She grabbed the machete. If they came for her, she would make it expensive for them.
It was this thought that made her realize that the crunching had stopped, and the wailing had subsided to a whimper.
She put her ear against the bulkhead again. There was a new sound—something moving outside in the sand.
Ada eyed the hatch. She would have to get back down into the bilge water to reach it. She hadn’t planned on doing that until the leeches were gone, but the only way she could know was by checking.
Using the utmost caution, she lowered herself into the calf-deep water with the machete and the flashlight. The waterproof boots sloshed through to the hatch. Once there, she switched off her flashlight and calmed her breathing.
Just one look. Only one.
She slowly pushed on the broken hatch, using her shoulder to open it. Lightning streaked through the sky right when she did, illuminating the concrete walkway connected to the pier in the distance.
She waited for another strike, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness.
All she could see were amorphous shapes.
She focused on the beach, where the whimpering seemed to be coming from. But the sound was on the other side of the capsized boat. To see what it was, she must leave the shelter.
Another jag of lightning lit up the beach.
She didn’t see any leeches out there, or any sign of what they had eaten during the night.
Curiosity brought her out of the cabin.
The irony hit her then. Only minutes ago, she had tried to kill herself. Perhaps she was trying to again. But she had to see whether the leeches were gone.
Only then could she move on to plan B: find a boat with a sail and get the hell off this godforsaken island.
She ducked under the hull of her boat. Bringing up her flashlight, she turned it on and raked it over the beach.
Nothing.
Machete in hand, she moved out onto the sand. Using her light as a guide, she walked around the other side to search for the source of the wailing.
When she saw it, she froze.
A hairy face with wide eyes stared back at her.
It was some sort of small primate with dark-black hair and an almost humanoid face. But unlike the creatures on the ghost ship, this one didn’t have any robotic parts, and it didn’t try to kill her.
The creature looked away from Ada, uninterested in her. She followed the big brown eyes to the beach and shined the light on bloodstains in the sand.
The leeches, it seemed, had consumed this creature’s friend or perhaps parent. The small monkey-like creature was crouched on a rock, its back slightly hunched. It reminded her of Jo-Jo, a stuffed toy she’d had as a kid.
Unlike most of the mutant creatures she had seen, this one was cute. But looks could be deceiving. It could have a mouthful of sharp teeth, and retractable claws hidden on those hairy fingers.
Everything that had adapted to live out here had weapons.
The creature sulked, whimpering again, black lips quivering.
Ada couldn’t help but feel bad for the baby monkey.
She pulled an energy bar from her vest. Then she pulled back the wrapper and broke off a chunk. She tossed it to the creature, but it just looked at it in the sand and went back to crying.
Ada took a step closer. The creature jumped away. She took a step back and looked at the beast.
It wasn’t really a beast at all. Standing about two feet tall, it was the size of a rather skinny toddler with black fur covering its humanlike body. Definitely some sort of monkey.
But how had it survived?
According to her wrist computer, the radiation was minimal here, but if humans couldn’t survive, how could these creatures? One thing she was still learning out here was that life continued to find a way.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The monkey crouched back down. It whined, opening its mouth. It didn’t appear to have any sharp teeth or claws, but she was still waiting for it to reveal something horrifying.
Perhaps it would split down the middle, and a much nastier beast would jump out. Or it might spit acid on her, or perhaps . . .
Relax, Ada. It’s just a baby monkey.
The creature jumped again, making a new noise much like what she remembered monkeys making in the documentaries she’d watched as a child.
It jumped back and forth, suddenly agitated. When she moved her light, it raised a hand to shield its eyes from the glare. Then it turned and hobbled away.
“No,” she whispered. “No, come back.”
The animal darted into the vegetation crawling down the beach. Ada tried to find it with her light, but it was gone.
Lowering her beam, she heard a noise over the crashing waves on the beach. She whirled with her machete, knowing that she wasn’t what had spooked the baby monkey.
The leeches had returned, surging up the beach with the tide. They squirmed toward her, their gleaming spiked backs closing in like a school of demonic fish. A dozen of the slimy creatures snailed toward her.
One raised its head as it approached, opening sucker lips rimmed with teeth. Her brain screamed at her to run, but instead of flight, the fight instinct kicked in.
She strode forward, swinging the machete. The blade cut through gristly flesh, and purple blood ran out.
She yanked it free and hacked at the next creature, slithering a few feet away. The edge cut open a gash through the back. A third leech rose up like a cobra and darted toward her, only to stop when she jabbed the machete into its open mouth.
The point broke out the back of the head, and the thing went limp, pulling the stuck blade down with the weight of its body. Before she could get it out, a fourth leech slithered toward her, striking at her boot, and she had to let go of the weapon.
She jumped away and then fell on her back, with the flashlight still in her hand.
A tide of the leeches surged forward in the glow, sucker lips popping. She jumped up and bolted for her boat, looking frantically for something to fight with. The broken oar was the first thing she saw.
