“Why’d they turn it off?” he asked.
“Because they are getting ready to leave,” Rhino said. He said something in Spanish and reached out to help Wendig. After watching the beast kick him into the water-filled basement, X was surprised he could walk at all.
“Got to move faster,” X said.
Rhino simply nodded, and Wendig looked over but didn’t reply. His arm was in a sling, and he was having a hard time walking.
They pushed onward as thunder boomed above them. A light rain pattered on their armor, but it wasn’t a cooling rain—acidic, according to the readings on his HUD.
X wiped his visor clean and helped Rhino cut away vegetation growing on the path. They worked together for several minutes, but there was no good way forward.
The vines and spiny bushes grew in deep thickets around the foundations of ruined buildings. X stumbled as he swung his sword, nearly falling into a tangle of the carnivorous vines.
Keep it together, old man.
An exhausting hour later, they could finally see the beach. The boats still waited on the sand. He breathed a sigh of relief. The Cazadores hadn’t left without them.
Almost back… Keep moving.
X was going to reward himself with a long nap on the voyage back to the Metal Islands.
Rhino put an arm under Wendig as they moved down a steep incline to the debris-filled street below. Closing in on the lighthouse, X saw the first sign of the battle that had raged against the Siren hordes.
Several of the beasts littered the road in a circle around a single Cazador soldier. The man had killed five of the creatures before their talons opened his armor and strung his entrails away from his corpse.
The grisly sight reminded X of Hades, but he pushed the memory away and followed Rhino and Wendig around the corner. A group of four men on sentry duty brought up their rifles.
“Easy,” X said, raising his hands in the air. Covered in gore and dirt as they were, the team probably looked a lot like the monsters they had been fighting.
Instead of putting up his hands, Rhino yelled at the grunt soldiers, who quickly lowered their weapons and backed away from the makeshift barrier to let the group through.
All four helmets turned to Wendig and the bony head slung over his armored shoulder as he limped past.
“El rey demonio,” one of them said.
The four grunts all pounded the octopus logo on their chests.
“What did they say?” X asked Rhino.
“‘The demon king.’”
“That’s what you call that thing we took down?”
Rhino nodded. “But I call it the ‘bone beast.’ There aren’t many of them left.”
“What was it? I mean, what did it evolve from?”
Rhino shrugged his massive shoulders. “A bear, maybe? Who knows?”
“There weren’t bears out here, I don’t think.”
“Does it matter?” Rhino asked.
X shook his head. “Not especially.”
Rhino called out over his shoulder at the four soldiers.
“Somos todo lo que queda.”
The men all grabbed their gear and fell in line.
Rhino walked by X. “They thought there would be more of us,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to the boats.”
The small group set off down another street, where they had to climb over a pile of rubble that blocked the way. At the crest, Rhino raised his hand to several soldiers on the other side. The men all looked up from their work of checking bodies and salvaging weapons and gear. Armored heaps lay on the asphalt—soldiers who had died of their wounds.
The thick of the battle appeared to have been right here.
Siren carcasses lay among the dead, their eggshell-white bodies hacked to pieces. Limbs, heads, and torsos littered the road while other bodies were still strangely intact, their charred flesh still smoking.
But they weren’t all dead.
The clank of metal rang out from the road ahead. X stopped to watch wagons laden with cages. The convoy crossed through the intersection. A boxy metal vehicle moved slowly on tracks over the broken concrete, pulling the wagons behind it.
An octopus symbol marked the hull of the ancient war machine, which reminded X of a vehicle he had taken refuge in years ago with Miles.
Rhino kept walking, but X stood staring at the wagons. Inside the cages, Sirens were chained to the floor, unable to move. Gags covered their mouths to prevent them from shrieking and biting.
X had captured a few of the beasts back in Florida, but he always killed them. He still couldn’t believe the Cazadores ate these things, but seeing their warrior culture, he now understood why. They believed that the meat of a worthy foe made them more powerful.
Rhino quickened his pace as the wagons began to move around another corner. The vehicle pulling them crunched over a pile of broken concrete, crushing it beneath the tracks.
A group of about forty soldiers marched alongside the wagons. Was this all that remained of the fighting force that landed on this beach only hours ago?
Catching up with the group, X saw the answer on the beach just below the lighthouse. The support crew of sailors in the green military uniforms had come up from the beaches and were stripping dead Cazadores brought down from the city.
Some of the men had already completed their tasks and arranged the corpses neatly in the sand. They made four rows, ten deep. Adding the other losses in his mind, X counted fifty to sixty dead soldiers.
On the Hive, such a loss would have been a disaster, but unlike in the sky, the Metal Islands seemed to have no shortage of warriors.
Still, he couldn’t believe how costly this mission had been for el Pulpo.
He walked up along behind the wagons. The very last cart carried Siren children. These weren’t chained like the adults, but their mouths were covered in gags and masks.
“For the sky arena,” Rhino said, jerking his helmet at the kids. “Whale used to fight them with his brass knuckles. I’m going to miss that.”
X picked up some sadness in his rough voice and had a feeling that it wasn’t just the breathing apparatus of his helmet. He didn’t exactly have empathy for Rhino, but he did know what it was like to lose close friends.
A crunch sounded as the tracked vehicle pulling the wagons ran over a dead Siren. The head imploded, painting the broken asphalt with blood and brains. The vehicle continued at a crawl and began turning toward the boat ramp.
Voices called out, and the final preparations began on the beach. The remaining soldiers moved to the rowboats while green-uniformed sailors loaded gear and weapons.
X scanned the ocean for their ship and saw it still anchored about a mile out.
“Immortal, come here,” Rhino said. He climbed onto a boulder and raised his arms, attracting the attention of the men. The soldiers and sailors abandoned their tasks to form a circle around him.
Most of these men were covered in blood and moved sluggishly. A few had severe injuries and cracks in their armor, which would end up killing them if they didn’t get back to the ships soon.
But whatever Rhino had to say was apparently more important.
“Today we have achieved victory,” he yelled. “Today we came and conquered the demon king.”
He repeated the message in Spanish to great applause. The soldiers raised blades and fists in the air as Wendig held up the head of el rey demonio, or, as Rhino called it, the bone beast.
The men beat their chests, riling up the Sirens, which struggled against their chains in the cages. The soldiers and sailors stood there for several minutes while Rhino continued his victory speech.
X turned away, unable to take part in what would have been a solemn gathering on the Hive. Most of the time, when Hell Divers didn’t come back, there were tears, not shouts of triumph.