CHAPTER 13

“Twenty-nine!” Reynolds was bending over me. Her auburn hair hung in thin, stringy strands, and there was so much of it that the few times I looked up from my place on the ground I couldn’t see her face.

My hands were squishing into the dirt. Sediment would get under my fingernails and I’d be up until three in the morning scraping it out. But I’d stopped worrying about that around push-up number twelve. They weren’t coming easily. Hell, they weren’t even coming at a decent rhythm.

“Come on, man,” Reynolds barked. “Just give me one more.”

I grunted, gritted my teeth. I really hated this kind of shit. “I… can’t.”

“You give me a full thirty push-ups and we won’t run the perimeter again.”

Wow, she really wanted me to get one more in. I really wanted it, too. She’d been wearing me out all morning. Two laps around the perimeter already, five sets of five burpees, and I forgot how many crunches it took for me to roll over and dry heave. I’d do anything to avoid more of that. A single push-up was an easy price to pay.

I’d been holding in a plank position and lowered myself to the ground.

“That’s it,” Reynolds said. “All the way down.”

I wanted to make it count, I really did. I made sure to press my chest into the dirt. There’d be evidence all over the front of my fatigues if she tried to say it wasn’t a full push-up.

But once in that position, I couldn’t push myself back up. My body had given out. I tried to hype myself into doing it. I told myself about the running to come if we didn’t rise. It didn’t seem to matter. I gave a hard shove to the ground, but it felt like every bit of energy was sucked out of me. I dropped onto my face.

“Damn good try.” Reynolds was laughing. “I salute your effort. But, unfortunately…”

“Come on…”

“Our deal was thirty or another lap. So…”

“…I’m going to die.”

Reynolds rubbed her hand through my hair. I felt bits of dirt fly everywhere. “You’re not going to die. Get up.”

Things didn’t just ache. They refused to work or twitch any more. My lungs felt tighter. Coughing didn’t help. Somehow I got to my knees, feeling exhaustion even in my gums. “I hate this.”

Reynolds pulled out an old compact mirror and cleaned the front of her teeth with a finger. “Then why did you join the Army?”

I stood and immediately felt the urge to vomit. Bending over helped my head quit spinning. “Why are you wasting your time with me?”

“We’re only as strong as–”

I straightened my stance and pointed a finger at her face. “Our weakest link? Is that what you were going to say? See, you think of me the same way the others do. I don’t know who you’re trying to fool with all this spending time with me bullshit. We don’t even talk, we just do exercises. I didn’t ask for a fucking personal trainer.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Why? There’s no point. I don’t belong here. But I’m the dumbass who signed my life away, so I’m stuck here in hell. I’d appreciate it if you made my sentence easier by just leaving me alone.” I turned away. Life only gives you so many opportunities to stomp away from a short list of people and I knew for sure this had been one of them. Reynolds ruined it.

“Excuse me, Private Contreras,” she called at my back. “I said one more lap around the perimeter and I’m going to get it.”

I turned, just to see if she was fucking with me. I didn’t think she was. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t angry either. Her face was neutral and still.

I fell into a run and brushed past her. “This sucks.”

Reynolds easily sped ahead of me, even turning to run backwards, which was still faster and more spring-heeled than my forward stumble. “You wanna know why I spend so much time with you? Because you make me feel safe.”

And like that she was turned the other way and booking it at least a hundred meters ahead.

Wait, I make her feel safe?

No boost of speed came upon me, but my curiosity kept my feet moving. How did a crumb like me make her feel safe?

Reynolds turned the corner on the other side of the town, taking the path that led up. The people called this place Stonehaven. They’d erected it in the middle of an old rock quarry, and must have thought it would be safer from dragons. As far I’d heard, they’d been right. It was just too bad the NUSA found them instead.

“Where… the hell… are you going?” I shouted. Reynolds didn’t hear me. I followed her up.

