by Michael Todd
“Now, we run,” Ava said.
Chapter Seventeen
They burst out of their little vomit grove and onto the flattened trail they’d followed to the clearing. It seemed odd, now, that the path had been made by the group of soldiers in their throes of madness. While weak and even a little disoriented, they all appeared sane and recovered from the berries.
“This way—go!” Ava led them away from the constrictadile. She told herself she knew where they were going, and that was why she was in front, but in truth, she couldn’t be sure. All she really knew was that they had to escape the monster and put a good distance between them and it. She had no doubt it could eat more than one of them if it was hungry.
The mutant reptile surged forward, and its massive body looked supremely unnatural as it undulated toward them. Gunnar stopped firing in order to run. He and Peppy brought up the rear and both yelled, “Go, go, go!” as they sprinted from their determined pursuer.
The soldiers obeyed almost blindly and stumbled after Ava, desperate to keep in front of the paltry defense Gunnar and Peppy tried valiantly to provide.
Ava could still hear the yips of the hyenamites. They seemed to follow the constrictadile and their cries were probably to invite even more monsters to join the feast—but no, that didn’t make sense. These people had been in the Zoo for days. Nothing else had attacked them because they were in the domain of the monster predator. If they could escape it, they might have a chance.
“Where are you taking us?” Manny bellowed from the middle of the pack. He carried Kessler on his shoulders like a sack of rice.
“Away from that thing!” Ava yelled but she knew she needed a better plan than that. The soldiers were exhausted and stumbled constantly, even over the relatively easy terrain of the trampled path they were on. They couldn’t keep this up, not for long.
One of the men cried out. Ava looked through desperate ranks to see that the man who’d had his ankle bitten by a hyenamite had fallen. He clutched the injured ankle and it seemed obvious that he’d somehow done more damage.
Gunnar raced past him and barely managed not to trip over the prone body. He fired more rounds at the constrictadile and looked at the injured man, then back at Ava with shame in his eyes. She would remember the tableau for a long time—Gunnar’s look of failure mixed with her own adrenaline-fueled fear. The private turned and ran from the approaching beast. Its mouth was already open, the massive jaws taller than a man, a fleshy silhouette of teeth, tongue, and throat that framed the soldier as he ran in terror.
It snapped its jaws shut on the fallen man’s legs and swung him high, shook him violently like a rag doll, and tossed him upward. Somehow, it opened its jaws even wider and swallowed the man whole.
The terrified victim screamed until the reptile snapped its mouth shut. Ava thought she could still hear his shrieks from inside the massive body and fought the instinctive urge to cover her ears. A loud snap pierced the sounds of labored breathing and stumbling footsteps, and the screams abruptly stopped.
Peppy fired at the constrictadile once again and it responded with a low, menacing rumble, a low bass sound that seemed to shake the very ground beneath them. They pushed into a sprint, but the monster simply coiled itself into a writhing, constricting knot and ignored them.
As tempting as the idea of rest was, Ava didn’t slow the pace. She and everyone else knew that the creature would be back for more of them. The only real question was whether the hyenamites would catch up to them first.
“What’s the plan?” Gunnar asked from the back of the pack.
“I’ve reconsidered my funeral arrangements. Death by constrictadile seems…distasteful.” Peppy slowed into a jog and reloaded her weapon, even though it seemed to do absolutely nothing against the massive, armored snake.
“I vote for getting the hell out of here,” Manny said around the unconscious Kessler, who still bounced on his shoulders.
“How far are we?” Mathers asked. She was winded and had bags under her eyes too big to be carry-ons. She was absolutely exhausted—as were the other survivors.
“We’ll make it,” said the soldier who’d been bitten in the side by the hyenamites. He was pale—extremely pale—but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Either that or the blood had so thoroughly soaked his tattered shirt that Ava couldn’t tell if it was still spreading.
