By the time the moon was high in the open bowl of sky above them, el Pulpo had downed his sixth goblet of wine. He got up from the table, the feet of his chair shrieking on the metal deck.
Then he lumbered over to the hatch leading belowdecks—to relieve himself, Magnolia assumed. She remained at the table, looking at the dead fish that stared back from her plate. The past few hours had been torture, but at least, thanks to the distractions, she wasn’t forced to carry on much of a conversation with the bastard.
He didn’t seem interested in what she had to say, anyway. Imulah had translated the few things el Pulpo said to her. Simple questions about her former life on the Hive, which she answered in the fewest words possible while the king stared at her breasts.
She glanced back at the scribe, who remained standing near the rail of the boat, flanked on either side by the two Cazador guards. They hadn’t taken their eyes off her the entire night. Behind them, beyond the barbed wire that spiraled above the rail, the pilot of the speedboat that had ferried Magnolia here watched from his vessel.
There was nowhere to run.
She looked at the oil rig. Sparks showered into the water from a metal gate two men were welding out of pipe. Rodger was up there somewhere, helping build the cages.
The sight sucked the spirit out of her. She felt numb, weak.
The will to fight had drained away. Years ago, when she had gone to the brig on the Hive for stealing, she had felt trapped. That dreadful feeling had returned. Her heart ached, and her stomach churned with anxiety.
She had joined the Hell Divers to get out of prison, even though it meant she would probably die on a dive. But she hadn’t. She had survived by fighting tooth and nail, only to end up a prisoner once more.
This time, however, she feared what would happen if she didn’t cooperate with the Cazadores, more than she ever feared dying on a dive. Back then she didn’t have anyone to care about. No one would have mourned her if she splattered on the surface, and she wouldn’t have lost any sleep over the death of anyone around her.
But now she had Rodger, X, Miles, Tin, Layla, Katrina, and Les. They were all counting on her. They were more than friends. They had become her family.
Cooperating with her captors could help them, maybe even save them. But it also meant betraying what she was: a fighter.
The hatch to the Sea Wolf opened, and for a moment she pictured X stepping out onto the deck. But it was just el Pulpo ducking under the hatch frame, his unbuttoned shirt blowing in the breeze, his muscles glistening with sweat.
He returned to the table holding something under his arm. When he sat in his chair, he pulled a knife from the sheath on his belt and used the tip to pick food from between his sharp yellowed teeth. He flicked a bit of meat down at Miles, who licked it off the deck.
Sick bastard.
She hadn’t seen them feed the husky at all since she arrived. No wonder he was so hungry. Before anyone could stop her, she grabbed the hunk of fish off her plate and tossed it down to him.
This earned her a glare from el Pulpo, and then a laugh. He took the black object from under his arm and set it on the table. It looked like a hard drive. He pushed it over to Magnolia, and she leaned closer for a better look.
“Our lord wants you to know that we found your friend yesterday,” Imulah said.
“Friend?” she said quietly. Staring at the hard drive, she realized that the friend was Timothy. The AI’s consciousness and programming were stored on this drive, which was effectively his brain.
Before she could pull it away, el Pulpo stabbed the hard drive with his knife, then tossed it overboard.
“No!” Magnolia shouted.
The assemblage of digital programming and memory that had been Timothy sank into the water. A tear welled in her eye, but she forced it back, not wanting to give this filth the satisfaction.
“Our lord now wants to know if you’re ready for the final course,” Imulah said. “I believe your people would call it dessert.”
“No,” she snapped. “I’m not feeling very well.”
The scribe translated her words, much to el Pulpo’s annoyance. He frowned and fixed his eye on her as if trying to look into her guts for a lie.
Magnolia turned away.
“You should drink more wine before you go to the room downstairs that has been prepared for your first night together,” Imulah said. These were his words, she realized—not something el Pulpo had told him to say.
“It will make you feel much better,” the scribe added.
Magnolia nearly gagged.
Did you see that, you repulsive lump of Siren scat?
El Pulpo picked up his goblet. Chugging down the remaining wine, he slammed the glass on the table and continued watching her. This time, Magnolia followed Imulah’s advice, hoping it would make her rape by the cannibal king less awful.
Sofia was right about the wine: it did help numb the senses.
“I’ll be back with his final course in a moment,” Imulah said. He left them at the table and made his way belowdecks.
“¿Estás enferma?” el Pulpo said.
Magnolia glanced across the table and was surprised to see his features soften. She wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but he almost seemed concerned for her welfare.
She wasn’t buying it.
“¿Estás enferma?” he asked again, patting his belly.
She shook her head, not understanding.
A few minutes later, the scribe returned carrying a tray with a covered dish. He placed it in front of el Pulpo, who plucked the lid off a plate full of slimy fish eyes. They all seemed to be staring at Magnolia.
“You sure you don’t want some?” Imulah asked. “It’s a delicacy.”
Magnolia forced herself to look away as el Pulpo slurped one down without chewing. He continued popping eyeballs into his mouth as if they were candy jam from the Hive, while she sat and waited, her guts cramping with anxiety.
