Captives

TWENTY-FOUR

After swimming to exhaustion, Rhino and X had made it to the remains of the fishing boat. Its wooden hull still burned, and one of the sails lay stretched out in the water, like a broken bird wing.

They searched in darkness through the debris field and found a bag and a few planks of wood, but nothing that would help them stay afloat.

At least, the sharks hadn’t found them.

Yet.

X kept treading water. He was drained from swimming, and one calf was cramping. Though he didn’t have his armor to weigh him down, he was struggling to keep his head above the surface.

It seemed that some monster was always trying to eat him, or some human was bent on killing him. All he wanted was a simple life and a place to settle down somewhere and live out his years with Miles.

Was that too freaking much to ask?

He kept searching through the flotsam for anything that would help him get back to his dog and friends.

Some people in this world had an intense will to live, coupled with the skills to keep them alive. X knew he was one of them. What he didn’t understand was why he continued to live.

What made him different?

Not some stupid prophecy, that much was certain. The fairy tale that Janga had preached for years on the Hive was nothing but bullshit. She wasn’t much better than the woman from the trading post who had sold herbs to his wife when she was dying of cancer.

A destiny foretold wasn’t the reason he had survived long enough to reach the Metal Islands in the Sea Wolf. Certainly, he wasn’t any stronger or smarter than Cazador warriors like Fuego, Whale, or Wendig. He wasn’t stronger or smarter than the Hell Divers who died before him, either. Not Commander Rick Weaver, Aaron Everhart, or Erin Jenkins.

Maybe he was just lucky. And maybe that luck was running out.

“Hey, you see that?” Rhino asked.

X brought his rambling mind back to the present and looked in the direction the Cazador lieutenant was pointing. It was a dark night with only a sliver of moon, but in the intermittent flashes of lightning, he saw the outline of what looked like one of the Cazador skiffs, and someone was standing inside.

“Shit, is that…”

Rhino was already swimming in a front crawl toward the skiff. For a man of his size and dense muscularity, he was a damn good swimmer. X fell behind quickly, too tired to do anything faster than a breast stroke.

A voice called out at the halfway point.

“¡Hola, hola!” Rhino yelled.

The figure in the boat turned toward them. A Cazador soldier had survived after all.

But rather than respond to Rhino, the man ducked down in the stern near the motor. He was trying to start the engine, X realized.

X kicked harder, breaking into a crawl. Memories of the swamps back in Florida surfaced in his mind. Giant octopuses weren’t the only monsters in the sea.

But he couldn’t think about those beasts right now. Maybe that was why he continued to survive. He rarely gave in to fear, preferring anger as a motivating force.

“Hello!” Rhino called out. He swam the rest of the way to the boat and tried to climb inside, but the Cazador standing inside swung a cutlass, forcing him back into the water.

X didn’t need to see a face to know that this was Sergeant Lurch. Why did everyone have to be such an asshole?

He sucked in a long breath, filling his lungs, and ducked under the water. Once he was down, he frog-kicked and breast-stroked for as long as he could hold his breath.

When he surfaced, Rhino had backed away from the boat, treading water.

“Don’t do this, Lurch,” he said. “We can all make it out of here.”

“Fuck you!” The sergeant swung the cutlass downward and came within an inch of lopping off Rhino’s ear.

X went back under the water, this time swimming under the boat and surfacing on the other side.

Lurch had his back to him, providing an opportunity, but X had nothing to fight with but his bare hands.

That’ll have to do.

The sergeant swung at Rhino again, and X grabbed the side of the boat and shook it as hard as he could. It worked, knocking Lurch overboard.

X climbed over the side and slumped onto the deck. He couldn’t see much in the darkness, but he did see a broken oar with a jagged end.

He could hear a lot of splashing and grunting in the water as the two Cazadores tried to drown each other. For a fleeting moment, he considered just leaving them to it, but there was something about Rhino that X respected—something he could relate to.

X picked up the broken oar. To his surprise, Lurch managed to push Rhino under the water and hold him there.

