“Oh, my G-God,” Rodger stuttered. The grin was gone, and his eyes were squeezed shut. He wasn’t the only one feeling sick. Magnolia had to will her food to stay down, even though she had eaten very little.
“Take us lower,” Michael said, his tone still measured and calm.
“I am unable to descend beyond the minimum safe distance,” Timothy replied.
Magnolia watched the spurs of land on the screen. Hills and ruined buildings reached up dangerously close to Deliverance’s belly.
A recessed red light switched on, and the Klaxon wailed its high-pitched alternating tones. Movement danced around the room in the swirling red light, the divers casting shadows that looked like Sirens.
Two bolts of lightning struck the bow, and an explosion followed somewhere deeper in the ship. Timothy’s hologram reappeared on the bridge.
“Fire detected in compartment fourteen,” he reported.
“Seal it off!” Michael yelled, his measured tone forgotten.
Ten minutes into the journey, and the ship was already on fire.
Another monitor fell off the bulkhead, shattering on the floor.
“Lower, Timothy!” Michael ordered.
“Sir, I would highly recommend—”
“Just do it!”
Magnolia looked at her monitor. They were just fifty feet above the water now and fast approaching a land mass.
“Contact at one o’clock!” she shouted.
“Readjusting course,” Timothy replied. The ship veered left, the fins cutting through the air. Lightning illuminated an island about a mile away, silhouetting the shells of old buildings. For the next few minutes, they flew under the storm without suffering a single strike, but the turbofans were skirting dangerously close to the jutting towers below.
“The fire in compartment fourteen has been isolated,” Timothy said. “We are three minutes from target.”
Another bolt of lightning slammed the starboard hull, and Magnolia gritted her teeth as the ship jolted violently. The Klaxon screeched on and on, filling the bridge. On-screen, the entire sky seemed to light up at once. Magnolia squinted against the brightness.
Nearly blinded, ears ringing, she looked down at the monitor, where dozens of contacts blinked on the radar.
“Shit!” she yelled, unsure whether anyone could hear her over the alarms. “We’ve got multiple objects ahead!” By the time she looked back at the main screen, the obstacles were already looming into view. The buildings lined the horizon like teeth on a Siren’s jaw.
“Are those scrapers?” Rodger asked.
“More of them than I’ve ever seen,” Layla replied.
“That’s our target,” Timothy said. “We are two miles out from Miami. Everyone, hold on!”
Magnolia watched the screen, flinching when a flash of electricity hit the stern. She saw the strike with perfect clarity as it lanced like a bullet into the ship. The screen of her station exploded, sending glass, circuitry, and pieces of metal flying into the air. Shrapnel sliced her cheek, burning as it cut through her flesh.
Rodger reached out for her. “Mags!”
Flames danced from the destroyed console, as if reaching out for her body. Michael unbuckled his harness and grabbed an extinguisher. She tried to get out of her harness, but the clasp wouldn’t release. The heat from the flames singed her hair, and she pulled back, screaming.
“Mags!” Rodger cried again as he shucked off his own harness. He reached through the flames, his arm catching fire as he unfastened her belt and dragged her away. White mist suddenly coated the station, suffocating the fire in a single blast. The spray turned on Rodger and Magnolia next.
“One minute to target,” Timothy said over the comms as if nothing were happening on the bridge.
Smoke from at least three fires on the bridge choked the air. A voice was calling out to her over the Klaxon’s blare.
“Magnolia, are you okay? Please, Mags!”
She turned toward the sound and found Rodger’s pleading eyes.
Managing a nod, she blinked away the sting of smoke and focused on the main view screen. The skeins of lightning died away. Below, she saw what was once a great metropolis. And beyond the shells of towers was something she had longed to see again.
The ocean.
The ship jolted again, and Rodger helped Magnolia strap into another seat.
“There are fires in compartments four and five,” Timothy said. “Sealing them off now.”
