Wolves

THREE

The island sure didn’t look like a potential home for the human race. X stood in the off-kilter crow’s nest twenty feet above the Sea Wolf, roving his rifle scope across the shoreline and looking for any sign of the Cazadores or Sirens.

The same bleak scene from back on the mainland filled the scope. A cold, dead world the color of rust waited on the other side of a wide bay. Along the base of a mountain, the ruins of a city stood at the far edge of a gray beach. The crumbling structures weren’t blackened from the nuclear fires, but the years had not been kind to them.

It was a place of broken windows, sinking foundations, rotted wood, and cracked roadways, just like every city he had ever seen. The jungle had crept into the heart of the town, covering most of the structures in vines and red foliage.

No, there weren’t any Cazadores here. This wasn’t the Metal Islands that el Pulpo had spoken of back in Florida. This was just another radioactive old-world city, cursed to die in the darkness.

And once again X had no choice but to scavenge the wastes while nursing an injury. Blood crusted around his arm where a suction cup had held him tight enough to draw blood through his skin. And his flesh wasn’t the only part of him injured.

Smoke fingered away from the stern of the Sea Wolf, swirling into the storm clouds above. The vessel had taken severe damage in the storm and the attack. He had blown a three-by-three-foot hole on the port side with the grenade that killed the giant octopus, flaying open the metal deck and splattering the rail with hunks of gore stuck in the barbed wire. Even worse, engine two was destroyed, and battery two was at zero percent charge.

“Pepper, how long will battery one last us?” X asked over the open channel.

“Battery one is currently showing an eighty percent charge, which should last roughly two more weeks before requiring a recharge.”

X twisted for a better view of the deck, examining the damage from above. The beast had done a number on the twin hull, leaving deep rents in the stern and starboard rails. The command center had a broken windshield and a damaged radio.

“Michael better not come for us,” X muttered to himself.

“Come again?” Magnolia said.

“Nothin’.”

X hadn’t meant for her or Timothy to hear his thoughts about Katrina or Michael coming after him out here. He was terrified that the distress beacon Timothy had activated would provoke the captain into sending them help.

I can do this on my own, with Miles’ help and maybe Mags’ if she gets smart about shit.

Grabbing the metal rail, X went back to scanning the island. A few clicks to his wrist monitor brought up a map of their current location. They were in the West Indies, dead north of Hispaniola, which meant he was looking at a part of the Turks and Caicos Island chain.

“Take us in, Mags,” X said over the comm link.

“You sure about that?”

He grumbled. “You need to start trusting me, kid.”

“And you need to stop calling me ‘kid’—although I won’t hold my breath for that day.”

The single working engine purred beneath the deck, and the rudders turned slightly. He felt a little guilty about having yelled at her in the command center, but she had to understand, he didn’t want Deliverance risking their hides for him. This was his decision, his mission.

He wanted el Pulpo’s head on a pike, and he wasn’t going to stop until he found the bastard—and, with any luck, discovered humankind’s future home in the process.

He wedged his boot between the metal ribs of the crow’s nest and trained his rifle scope on the shore as the Sea Wolf began cutting through the shallows. Lightning forked over the mountains, spreading a blue glow across the jagged cliffs and the mutated jungles surviving in near darkness.

This was the third island they had come across in the past few hours, but the first showing any sign of civilization.

X was hoping to find the tools to help repair their radio and fix the Sea Wolf. His vantage point gave him a panoramic view of their surroundings, and he continued to scan the ocean, beach, and city beyond for contacts.

He didn’t need to activate his night-vision goggles to see the island in detail. The sky retained a blue tint from the constant flashes across the mountain chain, casting an eerie glow on the terrain and the surf.

Several large vessels stood aground on the shallow bottom, the waves beating their rusted hulls. On shore, a dozen shipping containers sat in the sand. X recognized the language marking the side.

It was all in Spanish—the language of the Cazadores.

Shadows flickered beneath the clouds. He zoomed in with his scope on what looked like missiles firing from the sky toward the jungles.

At first, he passed them off as some trick of the light. But then he realized, this was no optical illusion.

His heart skipped at the realization—they had to be Sirens.

But when he zoomed in further and followed one of them in his sights, he saw these weren’t the genetically modified humans at all. These were massive birds.

“I got potential hostiles,” X said.

“I see ’em. Do you want me to change course?”

X watched the beasts for several seconds. There were a dozen of them, and several were headed out to sea. From this distance, he wasn’t sure just how large they were, but they were big.

They weren’t just big—they were monsters.

An ethereal wail made him flinch. He ducked down just as one of the creatures swooped overhead from behind, giving him a close-up glimpse.