“Hey, numb-nuts!” X yelled.

Lurch glanced up, then cried out as X plunged the jagged end into the side of his neck. The splintered wood broke through gristle and took off a flap of skin that hung like a speared fish.

X stabbed again as the man thrashed with one hand and tried to clamp his neck wound with the other.

Rhino broke back through the surface, gasping for air.

X stuck the oar out, and Rhino grabbed on as X pulled him toward the boat, away from the thrashing sergeant.

Rhino got his hands on the gunwale, and X helped haul him in.

“Guess he won’t be giving you problems anymore,” X said.

Lurch reached up at the boat, but he was weakening fast. X locked eyes with the dying man, then turned away.

“Gracias,” Rhino gasped.

X didn’t respond. He was trying to start the motor. He had to get the hell out of here and back to the Metal Islands to help with the attack.

“How far out are we?” he asked.

Rhino looked over his shoulder.

“Twenty-five miles, maybe thirty—I’m not sure. Do you think you can fix it?”

“I’ve fixed worse,” X replied. “The question is, do we have enough gas to get us there?” He had found at least part of the problem. The fuel injector was loose. He screwed it back in and then tried turning it on.

The motor coughed but didn’t turn over.

As he moved around to check the back of the engine, something slammed into the boat, nearly pitching him over the side. He fell to the deck, where his hand closed on a screwdriver. Rhino moved from starboard to port, peering into the water.

“How is this asshole still alive?” X muttered. He went to look, when Rhino held a hand up. Then Rhino slowly picked up the broken oar.

A dorsal fin as tall as Miles rose out of the water before vanishing again. The dead sergeant had attracted the beast with the lure of fresh blood.

X quietly crouch-stepped back to the motor, holding the screw driver.

The screwdriver would make about as good a weapon as it would a fishing pole. X grunted as the shark slammed them a second time, knocking him down on all fours. Rhino held his stance and plunged the oar into the flesh as it moved under the boat. He yanked it out, blood dripping off the end, and moved to the other side of the boat.

“Ven aquí, pinche cabrón!” He raised the jagged oar like a lance.

X found a loose vacuum tube and reattached it, then pulled the cord again. The motor coughed twice. He pulled again and it turned over, billowing smoke out of the back.

“Hell yes!” X yelled.

He pushed the throttle lever hard forward, knocking Rhino on his butt. The dorsal fin pursued them but then went under the surface as the shark went for easier pickings in the debris field.

As they sped away, X looked over his shoulder and couldn’t help but chuckle, seeing the big man on his ass in the bottom of the boat.

“You good?” X asked.

“Yeah,” Rhino said, pushing himself up. “You?”

“Depends.”

Rhino stood. “Depends on what?”

“On what happens next,” X replied. “I’m going to kill el Pulpo when we get back to the Metal Islands. If you have a problem with that, we should deal with it right now.”

Rhino stepped up to the front, towering over X.

Great. I was afraid of this…

X still held the screwdriver he had used to fix the motor.

“I do have a problem with that, Immortal.”

X had really hoped it wouldn’t come to this. God damn it, why did everything have to be so hard?

He prepared to jam the screwdriver inside the Cazador’s chin and up into his brain, killing the one man who stood between him and the Metal Islands.

“I have a problem with that, because I’m the one who’s going to kill el Pulpo,” Rhino said.

“Uh, what?” X relaxed a degree.

“Sofia has been his prisoner for too long,” Rhino said. “It’s time I set her free. She is my true love. I’ve known her since I was a child. The Cazadores took both of us from the same bunker in Texas. I was forced into the army, and she was forced into marrying the king.”

X shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about, man?”

“I’ve fought all these years, enduring the loneliness and perils of a soldier’s life, biding my time until the right moment. That moment is now.” Rhino took a step back and looked into the distance.

X was surprised at how much they had in common. He, too, had spent years biding his time on the surface, staying alive and waiting for the right moment. At one point, he had even given up.