There was no way I could continue running up that steep climb. It must have been thirty minutes later when I finally crested the top of the rise and found Reynolds looking down at the town with hands on both her hips.

“This… is not… around the perimeter.” Slowly, and with a lot of effort, I came over to stand beside her. Every crevice of my body was collecting pools of sweat. Reynolds didn’t turn to look at me, she stared down at the town as the wind played with her hair. “What did you mean back there?”

“Look below us,” Reynolds said.

“I can see it,” I said. It was just some dwelling boxes and a few people milling around. Some guys from our platoon were leaning against Tank 2 while they laughed and stared at one of the old men of Stonehaven passing by.

A smile came to Reynolds’ face. It was a little weird. Lately, she seemed to be all over the place. Was she seeing the same thing I was?

“Down there,” Reynolds lowered her head slightly. “Those tanks, those guys in fatigues, even that metallic sergeant, wherever he is. That’s my platoon.”

I didn’t understand her pride. I’d considered more than once that she had nothing else and that’s why she was so gung-ho. Maybe she had no family back home, maybe not even a home back home. But you could have said that about every grunt in the platoon. I wished she would have talked about it more.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Calhoun’s platoon,” I said.

“He leads us, sure,” Reynolds said. “But we’re all in it together. We’re one unit. That’s my platoon. Don’t you think I was treated the same as you, if not worse, when I signed up?”

She looked so deeply into my eyes I thought she would dive in. I didn’t notice my exhaustion so much anymore. Her stare was intense. I had to look away, but I didn’t know why. Maybe I just couldn’t figure out where I landed with Reynolds.

“But I changed my thinking.”

“Your thinking?”

“Yeah. I thought I had been sucked up by the NUSA and bouncing around with everyone yelling at me or making fun of me. Then I realized that I was a part of this thing. I wasn’t being dragged along. I took ownership. I saw it as my platoon. You have a good heart, Gilly. And the persistence of a Jabberwock. I think all you need is a little ownership in this service. So look down there, find a tank or another grunt and say, ‘That’s my platoon.’”

I looked down there, but all I saw were those same soldiers, one sticking out a leg to make the old man trip and fall. Laughing, laughing. The world was full of filthy fucking hyenas. I wouldn’t claim them. They disgusted me.

Reynolds put her hand on my shoulder. “Go on. Feel it. Say it as many times as you need. Say, ‘That’s my platoon!’”

“This is stupid.”

“Say it.”

“Reynolds.”

“It’s just three words.” She was really squeezing my shoulder.

“Sarah, I don’t–”

“Say it, Gilly!”

“That’s my platoon.” I said it to myself in the back of the cannon truck. I stared in awe at Reynolds astride the bright yellow Lung dragon. Back in Waukesha, I’d left Calhoun and the others on foot in the middle of the night with several wraiths to fight off. They shouldn’t have been alive let alone anywhere near Chicago. How had they gotten here on the backs of dragons?

Everyone inside Cannon 15 turned to stare at me. Their looks could have bored holes into my flesh.

“What?” I said. “I didn’t know anything about this.”

Tamerica looked back outside the window. “These motherfuckers just rode some dragons right on top of us. You’re telling me you had no idea they could do that.”

“I didn’t know anybody could do that,” I said. “I was a private. They barely ever told me what town we were in.”

“We don’t have time to argue,” Brannigan said.

Outside, the red Fafnir raised its head and gave a few grunts from deep inside its throat. It sounded like old horn blows from the dark ages. Biblical times. When they used to make music with goat horns and shit. But the scaly didn’t have to rub it in. We all knew we had only a few seconds to make a decision.

“We’ve got two choices,” Brannigan said.

“Run or fight,” Renfro said. “I’m good with either.”

“We can’t outrun them,” Afu said. Worry filled his thick face.

“We can sure as hell try.” Renfro gripped the steering wheel. I could tell he felt more at home behind the wheel than in front of a dragon. There was nothing wrong with that. I was shit at both.

