Warriors

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  The first thing she spotted was a pole sticking out of the sand. She walked over and tried to dislodge it.

  Wiggling it back and forth, she finally managed to free the five-foot length of pipe. It reminded her of the spear General Rhino carried. Almost as long as her body, it was so heavy she could hardly swing it.

  The farther she trekked, the more frightened she became. She had no real weapon. No flashlight, no food, no water. And no idea where her boat was.

  Ada stopped and thrust the pipe into the sand.

  You’re okay. There’s nothing out here with you.

  She wanted to believe that, but the electrical storm illuminated a dense tropical jungle growing up through the old-world resort city. Trees had grown up through mounds of rubble, and vines curled like snakes toward the beach.

  A quarter mile away, a raised concrete walkway cut the beach. At the end, metal poles stuck out of the sand and rose from the water. The pier that had connected them to the concrete walk was mostly gone.

  In the harbor, bows and masts jutted out of the surf. She counted two dozen yachts and double that number in smaller craft, washed up along the shoreline and partially buried in sand.

  The bigger vessels didn’t make much sense to her in a harbor so shallow that their remains poked out of the water like broken bones.

  Maybe people had fled here after the bombs, she thought. Maybe they anchored here to wait out the war.

  She looked back, to where hotels and resorts had once overlooked the harbor. The buildings were mostly rubble. Probably felled by a monstrous tsunami—a bomb would have caused much higher radiation readings.

  She climbed up onto the concrete walkway for a look at the beach on the other side.

  Lightning flashed, and in the glow, she saw there wasn’t much left of the pier on this side of the marina, either. Only a few rusting platforms—mostly just poles sticking out of the water.

  She waited again for lightning and used it to scan the shore.

  Her spirits lifted when she saw a boat that looked like hers. But they sank again when she saw tracks in the sand just below the edge of the concrete walkway.

  She waited for another lightning bolt. It provided just enough light to make out a trail made by webbed feet about the size of a human’s.

  The tracks ran between her and the capsized boat that looked like hers.

  She hurried down the sand, past the remains of a metal boat whose hull was cracked in half. Something skittered out from under the stern.

  Alarmed, she jabbed the metal pole into it, impaling a purple crab the size of a sea turtle. The creature squirmed, claws snapping at her, all four eyeballs looking on probably the first human it had ever seen.

  Ada gave a scream, not of horror but of disgust, and flung the pole down on the sand. The crab managed to free itself and scuttled away into the crashing surf.

  She stood there staring for several moments until her heart stopped pounding. Then she raced to the capsized boat, leaving the pole behind. Coming closer, she saw that it was indeed her boat, with the same oars she had spent countless hours hauling through the waves.

  She pulled it from the sand, only to have it snap in two.

  “Son of a . . .”

  She found the other oar still strapped against the hull, but the top of the paddle had broken off. Gear and uncoiled rope lay scattered about the boat. The steering wheel was partially buried in the sand.

  But at least the hull didn’t have any damage that she could see. If she could rig a rope, maybe she could turn it over and launch it back to sea.

  Somewhere on this beach, there had to be other oars for the scavenging. She found her machete in the sand. Then she ducked under the portside gunwale.

  The cabin she had called home was crushed against the beach on the starboard side. She tried to open the hatch, but it, too, seemed broken.

  She kicked it with her good foot. The steel toe did the trick, and the hatch popped open. Inside, she saw that the starboard side of the cabin bulkhead had been crushed inward, knocking off all the gear and crates she had locked in place. Even worse, they had spilled into standing water.

  “No luck at all,” she whispered.

  She dug through the soup for whatever she could salvage. In the end, she returned to the sand with her soaking backpack, a knife, and a hand flashlight.

  Slumping down onto the beach, she watched the surf and felt the anger warm her body. The Cazadores she’d killed had it coming for what they did to Katrina, but how did she deserve this punishment?

  “Fuck you for sending me out here, Xavier,” she growled. “Fuck you for not believing me about the Cazadores.”

  She lay back on the sand, looking up at the blue explosions of electricity in the clouds rolling overhead. The thunder made her think of bombs.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” she muttered.

  As if in answer, a croaking sounded in the distance.

  Ada shot up, grabbing the machete and the flashlight. She clicked the button, but the beam didn’t come on.

  She tapped the flashlight with the spine of the machete, and it flashed several times, then died again.

  Dropping the flashlight, she scanned the mounds of rubble along the shoreline for movement.

  The croaking came again a few minutes later, but it didn’t seem to be coming from the beach or the fallen buildings.

  She turned toward the surf.

  A capsized sailboat lay in the sand, its hull stripped of paint. The mainmast was broken, but a remnant of sail flapped lazily in the breeze.

  It struck her then. Maybe she wasn’t stranded here after all. She didn’t need fuel and oars to get her to Florida. She just needed the wind and something to catch it.

  The beach was littered with dozens of boats. At least one had to be seaworthy.

  The croaking came again.

  The escape strategy was great, but she must first survive whatever mutant beasts lurked out there in the ruined city.

