by Michael Todd
Wallace appeared next to them now, looking down. “What’s going on?”
Chris examined the weed, then broke off a small portion of it. It writhed briefly in his hand like an insect, and he put it in a plastic bag, which he stuffed into his jacket.
“Well, I’ll need to do a proper test to answer that question in any detail,” he began, “but it looks like this weed has enough sentience and fast-grow capabilities to paralyze our vehicles. In fact, that might be its primary function—some kind of new defense the Zoo has developed. They’ve been sending a lot of vehicles up and down this trail lately, haven’t they? The Zoo learns fast. It’s already weaponized other kinds of plant life against us in different ways, after all.”
“I see.” Wallace turned back toward the APC. “Any luck?”
“No, sir,” the driver replied. “Engine’s dead.”
The guys who’d been in the JLTV, meanwhile, had popped the hood and were now examining things from the other direction. “Jesus,” said the one who’d scanned the underside a moment ago. “That plant is everywhere in here. It looks like it’s still moving around, even. It’s gonna take a while to clean all this shit out and get the engine running again, and that’s if it hasn’t been damaged to the point where we’d need a bunch of replacement parts.”
Chris looked at Wallace. A mixture of anger and worry smoldered in the man’s hazel eyes, but otherwise, his face was expressionless. He seemed to think for a moment. “We can’t afford to spend that kind of time,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Leave that vehicle and the APC. Bring any necessary supplies and put them in the other JLTV. We continue on foot.”
“Yes, sir,” the troops responded.
At least the broken-down vehicles would act as handy landmarks on their way back, Chris thought. He just hoped that Wallace knew what he was doing.
7
The creatures of the Zoo had ceased to bother them…for now, at least. They had massacred a large portion of the welcoming committee in this section of the place, but there were undoubtedly more creatures waiting. Far, far more. And being down to only one JLTV now, they were more vulnerable to attack. They had less cover and firepower.
Chris had obeyed Wallace’s polite suggestion to return to the center of the formation. They were now coming into the part of the Zoo that was thick with the big squirming man-eating vines.
“Don’t step on those,” Chris said to the troops nearby, pointing out green coils on the ground. “And keep your eyes peeled. Do not walk directly underneath the huge ones, either—the ones that are moving in place. Treat them like a giant carnivorous snake that just happens to be a member of the plant kingdom rather than the animal, because that’s what they are.”
“Man, that’s fantastic,” a slightly chunky but muscular guy replied. Judging by the voice, he was probably the one who had teased Santos after Chris’ epic failure at flirting with her. “This place is just great. I wish we could take pics to donate to the tourist brochure when we get back. I can think of sooo many people who should take a vacation here—just get drunk and pass out in the shade. Directly on one of those vines, maybe.”
“Santos could sit on one of those fast-growing weeds,” someone else said.
“Motherfucker!” Santos bellowed. Her voice was getting a bit hoarse. “Come over here and say that to my face!”
“Hey!” Wallace snapped. “Easy. Everyone, leave Santos alone. No need for that shit. And Santos, there will be no friendly fire of any sort. We’re all on the same team, and we have a job to do.”
Chris had to nod in agreement with that. Between keeping an eye out for whatever the Zoo might throw at them next and ruminating on what they could expect when they finally found Kemp, listening to people’s bullshit was more than a little distracting. And speaking of Kemp…
He worked his way forward, weaving through the soldiers, who looked at him with dull disregard, coming around the JLTV, and ending up almost beside but slightly behind their commander. He had only asked Chris to go back to the center, after all. He’d even said please. Wasn’t really an order.
“Hey, Wallace,” he said. The acting lieutenant looked at him. “And yes, I know, I’m supposed to be in the center. Sorry. I need to talk to you, though, and I figure I’m as safe next to you as anywhere else. Plus, we’ve seen no sign of our furry or feathered-and-scaled friends coming back to say hi lately.”
Wallace sighed. “All right, Chris, just fall back the instant anything happens or do as I say instantly if I give an order, okay?” He almost smiled for a brief moment. “What do you need to talk about?”
