CHAPTER 6

The woman on the tractor, a real thin lady with a squinty eye, began hitching chains to Tank 1. I tried not to take too much time to look back at it. It was bad enough wondering how I was going to get five miles down a dragon-infested road, let alone the whole way back home.

“Follow me,” Seabee said.

He’d left his bazooka behind in the tower and had rolled up the sleeves of his long, forest green coat. His forearms were as big as my thighs. He had a military-style haircut and the short stubble was as gray as a storm cloud. I would have pegged him as a soldier if he hadn’t spouted so much hate for the Army.

Yeah, it all checked out. Seabee must have been former Navy.

The inside of the settlement looked like most others I’d seen, but someone with the freedom to be artistic had used paints and chalk to make the fronts of all the ramshackle buildings look like a typical Main Street USA from different time periods. There was a grocer and a blacksmith and even a store called IKEA. And they were placed beside a jazz club and a saloon from the old west.

I didn’t know if these buildings functioned as their facades indicated or if it was just a way to make it all look more pleasing to the eye. People probably just slept in them. I wondered who had pulled the short straw and had to live in the IKEA.

Everyone came out and watched from the side of the street as I followed the old man through the snow.

The ground was cold as fuck.

“I guess you believe me now?” I asked him. My teeth began to chatter.

“Believe what?”

“Uh… everything I told you.”

A fountain stood in the center of the town, but it held no water. A name had been chiseled into the stone: Sherry.

Seabee hurried on. “When I saw you in that bathrobe, I knew you were alone. Everything else you said still remains bullshit in my eyes.”

Three small shacks had been built side by side in the back corner of the town wall. Pointing a lazy finger toward them, he said, “Pick one.”

The shacks were basically outhouses, but I’d relieved myself in worse places.

I entered the one on the far right.

When I was done with my business, Seabee was leaning against the wall and staring at the ground. He didn’t bother lifting his eyes. Some rock on the ground had his interest.

“Are you really going to put me back on the road with nothing?” I asked him.

“We could shoot you instead.”

“Come on, man. I’m as good as dead out there without that tank. And I didn’t have much of a chance with it. I just want to see my Mom and Dad one more time before I go on the run for good.”

“Peoria?” Then he looked at me. “That’s where you said you were headed? Yeah?”

“Yeah. Born and raised.”

He came at me like a hover train, shoved me up against the nearest outhouse and put one of those big forearms against my throat. I couldn’t breathe, but I could still somehow smell whatever had blown up in the shithole behind me.

“I think this is some Trojan horse shit one of your superiors put you up to.” Seabee’s face turned red. He had the eyes of a psychopath. I kept thinking I was glad at least to have gone to the bathroom before this maniac strangled me to death. “Why are you here? No one’s ever come to our gate, and all of a sudden I’m supposed to believe some Mexican in a bathrobe stumbles on our town in a spider tank and all he wants is directions?”

I coughed and screeched enough to say, “I’m… not… Mexican, you… fucking… dick.”

He released his arm. I fell to the ground.

“Why are you here?” He was yelling now. “You can tell me or I can stomp your fucking brains out.”

I rubbed at my neck, where his arm had been pinned. I’d been doing a lot of neck-rubbing lately. I stayed on my knees but looked up at him. The sun had him in shadow. “You hate NUSA? Well, so do I. After I joined up, I found out they were a bunch of assholes, but I tried to make the best of a shit situation. My droid sergeant dragged me out of bed last night and tried to burn me ’cause he thought I was a smoke eater. I stole that tank and left my platoon to get ripped apart by wraiths. I meant what I said. I’m just trying to get back to Peoria.”

“Your sergeant was a droid?”

“Yeah,” I said. “5-90.”

Seabee shook his head. “You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie about that? You can’t make that up!”

“You’re heading to Peoria?”

“That’s where my family is.”

“Peoria is ashes now.”

Everything went still. I’d heard the words he said, but they didn’t make sense.

