by Sean Grigsby
I didn’t have the energy to argue with Sherry, so I didn’t stop them from following.
Naveena was yelling at Donahue at the front entrance. They both turned to me as I jogged up.
“Well, you really did it this time.” Naveena balled her fists. I could have sworn steam seeped from between her fingers.
“Sherry.” I extended a hand. “This is Captain Naveena Jendal. My, um… boss.”
“Hi,” Sherry said, smiling big. “Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah,” Naveena said.
Donahue scrubbed his face with both palms, as if he was rubbing a lamp, wishing I’d go the hell away. “Brannigan, why is there a dead dragon in front of my headquarters?”
When I’d asked the pilots to drop it on our front steps, I was releasing a little anger. I thought it would be a great way to put the fear of God into the protesters, if not just piss them off. But when Chief Donahue asked me, I figured I’d give him another reason.
“Public relations.”
Donahue’s eyes twitched, and a low gurgling sound came from deep within his throat.
Kenji barked and said, “Neoneun modu manghaessda.”
“Maybe we can still use this,” Naveena offered, as she placed a hand on the chief’s shoulder. “Show them that we can still get the job done. It’ll take some finesse, though.”
Yolanda appeared around the corner. “Things are about to get suckier.”
Donahue turned at that. “What?”
“Um.” Yolanda puffed air from under her top lip. “You’re going to want to come with me.”
Donahue swore, and I told Sherry and Kenji to wait for me.
Yolanda led us to a propellerhead lab where, on the other side of the glass, a man sat on an examination table, trembling and cupping a mug. He wore an unbuttoned police shirt.
“So there are some cops still around,” I said.
Donahue took a sip of coffee as we all stared at the policeman like a rabbit in a cage.
“He showed up around the time the protesters were gathering outside,” Yolanda said. “We thought he was one of them until he showed us his badge.”
“And you believed him?” Naveena asked.
“Another propellerhead recognized him, said he worked with his dad.” Yolanda crossed her arms and looked at the floor. “I’m just hoping what he’s saying is bunk. Or at least that he was hallucinating or something. It’s just too crazy.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“I’ll let him tell you.”
We entered the room slowly, as if the poor guy was a scaly strapped to the table.
“You the chief?” the cop asked Donahue.
“I am. Yolanda says you have something to tell me. What’s your name?”
“Billy… er… William Martinez. I’m a sergeant with PCPD. Or, at least I was.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We were just there. What’s with all the droids taking over?”
Martinez looked on the edge of tears. “It was just like any other day. You know? Sometimes you just know it’s going to be a bad day, and you’re always right. But not this time.”
We all waited for him to continue.
He took a drink from his mug and cleared his throat. “Droids came in all at once, aiming lasers. A few cops tried to fight them off, but they got thrown into a wall or held down. We smoked a couple of them, though. But it took so many damn shots, the other droids were on us before we could run.
“Then they brought in Chief Feldman. He told us we were all being let go, including him. That there were droids waiting outside our homes at that moment, and if we resisted…”
Donahue shook his head. “Jesus.”
“I have a little girl,” Martinez said.
“They would have killed her in an instant,” I said.
“I know,” Martinez said. “But I still feel like shit. They gathered us all up and loaded us in the back of a truck. Except Feldman. I don’t know what happened to him. The droids said if any former cop got close to headquarters, we’d be shot on sight. Then they’d kill our families like they’d promised. Before they locked us up, I saw droids marching people out of the court house across the street. Judges, too.
“We were crammed in that box for hours, sweating our asses off. I was trying to figure out a way to stop the droids. Nobody wanted to listen. They didn’t want to risk their families any more than I did. But I had to do something. Finally the door opened on its own. I don’t know why, but I came straight here. I knew the smoke eaters could help.”
Donahue led Naveena and me out of the room after telling Yolanda to get Martinez anything he wanted.
“Rogola strikes again,” I said.
