CHAPTER 31

The next morning, Brannigan’s truck was parked in the driveway outside his house. He turned the garage into his personal art studio – he’d shown me some of his paintings the year before, and I thought it was a good thing he was great at being a smoke eater, because he was shit at painting.

Sherry wasn’t home. A sigh of relief left my lips as I walked to the front door. This would have been harder if Mrs Brannigan was here. She’d hoard her husband away and never let him leave the house. She hadn’t wanted him to be a smoke eater in the first place, although she got over it eventually. But now that there was an added threat of him turning into a flame puppet for the phoenix, there was no way she would let him back as chief. Which made me wonder if he’d even told her what was going on.

I knocked on the door three times but no one answered. I called Brannigan on my holoreader but had the same result.

“I know you’re in there, you old motherfucker!” I shouted. I looked around at the neighboring houses, hoping I hadn’t been so loud to cause someone to call the cops on the crazy black woman trying to break down the Brannigans’ door. “So, let me in and let’s talk. Or are you too chickenshit?”

After that, I heard heavy footsteps coming closer until the front door swung open. Brannigan was already walking away into his living room.

I stood on the front step and watched him take a seat on the big pleather couch in front of a Feed screen. Softly, I closed the door behind me and then joined him on the couch. The Feed was showing a commercial for dragon shelters. This company would come to your house, dig a hole in the backyard, and put a titanium box inside for your family to crawl into in the event of a dragon emergency.

It didn’t make much sense to me, seeing how dragons came from beneath the ground, and it would only make it that much easier for a dragon to munch on a husband, wife, and their two-point-five kids, but people were dumb enough to buy that kind of shit, so hooray for capitalism, I guess.

“Where’s Sherry?” I asked.

“She took Bethany and Kenji to her mother’s house in Wisconsin. I had some propellerheads fly them out in Jet 1.”

“And she didn’t wonder why you were sending them away?”

He shrugged as the Feed went back to the daily news program.

I turned to face him. “Chief, you’re a born smoke eater. We’re thinking there’s no reason to be afraid of–”

“I had dragon blood pumping into my veins for two weeks while I was in that fucking robobox. Anyway, it’s not about me. Sherry received an infusion, too, and I have Bethany to think of.”

“But you’re still here,” I said. “You didn’t go to Wisconsin. So this can’t be you quitting.”

He laughed under his breath. “Funny you should be the one talking to me about quitting. Wasn’t long ago you said you were thinking of getting out.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “But I realized that there’s shit in this world that will never work itself out alone. And there’s only a few of us who can make things better. We need you, old man.”

His next words were soft, the voice of defeat. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes, goddamn it, we do!” I jumped off the couch and leaned over him.

“I’ll end up like Harribow and Patrice. I’ll burn and take others with me. It’s better I stay here. Alone.”

I took a step back to get a better look at him. “Do I need to put you on suicide watch?”

He scoffed. “I like myself too much to off it. I figure if the phoenix flies over and turns this dragon blood running through my veins into zombie juice, at least it would just be me and the house getting torched. I was working on chaining myself to the bed when you showed up.”

“You’re not a fucking werewolf, Chief.”

He shrugged. “Same principle, right?”

I shook my head. “You know, part of me thinks that this phoenix is actually a good thing. Or would have been if we didn’t go fucking around with that blood. I know we couldn’t have predicted any of this, but… the thing eats dragons. It could have ended the whole problem for us. And because we were so hungry to take humans to the next level, all these people are feeling the wrath that was supposed to be for the scalies. It’s a shit show.”

“That’s humanity for you,” Brannigan said. “We try so hard to fix one problem, we end up creating one even worse. Listen, I need you to do me a favor. Can you promise me you’ll do it?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Damn it, Williams. Promise me.”

I swore, rubbed my hands across my face and paced around Brannigan’s living room before walking back over to him. “Fine. What is it?”

“I want you to put Naveena up for smoke eater chief. No one should argue with it. She was going to be next in line anyway.”

I could have strangled the old, stubborn bastard.

“You are going to be fine. You hear me?”

“Either way,” he said. “You promised. Don’t fuck with your promise. Not one you make to me. I’ll come back and haunt your ass. And not like a wraith. I’ll sing old country western songs while you try to sleep every night. It’ll be hell. Now, say it back to me. What are you going to do when you get back?”

