CHAPTER 18

A haze of mildew emanated throughout Cedar Point.

Tamerica told us they’d hidden Jet-1 by a roller coaster. Renfro parked outside the amusement park grounds, which meant we all had to power jump over a concrete wall. The ash kickers jumped without thinking. Whilst I didn’t hesitate as much as I thought I would, I’d been leaning too far forward so on the way up, I gouged out a chunk of rock with my chest plate and missed the top. Renfro had been waiting and caught my hand to pull me the rest of the way over. Brannigan went last and landed into a grumbling walk.

Lot Scynch had come along with us to stay behind in the cannon truck. Once we had Jet-1 in the air, his job was to drive the truck back to the Williams’ town, send our planned distraction to Big Base, load everyone up and transport them to Brannigan’s castle settlement. It was a big job, but he seemed happy to do it.

Tamerica’s dad, Carl, had balked at leaving his home, but finally relented when even Brannigan told him it was better to get as far away from Ohio as possible. If things went awry, the Army would surely find him and Rebecca. If one of us was captured at the base, we could be forced to talk. And I knew enough about Calhoun to know he’d only shown me half the things he would do for information. Everyone has their breaking point.

There inside Cedar Point night was coming on fast and all we had was the turquoise glow of our laser swords to see by. Brannigan was quiet as we neared the park. He didn’t even groan. I almost forgot he was there, and that was the first sign of impending doom. The old man usually never shut up.

Everything in the amusement park had a touch of gray to it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It wasn’t just ash, it was a lifelessness that coated everything like a fog. I hadn’t seen many other places that had been left to rot like that, while still being able to show a glimpse of the world that used to be. All without being able to enjoy it. The carousel was especially decrepit. The top had fallen over and most of the horses were either bent on their poles or had broken off.

“Hey,” Afu said, running up to the damaged ride. “Remember this one, Chief?”

“You motherfuckers took us this way on purpose,” Brannigan said.

The others laughed. I didn’t. The place had me feeling eerie. If I hadn’t known it’d been abandoned since E-Day, I would have been worried a gang of wraiths would rise out of the half-scorched funnel cake stand to kill us.

We moved on. Oscar Mike, as NUSA would say. I kept thinking that my boots were too loud against the ground. It was all I seemed to hear. Army boots had rubber soles. These power suit kicks were all metal. I had no reason to be quiet but I softened my steps anyway. That just made me fall behind, so I ended up being even louder trying to catch up.

The coaster we were headed for lurched into the sky ahead. It was called the Iron Dragon and so much of its track was missing it was a wonder any of it still stood. Just outside the coaster’s turnstiles, a large shape stood under the Iron Dragon’s shadow, covered by what looked like a large sheet.

“Well,” Renfro said. “At least it’s still here in one piece.” He stopped abruptly. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Stop. Nobody move.”

I froze.

Tamerica took a few more steps and turned to look back at Renfro. “What’s wrong? You step on your nuts?”

Renfro kept his red eyes on the murky shape just ahead of us. I squinted and tried to make out what he saw that the rest of us couldn’t.

“T,” Brannigan said. “I’d listen to the guy who can see in the dark.”

Tamerica must have realized the joking was over. “What is it, Renfro?”

“All of you be quiet for a second,” he said. He held a hand up as if it was some kind of antenna that could help him see better. Despite my hopes, his eyes didn’t glow red in the dark. That would have been awesome.

We all stood silent, watching Jet-1, waiting for something to happen. I thought I saw movement on the jet’s surface, but when I blinked and looked again it seemed no different. I listened, but all I heard was distant water from the lake and the death knell creaks of old wood and steel beams.

“It’s moving,” Renfro said.

Brannigan’s whisper sounded like he was gasping for air. “What, the jet?”

“Someone beat us to it?” Afu said.

“Shut your damn mouths!” Tamerica curled a fist at us. Somehow I knew if she started swinging Afu would get socked first.

“I mean something is moving under the tarp,” Renfro said. “The jet is stone still. Looks like a squid crawled under there and started getting busy with my plane.”

“Scaly?” Afu asked.

