by Michael Todd
“SNAFU,” was all Wallace said and shrugged. “If by some chance you do end up having to fire one of these, open your mouth to equalize the pressure. They’re very loud. And be prepared for it to pull upwards as you fire. Do not fire continuously unless you need to. Otherwise, you risk overheating. You got all that down?”
“Uh, yes,” he replied.
Chad watched them with an amused smirk on his face as he cleaned the barrel of his gun. “I might have an old math textbook,” he said, “in case you need to calculate the trajectory of the bullets before you shoot. Plus, it’s heavy, so you might even build the muscle you’d need to actually handle a weapon.”
“Shut up, Chad,” the sergeant snapped. “Get back to work.”
The man grumbled under his breath but obeyed. Did he even have a surname or a rank, for that matter? Just “Chad” seemed appropriate in any event.
“Now again,” Wallace went on, “we don’t expect you to do any actual fighting except as a last resort for your own protection. You’ll be in the center of the formation, and the rest of us will keep the enemy off your back. Basically, do whatever we tell you and try to stay out of the way.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. That sounded fine with him. Jackie Chan might have been disappointed at his sudden passivity, but there was reality to consider there.
Kemp returned and everyone stood at attention.
“Dr. Lin,” she said, and motioned him over. He walked up next to her. “All right,” she continued louder as she addressed the squad. “This is Dr. Christopher Lin. Our CO wants him here to observe the Zoo and report on its projected course of action. Dr. Lin, you’ve already met Sgt. Wallace and myself.”
She went down the line of the men, introducing them. “Sergeant Miller,” a middle-aged black man developing a paunch but still looking tough. “Private Gronski,” a thin young man with a dirtstache, and the only man present who was shorter than Chris. “Private First-Class Diaz…Private Steadmann…Private First Class Margheriti…Private Connolly…”
Chris noticed, with a certain disappointment, that Gunnar the gunner was not present. Maybe he was strictly an aircraft guy.
Kemp reached the end of the line. “...and Chad. He’s our best shot.”
“Yup,” the man confirmed.
“Nice to meet you all,” the scientist said. He felt stupid the moment he said it.
“Go stand in line with everyone else,” she instructed.
He obeyed and fell into place beside Chad. It was the only opening and he grimaced at that fact. Chad smirked.
“All right, I’ll reiterate the mission in very simple terms,” Kemp continued. Two vehicles pulled up near the south gate as she spoke. “We cross the desert briefly, then it’s in and out. We move fast and disturb as little as possible. We don’t know exactly what will be in there, but we know the alien matter likes to react to anything and everything, so we give it as little to react to as possible. We get to the original lab site, retrieve Dr. Marie’s files, and get the hell out of Dodge. This is not an escort mission but try to keep Dr. Lin safe if reasonably possible. The primary objective, however, is retrieving the files.”
That meant Chris was technically expendable. He was glad he’d imitated everyone else and clasped his hands behind his back. It limited the shaking.
“Are we clear?” Kemp finished.
“Yes, ma’am!” everyone barked back.
Kemp nodded. “Let’s go.”
7
Of the two all-terrain vehicles, they were only allowed to keep one. The other was merely to help escort them across the miles of sand that separated the foundations of Wall Two from the vicinity of Wall One. After that, they’d be on foot.
They drove mostly in silence, since the vehicles made considerable noise at this speed and churned up sand the whole way. Before they’d left, however, Chris had heard something that bothered him. Kemp mentioned to a guard outside the base that her team would inspect the perimeter of the Zoo and reinforce it if necessary. Kemp and Major Martinez must have kept this mission secret from most of the base.
The sun rose steadily and the heat grew intense by the time they arrived at Wall One. It wasn’t as high as Wall Two shaped up to be, and it looked like it had been thrown together hastily from whatever materials had been on hand. A couple of construction crews were at work, reinforcing parts that looked weak or damaged. It would certainly get in the way of anything trying to get out of the Zoo. But would it stand up to an actual assault?
