by Michael Todd
“This is crazy,” Cort yelled finally. His eyes were wide, his face pale, and his knuckles white as he gripped his harness.
Ava put a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay. Right now, we need to get out of the helicopter.”
“And go into the Zoo? That’s a suicide mission.”
“Hold up. I have an idea.” Manny pushed up from the pilot’s seat and scrambled out of the chopper.
He hefted one of the dead locusts onto his shoulders like a bale of hay. Then he ran at Gunnar. “Go down.” Manny threw the corpse at Gunnar.
The soldier dropped prone and the corpse landed on top of him.
The pilot picked up another one and ran at Peppy.
“Play possum—isn’t that what you yanks call it?”
“Manny, I’d rather be eaten by bugs,” Peppy said. He ignored the complaint and threw the insect on her. Peppy dropped to the ground, hidden by the dead locust. He had already ducked underneath the helicopter.
To Ava’s shock, the swarm of locusts above them circled for only a moment more and finally flew off into the Zoo.
They all waited for a solid minute—silent, unmoving, and hardly breathing—before Manny popped out from under the helicopter, his grin as broad as ever.
Peppy and Gunnar pushed the cadavers off them and stood. They immediately checked their weapons as if being covered in giant bug bodies was simply business as usual.
“Come on,” Ava said to Cort and stepped from the helicopter. “How could you have possibly known that would work?” She marched toward Manny, who was already breaking branches and dragging them toward the helicopter.
“It’s like you said, Ava. This place works together. Them locusts was mighty pissed to find us flying in their airspace without a license. Once we were down, they needed to make sure we’d stay down. With the chopper off and our passengers eaten, they moved on.”
“You couldn’t have known that,” Cort said from the helicopter. He exited slowly, shaking visibly as he took a few steps away from the aircraft. “You gambled with our lives. Those things could come back at any moment. This…there’s no protocol for this. You can’t just…just…do whatever you want out here.”
Gunnar and Peppy laughed so hard they almost fell over.
“Holy hell, it’s an honest-to-God pencil-pusher,” Gunnar said as he drew out a cigarette and lit up.
“I hope you take copious notes on our infractions, so when they find our dismembered corpses, the chain of command knows it wasn’t their precious protocols that killed us.” Peppy went to break branches with Manny.
“I damn well know those things can come back. Why do you think I’m bothering with branches when I should check that my girl’s okay?” Manny demanded.
“I’m fine. And I’m not your girl,” Ava said.
“I was talking about the chopper, Ava.” He shot her a grin and hefted a branch over the top of the helicopter. “We need to obscure this bird—or, technically, all of you need to obscure her while I check for damages and make sure she’ll get us back out of here after we complete our mission.”
“Wait…you still want to complete the mission?” Cort asked. His eyes widened even further.
“O’ course! That’s why we’re out here, isn’t it? I suppose we could simply pick some flowers and head home, but what’s the fun in that?”
“I…you’re all… This is crazy. We were attacked by easily a hundred locusts and crash landed in the middle of the Zoo. We don’t even know where we are,” the lieutenant protested.
“We’re near the flare,” Gunnar said and gestured in a direction with his cigarette.
“More like sixty locusts,” Peppy said. “Seventy tops.”
“You call that a crash-landing?” Manny ceased his post-landing check. He had his hands on his hips like he was a school teacher who’d been challenged by a know-it-all student. “That was about as gentle as they come. Why, I could have fallen asleep, that landing was so gentle. In fact, one time, I did exactly that. See, I was flying over the American southwest, looking for a burrito, when this wave of insomnia washed over me.”
“Insomnia means you can’t sleep,” Peppy said.
“No, no. In-somnia. Like I wanted to get in bed.”
“That’s not what that means.”
“Maybe not in American English, but in Australian, that’s the word.”
Manny’s story forgotten, he argued with Peppy while the two of them went about their work.
