CHAPTER 10

The slayer’s headlights revealed an endless tunnel. Seabee worked the steering wheel left and right as if he knew exactly where he was going. We were inside an ash heap, but it wasn’t made out of the same cinders you’d find at the bottom of a campfire. The scalies knew how to compress and sculpt the ash however they wanted. They’d scorch it to make it harden. The end result was as tough as a concrete wall, but no structure lasts forever. The ash heaps could topple like sandcastles given the right circumstances.

Every new curve in the tunnel would make the truck bounce or skid. I would tense up and squeak through my teeth. Debris would rain onto us and I would imagine the whole nest caving in. Seabee would just turn on the windshield wipers. We continued deeper into the nest.

I didn’t want to say anything to throw off his concentration. I was glad he was driving and not me. Then again, if I were behind the wheel, we wouldn’t have been speeding through a hole underneath Chicago.

The tunnel sloped down then opened into a wider area, but it wasn’t much taller. If we’d been in a smoke eater cannon truck and not the standard slayer, we wouldn’t have been able to fit.

Seabee parked and left the high beams shining on a shape embedded into the ash wall ahead. It looked like a dragon’s claw print, but it was too smudged to know for sure. From where we were, the tunnel branched off into additional paths of different sizes, going in different directions. I counted three of them. There might have been more.

To our left, a structural beam was buried in the ash like an archaeological ruin. Most of its tiles had fallen off, but it still held a sign telling us we were on the Red Line.

“Stay here.” Seabee reached for his door.

“Wait a minute.” I unclenched my teeth. “What are we doing down here? This is worse than being on the street.”

“I’ve got to find a dragon and make it swallow this tracker.” He waved the device at me then put it in one of his power suit’s metal pockets. “Waiting for one isn’t an option. We don’t have that kind of time and we don’t want something showing up that I can’t handle. Stay inside the truck. I shouldn’t be long.”

He turned back to the door.

“How did you know this nest was here?”

Huffing, Seabee took his hand off the door handle. “People out in the wastes have to scavenge to survive. We can’t just go rob someone like you Nusies. I scoped this out a few months ago on one of my outings.”

“You came to the city? By yourself? Does Bethany know about that?”

“No. I mean, yes. Damn it, it’s none of your business one way or the other!”

“What use am I just sitting here?”

“Keep your voice down.” His voice dropped to a whisper. Before that, he’d been talking even louder than me. “Are you a smoke eater?”

I didn’t reply. We both knew the answer to that one: a big, resounding “I don’t know.”

“This isn’t where we find out if you are,” Seabee said. “If something happens to me, you can take the slayer back to my town and tell them the gory details. Or you can drive this thing all the way to Calabasas. I’d be dead so what the fuck would I care?”

“Go back? I don’t even know how we got down here.”

“Just follow the tunnel to the street.”

“How long should I wait? What if I leave, but you were right there and I should have waited a little longer? What if something gets me when I’m walking around to get in your seat?”

“Goddamn,” Seabee said. “You’re worse than my daughter. Hold on.”

He jumped out of the truck. I stared past the door he’d left open, into the dark of the dragon nest. A cloud of ash dust blew by, floating through the dim light above the door.

What if a scaly slithered in before Seabee got back? What if there was something down here big enough that it didn’t even have to infiltrate the cab, it could just swallow the truck whole?

I heard Seabee’s steps crunching against the ashen floor, moving farther and farther away. One of the bins opened with a metallic clank. I could hear him rustling around back there.

I could feel something watching me. Maybe more than one something. The tiny hairs on my body rose. I’d always thought that was just a dumb expression. Normally I would have shaken away the eerie feeling, my mind playing tricks on me, but the last time it had happened a droid dragged me from my bed to be burned.

Seabee climbed back into the cab and shoved something at me. I looked down at his hand. He held a smoke eater helmet.

My breath caught in my throat. “But you said–”

“I dub you an honorary smokie.” He waved his arm around like a drunk priest blessing me with the sign of the cross. “Now shut up.”

I was too stressed out to be offended.

The helmet was heavy. I could already feel the strain on my neck. Turning to look in any direction felt awkward. The metal was cold, rough. The inside of the helmet smelled like ass sweat and stale smoke. I loved it.

“I’m going to cast my radio signal to your helmet,” said Seabee. “That way we’ll be able to stay in contact. Don’t fill the traffic with your endless stream of damned questions. Only talk if it’s important. Fuck that. You’ll think everything is important. Only talk if you’re in danger of being eaten or something.”

