by Sean Grigsby
The dragon lifted its wings and beat a few flaps before it was flying, the air whipping against my face and scattering loose gravel.
“No!” I shouted.
The three heads breathed fire in every direction, catching more houses aflame, and roasting a few smoke eaters that hadn’t cleared out soon enough. I ran with all I had, ready to climb onto the dragon if I could find a way.
Flapping its wings faster, the Behemoth fed the newly lit fires as it soared over me, headed the opposite direction. I spun on my heels and ran after it. I was able to catch up as the dragon hovered over one of our slayer trucks and grabbed it with all four of its claws.
I saw what was going to happen next, so I threw down my shield and grabbed onto the back bumper as it left the ground. Sergeant Puke’s pushups came in handy as I pulled myself onto the truck. I didn’t know how high the dragon was taking me, but I could make out a line of house roofs in my periphery.
No time for that.
I began climbing onto the top of the truck. All I had to do was get close enough to shove my lance into a vital part of the dragon. Then, I’d figure out what to do about getting back to the ground.
The wind pounded my ears as I stood just under the dragon’s belly. It could have roared my name and the winning lottery numbers and I wouldn’t have been able to hear it.
I thrust my lance up to pierce its belly, but the Behemoth’s underside moved away from the tip of my weapon, and soon I could see its entire body and the three heads flying away.
The sonofabitch dropped me while I stood on a twenty-five-ton hunk of metal.
Everything went black.
Chapter 18
I was in the worst pain of my life, and the thing that made it worse was that I was asleep and could do nothing about it. The vaguest flashes of voices and movement came to me, but it was garbled among the void of agony I couldn’t seem to find my way out of.
Eventually, I began to crawl back to consciousness a little at a time, the kind of thing they write about in articles about comas and exorcisms. I was awake, but couldn’t open my eyes or move any part of my body – not that I had any desire to further my pain.
Beeps and boops of machines surrounded me. Metal clanged. The unmistakable roll of a chair moved past. Light hit my corneas when I was able to split my eyelids open. Everything was blurry, as if I was underwater. I used to wear glasses before I had laser eye surgery to get onto the fire department. This was a million times blurrier than that recovery.
“Are you trying to determine how high of a fall it’ll take to kill you?”
I knew that voice. It was Yolanda, the propellerhead with the blue miracle goop. Recent events were still a little fuzzy, but whatever had happened she’d make sure I was in good shape.
“No,” Donahue’s voice said, “he’s just an idiot. They’re immortal and stick around to make everyone else’s lives a living hell.”
I meant to say, “Fuck you, too.” But it came out, “Blugh mugh, roof.”
I guess I had a tube down my throat and cotton shit in my mouth. Had I gotten hurt that bad?
“Well,” Donahue said. “I guess there is an upside to this. I don’t have to hear your wisecracks. Or at least understand them.”
My vision had been clearing up steadily, and I could now make out Yolanda sitting in a chair and Donahue leaning against a metal table, arms crossed with bureaucratic angst.
“I can take his tube out if you need him to speak.” Yolanda drummed a pencil against her chin.
Donahue smiled, the sick bastard. “No, I like him better this way.”
I still couldn’t move my body. My head wouldn’t lower, so I tried to see as far down as my eyes would go. Instead of lying in a bed, I sat straight, and it looked like I was encased in a large, shiny, gray metal box, almost like a one-person sauna.
“I’ll let Yolanda tell you why you can’t move,” Donahue said, “and what we plan on doing with you.”
Yolanda breathed slowly through her nose and sat forward, flipping the pencil between fingers. “You fell from a significant height while on top of a slayer truck. Honestly, when I heard about it, I thought you’d be in a body bag.”
“Don’t inflate his ego.” Donahue groaned.
“Anyway, this isn’t like the small injuries you had before. You’re going to have to stay immobile, at least bodily, for about two weeks.”
Even though I couldn’t move, I tensed so bad, my eyes could have popped from the sockets.
“Settle down, Brannigan,” Donahue said. “You aren’t in any shape to do anything.”
Yolanda tapped the metal box surrounding me. “What you’re sitting in is in a beta stage, but we haven’t had too many accidents with it in our tests.”
For fuck’s sake.
“We call it the psy-roll,” Yolanda said. “We’ll show you why in a second. The good news is that I have you hooked up to several IVs pushing Ieiunium curate, and the psy-roll has a cleaning system for…” she bobbed her head from left to right, as if looking for a nice word, “…when you do your business. You’ll have to replace the curate tubes every three days or so. And have someone empty the… other stuff.”
How hygienic.
I looked between her and Donahue. If I couldn’t move, how the hell was I going to replace the very stuff I needed to heal up? Plus, I had no home to go back to, and Sherry was in the hospital herself.
Shit. I had to see her.
Donahue played with the golden lances on his collar. “I have someone assigned to replace your medicine. And don’t think you’re going to sit on your tail for two weeks. I have a special task for you.”
“Mugh flur dungungh!” I mumbled.
“Oh, hell,” Donahue leapt off the table. “Pull that thing out of his throat so he can talk.”
