Wolves

SIX

Magnolia slapped the floor with her palm in frustration, tears steaming down her face. Outlandish wails rose into a cacophony outside—a mixture of howling beasts and screeching birds. The macabre music assaulted her ears as the minutes passed by. She strained to hear anything that would tell her X was still alive. Gunfire, a bark from Miles, a message over the comms—anything to let her know he was still alive.

She had blown it. Bad.

Had she paid more attention while crossing the field, maybe she would have seen the beast sneaking up on her. Maybe she could have brought her rifle up in time to shoot it between the eyes. Or she might have stabbed it with her blade. Instead, she had rushed across the clearing as fast as she could to get to the compound.

X was right. God damn it, he was always right—which, of course, was why he had survived so long in this dangerous world, and why she had a hole in her helmet.

She reached up to check the damage. The tusk had punctured the crest but not her skull. A few centimeters more, though, and her scalp would have been oozing brains instead of just a little blood.

Patience saves your life. Rushing gets you killed.

“You were right, X,” she muttered.

She was lucky this time. The mistake hadn’t gotten her killed, but she wasn’t sure Miles would be so lucky. The vulture had pulled him into the sky. She would never forget the raw scream from X that followed. He had taken off running after them, yelling at Magnolia to stay put.

She sat with her back to the wall, head throbbing and heart pounding. A single tear streaked down her cheek. X still hadn’t returned, and all she could do was sit here, hoping for the best.

You’re a Hell Diver. You know better than to hope.

Hell Divers didn’t sit around and hope for something to happen—Hell Divers got up and made something happen.

But what could she do? If she did leave, she could get lost in the jungle or eaten by the monster hogs.

Using the butt of her rifle, she pushed herself up, taking a moment to let the wave of dizziness pass and to think about her next move. She checked her HUD. The readouts were good, at least. Radiation levels were minimal, and her battery unit was at 70 percent.

But she still had no idea how long she would be here. Better to use her flashlight instead of the NVGs, which drained the battery unit.

Switching on the beam, she played it across the room. Dust particles floated in the air like fine snow. Two tables lay upended in the middle of the space. Several chairs were on their backs nearby, legs angled up at the ceiling. The light hit thick cobwebs stretched across the metal pegs. Cabinets, a bookshelf, and a desk stood against the opposite wall. Cracked lightbulbs protruded from sconces on the walls.

Every window had been boarded up with metal hatches. Whoever had taken shelter here did a good job sealing the structure, aside from the front door that X had kicked in.

A T-shaped bar was now locked in place over the metal entrance. It seemed the former occupants had left without bothering to secure the door when they abandoned the place. A second door led into another room, which she hadn’t checked yet.

A loud crack of thunder rattled the window hatches. She moved toward the door she still hadn’t opened. Halfway there, she stopped and closed her eyes. “X, do you copy?”

It was the third time she had tried him in the past few hours. Only static crackled from the speakers. The sound filled her with dread. He either was dead or had gone radio silent to avoid detection by the hogs.

Magnolia sucked in a breath of stale air and opened the door to the other room. A monitor the size of her wrist computer was mounted to the wall right of the entrance.

She played her light over computer equipment in the corner of the room.

“What the…?” she whispered. These were not the type of computers they had on the Hive or Deliverance. This stuff looked ancient. Boxy computers and monitors were stacked on tables.

She swung the beam to the left. A pile of rubble covered most of the floor in the center of the room, where the wall and part of the roof had caved in.

Two thunderclaps shook the structure, rattling the metal hatch over a window at the far end of the room. She shined her beam in that direction, hitting a row of chairs and more desks. Facing the central desk sat a skeletal figure, head hanging at an odd angle. The top part of the skull was missing, and raising the light, she saw on the ceiling the brown stippling that had been this person’s brains.

The gun was nowhere in view, which told her someone else had taken it before abandoning the building. But what really interested her was the radio equipment in front of the corpse.

She made her way over and flashed the light over all sorts of devices she remembered from textbooks in school. A switchboard with dozens of toggle switches, a ham radio, and what looked like an archaic Morse code transmitter key.

Grabbing the back of the chair, she gently moved it out of the way, trying to make as little noise as possible. Despite her efforts, the metal legs scratched the floor, and a leg bone cracked off the corpse.

Magnolia held in a gasp as a furry spider pulled itself out of the home it had made in the skull. It raised its head, brandishing fangs, then clambered away.

She followed it with her light till it took refuge in the debris pile. Then she turned back to the desks, astonished at how well preserved the room was. Maybe it had lasted long after the apocalypse.

