Hell divers x fallout, p.6
Hell Divers X: Fallout, page 6
Magnolia looked at the techs who had stopped working on the APC. “Get back to work!” she barked.
They all looked in her direction, then promptly returned to the task.
Some time later, an officer ran over with three separate maps of the area. He handed one to Magnolia.
“A’ight, listen up everyone,” X called out.
The three Cazador fire teams came to attention, standing like statues in front of the king and General Forge.
“Two of our men died to bring us the intel you all have seen. Those parts will determine whether we make it home or not,” X said. “Make no mistake—to find the parts, you’ll have to deal with beasts out there.”
Forge tapped his breast plate and thrust his sword into the air.
“¡Matamos los monstruos!” he shouted. “We kill the monsters!”
The soldiers thumped their chest plates and raised their spears in the air. But those deep voices lacked the brash fearlessness Magnolia was used to hearing. These were the voices of a cowed army.
As those voices faded and the warriors stepped out onto the weather deck, guttural barking and howls rang out from the mist. The beasts were answering with their own war cries.
Gran Jefe stayed inside the cargo hold, his helmet still clutched against his chest. He raised his nose to the air, sniffing like an animal.
Then he turned.
“No sólo perros,” he said. “Diablos—devils out there.”
“We’re all devils,” Magnolia said.
“Ready to roll!” Edgar shouted.
He got in the front of the APC and fired the engine. The sound reverberated through the cargo hold. Then he got out and gestured for Magnolia and Gran Jefe.
“All yours,” he said. “Good luck.”
Sofia and Tia stepped up with him.
“It will be okay,” Magnolia said.
“Be careful, Mags,” Sofia said.
The divers walked away as X made his way over to the APC. He scratched the beard clinging to his haggard, scarred face. His eyes met Magnolia’s, and in them she saw the same pain she herself felt.
“Keep your head on a swivel out there,” he said. “I can’t bear to lose you.”
Reaching out, he embraced her and whispered, “We’ll get through this.”
She hugged him back and felt the strength that was still there.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said.
Gran Jefe bowed slightly to the king, then got into the vehicle with Magnolia. She closed the door, which had been reinforced with an additional armor plate. Bars now crisscrossed the side windows.
She drove through the wide-open hatches, out onto the weather deck, and parked with the soldiers. A loud clank rang out as the elevator began lowering them down to an assault craft on the water.
X nodded and she nodded back, holding his gaze until he was out of view. When the elevator clicked to a stop, a ramp lowered from the deck to the assault craft. As carefully as she could, Magnolia drove the APC aboard. Bite marks from crocs marred the hull, reminding her of the rescue mission in Brisbane. The craft pulled away a few moments later, into the fog.
Opening the door of the truck, Magnolia got out and looked as the elevator returned to the weather deck. X still stood there, watching until the mist swallowed the assault boat.
Vicious barking and yowling erupted suddenly in the distance.
Magnolia got back into the truck and closed the door.
“¡Los dioses pulpos!” Gran Jefe said. He pounded his chest. “We have Octopus Lords to watch over us!” The sharpened teeth grinned, and he winked at Magnolia before putting on his helmet.
The assault craft approached the old River Heads public boat ramp. When they got close, the soldiers on the deck unlatched the cargo gate. A small wave lifted the boat as the driver eased off the gas. He got them right up to the concrete landing, where the men swung the gate down.
Magnolia fired up the APC and followed the warriors out onto the fractured concrete of the boat launch. The overhead lights stabbed the darkness, illuminating the backs of the Cazador troops fanning out to begin the search.
Gran Jefe climbed up into the turret with the recently added .50-caliber machine gun. He turned on a spotlight attached to the barrel. The beam lit the shattered road twisting away from the boat ramp.
The Cazador soldiers moved in combat intervals, with the flamethrowers up front. Warriors equipped with shields and spears also took the lead.
Magnolia drove slowly behind them. The idea was to stay close to the teams in case they needed backup. All scavenged parts would be stored in the back of the APC.
The first location on the map wasn’t far. Ten minutes into the trek, Fire Team Eel peeled off the road. They hiked down the rocky shore toward a row of beached small craft.
Magnolia looked over the side of the road that had a good vantage of the shoreline. Gran Jefe’s beam swept over cracked-open ships, yachts, barges, and fishing boats. All that remained of some of them were a rusted hull, a few spars, and maybe a propeller.
The spotlight raked over several blackened skeletons—human from what Magnolia could tell. She watched the light move to a ship lying on its port side like a beached whale.
The aft section was submerged in the water, but the bow was fully above the surface. A smaller naval ship about the same size as the Frog, it was one of the most promising wrecks the scouts had found.
Fire Team Knife started down toward the ship, leaving only Team Octopus ahead.
The barking came again, and Magnolia spotted movement just ahead of Octopus. A gangly quadruped shape darted past. She tracked it with the headlights as it stopped about two hundred feet in front of Fire Team Octopus.
Three of the soldiers stopped, but the one with the flamethrower aimed into the fog and launched a wide arc of flame.
The beast stayed out of the range, eyes glowing red in the darkness. Then it turned and vanished into the fog.
