“We’re not far,” he said. “Follow me.”
He led them down a stairwell to the museum’s basement. The stairs were all concrete until they got to another door, this one ajar.
Raphael tested the first cracked tile step, then proceeded ahead. Kade went next, shining his flashlight down into the basement.
Halfway down, one of the stairs above cracked, and Kade looked over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Johnny said.
“You could at least try and not sound like one of those dinosaurs,” Kade said.
“They aren’t even real,” Johnny whispered.
“Damn, wanker . . .”
The divers finally made it down into a cavernous storage area. Raphael played his flashlight over a map and then pointed across the space.
“Almost there,” he said.
They crossed the basement, past glass display cases still housing artifacts. Kade stopped to look in one that had a leather cowboy hat, rope, satchel, and an old-west six-shooter pistol.
His oldest son was obsessed with cowboys and would love it.
Kade considered breaking the glass, but he dare not make the noise. Maybe on the way out, after they completed their mission.
A flashlight beam hit him in the helmet.
“You comin’?” Johnny asked.
“Yeah. Get that out of my face.”
“Sorry.”
Kade walked on, leaving the cowboy display behind. They finally stopped in front of shelves that took up the entire wall.
“We’re here,” Raphael said.
“Our mission is to find something in these boxes?” Johnny asked. He pulled down a plastic crate and started rifling through it.
“No,” Kade said.
“The mission’s objective is behind these shelves,” Raphael said. “Help me take them down.”
For the next half hour, they removed almost every box from the long row of six shelves, until they finally discovered a steel door to a vault.
“There it is,” Raphael said.
Johnny maneuvered on the other side to help pull the shelving away. Its metal legs grated against the floor. Once the door was clear, Raphael stepped up to the keypad and pulled out his wrist computer. Using a tiny screwdriver, alligator clips, and patch cords, he connected the device to the keypad. He tapped in a code, and the door groaned as the locking mechanism and bars unsealed on the other side.
The three divers stepped back as the ancient hardware creaked and cranked.
“And you bastards say I’m loud,” Johnny said.
Dust poofed out as the doors parted and opened onto a landing. Another stairwell led to a still lower level.
Kade’s beam stabbed into the inky depths of the vault.
“After you guys,” Johnny said.
The doors finally finished opening and thudded into their locked position.
Raphael stepped forward but paused at what sounded like breaking glass. The men all turned toward the noise.
“What was that?” Johnny asked.
“Maybe one of the displays fell,” Kade said.
Raphael took a step back into the basement storage area. He listened for a few seconds, then gestured toward the vault.
Kade stood at the landing for another moment but heard nothing. He followed Raphael down the stairs, with Johnny right behind them.
Three floors later, they came to another set of blast doors. These were open.
Kade slowly made his way through what looked like a second museum, but with humans on display. Skeletons lay throughout the room. Some clutched one another. Others were on their own, backs to the wall, heads slumped.
On the floor beside each body was a little plastic vial.
Bending down, Kade picked up one and held it under his beam.
“Poison,” he whispered.
“All these people killed themselves?” Johnny asked.
“Aye, poor bastards,” Raphael said. “Come on, I want to get the hell out of this mausoleum.”
The divers fanned out across the chamber. It was furnished with cots, tables, and chairs. Clothing and bags were scattered among jugs and containers that lay on their sides, empty.
Kade guessed these people had simply run out of food and had decided to end things as gracefully as they could before it got ugly. He had seen enough places like this to understand the thinking.
These people were probably the families and friends of the museum workers. Just as his ancestors on the ITC Victory had been families and friends of the crew.
A few minutes later, Raphael found what they had come here for: a map encased in a plastic sheet.
“Got it,” he said.
“What’s that?” Johnny asked.
“Our next drop,” Raphael said. “Place called the Black Hills, in what was once the state of South Dakota.”
Kade helped him carefully roll up the map and slide it into a tube. With the map secured, they started back out the way they came, with Johnny taking point.
“Hurry up, guys. I got a hot date waiting for me tonight,” he said.
“Tell your hand you’re going to be a little late,” Raphael said.
Kade chuckled and raised his rifle, the flashlight beam shooting across the storage room.
He halted when he saw a pair of yellow eyes glowing in the darkness. Another set joined the first, and then a third.
Raphael had already seen them and was crouching down, trying to signal Johnny, who was looking back at them.
“What?” he said, suddenly freezing.
“Get down!” Raphael hissed.
Slowly Johnny turned with his rifle. Then he screamed and dropped on his bum as Kade fired. He took calculated single shots at the closest sets of eyes, conserving his ammo.
Raphael fired an arrow, and a cry of pain followed the thump. He backed up to nock another bolt as Kade covered him.
“Get up!” he shouted to Johnny.
Johnny stumbled to his feet and opened fire with his submachine gun, spraying the room with bullets that didn’t seem to find a single target.
In the glow of their beams, Kade identified mostly naked humanoid shapes darting through the maze of shelves and displays, wailing and roaring if they got hit.