Using her light, she scanned the switchboard. Symbols and text marked the different buttons, though she doubted that anything worked. Even if this place had continued operating after the nuclear fires, it couldn’t possibly still have backup power.

From what she could tell, this wasn’t an ITC facility.

“X, do you copy?” Mags said into the comm. “I found some radio equipment. I’m going to try and get it working.”

Static once again crackled in her helmet.

She lowered her light and fished out a thin cable, which she patched into her wrist monitor. Then she plugged the other end into a second cable, which divers used to hack into old systems such as this. All she had to do was get enough juice to turn the radio back on.

Next, she plugged the other end of the cord into her chest battery slot. The charge would, she hoped, be enough to power the equipment.

Clamping the flashlight between her teeth, she pulled off her gloves, then tapped the screen of her wrist computer, bringing it online.

A distant wail broke over the thunder outside. Something massive rammed the outside of the building. Her eyes darted over to the debris pile.

“Mags, do you copy?”

The sound of X’s voice in her helmet startled her.

“Yes, I copy,” she said softly.

“Where are you?”

“Same place you left me. Where are you?”

“I’m tracking Miles, but those things are hunting me.”

She could hear snorting in the background. It sounded nothing like the dog. A flurry of gunshots rang out. These she could hear inside the building. X and the hogs were close.

The wrist monitor blinked. The main dashboard on the desk suddenly flashed with colors. The radio equipment crackled to life, and several monitors came online.

“Oh, shit, I did it!” she said. “I got a radio working here, X!”

“Screw the radio, Mags. I’m about to be hog shit, and Miles is still—”

More gunfire popped in the distance.

“Mags, those things are on my six. I need help.”

Magnolia unslung her rifle and looked at the radio one more time, wondering whether she should try to connect with the Hive first.

There’s no time. Just as she started to turn away, she saw a symbol on the switchboard. She hesitated for a moment, then moved back to the equipment.

“Hold on, X. I’ve got an idea.”

“I don’t have time for ideas!”

She flipped the button with a horn symbol below it.

She turned the light off and bumped on her NVGs as an emergency siren blared outside, drowning out the screeches of birds and even the crack of thunder.

Moving into the other room, she shouldered her rifle and trained it on the metal door.

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” she muttered.

Sweat dripped down her forehead as she waited. She moved her finger to the cold metal trigger. With no gloves, it felt different.

The wait wasn’t long.

A snorting came outside the building, loud enough to be heard in the rising and falling of the emergency siren. She held her ground, keeping the rifle aimed at the door.

“Mags…” X panted over the comm. “They… those things aren’t following me anymore. They’re…”

Her plan had worked. The sound had drawn the hogs away from X—straight to her location.

Again something slammed the outside of the door, rattling the metal. She could hear guttural noises, something between a bark and a snort.

She flinched at the sound of another creature hitting the metal shutters behind her. Pivoting, she pointed her rifle at the window.

Another crash came from the other room, where a third beast tested the debris pile that served as a wall. They knew she was here, and it was only a matter of time before they battered their way inside.

She knew better than to hope, but this time it was the only card she had to play. If her lucky streak continued, the door would hold until X could find Miles and return to kill the beasts. If it didn’t, then she was about to join Rodger and the other dead Hell Divers in Valhalla.

The sound of the emergency siren had sent a chill of alarm through X. At first, he had scanned the sky and terrain for Sirens. But this wasn’t the electronic language of the monsters; it was coming from the direction of the compound where he had left Magnolia.

Way to improvise, Mags! he thought. For once, she had saved his hide.

Now that the beasts were distracted, he could finally get out of this damn tree. He began the climb down the curving branches, cautious of the spiky thorns.

X had been forced up here by the half-hog, half-dog beasts, with no choice but to try to pick them off with his rifle from above. The rounds did little to deter them, mostly ricocheting off the furry platelike armor that covered their vital organs.

It was his NVGs that saved him. The optics helped detect the creatures trying to sneak up on him as he made his way through the jungle in search of Miles. Their camouflage didn’t work when his night vision was activated.

He scanned the terrain a final time, looking for their meaty bodies and listening for their grunts and snorts over the rise and fall of the emergency siren.

Rain continued to fall, as if the lightning that streaked through the bulging clouds was shaking the water loose. It cascaded down off the tropical leaves, turning the ground below into a mudslide.

The tracks of the hogs had already vanished, and he saw no signs of movement or fresh prints anywhere below him.

He wiped his visor off and finished the climb to the bottom, dropping the final eight feet. His boots sank in the mud, and he quickly pulled them free and began moving again.