“Leviathan,” Brannigan said. He wasn’t asking, he was being cocky, thinking he knew the answer.

Renfro took a cautious step forward. He shook his head. “No. I can’t tell much without seeing it out of that tarp, but there are too many… heads? If it’s a Leviathan, there are at least three of them under there. And they’re moving too in sync, too rhythmic to be more than one scaly. I’m telling you, it looks like a giant octopus.”

“Ha,” Tamerica whispered to Brannigan. “You even remember the difference between a Wyvern and a Drake?”

“This isn’t the time for jokes, Cappie,” Brannigan said. “And you don’t know what’s under that tarp either.”

Tamerica stiffened her chin and looked toward Jet-1, where I thought I began to see the swaying shapes Renfro was describing. She guessed. “Behemoth.”

“Nah,” the other three men said in unison.

“Then all four of you chauvinistic bastards can go pull that tarp off and see for sure,” Tamerica said.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t disagree with you.”

“You didn’t agree either.”

Afu showed me a sympathetic pout.

Brannigan groaned and pushed ahead of us, stomping down the path toward Jet-1. “Come on. We need that plane.”

I hustled to follow behind him. My body moved before my mind could talk my sore legs out of it. I blamed Mecha Scaly for the soreness, but it was my damned curiosity that got me going. I’d studied dragons twice as much as I had the smoke eaters. Nothing Renfro had described jumped out at me, and that meant if there was something under that tarp, it could be a scaly I’d never heard of before.

That would take some doing.

Reynolds and I used to play this game where we’d have to guess a dragon type in as few characteristics as possible. It was like twenty questions. We’d always end in a draw, and I’d always wonder if she asked for more hints than she really needed, tying the game on purpose. Maybe if she’d been there with me in Cedar Point, she would know the answer.

Tamerica, Afu, and Renfro followed behind me. I looked back and saw Afu and Tamerica holding hands as they clogged along in their big, metal suits. It was both cute and oddly hilarious.

A deep rattle came from underneath the tarp. I skidded to a stop. We were twenty, maybe twenty-five feet from the jet. I could see the rustling shapes Renfro had mentioned. They rose against the tarp briefly then dropped back against the jet. It looked like one of the park’s rides, operating silently under a big sheet. But the things moving under there were too imperfect to be mechanical. They confirmed what that rattling, like a thousand broken tambourines, had already told me.

“Hydra,” I sputtered.

The others swore under their breath and stopped.

“No way,” Tamerica said.

“That’s funny, bruh,” Afu smiled at me.

“I’m serious,” I said. “The rattle and all the heads moving under the tarp. Only thing that makes sense. Dragon Field Guide Volume Three. Fun Fact section on Mediterranean scalies. Each hydra’s throat has a–”

“Man, you read the Fun Facts section?” Afu said.

I blinked at him. “Yeah, didn’t you?”

Afu laughed. “It’s not a Hydra. That rattling sound make you think that? All you heard was one of the coaster cars moving or something. You have nothing to worry about. Promise. Here, I’ll show you.”

He broke away from Tamerica’s handhold and ran ahead to grab one of the tarp corners.

“Hold up,” Tamerica called.

But Afu was already charging back toward us with the tarp corner draped over his shoulder as if he were pulling a spider tank by a rope. He was able to tug off enough of the tarp to uncover the orange brown jet we already knew was under there…

…and three swaying scaly heads at the end of three long, skinny necks. All three visible heads were the size of hover cars and all three were dancing side to side. Its skin was the green white of cheap glow-in-the-dark stickers. All the Hydra heads had only two teeth, but they were huge, too big for their mouths – all of which had underbites.

To someone who hadn’t read the Fun Facts section of DFGV3, they might have thought the Hydra was sleeping. Its eyes showed no irises, they looked to be covered in the same scales as the rest of it. But here’s one of its tricks: Hydras have no eyelids and their eyes are completely white.