I rolled my eyes. “I ain’t playing with you.”

“What are you going to do, Tamerica?” he said, more sternly.

“I’ll put Naveena up for chief.”

“Okay,” he nodded and relaxed into the couch.

I was glad, at least, that I had provided some kind of comfort to him. It was like he was already dead, and I had the singular curse of hearing his last wishes from beyond the grave.

What a disappointment. I’d looked up to this man. Thought he was the most badass smoke eater to ever live. He was like a second father to me and to everybody else on the job for that matter. And now he was giving up without a fight.

On the Feed, Duncan Sharp, leader of PC First, appeared on the floating screen. I forgot what I was about to say to Brannigan and listened in to the broadcast.

A voice over said, “The activist group, known as PC First, will host a benefit tonight in support of volunteer smoke eater families who recently lost loved ones to dragons. Duncan Sharp spoke with us this morning at the Parthenon Convention Center where the gala will be held.”

Mrs Wilkins stood beside Duncan Sharp as he spoke to a group of news drones and curious citizens. Something big and covered by a tarp stood behind Sharp as he snarled out his diatribe.

“Mayor Ghafoor has recently suggested putting a stop to dragon blood supplies because the rats invading our city have put fear into her and those too weak to see that the problem isn’t our medicine, but those who would seek to take everything we’ve worked hard to achieve. So, tonight at the first of many fundraisers, we are going to be providing infusions to any natural citizen of Parthenon City for a low cost that will benefit the families who lost brave heroes trying to protect us. And what’s more, we’ll show you what the so-called professional smoke eaters have done to this poor woman’s late husband.”

“No way,” I said, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

Sharp turned to the tarp behind him and ripped it away. There, in a glass container only slightly different from the one Yolanda had been using, floated Wilkins’ wraith, radiating orange light and acting a fool for all the Feed cameras.

“This is your chance to see a wraith up close and personal,” Sharp said with a grin.

Mrs Wilkins frowned at that, but she was too deep in this mess to argue with the carnival side show Duncan Sharp had turned her husband into.

“These dumbasses are going to bring the phoenix right on top of them,” I said, wanting to throw something against the wall. “And everyone there with an infusion is going to catch fire and blow the place up. It’s going to be chaos!”

Brannigan sniffed. “Then it looks like you have some work to do.”

Yeah, just put it all on me.

“I’ve got to go,” I said, and hurried toward the door.

“I’m proud of you!” he called from the living room.

I stood there at the front door, one leg outside, trying to think of how to reply. I’d never thanked Brannigan for everything he’d done for me, from rookie school till now. I wished I could have said I was proud of him, too. But I wasn’t. I used to be. Now, there was nothing left to discuss. Sometimes you just have to let people bury themselves, because trying to dig them out will only put you six feet under as well.

I had no intention of throwing in the towel, not while the phoenix was still flying over Parthenon City. Words meant jack shit to me. Actions were what proved things, changed things. I should have told Brannigan where he could stick his pride.

But I closed the door and didn’t look back.

“What do you mean, stay indoors?” my daddy said from my holoreader. “We never go anywhere. That barbecue at your boss man’s house was the last time we left the house. I might as well call your mama The Warden.”

I was a mile out from Central Fire Station. The night was looking like a potential shit storm and I wanted to give my parents a call, just in case it was the last time I’d get to talk to them.

“I’m just saying that some crazy people are going to make things a lot worse and I don’t want you or Mama going out.”

“And you expect me to sit here calmly while you’re out there?”

It was a fair question, but that’s exactly what I expected him to do.

“You’re either bursting into the house crying or out there gallivanting with monsters and Satanists. Tammy, you just need to come home.”

“There’s no cult, Daddy.”

“I know what I know.”

Naveena and the other ash kickers stood outside the fire station. I had to get off the holoreader, so I swallowed down a few tears and told my daddy, “I love you.”

“Tamerica?” He must have heard the tremble in my voice, but I didn’t give him a chance to go on.

I hung up.

“Let’s giddyup,” I shouted as I jogged toward Cannon 15.

“Where we headed?” Naveena asked.

“Eastern enclosure.” I didn’t forget the promise I’d made to Brannigan. Far from it. Seeing Naveena should have urged me to tell her everything. Instead, I decided Brannigan had asked me to deliver an emotional bomb, and I needed my crew’s focus intact. I locked into my power suit and kept my secret.