The fort of trees just ahead was his target. Miles was up there somewhere, dropped into a nest to feed the young birds. X checked his wrist monitor to make sure the dog hadn’t been moved to a new location. He tapped the screen several times, pulling up the map in the corner of his HUD that showed his location.

The beacon blinked on the map.

“I’m coming, buddy,” X said. “Just hang on.”

The dog’s vitals were still strong, but the clock was ticking. The birds would feed soon now that the predators had gone away. The wail of the siren had saved X from the beasts, but it had likely put Miles in even more jeopardy.

Moving between two thick tree trunks, X came out on a watercourse. The dry oxbow lake was quickly turning into a river. The flow created actual rapids down the slope and around the stand of trees where the vultures had built their nests. X wasted no time seizing the opportunity.

With a grenade already loaded, he aimed at the bole of a tree growing out of the embankment on the other side of the watercourse. He fired, then ducked behind the thick, twisted roots of a nearby tree.

Shrapnel from the blast whizzed overhead, and the birds once again took to the sky amid much screeching and cawing. Several rabbit-size bugs darted out of their homes.

X pulled a second grenade from the bandolier, loaded it, and rose to his feet. Another trigger pull launched the grenade into the deep, splintered gash the first grenade had blown in the tree bole.

Leaves and branches rained down around him, and the tree creaked and swayed from the second impact. It began to lean out of the creek bank, but the roots held firm.

He loaded a third grenade just as something big hit him hard from behind. He knew at once that he was in the talons of a vulture.

Feet kicking as he rose over the watercourse, he did the only thing he could think of: fired the third grenade right into the gaping hole of the tree trunk, where splintered wood stuck out like twisted rebar.

An orange blast rocked the base, shredding the exposed roots and punching through the center. Hot shrapnel whined through the air.

The monster holding him let out a shriek as a flurry of sharp sticks cut through its wings. X was falling then, and he landed with a splash in the rapids. The waist-deep flow of the water did little to break his fall and almost swept him away. He scrambled, then got his footing. The impact had rattled his bones, but Miles had little time, and that thought kept him moving.

He fought the current and waddled toward the other side, his eyes on the top of the tree he had blown nearly in half. The sky above the canopy was moving, and it took him a moment to register that the motion wasn’t from storm clouds—it was the vultures themselves. They had taken wing, filling the air above the forest canopy.

A loud cracking emanated from the blasted tree. The splintered bole finally gave way, and the entire trunk began to lean. The top branches crashed into the next tree, shaking loose a litter of sticks and other debris.

X pushed through the current to the side of the embankment. He slipped several times trying to climb out over the loose earth and stones but finally clawed his way up on a skein of roots to solid ground above. The broken tree continued to crunch and creak as roots snapped and branches crashed into other trees.

He pushed himself up in the mud and ran away from the embankment at full speed to get out of the crash zone.

The tree smashed to the jungle floor a few beats later, sending a violent quake beneath his boots. He took cover behind the base of another tree as a cascade of sticks, mud, and rocks flew through the lower canopy.

The wail of the emergency siren reasserted itself. And over that, X heard something that made him smile.

Heart pounding in his ears, he held in a breath to listen, and there it was again: the sound of his best friend’s bark.

X wanted to shout and scream for Miles, but he didn’t want to draw more attention to his position. Magnolia had already notified every creature on this island that humans were back, and X had a feeling the birds and hogs could prove to be the least of their worries.

He knew that it wouldn’t be long before the monster birds forgot about the raucous noises and returned to their nests. And this time, they would feed on his dog’s flesh.

X bolted away from the tree after looking at the beacon on his wrist monitor again. The vitals were still strong, but Miles’ heart rate had increased.

He scanned the branches in the area where he had seen the bird lumbering through the air with Miles in its claws, but the collapse of the tree had him disoriented.
Another bark helped X narrow down the location. Just ahead stood four massive trees, and the tallest seemed to be the likeliest spot, with several nests hanging in the higher branches.

X brought up his scope, scanning them one by one until he finally glimpsed the white hazard suit he had customized for Miles. Lowering the rifle, he broke into a run, moving like a fox over the slick terrain. He jumped over logs and ducked under branches.

The sound of great flapping wings spurred him on. He kept low and ran hard, eyes trained on the nest. The sparsely feathered heads of the nestlings popped up, pecking at the air around Miles, and he barked back at them.

A red flash of motion descended from the canopy and perched at the top of the nest. The mother had returned to help her young with their meal. X aimed his rifle, held in a breath, and fired a shot.

The head and beak vanished in a spray of gore.