This one had a bald head the color of blood, and a wingspan longer than two men. The yellow beak was big enough to swallow a child. It flapped black wings, heading toward the shoreline with an eyeless fish clutched in its talons. A flashing antenna hung from the skull of the fish, blinking and giving the bird’s underside a purple glow as it flew back to its nest on the island.

These weren’t just birds. They were monstrous vultures.

X checked his six for more of the flying beasts, but the sky was clear in that direction. He ignored the water until he saw something cresting the waves back in the bay. A spiky dorsal fin broke through the water, cutting the waves.

The birds weren’t the only hunters prowling these waters.

“Great,” he muttered, flipping his NVGs on. In the green hue, he saw the silhouette of a shark half the boat’s length, just below the surface. The predators had survived nearly half a billion years on Earth; it should have been no surprise that they made it through the apocalypse.

“Mags, better pick up speed,” X said into the comm.

“It’s pretty shallow in here. I have to—”

The crunch of the hull hitting something massive nearly sent X tumbling out of the crow’s nest. He looked over the side of the cage at more silhouettes beneath the surface. But these weren’t giant sharks or cephalopods.

A graveyard of boats lay in the shallows, their carcasses strewn over the bottom, where they had sunk at their moorings hundreds of years ago. They no doubt made perfect homes for all sorts of monsters.

“Hurry it up, Mags!” he shouted.

The Sea Wolf clipped the stern of an ancient vessel just below the water, shaking X inside his aerial cage. He watched in horror as they plowed toward the minefield of sunken wrecks.

“I can’t see,” Magnolia shouted over the channel.

Miles barked in the background. The poor dog wasn’t used to the confines of a boat any more than X was. He was meant to be free, to be able to run on the surface, but like humans, Miles had been dealt a cruel hand.

The anger flowed through X as he tried to form a plan to get them out of this mess. There was always a way out—always an option.

“I’ll be your eyes, Mags, just calm down,” X said. “Now turn a hair to the right… now!”

The boat veered around a barnacle-encrusted wreck. Beyond it, several more derelict hulls broke the surface. Radio towers protruded from them like twisted rebar. The sight gave him an idea, but he tabled it for now and checked the status of the shark.

Still trailing them, the sea monster lazily whipped its tail back and forth, moving through the water with ease—the perfect predator. X aimed his rifle and prepared to fire, then decided that the noise might attract more hungry things.

The creature swerved away, sinking beneath the waves and vanishing into the boneyard of ships.

X slowly lowered his rifle.

It would be back.

The Sea Wolf moved into the center of the bay at a good clip. At the helm, Magnolia steered around the clearly visible obstructions, and X continued to warn her of those buried beneath the dark surface.

Piercing chirps from the birds hunting over the land filled the night. At least, X thought it was night—it was hard to tell in perpetual darkness. Day or night, his biological clock and his growling stomach told him it was time for supper.

He fought both the pain radiating up his arm and the grip of exhaustion.

“Screw off,” X muttered, raising his weapon and firing at a bird that swooped toward the boat. The rounds lanced through its red-plumed wings, sending the creature arcing down toward the bay.

Magnolia steered to port, avoiding the broken hull of a fishing vessel that had split in half on a submerged rock.

Hearing a splash off the starboard side, X turned to see the bird he had shot, flailing in the water. In a blink, the shark hunting in the shallows emerged, opened a mouth rimmed with two rows of teeth, and swallowed the struggling bird in a single bite. The sea beast vanished beneath the waves.

“Almost there, Mags,” X said, trying to focus on the beach.

Their vessel squeezed through a gap between two ships aground in the tide. X got a view of their decks, still laden with shipping containers marked in the Cazadores’ language.

This wasn’t the Metal Islands, but they had to be getting close.

The starboard hull of the Sea Wolf screeched against the hull of the ship on the right. X kept his rifle up, roving for contacts on the decks to either side.

A moment later, and they were free and sailing right for the shore.

“Beach us,” X ordered.

Timothy, who had been silent until now, spoke up. “Sir, I would highly recommend avoiding contact with solid land. The impact could dam—”

“Mags, shut our AI friend off, please,” X said.

“Sorry, Timothy,” Magnolia said. “Nothing personal.”

The shark’s dorsal fin surfaced again, and X wasted no time lining up the crosshairs on the head and pulling the trigger. The rounds punched into the dark skin around the open mouth, which yawned open to reveal feathers still stuck in the double rows of teeth.

Blood trickled out of the bullet wounds, and the beast veered away, its tail slapping the starboard hull before it swam off into the bay.

The impact knocked the Sea Wolf to the side, so that the port hull caught the next swell of surf. Escapes like this were never based on pure logic, and sometimes, with just seconds to make a decision, a good option didn’t present itself.

This time, the only option was to hang on for his life.