Ava ignored them. Cort appeared to be cracking up, probably on the verge of a panic attack. She recognized the feeling and had gone through it herself only a week ago. God, it felt longer than that. More like a lifetime.
“Hey, this is way better than my first time in the Zoo,” she said and handed the lieutenant a branch. It was best to get him focused.
“We were attacked by a swarm of locusts and crashed—I don’t care what pilot Mann says. How could this be better than anything?” Despite his indignation, Cort took the branch and leaned it against the tail of the helicopter. He even pointed the leaves up to better camouflage their exit ticket. Good, he would be okay. So long as Manny didn’t say anything too crazy.
“We’re all alive. That’s something.” Ava took a branch and found a suitable place for it.
“For now.”
“This is your first time out here,” she said.
Cort answered even though it hadn’t really been a question. “I’ve been to the border a bunch of times. But, um…you are technically correct. I haven’t been in the Zoo before.”
“You’ll be fine. You’re in way better company than I was my first time. I know they seem loony, but they merely use humor to keep cool. You have to remember, everything out here is trying to kill you.”
“How is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Everything but them. Look, you’re one of us now. Don’t point a gun at anyone and you’ll be all right. They’ll spot any critters before we do—that’s the good thing about traveling with gun-heads—and I’ll fill you in on the plants that will try to kill you. We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
“There are plants that will try to kill me? As in more than one?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ava said and smiled. She couldn’t help it. “Look, Manny, Gunnar, and Peppy have the right of it. You have to do something in the face of death—well, unless you’re stone-faced Peppy—and laughing’s better than crying.”
“I wasn’t crying.”
“See? You’re already doing better than I was. Now, don’t stop and smell any flowers and you’ll be fine.” She added another branch and tweaked it into place. The chopper was obscured reasonably well.
“No flowers?”
“Everything’s trying to kill you, remember?” She winked. Oh, God, I really am becoming like them. Soon, I’ll enjoy the smell of gun oil. Bad example. I already like the smell.
Manny hopped down from the aircraft. “Everything looks as fit as fur. We have a few scratches. That bug that tried to give Ava a hug means we’ll have a breeze on the way home, but she’ll fly.”
Cort visibly relaxed. “You’re sure?”
“Do you really want me to answer that question?” The pilot smirked.
“No,” Ava said. “The answer is no, you don’t ever want Manny to answer anything. Shouldn’t we be moving?”
Gunnar put his cigarette out and pointed with his rifle. “This way.”
Chapter Five
“So, tell us what makes Lieutenant Cort get out of the bed in the morning,” Manny said as they worked their way through the Zoo. Gunnar was in the front and Peppy in the rear. Ava, as their unofficial botanist, followed Gunnar, then Cort, then Manny.
“Um…my alarm clock?”
The pilot chuckled. No one else did.
“We have poison blooms at two o’clock.” Ava pointed.
Gunnar nodded and gave the deadly shrubbery a wide berth as he led them around it.
“No, I mean like what makes you tick? Me, for example,
I live and breathe adventure. It’s as essential as eucalyptus is to a koala, with the opposite effect o’ course. I can’t help myself. I tried staying home for a whole day once and couldn’t do it. I ended up lighting the place on fire so I could put it out, believe it or not.”
“Not,” Peppy said.
“Anyway,” he continued. “We all have reasons to be out here. Gunnar has to constantly compensate and when you’re in the Zoo, no one talks crap about packing a gun. And Peppy…well, I think she genuinely enjoys seeing suffering.”
“It puts one’s short and meaningless life in perspective. Do you guys notice this way isn’t as closed-up as the Zoo usually is?”
She was right. Although Gunnar still led them through the brush, they followed a fairly open path. Something had trampled much of the vegetation. Ava knew very little about tracking, but even she could see that they headed toward what had flattened the plants, not away.
“What about you?” Cort asked Ava, obviously clueless as to what the trail signs meant.
