Kade recognized a few words from where Bulldozer hung in his harness. “Brokedick!” seemed to be the interjection of choice.

  The beating of the chopper made it all but impossible to hear anything else as it lowered toward the partial opening.

  Jack waved for his men to get back.

  The Sea King continued to lower, but the huge aircraft didn’t seem as if it was going to fit through the opening.

  An alarm blared.

  Kade dropped the bag of dried bananas. Not an alarm . . .

  A distant shout confirmed his suspicions.

  “We got hostiles coming from the east!”

  “How many?” Jack yelled back.

  “An entire pack—maybe a dozen!”

  “Get Garrett out of there and close the door!” General Jack reached out as Lucky tossed him his rifle.

  Kade held up his hands. “Can someone uncuff me?”

  None of the knights seemed to hear him, or they ignored him as they moved out under the open hatch.

  Garrett pulled up. The whining grew louder, until it seemed to be just above them.

  Kade flinched when he saw a winged creature slam into the cockpit of the helicopter. The Sea King jerked violently.

  “Get back!” the general shouted.

  The knights ran away from the opening.

  Kade watched as the chopper pulled up with the Siren still attached to the hull. The mounted M60 machine guns blazed, spewing green tracer rounds into the night. Bullet casings rained from overhead, clinking on the concrete floor.

  Three creatures swooped through the opening in the ceiling. They dispersed down into the hangar as the six knights raised their rifles.

  “Down!” Lucky yelled.

  A Siren flapped over him as he ducked. The creature picked up another knight and flung him into a wall. His visor shattered with an audible crack.

  Gunfire drowned out the electronic-like wails of the monsters.

  “Watch your fire!” General Jack shouted.

  Kade crawled under the gunfire with the three monsters flying overhead. He got behind a crate with Lucky, who used the cover to fire at the monsters. The general slid next to them, turning his suppressed submachine gun on a creature that had swooped down with its wings out.

  The eyeless beast snarled, spittle dripping from its twisted maw. Bullets punched into the rubbery flesh. It jerked from the impacts as it tried to pull up, but a head shot dropped it before it could fly away, and the beast crashed lifeless to the floor, not far from Kade.

  Hearing a new wail, he looked up to find two more Sirens dropping through the hole in the roof.

  “Watch out!” Kade yelled.

  General Jack and Lucky turned a torrent of lead on them. Sparks pinged off the ceiling and door. That was when Kade saw Bulldozer, still in his harness, trying to unbind the still-grinding wheels.

  Kade ducked as a beast came out of his peripheral vision. So the creature went for Lucky instead. It slammed into him and General Jack, knocking the general to the concrete.

  Then the beast scrambled over to Lucky. He rotated on his back with his rifle, only to see a clawed hand slap it away.

  Kade ran over and jumped onto the Siren’s spiked back. He wrapped the chain of the cuffs around the grizzly neck of the beast and pulled as hard as he could.

  All around him, guns fired, muzzles flashed, and monsters screamed in their emergency-siren-like voices. Knights yelled right back as they cut the abominations down.

  The eyeless monster snapped at Kade as he pulled back on the chain. It reached up, clawing at his armor. He watched in horror as its other clawed hand slashed at Lucky, cutting through his vest and duty belt.

  Kade grunted, pulling harder so the creature couldn’t slash Lucky again. The monster bucked backward and then launched into the air. Kade lost his grip, landing on his back as the creature flapped upward, right for Bulldozer.

  Rolling onto his side, Kade fumbled at Lucky’s torn duty belt. He pulled his Monster Hunter revolver from the holster. He pulled back the hammer, closed one eye, and aimed. The beast flapped up toward an unsuspecting Bulldozer, closing in with outstretched claws.

  Kade squeezed the trigger.

  The heavy bullet broke the creature’s spiny back. It let out a roar of agony and fell over the tail rotor on one of the disabled Sea King choppers.

