Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

Weaver took a step backward as a crack spider-webbed up the concrete stairwell. The violent rattle of metal siding pulled his gaze to the ceiling on the second floor. He heard Jones shouting, but his voice was muffled by the sounds of the building coming apart. The concrete stairwell walls around Weaver and Jones were fracturing under the onslaught of tornadic wind.

Weaver nearly stumbled down the steps to avoid a falling chunk of concrete. He braced himself against the opposite wall and watched in horror as a wide crack zigzagged up the stairs, breaking them in half.

“Run!” he shouted. But looking up, he saw there was nowhere to go. The metal roof was rattling so hard, it was only a matter of time before the storm peeled it back and sucked them right out the top.

Jones hesitated on the broken stairs, huddling against a wall and covering his head with his arms. With nowhere to hide, there was only one option.

Weaver pressed his left palm against the wall for balance. With his right hand, he fished in the cargo pocket on his left leg and pulled a coil of 550-pound test paracord. Uncoiling it, he handed one end to Jones.

“Tie it on your belt!” Weaver yelled.

“No,” Jones said, waving it away. “We can’t go out there!”

“We take our chances out there or we get crushed in here! Pick your poison!”

Above them, a section of roof peeled back like the skin of an orange. They were out of time.

“That’s an order!” Weaver shouted.

Jones took the end of rope from his hand and tied it in a figure eight to his belt. Grabbing the door handle, Weaver yelled for Jones to follow. He put his shoulder against it, using all his strength to push it open. The concrete walls of the staircase broke off behind them, the fragments tumbling down the stairs and narrowly missing Jones. The building swayed, throwing them against each other in the concrete stairwell as the structural metal gave out a loud groan.

Weaver gritted his teeth, wishing he could remember the prayer Jones had whispered a few minutes earlier. He tried to plant his boots as he stepped outside, but the wind took him the moment his feet were out the door. The rope on his belt tightened and yanked Jones from the doorway. The next instant, both divers were sucked into the white void, their screams swallowed up by the howling wind.

X gave up waiting for Tin to come out of his room.

“I’ll be back later,” he said on his way out. He locked the door behind him and headed down the corridor. His destination wasn’t far. The scruffy bar called the Wingman was only a few passages away.

He walked with his hands in his pockets, eyes downcast. The white flicker of a single light told him he was close. It was like the beacon of a lighthouse, warning ships away from the shore. X ignored the warning every time.

The familiar scratchy mechanical sound of an ancient CD player greeted him at the entrance. Hearing the thumping guitar strains of “All Along the Watchtower,” he grinned. The centuries-old Jimi Hendrix tune reflected his mood perfectly.

He nodded at Marv, a middle-aged former Militia soldier who had bought the shit hole of a bar when his term was up.

“Evenin’, X. What can I do you out of?” The burly barkeep finished wiping a glass with a rag of dubious cleanliness.

“Usual.” X scanned the faces of the other three patrons, recognizing none of them. Fine with him—he wasn’t here to talk.

Marv muttered something to a woman at the end of the bar—she was in X’s seat. She grabbed her glass, gave X a scowl, and squeezed past him. He took her place and reached for the mug of ’shine that Marv had already set out. Two gulps, and it was gone. He welcomed the burn—welcomed feeling of any kind after the week he’d had.

X hit his chest with a fist and signaled for another. He didn’t care that Captain Ash had ordered him to stay away from the ’shine tonight. With the liquid warming his gut, he felt happier than he had in a while. And that, he knew, was a bad sign.

“Not taking it slow tonight?” Marv asked.

“Got things to forget.”

He filled the glass to the rim this time. “Don’t we all, brother!”

“I’ll drink to that,” said the man sitting to his right.

X didn’t reply. He stared at the only decoration in the bar—a painting of some ancient battle. Men wearing plate armor swung swords at one another, spilling blood on the grassy fields of a place forgotten to time.

“You’re a Hell Diver, aren’t ya’?” the man asked.

Slamming down the liquid, X tilted his head ever so slightly to catch a glimpse of the talkative patron. He was middle-aged, with a rough face and black dreadlocks down past his shoulders. He looked familiar, but X wasn’t here to think about the past. He wasn’t here to think at all.

“The red jumpsuit give it away?” X said reluctantly. He tapped his empty glass on the table and anticipated the man’s next question.

“I knew some Hell Divers once. They said you guys don’t talk about what you see, but come on, man.” He nudged X in the side. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

X didn’t like that. His body was the only real estate he truly owned on the cramped airship. Invade, and there were apt to be problems.

“They were right,” X said.

The man squinted. “Hey, I’ve seen you before. You’ve been around a while. I know you’ve, you know, seen things.”

Marv froze, his hand stuck inside another glass with the same dingy rag. He kept an eye on X but didn’t say a word.

“Come on, just one story,” the drunk wheedled. “I heard you guys found life down there recently.” He wiggled a finger again, back and forth. “But not human life.”

X didn’t like that, either. Rumors annoyed him. His vision began to fade as the ’shine took hold of his senses. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he considered telling the man about the beasts down on the surface, just to see his reaction.

Marv cut in. “Why don’t you get going, pal. You’ve had enough ’shine tonight.”

“Wasn’t talking to you,” the man replied. Shifting his glazed eyes back to X, he reached out as if to touch the scar above his eye. “I know you got some stories in you.”

X grabbed his hand, stood, and whipped the arm back around into a hammer lock. Now he remembered where he had seen him. It was the same guy from the hallway earlier, who had mouthed off to the Militia soldiers.

The man resisted, jerking his arm, but X was quick, pushing the trapped hand farther up between the shoulder blades as his other hand bounced the man’s head off the table. The smack of bone on wood resounded in the small space.

The man struggled to get free. “Lay off, man! You think you’re so goddamn special, don’t you? You got any idea how the rest of us live? I think…”

X hiked the arm up a little higher, and the words trailed off into a whimper. The other customers scattered from the bar.

“You weren’t thinking all that much,” X said. As suddenly as he had grabbed the man, he loosened his grip and let him go.

“ Shit, ” Marv said. Putting the “clean” mug down on the bar, he readied the rag for messier duty.

A beat later, the drunk slid his face off the bar. He staggered backward, murmuring a string of profanities.

Marv mopped up the streak of blood with a quick sweep. “Now, hike your ass out of here!”

The man stumbled away, cupping his mouth with his right hand and flashing the middle finger of his left. He mumbled something, X heard only the tail end of it.

“My dad was never like you.”

X shook his head and plopped back down on the stool. “Sorry, Marv,” he said, watching the man limp into the hallway.