X’s arms were still free, and he plunged his blade into the thick hide as it continued coiling its body around his legs, pulling him deeper into the water. He couldn’t see Miles anywhere, and then he couldn’t see anything at all as the monster dragged him below the surface.
* * * * *
Present day
Les Mitchells and the other divers watched Erin Jenkins enter the wind tunnel. The noise drowned out the raised voices outside the launch bay. Les tried not to get distracted by the civil unrest in the corridors. He wasn’t sure what was going on outside, but he canceled it out the best he could and focused on training. The wind tunnel was the closest they were going to get to diving before being launched from one of the tubes.
“You really think you’re going to fit in that thing?” Jennifer teased. She jabbed Les in the ribs hard enough that he shot her a glare.
“I’m not a freaking—”
“Giraffe?” she finished with a grin.
Les laughed. Then he reached out and pointed at her hair. “You’re probably going to need to cut those to fit in your helmet.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She pushed her dreadlocks over her shoulders and focused on the wind tunnel. Don Olah and Tom Price both had their arms crossed over their red coveralls, watching Erin get into position.
They all were beat from training eleven hours straight. After the wind tunnel, they were heading to the armory for weapons simulation.
And tomorrow they would put it all to use.
Les still couldn’t quite believe they were going to dive so soon. The thought sent a chill through his long body. The wind tunnel clicked on in front of him, pulling him back to reality. Erin rose into the air, arms out. Bending her knees and putting her elbows at right angles, she moved gracefully in the upward draft. She drew her limbs in a little and dropped almost to the grate below.
“This is the stable fall position,” she said over the comms. “This is what you’ll be doing for most of a dive.”
She held the position for several minutes.
“You will nose-dive only if we’re in a hurry,” Erin said. “And usually that happens only if the Hive’s weather sensors missed picking up a storm. The quicker you get through it, the less likely you are to get fried by a lightning strike.”
Les watched her go through the moves, but the hundred other things on his mind made it hard to concentrate. Phyl, Trey, and Katherine were all counting on him to take care of them. He was used to pressure and stress, but this was on an entirely new level.
In his mind’s eye, he kept imagining the aftermath of his death. Trey would end up rotting away in the brig, his wife would succumb to her illness, and Phyl would grow up an orphan—if she got a chance to grow up at all.
“You’re going to save them,” Les said out loud.
Don, Jennifer, and Tom all looked in his direction.
“You okay?” Jennifer asked.
“Sorry,” Les replied, his cheeks warm with embarrassment.
Erin did a backflip inside the tunnel and continued speaking over the comms to explain her moves and how to execute them. Les shook away his worries and watched, knowing he would be up soon.
A few minutes later, Erin ordered Olah to shut off the fans. The wind jets clicked off, and she lowered to the grate and took off her helmet. Erin stepped out of the glass tube and ran a hand over her Mohawk.
“Who’s first?” she asked.
Olah stepped up. He was always first to volunteer.
“He’s definitely going to be the first to die,” Jennifer whispered to Les.
My thoughts exactly.
Erin moved out of the way to stand beside Les and the other two divers while Olah secured his helmet and stepped into the tube.
“You okay, Giraffe?” Erin asked.
“I’m good,” Les said.
“I’ve got a question,” Jennifer said. “Something we’ve all been wondering about.”
Erin nodded. “Okay.”
“What happened to Team Wolf all those years ago?”
The question blindsided Les—and Erin, too, judging by her face. It contorted as if she was remembering something awful.
After a brief pause, Erin said, “Fair enough. Eight years ago, not too long after we lost X and a handful of other divers to Hades, my team was sent on a routine salvage mission.”
“And?” Jennifer prompted.
Erin sighed. “And we were caught in the middle of a dust storm. We had the supply crates full of supplies and ready to deploy. Lane—Commander Bricken—should have ordered us to take shelter, but he wanted to get the crates in the air to beat the storm.”
She paused again, massaging the surface of her Wolf ring. “We lost four divers that day, along with our supply crates. I helped Jon Tormund escape, but at a cost. He broke his back after the storm flung him into a rock. He lived only a few years after that.”
“Wasn’t Lane your boyfriend?” Jennifer asked.
Erin shot the other woman an icy look. “You ask a lot of questions.”
Jennifer lifted one shoulder. Les wasn’t sure whether it was an apology or a shrug.
“Anything else you guys want to know?” Erin asked.
A shout sounded in the corridor outside the launch bay doors, and Les turned to see people running past the small windows.
“What the hell’s going on out there?” Tom asked.
Erin let out a sigh. “It’s getting worse.”
“What is?” said Jennifer.
Les looked over at Erin. He couldn’t quite read the expression on her dark, freckled features.
“Captain Jordan ordered all history purged from the ship,” Erin said. “Paintings, vids, books—everything.”
Jennifer lowered her hands to her sides. “You have to be kidding.”
“I wish I were. My dad told me last night.”
“But … without all that stuff, the Hive is just a rusted hull and a couple of gas bladders,” Tom said, looking thoughtful.
“Captain’s orders,” Erin said.
