by Michael Todd
More gunfire. Chris hovered near the rear. Most of the men jogged toward the attack point along the southeast wall. Since the Chimera wasn’t present, he didn’t bother taking out his phone to attempt a photograph.
“Net!” someone shouted as the sky grew still thicker and darker with the expanding swarm. Their hideous buzzing had grown louder.
Though the wall itself had been thrown together hastily out of basic materials and spare parts, the camp did have a few high-tech tricks up its collective sleeve. The Net System was one such trick.
A mechanism in front of the wall fired. Its payload was a huge net made of densely-woven fibers approximately three hundred feet across tethered to multiple weighted balls that shot up in an arc and then stuck to a steel lattice that had been erected in front of the tents. The balls were powerfully magnetized and would hold firm even under immense pressure without damaging the lattice. For all intents and purposes, a bug screen now separated this part of the base from the invading horde.
More guns fired as the locusts descended. Then they crashed straight into the net.
“Flame units!” a voice barked again. Chris knew it well. Lieutenant Danvers was now third or fourth-in-command of the project overall, and first-in-command of the Wall One camp. He and his men—including Gunnar—had personally rescued Chris from the Zoo almost three weeks before. “Everyone, get clear!”
Men fell back from beneath the net as other troops clad in white fireproof hazmat suits approached to form a circle underneath and around the net’s edges. The lattice strained against the blind and useless assault of the monstrosities as the special unit prepped their flamethrowers.
The locusts were too stupid to have learned how to circumvent the Net System—at least until after they’d tried to go through it—but they were fearsome creatures nonetheless, large as large dogs, vicious, and hard to kill. They could fly as well as glide or hop. They had the ravenous hunger of the common insects from which they’d mutated, but they also had blade-like clawed forelimbs, horns, fully developed jaws, and teeth. Even one was a serious threat to any less than three or four trained and armed men. Chris had managed to kill one single-handed, but he had to concede that luck had contributed to that particular victory.
“Fire!” Danvers ordered as he chopped the air with his hand.
Fire is exactly what happened. Blazing jets shot in streams from the flamethrowers’ nozzles and rose to engulf the mass of creatures that had been in the process of trying to break down the net with claw, horn, and teeth. They hissed and shrieked in unison as their green bodies ignited. Sparks and boiling black blood rained down from the net. Most of them were dead in seconds, but others tried taking wing and crashed to earth or hopped off to attempt a final suicide attack directed at the nearest humans. They were quickly gunned down. Once more, the net held firm. The heat resistance was a key part of this particular containment strategy.
All the same, Chris couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of dread. Last time he’d seen this, none of the beasts had survived long enough to volunteer for kamikaze duty. Were they developing a resistance to fire? Given the rate of rapid mutation and evolution the ecosystem provided, it was a distinct possibility and one that would need to be addressed if it held true.
His thoughts were interrupted by Danvers’ bellow.
“Positions!”
Unfortunately, some of the swarm had slipped around and under the net.
Danvers barked. Chris backed toward the tents. He was relatively safe there but still had a good view from which to observe the action as he’d been ordered. Men and women bearing rifles and other weapons formed up in ranks before the camp to repel the locusts’ flanking attempt.
Just as they were about to open fire, they all heard a very loud whistle blown from somewhere farther west.
And it moved closer.
“Chimera!” someone screamed. “It’s the Chimera!”
“Dammit!” Danvers swore. “Fucking diversion. All right, fire!”
Guns blazed. Chris covered his ears as the rifles tore into the remaining locusts, some of which hopped dangerously close before being torn apart into sparking green fragments. All fell. The humans had survived again without any casualties. Yet.
“You men, this way!” Danvers shouted and gestured to the line of troops on the west side of the net. The clock was ticking. They all took off at a full run. Some fell behind to reload their guns.
Chris hurried along behind them. His blood ran cold. Danvers was right. The more time Chris spent there, the more he doubted that such things were coincidences. The Zoo was intelligent. It had proven that in its sheer ability to adapt its flora and fauna to defend its anatomy and resources. It even knew they were targeting its flowers to find a means of combating the substance responsible for the forest’s rapid growth and used the locusts as its primary defense by producing pheromones to control them. It had built its own river to prevent them from reaching the epicenter of the event that spawned this monstrosity in the first place. That demonstrated signs of intelligence on multiple levels. If it could create that intricate a defense mechanism to protect its own resources, it was possibly smart enough to use actual strategy against them or to learn the meaning of strategy from them and then apply it.
They passed around a bend in the outside wall between a narrower space and another mess tent.
Everyone froze. It was there. It had paused, only for a split-second, in the broad, black shadow of the mess tent. Then it vaulted into the air and was gone.
“Hold your fire,” Danvers ordered. To let loose now would be to risk striking fellow soldiers and scientists in the other tents. The huge shadow of the Chimera moved northwest, landing almost right within a gap it had torn in the wall. Now, it was safe to fire.
“After it,” Danvers ordered.
They raced toward the gap and the waiting creature. Gunfire resounded from the men mounted on that part of the wall, but the silhouette had already gone.
