Each Skull he killed was one less creature left to haunt this god-forsaken world.
The last Hunter, Andris, threw himself aboard as the team’s captain, Dom, manipulated the steering levers at the helm. The vessel’s engines churned as it pushed away from the pier, chugging away from the hellish landscape. Beasts threw themselves into the water after them. But even those that managed to swim were quickly outpaced by the boat.
The AA guns where the Hunters had been only seconds ago were now covered in Skulls. O’Neil had never seen so many of the monsters in one place.
“Blow the AA guns, Andris!” Dom called from the helm.
Andris nodded and pressed the trigger on his detonator. The charges exploded, sounding like someone had fired a cannon across the base. Columns of fire clawed into the air, carrying with them chunks of burning Skulls. Other monsters leapt through the flames. Their bodies burned even as they continued their reckless charge, jumping after the tugboat. Those flames hissed out as the bodies hit the water.
Fingers of dark smoke lifted up from the fires devouring the base.
The Hunters must’ve planted those explosives while O’Neil was taking out that last ship. Smart of them to clean up like that after they left.
The last packs of monsters left let out howls that wailed over the water, and O’Neil could just see their silhouettes flickering in front of the flames as they descended on the scraps of the Russians left behind.
O’Neil looked over the pier, even as it shrunk, wondering what would happen to the bodies of his brothers.
They would be left behind in that madness. None of them deserved that fate.
But he vowed then, even if he couldn’t give them a proper burial, he would make it up to them somehow. He had to figure out a way to make their sacrifices worthwhile. Figure out a way to stop the monsters ruling this world and turn the tide of destruction.
Because this one mission wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough until the world was rid of every last Skull and every last bastard responsible for their existence.
He felt the presence of someone near him and turned to see Andris.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’ll never be okay,” O’Neil said.
Andris gazed over his body. “Maybe that is a stupid question. I wanted to thank you.”
“I did what I had to.”
“You did everything, friend,” Andris said. “Everything and more.”
Then he bowed his head to his chest.
“Our captain tells me that your troop chief, Reynolds, sacrificed his life to complete the mission.” Andris pointed at the sky. “They managed to take out the people responsible for running this base and the labs, though, and with those AA guns, we killed the last of them as they tried to escape.”
“We did it,” O’Neil said.
Andris patted O’Neil’s bony shoulder with a gloved hand. “We did it.”
Then O’Neil finally let it take him. The exhaustion. The pain. All of it was too much. He had, as Andris said, given everything and more.
He fell back against the gunwale of the ship as it rocked in the rough waters. Slid down to the deck. Then closed his eyes.
O’Neil sipped from a can of beer and looked out toward the sea. The sun was rising over the Virginia shore, painting the sky in swirling streams of orange and purple and red and blue. A few stubborn clouds drifted lazily in front of the fiery disc.
Yeah, it was early for the beer, but who was watching?
No one came to the beach this early. And if they could not get a sunset on the east coast that fell over the ocean, might as well drink to the next best thing.
He smiled as the warmth of the sun traced across his face. His skin. Not bones.
Turning away from the rising sun, he saw them. His team. Van, who gave him a slight nod. Tate, who was shooting the shit with Stuart, Henderson, and McLean. Loeb, wearing his cowboy hat, busy chasing his young daughters. The other SEALs gave the guy crap for bringing the girls to an early morning tailgate. Said it was supposed to be an adults-only thing, but Loeb had told them every day they were on deployment was an adults-only thing. He only got so many days at home and he sure as hell wasn’t going to spend them all away from those girls.
Right now, he seemed to regret it as the older one, maybe eight, was whining about how early it was and the younger one, five or six, told Loeb she wanted to go back to bed.
O’Neil couldn’t help but chuckle.
This was happiness.
Peace.
He had some distant memory—maybe a nightmare—of his body being turned practically inside out. His skeleton pushing through his skin and turning him into a monster.
None of it made sense.
How in the hell could something like that happen?
He turned back to the ocean and watched the waves rush in. Watched them crash over the shore, carrying with them the glint of the sunrise.
God, yes, this was Heaven. This was the place Van was always talking about going. How the rest of them needed to get their shit in order so he didn’t find himself at the Pearly Gates without his brothers.
Yup. Heaven.
Then it hit O’Neil.
Was that really, literally where he was now?
Had he died?
Because as he let the thought percolate through his mind, he remembered Lithuania and Tangier and the Hybrids and Skulls and those three freighters full of containers destined for foreign shores.
Then he saw the armies of beasts. Monsters and men that had destroyed his team. Killed the people around him.
He shook his head. If they were dead, then it seemed like he was, too.
Was that such a bad thing?
Because after all, he had lost everything on Earth. He was a monster. A Hybrid.
Not a SEAL any longer.
Just a twisted abomination.
Then he heard it. A rhythmic beep. He looked around for its source. Saw only empty beaches.
Van. Loeb. Tate.
They all vanished.
“Guys, where the hell are you?” he asked, voice scratching up through his throat.
As he turned around, looking toward the ocean for them, the water too had disappeared.
Then the sand.
All that was left was yellow sun floating above him, glowing, reaching out toward his eyes and scraping at his retinas.
He tried to raise his hand to block the light, but the movement was torture. That throbbing agony spread through his body as he blinked.
“O’Neil, do you hear me?” a soft voice asked. “O’Neil?”
The more he blinked, the more he realized he wasn’t looking at the sun. Instead, it was a light, gently glowing above him.
He felt a gentle rocking motion. Like he was on a ship.
What in the…
“O’Neil?” a voice asked.
He twisted his neck slightly, wincing at the shock of pain. A woman in a white coat stood above him. She looked down at him with crisp blue eyes, her blond hair tied back from her face. It took him a moment to realize he was in a bed—a patient exam bed—and the beeping he had heard was an EKG.
“Where… Where am I?” he asked.
His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth.
“I’m Dr. Lauren Winters,” the woman said. “Chief medical officer of the Huntress. You remember the Hunters?”
O’Neil managed a painful nod.
“Yes, well, you’re on our ship. You’ve been out for a while. Can you tell me your name?”
He did.
“What do you last remember?”
The fires. The port. The Skulls. The death of his brothers. He told her everything.