The minutes ticked by, drawing her ever closer to the dreaded consummation of her “marriage” to the cannibal king.
The rumble of a boat motor snapped her out of her doom-ridden thoughts. She twisted in her chair as the soldiers moved away from the railing back to the stern. The beams of two WaveRunners flickered over the water as they sped toward the armada of small craft.
The lights hit the Sea Wolf, and both soldiers leveled their weapons. El Pulpo grunted, clearly not happy about being interrupted just before taking his bride belowdecks.
She eyed the fork beside her plate and once again considered driving it through his remaining eye, deep into that demented brain.
The two WaveRunners slowed, and the soldiers guarding the king relaxed when they saw it was just more Cazadores. They slung their rifles and threw ropes to the riders.
Both men got off their WaveRunners and jumped onto the landing pad, where they raised goggles from their filthy faces and boarded the Sea Wolf. El Pulpo belched and walked over, his arms folded across his muscular chest.
“¿Qué pasa?” he asked.
They spoke fast in Spanish, making it impossible for Magnolia to make out any of the words except one: “Inmortal.”
Whatever they said next made El Pulpo furious. He pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt and threw it across the boat, sinking it deep into the cabin behind Magnolia.
He turned back to her, giving her the elevator eye. Then he snorted and pushed one of the soldiers out of the way. The man fell onto the deck as his lord stepped to the landing and jumped onto one of the WaveRunners.
The driver of the speedboat started his engines. One of the Cazador soldiers from the Sea Wolf jumped on, and the other man returned to his WaveRunner.
The third soldier remained standing next to Imulah, both of them looking at Magnolia. She watched as the vessels sped away after el Pulpo.
&
nbsp; Delighted though she was at the reprieve, she couldn’t help wondering what was so urgent that he would leave her and the fish eyes he so loved.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
The scribe walked over to the table but didn’t take a seat. He picked up a large eyeball and chewed it slowly before spitting out the hard round lens, which bounced like a marble on the deck.
“Two of our vessels have gone missing,” he said. “It could have been a storm, but there was no SOS. They just went dark.”
“What about X? They mentioned him, I think.”
Imulah stroked his beard. “You are starting to pick up our language, I see.”
“Tell me what el Pulpo said.” Magnolia paused, then added, “Please.”
“The Cazador warriors have finished their hunt, but apparently the Barracudas haven’t returned. The Immortal was with that team.”
The scribe took another fish eye and gestured toward the hatch with it still in his hand. “Since you’re not feeling well, you can go lie down belowdecks to rest. I’m not sure when our lord will be back.”
She looked out over the waves, the guilt of her complacency eating her insides. Timothy was gone now, and whether or not he had been able to communicate with the airships before, he certainly couldn’t share any intel now. On top of that, X was out there fighting, or possibly even dead, and she had all but given up her own fight.
No more, she thought. When he gets back—and he will come back—I will fight for humanity. I will fight for our people.
SIXTEEN
An ethereal shriek pierced the night. X waited for a gunshot to follow, but he hadn’t heard any for a while. Even though the Barracudas were miles away from the main Cazador army, they should be hearing something. The battle couldn’t be over already unless … Could the Sirens really have killed close to a hundred men?
A sporadic burst of gunfire finally came. The chatter hardly pierced the din of wails that sounded like a malfunctioning alarm on one of the airships. He had trouble believing that the mutant beasts could stand against such a large, well-armed tactical force. But they were cunning and strong creatures, evolved to survive in the wastes, and to fight.
The Barracudas, in fully armored suits and carrying heavy weapons, weren’t faring so well, either. Ricardo and Luke were dead, and Wendig had a broken arm. Whale, Fuego, and Rhino didn’t seem deterred, however. They took a steep trail up into the jungle that bordered the coastal city.
The team crested the hill and set off under the dense canopy. The electronic whines of the monsters faded away, replaced by the chirping of insects and the creaking of branches in the wind.
A light rain pattered the ground, turning the poisoned earth to a fine slurry. X kept his rifle up and ready, his finger on the trigger guard.
Ten minutes into the trek, they came across more ruined buildings. Several rooftops protruded from the purple canopy of trees four and five stories high. One had grown right up through a building, its red branches bursting through the now collapsed ceiling like an explosion frozen in time.
Farther north, several acres of jungle were burned, perhaps from a lightning strike that started a fire. The storms had mostly passed, but sporadic flashes forked through the clouds every few minutes.
Rhino crouched down to look at tracks in the mud. Then he stood and continued up an overgrown trail that had once been a road. Very little of the fragmented asphalt remained, and the jungle closed in as the path narrowed ahead. Branches covered in thorns reached out like sharp fingers.
X had avoided places like this back in the wastes of the former United States, where more than once he had narrowly avoided becoming plant food. Rhino kept his distance from the branches by moving to the center of the road. The Barracudas seemed as wary of the trees as he was.
But the trees weren’t the only threat. A vine undulated like a snake across the ground. Rhino sliced it in half with his double-headed spear, and the vine retracted, oozing violet sap onto the fractured asphalt as it recoiled back into the jungle.
Fuego walked behind Rhino with his flamethrower, ready to blast through anything too thick for the lieutenant’s blades.
