Hell divers x fallout, p.20
Hell Divers X: Fallout, page 20
Kade turned toward the pack of beasts on the asphalt. The leader was already clambering over the broken runway toward him. Three more creatures dashed out from the rubble, following the leader.
The beasts on the hangar took wing. Kade fired in their direction, hoping to keep them back. Then he turned toward the Sirens on the runway and sighted up their leader. He squeezed off a burst of hollow-point rounds, and the head flew apart.
The other three Sirens scattered, but not before Kade took out two more with calculated shots to center mass. With the fourth Siren on the run, he aimed his rifle back to the sky and was shocked to see all the monsters swooping down toward him at once.
“Go,” he said into the radio. “now!”
Kade winged the leader of the formation, and it spun down into the asphalt. The next one took a head shot and dropped from the sky. By the time it smacked into the broken tarmac a few feet away, he had already maimed two more.
Screeching behind him prompted Kade to bring his rifle around to a gaunt-looking Siren coming at full speed. He closed his eye, aimed, and fired. The Siren leaped for him at that same moment, claws out. A burst ripped through its chest. He squeezed the trigger again, but the magazine was out.
The beast hit the ground, rolled, and skidded to a stop inches away. Backing up, Kade ejected the spent mag and punched in a fresh one.
Two more packs came sprinting across the runway to flank him. He searched for cover as the cries from the sky drew nearer.
When one was close enough to touch, he brought up his rifle and fired into its gaping mouth. Blood and gore flecked his entire front as he went down on one knee. He sighted up two more Sirens descending on his position. Two quick bursts put one on the ground and sent the other flapping away.
Lightning forked across the horizon. In its glow, he saw more of the monsters swarming toward the airfield. Their distant wails rose in an electronic chorus.
They were surrounding him from the sky and the ground. He sighted up the nearest beast on the asphalt and missed twice before finally bringing it down.
The whop-whop of rotors finally sounded as the chopper rose out of the underground hangar. He started toward it but stopped when he saw that the troop hold doors were shut.
Were they planning on leaving him here?
Of course. They figured you for a dead man!
“I’m on the runway!” he shouted into his radio.
The radio crackled but gave no response.
Sirens flew toward the Sea King, one hitting the disk of the tail rotor in a pink puff of gore.
Kade picked off two more of the monsters swooping down toward the chopper. Lowering his rifle, he raced after the bird as it began to wheel around.
“Down here!” he shouted. “I’m down—”
Something meaty hit him from behind.
He smacked the asphalt hard on his stomach, dropping his rifle in the process. A Siren’s claws grabbed his helmet, scratching the visor as it tried to crush his head.
Kade reached down to his right thigh for his pistol as the beast squeezed his helmet. His fingers touched the grip, but the Siren brought its fists down on his visor, making him flinch. Finally, he got a purchase on the grip and brought the pistol barrel up under its chin. One of his last three bullets blew off the top of the eyeless skull. The body slumped off, but a live one was coming at him.
He raised the weapon, watching in what felt like slow motion as the jaws snapped and snarled. The creature slammed into him, knocking him onto his back again. Saliva and blood dripped onto his helmet as, in his peripheral vision, he saw more of the beasts surrounding him.
Trying to buck the beast off, he glimpsed something else that chilled him to the core. The chopper was lifting into the sky.
Kade should have known this was a suicide mission. Maybe deep down, he had wanted it to be. Maybe deep down, he had a death wish.
For a fleeting moment, he gave up, allowing the Siren to get a scaly hand around his neck. It squeezed, and his vision blurred.
Blood dripped onto his visor as he heard a loud crack. He reached up and wiped it clear as more cracks rang out. Gunshots.
He raised his pistol and fired at a Siren bounding for him, hitting it in the shoulder. It slid to the ground in front of him, and he bashed the skull in with the weapon’s metal grip.
More shots cracked in the distance.
