Hell Divers II: Ghosts Read online

  He fired a burst into a creature making a run for the door. Rounds punched through its skull, making two neat holes where the eyes should be. Another Siren took its place, and he sent it spinning away with three quick shots to the torso. He leaned into the recoil, picking targets in the waning light. Blood pooled on the ground, and fallen bodies formed a perimeter around the ITC bunker entrance. Behind them, the tentacular arms of the bushes swayed back and forth like the dancing flames of candles.

  Barking filled the passage behind him as he fired round after round.

  “Hold on, Miles! I’m on my way!”

  The bolt locked open on the carbine’s empty chamber. He was reaching for another magazine when a torrent of lightning connected with the steel girders down the street. Dozens of skeletal, leathery bodies moved in the flickering downpour of sparks.

  There were too many to fight. It was time to flee.

  Lowering the carbine, he shouldered the door shut and barred it from inside. He flicked on his precious tactical light, shined it down the staircase, and loped down to a hallway below.

  “Behind me,” he said to Miles.

  The dog trotted after him along the narrow passage that stretched under the ITC campus. These derelict arteries connected the basements of buildings designed to survive the apocalypse, though many had since caved in.

  The man rounded a corner with weapon raised, but the beam from his light revealed an empty hallway. He knew this passage better than any other. The five doors all led to different rooms. In the first was a space that had been airtight until he opened it to discover food, water, and medical supplies designed to last five hundred years. When he first found this place, he had been dying from blood loss and radiation poisoning. The discovery had saved him, to the extent a dead man could be saved.

  The second door opened onto an armory containing guns of all kinds, ammunition, equipment, and radiation suits for adults as well as children. One of the smaller suits, with a bit of alteration, had fit Miles well enough.

  He passed the third door at a jog. It was a vault containing every seed that humans would have needed to start again on the surface. The man had spent many hours reading the information on each strain. He carried several of the sealed packets with him, though he wasn’t sure why. Fruit trees couldn’t grow without the sun.

  The fourth door, marked by a sign that read cryogenics, was sealed. This was where he had found Miles a year ago, in suspended animation inside one of the chambers.

  When the man first came upon the space, he hadn’t known what “cryogenics” meant, but when he took the elevator down and saw the silo of chambers, he understood. Humans, as well as animals unlike any he had ever seen, filled the capsules. Thousands upon thousands of them were hooked up to the backup power that would last another 250 years, but not all of them were preserved. An entire section of chambers was open, and several other sections had been destroyed. Whatever had broken into or out of the chambers was long gone by the time he arrived.

  The man was not a god, however, and no matter how lonely he got, he never unfroze any of the other humans. But when he saw Miles suspended in cryo-sleep, he couldn’t resist unfreezing him. He was a Siberian husky, like the dogs on the airship the man had once called home, but the man had quickly realized that Miles was different from those dogs. It was as if he had been designed to survive in hostile conditions. He could tolerate high doses of radiation, and his sharp senses had saved them from the monsters more times than he could count.

  Miles ran ahead toward a blast door at the end of the hallway. By the time the man got there, the Sirens had found the door at the street above. The beasts pounded on the steel with their leathery fists. It wouldn’t hold long, but the blast door would buy some extra time. It would also seal them in, and the only other exit was a highly radioactive crawl space. If their suits were uncompromised, they would live; if there was even the smallest tear, they would die.

  He fumbled in his pocket for the other key and inserted it in the door, then used all his strength to push it open. Miles hurried inside.

  Raising his gun, the man ran the light over a room furnished with metal tables and desks. Radio equipment and flat-screen monitors that no longer worked awaited users who would never arrive. He closed the door with a grunt, locked it, and hurried over to the only working radio.

  The man leaned down and turned the knob. Static crackled from the ancient speakers as he scanned the channel for transmissions. But just as in all the other attempts, he heard nothing but static. No voices. No hint that there might be another human soul out there.

  A high screech sounded from the hallway, and Miles let out a low growl. The monsters were here. They had never made it inside before. He didn’t have much time.

  He turned the knob slowly, straining his ears for any sound of survivors. A chorus of wailing Sirens drowned out the white noise, and he leaned closer to the speakers.

  No one had responded to his SOS. He bowed his head, feeling defeated. For two years, he had sent his message out over every frequency, and for two years he had listened to silence. Help wasn’t coming. There was nothing left for him here. Leaving meant abandoning the supplies that had kept him alive, but staying meant he would never see another human again.

  Any conflict in his icy heart fell away.

  It was finally time to leave this cursed place—finally time to leave hell. He had always wanted to see the ocean. Maybe, in a few more years, he would make it there.

  “Come on, boy,” he said to Miles. The dog whined as if he understood, and tried to wag his tail, but the ill-fitting radiation suit hampered his movement.

  The Sirens slammed into the blast door, their electronic whines echoing through the space as he recorded his final dispatch from hell.

  “If anyone’s out there, this is Commander Xavier Rodriguez. I’m leaving Hades and heading east toward the coast.”

