by Michael Todd
“Audrey—Jimmy—your vehicles are working well, from the looks of it,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said and blushed. “That’s high praise coming from you. A couple of people said you were a Luddite in addition to being a hardass.”
Wallace bit his tongue to keep from smiling too hard. He didn’t want the troops to resent the fact that a civilian could not only get away with talking to him like that but even get a positive reaction for it. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. “What is a ‘Luddite,’ though?”
“Oh, a person who doesn’t like technology,” Jimmy replied.
“Who the hell doesn’t like technology?” asked Glassner. “It’s done so much to help people—”
“It makes things more…complicated,” said Wallace. “But I don’t dislike it, exactly. I’m only able to walk right now because of it. I merely prefer that it be employed responsibly. Sometimes, it’s better not to invent something simply for the sake of inventing something, if you ask me. There are already plenty of other things that have worked well for hundreds of years.”
“You mean, like, not inventing nukes?” Glassner suggested.
“There is nothing wrong with nukes,” Gunnar interjected.
They continued down the path. Wallace pointed out one of the thick, green, squirming vines that hung nearby at one point—the ones that descended like giant snakes and could devour a man in a single gulp. They avoided it and otherwise, saw and heard nothing save a few faint rustlings, some flitting shadows, and the whispered breathing of the forest itself.
Wallace’s plan was to go to the drawbridge and back. It was less than a mile in, and it marked the end of the least-dangerous part of the Zoo. They’d be there soon and they could turn around and call this mission complete.
Blancheau and Flemm continued their commentary from atop their steel horses as the group progressed. Graf said nothing, but Wallace could tell that she observed all that occurred and listened to as much as possible.
A mass of metal in construction-yard yellow, black, and grey loomed in the green shade up ahead. The drawbridge.
“We only installed this yesterday,” Wallace told the politicians. “It had to be assembled on-site. It’s technically mobile, but all that really means is that it can be wheeled back and forth to different spots in the same area, which doesn’t do us much good unless the stream advances deeper into the Zoo and we need to push it forward to keep up.”
“What do you mean, the stream ‘advances?’” asked Graf. She seemed legitimately curious and even a little awed.
“The Zoo has some ability to…reshape itself,” the sergeant explained. “Our former director of research, Dr. Lin, had a theory that the Zoo is all basically one big organism with all the parts working together toward the same goal. I’m not a biologist or ecologist so I didn’t understand all the details, but that’s the gist of it.”
“Incredible!” Flemm said.
“Zis is basic natural science,” Blancheau scoffed. “We would have reached same conclusion very quickly and already produce beautiful gardens from it, as well as advances to medicine.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Wallace replied. He looked at Graf. She studied the drawbridge.
“It’s operated by a simple switch,” said Wallace, “although slightly too complicated for creatures of animal or even insect intelligence. We can lower it to go deeper in ourselves, if we need to, or raise it to cut anything else off and prevent it from reaching the wall.”
Something hissed and chittered and tension flared in seconds.
“Positions!” Wallace barked. He and his men immediately raised their guns, assumed fighting stances, and scanned the area.
About half a dozen locusts suddenly emerged from the underside of the drawbridge. Whether they had been trying to destroy it, lying in ambush, or simply happened to have been mating or eating down there when the humans stumbled onto them, Wallace did not know. “Hold your fire! Wait until you have a clear shot.”
Blancheau and Flemm both exclaimed something simultaneously as the blackish-green, almost human-sized insects clawed their way over the top of the mechanism, their claws grasping, wings beating, and fanged mouths opening and shutting.
“Now,” Wallace ordered.
Everyone at the front of the column opened fire. Automatic rifle bullets and shotgun shells rocketed from flashing muzzles, and the first four of the locusts were blown apart. They screeched shrilly as they died in masses of sparks and blood. The last two tried to flee in opposite directions.
“Cut ʼem down,” Wallace ordered. Three riflemen sprayed the one on the left and Gunnar decapitated the one on the right with his shotgun.