Everyone dismounted except PFC Diaz who was driving the ATV they’d take with them, and Pvt. Gronski, who manned the machine gun mounted on it. A guard near the gate in the wall approached them. Behind them, the other ATV that had simply given half of them a ride returned to base. The guard saluted Kemp.
“Lieutenant Doctor Emma Kemp,” she said. “We’re here to inspect and reinforce if needed. We have an egghead from outside with us who’ll also examine the periphery of the Zoo.”
“Uh, yes, Ma’am,” the man said. “I wasn’t notified—”
“Major Martinez made his mind up this morning,” she went on sharply. “He’ll take care of any paperwork directly.”
The guard let them pass. They climbed a movable metal staircase and mounted the wall. Beyond it lay perhaps another quarter-mile or less of empty desert and then the Zoo. Chris tried not to gasp. It was vividly colorful, wet, and vibrant. The fantastic shock of seeing it all sprouting from this pale and arid landscape still hadn’t faded.
The great mass of twisted, slimy trees loomed closer, and they approached the first of the men in hazmat suits. They blasted their flamethrowers only sporadically now and the Zoo seemed oddly quiet. Chris wondered how often the men chosen for this particular duty were rotated. It had to be tiresome and hot. He was already sweating and took a measured sip from the canteen of lukewarm, stale-tasting water at his side.
Kemp approached the first man and repeated what she’d said to the guard. “We’re looking for a relatively open, low-density area that we can penetrate,” she added.
The suit obscured the man’s features, but somehow, he still registered surprise. “You’re going in?” he stammered, before remembering he was speaking to an officer. “Uh, yes, Ma’am. If I recall correctly, there’s a sort of natural corridor over to the southwest.”
“Right, well, this wall looks secure enough,” Kemp said. They climbed down again and the guard they’d encountered moments ago let them through the gate. They were almost inside the Zoo now and had passed the last line of human defense.
Chris examined the para-natural flora from the side. There had to be at least eight species of trees just from what he could see out here. One that formed much of the lower canopy layer resembled a date palm tree, only with a greener trunk and even more brightly-green leaves. The rest were unknown to him, either unrecognizable mutations or perhaps totally alien species.
A few spots of bright red and near-neon blue broke up the green morass—flowers, fruits, buds, or maybe weird mosses or lichen of some kind. There was also the suggestion of fog or steam rising from the jungle floor. It was one thing to be told of the phenomenon but another entirely to witness the process as the Zoo synthesized its own moisture.
He gaped at it all, awestruck, and shook his head. If only this weren’t some dangerous, secret military project. He would ship a whole crew of his old co-researchers to in make a real study of the place. They could potentially revolutionize the whole field of biology. It would be the largest breakthrough since Darwin.
“Does this jungle come with Amazons?” Gronski asked from behind his gun.
“It might once the aliens stick a tentacle up Gronski’s nose to read his mind,” Sgt. Miller said. “Start spawning a Venus honeytrap, lure in those Earth men. Gotta harvest the seed—”
“Quiet,” Kemp ordered.
They reached the natural corridor easily. The foliage was less dense there, in part because some of it appeared to have been damaged, and new growth had mostly avoid
ed the damaged area.
Just then, two men similarly dressed in white suits hurried through the gate and approached the group. One carried a flamethrower on his back.
“I’m Sergeant Freiburg,” the flamethrower-less one said as he snapped a salute. His voice was muffled by his hood and face-mask. “I heard from the men about your mission. This spot here is about where we found Dr. Marie, or what was left of her. Are you actually going in there?”
“Yes,” Kemp said.
“With all due respect, ma’am, you don’t have hazmat suits—”
The lieutenant looked over her shoulder. “Gloves!” she snapped. Sergeants Wallace and Miller produced a case of white gloves and passed them out. “Everyone put them on.”
Chris found the gloves surprisingly thin and tactile-friendly, although they made his hands sweat. He recalled what Kemp had said yesterday about treating the Alien Goop like plutonium. Before he could ask about it, however, she spoke again.
