Hell Divers Series | Book 8 | King of the Wastes

by Smith, Nicholas Sansbury

  Stepping up to the controls, Michael looked down at a map. They weren’t far enough away from the Vanguard Islands yet.

  “Can we put this thing on autopilot?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but there’s no telling if the storm will push it off course. We have to keep going, Chief.”

  Michael gave a reluctant nod.

  “Is Rodger gonna be okay?” Alfred asked.

  “He took in a lot of smoke, and he has some burns.”

  “Get a lifeboat ready and get Rodger inside,” Alfred said. “I’ll stay up here for now.”

  Michael left the command tower but stopped when he saw movement at the front of the tanker, past the raging fire.

  “You see that?” he asked.

  Alfred followed his gaze and then grabbed a pair of binoculars.

  “I think that’s Pedro,” he said. “He’s with two other sailors.”

  “Did you try them on the comms?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think Pedro has a headset or radio.”

  “They look like they’re trying to lower a lifeboat.”

  “Okay, keep an eye on them,” Michael said. “I’m heading back down.”

  He was relieved that Pedro and a few other sailors had survived, but they weren’t clear yet. He pounded down the ladder.

  Feeling the seconds tick off was like watching the fuse on a stick of dynamite burn down shorter and shorter. And each second that passed took him farther away from Layla and Bray.

  When Michael reached Rodger, he was on all fours, coughing.

  “Can you walk?” Michael called out.

  Rodger pushed himself up.

  “Yeah, I’m good . . .” He paused while another spate of coughing racked him.

  Michael half-lifted and half-dragged him over to the railing on the starboard side, where an orange enclosed lifeboat hung over the side on its davits, just above the lower deck.

  The next wave crashed into the hull, splashing the deck above and soaking Michael and Rodger.

  A violent tremor suddenly shook the ship, making the lifeboat swing and knocking both men down. Michael grabbed a post and pulled himself up as flames shot from a vent amidships.

  “We have to get the lifeboat ready to launch!” Michael shouted.

  “Okay!” Rodger yelled back.

  They moved over to start the first preparations by removing pins and disconnecting the electrical charge cable.

  “Alfred, how far out are we?” Michael yelled into his headset.

  “Almost twenty miles now, Chief.”

  He would have liked to be much farther, but it was time to bail. The second fuel compartment was about to blow, and when it did, the ship would sink.

  “Alfred, put us on autopilot and get down here,” Michael ordered.

  “On my way.”

  Michael helped Rodger into the orange lifeboat, dragging him and then lugging him through the hatch. He locked Rodger into a seat and fastened a belt around him.

  Rodger was pale and his lips were blue.

  “You’re going to be okay, buddy,” Michael said.

  “Mags is going to kill me twice,” Rodger mumbled. He pushed his goggles up in his hair and fiddled with his glasses. “She’s going to think I’m a gimp.”

  “She’ll be glad you’re alive.” Michael managed a smile. “I’ll be back in a sec. Sit tight.”

  Leaving the boat, he looked at the bow and then the water, scanning for Pedro and the others, but there were only waves.

  “It’s done!” Alfred shouted. “Let’s bail!”

  “Did you see Pedro?”

  “Yes, they launched a few minutes ago.”

  Michael trotted with Alfred across the deck to the lifeboat.

  Another vicious quake shook the ship, knocking them to the deck. Alfred slid toward the rail. He had his hands out, trying to brace himself, but he hit a post headfirst. The crack was audible even over the howling wind.

  “Alfred!” Michael yelled.

  He slid over and bent down, afraid to move him.

  Groggy, but conscious, Alfred reached up to the wound.

  “Let me help you,” Michael said. He put his robotic arm under Alfred’s armpit and helped him to his feet.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah,” Alfred said.

  They started down the rail to the section directly over where the lifeboat hung in its davits. Alfred staggered in his grip, unsteady, like a child taking its first steps.

  “Almost there,” Michael said. “You can make it.”

  A deep roar ripped through the hull. Alfred grunted as Michael hauled him over the deck.

