Nicholas Smith - Wolves

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.