Chris gathered his thoughts for a moment as he tried to keep pace alongside Wallace. The man’s height, combined with the unfaltering pace of his humming cyborg legs, made it a bit difficult.
“It has to do with Kemp,” Chris began. “Ever since yesterday when Dr. Stroganov revealed who he was raving away about, I’ve been trying to think of what might have happened to her. Where she’s been, how she’s managed to survive all this time, and what sort of state she’ll be in when we find her. We have plenty of medical supplies, right? I mean, pardon me for mentioning something like this, but maybe she also lost the use of her legs and has been living in a hole in the ground eating worms and grubs or something. God, I hope not.”
He blinked then and shook his head to clear it of the fog of stupidity. This was what happened when he engaged in “thinking out loud,” as a professor of his had once put it. “No, no, never mind,” he went on. “If she was hiding in a hole, the team yesterday morning wouldn’t have just stumbled on her. At least, I don’t think so. Shit. But if she is up and walking around in this goddamn place with all these things trying to kill her, what kind of state is her mind going to be in?” He felt the skin between his shoulders crawling.
Wallace frowned slightly. His demeanor was still distant and aloof. “It’s probably best not to think about stuff like that,” he said. “We’ll find what we find. We figure out where she is, take the immediate facts into consideration, and then deal with the situation as ordered. That’s all.” He lapsed back into silence.
Chris did not respond right away. Wallace clearly didn’t want to talk about this. Probably just his usual schtick of avoiding his emotions so they didn’t get in the way of the mission, Chris thought, but he couldn’t quite shake the notion that there was something Wallace wasn’t telling him.
“The fruit, though,” Chris went on, not wanting the uncomfortable silence to stretch on any longer than it had to. “Have you been briefed about it?”
“Slightly,” Wallace replied.
“It’s extremely toxic. It even kills Zoo plants. They’re thinking we might be able to synthesize its venom or juice or whatever and use it to kill off enough of the Zoo to turn it back into a proper experiment, instead of…this.” He waved his hand vaguely around. “It’s almost like the opposite of what they are discovering about the Goop Plants, which have incredible healing properties. The blue Goop gives life, and the red fruit’s golden juice takes it away. I mean, when we find Kemp, she’s probably going to be really excited about all this… She’ll know that everything she went through wasn’t in vain.”
Again Wallace did not respond. He did not even indicate he’d heard what Chris said.
“Sorry,” Chris continued, “you probably don’t want to, uh, remember. After she sacrificed herse—”
“I was there, so yeah,” Wallace snapped. “And like I said, it’s probably best not to think about it much. Or talk about it.”
“Sorry,” Chris said again. He was starting to feel like an eight-year-old intruding on his twelve-year-old brother’s sleepover. It would probably be best to just fall back to the center, but he wanted some indication that his friend Erik Wallace was still there; that it wasn’t just the machine he was talking to. In fact…
“You don’t seem to be having any problems walking in that thing,” Chris stated. “I mean, we already know you can fight in it, but walking is the hard par
t.”
Now Wallace smiled just a little. Right before the hunt for the mother Chimera, Wallace, who was then barely used to the exoskeleton, had successfully knocked Chris on his ass by charging into him. The best defense was a good offense, he’d said.
“Yes,” Wallace replied, “it took a while, but it’s already second nature, more or less. My physical therapist kept saying that the essence of it was to trust the machine to do what you wanted, which takes practice. We’re used to feeling like we’re in control of our bodies; our brain or consciousness or whatever controls everything directly. Now it’s more like my brain tells half my body what to do, and the exoskeleton is in charge of making it do that.” He shrugged. “Chain of command.”
“Interesting,” Chris remarked. “Can you, like, jump or climb or anything like that?”
Wallace turned his head and looked at Chris with a subtle expression of amused surprise. “Yes, I can,” he said. “About a week and a half ago they had me doing exercises outside at night on the sand and on parts of the wall. Let’s just say that even though it requires a lot of…strain, I can do things beyond what I used to be capable of.”
