Falling (Part One)

Fighting was living. They would rather die on their feet than live on their knees.

They heard it coming.

Instead of covering, they ran toward the crackling fire as bright as a sunrise. Though they were powerless to stop the terror, they could pour water on glowing embers and extinguish the waiting fire before it flared into action, greedy for destruction, for death, for sin.

It was a year since they became feral. Now, they were wild teenagers, living in the woods and smelling like the rich earth they found deep in the shade of ancient forests—the ones that had not fallen for fuel. Much of what they remembered from boyhood was dull, covered in dusk, and as old now as ash. They had grown up. They were dragon killers.

The dragons, now roaming with menace, had been reared against the breasts of fools.

A nest was found in the Urals. The eggs pulsed with heat, and the gray-blue carcass of a dragon turning to light and fragile ash lay beside the nest. The eggs were saved, incubated, and hatched. Then, the dragons quickly reproduced. For a time, they seemed docile and were sold to breeders to be domesticated and sold as exotic pets, status symbols.

Now, reproducing with the frenetic energy of rabbits, the dragons struck like lightning, reducing beauty to dust as dry as chalk.

But dragons, once plentiful in fairytales and again thriving, are not invincible. They are creatures with inherent weakness, even if not readily seen.

Growing as quickly as cancer, the dragons had overtaken cities first. People huddled in apartments were trapped as the fire spread rapidly, engulfing hundreds in one puff. Now, the fields burned. So, the boys learned to be killers.

“How many dragons are left, do you think?” Joseph said. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Under a hundred, I bet.”

They fought dragons and learned to take comfort in desperate struggle. Fighting was living. They would rather die on their feet than live on their knees.

Dragons could be killed—guns that bring down deer will bring it down a dragon—but their soft weakness is small and only revealed when faced. Their mouths, though impervious to fire, are unprotected from accurate bullets. The rest of its hideous body is as hard as steel.

One of the boys would run toward the head of the dragon with a raised rifle—each had one, well used, oiled, and deadly. Sighting through the scope, the world reduced to evil scales, he would wait for what always came—the sharp inhalation, bellows fanning the fire in the deadly belly. In the short, empty silence, as the dragon’s body twisted in a red curve and its mouth opened, he pulled the trigger, and the dragon’s head exploded with a white phosphorus flash.

It was always the same.

“How many dragons are left, do you think?” Joseph said. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Under a hundred, I bet.”

“Around here or everywhere?” His older brother Leonard said.

“Here.” Joseph said flatly.

“Less,” Leonard answered. “Fewer are here, and there’s less smoke on the horizon. Probably not more than 50 right now.”

“Right now? You think there’ll be more?” Joseph said.

“Yes. It won’t stop. Not for us anyway,” Leonard said darkly, his voice trailing off into the quiet.

“You don’t think we’ll get rid of them?”

“No, I don’t think this will end. Our children, if we have any, will be fighting dragons. Our grandchildren, too. This keeps going because the dragons keep coming. We can’t kill them all, not now.”

They sat quietly and smelled the gun oil—its dark metallic scent comforted them.

“I won’t stop until I kill them all,” Joseph said. “It’s gotten easy. One of us walks into the open, gets its attention, listens, and then blows its head wide open. Then, we watch it turn to cold and gray. I’m tired of these things. I want things to go back to normal.”

“Normal got us here,” Leonard said. People wanted the dragons. They bred them, fed them, and sold them. There is no normal, not anymore. That’s what I learned.”

“You know what I mean, Leonard. I want it to go back to where it was. Safe, no dragons,” Joseph said.

“We never never were safe,” Leonard said. “And now, we know it. I’m glad we know it. We don’t have to pretend anymore. The evil is out it’s in the open, and we can fight it.”

They heard the air move overhead. The breeze quavered with a leather vibrato as a writhing bull dragon, blood red and trailing a stinking yellow haze, flew overhead. The boys instinctively ducked and grabbed their weapons. They had been surprised. An uneasy coldness shivered through Leonard’s chest.

Next Week: Part 2