Yolanda came at me quick. I would have flinched if I could move. The tube came out like a sword through my esophagus and I sat there dry heaving and swallowing away the shitty taste in my mouth.
But after a while, I was able to croak out, “What did you do to me?”
Yolanda rolled back in surprise, afraid I was going to yell at her. Like I could do anything else.
“We didn’t do anything,” Donahue said. “Not counting the headache I have to deal with in regard to compensating those injured on Friday, the families of those who died. We lost a recruit because he was so damned gung-ho, he thought he could take on a three-headed dragon!”
“The Behemoth,” Yolanda said with a grin. “We heard you over the radio. I think the name fits.”
Friday. Donahue had said it with a hint of past tense. How many days had come and gone?
I watched the vein in Donahue’s neck twitch. When it settled down, I said, “Did they kill it?”
“Kill what?”
“The Behemoth.”
Donahue rubbed his temples, a hand at each side. “No.”
“You guys lost a dragon that big?”
“No, you lost that dragon. After it burned half of Parthenon City in an air raid, it flew off where we couldn’t track it. The citizens are madder than hell, blaming all of this on us. And I’ve been trying to figure out how in the blue hell the Behemoth just so happened to emerge right under your house.”
“Fascinating development,” Yolanda said. “Not only is this the most sophisticated dragon we’ve ever seen, it’s also a scaly predator. It’s on top of the top of the food chain!”
She grinned wide, while Donahue and I could only stare at her in disbelief.
“Do you think we could have some privacy for a minute?” I asked Yolanda.
She was only too glad to leave, saying, “Get better, Brannigan.”
When the glass doors sealed behind her, I said, “You didn’t pay to have my window fixed.”
“What?”
“You didn’t buy my wife a holostereo.”
“Hold on.” Donahue looked out into the hall. “You’re still out of it. I’ll get Yolanda to up your meds.”
“Liste
n! My wife had been seeing a wraith appear out of a holostereo, one she mysteriously received earlier in the week. Someone also came out to fix one of our broken windows. I thought it might have been you, greasing my wife up so she wouldn’t try to convince me not to become a smoke eater.”
“I did pay for the window, but not the holostereo. I’m not made of money.” He squinted, trying to solve the puzzle I was throwing at him. “So, if it wasn’t me–”
“Who was it?”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“Sherry told me that right before the dragon showed up at our house, a wraith appeared out of the stereo again, but this time it burst into flames. White flames.”
He sat down, rubbing his hands. “She could have been seeing things.”
I shook my head. “My firefighter saw the same thing in the fire you recruited me from. Don’t brush this away like last time.”
Donahue began bobbing his metal knee up and down. I waited for him to respond. To tell me he’d look into it. To say it sounded suspicious. To give a shit.
He sighed. “I’m not sure what to make of this.”
“I sure as hell do. Someone’s found a way to capture wraiths, and not only that, use them to draw dragons.”
“Catching wraiths is impossible. Besides, who would do something like that?”
“The world is filled with bad people. This is like a new kind of arsonist.”
He nodded slowly, looking away.
“So, are you going to look into it?” I asked.
“If it’ll get you to shut up, I’ll see what I can do. Maybe check with the delivery company, if you know who it was.” He groaned. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
“Well, when it shits, it pours. Have you guys contacted my wife? Told her I’m OK?”
“She knows you were hurt and will be out for a few weeks. She’s doing all right, but nagged me up and down for not letting her see you.”
“Yeah, she sounds like she’s her normal healthy self.”
“All right,” Donahue said. “We’ve got to get you ready to go on this trip.”
“Trip? How the hell am I supposed to do anything when I can’t even wiggle my finger? Plus, I’m suspended, remember?”
Donahue shook his head. “It’s already been a week.”
A week!?
“I want to see my wife. I want to go after the dragon that burned my house down. I want to find whoever summoned it!”
Donahue drummed fingers against his knees. “You ever try to catch a snake?”
“I can tell there’s some Aesop fable type shit you’re about to tell me, but I’m not in the mood.”
“If you sit outside a snake’s hole, it’ll never come out. The snake would starve to death before it gave you the satisfaction of nabbing it. So, the best way to catch him is to walk away. If it thinks you’re gone, it’ll slither out. And that’s when you cut its head off with the end of your shovel.”
“You have some sick hobbies.”
“If what you’re telling me about the white fire is true, someone targeted you. The news drone got wrecked along with everything else electrical with that Behemoth’s EMP blast. All anyone knows is that a bunch of smoke eaters were killed. So if this snake thinks you’re no longer in the picture…”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re going to fake my death?”
He moved his hand in a so-so gesture. “Go on this assignment. It’s a classified gig, and you’ll be learning things most Americans never will, so that should get you excited. While you’re there, get better. Come back ready to kick ass. Or quit, go home, and give us back our psy-roll and the chance to ever walk again.”
“There are no soft punches with you, are there?”
Donahue shook his head.
“Sherry knows I’m still alive, right?”
“Of course.”
I squinted at him, using my limited skill at reading body language to see if he was lying. I couldn’t catch anything deceitful.
Donahue had me on the receiving end of an ass-kicking fest.