“We know there isn’t any raw AG in the farther reaches of the jungle,” she said, apparently to both her own team and the men of the flame unit. “Once it stabilizes into living things, it stops reacting the same way the raw goop does. However, our research team also believes that creatures spawned by the AG can themselves create more of it, almost as a reproductive measure. Therefore,” she turned specifically to her squad now, “do not touch anything in there without gloves, and inform the rest of us immediately if you see any sort of glowing blue substance, regardless of what it emerges from.”
“There hasn’t been much locust activity for the last few hours,” Sergeant Freiburg added. “The whole Zoo has been in virtual hush-mode. I suppose that’s a good thing for now, but we don’t know what it means in the long term. Every few days, it seems to throw something new at us.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Kemp said. “Wait till we’re out of sight before discharging any fire or pesticide in our vicinity.”
She turned back to the team. “All right. Forward, march.”
The change was drastic and immediate. Desert gave way to lush jungle and green shadows closed around them, cutting off the sun’s glare as cleanly as if they’d entered a dimly-lit building. The humidity rose by at least fifty percent and the temperature dropped by a good fifteen degrees Fahrenheit according to their instruments. It was still hot, and now a muggy humidity had been added to the mix. But this seemed almost a relief after the desiccating heat of the desert. Far less comforting was the sudden sense of claustrophobia. They’d gone no more than a hundred feet when Chris felt penned in. It was almost like he’d stumbled into a giant hedge maze with a roof of shuddering leaves and squirming vines.
Yes, much of the plant life was moving as though the whole jungle were breathing. It was slight, but he could see it. Many sounds echoed around them, but they were low and difficult to distinguish.
“My God,” was all he could say. He was struck by the sense of how pristine and how primeval the place was.
He walked beside the ATV, which Diaz drove forward at only three or four miles per hour to keep pace with those on foot. PFC Margheriti and Private Connolly were on point. Kemp and Miller were on the left side of the vehicle and Chris was on the right, with Wallace stalking in front of him and to the side. Chad stood behind, with Steadmann bringing up the rear.
Chris scribbled notes and observations on a small e-pad. He would have loved to pause and examine the flora in more detail, but they didn’t have time for that. The Zoo was dangerous and they had to be prepared. The entry corridor had long since disappeared behind the foliage.
“So about that Venus mantrap thing you mentioned,” Gronski said to Miller. “Didn’t the nerds say that the AG reacts to biomatter and produces new mutant varieties? See, I was thinking, we could get some college girls up here and introduce them, you know, like as experimental specimens, and maybe the Zoo will create some Amazons for us. Like they still look like college girls, only mutated with bigger tits or something.”
“Deeper pussies,” Miller mused, “no gag reflex, higher sex drive… Yeah, Earth’s men might not stand a chance.”
Chris blinked as it dawned on him. The two were dicking around, but they’d inadvertently raised a good point. Hadn’t Kemp mentioned something about how some of the scientists back in Nevada had been eaten by the goop? What if that meant the AG had somehow learned about humanity from that incident and absorbed some of what it needed to know about its chief opponent on the planet? He jotted this down next to his other notes.
Despite this disturbing possibility, however, he felt better about the whole thing. They hadn’t been attacked, and these men all seemed to know what they were doing. Perhaps the locusts had died out already on their own. Many insects had short lifespans or moved on to another location. If that were the case, then retrieving Dr. Marie’s files would be no more than a walk through the woods and back.
“Hold!” Kemp barked. Everyone halted.
The jungle foliage grew thicker ahead. They could have veered to the side, but their path was practically walled off by an interlocking mass of vines and creepers.
“Sgt. Wallace, PFC Margheriti,” Kemp said, “hit it with fire first, pesticide second.”
Margheriti strapped a flamethrower on as Wallace retrieved a jug and sprayer from the ATV. “Wait here,” he said to Chris. “Chad!” he called back. “Come up here and protect Dr. Lin.” The sergeant headed forward to obey Kemp’s order.
“Are we sure we want to do that?” Chris called after him. Attacking the plants might draw attention. “We might be better off leaving it and taking the long route.” Everyone ignored him except Chad, who listened intently to all he said as he came up beside him.