“Damn right it is,” Olah said over the comms from inside the wind tunnel. “Captain Jordan must have had a good reason to issue that order.”
“May I?” Les asked, nodding toward the button that activated the wind tunnel.
Erin nodded, and Les walked up to the tunnel with a grin. “Good luck, Olah.” He pushed the button and stepped back to watch.
“Shit, shit!” Olah said, holding his arms out as the air took him. He rose halfway up the tube before losing his balance and flipping over.
Jennifer and Tom both laughed, but the sounds were lost under the shouting in the corridors.
“That sounds bad,” Les said. “What if the other passengers tear the ship apart while we’re gone?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Erin said. “My dad will keep things under control up here.”
Olah continued to struggle in the tube while they talked, and Les couldn’t help but chuckle. The guy had no sense of balance whatsoever. He wobbled in the updraft like an overweight bird, arms and legs flapping.
“We still need to pick a name for the team,” Erin said. “Something new. Something different from any of the other teams.”
Les looked at the flash of her silver ring as she reached up to scratch her head. He liked the name Wolf but understood why she wouldn’t want to use it again.
“What about Phoenix?” he said.
“Why Phoenix?” Erin asked.
Les shrugged. He had picked it because he loved mythology, and naming the team after something culturally significant seemed like a big screw you to Jordan without actually saying it to his face.
“I’ll run it by the other divers,” Erin replied.
More shouts broke out from the corridor, and the divers all turned toward the launch doors. A group of lower-deckers
ran past as militia soldiers in riot gear gave chase.
“Damn fools,” Les muttered. The one good thing about his son’s being in the brig was that he couldn’t get hurt. Knowing the boy, he would be the first to throw down with the militia.
“Don’t worry,” Erin said. “The ship has had problems like this before, but we always make it through. My dad will make sure of it.”
“Your dad’s not the one I’m worried about,” Les said.
TEN
Rodger decided he didn’t much like the swamps. Too much water, too much mud. And it smelled like an old sock full of manure.
“What do you think happened to this place?” Magnolia asked.
“Boom,” Rodger said, miming an explosion.
“I’m talking about the swamps,” Magnolia said. “Where the hell did they come from?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Michael said. “Now, be quiet. I’ll take point. Layla and Mags, you take rear guard. Rodger, get behind me and shut your trap. Eyes up and ears out.”
Rodger hurried to catch up with Michael, who had already taken off at a trot. The young commander didn’t have as many dives under his belt as Magnolia, but he was a natural leader who knew when it was time to joke around and when it was time to get down to business.
Rodger knew he needed to learn a thing or two about that. Lately, he was always saying or doing the wrong thing. For a while, he seemed to be finally getting somewhere with Magnolia. But then she dropped it—the gift he had made for her with his own hands and carried through a city full of monsters to deliver—onto a stranger’s grave.
Maybe he should make her something else.
“Look alive, Rodger,” Michael snapped, bringing his attention back to the task at hand.
Michael had an AK-47 rifle trained on the buildings above, while Rodger had been entrusted with only a small-caliber pistol. He pulled the ax from the sheath over his shoulder and held both weapons in his hands.
The distant whir of the turbofans pushing Deliverance into the sky reverberated in the clouds above them, but he kept his focus on the buildings ahead. Empty windows, the glass long gone, looked out over the vast swamps. It was hard to imagine that two and a half centuries ago, the occupants would have been looking through swaying palm trees at a sunny sky. Rodger had seen Florida in old prewar vids. It was never supposed to look like this.
His boots crunched over the muddy, debris-strewn ground. Almost constant flashes of lightning made the dark landscape visible, but it was nothing like sunlight. The divers kept their NVGs off and used the blue glow to guide them toward the ruins.
The path led up a steep slope with several stone and brick structures at the top. A steeple rose above the other buildings. Beams arched over what remained of the roof, framing the swirling storm.
“Looks like a nice place,” Rodger muttered.
“I’ll check it out,” Michael said.
“Just be careful,” Layla said.
Michael started up the muddy slope, and Rodger followed close behind, using the same footholds to avoid falling on his ass. At the top, they looked out over an ancient city. A single metal chair sat in the middle of the road ahead. The sight gave Rodger a chill. Who had sat here all those years ago to watch the world burn?
Crooked brick foundations and stone walls framed a street leading across the island. Pools of water filled gaping craters in the sunken pavement. Thunder boomed, rattling his armor.
“Keep sharp,” Michael said. He pulled out his binos while Rodger chinned on his NVGs. The green hue flickered over the ruins, but nothing moved. He took a few steps away from Michael to look at a brick building to the east. A hole in the wall provided a glimpse into the guts of the structure.
“Looks clear,” Michael said. He turned back to the edge of the slope and flashed hand signals to Magnolia and Layla.
They continued down the street, with Rodger angling his pistol at the east side and Michael searching the west with his rifle.
“You see these messed-up foundations?” Rodger whispered. “Must have been some sort of geological event to make the ground shift like that.”
Michael halted and brought a finger to the front of his helmet.