“He fires the police force and replaces them with droids,” Naveena said. “The whole legal system is probably gone by now. And he’s got the city calling for our heads on platters.”
“Because we’re better defended than police,” Donahue said. “And he probably sees it as a way to boost himself while destroying our department at the same time.”
Naveena cracked her knuckles. “There’s no way the police can let this stand.”
“Sure they can,” I said. “Who would they complain to? The droids are running law enforcement now.”
“The government,” Naveena said. “The big one.”
Even Donahue laughed at that. “I learned a long time ago that the America we used to know is gone. Now it’s all city states that have a shared fondness of what used to be and are maybe trading tomatoes for air conditioners and things like that. We’re on our own, Naveena.”
“We can get Martinez to tell them what he told us.”
Donahue shook his head. “He doesn’t leave this facility. This is the safest place for him, at least until we find a way out of this mess. We don’t mention his name to anyone, and we send a couple of our people to bring his family in, too. That’s all we can do for now.”
“This is such bullshit.” Naveena kicked the wall.
Donahue sighed. “Suit up. Full power armor. The works.”
Chapter 34
After introducing Sherry to the others in my crew, I showed her how I got into my power suit.
“Nice,” she said. “Think you could bring it home sometime?”
“Come on,” I said. “I’ve got a mob to calm.”
Afu and Williams were staring out the front doors when we came back. Williams leaned against Afu’s arm. Both swore in disbelief.
“Things are getting crazy out there,” Afu said. “They brought a shitload of those robots.”
I turned to Sherry and Kenji. “You guys should stay inside. I don’t trust those things.”
Sherry shook her head, humming a negative. “You had me dragged all the way out here and are just going to hide me away? I don’t think so. Besides, what can a few hunks of metal do?”
I swallowed, still not thinking it was the best idea. When I opened the door, the protesters’ collective roar hit my ears. A synthwave song boomed from the speakers and the people chanted something I couldn’t decipher. An army of droids stood at the front of the crowd, hands on their metal hips.
Donahue and Naveena stood hidden from the crowd behind the mass of the dead Behemoth. The dragon smelled worse than when it was alive, like body gas and rotten possums.
“Now what?” Williams asked.
Donahue waved a megaphone in his hand. “Now, I try to clean this mess up.”
He walked around the dead dragon and waved to the crowd. They booed him on sight, followed by the same chant that I worked out to be, “Fuck you, smokies!”
It did have a nice ring to it.
“People of Parthenon City,” Donahue began.
The music lowered, but still trickled from the speakers.
“I know all of you are upset about the destruction of your homes, the ashen wastes that used to be your neighborhoods. You’ve lost family. Friends. All because of some ancient species returning, with nothing but destruction on its agenda.
“A
nd we,” he waved for all of us to step out there with him, “are all that stands in the way, between the dragons and what’s left of our civilization.”
We moved to stand beside him. I hated this “We Are the World” treatment, but if Donahue thought it would get these people to shut up and let us go back to doing our job, I guess I had to play along. Sherry ate it up, putting her arm around my armored elbow, smiling as if she was the first lady. Kenji stood silent, watching the droids warily.
Naveena seemed pissed as ever, while Afu, Williams, and a bunch of other smokies looked like they were starring in the school play and had walked onstage completely naked.
I didn’t see Renfro. Lucky bastard skipped out on this charade.
“Lying here,” Donahue held a hand to the dead Behemoth, “is the most recent dragon to terrorize our city. We travelled over a thousand miles to track it down.
“We brought this dragon back for you. Because that’s who we serve. You. Now, if you want us gone, fine. But if you think a bunch of droids can replace us, you won’t have a city left to call home. And you’ll all be dead within the month.”
That shut them up. The only remaining sound was the horrendous music softly bumping from the speakers towering over the crowd. And funny thing, something I hadn’t noticed before because of all the other flashing lights, was that the speakers glowed white.
