The Phoenix Dragons

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. It was hard to imagine now, in the dizzying oven-like heat that lingered from the summer that Phoenix, Arizona, had also once been touched by the Ice Age - a time that many don’t realize we are now exiting and hastening with greenhouse gases. Still, the desert was littered with animals that were reminiscent of dragons that we now know as distant cousins - snakes, lizards, all kinds of creepy-crawly cold blooded creatures. I wasn’t a stranger to them – I, too, had come from a hot place, but a much wetter one. Florida had a host to all kinds of reptiles, from the invasive iguanas to the oil-slick backed alligator. But still, none of them flew and all of them had been around consistently forever.

It’s not often that a species disappears for millions of years only to come back to a world more suitable to them. If that was the case, then there would be less mass-extinction events and many more mass-hibernations. As a biology student, I had always been taught from behind a desk in a lecture hall about the fragility of life in its carbon-based form. All life forms, as we knew it, needed at least two things that we know of; energy and water – and they needed them somewhat consistently to keep on existing. There was no reason in the scientific community to question this until one day reports of flying giant lizards were budding across the San Tan valley. At first, it was hard to discern these scattered musings from reality. Only the quick-to-post non-reputable news sites and twitter accounts were posting about them. For the better part of the morning on September 18th they were treated much like the mass-hysteria of seeing a UFO, which was a phenomenon not too unfamiliar to the area. And these weren’t like the blurry videos of big foot obscured by a low frame rate and a shaky hand or a smudged shiny object in the sky that are usually dismissed by anyone not diving down an internet conspiracy theory forum - no, these were high quality videos of what could only be described as (nobody was saying the word yet, because it sounded too crazy) a mother-fucking dragon flying across the sky.

And then there were more, both of the dragons themselves and the videos of them, flooding in from every social media and news outlet possible. If you lived in the valley, everyone you knew was posting some video of a large, hard-skinned creature perching itself on top of a car, the roof denting in beneath its enormous body weight, or a dragon scooping up a horse or cow or donkey and carrying it off into the distance, ripping it to shreds with its giant claws. The corpses they found later were broken and pulled apart, hardly resembling animals at all.

I remember watching the news report in a class I had (any major world-altering event won’t get you out of attendance but will get you out of lecture when your teacher live-streams the news) with my bewildered professor smushing his mouth against his fist, bent over his desk in a stance that really said “I am questioning my reality”. About half-way during class the entire lecture hall buzzed as each student got the notification that classes were canceled for the day, but that we were allowed to shelter in place if need be. I left promptly afterwards, unlocking my bike and peddled slowly down the empty streets. Somehow, I wasn’t scared. It could have been the adrenaline, or maybe the desire to actually see one of these beasts myself.

Then, the rush of wind came from behind me, hot and harsh like the desert, blowing me off my bike and onto the asphalt. I didn’t even feel the pain of the skin on my knee ripping, or the blood that dripped down onto the sidewalk. I was too in-awe of the wingspan of a giant, sand colored animal that overtook me, heading in the same direction I was just seconds ago. Its wings were shaped with the sharp, pointy edges of a bat, and its feet were help up underneath its leathery body, adorned with scythe-like claws. Then the pavement began to burn me, and I stood up as the beast rose in elevation and banked left, becoming obscured by the buildings. I propped my bike up and peddled home quickly, one part fear, one part excitement.

When I arrived home, my roommate, Alicia, was sitting on a chair she had pulled up to the TV screen with her knees tucked under her chin. Her head snapped when the door opened, her eyes widening then relaxing when she recognized my silhouette step into the house we shared. She had shuttered all the blinds, and the house was dark, with only weak lamplight and the blue glow of the tv illuminating the room. Her black Labrador, Kayla, oblivious to all this, was whining by the door.

“Hey,” Alicia said, “Glad you got home safe.” There was no need to ask what the perceived danger was – the whole city was united in preoccupied thoughts of the obvious disruption to our lives and realities. What was next – unicorns? Aliens? Godzilla?

I looked at Kayla again, whose ears perked when she met my gaze, huffed and groaned impatiently.

“Should I let her out?” I asked, moving to the door.

“I don’t-“ Alicia paused and looked at me, “Is it safe, you think?”

“We can do it quickly, and I’ll go with you,” I said, as if I offered any protection. Still, even when futile, we always feel better in numbers.

