Hell Divers IV: Wolves

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Katrina went back to the captain’s chair and sat. Her crew was new, with both young and old officers, but they were her team, and she was proud to have them working with her.

  They had been granted a new beginning with Deliverance. But no matter how well things were going in the sky, their future really depended on what was happening on the surface. If X and Magnolia were dead, then the one shot at finding the Metal Islands was over before it really began.

  “Ensign Connor, bring up our current location on-screen,” she ordered.

  The wall-mounted monitor in front of her chair flashed to life, showing an old-world map. The airships were still flying about fifty miles off the coast of Florida. A curved red line showed the location of the Sea Wolf ever since Deliverance dropped the vessel into the water.

  X had sailed southeast from Florida, between Cuba and the Bahamas. They were just west of the Turks and Caicos Islands when the distress signal activated, but it had shut off not long after being turned on.

  She wasn’t sure precisely where they were now, but it had to be close to those islands. Pushing another button on her monitor, she pulled up the weather overlay map.

  A red cloud swallowed most of the screen, intensifying over Cuba and the Bahamas.

  X had seen this map. He knew what he was getting himself into, and that was why he had opted for the route between the islands. Another dense fog of red covered most of Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. Only a small chain called the Virgin Islands was visible in the blur.

  In her mind’s eye, Katrina pictured the nuclear-tipped missiles striking each of the larger islands two and a half centuries ago, incinerating millions of people and destroying in minutes what had taken humanity an eon to create. But maybe the smaller groups like the one on the map hadn’t been touched. Maybe it was some sort of Goldilocks zone that had been deemed not worth destroying. And maybe the radiation and electrical storms never reached this place.

  Or maybe it was just another mutated wasteland.

  The sound of the hatches opening pulled her away from her reflections. Les ducked under the bulkhead and walked onto the bridge, his normally pale cheeks red. Katrina knew right away something was wrong.

  She rose from her chair.

  “Captain,” he said.

  “That was a quick dinner,” she replied. “How’s Trey?”

  Les sighed at his boots. “He wants to be a Hell Diver.”

  Katrina stroked her jaw. She remembered the look on her father’s face when she had told him the same thing. He wasn’t happy about it, but he hadn’t lived long after she decided to join the ranks of the divers.

  “Trey is a man now and has to make his own way,” she replied.

  Les swallowed, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing, and rubbed his tuft of red hair. “I know.”

  “Try not to worry, Lieutenant. The next time we dive, it will be into a green zone, and even if Trey does decide to go through with this, it will be months before he dives. Besides, we have bigger problems right now.” She motioned for Les to follow her over to the central table.

  “Listen up, everyone,” she said.

  Layla, Dave, Ada, and Bronson all stood to attention at their stations. Even the older ensign, who had a natural slouch, stood ramrod straight.

  “As a few of you already know, we have received a distress beacon from Commander Rodriguez and Miss Katib. The last ping we got from their distress beacon was just west of the Turks and Caicos Islands before it went offline. For now, only a few of us, including Commander Everhart, are privy to this information, and for now I want to keep it that way.”

  “Should we change course, Captain?” Layla asked.

  “No, we hold steady where we are. The electrical storms in this area are too dangerous to try mounting a rescue op. X and Magnolia are on their own for now.”

  “The Sea Wolf is our best hope of finding a new home for humanity,” Layla said.

  Katrina sighed. “I know this, but X and Magnolia can take care of themselves. Right now we need to focus on keeping our ships in the sky …”

  Her words trailed off as realization set in. Her predecessor had often used that same line. The thought chilled her.

  So this was how it felt to lead the final bastion of civilization. The burden of having so many lives in her hands wasn’t even the worst part of leading—it was the secrets she had uncovered on Deliverance that she still hadn’t told to anyone.

  THREE

  The island sure didn’t look like a potential home for the human race. X stood in the off-kilter crow’s nest twenty feet above the Sea Wolf, roving his rifle scope across the shoreline and looking for any sign of the Cazadores or Sirens.

  The same bleak scene from back on the mainland filled the scope. A cold, dead world the color of rust waited on the other side of a wide bay. Along the base of a mountain, the ruins of a city stood at the far edge of a gray beach. The crumbling structures weren’t blackened from the nuclear fires, but the years had not been kind to them.

  It was a place of broken windows, sinking foundations, rotted wood, and cracked roadways, just like every city he had ever seen. The jungle had crept into the heart of the town, covering most of the structures in vines and red foliage.

  No, there weren’t any Cazadores here. This wasn’t the Metal Islands that el Pulpo had spoken of back in Florida. This was just another radioactive old-world city, cursed to die in the darkness.

  And once again X had no choice but to scavenge the wastes while nursing an injury. Blood crusted around his arm where a suction cup had held him tight enough to draw blood through his skin. And his flesh wasn’t the only part of him injured.

  Smoke fingered away from the stern of the Sea Wolf, swirling into the storm clouds above. The vessel had taken severe damage in the storm and the attack. He had blown a three-by-three-foot hole on the port side with the grenade that killed the giant octopus, flaying open the metal deck and splattering the rail with hunks of gore stuck in the barbed wire. Even worse, engine two was destroyed, and battery two was at zero percent charge.