  Kade got up to his knees, holding the gun in his cuffed hands and looking for another target. Three of the monsters lay dead.

  The other two flapped away through the opening in the rooftop.

  “Drop the weapon,” Lucky said.

  When Kade turned, he saw Lucky aiming a rifle at his helmet.

  “You’re welcome,” Kade said. He flipped the pistol around and handed it to the knight.

  The other soldiers shook off the adrenaline and spread out to hold security while General Jack and Lucky checked the injured knight.

  They carefully removed the helmet from a youthful face. The young soldier, a man named Mal, was choking on his own blood.

  General Jack bent down and put a hand on his chest plate. He whispered a few words, then got up and nodded at Lucky.

  Before Kade even knew what was happening, Lucky aimed the pistol between Mal’s eyes. They widened just before he pulled the trigger.

  SIX

  A violent radioactive storm battered the beached cargo ship. The wind howled like a monster, keeping Magnolia awake and alert.

  Beeping resonated in her helmet, and a check of her wrist computer confirmed the Geiger counter as the source of the warning.

  The radiation was spiking—the first fallout from the nuclear detonation.

  Two hours had passed since she and Gran Jefe joined Team Octopus inside the ship. Magnolia had climbed to an unstable mezzanine that extended over the engine equipment. The big Cazador Hell Diver was up here, watching the two hatches into the large space.

  On the deck below, the Cazadores of Team Octopus worked to dismantle the air-cooling system from its mountings in the rusted, stifling engine compartment. Three of the four soldiers quietly attended to the disassembly while the fourth organized the air-cooler components below.

  “How much longer?” Magnolia called down.

  One of the salvagers held up two fingers.

  “Veinte minutos,” he said.

  “Twenty minutes,” Gran Jefe said.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Magnolia replied.

  She bumped on the comms to Command again but got only static.

  Due to the weather, they had lost contact after Teams Eel and Knife returned to the Frog with valves, piston rings, and step-down transformers. She had a feeling X and General Forge would send the two teams back out here to help.

  All she had to do was keep Team Octopus and Gran Jefe alive.

  Magnolia used her flashlight to check the room again for any sign of the Tasmanian devil that she had followed with Gran Jefe. The beast had vanished somewhere inside the ship.

  These monsters were smart. It knew they were here and was waiting for its chance to pounce. She could feel it in her bones.

  “You hear anything?” she whispered.

  “My stomach.” Gran Jefe patted his gut. “Tengo que cagar.”

  “What—you gotta take a shit? You got to be kidding me.”

  Magnolia raked her light from the entry hatch on their left back to Gran Jefe.

  “You watch,” he grunted. “I can wait no mucho.”

  Magnolia might have laughed a few days ago, but not now.

  “You can’t hold it?” she asked. “That thing is still out there.”

  “I can no fight when I have to shit,” Gran Jefe said.

  “Fine. Go, then.”

  Magnolia followed him over the mezzanine. Their clanking boots drew glances from the Cazadores below.

  “Hurry it up,” she said.

  Magnolia turned as Gran Jefe went down the ladder they had taken to access the platform. She heard the clatter of his armor coming off at the bottom, followed by what must be the roar of the wind outside.

  But this wasn’t the wind—it was Gran Jefe emptying his bowels.

  “Why don’t you just tell every beast on the coast where we are?” she said when it finally ended.

  “They smell, they no come,” Gran Jefe said with a laugh.

  He climbed back up a few minutes later, looking perky.

  “I can fight now,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  The radio in her helmet crackled.

  “Team Octopus, this is Eel Actual, does anyone copy? Over.”

  “Copy you, Eel Actual, this is Commander Katib,” Magnolia replied. “What’s your twenty?”

  “We have dropped off the first round of supplies to the Frog and are headed your way, over.”

  “Thank the Octopus Lords,” Magnolia replied. She looked over the railing and quietly said, “We got support headed our way. Look alive.”

