The Phoenix Dragons Read online

  "Thanks," Kaley whispered, and ran a few steps down the ramp – though she couldn't help turning to look back.

  "Back off! Just let her go," the man called out to the dragons. He seemed to have absolutely no fear of them. "I'll make sure she doesn't come back."

  "You're the one who shouldn't have come back, Sarge," snarled one of the mandragons. "You're going to pay for what you've done to us! You and her both!"

  "Back off, Grinder," the man said, his voice cold as ice. "Any of you takes one more step, I'll use this."

  There was silence for a moment. And then came the deafening blast of the shotgun, echoing crazily inside the parking garage.

  Kaley screamed again and this time did turn and run, racing down and down and around on the spiraling ramp until at last she was outside, running through the hot desert night.

  #

  Kaley always locked herself inside Terminal Two's chain-link lost-and-found cage to sleep, but she wasn't sure whether that would be enough any longer – not if the dragons finally figured out where she was. That night, she hardly slept at all, just watching to see if anyone had come after her.

  The night passed quietly, though, and she did sleep for a little while. The next morning, as Kaley sat up on the double line of seat cushions covered with airline blankets that she used for a bed, she knew her first order of business would have to be finding a new source of water. The monsoons would bring rain before long, but there was no telling exactly where it would fall. She could set out containers, but –

  Then she gasped as she realized there was someone standing out in the large office room in front of the cage.

  It was the man who rescued her last night. In the bright light of the morning, Kaley could see that he was blond, blue-eyed, and very fair-skinned . . . and so perfectly made that he seemed to be carved from stone.

  As she remembered, he wore jeans and a white t-shirt, along with thick scuffed boots like a biker. He had a piece of heavy rebar in one hand with a shotgun slung across his back.

  "It's you," she whispered, sitting up and pulling a blanket around her. "You helped me yesterday. I'm glad you made it out all right."

  "Wanted to check on you," he said, and something about the smooth silk of his voice made Kaley shiver a little – or maybe it was more to do with the intensity of his stare. "Will you talk?"

  Kaley considered for a moment. This man had clearly saved her life yesterday, though right now she didn't exactly know why he had. Maybe he had other plans for her. In this world, you couldn't count on anything . . . and nothing was what it seemed.

  But he stood there like a soldier, polite and disciplined, and she had been alone for a long time with no one to trust. Surely a conversation couldn't hurt. If he'd wanted to do something to her, he could have done it by now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "Okay," Kaley said, feeling somewhat breathless. "I'll talk."

  Slowly, she shed her blanket, folding it and placing it back on her makeshift bed, not taking her eyes off the man as she moved. She saw his eyes flick over her, but she always slept in jeans and a t-shirt no matter how hot it was, so there wasn't much to see. Kaley put on her boots and gave her long light brown hair a quick brush.

  Then, she dragged a cushion close to the locked cage door and sat down. "My name is Kaley. I'm very grateful for what you did for me yesterday."

  "That's all right." He walked a little closer and sat down on the floor, a few feet away.

  "I'm just not sure why you did that. Helped me, I mean. It was dangerous." And in a world like this, nothing ever came free.

  "Helping strangers usually is."

  “Especially now."

  "They nearly got you," he said. "Said you'd tried to steal from them before."

  She raised her chin. "Only water. And it did them no harm. They can easily get all they need."

  "Don't go up there again. They'll watch for you. They'll make a game of it."

  "I'm sure they will." She moved a little on the cushion. "Do you know much about them? They sure seemed to recognize you."

  He shrugged. "I know a little."

  "How many of them are there? I can never tell for sure. They come and go. They change. They blend in. They can be almost anywhere."

  She saw him take a deep breath. "There are fifty – fifty-three of them living up there in that garage."

  "And terrorizing people in the area. You're right. It's a game to them." Then she cocked her head slightly. "How do you know their numbers? I haven't seen you around here before. Not that I remember."

  "Been on the move. Scavenging for what I can. Like everybody."

  Kaley nodded. "I guess that makes sense. A man like you wouldn't have to lock himself in a cage every night. Especially when he's armed with a shotgun."

  "Sure. I've been keeping my eye on the dragons. And on you."

  "On me."

  He kept silent.

  "So – how did you know I was up there last night? And how do they know you?” Her eyes narrowed. "Are you working with them? Did you make some kind of deal with them?"

  For a moment she thought he was going to laugh. "Deal? No. I just said I've been keeping my eye on you."

  Then she remembered something. "Last night – I was being followed! Out on the tarmac and then on the ramp. I did hear something. It was you."

  "Yeah."

  "Why would you – "

  "Listen, Kaley. You're smart, but you're a pretty girl who’s all alone out here. There's no law anymore. Everybody's desperate. Scared." He shrugged again. "Didn't want to see you hurt."

  She could not help but smile at him. "Thanks," she whispered. He might be a complete stranger, but it still felt good to have someone seem to care about what happened to her. In fact, it made hope blossom in her chest – that maybe someday, somehow, the world might return to how it had been before, where everyone wasn't simply fighting for survival all the time.