How long had they been doing that?
“Oh, shit,” I said, too loudly.
But it had already happened. With an electrical pop, the speakers erupted into white flames and dozens of wraiths crawled out of the inferno like a ghostly factory line.
The crowd tried to scatter. People crashed into each other, were thrown to the ground, trampled over, screaming louder than the wraiths closing in. The droids, who’d been standing statuesque among the crowd, turned with glowing red eyes and raised laser pistols.
“Brannigan!” Naveena chunked me the wraith-catcher remote.
I caught it and grabbed Sherry. “Get inside.”
“But what about you?”
“This is my job.” I turned her toward the building.
A droid launched up the steps, its eyes flashing red. “Eliminate. Eliminate. Eliminate,” it kept saying.
I guess it wasn’t as cliché as, “Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!” but the robot had obviously gone apeshit. The metal man grabbed Sherry by the throat.
Kenji bit the droid’s ankle, but the metal man raised its leg and smashed my dog against the pavement. Gears and pieces of metal canine shattered and skittered down the steps.
“Kenji!” I screamed. But there was nothing I could do. He warbled out something in Korean before his eyes faded to darkness.
Williams moved in to shoot the droid, but it slapped her across the face, and she fired her lasers over the heads of the crowd.
I ducked low to avoid the lasers and moved in. Sherry kicked her feet against the droid’s chest and choked out weak whimpers. The droid hadn’t crushed her throat, but it kept its eyes on me, waiting for me to attack. She was bait.
Something tried to grab me from behind, but I dodged and fell forward. The overwhelming smell of burnt flesh and the deafening shrieks told me it was a wraith. I flipped over and kicked at its ugly face, but it would only disperse and reform as soon as my armored boot was out of the way.
The wraith sank its claws into my armored legs. Electric ice ripped into my muscles, pinning me to the spot. Above, the droid, still choking Sherry, raised its metal foot and brought it down toward my head.
I ejected my laser sword. With a slash, the dismembered robot leg landed on my face. The pain was like a firework had exploded in my nose, and then blood poured from my nostrils.
I sat up and shot the wraith with the capture remote. The black light swallowed the ghost, and I had time to turn toward the droid to ram my sword into its chest and catch Sherry before she hit the ground.
She wasn’t breathing.
“Help!” I screamed. All my confidence, all my resolve, all my courage stolen from me like the droid had stolen Sherry’s breath.
Her skin was still warm against my cheek, and she hadn’t gone blue. I tilted her head and gave her two breaths, just enough to see her chest rise.
“Help!” I screamed again.
The ground shook as people and wraiths screamed behind me. In the back of my mind, I knew what that meant, but I was too distraught.
Williams crawled over to me and my wife. “You blow,” she said, wincing against a pain in her side, “and I’ll push.”
I nodded and moved to Sherry’s head. We needed to get her out of there, but she wasn’t breathing, and I’d always been trained that immediate CPR gave the highest chance of survival.
After I gave two breaths, Williams began compressions. Thirty years in the fire service, I’d performed this too many times to count, too many times to remember each dying face. But I’d never had to do it for someone I knew, someone I loved. The whole world was falling to shit just a few feet away as wraiths and murderous robots wreaked havoc amidst the crowd, but I didn’t look up. I was focused on Sherry, on Williams’ compression count. I refused to look away.
At least, not until I heard the first dragon roar.
They came from everywhere. Mounds of earth exploded under the wraiths and droids, scattering the crowd into a blind frenzy. Several of the protesters didn’t move in time, and flew like rag dolls into the air as a large, blue dragon emerged with fire in its teeth.
“Blow, Brannigan!” Williams shouted.
I gave Sherry two more breaths, then swiveled my head back to the shit storm developing. We were stuck. The rest of the smoke eaters fought amidst the crowd, trying to decide which was the worse threat – droids, wraiths, or dragons.
It was a shit sandwich buffet.