  “Hold on to the rail,” Michael said. “I’ll help you over in a second.”

  Michael straddled the rail, one foot in the lifeboat, and reached back to Alfred.

  Alfred took his hand and swung a leg over the rail. They were both directly over the lifeboat now. Rodger was coughing in the open hatch and trying to raise a hand.

  Michael jumped down onto the top of the orange craft and motioned for Alfred to do the same.

  A blast rocked the ship as Alfred jumped. He hit the bow of the lifeboat but slid backward. Michael scrambled across the overhead and reached down, grabbing him by the wrist.

  “I got you!” Michael shouted.

  “Shit!” Alfred screamed.

  He looked down at the waves slapping up toward his boots.

  “Rodger, I need a hand!” Michael yelled.

  A few seconds later, he felt Rodger grabbing his legs with both hands.

  “Pull him up!” Rodger shouted.

  Flames erupted out of the hull at the stern of the ship. The heat rolled over them. Michael closed his eyes and felt the burn on his cheeks.

  Their time was up. It was escape now or go up in flames.

  With a grunt, Michael started pulling Alfred back onto the overhead of the lifeboat. He had him almost all the way to the top when the boat lurched.

  The nose dropped to a forty-five-degree angle.

  “One of the cables snapped!” Rodger cried.

  He held on to Michael’s feet, and Michael kept his grip on Alfred’s wrist and forearm, but Alfred slid back over the gunwale, his feet dangling over the violent water. The flames on the decks above grew more intense. Michael squinted and coughed as smoke drifted over them.

  “I can’t hold on much longer!” Rodger shouted.

  “Don’t let me go!” Alfred screamed.

  There was terror in his voice—the same tone Michael had heard many times when a man knew he was about to die.

  But Michael wasn’t going to let his friend die.

  He pulled Alfred back up, their eyes locking.

  “I got you, mate!” Michael yelled.

  There was a loud pop, and the right side of the lifeboat dropped.

  Alfred slipped from Michael’s grasp, plummeting the twenty feet to the water and vanishing into the boil.

  “no!” Michael shouted.

  The lifeboat fell a moment later as the last cable broke free.

  They hit the water with a jarring splash, and Rodger pulled Michael inside. Michael blinked and wiped the water away as he searched the waves.

  “Alfred!” he yelled. “Alfred!”

  A wave slapped him in the face. Blinking the saltwater from his eyes, he popped back up, staring out into the ocean as the lifeboat bobbed up and down.

  Water sloshed about their ankles.

  An explosion above made Michael duck on instinct. He pulled the hatch down as the fireball rolled over them.

  Rodger picked himself up off the sloshing deck, dragged himself up into the pilot’s seat, and seconds later was going full throttle away from the blazing tanker. Michael stood under the hatch, trembling in anguish.

  “I had him,” h
e said. “I had him.”

  Michael opened the hatch and stood up with his top half out of the boat, gazing at the floating conflagration behind them. As he stood there gaping, a billowing mushroom of fire rose above the raging sea. He gazed in wonder for several seconds. Then a force greater than anything he had ever known hit the lifeboat, and the world stopped.

  * * * * *

  More tremors rippled across the earth. They came and went as Team Raptor advanced along the canal’s edge. Magnolia swept the shadows with her laser rifle barrel while scanning the phosphor-green terrain through her night-vision goggles.

  The rumbling faded, but she didn’t let herself relax. This wasn’t lightning strikes—the noise was resonating from somewhere below them.

  The radiation levels reflected the power of the storm. Magnolia’s Geiger counter put the ionizing radiation levels at the top of the yellow zone. They wouldn’t survive for long out here without their protective gear.

  She hunkered down to scan the industrial area west of them. Nothing stirred across the dark terrain. A few steel girders and beams poked up out of the ground ahead. Across the canal, a line of containers had blown over like dominoes.

  She motioned for the team to keep moving along the rolling terrain flanking the canal. There wasn’t much cover—only scattered boulders and rusted-out old-world vehicles.