  Then man reached for a backpack a few feet behind him. She'd hardly noticed it. "Come on out. I brought breakfast."

  Kaley hesitated. The man opened the backpack and lifted out some liter bottles of water, a few cans of chicken vegetable soup, and several packs of cinnamon sweet rolls.

  Her eyes flicked over the treasure he had brought, and her stomach growled. She'd been living off canned soda, airline snacks, and the occasional protein or candy bar – whatever she could scrounge up in the terminals or the open planes – for far too long.

  "That looks great," she said. "One reason why I stay around here is that the dragons scare off most everybody else. More food for me. But I don't have the greatest selection."

  "Makes sense. But the food here isn't much. What's left is going to spoil soon."

  "Yeah. Especially in this heat."

  "So come on out."

  Her instincts told her to stay where she was, but ultimately Kaley figured she had little to lose. He certainly could have harmed her last night when he'd followed her to Terminal Four if that was what he wanted.

  And he had cinnamon rolls.

  Kaley slowly reached into her pocket for the key, then reached through the chain-link fence and unlocked the door. But before walking out, she put away the key and grabbed two of the cushions she'd been sleeping on.

  "Here," she said, giving him one of them. He took it and sat down on it, and she did the same. Then she immediately reached for the can of chicken vegetable soup, popped the top on it, and hungrily drank it down.

  "I'm sorry," she said, gasping and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "But I haven't had anything like this in – in I don't know how long."

  "That's okay." He handed her one of the water bottles. "Drink plenty of this, too."

  She did, enjoying the pure sweet taste of the water. "That's wonderful. Thank you."

  "The dragons like this place because people are easy to control here," he said. "They're helpless. Cut off. No water. Not much food. They'll do what the dragons want for a jug of lake water."

  It was th
e most he’d said since she'd known him. Kaley could hear the bitterness in his voice . . . bitterness towards the dragons. It was kind of reassuring to know that he hated them, too.

  But right now, nothing had Kaley's attention as much as those packets of cinnamon rolls. Silently, he handed her two of them, and she tore them open and ate both on the spot. The sticky sweetness and the rush of energy were like heaven.

  He offered her another, but she declined – with only a little difficulty. "Might as well save a little for later on," she told him, smiling. Then she began to think about more serious things and turned to him with a question in her eyes.

  "Do you know what happened? What ended the world?"

  The man shrugged. His soft blond hair, long enough to touch his broad shoulders, moved a little as he did. "No. Don't think anybody does. Not around here."

  "There've been all kinds of rumors."

  "Sure. Asteroid. Alien attack. All kinds of stuff."

  "I think – I think somebody finally pushed the button. Dropped the big one. A nuclear strike."

  He nodded at that. His blond hair brushed across the white t-shirt again. "You could be right. The EMP would instantly knock out the power. "

  She nodded. "And that's exactly what happened. It seemed to me that a limited strike would have done this. Not enough to destroy everything, but enough to wreck it for a very long time."

  "Did that, all right."

  "And I figure it must have been worldwide because no one from the outside – at least, not that I know of – ever showed up here."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maybe it was the surge of energy from the good food and clean water, but Kaley began feeling something like restlessness and despair. She got to her feet and paced back and forth in front of the lost-and-found cage.

  "But then again, why would anyone come here? The last place you'd want to go if you had to ride out the end of the world, would be a big dry city in the middle of a scorching desert, hundreds of miles from any other major city. And from the coastline, where it would be so much cooler, and there would be fresh water in the rivers and plenty of fish to catch in the sea.»

  She sighed. "No one in their right mind would travel to this place. I've never seen anyone coming in, only those trying to get out. I know there's a military base out west of town, but we haven't seen anything from them, either. Who knows what might have happened to them? Maybe they were ordered out while they still had gasoline. Who knows? I sure don't."

  Kaley glanced out through the bright windows. "If any place would need help, it's us. But there's been nothing. That tells me that we can only imagine how bad it really is out there."

  "I think you're right."

  "And those dragon creatures . . . " Kaley shut her eyes. "Nobody knows where they came from, either. Maybe they're the result of an atomic bomb, too, the way Godzilla and the other monsters were caused by radiation. I sure don't know."

  The man just sat in silence, watching her pace back and forth.

  "There are stories saying there are more of those dragons," Kaley went on. "A lot more. That different groups of them have taken over other cities, just like they did here."

  She tried to laugh again, feeling more nervous than she had in quite a while. "All anybody really knows is that out here in this isolated desert city, after whatever-it-was happened, a whole lot of weird, shapeshifting dragons suddenly showed up. In the movies, everybody got zombies or giant grasshoppers after the atomic holocaust. We get these freaky dragons. I guess it could be worse!"

  "Sit down. Breathe."

  He was right. She was getting worked up, for the first time in a long time.

  "Listen," he said, as she sat down on the cushion again. "You can't steal from them anymore. They'll tear you to pieces and hang what's left from the ramp, to warn off anyone else."

  Kaley was silent for a moment. "If you're trying to scare me, it's working." She tried to smile. "I'm not going near Terminal Four again. I'll set out containers to catch rainwater at the next monsoon. After that . . . I don't know."

