by Michael Todd
Then a whole squadron of Chimeras dropped onto them.
Shrieking was everywhere as blue feathers wafted through the air and the deadly whistling of barbed tentacles descended upon the platoon. They must have hidden in the canopy of the trees, waiting for the humans to pass below, and they glided straight down on their makeshift wings. A few soldiers fled outward, spreading away from the JLTV at the center.
“Hold!” Wallace shouted amidst the chaos and blood. “Everyone stay together! Tight by the JLTV!”
The platoon’s “fighting retreat” having momentarily broken, the horde of kangarats and earthbound Chimeras advanced unhindered. Closer and closer they got.
“Oh, shit,” Chris gasped, firing up into the body of a Chimera that had nearly dropped onto his head. It screeched in pain and dropped bleeding to the ground a foot to his left instead. “Oh shit, oh shit…”
Beyond the dying creature, Chris saw the heavyset man who’d teased Santos trembling as he fell back against a tree. Or rather, against a thick, writhing vine wrapped around a tree. A shadow grew larger and darker above him.
“No!” Chris snapped. “Get away from there!”
The man froze for just an instant as he tried in his panic to grasp what Chris meant. Everything was happening too fast. Then the vine above him opened its mouth and chomped down on his head.
“Goddammit!” Chris aimed his pistol, preparing to mercy-kill the man, but as the vine dragged him upward, he heard the man’s neck break and saw his heavy body go limp. Then he and the carnivorous vine were gone.
“Turret! Fire on that group behind us!” Wallace said.
Someone in the JLTV mounted the turret and opened fire with its heavy machine gun, quickly destroying or dispersing most of the advancing horde as the soldiers finished off the Chimeras that had ambushed them from above.
Then the battle was done. Dozens of Zoo creatures lay dead, and the others had retreated. At least three people had been wounded, as far as Chris could see, one through the stomach. He might not make it.
“Why is the place so aggressive?” Chris asked himself. “Are we attracting more attention by bringing in such a loud force?” That could well be it, but he wondered if it might be something more. He thought of Kemp and hoped she was okay.
Wallace pushed them a short distance deeper into the jungle until they found a slight clearing where the whole unit could stop while keeping everyone else in sight.
“Halt,” he said. “We’ve got men down, it’s getting late, and we’re too far in to head back. Everyone, make camp. We’re riding out the night here.”
9
By now the ways of soldiers were starting to make sense to Chris, and something like setting up camp for the night was as good an illustration as anything else he could think of. They worked efficiently; the wounded were tended, weapons were reloaded, guards posted, tents sprang to serviceable life with surprising speed, and order was reasserted over the anarchy of the attack, all with minimal delay. The price of this efficiency was resentment. Chris was pretty sure that enlistees in the U.S. military were contractually obliged to grumble and complain about every single thing they had to do.
“Hey, Santos,” someone said.
“Now is not the time,” Santos growled. Chris saw her a mere ten feet away and decided he’d better move farther toward the edge of the camp, just to be safe.
“Aww, it’s okay,” the voice went on, “I was just going to compliment you on how good you are at clearing sticks off the ground so I can put up this tent. I mean, obviously, you were about to come over and do that anyway, right?”
“No,” Santos replied.
“Aww, okay, I understand. Your back probably hurts from bending over all the time anyway.”
“What!? Shut the fuck up!”
“Hey!” Wallace snapped. “What did I say about leaving Santos the hell alone, Jackson? And everyone else, for that matter. There’s a harassment protocol for that, and it will be implemented if need be.”
The owner of the voice shut up.
“About fucking time!” Santos snarled.
“And you,” said Wallace, “need to chill out. Don’t let them get to you. Dickheads like Jackson like to get reactions from people. The less you react, the less reason they have to provoke you.”
The woman glowered but fell silent and returned to her work.
Chris wandered over to Wallace and realized that the man was performing first aid on himself, or rather on his suit. His exoskeleton must have gotten damaged in the fight. A heavy blow, whether from a kangarat’s paw or a Chimera’s tentacle, had forced apart two of the components along his hip-plates and damaged the wiring.