“We can’t walk out of here, not like this,” she said and nodded at Kessler, although she tried not to puncture the soldier’s confidence. She needed to check his wounds, but they couldn’t do that where they were. The thought of deprioritizing a human’s life made her feel physically ill, but what could she do? She tried not to think about it. The idea that they had saved this man from zomberry-induced madness only to lose him on a march through the Zoo made her nauseous.
And he wasn’t the only one. All the soldiers seemed weak and beyond exhausted, perhaps even moments from passing out if she was completely honest.
“Is it following us?” she asked Gunnar and Peppy.
“Uh…yes? Of course?” Gunnar said.
“I think what he means is that our death at the constrictadile’s jaws is inevitable,” Peppy added. “But currently, it seems indisposed.”
“Damn, Peppy, that was downright optimistic,” Manny commented as he hefted the scientist and repositioned him on his shoulders.
“Then we slow down.” Ava immediately set an example and slowed to a quick trot instead of a jog. She felt absolutely insane doing so, but if the constrictadile or the hyenamites caught up to them—more like when—it wouldn’t do for the stronger members of the group to be winded. “Have some water and a bite of energy bar.” She addressed the soldiers and tried to sound encouraging. “Just a sip of water, mind you, and only take a bite of food. I don’t know when you last ate or drank and the last thing anyone needs right now is a cramp.”
Peppy and Gunnar let the soldiers take turns to drink from their packs as they walked and passed around a couple of energy bars. The survivors looked a little better, but Ava wasn’t naïve enough to think a drink and morsel of food would save their lives. They needed a plan, and they couldn’t make a good one without information.
“What do you remember about that thing?” Ava asked the soldiers.
“Not much,” one of the men said. The name on his tattered uniform read Estevez.
“I hardly remember anything,” Mathers added. “But I remember that thing. Whenever I saw it…” She shuddered, shook her head, and seemed strangely ashamed. “It was like…uh, like I wanted to go to it. Like it was…I don’t know, magnetic or something,”
“More like a friend.” Estevez nodded agreement. “It was like being a kid in the dark and you’re scared of everything and that thing was like our dad. Somehow, it made us feel safe.”
The other soldiers nodded but all of them looked horrified.
“Do you still feel that way?” Gunnar asked.
“Fuck no,” Estevez said. “That thing just ate one of us.”
“Not anymore,” Mathers confirmed. “But thinking about that feeling and remembering wanting to go to that fucking monster… If it comes for us and I go toward it—”
“We won’t let it get a hot meal.” Peppy patted her rifle meaningfully.
Mathers nodded, relieved and daunted all at once.
“I don’t want it to get any of us,” Ava said. “But we can’t keep going like this.” Again, she glanced at the wounded soldier. Aside from the tears inflicted by the hyenamites, his uniform was largely shredded and didn’t have his name on it. She wanted to ask him his name but didn’t, which honestly made her feel horrible. But they couldn’t stop to chat—not yet and not without an exit strategy. “What about the helicopter? Can we fly out?”
Peppy, Gunnar, and Cort looked at Manny.
“Well…” he hedged, and for once, seemed to have lost his habitual mockery. “It’s a ton of weight. We’d have to strip that bird down like it was molting season because it’ll be down
to the feather—like plucking feathers from an osprey until we’re down to a sparrow.” Manny studied the soldiers around him as if to weigh them all in his mind. “Plus, we’re basically guaranteed to be attacked by them damn super locusts and considering the amount of armor we’ll have to shed, it’s more than likely we’ll all die in a spectacular, fiery explosion.”
“So, you’re saying we failed the mission,” Cort said. “We’ll die here, even with Kessler.”
Manny’s signature grin appeared like a light in a coal cellar. “Fuck no, mate. I’m saying it’ll be awesome.”
Chapter Eighteen
They marched through the Zoo and set as slow a pace as they dared, but it was still too fast for the beleaguered platoon.
The wounded man, John Kerr—Ava had finally asked his name—tripped over nothing at all and made no effort to stand.
She hurried to him and cursed herself again and again for not tending to his wounds sooner.
