Smoke Eaters

by Sean Grigsby

  I don’t know if that eased their attitude toward me, but Williams didn’t give me her death glare anymore.

  “Just look at it this way, Brannigan,” Afu said. “If you die, you’ve already got a casket.”

  He laughed, but Sergeant Puck crossed her arms and nearly yelled, “That’s not funny.”

  We all turned to her.

  “We already lost one of you rookies. Or did you forget?”

  Afu looked down. “Sorry, Sergeant.”

  “Now let’s get on the plane and get this trip over with.” With that, Puck stomped up the open hatch.

  “Who’s flying this thing?” I wheeled up the ramp.

  “Couple of the propellerheads,” Naveena said. “They stay out of combat, but fly for us whenever we need them to.”

  Naveena fastened a seatbelt around my psy-roll, cinching it as hard as she could. I decided not to remind her that I couldn’t feel anything with a metal box around me. She might have wrapped another seatbelt around my throat. Sloppily, she placed a pair of headphones on my head before strapping herself in next to me.

  Puck told the pilots to shut the hatch, and we were all snug as carpet mice in our harnesses.

  “So, are any of you going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked. “I don’t see why we need a plane for a field trip.”

  “Where Hell freezes over,” Naveena said.

  “What?” I looked at the others to see if she was messing with me.

  “Canada,” Afu said.

  I said, “Are you guys serious?”

  “Donahue’s been trying to get in touch with them for a while,” Afu said. “Last week, they finally responded. Invited us to come up and see what they’re about.”

  “Just like that?” It sounded fishy to me.

  “Brannigan,” Naveena said, “shut up or I’ll throw you out of the plane.”

  I frowned.

  Canada. Geographically it wasn’t that far, but ideologically they were living on another planet. I already felt unwelcome among my fellow smoke eaters. Now I was headed to a country that stood against everything we were about.

  Fun.

  The enormous doors opened in front of the jumbo jet and the engines powered up. The air grew tighter as they pressurized the cabin. My nerves made me sweat. I was in a wheeled box with no control over my extremities, and I hadn’t been in a plane since the early 2090s.

  “This plane got a nickname or some cool designation?” I asked, trying to get my mind off rolling out of the hatch at twenty thousand feet.

  Everyone looked to Sergeant Puck, who sighed into her headset’s microphone. “Jet 1,” she said.

  “What?” I said. “Not Death From Above or Scorcher 5 or something?”

  “No,” Puck said.

  Disappointed, I looked at Naveena, who’d closed her eyes and leaned her head against the side of the cabin. Sleep would have been a help, but I’d already been out cold for a week. I had to ride this entire trip fully awake and nervous as hell.

  The jet rolled onto the long stretch of road just outside the smoke eater training field. Within a few minutes, we were in the air and flying at what I could only guess to be Mach 50.

  “How long until we get there?” I asked through clenched teeth.

  “An hour,” Afu answered.

  An hour didn’t seem long enough to enter a completely different world.

  Chapter 20

  I didn’t have the benefit of being able to see out the window like everybody else, who oohed and ahhed like a bunch of school kids when we were in Neo Toronto air space.

  Afu’s thick arm bumped my head as he pushed for a view out the window. “It looks like those old sci-fi movies from the 1980s. I’m surprised they still have so many buildings intact.”

  I wondered how my psy-roll would traverse over the ruins.

  “Must be like an urban safari down there,” Afu said.

  “They don’t just let the dragons roam free,” Naveena said. “I’m sure they have ways to keep them out of the city.”

  “I wonder how they do that.” I said.

  Naveena eyed me as if she’d forgotten I was still there. “I guess that’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Jet 1 descended and the pilot told everyone to buckle in. A significant amount of turbulence hit us. At least, it was significant to a guy stuck in a box. Everyone stared at one another, like we were seeing who might throw up.

  Williams hadn’t said anything to me the entire flight, sleeping most of the time. I think she shared my fear of flying. Afu had given her a few green pills to ease her stomach, but I didn’t see him holding any spark drugs.