“All clear,” Magnolia said. “For now . . .”
The four members of Team Octopus fast-walked down to a boxy ship lying on its starboard side against a rocky shore. Open hangars on the hull showed a cargo of wheeled vehicles.
Magnolia drove to the side of the road as the team of Cazadores climbed over a sagging concrete wall. Their boots hit the sand, and they slogged toward the vessel. She killed the engine to conserve gas. The only sounds were of wavelets lapping the shore.
The radio crackled with a message in Spanish from Team Eel. Gran Jefe translated from the turret.
“They say all boats are shit,” he called down. “No parts. Nada.”
Waiting for Fire Team Knife to report in, she heard more of the crazed yapping. Multiple dingoes this time—a pack.
She closed the door and grabbed the rifle she had propped against the passenger seat. Macabre memories flashed in her mind as she sat there. The first was an image of Arlo being torn to pieces in midair by baby bats. Then came an image of Ada falling to her death.
Next, she pictured Rodger sitting cross-legged while whittling a stick at Outpost Gateway. This wasn’t a memory but what her mind had come up with for his final moments, when the vines had writhed in through the walls. Creeping silently down the hallways and through windows, enwrapping him in their snakelike coils and consuming him whole.
Barking jolted her from the horrific images that plagued her. The APC’s spotlight speared through the darkness, chasing the beasts away.
The radio crackled again. Fire Team Knife had found some valves and piston rings that might work. They were gathering up parts before meeting up with Team Eel. Still no air cooler yet, though.
“I’m going to drive ahead and scope out the road,” Magnolia said. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
“Eyes ¿qué?” Gran Jefe asked.
“Watch out.”
“Ah, sí, cierto.”
She drove up over a hill, where some kind of shell lay in the middle of the road, just beyond the reach of her headlights. Gran Jefe put his spotlight on an armored torso. They had found one of the two missing scouts.
Blood was streaked across the cracked pavement, leading to limbs bare of armor and chewed to the bone. From a clump of mutant palmettos just off the road, glowing red eyes watched the vehicle. In the green hue of her night-vision goggles, Magnolia could make out the long snout of a dingo. Saliva dripped from jaws that held a human wrist and hand as, behind the beast, four of its brethren ripped pieces from the legs and feet.
“Fire or no?” Gran Jefe asked Magnolia.
“No, save your ammo. These pose no threat to us.”
Ignoring the feeding monsters, she backed away in the APC. She reversed all the way to where Team Octopus had boarded the cargo ship.
“Octopus, do you copy?” Magnolia asked.
Static crackled.
“Octopus, come in. Do you copy?”
Again nothing.
Magnolia waited another second, starting to grow nervous, before a response finally crackled back over the comms.
“We have located an intact air cooler.”
“Well, halle-fucking-lujah!” Magnolia crowed. “Copy that. Great job.”
Magnolia parked on the shoulder of the road overlooking the shore. Gran Jefe aimed the spotlight at the rusted hull that Team Octopus had boarded.
She could see no way down with the APC.
Though she wanted to get in and out as fast as possible, she wasn’t leaving the vehicle unless she had a damned good reason. Team Octopus was trained for salvaging. Her job was to get them and the air cooler back to the landing craft and onto the Frog.
She killed the engine and waited. A few minutes passed. Then fifteen. Thirty.
She scanned the darkness the entire time.
Just when she thought the monster dogs had departed, another bark came from the road behind them. Multiple pairs of red eyes glowed like coals in the mist.
All at once, the dingoes seemed to go wild in a cacophony of ferocious barking. She grabbed her rifle.
Something yelped in the darkness, and the vicious growls and snarls grew louder. Then came howls of agony from not one but two of the creatures. The loud yelping and yowling hurt Magnolia’s ears.
It ended as abruptly as it began—silence once again, with only the distant sigh of the waves. She was almost afraid to whisper into the comm.
“You see anythi—”
Before she could finish her sentence, something came sailing through the fog and smacked into the windshield. It rolled off onto the hood, where it stopped.
Magnolia didn’t need Gran Jefe’s spotlight. They had found the other scout.
The helmet was broken open, the head inside it mangled and mashed. Only the lower jaw was still fully intact. It hung low in a mocking half grin.
A deep roar emanated from the mist.
Magnolia squinted at a meaty figure lumbering down the road.
“Jefe!” she called up. “Fire!”
Gran Jefe’s spotlight hit a pitch-black Tasmanian devil galloping up the road. Its face was covered in warts and tumors. Tracer rounds split the darkness. Gran Jefe’s initial shots missed, giving the beast time to leap over the concrete wall that bordered the road.
When she realized where it was heading, Magnolia opened the APC door. She shouldered her rifle and moved through the fog to look down at the ship. The monster crossed the fractured tarmac and entered an open hangar.
“Team Octopus,” she said into the comms, “you got incoming.”
Magnolia listened for a response but heard only the distant roar of the beast. Perhaps her signal was being blocked by the half-buried hull, or the storm could be interfering. Or maybe the team had already encountered hostiles.
She looked out over the ocean waves. The other teams had collected vitally needed parts to get them home. But they weren’t going anywhere until they got that air-cooler unit out of this ship.
