Smoke Eaters

by Sean Grigsby

  With this scenario, we’d be lucky to make it back at all.

  “Who are my first two volunteers?” Puck put her hands on her hips.

  I raised my arm – damn instinct. The fire service fills you with this stupid need to always be the first in line. Thomlin was the other lucky contestant. The rest of the rookies took a few steps back.

  “Nice,” Puck said, walking over to grab something from the dolly. “One more thing.”

  Spinning back to us, she leveled a gun with a sphere containing what looked like swirling, red electro-liquid. She shot me first. The red goop hit my armored chest in a splat. My muscles tensed as an involuntary moan left my lips. A subtle vibration ran through my body as if I’d stuck my tongue to a frayed electric wire – it tasted like it, too. Inside my helmet, static sparked from the speakers.

  Thomlin raised his hands in defense, but Puck had already shot. When the slime ball hit him, electricity danced over his power suit. The orange glow at the tips of his boots and elbows faded to black.

  I gulped air as my muscles eased. I’d been holding my breath. “What the hell was that?”

  “Remember,” Puck said, “I told you this exercise was about relying on other things besides your power suits. Both of you grab a shield and a lance.”

  Me and Thomlin both walked to the dolly as if we’d been run over by Slayer 3, wincing and sucking air with each step.

  “The soreness will go away in a second,” Puck said.

  When I put my left arm through the handles of a shield, it widened with a loud click. A hundred tiny hexagons rippled across its glass in a yellow, electric honeycomb design, the light pulsing.

  “As an added handicap,” Puck said, “your shield is programmed to only take so much damage. When it reaches its limit, it’ll flash bright red. If I were you, at that point I’d ditch it before it blows up in your face.”

  “Is that standard?” Thomlin asked.

  Puck spit. “No, but we can’t have you huddled in a corner the whole time. This will make sure you focus on the objective and not hide behind a shield.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “If an EMP knocks out electricity, how are these shields going to work?”

  “They run on old-style batteries,” Puck said. “They only have a forty percent chance of failure if they get hit with a pulse.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” I said under my breath.

  Thomlin tested the weight of one of the lances. “Does the tip shoot out like a rocket?”

  “No, Zippy,” Puck said with an annoyed sigh. “It’s just a big piece of sharp metal.”

  I grabbed my own lance, which was about as heavy as a set of irons – what firefighters call a halligan and axe combo – and walked toward the opening of the labyrinth. Even the maze’s floor was metal, and that worried me. Metal conducts heat. And if we were expected to fight dragons inside this funhouse, there was sure to be fire, even if the dragons turned out to be cardboard cutouts. The maze would become a giant oven.

  “Just to be clear,” Puck said, following behind Thomlin and me, “your power suits are kaput. You can’t jump, you can’t shoot, you can’t use your laser sword or talk to each other through your helmets. No thermal vision. The only things your suits are good for now is making it harder for the scalies inside to kill you, and for collecting your piss when you get too scared to move. The winner gets the rest of the day off. The loser has to clean every bathroom and shower inside headquarters by themselves. Any questions?”

  “Wait,” I set my lance against the ground and leaned on it. “There aren’t any real dragons in there, right?”

  Puck ignored me and poked at her holoreader. Giant, red numbers appeared on the large wall outside the maze, showing thirty minutes.

  Afu whooped. “All right, fellas! Kick some ass.”

  “No cheering,” Puck said. “Ready? Go!”

  Thomlin broke into a run like it was a foot race and all he had to do was outrun the old man to the finish line. I jogged lightly behind him. I couldn’t give a shit less about beating Thomlin; my goal was not dying, and, as a secondary option, rescuing a fucking mannequin.

  A few yards into the labyrinth, a metal door rose behind me, sealing the entrance we’d come through, darkening the maze. The fog drifting above thickened.

  “Don’t stop, Brannigan!” Puck’s voice came through a speaker somewhere in the maze. “Time’s a’wasting.”

