Apocalypse Paused Boxed Set One (Books 1-4): (Fight For Life And Death, Get Rich Or Die Trying, Big Assed Global Kegger, Ambassadors and Scorpions) (Apocalypse Paused Boxed Sets )

by Michael Todd

“If what Hall has suggested is true,” Wallace said, stopping and turning to face the scientist now that the two of them had reached the edge of the camp, “that would mean she is a traitor to the United States of America and the entire human species.”

  “This…this is crazy, Wallace,” Chris replied, shaking his head. His mind had put up its defenses again; he could not easily accept what Wallace was suggesting about Kemp. “Even by the standards of what we’ve already seen from the Zoo, the notion that she could have been…assimilated into it like that is pretty hard to swallow. And even if it were somehow possible, why would she turn against us?”

  They worked their way through a bit more vegetation and soon found themselves amidst the sprawled, sleeping bodies of the rest of their unit. Chris sniffed the air. The fumes from the Happy Fern of the Exalted Sweet Leaf seemed to have dissipated, having done its duty of incapacitating everyone but him and Wallace. He was just glad that none of the Zoo’s creatures had attacked the helpless troops while they had been gone.

  “You heard what she said back there, Chris,” Wallace responded a moment later in a low voice. “Right before her little pet attacked us. ‘Your time is at an end’ and ‘they don’t like it when I’m threatened’—something like that. Pretty ominous shit. She’s changed, and whether we like it or not, my orders are to capture her and bring her in for questioning.” He narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Or, if that isn’t possible, terminate her.”

  Chris closed his eyes and shook his head. He understood why Hall would have included that particular parameter in the mission, and as the anger and guilt he felt right now made it clear why Hall hadn’t bothered to mention this to Chris. “Orders are orders,” he muttered.

  13

  Chris awoke, groaning, and realized almost immediately that he wasn’t the only one. A chorus of groans, almost a symphony of low, unpleasant sounds of humans returning to consciousness with great reluctance. It reminded him of a party he’d been to when he was about twenty. Some guy he knew had allowed forty or fifty people to get drunk in a one-acre thicket on his family farm’s property, and everyone had passed out where they lay, barely able to remember what had happened but nevertheless regretting it (whatever it was). At least in the present case, no one seemed to have puked on the person lying next to them.

  “Everyone, up,” Wallace’s voice announced. “On the double. We’re on a mission here.” He had gotten hold of some portable device or another and was using it to play a trumpet fanfare at max volume. Chris forced himself into a sitting position and, rubbing his eyes and temples, wondered if the headpiece of Wallace’s cyborg-suit was equipped with a speaker.

  “Yes, Dad,” Chris mumbled as he climbed to his feet. The Zoo’s natural laughing gas was a hell of a drug. And he’d slept less than the others since they had all passed out before Chris (and Wallace) had encountered Kemp.

  As he steadied himself, stretched, and tried to mentally prepare for whatever the day was about to throw at him, Chris reflected on what he’d seen and heard last night. Had it really happened? Kemp had seemed like something out of a dream—or a nightmare. He couldn’t quite shake the sense that it might still have been some hallucination induced by that damn fern.

  “What the hell were we smoking last night?” someone asked.

  Chris half-expected to hear Jackson make a comment about knowing what Santos had been smoking, but fortunately, he either hadn’t thought of it or had decided not to do so. Perhaps the man was wising up.

  “The ferns around this glade,” Wallace started to say, “apparently released a fume that sedated us and made us act like idiots, which is all the more reason to get up and get the hell out of this immediate area. Unless you’re one of the people who’s been wounded, you have no excuse not to perform at full functionality. That includes me. We will be ready to move out in five minutes.”

  “Yes, sir,” the troops returned weakly.

  “Did we bring coffee?” Chris asked. “Anyone?” Everybody ignored him, and he sighed. He wanted to compare Wallace’s memory of what had happened last night to his, so he wandered over to where the acting lieutenant was making a radio call back to the base via his headset.

