by Michael Todd
“Yes, sir,” they said.
Wallace assigned the flamethrower to a guy named Suszek who seemed to be good at following procedures. Then, he had another idea, one that might even help them find their way out of this hellhole without further casualties. He and Chris, alone, had escaped before. He and fourteen good soldiers could do the same.
“Corporal Åkerlund,” he said.
“Yessir?” Gunnar replied. The man looked concerned, Wallace realized. Was he worried about Peppy? Of course, he might simply have been worried about all of them, as any sane human being would be.
“You, PFC Akiwe, and I will do some recon ourselves in five minutes,” the sergeant said. “We will head out onto the sand and climb that hill. Obviously, danger may be involved, but it will enable us to survey most of the Zoo from a higher vantage point and determine exactly where we are and what is the quickest and safest way back home.”
“Affirmative,” said Gunnar. He pulled out a cigarette, which seemed to already be lit, and puffed casually on it. “I’m trying to understand the part, though,” he went on, “where you said, ‘danger may be involved.’ That almost sounds like it means that giant, creepy, hideous, alien stinger-spiders might pull us down into the tenth armpit of Hell, or merely jump up and snip us to pieces with their pincers.”
“Correct.” Wallace sighed. Sometimes, he hated being in charge.
10
Akiwe didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the assignment, either. At least it would be over quickly—one way or another.
As the rest of the team half-watched with nervous trepidation between their other tasks or kept an eye on the surrounding jungle, Wallace, Gunnar, and Akiwe stood three abreast at the edge of the greenery where the sand began.
“Powers must have stepped directly into one of those funnels created by the scorpions burrowing upward,” said Wallace. “The bastards looked heavy and managed to stand on the sand themselves once they were up, so there’s no reason to assume that we’ll sink down into it.”
“Wait,” Gunnar said, “what’s that saying about assumption being the mother of all fuck-ups or something? Oh right, I just remembered. ‘Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.’”
“Shut up, Åkerlund,” the sergeant retorted.
“Well, sir,” Akiwe suggested, “we could simply try walking on the glass at first.” He gestured and they saw it glint in the sunlight.
It had been partially masked, at first, by the dead, blackened, mostly-melted carcasses of the scorpions that Peppy had torched. Squinting, though, Wallace saw that the plasma blast had indeed transformed a large section of the sand into glass. He remembered hearing something about how nuclear bombs set off in desert regions had that effect.
“Åkerlund,” Wallace said, “get a stick and poke that glass to make sure it’s solidified.”
“Yessir,” Gunnar replied with immense enthusiasm. He broke a half-dead branch from a nearby tree, advanced a couple steps into the shallow sand at the edge of the mini-desert, and prodded at the gleaming surface of the area Akiwe had indicated. It made a hard thunking sound as he tapped it. “Well, it cooled enough that it won’t melt our feet off,” he said. “How thick or thin is it, though? I wouldn’t particularly want it to shatter as we walk on it, either.”
“Follow me,” Wallace said. “There’s only one way to find out.” He strode out onto the glass.
The first of his heavy, metal-shod feet landed without mishap and then the second, and his smooth, mechanical gait continued unimpeded. The glass had to be at least a couple of inches thick. In places where it warped around the shape of the sand itself, it crunched slightly, but that was all. “It’s holding up well,” he told his men. “But it looks slippery. Be careful.”
Gunnar and Akiwe followed warily. The former held up his automatic shotgun, while the latter held his automatic rifle aimed downward. Wallace wondered if stepping on the glass would make more noise than stepping on sand and alert more of the scorpions to their presence. He almost wished he hadn’t thought of that.
The glass ended as they reached the base of the strange sand-hill. It loomed before them, a broad, upright mass of pale yellowish-brown granules. Wallace saw that Gunnar still carried his stick under his arm.
“Corporal, test the consistency of the sand on this hill,” he ordered.