  ONE

  Eight Years Later

  Captain Leon Jordan jerked awake from a recurring nightmare. He sat up slowly to avoid the aluminum bulkhead that curved over his bed. Sweat traced the scar from his last run-in with it.

  The nightmare was almost always the same. In it, X would somehow be in Jordan’s quarters, hovering over his bed with a combat knife in hand. What came next changed from dream to dream. Sometimes, X got his revenge slowly. Other times, he would kill Jordan with a quick slash across his throat. But every time, he would first ask Jordan one simple question: Why?

  Jordan massaged his neck and shook off the fog of sleep. The buzz of an incoming transmission combined with the beeping of the alarm clock reminded him that he was already behind schedule.

  He reached over Katrina DaVita, who lay sleeping beside him, to shut off the alarm.

  “What time is it?” she murmured.

  “Time to go over the night logs,” he said, yawning.

  “And time for me to go back to sleep.” She patted the pillow and stuffed it back under her head.

  Jordan studied her features in the faint glow of the computer screen across the small room. The rules on the Hive were clear—officers weren’t supposed to sleep together. But he couldn’t stop himself any more than he could stop himself now from staring at the beauty lying beside him. His eyes flitted down to the defined curves of her long, muscular legs. She was easily the most beautiful woman on the ship, and she was all his.

  Good thing he was the captain. Rules could be bent when you were at the top of the pecking order. But with that power also came a heavy burden. Years ago, when Captain Maria Ash handed him the reins, he had realized just how heavy it was. This morning, he had a hundred things on his mind. They had just lost an entire harvest of corn, and power curtailments continued to cause unrest. Even worse were the whispers of a new illness on the lower decks. At times, it was almost too much to bear. Every minute of every day, there was a crisis somewhere on the ship.

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p; He put a hand to his forehead. Not even fully awake yet, and already he felt exhausted just thinking about his to-do list. Years of sleeping no more than three hours at a time had resulted in a chronic migraine. But that was what it took to keep this rusting hulk of metal and helium bladders together.

  With a sigh, he put his feet on the cold floor and crossed the small room, which was furnished with everything a person needed: a bed, a desk, a sink, and a shit can cordoned off by a faded curtain.

  Jordan picked up a mug from his desk and took a slug of the cold coffee within. Better than nothing, but it still tasted terrible.

  The incoming transmission alert was still buzzing.

  “Will you turn that damn thing off?” Katrina mumbled.

  He downed the rest of his mug and tapped the monitor. The screen flickered on at his touch, and he killed the sound with a swipe of his finger. He keyed in his security code and scrolled through the most recent messages. The first was from Chief Engineer Samson—something about a gas bladder issue that had already been solved. The next was an update from medical—a new case of the mysterious illness, and yet another stillborn baby.

  He skimmed Dr. Tim Free’s notes about a lower-decker admitted to the clinic, suffering from hallucinations, fever, and internal bleeding. It had to be from the radiation. That was also why they were losing so many babies. He had to get Samson to fix the damn leakage, but doing so meant another dive to the surface to collect parts.

  Jordan cursed, reaching again for the mug before he remembered it was empty. Even the captain didn’t get unlimited rations, but perhaps one of the junior officers would be willing to sacrifice for the good of the ship.

  “What is it?” Katrina said. She sat up and brushed aside a wisp of hair that had escaped her braid.

  “Another stillborn,” he replied. “That makes two this month.”

  Neither of them said a word for several moments. Jordan discreetly directed his gaze at her stomach. She was three months pregnant now, but they hadn’t told anyone. Soon, they wouldn’t be able to hide her condition—or their relationship. Some people already knew, and he would just have to deal with any repercussions when the time came.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything will be fine, I promise. Go back to bed. You need your sleep.”

  Katrina gave him a strained smile and laid her head back on the pillow. They both knew the odds of having a healthy baby were stacked against them. The last healthy child had been born six months ago. With the population of the Hive down to 443 people, it was vitally important that their baby be strong.

  He read through the remaining messages. A fire in engineering, a fight in the trading post due to a price hike on tomatoes, and a dispute over rations, which led to a mini riot on the lower decks. Typical day on the Hive. The final message, however, made him pause. He read the subject line a second time.

  Midnight.

  Jordan glanced at Katrina to make sure she wasn’t watching. Her naked back rose and sank rhythmically. She was already asleep. He positioned his shoulders so she couldn’t see the computer if she woke up again. She was his executive officer, but there were things that even the XO mustn’t see.

  “Midnight” was a top secret code for radio signals or transmissions picked up from the surface. Captain Ash had wasted a lot of time on them. She had believed there were survivors down there and that someday she would find a habitable place to put the ship down. Everything Jordan had seen proved otherwise. The only transmissions they picked up were decades, even centuries, old. Many of the bunkers below the blasted surface had generators and batteries that lasted far longer than the occupants, thus allowing messages to replay long after the last humans were dead.

