by Michael Todd
“What do you suggest?” Addams flashed him a warning glance. “What, you want her to walk all the way back to the vehicles on her own? With a gaping wound in her leg?”
“Hey,” Lynch said as he raised his hands, “if you volunteer to help her yourself, I won’t stop you. But don’t expect me to pad your expense accounts for leaving the job half done, sonny.”
“I could always go,” Sal suggested.
Lynch shook his head. “The specialist needs to stay with the gunners at all times. You’ll get yourself killed otherwise.”
Sal shrugged. “So when it comes to me, you’re suddenly concerned for the well-being of others?”
“You’re my paycheck, lad, or at least an easier way of getting more of it,” Lynch said unapologetically. “You can bet your skinny arse I’m willing to keep you alive and hale.”
“So, if I’d been the one shot—”
“I’d carry you myself if it came down to it,” Lynch said with a wink.
“It’s all a moot point anyway,” Kennedy said coldly. Her pale face seemed suddenly flushed with her controlled anger. “Because I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stick it out until the mission’s finished, Lynch.”
“Sorry, lass, but that is not your decision anymore,” Lynch snarled back. “It’s the decision of the blokes who will have to carry you across one of the most dangerous areas in the world. It was a stroke of bad luck to get wounded on a mission like this, and I feel for ya, I really do, but the rest of us have to think about our own bottom lines here.”
“I am thinking about my own bottom line,” Sal said, quietly but firmly, “and about getting out of here alive. More than any of you, I think. But I won’t leave Kennedy behind.”
Lynch scowled at him. “Look, little one, I’ll carry you even if you’re not wounded.”
“Will you carry me too?” Addams asked and stood now that he had closed Kennedy’s wound. “Because I won’t leave my patient on her own in the Zoo to get torn to pieces.”
“I won’t leave the sarge behind either,” Cortez cut in before Lynch could make a witty response. “It’s all of us together, or not at all.”
“It looks like you’re outvoted, Lynch,” Kennedy said decisively. She pushed gently to her feet and straightened to her full height. “So, unless you plan to strike out on your own, I think you’d better get used to having me around. For this mission only, though. I won’t be stuck in the Zoo with you as a gunner in the future, and after I tell the squad leaders at the Staging Area, I don’t think they’ll want you with them either.”
Her armor was shredded, but she still struck a more impressive figure than Lynch ever could.
The man stared her down for a few seconds and finally backed away as he shook his head. “You’re all a bunch of crazy fucks, you know that? You’ll all die out here, and it’ll be your fault. Not mine. Yours.”
“I can live with that,” Sal said softly and removed his helmet.
The closer they got to ground zero, the less the desert influence could be felt. The jungle heat was almost oppressive, to the point where they didn’t need the heating lamps. Sal wasn’t sure if this was something to be expected this deep into the Zoo, but the rest of the squad seemed too distracted by more pressing concerns to really give a shit.
“Okay,” Kennedy said, “we need to put a watch system in place in case any of the critters get curious about what we taste like. It’s…eight hours until sunrise so we can alternate for two hours each, okay?”
The rest of the squad nodded and grumbled assent.
“I can take the first watch,” Sal said.
Kennedy smirked. “Thanks, Jacobs. Do you want to be armed for it?”
Sal shook his head. “I’m sure it’s better if I simply yell for the people with actual weapons knowledge should something go wrong.”
The sergeant laughed. She placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I appreciate it.”
He nodded and fought the urge to grin.
“The rest of you,” Kennedy snapped, “get some rest. It was a long day, and it’ll probably be as long tomorrow.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sal created an improvised chair from the unused pieces of his shelter. He doubted he would be able to sleep anyway. Even if he did, the shelters had no ambiance control, so with the kind of heat they would endure, it would be cooler to sleep in the open than inside a shelter.