“Yessir.” Gunnar stepped forward and prodded the hill. The stick sunk easily into the first couple of inches’ but slowed after that and stopped after a little less than a foot. “It’s not too bad,” he said. “No worse than trying to climb one of the dunes on a beach. And there aren’t any fucking seagulls around trying to beg for all our food. So we’re in luck, gentlemen.”
“Yeah, sure,” Akiwe mumbled.
Wallace took the lead again. Going uphill through the sand wasn’t particularly easy but he managed it. He had the advantage of technological aid, anyway. Gunnar and Akiwe followed about two paces behind him. They moved more slowly and began to breathe heavily once they were about halfway up. Wallace could sense their fear and he shared it. Several of the scorpions had escaped the earlier fight, and even one might well kill them all if it ambushed them. It was quiet, though, and nothing happened to deter them.
They stopped barely short of the hill’s peak. “Right,” Wallace said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Not at all, sir,” said Gunnar. “When do we go swimming? I forgot my fucking sunscreen, though.”
“White people and their sunscreen,” Akiwe mused. His family was from West Africa if Wallace recalled correctly. Not too far from their current location, actually.
“I take offense to that,” said Gunnar.
As the two of them pretended to argue, Wallace surveyed their location from the high ground. His line of sight was a little above the tree line. Higher would have been better, but this should suffice. Mostly, all he could see was a vast, indistinguishable mass of green, leafy trees with faint moisture-mist rising from them. Sand and bare rock stretched beyond them in all directions. Here and there, he could see parts of Wall One.
“Jesus, it’s hot,” Gunnar said. “At least out in the real desert the humidity goes way down. We’re technically still in the jungle right now, but also directly under the sun. I hate the sun.”
“Shut up, Åkerlund,” Wallace said absent-mindedly. Then, he saw something distinctive. A particularly thick and elaborate green structure, like a tower of twisted trees and vines, ahead and to the left. The plant-castle of Queen Kemp, the bizarre structure that he now thought of as the capital of the Zoo. It was located a little southwest of the Zoo’s exact center if he recalled correctly. And since the trees blocked any sight of the American encampment near Wall One, he was fairly certain he now looked north. That meant…
“Dammit,” Wallace said. “We’re somewhere deep in the southeast part of the Zoo. That stream led us even farther off the beaten path than we thought. Nobody’s even been this far in before.”
“Awesome,” Gunnar said.
“Can we keep heading southeast and get the hell out by the quickest route?” Akiwe asked. “Once we’re clear of the jungle, we could loop around to the north and get back to the US base.”
“Possibly,” the sergeant conceded, “but that would take us through totally uncharted territory.”
Gunnar ascended a few steps past them to the actual summit. “Hey, guys,” he said, “it looks like there’s some sort of—whoa, shit!”
The earth seemed to sigh and groan, and sand shifted beneath their feet. Akiwe wobbled, and Wallace had to will his mechanical legs to dig in to maintain his balance. A rushing, swishing sound made them freeze in place. Not good.
The sand of the hill, starting at the summit, caved in. A circular waterfall of sand appeared around a yawning hole, one which grew and expanded directly beneath Gunnar’s feet.
Wallace pivoted, and his right arm shot out as the man toppled past him. Somehow, he cleared enough of the distance for his hand to grasp him by the forear
m, and the cave-in slowed as it neared the place where his own feet dug in. Unfortunately, however, he could not lean forward to gain better leverage to haul the man up without toppling in himself. His arms, naturally strong though they were, did not have the benefit of cybernetic enhancement to their strength and ability. Gunnar was thin but tall enough to be heavy.
“Hahaha,” Gunnar laughed, although his morose face was now alive with terror. He dangled over a dark pit that seemed to descend forever—or at least to a point level with the base of the hill and possibly still deeper in the earth than that. “This must be where all the beach bums throw their burnt-out joint roaches.” He swayed in the air as his legs kicked and veins stood out on his face and his arm. They were uncannily mirrored on Wallace’s arm and face.
“I got you,” the sergeant gasped. He tried to readjust his footing but the sand shifted, and he stopped. Both of them falling in would accomplish nothing. “Akiwe!” he said.