“It’s your call, T.” Brannigan said. “Your rig, your crew.”

Tamerica looked at him as though she’d been hoping he would have taken over the responsibility. She sighed and said, “I’ve never dealt with anything like this. Five dragons at once? And Nusies with rifles too? We don’t have a chance.”

“Sure we do,” said Brannigan. He patted the top of his helmet. “It’s just a few scalies and some assholes in the way.”

He was full of shit. There was no way we could survive this. I had to shove some sense into this conversation.

Outside, Calhoun had reached nineteen in his count.

“Give me up,” I said. “They might be lenient if you give them a reason to be thankful. They’re probably more pissed at me than any of you.”

Brannigan and Tamerica spoke at the same time, in sync, “No fucking way.”

“We don’t give people up.” Brannigan nodded. He said a lot with that tilt of his head. He was sorry for how he’d treated me. He didn’t want to repeat the mistake.

“Besides that,” Tamerica said. “There’s no way those Nusies are going to let four confirmed smokies go freely. We’re going to have to lay them out.”

“Knuck if you buck!” Afu jumped up and down in his seat.

“Guys,” I said, “you don’t have to–”

“Didn’t you hear me?” said Tamerica. “We’re fucked either way. I’d rather go out fighting. How about you, Contreras?”

I would have rather not “gone out” at all, but I blinked, then slowly nodded. “Yeah.”

“Renfro,” Tamerica said. “Back the truck up to the last intersection. Set the outriggers, raise the cannon, and blow away anything that isn’t in a power suit.”

“Sink or swim.” Renfro popped the truck into reverse and we were flying backwards. He careened the back half into a tall blob of concrete, but soon we were in line with the street.

I didn’t know what number Calhoun had reached by that point. It didn’t matter. I saw through the windshield all the soldiers were climbing back onto their dragons, except Calhoun, who remained standing there in front of his red Fafnir. He was yelling some order to the rest of the platoon.

The dragons spread their wings and roared.

Fuck me, I thought.

“The rest of you,” Tamerica said. “Use the buildings at each side of us. Am I the only one with a laser gun?”

“Yeah,” Brannigan said. “Me and Guillermo have swords. You, too, Afu?”

The big man nodded. “You know I can’t aim worth a damn.”

“Then I’ll hit them from a distance,” said Tamerica. “We need to separate them. Don’t take on more than one at a time.”

I didn’t know if she meant scalies or soldiers.

“Go, go, go!” Tamerica shouted.

I followed Brannigan out of the truck. Tamerica and Afu leapt out of their side and bolted across the street into the adjacent ruin. The Nusies fired their lasers at us. The beams flew over my head, struck the ground near my boots, but Brannigan and I made it into a crumbling building before any of the shots could hit us.

We entered a small room with no ceiling.

Brannigan leaned against a gouge-filled wall and slid onto his ass. “We’re going to have to split up.”

“Are you sure?” I dropped to a knee and flinched at every laser blast that hit outside the opening we’d just run through.

“Our best plan is to let Renfro blast a few of them. The rest will scatter after that. I think.”

“You think?”

“You fought alongside these Nusies,” Brannigan said. “You should know how they operate.”

He engaged his laser sword, stood up, and ran out of the tiny concrete room we’d been huddled in.

“What the hell?” I shouted after him.

His voice entered my helmet. “Relax, Gilly. We still have radio contact.”

“Same here,” Tamerica’s voice came through. “That green bitch and her rider are flying over me, trying to find a way inside here. Looked like a Fafnir. I need to give Renfro cover.”

“I’ll come help get that scaly off of you,” Afu said.

“Y’all better hurry.” Renfro’s voice shook.

Not wanting to wait around in that small room forever, I pushed further into the building. I didn’t care which turn I took; I just went whichever way felt best. When I found a stairwell, I went up. I figured the least I could do was give everyone a bird’s eye report of what was happening on the ground.

