The scouts had also confirmed that the Hell Divers would be on their way back in boats, but X still didn’t know about the airship’s condition or whether anyone had been injured on board.
X had waited anxiously to meet the bastard who nearly destroyed the airship, but that wasn’t going to happen now. The doors at the end of the chamber finally opened, and the man who had killed the escaping skinwalker entered the room.
Wet hair hung to Sergeant Wynn’s armored shoulders. He shambled forward woodenly, his face bruised and bloody. The soldiers with him looked equally beat up and exhausted.
X stood to greet them. He knew each face and name, knew their painful pasts, and their fears for the future. And tonight, he felt responsible for everything they had endured.
No, this was not a victory by any stretch of the imagination. He should have seen the trap, should have guarded the islands better. He had failed his people.
So much for the fucking prophecy.
“How bad is it?” X asked.
“Very bad, King Xavier,” Wynn said.
“Have you found Lieutenant Sloan?”
Wynn shook his head. “All we know is, she was last seen in a boat with two other militia soldiers, pursuing a submarine.”
X closed his eyes for a second. The news could mean only one thing. Sloan was fish food.
The pounding of boots on the tile floor pulled him from the gruesome image. Michael, Rodger, Edgar, Sofia, and Arlo entered, still in their suits. The rookie Hell Divers followed.
Missing from the group was Magnolia, who, the last X heard, was being treated for burns. He was glad she was actually resting—probably only because they had sedated her.
“Close the doors,” X said.
“Wait,” said Michael.
The team of divers parted as one more person walked into the great hall. The tall man wore a jumpsuit that looked as if it had been washed with ash. The doors clanked shut behind Captain Les Mitchells.
The Hell Divers and militia soldiers followed him on the short walk down the empty rows, to stand in front of Ton and Victor.
As X watched, it struck him that every person in the room had been injured in the attack or was still recovering from the mission to Rio de Janeiro. They had been through so much, and Les looked like hell.
X gestured for everyone to sit but remained standing.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “Everything is going to get worse before it gets better, but you’re all prepared for that.”
He waited a moment to let that sink in and then said, “I’m sorry. Sorry for letting you all down. I should have done more—”
Michael spoke up before X could finish. “Sir, we all knew an attack was possible, but you couldn’t know that the skinwalkers had submarines.”
“Now that we do, we’re locking down the borders,” Wynn said. “Our troops are working with Colonel Forge to patrol for the skinwalkers, but we have a major problem.”
“Fuel,” X said.
“Precisely, sir.”
“How about the rest of the Cazador forces?”
“From what I’ve heard, almost all of Colonel Moreto’s forces have joined Colonel Forge,” Wynn replied. “Those who haven’t are in the brig.”
“The Barracudas have joined our ranks,” said another militia soldier.
X hesitated, not wanting to ask his next question. But he had to know. “And the total body count?”
Wynn seemed as hesitant to reply as X had been to ask. The sergeant said, “King Xavier, we lost sixteen militia men and women, and another twenty are injured. With Sloan and five other soldiers missing, we’re down almost a third of our forces.”
X cursed under his breath. “What about civilians?” he asked.
“Twenty-one people were killed on the Hive,” Wynn said gravely. “Twenty more on the capitol tower, from the Sirens.”
X tensed at the numbers. Still, it could have been much worse.
“And Discovery, Captain Mitchells?” X asked.
“The damage is severe,” Les replied. “And even with all hands working on it, the ship isn’t going to be airworthy for some time.”
“How long is ‘some time’?”
“I . . . I’m not sure, sir. Samson and every mechanic and technician we can spare are already at the ship or on their way, but the main issue is going to be finding parts. Most of the bow is destroyed, but the good news is, the nuclear engines weren’t damaged, and almost all the thrusters and turbofans are operational.”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Michael said.
“I have Timothy to thank for that,” Les said. “He didn’t just save the ship; he saved Eevi and me. He acted fast to turn on the sprinklers after the explosion.”
X wanted to hear the story, but not now. He crouched beside Miles, scratching his chest while he thought about how to move forward. They needed Discovery more than anything. It was their best weapon.
The airship was at the coordinates he had given Michael—safe, but for how long?
“Rodger, how about the Hive?” X asked. “How bad is it?”
Rodger wiped his eye and stepped up beside Les and Michael. He had lost both his parents in the attack, but he had still reported to the airship rig to survey the damage.
“I hope getting her back into the air isn’t your Plan B,” Rodger said. “Chances of the Hive sailing again are pretty much zippo.” He wiped his nose. “Sir, if you’re done with me, I’d like to go see Magnolia.”
X nodded. “Tell her to keep resting.”
“I will, sir.”
X stood, his old bones creaking like a wind-blasted tree in the wastes. He was dizzy, but this time not from being hungover. The alcohol was out of his system, and for the first time in weeks, he didn’t even want a drink. What he wanted was to fight.