He ejected the spent magazine and dropped it in his vest before pulling out a fresh mag.
Smoke and the smell of burnt powder made it into his helmet as he slapped a new magazine into his rifle. He chambered a round and looked for a target, but the beasts, whatever they were, fled the room, their grunts and shrieks echoing in the distance.
Kade crouched, listening, his hand shaking.
“What in the unholy wastes were those things?” Johnny stuttered.
Raphael moved out in front of them. “I think I know, but I don’t want to believe it.”
“What?”
Kade waited for an answer.
“Let’s move,” Raphael said. “We have to get out of here.”
He started walking, then halted halfway across the chamber to listen. The wails rose into an alien din mixing with grunts, clicks, and what sounded like human voices, speaking in a language Kade had never heard before.
They crept through the storage room, toward the sounds. Kade stopped at the case with the pistol and hat. The glass had been shattered by a bullet, and he reached inside, grabbing the pistol first.
He put it in his bag along with the hat, and then took the rope.
“Move it, Kade,” Raphael whispered.
They climbed the stairs back up to the exhibition halls. A few minutes later, the noises stopped altogether, giving way to an eerie silence.
“I say we get to the roof and hit our boosters,” Raphael said.
“Sounds excellent to me,” Johnny said.
They kept going up the stairs,
passing the door they had used to access the basement, and heading up six floors. At the top landing, Raphael gave Kade a nod. He opened the door, and Raphael slipped into a passage.
“Stay close,” Kade said to Johnny.
Johnny shouldered his submachine gun and moved after the more experienced divers. Raphael pointed his beam down the hallway, to the Hall of Dinosaurs.
Keeping low, the team moved down along the balcony on the top floor, their beams crisscrossing the space and illuminating the fossil bones below.
Raphael’s fist went up, and he motioned everyone to kill their lights and get down. They hit the floor, keeping low.
Grunting came from across the hall.
Then below.
Footsteps slapped on the floors immediately above and below them.
“We’re going to have to make a run for it,” Raphael said quietly. “Stay with me.”
“Got it,” Kade said.
“Don’t leave me behind,” Johnny whispered.
“On me,” Raphael said.
Two nods. He got up and flicked on his light.
All three beams pierced the darkness, raking over the upper balconies. They lit up pale human-size creatures darting across the floors on all five levels.
“Shit a brick,” Kade said when he saw them.
They weren’t humanoid, they were humans. Or some version thereof.
The beasts, in tattered clothes and bandages, rushed across the floors surrounding the exhibitions. At first glance, they looked like mummies swathed in bandages. They howled and screeched, opening mouths of blackened teeth.
“Kade, what do we do?”
Kade was surprised to hear Raphael asking him for advice. He stared at what looked like feral humans. But these weren’t humans in the same way as the divers. They were mindless mutant creatures.
On the bottom floor, a woman clutched a baby to her naked breast. The deformed little face pulled away from her nipple and stared up at them with its single Cyclops eye.
“Shoot ’em,” Johnny said. “Shoot them all!”
And before Kade could stop him, he opened fire. Shell casings rained down on the ground as he fired in all directions.
Cries of anger and pain echoed through the hall. A door opened at the other end of the floor, and a big, muscular man with stained bandages covering his body rushed out.
Brandishing two cutlasses, he rushed Raphael, who aimed and fired his crossbow. The arrow hit the man in the chest, stopping him cold. Then he looked down at the bolt protruding from his torso and kept charging despite the blow, screaming in primal fury.
Backing up, Raphael tried to reload, but there was no time. So he grabbed a hatchet instead and parried the slashes from the two blades. The creature then plowed bodily into him, knocking him against the railing and sending him halfway over.
Kade aimed, waiting for the perfect shot. It came a moment later, and he pulled the trigger. The first bullet went high, but the second blew off the top of the feral creature’s skull. It reached up to the hunk of bone and flesh hanging off, before slumping onto Raphael, forcing him over the other side.
“Raph!” Kade screamed. He ran to the railing and looked over at Raphael holding on to the railing one floor below. Five floors down lay the beast, somehow still moving an arm.
Johnny leaned over the rail, firing his submachine gun on the next level down, hitting multiple targets as they advanced toward Raphael.
Kade let his rifle hang from its sling and took the rope he had grabbed from the basement. After throwing a fast clove hitch and stopper knot around the rail post, he tossed it over the side.
“Grab it!” he shouted.
Another creature darted out a door on their floor, and Kade pulled his blaster out. He brought it up and fired a blast that hit the woman in the chest, blowing out the back.
“I’m jammed!” Johnny shouted. He tried to eject the bullet while Kade fished the line down to Raphael.
The veteran diver reached over and grabbed on, then ran the rope between his feet to begin inchworming his way up.
Johnny finally managed to clear his chamber and fired over the side at the creatures making a run for Raphael. One had some sort of sickle blade that must be from a museum display.
“Shoot the big one with the sickle!” Kade yelled.