Deliverance rocked so violently that the front monitor cracked. Magnolia could still see the ocean, though. And something else: a red light flashing from the top of a tower. Was that a real light or a product of shock?
“Taking us down,” Timothy said.
The monitor fell to the floor, shattering before she could get a good look at the source of the red light. She reached up and put a hand to her face, gently probing the wound. Her fingers came away bloody.
Then they were descending again, slowly, like an elevator. Michael finished blasting the fires with the extinguisher, and vents sucked the smoke out of the room.
“Prepare for landing,” Timothy said.
* * * * *
One year and nine months earlier
X woke up shivering. He forced a heavy eyelid open to a blurred version of the world. He couldn’t see much besides rusted brown metal. His face was pressed against a cold metal surface.
Groaning, he tried to move onto his side, but his body wouldn’t respond. He could move only his eyelids, and even those felt heavy like metal hatches.
Was this some sort of a dream?
He drew in several long breaths and then pushed at the ground. His arms wobbled, and he fell back to the cold metal. A fence of bars obstructed his view, but through the gaps he could make out a candle burning on a bulkhead, spreading a glow over a pitted surface streaked with brown.
He was in a cage inside a larger room. But how had he gotten here? And where was Miles?
Fear gripped him when he realized he wasn’t just alone, but also shirtless. The resulting surge of adrenaline enabled him to push himself up, stretching clenched muscle fibers.
At the sound of voices, his eyes flitted across the room to a metal hatch with a spin wheel.
No, it can’t be. You’re dreaming.
More of the voices echoed, faint and muddled. It took several moments of listening for X to realize that he couldn’t make them out, because he didn’t know the language.
A vague memory raced through his mind. In it, he was back at the ITC facility, where he heard the same language being spoken.
That was basically the last thing he could recall.
He wrapped his arms across his chest, shivering in the cold, and trying to think harder. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the flashlights inside the stairwell, and then the men in bulky armor, with long cords hooked to oxygen tanks. They were dragging nets full of Sirens out of the facility. That was the last thing he remembered before blacking out.
Wait … no … There was one other memory … the image of a man with oblong eye coverings on his helmet. He had fired some sort of electrical weapon. The blue jolt was the last thing X remembered.
At least Miles was still safe in their hideout. X had to get back to him, but he had no idea where he was or who these people were.
One thing he was certain of: they weren’t from the sky—at least, not from the ship of his memories. And since they had captured him and thrown him in this cell, they weren’t good people, either.
“I fucking hate humans,” X said quietly. Even the croaking whisper sparked the raw pain in his throat, and he remembered why he was ever in the ITC facility to begin with.
Shit, the cancer meds!
The reminder gave him a spark of energy, and he managed to crawl over to the bars. He still wore the bottom half of his suit, but the upper half had
been stripped, along with his armor.
X crawled along the edge of the cage to look for his gear. He finally spotted it on a pile across the room. Using what little energy he had, he moved over to the edge of the bars and reached between them. His filthy fingernails just narrowly missed the bag containing the cancer meds.
He tried again. Letting out a breath, he took a moment to rest, trying to ignore the pain in his throat.
Stay focused. Stay alive. Breathe, Xavier. Just breathe.
He searched his pockets for anything useful. His captors had patted him down pretty well, removing everything from his cargo pockets. Or maybe not everything …
He pulled out the small syringe from the bottom of a cargo pocket. Holding it up to the glow of the candle, he saw it was an adrenaline shot, with some liquid still left in it.
Footfalls echoed from outside the hatch across the room, and X wasted no time jamming the shot into his leg. He kept the syringe in his hand, holding it flat against his forearm, while his eyes rolled up into his head. His veins constricted, and red flashed across his vision.
He gritted his teeth again, and this time one of them cracked from the pressure. When his vision finally cleared, the wheel on the hatch was spinning. It creaked open and slammed into the bulkhead, disgorging a burly figure that bent down to clear the overhead.
