by Michael Todd
“Not,” the man replied, “according to any plan. There wasn’t any plan where you blow your cover. The scientist already told everyone you were a double agent and they’ll look into it in the morning. And that’s only the beginning.” He spoke in such a way that he almost sounded sympathetic, but she knew better than to relax too much. She knew what this man was capable of. Still, she didn’t show it. Keeping cool was part of her job description after all.
“You managed to get the whole team killed,” the man went on, “or at least most of them. It seems there are a few stragglers, but we’ll deal with them later. And you didn’t even get the Chimera. What good are you to me, Frankie, if you can’t even follow a few simple orders without everything getting blown to hell like this?” He drained his glass suddenly and set it back in its holder “It makes me think, Frankie. It makes me wonder. What I am to…do with you?”
Frankie almost squirmed but turned it into a quick un-crossing and re-crossing of her legs. She had good legs, and men tended to notice.
“Well, here’s the thing about the ‘original plan,’” she replied. “The mission wasn’t a total failure. See, I managed to get something else. Something even better than the Chimera.”
“What,” the man mused, “could possibly be better than that? You have my curiosity now, Frankie.”
“This.” From deep within her outfit, she produced a small object—an old-fashioned flash drive. “This is all the notes we have on the Zoo. Everything Dr. Marie found originally and everything Dr. Lin has added to it since then. I swiped it from his room.” She grinned openly with a mixture of pride and mischievous glee.
The man was silent a moment, his expression neutral. “Is that so?” Then, he smiled. It wasn’t much. More of a twitch really. But it was enough for Frankie to conclude that she would be forgiven. “Then it looks like we have more work to do.” He poured himself another glass of champagne. “Maybe it’s time I took a more active role.”
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
December 19, 2018
THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well.
(I think I’ve been good with always opening with “thank you.” If not, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)
RANDOM (sometimes) THOUGHTS?
So many books, so little time…
When we (Lee and I) thought up and worked on this story, I wanted to have a basic understanding of where the ZOO was at the beginning (ok, CLOSE to the beginning, not the very beginning) of the Apocalypse.
Part of the reason is that the lore of the ZOO needed to be explained. The general setup was done in some prologues of the books, and frankly not that interesting (to me, anyway).
No, what I wanted was just after the shit hit the proverbial fan and everyone was running around with monkeys screaming and a few people in the back running across the tv screen with their hair on fire.
You know, the fun part?
And then you bring in the jerks. You know, the ones who ALWAYS screw things up and only play for the home team.
Themselves.
One of the reasons I particularly like the ZOO is that scientists aren’t just secondary characters. Here in the ZOO, we authors get a chance to make all sorts of crazy-smart people do things that crazy-smart people might just do if given the chance.
Or, you know, just act human and freeze up no matter how smart they are.
As I write this, I wonder if I’ll ever get some crazy-smart scientist who is known by everyone to tell me they want to be in the ZOO.
Then I’ll get to write a real-live person into the canon.
Damn, that would be cool!
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AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
One of the interesting (at least to me) aspects of my life is the ability to work from anywhere and at any time. In the future, I hope to re-read my own Author Notes and remember my life as a diary entry.
Dec 19th, 2018
So, still sitting in my writing bedroom in the Texas house (just fired the first realtor yesterday, hired the new one today.) While my office has room for me to work, still (a lot of the furniture has been moved out) I really don’t like working in there anymore. Over the years, I got WAY bored in there, and I’m thinking I will probably never have a defined office again. It bugs me to be stuck in one place too long.
For now, Vegas and all of the places I can walk to will be my office.
That is, until I get the $$$ necessary to buy that wicked-as-hell warehouse and spruce it up into the ultimate author-cave.
And then I’ll probably have to sell tickets to help pay for the sumbitch. But It will be cool!
Ahhh, more books to get written and published. My dreams are still outside my income level.
DAMMIT!
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Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Big Assed Global Kegger
Apocalypse Paused Book Three
Prologue
The jungle within the desert was a kingdom unto itself, and it had a queen.
She was naked as she walked through the green and leafy halls of her domain. Why should she be otherwise? She had nothing to hide from the flora and fauna here, which revered her in her natural state as she protected and guided them. And this place was a new beginning for Nature.
Through patches of red and blue flowers she walked, smiling with gentle approval at their vibrant colors and thinking of their life-giving properties. She alone could disturb them unharmed. Was this alone not proof of her preeminence, of the special privilege the jungle awarded her as its ruler? The flowers were soft against her bare legs, and the intensely blue viscous fluid that pooled amidst their petals did not harm her as it might have harmed an intruder. An outsider.
Beyond the flowers, the jungle grew denser again, and amidst the towering trees, deep green with the promise of life and moist with this place’s incredible fertility, hung a canopy of beautiful emerald-hued vines. Some were immobile, as most plants were. Others squirmed gently in place as they repositioned themselves for comfort or for better hunting, for they had mouths that needed feeding. Some of them moved slowly, and silently down from their perches as the woman passed beneath them.
