Smoke Eaters

by Sean Grigsby

  Renfro and I were the only smoke eaters.

  “Just us then?” I asked.

  Renfro grumbled and nodded. “Our other smokies are fighting dragons in different parts of the state. We’re on our own.”

  “They’re everywhere!” a woman in a pink robe screamed at us as we got out of the truck. “Kids are still in there.”

  Flames danced behind a few of the upper story windows. No smoke. The fire had no pattern, though. Different floors burned while others had been untouched. I’d never seen such disconnected fire, besides a few arson cases during the corporate wars. Behind the building, the full moon watched.

  I hoped it wasn’t a wyrm inside that building.

  Renfro put a hand on each of the frantic woman’s shoulders. “How many kids are in there?”

  “Seven… I think.”

  “You think?” I said.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” she snapped. “I had to get out too.”

  “Anybody else?” Renfro asked.

  The woman shook her head. “Just the droids.”

  “Did you see the dragons?” Renfro asked. “What did they look like?”

  Glass shattered from above, and what looked like a pterodactyl screeched into the night, flapping its tiny wings and holding onto a screaming little girl’s leg as she dangled over the gasping crowd. The shards of glass hit the street, but the dragon kept flying.

  My jaw dropped. Yolanda had been right all along.

  The little girl swatted at the scaly, but couldn’t reach far enough to land a hit. It didn’t matter, though. The dragon dropped her.

  The crowd screamed.

  I said, “I got her!” and power jumped toward the falling orphan.

  The girl didn’t make a sound, and she dropped so fast, I almost missed her. With one hand, I snagged the girl around the waist and tucked her in to my chest before scraping down the side of the orphanage.

  Wobbly, but able to stand on her own, the girl looked at me with saucer-sized eyes. Smoke stained her face, and she coughed several times before asking, “Am I OK?”

  “Yeah,” I patted her back. “You’re just fine. Go find the lady who runs this place.”

  She scampered into the crowd, and I turned to find Renfro.

  The scaly hovered fifty feet above me, breathing a stream of fire that caused me to crouch. Renfro jumped at the dragon, firing his laser gun and foam at the same time. When the dragon moved its flames toward him, it caught a wad of foam in the throat that killed the fire. One of the lasers ripped through the dragon’s wing, and the scaly screeched as it spiraled to the street. I ran to where it had landed, still alive and snapping its teeth at my boots. When the dragon began crawling toward me, sputtering flames from its mouth, I stomped on the bastard’s head until it quit squawking.

  The dragon was small, about the size of a Labrador – a Labrador with bat wings and an alligator’s mouth.

  “Come on,” Renfro said, running up to me. “There are more inside.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the dead scaly’s crumpled wings. “They’re not supposed to fly.”

  “We’ll figure that out later.”

  I shook myself back into the moment and pointed to the broken window in the upper floor. “Think we should start there?”

  “As long as you can make the jump.” Renfro checked his power level before launching toward the window.

  It was one of those times I should have made the sign of the cross or kissed a pendant or something. Instead, I said, “Ah, fuck,” and sailed into the air, following Renfro’s arc.

  I landed at the edge of the broken window, and Renfro had to grab my arm to keep me from falling backward.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  In the dark, Renfro’s eyes glowed red.

  I engaged my laser sword and followed him through the dark hallway. The building’s power had been killed, and the smoke was cotton-thick. We breathed it with ease. Our thermal goggles showed nothing besides a few places where fires grew, but we ignored them, still checking each room we came to for signs of life. I could hear the distant screaming of something, but I couldn’t tell if it was a bunch of orphans or scalies.

  When we rounded a corner, I stepped on something hard and bulky.

  “Settle down, children.” It was a nanny droid on its side, burned and cracked open like the egg it was shaped like. It waved a humanoid finger at us as if we were in trouble and due for a time out.

  “These stupid things,” I said.

  Renfro raised his head to the ceiling. “Next floor up. The other six kids are trapped in a room. A shitload of scalies in the hall outside.”