I gritted my teeth – the only gesture I had to show my frustration at the moment. “How. Do I. Move?”
“Easy,” Donahue said. He grabbed a holoreader. “They connected the psy-roll into your spinal cord. Your brain does all the work. Let’s see, it’s… this one.”
After he pressed a button, my psy-roll shot toward him, wheels humming on electric motors. He dove over the metal table and landed on the floor.
I thought, Stop! The psy-roll stopped. That seemed to work, so I told the contraption to turn towards Donahue and it did. I stared down at Donahue on the floor, who stared at me with blue goop all over his face.
I laughed, even though it hurt. “You bastards gave me a psychically powered wheelchair?!”
Chapter 19
“Ow! Watch that thing, damn it.” Donahue sped faster down the hall to avoid my psy-roll bumping into the backs of his legs.
I snorted. “Sorry. Still getting used to this box you put me in.”
The psy-roll was actually pretty easy to drive. It had wheels like a tank and could traverse over most terrain. I just thought about moving or turning and the box did it. But bumping Donahue’s calves was cheap entertainment as we headed for whatever secret assignment he’d conned me into.
The green shirts we passed on the way didn’t share my easygoing attitude. They hung their heads and avoided eye contact with me and the chief, even though they wished us a good morning. I heard later they’d just left a smoke eater funeral for Thomlin and the others who’d fallen in the line of duty. After I found out, I felt less than two dead flies.
“So, am I still a rookie?” I asked Donahue, just before we entered the slayer bay. “Or is this secret assignment some kind of promotion?”
“Right now you’re just a man in a box who does what I tell him.”
“Are you sure there isn’t something better I could be doing?”
“What the hell else would you be able to do in your condition?”
“Paperweight?”
He tucked in his lips and exhaled through his nostrils, almost like a dragon. “I need a break from you, Brannigan. And you need someone to resupply your meds and accompany you on the errand. She’ll take care of all the things you can’t do.”
“She who?”
Donahue pushed the door open and Naveena stood there, leaning against the wall and looking ready to tear someone’s head off. I was pretty sure my head was at the top of the list. That was especially unfortunate, because my head was the only part of my body currently working.
“Oh, shit.” I remembered leaving her, Afu, and Williams at Cedar Point. They would be pretty pissed at me.
Naveena didn’t say anything, but her eyes looked almost like they’d shoot lasers at any moment.
Donahue stopped just outside the door. “Captain Jendal will take it from here. She has all the information and will make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”
Yeah, if she doesn’t push my psy-roll off a cliff.
I spun to give Donahue a piece of my mind, but he was already gone. Slowly, I turned back to Naveena, who hadn’t moved or improved in disposition.
“How’d you get roped into this?” I asked.
“Once you’re on Donahue’s shit list, it takes a while to get off.” She thinned her eyes. Wrinkled her lips.
I swallowed. “Listen, about leaving you guys–”
She came off the wall so fast, it stopped me midsentence. She stood there with clenched fists, but it was enough to intimidate me.
I changed the subject. “So, what does Donahue want us to do?”
“We’re going to be presented with some new technology. Something that’s supposed to changed our entire approach in dealing with the dragons. Sounds like they’re feeding us bullshit, if you ask me.”
I didn’t ask who “they” were. Really, I was trying to avoid asking Naveena anything, hoping somehow we could get to a place where she neither
wanted to hate me or kiss me again. Both of those were too complicated for a man in a box to deal with. A man outside a box, for that matter. I wondered if she remembered our incident on the carousel.
“OK,” I said. “Which slayer are we taking? And how am I going to get in it?”
She put her back to me and sauntered into the expanse of the bay. “We’re not taking a slayer.”
The few smoke eaters who were washing trucks or mopping the floor stared at me, but I didn’t know if it was because I was the guy who’d chased after a three-headed dragon and survived a hundred-foot fall, or if they’d never seen a wheeled box operated by a disembodied head.
We passed all of the slayers and cannon trucks that weren’t out on a run. That’s when I noticed Afu talking to Sergeant Puck outside the old jumbo jet.
“Are you serious?” I stopped rolling.
Naveena kept moving. “Do I have to forklift you onto the airplane?”
I accelerated the psy-roll to catch up.
What I thought was a thick coat of rust on the airplane turned out to be a red-orange, dragon scale design painted on every inch of metal. The jet engines were plasma-powered – I could tell by the lack of turbines – and there were three under each wing.
The coolest toys.
Afu looked at me with the same disdain Naveena had given me, but Naveena had the benefit of experience.
Sergeant Puck was her same authoritative self, looking me up and down. “You look as useless as a square bowling ball.”
Afu laughed as Williams came out of the open airplane hatch and saw me.
“You motherfucker–”
Afu grabbed her shoulders before she could attack. “Chill out, lady. You knew he was coming.”
“You guys,” I positioned my psy-roll in front of them, “I’m sorry for ditching you. My wife, my house… I lost my mind.”
“You lost our respect,” Williams said.
A chill swirled in my stomach.
I cleared my throat, “If you can’t tell by this box I’m in, I lost a whole lot more than that.”