Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

“I can shoot!” She raised her gun, but X pushed her back, not wanting her to kill Weaver or him in the process.

“Get the fuck behind me!” X yelled. He squeezed off several shots as soon as Magnolia was out of the way. A beast that had been darting across the ceiling fell to the floor on its back, gurgling one last breath through its strangely wide mouth. The next volley of bullets ripped through more leathery bodies, spattering the concrete wall with steaming blood.

Now he understood: the first pack were just stragglers trying to escape the storm. Six more came scrabbling down the passage, their spiked vertebrae cutting through the darkness.

“Katrina! Help! Now!” X yelled.

Katrina stepped up between Weaver and X and joined them, taking single shots as Sirens crashed into one another, trampling the fallen to get at the divers.

“Changing,” Weaver said.

“I still can’t get my gun to work!” Magnolia cried.

X yelled to her, “Just retreat back to the gate!”

Lean, stringy bodies thumped to the floor, tripping those surging into the passage. But on they came. When one fell, two more appeared, some of them taking to the walls and ceiling.

“Get out of here!” X shouted at Magnolia. He squeezed the trigger again and again, watching more creatures fall shrieking to the ground as their blood spattered the concrete.

“Hold the line!” X shouted, pulling a spent magazine out of the rifle and reaching for another. He didn’t need to look down to see that he had only two left. In seconds, he was firing again.

With each beat of his heart, the Sirens moved closer. In almost slow motion, X saw scabby crested heads hurtling forward. He saw the abrasions crisscrossing their wrinkled skin, and their ropy muscles stretching as they moved. Gaping mouths opened and unleashed the screeches that made him want to drop his weapon and cover his ears. Undeterred, he kept shooting. The oscillating discord seemed impossibly loud, even overwhelming the racket of gunfire in an enclosed space. It continued to shock him no matter how many times he heard it.

Katrina backpedaled as the monsters advanced.

“Hold the line!” X yelled again. But Weaver was falling back with her, too.

“We can’t hold them!” Weaver shouted.

X fired quick bursts as he, too, retreated. The ammunition wasn’t going to do him any good if he was already dead. He flipped the selector to full auto, sweeping the passage, no longer bothering to pick his shots. It was a final, desperate attempt to hold back the leathery horde. If they died here in this concrete tomb, the Hive was doomed.

X knew they had run out of time when his left boot sank into the knee-deep powder that marked the curve of the tunnel.

“Get out of the way!” someone shouted over the comm. X was shoved to the side as a hunched figure, covered in snow, limped past him.

X stared, uncomprehending, at Murph. He didn’t know how it was possible, and he didn’t care. The sight energized him. Righting himself, he raised his rifle at three advancing Sirens and squeezed off a shot to the left, then the right, then the center of the pack. The monsters toppled and skidded across the floor.

Murph lobbed a black ball the size of a really big apple into the darkness behind the dying beasts.

“Run!” he yelled.

The ball plopped in the snow amid the front-runners of the next pack. Katrina and Weaver were already running for the gate, but X held back and grabbed the man that was supposed to be dead. Murph grunted as X helped him around the bend in the tunnel. The guy was short but dense, and heavy as hell.

Magnolia was already at the gate, crouching with her hands cupped over her helmet.

A thunderous explosion rocked the tunnel behind them. The blast wave propelled X and Murph into the air. X lost his rifle and braced himself with his arms folded across his head as he landed in the snow. Fragments of concrete rained down on him, one piece hitting his helmet so hard he bit his tongue.

He tried to raise a hand to protect his visor, but the arm wouldn’t respond. Another chunk of rock hit his back, but this time he only heard the impact. Everything below his waist was numb. The trailing rush of adrenaline amplified his heart rate. Blood rushed in his ears, and behind the ringing were voices over the comm channel—faint and muddied, but he could hear them.

Desperate to see if his team was okay, X tried again to move his extremities. A toe twitched. Then his entire foot. Good. It meant his spine wasn’t broken. He fought the stars in his vision, blinking until he could see dimly outlined shapes.

The walls seemed closer now, as if the tunnel were shrinking around him. Suffocating, he struggled to draw air.

Three figures moved at the opposite end of the hallway, near the gate. And another sat, back to the wall, a few feet away.

As X finally managed to move his entire body, a rising melancholy screech echoed down the passage behind him.

The Sirens!

He crawled across the dense powder, fingers searching for his lost rifle, knees sinking with every lurch forward. His vision slowly cleared, and he checked over his shoulder. Smoke swirled through the tunnel, but nothing stirred amid the destruction.

X turned and clambered toward the armored figure a few feet away. It was Murph, gripping his gut.

“Did I do good?” he murmured.

“Yeah, Murph. You did great.”

The engineer gave a feeble grin. “Homemade grenade. I knew Ty would never let me bring it into the launch bay if I told him. Was saving it…” He broke into a coughing fit and brought his hands to his helmet, revealing a wide gash beneath his chest armor. Blood had frozen around the wound.

“They’re all dead!” Weaver called out from the bend in the passage. “You killed every last one of those things!” His laugh carried an edge of hysteria.

“You’re hurt,” Magnolia said to Murph.

“I’ll be okay,” he choked. “Somebody help me up.”

Katrina reached down to help X to his feet, and Magnolia helped Murph up.

“You okay, X?” Katrina asked.

He put a hand on his helmet and nodded, his vision still clearing. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“We need to get going,” Weaver said. “Come on, before those things find us again.”

Murph leaned on X, an arm over his shoulder, as they followed the other three divers into the tunnel.

“This yours, X?” Magnolia asked.

She picked a rifle up from the snow and handed it to him. He threw the strap over his shoulder and continued around the curve, where they found dozens of mangled, smoldering bodies. Steam rose off puddles of cooling blood. One of the Sirens was still twitching.

X pulled his knife and said, “Hold on, Murph.”

The engineer winced as X pulled away and knelt beside the monster. It tilted its misshapen head in X’s direction. A bloody froth gurgled out of its mouth, and its lips stretched in what looked like a grin. Long, pointed teeth protruded from its swollen gums.

“Come on, X!” Weaver hissed.

“Hold up,” X said. He had never seen one up close like this. He took a moment to examine the small bristles dotting the mangy scalp, and the fresh abrasions on its pallid skin. Looking closer, he saw scars crisscrossing the creature’s body. It had been a fighter, a predator, and even in its final moments it remained so, snapping at X’s hand before he brought the blade down in the center of its skull.

The metal punched through bone with a satisfying crunch. A muffled sigh burbled out of the Siren’s gaping mouth. X twisted the blade and then yanked it free, wiping the blood off on the leathery skin before sheathing the knife.

A few feet away, he spied the handle to the blaster he had dropped earlier. The barrel was blackened from the blast, but it was still intact. He scooped it up and holstered it.