-eight hours off, with the caveat that the chief could institute a mandatory “all hands on deck” schedule in times of crisis.

  So, basically, they were fucking me pretty good, but at least they were paying me for it.

  I was burned out from reading and didn’t want to watch Afu’s show or go back to my dorm room just yet. It was nearing ten o’clock, but I messaged Sherry with my holoreader, hoping she was still up.

  You awake? I typed.

  Yeah, she responded. I can’t sleep. Keep feeling small quakes in the area.

  They monitor seismic activity here, I typed. If it might be a dragon, they’d put a crew in the area to keep watch.

  I’m not worried. Just watching my holostereo, but I think something is wrong with it.

  What do you mean? Can’t depend on technology for shit.

  I’m trying to jam out to a Thunder Rash concert, she replied, but the signal must be off. A horror channel keeps flashing through every few minutes. Scared the shit out of me and Kenji when it first happened. I had to lock him in his room. He kept barking at the stereo like it was going to bite me or something.

  I felt helpless, and it was always like that, even when I was a firefighter. When you were on shift, unable to get away until seven the next morning, the whole world went to hell at home. Never failed.

  I’m sure it just needs to be tuned up, I typed. What happened? Some guy in a hockey mask show up in the living room?

  No. Lol. I could have handled that. It was a wraith if you can believe it.

  I typed so fast, I had to go back and fix my words three times. What kind of sicko would make a wraith horror channel? Or would want to watch that?

  No clue, she sent. I called the company and they acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about.

  Typical.

  Yeah, so you’re coming home for the weekend?

  I smiled. Friday afternoon, I’m all yours. They’re not complete jerks to keep me away from you forever. But I’m going to Theresa’s funeral tomorrow for a few.

  Sherry didn’t reply for a while. Afu turned off the Feed and waved goodnight. Williams came through and slapped him on the ass. She then took a different hallway. I was pretty sure they were sleeping together. Hell, I didn’t care, they didn’t have to hide it from me. Afu would circle around to the other side of the building and go to Williams’ room, since she didn’t have a roommate. Thomlin had been bitching about how Afu came into their shared room at four o’clock every morning.

  My holoreader dinged.

  I miss you, Sherry sent. Love you.

  Love you, too. I signed off and sat there in the common room alone.

  After the chaos o
f the last couple of days, things were starting to even out. I was getting into the swing of being a smoke eater. I was going to see Sherry on Friday, and she was being very understanding about my new career. I had that warm fuzzy feeling that everything was going great and that all the bullshit and trouble was behind me.

  Boy, was I wrong.

  Chapter 11

  I didn’t want to go to my room just yet, so I dug out the disk Yolanda gave me and put it into my holoreader.

  The video began playing in full screen. A Canadian maple leaf flag blew in the background as text appeared at the bottom, signifying that the video had been government-sanctioned.

  The next image was in black and white, outside a computer-generated haunted house, complete with wailing spooks and a witch flying across the moon. The picture faded into a mad scientist’s laboratory – the viewer was to assume they’d entered the haunted house – and then the picture changed to color.

  A man walked into view, wearing a white smock that hung down to his ankles. His white hair stood straight up as if he’d stuck a fork into a socket.

  “Hello, brothers and sisters of the Great White North!” the scientist removed dark-lensed goggles from his eyes, resting them on his head. “I’m Professor Poltergeist and this is where I do all my crazy experiments.”

  I rolled my eyes. Yolanda had said this was directed at kids, but damn.

  “And today,” Professor Poltergeist said, “we’re going to be talking about those wonderful, wicked wraiths! Ah, I have one here.”

  A woman dressed as a hunchback pushed out a cart. On top, encased in an enormous glass tube, floated a wraith. It had to be CGI.

  “I assure you, boys and ghouls, this is an actual wraith. Not like the fakes you saw floating around my house outside. But don’t worry, I’m safe with this glass between us.” Professor Poltergeist knocked against the tube.

  The wraith snarled and scratched at the glass between it and the professor.

  Professor Poltergeist flinched, nearly falling onto his ass. It didn’t look like acting.

  “This one must have been a real hoser in his day,” Professor Poltergeist said, trying to get his composure back. “Where do wraiths come from? Why are they here? What’s their relationship with the dragons?”

  Some Canadians were just like us, their southern neighbors, and wanted to wipe out the scalies as soon as they could. Most Canucks, however, believed in hardcore conservation of all animal life – even those that destroy others. The concept of a smoke eater was reprehensible to them, and the American government issued a trade embargo to our neighbors in the north after they refused to share their research. As far as Uncle Sam was concerned, the Canadians could sing campfire songs and die on the teeth of dragons all they wanted, but that kind of shit wouldn’t fly in the good ole US of A.

  I’d also heard a rumor that small sects of Canadians worshiped dragons like gods. I wondered what flavor Kool-Aid they enjoyed.

  “Click any of these topics to learn more,” Professor Poltergeist raised his hand, and bullet points – typed in old-horror-movie green – appeared at his side. “Don’t wait around all day!”

  It was an interactive video. Professor Poltergeist would have stood there griping at me until I chose a topic. So I hit the one that said Defenders of the Eggs.

  “The Canadian government would like us to inform you that all of these are just theories,” Professor Poltergeist said, before the screen darkened.

  The next image was deep inside the Earth’s core. Thousands of dragons swam through rock and lava. They were small and computer animated, but that didn’t make me feel any better. The video focused on a particular dragon, showing it burrowing its way to the surface.