“Has Cricket found anything beyond the barrier?” X asked.
“Not yet,” Michael said. “I’m monitoring his progress.”
“We have people on the grounded airship ready with speedboats to relay messages if Timothy receives intel on their location,” Les said.
“Can’t we use some sort of code over the radio?” X asked.
Les shook his head. “The airship’s radio is damaged, and handhelds won’t reach that far.”
X cursed again at the bleak situation. It would take a speedboat a half hour at top speed to get a message back and forth—plenty of time for Raven’s Claw to destroy the drone and then move.
“If anyone has any bright ideas on how we find Moreto and her bastard, I’m all ears,” he said. “But with both airships grounded and limited fuel for our boats, I’m low on ideas.”
Les and Michael exchanged a glance, but neither spoke. Several moments passed before a voice broke the silence.
“What about hang gliders?”
Someone at the back of the group limped through to the front. It was Arlo, and he looked serious.
“Hang gliders?” X asked.
“Yes, sir. Since we don’t have an airship right now, why not paint some hang gliders and send out a bunch of Hell Divers wearing camouflage to search for Raven’s Claw and subs? It will be dangerous in the storms, and we can’t go very far past the boundary, because that’s where the thermals end, but if we find the warship or their subs, it’s over for those mutant freaks that stuck me like a pig in Rio.”
Arlo rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, and I’m pretty sure we could design a submarine-detection system by using those underwater sensors the trawlers use to find schools of fish.”
Everyone stared at Arlo for a moment—especially X, who didn’t know how to respond. The kid with an attitude had grown up a lot since Rio de Janeiro, and he had some damn good ideas.
“Hang gliders,” X said, deciding to start there. “How do you know we even have any?”
Arlo grinned, showing off two newly missing teeth. “Let’s just say I got acquainted with a Cazador lady the night before my first dive, and she told me a few secrets. She said her ex-husband died using one in the proving grounds.”
X remembered Rhino telling him about the island that was basically a boot camp, complete with monsters, for Cazador trainees. But he didn’t recall anything about hang gliders.
“So where are they?” he asked.
“Colonel Forge should know,” Arlo said. “And that Tomás guy, the merchant that was on the council—I’m sure he’ll be happy to hand over some sensors.”
“See if this is all true, Sergeant Wynn,” X ordered.
“Sir, all due respect, but how are we going to get them into the air?” Wynn asked. “It’s a ways from the capitol tower to the barrier, and those electrical storms are going to be hairy.
X knew that sending hang gliders out into the storms was risky, but they would be hard to detect if he could get them into the sky.
“We can use the boosters to get us in the sky again,” Michael suggested. “We just need boats to ferry us out to the barrier.”
X scratched the stubble on his chin. “It’ll be good training for the greenhorn divers,” he said, looking at Lena, Hector, Alberto, and Ted. Then he shrugged. “Hell, I might take one out for a spin myself if I can figure out how to fly it with just one arm.”
NINETEEN
The giant leeches fed twice more during the night. Each time Ada heard the sucking and crunching sounds, she considered fleeing. But there was nowhere to run, so she hid in the enclosed shelter of her capsized boat.
Not only couldn’t she run; she couldn’t flee, either. Her boat was ruined, the precious fuel was wasted, and she was stuck on this hellish island with limited water and food.
Depression washed over her like the wave that had stranded her here.
Her flashlight illuminated the dented bulkheads and toppled crates. Her broken toe was infected and throbbing. It had swollen to almost twice its normal size, making it excruciating to wear her boots, and almost impossible to fall asleep.
Sleep. That was all she wanted: to close her eyes and have a break from the living hell. She considered taking more painkillers. Not the weak ones. She was going to need the hard stuff to knock her out. But that would also leave her vulnerable to the monsters.
Ada reached down and unlaced her boot, then wiggled her foot free of its confines.
A flood of relief rushed through her toes, foot, and leg. It felt like taking a breath after being underwater too long. After enjoying a few moments of less pain, she took fresh gauze and antibiotic ointment from the medical kit. The toe was even more swollen when she unwrapped it. Thick pus wept out of the open wound where she had used tweezers to pull off the destroyed nail.
After cleaning and disinfecting it the best she could, she wrapped it with gauze, then fished inside the kit for the painkillers. There were two bottles of the anti-inflammatory she had been taking, and one sealed bottle of the hard stuff.
After a moment of looking at both, she opted for the same stuff as before, chasing down two pills with what was left in her water bottle. They settled in her sour stomach. Closing her eyes, she rested her back on the bulkhead.
Exhausted, injured, and nauseated, she finally dozed off sometime in the wee hours. She dreamed of the nightmarish leeches, only to jerk awake to that same horrid crunching.
They were closer now, feeding on something not far from her boat. Taking off her helmet, she put her ear against the metal, flinching at a noise that chilled her bone marrow.
The long, agonized wail reminded her of something she would never forget from twenty years ago: the relentless wailing of a baby dying of radiation poisoning in the Hive medical ward.