He pulled Raphael up another few feet, almost out of striking range.
Johnny fired his last few bullets into the sickle wielder, the rounds punching into his bulging muscles. He jerked a few times and let out a roar. Then he raised his blade toward Raphael.
“no!” Kade screamed.
The creature swung, hitting Raphael in the side, where there was a gap in his armor. The blade made a sickening thud as it sank deep into his flesh.
Raphael held on to the rope for a moment, staring up at Kade, his eyes wide and blurred behind his visor.
“Johnny!” Kade shouted. He pulled on the rope as the beast tried to wrench the blade free.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Johnny said, struggling to load another magazine.
Raphael swung his fist at the mutant, then let out a shriek of agony as the blade came free. He took a step back as Johnny finally cleared his submachine gun. He pulled back the slide, but the man swung the sickle first, hacking into Raphael’s side again.
He jerked with the blow but didn’t scream.
The beast then pulled back for another strike.
Kade closed his eyes and pulled. Pulled so hard his muscles burned, but without a pulley system, he couldn’t move his friend an inch upward. He felt Raphael jerk several more times from blows, and the weight on the rope lessened.
“Eat this, you freaks!” Johnny shouted. He fired again and again at the mutant creature below, pumping his body full of rounds. It took half the magazine, including two head shots, before he finally collapsed.
Johnny moved over to help Kade. Together they got Raphael up to the top, and then grabbed his shoulder armor, pulling him over the railing in a strong heave, spilling a yard of entrails. It wasn’t just his midsection that had taken the blows. His right leg was gone below the knee and hanging on by ligaments.
“Oh God, oh God, Kade, what do we do?” Johnny stuttered.
Kade went for his med kit, but stopped when Raphael choked out, “No.”
This wasn’t survivable. Raphael knew it, too. He grabbed Kade with the last of his energy. Throat gurgling, he tried to get out one last communication.
All that Kade could make out was “Tia.”
His friend went limp in his arms, and his hand fell away from his vest. Wrapped around his wrist was the turquoise necklace, his last gift to his daughter.
Kade unwound it and stuffed it in his pocket, then got up. Johnny was shaking and looking down at Raphael, mumbling in shock.
“Come on,” Kade said.
“But Raph . . .”
The grunts and shrieks of the beasts echoed closer. Kade grabbed Johnny by the arm and hauled him to his feet, fleeing the swarm of feral cannibals that descended on their dead comrade.
Twenty-Four
Kade was curled up against a crate, his cowboy hat over his eyes, flinching from a dream, perhaps a nightmare. Magnolia decided to give him a nudge with her boot.
He shot up, reaching for the revolver holstered on his duty belt.
“Easy, bubba, damn!” Magnolia said.
His eyes darted about before finally focusing on her, and he lowered his hand.
“Sorry. I was . . .”
“Bad dream?”
He tipped his hat up and nodded. “Aye, somethin’ like that.”
“Better get up, we got chow in a few minutes,” Magnolia said.
“Thanks.”
Magnolia went back to the other divers. Eight hours into the journey to Panama, and most of them were up and active. The g
reenhorns were hanging out now that their gear and supplies were all double-checked. Footfalls came from across the room as Edgar finished running laps with Ada. They got down and started push-ups.
“Making us look bad,” Arlo said.
“You can . . . join in,” Edgar said between pants.
“Finish up,” Magnolia said. “We got chow in a few.”
She continued over to Rodger, who had joined them during their downtime. He was also enjoying the R&R—maybe a bit too much.
“Suck it in and hold it in,” said Gran Jefe. He handed the joint back to Rodger.
“Tastes kinda funny,” Rodger said. “What’s in it?”
“Tobacco, and . . .” The Cazador pinched his fingers together. “Un poco de algo más. Leetle bit of somethin’ else.” He pushed the joint closer. “Go on, my fren’. No hay problema.”
Magnolia chuckled under her breath. The Cazadores were always pushing their marijuana.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Might help with that nausea.”
Rodger sat on a crate with a bucket between his boot and the prosthetic foot, looking a bit green around the gills. Magnolia thought it odd that some Hell Divers were just fine falling at terminal velocity through a turbulent sky, yet got seasick the moment the ship started to rock.
“It will make you feel muy bien,” Gran Jefe said.
Rodger wiped off his mouth and accepted the joint. He lit it again and took in a puff, filling his lungs. Then he started coughing.
“What the hell . . . you put in that?” he gasped.
“El secreto,” Gran Jefe said with a conspiratorial grin. He took the joint back and took a hit.
“Isn’t there a rule about smoking or something?” Ada asked.
Still dripping from her workout, she got up and walked over.
Gran Jefe blew the smoke at her, and she swatted the air.
“Hey,” she said.
“Lo siento,” he said unconvincingly. “Sorry.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that? Culo—yeah, that’s it, you big culo.”
“Better than what you are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gran Jefe took another puff, blew it at Ada, and walked away.
Hell Divers Series | Book 8 | King of the Wastes Page 32