She couldn’t sit here and wait.
“On me,” she called up to Gran Jefe.
He shouted to her as she hopped over the wall. “Commander, orders to stay here!”
“Stay there, then,” she called back. “I’m going to help!”
FOUR
“Team Octopus has located the air-cooler unit but is no longer responding,” Magnolia had said.
The rest of her message was muddled but clear.
There was a Tasmanian devil out there—a big one.
The report came in ten minutes ago, and since then, the line to Magnolia and Team Octopus had gone dead.
X stood in the CIC of the Frog, looking out at the misty coast of the River Heads, waiting impatiently for the comm officer to get him a line to Mags. After losing the two scouts, he knew that the Cazador teams would encounter hostiles. But in the wastes, they were in their element—hunters, raiders, and experienced salvagers all. Forge continued to assure him of that.
“They know what they are doing,” said the general. “Patience, King Xavier. It’s probably the storms that are interfering.”
Patience, X thought. He looked down to Miles, who sat on his haunches, just content to be out of his cage.
“Commander Katib . . .” X said into his headset. “Mags, do you copy?”
Static crackled, then a hiss of indistinct chatter.
X growled, “Can someone get me a solid line to anyone out there?”
“Working on it, sir.”
The voice belonged to a twentysomething corporal with black hair pulled back into a ponytail. The man, who went simply by the name Tiger, reminded X of Michael. Not just his youthful features and long hair but especially his energy level and eagerness to help.
X thought of Michael and hoped he was holding things together back at the islands. He was irreplaceable in keeping the rigs running, which made him invaluable to everyone. His skills and knowledge were such that no one in their right mind would try to sabotage him.
Tiger swung around from the radio equipment. “King Xavier, Teams Eel and Knife have both reported back but have had no recent contact with Team Octopus or the Hell Divers.”
“Something must have happened,” X said.
“We could redeploy Teams Eel and Knife to search for them after they return with the parts, or send out the reserve teams now,” Forge said.
X thought about sending the teams on standby but decided against it. They couldn’t risk more people until they knew what was going on.
“Tell Team Knife and Team Eel to hurry up with the parts and then get back out there,” X said.
“Yes, sir,” said the general.
Waiting for news, X paced, his mind a mess of worries. But as much as he wanted to go out there and send more troops, he had to stay calm and trust in the training of his people. There was too much at stake to make half-cocked decisions.
Having Miles by his side helped. He patted the dog on the head.
Just when X was starting to calm down, he saw Captain Two Skulls and Tiger speaking rapid Spanish in worried tones. General Forge joined them.
“What’s wrong now?” X asked.
“There is another problema,” Forge said. Tiger and Captain Two Skulls both looked at him with clenched features.
“Radiation, sir,” Forge announced. “The winds have changed, bringing much of that radioactive fallout in our direction.”
“How bad?”
“The rads are already going up; we shouldn’t stay here much longer. Maybe a few hours before it gets really bad.”
X felt the heat of anger rising in his chest. He wanted to kick the radio equipment but suppressed the urge. Calm. Just keep the fuck calm.
His pounding head didn't help. He counted to ten, then counted backward. Then, despite his best efforts, X let out a blue streak of curses.
“Son of a brokedick, dumbshit asshole!”
Miles let out a whine, and everyone in the room looked at X. He was losing it again. And for the first time in months, he felt the urge to drown himself in shine.
No, you’re stronger than that. Your people need you! Magnolia needs you.
X went back to the window, searching the ocean for any sign of the other teams. In the fog, he saw movement in the bow of the weather deck. Figures, some in Hell Diver armor, some in Cazador armor.
He squinted, and they vanished.
What the hell?
The headache was getting worse, settling in behind his eyes. He stared out at the mist and saw movement again.
This time, he could make out the gigantic figure.
“Rhino,” he whispered. “But I saw you die.”
The great Cazador warrior, two years dead now, stood on the deck below, gripping his double-bladed spear. He looked up at X, raised his spear, and stepped to the side.
In the mist in front of Rhino, an entire team of Hell Divers emerged. Aaron, Rodney, Will . . . All members of Team Raptor. All dead from what was supposed to be a green dive.
Cruise and Murph appeared next. Both divers were part of the team that X had led to the surface not long after losing the entirety of Team Raptor. Both men died on that mission.
Katrina joined them; then came Les and his son, Trey. Arlo was there, too. So were Erin Jenkins and her father, Militia Sergeant Leonard Jenkins.
Commander Rick Weaver, from the airship Aries, appeared. X had hardly known the man but knew he was one of the best divers in history.
More Hell Divers and soldiers from the past decade crowded the weather deck.
Ghosts from the past . . .
A bright-white figure in a suit with gold feathers embroidered on the shoulder pads walked out in front of everyone. A sword hung from her duty belt.
Captain Maria Ash’s serious but kind features looked up at X. He could hear her bold, clear voice in his mind.
“You have passed every test of your life, Xavier,” she said. “You dived so that humanity survived. You brought your people to habitable land. You defeated the machines and the Cazador cannibals. But now you face your most difficult test—one that requires you to fight with your head, not your heart.”