  The soldiers below were loading up the crate with the pieces of the air-cooling unit.

  If they could get out of here with it, without losing anyone aside from the scouts, then it was a good day. They needed this morale boost after losing everything and everyone on the Immortal supercarrier in the blink of an eye.

  Apparently, she wasn’t the only one thinking about their losses.

  “I sorry about Arlo,” Gran Jefe said. “I miss him. He make me laugh.”

  Magnolia faced the big Cazador, seeing his dark eyes behind his visor. “Me too,” she replied. A wave of guilt ripped through her at the memory. “I should have been paying attention to the sky. It should never have happened.”

  “No your fault.” His voice held a serious and rueful tone that Magnolia wasn’t used to hearing. It almost seemed as if the guy did have a heart.

  “He die because la muerte is part of la vida,” Gran Jefe said. “He funny, but lucky to be alive so long. He make too many mistakes. No your fault, Commander.”

  Gran Jefe put a hand on her shoulder.

  “It like Ada—not my fault,” he said. “Her fault. She make decision, and decision get her dead.”

  Magnolia was going to reply when a distant rattle broke her train of thought. Gran Jefe pulled his hand away and clutched his rifle. The gusting wind pierced the inside of the ship, whistling down the abandoned corridors.

  The rattle continued, but this wasn’t from the storm or the soldiers working below them. Team Octopus fanned out. They had heard the same thing.

  A guttural roar echoed through the ship.

  Another roar answered.

  The noises made Magnolia clench up for an attack. The monster was waiting for them to move so it could strike them when they were in the open.

  “Guess your mierda explosion didn’t scare them off,” Magnolia said.

  Gran Jefe snorted.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  Magnolia took a ladder down to Team Octopus as two soldiers finished putting the salvaged parts in a crate.

  “Ready?” Magnolia asked.

  “Sí, listo,” said the salvage boss.

  Shouldering her laser rifle, she started walking. Gran Jefe fell in behind the group, holding rear guard. They worked across an open deck still clogged with vehicles, many of them still fastened by their moorings from when they were being transported centuries ago. Others had somehow, amid cataclysms unknown, flipped onto their roofs or lay on their sides. There had to be over a hundred automobiles on this deck alone.

  The beams from tactical lights flitted over the broken windows and rotted interiors.

  As they got halfway across the sea of cars, a distant growling resonated through the damp chamber.

  Magnolia bumped on the comms. “Calling Team Eel and Team Knife—what’s your twenty?”

  They reported back from the road—both groups near the APC that Magnolia and Gran Jefe had left behind.

  “Do you have eyes on hostiles?” she asked.

  “Negative.”

  Across the elongated cargo space, they heard a thud, followed by breaking glass.

  The team of Cazadores set the crate down and raised their weapons.

  Magnolia moved ahead, sweeping the area with her laser rifle. The infrared scanner on her scope didn’t reveal any heat signatures. But something was in here with them.

  She checked the ceiling just in case the hulking devils could also, somehow, climb.

  Seeing nothing suspicious, she turned to look for a way out. It didn’t take long to find a jagged opening, blown in the hull by some long-ago missile. It was all the way across the deck, on the port side.

  Magnolia gave the signal to advance. Two of the Cazadores picked up the crate while the other two joined the security watch.

  Lightning flashed outside the ragged breach in the hull. From what Magnolia could tell, they were at least two decks above the beach. That meant getting down was going to be an issue, but she wouldn’t risk getting trapped in one of the corridors while trying to find a way out. If they had to lower the crate and themselves on a rope in the storm, it beat getting cornered by the monster hunting them.

  Magnolia looked over her shoulder at Gran Jefe, who was still watching their six. He backpedaled toward her, keeping his rifle trained on the hatch they had entered through.

  Thunder boomed as they approached the riven opening in the hull. Rain pooled on the deck. Her helmet chirped another warning as the Geiger counter detected yet another uptick in radiation. But the distant scratching of claws that followed made radiation a secondary threat.

