by Michael Todd
Chris examined his surroundings again. The corpse pile continued to be digested by the green pit. He remembered referring to the old base, which was a bit north of here, as the “heart” of the Zoo, and he supposed that this was its stomach. And as the Zoo ate, its vines seemed to grow thicker and greener… and flowers bloomed along them, and new leaves started to bud out. Tiny saplings appeared out of patches of earth between the vines that covered the floor, where they could catch the rays of sunlight that fell from the palace’s “windows,” growing with astonishing speed as if in a time-lapse video.
“You see?” Kemp said. “Isn’t it beautiful?” A new branch grew from the trunk of the throne-tree and curled toward her. Chris recognized it as one of the same sorts of trees that had born the Forbidden Fruit. Its new branch spawned sub-branches, which blossomed first with pale green flowers and then with orbs of brightest, most appetizing crimson. Kemp reached over and plucked one of the fruits, and with a gentle underhand motion, she tossed it to him.
Chris caught it. “Uh, thanks,” he said. “I already got two as a sample, but an extra one is always helpful.” He cursed himself then for not handing the fruits to Glassner when the rescue JLTV had come in for the wounded troops.
“The fruits were a diversion, you see,” Kemp explained, continuing to descend the stairs toward him. “We developed them just for you. Humans in general would find them irresistible, of course, but their toxicity even to us”—by which she meant Zoo-creatures—“was something we baited you with. I knew you’d be smart enough to figure out its purpose and potential, and come for it to try to…weaponize it. That’s what humans do, at least humans who are still locked into the corrupted thinking of our present age. You are one of the few with real potential.”
After this speech, she once more tilted back her head, a shudder of satisfaction running through her, but this time Chris saw why. Coming down the staircase as it hugged the interior wall, she was positioned at a slight angle, and something on her back and neck was visible. A sort of green cord or tendril rising from a small green growth tucked just under her left shoulder blade. The tendril disappeared behind her ear. Perversely, it reminded him of the wire plugged into Wallace’s skull that connected his brain to his exoskeleton.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Chris quipped. The Zoo was drugging her. That had to be it. Just as it seemed to have somehow learned basic military tactics as personified by the Chimera, so too had it apparently learned something from Earth’s junkies and coked-up Wall Street execs. The Happy Fern had certainly worked as planned in incapacitating them deep within the jungle, and the thing on Kemp’s back must have pumped endorphins or something into her whenever she said or did something that benefited the Zoo’s ultimate aims.
“Yes, Chris, it does,” said Kemp. “It feels good to be doing the right thing. To be doing what we always meant to do. We, meaning you and me.” The sense that something else was speaking concurrently with her, mouthing her words and speaking with its voice in time with hers, was even stronger now.
“Oh?”
“We talked about how the Zoo could be made into a Garden, but we didn’t realize that it already was one. We talked about how it had so much potential to benefit the world, but we didn’t understand how to develop that potential. And we talked about how all it needed was human guidance…and now it has that. Me. I am now the project director.” She grinned. As she got closer, Chris started to get the impression that she now resembled, rather than the nature goddess he’d glimpsed in the grassy ravine at night, some sort of mossy, gangrenous zombie. Chris couldn’t quite believe what she’d just said. The Zoo itself, he suspected, was still the director, and she was the new Project.
“And what direction are you proposing?” he asked.
“The end of war,” she replied. “The end of pollution. The end of human greed. Once, our world was a paradise. None of those things existed. The only violence or destruction was the bare minimum required by Nature to keep all of her creatures fed and keep the population low enough to prevent mass starvation. The world was wild, free, and beautiful. This balance was upset by the coming of Man, and especially by the coming of modern science, modern industry, and modern warfare.”
