“You’re out there, X, I know it,” Michael whispered as he scanned the horizon.
“There!” Layla yelled. Michael followed her fingers toward an island in the vast swamp.
He pulled his binos from the vest covering his armor and zoomed in on the small piece of land in the middle of the brown sludge that seemed to cover most of the area. There appeared to be a chain of islands in that direction.
“That’s our new LZ,” Michael said. “Good eyes, Layla.”
The ship changed bearing, gliding to the northeast as the turbofans directed them through the calm sky. Michael used the moment to check on Timothy, whose projection stood next to the corpses of his family, watching over them as Deliverance began its descent. He seemed to be functioning normally now that the bodies were covered up, but Michael couldn’t trust him anymore after what had happened on the descent.
Rodger grabbed a handhold on the side of the cargo bay and leaned out the side as they glided over the water. “Do we have any idea what those things are down there?” he asked.
“Stay back if you don’t want to find out,” Magnolia said.
Rodger took a hasty step back.
“Whatever they are, they can swim,” Layla said.
Magnolia cradled her rifle across her chest. “Hopefully, they can’t walk or fly.”
“Setting down in T minus thirty seconds,” Timothy announced.
Michael pulled his attention back to his team. “Okay, this is it, everyone. I know you’re all scared, but if X found a way across these swamps, we can, too.”
“Be nice if we had a boat,” Rodger said.
“No way in hell I’m taking a boat through that shit!” Magnolia exclaimed.
“Neither would I, then,” Rodger said.
Michael tried to think what X would do in this situation. “Cut the shit and focus.” After making sure he had everyone’s attention, he said, “There’s a way across, and we’re going to find it no matter how long it takes or whatever’s out there. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” the other divers said together.
Michael centered his binos on the island. It seemed to be several square miles, surrounded by a network of land bridges that spread like veins across the swamp. In the center of the mass were the crumbling shells of buildings.
“Looks like there’s some sort of ruins down there,” he said, zooming in on the structures. “Timothy, can you do another scan?”
“The LZ appears clear, Commander,” the AI replied a moment later. “No heat signatures are present on the land mass.”
“All right, set us down.”
Timothy deployed the landing gear and then shut off the turbofans as the massive feet connected with the dirt. The ship groaned. A bridge extended from the platform, angling twenty feet down until it sank into the mud.
Michael and the other divers scanned the area for any creatures that the sensors may have missed. The muddy field stretched a quarter mile to the bottom of a hill. Hunks of sheet metal, a refrigerator, and several rusty vehicles peppered the marshy landscape.
“Looks clear,” Michael said. He turned to the AI. “I’m going to fulfill my promise to you, Timothy, but you have to promise me you’re not going to leave us down here.”
“You have my word, Commander.”
Timothy’s reply seemed sincere, but Michael simply didn’t trust him. Still, what other option did he have?
“Come on,” Michael said to his team.
Working together, the divers gently carried the corpses from the platform to the ground. Michael took another moment to scan the area for hostiles while Rodger ran back up to find another shovel.
From the ground level, Michael didn’t see anything moving in the muddy terrain aside from a few armored centipedes scuttling across the hull of an old pickup truck.
Satisfied they were alone, he grabbed the shovel and started digging while Layla and Magnolia held security.
A light rain fell on the divers as they worked. Taking turns, Michael and Rodger dug for an hour, scooping out the wet soil and tossing it into a pile. By the time they had excavated four graves, Michael was covered in sweat beneath his layered suit and armor. Gently, almost tenderly, he and Rodger set the corpses inside the graves.
Timothy stood in the open cargo bay looking down. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for finally putting my family to rest.”
Michael gave a nod and began shoveling dirt back into the graves. Once they were filled, Magnolia bent down and placed something above Susan’s.
“I hope you don’t mind, Rodger,” she said, glancing up.
Rodger bent down to look at the wooden elephant statue he had carved for Magnolia.
“It’s yours to do with as you wish,” he said.
“Thank you,” Timothy repeated. “That was very kind.”
The turbofans clicked back on, and the divers retreated as a vortex of grit and mud whipped through the air of the landing zone.
Michael wiped his visor dry and watched the hologram in the open doorway looking down, remaining there as the ship rose into the sky. Timothy raised a hand in farewell to the divers, or perhaps his family—Michael couldn’t be sure.
Michael returned the gesture. “You’d better wait for us, Timothy Pepper of the Hilltop Bastion.”
NINE
Two years earlier
The crooked sign hung from rusted poles on the side of the road. welcome to florida, the sunshine state. Blue weeds grew between the cracks in the concrete. They were oddly beautiful, but Xavier Rodriguez knew to stay away from them.
He led his dog around the mutated foliage, careful not to get snagged by a tentacle. The plants mostly fed on cockroaches and other bugs, but they might try to snare the husky.
X walked over to the sign, trying to read through the rust that made the surface look like a hunk of moldy cheese. The only thing he could make out aside from the letters was the faded image of a sun integrated with the letter o in florida.