X blinked and tried to focus on the huge man wearing one of the bulky armored suits. He carried his helmet under his arm. The glow of the candle spread over his caramel skin and shaved head.
A helmeted figure, cradling a rifle, followed him into the room. He stopped next to the open hatch and turned his oval eye slots on X.
The man with a shaved head lumbered over to the bars, boots clanking on the deck. He crouched beside the cage, and X shifted his gaze from the Siren skull crests on his shoulder pads, to his face in the flickering light.
The man licked his thick brown lips, dark eyes narrowing beneath a circular scar on his forehead, and above a nose whose missing tip provided a window into his nostrils.
Hot breath that smelled of barbecued meat hit X in the face.
The man grinned, opening his mouth to expose a row of sharpened teeth. Then he spoke approvingly in a deep voice. “Sabrás rico a la parrilla.”
X shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“¿No Español?”
“English,” X replied, realizing that “Español” was the language he had been hearing. He didn’t remember it from school as a kid, but then, he didn’t remember much else these days, either.
The man just stared at X for a moment, then pointed to the center of his muscle-shaped chest armor, where an octopus had been engraved in the metal.
“El Pulpo. King of the Cazadores.”
X raised a shaky finger to his chest and said, “Xavier.” He had a hundred questions in his jangled brain, but he settled on the first one that came to mind. “What do you want with me?”
“The Cazadores need more.”
X tried to make sense of it. How did the Hive not know of their existence? Unless these people had absolutely no radio contact—which was possible now that he thought about it.
“Where is your home?” X asked.
His captor ignored the question and posed one of his own. “How many of you?”
X thought of Miles again. The dog was out there waiting, probably frantic. And judging by this guy’s teeth, he would likely eat a dog.
“Just me,” X said.
El Pulpo reared his head back and laughed. The man at the bulkhead chuckled, his voice raspy through the breathing apparatus.
“You lie,” el Pulpo said, turning back to X with a stone-cold face.
X shook his head. “I’m the last man—or I was, until I met you.”
“YOU LIE!”
Hot breath hit X in the face. El Pulpo snorted out his third nostril and then calmly said, “Tell me where the others are.”
X blinked and hesitated, then raised a finger to the ceiling.
“In the sky,” he said.
El Pulpo narrowed his dark eyes again.
“No more lies. Time to feast.” He pulled a machete from a leather sheath on his belt. Then he retrieved a key from a pocket and unlocked the gate into the large cell. X scrambled backward, the adrenaline shot still rushing through his veins.
The man at the bulkhead said something in Spanish and pointed at X.
“No jefe, está enfermo. Mátelo, nada mas y se lo dejamos a los tiburones.”
El Pulpo hesitated, towering over him with the blade drawn. X tried to glean something from their conversation, but he couldn’t understand a damn word. The man at the hatch kept repeating, “No lo comamos. Nos asqueará.”
Clicking his tongue, el Pulpo silenced the other man.
“He says you’re sick, no good to eat,” el Pulpo said, turning back to X. Now he knew why the man’s breath smelled like barbecue. These barbarians wouldn’t stop with eating Miles; X was also on the menu.
The Cazadores were cannibals.
El Pulpo grabbed X under the arm and yanked him to his feet.
“NO!” X shouted, squirming in the powerful man’s grip. The cold, dull machete blade touched his bare neck, and rancid breath almost made him gag. X tried to fight, but the man was much stronger and had X in an iron grip.
“I guess we just kill you and feed you to the demonios,” el Pulpo said.
It didn’t take long for X to realize who the demons were. He was about to become Siren chow.
“Lo siento,” el Pulpo said with raised brow.
As he began tracing the blade across X’s throat, X stomped on his foot and pulled free of his grip. Blood trickled down his cold chest.
El Pulpo let out a roar. X pulled out his syringe and jammed the needle into the man’s right eye. The machete clanked to the floor, and X snatched it up.