  I looked up as well. A cluster of blue blobs was gathered in a room, trying to keep the door closed as a cluster of flapping red blobs bombarded it like a military airstrike. The kids wouldn’t last long if we didn’t hurry.

  We entered the next floor up. The scalies at the end of the hall stopped attacking the door. Resting on the floor or hanging from the ceiling, they stared at us. One of them screeched and flew at us like a dart, snapping its jaws. I swung my sword with a quick phhmm and severed its head. The body skidded along the floor behind us, leaving a trail of blood and a sulfuric stench.

  That just pissed the rest of them off.

  Screaming and flapping like a bunch of hippies who’d taken bad acid, they filled the hall in a dark vortex. Renfro fired his lasers, only grounding a couple. I got ready to slash my sword as many times as I needed to.

  They hit us full force, pushing us to the ground. Even though we’d taken out several of the scalies with gun or sword, there were still too many for us to attack at once. I covered my face and blindly swung, but the dragons weren’t even trying to bite my head or blow fire at my face. Instead, they concentrated on my sword arm, ripping at it with their teeth, or torching the armor before I was able to fling them off.

  When I stabbed one dragon in the throat, another bit deep into my arm, and my sword went dead, evaporating into the dark.

  Oh, shit.

  “They took out my guns!” Renfro screamed.

  As if they knew what they’d done, the dragons screamed in celebration. A flapper landed on my chest, sending me onto the floor, and breathed deep, its chest swelling like flames inside a balloon. I ripped off my helmet and held it in front of my face.

  “Cast!” I shouted as flames curled around my fingers, lapping at my cheeks. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Brannigan and Renfro. We’re in trouble at the orphanage. We’re on the fourth floor, east side.”

  I just hoped the helmet radio picked up my traffic, and that someone was listening.

  When the dragon on my chest stopped breathing its fire and inhaled for another go, I thrust my helmet into its maw and heard a crack. I’d broken the scaly’s neck. “Eat that, you bastard!”

  The other flappers gnawed at my head, one nipping the end of my ear, as I rolled over and swatted away the ones swarming Renfro. He had one scaly in his grip and punched it repeatedly.

  “Let’s go.” I secured my helmet.

  “Where?”

  “With the kids in that room.”

  He began crawling toward the other end of the hall, fighting against the scalies to get to his feet.

  I squished a couple of the flappers into the wall with my shoulder before jumping into a run. Behind us, the dragons clawed against the wall. When we got to the door, it barely budged.

  “Back up, kids,” Renfro shouted. He pushed his way in.

  One of the dragons flew from the wall, aiming for me. I ducked the attack and followed behind Renfro before closing the door. Inside, I couldn’t see the kids’ faces – two boys and four girls – but the moon shining through the window illuminated the tops of their heads and a few toys scattered on the floor.

  I leaned against the weakening wood and said, “Dragons aren’t supposed to fly.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Renfro told the children huddled together. “He’s new.”

  I ran over to the window and p
unched it out. The cool air rushed in as I got a good view of the surrounding, ash-covered neighborhood, peaceful and unaware of the horrible shit we were in.

  “What are you doing?” Renfro said. “Now these bastards have another way to get to us.”

  “Watch your language, dub,” I said.

  Renfro looked to the orphans. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, kids.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “now we have a way out of here.”

  “We can’t power jump with kids in our arms.”

  “Why not?”

  Renfro groaned. “Can you count? Plus, they’re too big and it’s too dangerous.”

  “We can’t leave them here,” I said.

  “I know,” Renfro whispered. “But we’re low on options right now.”

  “What if we made more than one trip?” I suggested.

  “You barely made the jump to the floor below us. Plus, those sonsabit–” Renfro looked at the kids. “Those dragons bit all the right places in my suit. My power is draining.”

  “Yeah, mine, too,” I said. “Would be great if we had a couple lances right now, huh?”

  “They’re coming from the basement,” one of the kids said. “They won’t stop.”

  “Coming?” Renfro asked. “There are more?”

  The kid pointed to a laundry chute that had been tied closed with a Slinky.