A few smokies had been sheltering several protesters from a wraith, when a couple poppers emerged from a hole and snagged one of the smokies. They gnawed at either end of him, until the other smoke eaters shot or stabbed the poppers until they stopped moving. Then a gang of droids charged in and snapped one of the smokies’ necks. The other smoke eater fought like hell, but the droids fired lasers into his face. When other droids began blasting citizens with water cannons and scattering them across the ground like loose pebbles, I knew things had gone completely insane.
“Get my wife inside,” I told Williams as I stood. “Get her to Yolanda.”
“What are you doing?” Williams yelled.
I stomped into the crowd and ejected my laser sword. “What I was born to do.”
A couple droids tossed a shirtless man toward a snapping, bird-like dragon. I cut both of the droids’ heads off and ran after the man. The bird scaly had caught him by the ankle and, with one pinch of its beak, severed his foot. Smoke plumed from the dragon’s mouth as it guzzled the morsel down.
The man cried and crawled toward me. The dragon saw its prey escaping and flapped two bat-like wings to float into the air. I met it midflight with a power jump, snatching its long neck with both of my hands. We landed just behind the footless man, and I put every ounce of anger into my squeeze. The dragon’s eyes bulged as it snapped at my face, but I bent my elbows with a snap and broke the bastard’s neck.
“Thank you,” the footless man said. He was bleeding badly.
“I have to take your pants off,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah. Just help me!”
I ripped his pants off quickly, but he still screamed from the gushing stump at the end of his leg. As tight as I could, I tied a makeshift tourniquet around his calf.
The propellerheads had begun streaming from the building with gurneys and cots. I handed the man over to two of them and turned back to the mayhem.
I zapped two wraiths that had been clawing after a group of women wearing light-up hats. As the women ran away, their hats’ lights disappeared into a developing cloud of pitch black smoke surrounding us all. Most of the protesters were bent over, hacking against the dragon smoke, stumbling blind as t
he toxins stung their eyes. It had become a warzone.
To my right, a snakelike scaly had half-swallowed someone – their legs stuck out of its throat. A nearby smoke eater sliced the snake dragon mid-gulp, cutting the poor protester inside at the same time.
To my left, a couple droids rode the back of a spiky dragon that looked like a porcupine had fucked a dinosaur. Spike headed straight for me, snapping at passersby that managed to dodge its long snout. As it got closer and I readied myself to attack, I noticed the droids weren’t riding the scaly, but had become impaled on its spikes.
The dragon spread its jaws, but instead of fire, purplish gas shot from its throat. I rolled away. My smoke-breathing ability didn’t cover poisonous gas.
When I turned over to slash at Spike, it was already on me and biting down hard on my sword arm. I swear, these scaly bastards had a group meeting and knew how to go after our weapons.
Spike threw me into the air, and I soared with no control over my arms or legs. As I fell back toward the earth, the dragon opened its mouth to welcome me into its belly. But a barrage of lasers cut into its flesh. Some lasers contacted the purple gas just before the monster shut its jaws and flopped over onto its side. It exploded in a shower of stinking, scaly flesh.
I hit the ground and rolled over to stab Spike’s charred head. Not because I wanted to make sure it was dead, but because it had pissed me off.
An armored hand offered to help me up. Williams, the badass.
I took her hand and stood. “My wife?”
“Propellerheads are working on her. She still wasn’t breathing when I left. But I’m needed out here. OK?” She ran over to a woman whose back was on fire and covered the protester with cooling foam.
We ran deeper into the crowd.
The citizens had begun to fight back – against the droids and scalies at least. They used severed droid appendages to swing at dragons swooping from the air. Other protesters shoved a dragon shooting flames toward oncoming robots. Unfortunately, several of these people succumbed to the smoke, or died a fiery death, or were mangled by metal hands. I couldn’t have saved them if I tried. I was fighting the same bastards, and I had the only weapon against the wraiths.