His heart stuttered when his vision cleared enough to see that the cobwebs weren’t high above him in the sky but, rather, cracks in his visor shield. He sucked in unfiltered air through the gaps. It tasted like salt and barbecue and was laced with a lethal dose of radiation. His throat and eyes burned. He tried to reach up to the visor, but his right hand wouldn’t move. Neither would his left. He lifted his head slightly to find that his arms, hands, and legs were bound and bolted to the rusty deck of a ship. A few feet away, Magnolia lay in a similar state, her body limp.
“Mags,” he mumbled. “Wake up!”
Footfalls sounded, and a figure in full-body armor approached, carrying a machine gun.
The floaters, he realized. The memory of the men catching him outside the stadium rushed through his mind. They had been hiding in a storefront, and when he passed, they had yanked him inside the dark room.
They were soldiers of some sort, but what did they want?
The man with the machine gun strode forward. His massive metal-clad frame was an intimidating sight in itself, but the humanoid skulls he wore as shoulder pads made him all the more terrifying. Rodger’s eyes widened as the warrior’s almond-shaped, mirrored visors centered on him.
“G-get away,” Rodger said, kicking. He looked over at Magnolia. “Mags, you got to wake up, you …”
His strained voice trailed off as the man with the machine gun bent down. He spoke in a foreign language that Rodger didn’t recognize, but whatever it was, he sounded angry. So Rodger kept his mouth shut.
The man kicked him in the side. It hurt like hell. Then he walked away, his boots clanking across the metal deck. Rodger watched him go. He looked around him at the massive ship, hoping to find some clue as to where they were or how to escape. Several old-world vehicles were parked on the deck: a truck with oversize tires and a mounted machine gun in the bed, and three cars covered with armor plating. They all appeared to be in working order, with petrol tanks and oil canisters sitting beside them. There were also fuel cells on the deck to power the trucks that didn’t run on the archaic fuel.
Beyond the vehicles was a metal garage with two wide doors, both of them half open. Inside were more cars, a few motorcycles, and gigantic shipping containers. More people in the armored suits were loading what looked like cryogenic capsules into the containers.
Rodger turned his head the other direction, straining to see more. Tarps covered bulky shapes along the bow. One of them wasn’t tied down properly, and he caught a glimpse of what lay beneath. Cages, dozens of them. Several barrels burned along the railing on the ship, spreading an orange glow over the occupants.
No way. Nobody’s that crazy.
Chained Sirens, all of them apparently unconscious. The cages were stacked like crates, three high and who knew how many deep. This was some sort of cargo ship, and Rodger had a feeling he and Magnolia had been added to the manifest. But what the hell would these people be doing with captured Sirens, not to mention him and Mags?
His answer came a few minutes later, when one of the armored soldiers opened a cage and dragged a Siren across the deck. It slowly came to, head cranking from side to side to look at its captors. It clawed at the air, but the man with the chain yanked the beast to the deck as two more soldiers strode forward with machetes. They hacked the creature to pieces without even bothering to kill it first. Blood spattered the rust-coated deck as it let out an inhuman wail.
When the men had finished butchering it, they brought pieces over to the barrels and set them on grates over the top. Rodger’s stomach churned. Now he knew where the barbecue smell was coming from. He had to get out of here before he and Magnolia suffered the same fate.
The red glow of the lighthouse drew his attention. It flashed several times, then went dark. A horn sounded, and the armored men stopped what they were doing. They looked up at the tower that rose above the metal roof amidships.
Screaming in the foreign dialect came from all directions, and Magnolia finally stirred. The alarm sounded again. Footfalls came toward him, and the man with the machine gun and the skulls on his shoulders crouched down between him and Mags. He looked at Rodger first, and Rodger saw that the man had only one working eye behind the almond-shaped visors. The other eye was milky white.
“You speak the English, yes?” he said in his deep voice.