“Ha,” Gunnar said. “A machine gun would still have been better.”
“Secure our perimeter,” the sergeant instructed. A few of the troops fanned out to make sure there weren’t any more of the insects around—or anything else that might have laid a trap. There seemed not to be.
“Good God,” Flemm said and shook his head.
Blancheau had covered his ears against the noise and also sweated, trembled, and looked more than a little pale.
“All right,” Wallace began, “I think that’s a wrap. Our allies have gotten a good look at the Zoo itself and an excellent demonstration of how well we deal with it. Now, let’s turn around and head back to safety.”
“Yes…yes, please,” said Blancheau. “Zat will be good.”
“No,” said Aade Graf. She stood in front of Wallace.
He looked at her. “Excuse me?”
“No, I want you to take us in deeper. Beyond the bridge.” She seemed unfazed by the skirmish and unintimidated by Wallace’s military authority. “There is clearly more here which we have not seen.”
“Ambassador Graf,” Wallace said as his men looked at him and waited to see how he’d react. “That would not be a good idea. The deep jungle is no place for—”
“Your commander, Hall, ordered you to show us what we need to see,” she continued, talking over top of him. “And in order to make a fair assessment, I need to see more than only the petting zoo. Show me the real Zoo.” The muscles around her jaw tightened. That, as well as her braid, reminded Wallace of Kemp.
“I can’t disobey my orders,” Wallace said, “but I can advise you that every step we take beyond this point increases your chance of dying by about tenfold. The German people would be better off getting their ambassador back.”
“Yes, yes!” Blancheau added.
Graf said nothing. Wallace sighed, walked to the drawbridge, and operated the switch to lower it.
7
The sense of doom that had descended after they’d crossed the stream—not only on Wallace but, seemingly, on the entire team—was not helped in the least by the sudden failure of their radios and mapping equipment.
“Oh, what the hell?” someone complained. “Sergeant, nothing is working!” It was true. They picked up little more than static on the radio and in one case, even dead silence. Their GPS system shifted continuously to random spots around the nearby Sahara and sometimes, pinpointed parts of the Zoo, seemingly by sheer chance. The mapping software they used was little better, now reduced to blotches of green that seemed to shift and squirm like the living vines of the jungle itself.
“I know, soldier,” Wallace said. “This sometimes happens in the deeper parts of the Zoo. It’s not uncommon. On the path, it’s not as bad because of the lower density of Zoo plants. However, it seems like the last section of the path here past that new stream of ours is already almost overgrown again.”
The trail was fainter and narrower, and the branches, vines, and creepers grew thicker to the sides and overhead. The jungle’s canopy had turned it into something almost like a dark tunnel.
“Before he left,” Wallace went on, “Chris Lin theorized that it had to do with the plants—that they emitted something that messes with our long-range equipment and its signals. He was also fairly certain that the Zoo plants had some kind
of pheromone or something that they used to signal each other of danger. From that, he drew the conclusion that they might also have some kind of bioelectric radio signal or something along those lines. I wasn’t able to get a full explanation.” Wallace had received fairly high scores on intelligence tests, but he wasn’t a scientist or an intellectual. Chris had been good at explaining things, but he’d been too busy most of the time to do so.
As they entered the wilder and more hostile regions of the jungle, Wallace put himself on point, front and center, along with two other men. Augmented by his exoskeleton, he had a better chance to survive an ambush than most humans. Not to mention that he knew the Zoo better than most did, as well. Already, the trail had almost vanished into the wilderness.
“Sergeant,” the man to his left, a PFC named Powers, asked. “Where is it that the…queen lives?” Fortunately, he asked in a low enough voice that the foreign politicians probably hadn’t heard.
“South-central part,” said Wallace. “Don’t worry, we will not be going there no matter what anyone says.” He himself didn’t even want to think about that place. Kemp, totally under the influence of the Zoo’s alien intelligence, had summoned a veritable army of locusts to brutally slaughter an entire platoon when Wallace had led the mission to apprehend her. Only he and Chris had survived.
