by Michael Todd
He lunged.
The two men crashed into each other with titanic force. Both of their movements were fast and powerful. Chris realized with sudden embarrassment that he was leagues away from these two when it came to martial arts. Pike was the bigger and stronger of the two. After the first two moves, he seemed to have Micky dead to rights. He shoved the Magyar down to his knees with his knife at the ready to stab the man in the face. Micky wrapped a leg around Pike’s waist and spun around him, jerked his arm back violently, and drove his head into the hood of the JLTV. The metal crunched, and Pike let out a half-grunt, half-cry of pain. He slumped into the grass and didn’t move.
Chris stared in abject horror. Micky—ex-military though he obviously was, and for all his speed—had nevertheless struck Chris as the type of bully who would have shriveled when facing a true badass. Instead, he had taken down Pike in about four seconds. There was no way Chris could beat him hand-to-hand.
The Hammerhead burst into flames, and two jets of fire exploded from it. Dozens of locusts fell burning, and most of the remaining ones seemed confused.
“That is little last-resort I planned in case something like this happened,” Micky said. He walked over to his discarded silver handgun, picked it up, and loaded a magazine into it. The fact that Chris was still standing only twelve feet away did not seem to concern him in the slightest. “It will be a bit warm in Hammerhead, but I don’t think this little fuck will mind.” He very quickly untied the baby Chimera, and with another blindingly fast motion, had wrapped his arm around the creature to immobilize its back-tentacles while he dragged it back toward the Hammerhead.
Chris was on the verge of panic. He didn’t know what to do. He watched the flames and smoke rise from the Hammerhead. Most of them had died since it was likely due to a light coating of flammable liquid. The two flamethrowers within the vehicle continued to destroy most of the locusts who tried to attack it and the few bounty hunters who still lived scrambled to get in. Watching the flames, Chris again remembered that so far, they’d seen only locusts—the diversion. And as the saying went, where there was smoke…
“Hey— Hey!” Chris shouted and lunged forward. “Miklós Szepassony!”
Micky’s head snapped up. He’d lost his tinted glasses during the fight with Pike and now looked straight at Chris with green, almost yellowish eyes that reminded him of a feral cat’s. “I told you not to call me that,” he said.
“Yeah, well, uhh…” Chris scrambled to think of something, anything. Something to waste time. “Well, you’re a faggot anyway. You said you don’t like ‘fancy stuff,’ but torture is torture, and only faggots get off on doing that kind of shit.”
Micky raised his pistol as he continued to drag the Chimera backward. Based on where he aimed, he seemed unable to decide whether he would put a bullet in Chris’ kneecap or his testicles. “Nothing you say matters,” Micky said. “It was mistake for you to come here. You should be back home in America, masturbating to Japanese cartoon girls in video game and getting fat on deep-fried bacon-flavored ice cream. I have already won. I am in charge. And you will stay here until you learn lesson about how things work in jungle and how real men are ones who leave with the prize. Okay?” Presumably to emphasize the total power he assumed he had, he squeezed the baby Chimera’s midsection in a way that looked painful. It cried out.
This time, something answered.
A dark blue shadow fell over them and Chris looked up. Mama had arrived. The tentacles on her back had spread out, and feathers protruded from them. Chris gasped. The first impression he’d had, back at the base had been correct. The thing really did have wings. It retracted them, half-glided and half-fell to the earth, and crushed the JLTV beneath its massive claws. The ground shook. Chris fell on his ass, and so did Micky.
The baby Chimera burst free from the Magyar’s grasp and ran to its mother’s side. It turned to look at Chris again with that odd familiarity and remarkable intelligence.
Chris spread his hands, palms outward—the universal sign for “I mean no harm.”
“You fool,” Pike’s voice said weakly. The man lay sprawled almost right beside the Chimera’s leg where it stood atop the remains of the JLTV. He had finally regained consciousness. “It’s an animal. You can’t reason with it the way you would—”
Then the Chimera turned away from Chris, ignored him, and bore down on Micky.