“I just say ‘cast’ to transmit and ‘end cast’ to turn it off, right?” I asked.

He stared at me for a few seconds. Was that pride I sensed in his face? “Yeah. I guess you read that on the Feed?”

I strained to balance the helmet as I nodded.

“I’m pretty sure this is a Flapper nest, so it could go either way. If you lose contact with me, count to five hundred. Then haul ass out of here. You see a horde of ’em coming toward you, haul ass out of here. If I tell you to haul ass out of here–”

“I haul ass out of here,” I said. “Got it. But what if I need to defend myself. Is this a gun suit or a sword suit?”

“It’s a sit there and wait suit.” Seabee turned to leave.

“Come on, man. I’ll just start pressing buttons if that’s how you’re going to be.”

“You’re going to wear me out before the dragons do.” He leaned back in his seat, sighed. “You have a laser sword just like mine. You engage it by pushing the button between your glove’s thumb and forefinger.”

I held up my arm and spotted the button. I moved my thumb toward it.

“Not in here, dumbass!”

I dropped both arms. “You don’t have to be rude.”

“If shit goes down and you have no other option, fine, use the sword. But outside of that and bailing out of here, you’re going to let me do my thing so we can get you a car and send you on your merry way. Don’t fuck up and slice your leg off.” He hopped out and closed the door before I could ask him anything else.

I watched him walk away, softly cursing under his breath. His shape faded at the end of the headlight’s reach. Soon he disappeared down one of the tunnels.

“Can you hear me?” His voice came from the speaker in my helmet.

“Cast,” I said. “Yeah, I can hear you. What are you seeing?”

“Same shit you are. Just ashes and darkness. Don’t touch anything in the slayer.”

I sat there waiting for him to say something else. A minute passed. Maybe another five. I ended my radio cast and drummed my armored fingers against the door. The hum of the slayer’s engine made me nervous. It wasn’t loud, but a scaly was sure to hear it. The high beams were also going to attract unwanted attention, but the thought of turning them off and putting myself in total darkness was worse.

I heard my mother’s voice, You’ll never have to worry while I’m around. When I was a kid too scared of the dark to fall asleep, she would always say the same thing as she leaned her head inside my bedroom door. You’ll never have to worry while I’m around.

But she wasn’t around anymore. I was alone in the dark.

My nerves felt like they were on fire. I suddenly had a ball of erratic energy bouncing around inside me with nowhere to go. Anger, defeat, despair. I didn’t know what to call what I was feeling. It was all of them. None of them. I wanted to slice a thousand dragons in half, stuff my face with canned peaches, and curl up to cry all at the same time. I needed to do something!

I told myself to push it down. Bury it. Bury it. Think of something else.

“There are some eggs here,” Seabee’s voice crackled. “Looks like they hatched a while ago. No wraiths around, so that checks out. These eggs look different. Don’t ask about them. I’m just talking out loud and letting you know I’m not dead.”

I gave him a “10-4” because I didn’t know what else to say that wasn’t a question.

I remembered that smoke eater helmets had a cool feature and ran my fingers along the side to find the button. It took me a few passes but when I pressed it, dark lenses ejected to sit over my eyes. The tunnel lit up in a thermal view. Everything was pixelated in different colors and a number in the bottom right showed the temperature of whatever I looked at. The smokies called these thermagoggles. Not very inventive, but what else would you call glasses that allowed you to see heat signatures in the dark?

“Wow,” I whispered to myself.

That indented shape in the ash wall was still ahead of me. It was indeed a dragon’s claw print.

Didn’t Seabee say this was a Flapper nest? Or had he said Popper? I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t up on my knowledge of Popper anatomy but I knew they were short, round diggers with no wings. They didn’t have huge claws like this one. Poppers were mostly mouth and teeth with a big shovel-like horn at the end of their snout. Flappers were all teeth and wings. They were the size of a dog but you never only saw one. They hunted in dense packs like flying piranha.

This wasn’t a Popper or a Flapper nest.

Was that a snarl?

I looked down each tunnel. Their walls were warm but I saw no slithering tails or any other movement. Under the slayer cabin, the truck engine shone bright gold. I could see all the truck innards moving and giving off heat, like I had x-ray vision. But something else drew my eye.

Under the truck, deep below the ash, something was digging its way up. It showed red in my thermagoggles, starting off small, barely a dot. But it grew and I knew that meant it was getting closer. It meant it was much bigger.

I casted to Seabee, “I think I have a problem.”