“Are you saying,” the man began and smirked as his mighty chin rose an inch or two in the air, “that we should, like, negotiate with the Zoo?”
“I suggested that we shouldn’t do stuff that will draw unnecessary attention,” the scientist repeated. “Or did you want to risk stirring the hornet’s nest before we’ve made any significant progress?”
Ahead of them, the shadows retreated before a blast of yellow-orange fire. The vines withered in response but didn’t die. Instead, what could only be called a ripple surged through the stems. They twisted up the trunks and draped like party streamers between the branches of the understory. A couple of particularly large fat vines squirmed only ten or fifteen feet above their heads, in fact.
Wallace stepped in behind Margheriti and sprayed the flame-withered mass with foaming chemicals of some sort. At least one of the major vines forming the blockage snapped, and one of the thick vines above Chris’s head drooped lower and closer.
“See, that’s not how it works here,” Chad went on. He stepped on what looked like a thick green root. “This isn’t some eighty-percent-Asian math class. This is the jungle, and out here everything operates on the law of the jungle.”
“Oh,” Chris said.
“That means kill or be killed,” the soldier explained. “We’ve all been tested according to that law. Some men…” He postured for a moment with his rifle braced at groin level. “Some men are born survivors, wolves who can hunt with the pack. Some aren’t. They’re passengers and don’t have the skills or the instincts to survive in the real world. They can’t tell what’s going on around them. Out here, if you want to survive, you need balls of—”
The drooping vine above them opened its jaws and clamped on Chad’s head.
Chris fell against the ATV, and sputtered in shock as Chad’s rifle fell to the ground. The cocky rifleman screamed, although the plant’s engorged throat muffled some of the sound.
“Jesus!” Chris burst out and stared in horror.
“Holy shit!” Pvt. Steadmann exclaimed. He ran up and aimed his own rifle as Chad was lifted into the air. His blood dripped to splatter on the jungle floor. Steadmann held his fire, unable to hit the carnivorous vine without hitting the soldier. Then again, the thing’s gaping, hungry mouth had already engulfed the m
an down to his chest.
In the general commotion, Kemp appeared, shoved past the frozen Chris, and drew her pistol. She popped off three shots that found their marks in Chad’s still-exposed upper abdomen. His body slumped and went still as the plant continued to retreat into the canopy and continued to feed.
Pvt. Gronski aimed the ATV’s machine gun at the fat, squirming vine. “Should I—”
“No,” the sergeant said. “We need to save the ammo.” She glanced toward the front of the caravan, and Chris followed her gaze. The mass of plant matter had finally been broken by the pesticides, and their path to the heart of the Zoo was clear.
“Lieutenant,” Steadmann asked, “what do we—”
“Keep moving,” she ordered.
The squad obeyed.
8
It felt like they’d walked all day. And yet, from what Kemp had said, the radius of the Zoo from the ruined base at its center to the edge should only be a few miles. It was slow going, though, and they were no longer moving in a straight line. How big had this place grown by now?
“Look everywhere,” Sergeant Wallace had said. “There isn’t a single part of this place we can afford not to watch. Is that clear?”
He didn’t need to say it. Miller and Gronski had even stopped making wisecracks about Venus mantraps.
Soon, the foliage grew dense enough that they’d have needed three times the napalm and pesticide to burn, blast, melt, and poison their way through it. They were forced instead to weave along the path of least resistance, wherever that might be. They relied on compasses to keep them bearing south whenever possible.
Chris had tried to focus on taking notes and pictures. The minor flash from his phone camera didn’t seem to disturb the Zoo’s equilibrium. Steadmann was now his guard. He was quiet and largely indifferent to Chris’ presence, which at least was an improvement over the late Chad.
The scientist shuddered. He wouldn’t particularly miss the man, but he’d never seen a human being actually die before. Certainly not as a result of being munched and slurped by something akin to a giant boa constrictor, only with little flowers growing out of it. And lips. Dear God, the carnivorous vine had actual lips.