The sergeant wanted to focus on trailblazing, scouting for danger, and so forth, but his European guests, back in the safety of the column’s center, constantly tried to get his attention with “Sergeant?” and throat-clearing noises. He tried to ignore them at first but they grew more insistent, and he knew he’d run afoul of his mission parameters if he neglected them too much.
“Corporal,” Wallace said to Gunnar, “lead that thing up here and take point. Keep us close to that stream you scouted two weeks ago. It’s a nice, easy landmark for us to follow until the end of this little safari. I need to answer some questions in the middle.”
“Yessir,” Gunnar replied, and they all paused as he urged his Stallion forward. The troops made room for its armored body to take the lead.
Wallace, meanwhile, fell back. It was an odd experience, walking alongside the Stallions whose smooth yet stiff, mechanical gait was so like his own. To his left was the one carrying Flemm. To his right, the one with Blancheau. Aade Graf walked between them, slightly to Wallace’s right.
“Your people are good shots,” Graf said, “and their response time is very fast.”
“Thank you, Ambassador,” Wallace replied.
“You have said, however,” she went on, “that the Zoo keeps creating new creatures to attack you or old ones evolve at unnaturally fast rates. How do you prepare your people to deal with this type of situation?”
“We train to be prepared for anything,” was all Wallace said. In a slightly lower voice, he added, “You seem very concerned with the specifics of how our military functions. Some of that sort of thing might be considered state secrets of the USA, so I may not be able to answer all your questions.” He looked at her as sternly as he could without actually glaring.
“Oh, yes, I understand,” she replied. There was a faint undercurrent of…amusement? Or perhaps, just maybe, respect. He wasn’t sure how much he could trust her, but one way or another, he was relatively certain he’d given the correct answer.
Still, he might have to report her behavior to Hall. Foreign politicos should not be that curious about American military procedures.
“It is so hot!” Blancheau complained. “Is zere a…” He seemed to contemplate what words to use. “Mobile air conditioner? Zis place could use one very much.”
Someone at the side cracked up but managed to transform it into a cough. Wallace glared in that direction. Then he looked up at Blancheau who sagged against the neck of the Stallion.
“I’m sorry, Assemblyman,” he said, “but to lug a mobile air conditioner out here would be an unnecessary burden. Plus, I feel that our men should be able to fight even in intense heat.”
“Barbaric,” Blancheau said. “Our scientists will soon have mobile cooling units for every man in a terrible place like this.”
“Will every man also have their own cheese dispenser to go with that wine?” someone said under their breath.
“Quiet,” Wallace said but had to bite down on his own tongue as he said it. A large piece of cheese to shove in the Frenchman’s mouth would have been perfectly welcome right about then.
“I suppose I must agree with Monsieur Blancheau,” Flemm chuckled. “We Britons are perhaps a bit spoiled by our mild climate. Americans seem to have the worst of both extremes.”
“I’m from Kansas,” said Wallace, “where it’s almost this hot in the summer and cold and snowy in the winter, with severe weather fluctuations from day to day, or even hour to hour. Not to mention tornadoes.” He sighed. “You may have a point there.”
“It’s too bad that your healthcare system still isn’t up to dealing with all the injuries and illnesses that must result from living in such a climate,” Flemm mused.
“Wow,” Peppy said, “it would seem that the Marquis of Skyfall actually cares about our welfare. Truly we are blessed.”
The humid heat did seem to have grown worse than usual. Wallace wondered if the appearance of the new streams had something to do with it. The Zoo must have synthesized even more water. Was it preparing for something?
“Halt,” Wallace called. “Five-minute break. Corporal, scout our path ahead. We’ll go a little farther beyond this and then turn back.”
“Yessir,” Gunnar replied.
“Scout on foot, that is,” Wallace added. “To clarify.”