He clung to the cage as Magnolia tried to get the bow pointed ashore, but the surf was too strong. The waves slammed them broadside onto the beach, where they skidded until they fetched up against a rock.

X slid out of the crow’s nest, losing his rifle in the process. His left boot caught on the rail, leaving him hanging upside down twenty-odd feet above the sand.

Dangling there, he would be easy pickings for one of the oversized vultures. And dropping to the sand would leave him with broken legs, or worse.

“X!” Magnolia shouted.

She emerged on the deck below with Miles, who barked up at him.

It took only a second to see that the dog was actually barking at three birds swooping in from the sky.

X suddenly got a crazy idea. He swung his body until his boot dislodged, and using the momentum, he reached for the rungs. He fell several feet before finally catching one.

Somehow, the force did not dislocate his shoulder, though pain lanced up his shoulder and neck. Wasting no time, he put his boots against the mast, clear of the rungs, and slid down until he could safely swing off onto the sand.

Magnolia, with a rifle in each hand, and Miles were waiting for him there. She tossed X the rifle he had dropped, and they stood together, back to back, firing on the swooping birds.

They emptied their magazines, plucking a dozen from the sky with calculated shots to conserve precious ammo. The meaty bodies whapped into the sand a hundred feet away, twitching and squawking as they died.

X looked back over his shoulder to see whether the shark was still hunting in the surf. The Sea Wolf had pushed up a berm of sand on the port side, and smoke continued to drift from the deck.

“You still don’t think we need any help?” Magnolia asked while changing magazines.

The potshot got under X’s skin, and he couldn’t hold back his words.

“Remember the Hell Diver motto?”

“Uh… ‘We dive so humanity survives.’”

X dipped his helmet and gestured for Miles to join him. “This mission isn’t about destroying humanity; it’s about saving it. We dived for humanity; now we’re sailing for humanity. And I’m not going to risk Deliverance or the Hive just to save our sorry asses. We’re on our own out here, and the sooner you start accepting that, the safer humanity is going to be.”

The men and women inside the launch bay of the Hive were a diverse group. Les could see many shades of skin standing in front of the tubes that, for centuries, had launched Hell Divers onto the postapocalyptic world.

But there was one thing these people all had in common: youth.

Les hated seeing so many young volunteers standing in a room that most people stepped into only a handful of times. Seeing his son among them was especially painful.

Trey will have to make his own way. Captain DaVita’s words repeated over and over in his mind as he looked over his son and the other volunteers.

Trey stood between Sandy Bloomberg, the daughter of the head farmer on the Hive, and Jed Snow, an orphan that had lost his dad to diving and his mom to cancer. They were just months shy of their eighteenth birthdays, and it showed.

Jed sported a thin beard that didn’t quite cover all of his pimples, and had his long dark hair slicked back. Sandy tried to make herself look older by liberally applying homemade makeup, but it only served to emphasize her lack of experience with the stuff. She directed light blue eyes at Les and smiled, two crooked front teeth showing.

The veterans, Commander Michael Everhart and Layla Brower, weren’t much older than Jed, Sandy, and Trey. Only Erin Jenkins was in her midtwenties.

Vish Abhaya and his twin brother, Jaideep, were also young, only nineteen years old. They were both handsome: tall and dark-skinned, but they had spent the past few years in and out of trouble. They came from a Buddhist family that still practiced traditions of the Old World. But the boys didn’t shave their heads, wear robes, or meditate multiple times a day—or at all.

Ordinary brown jumpsuits draped their skinny frames, and gold hoops hung from their ears. Like many youths, the boys had rebelled, not because they were evil at heart, but because they were bored.

Hell Diving seemed to attract kids like this until they realized what it really entailed or until they died, whichever came first. Les had seen it plenty of times before, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about their presence. Both Abhaya twins were failed students and had spent most of their teenage years working odd jobs or in maintenance. Their last name meant fearless, but he wasn’t sure they were cut out for the world of diving into the apocalypse.

“You sure about this?” Vish whispered to his brother.

Jaideep punched him on the arm. “I told you to keep your trap shut.”

“Jeez, man.” Vish gave his brother a cockeyed look and rubbed his shoulder.

“What you lookin’ at, old man?” Jaideep asked Les.

Vish laughed. “You sure you’re not too old to dive?”

“And too tall?” Jaideep added with a chuckle.

“That’s Lieutenant Mitchells to you,” Trey said. He took a step toward the twins, but Les shook his head. The last thing he wanted to deal with right now was a fight that could end in Trey heading back to the brig.

“Yeah, I’m tall, and I’m old enough to be your father, but if you’re serious about diving, you both better get serious, because diving isn’t a joke,” Les said.

Jaideep smirked, but Vish nodded, apparently getting the message.

The twins weren’t the only potentially problematic divers.

