Smoke Eaters

by Sean Grigsby

  The cannon fire hit the bottom of the high-rise, and the building collapsed at once, no hesitation, no delay. In seconds, chunks of concrete fell and clouds of dust rose into the moonlit night. When the air cleared, a few distant car alarms were going off, and the crowd, watching behind the cannon truck, either cheered or shouted for us to be arrested. There were at least a few quips about our mothers. If none of those people had been at the protests, we’d just added more to their ranks.

  Some folks you just can’t please.

  I listened for any dragon shrieks or the flapping of wings, watched the moon for any escaping flapper crossing its face. Nothing.

  I limped over to Donahue as he climbed down from the cannon truck. “Those scalies could fly,” I said. “Yolanda said this was a possibility. We’re in deep shit if there are more like them. Bigger ones than them.”

  “Puck’s going to give that dead one to the propellerheads to study.” He sighed, his eyes half open. “And if anyone is in trouble, it’s you and Naveena.”

  “She wasn’t feeling well,” I said. “I filled in for her.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” he shouted. He relaxed his face, and the next thing he said was much softer. “Get in the truck. You and Naveena need to be in my office in the morning. We’re done here.”

  We both turned from one another, heading to different vehicles.

  A news drone buzzed above us. I wondered how much of the incident it had captured for the Feed, and if the smoke eaters had a tradition about getting on the news. In the fire department, you had to bake a cake if you made the Feed.

  As Renfro drove us away, hover trucks arrived and deposited fire droids to clean up the mess we’d made. It would be another mark against the smoke eaters, making us look like assholes and showing the robots to be the efficient heroes, who only did what they were programmed to do. They didn’t make bad calls, they didn’t blow up orphanages.

  It was going to give Donahue more teeth to chew my ass with.

  Renfro and I were quiet, listening to the noise of the road under us. It wasn’t until we pulled into Smoke Eater Headquarters that Renfro looked over to me with his red eyes and said, “Well, at least there won’t be any wraiths.”

  Chapter 16

  “Never, in all my years, have I seen some shit like this.”

  Donahue’s office looked more like a fire chief’s workspace than I thought it would. With all the crap I’d been hearing about how smoke eaters were so different from firefighters, I’d have expected something more… unusual.

  An old fire helmet sat atop a shelf. Pictures of Donahue and other firefighters hung from the wall, along with commendations and souvenirs of a different life. I’d been right. Donahue and I weren’t that different.

  There was one photo on the wall that stood out from the rest: Donahue and three other firefighters standing in front of a dead dragon, its head as long as the men and women, standing shoulder to shoulder, were wide. They weren’t smiling.

  “Are you listening, Brannigan?” Donahue said.

  I’d zoned out while he focused on Naveena, and she was mentally off the planet as well. I’d seen that look before. Her give-a-damn was broken.

  “Yes, Chief,” I told him. “But I think this is a special situation.”

  Donahue dropped into his chair. “Enlighten me.”

  “For one,” I cleared my throat. “Naveena had a bad call yesterday, and needed to go through some kind of post-incident debriefing. To talk it out.”

  Naveena sprang to life. “I don’t need any counseling, rookie!”

  “I’m not saying that.” I held my hands up in defense.

  Naveena pointed a finger at me. “You’re due for an ass-kicking.”

  “All right!” Donahue jumped to his feet and slammed palms onto his desk. “Both of you are suspended for a week.”

  “Chief!” Naveena huffed through her nose.

  I just sat there and shrugged. One week. So what?

  “Brannigan’s right,” Donahue said.

  Naveena and I both sat up straighter.

  “He is?”

  “I am?”

  Donahue nodded. “Captain Jendal, you should have come and talked to me about it if you were having problems.”

  “It’s not… it wasn’t a problem,” Naveena said, looking at me as if she hated and respected me for the same reason. “It was just a fluke. It won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” Donahue said. “You can take the week to make extra sure it won’t.”