  In the distance, another concrete lookout tower had survived, but the top was blown off, leaving the viewing area a jumble of twisted metal.

  The lack of cover did have one advantage, though: the divers could see if anything was hunting them. They moved in combat intervals toward the ship she had seen on the dive.

  Another vibration rumbled.

  “What is that sound?” Arlo asked.

  “Quiet,” Edgar said.

  He was on rear guard with Arlo. Magnolia was right behind Ada, who had taken point with Jo-Jo. The beast sniffed the ground, stopping every few minutes to peer into the darkness.

  Magnolia spotted a fire in the city—lightning, no doubt. She hoped the heat would draw whatever beasts they had heard back at the DZ.

  Two hours after landing, Team Raptor was closing in on the ship. She could see the stern now, its Chinese characters still visible on the hull.

  As they got closer, she noticed signs of the postapocalypse-style retrofits familiar to her from other Cazador vessels: mounted harpoon guns and railings festooned with razor wire. Whoever abandoned this ship had gone to great lengths to keep others off.

  All the way around the vessel, rows of metal spikes protruded from the hull.

  Magnolia raised her fist, then waved everyone behind a wall bordering the canal. She brought her binos up and saw more evidence of recent life. And a battle.

  The hull had long, deep gouges in the metal.

  Magnolia crouched back down. They all knew that something had killed the crews on the Anaconda and the Sea Sprite, neither of which ever returned from their mission through the canal.

  The long marks on the hull gave Magnolia a bad feeling, but then, that was what they were here to do: discover monsters.

  “Edgar, with me,” she said. “Arlo, stay here with Ada and Jo-Jo.”

  Nods all around.

  Magnolia hopped over the wall and started toward the ship. The long hull rested against the left side of the canal. Oddly, a platform had been extended down from the deck to the ground. It was as if someone had just stopped here, put down a ramp, then fought a battle.

  She saw no evidence of the fight having occurred as much as a decade ago.

  She motioned for Edgar to follow her over to the chains hanging off the stern. Eight feet of dark water separated them from the ship.

  “Gotta run and jump,” she said.

  “Yup, I’ll go first,” Edgar said.

  He took a few steps back, then ran and leaped into the air. His boots hit the hull with a loud thud as he grabbed one of the dangling chains. With his boots only inches from the water, he twisted the slack once around his leg for a brake.

  Then, pulling himself up, he let the slack run down and around his leg. After climbing up ten feet or so, he let the coil around his leg tighten and gave his forearms a few seconds rest before starting up again.

  Magnolia leaped and grabbed the chain to Edgar’s left and started up the side at once, wanting to put distance between herself and the inky water below.

  Halfway up, the chains next to Magnolia and Edgar started to jingle.

  “What the . . . ?” Magnolia noticed a ripple through the water, then a second and a third, each seemingly created by a distant rumble.

  Above her, Edgar twisted back toward the industrial zone, where the other divers had sheltered behind a hill. Magnolia couldn’t see them—only their beacons on her HUD.

  “Keep climbing,” she said.

  As they neared the top of the hull, the jingling of chains became a loud clanking, and the ripples were now wavelets.

  Looking over her shoulder, Magnolia saw the source of the quakes.

  Across the rolling terrain, beyond the hills rimming the canal, geysers of dirt burst into the air. She bumped off her NVGs to see unaided, using the glow of lightning.

  Out of those holes, creatures clambered out. Magnolia squinted to get a better look at the one closest. Pointy yellow legs emerged from the shell of what looked like a dog-size sea turtle. But the resemblance to a turtle was only superficial. Rather, it seemed to be a hybrid of several species, including a crab and an iguana.

  Across the terrain, great curved turtle beaks chopped like guillotines while releasing little clicks and shrieks. Spiked green tails slithered behind the beasts as they skittered over the ground on six legs and two pincer-wielding arms.

  Ada and Arlo took off running through the minefield, with Jo-Jo leading the way. All around them, the ground swarmed like a kicked anthill.