“Her?” Manny cut in. “She came out here to finally kill her dickhead boss—ain’t that right, Ava? She sticks around because she couldn’t do it herself and needed me to give her a little push. Now, we’re bonded until she kills someone for me. So don’t piss me off or I’ll sic her on you.”
The lieutenant laughed nervously. “No, but seriously. You’re not military and I’m sure you didn’t come out here to kill your uh…ex-boss.” Another nervous laugh seemed to indicate that he perhaps wasn’t as sure as he claimed to be.
“You’re right. I didn’t. That was a perk, I guess.”
Ava didn’t realize the man had stopped walking until Manny crashed into him.
“Keep moving, pencil-pusher. We ain’t gonna have any forms to fill out if we all stop and get eaten. Don’t be afraid of Ava. She’s only deadly when she’s holding a stick.”
“I’m not a pencil-pusher.” The other man moved on again. “I’m curious as to whether you’re like me, I guess. This place—The Zoo—has a ton of potential. It could save the human race from all sorts of problems. Disease, famine, climate change, who knows what else?”
“I thought you said you’re here on Captain Taylor’s orders?” Ava said as she eased below a low branch that was covered in glowing orange fungus. “Don’t touch that one. It makes you sleep—or die painfully. I can’t remember which.”
Cort ducked so quickly he stubbed his toe on a root.
“Captain Taylor’s orders are priority.” His expression darkened. “But I care too. This mission is extremely important.”
“And what is the mission?” Peppy asked. “I can’t exactly imagine a flare inspiring your sense of wonder.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Manny said. “Ava never said why she agreed to come back out here.”
For a moment, no one said anything as they continued their advance over the trampled plants. Ava realized they were all waiting for her answer. “I…uh…I guess I spent my whole life waiting for something to happen. I decided to come out here for similar reasons to your own, Lieutenant. I wanted to help people, and the Zoo seems like it has secrets that can do that. Getting trapped in here and making it out alive was the adventure I’d always wanted, but as for why I came back…” She paused.
Gunnar’s lighter clicked as he lit up another cigarette.
“Why do you smoke, Gunnar?” she asked.
“Because my older brother gave me a pack of Parliaments when I was sixteen and I thought he was the coolest asshole in the world. And then…well, nicotine is the most addictive substance known to man.”
“Did you ever try to quit?”
He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Fuck no.”
She nodded. “It’s like that, I guess. I know it might kill me. The chances are it will kill me, but I’d rather taste the danger than miss out.”
“Now that’s a stupid fucking answer,” Manny said. “The Zoo, more dangerous and more fun than smoking. Surgeon general’s warning, not responsible for lungs being eaten by a mutant.”
“The good thing about being a soldier is that you don’t have to worry about cancer as much,” Peppy said. “The short-term rewards outweigh the long-term risks. We’ll probably all die anyway. Only the lucky ones live long enough to die from cancer.”
“Damn it, Peppy, you are such a fucking downer.” Manny stopped in his tracks to shake his head. “With that attitude, why aren’t you always bumming smokes from Gunnar?”
“I’m a pessimist. That doesn’t mean I’m fucking stupid. Cigarettes have killed more people than the Zoo ever will.”
“So long as we do our job, that is,” Cort said quietly.
Gunnar stopped, bent over, and picked something up. “And what job is that, exactly? Do you care to elaborate on our mission?”
“Our first priority is to locate whoever shot the flare,” Cort said. He glanced around constantly and tried to face everyone but being in the middle of the group made that impossible, so he mostly looked like a meerkat.
One even more nervous-looking than most meerkats.
“Well, seeing as I have your flare gun right here and there’s not exactly anyone around to claim it, I’d like to know what the next part of these orders of yours was.” The soldier held the flare gun up.
“Even I know that one, Gunnar.” Manny stepped past the lieutenant, put both hands to his hips, and bent over with his gaze glued to the ground. He looked like a stork hunting for frogs until he held one finger up and said, “Investigate!” as if they sat in a leather armchair in a British library instead of sniffing around a clearing in a mysterious and deadly jungle.
