Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

Bending his knees, X performed his usual two-stage flare. When his boots hit the ground, he ran out the momentum across the compact snow, ground to a stop a few minutes later, and pulled one capewell, collapsing his chute. It rippled in the wind as he pawed through it to look for the other divers. Murph was sprawled on the ground a hundred feet away. Sam and Magnolia glided down to the east, both of them landing gracefully in the snow a few seconds later.

As soon as their feet touched down, X was running toward them. Every second in this radioactive pit was borrowed time.

Weaver couldn’t feel his hands or feet. Even so, his body seemed heavy, as if his bones were made of lead. He slogged through the snowy streets. The shrieks of the Sirens and the roar of the wind had ceased—either that, or his helmet speakers had frozen.

He was so cold, he could hardly think, hardly move. His legs moved by instinct, and his thoughts seemed to float disconnected from his body. A gust of snow beat him several steps backward. A second blast hit him in the back, knocking him to his knees. Pushing at the ground with hands that felt like bricks, he rose to his feet.

For the past several days, he had thought a lot about death. He had long since given up on the idea of a hereafter, knowing there was nothing but the rot that followed. But when he perished in this icy wasteland, he would be stuck here for eternity, his body a frozen fossil—unless those screaming beasts got to it first.

His mind drifted as he trudged ahead. The haunting images of Jennifer’s, Cassie’s, and Kayla’s burning bodies tormented his flagging awareness. The memories of better times were gone now. He saw only their melting faces.

Weaver tripped over a chunk of stone and went facedown in the snow. He caught the metallic taste of blood.

For a moment, he lay there, eyes searching the desolate landscape for the Ares wreckage. He didn’t want to give up, but he was so cold. An intense wave of despair took hold. In that moment, everything came clear. He felt vividly what it meant to be the last human on the planet. And he understood, perhaps for the first time, what the word “ forever ” meant.

The word prompted a fear unlike any he had ever experienced.

Defeated and alone, he rested his helmet in the snow. He needed to close his eyes and rest. Just for a few minutes…

He sobbed at the thought of his wife and his daughters and all the other passengers aboard Ares. Tears cascaded down his frozen face, growing cold on their way down his chin. “God, oh God,” Weaver whispered, drowsy now. “I have to get to my girls.”

He crawled a few feet, blinked away the tears, and squinted. Something was moving at the far end of the street, where the snow had drifted to form a low barricade. An apparition danced across the snow. A green cape flapped in the wind.

He clawed toward it, dragging his heavy legs. He made it four feet before collapsing onto his stomach. The fierce pain of his frozen body paralyzed him, and he contorted into a fetal position, shaking violently. He sucked in frozen shards of air that cut his lungs. Tilting his ice-crazed visor, he stared at the sky—the vast empty space where he had spent most of his life. He watched the lightning in awe.

Get up , a voice boomed in his mind. You have to get up.

The words were so distant, yet he recognized the voice at once. It was Jennifer’s.

You still have a mission to complete, she said. You promised us you’d come home, Rick.

His body was shutting down. He was dying. His brain would be the last to go, but reality was already slipping from his grasp.

Using every ounce of energy, he rolled on his side and saw the flapping apparition. No, a parachute. It wasn’t far, and with any luck, the body of a diver would be attached to it. A diver with a battery.

He struggled upward, balanced for a moment, and dragged one foot forward… then the other, toward the canopy. His feet were frozen anchors, but somehow, he willed them forward. He was light-headed, and his vision was fading, but he continued because he had no choice—he couldn’t break his promise.

After a struggle, he reached the chute and pulled it out of his way, following the cords to a hump in the snow. He dropped to his knees and wiped off a layer of drifted powder with his arm. He heard the faint sound of metal on metal. A second swipe exposed a helmet with a tiny red heart painted just above the visor.

“Sarah,” he murmured. He rotated her helmet carefully until it unlocked. Then he slowly pulled it away, grimacing as her frozen head slid out onto the snow. Her brown eyes were still open, the eyelashes covered in ice.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He set the helmet down with shaking hands and took her water bottle from inside the lip of her armor. Then he pulled out her food pouch. Both were frozen solid. He laid them on the snow and cleared the snow from her chest armor. His fingers shook as he dislodged his battery and exchanged it for hers.

He punched his minicomputer with wooden fingers and turned his heaters back on. The small devices bit his freezing skin, like bees stinging all across his body. He gradually felt the prickle of blood flowing to his extremities. The burn started at his feet and hands and worked its way up his legs and arms. His skin itched and tingled, and he sobbed again from the excruciating pain of his body slowly warming. He had been so cold. Now he was on fire.

When the pain subsided, he unlatched the locks on his armor, pulled the front plate up, and inserted Sarah’s water bottle and food pouch.

He secured the armor with a click, then searched Sarah’s corpse. A blaster was frozen against her leg. He grabbed it and yanked the grip, and the weapon broke free, sending him sprawling on his backside. He gripped the stock and gazed up at the sky, wondering what, as the last human being on Earth, he ought to do now. He heard his wife’s voice again. It sounded clearer now.

Live, Rick.

X reached down and offered his hand to Murph, who lay on his back, his mirrored visor looking up at the sky.

“How many dives did you say you’ve done?” X asked.

Murph grabbed his hand and groaned as he pulled himself upright. “Not enough.”

“Holy shit,” Magnolia said. She stood beside Sam, facing west. “Is that…?”

“Hades,” Sam said.

“Regroup,” X said. “We don’t have time for sightseeing.”

The team circled around him. Flakes of toxic snow fluttered from the sky. Magnolia held out her hand and caught a flake on her palm. X shook his head. She had no idea of the danger they were in.

“Sam, you’re our eyes. Take point. Murph, plot us a course to the target and the supply crate the Hive dropped. Magnolia… just stay close to me.”

“I’ve never seen rads this high,” Murph said.

X checked his monitor for the third time since landing. “Me, neither. We need to double-time it to get to this facility.” The Hell Divers lived by the law of the clock, and they were running out of time. They had an hour and fifty-seven minutes to return to the Hive with cells and valves.

Looking past the data, X scanned the wasteland to the west. For miles, nothing stood as high as a man. The landscape to the east was much the same. Foundations of buildings peppered the terrain, but only a few structures rose even to one story. X pulled his binos and dialed in on a bridge that stuck out of the snow like the dorsal fin of some monstrous fish. Beneath the snow, a network of highways and roads had connected the Old World. X had traveled on many of them on other dives.

He zoomed in on a cluster of towers beyond the bridge. Even from a distance, he could see that the skeletal buildings were badly damaged. Some were nothing more than husks. He had his doubts that anything inside could remain intact, especially after the blasts. But they had to try.