He supposed she had a point. Humans were the only species to have composed symphonies, shown mercy to the weak, and baked brownies. Those were all good things, and yet, how many species had gone extinct since the Industrial Revolution? How much habitat had been destroyed? How far had the climate shifted from sustainability? How many people had been killed by modern weapons above and beyond the small numbers that primitive warfare would have claimed? How drastically had human nature itself been damaged by the constant changes people kept having to adapt to, crawling before the God of Big Tech and beseeching it to have pity with whatever was its newest arbitrary decree?
“I want you by my side, Chris.” Kemp stopped. She was now only about five steps from the floor, maybe fifteen feet from him. Her eyes had taken on a distinctly blackish-green color, and she no longer seemed to blink. “Please. Join me, and together we can save the world.” She smiled. “Just like you promised.”
19
Chris was silent for a few moments. Somewhere overhead a bird chirped, and he could see the subtle shifts in the beams of sunlight penetrating Kemp’s cathedral as the sun moved across the sky. It was late afternoon by now.
Save the world, she’d said. He thought back to something they’d discussed—so long ago now, it seemed—about what would have happened if the Goop contained within the Alien Missile of 2025 had landed in the Amazon Basin or the Indian Ocean. Instead, it had been intercepted by NASA, taken to Nevada, and tested in a safely barren environment before being moved to the even more lifeless desert of North Africa. If it had deployed as the Yufos seemed to have intended, though…
Every spot of dry land became a jungle teeming with plants and animals and birds and bees. The seas and oceans morphed into a vast swamp or marsh. Two-thirds of the planet would become a “protected wetland area.” Global biodiversity would have increased a hundredfold, or perhaps a thousandfold or more. It would have been a disaster for modern human civilization. Millions, if not billions, of people might die. But it would have been a boon, almost a miracle for the Earth as a whole.
The Zoo really was beautiful when it wasn’t trying to kill him, Chris had to admit. In a way, he’d almost grown to like the place. The denizens of this jungle wouldn’t try to kill him now, he was quite certain, if he accepted a position as Kemp’s business partner, advisor, and consort.
Hmm.
“Okay,” Chris said. “I’m in. I told you that once before—I knocked on your door in the middle of the night after you asked me to go with you the first time and I accepted. I promised I’d continue your work to improve this planet via the Zoo’s potential. Those offers still stand, Emma. I’m in.”
She smiled again and shuddered again as the tendril behind her ear gave her another shot of happiness to emphasize that this was indeed the desired outcome. The Zoo would benefit greatly from the acquisition of a biologist. In its early immaturity, it probably hadn’t known how to use the full potential of Dr. Marie and her team.
“Good,” she said. “I’m so happy to hear that. I’ve missed you, Chris. I’ve thought about you every day and desired your company. Your wit and intellect, and the way you seem to be one of the few people who really understands what I want to accomplish.”
She came down the last few steps, her bare greenish feet soft on their surfaces, and stood before him, her demeanor grew warmer. There was still a strange majesty about her, but at this moment she was less a terrible and wrathful goddess than a naked and rather attractive woman he happened to know.
And the uncanny plant-zombie image she’d presented was fading; something about the quality of her skin was changing, as though the suggestion of decay were being replaced by healthy renewal. Part of this may have been a reflection of the processes of Nature, but it was likely at least partially
public relations. The Zoo was polishing her, repairing her, prettying her up for his benefit.
“Thanks,” Chris replied. “Understanding things and then trying to use that knowledge for the common good is my job. It’s what I always wanted to do with my life.” He shrugged and smiled back at her.
“Good,” she said, coming closer to him. “Good, good, good. With our combined talents, it will be easy to complete our work.”
She was right in front of him now, as close as she’d been in the grassy ravine last night as their hands were about to touch. Behind and to the side of Chris the super-locusts seemed to be watching like the congregation at a church attending someone’s confirmation. They had clustered roughly around the great tree of the Forbidden Fruit, some of them actually stacked on top of one another, circus-acrobat style.
Kemp reached out, as did he, and she took his hand. Her skin was as warm as a mammal’s should be, but it felt like he was gripping the stem of a flower or taking a handful of grass from a field. She ran her hand up his arm and left it on his shoulder as she looked him straight in the face, her greenish-black eyes locked to his brownish-black ones.
