“X, something’s attached to the boat!” Magnolia shouted. “Something—”
“Big? Yeah, I see it!”
X finally ducked into the hatch and had started to close it when one of the arms grabbed the handle, forcing it open. A third arm curled around the mast, twisting and curling its way to the top, where it bent the pole just below the crow’s nest.
Using all his strength, X tried to force the hatch shut. But the Sea Wolf crested another wave and came slamming back down, dislodging X from the hatch and lofting him into the air.
He flailed for something to hold on to. With the rope gone, he had nothing to hold him steady. He crashed onto the deck, sliding as soon as he hit. The port rail stopped him with the clunk of his rifle on metal. The impact knocked the air from his lungs, and red encroached on the edges of his vision. When it cleared, he had no more than an eyeblink to avoid another arm darting over the deck.
Kicking it away, he pushed himself up and fought his way back to the hatch leading inside the boat. Lurching past one of the spearguns, he grabbed it, his boot sliding on the slick deck. He swiveled the weapon toward the nearest arm and harpooned the meaty flesh.
A howl rose above the cacophony of the storm—the voice of a monster. The dark, dead seas weren’t so dead after all. It was why he had brought such weapons with him.
He grabbed the hatch to the cabin, opened it, and slammed it shut. An arm crashed into the metal a moment later. Backing away, X unslung his rifle, and flinched as an arm hit the hatch again.
“X, get down here!” Magnolia shouted from the command room.
Keeping the barrel aimed at the hatch, he backpedaled over to the ladder. Then he climbed down to the lower deck and bolted for the command center. A wave smacked the starboard hull, and he thumped into a bulkhead. Stars broke before his vision, but he kept going to the next hatch.
Inside the control room, Magnolia gripped the wheel and stared at the glass. She had flipped the beams back on, and the bright glow captured the side view of a meaty orange body covered in flaps and bumps.
“X …” she stammered, “what the hell is that?”
Miles was up and growling at the glass.
Part of the sea creature had surfaced, giving them a view of glistening flesh crisscrossed in deep scars. Longitudinal wrinkles and flaps covered its mantle and narrower head.
“Pepper can probably answer better than I,” X said.
“I believe it’s an Enteroctopus, or a giant octopus,” the AI replied.
The massive cephalopod tightened its grip around the Sea Wolf’s twin hulls. It reminded him of another monster—not as big and with fewer arms, but a monster all the same. El Pulpo, king of the Cazadores.
Something in his gut told him they were getting closer to the Metal Islands.
“This creature does not register in my database,” Timothy replied after a few seconds’ pause.
Thick arms covered in scars pulled the boat closer to a gaping hooked beak. The monstrous beast brought a tire-size eyeball to the windshield. Magnolia turned the wheel to the right, but the rudders didn’t respond. The engines whined.
“Stop,” X said, holding out a hand. “You’re going to burn them out.”
“I’m detecting a problem with engine two,” Timothy said. “I recommend shutting it off.”
Magnolia looked over to X.
“Do it and get back,” he said.
Ever so slowly, Magnolia unbuckled her harness. The enormous eye with the strange elongated pupil followed her actions, and before she or X could react, an arm slapped against the windshield. Spiderwebs spread across the reinforced glass, which cracked audibly from the impact.
Magnolia moved out of the seat, and X shouldered his rifle, training the muzzle on the bulbous lump-covered head of the giant octopus.
“Take Miles into your quarters,” X said. “Timothy, you take control of the boat as soon as I get done with this fucker.”
“What do you mean, when you ‘get done with it’?” Magnolia asked, not moving.
“Sir, I don’t think your weapons will have much …” Timothy started to say.
Water trickled through the cracked glass as a long arm smacked the window again. This time, its suction cups pulled away a triangular chunk of glass, letting in the howling wind and salt spray.
“Go, Mags!” X shouted.
He moved his finger to the trigger, held in his breath, and fired at the huge elliptical eye.
* * * * *
Michael Everhart stabbed the rotted melon with his garden fork and blinked away the sweat in his eyes. The diseased fruit splattered the dirt with green and red mush.
A bright glow from the ceiling-mounted grow lights captured the depressing scene. Other workers were carting off their first crop. The hybrid seeds had resulted in large melons, but a disease had putrefied the fruit.
“What the hell happened?” asked Cole Mintel.
The burly middle-aged man had joined the new team of farmers on Deliverance to help get the produce growing. He rolled up his sleeves, exposing strong forearms shaped by a lifetime working with wood.
Michael shook his head as he examined the three rows of melons. “Some sort of blight, I guess.”
Cole looked over the open space at the other crops. Twelve rows of corn were already maturing, and plump, healthy red tomatoes hung from dark-green vines. A large patch of potatoes had already begun to break through the rust-hued dirt.
“We’ll be fine,” Michael said. “We’ll try the melons again, or maybe we’ll try something else.”