  “Again, I have two people seriously wounded,” Wallace was saying. “One’s lost an arm, and the other has a stomach wound. Both in stable condition for now, but unable to fight. Yes. Yes. What? Listen, we’re down one vehicle and don’t have room for… Yes. Yes, sir. Over and out.” Upon finishing the call, he grimaced in a way that suggested he was gritting his teeth.

  “They don’t want to waste gas?” Chris asked.

  “They won’t give us an airlift for the wounded troops because they’re afraid of damaging the Zoo, or the Zoo deploying some defense that could crash the aircraft, even though they know that the locusts haven’t been sighted in weeks. Instead, they’re sending in another JLTV, even though I also warned them that one vehicle could get swarmed by Chimeras very easily.”

  Chris nodded. His, Gunnar’s, and Peppy’s hasty rescue of Stroganov & Co. hadn’t been a danger-free operation.

  “Listen,” Chris ventured, “did you… Do you remember last night the same way I do? Because I almost don’t believe it happened, honestly. That fern was messing with us, after all.”

  “It happened,” replied Wallace. “I’m certain of it. Besides, my headset recorded the audio.”

  “Oh,” Chris replied, a bit surprised by that. It fit, however, with Hall’s Orwellian new idea of linking all the computers at the base. “Ugh, you probably even picked up the noises made by that cat thing or land shark or whatever it was.” He thought for a minute. “Bruce,” he said then, snapping his fingers. “That was what they called the shark in Jaws. The cast and crew—on set, that was its nickname. Bruce.”

  “It works, but it’s not as scary as ‘locust’ or ‘Chimera,’” Wallace said. The acting lieutenant turned away from him. “All right, we’re moving out as far as the path, then we wait for the rescue vehicle.”

  And so they did. The men and women under Wallace again appeared to resent and complain about everything, but they got the job done. The entire unit was soon battle-ready and positioned back on the trail (which, Chris realized, was almost at its end; it tapered off near the center of the Zoo). The two soldiers who’d been severely injured were on mobile stretchers with a ring of troops around them, and everyone else surrounded around the JLTV. The rescue vehicle arrived about ten minutes later.

  “Any attacks on your way in?” Wallace asked although none of them had heard gunfire.

  One of the men who leaped out of the JLTV was Corporal Glassner, a lanky, friendly guy who had been the team medic during the Chimera hunt two months ago. “Hi, Chris,” he said. Chris waved back, and he turned to Wallace. “No, quiet so far. You guys must have killed or scared off a lot of the resistance.” He and two other men loaded the patients on their stretchers into the vehicle.

  “Be careful, my friends,” Glassner said.

  “We will, Corporal,” Wallace returned. “You too.” The JLTV took off. No gunshots on its way out, either.

  Unburdened, the remainder of the platoon set off and soon reached the place where the trail disintegrated into a dense mass of slimy green tree trunks, labyrinthine nets of vines, swaying weeds, strange flowers (no Goop plants, though), and fallen branches.

  “Do we even know where we’re going?” Chris asked.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Jackson’s voice said from somewhere behind him. “We’ll just wander around until we reach one of those ‘You Are Here’ signs.”

  “Shut up, Jackson,” Wallace said in a mild, bored tone. “And yes, we have rough coordinates of where we expect Kemp is hiding.”

  Suddenly Chris was angry again. No one had told him that, either. “Where did you get these coordinates? Hall again?”

  “Affirmative,” replied Wallace. “And don’t ask me how or where he got them. My guess is analysis of some of the aerial photos they’ve been taking, but I do not kno
w.”

  “I handled most of those photos personally while helping map the Zoo and chart its growth,” Chris said, “and I never saw a familiar-looking naked woman in any of them. Can we trust him?”

  “Trust,” Wallace shot back, his tone harsh again, “is not part of the equation. Hall is our commander now, and we are doing as instructed. That is all.”

  Chris knew better than to push this particular issue, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the way Wallace had pointed his gun at Kemp last night…or his admission that he was to terminate her if necessary. As they bore southwest, picking their way through narrow gaps in the jungle, Chris opted to try something else.