Rodger nodded warily. He noticed an octopus engraving on the breast of the man’s chest armor. Was it some sort of symbol like the raptor?
The man checked Rodger’s bonds with his good eye, making sure they were tight. “You will no get away like the others,” he said in broken English. He paused to look up at a man who had emerged in the lookout tower above; then he looked back at Rodger. “They call me el Pulpo. I am king of the Cazadores.”
“I’m Rodgeman,” Rodger said, trying to be polite. “I’m from the Hive.”
The man tilted his helmet as if trying to figure out what to make of him. Rodger did the same.
“Who are the Cazadores?” Rodger asked.
“Last of the humans.” He raised a long metal-clad finger at the containers. “We come every six months, save those frozen ones we can and bring back to our metal islands. We breed them there.”
“And what do you want with us?” Rodger asked, hoping it wasn’t the latter option, especially for Magnolia’s sake.
“You see soon.” He stood and slung his rifle over his back. “Live long enough, you see the sun!”
“The sun?” Rodger said, uncomprehending. He wanted to ask questions, but he was so terrified he could hardly form a sentence. Was it really possible that these barbarians were taking him to an island where the sun would shine?
El Pulpo turned his working eye to Magnolia and leered. “Pretty. Not many as nice as this one on our island.” He laughed—a humorless cackle that made Rodger shiver. “Big plans for this one.”
“Leave her alone,” Rodger said. “Don’t touch her, or I’ll—”
The man looked back at Rodger and laughed again. The deck suddenly vibrated, metal groaning as the gargantuan ship began to move. The Klaxon sounded a third time, and the anchor chain clanked onto the deck on the starboard side.
The ship was setting sail, and Rodger had no idea where it was headed.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The street raced by in gray and brown flashes as X gunned the engine of his motorcycle. Miles, apparently unconcerned by the speed, sat calmly in his custom seat, enjoying the ride.
Les had volunteered to come along and help find Rodger and Magnolia, but X told the others to stay behind. The ship needed repairing, and Layla needed saving. Michael had refused to leave her side. Seeing the young man’s pain brought back a feeling that X had suppressed during his long exile on the surface. It was an emotion that he shared easily with Miles, but he hadn’t felt it for another human in a very long time.
Hell, X had never been good at loving people.
Another emotion swirled through him as he drove. An emotion he was good at feeling. Anger.
He was angry at Jordan. He was angry at the militia soldiers he had been forced to gun down, including his old friend Sergeant Jenkins, who had apparently sold his soul. And he was furiously, righteously angry at the Cazadores who had kidnapped Rodger and Magnolia. He wanted to dismember them alive for daring to steal his friends away so soon after he had found them again.
Focus, old man. Save them first, then worry about getting payback.
The bike zoomed toward the coast, swerving around debris and jolting over cracks in the pavement. As soon as X and Michael had carried Layla into the airship, the ship’s AI had shown them the video feed of an old-world truck racing away from the area where Rodger and Magnolia had vanished. X had a feeling he knew where the seagoing bastards were taking his friends. The lighthouse had stopped blinking several minutes ago, and a horn signaled that the others were preparing to leave the harbor.<
br />
He didn’t have much time.
If he didn’t get to the ship, Rodger and Magnolia would be lost forever—assuming they were still alive now. X continued to debate whether he should have told the divers the truth about the cannibals. He knew from his own experience in captivity just what they planned to do to his friends.
He had always wondered whether there were people on the surface, but these were not the sort of people Captain Ash had hoped to discover. Somehow, these pirates or barbarians or whatever they were had gone undetected by the Hive and other airships all this time, and X had wanted to keep it that way.
But now the bastards had his friends.
He stared at the tower in the distance. Since his captivity, he had learned much about these people, mostly by watching and studying them from afar. Many years ago, the Cazadores had left their home in the metal islands and used the lighthouses to lure human survivors of the wars. People who had surfaced from bunkers or ITC facilities to repopulate the earth. Later, when stocks ran low, the Cazadores had turned to the next best thing: Sirens. Then to the people and animals still frozen in the cryogenic chambers.