  Machete in hand, she backed up to her boat. She wanted to climb inside and hide, but she stayed on the sand, searching the water for the source of the noise.

  When it came again, it was louder. Its source had moved. She scooped up the flashlight again and tried it. The beam came on, lighting up a small area of beach and surf.

  She flicked it in the direction of the next croak.

  Playing the light over the concrete walkway, she paused on a slimy green mass of something attached to the side wall. Horns lined the spine and head of a creature with four jointed legs spread out in L shapes. It looked a lot like a frog.

  The large eyes looked back at her. A purple crab claw hung out of its mouth, wobbling as the creature chewed.

  She kept the beam on the beast, but it didn’t seem to care. The claw fell from the mouth onto the sand. A long tongue shot out and whisked it back into the open mouth.

  Ada took a step back toward her boat, bumping up against the portside gunwale. The light flitted downward and picked up something else on the concrete. Something even slimier than a frog.

  At first glance, the three blobs looked like worms, but then she remembered seeing leeches in her biology classes on the Hive. These were orders of magnitude larger than the small creatures from that lesson.

  They oozed up the wall toward the gargantuan frog.

  The frog continued munching its meal, either unaware or unconcerned. She almost wanted to warn it since it hadn’t tried to harm her, but she didn’t want to risk drawing any attention.

  Besides, the leeches were only a third the frog’s size, and there was no way . . .

  Before she could finish the thought, the closest leech parted down the middle, like a sleeping bag being unzipped halfway. A red maw of gums lined with barbed teeth clamped around one of the frog’s hind legs.

  The creature gave an a
larmed croak and jumped. It succeeded in escaping its attackers, but at the cost of a severed limb.

  The frog hit the beach, leaking blood from the stump. All three worms dropped to the sand, moving astonishingly fast toward the scent of blood.

  A ball of rubbery black skin consumed the frog.

  Nearly falling, Ada ducked into her boat. From beneath the overhanging hull, she watched as the leeches fed. The crunching made her queasy, and she resisted the urge to take off her helmet and place her hands over her ears.

  The noises of death felt like a foreshadowing of her own fate, and for a fleeting moment, she thought of ending it her way, painlessly, instead of being eaten alive like the poor frog.

  The feeding was soon over. The wormy creatures, plump and slower now, squirmed back toward the foamy surf, vanishing in the next wave that lapped the shore.

  The bloodsuckers hadn’t left a drop behind. In fact, they had left nothing. No skin, flesh, or even bones remained. The only evidence of the frog were several webbed footprints.

  And a moment later, the surf washed those away, too.

  SIXTEEN

  The small armada pushed away from the Hive, toward the capitol tower. Other boats sped to the Hive, to help put out the fires and evacuate civilians.

  X sat in the bow of a speedboat with Michael while Sergeant Wynn piloted the craft as fast as he could between patches of burning debris floating on the choppy water. Ton and Victor stood in the back, staring in disbelief.

  The refugees had seen more death in their lives than some Hell Divers. So much for bringing you to a safe place, X thought.

  He looked over the gunwale at the flotsam from the destroyed submarine, but much of the burning debris had come from militia and Cazador vessels.

  He choked up when he saw the burning pyre on the funeral boat. Smoke billowed into the sky as the flames consumed General Rhino’s mortal remains.

  X wasn’t sure how the boat had been set ablaze, but without a proper ceremony, Rhino probably wouldn’t get into Valhalla or wherever it was Cazador warriors went after death.

  “Fuck!” he yelled. A wave of dizziness brought him to the seat, where he tried to contain his anger. But part of him didn’t want to. He was going to need the anger to fight the Sirens.

  He remained sitting, looking in all directions.

  The skinwalkers had hit the Vanguard Islands hard in a well-coordinated attack. And it was Colonel Moreto who had orchestrated the whole thing.

  X should have known she was up to something when she requested that the fight take place on the Hive rooftop.

  The boat weaved around more wreckage, where several militia soldiers held on to pieces of a boat, waving and shouting at crews moving out to pick them up.

  X still didn’t know where Lieutenant Sloan was or where Magnolia, Rodger, and half of his most trusted divers were. He turned back to Sergeant Wynn to ask for an update, raising his voice over the motor’s racket.

  “Last I saw them, they were on the rooftop of the Hive!” Wynn yelled back.

  “Victor, did you see them?” X said.

  Victor shook his head, then asked Ton in their native language. Ton also shook his head in reply.

  “And Lieutenant Sloan?” X asked.

  “She’s still not picking up the radio,” Wynn replied.

  X looked back to the airship, fearing the worst for the divers and the woman in command of the militia. Thick smoke wafted away from the flames lapping the curved beetle shape of the home that had kept much of humanity alive for over two and a half centuries. More flames billowed out of the gaping hole from a missile impact.

  To leave the airship now felt like fleeing, especially without knowing where his friends were, but X had to deploy their limited resources to try to save the capitol tower, too. The damage was severe, but his people would do what they must to salvage the ship.

  If anything in this world was immortal, it wasn’t X. It was the Hive. And it would survive.