Kade looked to the sky, expecting to see the chopper, but it was nowhere in sight. He turned toward the destroyed hangars and saw a figure on the collapsed roof.
It was Lucky, firing a long-barreled sniper rifle that had to be Zen’s weapon. He was damned good with that gun, picking off two beasts as they came at him.
Kade holstered the pistol and grabbed his rifle as a Siren ran out the doorway of the hangar Lucky was perched on.
“Watch out!” Kade called out.
Lucky turned and fired at the beast skittering up the mound of debris. A body shot knocked the creature off the slope. Then Lucky slip-slid down the rubble, pausing at the bottom to dispatch two Sirens chasing Kade.
They met in the middle of the tarmac, coming together back to back. Creatures surrounded them, some with wings, others without.
The beat of rotor blades buffeted Kade’s ears as he palmed in his last magazine. He looked to the east, where the Sea King was lowering with a Siren attached to the cockpit.
Lucky aimed and fired. The beast fell off, and the chopper hovered overhead. The troop door opened, and a rope dropped down.
“Go!” Lucky shouted over the rotors.
Kade grabbed it and was pulled upward. In the opening, General Jack fired a mounted M60 at the fleeing monsters.
The second Kade was inside the bird, he collapsed on the deck, gasping. He watched as they pulled Lucky up. Nobu and Zen grabbed the knight by the back shoulder plates and hauled him in next to Kade.
General Jack shut the door, sealing out the wind and rain. He loomed over Lucky and Kade. “Risky move, Gaz,” he said.
“Paying my debts, General,” Lucky said. He got up as the chopper fought for altitude.
“Nice shooting,” Zen said.
“Nice rifle,” Lucky said, handing the rifle back to Zen. Nobu reached down and helped Lucky up. Kade remained sitting, still panting.
“Maybe we should be calling you ‘Lucky,’ instead of ‘Hell Diver,’” said General Jack.
Still breathing hard, Kade dragged himself up into a seat. The chopper banked hard to the left, nearly knocking him back onto the deck.
Zen took his sniper rifle to the closed door to watch for hostiles. Nobu joined him, water dripping off his armor. It took Kade a few minutes to shake off the shock of the battle on the tarmac. He still couldn’t quite believe he was alive.
But they weren’t out of this mess yet.
Gail-force winds beat the hull, threatening to smack them back down onto the radioactive ground. Thunder boomed like gunfire in their ears.
The chopper jerked and shuddered violently, losing five hundred feet in an instant, then catching a lift back into the sky.
“I think we got a problem!” Bulldozer shouted.
“Yeah, I know! You can’t fly for shit!” the general yelled back.
“It’s not my flying!”
The general staggered up to the cockpit as Bulldozer tried to keep them steady. Kade made out two words over the engine and rotor noise: losing and fuel.
General Jack retreated back into the troop hold and grabbed a black shotgun with a painted image of a smiling blond woman in a flower dress on the barrel.
“Gonna need good ole Sally the Slugger for this run,” he said. “We’re fueling up at the Sunshine Castle.”
FIFTEEN
“We’re heading home,” X said.
Magnolia tried to raise her head, and the sheet fell away from her neck. He pulled it back up to keep her warm.
A deep groan rumbled through the hull, sounding like a monster groaning. That wasn’t impossible. During the attack back at the Sunshine Coast, a giant water bug had somehow gotten aboard, damaging the lowest deck of the ship the sailors referred to as the orlop deck. It remained there now, lurking in the shadows, no doubt feasting on the corpses of the two scouts they had sent to track the beast.
For now, they had the entire area sealed off, but they must deal with it at some point to address damage to that compartment. Until then, they had to travel at half speed.
So far, the Frog had already traveled two hundred nautical miles. Only another eight thousand or so to get to the Panama Canal, and then another seven hundred to get home.
We can make it, X tried to tell himself.
“X,” Magnolia whispered, trying to reach out to him.
“Don’t try to talk,” he said. “You’re okay. We’re on our way to Panama.”
