“Never heard that one before,” Michael muttered, stepping back to the edge.
Les reached out again but then lowered his hand.
“I’ll go first,” Michael said. He looked back down at the dark water, but before he could jump in, Layla moved in front of him with a rope.
“You crazy, Tin?” She clipped the rope to a carabiner on her waist and started taking off her gear. “You can’t just jump in, or you’ll sink like a rock.”
He backed away. She was right, of course. He was going to get himself killed if he didn’t get his mind right. The cardinal rule of Hell Diving was to be cautious and patient.
When Layla had peeled away most of her armor, she pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
“Three-sixty awareness,” Michael said, grabbing the uncoiled rope. “Tug if you run into any problems, and we’ll be right there to help.”
She smiled, then dived into the water.
* * * * *
Rhino gestured to the guy with a flamethrower, then to the one with the Minigun. They stood with their backs leaning against the bow of the skiff.
“This is Fuego, and Whale,” Rhino said.
Fuego dipped his helmet, and Whale thumped his armored chest with the brass knuckles he wore. The boat crested a wave and slid down into the trough, and both monstrous warriors bobbed up and down.
X didn’t respond. He pulled his oar through the water, staying in rhythm with the other three oarsmen.
“You already met Luke, Ricardo, and Wendig,” Rhino said. He stood in the center of the boat and moved from man to man, yelling something in Spanish.
“¡Mas rápido, Barracudas!”
Now he knew what the toothy fish symbol on their armor represented.
“The only team I’ll ever be is Team Raptor,” X muttered under his breath.
The men pulled harder on the oars, upping the tempo. There was a motor on the back, but X guessed they were either conserving gasoline or trying not to make noise.
X was on the fourth oar and was barely keeping up with the others. Water leaked around the patchwork of repairs on the wooden hull and was already sloshing around his ankles.
“Faster, Immortal,” Rhino said.
X pulled harder while keeping his boot on the biggest leak.
A wave slammed the side of the boat, splashing more inside. Rhino yelled again to row faster.
He wasn’t the only one. An army of Cazadores stormed the beaches of the old-world coastal city, yelling at the top of their lungs, each eager to claim the first kill and add a Siren skull to his armor.
But oddly, they kept their rifles and handguns slung or holstered and advanced toward the city with spears and swords out.
They were either crazy or trying to conserve ammunition, X decided. Probably both. What sane person would come out here to hunt for the mutant humans? Especially in this area. A check of his HUD showed the radiation still in the red.
X had spent his ten years on the surface trying to avoid the monsters, but when he did find them, it usually meant there was an Industrial Tech Corporation facility nearby. And, of course, that was where the real loot was. All his life, the end-of-the-world facilities had kept him, and everyone else in the sky, alive with their supplies.
He wondered whether raiding an ITC facility was another part of this mission. Or were they really here just to kill and capture Sirens?
No matter, he would soon find out.
The Barracudas were the last to the beach. Fuego and Whale clambered over the bow and stood guard while the others jumped onto the sand.
Wendig, Luke, and Ricardo grabbed rope handles on the side of the boat, and X helped them drag the vessel up.
He followed the team up the beach, his boots sinking in the wet sand. Rhino, with his shield still over his back, took point, carrying a long spear with a sawtooth head on either end.
He stopped while the other Barracudas gathered behind him. Then he pulled from his duty belt a black bar that looked like soap, and rubbed it over the spearheads. After placing the bar back in the pouch, he pulled out a lighter and lit the blades, creating metal torches that he twirled once, then twice.
He then pulled his shield from his back, and with the shield in one hand and the flaming spear in the other, he set off. Wendig, Luke, and Ricardo moved out with their single-headed spears, but X kept his shortened spear slung over his shoulder and unsheathed his sword.
They moved up the beach, away from the lighthouse still blinking in the distance and attracting the Sirens like bugs to light. In the past, X would have taken out his battery unit to avoid them, but not today. He was with a small army now, and he needed the battery to power his suit and night-vision goggles.
In the green hue, he scanned the remains of yet another postapocalyptic city. This place had probably been a tourist destination at one point, attracting people to its sunny beaches and tiki bars.
Now it was just another wasteland. The largest tower, once standing at least thirty stories, had broken in half, its top falling and crushing two other buildings. Scree surrounded the impact zone.
Some of the buildings, with their exteriors and foundations intact, looked much as they may have looked 260 years ago. But there wasn’t much left of the old-world vehicles that stood rusting with their tires rotted out, windows gone, and interiors nothing but dust and metal bones.
Several Cazador teams were already thronging the first of the roads, heading into the city of brown and gray structures. Vines blocked their route, stretching across the cracked and crumbling asphalt roads. The first of the men hacked through the foliage to clear a path for the bulk of the army.
The Barracudas continued up the beach. A sunken boat ramp led away from the sand to a sagging concrete retaining wall.
Most of the Cazador warriors had taken the ramp, but Rhino selected a different route. He jogged toward a stone stairway, with several broken steps and a twisted handrail, that led up a hill.
Thick tropical trees towered overhead, their red fronds swaying in the breeze. Red pulp from what looked like bite marks oozed down the bark.