The man was trapped in a half crouch. He’d begun to climb back to a standing position with his hand on his pistol. He dropped his arm to the side and relaxed it. His face contorted in an all-consuming expression of hatred. He and the Chimera looked at each other and Micky raised the gun.
He was fast.
The Chimera was faster.
It lashed out with a powerful foreleg, and the man flew back as though he’d been launched from a trebuchet. He crashed into a tree and crumpled limply to the ground. His spine had been broken. Chris had no doubt of that.
The mother urged her child gently on. It took a few bounds toward the fallen mercenary, whose greenish-yellow eyes were now wide with fear for the first time as he lay there, helpless. Fortunately for him, the baby Chimera did not return the favor by dragging things out. It simply placed its powerful beak-like jaws around the top of Micky’s head and crunched.
Mama tipped the Hammerhead as she went, and both creatures bounded into the forest side-by-side. The few remaining locusts began to disperse, and Chris released a long, rattling breath.
One of the men inside the Hammerhead—the other must have been dead—crawled out and, with the three other who’d survived, ran at top speed into the jungle to the northeast. Chris let them go. They’d failed, and all they could do now was flee home with their tails between their legs. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen Frankie anywhere. She must have gone ahead or slipped away at some point. This didn’t surprise him.
Four figures ran down the ridge toward him and Chris grinned. Gunnar, Peppy, Glassner, and Pachrapa had all managed to survive the battle. He wasn’t sure about Pike, though. He and Glassner both knelt by the man’s side.
“I am not…too badly injured,” Pike said, but his voice was weak.
“Your shoulder is dislocated,” Glassner informed him, “and you might have a concussion. I think you’ll be okay in the long run, but you’re not exactly in great shape right now.”
Pike nodded grimly. He looked at Chris. “Is there something you know,” he asked, “that we don’t?”
“Oh, well,” Chris said, “just that, you know, this is a pure, savage realm.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Where only savage measures would prevail.”
20
The camp at Wall One was even more chaotic than usual as the rescue force brought them back. The mission had come to an end, and Chris guessed correctly that they weren’t too far from the edge of the Zoo. They’d radioed Lt. Danvers to send in a couple of APCs to pick them up. They did, after all, have three wounded men. Chris and Pachrapa operated at less than one hundred percent, and Pike could barely stand or walk. That left them with only three healthy troops out of the nine who’d gone in.
It was late afternoon by now. The air was hot and dusty. The quality of the light grew orange as the day approached its end. The five of them stood waiting for the inevitable debriefing while Pike sat on the tailgate of a truck and waited for a stretcher to take him to the infirmary.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Private Peppy said.
“Glassner, dammit, you lied,” Gunnar remarked. “Clearly, she’s on drugs. What did you sell her?”
“Maybe she’s tired of being depressed. I don’t know.” Glassner shrugged. “I’m a medic, not a psychologist.”
A forklift approached carrying Agents Davis and Garcia. Chris rubbed his eyes. He was indeed seeing what he thought he was seeing. They’d mounted a sturdy square board on the forklift, and both stood on it as it ferried them out. It was fitting, he supposed. He couldn’t imagine either of them jumping out of a vehicle like a normal
person. The forklift came to a stop about fifteen feet in front of them and lowered its passengers to the ground. The two black-clad men strode forward through the blowing dust.
“Hey, welcome back,” Garcia said as he shot off imaginary pistols with his fingers and twiddled his thumbs like the hammers on old revolvers. “Good to see that two-thirds of you survived.”
“The Chimera does not seem to be your prisoner,” said Davis. “Presumably, you killed it. Also an acceptable outcome.”
“Nope,” said Chris. “Neither.”
The agents stared at him. “Clarify that statement,” Davis ordered. “Your message stated—”
“That the mission had been, you know, completed,” Garcia finished.