Shivering, she turned from side to side, glancing around the dim room where ten other patients slept. X had looked at all their charts overnight. Most of these people had broken bones, but a couple had radiation poisoning like Magnolia’s.
“Rodger . . .” Magnolia mumbled, no doubt still hallucinating from the fever.
“Go back to sleep, kid,” X said. “I’ll come check on you later.”
He turned to look for General Forge, who had come for a final casualty count. Magnolia’s eyes were closed. He stayed there watching for a bit longer, then went to Valeria’s bedside. She was resting peacefully in the bed that Lieutenant Slayer had vacated. He and Sergeant Blackburn were back on duty somewhere on the ship.
Miles sniffed Valeria’s bandaged hand as X checked her chart. She had a mild concussion, a sprained wrist, and three bruised ribs. After the beating she’d taken, she was lucky to be alive.
He put her chart back and was leaving when he heard his name.
“King Xavier.” X turned to find Valeria awake.
He went to her bedside as she tried to sit up. “At ease, Corporal.”
“Miles . . .” she whispered.
“He’s fine,” X said. “Right here, actually.”
Valeria smiled as Miles licked her hand, his tail whipping back and forth.
“Thanks for what you did,” X said. “You protected him.”
“We amigos.” She reached down to pat the dog.
X just watched them for a few moments. Never had the animal taken such a shine to anyone but X and Magnolia.
Miles even seemed to want to stay with Valeria when X stood up. That was okay with X.
He motioned for the dog to sit, then crossed the room to check on the other injured. Most of the soldiers seemed to avoid his gaze, and one turned away.
Not the respect he was used to, but he understood. They blamed him for their current predicament.
X met with General Forge in the corridor. “What’s the total count?” X asked.
Forge clenched his jaw. “Nine dead and twenty-one injured. Almost half our soldiers are out of commission, but we have another massive problem, sir.”
X braced himself.
“Our food reserves are all but destroyed,” he said. “A cyclops smashed through the food stash to get to the soldiers and contaminated everything. Some kind of fast-growing mold took hold, and now we have two days of rations left—and that’s if we stretch it.”
“You got any good news for me?” X ran his hand through his greasy hair.
“We’re moving again. But we have to go faster if we want to get to Panama before we starve . . . or worse.”
“Worse as in . . .” Despite his exhaustion, X understood. The general was worried some of the warriors might return to their old ways of cannibalism. And it wasn’t just human flesh the soldiers would be tempted by. Miles would be looking quite tasty.
Heaving a breath, X did everything he could to keep it together.
“Let’s go talk to Two Skulls and see what it’ll take to get us moving faster,” he said.
Sebastian and Nicolas accompanied him and Forge back to the CIC, avoiding the corridors that had been sealed off due to radiation and toxins. One lay just ahead, marked by plastic sheets and guarded by sentries with spears.
In the next intersection, crew members in hazard suits worked to seal off contaminated passages that were already cleared of carcasses. A sailor with a mop cleaned the blood trail, and another sprayed chemical mist to sanitize the passages.
“We have used up most of our chemical supply,” Forge said. “The other contaminated areas must be kept sealed.”
They were low on everything, it seemed. X was too exhausted to waste energy cursing.
When he entered the CIC, one look in the eyes of the officers around him said they were losing faith in him, like the injured soldiers in the sickbay.
Sergeant Blackburn and Lieutenant Slayer stood at the ready with three other soldiers, all armed and armored. But even the elite Barracudas had a certain aloofness about them. It seemed they, too, thought the Immortal had doomed them.
They could still make it back. He could still save his people.
X wasn’t sure he believed it, but he had to try. He had to make sure the sacrifices that had gotten them this far would enable him to get home and bring Captain Rolo and his fellow miscreants to justice.
“Captain, sitrep,” X said.
“Ship is crawling, sir, and until we can secure the orlop deck, I don’t want to push her harder,” Two Skulls replied. “We need to send a team down there to deal with the monster.”
