Hell Divers II: Ghosts

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Books by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  The Hell Divers Trilogy

  (Offered by Blackstone Publishing)

  Hell Divers

  Hell Divers II: Ghosts

  Hell Divers III: Deliverance (Summer 2018—preorder here)

  The Extinction Cycle Series

  (Offered by Orbit)

  Extinction Horizon

  Extinction Edge

  Extinction Age

  Extinction Evolution

  Extinction End

  Extinction Aftermath

  Extinction Lost (A Team Ghost short story)

  Extinction War (November 28, 2017—preorder here)

  The Trackers Series

  Trackers

  Trackers 2: The Hunted

  Trackers 3: The Storm (Fall 2017—preorder here)

  The Orbs Series

  (Offered by Simon451/Simon & Schuster)

  Solar Storms (An Orbs Prequel)

  White Sands (An Orbs Prequel)

  Red Sands (An Orbs Prequel)

  Orbs

  Orbs II: Stranded

  Orbs III: Redemption

  Copyright © 2017 by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  E-book published in 2017 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Kathryn Galloway English

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Library ebook ISBN: 978-1-5047-2603-0

  Trade ebook ISBN: 978-1-5047-2606-1

  CIP data for this book is available from

  the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

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  For Maria … You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.

  The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

  —Epictetus

  PROLOGUE

  The last man on Earth knew that monsters were hunting him. It didn’t matter that he was already dead and condemned to hell; the beasts would never quit.

  Lightning guided him and the dog through the ruins of the city. They moved through the darkness with calculated precision, his radiation suit snug around his lean muscles and scarred flesh. His Siberian husky, Miles, wore a similar suit to protect him.

  The dog turned to check out a noise coming from a heap of rubble. A bottle rolled down the side, bounced, and shattered at the bottom. The wind whipped over the crest of the mound, picking up a tin can and whirling it away in the draft.

  The man swept his assault rifle back and forth for contacts. He couldn’t see the creatures, but he could sense them out there.

  Miles trotted on, uninterested.

  The ground ahead was clear for now, but the path ahead was treacherous. Taking cautious strides over the debris field, the man melted into a passage through the crumbled ruins of a city block. Blackened metal bruised with rust littered his path. The jagged ends could rip his suit open with ease.

  He stopped and signaled Miles to halt. The dog sat on his hind legs, and they waited for a flash of lightning to illuminate the path forward. The man knew this route well and had memorized where the main hazards lay, but even so, every step was fraught with danger.

  A sinkhole fifteen steps ahead had nearly swallowed him and Miles a few months back. Twenty more steps beyond the pit was a wall of sharp rebar that had ripped his suit twice before. But the biggest danger aside from the monsters were the clusters of poisonous weeds growing here. No matter how many times he cut them down with his machete, they would grow back even thicker. Their sting would maim him, but it could kill a dog.

  A flash of lightning spread its blue glow over the flayed iron ribs of an old building. The man didn’t waste the light. He never wasted the light. He made a quick sweep for hostiles with his rifle muzzle, checked for the lethal weeds, then plodded forward into the belly of the building.

  Thunder boomed overhead, like a war drum urging him forward. He listened for other sounds: the skittering of clawed feet, or, worst of all, the otherworldly wailing of the Sirens.

  But tonight, he did not hear them. Whatever hunted them was a different kind of monster.

  He and Miles moved silently through the gutted corpse of an old-world building. Steel girders rose above them like the bones of a gigantic beast. When he first discovered this place, it had reminded him of the fossils of dinosaurs he had seen in books, growing up.

  Another flash of lightning lit up a pair of real fossils. The remains of two souls rested in the dirt ahead, curled up in the fetal position. The larger skeleton hugged the smaller one—a mother protecting her child from the blast that had leveled the city hundreds of years ago.

  The man tried to feel something at the sight. Memories flooded his mind, but he pushed them away as he always did. Damned men had no right to feel.

  His old life seemed far away now, and he wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve such a horrible punishment. Part of him wished he had just died in the sky two years ago, fried by lightning or snatched by the winged hunters. But he had Miles. A dog and a dream—that was all he had.

  They pushed on through the waste, toward the one thing that kept him venturing out into the darkness. Today was the last time he would check the radio transmissions. If there was no response to his SOS, he would finally leave Hades.

  For two years he had waited to hear something from the people in the sky. For two years he had scavenged the wastes with Miles, in search of food and supplies to keep them going until help arrived. They had evaded the monsters and fought them when they couldn’t run anymore.

  Time was hard to measure, especially when he had no idea whether it was night or day. He lived his life in the darkness, and he had given up marking the wall of his shelter over a year ago. As the days turned into months, and the months into years, he had realized that in hell there was no salvation—and no escape. If he tried to leave now, he would have to abandon their supplies, food, and only source of water. Trekking to the wastes beyond Hades would likely mean death for them both.