  I looked around for the cameras she was watching us with. When I didn’t see them, I pushed on, catching up to Thomlin, who stood where the path forked. He had his legs spread as if his body couldn’t agree on which way to take.

  “Hey,” I whispered, but I didn’t know why. Sound didn’t matter. A scaly could sniff us out if it wanted to. “We need to work together.”

  “Shut up!” Thomlin looked down one path, then the other. “I’m listening.”

  I shook my head. “For what? You know how we’re supposed to rely on other things? I’m one of the other things.”

  “I can do this by myself. Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Having a lovers’ spat?” Puck’s voice rang off the walls.

  “There.” Thomlin shifted his body to face the left path. “I can hear it.”

  Sure enough, after he’d said it, I heard a tink, tink, tink. My brain translated it to be the clawing steps of a big-ass dragon. Thomlin shifted his shield and lance, and then took off in the direction of the sound.

  “Wait,” I called after him in a stern whisper, “you’re looking for the dragon?”

  He didn’t answer me, but the approaching sound of claw against metal confirmed that I was going to take the other way. If Thomlin wanted to run off and be Captain Big Balls, I wasn’t going to stop him, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tag along.

  I used to be the king of corn mazes when I was growing up. This wasn’t much different. As I followed the path, I only turned when my intuition told me to or I had no other choice. It helped to look up at the ladders and the smoking building every so often to gauge if my inner navigator led me true.

  “You’re in trouble now, Thomlin,” I heard Puck say.

  At the next turn, I saw the bottom of a rusty yellow ladder.

  Pausing to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, I rubbed my eyes. My suit’s metal fingers only smudged the sweat around. I poked my head around the corner, checking for any surprise, pop-out dragons. All clear.

  Puck’s voice came through the speakers. “Looks like Brannigan has found one of the ladders.”

  I hadn’t been keeping track of how many seconds I had left, but I took my time getting to the ladder. With my eyes, I followed the metal rungs up to the building, trying to decide if I should leave my lance or my shield.

  Thomlin’s screams echoed through the maze. “Help!”

  “Uh oh.” Puck’s smug, disembodied voice was starting to piss me off. “Your fellow smoke eater is in trouble. What are you going to do now, Brannigan?”

  I turned to go after Thomlin, but stopped and took another look at the ladder. The frustrated groan I released could have belonged to a scaly.

  Scraping my lance against the floor, I drew a quick arrow around the corner, and did so at every turn – seeing that I was all out of breadcrumbs to lead me back to the ladder.

  The clanking of metal grew louder as I found myself in the center of the maze, where the walls curved, forming a wagon wheel shape. I wondered if I was too late, and the metal clanging I heard was the dragon clawing into Thomlin’s power suit like a grandma at an all-you-can-eat crab night.

  But Puck hadn’t made any commentary, and as I turned into a gap in the wall, Thomlin lay a couple dozen feet ahead of me, on his back and shoving his lance into the mouth of a robotic dragon. His shield was holding off one of the shiny, metal claws and furiously blinking red.

  “Thomlin, get out of there!” I yelled.

  “Meet Mecha-Scaly!” Puck’s voice echoed.

  “Shut up, Puck!” I didn’t care how many
pushups she’d give me.

  The dragon raised its head with a rusty whine. Its orange, glowing eyes contracted as if it was zooming in on my face. It was hungry for its new target – me.

  Whoever had built it had done a bang-up job. Its horns were long and menacing, its teeth plentiful and razor sharp. The thing had to be as big as a Mack truck, and it was all metal, polished chrome. They’d left out a tail, though. No actual dragon had ever scared me as much as this human-built motherfucker.

  Lifting its claw off Thomlin’s shield, it scraped him behind like a pile of droppings and lumbered toward me – tink, tink, tink.

  Thomlin tossed his shield away as the hexagons hummed louder and vibrated out of control. When it hit the ground, the shield exploded in fire and glass.

  He couldn’t have thrown it at the dragon?

  Thomlin ran off as Mecha-Scaly opened its mouth. It didn’t roar, but a flamethrower had been welded into the back of its throat.