“Have you…seen my mom?” he asked. He winced and looked past her and up through the tiny cracks in the canopy toward the sunshine, as far away as it was.
“Not yet. You hold on and we’ll get her on the radio. But hold on,” she said. By the time she’d removed his tattered shirt to check his wounds, it was too late. Kerr had stopped breathing and his heart had stopped. He’d obviously bled out and his organs had slowly begun to shut down. How he had managed to push himself that far was nothing short of a miracle.
Ava, furious with herself, checked his wounds all the same. They were a mess and aside from the weakness of blood loss and trauma, he must have endured incredible agony as well. She marveled at the sheer power of human determination that had pushed him to continue until his body simply lost the strength to follow the impetus of his will.
“Damnit. I could’ve helped him,” Ava mourned as she examined the multitude of wounds.
“No, you couldn’t have, mate. You might’ve bought him a few more minutes, but you couldn’t have stopped that.” Manny gestured at the man’s mangled abdomen. “The rest of these folks, though? Well, we have a chance. Are you blokes with me?”
Half-hearted nods, weak affirmations of resolve, were the only response.
“Don’t make me a put another one of you up here,” Manny said with a grin and gestured to Kessler. He didn’t seem to make much of a difference to morale. The soldiers’ gazes were glued to Kerr’s dead body. Ava knew as well as the rest of them what would become of their fallen comrade if they left him there. But they couldn’t bury him and couldn’t carry him, which meant—if they were lucky—the constrictadile would come across his body and be further distracted. One way or another, though, his body would add to the biomass of the Zoo. It had claimed another victory and would grow stronger because of Kerr’s death.
Ava hated the fucking place.
“Is this what you think Captain Taylor intended?” Cort said, his voice loud but quivering with pent emotion. “For you all to give up the moment you lost a man to the dang Zoo?”
Some of the troops straightened instinctively. Others seemed to recognize the lieutenant’s rank for the first time.
Manny leaned conspiratorially toward Ava. “That would’ve been a good opportunity to drop the F-bomb, but I guess the pencil-pusher doesn’t have it in him.”
“Because somehow, I doubt it,” Cort continued and seemed to draw strength from the soldiers’ looks of tentative hope. “I am Lieutenant James Cort, and I’m a pencil-pusher.”
A few of them laughed. The sound was weak but welcome.
“That means I know the details of the missions you’ve been on. I know your records. I know your strengths and your weaknesses. Not one of you was chosen to go on this mission because you were quick to lose sight of your purpose while you mourned a fallen comrade. Not one of you was chosen because you knew when it was time to quit.” He gained steam now and sounded more and more confident.
“You were chosen because Captain Taylor and I knew you would complete your mission and find Dr. Kessler—which you have. You were chosen because we knew that even if the Zoo threw something the likes of which no one has ever seen before—which it has—you would persevere, follow orders, and make it back to camp by any means necessary.
“You were chosen because you’re the second-best team that’s ever gone into this fucking hellhole and because we knew that if you were ordered to return, you would. Now. We don’t have much farther to this helicopter but still plenty of runway on which to be eaten by whatever comes looking for dinner. I know you’re tired and hungry and have lost more friends out here than I probably have back home. But orders are orders, and you were ordered to return to base. Are there any questions?”
Mathers spoke to break the silence that followed his challenge. “Second-best? Then who the fuck is the first?”
“Us.” Gunnar took a step forward and angled his rifle toward the sky like he posed for an action-movie poster.
“The Digeridudes,” Manny added as he dropped Kessler unceremoniously to the ground, folded his arms, and moved to stand back to back with Gunnar.
“For fuck’s sake, we agreed that’s not our name and you two look like you’re ready to be eaten by that damn snake,” Peppy said.
“Then what? I give you dickwads gold and you give me nothing. Wait! I have one—The Upshots from Downunder!”
Ava shook her head but the nonsense had worked. The soldiers actually smiled. Well, smiled was perhaps too strong a word, but at least they didn’t look so ready for death anymore. She considered that a victory.