“Did anybody get a good look at it?” Chris shouted. Once again, the troops ignored him. It seemed they always did when they got into a combat frame of mind. He understood the dangers and the need for caution, but without data on the creature’s appearance, he wouldn’t be able to map out its potential evolutionary path and plan for its next strike.
What little he’d seen in that fleeting instant was some sort of bat-winged blob that walked on four, maybe six, legs. As soon as it moved, the impression had changed somehow. A shudder passed through him as he contemplated what this thing would look like up close. The creatures he’d already seen were bad enough.
Suddenly, something crashed as the group neared the gap. Another part of the wall collapsed. A man who’d stood there leaped to the side in time to roll clear of the falling debris.
“It’s taking pieces of the goddamn wall with it!” another sentry on the upper walkway cried out before opening fire with his rifle.
The telltale buzzing rose again. Another black cloud rose, this time from the tree line. A second swarm had been lying in wait.
“No!” someone yelled. There was no time to deploy another net over this part of the base. The locusts were already over the wall and descending on the troops. Chris drew his handgun and watched in horror as the next phase of battle began.
The Chimera. Had it brought this second force with it to cover its escape? Had it somehow communicated to the locusts to hop along the ground so they would be less conspicuous until they could attack?
Rifle fire cracked through the air and muzzles flashed. This force of locusts was smaller than the diversionary group. They spread themselves around to attack at random and forced the troops to break into smaller groups. The battle quickly degenerated into dozens of melees.
“Fall back! Regroup by the tent!” Danvers barked as he strived to stave off anarchy. “Don’t fucking shoot each other!”
Chris was already back by the west mess tent. Three other soldiers had joined him. A locust suddenly landed between the
m and kicked up dust with the force of its landing and the whirr of its wings. Then it pounced and smashed directly into the man in the center of their little group. He was on the ground in seconds. The creature’s sword-like forelimb followed and found its mark in the man’s chest. The soldier screamed, but the sound faded to a low gurgle almost instantly as blood replaced air.
“Fucker!” another man snapped. The three remaining humans opened fire. The locust was blasted back into the sand. Its carapace cracked apart as two dozen bullets from three guns ripped into it. Its leg stayed buried in the man’s torso. Chris and one of the others ran over to their fallen comrade while the third member of their party kept watch.
Chris didn’t need to be a doctor to know a dead man. The locust’s arm had pierced through the soldier’s heart and spine and probably punctured a lung for good measure. He was still and silent. Blood pooled in the sand beneath before the desert absorbed the moisture and left only the curiously colored sand bound by blood.
Then it was over. Most of the second wave had been killed. The remainder were driven off to buzz or scamper back toward the brooding mass of alien vegetation that lay beyond the all-too-flimsy wall. Noise and chaos gave way to heavy breathing and finally, the beginnings of order.
“We have a man down here,” Chris called toward the nearest medic. “I—ah, I’m pretty sure he’s gone.” He did his best to swallow the revulsion that followed. Another lost to the jungle. How many would have to sacrifice their lives before they found the Zoo’s weakness?
The medic ran up to do his duty. Chris rose to observe the remainder of the scene. Another man was down with a leg wound, but aside from that, the casualties seemed minimal. This poor bastard appeared to be the only fatality.
This was the ninth attack in the last two weeks. At least one person had died each time. Chris’ face set in a grim line. If the Zoo really was utilizing strategy, then it appeared it was content to make this a war of attrition.
And the Chimera… Since it had first been sighted, a day or two after the attacks began, it had become a source of mystery and terror for the camp’s personnel. No one had managed to see it up close or in good lighting. Its tactics changed every time it appeared. The one constant was that it always did some damage to the wall and usually took pieces of material back with it into the jungle.
The Chimera quickly became an urban legend among the troops. Unfortunately, that legend had proved all too real tonight.
“All right,” he said as he approached a group of soldiers near the wall. “This battle is over and it’s time to answer my questions. We’ve lost enough men to this thing and I don’t want to lose any more. Did anyone get a good look at the Chimera? Did anyone notice anything distinctive about it or catch a glimpse of what it was doing this time?”
Several men looked annoyed by the question. “Not really,” one mumbled.
“It probably has an alien cloaking device or some shit,” said another.
“I kinda saw it,” a third began, “but it was too fuckin’ dark to make out any of the details. Like,” he went on, “when people started calling it the fuckin’ Chimera, I thought of the O.G. mythological creature. You know, a lion crossed with a fuckin’ goat and a dragon, and one head for each, or like sometimes, the tail was a dragon’s. I forget. Anyway, as far I can tell, that goddamn thing is like a fuckin’…beetle-leopard zombie or something.”
“Bullshit,” a young Latino guy threw back. “It’s obviously a cross between a crab and a camel.”
“We’re in the middle of the biggest fuckin’ desert on the planet,” the soldier retorted. “Where would the UFOs get the idea for a crab? Come on, man.”
That was one of many questions Chris had tried to answer. As the two young men traded disturbingly colorful insults, he reflected on the biological impossibilities that had officially become possible since the Zoo had appeared. The place had somehow synthesized lifeforms that resembled other Earth species with which it had had no direct contact. How?