  I had to hand it to these kids, they were handling the situation like professionals, but I should have guessed as much. They hadn’t become orphans from Mom and Dad overdosing on sleeping pills or being in a car accident. Dragons had taken their families. They were used to scalies and the death they brought with them.

  “We heard them break through the basement,” one of the girls said. “We snuck down to see. There’s a big, fiery sinkhole they’re coming from.”

  “Sinkhole?” Renfro looked at me. “This building could collapse any minute.”

  The girl pointed to the laundry chute. “We can hear more of them coming out.”

  All of us got quiet and I stared at the rednecked, Slinky lock. I took slow steps toward the laundry chute and held out my hand. If more of those flappers were coming out of the ground, I wanted to know about it.

  Behind me, someone’s breath quickened as I neared the chute, and I was pretty sure it was Renfro.

  I grabbed the chute’s handle, ready to pull it open.

  Bang!

  Wings rattled the chute, as if a thousand rabid sparrows flew toward the roof.

  I turned to the kids. “OK, I believe you.”

  Hard hits rattled the door behind us, almost ripping it off its hinges. Renfro and I both ran to hold it shut.

  A snout split the wood, stuck in the crack. The dragon screeched and clawed to remove itself from the door, so I decided to help it out with an armored fist. It fell away, but more of them battered the door, and smoke began to curl from the bottom.

  I gave Renfro a look that said, We’re fucked! He returned me the same.

  We could have opened the door and tried to fight the scalies off, but the orphans didn’t have the benefit of power suits. And I sure as hell wasn’t like Thomlin. I wasn’t going to sacrifice a bunch of kids just to save my own ass.

  I stared longingly at the window I’d broken, still considering grabbing three of the kids and leaping to the ground, when the tip of an aerial ladder appeared just outside.

  “Hot damn!” I touched my lips and glanced at the kids. “I mean, hot dang!”

  I told Renfro to hold the door as I ran to look out the window.

  Truck 1 had arrived on scene and the crew was climbing up the ladder, fully geared up. It went against every department protocol. But there wouldn’t be a department as of seven o’clock that morning. These guys were saints.

  The captain met me at the window, wearing his air mask. I’d lost count of what shift it was, but I realized from his bulging gut, it was the same guy from a few days before. The one whose job I’d saved.

  “Need a little help?” The mask muffled his voice, but I’d learned how to decipher SCBA talk.

  “Can you get these kids out of here?” I pointed to the orphans.

  He waved his hands to receive them.

  I handed off the first kid, who was actually smiling. “And a couple axes, if you don’t mind.”

  Truck 1’s captain handed me the pickhead axe he’d been carrying and detached the flathead they carried at the ladder tip. I handed the flathead axe to Renfro, and began hoisting the other kids onto the ladder.

  The door behind us exploded in flames.

  “Lower the ladder!” I screamed at Truck 1’s captain.

  With all but one of the orphans out of the room, Renfro turned to face the flood of dragons pouring in, while I raised the last kid, a little boy with a mop of blond hair, to the captain.

  One of the scalies flew past Renfro and latched onto the blond boy’s shoulders. The kid screamed as he slipped through my hands, but I was able to grab his ankles before the dragon took him on a moonlit flight.

  Truck 1’s captain dodged the dragon’s teeth, unable to make a grab at the boy. I dug my boots into the floor, but the dragon flapped harder and pulled me toward the window. I was afraid the little boy would split in half if neither I nor the dragon relented.

  Renfro swung his axe wildly, not used to handling anything besides his laser gun and foam shooter. But after the third try, he chopped the flapper’s legs. The boy dropped to the floor and rolled away, but the scaly went berserk, crashing repeatedly into the ceiling and splattering blood all over the room.

  Another dragon slammed into my back and bit down on my shoulder. I punched it a couple of times, but seeing how it wasn’t letting go and that it wasn’t hurting me – yet – I focused on taking out the legless dragon cracking its own skull into the ceiling.

  I jumped once and missed as it fluttered away. With my next jump I snagged one of the dragon’s bleeding stumps and threw it to the ground. I lifted my axe.