  “Listen, I know we have to complete the mission,” he began, “but can you really kill her? She sacrificed herself to save us.”

  There was a momentary break in the smoothness of Wallace’s mechanical stride as though his will had faltered, and he fell behind a pace before resuming. “The only reason,” Wallace said in a low voice, “we were in danger was because Kemp lied to us. She had no authority to conduct that mission.”

  True. “But her reasons for doing so—” Chris began.

  Wallace cut him off. “And she wasn’t exactly a damsel in distress when we saw her last night. That thing she summoned damn near killed us both.”

  The nearby troops were listening, Chris could tell. They knew something weird had happened after they’d all passed out, but Wallace hadn’t given them the specifics. Chris just hoped they’d had more briefing than he had.

  “Maybe she just happened to befriend that particular creature,” Chris suggested. “I mean, she obviously got hurt when she diverted all those locusts after her. She needs help. Weeks and weeks alone in this place might have convinced her that somehow she’s the Zoo’s ‘chosen one’ or some crap simply because it hasn’t killed her yet. And furthermore,” he raised his voice a bit, “you were the one who had your gun pointed at her from the get-go. I mean, that’s going to make her defensive, isn’t it? What might have happened if you’d tried just talking to her first? She knows you.”

  Wallace sighed, and Chris could tell he’d “won,” insofar as he’d gotten his point across. “Chris,” the man began, “I miss her too, and I regret what happened as much as you do. Capturing her alive is the preferred outcome, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that’s what we do. But I will complete the mission and obey my orders, no matter what. And we’re done arguing about it.”

  He picked up speed and moved closer toward the front of the formation, his exoskeleton whirring louder with the increased effort and his broad back advertising that he meant it. There would be no further discussion.

  Chris hung his head. At least Wallace had said he’d try to avoid killing her, but if she was still in the same deranged state she’d been last night, she might not be able to listen to reason. And if Wallace decided that meant they had to move on to Option B…

  Quietly, to himself, Chris said, “I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know.”

  14

  “What the hell is this?” Jackson’s voice asked. “A mini-golf course?”

  It was certainly green, whatever it was. Greener than the surrounding jungle, that was. They stopped at the edge of it, and Chris walked up and examined it. The ground dropped a few feet, and then there was a flat expanse of bright chartreuse. It actually did look a bit like AstroTurf or some sort of dense foam.

  “It’s probably a pond,” Chris said.

  “We’re in the fuckin’ desert!” someone replied. “I mean, trees are one thing, but standing water?”

  “There’s a river on the other side,” Chris said casually and coughed. “I got to wade through it.” Him and Kemp. Kemp had lost her balance and was almost swept away by the current. She might have drowned if Chris hadn’t caught the rope attached to her just in time.

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, he’s right, it’s a pond covered with serious pond scum. Someone throw a pebble at it.”

  “Nah, just throw Jackson in.”

  “Quiet,” Wallace snapped. “Chris, do you agree that it’s just a pond covered with slime? It does almost look solid. I’d poke it, but for all we know there might be giant piranhas in there.”

  “I can’t think of what the hell else it might be,” Chris replied. “Let’s just go around.”

  “Agreed.” Wallace turned to the others. “That way. Single file. Do not fall into the pond.”

  They obeyed. Unfortunately, detouring around the bright green circle took them up a ridge that was heavily overgrown with big, warped-looking roots, and large and probably carnivorous vines were hanging nearby. Chris pointed them out, and Wallace warned everyone to steer clear of them and keep an eye on them.

  They passed through the area without incident. Chris now was pretty sure he’d been here before. They were somewhere due west of the jungle’s exact center, not far from where he, Wallace, and Kemp had bolted from the old base—the heart of the Zoo—only to be hopelessly swarmed by locusts near a grove of Goop flowers.

  Chris still needed a sample of that particular plant, but deviating now to look for the grove would have been too dangerous. Besides, it was where Kemp had opted to make the ultimate sacrifice—or so it had seemed.