“What?” It was a good thing I was already on the ground. My legs felt rubbery. I said it again, “What?”

Seabee looked at me, and I don’t know what he saw, but it caused his face to slacken. “Peoria was overrun by dragons about a month back. One of the worst attacks since E-Day. You should have known that. Everyone knows about it. If some hicks in the sticks like us know, any common Nusie should, too. Peoria had been requesting the Army to come save them. They sent out signals for days before the city went under. Damn Nusies never responded to the call. You had to have known.”

I fell back from my knees and onto my ass. My throat tightened, eyes stinging. The world went blurry from tears welling in my eyes. “I’m going to… need a minute.”

I buried my face in my hands and cried.

I tried not to think about how it happened, but the thoughts fought their way through and made me cry harder. I saw dragons burning my family alive, eating them. Tearing their flesh. I saw my house cave in and bury my abuela in a pile of rubble. My mind, the sick son of a bitch, showed all my younger cousins in a corner in some back alley, surrounded by grimy bricks, trapped by scalies of different shades of evil. The dragons crept closer and closer as the kids cried and screamed for God, anyone, to save them. Then teeth snapped and claws slashed. Fire, acid, blood, and smoke engulfed my brain.

I wanted to die.

“Hey, kid,” Seabee said. His voice went softer. “Listen… umm…”

“The whole city?” I raised my soaked face to him. I tasted salt. I couldn’t believe it. This was a dream, a nightmare. This wasn’t real. This old man had his information wrong. “No one got out?”

“I… uh… aw shit.” He helped me stand as I kept crying.

I let him drag me through the center of town. Nothing mattered anymore. I didn’t care where I was. I didn’t care about anything. My world had been burned away or torn to bits. The only people who loved me were dead. They’d suffered terribly. At least, I was sure they had.

Not knowing seemed worse than if I had a complete report of how they perished. My mind went to dark places to torture me. I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

I craved closure. I was at the mercy of endless possibilities.

When I took the time to look up, I saw I had been brought inside one of the painted buildings. Seabee laid me on a twin-sized mattress and stood over me for a second before rushing out to fetch one of the townspeople. He came back with the younger woman who’d been arguing with him on the wall. Then the old man left again with an exasperated shake of his head, leaving me with her.

She was wearing an old fire helmet, with the face shield pulled down, as if I had some disease she didn’t want to catch. I kept looking at her because she had a kind look on her face, even though she was wearing knee and elbow pads with nails driven through them. And all of that was made scarier by her puffy, pink coat.

“Can I get you anything,” she asked, after watching me bawl my eyes out for a while.

“Kill me,” I said.

“Goddamn.”

“There is no God.”

“I don’t have an opinion on that one way or another, but my dad asked me to take care of you so that’s what I’m here to do. You want to talk about it?”

I buried my head into the pillow. No. I didn’t want to talk about it.

To add a twist of weird to my trainwreck of thought, I kept remembering Reynolds. She was all I really had left in the world, but all she really had was the Army. She was just as gone from me as my parents and cousins and…

The heaving cries came again.

“Hey, I get where you’re coming from,” she said. “I lost my mom not too long ago. I still cry sometimes. Well, more than sometimes.”

Why was this person bugging me? These people didn’t even want me here. But now that I was in a depressive fit, they felt they had to keep someone around me? It probably had nothing to do with my emotions and everything to do with me being an outsider, a soldier, a Nusie. No one gave a shit about anybody anymore. At least, no one gave a shit about me – no one alive anyway. They’d died while I was off trying to do the right thing with the wrong people. And the bastards like Calhoun, if they knew, and according to Seabee they sure as hell did, hadn’t told me anything about it. The thought brought on another bout of crying.

“I’m Bethany,” she said. “You’re Gilly, is that right?”

“Guillermo,” it came out like a yell, but I was crying and couldn’t help it. “Contreras.”

“Oh, my dad said your name was Gilly.”

