Hell Divers Series | Book 8 | King of the Wastes

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  When Miles went, X would likely not be far behind.

  X continued to the library and opened the doors to the long two-tiered chamber. Candles burned in sconces set between the bookshelves on the first level.

  On the second floor, a candle flame illuminated the bearded face of Imulah. The lead scribe was right where he had promised to be, sitting at the table with the maps and books.

  “Everything you asked for, King Xavier,” Imulah said. “But I’m afraid we don’t have much information on the Coral Castle—only a single entry about the man who first spoke of such a place.”

  X put the armor down, took a seat, and carefully opened the logbook.

  “One hundred and two years ago, a Cazador raiding party saw a lighthouse in Colón, Panama. When they went there, they found a man wearing the armor and helmet Ada discovered in Aruba,” Imulah explained. “He was killed and eaten by that party, but not before he told them about the Coral Castle.”

  “Did he say where it was?”

  “In the Pacific. Under the water. He claimed to have traveled through the canal in a small boat and was looking for survivors to bring them back to this haven.”

  “Sounds mad, but then again, I found this place, and I was a bit loco, as you say,” X said. Still, he didn’t think much of the story and quickly went on to the next book—logs of the Cazador warships that had raided Florida and the Caribbean and Atlantic shores of South America for over two centuries.

  The hours passed, and X finally put the book down.

  “Imulah, do you know why el Pulpo and his descendants focused only on these places?” he asked. “Why did they never try to go through the canal and reach the western shores of South America?”

  “They did. Let me search for it.” Imulah unraveled a scroll, then another. Then he opened a book and pointed to a passage. “Here . . . The warship Anaconda traveled to the Panama Canal forty years ago, during the reign of King Mayac. A second, much smaller vessel, called the Sea Sprite, was deployed with them.”

  He handed the scroll over. From what X could tell, King Mayac had deployed the warship with fifty sailors and a raiding team of thirty marines—quite a number for a vessel that never returned.

  “Were they looking for the Coral Castle?” X asked.

  “Perhaps, but I think they were just trying to get through the canal.”

  “No scouts were sent out to look for them?”

  “Yes, a vessel was deployed to search. I believe they found the Anaconda, adrift in the ocean not far from the Port of Colón in Panama, but the Sea Sprite was never recovered.”

  Imulah put his finger on a line in Spanish and read it aloud, translating on the fly.

  “When we found the Anaconda, it drifted like a dead fish—no direction,” he said. “A boarding party was put together and climbed onto the Anaconda to search for the crew. At first, due to the missing lifeboats, it was believed they had abandoned ship during the storm. But then we found the damage to the port side.”

  Imulah glanced up, stroking his beard.

  “And?”

  “They found signs of a kaiju.”

  “What the hell’s a kaiju?”

  “It was an old-world term for ‘monster.’ ”

  X sat back in his chair.

  “General Forge was just in Panama a year ago, where he salvaged the Octopus and Ocean Bull from the port,” X said. “I wonder if he knew about this.”

  “Maybe, but why does that matter?”

  “Do we know if Horn and his skinwalkers went through the canal?” he asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Imulah replied.

  X listened to the rain tap on the shutters and windowpanes. Candles flickered across the quiet room as he pictured what might have happened to the crews of the Anaconda and the Sea Sprite.

  Imulah sighed. “King Xavier, with respect, I know you well enough to understand what you’re doing.”

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  “You believe this place is doomed, as el Pulpo did, and you are looking for more places to raid.”

  X narrowed his eyes. “You knew he thought that?”

  “I suspected it.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I figured you would make your own way as king.”

  “Do you believe this place is doomed?”

  Before Imulah could answer, a knock came on the door. X stood, Miles rising with him.

  Michael opened the door and stepped inside.

  “King Xavier, you summoned me,” he said.

  “So formal,” X said with a grin. “Yes, please come in. We need to talk.”

  Michael crossed over to the table, holding a computer in his robotic hand. “I have something I need to talk to you about, too.”

  X narrowed his eyes and gestured for Michael to take a seat, but Michael remained standing.

  “This must be bad,” X said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  X decided to stay on his feet, too.

  Michael held out Cricket, and a hologram of Timothy emerged before them.

  “Ah, King Xavier, good to see you,” he said with a smile.

  “Give me the shit news, Pepper,” X said.

  “The drones have detected a powerful storm heading our way,” the AI replied. “The wind is already hurricane strength, and it’s getting stronger.”

  X cursed under his breath.

  Time wasn’t running out. It was already gone.

  Two weeks before harvest, they were about to be hit with the worst storm yet.

  He knew then that he could no longer sit around and try to mitigate problems. There was no fixing some of the issues here.

  It was time to be aggressive and head back into the wastes.

  “How long do we have?” X asked.

  “Two days, maybe a bit less,” Timothy said. “Pedro is monitoring the data with me and has taken a more conservative approach, thinking it will be here faster.”

  X shook his head. “Just what we need,” he said. “Sound the alarms when I tell you to get everyone prepared and buckled down to ride this one out.”