Bull’s-eye.

The bird toppled off the nest, wings spread like a fallen angel, and slammed into the ground neck-first a few seconds later.

Two more vultures sailed in from different directions.

X flicked the selector to automatic and sprayed the air to send the birds fanning out in all directions, filling the night with their squawks. A spear of lightning struck one of them, and the smoking carcass cartwheeled into the leaves, where it caught fire.

Slinging his rifle strap, X grabbed the lowest limb of the tree and started climbing, his eyes on the nest fifty to sixty feet overhead. It was a long way to climb, and he had a target on his back.

“Hold on, buddy, just hold on,” he panted.

His arm was already burning from the slash the giant octopus had given him. The wound was infected now, and if he didn’t get it treated it could become septic.

But none of that mattered if Miles died. He couldn’t imagine life without his best friend.

Gritting his teeth, he climbed faster. To reach the next branch, he jumped like a monkey. And when he got to an area where he couldn’t reach another branch, he pulled out his sheath knife and stabbed the thick bark.

He saw movement in his peripheral vision: a bird swooping down. He rotated as it spread its wings to flare. Stretching forth its talons, it prepared to snag him off the tree. X held on to the knife with one hand and grabbed the blaster from his thigh holster with the other.

The flare streaked into the monster’s breast. It flapped away, squawking in pain as its plumage caught fire; then it tumbled from the air. X holstered the blaster and kept climbing.

He was about ten feet from the nest when the other birds began returning to their roosts.

The speakers in his helmet crackled. “X, do you copy?”

He was breathing too hard to answer right away.

“X, do you copy?”

“I’m… busy,” he panted.

“Are you okay?” A flurry of white noise took over the comm, then died away. “Is Miles okay?”

Despite the static interference, X could still hear the apprehension in her voice. She thought this was her fault.

“I’ve almost got him,” X replied.

The branch cracked under his boot, and he jumped to another.

Lightning flickered overhead, spreading its eerie flickering glow over the jungle floor. The headless vulture looked like a pile of feathers. He had been so revved with adrenaline, he hadn’t noticed the height until now.

Miles barked, then yelped in pain, pulling X’s focus back to the nest above.

“Hold on, boy,” he shouted. “I’m coming!”

X used the knife to aid him up the rest of the way to the nest. He pulled himself up on another thick branch, stood, and was scrabbling for a foothold when a hooked beak with orange lesions peered over the side of the nest. Orange-feathered wings rose threateningly as two piercing black eyes glared at him.

Magnolia relayed another message over the comm—something about a radio and the Hive—but X was too focused on the strip of white plastic, stained red and hanging from the bird’s beak, to respond. A full second passed before he realized what he was looking at.

It was Miles’ hazard suit.

X grabbed the end of the beak with one hand and stabbed the left wing with the other. The young vulture jerked back, and X, holding on to the knife, was hauled up into the nest. Rolling over the lip into the nest, he saw Miles hunched in the corner and snarling. The four nestlings surrounded him, pecking at his suit.

Hell no!

X let go of the knife hilt, leaving the blade lodged deep in the creature’s wing. It slammed him with the other wing, pinning him against the side of the nest, then moved closer and thrust its beak at his chest armor.

He squirmed slightly to his left and grabbed the beak with both hands. Then, screaming in rage, he pushed the wing back, freeing himself. He came up on his knees, with the bird in a headlock.

X twisted the baby monster’s head and beak until both crunched. He kept going, pushing harder and harder, his old muscles straining, until he ripped the beak completely off.

Tendrils of muscle and gullet hung off the base. He rose to his feet, panting like a wild animal, with the beak in his grip. The three remaining nestlings had turned away from Miles to look at him.

“Get away…” he panted, “from… my… dog!”

Holding the beak in both hands, he plunged the sharp end into the birds one by one, until the nest was drenched in blood. He raised the last creature into the air for the other vultures in the jungle to see.

“You’re done trying to kill us!” he shouted.

Miles nudged up against his leg, and X slowly lowered the still-twitching baby bird and rolled it out of the nest. Lightning flashed over the bay in the distance, and in the glow, he saw something that froze him for a second.

The incoming tide had dislodged the Sea Wolf from the beach. The damaged vessel was now in the surf, being pushed back into the bay.

X cursed. This time, it wasn’t Magnolia who screwed up. It was on him. If he had kept an open line to Timothy, he would have known about this.

But that still didn’t explain why the boat was drifting.

Why the hell wasn’t the AI doing something to stop it?

“Son-of-a-bitch robot is leaving without us,” X said over the comm.