  The dragon on my shoulder reared back and breathed fire across the side of my face.

  I screamed and rolled, slapping at the fire to put it out. The shouldered dragon didn’t let go, and went for a ride as I did what we always told kindergarteners to do if a scaly ever caught their clothes on fire: stop, drop, and lose your shit.

  The dragon on my shoulder squawked as if it was having the time of its life.

  I got to my knees and grabbed the flapper by the snout, throwing it onto the ground in front of me. It squirmed at first, but an axe to the throat stopped that.

  The remaining orphan boy screamed from a corner as Truck 1’s captain leaned through the window with a useless stretch of his arm. The legless dragon was army-crawling toward the kid, only a couple feet away, snapping and frothing smoke from its nostrils.

  I jumped at the scaly as it readied its fire breath, piercing its back with the pick of my axe. Grabbing the boy, I threw him into the truck captain’s arms and turned to retrieve my weapon.

  As I was pulling my axe free, another dragon flew in, stinging my eyes with the tip of its wings.

  I thought for sure I’d been permanently blinded, but I only spent a moment stumbling around the room with my hand out in front of me, hoping Renfro didn’t bury his axe into my neck. A dragon’s mouth bit down on my arm instead, jerking me all over the room, slamming me into the walls and a dresser that had caught fire.

  I was sure this would be the room where I died. I guess it wasn’t a bad way to go – we’d saved a bunch of orphans. But I’d always thought I’d die mid-orgasm, and I was kind of sad a bunch of winged assholes were going to be my ruin.

  Despite the noise and violence, I heard the pew pew of a laser gun. Renfro’s guns were trashed, which meant it could only have been–

  “Brannigan, get down!” Donahue shouted at me through the doorway. He stood among the corpses of several dragons, and was taking aim at the one on my arm.

  I dropped to the floor.

  Donahue’s shot hit the dragon between the eyes,
just inches from my arm. The chief helped me up and blasted two dragons off Renfro.

  Puck came in and cut down the rest of the scalies with her sword. “Out the window. Now!”

  She didn’t have to tell me twice. After three bounding steps, I launched toward the ground outside. The other smokies followed just behind me, landing in a clink, clink, clink of metallic rhythm. Puck held a dead scaly by the throat.

  Renfro turned to Donahue. “The kids told us more keep emerging from a sinkhole in the basement. That they won’t stop.”

  “We’ll make ’em stop.” Chief Donahue pointed to Sergeant Puck. “You and Brannigan clear the area. Me and Renfro will get the cannon ready.”

  “Are you sure that’s safe?” I asked. The building was unstable as it was, but adding firepower to it seemed like a bad idea.

  “Shut up and do what you’re told.” Donahue said. “You shouldn’t even be out here, but don’t worry, we’ll take care of that later.”

  Order up! Shit sandwich to go for a Mr Brannigan.

  I followed Puck, who was strangely silent. We told the crowd to get as far away from the building as possible. No sugar-coating was needed. People tend to scatter when you tell them you’re about to blow a nearby building to hell. The dead dragon in Puck’s fist helped too.

  After the area was clear, I drove Slayer 3, which Donahue and Puck had arrived in, to a safer spot. As the cannon truck moved into firing position, I walked over to Truck 1’s captain and thanked him for showing up.

  “Not a problem,” he told me. “We were parked nearby to watch. I scan the smoke eater dispatch when nothing is on the Feed or if I can’t sleep. You’re lucky this was one of those times.”

  “That’s illegal, isn’t it?” I knew the smokies would be pissed if they realized outsiders could listen in on their calls.

  The captain smiled. “I won’t tell if you won’t. I know it was you who saved my job, for a while anyway. Let’s consider us square.”

  We shook hands and let that be the end of it.

  An electrical sound rose in pitch behind me. The cannon glowed green at the base of the barrel, where Donahue stood at a trigger that looked like a racecar steering wheel. When the noise could rise no higher, Donahue pulled the trigger, firing a huge streak of green, iridescent light across the parking lot.