He scooped the mess into a bag and handed it to Cole, who was collecting the ruined fruit. The older man hadn’t said much since losing his son two months ago, and Michael could tell he had lost his passion for woodworking. Lately, he spent more time at the farm than in his shop.
“How’s your wife?” Michael asked.
“She … we miss Rodger.”
“I miss him, too. He was like an older brother to me.” Michael put a hand on Cole’s shoulder. He seemed to sulk under the touch.
“His sacrifice saved a lot of lives,” Michael said.
Cole nodded again. “I better get these to the composters.”
“Right.” Michael watched the man leave and let out a sigh. They had lost too many friends over the past few months. Commander Rick Weaver, Andrew Bolden, Rodger Mintel, Ty Parker—the list went on and on.
But a ghost from the past had returned. As if in partial compensation for all the heartbreak and sacrifices, Xavier Rodriguez had come back from the dead. Humanity now had a future—an uncertain one, to be sure, but there was hope.
The most dangerous of emotions. Michael pulled the shirt from around his waist and used the bunched material to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
“Commander Everhart.”
He followed the voice to the clean-room entrance, where Lieutenant Les Mitchells had ducked under the flap. “Sir, you’re needed on the bridge.”
“I’ll be there in an hour,” Michael replied.
Les remained where he was, and even at this distance, Michael could see the worry in his eyes.
“Give me a few minutes,” Michael said.
That seemed to satisfy Les, who slipped back into the clean room.
Throwing on his shirt, Michael picked his way through the rows of crops, careful not to step on a stem or tendril. He felt eyes following him across the dirt.
Most of the crew didn’t understand why he spent his time off from diving and engineering to work in this place. But for Michael, farming had become therapeutic. Every tomato he held in his hand, every stem of potatoes he pulled from the ground, and every apple he plucked from their tree was a tangible success—something you could smell and taste. Something that sustained the human race.
Layla joined him here from time to time, but she didn�
��t love it the way he did. She preferred to be in the new library aboard Deliverance, combing the archives and learning about the history of a destroyed world.
Michael got out of his work clothes, cleaned off, and then threw on his red coveralls. Walking through the corridors, he drew looks from nearly everyone he passed. There weren’t many Hell Divers left, and even though Michael was helping in the effort to recruit new ones, the divers would never reach the numbers they had during his father’s tenure under X.
The real legends were almost all dead now.
Two workers painting a bulkhead outside the farm stopped to salute Michael. He simply nodded and continued on his way. After Captain Jordan’s death, both ships had returned to the roots of the Hive. The artwork was being restored, and destroyed and deleted archives were slowly being recovered, but there was still much work to be done.
Michael turned down a passage still being retrofitted into new quarters. More workers in yellow uniforms were carrying equipment into the small rooms, preparing them for their new tenants.
A third of the Hive’s population had already moved into quarters on Deliverance. There were still issues to deal with, primarily involving lower-deckers who felt that they got the short end of the stick in reassignment. But the committee formed to deal with such issues was working every day to make sure food, medical care, and shelter were being distributed equitably.
For the first time in recent memory, the passengers of the two airships were experiencing something that approached an egalitarian society.
Now that they had a second ship, there were more jobs. More jobs meant more food. More food meant a healthier population. A healthier population meant that Michael had a stronger pool of possible recruits for the next Hell Divers team.
Some days, he was really starting to feel that there was still hope for the human race, especially now that X and Magnolia were on the surface, looking for a permanent home.
He pulled his long hair back into a ponytail before approaching the hatch to the bridge. Only one militia soldier stood guard—another sign of change. With Jordan’s henchmen either in the brig or dead on the surface in Florida, there was no reason to have a bulky security force. The executive team had reassigned most of the militia to other jobs, such as farming.
The hatch opened, and Michael walked out onto the clean bridge, blinking in the dim light.
Layla stood at the helm beside their new captain, Katrina.
“Commander Everhart on deck,” said one of the officers.
Katrina and Layla both turned to face him, and both smiled, though the smiles seemed fraught, almost forced. In an instant, the optimism he had felt rising inside him drained away.
“Captain,” Michael said.
“Follow me, Commander,” Katrina said.
Layla remained at the command center while Michael followed the captain into the small conference room off the bridge, not bothering to ask why she wanted to meet with him personally. It could be any of a hundred things, since the ships were always one step away from disaster. But this time, it wasn’t an engineering problem, or a new strain of flu afflicting the passengers, or a lower-decker resentful about reassignment.
“We just received a distress signal from the Sea Wolf,” Katrina said. “Something happened to them, Michael.”
His heart sank at the news. Everything had been going so well. But Michael had learned long ago that life was seldom fair.
“We tried to hail them,” Katrina said, “but their radio is either damaged or offline. Right now, we have no way of knowing what happened.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “I wanted you to know. I loved X once, too.” Her eyes flitted to the deck. “A part of me will always love him.”
Michael blinked back a tear. He stiffened, trying his best to stay strong, because that was exactly what X would want him to do.