She remembered it like yesterday because that baby had been her little brother.
Whatever was making this noise was not human, but she was too frightened to open the hatch and look outside. Sitting idly inside was almost just as bad.
She pictured the leeches feasting on a mutant otter or some other mammal that had adapted to live here and was caught in the surf hunting for fish.
In her mind’s eye, the bloodsucking worms swarmed the creature, chewing through flesh and bone until there was nothing left, as they had done to the frog.
The noise came again, and Ada backed away from the bulkhead. She hugged herself, trembling.
Make it stop. Please make it stop.
She wanted to scream.
The leeches were far worse than whatever she had encountered on the research ships, and again she considered ending her life before they found her.
She was so very tired. Of the sounds of thunder and ocean. Of being afraid. Of waking to darkness.
At least on the airships there were lights. Out here there was just the black.
The wailing started again. She cupped her hands over her ears, but no matter how hard she pushed, she couldn’t block out the sounds.
She dug back into her medical supplies and pulled out the jar of the hard painkillers that she had been saving. A caution symbol marked the bottle that ITC had designed to survive for centuries. A laundry list of possible side effects ran vertically down the label. One read, Death may occur if . . .
The cries of the creature outside rose into long, plaintive wails. More than anything, it sounded like a child in distress.
But that wasn’t possible. No child could survive out here. Maybe no adult could.
This had to be her mind playing tricks on her.
Soon she would find out. She couldn’t stay in the damned cabin forever.
No, you have another option, Ada.
A painless option that let her choose her own fate.
In a fleeting moment of fearlessness, she twisted off the cap. She brought the bottle to her lips and tried to shake pills into her mouth, but none came.
Tilting the bottle, she looked inside to see something wedged inside.
Using her pinkie, she fished out the blockage. It wasn’t the usual cotton ball she had seen in other pill jars. This was paper.
Probably more instructions and warnings.
She dropped it, and it landed on her thigh. Then she tipped back the bottle and shook three tablets into her mouth. She kept them on the tip of her tongue for a moment, considering what she was about to do.
You tried, Ada. You gave it your best, but this isn’t worth it.
And damned if she would let herself become food to a beast. Especially the horrid leeches.
She had no reason to live and no way off the island. No friends waiting for her back home. No family left. And maybe, just maybe there was something better after this bleak existence. A real paradise, without any cannibalistic barbarians.
Whatever happened next, she prayed it would let her see her mom and dad again. She missed them now more than ever. Maybe she would even meet the brother she never got to hold.
Either way, the infinite darkness of death was better than living in the darkness of the nightmarish wastes.
She picked up her water bottle and downed the pills, then swallowed two more for good measure. Once she finished, she put the bottle down on a crate and rested her head against the bulkhead.
The crying continued outside, though not loudly enough to drown out the sounds of the leeches consuming its body. How it was still alive mystified her.
But soon, the horrifying noise would be gone. Soon, Ada would be at peace. No more monsters. No more pain. No more being sick. Only the infinite quiet of death.
She let her body relax, accepting her fate.
You tried. You gave it your best.
The cries came again, whimpering now, like a baby. Ada opened her eyes and picked up the bottle again to take more, to make sure she had enough in her to finish the job.
Then she saw the paper on her thigh
. It wasn’t instructions.
She blinked and picked it up, holding it in the glow of the flashlight.
Ada,
Never give up.
I didn’t, and I lived.
You will, too, if you don’t give up.
When I was in a dark place, I always came back to these words:
“Accept your past without regret.
Handle your present with confidence.
Face your future without fear.”
X
Ada stared at the note. X had put that in the bottle knowing she might use the pills for exactly this. He had known.
He did care. He did want her to survive.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent you out here.
She had thought he’d doomed her, but he had given her a chance, and now he was offering her a second chance.
Several minutes had passed since she’d swallowed the five pain pills. She found herself wondering why.
Why give up?
She had a broken toe and a bellyache, and there were monsters outside. Big whoop.
“Coward,” she muttered.
She had seen plenty of boats on the beach that could be seaworthy. All she needed was one with a sail. The excuses and fear had made her a coward, but no more.
Without another thought, she jammed her finger down her throat. She leaned over the crates and vomited into the bilge. Then she did it again. She gagged herself until there was nothing left in her stomach but pale-yellow foam.
When she was finished, she wiped her mouth. Her throat burned from the acid. For the next few minutes, she pulled out the supplies she needed to get her head back into survivor mode, starting with antibiotics to fend off the infection in her toe, and then the antinausea pills.
Next, she ate one of the energy bars she had salvaged, filling her stomach. She stuffed the rest of the bars in her vest pocket. Finally, she drank several swigs of water.
By the time she was done, she felt like a new person. Not quite confident enough to take her machete outside and fight the leeches, but confident enough not to piss herself worrying about them.
Warriors Page 23