My breath and legs were beginning to give. I stopped on the twelfth floor, which had been gutted, missing the entire outer wall so that it looked like a cliff. Wind and snow and every other element had had its way with the interior.

I walked past lumps of ash that seemed to resemble filing cabinets and other office accoutrements until I reached the edge of the floor. I looked onto the street below. Lasers streaked across like coked-up fireflies. One of the Silver Razors was clawing against the building across from me. I didn’t see its twin. Both of these scalies looked like walking mirrors. It was a way to distract their prey. Light would reflect off their shiny hides and dazzle whatever they were looking to swallow. They either sliced flesh to ribbons with their dagger-like teeth, or used their short, but high-heat, breath to scorch the same flesh.

“One of those Silver Razors is trying to get into the building across from me,” I reported into my helmet.

“Great,” Tamerica said. “I thought I only had the green one to worry about.”

I spotted her in a broken window. She shot lasers toward the cannon truck, where Calhoun’s red Fafnir was slowly creeping toward Renfro, who stood at the controls in the back. The second Silver Razor crawled from the back of Tamerica’s building and slithered onto the roof. It lay under the sunlight, reflecting beams like a homicidal disco ball. It was sending out a beacon to the others.

Air fluffed up over the edge of the floor I stood on. Ashes flew over my boots. A rhythmic flapping grew louder and soon yellow horns and tendrils rose from below me. Reynolds’ beautiful but angry face appeared. She had a cut across her cheek that hadn’t been there when I’d left her in Waukesha with the wraiths. Of course I blamed myself.

“Gilly,” she hissed.

There was a device running from her ear to the side of her mouth, almost like a microphone, but it stuck to her skin like a bandage. I would have gotten a better look at it, but the Lung dragon sang its bright song right into my face. It was like being attacked with a thousand wind chimes.

“Sarah,” I said. “I’m so sorry. Please–”

“Shut up! I almost died because of you. I tried to warn you. You never listen to me.”

I held up my hands. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“It never is.” She rubbed a hand against the Lung dragon’s head.

The scaly flapped its large yellow wings to stay afloat, raising its head to purr at its rider.

“How are you doing this?” I asked. “Since when can you ride dragons?”

Reynolds flashed her eyes up to me. She inhaled deeply through her nose and answered, “Huxi!”

I’d read enough meditation books to recognize the word she said. It was Chinese for “breathe.”

The Lung puffed up its chest. I saw the light burning under its scales before the flames ever left its mouth. I turned and headed for the stairs. My shadow grew against the concrete floor as yellow light flashed at my back. The first inklings of heat pelted against my suit. It started as a small envelopment of warmth, then grew as if a wildfire was chasing me. I fell down the stairs and slammed into the wall at the bottom. Lying on my back, I looked to the floor above. Everything was golden fire, dancing and rippling. The scaly had flooded the floor with flames. Normal fire dissipated after a dragon finished breathing it, but these flames remained, floating above me like fatal clouds.

I scrambled to my feet and brought out my laser sword. All around me the air was dark yellow, filled with floating bits of ash. I couldn’t see more than shadows a few feet in front of me.

The Lung dragon’s head broke through the fire above me. It snapped its teeth, and although its moustache tendrils slapped across my helmet and my suit, it couldn’t get close enough to bite me.

“You asshole!” Reynolds screamed.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and with a dragon to ride.

I slashed my sword toward the Lung but I didn’t want to get too close to either the teeth or the fire. I stayed against the wall. My first swipe caught nothing but air, my next had me stumbling into the wall to my left. When the scaly flicked its yellow head to try another bite at me, I cut into one of its tendrils, leaving the rubbery thing to drop at the ground between my boots.

The Lung dragon pulled out of the fire, yelping and roaring in pain. A slice of its wings split the flames open. Reynolds and her dragon dropped from the building, twisting toward the street. The scaly must have gone berserk when I’d sliced off one of its lip tentacles. Reynolds couldn’t control it. All she could do was hold on and hope throwing up or losing consciousness in the force of the dragon’s spin was the worst that would happen to her.