The soldier was already beside him. Gunnar was out of his reach, though. “God damn,” he said when he looked into the pit. “This isn’t a mountain, it’s like an anthill! Look!”
Gunnar chose not to look, but Wallace didn’t have much choice. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness within the hill that he could now see multitudes of big, glossy, dark shapes moving around. As always, they made scrabbling and squeaking sounds. The pit positively teemed with scorpions.
“That’s what I think it is, isn’t it?” Gunnar gasped as he swayed in the air. “Don’t answer that question, actually.”
Akiwe extended the butt of his rifle toward the dangling Corporal, hoping that he’d be able to grab it and both he and Wallace would be able to pull Gunnar up and out. The glossy forms grew bigger and closer. Somehow, they climbed upward. Fast.
“Shit,” Wallace grunted. “Akiwe, shoot them!”
The PFC shifted his rifle and fired a couple of bursts down into the hill. It seemed that two or three of the scorpions hesitated but the others continued to advance. Their claws closed around Gunnar’s lower body. For some reason, they didn’t snap him in half but simply held on. It soon became obvious that they tried to pull him in.
“Guys?” Gunnar said, his face totally ashen. “I…uh, really don’t think—”
His hand slid out of Wallace’s grasp and in an instant, he had vanished into the roiling black mass of the giant arachnids.
The sergeant stood frozen for a second. He tensed himself, ready to pounce. These things wouldn’t capture a man of his without a fight.
“Sir! No!” Akiwe burst out. He seized him by the shoulder and dragged him back.
Wallace resisted at first but then relented. The soldier was right. The mission. He was in command. There was everyone else to consider.
Scorpions now poured upward and out of the gaping hole, their evil-looking claws raised skyward.
“Run!” Wallace said.
Both men sprinted down the hill, uncaring whether they ran on glass or sand and more than once, almost fell in their haste. The other troops had gathered at the edge of the sandy area. They watched them and tried to get a bead on the advancing arachnids with their guns. Behind them, they could hear the soft, swishing sound of the scorpions’ advance.
Wallace crashed through leaves and suddenly, was back amidst his men. Akiwe plowed through right behind him. Sand whistled and shifted. They looked back but saw only funnels in the small desert. The scorpions had gone.
11
“Zis is terrible! What is ze matter with you idiots?” Blancheau wailed. He wrung his hands despite the physical effort involved in doing so and sweated through his now grubby suit. “Zis is what happens when too much money gets into ze hands of people whose schoolchildren cannot even score well on math tests! You get other people stuck in total disasters like zis. With your Fahrenheit and inches and miles, America should not even be considered a First-World Country!”
“Whoops,” Private Falstaff said as he broke a branch on an overhanging tree as he walked past the spot where Blancheau lay. The branch drooped, and a mass of large leaves fell directly onto the French assemblyman’s face, temporarily shutting him up.
Wallace ignored the man’s pissing and moaning. He ignored almost everything right now—distractions, pain, tiredness, and most of all, emotions. What mattered was that he was on a mission, he had a job to do, and he had parameters to fulfill. Emotions got in the way. They weren’t even real. How he felt about losing Corporal Gunnar Åkerlund was irrelevant to the task at hand. He had to finish the mission.
“Sir,” Glassner said to him, “your wrist is bruised all to hell, and there’s some damage to your leg plate. It’s scraping against your actual leg enough to draw blood.”
Wallace blinked in surprise. The medic was right. Gunnar’s death-grip as the man dangled over the scorpion-hill had turned his lower forearm a nasty blackish-purple. A trickle of red blood ran down the side of his lower exoskeleton from a wound in the mostly-useless flesh within it.
“I don’t seem to be seriously wounded,” he replied.
“Let me patch you up quickly,” Glassner said, “and give you a painkiller.”
“I’ll defer to your expertise,” Wallace agreed. He supposed he should take a minute to rest and gather his thoughts. But only a minute. There were too many things for him to do.
