The numbers on his HUD came back online, and the comm channel clicked on.
Michael bumped his chin pad. “Layla, are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, but he could hear the lie.
“How bad?”
“It’s nothing, Tin.”
He could hear the pain in her voice. She was injured, perhaps badly.
“Just hang on,” he said.
He forced his gaze away from Layla. The blackness had transformed into a brown and gray wasteland backlit by arcs of lightning. Most of the city had been leveled, but a cluster of gutted scrapers stood at the edge of a small valley. Farther east, about a mile from the devastation, the land seemed to be moving, undulating. He bumped on his night-vision optics and gasped.
“Tin, is that the ocean?” Layla said over the comms.
She sounded better, more like her energetic self, but Michael was still worried.
“I think so,” he said. He wasn’t exactly sure how the ocean was supposed to look in real life, but he knew that it was as gray and dead as everything else in the world below.
He brought his wrist monitor up and tapped the screen with his finger. “We’re pretty far off course,” he said. “The Hilltop Bastion is two miles west. Pull your chute and follow me.” He reached up and pulled his rip cord. The chute fired, and he felt the familiar sensation of being yanked into the sky by a giant hand. He grabbed the toggles and scanned the city rising up to meet him. Sailing west, he set a course to the Hilltop Bastion.
There was no sight of the winged Sirens, and he couldn’t hear their otherworldly wailing from the streets below. But they were out there somewhere, watching and waiting for the right opportunity to strike. But the monsters weren’t the only things on the surface tonight. His friends were down there, too.
He just hoped he wasn’t too late to save them.
Michael kept his voice low as he bumped his comm to open a channel to the other divers.
“Apollo One, Angel One, Raptor Two, Raptor Three, does anyone copy?” Michael said.
Only thunder answered him.
“This is Commander Everhart, heading west over Charleston toward the Hilltop Bastion. Does anyone copy?”
“Do you see that?” Layla said.
Michael scanned the city again before replying.
“What am I looking for, exactly?”
“To the east, those scrapers.”
He blinked off his night-vision goggles. Where there should have been only the dead brown and gray of the surface, Michael saw a faint orange glow. One of the buildings near the shoreline was flashing like a beacon.
“What the hell is that?” he whispered. It would be naive to think there weren’t other strange creatures down here, but Michael had never seen anything like this on another dive. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. They were too far away to check it out.
He bumped his optics back on. “Apollo One, do you—”
Weaver’s rough, uneasy voice broke over the channel. “Michael, is that you?”
“Yes! I’m here with Layla. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m underwater and trying to get to…” Weaver’s words were strangled, as if he couldn’t get enough air. “I’m trying to get to the lookout. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Underwater?” Michael asked.
“We came to save your ass,” Layla cut in.
Weaver gave a bitter laugh. “You’re too late. This place is crawling with Sirens and—”
A crosswind rocked Michael, breaking up the transmission. He worked his toggles and fought his way back into position.
“Come again, Weaver,” Michael said. “Didn’t catch your last.”
“Magnolia and Rodger are on their way. I think. I haven’t heard from them for a while. This place, this tomb—it’s crawling with monsters. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Michael almost swallowed his mouth guard. He knew it! Magnolia was still among the living, but if she and Rodger had gone radio silent, it meant they were in trouble.
“Where’s Pipe?” Layla asked before Michael could.
The silence was enough to confirm that Andrew wouldn’t be making the trip home this time.
Weaver drew a long breath, exhaled, and said, “I’m going to try to reach the command center and send an SOS to the Hive. Look for the windows at the top of the bunker.”
“No, wait,” Michael said.
Several seconds of static rushed over the channel.
“Weaver? Do you copy?”
“Must have run into trouble,” Layla said.
“I guess so. Stay close to me.”
Michael cursed himself for not explaining more in their brief conversation, but there had been no time. The wasteland below was rising fast to meet them.
He readied to flare his chute as he searched for their target. To the west, a canyon of debris piles led to a dirt hill topped by a squat concrete structure with small windows. That had to be where Weaver was headed.
“Good luck,” Michael said even though the other diver couldn’t hear him.
The corpse of a Siren floated on the surface directly above Weaver. The eyeless face seemed to stare down at him, its wide mouth open in a macabre grin full of bits of its last meal. Andrew’s flesh, likely enough.
Weaver looked away. He was standing on the pile of human bones, holding his knife and trying to conserve his air. He was running low, way past the allotted thirty minutes, but the corpse and the monsters prowling the poolside weren’t helping him manage his intake.
He could see their distorted, bony figures through the murky water. They knew he was down here. His conversations with Magnolia and then Michael had sent the beasts into a frenzy, and he had been forced to shut down the channel. Getting out of here wasn’t going to be easy, but a plan was forming. All he needed now was the courage to do what came next. He was down both of his main weapons and he couldn’t risk trying to find them. He also didn’t trust his wet blaster, and his knife wasn’t going to do much against the monsters.
Instead, he scooped up a jagged femur in one hand and groped for a skull with the other. Each was slick with the same reddish slime that lined the edges of the pool. He didn’t know what it was, but from what he could see, even the Sirens weren’t drinking it.
Weaver steadied himself on the bone pile and looked back up at the surface. The door was about three hundred feet away. He took a mental picture as two Sirens skittered by. A third stopped to examine the water, dipping a talon beneath the surface and sending a ripple overhead before moving on.
He waited several minutes before taking another step up on the bone pile. The rush of his heart sounded in his ears. Eighty-nine dives had put him in some rough spots, but this was maybe the worst.
Drown or be torn to shreds? Neither option had much to recommend it.
Come on, you old bastard. You can do this.
With the femur and skull in his hands, he sucked in a long breath. Exhaled. Sucked in another. Exhaled.
One… two…
A flash of motion came from the left. A Siren was leaning down toward the water. Weaver lunged, spearing the beast in the face with the sharp end of the femur. It sliced through flesh and hit the skull with a crack that Weaver could hear under the water.
The creature darted away shrieking.
This was Weaver’s only chance.
He shut off his headlamp and climbed up on the bone pile, tripping and sliding, pushing himself up through the bubbly red sludge. As soon as his torso was above the water, he tossed the skull into the air, then stumbled up the last steps onto the floor. He slipped again but righted himself, prying out the battery unit with his free hand just as he spotted a pair of Sirens making a run for him. Clenching his jaw, he raised his weapon and waited for the beasts to strike.
The skull bounced off the far wall and clattered onto the floor. Then came the sound of running footfalls changing direction. Shrieks rang out all around him. It seemed the distraction had worked, but he remained frozen, clutching the femur and his battery pack. He held his breath and stared into darkness so deep, he couldn’t even see shapes. Somewhere behind him, wings beat the air. His muscles tensed as he waited to be yanked upward, but the only thing to hit him was a draft of air. The creature sailed overhead toward the skull, its screech morphing into the electronic sound that Weaver hated most.