“That’s awesome!” Chris said, again feeling like a kid, but now in a good way. He momentarily imagined Wallace doing superhero-type stuff, bouncing off walls and hitting the ground in perfect three-point landings. Pulling off insane, death-defying Jackie Chan stunts and pounding the shit out of the ground, trees, and buildings while he was at it.
Wallace frowned again, though. “There are other things I still can’t quite do as well, however. I’m better at the gross motor stuff but not as good at the small stuff if that makes sense.”
“It does. Like you can jump higher, run faster, and kick harder, but you’d probably have more trouble with that thing the military does in boot camp where they make you guys tap dance through all those tires.”
“Something like that,” Wallace replied. “They’re working on a newer model, supposedly; this one is still in beta testing. The new one allows for better fine motor coordination and has a few other new features. For now… I mean, the Army trains us to be like an all-purpose rifle that can be used for sniping or relatively precise burst fire or full-auto spray. In this thing,” his gesture encompassed the exoskeleton, “I’m more like artillery.”
“Sir!” one of the guys up front interjected. He had gone slightly ahead of the line and poked his head off to the side, looking into what appeared to be a dense cluster of shadowed trees beyond a curtain of vines.
“Return to the safety of the front line, Corporal,” Wallace said. “Now, what is it?”
“Well, sir,” the man reported, “I think we found it.”
8
If indeed the Zoo was, as some people had suggested, the evil twin of the Garden of Eden, then it was only fitting that there would be not a single tree bearing the Forbidden Fruit but a whole goddamn orchard’s worth of them.
The trees that bore the bright crimson buds were indeed much like apple trees, but more beautiful. Their bark was a deep, perfect brown, the color of chocolate or coffee with just a bit of cream. They were not so much gnarled, as regular apple trees often were, but curled. Their leaves were heart-shaped and of a deep emerald hue. Flowers bloomed at the ends of their branches, their petals pale jade green. Within the flowers were the fruits: intensely, almost hypnotically red. Much like the color of blood but somehow both brighter and softer; more pleasant, not unlike cherry-flavored candy or cupcakes with Valentine’s Day frosting.
Everyone stood at the edge of the grove, gaping in silent awe. The sound of breathing that generally underlaid the other sounds of Zoo was fainter here, but looking at the gorgeous fruits, it almost seemed there should be heartbeats to accompany it. And the smell…faint but intensifying, and tantalizingly delicious.
“Everyone, stay where you are,” Chris ordered. “These things are dangerous.” He took a few steps ahead into the grove, partly to examine the fruit more closely, but mostly because his mind had already raced to Kemp. She had to be somewhere nearby.
Chris was no tracker, but he could not see any obvious signs of disturbance in the grove; nothing that clearly indicated a person had been through recently. Arthur Pike, the USMC veteran and big-game hunter who had led the expedition to find the Chimera, might have been able to detect something subtle, but he had gone home two months ago.
What Chris did notice was the way the fruit kept drawing his eye. And his nose. And his brain. Just being near them in the state of perfect ripeness in which most of them now were was like being at a buffet after not eating for two full days. He plucked two and put them in his satchel.
“Oh, God,” someone burst out behind him, “Help! Medic!”
Chris spun around. Four soldiers were clustered around a fifth, who sprawled on the ground at the base of one of the trees. He ran back toward them. Beyond the group, he could see (and hear) Wallace stomping toward them from the opposite direction. He must have gone back to check the security of the platoon’s rear before authorizing them to enter the grove.
The guy on the ground was clearly in deep shit. Coming closer, Chris recognized him as Private Simon, the extremely nervous rookie who’d narrowly escaped beheading by a kangarat. The young man was foaming from the mouth, his eyes wide yet twitching, his whole body convulsing in a way that suggested not so much unrestrained motion as excessive stiffness or tightness.
“I think he’s having a seizure!” someone said. “Is he fuckin’ epileptic or something?”