  She turned again and spotted movement at the far end of the cargo hold: a hunched back of spikes protruding through wet fur. The dark bulk vanished among the vehicles.

  “Behind us,” she whispered.

  “I see,” Gran Jefe replied.

  “Keep going,” she said to the Cazador team.

  They maneuvered around a car, heading for the opening while Magnolia kept her light on the vehicles at the other side of the hold. The monster had somehow ducked out of view.

  “Where the hell’d it go?” she whispered.

  She heard a muffled shout behind her, followed by a fading voice and a sharp crack. When she turned to check, three of the four members of Team Octopus had stopped around an opening in the deck.

  It hit Magnolia then.

  The hole in the bulkhead wasn’t the only breach on this level. And the monster seemed to be using them as doorways to move through the levels.

  She retreated with Gran Jefe to the gaping hole in the deck. The Cazador soldier who had fallen through was ten feet below, gripping his ankle.

  A rope with a bowline loop already tied was on its way down when the shriek of claws on metal came again.

  “Better move it,” she said.

  The soldier with the broken ankle threw the rope over his shoulders and held on as his comrades hoisted him upward.

  In the respite between thunderclaps came heavy panting, then a throaty growl.

  Magnolia crouched and aimed her rifle and tac light into the shadows. Thunder cracked outside, masking whatever the creature did next.

  “Faster!” she yelled.

  The Cazadores pulled harder, joined by Gran Jefe. The injured man was almost up now.

  You can’t lose a soldier, Magnolia thought.

  Moving her finger to the trigger, she fired as the terrible panting seemed directly below.

  A clawed paw swiped up at the Cazador’s dangling feet, only to be shorn off by a laser bolt. The soldiers heaved the man up onto the deck as Magnolia fired another burst into the darkness.

  A furious screech arose from the deck below.

  The soldiers got back up, two grabbing the crate while the other helped the injured man.

  “Go, go, go!” Magnolia shouted.

  Wind slammed into them as they approached the jagged opening in the hull.

  Gran Jefe and Magnolia stood back to cover the soldiers. She checked that they weren’t being flanked, but all she could see outside were storm clouds over the ocean.

  Waves crashed against the shore, and thunder boomed steadily.

  “On our way outside,” she reported over the comms. “Prepare for evac.”

  “Copy, Commander,” said the leader of Team Eel.

  At the edge of the hole in the portside hull, the Cazador soldiers set the crate down. Working swiftly, they got out the ropes and tackle. To Magnolia’s relief, they were fast and competent.

  They sent the crate down first. When it was safely on the sand, the first soldier rappelled down, readied his rifle, and put his head on a swivel.

  The distant howl of the maimed Tasmanian devil made Magnolia shudder. The monster was out to feed, and she didn’t think the wound was going to keep it from bringing back fresh meat to its pups.

  She kept her rifle aimed into the cargo hold while the rain and wind beat against her armor. The third and then the final member of Team Octopus rappelled down. They called up, but Magnolia turned to wave them onward.

  “Get to the evac!” she yelled.

  “Now you go,” Gran Jefe said.

  As Magnolia reached for the rappel line, she heard claws scrabbling. She turned just as a hunk of metal came flying across the space, too fast for her to duck.

  A car door slammed into her shoulder, spinning her around and smashing her into the hull. Warning sensors beeped in her helmet again.

  Her heart hammered with fear. Stunned on her knees, she wiped the rain from her visor and blinked. Something huge and furry was climbing out of the hole the Cazador had fallen down. One arm was missing its paw.

  And the beast wasn’t alone. Another creature jumped onto a car across the cargo hold, crushing the hood. Gran Jefe fired a burst, forcing it down. Then he trained his barrel on the beast with the still-gushing wrist. It came at Magnolia as she tried to find her feet.

  The shots stitched up the monster’s spiked back, hitting the armorlike flesh with audible thunks.

 

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