But when they opened their mouths before her, they did not threaten her as prey. They only seemed to sigh in greeting and adoration. Slowly they returned to the canopy. As she passed, she placed a hand on one that was twisted around the trunk of a tree and felt the pulse of life within it. Since nearly all things here were connected in life’s majestic web, she felt through and beyond it to the life it shared by all her creatures.
This place had its predators, though. As always in Nature, certain things had to die that others might live. The greatest predator of them all appeared before her now. It was huge, long, and sleek, and powerfully muscled. Graceful like a cat, but something about it spoke of ancient and primitive creatures—ones that had not the gentle humor of Earth’s modern cats but who lived only to kill. Its eyes were slit-pupiled, but flat and glossy, like those of a sea creature. Seeing her approach, it tensed. Down it crouched, muscles poised as if ready to pounce.
The woman smiled. The great cat-like creature did not pounce. Instead, it turned its motion into a kind of bow, a prostration of respect and submission. She approached it without fear. When she extended her hand and placed it on the bristly fur of the cre
ature’s head, scratching between its ears, it closed its eyes and purred. The sound was like the grinding of stones, and in its slightly open mouth, she could see rows of jagged, shark-like teeth, designed to reduce its prey to mealy pulp. This was one of her favorite creatures. She kept her hand on it as she moved past, stroking down the back of its neck and shoulders all the way to its tail. And then finally she arrived at the Tree.
A rush went through her as she examined it. Euphoria, adulation, triumph; she wanted to sing and dance. Everything was going to plan. It would all come to fruition soon.
And fruit was exactly what this Tree bore. Its branches looked like arms, holding out its largess for visitors to see and sample. Bracts of dark green leaves and light green petals spread around the base. The fruit itself was richly, intensely red; the color of blood, but almost glowing, so rich and ripe it looked. In both appearance and aroma, it was beyond tantalizing; it was irresistible.
Some faint memory arose then in the queen’s mind; an ancient myth, perhaps from some alien world, of a Garden that had arisen at the dawn of time, and of a woman who had been forbidden to eat the fruit of a certain tree. No such limitations were placed on her. Not here. Nothing was forbidden to her.
Smiling even more broadly, she plucked one of the rich crimson fruits and took a bite.
1
They were going back into the Zoo again. Not that big a deal. Hopefully.
“I dunno, Peppy,” Chris said, reclining in the shade of their tent, “things have gotten easy enough that you’re probably going to survive again. We might even have to lay you to rest ourselves if the Zoo can’t finally figure out a way to end the meaninglessness of your continued existence.”
The young woman’s face with its heavy-lidded brown eyes drooped, much the same way her voice drooped with everything she said. “Oh.” She sighed. “Oh, well, just make it quick, okay? None of that infecting me with leprosy first and then sneaking up on me when I’m asleep to peel off one piece of skin per night over the course of a month so that I gradually perish of infection, sleep deprivation, and pain.”
“How do you think that shit up?” another man, Gunnar, asked. “Wait, scratch that. Better question would be, why do you think it up?”
Chris was fairly sure he didn’t want to hear the answer to that—if there was an answer. Nonetheless, he was in a pretty good mood.
Dr. Christopher Lin was one of three non-virgins who’d be plunging themselves into the Zoo’s warm, wet folds in a short while. With him were Private First-Class Gunnar Åkerlund (who was up for promotion to corporal, actually), and Private Monica Pérez, better known as Private Peppy (who was also up for promotion, to first class), the other non-virgins. When not specifically ordered to do otherwise, the three of them tended to gravitate toward one another. That happened when you’d fought next to someone as well as played Risk with them. The rest of the team for the current relatively routine mission was composed of newbies. They were all farther back in the camp and away from Wall 01, receiving a mass briefing on what to expect within the alien-spawned jungle.
Chris, Gunnar, and Peppy were in a tent near the wall’s gate. There was still a bit of tension in the air—no one went into the Zoo casually—but at last it seemed they’d arrived at a sort of plateau. They knew what they were dealing with, and they could handle it. No one had been killed in almost two months.
The chief reason for this was the end of the locust swarms. The giant, mutated insects which originally had been the scourge of the project, and the most common danger to those now trying to contain it, had seemingly died off. Not a single one had been sighted for a couple weeks now, and the last few attacks before that had been small and easily repelled. The Zoo’s other dangerous creatures never left the jungle. Keeping watch over the place no longer carried the serious risk of untimely death.
Chris, back in the Research department at the base, had not had a great deal of work to do recently. He’d been reviewing the notes they already had of the experiments and correlational studies they’d already done. He’d used his own experiences, combined with aerial photographs, to begin work on a rough map of the Zoo’s major features. It was still incomplete, though, and the Zoo seemed to change at a very rapid rate anyway. He’d summed up everything they already knew for multiple different agencies and bureaucrats in a number of tedious reports.