Around the next corner, a lattice of thorny vines crisscrossed the path. Rhino waved Fuego back and used his serrated spear blades to carve a doorway in the spiny mat.
Fuego walked closely behind, followed by X and then Wendig. Whale held rear guard with the Minigun, watching and listening.
X wasn’t sure that even it would stop what they were hunting. The tracks in the mud were three times the size of Rhino’s. He eyed the path the creature had taken to get around the vines. Branches thicker than his arm were snapped off at seven feet above the ground.
The submachine gun that X carried suddenly felt no more substantial than a slingshot, and the spear may as well be a mop handle.
He missed Ty, and thinking of him brought back a swarm of memories of the other friends he had lost over the years. But there wasn’t time to think about those people now. He had to get the hell off this island and back to the living. Magnolia, Rodger, and Miles still needed his help.
A distant cracking sound snapped him alert, and he slowly scanned the green landscape of his night vision for the source. To the left of the road, several ruined houses, mostly just foundations and the bones of walls, stood between the trees.
Another cracking sound came from behind X, and a scorpion almost the size of Miles came skittering out of a pile of concrete. Whale split the creature in half with his axe, and the pincers clicked feebly as a pool of green blood spread outward.
Rhino ordered the team ahead, pointing with his spear. The tracks continued beside the road but jeered off on the right to avoid a section blocked by a fence of waist-high plants.
Spiked branches with suction-cup tentacles hung limp, looking almost harmless, but X knew better. Five years earlier, he had watched a pack of Sirens get tangled in them.
The barbs carried a venom that paralyzed their prey; then the tentacles sucked the victim dry. Days later, he had come across the dead Sirens. Their milky-white skin had shriveled over the bones, the flesh sucked out.
“Hold up,” X said. “We need to find a way around those.”
Rhino stopped and scanned the structures left of the road. Then he checked the tracks that diverged to the right.
Fuego raised his flamethrower and looked to Rhino.
“Wait,” X said, holding up his hand. “You want to tell every beast where we are?”
Ignoring X, Rhino gave Fuego a nod and stepped back. A jet of flames shot out of the barrel, engulfing the spiny black thicket. The tentacles came alive, squirming in the intense heat, before beginning to wither and turn to ash.
The men followed Rhino through the now-cleared path off the left side of the road, into a lightly vegetated area outside a two-story building. The concrete walls, probably built to withstand a hurricane, had withstood the test of time, and it still had part of a roof.
Framing the house on both sides were the remains of less resistant structures, now little more than foundations and basements full of dark water. X saw a V-shaped ripple cross the pool on his right and moved closer to the team.
He bumped off his night-vision goggles, relying on the glow of the burning thorn bushes behind him as he followed the others through the concrete building’s open front doorway.
Columns held up a sagging roof over the entrance. Inside, a rusted metal stairwell led to a second floor. The team cautiously made its way up the stairs and across the creaky floorboards.
Rhino motioned X into one of the bedrooms. The only furnishings that had survived were the frames of metal chairs, and the rusted springs of a mattress. A tapestry of moss and mold covered the black walls.
Wendig’s raspy breathing told X the man was in a lot of pain. He doubted they could count on him to help when they did find their target.
A roar snapped X from his thoughts.
He moved over to an empty window frame and watched the flames. Smoke rose from the smoldering plants, which continued to squirm and writhe like the giant octopus he had killed on the Sea Wolf.
Rhino moved beside X. “Hold your fire until it gets close,” he said. “Aim for the eyes.”
“Eyes?” X muttered, picturing a beast with eyes the size of a human. He watched the flames, realization setting in. The lieutenant wanted the beast to see the fire.
This was a trap. So why did X feel like bait?
Through the cracked wall between the two rooms, he could see Fuego and Whale, their weapons pointed out the windows.
X brought up his submachine gun and looked back to the flames. They were spreading into the forest across the road now, licking their way up a tree trunk to the limbs.
His eyes roved back and forth, searching the canopy and the terrain for any movement. Tree branches cracked, and X centered the barrel on a palm that jerked and then swayed from side to side. Its lavender fronds shook violently before the entire thing crashed to the ground. There came another cracking sound, like a bone being snapped.
“Get ready,” Rhino said to X. He said something in Spanish to Wendig, who moved into the other room to tell Whale and Fuego.
Rhino’s almond eye slots turned to X.
“You’re about to meet the devil,” he said. “If you can take its head, you might impress el Pulpo. He’s one of only a few men ever to kill one of these beasts.”
Though X couldn’t see his features, he picked up on the excitement in the Cazador lieutenant’s voice. It made him wonder, did these people actually enjoy fighting monsters?
Wendig came back into the room, taking the window next to X’s. Using the ledge as a bench rest, he got down on one knee and shouldered the rifle with his good arm.
The fire continued to spread into the jungle, hiding the trees and undergrowth behind a dense wall of flame. X moved his gun barrel from left to right, then back again. All at once, the foliage across the road came alive as hundreds of rodent-size insects skittered out of their lairs. The creatures were fleeing something besides the fire.
Hell Divers V: Captives Page 19