  “When a dragon matures,” Professor Poltergeist’s voice spoke over the image, “it comes to the surface to eat and mate. And that’s where we come in.”

  The animated scaly burst into a house with a family of poorly rendered humans sitting at a dining table. The dragon proceeded to burn everything down and gobble every member of the family.

  “Any lucky enough to be chosen, aid the dragon in attracting a mate.”

  The family reappeared as glowing wraiths while the dragon shifted the ashes into a huge heap.

  “Every living thing contains electrical energy. We think that humans have the exact type of energy that aligns with a dragon’s. Thus, wraiths can be born! Depending on the sex of the dragon, it creates the appropriate output to attract the opposite sex.”

  Another dragon crawled from the ground and the two scalies kissed, producing a giant, pink heart above them.

  Goddamn, this was pathetic.

  Professor Poltergeist continued, “But that’s not all the wraiths do.”

  The second dragon dug back into the earth while the first stayed behind and laid eggs in the ash heap. After it was done, the dragon returned underground as well. The wraiths then surrounded the eggs like guard dogs.

  “Having done their duty, the dragons leave it up to the wraiths to protect the next generation. Woe to anyone who gets close!”

  More humans arrived, looking too much like firefighters. When they neared the nest, the wraiths chased them off screen, returning with animated blood on their claws.

  “When the babies have hatched, and burrowed below to grow over the next few hundred years, the wraiths disappear, their job done.”

  The eggs cracked and the dirt under them stirred. Then the animated wraith family faded away.

  “Each nest can have between fifty and a hundred eggs. And the same two dragons can repeat the process with other mates as many times as they want before they pass maturity and their time is at an end.”

  The picture returned to Professor Poltergeist’s laboratory, where he waited by the rest of the bullet points.

  I didn’t choose any of them. The short video had made me sick to my stomach, and I opted for my dorm room and the hope of a dreamless sleep.

  Knowledge isn’t power. It’s a damned burden.

  Chapter 12

  Thursday morning, Puck ordered us to meet out at the drill field, fully geared up. Some kind of obstacle maze had been set up in the middle of the training field, and a fog had rolled in. The humid air stuck to my tongue, almost making me gag. I guess it would have been too much to ask that my power suit came with air conditioning.

  I walked over to where Williams was staring at the giant rat maze in front of us. I asked, “What the hell is this?”

  Flinching, she came out of her early morning trance and turned to me. She sighed before looking back to the raised, metal walls and the darkened opening that led into the maze. “Some bullshit.”

  “Might be fun,” Afu said, chewing on a granola bar as he lumbered over.

  “That looks like fun?” Williams pointed to the twin yellow ladders rising from somewhere deep in the maze. They connected to a building a hundred feet up, where the faintest puffs of black smoke had begun to flow from the windows.

  “I hate heights,” I said.

  “But you were a fireman,” Afu said. “You climbed ladders and shit all the time, right?”

  “Only when I had to.”

  Puck came out of a set of double doors at the side of the main building. Behind her, Thomlin dragged a long dolly carrying some gnarly-looking equipment. Both were in their power suits.

  “You’re early,” Puck said with a smug grin. “Good. I guess the pushups are keeping you sharp.”

  If she said so.

  Thomlin stood beside the sergeant, leaving the dolly behind him.

  Puck turned to the jolly ginger and waited for him to do something. When it became evident he was going to cling to her ass like a tick, she grabbed his armored shoulder and shoved him toward the rest of us. “Form up, Thomlin.”

  The sour look on Thomlin’s face only made Williams and me snicker harder.

  “You catching up on the material, Brannigan?” Puck asked.

  “Doing my damnedest, Sergeant.”

  Puck rubbed he
r hands and smiled, wide and scary. So much so, that I noticed, for the first time, she had a small gap between her two front teeth. “Good. This’ll prove it.”

  On the dolly stood a row of edged shields made of glass and another row of pitch black lances. Medieval Times 2.0.

  “There may come a day when your laser swords or your foam or something else will fail.” Puck paced in front of us. “No one wants to see that day, but we need to prepare for it just in case. Every one of our slayers and cannon trucks have shields and lances like the ones you see on the dolly behind me. There are other tools we use, but these two are the bread and butter of slaying scalies when your power suit is toast.

  “The labyrinth of hell you see behind me has caused more than a few smoke eaters to quit. Legally, I also have to inform you that one recruit was killed during this exercise.”

  I looked at the other rookies to see if they were buying this bull. Williams swallowed. Thomlin raised his chin, as if defying the maze. I’m pretty sure Afu had fallen asleep with his eyes open.

  “You have thirty minutes.” Puck held out her holoreader and expanded a picture of a little girl mannequin. “This is Little Susie. Your objective is to rescue her and kill any dragons you encounter on the way. Go on and ask me where Little Susie is located.”

  “Where is she located?” we all said in a mishmash of tired voices.

  Puck grunted laughter as she pointed to the sky. “Way up there in the tower.”

  The black smoke had fully pressurized inside what Puck called the tower – it looked more like a cabin on stilts. My knowledge of fire science said it would be more productive to inform Little Susie’s parents that she wasn’t going to make it – nothing could survive that environment – not to mention that it looked like a textbook backdraft scenario. If we were able to make it through the maze and open one of the hatches above the ladders, oxygen would be reintroduced, and then – boom!

  This was a setup.

  But I’d also been in enough training scenarios to know you didn’t correct the instructor, especially one like Sergeant Puke. You just did what was assigned and hoped you made it back in time to watch the Feed.