“Didn’t they teach you radio etiquette in the Army? You just say the thing. There’s no preamble.”

The red blotch took on more of a shape. It had a body the size and length of a freight train. Its head reminded me of a tyrannosaurus. The scaly broke the surface and slammed into the slayer’s undercarriage. I flew out of my seat as the whole truck lifted and dropped back down. Ash poured onto the roof like sand out of a broken hourglass.

I screamed into my helmet. “A big, fucking dragon just came out of the ground and hit the slayer. What do I do?”

“Hold on, kid. I’m coming. Don’t leave. What is it? Did you get a good look at it?”

“I don’t know!” I looked at the ground. A red-lit tail was slithering off. I followed it and saw the dragon was heading away from me, under the ash. “Some big dinosaur snake. I think… I think it might be leaving.”

“I’m headed your way. Do me a favor. Turn the slayer around to face the way we came.”

“Man, I don’t know. What if that thing comes back?”

“Then we’ll have more of a chance to not get eaten if I don’t have to waste time pulling a u-ey.”

I mumbled, “Should have turned it around before you left.”

“What did you say?”

“I said–”

“Oh shit!” A laser buzzed furiously on Seabee’s end. “Shit!”

“What?” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Poppers!”

I began to shake. The old man was putting up one hell of a fight. Each of his grunts were accompanied by an electric slash of his laser sword. He was calling each dragon every swear in the book. Whether he made it back or not, I was going to have to reposition the truck.

I scanned the area with the thermagoggles one more time to make sure that big snake bastard wasn’t anywhere around. When I saw it was clear, I retracted the goggles and grabbed the door handle. I hesitated. It felt like I was covered in chum and about to jump into shark-infested waters.

My Uncle Pedro came to mind. He would always get drunk at a barbecue or other family event and try to get us to do stupid dances or pull some prank on one of the other adults. I would always resist and he would always slur and stretch the vowels of three tiny words to goad me into going along: “Let’s doooo iiiit!”

All right, then. Let’s do it.

I opened the door and slid out onto the ground. I put my back as close to the truck as possible without grinding the metal and shuffled around the front, keeping one hand in contact. I thought I heard the flapping of wings. Seabee was making so much noise through my helmet speaker I couldn’t focus on my immediate surroundings. I stopped in front of the slayer, between its headlights. The beams tried to stab the dark but the fallen ash made it look like I was shrouded in fog.

I squinted but remembered I had a better way to see. When I extended the goggles, an angry, orange cloud was rushing toward me from one of the other tunnels. The sound of a hundred leathery wings grew louder.

Poppers shouldn’t have sounded like that. They sure as hell didn’t look like that.

Back to using my bare vision, I stumbled toward the driver’s side door. I kept going the way I had been, my back against the truck, only much faster this time. I could have run for it, but I didn’t want the scalies to attack and not see it coming. That was one thing I learned from the Army. You always kept a scaly in front of you.

I held up my right arm, moved my thumb to the button on my glove, pushed it. White hot light sprang out. It was wider than it was long, but it was clearly a blade. It had so much power I thought my arm was going to fly off without me. I kept moving.

I’d just made it to the other side of the truck when the Flappers found me.

They pelted into the slayer like hailstones. With the hook-like claws on their wings, they latched to the truck and began skittering all over it. Some of them flew to the other side of the slayer and attached to the wall just in front of me. One of them bent its neck back, saw me, and opened its long, toothy jaws to hiss.

A stream of flames leapt from its mouth. I leapt out of the way and left the slayer door to be scorched. There were three Flappers on my side of the truck and they attacked as one, beating their wings around my head, biting at my helmet. If I bent the wrong way they’d be able to get to my neck. I flung my arms around in a panic, forgetting I had the laser sword engaged. The hot blade found one of the Flappers’ necks. It’s head, sliced off, dropped to the ash, quickly followed by the rest of it. The other two Flappers backed off, hovering above me like demonic hummingbirds. They tilted their long heads toward the heap of dragon flesh on the ground and grieved their fallen sister with a rippling squawk.

They turned their glistening black eyes to me. Their fire would come next.

“Oh shit.” I jumped and slashed at them.

They rose out of my reach. I could hear the other Flappers clawing along the other side of the slayer. I’d have more scalies to deal with if I didn’t kill the two above me and escape into the slayer truck.

The two in the air screeched and circled me.

I lost it. A burst of anger exploded in my gut. It felt good to dump my internal shit into something productive. These fuckers weren’t going to get me. “Chinga tu madre!”

