The Very Last Days of Mr Grey (25 page)

“What the fuck!” Sawyer shouted, rubbing his face where it had slammed into the controls. He already had his headset on, and so this interjection was relayed to Ethan.

“Pulls to the right,” Ethan muttered.

The supposed most powerful person in the world, though she usually didn’t feel that way and especially not now, stared in horror and indecision at the banks of monitors displaying the destruction.

It was like something from Independence Day, the movie. This dragon had withstood all weapons from their jets—missiles, bullets, whatever else those things shot—and hadn’t suffered apparently from any of them. And they hadn’t even got in many shots, because soon after they’d had to stop firing on it when a man—who they’d found out just moments before the media announced it was named Mason Grey—appeared and started fighting it.

Meanwhile, on the street, two men who looked uncomfortably like government agents—or Men in Black—had killed and were killing more people in their reckless “escape” than the dragon.

And their escape was another thing… She wasn’t sure they
were
running away necessarily, just that her forces were following, and so it gave the appearance that the pursued were being chased. But a man with a stick chasing a lion pursuing a gazelle does not imply the lion is running away from the insane man.

And then there was the flying man, Mason Grey, an American—though whether that warranted a thank God or a goddammit was yet to be established—who seemed to be at least nominally on the side of “good” and therefore America. He hadn’t directly killed anyone, though his body had destroyed several buildings. And he’d saved a kid. That was good if they decided to honor him. They could show that footage.

Maybe hold back the footage of him grabbing the dragon by its tail and hurling it into the children’s hospital, and the subsequent explosion when the dragon—being far too large for the far too short ten foot ceilings—broke gas valves and fire suppression systems and blew fire everywhere as it slid through the floor before coming out the other side and crashing to the ground, crushing an ambulance and—somewhat ironically—a fire truck currently putting out an unrelated fire.

At least no one had died there—well, no kids anyway. Which, now that she thought about it, was likely a reporting error.

Whatever else Mason Grey was doing, he was the one who was staying her hand currently. She wasn’t going to break out the big guns until this superman was out of the picture, or he’d defeated the dragon—and the two Men in Black.

She hoped for the second, but the “football” on the table in front of her was guard against the first.

The Premier of Nova Scotia sat at her desk, waiting for her secretary to get her a line.

Finally, he arrived in the door. “I’m sorry Ms Hampton, there’s no answer.”

“What! Don’t tell me that! You asshole. How can there be no answer?”

The aide shrugged. “I’m sorry Ms Hampton.”

“You’re a sorry sack of—”

The phone rang. The premier glared at the aide.

The aide took the hint, and left.

“Yes!” the premier shouted into the phone.

“Minister Hampton. This is the vice president, I’m sorry we missed your call.”

The premier scowled. Of course
the
Vice President would just assume everyone knew you meant the
American
vice president when you invoked those two words. Not the VP of… American Apparel… Or the goddamn Macy’s Day Parade! she thought with vehemence.

Or was that Parade Master?

“Minister?”

“Yes, I’m here. Now tell me, what in the hell is going on? Please, tell me it’s a training exercise.”

“It’s a training exercise.”

The premier breathed a sigh, a great weight lifting from her shoulders. Good. Now, the matter of why. “And just what the fuck were you thinking? A training—”

“Oh, I’m sorry ma’am. That was a joke.”

She refrained from making her own about Americans. “I see. Would you care to elaborate? Which part, exactly, was a joke?”

“I’m sorry. We really don’t have a clue what’s going on. What you see on the news? That’s the gist of it, for once. We don’t have more information yet. We do know the dragon is real—at least, it’s a physical thing that is capable of causing serious damage.”

“And this American?” She shoved papers around on her desk. She couldn’t find where she’d written his name. Grey something. “This Chris Grey?”

“Uh, Mason Grey. Yes, he is American. That’s pretty much all we know. We’ve been unable to locate any family.”

The premier muted her phone, cursed at him, then unmuted it. “And he can fly?”

“Yes.”

The premier waited for him to go on.