  The last time he had sent Hell Divers to follow up on a transmission, only one man returned. Still, part of his duty was to investigate any potential survivors, which meant listening to every radio transmission and signal they picked up, even if it was two hundred years old.

  He put on his headset and hit the play button. A surge of static hissed in his ears; then a female voice.

  “This is Governor Rhonda Meredith of the Hilltop Bastion, requesting support from anyone out there. The—”

  Static.

  “We are low on food and ammunition.”

  Jordan raised an eyebrow at that.

  “We can’t keep them back much longer. Please, please send support to the following coordinates …”

  What were they fighting down there?

  He cupped his hands over his headset. Flurries of static crackled across the line. The sound cut out. He clicked on the message again, but the signal was too weak. He would have to see whether Ensign Hunt could capture more of it. They had a deal: any messages picked up by the satellites came straight to Jordan. In return, he provided Hunt’s young family with a few extra credits each month. The last thing Jordan wanted were rumors flying around the Hive about people down there—or about the monsters.

  Jordan and Hunt weren’t the only ones who kept the ship’s secrets. The Hell Divers followed similar rules. Never speak about what you saw on the surface. Never give the population any more reason to worry.

  But not even the Hell Divers knew what Jordan did.

  He was pulling off the headset when he saw a second message marked “Midnight.” Two in one night? The odds of that were basically impossible. The last time they heard anything from the surface was months ago, and that transmission had proved to be over a century old. It was the same one that cost him three divers.

  Jordan settled the headset back over his ears. He clicked play and leaned closer to the monitor. This time, the message came through clearly. It was one he had heard many times, and he sighed as he listened to it yet again.

  “If anyone’s out there, this is Commander Xavier Rodriguez. I’m leaving Hades and heading east toward the coast.”

  Attached to the message was a note from Ensign Hunt:

  Sir, we have a potential problem. Someone has been poking around in the restricted archives, and they may have intercepted this message.

  Jordan groaned inwardly. Only a few people on the ship were capable of hacking into the archives, and even fewer were stupid enough to try it. Whoever it was needed to be dealt with swiftly.

  A hand on his shoulder made him flinch. He craned his neck to see Katrina standing behind him with her arms folded across her robe, revealing the tattoos of an angel and a raptor on her forearms.

  Jordan quickly pulled off the headset and said, “What are you …?” Then he saw the militia soldier standing in the open hatch.

  “Sorry to bother you at this hour, Captain.” The young man’s features were tense in the blue light of the computer monitor.

  “Speak,” Jordan said.

  “It’s a storm, sir. Came out of nowhere. Ensign Ryan says they need you on the bridge.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  The guard retreated into the hallway, where a second militia soldier held security with an automatic rifle. The passage outside was empty; most of the upper-deckers were still asleep. That would soon change when Jordan ordered his crew back to their stations.

  Katrina frowned. “I guess I’d better get dressed.”

  While she put on her uniform, Jordan sat back down and typed a message to Hunt:

  I will deal with the security breach. Get me the coordinates for the Hilltop Bastion.

  Jordan turned slightly to watch Katrina. She had made a damn fine Hell Diver, which was exactly why he had appointed her his second-in-command shortly after they started sleeping together. In doing so, he had saved her. He knew what was down there on the surface. The fate of every diver was always the same … except for one man.

  Somehow, Commander Xavier Rodriguez had survived on the surface all these years. There were other messages from X, noting his trek across the wastelands, but the most common was the recurrin
g dispatch from Hades.

  Jordan had made the decision to keep the information a secret, despite the nightmares and the guilt that tore at him daily. He knew he was condemning a man to death—or at the very least, the worst kind of life imaginable, for however long X could survive it. A man who, of all people, certainly didn’t deserve that fate. But he couldn’t risk the cost in lives and fuel to return to Hades for one man. Plus, Katrina had loved X once, and it had taken her a long time to move past her grief. How could he tell her X had survived all these years? He couldn’t. She could never find out. He would do whatever it took to maintain order on his ship and protect his people from the truths they couldn’t handle.

  Looking over his shoulder, he checked to make sure Katrina wasn’t watching. Her deep-brown eyes, the color of his coffee, focused on him.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked.

  Jordan shook his head. “No, everything’s fine.”

  “I’ll meet you on the bridge,” she said. “I need to stop by engineering first.”

  As soon as she had gone, Jordan let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and turned back to the screen. He selected the SOS from X, tapped the message twice with his finger, and held it for a moment to delete it.

  The voice on the transmission was nothing more than an echo.

  A ghost.

  * * * * *

  Standing with his back to the wall in the launch bay of the Hive, Commander Michael Everhart watched the portholes on the starboard side of the ship. Rays of crimson shot through the filthy glass, filling the room with a warm light that showed every scratch, ding, and shoddy patch job. The ship was falling apart everywhere. It wasn’t that the occupants didn’t care. They just didn’t have the resources, and every time they fixed a problem, another would pop up. Hell Divers continued to scavenge the Earth below, and the engineers on the ship continued to recycle and repurpose, but there was only so much they could do.