  Time was everything, and time was nothing. And as it slowly passed, details of his earlier life eroded away like bones turning to dust. The faces and voices of people he had lost became harder to remember.

  That was how he knew he was dead. His body might still be alive, but the loneliness and isolation had killed whatever remained of his soul.

  And yet, there was still a seed of something human inside the man. Perhaps it was his affection for Miles. He wanted to protect the dog, as he had once protected people.

  Something else pushed him on through the merciless world that humans had once called home. The man had a strong desire to fight. It was something deep in the marrow of his bones, like a cancer that he couldn’t kill.

  Miles stopped before a pocket of glowing bushes. Tentacles with needle-lined suction cups reached out for the dog, and the man motioned him back.

  The wind swayed the stems dangerously close, and he took another step back. A year ago, he had almost died when one stung his leg. He still had the suction-cup scar—yet another badge on his tormented flesh.

  Raising the rifle, he checked his surroundings again. Awareness was the key to survival. Miles provided keener ears and eyes, but his sense of smell
was handicapped by the mask he wore.

  The man listened, scanned, listened again, then directed the dog onward. The Industrial Tech Corporation bunker wasn’t far now, but it was buried deep in the guts of the city.

  The lightning continued to guide him through the skeletal remains of the building. He pulled out his machete and hacked through a bush in their path. The limbs plopped to the ground, wriggling like decapitated snakes.

  He wiped the gooey sap off carefully on the ground and resheathed the blade. They took a slight detour around the next clump of weeds. The stems, activated by their presence, blinked alive with a dull pink glow. Like most life-forms on the surface, this one was carnivorous.

  The sky boomed and he glanced up at the swirling soup of clouds and static electricity. The storm was growing.

  A single raindrop splashed across his visor. One beat later, the clouds erupted, pouring sheets of radioactive acid rain over the city. Miles, scared by the sound of thunder, brushed up against his leg.

  The man considered turning back to his shelter but decided to brave the storm. He was almost to the place where he had discovered Miles a year ago. They pressed on, the dog trotting closely alongside as they navigated the final stretch of flashing bushes. The glow pulsing over the path was eerie yet beautiful. The sign of life offered a slim hope that maybe, someday, the surface would thrive again.

  Perhaps hell wasn’t for eternity.

  A shotgun blast of lightning snapped him back from his thoughts. It arced into a debris pile three stories high on the western edge of the open tunnel. Sparks rained down over hunks of brick and spikes of rebar.

  He took a step forward but halted when he saw movement. Miles saw it at the same time and took a few crouching steps forward, then let out a low growl.

  The man’s eyes weren’t as good as the dog’s, and he had to squint. Rain slammed into him as he waited for light. Three beats passed before lightning arced overhead and backlit the city blocks. This time, he didn’t need to squint.

  His finger moved instinctively to the trigger, and his dead heart flinched when he saw the creatures hunting them. He had been wrong earlier. The Sirens were stalking him all along—hundreds of them, skittering across the mounds of rubble.

  Never in his life had he seen so many.

  He tried to move, but his aching muscles were frozen. Maybe if they stood perfectly still, the monsters wouldn’t find them. After all, he didn’t have a battery pack or any other energy source that would draw the beasts to him.

  Swallowing, he watched them stampede right for his position. He couldn’t outrun them, and he couldn’t fight them all. Hades had finally won. Surprisingly, the only sadness he felt about his impending death was for Miles. His dog’s death would be on him.

  All at once, the glow of the bushes brightened, flashing from pink to a fiery red. The Sirens shrieked louder and hurried onward. The beasts were coming for the plants, not him.

  Their high-pitched wails rose over the loud crack of thunder. The sound, no matter how many times he heard it, still turned his blood to ice.

  Miles backpedaled, and the man snapped into motion. He ran, boots slogging through the mud. The dog lunged through a gap in the concrete, but the man had to stop and flatten his body. He lowered his rifle to squeeze through the narrow space. Rebar jutted out, but he ducked under it. He made it through without any more tears and kept running. He leaped over a grove of the glowing weeds. His boots hit the earth with a splash and sank into the toxic muck. He pulled free and continued onward.

  Miles was waiting for him, sitting on his haunches.

  Breathing heavily now, the man looked past the dog and focused on the tunnel exit. It opened onto a city street framed on both sides by sagging structures. This was one of many ITC campuses, and the buildings had been constructed to survive the apocalypse. Humans, however, were not.

  The screeching rose into the familiar wail, like an emergency siren. He twisted to see the monsters entering the open tunnel. The bushes growing throughout swayed back and forth, tentacles groping for the eyeless beasts. He stopped for a moment to watch as the Sirens fed, ripping the stems off and jamming the tentacles into mouths rimmed with jagged teeth.

  Heart pounding, he moved back as one of the monsters, still chewing on a glowing stick, turned its head toward him. The leathery, eyeless face locked onto him, and it spat out the stem it was munching on to release a high-pitched call.

  Two dozen conical heads all seemed to home in on him at once. Thunder boomed overhead as if answering their wails.