One of the plusses about the Zoo, he thought, was that mosquitoes hadn’t heard about it yet. Either that or the goop had absorbed those that had migrated there and would soon transform them into horrifying mutant monsters that could suck a human dry in seconds.
He shuddered. That wasn’t something he wanted to think about. They had giant locusts, panthers with six legs, and lizards that spat metal-melting acid. The last thing the Zoo needed was giant mosquitoes. He was born and raised in Florida, and he’d had more than enough experience with the damned blood-suckers. If there was one thing this fucking jungle could do for him, it was to keep them out.
With his suit off, he felt more comfortable. The heating lamps were turned to their minimum setting, and the squad had retired to bed. They seemed to have had the same idea as he had and slept out under the stars.
Well, under the leaves anyways, Sal amended. There was no sign of the sky there, merely leaves in abundance.
Sal sighed, leaned back in his seat, and focused on his ongoing experiments. One of the more interesting things he’d learned about the flowers that they’d collected was that they glowed softly in the dark. It wasn’t much, not enough to light up a place, but it did show a high concentration of the goop, and that was interesting. They already knew that what made them so very expensive was the fact that they were crammed full of an altered form of the goop.
Sal could safely assume that not all the substance from the original supply had been used in this experiment. There would be some more stored away in an Area Fifty-One-esque place—probably, God forbid, somewhere on the continental USA—in case a need arose. He considered what Lynch had said about synthesizing the goop and wondered why they hadn’t found a way to clone it. Any scientist would have pursued that at the very beginning, he realized. Obviously, the goop was so far advanced that no one had been able to replicate it, or they would have by now. He reminded himself that it was, after all, of alien origin. That in itself probably put it light-years ahead of what humanity could even imagine.
Even then, Sal thought the concept that these flowers were infused with an altered form of the goop needed to be explored. He remembered the way that the damaged locust armor had coalesced, and the new piece had taken on the advanced abilities of the other. He wondered if the eggheads in charge of the whole experiment had thought to try this out. Maybe they didn’t even know that it had this kind of reaction?
Sal inspected the bruised flower petals. He could see that a little of the juice from the flower petals had seeped out. The liquid glowed as well and was probably what the corporations paid so much for.
All they had to do to start making more money more efficiently was to have a genius like him on the case.
Sal grinned and glanced at the camp to make sure the rest of his squad were sleeping. Satisfied, he rummaged in his pouch for the containment unit with the plant he’d uprooted.
It seemed fine. The leaves were still green although the buds hadn’t opened yet. They would come; he was certain of that. The plant appeared durable, especially considering that it sent a pheromone alarm into the air every time it was plucked from the ground.
Sal gathered a handful of soil from the ground. It was thick and dark, almost black. He opened a small compartment on the bottom of the container, dribbled the soil inside, and closed it again. The plant remained sealed, but he guessed it might grow better in its own soil instead of the generic stuff that came with the container. That might be good enough for test plants back at the lab, but considering how much this one was worth, he really wanted to make sure it was in a hospitable enviro
nment.
He replaced it carefully and withdrew one of the sealed units with the flowers again. He tilted his head and studied it. The bounty on these things was about five or six thousand now, so it wasn’t exactly worthless, but he wondered what problem would arise if he unsealed one to examine the petals in more detail. He felt bad for Kennedy. While she had pain medication, one or other plant around there might have antibiotic properties that could help as Addams’ supply of these would be limited.
A quick look through the database didn’t reveal much. The scientists at the Staging Area seemed less inclined to investigate the medicinal properties of the other plants as they already had the cure to aging. It was a shame really because the Zoo had to be a pharmaceutical company’s wet dream waiting to happen. The goop was infused in almost all plants and animals.
Still, feeding Kennedy some random plant or mushroom had all the makings of the world’s worst idea. He turned his attention back to the medicinal properties of the plants the eggheads back at the Staging Area had studied.