I felt horrible. But Reynolds had been the one to attack me. She’d chosen the Army over common sense. And she’d never said a damned thing about being able to ride the scalies.

The Lung’s floating fire evaporated and I could see my surroundings more clearly. I climbed back to the floor above and got a view of the street. Calhoun rode atop his Fafnir and clawed along the top of Cannon 15. Renfro placed the cannon barrel on them and fired. The colonel took his dragon to the air as a blast of blue light flew just under the Fafnir’s claws.

The red scaly began to hover around the truck. Renfro tried to follow them with the cannon but it would only be a matter of time before Calhoun found an opening and dove in to take Renfro out.

Lasers whipped out of the building across the street, shattering glass as they flew from the top window and tore into the midsection of the Silver Razor that hung from the side. The dragon whined and leaned away from the shots. The sun shimmered across its reflective scales. It couldn’t escape. The soldier riding the Razor’s back whipped the reins in his hands to no effect. The Silver Razor was already dead and dropped from the building. It landed against the street on its back, squishing its rider into red goo.

The green Fafnir flew past me. A smoke eater dangled from its foreclaws with both of their hands gripped onto its ankles. It was Brannigan. He was screaming but his voice carried over the street sounding joyful. The old fuck was having the time of his life.

“I’m going to need some help,” Renfro called through my helmet.

“What’s going on out there?” Tamerica said.

Renfro couldn’t answer. He was having trouble just keeping the cannon aimed close enough to the Fafnir so Calhoun wouldn’t divebomb him.

Calhoun’s red Fafnir had begun to blast down streams of fire as it circled the cannon truck. The colonel then began taking shots at Renfro with his rifle. The colonel didn’t look too confident in the saddle, and he was having a hard time aiming properly. But one of his wild shots would eventually hit its mark.

“It’s Calhoun,” I radioed back. “He’s trying to take out Renfro.”

“Our priority is to protect that truck,” Tamerica said. “Everybody head back.”

“I’m hanging from this green one,” Brannigan said. I could see green wings through the middle of two ruined buildings in the distance.

“Then let go and come help defend the truck,” Tamerica said. “It’s the only one we have.”

Calhoun found an opening to attack. He yanked on his dragon’s reins and they fell out of the hovering position. The Fafnir stuck out its hind claws as if to snatch Renfro, but the smoke eater had the cannon barrel spinning at full throttle. The barrel knocked the dragon in the head before it could touch him. For extra measure, Renfro dug into his power suit and threw something small and black into the air. Laser light flashed and spun like a propeller, cutting the Fafnir along its side. I smelled burned meat.

The dragon roared and twisted its wings at an odd angle. Calhoun slid sideways. His weight tugged at the reins, pulling the scaly even farther away from Cannon 15, flying like a comet toward the edge of the building where I stood.

As with all events beyond my control, two words slipped from my mouth: “Oh, shit.”

Fully grown Fafnirs weighed an average of seven tons, and this big red bastard was probably a few pounds over that. The structure I was standing on had already been a wind gust away from crumbling to ash. When the scaly crashed into the building, it was like a wrecking ball had hit it. I fell forward, then down. Nothing was holding me up any more.

I landed on the Fafnir’s back, though I didn’t realize it until I’d quit screaming and saw I hadn’t fallen to the street. My bones hadn’t broken. My innards hadn’t popped out like spaghetti from an overfilled water balloon. The only thing that hurt was my face, where it had smacked against the Fafnir’s rough, red scales. When I looked up, Calhoun was ahead of me and bent forward steering the dragon out of the trash-yellow cloud left by the demolished building.

“Holy fuck,” Afu said through my helmet. “That Guillermo kid is riding the red Fafnir!”

I felt dizzy. Some of the concrete dust and ash had flown into the back of my throat. I gagged and tried to clear it from my mouth with slobbering coughs.