It seemed the Sirens had eaten every moving thing. X didn’t see so much as a cockroach. As he set off into the dense vegetation, the first gunshot sounded. Rhino held up a fist, and the Barracudas stopped in the radioactive dirt to look to the east.
The vantage gave them a view of the city, and the army moving through the streets and around broken-down buildings. Another gunshot cracked, and a Siren rose above the sunken roof of a rectangular building, a Cazador warrior hanging from its talons. The man struggled in its grip, firing a handgun at the creature.
It finally dropped him from two hundred feet, and he plummeted back to the surface, his armor and bones crunching audibly on the pavement of a vine-infested road.
The noise brought back to X the painful memory of losing his best friend and Michael’s father, Aaron. And just as before, the female Sirens nesting in the buildings darted out and descended on the dead man, tearing him into manageable pieces before skittering away with meals for their young.
The soldiers on point made it to the street a moment later and charged with their spears, spilling Siren blood on the asphalt. One of the Cazadores skewered a female and hoisted the body into the air—the first trophy.
“And so it begins,” X said.
Rhino twirled his flaming spear and set off down the other the side of the hill. “The rest of the Barracudas don’t think you will live out the day, Immortal,” he called out, “but I give you at least two.”
His bellowing laugh crackled from his breathing apparatus.
“Try ten years, asshole,” X muttered.
The other soldiers moved past him, Wendig reaching out and shoving X so hard he hit the dirt.
“Puto,” Wendig said, looking over his shoulder.
X pushed himself up
and grabbed his sword from the dirt. When he rose to his feet, he saw the flashing lighthouse where the Sirens circled, their huge wings beating the air audibly as they flapped around the structure.
“¡Vámonos!” Rhino shouted. Ricardo, Fuego, and Whale vanished over the north side of the hill, and Wendig and Luke double-timed it to catch up.
In the streets to the east, the army of Cazadores battled the Siren hordes. It took only a few minutes for the monsters to grow in number from a few dozen to hundreds, filling the streets with flesh the color of corpses.
The beasts had been busy here over the past two and a half centuries, breeding and growing in numbers. Even children joined the horde, anxious for fresh meat.
X jogged after the other men, suddenly realizing the Barracudas weren’t going on the same mission as the rest of the army. The warriors in the city, fueled by the promise of trophies, prestige, and perhaps a wife, were a decoy to keep the beasts away from Rhino’s small unit.
Their mission was something else entirely.
An electronic wail rang out from the west, and X brought up his sword as three of the eyeless monsters scrambled over the edge and bolted out across the hilltop toward Wendig and Luke.
A shout came in Spanish, but X was too busy throwing his sword to see where it came from. The blade sailed past Wendig and struck the front Siren, knocking it off its feet.
X pulled the short spear from his shoulder and ran to meet the other two Sirens, which barreled into Luke. Wendig went down a moment later, unable to move in time to avoid the fleet-footed predators.
Adrenaline rushed through X at the sight of another group of Sirens pulling their way over the rocks to his left. Long limbs covered in leathery, wrinkled skin hit the ground at a dead run. Ropy muscles glistened with water.
They had come from the ocean, flanking the Barracudas.
So much for a decoy, X thought.
Maybe the Cazadores weren’t the hunters after all.
He thrust his spear through the gut of one of the beasts straddling Wendig and pulled it out with a strand of intestine hooked on the serrated edge. The beast gripped the wound as Wendig pushed the screeching creature into the dirt. He then pulled out his handgun, twisting to fire at the beast clawing Luke’s armor a few feet away.
Dust rose around the warriors in the chaos, but through it, X glimpsed a dropped full-length spear and picked it up. He pivoted to face a pack of six female beasts, and for a moment he considered abandoning these men to fend for themselves. They were his enemy as much as the monsters were.
But where would he go? If he fled and was captured, he would be killed for desertion, and the thought of being stranded out here again filled him with enough dread to keep him in the fight.
An ethereal wail made him look up at a massive male beast flanking from the sky. More Sirens flapped away from the city to storm the hill, heading for Rhino and the other men, who had already moved down onto the other side.
At the hilltop, X went to work with the spear, stabbing, slicing, and swinging the sharp blade at the cadaverous-looking flesh. Blood streamed from the gashes as he inflicted mortal wounds.
A human scream followed the alien cries of pain, and X saw Luke squirming under the weight of another Siren. The beast impaled his eye with a talon and twisted it as the Cazador wailed in agony.
The beast retracted the claw from the bleeding socket. Wendig turned and fired three shots that punched neat holes into its eyeless skull.
It slumped onto Luke’s limp body.
X moved to Wendig’s side as the man reloaded. Holding up his spear, he prepared to jab at the team of Sirens surrounding them. Saliva dripped from open maws, the beasts tilting their heads as they seemed to study their prey.
They moved in all at once to overrun the two men.
A wave of fire suddenly blasted through the air, slamming into three of the beasts. Flames coated their flesh, and they dropped to the ground, flopping and howling.
X thrust the longer spear into the eyeless face of a fourth beast, which had avoided the fire. The blade caught it in the side of the head, puncturing skull and brain.