“Down there,” X repeated.
“Yes, an experienced hunter-killer team,” said the captain.
“We don’t have any left,” said General Forge in a heated voice.
“What about the Barracudas?” Two Skulls gestured to Slayer and Blackburn.
“They aren’t in any shape to take on a beast that size right now.” Forge strode forward, his posture tall, strong, and angry.
“We can fight,” Slayer said.
The captain and Forge had a brief, heated exchange in Spanish.
X flashed back to finding the Barracuda soldiers in the submarine. He pictured them shrouded in webs and hanging from the bulkheads while the bristly limbs of a freak sea creature sucked their lifeblood.
“Stop,” X said.
Two Skulls seemed to back down some, and Forge did as well. Both men, along with everyone else in the CIC, looked to the king.
Send a monster-hunter team down to die, X thought.
That was essentially what Two Skulls was asking. Anyone they sent to the orlop deck would be facing the beast in close quarters.
A voice boomed, “I go hunt bug.”
It was the gruff, heavily accented voice of Gran Jefe. The Hell Diver and former Barracuda was standing in the CIC with a bandage over his face.
“King Xavier, I hunt bug,” he repeated. The Cazador bowed slightly.
X weighed other options, but it seemed the best was standing right in front of him.
“Okay, go; I will meet you down there,” X said. “General Forge, have a supply of the best close-combat weapons delivered—axes, cutlasses, blasters, stabbing spears—and see that the hatches are secure until Gran Jefe gets there.”
Forge gave the order over the radio while X hurried out, not wanting to give the general a chance to protest his decision to head belowdecks. Sebastian and Nicolas followed X through the uncontaminated corridors, passing more sullen, gloomy soldiers.
“Sir?” Nicolas said.
X stopped.
“Is it true?”
“What?” X asked.
“Is our food supply really down to two days?”
X couldn’t lie to these young men. The truth was out already anyway.
“Yes, it’s true, but we’ll make do,” X said.
“If you say so, sir,” replied Nicolas. His shifting eyes and the tone of his voice seemed at odds with his words.
Sebastian simply shook his head and followed X.
On the deck below them, three Cazador soldiers patrolled with Hell Divers Edgar, Tia, and Sofia, carrying crossbows.
X stopped to acknowledge them.
“King Xavier, how’s Magnolia?” Edgar asked.
“She’s hanging on,” X said. “Don’t worry, she’s going to be okay, and we’re going to make it home.” He looked to Sofia. “You will see your son again.”
“I better,” Sofia replied.
The tone of her voice had X wondering if even some of his closest allies were rethinking his leadership.
“We’re heading to secure the last deck,” he said. “Once it’s safe, you all get some rest.”
The divers nodded, and X left with his guards.
They arrived at the orlop deck a few minutes later. A fire team of six soldiers was there with monster-hunting equipment. Short spears, stun grenades, a tranquilizer gun that could sedate an elephant, and electrical livestock prods like the ones the Cazadores had used on X years ago in Florida. Gran Jefe had arrived and was already equipped with his choice of weapons: two short spears, two cutlasses, and a sawed-off blaster.
At the heavy clomp of boots from X and his two guards, the soldiers looked up. Heads nodded, and a couple of them even bowed.
But those signs of respect weren’t for X. They were directed at Gran Jefe as he opened the hatch leading to the orlop deck ladder.
Tales of the big man’s valor at the Sunshine Coast had spread through the ranks. From taking on a pair of Tasmanian devils in the shipwreck on the beach, to battling the alpha cyclops on the Frog. X had seen that impressive fight with his own eyes.
He heard a hatch shut behind him.
“I’m sorry, King Xavier,” said Nicolas. “But you have brought us to death.”
The warm surge through his veins was one that X knew, from a betrayal many years ago. It was a mixture of fear and fury.
He turned to find the young guard gripping a cutlass up in his shaking hand.
Gran Jefe moved in front of X with his two spears.