“Move aside!” Wallace ordered. The men on the far side of Simon parted to make way for their commander, as well as a medic who hurried ahead of him.
Chris knelt beside Simon just as the man made a final, rattling gargle sound and grew still, the tension in his body now into a permanent state. His bulging eyes went dull and glassy.
“Goddammit!” Wallace exclaimed, his voice thick with both fury and pain at seeing the obviously dead man. The medic nevertheless knelt to check the man’s vital signs.
Chris looked around. Lying on the ground next to Simon’s clenched hand was a piece of red fruit with a big bite taken out of it. It smelled delicious. He took it in his hand and held it up. “Jesus,” he exclaimed, his gut clenching, “I told everyone to stay away from the fruit!”
“All right, everyone stand up and get back,” barked Wallace, not messing around at this point. Everyone sprang into a vertical position and started backing away from the deadly orchard, even as the medic dragged the body toward their remaining JLTV. “Form a perimeter around this grove—semicircle, two deep—and stay ten feet away from those trees. No one is to take even one step closer to them unless I say so, and no one is to so much as touch that goddamn fruit.”
Everyone nodded, shaken. They hurried to obey, some muttering under their breath or conversing in low voices about what had just happened.
Wallace turned to Chris. “Dr. Lin,” he said, “carefully gather the bare minimum of those things you need for a proper sample and secure them in a plastic bag in the vehicle. Do it quickly. We are getting the hell out of here, pronto.”
“But this was where Kemp was sighted!” Chris protested.
“She’s not here now,” Wallace snapped. “And we are not hanging out near those things if they have that kind of effect.”
“She might return at night or something,” Chris went on. “We should at least post someone to keep watch for her.”
“Negative,” Wallace returned. “Do not question my orders, Chris. And right now I am ordering you to—”
Gunfire broke out. Chris spun, already drawing his pistol, and saw flashes from the rough path behind where Wallace stood and brown shapes dashing by. The Zoo had known that they were distracted—he was somehow sure of that—and had chosen this particular moment to attack.
To Chris’ shock, Wallace took two quick, powerful steps back toward the path and launched himself forward and up, crashing through branches and vines to land with a thud on the path right nex
t to the JLTV. The machinery of his armor whirred louder than ever. He’d cleared almost twenty feet in a single jump.
“Everyone to the JLTV!” Wallace yelled.
Chris and the other troops near the grove rushed to obey, blood pounding in their heads as fear and adrenaline spread through their bodies and minds. From the grove, Chris saw blues flashing amidst the red fruit. Another posse of Chimeras was coming for them, probably trying to hit them in a pincer movement with kangarats coming from the other direction.
“Chimeras coming from back that way,” Chris ground out as he fell in beside Wallace and the rear guard. The whole platoon was now clustering around the JLTV. Scanning the scene, Chris saw that the kangarats he’d glimpsed had blitzed by without doing much damage, but more were gathering in the trees on the other side of the path. Most of them—there had to be eight or ten—were grouping behind them. Those plus the Chimeras meant that their attackers would be chasing them deeper into the jungle.
“We press on. Fight and run,” Wallace said between bursts of fire from his men. “Leave the path and bear southwest.” The trail ended soon anyway, Chris was pretty sure.
Wallace directed them to perform a maneuver where most of the column moved slowly southwest while about eight soldiers at the rear laid down a couple quick bursts of suppressing fire, then ran to rejoin the main column and reload as another seven or eight rotated back to replace them. It seemed to work at first; they made progress even though they left the rough path for the denser jungle and uneven ground beyond, and the shrieking, drooling horde of creatures behind them was held at bay.
Chris could feel the fear in the air. He wasn’t exactly calm, but several of the rookies were on the verge of panic. Strange that he should feel less scared than they, despite his being a civilian. He was a veteran of the Zoo, though.
Their commander kept his cool, and Chris thanked God for that. Wallace, although agitated by the obvious danger of their predicament and the strain of his responsibility for the whole group, was unflappable, and they’d all seen his superhuman jump. And how straight his shooting was.