“Need help?” Chris asked.
“Should be okay,” Wallace replied, “but it wouldn’t hurt if you were to hold the lower plate there while I redo the wiring. That leg hasn’t been responding as well since the bastard hit me.” He unspooled some extra wire from his pack and set to clipping off a short length of it.
Chris did as asked, holding the plate back to give Wallace’s large hands room to maneuver. “I’m sorry for questioning you in front of the troops,” Chris said, “but we can’t leave without finding Kemp. She has to be right around here somewhere, and finding her is part of our mission. Or at least finding evidence of where she is or what’s happened to her. We can’t…abandon her.”
“Orders are orders,” was all Wallace said by way of reply. “We come in, do as we’re told and then leave.”
Chris nodded, although he wasn’t sure if Wallace agreed with him. “I have two of the fruits,” he pointed out. “Six would be better, I’m guessing, but I can work with two. That just leaves Kemp.”
“Yeah,” said Wallace. “I should be good here for now. Why don’t you help inspect the perimeter of the camp? There are things you might notice that our newbies might not.”
“Yes, sir,” Chris returned. He stood and did as instructed.
As Chris started to make his rounds about the edge of the clearing, he noticed that something had changed subtly in the behavior of the troops. It was difficult to put a finger on exactly what it was. They had slowed down a bit, but less out of exhaustion, it seemed, than apathy or boredom. Half of them also kept snickering or giggling under their breath, even though only a quarter of them were actually talking to one another. What the hell were the others laughing at?
He passed by a man who’d been posted as a sentry. He was just sort of standing there, leaning against a tree and staring into space, his vacant gaze focused on one particular point where, as near as Chris could tell, there was nothing to look at. His mouth was partially twisted in a weird smile.
“You should—” Chris started to say, but then he broke off, chuckling to himself. He was going to finish with “pay attention,” but the man’s goofy expression had slain him. He suddenly felt relaxed as the humor of it wormed its way into his brain. The man almost looked drunk or stoned.
Beyond the inept sentry, Chris passed Santos. For some reason, he didn’t feel particularly terrified now by the prospect of being within arm’s reach of her. Then again, she didn’t look angry anymore.
“Heyyy,” she said, noticing him. Bizarrely, she was smiling.
“Hey there,” he said back.
“You know,” she went on, and her smile took on a sort of cat-like self-satisfaction that went far too well with her lovely eyes, “I actually used to like it when guys called me names.” Then she burst into giggles like a schoolgirl.
“Oh, you’re one of those,” Chris replied. He mentally shifted gears; the CPU of his brain ran the script for This Chick is Drunk, even though none of them had been drinking. “Alcohol goes in…here. Something else goes in—”
Santos cracked up, literally falling down laughing. As she did, she stretched out her foot and ran it up the inside of his lower leg. “Oh my God, you’re adorable!”
Chris stumbled away from her, now completely weirded out. Part of his brain was worried; the rational, intellectual
part. His body and his emotions, though, were having the opposite reaction. Looking around he saw soldiers tittering for no reason, soldiers humming softly to themselves, soldiers lying on their backs with hands folded on their stomachs, staring pleasantly at the darkening sky as if they had just finished a picnic.
This was not right, and yet Chris hadn’t felt this good since…
Right next to his face was a plant that stood out from the surrounding foliage. Although it was getting dark, he could tell that it was a deep purplish color. It looked somewhat like a large flower, but more like a fern. He hadn’t seen any such plant in the Zoo before. He bent closer to it and sniffed.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed as a wave of euphoria rushed through him. Inhaling right next to it had obviously been really stupid. So stupid, in fact, that he almost fell over, laughing at the stupidity of it. He turned and half-stumbled back toward where he’d last seen Wallace.