Afu stopped and turned to see how much more tarp he’d have to pull, but it fell the rest of the way, revealing four more dragon heads, for a total of seven, all connected to a slug-like body sticking to the side of Jet-1. As one, the heads rattled in their throats for an instant. The one nearest Afu struck so quickly, I didn’t realize it had attacked until it had the big man up in the air, wrapping its neck around his body

“Hydra!” Renfro and Brannigan shouted.

“Shit!” Tamerica ran toward her husband.

The Hydra’s teeth grated against Afu’s suit, but as soon as it realized it couldn’t crack into it, the dragon dropped him from its mouth and squeezed its neck around him like a python. I could see Afu’s head poking out of the dragon’s coils. He couldn’t even scream and his face was turning blue.

The other Hydra heads unlatched from Jet-1 and lowered to the ground to hold itself up. A hydra doesn’t have legs. It uses its heads to move over the ground like a speeding storm cloud, and it can do it on as many or as few as it decides. A Hydra was essentially a big tangle of angry mouths and wiggling necks. Now it was slinking toward us.

One head dove and shot across the park pavement. Tamerica jumped over it, then launched higher into the air on her thrusters. She slapped her suit’s laser arm and blasted several shots into the top of the dragon head. A gory gash appeared and spurted a puff of gray smoke. A rattle escaped its throat, but the head was dead before it stopped sliding.

The Hydra tried to bolt forward, but the dead appendage slowed it, dragging behind and tripping up the heads the Hydra was using as legs. It fell back onto its body and the remaining six mouths closed in and began chewing through the dead neck. The huge fangs dug into its flesh like a bulldozer shoving through chocolate cake. When the neck was severed, the other heads fought to gobble up what they could.

“Goddamn,” Brannigan said. “That’s recycling.”

Tamerica landed against the neck squeezing Afu. The Hydra heads were busy eating their own detritus, so they didn’t notice her placing her laser arm against its flesh. Blood and a splatter of scales flew into Tamerica’s face. The neck fell and Afu with it. Just before the other heads snapped at where she’d been standing, Tamerica jumped to the ground and ran over to untangle Afu.

The Hydra was pissed. It rolled up and stumbled forward. I thought it would fall over again, but it saw the opportunity to keep itself upright and snag meal at the same time. It just had to put one of its heads onto Tamerica and Afu.

Brannigan saw the scaly’s attempt before it could pull it off. The old man launched into the air and lopped off the attacking head before it could swallow Tamerica and Afu. But the Hydra was just as smart. Another of its pale heads zipped in to catch Brannigan while the other two mouths plowed into the ground. The old man dangled upside down in the Hydra’s teeth, while the dragon ground its jaws against Brannigan’s suit.

“Come on, kid.” Renfro patted his helmet and ran toward the dragon. He placed his laser shots toward the two heads standing on the ground, but the scaly jumped out of the way, tucking its heads – including the one gripping Brannigan – into its body. It rolled off toward a broken-down tilt-a-whirl. Renfro chased after. “Squirrelly bastard!”

I ran over to Tamerica and Afu. White chunks and blood stuck to their suits and helmets. Afu was sitting on the ground and spit out a glob of slime.

“We’re fine,” Tamerica said. The way she held her husband’s head suggested she’d never allow him to move from that spot ever again, but I took her word for it and followed after Renfro.

The Hydra had crawled onto the tilt-a-whirl and balanced on one head. The second swung high in the air, continuing to chew and dodge the slashes of Brannigan’s laser sword. The third head bent over Renfro and snarled.

“Get up here, Guillermo,” Renfro’s voice came through my helmet. “I need you.”

My breath caught in my throat. I huffed but couldn’t find any inhalation that would calm my nerves. I kept running.

The Hydra swung Brannigan toward the ground. His boot grazed the top of my helmet and then he was back to dangling from the Hydra’s full height. It was playing with him. From a hundred feet up, the old man was swearing. Out of everything he was saying, it was the only thing I could understand. He hadn’t cast his radio, and his distant shouts went garbled every time the dragon would shake him from side to side.

Renfro tried a few shots, but the Hydra dodged them or switched to balance on the other head. If I had been in Brannigan’s place, I would have puked.

“My shots aren’t going to work,” Renfro said. “Guillermo, you need to get in close and use your sword.”