I sat up, angry at everything. I was especially mad at myself for devolving into such a blubbering mess. I also knew it was justified. These weird townies would just have to deal with a sadsack of an AWOLer until they kicked me back out into the wastes.

“You can call me whatever you want,” I told her.

“Gilly it is.” She had jet black hair and a face that had no business being so radiant in such times.

“Can’t I get some clothes or shoes or something?”

“My dad is looking into it.” She tilted her head and gave me a sad smile. “You want to talk about what you’re feeling?”

“No.”

“It might be good to talk about something else then, anything else, just to get the pressure off your heart. That’s something my mom used to say.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist. Shit. I was leaking gallons. I began to shiver. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. What do you know a lot about? You got a hobby or some other interest?”

I opened my mouth to speak. Closed it. I shook my head. “You’ll just think I’m stupid or crazy.”

“No I won’t. We’ve been off the grid for a long time out here behind these walls. Unless you like to play Jenga with severed body parts, I think I’d be very interested to hear about it.”

She was trying to make jokes. I didn’t feel much like laughing. Okay. She wanted to know what I was interested in? I’d tell her.

“Smoke eaters,” I said. Her smile fell away. “I know just about everything non-confidential about the smoke eaters. I look up to them, still, even though they’re gone. I know about their power suits, how they were an offshoot of the fire department. All their equipment and how it works. They were basically fucking superheroes. And they were there exactly when we needed them until NUSA broke them up. I especially know about Captain Naveena Jendal out of the Parthenon City department. It was out in Ohio. She was my favorite. I mean, she had more recorded dragon kills than anyone in the world. But nobody knew about it until after the smokies were over.”

Bethany was wearing fingerless, black gloves. She began fidgeting with them and didn’t stop, even after I’d quit talking. “What about Cole Brannigan? Know anything about him?”

I leaned forward. My breath got quicker. Bethany had been right about talking about something else to get my mind off my family. At least for a moment. I couldn’t believe there was someone else who knew about the smoke eaters, and especially the ones out of Ohio. “Chief Brannigan? He was a legend. A little gruff for my taste, but he was the oldest rookie out of any department. Helped to completely transform the smoke eaters, even in other cities around the country. When we still had a country. How do you know about him?”

She shrugged. “I just heard some stories. Wonder where he is now.”

“Oh.” I sank back onto the cot, dropped my head. “Guess you don’t know. He died. Sacrificed himself to kill the Phoenix that attacked Parthenon City a few years back.”

“A Phoenix?”

“Yeah. I think it was the only one. I don’t know much about it besides the news reports I could find. It liked to eat the dragons. Maybe if they’d left it alone Brannigan would still be around. And so would…”

Bethany must have seen me sulking, thinking about death. She was determined to steer me elsewhere. “So I guess you know a lot about dragons, too?”

“I try. They’re amazing. It sucks they always try to kill us.”

“What’s your favorite type of dragon?”

“This is starting to sound like you’re talking to a four-year-old. I’m probably older than you.”

“You might be. You sound like an old bastard if you don’t even have a favorite scaly.”

I hummed, put two fingers to my lips. “I like the majestic nature of Golden Drakes, but I also think Jabberwocks are creepy in the coolest way, but… hold up. You keep asking the questions. Why don’t you tell me about who you are and how you’re all out here in the middle of nowhere in a fucking castle?”

Her smile returned. “No can do. You’re still a Nusie and I didn’t even want to let you through the gate. That was my dad’s decision. Man’s got a soft spot for fellow weak bladders.”

“So I’m supposed to tell you everything and get nothing back? That feels more like an interrogation than a conversation.”

“That’s life.”

“Do you think I could get some food at least?”

“We already had breakfast. You’ll be gone before dinner.”

“Can you at least tell me where I am?”

Bethany laughed, obviously getting a kick out of denying me answers. She shook her head.

“What about your mom?”

Her face went slack, maybe even a little paler.

I felt my nose running and had no other option but to use the sleeve of my robe. “You said you lost her. What happened?”