“Oh, man,” he said, between giggles, “the Zoo is drugging us now. Ha…that’s so, oh my God…that’s so fucked up!” He fell to his knees, overcome by the absurdity of it; the stupid-ass expressions on everyone’s faces, like cats on catnip or cows being cows. God, cows were dumb. Just thinking about it was funny as hell.
“Hey, Santos,” Jackson’s voice said.
“Coming!” Santos replied sweetly.
“Yeah, I bet you—pfffft, hahahaha…”
He hadn’t even been able to finish the joke! Chris rolled over on his back, his sides hurting from laughter, and he heard Santos cracking up as well. This was terrible. He wanted to fall gently into sleep and dream of amusing things, even though there was nothing amusing about this place or what might happen to them if they all passed out at once with no one guarding the perimeter.
Biting his tongue, Chris forced himself to think of Kemp disappearing into a tidal wave of locusts. Of the first time he’d glimpsed the Chimera, the terror of it. Of his parents back in North Carolina, worried sick about him. Of the unfortunate guy who’d been eaten by a goddamn vine only an hour or two ago. He gritted his teeth and finally struggled over to Wallace.
Wallace was sitting Indian-style on the ground, his exoskeleton repaired, a silly, good-natured grin looking strange on his angular tough-guy face.
“Wallace,” Chris began, and almost collapsed in another giggling fit, “there are these stupid ferns around the camp… Hahaha, oh, man…”
“Yeah?” Wallace said, looking at him and grinning dumbly.
“They’re getting us high as fucking kites. We need to get out of here, man. I mean, Santos is acting nice!” Then he fell over, heaving with levity.
“No shit.” Wallace chuckled. “I remember back home in Topeka this one time. My brother and me got some weed and made magic brownies. Hoo boy was that ever stupid! We even gave our dog, Ranger, one.”
“Holy crap, you guys were idiots!” Chris replied. His face was starting to hurt from laughing so much. “You didn’t even know that chocolate is poisonous to dogs!”
“I know, man, I fuckin’ know,” Wallace said, raising a hand to his mouth to keep from cracking up himself. “He ended up staring at the tv while we were watching the goddamn Food Network and trying to eat the roast beef an annoying chick was making, on the screen! Oh my God!” He toppled over on his side, mechanical legs kicking stupidly in wheel-like motions in the air.
Then Chris smelled brownies. Why, oh why had Wallace mentioned them? He loved brownies. His mom only made them once in a while since she didn’t have the best opinion of American food, but she was a very, very good baker when she put her mind to it. Hunger began to eclipse the overpowering sense of hilarity that had engulfed almost every corner of his brain, and he got to his knees and crawled toward the smell. He noticed that Wallace was barely moving now, and almost everyone else seemed to be asleep.
Chris was pretty drowsy himself, but brownies. They smelled like they’d been out of the oven for about five minutes—the hot, gooey chocolaty scent still irresistible, but fading slightly as they cooled enough to be ready to eat. Holy shit.
“I can stay awake a bit longer, Mom,” he said, trying not to cackle at his own idiocy since his mom obviously wasn’t here. “Just, you know, hold the fort there. And don’t feed them to the fucking dog.”
He crawled past Santos, who glanced at him dreamily and then her eyes closed, her head tilted back, and she began snoring. She had one hell of a loud, obnoxious snore.
“Ha-ha,” Chris tittered. “Typical.” He struggled to his feet and pressed onward, following his nose. It was necessary to have at least one brownie before bed. The rest could be saved for tomorrow.
When he had gone at least half a klick deeper into the jungle, which was now turning black with night’s fall, the smell seemed to grow fainter and then vanish, and things stopped seeming so goddamn funny. And he realized that he had wandered alone into uncharted territory, with the entire rest of his unit blitzed out of their minds or passed out.
He had no idea where he was or why he was here.
“Uh, guys?” he called uncertainly. Of course, there was no one around—he knew that. “Chris,” he said instead, “what the hell are you doing?” He trembled and felt cold. Withdrawal symptoms? Were his reflexes up to par? Had his reasoning been damaged? What the hell was that stuff?
