Sweat dripped down her forehead as she waited. She moved her finger to the cold metal trigger. With no gloves, it felt different.
The wait wasn’t long.
A snorting came outside the building, loud enough to be heard in the rising and falling of the emergency siren. She held her ground, keeping the rifle aimed at the door.
“Mags…” X panted over the comm. “They… those things aren’t following me anymore. They’re…”
Her plan had worked. The sound had drawn the hogs away from X—straight to her location.
Again something slammed the outside of the door, rattling the metal. She could hear guttural noises, something between a bark and a snort.
She flinched at the sound of another creature hitting the metal shutters behind her. Pivoting, she pointed her rifle at the window.
Another crash came from the other room, where a third beast tested the debris pile that served as a wall. They knew she was here, and it was only a matter of time before they battered their way inside.
She knew better than to hope, but this time it was the only card she had to play. If her lucky streak continued, the door would hold until X could find Miles and return to kill the beasts. If it didn’t, then she was about to join Rodger and the other dead Hell Divers in Valhalla.
The sound of the emergency siren had sent a chill of alarm through X. At first, he had scanned the sky and terrain for Sirens. But this wasn’t the electronic language of the monsters; it was coming from the direction of the compound where he had left Magnolia.
Way to improvise, Mags! he thought. For once, she had saved his hide.
Now that the beasts were distracted, he could finally get out of this damn tree. He began the climb down the curving branches, cautious of the spiky thorns.
X had been forced up here by the half-hog, half-dog beasts, with no choice but to try to pick them off with his rifle from above. The rounds did little to deter them, mostly ricocheting off the furry platelike armor that covered their vital organs.
It was his NVGs that saved him. The optics helped detect the creatures trying to sneak up on him as he made his way through the jungle in search of Miles. Their camouflage didn’t work when his night vision was activated.
He scanned the terrain a final time, looking for their meaty bodies and listening for their grunts and snorts over the rise and fall of the emergency siren.
Rain continued to fall, as if the lightning that streaked through the bulging clouds was shaking the water loose. It cascaded down off the tropical leaves, turning the ground below into a mudslide.
The tracks of the hogs had already vanished, and he saw no signs of movement or fresh prints anywhere below him.
He wiped his visor off and finished the climb to the bottom, dropping the final eight feet. His boots sank in the mud, and he quickly pulled them free and began moving again.
The fort of trees just ahead was his target. Miles was up there somewhere, dropped into a nest to feed the young birds. X checked his wrist monitor to make sure the dog hadn’t been moved to a new location. He tapped the screen several times, pulling up the map in the corner of his HUD that showed his location.
The beacon blinked on the map.
“I’m coming, buddy,” X said. “Just hang on.”
The dog’s vitals were still strong, but the clock was ticking. The birds would feed soon now that the predators had gone away. The wail of the siren had saved X from the beasts, but it had likely put Miles in even more jeopardy.
Moving between two thick tree trunks, X came out on a watercourse. The dry oxbow lake was quickly turning into a river. The flow created actual rapids down the slope and around the stand of trees where the vultures had built their nests. X wasted no time seizing the opportunity.
With a grenade already loaded, he aimed at the bole of a tree growing out of the embankment on the other side of the watercourse. He fired, then ducked behind the thick, twisted roots of a nearby tree.
Shrapnel from the blast whizzed overhead, and the birds once again took to the sky amid much screeching and cawing. Several rabbit-size bugs darted out of their homes.
X pulled a second grenade from the bandolier, loaded it, and rose to his feet. Another trigger pull launched the grenade into the deep, splintered gash the first grenade had blown in the tree bole.
Leaves and branches rained down around him, and the tree creaked and swayed from the second impact. It began to lean out of the creek bank, but the roots held firm.
He loaded a third grenade just as something big hit him hard from behind. He knew at once that he was in the talons of a vulture.
Feet kicking as he rose over the watercourse, he did the only thing he could think of: fired the third grenade right into the gaping hole of the tree trunk, where splintered wood stuck out like twisted rebar.
An orange blast rocked the base, shredding the exposed roots and punching through the center. Hot shrapnel whined through the air.
The monster holding him let out a shriek as a flurry of sharp sticks cut through its wings. X was falling then, and he landed with a splash in the rapids. The waist-deep flow of the water did little to break his fall and almost swept him away. He scrambled, then got his footing. The impact had rattled his bones, but Miles had little time, and that thought kept him moving.
He fought the current and waddled toward the other side, his eyes on the top of the tree he had blown nearly in half. The sky above the canopy was moving, and it took him a moment to register that the motion wasn’t from storm clouds—it was the vultures themselves. They had taken wing, filling the air above the forest canopy.
A loud cracking emanated from the blasted tree. The splintered bole finally gave way, and the entire trunk began to lean. The top branches crashed into the next tree, shaking loose a litter of sticks and other debris.
X pushed through the current to the side of the embankment. He slipped several times trying to climb out over the loose earth and stones but finally clawed his way up on a skein of roots to solid ground above. The broken tree continued to crunch and creak as roots snapped and branches crashed into other trees.
He pushed himself up in the mud and ran away from the embankment at full speed to get out of the crash zone.
The tree smashed to the jungle floor a few beats later, sending a violent quake beneath his boots. He took cover behind the base of another tree as a cascade of sticks, mud, and rocks flew through the lower canopy.
The wail of the emergency siren reasserted itself. And over that, X heard something that made him smile.
Heart pounding in his ears, he held in a breath to listen, and there it was again: the sound of his best friend’s bark.
X wanted to shout and scream for Miles, but he didn’t want to draw more attention to his position. Magnolia had already notified every creature on this island that humans were back, and X had a feeling the birds and hogs could prove to be the least of their worries.
He knew that it wouldn’t be long before the monster birds forgot about the raucous noises and returned to their nests. And this time, they would feed on his dog’s flesh.
X bolted away from the tree after looking at the beacon on his wrist monitor again. The vitals were still strong, but Miles’ heart rate had increased.
He scanned the branches in the area where he had seen the bird lumbering through the air with Miles in its claws, but the collapse of the tree had him disoriented. Another bark helped X narrow down the location. Just ahead stood four massive trees, and the tallest seemed to be the likeliest spot, with several nests hanging in the higher branches.
X brought up his scope, scanning them one by one until he finally glimpsed the white hazard suit he had customized for Miles. Lowering the rifle, he broke into a run, moving like a fox over the slick terrain. He jumped over logs and ducked under branches.