“Oh, it has,” Chris clarified with an innocent expression. “I’m sure that the Chimera won’t attack the wall anymore. It mainly tried to get building materials for its nest, you see. It wanted to build a defense for its baby, so it went on the offensive. And it seems that the reason it wanted to build up a defense,” he went on before they could interrupt him, “is because there were a bunch of bounty hunters in there chasing after it. There had to have been at least thirty of these guys initially. Most are dead now. And they had two vehicles with them, including a big-ass Hammerhead. How, pray tell, did they get in there?”
Both the agents looked dumbstruck for a moment. When they didn’t speak, Chris kept talking. “There is some serious corruption going on. If those assholes were able to get in, I assume you gentlemen wouldn’t have let them come through our section of the wall. As such, I’m guessing the Russian side. You guys ought to consider looking into that. Especially since Frances Stoudt was working for them the whole time. How the hell did she get cleared to serve on this mission without you gentlemen picking those connections up?”
“This is something we will consider,” Davis replied in his usual emotionless tone. Chris had to give him one thing. He adapted quickly to surprise. “Highly convincing false documents. Accomplices posing as references. That kind of espionage isn’t easy or cheap, but it can be done.”
“So yeah, anyway,” Garcia went on, “you’re totally confident that this Chimera thing won’t come back? Because it would definitely help us study the Zoo and all if we could finally get this wall secured without that thing messing up the works.”
“There are no one hundred percent guarantees,” Chris replied, “but yes. I’m confident that we’ve bought ourselves some breathing space. The creature wanted to be left alone. Without the bounty hunters trying to capture or kill it, we shouldn’t need to worry.”
“We were damn lucky that ma Chimera showed up when she did,” Gunnar said.
“Oh, it wasn’t luck.” Chris turned toward his friend. “It was your strategy from Risk. Remember? Convincing the third party who the bigger enemies are and getting them to do your dirty work. I showed the mother that I wasn’t there to harm her or her child and that the bounty hunters were the ones she needed to fight. Hell, Micky even went around bragging about his victory while acting like a belligerent douchebag—like I did right before you and Peppy kicked my ass out of Asia.”
Gunnar smiled at that and looked into the distance. He produced a lit cigarette out of nowhere, puffed on it, and said, “Yup.”
“What’s this I hear about you playing as Yellow, man?” Pachrapa said and slapped Chris on the arm. “Isn’t that, like, a little stereotypical?” This was the first time Pachrapa had addressed him as a fellow Asian, and he blinked for a moment before he responded.
“Well, yeah,” said Chris, “but in a good way. Yellow was an imperial color in ancient China—very dignified, very cool, like purple in the West. The Yellow River, the Yellow Sea, and of course the outfit Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death and the one Jackie Chan wore in First Strike. We own that color.”
“Looks like a fucking banana in a cup of piss, man,” Pachrapa said. “But fair enough.”
“Nobody had better take my Black,” Peppy said darkly. “I alone am qualified to play as Black.”
The agents both waved their hands in irritation. “Stop talking about games,” Davis ordered. “Complete full reports as directed. We need details. Extensive information about your experiences. Very serious and important matters.”
“Especially,” Garcia chimed in, “with the extra gas we had to spend on that rescue mission! I mean, you guys walked in, so we kinda hoped you’d walk back out. APCs get really shitty mileage, bro.”
“Thanks.” Chris deadpanned.
The agents departed the same way they had arrived. Shortly after, a stretcher arrived for Pike, who’d remained quiet during the whole debriefing. “I suppose this is where I take my leave,” he said.
Chris stood before him and extended a hand. Pike clasped it with his good arm. His grip was firm but surprisingly gentle. The two men looked at each other with a subdued kind of mutual respect. “You’ll be back though,” Chris said, “won’t you?”