  Naveena groaned and stomped out of Donahue’s office.

  The chief leaned back in his chair and turned to me, rubbing his chin. “It was a Tuesday morning.”

  “Huh?”

  “E-Day. I don’t know if it was the same with your department or shift, but when I was on the job, firefighting, nothing happened on a Tuesday. Maybe some old people would trip on a rug or we had to check out a couple false fire alarms. But that Tuesday was a biggie.

  “My crew and I were the first to go in to this school fire, some elementary school. The whole place was lit up. Chief told us to go search, so we did. Before we could find any kids or teachers, the dragon found us.”

  “Shit.”

  Donahue blinked a few times, but he stared at the spot just above me. “The dragon snagged one of us. Rookie. Poor kid hadn’t been on a month. My captain and I tried to escape, but the way back was burning, so we holed up in one of the classrooms. Radio traffic was horrible. Everyone talking at the same time.

  “My captain finally decided we had to take out the scaly. Said he’d use his axe. I thought he was crazy. And all I had was a pike pole. I told him we should just run, find a way outside and call in the Army Reserve or something. But he couldn’t do that. As scared as I was, I couldn’t abandon him either.

  “We found the dragon outside on the playground. It’d smashed through the doors and was trying to snatch a young woman from under one of those round jungle gyms. My captain and I took off our masks, thinking it would be OK since we were outside the building, had no air left anyway. But smoke was everywhere, like a fog. The woman’s screams and the dragon’s growling were the only things that let us know we’d found it.

  “My captain was coughing bad; snot and spit coming out of him. I told him again we should go. But he didn’t listen. He charged the dragon with his axe.”

  I waited for Donahue to continue. He just kept staring off into space, reliving the past. After a minute I asked, “What happened?”

  “He dropped to the ground before he ever reached the dragon. Dead. Smoke got him. I tried to get to him, but the scaly turned and scorched his body.” Donahue cleared his throat. “When it started eating, I snuck around and pulled the woman from under the jungle gym. She seemed to be OK, besides being scared half to death, but I was too. I helped her over the fence, and that’s when the dragon got my leg.”

  He knocked knuckles against his metal thigh for emphasis.

  “Damn, Chief,” I said. “Did you at least get a lick in?”

  “I shoved my pike pole into its eye. It dug back underground after that. Thankfully, I always carried some webbing in my turnouts, so I tied off my leg and waited for help.”

  I whistled. “You’re a tough old bastard, Chief.”

  “I’m telling you all of this because I want you to know that I get it. When things go bad, some people run and some people rush in. After that day, I promised myself I would never even consider running away. You’re the same, Brannigan. But what you have to understand is that we have rules for a reason. I thought a fire captain would know that.”

  I sat there twiddling my thumbs. I’d run out of smartass retorts.

  “We’re done here, Brannigan. See you a week from Monday. I’m sure your wife will be glad to have you home. Be sure to take your holoreader so you can still study.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Aren’t we going to talk about how dragons can fly?”

  Instead of answering me, he twirled his chair aro
und to face the wall.

  When I got back to our dorm room, Naveena was punching clothes into a bag.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Why do you care?” Punch. Punch.

  “Look, I never wanted to get you in trouble,” I said. “If it was up to me, that dragon call at the orphanage would have gone over without a hitch, and no one would know besides us and Renfro. Shit just didn’t go our way.”

  She stopped filling her bag and glared at me. It looked like she’d put on eye shadow after she’d left Donahue’s office. “And telling Donahue I needed counseling?”

  “So he’d go easier on you?” I shrugged. “It always worked for my firefighters.”

  She sighed. “This isn’t–”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  If I had to hear how smoke eaters were different one more time… well, I was glad to have a free week away.

  There was a knock on the open door. Afu stood outside, with Williams crouched under him.

  “Hey,” Afu said. “Puck’s letting us go early for the weekend. You guys want to come party with us?”

  “Hell yeah,” Naveena said.