Okay, I get the point, Rodger thought.
Magnolia and Layla caught up with them as they approached the largest building, the one with arched roof beams and a steeple at the other end. A wide stone staircase led up to the front entrance. A massive set of double doors had once led into the building. The right door was missing, but the left appeared to be mostly intact. It looked like oak, maybe maple. Definitely not pine. Nothing as soft as pine would survive in conditions like this.
“This was a church—a place of worship,” Magnolia said. “I’ve seen these places in the picture books on the Hive.”
They walked cautiously up the stairs. The door on the left was carved with intricate designs that reflected the skill of a talented craftsman. Shards of colorful glass littered the dirt along the wall. Michael moved through the door and into the building. Rodger nearly ran into him as he followed. The commander had stopped in the entrance, his left hand in a fist.
Rays of blue light from the storm penetrated the clouds, cutting through the rotted rafters. The glow illuminated the inside of what had been a holy place, now covered in vines and roots. At the other end, the thick trunk of a tree had grown through a raised platform and up into the steeple overhead. Spiky branches with barbs on the ends extended over the rafters like some sort of palm tree out of a bad dream.
Magnolia stepped up behind them. “Holy shit,” she whispered. “I saw something like this back in Charleston. Don’t get close.”
She raised her rifle and aimed at the center of the tree. Rodger didn’t understand—it was just a tree, not a Siren.
“Hurry, let’s get out of here before it notices us,” she said quietly.
“Notices us?” Rodger said, turning around to look at her.
As soon as he moved, the bark of the tree began to vibrate. Cracking and creaking sounded as vines rustled and branches swayed.
Rodger gulped. “Oh, shit.”
The web of interconnected vines and branches shifted and peeled away from the walls. Pieces of stone fell and shattered on the ground.
“Move it!” Magnolia said.
Everyone retreated except for Rodger. He remained in the doorway, watching as the strange tree began to glow. The thick foliage lit up all at once, flashing pink on the first pulse and then an angry red.
Someone grabbed him by the back of his armor and pulled him outside.
“You want to be plant food?” Magnolia said. “When I say move, you move!”
Rodger pulled his gaze away just as the center of the tree split open, revealing something that looked a lot like an animal mouth with teeth the size of his arm.
He stumbled backward and then loped down the stairs with Magnolia. Vines shot out of the entrance, wrapping around the door and pulling it back into the church.
“No!” Rodger shouted.
A crunching came from the interior as the mutant tree destroyed the ancient wood. More vines snaked outside and writhed across the steps.
Michael held up a hand. “Hold your fire,” he said.
Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he pulled out a large blade instead. Magnolia followed suit, exchanging her gun for the two curved blades. She swiped at a vine that stretched toward them, slicing through it with a quick motion. A beat later, Rodger holstered his pistol and gripped his ax in both hands. He hacked another limb in half with the sharp blade. Green blood sprayed the pavement.
The tree inside the church answered with the crunch of more branches, and the interior lit up like a flame. Michael and the other divers sliced their way through to the center of the street as more vines tried to grab them. Layla leaped over one, crying out in pain when she landed on her injured ankle.
Michael ran over and put his arm under her shoulder while Magnolia and Rodger kept the barbed appendages at bay.
“They’re everywhere!” Magnolia yelled. She wielded her two blades expertly, shearing off the limbs before they could touch her. She was much faster and more agile than Rodger, who hacked away with his ax. The limbs were tough and pulpy, some so thick it took several swings to chop through them. For every vine he cut to pieces, five new ones appeared.
“Don’t let them flank us!” Michael yelled. Layla was still leaning on him as a crutch. Rodger wasn’t sure how badly she was hurt, but she was slowing them down.
He fought harder, swinging madly at the vines and branches that now spilled from the interior of virtually every building. Pulsating red light bathed the four divers as they struggled down the street.
Lightning slammed into the city. Sparks showered down. The thunder banged away in a constant din, making it nearly impossible to hear anything else.
Rodger lost track of time. He felt the sweat trickle across his skin, and his muscles began to ache with fatigue. A barbed vine streaked across his chest armor and wrapped around his calf guard, jerking on his leg so hard, he hit the ground.
“Get it off! Get it off!” he yelled. The limb yanked him toward a building. His armor scraped across the concrete.
“Help!” he screamed, flailing for something to hold on to.
Magnolia jumped over a branch, then sliced through the needle-covered tentacles. Thick green fluid gushed over the ground. She vaulted onto the hood of a rusted vehicle and then leaped toward Rodger. Wielding one of the sickles, she severed the branch holding his leg.
“Get up!” she yelled.
Rodger grabbed her arm and jumped to his feet. Not bothering to wipe off the green fluid that oozed down his legs, he ran toward the other divers. Layla and Michael were fighting off the vines on the opposite sidewalk. They came together in the center and fought their way toward the end of the street.
“I think they’re talking to one another!” Magnolia shouted over the boom of thunder.
“No way!” Layla yelled back. “Plants can’t do that.”
Michael slashed at a vine that tried to trip him up. “Just keep them back!”
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