“No,” Pike replied, “I don’t think I will. This was probably my greatest hunting trip, but—” He grunted as Glassner and two other medics helped him down from the tailgate into a standing position and toward the stretcher “Also my most difficult. And painful. Not only the physical requirements, of course, but the simple fact that what we have here at the Zoo is ultimately beyond my understanding.” His eyes were distant. “Maybe, after all, this is more of a world for scientists now. Maybe it’s no longer entirely the God’s-green-Earth I once knew. We shall see. Goodbye Dr. Lin.” He said his farewells to the rest of the team and allowed himself to be taken away on the stretcher into the back of a medical vehicle, which soon drove away.
With Arthur Pike departed, Chris turned and looked first toward the setting sun, then to the brooding greenish-black mass of the Zoo. It was still so incredible, this place and the lifeforms it had spawned. The creatures demonstrated intelligence far beyond what seemed reasonable or even possible. It was almost as though there were some sort of guiding hand behind it all.
He thought back to the Chimera—the look it had given him. He’d never seen that in an animal before. It was the look of one human being recognizing another. Had some sort of actual memory of him from his first time in the Zoo been encoded into its very ecosystem, into the DNA of its creatures? That would be another first. He would have delved further were it not Gunnar acting in true Gunnar style.
“Wanna play some more Risk?” he asked.
“Eh,” Chris said, “maybe later. Unfortunately, us scientists have it rough. After a mission, we have to type up a bunch of shit and can’t lounge around like you guys.”
“Hear that?” Gunnar said to the others. “He knows he can’t win.”
Chris was already distracted again, though. He was thinking of Kemp. Every day since she’d sacrificed herself, he had thought about all they’d said to each other and about his promise to finish her work in solving the mystery of the Zoo.
That thought inevitably led to the memory of his messy room and he frowned. Solving said mystery was something he’d get right on with—as soon as he found that damn flash drive.
Epilogue
She waited until the Saharan sun had begun to dip under the horizon before she emerged from her carefully-chosen hiding place. In this desert, even her skills might not be enough during the daytime. Moving under cover of darkness was always better.
She’d gone ahead of the rest of the group to signal that their mission was almost at an end. Unfortunately, it was right after she’d sent the message that she realized how bad the end was. The sounds she heard coming from that low, almost-treeless valley indicated that she’d best not get involved. That could ruin all her plans permanently. As it stood right now, they were only temporarily ruined.
Once she’d confirmed that everyone else—even Micky, who’d gotten half his head bitten off somehow—was either dead or fled, she’d made the decision to lie low. But now it was time to face the music. She couldn’t stay there.
It didn’t take long to reach th
e edge of the jungle near the east gate in the eastern part of the wall. She’d sent another message ahead of her emergence, and so was not surprised to see a vehicle waiting for her on the sands beneath the desert moon.
“Damn,” she said, examining her ride. It was pretty impressive. Definitely a military or paramilitary vehicle of some sort, with state-of-the-art weaponry mounted at every corner. One of the side doors lifted open and a hand beckoned. She was still nervous, but some of her old enthusiasm was back. At least she would ride in style. It suited her.
The vehicle’s interior was downright luxurious. There were limos for rent in Vegas and Manhattan that had nothing on this thing, whatever it was exactly. It was practically a top-notch lounge on wheels. The door closed behind her as she reclined on the comfortable bench seat and reveled in the sensation of real leather.
“Frankie,” said the man who shared the back seat with her. The vehicle took off, and their ride was incredibly smooth despite having to barrel over sand dunes.
“Hi,” she said, and again, was more nervous than excited. She’d expected an underling of some sort—a middleman or an intermediary. Instead, he had come personally.
The man was large, both in height and in breadth. At least half that breadth was muscle. He was bald and dressed in an exceedingly fine pinstripe suit. He’d always reminded her of the Kingpin from Spiderman.
He pressed a button, and a small platform bearing a bottle of champagne and two crystal glasses extended. He poured a little into each and offered her one. “Frankie,” he said again as she took it, “I must confess that I’m…slightly disappointed.” His voice was soft but carried an undercurrent of power.
“I know, I know,” she said, in her most disarming, plucky-girl voice. She took a sip of the champagne and sighed. “Things didn’t work out, at least not according to the original plan.”