Nicholas Smith - Hell Divers

Magnolia shrieked again. “Help! I can’t… I can’t get away!”

“Hold on!” X shouted. Letting his rifle hang across his chest, he grabbed both toggles and steered toward the Sirens. He wasn’t going to let Magnolia join the ranks of dead divers, not when he still had some fight left in him.

She angled away from the Sirens’ claws while X shot toward them. The two that had broken off from the pack were a hundred feet away now, their gangly arms already reaching up for Magnolia.

“No!” Katrina shouted over the comm. “Don’t, X!”

X imagined she was looking down at them, watching as he soared through the sky toward Magnolia and the monsters. But he didn’t have time to console Katrina or explain what he was doing. The clock was ticking, and he had time for only one message.

“Make sure Captain Ash takes care of Tin,” he said. He bumped off the channel and caught Magnolia’s terrified gaze for a split second as he rocketed past her.

With his left hand on a toggle, X raised the rifle in his right. He aimed carefully, knowing he had exactly one chance to save his friends. The other formations were five hundred feet away, but maybe if he could kill the front two, it would buy the other divers enough time to escape into the storm.

The Sirens’ vacant faces jerked in his direction. He closed one eye, then fired just as they changed course. The bullet hit the first Siren right between where its eyes ought to be. It dropped like a rock, and he squeezed off another shot that hit the second one in the chest. The bullet jolted the creature, but it fought to stay in the air and angled toward X.

He fired two more shots into its mass, veering it from its trajectory. The Siren torpedoed past X, narrowly missing him. An ear-splitting screech followed, waning as the monster tumbled into the dark void. When X looked back up, the heart of the formation was almost on him. They reached out with ropy muscles, maws chomping and wings riding the wind.

They were so close now, he could see their scarred flesh coming apart as the bullets hit. Blood ballooned into the sky. For a moment, he thought he might actually have enough bullets to kill them all—that maybe he would make it back to the Hive after all. He had killed six of thirteen before his magazine clicked dry.

X let the rifle drape from its sling. Then he let go of the left toggle and grabbed his pistol and his knife.

Letting out a guttural scream that rivaled even the Sirens’ shrieks, he extended his arms, brandishing both blade and gun at a bulky Siren at the front of the second formation. Its wrinkled flesh was covered with scars. Well, X would give it some new ones. He managed to fire a shot into its neck before they smashed into each other. He plunged the blade into the monster’s torso as they collided. The pistol flew from his hand, and air exploded from his lungs. He was spinning now, his knife still stuck in the Siren’s lean muscles.

It flapped its wings, screeching and tearing at him. Claws scratched over his chest armor, and he felt the hot burn as one of the talons ripped through his layered suit and caught the flesh in the gap beneath his armor and his belt.

X wrenched the blade from its neck. Blood spurted out, half covering the outside of his visor. He plunged the knife back into the monster again and again. Piercing shrieks, filled with rage, answered each thrust.

The field of view beyond his visor blurred with scabrous, wrinkled skin. He could see leathery wings and little else. A moment later, a pair of wings wrapped around his body, and darkness enveloped him.

“No!” X shouted as the dense weight pulled him downward. Fear gripped him as he squirmed in the membranous shroud, struggling to move his helmet. Through a hole in the cocoon of tattered wings, he glimpsed three flickers of blue from battery units above. In the blink of the eye, they vanished into the storm clouds. While the other divers rose to salvation, X fell back into hell.

Weaver had flinched at the sound of a single gunshot below. He watched in shock as X crashed into the Sirens. They swarmed him, flapping their wings like prehistoric flying reptiles. In a heartbeat, the diver plunged into the darkness and disappeared with the roiling mass of monsters.

In that instant, Weaver had considered helping X, but a gust of wind sent him and the thought spinning away. There was nothing he could do to help. He had known X for only a few hours, but his courage and sacrifice had reminded Weaver that diving wasn’t a job or an obligation; it was a duty and an honor.

He stared at the storm as the balloon pulled him through the sky. Flash after flash of blue lanced through the muddy clouds. The panicked screams of the other two divers broke over the distant clap of thunder.

He glanced down to see Magnolia pulling frantically on her toggles and scanning the clouds below her feet for X. Katrina was doing the same thing. It seemed unfair that X had led the divers through hell, only to perish at the very end. Katrina and Magnolia might not understand his sacrifice now, but they would if they would just get back to the Hive . Life in the sky was harsh but precious, and X had spent his life protecting it. The moment of his sacrifice would forever be embedded in Weaver’s memories.

Another torrent of lightning flashed above, arcing out like blood pumping through veins. Low, dull thuds boomed as his balloon pulled him toward the heart of the storm.

Until now, Weaver hadn’t even thought about their ascent, but the booming thunderclaps reminded him that Hades hadn’t let go of him yet.

His HUD was flickering now. In a few seconds, the storm would knock it out entirely. They were nearing eight thousand feet. If the Hive was still up there—and Weaver seriously doubted it—then the divers were almost halfway there.

He searched the clouds for any sign of escape—for a place that he might squeeze through. There, maybe a hundred feet to the west, he saw an area where the clouds seemed lighter.

“Come on!” Weaver shouted. He waved at Katrina and Magnolia with one hand and pointed with the other toward the paler clouds framed on both sides by denser bulging masses.

As he rose into the sky, he found himself trying to remember the words of Jones’ prayers, but the thunder all around him made it hard to think. He still didn’t know why he had survived while his family and so many others had perished. Finding a divine reason seemed disrespectful to the memories of everyone else who had died. Why was he so lucky? Why would God save only him?

There was no simple answer, nothing to explain the air in his lungs or his beating heart. There was no time to think at all. Lightning zipped overhead, raising the hair on his neck. He tensed and eyed his balloon, his heart skipping. The ball of precious helium continued its ascent. He exhaled a sigh of relief. The aftermath of the strike shook him, and he lurched in his harness, glimpsing a view of the clouds below. The air hadn’t even left his lungs when the roar of thunder came crashing in.

Weaver blinked away beads of sweat and tried to focus. Using his toggles, he directed his balloon toward the break in the storm. Magnolia and Katrina were still right below him. Lightning backlit their outlines, each flash making his heart pound faster.

They had to be around twenty thousand feet up now. He couldn’t see anything on his HUD, but his mind could estimate his location by habit.

Tendrils of electricity reached out toward the divers as they scaled the clouds. The subsequent cracks of thunder rattled his body again and again.

He was in the heart of the storm now. The electricity arced to his left and right, below and above. He was floating in a stew of lightning bolts. Before he knew what had happened, one of those streaks licked him. He saw the bolt in the corner of his eye before it passed through him. The strike jolted his body so hard, it felt as if he had landed without a chute.