“But,” she said.
Chris raised his eyebrows. “Yes?” he asked.
“You were just recently fighting alongside the people who tried to kill me.”
“Uh, yeah, well,” Chris said, “mistakes happen, you know? I’m a scientist, right? New evidence comes in, and we change the theory to accommodate it. We adapt. Have to be open-minded.”
“Yes, of course,” Kemp replied. “But I want a test of your loyalty, then you will get your first reward, followed by many others.”
“I like the sound of that,” agreed Chris. “Just tell me what it is. Anything.”
Without speaking, she removed her hand from his shoulder and sauntered slowly past him. He turned to watch. Her bare ass looked rather good as she moved. The growth on her shoulder, not so much. Still, nobody was perfect.
Kemp crouched, lifted the huge leaf, and disappeared beneath it for just a moment. Chris tensed up. He thought he heard a quick, faint metallic sound, but nothing too disturbing, and then Kemp emerged from the other side of the shaded corner. In her right hand, she held a combat knife like the kind Wallace wore at his side. She walked up to him and extended her hand, the knife lying flat across her palm.
“I want you to kill Sergeant Wallace,” she stated.
Chris said nothing for a moment.
“I know you thought of him as a friend,” she went on as though he were already dead, “but he’s not right anymore. The base has…changed him. He’s not the good man you once knew. Whatever part of him was once our friend is mostly gone now. He’s been corrupted by the worst aspects of military-industrial civilization. Even his body is being transformed into a soulless, lifeless, heartless machine, which people like the bureaucrats running the base will use to kill. They will stop at nothing to enforce their will and trap the whole world within a metal suit of their design. He can’t be happy like that. Put him out of his misery, Chris, and give him back to the earth. Make good use of him.” She gestured toward the green pit, which by now had almost finished eating the bodies of the rest of their platoon. “Do that, and I’ll know that you’re sincere. Then we can save the world. Together.”
Chris sighed. “I mean, it’s a tough thing to do,” he began, “but all right. It has to be done.” He took the knife. “Let me say goodbye first, though. He at least deserves that.”
Without waiting for her to respond, he walked over to the corner and lifted the huge leaf. Wallace lay on his side, still bound hand and foot although he’d rolled himself over and now faced Chris. His eyes were open, and his face was blank.
“I overheard,” he said in a flat, steely voice. “No need to recap your reasons. Just get it over with.” Dear God, the stoicism of this man! In a way, he was almost a machine.
Chris knelt beside him, knife in hand. “I’m sorry, Wallace.” He extended the knife a bit. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you sooner. And most of all, I’m sorry things are about to get…” he sighed, “difficult.”
He lunged. The knife slid under the hard vines around Wallace’s arm and cut through them, then cut through the vines around his wrists, legs, and ankles. Wallace had always struck him as the type who’d keep his blade good and sharp.
“What?” Kemp gasped.
One more quick motion and Chris had seized the loose-hanging cord, the one that looked a bit like a USB plug, and popped it into the headpiece attached to the back of Wallace’s skull. His exoskeleton whirred to life as bioelectricity surged through it and Wallace grunted as his body, probably tingling with pain, returned to viability.
“No!” Kemp screamed, her clawing hands rising into the air. The mass of locusts began hissing and chittering in empathy with her anger, “Goddammit, no!”
Chris hooked his arms under Wallace’s and, springing upward with all the strength and agility he possessed, heaved the man onto his feet. While he was at it, one of his hands found a grenade attached to Wallace’s belt. As the man recovered from shock, not to mention struggled to readjust himself to the newfound control of his suit and his body, Chris turned back toward Kemp. Bruce the Cat-Shark, up on his perch, hissed.
“Sorry, Emma,” he told her, “but if I can still save you, I will.” He pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it.
The explosive sailed toward the cluster of now-raging locusts and the giant fruit tree around which they’d grouped.