  “Pepper, how long will battery one last us?” X asked over the open channel.

  “Battery one is currently showing an eighty percent charge, which should last roughly two more weeks before requiring a recharge.”

  X twisted for a better view of the deck, examining the damage from above. The beast had done a number on the twin hull, leaving deep rents in the stern and starboard rails. The command center had a broken windshield and a damaged radio.

  “Michael better not come for us,” X muttered to himself.

  “Come again?” Magnolia said.

  “Nothin’.”

  X hadn’t meant for her or Timothy to hear his thoughts about Katrina or Michael coming after him out here. He was terrified that the distress beacon Timothy had activated would provoke the captain into sending them help.

  I can do this on my own, with Miles’ help and maybe Mags’ if she gets smart about shit.

  Grabbing the metal rail, X went back to scanning the island. A few clicks to his wrist monitor brought up a map of their current location. They were in the West Indies, dead north of Hispaniola, which meant he was looking at a part of the Turks and Caicos Island chain.

  “Take us in, Mags,” X said over the comm link.

  “You sure about that?”

  He grumbled. “You need to start trusting me, kid.”

  “And you need to stop calling me ‘kid’—although I won’t hold my breath for that day.”

  The single working engine purred beneath the deck, and the rudders turned slightly. He felt a little guilty about having yelled at her in the command center, but she had to understand, he didn’t want Deliverance risking their hides for him. This was his decision, his mission.

  He wanted el Pulpo’s head on a pike, and he wasn’t going to stop until he found th
e bastard—and, with any luck, discovered humankind’s future home in the process.

  He wedged his boot between the metal ribs of the crow’s nest and trained his rifle scope on the shore as the Sea Wolf began cutting through the shallows. Lightning forked over the mountains, spreading a blue glow across the jagged cliffs and the mutated jungles surviving in near darkness.

  This was the third island they had come across in the past few hours, but the first showing any sign of civilization.

  X was hoping to find the tools to help repair their radio and fix the Sea Wolf. His vantage point gave him a panoramic view of their surroundings, and he continued to scan the ocean, beach, and city beyond for contacts.

  He didn’t need to activate his night-vision goggles to see the island in detail. The sky retained a blue tint from the constant flashes across the mountain chain, casting an eerie glow on the terrain and the surf.

  Several large vessels stood aground on the shallow bottom, the waves beating their rusted hulls. On shore, a dozen shipping containers sat in the sand. X recognized the language marking the side.

  It was all in Spanish—the language of the Cazadores.

  Shadows flickered beneath the clouds. He zoomed in with his scope on what looked like missiles firing from the sky toward the jungles.

  At first, he passed them off as some trick of the light. But then he realized, this was no optical illusion.

  His heart skipped at the realization—they had to be Sirens.

  But when he zoomed in further and followed one of them in his sights, he saw these weren’t the genetically modified humans at all. These were massive birds.

  “I got potential hostiles,” X said.

  “I see ’em. Do you want me to change course?”

  X watched the beasts for several seconds. There were a dozen of them, and several were headed out to sea. From this distance, he wasn’t sure just how large they were, but they were big.

  They weren’t just big—they were monsters.

  An ethereal wail made him flinch. He ducked down just as one of the creatures swooped overhead from behind, giving him a close-up glimpse.

  This one had a bald head the color of blood, and a wingspan longer than two men. The yellow beak was big enough to swallow a child. It flapped black wings, heading toward the shoreline with an eyeless fish clutched in its talons. A flashing antenna hung from the skull of the fish, blinking and giving the bird’s underside a purple glow as it flew back to its nest on the island.

  These weren’t just birds. They were monstrous vultures.

  X checked his six for more of the flying beasts, but the sky was clear in that direction. He ignored the water until he saw something cresting the waves back in the bay. A spiky dorsal fin broke through the water, cutting the waves.

  The birds weren’t the only hunters prowling these waters.

  “Great,” he muttered, flipping his NVGs on. In the green hue, he saw the silhouette of a shark half the boat’s length, just below the surface. The predators had survived nearly half a billion years on Earth; it should have been no surprise that they made it through the apocalypse.

  “Mags, better pick up speed,” X said into the comm.

  “It’s pretty shallow in here. I have to—”

  The crunch of the hull hitting something massive nearly sent X tumbling out of the crow’s nest. He looked over the side of the cage at more silhouettes beneath the surface. But these weren’t giant sharks or cephalopods.

  A graveyard of boats lay in the shallows, their carcasses strewn over the bottom, where they had sunk at their moorings hundreds of years ago. They no doubt made perfect homes for all sorts of monsters.

  “Hurry it up, Mags!” he shouted.

  The Sea Wolf clipped the stern of an ancient vessel just below the water, shaking X inside his aerial cage. He watched in horror as they plowed toward the minefield of sunken wrecks.

  “I can’t see,” Magnolia shouted over the channel.

  Miles barked in the background. The poor dog wasn’t used to the confines of a boat any more than X was. He was meant to be free, to be able to run on the surface, but like humans, Miles had been dealt a cruel hand.