There was no way it could have understood Renfro, but the free head turned and looked down at me as if it knew I’d be the next to make a go at it. The Hydra’s scales began to glow with that dim Halloween mask green. The head watching me rose to its tallest. I had to bend my head all the way back to see Brannigan’s legs kicking between the dragon’s two big teeth. The head hissed, daring me to just try if I thought I was salty enough.

But I just stood there. It was like my problem with sleep paralysis had crept into my waking life.

All the pep talks my Uncle Pedro had given me, the sayings I’d repeat in my head to pump me up and force myself into action, they were all gone. The only thing my mind would give me was an image of my father, standing in front of me, spreading his arms to hug me. I remember the day he’d done it, because it was the only time in my life he ever had. It was the day he’d dropped me off with the platoon in Peoria. The day I signed up. I’d refused to hug him in front of the other soldiers because it seemed weak. I thought it would make me look bad and that they’d give me a hard time about it. If I’d only known they’d do worse for no reason at all. When I shook his hand instead of hugging him, my father had nodded and smiled as if he understood, but as he walked back to his white Wilheimer hover pickup, it looked like he was hunching a bit, as if something invisible was weighing him down.

I didn’t want to be there in Cedar Point, standing in front of a dragon. I wanted to be back there in Peoria with my father. If I could just wake up a few years earlier, I’d do things differently.

“Gilly!” Renfro shouted. “I’ll distract it. Move in.”

“I… I can’t.” My eyes watered. I was so angry with myself. I wanted to fight, but I couldn’t move.

“What do you mean?” Renfro asked. “It’s going to kill Brannigan.”

I tried to tell him, but my throat tightened. All that came out were croaks and sighs.

The thing about this kind of paralysis, it’s sharper than anxiety, more than fear. Those words don’t really do it justice. The feeling petrifies and shakes your whole body, and not just the obvious arms and legs. It feels like a parasite digging into your central nervous system and shutting your shit all the way down. And people like me, those who’ve been smothered by sleep paralysis more than twice, we know it’s just a matter of time before it happens while we’re awake. And when it does come, there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

“Goddamn it!” Renfro jumped at the Hydra. He was aiming for the neck holding Brannigan.

But the head that had been staring at me whipped toward him. It didn’t bite, but I don’t think it had been trying to. The neck snapped like a whip and the Hydra’s head smacked into Renfro. It sent him flying into the Iron Dragon roller coaster. He broke through several support beams before dropping to the ground, out of my sight. The track above creaked once, then imploded in a cloud of dust and metal clanging against itself like a giant wind chime.

The Hydra turned two of its heads toward me. It hopped off the tilt-a-whirl, landing just a few feet away. The pavement shook but I still couldn’t move. I was blank. Numb. I knew there was a giant monster coming to eat me, but that only cemented my boots more firmly to the ground.

“Contreras, get down!” Tamerica’s voice came through my helmet.

A sliver of light flew over my head – a laser axe. The burning blade dug into the Hydra’s body. The dragon roared and fell back, extending all three of its remaining heads toward me. Afu flew over and began chopping into one of its necks with his sword.

Brannigan must have finally realized he hadn’t been casting. His shaking voice came through my helmet. “Get the one holding me… for… Chrissakes!”

Afu punched the mouth trying to bite him, then looked up to see which neck to leap onto next.

I felt something grab my arm. I flinched and turned. Tamerica was there at my side. She looked angry but concerned.

“Get out of the way if you can’t fight,” she said.

She might as well have dropped a nuclear bomb on me. I was devastated. It shook me out of the funk enough for me to stiff-leg it over toward a set of bathrooms with a cartoon hound dog hanging on the wall.

Tamerica stayed just outside the Hydra’s strike zone and fired lasers at the closest head. She was trying hard to keep her shots low to avoid hitting Brannigan. She barely grazed the scaly as it swerved out of the way, but Tamerica got the attention she was after. Afu cut into the neck holding Brannigan. The other heads had been going after Tamerica, but sprang back toward Afu. They were too late. The big man severed the neck and Brannigan dropped from the scaly’s mouth, landing on the other neck Afu hadn’t finished cutting. The weight ripped it the rest of the way off and both old man and dragon head landed onto the pavement.