“I’ve always loved Sofia, and I always told her I would set her free. Your people have given me that opportunity, Immortal.”

It hit X why he felt this bond with Rhino. They were the same breed of man. Both had been driven over the edge but somehow managed to come back from it and keep fighting.

Rhino reached out with a battered and bruised hand. “Let me kill him, and I will help you free your dog and your friends. I will fight with you, Immortal.”

X was sick of killing, sick of trying so hard not to die, but he would happily fight one more time with this man.

He dropped the screwdriver and reached out his battered hand. And in an old-world tradition, they shook, sealing the deal.

Magnolia wasn’t sure that Sofia was still alive. Her head was slumped against her chest, which didn’t appear to be moving. But even if el Pulpo’s favorite wife was still alive, her time, like Magnolia’s, was running out.

You should have ended it when you could.

Back on the Sea Wolf, Magnolia had fired as the hatch broke open, but El Pulpo’s men had overwhelmed her so fast, she didn’t even have a chance to turn the gun on herself or Sofia.

But even given the opportunity, she wasn’t sure she could have taken her own life or Sofia’s, no matter how bad things were going to get for them. And things were getting bad.

Magnolia had woken up bound to one of the two windshield posts, each topped with a grinning human skull, on el Pulpo’s war boat. Sofia was tied to the other, and she hadn’t moved yet.

“Sofia…” Magnolia tried to say. All that she could hear was a steady ringing. There was fluid in her ears that had to be blood.

Those weren’t the only things that hurt.

She couldn’t see out of her right eye after a fist had caught her there. The left eye wasn’t all that much better, but it let her see the battle raging in the distance.

El Pulpo hung back from the rest of his armada, watching the fight. His thirty or so remaining boats were firing everything they had at the warship.

Apparently, Katrina either hadn’t gotten the warning or had ignored it. Knowing the captain, it was probably the latter. But if that was the case, then where the hell were the airships?

She could understand keeping the fragile Hive at a safe distance, but Deliverance? She prayed it wasn’t the source of the explosion a few minutes ago.

The blast was loud enough to carry over the rumble of the exhaust stack beside her, but her restraints had kept her from twisting around to see. They had trussed her up so tight, the rope cut into her bare flesh.

El Pulpo took his helmet off and set it on the seat beside Miles. He turned to look at Magnolia and Sofia. The glow from burning boats gave enough light for Magnolia to see the rage in his face.

His eye appeared to be bulging, and a vein stuck out in the center of his forehead, adding what looked like an extra arm to the octopus tattoo. She was going to take great pleasure in seeing her people kill him. If she lived that long.

After baring his teeth at the captured runaways, he went back to watching the battle. Another of his boats exploded in a cloud of debris. The Zion was on the run now, fleeing the armada of smaller vessels. Its wake heaved through the scrap yard of boats chewed up by its cannon and machine-gun fire. But the warship had taken some hits, too. Smoke fingered away from the deck and the top of the destroyed command center. Whoever was at the helm knew what they were doing.

Magnolia glanced over to see Sofia finally coming to. Her nose was broken, and some teeth had been knocked out. Blood streaked down her chin, neck, and breasts. With her looks destroyed, el Pulpo would be less likely to forgive her sins.

Now Magnolia understood why Sofia didn’t want to be taken alive.

They both were as good as dead. Their only chance was to be saved by the only heroes left in this world. She looked back up at the jeweled sky, but there was no sign of the Hell Divers.

They couldn’t be dead—not all of them… could they?

She twisted in the restraints, which cut into her hands and wrists. The pain didn’t bother her, but Miles’ sad gaze made her heart ache.

The dog cowered on the deck, quivering at the racket of explosions and gunfire. Magnolia fought harder, but there was nothing she could do. She was tied up too tight.

Her eyes flitted back to the star-filled sky.

All she could do was hope and pray that X had returned and that the Hell Divers would come for her. Not everyone believed in Janga’s prophecy—certainly not X—but she did, and her gut told her that he was going to help end all this.

She just hoped she would live to see it.