“Public Hazard Zone. Huh.” The Survivor scratches his ear hair with the pistol barrel. He pours boiling water from the kettle into a mug with NEVER EVER GIVE UP printed on the side. “You sound like my kids.”
“Kids?” Ripple glances around. He’s yet to see an actual child anywhere in the city. Most Survivors are depressing oldstrologers, predicting no future at all, or risk-taking young pyropreneurs who’ve figured out the dead-enders will pay top dollar for deliveries of fast food, booze, and loam while their time ticks down. Even the burn clinics are going under; that’s why the clinicians run around begging for attention like weak desperate virgins. “Sir, is anyone else on the premises?”
“They don’t visit anymore. Say the city’s too dangerous.” The Survivor tucks the pistol into the tie of his robe and shakes some Powdered Zip into his cup. He hacks again, harder this time, with a mucous rattle in it: the air is thickening with ashy grit. “Hell, they were born here—born and raised. I paid for the boy’s exemption out of pocket myself. You try doing that on a damage assessor’s salary.” He stirs his mixture with a bent spoon. “Now they want me to come live on a soil reclamation farm with a bunch of endtimes lumberjacks.”
“Maybe you should go,” Ripple offers, eyeing the gun. He wonders how quick the Survivor is on the draw, but he’s not going to risk it. “Then you wouldn’t be so lonely.”
The Survivor blows steam off his wake-up juice. “I never said I was lonely.”
“Well, you can’t stay here.”
“They only invited me because they knew I’d say no. Wanted to keep me off their consciences.”
“That’s not true. They’re your kids. They love you.”
“They don’t want an old coot like me around.” A tremor seizes his liver-spotted hands; liquid sloshes and spills. “Besides, I used to hit ’em when they were little. Hit ’em hard. They pretend they don’t remember, but you don’t forget a thing like that. Most likely they just want a chance to get even when I’m back in diapers.”
“I’m sure they forgive you.”
“How are you so sure?”
“They’re your family.”
“Son, since when do people in families forgive each other?”
The smoke is thicker now; even behind the gas mask, Ripple’s eyes water. It’s too late for any more conversation. “You win. I’m out.”
The Survivor dumps what’s left of his drink down the drain. “Shut the door behind you.”
Ripple descends the three flights back down to the sidewalk. He peels the Tarnhelm off his sweaty face as soon as he’s outside and rubs his eyes. Except for Trank’s hot-dog cart parked at the curb, the street is completely empty. As usual.
Ripple would be lying if he didn’t admit he finds this whole firefighting thing a lot less glamorous than he imagined. People are so rude sometimes.
“You’re letting out the smoke,” one pert granny said, putting the chain on the door as she tugged it closed.
“Didn’t you see the Rest in Peace sign on the knob?” another asked.
To be honest, Ripple is starting to have pretty major doubts about this line of work. Because seriously, what’s the point? When Ripple first started, he kept picturing the whole thing as a killer reality show, but that gets harder to do every day. It’s nothing like the edutainment special. There are no MILFs, no babies, no teammates, and even if you save a building it just gets lit up again four seconds later. Nobody cares.
It doesn’t feel very badass to admit it, but Ripple is lonely. It would be different if Trank opened up to him, or even just eased up a little and made some small talk, but since that first night in the Fire Museum they’ve barely spoken about anything besides the task at hand. Meanwhile, Abby has this pet rat now that she found behind the stove, and even though Ripple warned her it’s probably carrying every disease known to man (black plague, Botticelli, flesh-eating spore), she keeps acting like it’s her new best friend. No joke: that furwad blinks its gross red eyes and she laughs like it said something hilarious. Ripple never thought he’d be competing with a rodent, but surprise. Plus it’s always watching when they have sex, which isn’t…constantly anymore. It’s one thing to bang a stranger, but it’s another thing to bang a girlfriend who keeps on getting stranger the longer you know her.
At least if he goes home now he can show off his badge. That’s something, right?
Trank comes out of the building on the right, even though it’s still on fire. Dragons 2, firemen 0.
“No Survivors,” Ripple reports.
Trank nods. He refills his water-tank backpack and loads it back into the hot-dog cart, then, as he always does, takes out his logbook and jots something down on the pages inside.
“What do you keep writing in there, anyway?” asks Ripple. He tries to look over Trank’s shoulder, but the fire chief covers the page with his gloved hand, like it’s a test and Ripple is trying to copy his work—like he doesn’t even trust him.
“Notes.”
“About all the awesome people you saved? Oh wait, you didn’t have any Survivors either.”
Trank closes the logbook. “My building was empty.”
“Mine wasn’t. There was some old cat fapper who wanted to die.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Duncan. We can’t save everyone, but it’s always painful to be reminded.” Trank says it kindly, but that just pisses Ripple off even more, like Trank is trying to tell him how to feel.
“He pulled a gun on me!” Ripple explodes. “Nobody cares about what we’re doing. It’s just like Uncle Osmond said, this place is for the high and the damned. And Osmond’s the only high one left. I know you think the city’s going to come back someday, but news flash: it’s not. Kelvin was right. Empire Island is over—there’s nothing worth saving. I should just go back home.”
Ripple didn’t expect it to come out sounding so harsh; for a second he thinks Trank is going to deck him. But he doesn’t. He’s standing there, totally still, and although it’s impossible to tell his expression through the Tarnhelm, he seems to be actually…listening?
“This time is wasted,” Ripple adds, a little meeker.
“What about heroism? Is that a waste of time?”
“No. But if we want to be heroes, we need to do something real.”
“What do you propose?” Trank asks the question like Ripple’s answer matters.
For once, Ripple thinks for a second before talking. He looks up at the sky. The dragons are way over to the east side, and though they’re too far off for him to make out most of the details, it’s the first time in a while he’s seen them fight. In fact, it looks more like a vicious embrace from where he’s standing, the way their bodies twist together in the flurry of their wings, yellow talons clawing green-scaled ribs, fangs gnashing throatward. What if they’re mating? Ripple imagines a snaky joystick lustily unsheathing itself from turtilian foreskin, slam-jamming an airborne scalebox. And then the eggs, organic sex bombs dropping from the clouds, unbreakable and fully fertilized, the next generation of destruction.
Nothing anybody does down on the streets will matter as long as the sky is theirs.