There would be no real breakthroughs, however, until they acquired a Goop Plant. Those red- and blue-petaled flowers were the key to understanding the improbable jungle that sprawled before them amidst the barren sands of the southern Sahara Desert, Chris knew. Twice he had been into the Zoo on long, dangerous excursions, and twice he had failed to come back with a sample.
“I heard they’re bringing more female soldiers in,” Gunnar said then. “I mean, we have Peppy, but she doesn’t really count since I’m talking about humans rather than the undead. I’ll have to test-drive my best pick-up lines…the ones that have born sweet, sweet fruit in the past.”
“Oh?” Chris said. He had to admit he was intrigued. Peppy watched both of them with even less enthusiasm than usual.
Gunnar produced a lit cigarette from somewhere and drew a long toke, exhaling a white cloud before he responded, “For example: ‘You look like trash. Can I take you out?’”
Chris made a spitting sound that turned gradually into laughter. Peppy said nothing.
“Oh, I’m serious, my friends,” Gunnar assured them. “Women love being insulted.”
“No, they love being impressed, especially if you do it in a weird way they haven’t seen or heard before,” Chris retorted.
Gunnar raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
Chris cleared his throat and spread his hands before him. “Okay, here we go… ‘Are you the square root of negative 100? Because you’re a solid ten… but too good to be real.’” He paused. “It, uhh, works better, you know, if you’re good with math and stuff.” He coughed. “This one girl in college… I mean, she seemed to—”
“Okay, whatever, yeah.” Gunnar snorted. “Here, let me show you how it’s done. ‘Hey. I want to be the reason you look down at your phone and smile… and walk into a pole.’”
“Dear God, I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Peppy said, her voice actually rising in inflection for once. “Both of you are lying, lying liars who are dishonest, untruthful, mendacious, and deceitful. Neither of you has ever gotten laid using that crap. If you were abducted by a female kangarat in heat and you said shit like that to her, she would kick you out of her nest and mate with a locust instead.”
Gunnar puffed on his cigarette. Chris ran a hand through his hair.
“I mean,” Peppy went on, “not that I really care or anything.” Her voice was back to its usual zombified-Eeyore monotone now.
“Why don’t you tell us,” challenged Chris, “what you would consider to be a good pick-up line, then? Like, what would some guy have to say to you to get your attention?”
Gunnar vanished his cigarette. “This ought to be good…”
“Okay, then,” Peppy began. She tapped a finger on her lips, and her eyes were distant for a moment. “Something like… ‘You look like the kind of girl who likes to be choked. And even if I were to choke you to death, I wouldn’t stop… since by then you’d be past saying no.’”
Gunnar stared. Chris’ open mouth twitched strangely, but no sound came out of it.
“Umm,” Gunnar said, “even by your illustrious standards, ma’am, isn’t that a little…”
Private Peppy’s lips suddenly bunched together and the sides of her mouth shot upward. She turned her face down, snorting with laughter.
“Holy shit,” Chris exclaimed. “She’s laughing! That must have been some sort of, uhh, ‘joke,’ I think,” He was on the verge of cracking up himself.
Gunnar smiled. “Yeah, great. I’ll have to remember that one next time I pick up chicks from the mental hospital.” His cigarette reappeared in his hand.
Chris leaned back in his chair.
He’d been here a while now; they all had. He was getting a bit homesick. The family back in North Carolina kept sending him letters asking when he’d return, and yet, things were good. If even Peppy were capable of demonstrating something that resembled a sense of humor, things really, truly must be improving. And on this expedition, now less than an hour away, they might finally acquire one of the Goop Flowers. With one of those things in the lab, there might be a Nobel Prize in his future.
“I have a very positive feeling about this mission,” Chris said in a deliberately sweet, lisping voice. As he did so, he double-checked his semi-automatic pistol, the one he had inherited from the late Lieutenant Doctor Emma Kemp. All secure, and his shooting had improved of late.
“Yup,” Gunnar agreed. “Routine patrol, basically—as long as the FNGs don’t flip out and accidentally frag each other at the first sign of a death-vine or a kangarat. Seems like at least they’re—”
The radio on the nearby table screeched and crackled. Everyone froze and went silent.
“...Reporting…that…for fuck’s sake!” a voice half-screamed amidst the buzzing of static. “...immediate evac…one klick or fewer …edge of…oh, God!”
All three of them were immediately on their feet. The call died out just then, and in the silence, they all looked at each other; something unspoken passed among them. They all remembered very well that a small team had been sent in a few hours earlier…at dawn, and now there was a situation. A situation happening at an inconvenient time, when no one was specifically ready to deal with, even though someone had to.
Someone.
“I got the medkit.” Chris ran to grab the nearest one from the corner while Gunnar gathered up a couple of spare loaded rifles. Peppy was already out the door of their tent, looking for an appropriate vehicle. Chris and Gunnar weren’t far behind her.