  He took a deep breath, and glanced around. "Okay. I'll bargain with you. Money's worth nothing, so bargaining's all there is."

  Instantly she was on her guard. Maybe it had been a mistake to come out of the cage. Maybe –

  "I bring you water and food. And you – "

  She tensed, and waited for it.

  "Talk to me."

  "Um – what?"

  "Talk to me. Like now. That's all. Really."

  She gave him a sideways look. "Okay," she whispered. "Just a little company. Like now."

  "Sure."

  "And if I find anything worth sharing, I'll share it with you."

  "Sure."

  "Okay." He stood up and lifted the backpack, taking out another can of chicken soup and a bottle of water – and the rest of the cinnamon rolls. "Back tomorrow," he said, placing the items on the floor. "Keep your door locked."

  "I will. Thank you again – for everything."

  He walked away, pushing open the outside door that led to the tarmac.

  "Oh – wait! Wait! What's your name? I don't know your name!"

  But he was already gone.

  #

  As promised, Kaley slept inside the locked lost-and-found cage and did not go near Terminal Four. She was happy to sleep a little deeper that night – but embarrassed to find herself dreaming of her handsome rescuer. In her dream, he was stripped bare, the moonlight playing silver across his toned muscles. She dragged her fingers across his skin, watching goosebumps erupt, her fingers skirting towards his proud manhood where it stood between them, arching towards his navel…

  In the morning light, it made her blush, and she tried to put her thoughts of him out of her mind.

  She ate cinnamon rolls for breakfast and drank deeply of the pure bottled water, figuring she may as well enjoy both while she could. She knew that the chances were slim that the man would actually return.

  Besides, there was another day of scavenging ahead of her, keeping an eye out for flying monsters all the while.

  But once she'd found a few more canvas Sunward Air bags and walked outside into the early morning light, she found the blond man standing out there waiting for her.

  "Promised I'd bring you water,” he told her gruffly. “You won't have to steal again. From anyone."

  "Thanks," she said, as he walked over. Kaley took the bottles from him and placed them inside the terminal door, out of sight. "I'm going to check cars in the parking lot for anything useful. I figure anyone who owned them would have picked them up by now, or at least got their stuff out if they were going to. So I guess it's not stealing."

  "Guess not." He pulled his backpack up over one shoulder. "Where do you want to start?"

  "You want to go with me?"

  "Sure. We'll share what we find. Bargain."

  "Bargain. Okay." It would be nice not to have to do this alone. "We can start with the nearest lot, right here for Terminal Two. Employee parking."

  All they had to do was walk out a short distance from the side door. "I don't think the dragons will see us here," said Kaley, as she walked to the nearest car in the lot. "They usually stay up on Four's roof sunning themselves. And fighting. "

  "Sounds about right."

  She noticed he still had the piece of rebar and, of course, the shotgun. "Brought my hammer," she said with a grin, placing her hand on it where it was shoved through her belt. "And my knife."

  He nodded, and his light blue eyes seemed to brighten a little as he looked at her. "Donovan," he said suddenly.

  "What?"

  "My name's Donovan."

  "Oh," she said. "I'm Kaley."

  "I know."

  "I'm pleased to meet you."

  Donovan walked to the car behind hers, and with one strike, he broke a window with his piece of rebar. Kaley used her hammer to tap out the window on the driver's side, breaking it just enough so she could reach in and open first the front door and then the back
in hopes of getting a little air inside the vehicle. These cars were terribly hot inside after baking for weeks in the heavy summer heat of a desert parking lot.

  This car was pretty clean, though, and didn't seem to have much in the way of food or tools or anything else they could use. She slid into the back seat to look through a small suitcase there.

  Suddenly a strong hand shoved her down onto the seat and slammed the car door shut. The front door slammed shut, too, sending more of the broken safety glass showering onto the front seat. "Hey! What's – "

  But she cried out and ducked when there was a huge thump on the car roof and the whole vehicle rocked. A dragon's tail draped down over the rear window. Kaley saw claws on either side of the roof and wings trailing down over the doors – and then a hideous grinning head full of teeth tried to look at her through the windshield.

  "Donovan!" She could see him near the front of the car. The dragon swung its head around trying to fixate on him. But to her shock, Donovan simply took off running. He didn't even have the shotgun or the piece of rebar.

  He's abandoned me! And she was trapped in this car with a dragon on the roof.

  Kaley got down on the floor and hoped the beast wouldn't see her. Maybe it had just been chasing Donovan. But then she saw that there were at least two more of them, as one landed on the car's trunk and one more clawed at the broken front window.

  She didn't think they could get in as long the doors stayed shut. But it was extremely hot and she was already soaked in sweat, and it was only a matter of time before she passed out in this airless heat. If she did, she would not wake up again.

  If ever she needed help, it was now, but Donovan was gone. Apparently, he'd decided he couldn't save her this time and had run away to save himself. Well, that was the world they lived in now . . . and he had still done more for her than she'd ever expected.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The three monsters clawed at and tore at the car. All that remained to be seen now was whether the heat would get Kaley before the dragons did.