“There’s more here than only the flare gun,” Gunnar said and Peppy and Ava stepped forward to help him search for more clues.
Only Cort seemed flabbergasted by Manny’s behavior.
Ava shrugged and gestured for Cort to come along. “His parents were dingoes.”
Gunnar and Peppy seemed to step more cautiously than they had before despite the area around them being even more trampled. Ava checked for poisonous plants, but—shockingly—found none. That had to be a first.
“I have blood,” Peppy said. “A lot of fucking blood.”
Her fellow soldier held up a strip of cloth on the end of his rifle “Uniform. Maybe more than one? I don’t see a name or rank, but that kind of luck won’t strike with Peppy around. Have you found anything, Manny?”
“Don’t interrupt me. I’m extrapolating.” He continued to stork-walk.
“You guys, come here,” Ava said. She’d checked the perimeter, certain there’d been a patch of deadly ivy or a man-eating plant somewhere, but had found something far more unusual.
“What is it?” Cort asked although he made no attempt to move any closer to her. His gaze seemed stuck on Manny and his feet glued in place.
“A backpack full of supplies. Whoever was here, they’re in trouble now—or they will be as soon as they realize they’re hungry.”
“Or if they’re attacked.” Peppy held a rifle up. “The magazine’s full too. Gunnar, do you see any bullet holes in the trees?”
Gunnar took a step toward them and scanned the clearing. “No. None around here, anyway. No spent casings either. Let me see that gun. That’s fucking strange. Who would be attacked in the Zoo and not fight back? It’s not like you’ll accidentally hit some old lady who was out to pick flowers.”
“Seriously, Gunnar?” Peppy reprimanded.
“What?”
“That was in poor fucking taste, is what.”
“For fuck’s sake, half of what comes out of your mouth is about dismemberment and you complain because I’m happy I’m not gonna shoot an old lady?”
“My grandmother is an old lady.”
“No one wants to shoot your grandma. Jesus, Peppy.”
She scowled.
Cort broke the silence. “What…what is he doing?”
Manny had dropped to all fours and now sniffed around like a dog.
; “Didn’t she say his parents were dingoes?” Peppy reminded him.
“I thought you were kidding,” Cort replied.
Ava shrugged. “You get used to him after a while.”
“I have it.” Manny pushed to his feet. “Wait, no let me do that again.” He dropped back on all fours and looked at Gunnar. “What did that naked man say when he spilled his bathtub water?”
“I don’t know, what did the naked dude say—”
“It’s not a fucking joke, Gunnar I’m serious,” Manny said, still on all fours.
“Eureka,” Peppy said.
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t have a chance to shower before we got out here and new company always makes me nervous,” Manny said and directed his nose at Cort instead of using one his hands.
“No, that guy. He said Eureka. It means ‘I’ve got it’ or something like that,” Ava said.
“Oh, right.” Manny stood once more. “Eureka! I know what attacked our missing soldier.”
“Of course, you do,” Gunnar said.
“How could you know that I know that?”
“It’s either that or you smelled dingo pee and somehow, I doubt that.”
Manny grumbled in a low tone, obviously annoyed that the suspense of his great reveal had been ruined, even though he was the one who’d ruined it.
“Come on, Manny, tell us—what attacked our guy?” Ava said.
“Not what. Who.”
Gunnar and Peppy shared a look. “No, no fucking way,” Peppy said.
“This isn’t funny man, seriously.”
“What? What is it?” Cort said, looking very bewildered.
Ava saw what Manny had found. He hadn’t been sniffing at all.
“That’s a boot print. Which can only mean our soldier was attacked by a person?”
“Bingo!” the pilot said with a delighted grin.
Chapter Six
“How can we be sure that boot print doesn’t belong to our soldier?” Peppy said as her gaze traversed the perimeter of the clearing.
“That one might, but the rest sure don’t,” Manny said. He stepped around the area and pointed out multiple boot prints.