  Ada fired a bolt at the pincers snapping behind her. The laser seared a hole into the beak and face, eliciting a gruesome screech.

  The head vanished inside the shell as Ada punched simmering holes through the armor. Green fluid trickled out.

  “Run!” Magnolia shouted.

  Arlo fired as he backpedaled, only to trip and fall. Ada paused to help him up.

  Magnolia watched in horror for a second, then went back to hauling herself up the hull. At the top, she rolled over the barbed wire, snagging a strand. She hit the deck and got up, using her knife to cut through the tangled wire.

  “Edgar,” she said.

  A quick scan of the deck showed he wasn’t there.

  “Edgar?” she said into the comms. “Where’d you go?”

  No answer.

  Heart thrumming, Magnolia brought her rifle scope up for a close-up visual of the beasts chasing her comrades.

  Spiky red hair surrounded the wicked beaks on their armored faces, and those long, pointy legs scuttled so fast, she had trouble sighting up a target.

  Her burst went high. The next hit one of the creatures in the head, blowing out green juice. It bucked and slashed at the air with its sharp legs.

  Another dirt geyser erupted in the direction Jo-Jo, Arlo, and Ada were running. Arlo had his back turned to fire and didn’t see.

  By the time Ada warned him, one of the creatures skittered toward him, slicing the air. He turned just in time to bring up his rifle and parry a pincer, but the other claw snapped around his arm.

  A scream of pain rang out over the comms.

  Ada fired a laser bolt into the head, and the beast finally let go and fell back, legs kicking the air. A second turtle clattered toward Ada, but a snarling Jo-Jo grabbed both pincer arms.

  “Get Arlo out of here!” Magnolia shouted over the comm. “Get a tourniquet on that arm and take him back up to the ship!”

  She had to give the team a window to escape. Ada crouched next to Arlo.
She had applied a tourniquet and was taping a sterile dressing over the wound.

  Jo-Jo finished off the hybrid creature by ripping off both clawed arms and then beating the head to a pulp with her powerful fists.

  Ada’s mascot packed a hell of a punch.

  “I’m cold,” Arlo said over the comms.

  “Stay with us!” Magnolia shouted. “Edgar, where the hell are you!”

  She dare not turn to look for him, so she just kept choosing shots, picking off the turtle creatures surrounding the divers. Jo-Jo got in front of Ada and Arlo, raising her fists and letting out a roar that Magnolia could hear from the ship.

  She zoomed in on Arlo. He slumped against Ada as she finished wrapping his wound.

  “Get him out of here!” Magnolia shouted.

  Ada helped Arlo to his feet and punched his booster. The canister fired, filling the helium balloon and yanking him skyward.

  “Ada, run!” Magnolia yelled.

  Jo-Jo howled and swung at the beasts as they closed in.

  Magnolia aimed and fired, aimed and fired, trying to give them a chance to escape. Ada and Jo-Jo took off running up a hill bordering the canal.

  As they crested it, a massive bulge of dirt pushed up, revealing pincers as long as a man. They pushed up, supporting a white shell with red markings that was the size of a small airship.

  “Oh my God,” Magnolia murmured. She gazed in wonder at what had to be the mother of this turtle brood—a beast far bigger than any animal she had ever seen.

  Ada stared up at the monster.

  “Ada, get in the air!” Magnolia shouted over the comm.

  Turning, Ada grabbed at Jo-Jo. The animal fought in her grip, but Ada managed to get a safety strap around her and fashion it into a crude harness. She reached over her shoulder and hit the booster, firing two balloons.

  Magnolia held her breath as the hellish thing broke through the ground and swung its massive head upward. Sighting the diver and her companion, it let out a roar that filled the night.

  She had raised her rifle to fire when she saw something drop. Not something . . . someone.

  The monkey fell almost twenty feet to the ground.

  The monstrous turtle snapped at the air below her feet while the babies swarmed around their mother. Ada toggled away from them, toward Jo-Jo, then cut away from the booster.