“Try not to worry,” Katrina said. “If anyone can survive out there, it’s Commander Rodriguez.”
TWO
A violent shaking startled Magnolia awake. She coughed up a mouthful of salt water, gagged, coughed again. A curtain of short-cropped blue hair hung over her face, blocking her view. She pulled it back and looked up at the blinking emergency light spreading its pulsing red glow over the room.
Between blinks, she spotted the wet, furry heap that was Miles. The dog lay a few feet away, curled up, unmoving.
“Miles,” she whispered. Reaching out, she nudged him, and he let out a whimper and moved a leg.
That was good. At least, he was still alive and could move.
But where was X?
Magnolia touched the goose egg on the back of her head and winced. She pulled away fingers slick with blood. She had taken a beating and had no idea how long she was out.
“Timothy, do you copy?” Magnolia said.
There was no answer but the creaking of bulkheads.
At first, she couldn’t remember why she was inside her quarters with Miles, but an otherworldly call reminded her.
The screeches of the giant octopus carried through the small vessel. But something about this melancholy sound was different from the one she had heard in the command center.
The scent of smoke drifted belowdecks. That got her attention.
She pushed herself up in the puddle of cold water, cursing a blue streak that would have made X proud.
X … Where the hell are you?
Miles tried to get up, too, but slipped and fell in the water, splashing it over Magnolia’s black fatigues. She helped him up onto a bunk and told him to stay put.
Then she fumbled her way over to the hatch and opened it to a passageway that was ankle-deep in seawater. Another emergency light winked outside the command center.
The hatch was ajar, providing a view inside the room. The red swirl from the light fell over standing water and a shattered windshield. A failsafe mechanism had activated, covering the broken glass with a metal hatch to keep the water out and at the same time blocking her view of the dark sea.
“Timothy?” she said.
The AI did not respond.
She closed the hatch and sealed it to keep the rest of the boat from flooding, then began her search for X.
The ladder to the upper deck was slick, and a quick glance revealed that it wasn’t just water.
Blood coated the rungs.
She climbed to the staging area and stepped cautiously into the dark space. There were no emergency lights up here, and all the porthole windows were sealed off with metal hatches.
“X,” she said quietly but firmly.
There was no response.
She reached into her cargo pocket and pulled out a small flashlight, which she pointed at the floor. A trail of blood led to the hatch.
“X, you son of a …”
She hurried over to a gun rack, freed her carbine, and slapped a full magazine into it. The gun felt good in her hands, but she wasn’t sure the rounds were going to do much against such a massive beast.
The hatch opened to darkness and a spray of cold water that hit her face. Howling wind greeted her as she stepped onto the deck with her rifle shouldered and the flashlight clamped against the stock.
The trail of blood ended on the deck, where the ocean water had washed away any further evidence. She played the beam back and forth, but X was nowhere to be seen.
“X!” she shouted, but her voice was lost in the howling wind.
The Sea Wolf swayed as she took her first step out. The engines continued to propel the craft through the mountainous waves that crashed and rose, over and over.
“X!” she yelled again.
Her light fell on a limp arm lined with suction cups, nailed by a spear to the rail.
Another sucker-covered arm hung off the cabin behind her, severed and dripping red off the second deck.
Her flashlight m
oved to the gore spattered behind the mainmast. Smoke rose away from a charred spot and a gaping rent in the deck.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered. The damage was, without a doubt, the result of a grenade. The blast had blown off two more of the creature’s arms, and a hunk of meat that she didn’t recognize.
“X, where are you!” she yelled, frantic now.
A reply came over the wind.
“Mags!”
The voice was faint but recognizable.
She hurried over to the side of the boat, cautious not to slide into the razor wire. Lowering her rifle, she used her flashlight to scan the ocean.
“Mags!” X yelled again.
But this wasn’t coming from over the side.
She looked up at the top of the bent mast and spotted X, hanging on to the crow’s nest. Another torn snaky arm was wrapped around the metal lookout, part of it coiled around his leg.
“You crazy bastard,” Magnolia whispered.
She stared for a second but quickly moved away from the side of the boat. Judging by the spatter around her, the beast was dead, but if she had learned one thing over her years of diving and fighting, it was never to turn her back on a monster.
With the rifle up and trained on the starboard rail, she backpedaled to the mizzenmast, boots slapping in the constant wash. “That thing still out there?” she called up.
“Nope, nothing but fish bait now!” he shouted.
She stopped when she got to the mast.
“You need me to come get you, or you coming down from there?”
X swung his legs over the side of the crow’s nest and kicked the hanging arm, but the suction cups had him and wouldn’t let go, even in death.
She kept an eye on the rails on both sides of the Sea Wolf as X made his way down the bent mainmast. One of the engines was still running, but if they continued losing power they would be forced to use the sails, which was going to be difficult with the mainmast so severely compromised. The mizzenmast looked fine, but if they lost the engines, they would need both sails.
Hell Divers IV: Wolves Page 2