Sadly, she laid John Kerr’s head in the grass and stood. Now was not the time to show weakness or even emotion. “We need to make it to the helicopter with enough time to de-feather it before that thing comes back.”
“Who’s ready to join the Upshots for a nice little run?” Manny said as he hoisted Kessler once more. The doctor really was out cold.
“For the record, that is not our name, and if you say that again, I’ll stab you in the thigh and leave you for the hyenamites,” Peppy said.
“Well then, what should we be called?” Manny said and started off at a brisk pace.
“The Hopeless Optimists.”
Gunnar laughed at Peppy’s deadpan joke, then lit up a cigarette. “They’re not gonna call us shit if we don’t get moving.”
Their spirits lifted, if only slightly, the motley group started out again. They managed a slightly faster pace than before, if only because they no longer had a man bleeding out. A grim thought, but there it was.
They made it to the helicopter without incident. Well, with as little incident as was possible in the Zoo. The yips and shrieks of unnatural laughter from the hyenamites never completely died away. And the insects seemed to leave a bubble of silence behind them, which was never a good sign, but nothing attacked. Ava didn’t even see any carnivorous plants, either—a kindness given all they’d already had to contend with.
“Here she is,” Manny said and again relinquished Kessler like a bale of straw before he started toward the camouflaged chopper.
Peppy and Gunnar shared a look, rolled their eyes, and secured the scientist to a pillar-like sandstone boulder near the edge of the clearing—another odd reminder of the desert the Zoo once was.
Ava used the moment to examine the other soldiers. She’d be damned if another one of them died from something she could have treated. They’d already lost two of the eleven people they’d rescued. She would not lose another. They were all bruised and scratched, some with infected wounds and others that would be infected soon, but they’d live. At least long enough to be attacked by a flying swarm of super locusts.
She directed a few of the healthier-looking troops to help Manny and turned her attention to fully watch the pilot work. He attacked the innards of the helicopter with reckless abandon. Cort tried to stop him and failed spectacularly.
“That’s the navigational computer,” the lieutenant protested as Manny chunked a particularly large and rather expensive-looking
machine from the aircraft like it was day old bread.
“I have all the navigational computing we need right here.” He tapped the side of his head and winked at Cort.
“The Zoo could’ve grown since we’ve been in here.”
“Then we make for the horizon.”
“Won’t we need safety harnesses to get there?” Cort was aghast. He tried to catch the seats Manny hurled out of the helicopter as if catching them would somehow restore them to their proper place.
“Nah. There aren’t enough to go round. It wouldn’t be fair to make some people stand—it’s a solidarity thing. Rule number twenty-two—all for one and no one sits unless we all do. Who knows how to use a wrench?” He looked at the soldiers Ava had sent over.
“Don’t answer that,” Cort mumbled, but whatever confidence he’d found earlier seemed to have escaped him.
The soldiers looked at one another and Estevez raised a hand. “My dad was a mechanic.”
“My parents were dingoes but you don’t see me bragging.” Manny tossed him the wrench. “Now, get to work on the landing gear. You take the nuts off but leave the bolts, see? That way, when we lift off, we leave ʼem behind!”
“You’re dumping the landing gear?” Cort was incredulous.
“Do you have any idea how much that stuff weighs?”
“No, but we’ll need it to land.”
“Damn.” The pilot paused. “I had hoped you’d read some sort of ledger or something in your free time. Ah, well, better safe than sorry, eh, mate?” Manny vanished back into the helicopter.
“Who likes prybars?” he asked and held up a pair of iron tools like they were candy apples. “This armor’s gotta go, and it won’t be easy.”
Mathers and another soldier went to work, starting on the piece that a locust had already tried to peel off.
“You…you filching monsters. Join me. Join us. We hunger.” Ava turned to see that Kessler had begun to wake up. He was still tied to the rock, his eyes closed, but he gradually came to and shook his head slowly as if to clear it. “Evolve. Evolve! We must grow, grow, grow!” His words emerged between grunts and hisses.