  He turned back to the capitol tower and kicked himself for leaving Miles sleeping in his room. If something happened to his dog, Carmela Moreto would die slowly . . .

  “Look!” Michael shouted. He pointed his robotic hand at the tropical forest topping the mounted airship. A winged beast flapped over the tops of the palms, then dived.

  It emerged a moment later with a soldier in its claws. The man kicked helplessly, fighting to get free. He succeeded, but he didn’t fall back to the rooftop, instead plummeting all the way down to the ocean.

  Water splashed from the impact, and X didn’t see the soldier resurface.

  Tracer fire followed the creature into the clouds. More of the abominations circled the tower. One squeezed out of a window on the third level, spread its wings, and took flight.

  “Faster!” X yelled back at Wynn.

  The boat accelerated, jolting over the waves.

  “Sir, I’m picking up some radio chatter,” Wynn said. It sounds like there are over a dozen Sirens inside the tower, most of them at the top.”

  “How is that possible!” Michael yelled back.

  They would find out soon enough, but X hoped to God the monsters hadn’t started from the bottom and worked their way up already.

  Michael loaded a spare assault rifle that Wynn had given him, and X unstrapped his rifle. He struggled to load the shotgun shells from the bandolier into the hybrid weapon, and Michael reached over to help with his robotic hand.

  “Guess we’re twins now,” X said. Feeling helpless and embarrassed, he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Neither of them laughed.

  “Here,” Michael said, handing the weapon back.

  X took the loaded assault rifle–shotgun combo, though he had no idea how he was going to fire the damn thing. It was too heavy to hip fire, especially with his left hand, and his stump was too short to rest the stock on.

  Slinging the weapon, he grabbed his sword. He had killed Sirens with less in the wastes.

  The boat closed in on empty docks in the open marina. X had a feeling this was where the skinwalkers had released the Sirens.

  Wynn took the radio off his vest and held it to his ear while guiding the boat to the dock.

  “Sir, it’s Captain Mitchells. He wants to talk to you.”

  X took the handset. “Tell me you took out all those subs,” he said.

  It was hard to hear over the chug of the motor, but X did make out that Discovery had taken out one sub; then the transmission broke up.

  “Les!” X shouted. “Les, do you—”

  “Sir, I copy,” Les replied. “I was saying there are still at least two submarines left, and they have gone back under.”

  “What about Raven’s Claw?”

  “Not picking it up on radar,” Les said. “We’re continuing to scan.”

  X doubted they would find it. Chances were good the warship had launched the subs from a distance, and one of those subs had somehow unleashed the Sirens.

  “Stay out of view, and take out those subs if they resurface,” X said. “I’ll take care of the Sirens.”

  “Sir, my family . . .”

  Through the static, X could hear the fear in the captain’s voice. He was in the sky, unable to do anything to protect his wife and daughter.

  “I won’t let anything happen to them,” X said. “Watch our back from the skies.”

  Several boats full of militia soldiers powered toward the rig. X handed the radio back to Wynn and prepared to jump onto the dock. Then he saw the bodies. Militia soldiers and civilians, including a Cazador merchant, lay on a dock slick with blood.

  “My God,” Michael groaned.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened here. The Sirens had torn through the area and then scaled the tower or taken flight.

  The boat pulled up alongside the dock, and do
zens of militia soldiers stormed the piers with X and his comrades.

  X raised his sword into the air and shouted, “Save our home!”

  The soldiers shouted in response, but he could hear the fear in their voices. Many of these men and women had fought the Cazadores during the battle for the islands, but they had never faced the mutant monsters.

  X ran ahead of the group to show them he did not fear the beasts and that he would happily give his life today for his home and his people.

  He was first to the elevator cage. Michael, Ton, Victor, and Wynn piled in after him, and he hit the lever.

  The jolt rocked his stomach, and X again cursed himself for drinking too much last night. Facing Sirens with a hangover and no right arm was going to be one of the toughest fights of his life.

  The cage lift was maddeningly slow.

  When it clanked to the sundeck, X burst out. He ran across the gardens toward a side door, sliding to a stop when he heard the electronic wail of a Siren nearby.

  The beast loped around the end of a wall decorated with images of ships and animals. Wings riddled with bullet holes spread outward. It then tucked them to its side and dived toward X while he labored to bring up his slung rifle.

  Two spears sailed overhead and slammed into wrinkled, pale flesh, impaling the beast against the tower bulkhead. Blood smeared the colorful birds and butterflies painted on the wall.

  Ton and Victor drew their swords as it screeched in agony. The creature flapped away from the wall, fighting for altitude, then sank to the deck, where Michael finished it with a burst from his assault rifle.

  The team entered through the side door. A blood trail streaked down the tiled floor, ending at a corpse sprawled in an intersection, only the legs in view.

  Michael shouldered his rifle and went first. A loud crunching resonated, and he held up his robotic fist. X gripped his sword, leaving the rifle slung over his back.

  He followed Michael around the corner to find a Siren hunched over a dead woman. It raised an eyeless face, viscera hanging from the mouth.

  Michael fired a burst as the lips opened to release a screech. The head went backward, and the Siren fell on top of its victim.