“Guys, stop,” Layla said, rising to her feet. “This is not anyone’s fault.”
Les turned for the door. “Tell me when you find that Siren, Pepper.”
He moved out into the passage to continue the search.
Everyone on the comms reported the same thing. No one had any idea where the thing was.
Les felt a stab of fear. The thing had already caused damage in compartments ten and fourteen, knocked out a turbofan, and…
The floor shuddered.
Les halted in the passage as the lights winked off.
“Timothy, what the hell is happening now?” he said into his headset.
There was a slight delay, enough to make Les wonder whether it was intentional.
“Captain, this is Alfred. One of the valves to the reactor is damaged. We’re diverting power from several sectors to keep the thrusters online.”
The lead technician confirmed Les’s worst fear.
“How bad is the damage?” he said.
“Bad enough, sir. The conduit housing the valve is severely damaged.”
“Shit!”
“This wasn’t the beasts. The damage is from an arrow.”
Les cursed again. “Just fix the damn thing!”
He flipped on his headlamp and took off in the darkness.
Maybe Timothy was right. Maybe this was partly Les’s fault. He had used Cricket as bait to draw the Sirens away from the divers in the city.
It was also possible the beasts had gained access when he landed the ship to evacuate the divers and the survivors from the bunker.
Either way, he had failed to keep the monsters from entering the ship.
“Sir, I’ve located the second Siren,” Timothy said. “Inside the launch bay.”
Les cursed under his breath at the news. Of course the thing had gone to the launch bay. With all the people inside, it was the biggest food source on the ship.
“Everyone meet me there!” Les yelled back. Cradling his bow, he ran as fast as his long legs would carry him. Knowing the passageways by heart helped him calculate the distance.
It would take him two minutes to get there—more than enough time for the Siren to shred through the rescued passengers.
Worse, these people didn’t seem to know how to fight.
Les thought of his boy as he ran. Trey had sacrificed himself to find people in the wastes, and now that they had, Les would do anything to save them, even give his own life.
He was the first to reach the dark passage to the launch bay. Michael and Magnolia rounded the next corner and arrived a second later. Their headlamps captured the terrified faces of the refugees pounding on the hatches and glass. Behind them, Les glimpsed the Siren slashing at three men. One of them jabbed at it with a metal leg from a cot.
Les twisted the handle. Locked.
“Timothy, open the door!” he shouted.
“Sir, I can’t…”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“Alfred shunted power from that sector of the ship.”
Les backed away and kicked the door. That did nothing but hurt his foot. He kicked again, and again.
“Out of the way, sir,” Michael said. He used his robotic hand to smash the lock. When the door clicked open, Michael and Les grabbed the inside edge and pulled. The beast’s ethereal screeching rose above the shouts of terrified passengers.
Les couldn’t worry about the quarantine—the Siren’s knife-size claws would kill them faster than any invisible germs.
Michael grunted, and finally the two men pried the door open. The people on the other side flooded out, and Magnolia squeezed in, with Les and Michael right behind her.
Les shouldered his crossbow. The beast was on its back, wings extended. Two men stomped on the wings while a third straddled the chest. The dreadlocks over his shoulders confirmed what Les suspected. It was Pedro, the leader of these people.
He bent over, pushing on something.
Les hurried over to help. The beast jerked on the deck as Pedro shoved the cot leg into its open mouth, crunching through teeth and bone. He kept pushing until the creature went limp.
Covered in the creature’s blood and bleeding from several gashes of his own, the man limped away from the dead beast.
“Timothy, report to the launch bay,” Les said quietly into his headset. “And get a medical crew here ASAP.”
Pedro put his hand to the back of his dreadlocks and pulled it away bloody. Les stepped back to scan the room for bodies.
A man lay in a puddle of blood with several people crouched around, sobbing. They looked up when a blue glow washed over the open space.
“Tell them it’s okay now,” Les said to Timothy’s hologram. “Tell them the beasts are dead and we are sorry, and that in a few hours they will see the sun as we promised.”
X raised his wrist computer toward the dark sky. It was a balmy fifty degrees Fahrenheit, with a hint of radiation on the surface. Sporadic jags of lightning cut through the black drape of sky, illuminating the cracked earth he trekked across.
A rusted sign marked the way.
Déjà vu enveloped him. He had seen this one before.
Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State.
Miles trotted ahead, the hazard suit crinkling over his muscular body. Muzzle to the ground, he sniffed toward a cluster of blue weeds that writhed like octopus limbs at the side of the road.
“No!” X shouted.
Miles halted, just out of the tentacles’ reach. A single sting could end the dog’s life with a lethal dose of venom.
“You know better than that, boy,” he said, bending down.
The dog tilted its loose-fitting helmet for a better view of X. Then it brushed up against his hand as if trying to lick his gloved fingers.
X chuckled and stood. “Stay next to me this time, buddy.”
Side by side, the man and his best friend set off again down the apocalyptic road toward their new home on the coastline. The view seemed to shift as he walked, and in a moment of clarity, he realized he was in a dream he couldn’t rouse himself from.
A collection of memories surfaced. The next thing he saw was a land bridge. Again déjà vu struck. He remembered what had happened here, and watched it unfold in slow motion.
Several fissures broke the ground. Jumping back, Miles went over the side of the embankment. X bolted after the dog, leaping another chasm.
Scrabbling with his forelegs, Miles tried to climb back onto solid ground.
“Miles!” X shouted.
Before X could get to him, a reddish tentacle shot out of the water and grabbed the dog, yanking him into the muck.
No matter how hard he tried to wake, X was stuck in the purgatory of sleep.
He jumped into the fetid water, darkness swallowing him like quicksand. Kicking upward, he broke the surface in time to see the twenty-foot monster swim past with Miles in its grip.
He pulled out his knife and slashed the creature, opening a long gash.
Pinkish eggs jettisoned from the rubbery hide. The beast let go of Miles and snaked backward through the water toward X. A fanged reptilian mouth opened.
The dream transported him again, this time to some sort of limbo between reality and nightmare. Voices seemed to call out in the ether. He could feel his wounded body again and the chill from his fever.
A few voices seemed familiar, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. They faded away, leaving him with a sensation of near weightlessness, like during the first few moments of a dive.
The dreams returned, and he was in a military bunker where he had taken refuge with Miles on his way to the coast. It was here that he repaired an old-world motorcycle. Here was also where he started coughing up blood. The continued exposure to toxins and radiation had finally caught up with him.
He was transported into yet another dream—more a collection of memories and not as vivid. He drove the bike with Miles strapped into the custom seat. A view of Miami’s ruins stretched across the horizon.