  I knelt and raised my shield as flames blasted from the dragon’s mouth. With the transparency of the glass, I got a great view of the fire steadily burning away my defense. My shield’s hexagons flashed orange.

  The only place I could do any damage was one of the dragon’s orange eyes. I thrust my lance, aiming for the left orb, but the metal bastard swiped my lance away like it was a twig, twisting my wrist in the process. It snapped so badly, I wondered if my wrist was sprained, if not broken.

  Flexing my fingers – no, not broken. It sure hurt, though.

  I would have tried retrieving my lance, but, with the same claw, the dragon swung back toward my head. I balled up behind my shield in time for the hit to send me onto my back.

  Mecha-Scaly ran on an effective program, because I was in pretty much the same position I’d found Thomlin.

  Sweat stung my eyes, blurring my vision, but even a blind man could have felt my shield wigging out, flashing red and vibrating as if the hive pattern contained an angry swarm of bees. Above, the dragon reared back, ready to bite. I rolled backwards, throwing my shield under the scaly’s belly. It chased after me with its teeth…

  …and then the shield exploded.

  I sprawled onto my stomach, ready to say goodbye to the majority of my butt cheeks. More than a few hunks of metal racked my helmet and power suit.

  Tink, tink, tink.

  Behind me, the dragon clawed in chase, gnashing its creaky teeth. They were the only sounds echoing through the maze, besides my labored breath. A roar might have made me feel a little better about having to crawl for my life, away from a metal monster.

  The back half of the dragon was gone. It dragged shredded wire and tumbling metal behind as it clambered after me, a cog or two falling out of the gash. Funky, clear fluid pooled under it and trickled away, outrunning the dragon on its way toward me.

  Fuel.

  It was in that same moment the dragon’s oh-so-intelligent computer decided the best course of action was to breathe fire.

  I leapt to my feet when it opened its mouth, running with everything I had. Oh, to shed my armor for a little more speed. What the metal scaly had lacked in a roar was quickly made up for by the inferno that ripped to life behind me. The flames scorched my ass first, and then they quickly radiated everywhere else, even in front of me, thanks to the metal box.

  I ran until I felt it safe enough to stop, drop, and roll to make sure I wasn’t on fire. After I was done with my tumbleweed impression, I lay there, staring at where Little Susie waited for me to save her, in the building still churning out smoke, high above the maze. I heard the crackling of flames and not the tink, tink, tink of Mecha-Scaly, so I assumed it was safe to take a breather.

  Forget the clock. And Puck, and everybody else. I didn’t sign up for this. My whole body was like a roasted duck, and I was sure my wrist would swell to the size of a grapefruit before the sun set. Fuck Little Susie. I was going to lay there until someone dragged me out.

  A blocky green shape moved along one of the ladders. I sat up.

  Thomlin.

  He’d found his way through the maze and thought he’d steal all the glory. Not on my watch. Huffing and cussing, I stumbled onto my feet and shuffled in search of one of my scratches on the maze floor.

  Thomlin was halfway up his ladder when I reached the other and began climbing.

  “Give it up, old man,” he shouted, when he noticed me clanging up the rungs.

  I said, “That’s not what your mom told me last night.”

  “Looks like we have a close race.” Puck would have made a terrible sports announcer. “With only four and a half minutes to go.”

  Every rung climbed was hell on my body. Every time I grabbed another piece of metal, a flash of white crossed my vision, and I considered dropping to my death as a better alternative. But I fought through it.

  Thirty seconds later, Thomlin stood under the hatch leading into the bottom of the building. He raised his hand to the handle as smoke puffed in and out of the cracks.

  I could have let him burn to death and fall like a meteor, but instead, I shouted, “Wait!”

  I don’t know why, given our brief, tumultuous history, but he actually stopped and looked at me, annoyed, but curious.

  “That room is prepped to blow,” I said. “See how that smoke is breathing?”

  He did. “What’s that mean? Another dragon?”

  Amateurs.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Backdraft. That room is oxygen deficient. The fire has everything it needs but air. If you open that hatch, an explosion is going to send you to the ground.”