  The anger flowed through X as he tried to form a plan to get them out of this mess. There was always a way out—always an option.

  “I’ll be your eyes, Mags, just calm down,” X said. “Now turn a hair to the right … now!”

  The boat veered around a barnacle-encrusted wreck. Beyond it, several more derelict hulls broke the surface. Radio towers protruded from them like twisted rebar. The sight gave him an idea, but he tabled it for now and checked the status of the shark.

  Still trailing them, the sea monster lazily whipped its tail back and forth, moving through the water with ease—the perfect predator. X aimed his rifle and prepared to fire, then decided that the noise might attract more hungry things.

  The creature swerved away, sinking beneath the waves and vanishing into the boneyard of ships.

  X slowly lowered his rifle.

  It would be back.

  The Sea Wolf moved into the center of the bay at a good clip. At the helm, Magnolia steered around the clearly visible obstructions, and X continued to warn her of those buried beneath the dark surface.

  Piercing chirps from the birds hunting over the land filled the night. At least, X thought it was night—it was hard to tell in perpetual darkness. Day or night, his biological clock and his growling stomach told him it was time for supper.

  He fought both the pain radiating up his arm and the grip of exhaustion.

  “Screw off,” X muttered, raising his weapon and firing at a bird that swooped toward the boat. The rounds lanced through its red-plumed wings, sending the creature arcing down toward the bay.

  Magnolia steered to port, avoiding the broken hull of a fishing vessel that had split in half on a submerged rock.

  Hearing a splash off the starboard side, X turned to see the bird he had shot, flailing in the water. In a blink, the shark hunting in the shallows emerged, opened a mouth rimmed with two rows of teeth, and swallowed the struggling bird in a single bite. The sea beast vanished beneath the waves.

  “Almost there, Mags,” X said, trying to focus on the beach.

  Their vessel squeezed through a gap between two ships aground in the tide. X got a view of their decks, still laden with shipping containers marked in the Cazadores’ language.

  This wasn’t the Metal Islands, but they had to be getting close.

  The starboard hull of the Sea Wolf screeched against the hull of the ship on the right. X kept his rifle up, roving for contacts on the decks to either side.

  A moment later, and they were free and sailing right for the shore.

  “Beach us,” X ordered.

  Timothy, who had been silent until now, spoke up. “Sir, I would highly recommend avoiding contact with solid land. The impact could dam—”

  “Mags, shut our AI friend off, please,” X said.

  “Sorry, Timothy,” Magnolia said. “Nothing personal.”

  The shark’s dorsal fin surfaced again, and X wasted no time lining up the crosshairs on the head and pulling the trigger. The rounds punched into the dark skin around the open mouth, which yawned open to reveal feathers still stuck in the double rows of teeth.

  Blood trickled out of the bullet wounds, and the beast veered away, its tail slapping the starboard hull before it swam off into the bay.

  The impact knocked the Sea Wolf to the side, so that the port hull caught the next swell of surf. Escapes like this were never based on pure logic, and sometimes, with just seconds to make a decision, a good option didn’t present itself.

  This time, the only option was to hang on for his life.

  He clung to the cage as Magnolia tried to get the bow pointed ashore, but the surf was too strong. The waves slammed them broa
dside onto the beach, where they skidded until they fetched up against a rock.

  X slid out of the crow’s nest, losing his rifle in the process. His left boot caught on the rail, leaving him hanging upside down twenty-odd feet above the sand.

  Dangling there, he would be easy pickings for one of the oversized vultures. And dropping to the sand would leave him with broken legs, or worse.

  “X!” Magnolia shouted.

  She emerged on the deck below with Miles, who barked up at him.

  It took only a second to see that the dog was actually barking at three birds swooping in from the sky.

  X suddenly got a crazy idea. He swung his body until his boot dislodged, and using the momentum, he reached for the rungs. He fell several feet before finally catching one.

  Somehow, the force did not dislocate his shoulder, though pain lanced up his shoulder and neck. Wasting no time, he put his boots against the mast, clear of the rungs, and slid down until he could safely swing off onto the sand.

  Magnolia, with a rifle in each hand, and Miles were waiting for him there. She tossed X the rifle he had dropped, and they stood together, back to back, firing on the swooping birds.

  They emptied their magazines, plucking a dozen from the sky with calculated shots to conserve precious ammo. The meaty bodies whapped into the sand a hundred feet away, twitching and squawking as they died.

  X looked back over his shoulder to see whether the shark was still hunting in the surf. The Sea Wolf had pushed up a berm of sand on the port side, and smoke continued to drift from the deck.

  “You still don’t think we need any help?” Magnolia asked while changing magazines.

  The potshot got under X’s skin, and he couldn’t hold back his words.

  “Remember the Hell Diver motto?”

  “Uh … ‘We dive so humanity survives.’”

  X dipped his helmet and gestured for Miles to join him. “This mission isn’t about destroying humanity; it’s about saving it. We dived for humanity; now we’re sailing for humanity. And I’m not going to risk Deliverance or the Hive just to save our sorry asses. We’re on our own out here, and the sooner you start accepting that, the safer humanity is going to be.”