Two perfectly-aimed lasers sank into the flesh just under the last head’s mouth. The Hydra flopped dead to the ground.

Brannigan stomped a boot into one of the head’s eyes. “This was supposed to be fucking easy!”

“Where’s Renfro?” Afu asked.

I limped over and pointed toward what used to be the Iron Dragon.

They called Renfro’s name. Their voices echoed into the debris dust still floating in the air, but he didn’t answer.

“We have to go find him.” Tamerica ran toward the fallen coaster. “He could be trapped under all that shit.”

Brannigan ran to the gate and extended his thermagoggles, scanning the area from left to right. “I don’t see his heat signature. There’s a bunch of water in there. Basically a small lake. Maybe he fell into it. Did he have a respirator?”

“He couldn’t put it on if he was unconscious, Chief.” Afu ran after Tamerica. Both of them continued to shout his name, even through the radio.

Someone coughed to my right. He was walking toward us from the path leading from a rise-and-drop ride called the Corkscrew. Renfro was dripping water. “Relax. I’m okay.”

I ran over to him. “Renfro. Man, I’m so sorry.”

Renfro glared at me for a second then pretended I wasn’t there.

Tamerica and Afu ran over to hug Renfro. She squeezed him and grunted out all of her frustration. “I thought you’d… you know.”

“Nah,” Renfro said. “It’ll take a lot more than that.”

“You sure you’re not hurt,” Tamerica stepped back and looked him over.

“That scaly flicked you away like a damn house fly,” Afu said.

“You should get out of your suit,” Tamerica said, “just so we know there’s no internal bleeding or anything.”

“I said I’m fine.” Renfro walked toward the jet. “If you want to check in on anyone, it should be the rookie over there. Dude turned into a wet noodle. Make sure he’s up for this.”

Tamerica and Afu looked at me. She sighed.

Brannigan stepped forward and waved them off to follow Renfro. “I got this. You guys get in the jet. We’ll be right behind you.”

They moved quickly, as if the old man had saved them from doing something they didn’t want to. Brannigan stared at the dead hydra as they walked away. When they were climbing into Jet-1, he spoke.

“What should you have done?”

I swallowed, thinking about it. There were a million things I should’ve done. But like my dad always used to say: shoulda, coulda, and woulda never did mierda. “I… guess I should have thrown the Haymo.”

“No.” Brannigan shook his head. “It had one of us in its mouths pretty much the whole time. That would have been dangerous. But it still would have been better than what you did.”

I felt nauseous. I bent over and held myself up with my hands against my thighs. “So, the answer is I should have done something.”

“See,” Brannigan said. “You’re smart. So tell me what happened. You’ve been doing great until now.”

I’d been doing great? I felt like I’d been bumbling my way alongside the real smoke eaters the whole time. I’d been severely lucky, probably due to some blessing my family asked for as they died. That’s the only reason I still held breath.

“It just…” I stared at the pavement, trying not to think about it again. “It came over me all of a sudden.”

“What did? You got diabetes or something?”

“My family,” I said. “And I know you’ll tell me I should bury it. I’ve been trying. Sometimes I don’t even think about them. But you bury enough long enough it’ll eventually spew out. I’m sorry.”

Brannigan sucked on his teeth. It was obnoxiously loud. He walked over and patted me on the back. “You going to puke?”

“No.”

“You want to?”

“No.” I stood up. Breathing felt a little easier.

“You think I bury it?” Brannigan asked.

I turned to look at him. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and gray stubble covered everything below his eyes. “You?”

“Yeah. You think I don’t see my wife dying every single day? Firefighters and smokies I’ve seen killed? And there have been a lot. It’s like a movie on repeat and life keeps adding more horror scenes to the reel. I’m not judging you. Everybody deals with their shit differently. You can take what I say and use it or you can figure it out yourself. But would you like to know what I do?”