She grabbed it and impaled the nearest creature with the jagged edge where the paddle had broken off. The other sucker-faced abominations surged up the beach, making clicking noises. She struck them one by one, pounding them over and over until they were masses of spikes and pulp.
Killing each of the monsters felt oddly satisfying. She slashed, jabbed, and hacked until she was panting. Sweat dripped down her forehead.
After another few whacks, the last creature stopped writhing.
Lightning forked overhead, spreading a glow over her handiwork. A dozen monsters lay in pools of purple blood in the sand. She stood there, chest heaving, drenched in sweat, flush with a feeling she hadn’t known in a long time.
Pride.
While she caught her breath, the adrenaline that had masked her pain faded. It wasn’t just her toe that hurt. The same foot pulsated with pain from where a leech had sunk its teeth through the reinforced boot. She could feel it filling with blood.
Cursing, Ada hobbled over to retrieve her machete, when she heard a familiar noise behind her. She searched for the source with her light and found a hairy head poking above a cluster of purple roots that grew at the edge of the sand.
The little monkey hopped out of the vegetation and moved cautiously toward her.
She lowered the machete and the flashlight.
“It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The monkey hopped over until it was just a few feet away.
She thought back to one of the reasons she had popped all those pain pills. Now perhaps she had a companion. A creature to accompany her, as X had with Miles on his journey through the wastes.
But would it come
with her, and could she care for it?
One thing was certain. She wasn’t going to Florida. She was going back to the Vanguard Islands, to fight for her freedom in the Sky Arena—assuming she hadn’t been right about the Cazadores.
She feared there wouldn’t be anything to return to if, by some miracle, she made it back.
First, though, she had to get her foot fixed up and then salvage a sail from another boat. She sure as hell wasn’t rowing all the way back to the islands.
Ada went back to her boat, and the monkey followed warily.
Halfway there, she saw something sticking out of the sand. Bending down, she brushed sand away from her rifle.
The animal hopped over and looked up at Ada, and for the first time in recent memory, she smiled.
This was shaping up to be a better day than she could have hoped for. She was still alive, and she had a friend.
TWENTY
Magnolia woke up in a room that smelled like overcooked meat. Looking around her, she realized she was surrounded by it.
Dozens of burn victims lay in rows of beds, their bodies wrapped in bandages brown with blood.
With her ears still ringing, she sat up and scanned the bandaged faces for the one person she expected to see in here. For the first time she could recall in her adult life, she found herself missing another human being.
She had always counted on herself, but she had grown to count on Rodger. And Rodgeman wasn’t in any of the beds that lined both walls.
Feeling a twinge of panic, she lay back on her pillow, looking up at the ocean waves and fields of flowers painted on the ceiling.
She followed the line up from her arm to the IV bag hanging from a pole beside the bed—sterile saline for rehydration, she supposed.
It had taken her a few seconds to remember why she was here and why her ears were ringing. Memories of the attack flooded her mind, but she had no idea what had happened since the boat ride, or how long she had been out.
“Nurse,” she mumbled in a scratchy voice.
The woman attending a man across the aisle turned and said something that Magnolia could hardly make out.
The woman, named Lisa, wasn’t really a nurse. She had worked as a seamstress on the Hive, which apparently made her really good at stitching people up. The skill had come in handy since they arrived at the Vanguard Islands, but Magnolia was leery of her doing anything more than suturing a wound.
As she waited, a man with a beard raised a bandaged hand to her.
“Imulah,” Magnolia whispered. She waved back to him, and he rested his head back on a pillow.
“What can I do for you?” Lisa asked in a distant-sounding voice.
“How long have I been here?” Magnolia asked.
“Since the attack.”
“Which was when?”
“This morning,” Lisa said. “It’s about midnight now.”
“I slept that long?”
“We gave you a strong painkiller,” Lisa said. “You have a ruptured eardrum, and burns—”
“Do you know what’s going on outside?”
“Not really, but he might.” Lisa looked toward the double doors with glass windows. A militia soldier stood outside.
“Thanks,” Magnolia replied.
Lisa nodded and moved on to her next patient.
Magnolia wasted no time. Reaching down, she ripped off the tape and pulled the needle out of her vein. Then, wincing in pain, she swung her legs over the side of the bed.
The right side of her head throbbed under the thick bandage, but she didn’t care about the pain. All that mattered was finding Rodger and the Hell Divers. She threw off the blanket and placed her naked feet on the tile floor.
Several patients in the beds were people she had grown up with, but there were also Cazadores she didn’t recognize. The attack had spared no one.
After testing her balance with a tentative step, Magnolia staggered down the center of the room, past nurses and patients. A male voice that had to be Dr. Huff’s called out when she had reached Imulah’s bed.
“Magnolia!” said the same agitated voice.
She slowed but didn’t stop as the doc hurried after her.
“Where are you going?” he said.
She kept walking. She didn’t have time to argue.
“Magnolia Katib, stop!” Huff said, his voice louder but still faint.