Calhoun turned in his saddle.

“You!” The whites of his eyes stuck out bright against the brown, powdered debris caking his face. “I should have let you freeze to death.”

He turned the Fafnir to spin us through the air, trying to shake me off. What Calhoun didn’t know was that it would take the very fingers of God to pluck me from the back of that scaly. Aside from freezing and drowning, falling from a high place was the last way I wanted to die. Even if I had to dig my armored fingers into the dragon’s back, I wasn’t getting off until I was back on solid ground. But how the hell was that going to happen?

A surge of vomit threatened to rocket from my mouth, but it had been a long time since I’d had those canned peaches. Dry heaves wracked my body. My grip began to loosen.

“It’s just not your day, soldier.” Calhoun stretched an arm back, pointing his rifle. He wasn’t handling the weapon by Army regulation; it weaved all over the place, but as close as we were to one another it would do what he intended. He fired. The Fafnir dived and it bucked the colonel’s aim. My eyes filled with bright red light. I had to blink a few times before my eyes adjusted back to normal. The red laser had grazed the side of my smoke eater helmet.

Calhoun gripped the dragon reins tighter while trying to get a better bead on me. Keeping tight to the scaly’s back, I slid my hand toward my right glove. I pressed the button and dug the laser sword into the Fafnir’s flesh. The dragon screeched like a baby wailing to death. It really fucked me up. I felt strangely horrible for having caused the beast pain, but I didn’t get a chance to feel bad for long. The dragon pitched toward the earth.

What the fuck had I done?

Calhoun’s rifle fell from his hand. He whipped the reins to no avail, shouting, “Fly, you bastard!”

There was no way my shallow sword plunge had killed the dragon. It hadn’t even gotten close to any vital organs. Still, we were free falling.

At the last second, the Fafnir caught the air in its wings and landed into a four-legged stumble against the street. My head bounced to the rhythm of the Fafnir’s cavorting. My neck felt like it would snap in two. The dragon twitched to and fro, tensing its muscles and scratching its hind claws at me like I was a flea.

I threw myself to the street, tumbling across the ash and snow. Calhoun barked wobbly-voiced orders at the bucking Fafnir, but the scaly wasn’t listening. I guess whatever power the Nusies had over the dragons wasn’t enough to combat a laser sword to the ass.

We hadn’t landed too far from the cannon truck. I could see Renfro at the controls on the back of the truck just down the street. Afu and Brannigan ran over to the truck and put their backs to it. Their laser swords glowed at their sides. Afu pulled his axe from the back of his power suit. From a broken window two stories above the truck, Tamerica launched out, using her power jump to coast safely to the ground.

I ran toward them.

“Are you okay, Gilly?” Brannigan’s voice came through my helmet.

“I’m good,” I said. “What are we going to do?”

Shadows moved above. As I ran, I looked up. I wished I hadn’t. Reynolds and her Lung dragon circled in the air while the green Fafnir and the remaining Silver Razor clawed along a building at either side of us. Soon they leapt off and joined Reynolds, widening the death circle.

The wind was picking up, lifting ash and snow into the air. It created a haze around us. I knew Chicago was the windy city, but this seemed unnatural. The dragons flying above were having a hard time staying upright.

I made it to the cannon truck and bent over, catching my breath. My stomach wasn’t ready to settle down yet, and I was afraid it would find something to regurgitate before I could put up a fight. Several chunks of slushy ash flew into my mouth. I gagged.

“Where’s the red one?” Tamerica said.

“Down the street,” I said between gasps. “It’s giving Calhoun trouble.”

A roar came over our heads. The red Fafnir flew in and flapped to stay just above us. Tamerica raised her laser arm.

“Don’t even try,” Calhoun said through his tiny megaphone. He was a little too proud of that thing. “You might get a few shots on me, but there are enough of us here to end you all. You can make this hard or easy, it doesn’t mean a thing to me which way you go.”