I nodded. Most of the words that came out of Brannigan’s mouth were bullshit, but every so often he offered a rough gem.

“I use it,” he said. “I take it out on every dragon I come in contact with. Every Nusie for that matter. It’s a damn miracle I was in a decent mood the day you showed up at my door.”

“How?” I asked. “How do you use it? It always feels like it’s using me.”

He took a big breath as he thought about it. “Blame them. Put all of that pain on the scalies. Thing is, you wouldn’t be wrong to do it. Believe me, I feel justified as hell. Dragons killed your family. Nusies allowed it to happen. If you don’t expel that shit inside you, it’s going to eat you alive and get one of us killed. Normally, if you were under my command, I’d recommend you get therapy and take some time off, but this isn’t a normal situation is it?”

“And I’m not a smoke eater,” I mumbled.

“Shut up.”

“I mean it. I just showed how I’m not–”

“No, I mean really. Shut up.”

I turned and saw Brannigan was staring at the dead Hydra’s body. A sharp, wet sucking sound was coming from it, like squids dying on a tile floor.

“How much of that Fun Facts section on the Hydra did you read?” Brannigan asked.

“All of it,” I said. “But there wasn’t much. Just a paragraph.”

Brannigan took a cautious step toward the headless body. “You know, given its name, I thought it would sprout two more heads for every one we cut off. That’s what the one from Greek mythology did.”

Jet-1’s engine turned on. Dark orange lights were piercing through its windows. Renfro turned it toward the long stretch of pavement cutting through the park. It was going to be a tight squeeze. He’d left the hatch open for us, and it looked like it was time to go.

“What the fuck,” Brannigan whispered.

The Hydra’s body was convulsing, steaming, issuing black sludge from each of its headless stumps.

“We should get on the plane,” I said.

“Yeah.” Brannigan nodded and took a step back, but he couldn’t stop watching the dead dragon.

One of the severed necks exploded. Blood and flesh hit me in the face and somehow found its way into my mouth and nostrils. It tasted like what I would guess a pickled cadaver tasted like.

Another head, from deep within the Hydra’s body, pushed out of the same hole where the neck had broken apart. It looked like a monster being birthed. It screeched and shook gunk from its face. A little smaller than the head it had replaced, it was still big enough to be dangerous. It looked down and noticed us. It screeched again.

Brannigan engaged his laser sword. “Guess there’s one more for the road.”

Five more wet splats came from the Hydra’s middle, and five more heads appeared. It was as if the smoke eaters hadn’t done anything. The Hydra was back to the way it was when we’d arrived.

“Should,” I said, my fingers trembling as I reached for my pocket, “should I use my Haymo grenade now?”

“No,” Brannigan said, as the heads moved in to lurch above us. “Run.”

“What?”

“Run, goddamn it!” Brannigan turned and bolted for the jet.

I ran after him, but I was clearly aware of the slithering sound behind me, the rasps and snapping teeth. Ahead, Tamerica stood at the edge of Jet-1’s hatch, squinting to see what was going on.

“Start the plane!” Brannigan shouted.

The Hydra roared. It no longer sounded like a fledgling scaly, but a full-blown monster intent on murder. Tamerica turned and shouted something toward the front of the plane. When she looked back, I could hear her plainly as she saw what was chasing us. “Oh fuck.”

The air whooshed behind me. Something heavy struck at the back of my legs. I would have fallen, but I hit my power jump and sailed the rest of the way to the jet’s hatch. It was gaining momentum and beginning to roll down the concrete path.

Brannigan was still far behind. The jet was picking up speed. The way it looked, the Hydra would make it to him before he made it to the jet.

“Power jump!” I shouted.

He raised his left arm and hit the button. As he launched into the air, the Hydra’s heads moved in to snatch him. It all seemed to happen in slo-mo. Brannigan flew upward. One of the Hydra’s many heads had its mouth surrounding him. And then he was out of the way, flying forward toward the jet.

I caught him when he landed against the hatch floor. We quickly fell back while Tamerica closed the door behind us. I could hear the Hydra roaring, as if it was still just beyond that metal door.

I would hear it all the way to Big Base.