It had been a long time since he saw the real sun.
He looked up at the black sheet draped over the atmosphere. Not a single ray of light could penetrate the darkness. Raising his wrist monitor, he checked the temperature: fifty degrees Fahrenheit.
That was a sauna compared to most places on the surface. He would have taken his helmet off if not for the rads. They were high here, and getting worse with every step.
He looked at the sign once more, thinking of the picture that had burned in the Stryker vehicle. It was that image that brought him here, but this place looked nothing like the picture.
X stepped over a two-foot-wide crevice that had split the road in half. Blue tentacles writhed in the air, reaching for him. He didn’t know whether heat or movement attracted them, but whatever the reason, his presence was riling them up.
X navigated around the carnivorous vegetation and raised his rifle scope to glass the area for bigger threats. A wide array of monsters dwelled in the wastes. Since their journey began in Hades, the man and his dog had battled stone beasts in the desert, and in the cities he fought the Sirens as well as big lizards and one-eyed birdlike abominations. From overgrown poisonous plants to man-eating worms, just about everything down here on the surface was out to eat you.
Lightning forked into the ground, reminding him that the swirling, bulging dome of storm clouds could be as deadly as any monster.
But the monsters and the storm would not stop him. Somewhere out there, not far from here, was the place he’d been searching for. The place from the picture.
The place he had risked everything to reach.
“We’re almost to the ocean,” he said with what might have passed for a smile.
Lowering the rifle, he pulled out his maps and shuffled through them till he found the military map from the Stryker. Not far from their location, underneath an airfield, was
a bunker. Sliding the precious maps back into their sleeve, he started walking again.
Soon the journey would be over. They would find a home, a place where they could stay until the end. He wasn’t exactly sure where that place would be—only that it would have a view of the ocean.
This was the one thing he had managed to hold on to. He had lost almost everything else, some of it more than once. His gear. His weapons. His book of memories. But he had held on to this dream.
These days, he spent most of his energy just staying alive. He was tired. Exhausted. The years of traveling and fighting had taken their toll, and his skin was a canvas of injuries, some of which had never quite healed.
Miles, on the other hand, was still cavorting around like a young dog, just as he had when X unfroze him back in Hades. It was hard to believe that was eight years ago.
But their journey was almost over. The ocean wasn’t far now.
He looked back up at the sky, and a distant thought of the people who had left him down here to die flitted through his mind. The memories were as muddy as the dirt on the side of the road.
That life is over. Let it go.
X had forgotten their names. After his journal burned and his messages went unanswered, he had finally decided to give up—both on those he loved and on those who had betrayed him.
There was nothing for him in the sky now, just the long road and the loyal dog that trotted by his side.
They kept moving, one step at a time. X was low on food, low on ammo, low on water, and low on energy. But he could do this. He would reach his goal, and then he could rest.
Several days of traveling south along the road had led them past the ruins of civilization. X had seen similar sights on his journey across what had once been the United States of America. The crumbling towers and flattened buildings looked pretty much the same wherever he went.
But on the third day of the trek through Florida, X saw something new. He almost broke down at the sight.
“It can’t be,” he croaked. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry.
Miles sat on his haunches, unconcerned. But the man didn’t believe what he was seeing. This couldn’t be the ocean, could it? The water was brown and muddy, like sewage. There were no whitecaps, no beaches. And a terrible smell filtered through his helmet.
Lightning flashed through the storm system, illuminating the water for as far as X could see. Several islands and spurs of land stretched out into the muck. He reached into his vest and pulled out the maps again. They were over 250 years old, but the tattered papers had served him well this far.
This time, however, either the map was wrong or the land had changed, or else he was lost. He tucked the sleeve back into his vest and unslung his rifle. The cracked leather strap nearly snapped. Like everything else, it was barely holding together.
“Come on, boy,” X said, his throat burning with every word. He knew that something was wrong, but he had no medicine.
Miles looked up, concern in his gaze. That was what the ocean was supposed to look like, X thought, looking into the dog’s bright blue eyes. Not this brown shit.
The road curved out through the water, framed on either side by a half-eroded landmass a hundred feet wide. Miles followed him toward the bridge, both of them alert for threats. He raised his wrist monitor to check the radiation levels. They were still in the yellow zone, but the rads continued ticking higher and higher.
He stopped when they got to the land bridge. Several chunks of concrete had broken off and slid down the sides. More debris littered the slopes. Hulls of old-world vehicles, rebar, and hunks of metal. He leaned over the side to see human skeletal remains covered in red moss and half protruding from the mud. Purple and blue plants grew along the road and in the cracks. One plant sprouted through the grinning jaw of a skull.
X put one boot on the bridge and kept the other on the road behind him. Something was strange about the remains below. The skeletons looked … different.
Miles remained where he was, his helmet angled toward the water. They both stood there for several minutes, listening to the clap of thunder and the gurgle of the water.