  He inspected the building above us. “What do we do?”

  It was a miracle that he believed me. I looked around, even to the maze far below, and at Puck and the other rookies watching us from the grass. I was searching for… hell, I didn’t even know.

  Pegs had been nailed into the wood about a foot away from my hatch’s handle, painted the same color as the building. You really had to be looking to catch them. I followed the line of pegs up to the top of the building.

  Well, this was going to be fun.

  “I’m going to climb to the roof,” I told Thomlin.

  “Why?”

  “Making a hole up there is the only way to release the pressure without either of us dying. I’ll shout when I’ve done it. But you’ll probably be able to tell.”

  “How are you going to make a hole?”

  I swung for the first peg and said, “I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

  I almost missed the third peg, and swung wildly at the end of a five-inch piece of metal, a hundred feet above certain death. My wrist would have cursed me in shrill syllables if it had a mouth. I’d never experienced pain like that before, and I’d broken more than a few bones in my lifetime.

  Looking down wasn’t an option as I waited for my body to still before reaching for the next peg.

  I passed a window that had been blackened so badly it might as well have been spray painted. Up top, the roof was flat and made of thin plywood. I would have used a pike pole or trash hook – or my lost lance – to check the roof’s stability, but I had nothing but my power suit. If I fell through, me and Little Susie would both be fricassee.

  With an exhausted sigh, I swung a leg over and tapped the roof with my boot. It didn’t feel squishy, but I wasn’t confident enough to put my entire weight on it. I looked at my uninjured hand and made a fist. It was awkward using my left hand, but pain had already enflamed the other.

  My fist cut through the air and I leaned into it with all my weight. The first hit made a crater and a thunderous snap. Smoke sprang out like black ghosts among flames that clawed against my leg.

  Good, a dead power suit was good for breaking shit, at least.

  For good measure, I punched the same spot and cleared out a two-foot-wide hole. What little fire that showed itself had extinguished with the release of pressure. I hadn’t been expecting that, but seeing how this backdraft was intentional, I wasn’t going to question
serendipity.

  “It’s done!” I shouted.

  I looked back over the way I’d come and groaned softly to myself. Getting back to the ladder was going to suck even worse.

  By the time I got to the first rung, Thomlin was climbing down with Little Susie over his shoulder.

  “Hey!” I called to him. “Wait for me.”

  He looked up nervously, and, laying the mannequin over his arms, slid down the ladder like crap through a goose.

  “You asshole!”

  Hadn’t Thomlin ever seen movies where two adversaries in flight school or on a football team bond during a tough training exercise and share the glory of winning together? Didn’t he want to put aside our differences and show that, in the end, friendship conquers all?

  Yeah, I guess I didn’t want that either.

  When Thomlin reached the ground, he took off toward the maze’s entrance. I put each of my boots to the side of the ladder, and even though my wrist hurt like hell, I grabbed the sides and let gravity do the work.

  I’m not sure how far I’d gotten before I hit a snag somewhere and fell from the ladder. Everything was going fine, but then I was airborne, and the ground met me quick.

  And it met me hard.

  Chapter 13

  All I wanted to do was take a five-year nap.

  No. Make that six years.

  With my wrist on ice, I sat on the edge of an examination table in an air-conditioned lab room as Yolanda, the propellerhead, stirred an aqua-blue mixture in a bowl behind me. The injection she’d put in my arm had numbed my body but had also invigorated me like a quadruple espresso shot with a cocaine chaser. Weird combo. But it allowed me to move without crying out in pain.

  Puck had been there earlier while I was tenderly peeling my clothes off. She said she wouldn’t make me clean the bathrooms until I’d properly healed. Very kind of her.

  After I’d fallen from the ladder, the maze walls lowered into the ground, and the other smokies ran in after me. I told them I could walk just fine, but they made me stay flat on my back. Afu grabbed both my legs while Puck and Williams took an arm. I looked at Thomlin as we passed. He had no one but Little Susie to keep him company.