The man with the rifle was already moving toward the open gate to the cell. X shoved el Pulpo forward and then bounded around his side.
The barrel of the rifle hit X in the chest as he raised the blade.
Click.
The helmeted man looked down at the gun.
Heart pounding, X didn’t waste his lucky break. He swung the machete into the side of the rifleman’s helmet and left it embedded in his skull. Then he grabbed up the rifle and smashed el Pulpo in the round scar on his forehead—which wasn’t a scar at all, but a tattoo of the same octopus logo on his chest armor.
The massive man collapsed in a heap of armored limbs.
X pulled the trigger again, but the gun wouldn’t fire. A bad round, perhaps, but he had no time to clear it. And it didn’t matter, anyway. El Pulpo was out cold.
After locking him in the cage, X moved over to grab his gear. An animalistic grunt came from behind, and he glanced over his shoulder at the rifleman with the machete sticking out of his helmet. His legs were squirming, and he was making odd noises.
The sight gave him an idea. X didn’t know how many Cazadores were in this building, but he would need a disguise to escape.
X walked over and yanked the machete free. Blood gushed from the man’s head, and X removed the helmet to find another face with an octopus tattoo on the forehead.
X continued to strip the dead man. Once he had put on new clothes and the armor, he grabbed his pack containing the cancer medicine. There was only one thing left to do before he escaped this wretched place: find a map or any information he could get about where these barbarians lived.
TWENTY-ONE
Present day
This was it. The moment Michael had been anxiously awaiting. In a few minutes, Team Raptor would leave the ship and begin the trek through Miami to find X.
Breathing in filtered air, he used his headlamp to navigate from the bridge to the cargo hold. Timothy had silenced the alarms, but it didn’t matter. Ever
y creature in Miami would have seen them coming in hot over the swamps.
Weapons ready and suits functioning at 100 percent, the four divers stepped into the cargo hold, ready for whatever awaited them outside. The door creaked open at Michael’s command, and Timothy’s hologram emerged by the exit.
“Good luck,” he said politely. “I hope you find what you are looking for, Commander.”
“Don’t move from this location,” Michael ordered. He set off down the metal walkway with his AK-47 out and up. To the divers, he said, “NVGs on.”
He chinned on his optics and moved out into the field that Timothy had chosen as their LZ. A circular structure taller than the ship surrounded them on all sides. Thousands of seats, blasted and melted almost beyond recognition, lined the sloping walls, all facing the field. Michael had no idea what the space had been used for in the old days, and he didn’t really care.
The ramp to the cargo bay retracted as they cleared the area for contacts. Fingers of smoke rose from the airship’s battered hull, still sizzling from a dozen lightning strikes. At least he didn’t have to worry about Timothy abandoning them out here. Deliverance wasn’t going anywhere until it got some major repairs. From the looks of it, they were lucky to have made it here at all.
Magnolia shook her head and muttered, “Hope you have a plan to get us out of here, Commander.”
“I think I know what this place was,” Rodger said. “They used to play games here.”
Lightning flayed the ground in the distance. The boom silenced Rodger. Michael gestured for the divers to fan out and find the closest exit. He hurried to take the lead, knowing that whatever happened, he could count on his friends. Layla, Rodger, and Magnolia were prepared for what came next, and he trusted them to have his back.
The plan was simple: navigate through five city blocks and find the source of X’s last transmission. His message had mentioned two locations: one to avoid, and one where he had been holed up two years ago. It felt almost as if X was still watching out for him.
He knew that the odds of finding X alive and mentally stable weren’t great. But he had to know, had to give it this one last shot.
Thunder boomed overhead. Michael strained to hear the wails of Sirens or other beasts over the noise. Neon patches of weeds shifted in the dirt ahead, their pulpy limbs flashing as the divers approached. Michael moved around the clusters, careful not to get close to the suction cups on the longer tendrils.
Hell Divers III_Deliverance Page 24