  I snapped my head toward her. This woman, who’d been basically comatose the previous night while being called to kill dragons, someone who was just packing like a thirteen year-old runaway, wanted to go party with a couple rookies?

  “Cool,” said Williams. She threw her chin to me. “What about you, old man?”

  Sherry had been expecting to see me all week, at least I hoped as much. I was horny, tired, and needed a break. But I hadn’t had an outing with friends since I was forty. And that had ended with rug burns and a hangover.

  I also didn’t want Naveena to do anything crazy. That kid dying clung to her like fungus. She wasn’t acting like herself, and for some reason I was compelled to watch over her. She was a sister smoke eater. Most people in our line of work just pay lip service when calling it the Brotherhood. But it actually meant something to me.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  I held my head outside the car window, enjoying the breeze, and then a chunk of ash flew into my mouth. I coughed and hacked, nearly choking.

  Naveena laughed from the front passenger seat and handed back a bottle of bourbon we’d picked up on the way. “Here, grandpa. Wash it down with this.”

  I took the bottle and drank.

  Beside me, Afu took up most of Williams’s two-door coupe, singing along with the weird sounds blaring from the car’s speakers. I’d refrained from keeping up with modern music. Shit sounded like a cat dying to a hundred and fifty beats per minute. Williams drove, and had made it clear before heading out that, in her car, boys sat in the back.

  I felt like I was in high school again.

  “So, this amusement park got shut down a few years ago when a wraith wandered into the funhouse,” Williams said. “People freaked and they boarded it up. Thing is, dragons never attacked it. I guess it was a false alarm.”

  Afu said, “Supposedly, it’s still operational.”

  “And we’re going to break in,” I said, confirming my theory of how the rest of the day was going to go.

  “Yep,” Afu said. He dug into the backpack he’d brought along, and removed a baggie with glowing pills that looked like bottled television static. “Who wants to spark?”

  Naveena turned in her seat, and as soon as her eyes hit the bag, they widened. She stretched out a hand. “Me!”

  “I’m driving,” Williams said. “I’ll pop one when we get to the park.”

  “What the hell are those?” I tried to get a better look at the pills in the baggie. They could have been radioactive mints for all I knew.

  Afu handed me one. “Sparks. They take hologram tech and shove it into this tiny pill. Recodes your brain. Anything that bums you out gets wiped, and it ups all your senses. You might cum in your pants if the right breeze blows by.”

  Sounded like a dangerous combo of a lot of the drugs popular back in my day. And Naveena was about to throw one back.

  “Naveena,” I said, maybe a little too loudly.

  She stopped and looked at me.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  She sputtered her lips. “It’s the best idea all week. And you’re not my daddy.” She took the bottle of bourbon from my hands and washed down the pill.

  The drug hit her instantly. She howled and spread her arms, cranking up the music and bobbing to the racket. The other two laughed and joined in. I pocketed the spark Afu had given me and took back the bourbon. I’d need a lot more of it in my system if I was going to deal with these people for the next few hours.

  “This is to celebrate Naveena and Brannigan’s suspension.” Afu popped another of the sparks and dry-swallowed it.

  I took another swig of the bourbon in sympathy.

  “There it is.” Williams pointed through the windshield.

  Amid the ashes, a Ferris wheel towered over a fenced-in lot that guarded roller coasters and the other amusement park basics. I remembered the park – Cedar Point. I hadn’t been there since I was ten years old, when I threw up on the tilt-a-whirl. Besides a generous touch of mildew on the wood, the place hadn’t changed much.

  Lake Erie surrounded us.

  “I say we hit a roller coaster first,” Afu said. His voice was more bubbly than normal, and his eyes looked somewhere I could never see, unless I popped one of those hologram pills.

  Naveena moved her arms to the music. “You have to race me there first.”

  “Wait,” I said. “We’re not actually going to ride any of that rundown shit, are we?”