  The jet’s thruster brakes beat against the ground, and we slowed to a stop.

  “All right,” Sergeant Puck said. “Everybody out.”

  The hatch lowered, and Naveena unbuckled me before hurrying out to the open air. Everyone with working legs left me to slowly roll down the ramp by myself. Assholes.

  A group of well-dressed people welcomed Sergeant Puck and the others with handshakes, but I was more interested in the city around us. For one, we’d landed in the middle of what used to be downtown Toronto. There were plenty of vacant lots where you could almost see the ghosts of former buildings.

  At the corner of the nearest block, a man in a blue bandana smoked a bubble vape outside his shop. Above him, a holographic, smiling moose, electrically bright against the dimming sky, hefted a steak on the end of an oversized knife. As soon as I laid eyes on the cannibalistic hologram, it grew larger and floated toward me, offering me the meat. I zoomed my psy-roll backwards, away from the advancing advertisement.

  “Brannigan,” Puck said. Her neck tensed as she restrained a yell, morphing her lips into what I guessed she would have called a smile, but it looked more like a bulldog having a seizure. She lifted a hand to a Canadian man in a business suit. “This is Alan Hamdel, Vice President of Yūrei Corporation.”

  The man nodded to me. I tried to nod back, but hit my chin against the metal top of the psy-roll.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I had an accident. Now I’m stuck in this box.”

  “We’re happy to accommodate you any way we can,” Alan said.

  He looked about my age – it was nice not to be the only codger in the group. Gray dusted the sides of his otherwise brown hair, and wrinkles sat at the corners of his eyes.

  The others in his party were much younger. Teenagers, from what I could tell.

  “Yūrei Corporation?” I asked, turning to Puck. “I thought we’d be meeting with the government.”

  Puck’s eyes shook. She tried another one of those monstrous smiles with Alan. “Don’t mind him, he’s–”

  “Our government is made of corporations,” Alan said, keeping his gaze on me. “They were the only ones left standing after the earthquakes. It’s just like your city states, but on a smaller scale.”

  I would have shrugged if I could. “Hey, buddy, you guys can elect Ronald McDonald emperor for all I care.”

  “Aha.” Alan thinned his eyes, then turned sharply, almost militarily, to the side. “Allow me to introduce the rest of my board.”

  The teenagers hustled over to me, hefting their holoreaders. Three of them were women, two men. All of them wore loose suits with carelessly tied ties. The men had spiked their hair; one had dyed his in golden metallic.

  Alan introduced each one to me, but for some reason I only remembered Cheryl.

  Before Sherry and I found out that we couldn’t have kids – my fault – we tossed around a few names. We could only agree on a girl’s name – Cheryl. It was a mishmash of Cole and Sherry.

  The young woman in front of me even had red hair like my wife. It was hard not to instantly consider what could have been, if our daughter had looked the same, or if we’d adopted a little girl like the one I’d seen in Sherry’s orphanage pamphlet.

  Hell. If life doesn’t constantly slug you in the gut when you least expect it.

  I smiled at Cheryl, and she grinned wide
r than the others. Sincere. Honestly, if I hadn’t been shooting blanks, I would have thought Cheryl was my own flesh and blood smuggled across the northern line.

  Naveena stepped closer and leaned a hand on the edge of my psy-roll. “Should we move along, then?”

  It was difficult, but I raised my head to get a good look at Naveena. She scanned the area with her eyes, as if something was going to pop out of the ground – or sky. Smart. I should have been doing the same thing. But Naveena herself had said the Canadians must have had some means to keep dragons away. Maybe she didn’t believe it.

  Why the hell did I?

  “Of course,” Alan said. “You and Mr Brannigan will come with me and Cheryl. The rest of you will be taken to your lodgings until tomorrow.”

  VIP, huh? I could roll with that.

  “Behave, Brannigan,” Puck said as she walked away with the others.

  Jet 1 rolled toward a glossy building, where a glass door raised to allow the plane in. Alan led us to a van hovering on the street and told the driver to let me in. Then the side door popped out and lowered a lift to the ground.