Wordlessly, Alicia unfolded herself and walked to the front door. We decided to keep Kayla close, in case one of the creatures flew by and she decided to take on her job as guard dog and alarm system. Who knows how a dragon would react to a barking dog? Why take the risk?

We slowly wandered barefoot onto the Bermuda grass, keeping the door open behind us for a quick escape route. Kayla rushed ahead of us, pulling Alicia just ahead of me, and squatted to relieve herself. We fidgeted while we wait, my left leg nervously bouncing while Alicia rocked side to side on her heels.

“I have just been too scared to go outside,” Alicia said, “I don’t want to be scooped up like a mouse.”

“No one has been hurt yet, right?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, but who knows.”

Then Kayla stood, and we darted back into the dark, cool house.

Like us, many citizens of Phoenix were scared and somewhat cautious, but the dragons didn’t seem to pay much attention to people at all. Mostly they treated most people with the same indifference as the one that flew past me in the street – I couldn’t even be sure that it saw me. But this gave some people false confidence, which lead to some of the more brazen and/or dumber Phoenicians to get truly bold in their interactions. See, we didn’t know this then, but the last time Dragons were above ground, humans weren’t really in the biological mix. So we looked weird, hairless mammals, probably diseased and unappetizing, and weren’t really registering to them as food. Think of it as being the same as with Sharks or a Mountain Lion – we don’t really fit into their typical menu, so people are generally safe save a few cases of mistaken identity or desperation. Well, the time finally came when a group of local highschoolers decided to antagonize a dragon that was, for all intents and purposes, minding its own business after squashing and feasting on a herd of cattle, when these geniuses started throwing firecrackers at it. Now, I try not to anthropomorphize animals, but this small, smokey display of sparks that bounced off the Dragon’s skin must have been somewhat humorous as the behemoth turned, shook his head like a dog shaking off water, and let out actual fire-breath that roasted two of the teenagers and left the others fleeing.

The video was all over the internet, and immediately started a panic. People were fleeing the Valley, convinced it was the end of days, while the Governor was sweating through his shirt on TV while waiting for the President to start his national address – there were rumors that the national guard had been deployed, and soon enough the Air Force made their presence known with fighter jets ripping through the skies. Passenger and cargo planes had been grounded as soon as the dragons were confirmed, so they hadn’t had much experience with flying objects, and we didn’t really know how they would react. These jets were loud, and they quickly got the attention of the dragons who did, it seem, try to chase them through the skies. It was incredibly spectacle – giant, flying lizards following war machines – buzzing by them whether they were in the sky or on the ground. There was no way around it – they were being taunted. Anyone watching the live footage (who wasn’t?) knew it wouldn’t end well. When one large, black dragon showed the first sign of aggression by spitting a hundred-yard flame towards a jet, the orders came – shoot on site. In a matter of hours, all the dragons were dead, and quickly cleaned up by industrial equipment and government personnel in hazmat suits.

I got to see one up close, that was shot down into Papago Park. It was the last to go down, and the fear that had gripped the city only hours before now turned into morbid curiosity. Once it became clear that the government was quickly disposing of the bodies, and that there were no more dragons in the skies, people became curious and shared locations of the bodies that were still out on social media. This dragon had fallen onto the rocky hill and slid down, leaving a trail of debris and blood. People gathered around, posing, taking pictures, some even cut pieces of skin off hoping to sell later. It was the same dragon that had flown above me before, and the sand-colored skin was in contrast with the brownish-red rocks it had come to rest on. I stood by its head, that wore a crown-like arrangement of spikes at its top, and more quills that jutted out from its cheeks that up close bore a resemblance to the primitive quills found on some dinosaur fossils. If it weren’t for the blood, the amount of which threw the smell of copper into the air, you would think it was just on the brink of consciousness, its half-open eyes about to wake fully and roast the crowd to death.

Something about the wilting muscles of the great beast became too much for me, and I wandered off as the government trucks arrived, quickly clearing people out of the area. As we all fanned out, I decided to cut off with my bicycle off the trail and across the creosote filled desert, back to the main road. But off of a rocky outcrop, something that didn’t belong in typical colors, or often in nature caught my eye; pure white orbs, tucked in the midst of debris. Gleaming white was not a color nature produced often, except for in one instance – eggs.