And now Rodger and Magnolia were on the menu, although X had a feeling they would use Magnolia for other purposes. The Cazadores had clearly sacrificed their humanity on the altar of their own survival. Now they were animals, barely more human than the Sirens they hunted.
It was precisely why X had lied to Michael and the other divers. They didn’t come from some utopian society basking under the sun. The pirates came from a dark world where men ate whatever meat they could find, including their own species.
At the next bridge, X twisted the throttle and sped up the ramp, finally getting a view of the beach. The ship was already pulling away from the pier. The speedometer ticked up to ninety miles per hour over an open stretch of road.
The sky was remarkably clear, with not a Siren in sight. Chances were, the Cazadores had captured and killed most of the beasts that were stupid enough to come out of their lairs. But there were always more out there, hiding and waiting.
X steered onto another road at the bottom of the bridge, weaving between charred hulls and melted vehicles. He reached a hundred miles per hour on the final stretch to the beach.
The ruined coastline stretched northward. Tsunamis had leveled this area centuries ago, crushing the buildings and washing away everything but the foundations. Destroyed boats, sheets of metal, amorphous hunks of plastic, and other debris littered the beach.
X parked the bike behind a brick wall and unbuckled Miles. The dog jumped out, and X grabbed the backpack he had designed for carrying the dog in unusually dicey situations. Then he grabbed his assault rifle and a noise-suppressed long rifle, which he slung over his shoulder, flattening the backpack against him. Next, he shouldered the machine gun as he ran out into the junkyard, barrel pointing at the deck.
Several Cazadores manned machine-gun nests on the ship’s deck, keeping an eye out for Sirens in the sky. The junkyard would provide plenty of cover, but he and Miles would have to make it quick. He darted around the mounds of sheet metal and concrete slabs, running faster than he had thought possible, his dog at his heels. Lightning cracked across the sky like muzzle flashes from an automatic rifle.
He eyed a metal ladder running down the side of the ship. A guard manned the nearest turret above the deck, but his eyes were on the clouds. If he looked in X’s direction, he would have him and Miles dead to rights in his kill zone.
X swapped the assault rifle for the long rifle and knelt behind the split hull of a boat. He brought the scope up and centered the crosshairs right between the two almond-shaped lenses in the guard’s helmet.
With the noise-suppressed barrel lined up, he waited for a bolt of lightning and the following thunderclap. A flash speared the sky, nearly a mile away, and he counted four seconds until the thunder boomed, pulling the trigger with the noise.
As soon as the shot was away, X lowered the rifle and started running again. The man slumped over, blood trickling out of his helmet and onto the deck below.
X sprinted from the beach and onto the concrete pier. The ladder wasn’t far, just two hundred feet, but the ship was picking up speed.
X slowed, unslung his weapons, and strapped Miles into the custom pack and onto his back. A moment later, X was running with the weapons hanging over his chest, and Miles high on his back.
The massive ship was slipping out into the dark ocean. Waves slapped the pier behind X, water sloshing over the concrete platform. He reached out and grabbed the ladder, his boot sliding on the metal rung for a heart-skipping moment. Gritting his teeth, he climbed toward the railing fifty feet above. He flattened his body against the ship when a helmeted head appeared to his right.
Had they found their dead comrade?
X waited, straining under the load. Miles was only fifty pounds, but along with the weapons and armor, it was a lot to haul up a ladder. He could feel the blood pulsing in his carotid arteries and his temples.
When he risked looking up again, the man was gone.
Wasting no time, X grabbed another rung and kept climbing. At the top, he whispered to Miles to keep quiet and then peeked over the side, giving the area a quick scan. To the right, several armored soldiers were standing around a barrel while something cooked over a metal grate. Neither of them seemed to be aware of the dead man in the nest above, but X could see the blood striping down the turret. The left side was open deck between the rail and the middle of the ship.