  “Chief Donahue called ahead and told us you’d be coming, Mr Brannigan.” Alan grinned slightly at me, but I didn’t sense any smugness. “Miss Jendal, you may sit in the back with me.”

  “Captain Jendal,” said Naveena.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Cheryl got in on the other side, wearing a grin that dimpled her cheeks, and sat next to where I’d be. The lift cradled me into the van, and we floated off toward the center of the city.

  “Have you ever been to Canada?” Cheryl asked me. She had a slight French accent, and it suited her.

  “First time,” I said. “Would have probably visited after I retired, but you guys pulled up the beaver skin curtain. So, that plan got nixed.”

  “You mean Iron Curtain,” Naveena said.

  “No, I know what I meant.”

  “I’ve always wanted to visit America,” Cheryl said. “My duties with the company take up much of my time, though.”

  “What?” I said. “At your age you should be hanging out with your friends and doing geometry homework. Fawning over boys. Why the hell are in you in a soul-sucking corporation?”

  “Many of our country’s most productive employees are under seventeen,” said Alan. His face sat plain, so I didn’t know if I’d offended him.

  I turned my head to Cheryl. “Well, if you ever decide to defect, I mean visit, you can always stay with my wife and me. We don’t currently have a house, thanks to a three-headed asshole of a dragon, but we’ll figure something out.”

  “Really?” Cheryl said. “Thank you!”

  I smiled at Cheryl. Naveena gave me a “what the fuck are you doing?” look. I tried to shrug, but forgot I couldn’t move my shoulders. So, I just raised my eyebrows.

  I stared out the window at the bright neon advertisements and the crowds of people streaming down the sidewalks. Every other block or so, there’d be an old-style house or shop in the midst of the high-rises and more modern sights. In Neo Toronto, they blended the old with the new. It was completely un-American, and I loved it. One thing these dragon huggers got right was a respect for the past with a simultaneous look to the future.

  Cheryl put a hand on my psy-roll to get my attention. “Why do you kill dragons?”

  “Cheryl!” Alan said. He hadn’t shown much emotion until then.

  “Sorry.” It sounded like soar-e.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “Let’s cut any bullshit and speak plainly.”

  Cheryl laughed.

  I cleared my throat. “Let’s say your dad is having a beer in his living room, watching the game – it’d be hockey, here, I guess – and suddenly, the power goes out, the earth shakes, and something right out of the pits of Hell bursts through his floor, burns everything he owns to the ground and eats him for added insult. Wouldn’t you want to kill the scaly who did it? Wouldn’t you want to make sure that didn’t happen to anyone else?”

  “I lost both of my parents in an earthquake.”

  Well, that shut me up. Made me want to reiterate my invitation to the States.

  “Revenge is a useless idea,” Cheryl said, pulling strands of hair behind her ear. “Especially against something that is only following its nature. It would be the same as shooting the cloud that rained on your picnic.”

  “If a raincloud can wipe out an entire neighborhood, an entire city, you’re damn right I’ll find a way to wreck that motherfucker.”

  Cheryl full-on belly laughed.

  Alan, however, wasn’t as amused by my American antics. “Perhaps we should refrain from political or religious discussion. This is a business endeavor, after all.”

  “About that,” I said, but didn’t get to finish.

  The driver hit the brake thrusters on the hover van as a gang of teenagers leapt out in front of us, carrying metal swords, sticks, and rocks. A few of them sat on air scooters. One girl in the front held a leash, and at the other end was either the ugliest and biggest dog I’d ever seen, or a she’d found a way to domesticate a dragon.

  The thing looked like a Komodo, except that it had a frill below its neck that flashed with sparks of purple electricity.

  Our driver hit ultra-bright high beams in an attempt to blind the gang, but that just got them to throw their rocks and run toward us. A few jumped onto the hood and beat the van with their weapons. We surged into reverse, scattering the punks onto the street.