Erin Jenkins had a chip on her shoulder. Her Mohawk glistened with paste under the overhead lights. She wore a sleeveless shirt that showed off her ropy, defined arm muscles. Michael and Layla were discussing something with her in private.

“We have no choice,” Michael said loud enough for everyone to hear.

Layla put a hand on his arm—a subtle gesture to calm the commander down. Les had seen her do it a hundred times, but this time it didn’t seem to have any effect.

Michael stalked over to the porthole windows to look out at the swirling storm clouds. For the past two months, both he and Erin had developed anger problems. Erin’s was related to losing her dad, but Les wasn’t sure where Michael’s was coming from, unless it had something to do with X.

Layla walked over to join Michael, and Les moved closer to Erin.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

Erin shrugged a shoulder.

Les liked the young woman, but he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of diving with her again until she got her emotions in hand. A prickly attitude could lead to poor decision making, and a single poor decision could kill someone.

For Les, with Trey standing just a few feet away, more was at stake now than ever before. Les had to protect his son at all costs, but he wasn’t sure there would be a way to prevent Trey from diving with Erin in the coming months.

The problem was simple math. They didn’t have a very big pool of people to recruit from. The passengers were getting stronger, thanks to an increase in food production, but the only volunteers so far were those now standing inside the launch bay.

Katrina had privately communicated orders to Les, Michael, and Layla. She didn’t want any of them diving unless absolutely necessary. Their focus was to be on the airships, not the surface. X and Mags were in charge of the ground, for now.

The metal doors screeched open, and everyone came to attention as Katrina finally walked into the room. She wore her braided hair over her shoulders, and her crisp white uniform pulled up over her forearms to proudly show off the Raptor and Angel tattoos.

“Good evening, Captain,” Les said.

“Evening, Lieutenant.” Katrina stopped in front of the group, who gathered in a loose rank before her. She spent a moment taking them in, and Les did the same.

Jed, Trey, and Sandy stood stiffly and respectfully, eyes forward like soldiers. Jaideep and Vish were more relaxed, and Jaideep seemed to be whistling a tune under his breath. Les realized if you added up all their ages it still wouldn’t equal the amount of dives Xavier Rodriguez had completed over the years.

“Welcome, and thank you, all of you, for volunteering,” Katrina said. “I started diving when I was about your age.”

Moving down the line, she looked at each of them in turn, stopping to give Jaideep and Vish another once-over. Then she moved on to Trey and Sandy. Finally, she walked past Erin, Layla, Michael, and Jed.

“Jed, I’m happy to see you here. Your dad would be extremely proud, and your mom would be, too,” Katrina said.

“I’m proud to be here,” Jed said. “If it weren’t for some health problems, I would have been here when I turned sixteen.”

Katrina forced a smile, and then looked at Les.

“Lieutenant, may I have a word?” She gestured toward Michael and Layla. “You, too, Commander Everhart, and diver Brower.”

The three followed the captain over to the conference room, where hundreds of Hell Divers had received briefings over the years. Les saw Sandy’s curious gaze follow them across the room before Katrina closed the door behind them.

“This is not enough,” she said.

Michael and Les exchanged a glance.

“These are the only volunteers,” Les said.

“We will need more.”

Michael stepped forward, his back stiff. “I thought we didn’t have any upcoming missions.”

Les was equally baffled. Did she have something planned that he didn’t know about? Just last night, she had told him there wouldn’t be any dives for months.

He wanted to ask what had changed in the past twenty-four hours, but his job as her right-hand man wasn’t to question her in front of others. He would do that in private—unless she told them first.

Katrina took a seat in her chair and put her hands on her head.

“Ma’am,” Layla said, walking over to pat Katrina’s back in a sign of support.

Les didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t seen Katrina like this since she first took the helm. But the trauma of losing her child, killing her former lover, and seeing X leave—again—and the burdens of being captain had likely stacked up.

She was a strong woman, but in the end, she was only human.

Katrina pulled her hands away from her flushed cheeks and stood again.

“Sorry. I’m fine. There’s just a lot on my mind, and I’m worried about our friends on the Sea Wolf.”

“X is still out there,” Michael said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“He’s definitely a hard man to kill, but he isn’t immortal.” Katrina sighed. “I should never have sent him out there alone with Magnolia. We should have sent more boats. More…”

After a pause, she looked to Les. “Lieutenant, I want you to meet with Sergeant Sloan as soon as possible. Tell her I need the best militia soldiers she can spare.”

Michael raised a hand. “Captain, I thought I was in charge of finding new divers.”

“Things just changed, Commander,” Katrina replied, still looking at Les. “I need you for something else.”

He had finally figured out what had her so bothered. She wasn’t looking just for people who could dive—she wanted people who could fight.