Several injured patients looked up from their beds.
“I said stop!” Huff said in what had to be a shout.
Magnolia halted and faced the doctor. He stepped up to her, stopping uncomfortably close to her face, all the usual niceties forgotten.
“I’m going to assume you didn’t hear me because you have a ruptured eardrum,” he said.
“I can hear just fine,” she lied.
“Well, then, listen and listen well. You have third-degree burns on the right side of your head and need to rest. Your ruptured eardrum makes your middle ear prone to infection and needs time to heal as well. I’ve given you some of the last of Colonel Forge’s nanotech gel, but you still need rest if you want to heal fast.”
“Just give me some painkillers that won’t knock me out.”
Huff stared. “I really want to believe you can’t hear what I’m saying.”
“I hear you, but I have work to do.”
“What is it with you people?” he asked.
“What people would that be, Doc?”
“Hell Divers. You’re all the same. You think you’re invincible. Well, I can tell you, you’re not.”
“One of us is.”
“No. X almost died because he didn’t listen to my orders about staying in bed.”
“But he didn’t die, did he?”
Huff let out a sigh of frustration. “I give up.” He walked over to a table and returned with a mirror.
“If you won’t take my word for how badly you’re injured, take a look for yourself,” he said. “Now, sit.”
Magnolia sat on a doctor’s stool and held the mirror up while he carefully unwrapped her head. The first few winds didn’t hurt, but he stopped when she was almost unbandaged.
“This is going to hurt,” he said.
“Then get it over with.”
He unraveled the bandage one last time, then peeled the dressing away from her scalp. She gritted her teeth and took the pain. Then she held the mirror up and turned her head.
The entire right side of her scalp and her right ear were burned away, leaving gooey flesh that was covered in the gray gel. Horrified, she just stared.
“You’re not howling in agony now only because of the pain med in your saline solution, and the nanotech gel that’s speeding up the healing process,” Huff said. “But you’re still at high risk for infection.”
She held the mirror there, studying the wound.
“The ruptured eardrum is essentially a tear in the thin tissue that separates your ear canal from your middle ear,” he said. “I’ve tried to get some of the nanotech gel inside, but I’m not sure it’s going to work.”
Magnolia turned her head more, looking out the corner of her eye.
“X insisted that I keep you in bed and watch you, so you can heal,” Huff said. “Those bandages need to be changed multiple times a day . . .”
She lowered the mirror when she saw a flash of black armor outside the medical ward. The militia soldier standing guard suddenly ran away with another guard who had just arrived.
“X didn’t have time to heal, and I don’t, either,” she said.
Magnolia handed the mirror back to the doctor, and wrapped the bandage around her head as she hurried out of the ward.
“You Hell Divers are all insane!” Huff called out after her. “Do you hear me?”
Magnolia heard him, and of course he was right. The best Hell
Divers were the crazy ones. And she was proud to be one of the craziest in the ranks.
* * * * *
A group of divers and support staff had gathered inside the marina under the capitol tower. X stood with them, anxious to join them in the air and search for the skinwalkers. Having a mission to focus on helped keep his mind off all the people he had lost.
But the losses were not far from his mind. And his heart.
Torches cast a glow over the freshly painted hang gliders pulled from storage on another rig hours earlier. With all the mechanics, engineers, and technicians busy working on Discovery, the divers had to do most of the work.
But most of them had come from other fields such as engineering, and some, like Michael, knew their way around equipment and machines. The young commander of Team Raptor finished applying a synthetic wrap around the aluminum-alloy poles of a glider’s control frame. Apparently, it would help lessen the risk of lightning strikes. A few feet away, Sofia was securing her booster pack to the control frame of her glider.
Two militia soldiers laid out submachine guns, extra magazines, pistols, and flares.
Ton and Victor finished tying the camouflage tarps on a fiberglass boat that would be almost invisible to any skinwalker subs still prowling. Mac and Felipe helped with the tarps on another boat. After working all day with Colonel Forge and Sergeant Wynn to scour the rigs for hostiles, they were now joining the mission to launch the divers. It was a coordinated effort between sky people and the many Cazadores who had rallied after the skinwalkers’ attack.
Even Pedro, leader of the survivors from Rio de Janeiro, had come to help. While he couldn’t pilot a boat, he was armed and could fight.
X chugged the rest of a disgusting beverage more potent than the shine Marv used to pour at the Wingman. The liquid running down his throat wasn’t alcohol, though. It was a Cazador cocktail of thick fruit juice infused with electrolytes and a special ingredient that they claimed would give him energy.
He still wasn’t even close to normal, but he wasn’t hungover, and the phantom pains where his arm had been were manageable tonight. It was his heart that hurt the most.
After finishing off the bottle of nutrients, X walked with Miles over to the divers. Michael, Rodger, Sofia, Arlo, and Edgar were the veterans of the group. They worked on their rigs quickly and efficiently, showing no sign of pain.
Warriors Page 24