I squeezed my hands into fists. What I didn’t realize was that I’d pushed the button in my left glove. The power jump. I flew into the air, grazing the nest ceiling with my helmet. There was an instance of confusion and dread, but when I saw I was at the same level of the Flappers, I sliced in one big swing.

I’d like to think I saw fear in those Flappers’ beady eyes as I cut them in half.

I landed on my feet and stumbled backward. The slayer caught me before I fell. Hissing came from above me. An entire horde of Flappers, too many to count, lined the roof of the truck, leaning over to inspect their intended kill.

A noise reverberated in my ears. It must have been my own short, mumbled shrieks. Whatever Seabee was doing, I’d quit listening a while ago. I had my own problems.

I reached for the door handle to the driver’s seat. The laser sword was still on and pierced into the slayer’s metal. “Damn it!”

I disengaged the sword and used my other hand to open the door. The Flappers began dive-bombing. Several missed, others bounced off my helmet and the shoulders of my armor, but one latched onto my arm. I grabbed it by the tail and used every bit of strength to pry it off. I jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut on the Flapper’s neck.

The bastard could stay there and struggle till it suffocated to death. I wasn’t opening the door again.

The other scalies took flight and glided as a flock around the truck. One at a time, they smacked against the windshield. When the fourth or fifth Flapper smacked against the glass, a thin crack appeared.

“Seabee,” I called through my helmet.

There was no response.

Give him more time, I thought. He probably couldn’t hear me because he was too busy dealing with an entirely different scaly problem.

Or because he was being digested.

I put the slayer into drive and put the nose into the lip of the tunnel ahead. The Flappers flew off for another round. This time they went for the driver’s side window. Their breath fogged the glass. Dragon spittle ran down. The scaly caught in the door spasmed every few seconds. I could feel its tail hitting my leg.

My boot crushed the accelerator as I put the slayer into reverse and cut the wheel all the way to the right. I struck the ash wall behind me. The Flappers quit their aerial routine and landed on the windshield. With their sharp beaks, they began chipping away at the glass. It wouldn’t take them long to get inside.

I punched the truck forward and turned it as far as it would go. There was no time for a twenty-point turn, but it was hard to maneuver such a big machine in such a small, dark space. I slammed on the brakes just before I hit the wall in front of me. The Flappers didn’t budge. They had too good of a hold on the windshield. There were so many of them, I could barely see the mass of scaly bodies.

“Get off the truck!” I yelled.

Like that would do anything.

I had to reverse one more time before I was even close to driving the slayer out of the nest. The Flappers continued to chip away at the windshield. How it had held up till that point was a credit to the propellerheads who designed and constructed smoke eater equipment. And that wasn’t a euphemism for the scientists working alongside the smokies: they were officially called propellerheads. And they should have been given equal credit for every dragon bagged and tagged.

“Hey, you ugly fucks,” Seabee’s voice came through my helmet.

The Flappers on the windshield turned their heads in odd angles to look toward the tunnel to my right. They flew off like one disjointed body. I heard laser slashes from my helmet radio and directly outside the slayer truck.

My door was pulled open and the dead Flapper fell to the ground. Seabee stood there. His face was covered in dark liquid and chunks of ash.

“Get in the jump seat in the back.”

When a man covered in blood gives you an order, you tend not to ask questions.

The Flappers swarmed the slayer but were giving us a few feet of distance for the moment. I hopped out of the driver’s seat and crawled through the door behind. I didn’t know which one was the jump seat. Seabee got behind the wheel and began driving us out of the nest, back the way we came.

We had to use our helmet radios. It was otherwise too loud to hear each other. “Which one of these is the jump seat?” I asked.

“The one facing the rear. The one with the gun.”

“Slayer’s don’t have guns on the inside,” I said.

“This one fucking does. Now get in it and buckle up.”

I held onto a handle to keep myself from falling. Sure enough, there was a seat right in front of me with a large gun bent down with its barrel facing the floor. I got into the chair and buckled up.

We were flying through the tunnel. The ash wall flew by my window at what felt like a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Seabee had turned on the emergency lights on the outside of the slayer, and the only reason I could see why he’d do that was to light the way as much as possible.

“Ah, fuck,” Seabee said.

“What now?”

“You know that big dinosaur snake thing you told me about?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s called a Basilisk.”

“How do you know?” I’d never gotten around to reading about them, but I had a bad feeling I knew what Seabee was going to say next.

“Well,” he said, “it’s right behind us.”