Seconds passed. When she found herself looking at the clock, she couldn’t contain herself any longer. “So you have a dragon and a flying cowboy shooting up New York and we are just supposed to sit here with our thumb up our butts!?!”

Laughter from the other end, then coughing. “Erm, sorry, bronchitis.”

After unmuting her phone again, she said, “How awful.”

Her aide came to the door looking concerned. She gestured for him to clean up later. He took in the broken lamp she’d thrown across the room, and quickly retreated.

“Yes, well, I’m sorry I can’t tell you more,”
the
Vice President said pompously into her ear. “Look, I need to get back to the battle room. I’ll be sure to keep you updated.”

“Of course you will.” She didn’t bother hiding the sarcasm.

Sawyer and Ethan had managed to navigate the tank through the streets of New York without running anyone over. That itself was a minor miracle (minor because most people were either inside, or chasing after the Men in Black, or trying to follow the dragon).

Now, they had managed to get in front of the military and the Men in Black (they knew this because of the radio communication they were privy to, thanks to their commandeered vehicle), and were patiently waiting for them to come into sight, where they could put an end to this—or at least, this part of it. There was still the dragon to contend with.

“I see them!” Sawyer shouted into his headset, looking out over the main gun.

“Yeah,” Ethan replied.

It was only somewhat surprising that no one had come after them. Sawyer wondered if there wasn’t some way to remotely shut down the tank. Maybe it hadn’t been reported, though that didn’t seem likely. Oh well, he had more important things to worry about, like this.

Two men charged down the street they were waiting on, a little more than a city block away.

This was Sawyer’s chance. He could hear news helicopters above him. No doubt thousands—millions—were watching them right now. And there were the two men, the men who minutes before had sent Ethan’s dad to the hospital. Last they’d heard he was alive, but that was beside the point.

Sawyer took a steadying breath, picking one of the Men in Black and targeting him with the main gun.

Both leaped when they were around fifty feet away, like they had done several times before, choosing to jump over obstacles instead of going around.

That would be their downfall.

Sawyer released the breath and caused the gun to fire.

He saw a flash, then the rocket hit, center mass. But instead of gutting the man, it continued on with him at its tip, but much slower than it had been going before it hit, as though the man were exerting his own force in the opposite direction.

But it was still going forward.

It exploded against a building, the man the cushion between the missile and brick, bits of depleted uranium breaking off and bursting into flames, catching the building on fire and Sawyer looked away and moved to follow the remaining target as he sailed overhead. Sawyer quickly switched to the front machine gun and moved it to track the target, but he wasn’t fast enough, and his shots hit air, then nearby buildings.

“No way,” Ethan said over the radio.

Sawyer glanced inside the tank, only the top of Ethan’s head visible in the driver’s compartment. “What?” he asked, ceasing fire.

Ethan, unaware Sawyer was looking at him, said, “Look.”

Sawyer looked outside. Noth— Then he saw it. The man, the man he’d just shot with a rocket, and that had exploded—he’d thought—against a wall, was walking toward them, swiping his hair back into place.

“No way,” Sawyer echoed.

The man’s walk turned into a run, then a charge, and he leapt into the air.

“Uh oh,” Sawyer said, and scrambled from the tank.

A tank flew through the air of New York City. A flying man fighting a dragon, a dragon he now had on the run, briefly paused and observed this sight. And though he thought he’d gotten over his doubt, he wondered if he was hallucinating it.

Then he shook his head, and proceeded after the dragon, who was, yes, most certainly running away. That last blow had broken its right wing.

The news had just come back from commercial break, and the main screen was again filled with the stern—yet playful—face of Julia Chung. “It appears, yes, this Mason Grey has the dragon on the run!”

Cheers in the studio broadcast room.

“Now, as you can see—” Just then, a military green tank flew past the camera. The reporter had been pointing, and now she was silent, hand frozen.