Wallace’s suit hummed with exertion as the man, finding his strength again, grabbed Chris by the shoulder and hurled him toward the exit. “Move it!” he bellowed.
The grenade went off. The ground shook, flames and smoke filled the air, and the sonic wave created by the blast knocked Chris and Wallace—and Kemp—off their feet, nearly popping their ears as well.
Chris sprawled half-in, half-out of the plant-palace, his upper half in sunlight and his lower half in green shade. His knees and hands had been abraded by the green trunk of the bent tree that formed a walkway to the glade outside. He glanced over his shoulder.
The grenade’s blast had killed almost a third of the locusts outright and also severely damaged the central tree. Dozens of the newly-sprouted Forbidden Fruits had been destroyed. This had released their toxic fumes into the air, which now hung in a pinkish-yellow miasma in which the locusts milled about in confusion, flapped weakly or simply dropping dead. Almost the entire swarm had been, at least for the moment, neutralized.
Wallace, willing his cyborg legs to work, sprang back to his feet. Looking at Chris lying halfway across the threshold of the Zoo’s cathedral, and perhaps thinking back on the experience of being unplugged and then replugged, he said, “You really need to make up your mind.” He extended a hand and pulled Chris to his feet. “And we really need to get the hell out of here.”
“Good idea,” Chris replied, his ears pounding and his head aching from the explosion.
They ran.
20
Down the bent tree trunk they stumbled, quickly reaching the ground below. They bolted toward the jungle in the same direction they’d originally come from—toward the trail and the wall and the base.
Wallace, taller and aided by advanced technology, outpaced Chris quickly, but once he passed the tree line, he slowed and waited. Behind them, the handful of still-functional locusts buzzed up and out of the palace, hovering in the air to look for them.
As Chris ran toward his friend, he heard footsteps near the mouth of the great plant-structure.
“Hunt them down and kill them!” Kemp’s dual voice shrieked, completely unhinged and uninhibited with fury. “Find them, goddammit! Kill them and fucking eat them! Hunt. Them. Down!”
First behind and then in front of where her voice had shouted from, Chris heard something very large, fast, and heavy running. He did not look behind him.
The sheltering shade of the jungle closed over and around him, and he bolted past where Wall
ace had paused. Then the other man resumed his flight and pulled ahead of Chris again, leading the way in their half-mad plunge through the jungle.
“Uh, Wallace?” Chris said between breaths that were already growing more ragged.
“Yeah?”
“Did you hear what she said?”
“Kinda.” He crashed through a screen of trees, using his gauntleted arm to break one of the branches and keep it out of Chris’ way. Chris, grateful, leaped through the opening and tried to keep up.
“I’m pretty sure she sicced Bruce on us,” Chris reported.
“What? Who?” Wallace was focused on finding the clearest and most direct path through the jungle; Chris almost hated to bother him about their impending death and consumption.
“That, uh, sharky cat-thing,” Chris explained. “Her little pet.”
“Oh, God.” Wallace groaned. “Last thing we need now…” He leaped over a log, clearing ten or twelve feet in what looked effort-wise like a gentle hop. Clearly, the suit was still in good order.
Chris cleared the same log with a bit more effort and not as impressively. He was getting tired already. He was still in fairly good shape, but his work at the base hadn’t left him much time to jog or otherwise exercise, and of course, he couldn’t compete with a beast like Wallace in any case. An augmented beast like Wallace.
The buzzing sound grew louder and closer. Wallace raised a hand and slowed down a bit. Now he moved at more of a trot, trying to make as little noise as possible, and Chris, close behind him, did likewise. Above and to the side of them, the leaves and trees of the canopy were disturbed by something half-flying, half-crawling through them.
Suddenly a locust was upon them. It burst from the foliage above their heads, veering in midair between them to cut them off from one another. As Chris staggered back, clawing at his hip for his pistol, which was gone, Wallace simply attacked.