Gunnar’s long face drooped with obvious disappointment. He brought his Stallion to a stop and swung off to pick his way forward into the jungle with his automatic shotgun in hand.
Everyone stopped where they were and formed a loose perimeter around the three people they were escorting. Flemm hopped down from his four-legged go-kart with surprising agility. Wallace found himself wondering if the man was really so useless after all.
Blancheau, on the other hand, fell.
“Whoa!” exclaimed Private Falstaff as he grabbed for the politician but missed. Blancheau rolled down the Stallion’s haunch and crashed into Jimmy. She made a “gahh!” sound and stumbled against a tree. Blancheau, meanwhile, landed in a patch of mud.
“Sir, are you okay?” a man asked as he helped the old Frenchman to his feet.
Blancheau did not answer this question but instead, looked at Wallace. His crisp, expensive-looking outfit was stained and coated with greyish-brown mud, and more of the same was spattered across the jowls of his face. “Zis suit,” he said, “will be billed to your government.”
“I’d suggest billing it to Director Hall, first,” said Wallace. “He’s rich.”
“Sergeant,” said Graf’s voice. Wallace turned toward it and saw the woman crouched in a small patch of weeds and flowers beyond the Stallion that Falstaff and Blancheau had ridden on. He walked to her side.
“Yes, Ambassador?” he said.
“What is this flower?” she asked. She gestured toward a plant about a foot high with vibrant green stem and leaves but bright red-and-blue petals. A little bright blue liquid had pooled in the center its blossoms.
“Do not touch that,” Wallace almost shouted. “It’s extremely dangerous.”
Graf retracted her hand and stood slowly. “I see,” she replied. “How so?”
“The blue liquid can be corrosive,” he said, “but more importantly, harming or disturbing that particular flower enrages the whole Zoo. If you were to pluck it, we’d have two hundred locusts on us within forty seconds.”
“Incredible,” Graf mused. She stared intently at the flower.
Wallace knew that the Research Department still wanted a sample of the goop plants, but acquiring one safely was more than a little difficult for the reasons he’d just explained to Graf. Plus, he shuddered to think what Dr. Kessler would do with it, anyway. Chris a
nd Kemp had wanted to use the goop—the lifeblood of the Zoo itself—as a universal curative and elixir for longevity. Kessler would probably turn it into a neurotoxin that could be used to kill possums or something.
The Sergeant returned to the center of the formation, where his men complained under their breaths about anything and everything. The now-dismounted Flemm bent forward and examined the Stallion he’d been riding and poked at it. “I say,” he said, “very good engineering. It makes more sense to move about on strong legs than on rubber feet, doesn’t it?”
“Thanks,” Jimmy said.
Gunnar suddenly appeared. He looked at Wallace and gestured with his head. The sergeant went over to him. “What is it, Corporal?” he asked.
“Well, sir,” Gunnar replied, “it seems that the Zoo…well, her terrain’s changed even more rapidly than we…you know, expected.”
Wallace didn’t like the sound of that.
“The course of the stream we’ve followed has shifted. It didn’t lead where we expected. So, you know, we’re…uh, lost.”
The sergeant put a hand to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose as he closed his eyes.
“What? What?” Blancheau sputtered.
“Joy,” said Peppy.
8
Despite Blancheau’s constant complaining and second-guessing, the team, under Wallace’s minimal direction, managed to attempt the most obvious of all possible solutions to their predicament. They retraced their steps.
“I’m sure I saw that vine on the way in,” Gunnar said and pointed at a single strand within a large curtain of vines that all looked exactly alike. “Yeahhh. I never forget an epidermis. I’d recognize that son of a bitch anywhere.”
“It is highly likely,” Peppy added, in her depressed monotone, “that it recognizes you too, Gunnar. Every night in its nightmares, it sees your face looming up behind it in a hallway that stretches longer and longer the harder it tries to get away. What did you do to the poor thing? Where on its body did you touch it? Show us on the piece of fuzzy green rope we’re using as a vine-doll.”