The gauge on my right forearm showed the suit’s power charged and ready to go. I grabbed a laser axe and flicked it on, taking a few practice swings and listening to the satisfying sound of the blade going phoom, phoom through the air.

“We’ll snag a wraith and bring it back here to Yolanda. Then we need to haul ass to the convention center downtown.”

“What the hell’s going on over there?” Afu asked.

“I’ll tell you on the way to the enclosure.”

Yolanda walked out of the fire station. “You’re going to need the wraith once I’ve finished with it.”

“I’m with you there,” I said. “But that dumb woman is showing off her dead husband so a bunch of neo-Nazis can inject more people with dragon blood. I’m pretty fucking sure we’ll be able to find the phoenix without a problem.”

“The wraith isn’t just to attract the bird,” Yolanda said. “You’re going to need the reversed polarity to destroy it.”

I dropped my axe and it sizzled against the asphalt. “And when were you going to let us know that important little detail?”

“That lawyer interrupted me. Plus, I had to look over my data a bit more. You’re going to have to release it from the remote at a close range to the phoenix. But… that might be a little dangerous.”

Afu snorted. “Is anything about this job not dangerous.”

“This part is especially so,” Yolanda said. “Because the phoenix may explode.”

“And probably come back again like the resurrecting bastard it is.” Naveena shook her head.

“Not likely,” said Yolanda. “This explosion may be a teensy bit on the… nuclear level.”

You could have heard a dragon scale drop out there on the fire station’s front pad. Renfro’s jaw fell open.

“The fuck?” I said.

“It’s a very slight possibility,” Yolanda said. “Maybe a little more than slight. Slight and a half.”

“Will it kill the phoenix?” Naveena asked. She licked her lips, a nervous twitch Brannigan had always thought was a form of flirting. “And I mean for good?”

“Most definitely,” Yolanda said. “But it might vaporize you as well, if you’re too close. Nuclear or not.”

I grabbed my helmet and sat on the truck’s side bumper. “There’s got to be another way. I’m not going to blow up the city just to kill that goddamn bird. The mayor would fire us all and put the army in our place if I even offered her the idea.”

“Don’t have to tell her anything.” Naveena looked at me from the side of her eyes. “Do ya?”

“I don’t see another option,” Yolanda said. “I’ve been using this reversed polarity idea on Harribow and it seems to have stalled any further degradation.”

Renfro’s eyes got as big as dinner plates. “He’s not going to turn into a nuke is he?”

Yolanda shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

I groaned and put the laser axe back into the truck, slamming the bin door shut. “We’ve wasted too much time talking about this. Let’s roll.”

Calvinson got into the driver’s seat of Slayer 5 while Naveena got into the seat beside him. We were down too many smoke eaters for them to find a temporary replacement for Harribow, and it wouldn’t feel right if we did. It was a silent reminder of what we were working so hard and fast for. I got into my seat and swallowed against a rise of bile in my throat. Afu buckled in. Renfro started the truck.

I could feel it in my gut and in my bones, even before we left the fire station: this was going to be a long night.

We weren’t far from the enclosure when Renfro said, “Um, Captain.”

I looked up from my holoreader. I’d been staring at the blank screen, hoping Brannigan would message me, saying he was on his way to take the lead.

“What is it?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything; he pointed toward the night sky just ahead of us, just above where the enclosure would be. I sat forward and bent my neck to see what he was trying to show me.

A fiery streak flew across the purple and pink sunset. It had wings, and if I held my head out of the window, I would probably hear the phoenix’s tea kettle screech sounding out over the ashen wasteland.

“Pedal to the metal,” I said.

“Um…” Afu said.

“What now?” I turned in my seat to look at him. He’d crawled to the other side of the truck and pointed out the window.

“We’re not the only ones heading for the enclosure, Cap.”

I squinted as I looked outside. On a parallel road a quarter mile away, the last bit of sunlight struck against long metal barrels and rugged treads. Army tanks and spider vehicles were kicking up ash as they raced toward our same destination.

Our truck’s holoreader buzzed with a flashing red screen. The words floating in the air turned my skin ice cold: NORTH, WEST, AND SOUTH ENCLOSURES HAVE BEEN BREACHED. DRAGONS ESCAPED.