“She died out on the road, when a bunch of Nusies did a shit job of trying to take out a scaly.”

Maybe if I hadn’t known I’d lost my own family, my lips would have frowned in pity and I would have told her how sorry I was. We just ended up staring at each other, listening to some secret song only people like us could hear.

Finally, I said, “The Army. They fucking suck.”

“They? Don’t you mean you? You rolled up to our gate in a Nusie tank.”

“I ran away. Went AWOL.”

I noticed Bethany was wearing some kind of old Kevlar vest under the pink coat. It was official. I dubbed her apocalyptic attire as “punk sniper”. All she was missing was an anarchy symbol painted onto the front of her fire helmet.

She slid a thumb under one of the vest straps. “I thought I was only smelling the wet funk coming off your robe.” She sniffed the air, squished her face in disgust. “But I seem to be catching the wisps of bullshit.”

Wow. The suspicious apple didn’t fall far from the tree. She thought I was a liar. Her dad thought I was a liar. Maybe if I started waddling and quacking they’d roast me for Easter.

“It’s true,” I said. “I thought I was finally doing it, being a good soldier. The platoon forced my hand. I had to run.”

“And why would you do something like that?”

“Because other than you, the last people I talked to about the smoke eaters were a bunch of kids and somehow that led to me being threatened with fire and accused of being a smokie.”

Bethany stood and moved toward me. I flinched a little, moving farther back onto the mattress. I didn’t have much of anywhere to go.

“Are you?” she asked.

“Am I…” I smiled, showing lots of teeth. My eyes tensed. I’m sure it looked crazy. It felt crazy. My rational brain seemed to be far away in a Peoria that didn’t exist anymore. I laughed. “Am I a smoke eater? If I was a smoke eater… oh why am I even talking to you about this? You’re just going to kick me out once your dad gets back.”

She leaned in close, squinting her eyes a little. She was inspecting me. Her gaze drifted down to my feet then all the way to the top of my head and then back to my eyes. “Yeah, there’s no way you’re a smoke eater.”

Who the hell did she think she was? “And how would you know?”

She opened her mouth to answer.

The door burst open and a metallic creature bounded in. It stopped in the middle of the room. With its digital eyes, it took several glances between Bethany and me. Its rubber tongue hung from the side of its rectangular mouth. Spots had been painted all over the robot’s body. It was a droid dog.

“Dodaeche nuguya?” the dog said, then jumped onto the mattress and began licking me. It felt and smelled like a soft tire being shoved in my face.

I yelled and flailed my arms, falling flat on my back, thinking they’d sicced the thing on me. Bethany started laughing. After I realized the droid wasn’t trying to kill me, I started laughing, too. I’d never seen a real dog – they’d been gone since E-Day – and my family couldn’t afford the mechanical substitute.

The robo-dog barked. It sounded like a static-laden recording of a real canine.

I heard the door slam shut. Seabee stood there with a pair of old boots and a small stack of clothes in his arms. He didn’t look charitable. He looked pissed. “Kenji, get off of him.”

The dog turned toward the old man, then jumped off the mattress and laid down at Bethany’s feet.

Seabee tossed the clothes onto the mattress. “Hurry up and get dressed.”

“What’s wrong?” Bethany asked.

“We have a problem.” He glared at me as if I already knew.

“What?” I said.

The old man dug into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, silver device, about the size of a hover car’s key fob. Seabee held it between his fingers. A tiny red light blinked in its center.

Bethany beat me to asking the obvious question. “What is that?”

“Merv and the others started taking the tank apart. Found this bolted next to the core distributor. Wanna tell us what it is, Gilly?”

He stared at me as if I’d killed someone. I looked from Bethany to her dad, confused. “How the hell should I know? I barely even know how to drive the tank.”

“It’s a tracker,” Seabee said. “Had it encased in the underside of the tank. EMP can’t do shit to it, but even if it could the Army already knows you’re here.”