“Uh, as, uh, as you…” She looked at the camera. Smiled. “As you can see, the dragon is on the run. And—” A loud crash drowned out her words. She looked away from the camera, to the street below. She looked back to the camera. Smiled again. “Uh, the dragon… Right, we’re getting told that the two unidentified assailants, uh, and Mr Grey and the dragon, are all converging on somewhere around the three hundred block of Manhattan Avenue. Um, which is mostly apartments.”

Back in the studio, the anchor’s heavily-makeuped face looked stunned. A faint snapping could be heard, as though of someone’s fingers, then his eyes focused. “Oh, yes. Uh, you can see from the footage— Oh, one second, they’re combining it—”

Several seconds passed. The anchor stared blankly into the camera, and the camera angle changed, now showing several other anchors, a woman in headphones and a t-shirt still setting up a microphone in front of one of the new anchors.

She looked up, eyes wide, then slinked off.

A second later, she came back, did something to the microphone, and was gone again.

“Yes,” the main anchor said, “there we go.”

The screen shrunk upward, revealing a map with the Google Maps logo and three glowing dots slowly moving across it.

“As you can see from our exclusive live satellite map view, they are converging. The red dot are the two assailants, the green is, um, the dragon, and the blue is Mr Grey.”

“Should have been gray,” an anchor in a very ugly shirt joked.

Forced chuckles filled the airwaves. The camera switched to the one who had made the joke, then quickly cut back to a view of all of them to catch the laughs.

“Mr Grey would be Mason Grey, the man fighting off the dragon, correct?”

“That’s right Susan.”

On the screen, the image changed, replacing the studio view with live footage from a helicopter, the left side showed Mason and the dragon, the dragon definitely running from him now.

On the right side, the two Men in Black, followed by hundreds of military and government and police, in dozens of vehicles.

Below was still the map, now with a dotted line showing the projected route with a large X where they would intersect.

There were occasional gun flashes from the right side, which showed the live footage, as the military troops fired on the Men in Black. When the rounds were large enough, sometimes the agents would be pushed slightly off course, but never very far.

The newscasters did their best to interject commentary about what was going on, but the airwaves were mostly silent, save for faint explosions picked up by the reporters’ in the helicopters mics.

On the side showing the city: Humvees bounce over destroyed streets, pushing burnt and demolished cars out of the way.

And then finally, they—Mason, the dragon, and the two Men in Black—emerge into the open, followed closely by the troops, and a few brave or idiotic onlookers, among them possessing many score cameras.

What is to come will remain the most photographed event in history, until there are no more cameras, and the world has lost its spark.

One final attack, the ‘superman’ dashing in and hitting the dragon’s damaged right wing as it soars above a park, and then the dragon plummets, and crashes and slides into the center, as if the flying man had planned it, throwing up huge clouds of dirt that are massive enough to obscure the scene to the many cameras eagerly filming from a safe distance.

The cameras cut back to the studio once again, but none of the anchors were looking into them.

The man now known to all the world as Mason Grey landed behind the dragon, looking like a superhero as he did. He walked up to its head, and looked down upon it.

Meanwhile, the two agents burst into the cloud of dust the thing kicked up when it crashed, and the military had to abandon their vehicles at the edge of the park to follow on foot so they didn’t run over the bystanders scattering from the crash site. They had the park surrounded on all sides, and so this wasn’t such a bad thing. At least this way they wouldn’t accidentally run over the world’s hero. Though, if he could survive what he did, then hitting him in a vehicle would hurt its passengers, not Mr Grey.

Mason approached the thing carefully. He had no weapon, but his fists should be enough. He went to its head, and raised his fist to crush it.

It stirred and opened its eyes. It looked at him and whimpered, and Mason remembered his dog. His hand came down, but the fist he had been making was gone, and he lay his palm upon its head, feeling its hard slick scales, warm to the touch.

Mason floats away as his mind is washed in memories. Memories of chains and fog. Of a dark king in black armor.

The chains attached to it as a whelp. The scars, still there even now, healed but permanent. Its imprisonment, its torment. Huge, mechanically controlled whips coming down repeatedly to the cheers of crowds. Being forced to fight other beasts of the mist. Not having a choice.