Looking through the scope on his rifle, X confirmed the skeletal remains below weren’t all human. Some of them were machine. He could tell by the smooth bones. Human remains didn’t age like that.
There were plenty of robot skeletons in the wastes, but X had never seen a graveyard like this. Whatever had happened to the bots below didn’t matter now though.
He placed his other boot on the bridge, waited a moment to see whether it would hold, and then gestured for Miles. Rifle up, X scanned the slopes to either side. Miles’ masked muzzle sniffed the path as they walked, following the curved road deeper into the swamps. Thunder boomed louder, shaking the concrete beneath his boots. To the east, lightning zapped the water. The insulating layers in their suits would protect them from anything short of a direct hit, but X had made sure they wouldn’t attract the charge by adding a second layer of rubber.
He stepped over to the edge of the road and looked down. There was no way to tell how deep it was, and it was so murky, he couldn’t see whether anything lurked below the surface.
The storm boomed in the distance, and shock waves rumbled across the ground. Miles let out a whine.
“It’s okay,” X said. “Just keep going.”
They pushed onward, the din of the storm pounding like great drums in the clouds, growing louder with each step. Another thunderclap rumbled through the ground. The sound faded, but the concrete continued to shake.
The vibration grew more violent. X could feel it in his bones now. This was more than thunder.
Miles halted, sat, and howled. Now X knew that something was wrong. The dog had a sixth sense about danger.
“What is it?” X asked.
Miles barked back at him.
X looked down the road and then back the way they had come. He didn’t want to turn back, but Miles wouldn’t budge.
Before X could move, a section of dirt on the right side of the bridge crumbled away, splashing into the water. Cracks webbed across the road. Miles nudged up against him, nearly herding him off the road. X finally realized what was happening. He had lived through dust storms powerful enough to skin you alive and ice storms that could freeze you where you stood, but he had never been in an earthquake before.
He didn’t know what to do besides run. Miles ran after him down the bridge, toward solid land. More cracks broke across the road, and a piece the size of a truck tumbled down the left side and splashed into the brown water.
The entire area must be some sort of sinkhole. Maybe it had always been this way, but he suspected that the bombs had made things even more unstable.
He hopped over part of the buckling street. Miles followed with a graceful leap. For several minutes, they ran at full speed, the quake still rocking the land bridge. They weren’t far from where they had started. Ahead, the curved road connected with solid ground. Water sloshed along the side of the bridge as the groaning earth shook beneath them. X glimpsed movement under the dark surface, but lost sight of it when his boot caught a chunk of concrete. He fell, scraping his kneepads on the road, and dropped the rifle.
He paused long enough to grab the weapon and then continued running after Miles. The dog was still bolting for safety, and X didn’t bother calling after him. The dog would reach safety, even if X didn’t. That was something, at least.
Move it, old man!
Breaking into a run, he glimpsed another flash of movement in the sewage-colored water. This wasn’t from the quake. This was alive. A curved red back squirmed like a snake beneath the surface and then vanished.
The land bridge suddenly shook so hard that a fissure opened up a few feet ahead. Miles tried to stop but slid toward the widening crevice splitting the bridge in half.
X ran harde
r than he could remember running, as the dog slipped over the side. Miles managed to turn and claw at the top with his front paws, but his hind legs had gone over the edge.
Throat and lungs burning, X sucked in air, forcing his tired muscles to pump faster. He bent low and prepared to slide toward Miles when a massive coiled body rose from the water on the left side of the bridge. A bright red tentacle flicked out and grabbed Miles.
X screamed in wordless rage and horror. He dropped his rifle and ran full speed for the edge of the road. As he prepared to jump, he unsheathed his knife, then propelled his body into the air.
“I’m coming, boy!” he yelled.
His boots sank into the fetid muck as he splashed into the water. The world went dark for a flitting moment. He kicked above the surface and turned from side to side to search the murky water for Miles or the beast. His muffled screams filled his helmet.
“Miles, Miles!”
Another tentacle whipped in front of him, slamming into his side. The twenty-foot-long creature had Miles in its grip. X kicked toward him and swiped with the blade, slashing through the rubbery hide. The wound did not bleed but instead disgorged pinkish spheres the size of apples from the Hive’s farm. He slashed again as the creature twisted its boneless body through the water.
This time, his blade sliced through the bulging midsection, letting out more of the balls that, X realized, must be eggs.
The gravid monster let Miles go and whisked about to face X. A halo of spikes rose around the creature’s head, and it opened a maw lined with sharp teeth. Then the serpentine nightmare clamped its mouth shut and squirmed away as X jabbed at it.
He sucked in filtered air and tried to watch the beast circling. The cloudy water made it nearly impossible to see anything, and the weight of the armor made treading water difficult.
A flash of motion alerted him at the last second as the monster darted through the murk. X moved left and jabbed again with the knife, but the blade missed, and the creature wasted no time throwing a coil of its muscular body around his chest armor and squeezing.
Hell Divers III_Deliverance Page 10