“It didn’t give him enough trouble,” Brannigan said.

We looked at each other. On the truck, Renfro looked down at us. He was tired, and the cannon was pointed the opposite way. If he started to move it, Calhoun or one of the others would just attack the rest of us and get him last.

“Give up now, and you can keep breathing.”

“I’m not going to be a goddamn experiment,” Tamerica said to us through gritted teeth.

“I’d rather be dead,” Brannigan said.

“Of course you’d say that,” said Afu, “you’re not that far from dying anyway.”

“Fuck your old jokes,” said Brannigan. “I haven’t seen you in ten years and you’re still spouting that bullshit.”

“I’m sorry, you guys,” Tamerica said. There was a sad acceptance in her voice.

“No,” Brannigan said. “It’s my fault. I had to fuck everything up.”

“You’re right,” Tamerica said.

Brannigan squished his eyebrows together.

“You guys can’t give up,” I said, even though I felt like permanently falling to the ground. “Sink or swim, remember?”

“We’re not quitting,” Brannigan said. “We’re just accepting.”

“That sounds the same,” I said.

They had less to worry about than I did. They might have been kept as prisoners and experimented on by the Army scientists, but I was the one Calhoun had a personal grudge against, as well as Reynolds and every surviving soldier in my platoon. The NUSA might have wanted to eradicate smoke eaters, but I was a traitor and that was worse. I’d be lucky to get a firing squad.

“No,” said Tamerica. “Accepting means we’ll slash and shoot till the end. They aren’t taking us alive.”

Using his natural voice, Calhoun shouted, “Form up on me.”

The other soldiers dropped their dragons out of the circle to hover next to Calhoun and his Fafnir. The air pushed them around like struggling kites.

“I’m done waiting,” Calhoun said. “Fry these abominations. I don’t wanna even see bones left behind. And don’t let up. They don’t burn like normal people.”

The soldiers breathed in to give their dragons the orders. The smoke eaters beside me readied to jump into glory. I was too tired to move.

The wind suddenly grew stronger. My helmet threatened to leave my head. Tamerica lifted an elbow to block the gust from her eyes. Afu grabbed hold of the back of the truck and Renfro squatted low behind his controls. A roar came down the street, from the sky. Hell, it was coming from everywhere, all around us. It was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. I squatted and closed my ears with the tips of my armored fingers.

Calhoun and the others flew higher to get out of the wind, but they couldn’t escape it. The scalies bumped into each other, forcing the soldiers to spread out to avoid colliding with one another.

Reynolds looked up and shouted, “Oh shit!”

She made her Lung dragon dive toward the ground. A golden-scaled body filled the air above the street, soaring over Reynolds’s head. The giant dragon plowed into the Nusie who’d been hovering next to Reynolds; it snatched the soldier and his green Fafnir in its teeth and kept flying.

I turned to follow the scaly. When it got far enough and turned for another pass above the ruined buildings half a mile away, I saw what it was. The Golden Drake.

Buildings began crumbling around us. The wind never let up. I saw the Golden Drake flap its wings and then a few seconds later a violent gust racked my body and caused me to stumble backwards.

Calhoun’s orders came out as garbled shouts. If his soldiers heard him at all they weren’t obeying. There were only three of them now. Reynolds had flown off somewhere to avoid getting chomped and the guy riding the Silver Razor was buzzing around like a one-winged fly.

“Everybody get in the truck!” Tamerica shouted over the wind.

Renfro bedded the cannon and jumped off, not bothering with the ladder steps. The rest of us piled into the cab. The doors wobbled so hard I thought they would rip from their hinges. It took both me and Brannigan to shut the door on our side. Afu got his closed before us, but Renfro was already speeding us down the street by the time Tamerica sealed herself in.