  Onward through the unnatural jungle they went for perhaps another hour, or maybe a bit less. Again Chris was pretty sure he’d seen this area. They pushed, cut, and trampled their way through a particularly overgrown patch of jungle and emerged into a relatively clear and open area, and the fleeting impressions of familiarity Chris had had came crashing back home.

  The Chimera’s nest. He couldn’t have forgotten it if he’d tried. This was where the mother had dragged all those pieces of building-material, scrap, and random equipment she’d stolen from Wall 01 during her reign of terror. She had piled them up and around a central area to create something very like a giant bird’s nest, and there she had reared her baby. Her prototype, really. Dozens more of the things had spawned in the meantime.

  It was also where the crew of bounty hunters had dragged Chris, literally using him as bait in their efforts to capture the creature before Pike’s team could, and where their sadistic leader, Micky, had beaten him and left him to be killed by underlings. Pike had rescued him just in time. He had unpleasant memories of this place.

  And yet it had changed. A lot.

  “Dear Lord,” someone behind Chris gasped. “It looks like a frickin’...palace or something.”

  It was true; the Zoo had converted a simple nest made of spare parts into something both living and grandiose.

  Plants and trees—new and unique ones, perhaps created for this very purpose—had grown up from the surrounding field to envelope the nest. What the mother Chimera had built was simply a foundation. Hard, thorny vines had grown around its sides, providing defense. A curiously bent tree trunk led into the center of the nest like a staircase. Other trees had grown up from within it or beneath it like great columns, and tapestries of leaves and ivy hung from its towering heights. Huge red and blue flower petals, like those of the Goop plants but much larger, were strategically placed as decorations.

  Chris remembered to close his jaw. This was, he supposed, an abode fit for the Queen of the Jungle, and suddenly his spine went cold. Last night…Kemp’s greenish skin and seemingly double-tracked ethereal voice. He’d been thinking it was just a trick of perception. What was it she had said? Something about how she considered the place hers now. This place, this nest-palace thing, almost looked like it had been designed by a human being. Hell, it had a woman’s touch, even. Maybe, just maybe—

  “Form a perimeter!” Wallace ordered, “one hundred and fifty yards back from the edge of that structure, as tight as possible.” The men and women of the platoon hastened to obey, their discipline very evident as they spread out to either side, quickly encircling the botanical castle. They stood, jaws set grimly but eyes wide with wonder. Their rifles and automatic shotguns were held at the ready. About ha
lf of them also had grenades. The only ones who hadn’t joined the perimeter, Chris saw, were the half-dozen proton troopers.

  It came back to him just then—something he’d read six months or maybe a year ago before he’d been called in on the Zoo project. It had been a short article, and vague; little more than a blurb in the science & tech news. Rumors that the military was developing some badass new weapon, a kind of plasma-flamethrower that could incinerate virtually anything destructible more quickly and efficiently than napalm. He recalled thinking that such a weapon would have been terrifying even next to big guns and explosives. At least if deployed against living things, it would not cause as slow and painful a death as a traditional flamethrower. Nevertheless, he shuddered.

  “Position the JLTV two hundred yards back from the entrance,” Wallace said to the driver of their vehicle. “Keep the machine gun trained on whatever might emerge. In the event of a major attack, return to our entry point to this clearing.”

  “Yes, sir,” the driver replied, and the JLTV rumbled over the bumpy grass-covered earth to take its place as directed.

  The former Chimera’s nest resembled a castle, and Wallace’s platoon looked ready for a goddamn siege. The thought of it set off something close to panic in Chris’ mind and gut. Why couldn’t they have tried something less…belligerent? If Kemp really was in this place, how would she, in her current state, react to being completely surrounded by heavily-armed troops?

  “It is highly likely,” Wallace said to the regular troops nearest him as well as the plasma squad, “that our target is aware of our presence and can see and hear everything we’re doing. This is perfectly acceptable for our purposes. I want everyone to be aware of anything that might come at us from behind, but for the moment, we have the advantage. We will attempt to negotiate first, and it’s always better to negotiate from a position of strength.”

  Chris overheard this, of course, and wondered if it might have been partially directed at him. He stomped over to Wallace’s side.