  “Please remain calm,” Alan said, climbing past Cheryl and me toward the front seat.

  “Remain calm?” I said. “What the hell is going on?”

  I couldn’t do jack shit if one of the thugs got into the van and swung their sword or dragon at me. A turtle-like head retraction would have been a nice addition to my psy-roll at that point.

  “Just relax, Brannigan,” Naveena told me. But she didn’t have a weapon either, just two good legs to leave me behind.

  Alan reached into the glove compartment and removed a pulse gun the size of his arm.

  “Don’t worry,” Cheryl told me. “These street gangs are only minor nuisances.”

  The way our driver was swerving around street vendors like an experienced Hollywood stuntman, I couldn’t see how the situation was either minor or rare.

  The van stopped as Alan opened the large sunroof and stood on the center console. Through the windshield, I saw his pulse shots rip down the street, hitting a few of the gang members, including the one holding onto the dragon.

  The scaly roared and released a circular blast of electricity. The remaining thugs dropped to the street, convulsing out of their smoking sneakers. For a second, I thought the dragon might take the opportunity to munch on the dead teens, but I was wrong.

  Apparently drawn to our high beams, the dragon shook its electric frill at full extension and galloped toward us.

  “Drive!” Alan shouted, holding his position in the sunroof.

  I thought I heard him begin to chant or pray.

  The van lurched into reverse again, but it didn’t matter, the dragon was faster than the van.

  Naveena cursed. “Dead end behind us!”

  Sweat stung my eyes, nearly blinding me. “Just shoot it.”

  Alan wailed in frustration before firing the pulse gun once, twice, finally a third time. Each hit struck the dragon in its center, blowing dark chunks of meat into the air.

  Our driver stopped the van, breathing heavily, and the headlights covered the dragon’s lifeless body splayed out in the street. Alan slowly lowered to the front seat, holding a handkerchief to his mouth as he bent over, shaking.

  Pedestrians and shopkeepers crept out to see what the hell had happened. When they saw the dragon in the street, they whispered to each other, concern plastered over every face.

  Alan rose from his handkerchief and made a phone call with his holoreader. The person on the other end didn’t sound happy. Alan answered quietly in short, single words – at least from what I c
ould tell. When he hung up, he turned back to us.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

  But it took a second for me to realize he wasn’t saying it to either me or Naveena. He was speaking to Cheryl, who began to cry without the benefit of a handkerchief.

  Chapter 21

  “We don’t have to like it, Brannigan.” Naveena sat in a chair behind me, tinkling ice in a glass that held whatever booze she’d found in the mini fridge.

  We were in one of the corporate apartments – mine. Naveena had been given a different room at the Yūrei building, but on the same floor, so she could come to my aid if needed.

  “They have their own customs and beliefs,” she said. “None of our business. We’re here to look at some tech we might use, do a little diplomacy, and then go home. Stick to the plan.”

  I’d parked my psy-roll by the big window overlooking Neo Toronto, a place where the people valued dragon life over their own. Where you could slaughter a couple dozen idiot teenagers, but killing a rampaging scaly was the worst thing you could do. Alan had been dead quiet the rest of the ride, his body tight and shaking. He acted as if he was headed for death row.

  Maybe he was.

  Naveena and I had been holed up in the company building for the last two days while the rest of the smokies got to gallivant around Neo Toronto. Alan’s people kept putting us off any time we asked to see the new technology or anything other than the inside of the Yūrei building and its too-polite employees. Hell, even the Canadian Feed sucked. The religious shows were the worst. It was just like the old American preacher programs, but Jesus was replaced with scalies. The other shows bored me to tears: talk shows discussing regular problems like divorce and mortgages. Where was the action?!

  I shifted my focus from the city outside to Naveena’s reflection in the window. “Then let’s demand they get it over with so we can go home.”

  “We don’t want to be rude.”

  “Alan is pretty messed up about what happened with that dragon.” I turned my psy-roll to face Naveena. “I’m sure he’d be happy to see us go.”

  “What about your foreign exchange student?”