I kept turning to take glances through the windshield. Ash and snow flew everywhere – it was like driving through a foggy tornado. Just ahead, a shadow crept across the street, hunkering low against the wind. It was the Lung dragon, wings pulled in close, claws struggling to grip into the street. Reynolds lay against its back from within her saddle. Renfro didn’t let off the accelerator.

“We’re going to hit that dragon,” Tamerica said.

Renfro gripped the steering wheel. The hum of the engine didn’t soften.

“Renfro!” Tamerica grabbed his arm.

Reynolds yanked on her reins and pulled the Lung into a jump. They both disappeared into the debris as the wind took them away.

“What was that about?” Tamerica asked. She hadn’t let go of Renfro’s arm.

“I knew she was going to move,” Renfro snapped.

Brannigan took off his helmet and wiped sweat from his gray head. “Hell of a time to be playing chicken.”

“She’s a good person,” I said, shaking my head. “Was a good person. I thought.”

“She’s a Nusie,” Brannigan said. He patted my knee but it didn’t make me feel any better. I hadn’t forgotten he’d tried serving me up to the scalies. He turned to Tamerica. “We need to get out of Chicago.”

“Not yet,” Tamerica said. She was about to say more, but Brannigan interrupted her.

“Why the hell not? We’ve got a ride. We’ll just need to find somewhere to hide out for a day or so, then we can hit the road. If you need a home, we can go back to my town and–”

“Hey!” Tamerica shouted. “You really think it’s just us three living here? We’ve got other people depending on us.”

“Oh,” Brannigan said. “Well, what are we going to do then?”

“We, huh?” Tamerica said.

Afu and Renfro chimed in at the same time, saying, “Yeah, we.”

Tamerica took off her helmet and smiled. “So the gang’s all back together, then?”

They all nodded. I did, too, though I felt out of place.

“All right,” Tamerica nodded as she spoke, “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to get our people out of the city and then we’re going to figure out how the Army is riding dragons.”

Renfro hit a bump in the road and mumbled a “sorry.”

“You kidding me?” Brannigan said. “If it wasn’t for that Golden Drake, we would have been crispy critters. I nearly got my arm blown off by a laser rifle. What are you going to do? Walk up and ask them how they’re doing this scaly cowboy shit?”

“So now it’s you and not we?” Tamerica asked.

“You know what I mean,” Brannigan said. “Short of capturing one of them, we won’t know how they’re doing it.”

“We won’t need to capture one of them.” Tamerica turned back to me.

“I already told you,” I said. “I never knew anything about that.”

“Maybe not,” Tamerica said. “But you might help us crack into this.”

She pulled a holoreader from her suit’s pocket and see-sawed it in her hand.

“Where’d you get that?” Afu said. His long hair was dripping with sweat and coated in ash.

“Took it off the asshole who was riding the Silver Razor,” Tamerica said. “I didn’t have much time to look, but it’s got a password on it. I’m thinking only Nusies know it. So, Contreras, think you can help us crack it?”

None of the soldiers used any connected system. There was no Feed anymore. The guy who’d owned the holoreader probably had his own password for it to protect his porn or action movies. But I wasn’t going to tell Tamerica that.

“You take me with you and help me get out of the city, I’ll help you with the holoreader.” I tried not to blink as Tamerica stared me down.

“That sounds like a good deal to me,” Brannigan said.

I huffed and rolled my eyes.

Tamerica snorted a small laugh before turning back to face the front. “You got a deal, kid. Renfro, how’s it look behind us on your side?”

“They aren’t following us. No GD, either.”

I thought about abbreviations and how that sounded short for goddamn. Which, funnily enough, was what had been going through my head when the Golden Drake showed up. Then I looked at the man I’d been calling Seabee and wondered how anybody could put up with such an obnoxious blowhard. He wore a smug smile like he was happy how everything had turned out so far.

I turned to look at the wastes outside my window. The wind was still turbulent, but had died down from hurricane-level. “Where have you guys been staying around here anyway?”

Afu laughed and said, “You like baseball?”