Things like, for example, checking on Jimmy’s repair-job on their Stallions and getting the rest of them the hell out of this place in one mostly-functional piece. Not to mention finding the wayward politicians to avoid making unnecessary extra work for the US State Department. There was probably some or another diplomat who had been required to promise the British, French, and German embassies that their people would be in safe hands. God forbid politicians had to accuse one another of lying.
“I patched up the abrasion,” Glassner said as he finished with Wallace’s leg, “but it might break open again if the dented metal keeps scraping it. You might want to talk to Miss James about that.”
“I was going to talk to her, anyway,” Wallace replied. “Thank you, Corporal.”
“No problem.” The medic handed him a painkiller for his wrist. He palmed the pill into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of water from his canteen.
“Check on PFC Akiwe,” Wallace ordered. Then, he walked to where the two Stallions stood, unmoving and useless for now, and where Jimmy crouched with her toolbox. She was hard at work and squinted in concentration. Her tongue stuck out the side of her mouth and a strand of red hair fell from beneath the cap she’d worn to hold it back and protect her head from the sun.
“Jimmy,” he said. She looked up at him, wide-eyed. “How’s it coming?”
“Well, I have bad news, good news, and more bad news,” she reported. Her demeanor was a mixture of fear, embarrassment, and anger but there was still that underlying energy and positivity that shone through her. Wallace was, to be honest, glad she was here.
“Bad news first,” Wallace said. “The first bad news.” He wasn’t sure yet if she was aware that Gunnar was dead. He didn’t feel like telling her unless she specifically asked.
Jimmy nodded, brushed herself off, and stood with her wrench in hand. “Okay,” she began, “the first bad news is that I am pretty frickin’ confident that someone sabotaged the machines.”
Wallace felt his muscles tense. He only nodded, for now. He would ask about the details after he heard the good news…and the second bad news.
“The good news is that I can fix them. The second bad news is that it’ll take a while…like possibly all night.” She frowned, sighed, and hung her head, her gaze fixed on the ground.
“What makes you confident that they’ve been sabotaged?” Wallace asked.
“Well,” she said, “a bunch of wires were cut. And not ripped or broken, but cut, obviously with a knife. Internal stuff that wouldn’t have gotten damaged unless the whole damn Stallion was crushed or impaled on something. Someone had to have opened them, reached in there, and screwed us over. A
nd while they were at it, they tossed some mud and stones into this one that now mess with one of the leg mechanisms. I’ll have to basically re-wire them both in addition to cleaning this one out.” She kicked a rock and it clattered against a tree trunk before it disappeared into the foliage. “Who would have done something like this to us?”
Wallace was suddenly furious. It welled up out of the spring deep within him, the place where his potential for violence lurked, and made him agitated and yet hyper-calm at once. It was how he became when he was ready to hunt, kill, and destroy. The answer to Jimmy’s question was obvious. The person who’d done this was the same one who’d poked around their base, spoken contemptuously of their soldiers, and asked far too many questions about exactly how they responded to difficult situations—not to mention demanded that they enter a difficult situation, to begin with.
“I have an idea,” Wallace said, “and one way or another, they will pay. Keep working on those Stallions, Jimmy.” He spun and strode off toward the forest, his cybernetic brace whirring as it helped him move.
She would pay not only for sabotaging their rides but for getting Gunnar and five other good men killed. Wallace would contradict his own orders if he arranged for her to have an “accident” out there in the jungle…so no. He would not disobey his orders. But he would tell Danvers, and Bokhari, and Hall everything. She wouldn’t get away with this.
He reared his left fist in its gauntlet back and punched the nearest tree. Wood cracked.
In the silence that followed, a radio sprang to scratchy, static-filled life, and a familiar voice wafted out of it. Wallace sprang toward it and reached it even before his men could.
For their radios to work out here, it had to be local—someone nearby and indeed, it was. “…found the Stal…sign of…two hundred yards southwest of…extraction,” Peppy’s voice said, but it wavered in and out, barely audible under the distortion. It was impossible to tell exactly what she meant based on the fragments he’d heard, but clearly, she’d found something important.