  “Run!” he yelled at the dog.

  The man felt the trickle of fear but pushed it away. Planting his boots firmly, he squared his shoulders and fired off a volley into the beast that had first made his position. His aim was true, and the rounds punched through the thick skull. Blood darkened the mud as the Siren crashed to the ground. He fired another burst that took down two more of the beasts to his left. The rest fanned out, some taking to the sky, others darting for cover in the toxic rubble.

  He wiped his visor clean and turned to run down the street after the dog. He could see the bunker’s domed entrance in the distance, but clusters of the poisonous bushes had grown along the path since he was here last. As Miles approached, their stems activated, blinking like warning lights.

  “Watch out!” he shouted after the dog.

  Miles navigated the minefield of plants with ease and galloped down the final block, then sat in front of the double doors leading to safety.

  The man slung the rifle over his shoulder as he ran. He reached for the key in his vest pocket. Halfway down the street, he turned to fire at a Siren sailing through the sky. It swooped away from his gunfire and dropped into a nosedive, coming right at him. Holding in a breath, he squinted and fired a three-round burst into the creature’s jagged spine. It crashed to the ground like a missile, throwing dirt into the air.

  Miles was barking now, which drew the creatures’ attention. Another Siren sailed toward the dog. Raising his rifle, the man fired two bursts that lanced through the creature’s leathery flesh. Then he leaped over another toxic bush with the grace of a much younger man as tentacles reached up for him. One grazed his boot, needles slashing the worn leather. The tip broke through, burning his skin, but he breathed through the pain and limped for the doors. He would survive a minor sting as long as he could apply ointment in time, but he would not survive the Sirens. They would dismember him on the spot and fight over his remains. He had seen it before, years ago.

  A memory of an old friend tried to surface in his mind, but he pushed the traumatic scene away and ran from the monsters.

  Miles was pacing outside the door, his gaze trained on his master. The man wiped rain from his visor as he bolted for the entrance. He knew the final route better than any other place in Hades. But even with it memorized, he hadn’t prepared for the wet asphalt. He hit a slick spot, slipped, and crashed to the concrete, losing the key in the fall. Pain swept across his battle-scarred body.

  Miles barked and ran toward him, but the man yelled for the dog to get back.

  He pushed himself up just as a network of lightning skewered a Siren in the sky, sending it windmilling to the ground. The smoking creature crashed into a cluster of the bushes. Tentacles clamped on, looping around it. The Siren wasn’t dead, and it thrashed violently amid the pulsating red stems. Blood splattered, steaming in the cold.

  The key. Where the hell is the key?

  The man scanned the ground as the Siren twisted in agony, tentacles plastered to its body like cords hooked up to some monstrous machine. The screeching was so loud, it made the blood in his ears sing.

  Fifty more steps—that was all he had left to go. Get to Miles; get inside the bunker. But first, get the key. He focused on the ground, searching desperately.

  There it was, a few feet away, between him and the dying monster. Tentacles shot ou
t at him as he approached. He parried them with his rifle butt and then bent down to scoop up the key. Another tentacle whizzed past his arm, and a second came from his left and smacked the visor of his helmet, sticking to the glass. He pulled his machete from the sheath on his thigh and slashed through the stem. A geyser of green blood jetted into the air.

  Miles continued barking, frantically now. The man checked the sky to make sure none of the monsters were headed for the dog’s position.

  The trapped lightning-struck Siren stopped struggling and fell on its back, and the vines dragged it into the grasp of other vines, which pulled it into the heart of the thicket.

  A final shriek followed the man as he turned to run.

  Behind him, dozens of clawed, naked feet slapped the asphalt or slurped in the mud. Wailing Sirens filled the sky, and above the circling creatures there was something else: the beetlelike outline of an airship.

  Raw memories washed over him like rain. Memories of a time before Miles, before this wretched hell. They filled his mind, and for a beat, Hades vanished, replaced by the brilliant sun. In the distance, the Hive was slowly flying away. Even as the balloon had pulled his body upward, his heart had pulled him toward the airship. He had drifted across the sky, hailing Captain Maria Ash over the comms as the helium in his balloon escaped and slowly lowered him back to the ruined surface. But his pleas for rescue had gone unanswered.

  Lightning filled the cloud that he had mistaken for an airship.

  Behind him, a Siren screamed. He pulled the blaster from his hip and shot a flare at the galloping beasts. The brilliant red light blossomed out across the street, and the monsters darted away from the glow. He holstered the gun, grabbed his rifle, and fired bursts at the retreating Sirens, then turned back toward Miles with the key in his other hand.

  The dog trotted up to greet him, but the man pointed and yelled, “Inside!” He unlocked the door, and Miles darted through the opening.

  In a fluid sequence of movements, the man shouldered his rifle again, turned, and squeezed off shots at the encroaching monsters. The flare was still coughing fire into the street, but there wasn’t much light left, and he didn’t waste it.