The whine of an automatic weapon came over the electronic cries, blowing limbs off the other two beasts.
X yanked his blade free and backed away as Rhino, Fuego, Ricardo, and Whale traversed the hill. They easily dispatched the remaining Sirens that had flanked them, and then turned their attention to the fliers.
Rhino jabbed his flame-tipped spear into a swooping beast, and it caught fire. He pulled the spear out and sliced off a wing with the next stroke.
The creature crashed in flames.
Whale let the Minigun hang from its strap and pulled the axe from the loops on his backpack. He brought it down on another beast, splitting its head like a round of wood.
He laughed as he moved on to the next beast, lobbing off an arm and then a leg before opening the chest cavity with the third swing. Reaching down, he pulled out a handful of viscera and held it dripping in the air.
The other men cheered, but X just looked on in amazement. Some carcasses still burned, the flesh sizzling as it melted off the bones.
Rhino pierced the heart of a Siren crawling away and then knelt beside Luke. He put a finger between the gap in his helmet and neck armor, feeling for a pulse. Then he stood and gestured for the other men to gather around.
They bowed their heads as Rhino spoke several words in Spanish. Then they pounded their chests and stripped Luke of his weapons. Whale tossed the fistful of Siren guts at X’s feet.
“Cómelo,” he said. “Te pondrá pelo en los testículos.”
The other men laughed.
“What did he say?” X asked Rhino.
“He said, ‘Eat this. It will put hair on your balls.’”
“You’re a seriously sick fuck,” X replied. He used the breather to check his HUD while the other soldiers gathered their weapons. His suit hadn’t been compromised, but his old injuries were aching again, and he felt fresh blood inside his boot.
“So you want to let me in on the real mission now?” X asked Rhino, who was already walking away from their fallen comrade and the gore-spattered ground.
“You will see soon enough,” Rhino said. “Now, keep moving, and maybe you will earn a spot on the Barracudas.”
Wendig walked past X, but this time, instead of pushing X to the ground, he clapped him on the shoulder, then hurried after the others.
TWELVE
Magnolia sat with the other wives in the gardens. The platform jutted from the capitol tower, providing a view of the ocean, and plenty of sun.
She folded her arms across her see-through blouse. Never in her life had she dressed in anything so seductive and downright silly. A floppy straw hat shielded her fair skin from the baking afternoon sun, and she made sure she was directly under the canopy of a tamarind tree. The other women lounged about, some of them dipping their legs in the limpid pool.
Flowers bloomed around the edges of the sparkling water. In the grove of fruit trees just beyond, servants picked oranges into wicker baskets.
For several minutes, she watched them work, wondering what their lives were like here on the Metal Islands. Every morning, the workers would come from other oil rigs like those she had seen on her ride to the main tower, from which el Pulpo ruled his domain.
One thing was certain: the servants did not live like his wives. The wives lived like royalty, lying on folded chairs on the deck, drinking goblets full of the berry drinks they called wine.
Another servant brought pieces of sweet candy and plates of berries. He made his way over to Magnolia, offering her some, but she grabbed a glass of water instead and thanked him with a smile.
But for the soldiers standing guard, one might think this was an old-world resort where tourists came to vacation, and the man was just a worker.
But he wasn’t a worker; he was a slave.
The man gave Magnolia a toothless smile and moved over to Inge, who greedily snatched a handful of candy without a single word or gesture of thanks. Sofia kindly accepted a glass of wine. She also took a hand towel and dabbed her forehead. Then she lifted her sun hat and looked at Magnolia.
“You will get used to the brightness,” she said. “I was born in a bunker and didn’t see the sun until I was brought here.”
She grabbed a bottle off the table and tossed it to Magnolia.
“Put this on. It will help protect you from the sun.”
The other women were already slathered with the ointment or whatever it was. Magnolia declined the bottle and stayed in the shade.
It felt like a betrayal. Why should she be enjoying the sunshine and a cold drink while X was out there fighting and Rodger and Miles were in chains?
She was in this position merely because she was beautiful in the eyes of the Cazador king. Her looks had never gotten her anywhere on the Hive except into trouble. But in this society, a woman’s looks seemed to be prized above all else.
She took a sip of water and got up from the chair. Sitting around promoted boredom, and boredom made her want to do things she might later regret.
Pulling her sun hat down, she walked toward the rail overlooking the ocean. One of the women sat up and glared at her, baring her sharp teeth like a wild animal as Magnolia passed by. She was Alicia, the oldest of el Pulpo’s wives, the woman who had taunted her at the banquet several nights ago.
Magnolia returned the smile and kept walking toward the railing. Gray clouds crossed the horizon, their bellies full of rain. For the first time since she arrived at the Metal Islands, she hoped one of them would block out the sun for a while.
She gripped the steel pipe balustrade and looked down at the docks below. A group of men in jackets and matching trousers were there, overseeing a shipment of crates being unloaded from several boats. She still didn’t know exactly what they did, but they seemed to be some sort of clerks, helping run a complex barter economy based on currency of tobacco and wine.
Hell Divers V: Captives Page 14