The jungle breathed. It was too dark to see where the breath was coming from. It might have been the faint respiration one always heard in this place, or it might have been whatever new monstrosity the Zoo had concocted, about to pull his spine out of his back and lick out the contents of his ribcage like the interior of a chocolate egg.
“Oh, hell!”
He had mostly moved in a straight line…or a curved line, or a wavy line. He’d been too high to notice. Still, if he turned 180 degrees around and wandered back the way he’d come…
He started to turn. He’d only rotated about forty-five degrees, however, when his eyes rolled over an open, weedy gap in the trees that looked like a shallow overgrown ravine, revealed by faint starlight and moonlight. Standing in the midst of all the plant life, he saw her.
10
“Kemp?” he called. It can’t be.
The figure before him was definitely a woman and looked familiar. The weeds and creepers rising from this cleft in the earth rose to her thighs. She was standing, doing nothing for now, with her arms spread slightly to either side, her hands open and palms facing toward Chris. She appeared to be naked, and her hair, a bit longer than shoulder-length, was blowing loose in the gentle breeze that funneled through this tiny narrow valley.
“Is it… Is it actually you?” he asked. He might be tripping. He had no way of knowing if he was in command of his senses yet. The hallucinogenic vapors secreted by that weird purple fern seemed to have worn off, but this could simply be the next phase of the intoxication process. Who the hell knew what sorts of side-effects an alien jungle plant might have?
“Nah,” he said, trying to get a grip, although he felt a serene sort of awe now rather than fear. “Not you. You’re not actually there.” He couldn’t see her face anyway. The woman’s body, still unmoving, looked like Kemp’s—about her height and build, and the hair looked similar—but he could not identify the individual. “I’m going back to camp to pass out. Yeah…”
“Chris,” a female voice said.
Chris froze in place. His stomach clenched and chills ran up and down his spine, yet he did not feel afraid. More excited than anything. He took a tentative step toward her. “Lieutenant Doctor Emma Kemp?” he suggested. “Supposedly you’re still alive…”
“Yes, Chris,” the voice replied. The woman in the weeds took a step forward herself, and in the shadows, Chris could faintly see her mouth move. The voice was definitely coming from the woman; neither she nor it was in his head. “It’s so good to see you again. I’ve missed you. I really have.”
A tingling feeling rose in him, and an undertow of emotion. It was her, and yet somehow it wasn’t, exactly. So strange… The voice was
Kemp’s, but something about it was off. There seemed to be a slight echo or reverb to it, as though he were hearing the sound of wind rustling through leaves and branches that rose and fell in time with her voice as though the human voice and that of the jungle spoke in unison.
And she was being so…sweet. Emma Kemp was a woman whom Chris had learned, in the brief period he’d known her, to respect and even care for, but she hadn’t been “sweet.” Not for nothing had Erik Wallace been her right-hand man; both of them were cut from much the same cloth. Old-fashioned white Middle-Americans—stoic, pragmatic, sparing in their praise of others and harsh in their criticism of themselves.
If she had changed, though, he was pretty sure he liked it.
“I… I’m confused,” he replied. Nevertheless, he took another step closer to her. He had to see her more clearly; he had to know what had happened. He’d thought about her every day since she had seemingly thrown away her life to save his and Wallace’s. “How are you still alive?” he asked. “What…what the hell happened after you ran away from us? How have you survived in this place for three whole months?”
Kemp took another step toward him, her arms still outspread, as though she were running to embrace him in very slow motion. “You’ve got this place all wrong,” she said. “We all do. In our ignorance and fear, we saw it as something strange and hostile from outside. We assumed it came here to hurt us.”
As she spoke these words, she took another step, and Chris could see a little more of her. The shape of the chin and nose were starting to come into focus. It was her; it truly was. She was so beautiful. She had been somewhere in her thirties as far as Chris knew, but her body was as shapely and youthful-looking as a college girl’s, and what little he could see of her face was much complimented by the faint moonlight. And of course, she’d let her hair down.