  Michael nodded and went to leave, then hesitated. “Wait. What were you going to tell me?”

  “Something I should have told you a month ago,” X replied.

  He handed Michael Horn’s logs, translated from the Spanish. Michael read them and looked up with dread in his eyes.

  “I’m going to activate the Hell Divers and recruit new ones,” X said. “It’s time to face our future without fear. I’m sending a team into the wastes to look for more places to raid. We can’t hide out here any longer.”

  “Where exactly are we heading?” Timothy asked.

  X pulled over the maps and pointed at the Panama Canal.

  “Never thought I would say this, but el Pulpo was right,” he said. “Unless we head back to the wastes to search for new supply chains, the Vanguard Islands have an expiration date.”

  X picked up the new armor and whistled for Miles to follow.

  “Where are you going?” Imulah asked.

  “To recruit some new allies,” X said over his shoulder.

  Three

  Kade Long squinted and pulled down the brim of his tattered cowboy hat. Although he had been here a year, he still wasn’t used to the bright sunshine at the Vanguard Islands. There were a lot of things he and his fellow sky people weren’t used to.

  Food, for one. Good food, anyway.

  The 505 survivors formerly imprisoned at Mount Kilimanjaro weren’t used to eating much at all. Most of them had been malnourished and sick when the Hell Divers showed up and rescued them from the machines.

  Five of Kade’s comrades had died shortly after, unable to hold on long enough to see this wondrous place.

  He gazed out from the balcony o
f his small shack on the second-highest deck of oil rig 15. All the Kilimanjaro survivors lived on this rig, cramped together in dwellings just like his. No one minded the tight quarters.

  Laughter came from the balcony above him, where his neighbors were joking around.

  Sounds he never used to hear—very different kinds of noises from those he had heard in the machines’ prison. Gone were the constant coughing and sobs of starving, sick people.

  Here was laughter, deep and joyous.

  He enjoyed hearing those happy noises, but he also enjoyed the sounds of the ocean: the keening cries of the seabirds, the rumble of fishing boats heading out early in the morning.

  All these sounds were new, just like the views. The clear blue-green water, the colorful shoals of fish, and the bright colors of the Cazadores’ clothing and jewelry made him feel like a blind person seeing for the first time.

  He closed his eyes.

  This was paradise, but the thought often brought on survivor’s guilt, as it did now. Feelings of regret and loss bubbled up, along with the horrible question that ate at his broken heart.

  Why was he alive when his family was dead?

  He thought of his wife, Mikah, and their boys, Sean, Jack, and Rich—all of them gone. Killed by the machines all those years ago when Captain Rolo had chased the signal to Mount Kilimanjaro and fallen for the trap.

  Anger festered in his guts, though not at the captain. Kade had long since forgiven Rolo. In fact, Kade had been on the crew that decided it was worth the risk to chase that very signal.

  Maybe surviving after his family had perished was only what he deserved—a punishment that would never end.

  He went back inside. Besides the little square table and a plastic chair, the two-hundred-square-foot dwelling also boasted a custom-made bed and armchair. Resting against the armchair was his only other belonging besides his clothes and hat and six-shooter: his guitar.

  Normally, he would sit down and pick a few tunes every day, but today he didn’t feel much like playing.

  He left the shack and headed to the top of the rig. The supper bell sounded from a lookout platform off one of the sundecks, drawing hundreds of hungry mouths.

  The scent of fish stew and fresh-baked bread led them all to the center of the deck, where tables and chairs were already occupied by the early birds.

  Kade knew every person here. They all had suffered together, seen each other at their worst. He walked past Janice, who had been friends with his wife. She bit off a hunk of bread and nodded at him as he walked by.

  In his mind’s eye, Kade recalled a night five or six years after they were imprisoned at the machines’ camp. He was in a cell with Janice and three others, two of whom had since died. Starving, sick, and thirsty, Janice had come to Kade, offering her body in exchange for his water ration.

  He had gently declined her offer but gave her the rest of his water.

  Kade was filled with memories of moments that had brought out the worst in the captives. Times when people had fought and even killed over food and water.

  Doing whatever they could to survive.

  He fell into line behind Thomas, who had lost an arm in an accident running a laser-cutting machine at the camp. The severed limb hadn’t gone to waste, though—several other workers had cooked it that night and eaten it.

  “G’day, Kade,” Thomas said.

  “How you doing, mate?” Kade dipped his cowboy hat, speaking with whatever remained of the accent that had taken to the sky with their ancestors during the war. “I’m still full as a butcher’s dog from last night’s feast,” Thomas said while patting his belly. “Sometimes, I can’t believe this is all real.”

  “Aye, almost like someone pulled the wool over your eyes, yeah?”

  Thomas chuckled.

  As the queue shuffled forward, another memory surfaced, of the lines he once stood in for the thin soup that the machines served in the camp. A droid unit that looked like a wastebasket had served them all from vats that contained a mystery soup. Some days, it was just broth; other days, it had small chunks of meat or herbage.

  Kade used to think the rare scraps of meat came from rats, until the day he learned the truth.