He got over the railing and bent down to let Miles onto the deck. The center of the ship was a metal garage and storage area for containers. He had spent days studying the layout from his apartment after the bastards caught him over a year ago, just in case he ever tangled with them again.
Now was his chance to even the scales.
Hugging the pocked metal wall and keeping low, he moved with the assault rifle shouldered. This weapon had no suppressor, and any gunfire would surely attract every soldier on board, but he was ready for a firefight. He had never been much for sneaking around.
He stopped when he got to the edge of the garage. The doors on the right were open, and inside were more vehicles and the shipping containers. The bow was clear of contacts, but several crates were stashed along the deck, blocking his view.
Just as X was about to move into the garage, Miles nudged him. The dog’s head was pointed at the crates, keying on something that X had apparently missed. Crouching down, X studied the rust-darkened metal before finally glimpsing the silhouettes of two figures strapped between crates.
It had to be Rodger and Magnolia.
He reached down to pat the dog’s head, glad he had lugged him up the ladder.
X pulled a knife from his vest and raised his rifle in his other hand, prepared to make a run for the divers. But he didn’t get the chance. A Klaxon screamed overhead, and the sound of men yelling in Spanish came from all directions. Cursing, he sheathed the knife.
“Stay,” he said to Miles. Then he stepped around the side of the garage with his rifle up and the safety off.
Let’s see if you’ve still got it, old man.
He squeezed the trigger and fired a burst at each of the three men standing outside the shipping containers. Two of them went down right away, but the third staggered until X shot him through the helmet.
X ejected the spent magazine and pulled another from his vest, slapped it in, and did a quick scan of the garage. Two more Cazadores came around the other side of the entrance to see what was happening. He raised the freshly loaded rifle and fired just as one of the men stopped and raised his hands in the air.
A three-round burst sent the man buckling and he collapsed in a limp heap onto the deck. The next burst hit the second soldier. He fell backward over the rail with a muffled scream and a splash.
Return fire ricocheted off the deck beside X
, and he rolled for cover. He came up on one knee and fired at the turret on top of the garage. The bullets pinged off the side of the armored wall, and X waited until a helmet popped up again to pull the trigger. This time, the round punched through a visor slot, finishing the job with a small spray of blood.
As X looked for the next target, Miles barked, but not at him—he was barking at the two men flanking them from the bow. They had been hidden by the crates, and now they were slinking toward Magnolia and Rodger with machetes.
The men both darted for cover as X brought up his gun. He ran after them, firing as he moved and hitting one in the back. The second vanished in the maze of crates. X stopped to pull out his blade again and cut Rodger free.
“Thank God you found us,” Rodger said. “They were going to ea—”
“Shut up and call Michael for evac,” X said. He looked over at Magnolia. “You okay?”
She managed a nod, but the two dents in her helmet told X she had taken a beating. At least, she was still in one piece.
“Go!” X shouted as soon as they were free.
Keeping his rifle tight, X moved toward the crates, sweeping for contacts. He pivoted around the first crate with Miles on his heels, wondering whether they should abandon the hunt. He wasn’t sure how many of the ghouls were still left on the ship. It might be better to get Mags and Rodger to safety while he had the chance, but he also didn’t like the idea of turning his back on someone armed with at least a machete.
“Bark when you see ’em, Miles,” X ordered. He jumped up, grabbed the lip of the crate, and then hauled himself to the top. From his new vantage point, he saw movement around the next crate. The man had his machete up and was moving directly for Miles. Cords hung over his shoulders like metal dreadlocks, connecting his helmet with the tanks on his armored back.
X whistled from above, and the man looked up in time to catch two rounds to his helmet and a third in the tank on his back. One of the cords disconnected, hissing and jettisoning air.
Hell Divers III_Deliverance Page 32