Soon, an all-terrain vehicle drove up containing two grunts and another officer from the main base back at Wall Two, miles farther out in the desert. Agents Garcia and Davis, the black-suited feds now running the place, had decreed that Wall One must be secured before anyone went back into the Zoo proper. Hence, this camp.
“Lt. Danvers!” the officer in the ATV called out. “Where the hell is he?”
“Right here.” Danvers pushed past Chris and a few other soldiers to stand before his superiors.
“Report.”
Danvers took a deep breath and recounted what had occurred. The officer seemed incredulous at the notion that the Chimera had used an actual diversion.
Clearly, he hadn’t been there that long.
“Losses?”
Danvers fumed. “Part of the wall, again,” he said. “Two men down with injuries, one due to friendly fire from when the locusts got between us. One man dead. Private Sansom. He was a rookie but not a moron. We lose someone every time they attack, sir. This wall might be a lost cause.”
“That’s not for me to decide, Lieutenant,” the officer said. He waved his arm, and the ATV drove around to inspect the rest of the camp before returning to base to report to the agents.
“We’ve tried everything we can think of,” Danvers said in a grating voice, half to Chris and half to himself. “Guns, bombs, traps, poison gas… That monster and its little minions learn their way around every lesson we try to teach them. Why does it keep taking chunks out of the wall? What does it want?”
Chris thought of the late Lieutenant Doctor Emma Kemp, who had led the illegal mission into the Zoo almost three weeks ago in the hope that world-altering knowledge could be salvaged from it. She had sacrificed her own life so that Chris and another man, Sergeant Wallace, could escape.
“I don’t know, Lieutenant,” Chris said to Danvers, “but we will find out.”
3
Chris stood in the base’s main office. Agents Garcia and Davis stood before him and over him. The two men looked nothing alike aside from their identical black suits and sunglasses and being around six feet, two inches tall.
“So, okay, let me get this straight,” Agent Garcia said in his usual loud and cocky voice. His lean body swaggered, and his raven hair glistened in the light as he gesticulated with olive-skinned hands. “You want us to pull the men back from Wall One because it’s too dangerous, but at the same time, you want us to send more men into the Zoo itself?” He chuckled. “Because, apparently, that isn’t dangerous?”
“Totally unacceptable,” Davis agreed in his whisper-edged robotic monotone. His pale skin shone through the thinning blond hair of his combover while he fiddled with his suit’s straining buttons. “Insanity. Contradiction in terms. The costs would be outrageous.”
Of course, Chris thought. Last night, when the ATV had come out to the wall to gather info on what happened, the Agents would have wanted to assess the cost of the attack. Their primary concern seemed to be keeping control of the project’s budget.
“All I’m saying,” Chris retorted, “is that I agree with the opinion of Lt. Danvers that the camp at Wall One needs more personnel and more supplies, and if those can’t be provided, we ought to consider falling back. However,” he went on before they could interrupt him, “that’s ultimately up to the military, not me. The other part of what I’m saying, which is in my actual field of expertise—theoretical biology—is that I cannot make any further breakthroughs in understanding the Zoo without new data. Kemp and I were unable to gather samples since we were too busy trying not to die. We retrieved Dr. Marie’s files, and those plus the data the base already has have been helpful, but I need a sample of the goop plants in order to make real progress.”
“Goop plants?” both Agents said, almost in unison.
Chris sighed. “The red-and-blue flowers that produce the Alien Goop that allows the Zoo to spread in the first place,” he explained. “And which the Zoo’s creatures defend to the death. Didn’t you guy
s read my report?”
“We leave that to the pocket-protector crowd,” Garcia said and adjusted his dark glasses. “We have slightly more pressing matters to deal with.”
“Damage control,” Davis explained. “Ensuring the lid isn’t blown off the whole project. Global chaos is a real possibility. The DOD can’t manage an international coalition of this magnitude in secrecy for much longer.”
“Right,” Chris said. “The financial and bureaucratic shit. Got it.” He turned to leave.
“Dr. Lin,” Garcia called.
“Yes?”
“Listen, we merely follow orders from the Boss at the end of the day, all right? You do good work and we want to keep you around, but don’t get tunnel vision. You’re not the only one here with a job to do.”
“Yeah…I know. Thanks.” Chris sighed and shut the door behind him. He shuddered as he emerged into the light and cleaner air of the hallway. Those two creeped the hell out of him. Since when did two men share the same office and even the same desk? The mean-spirited gay jokes had been flying consistently ever since the agents had taken over, but Chris didn’t see it that way. It was almost like the two of them were host bodies, each holding half of a single human brain implanted in their skulls—probably one grown in a government lab—with the two halves making sure they stayed on the same page by communicating via radio waves.
Or something.
And who exactly was this Boss?
Chris returned to the research division briefly, but there wasn’t much to do except, essentially, review all the stuff he already knew and ask the other whitecoats if they’d had any bright ideas. Mostly, they didn’t, because they assumed Chris would be the one to have them. He had, after all, actually been inside the Zoo for almost two days. Nine others had gone with him. Eight had died. The ninth was…