  “Wouldn’t come out here for nothing,” Williams said. She parked the coupe outside the side gate. It had been locked with several chains, and a posted sign declared the area to be condemned. It didn’t mention why.

  A fucking ghost could have been lurking among rotten corn dogs and funnel cakes for all I knew.

  Williams got out and folded her seat to let me exit. Naveena did the same for Afu. I stayed in my seat and watched the women sashay to the gate as Afu opened the trunk. With a sigh and another drink of bourbon, I got out and followed the ladies.

  Naveena tugged on the tightly secured chains and laughed so hard she fell on her ass.

  “Looks like we’re out of luck,” I said. “Let’s go do something a little less stupid, like human sacrifice.”

  “This won’t take but a second.” Afu walked past me, wearing the arm of a power suit. He hit a button and a laser sword extended.

  “Hell yeah!” Naveena shouted, and got out of his way.

  “Are you stealing equipment now?” I hated feeling like the buzzkill, especially given my age. But damn it, somebody had to have a little sense here.

  “No, man,” Afu said. “I’m offended you’d think so. This is from your wrecked power suit. I help the propellerheads fix them sometimes. We’re just borrowing it.”

  He slashed the chains, and they dropped instantly, the cut ends glowing like lit fuses. The sword died a second later.

  Afu shook the power arm. “Damn. Battery didn’t last as long as I thought it would.”

  Seeing that I was stuck in this adventure, I helped Williams open one side of the gate. Afu and Naveena slipped through and raced toward the nearest rollercoaster.

  Williams tapped me against the chest and ran away, shouting, “I’m going to go find the power.”

  Cedar Point smelled strange, different from how I remembered. It had the stink of rotten wood mixed with the surrounding lake, but it was all tainted by this… sourness that might have only been in my mind. A scent that said, You’re not supposed to be here.

  Dusk was a few hours away.

  The face of the Cedar Point mascot – a big-eyed, bowler-hat-wearing hound dog – was plastered over a sign beckoning, “Have a howl of a time!”

  I’ll keep that in mind, dog.

  Lights sprang to life all around me, followed by the drawl of ancient, carnival music. I thi
nk the singer’s name was Marvin Gaye.

  The roller coaster, the Iron Dragon, stood a long walk down a cracked-asphalt path. Afu manned the controls as the top-mounted cars waited on a pair of rusty, inverted tracks.

  “I want to sit in the very front.” Naveena made her way through the labyrinth of metal poles that patrons used to slowly march through. “Sit with me, Brannigan.”

  I swallowed. “Maybe we should run the coaster by itself. You know, to make sure it’s still safe.”

  “Fuck that,” Naveena said, raising the lapbar.

  “Wait,” Afu said. “That’s a good idea.”

  Naveena huffed and backed away, as Afu pushed a button and sent the coaster on its trial run. We all huddled behind Afu and watched the coaster mount the rise with its slow click, click, click. A minute later it dropped down the other side and swooped through the rest of the track. As it made its way around the last curve, the wheels sparked against the track and the Iron Dragon flew off, crashing through the side rail before plummeting to the dry lagoon below.

  There was a lot of noise and dust, but no fire.

  Naveena and Afu laughed their asses off and pointed at the crash. I looked at what could have been a really crummy death, especially thinking about what Sherry would have thought – why I hadn’t come straight home and why I decided to go on a bender with a bunch of drughead dragon slayers half my age.

  Williams jogged up the steps and asked, “What was that?”

  “Side effects,” I said with a frown.

  “Let’s go find something else to ride.” Naveena pushed past me.

  I saw an old favorite, one that wouldn’t make me puke or be decapitated. “The carousel,” I said.

  “You’re cool, Brannigan,” Williams shook her head, “but sometimes you’re just too damn old.”

  “Look at it this way,” I said, “if it doesn’t work, we won’t be crashing into the funnel cake stand.”

  “I’m in.” Naveena swung under the metal dividers and ran toward the carousel, shouting back, “I want to push the button.”