  People would often push and fight their way into the line, anxious to get the first ladlefuls, thinking these would have the most meat. In the early days, Kade didn’t care about his position in line. He had lost his will to live, and with it, all his instinct to survive.

  He let his rations go to people like Tia, the daughter of a fellow Hell Diver who had died years before their airship reached Africa.

  Kade didn’t see the teenager here today, but he did see another kid, this one born in captivity.

  Eight-year-old Alton was sitting at a table with his mum, Kaitlyn, shoveling fish stew into his mouth. Long, shaggy brown hair hung over his eyes.

  Unlike most of the other sky people, Kade was blessed—or, in his mind, perhaps cursed—with the natural athletic ability and killer instinct that kept him alive.

  He had lived in that camp for over ten years, until the day the angels stepped from the sky.

  Finally, a joyful memory emerged: the moment Michael Everhart and Arlo Wand had landed at the building where Kade was held prisoner.

  He breathed deeply, exhaling the memories as he took a bowl from a stack. When he got to the front of the soup line, he held it out. Molly, a widow with long brown hair and a pretty smile, spooned a hearty portion into his bowl.

  Kade thanked her politely and took his bowl, and was headed back to eat in his room when a youthful voice called out.

  “Hey, Cowboy Kade, will you tell us some stories today?” little Alton asked.

  Sorry, Kaitlyn mouthed.

  Kade hesitated. Not because he wanted to eat by himself, but Alton reminded him of his sons. He had a hard time with painful memories of his family whenever he was around kids.

  “What kind of story you want to hear?” Kade asked.

  Alton gestured to the hat as Kade kicked out a chair and sat down.

  “For starters, where’d ya get that? I know that’s why they call you ‘Cowboy Kade,’ but . . .”

  “I’m no cowboy,” Kade said.

  Alton pulled out a book from his backpack and opened it in front of Kade. “These are cowboys,” he said. “They got the same hat you got on, and they rode these things called horses.”

  Kade looked at the picture of a man astride one of the old-world beasts. The rough-looking guy wore a leather hat and chaps, and held a lasso in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  “He sure looks like you,” Alton said. “Even got your gun.”

  Kade had forgotten he was wearing his six-shooter on his hip.

  “The Monster Hunter.”

  He turned toward the cocky female voice and found Tia. She wore a tan tank top and the turquoise necklace she never took off—the last thing her dad ever gave her. Or, rather, that Kade had given her for her dad, who died on the very day he found it.

  Tia ran a hand over her buzzed head. The Maori tattoos inked into her scalp recalled her distant ancestors. Those first Polynesians had a fierce warrior culture.

  “Where’ve you been?” Kade asked. “I haven’t seen you.”

  “Trying to find work.” Tia shrugged. “Not much to be had if you only know how to shovel dirt and sit in cages.”

  “There’s got to be something.”

  “Aye, but maybe you should teach me how to use that.” Her green eyes flitted down to his pistol.

  The barrel was rusty from sitting in the dirt during all the years of Kade’s captivity, but he had recovered it after the Hell Divers freed him and his people.

  Now it stayed in the holster, ready for the day he might need it again.

  “Teach me how to shoot,” Tia said.

  “Yeah, me, too!” Alton said.
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  Kade snorted and then chuckled while shaking his head.

  “What’s so funny?” Tia asked.

  He sighed. “That’s not the kind of life your dad wanted for you.”

  “Well, he’s dead along with pretty much everyone else, and I want to do something with my life now that we got this second chance.”

  Kade turned back to Kaitlyn and Alton. “Excuse me for a—”

  “No need,” Tia said. “I was just heading out.”

  “To go where?”

  She hurried off without answering. Kade considered getting up and trying to talk to her, but he knew Tia all too well, and chasing after her would make things worse. Long ago, her father, a Hell Diver on Kade’s team, had asked Kade to help look after Tia if anything happened to him.

  Kade had agreed, but after her father’s death, Tia grew more and more distant and rarely listened to anyone. Now, with freedom all around her, she listened even less.

  He sighed again and turned back to the table.

  “She’s a hurt soul,” Kaitlyn said.

  “What’s that mean, Mum?” Alton asked.

  “It means you have a broken heart.”

  The truth was, Tia thought Kade a bit of a bastard, when he was only trying to help.

  Alton pointed at the book again. “Were cowboys kind of like Hell Divers?” he asked. “You really look like this guy.”

  Kade studied the picture of the cowboy and saw the resemblance. They both had thick mustaches, a strong jawline, and a brown leather hat.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Kade finally said. “It’s just a coincidence.”

  “So how’d you get that hat if you’re not a cowboy?” Alton asked.

  Kade set the spoon back down as another memory engulfed him, this one a nightmare.

  “I found it in a building a long time ago,” he said. “Place called a museum. Same place I got my revolver.”

  Alton reached out for the hat, but Kaitlyn chided him.

  “That’s not yours to touch,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” Kade said. He handed it to Alton. “Go ahead, try it on.”

  “Really?” The boy’s eyes widened.

  “Aye, long as you give it back.”