He quickly and quietly unsealed one of the packets with the petals. He used a pair of tweezers to take one of them gently and placed it in a petri dish before resealing the others. It wasn’t a complete set anymore, but it made no sense to waste what they’d already collected.
If the squad were angry, he would remind them that he was the one responsible for finding the petals in the first place. If they had a problem with it, they could find more using the same device they’d used to find the first batch. In fact, he was sure they could go back to the first batch now that the animals and bounty hunters were no longer around.
Sal pulled his helmet on, activated the HUD, and set it to the microscope. He zoomed in on the bruised petal and tried to look deeper into what made these things so damn special.
The first thing he noted was how the petal seemed to repair itself, but not to the extent that it would return to its original condition. The process had also slowed, much like it would if it was no longer attached to the plant that had made it in the first place.
Sal scowled. The plant seemed to repair itself with the goop that oozed from it, but since most was out already, it had little to work with. That realization brought the absolutely weirdest idea he’d ever had.
He rooted in his pack until he found the petri dish with what was left of the giant locust’s armor that hadn’t been dipped in or affected by acid. He broke it quickly into smaller pieces and put it into the dish with the petal. Using the tweezer, he squeezed a little of the goop on to the armor.
Sal peered through the microscope to see what happened. The goop had little effect at first until it soaked into the armor and he saw it repair itself faster than it had before. He drew back and confirmed that the process was actually visible now as the pieces adhered. The effect was that the armor repaired quite effectively, although not as well as it had before. It was as if the concentration of even this tiny smear of goop from a bruised flower petal could work better than a much larger quantity in the animal itself.
It could easily be engineered into a rejuvenation potion. Rub it over your skin and see forty years’ worth of wrinkles disappear. Drink some and see the effects of your alcoholism disappear. It wouldn’t even take that much work. He guessed that most of the effort came from diluting it to have more to sell.
He wondered what work he’d have to put into it to actively heal leg wounds.
He dug into his pack again, mumbling something about killing corporations when he got back and found a saline solution. With a furtive glance at his sleeping companions, he tipped the rest of the ruined petals into a pewter bowl and crushed them. They had very little goop left in them and provided a disappointingly small amount of liquid to pour into the petri dish. He mixed the thick goo with a few droplets of the saline solution and drew it out with a syringe. Sal packed everything up quickly, careful to hide the plant beneath what he hoped was boring stuff that the likes of Lynch wouldn’t bother to dig into. He stood, brushed the dirt from his pants, and sat once more. Another fifteen minutes to watch for flesh-eating monsters remained in his shift, so he had to exercise a little patience.
Time seemed to slow as Sal waited for someone to relieve him from duty. Finally, Cortez roused and pushed to his feet. He stretched and yawned before he shook his head as if to clear it and grabbed his rifle. With a low murmur of displeasure, he scratched at the rough beard that prickled on his cheek before he stumbled across the camp.
“What’s the helmet for? Have any monsters come yet?” Cortez asked and punctuated the sentence with some curse words in Spanish.
“Oh, yeah, there was this one,” Sal said, “but it said it had a taste for some Irish meat, so I pointed him Lynch’s way and got back to looking out for the real monsters.”
Cortez chuckled. “You’re an asshole.”
Sal nodded and stood. “Yep, that’s me.”
“Well, get some sleep, Jacobs, and I’ll see you in the morning.” Cortez dropped into the seat.
“Do you mind if I use your sleeping bag?” The man nodded and waved him away. There would be a two-hour chair dance between each change of the guard, Sal supposed. Cortez would take the bed of the person who relieved him, and so on.
It didn’t matter since he wouldn’t go to bed yet anyway. Sal lifted his pack and moved toward the others. He walked to where Kennedy slept and tried to move as quietly as possible over the rough ground until he reached her. After drawing a long, slow breath and releasing it quietly, he sat beside her and tapped lightly on her shoulder. When she growled in her sleep and tried to turn over, he tapped again.
“Kennedy,” Sal growled softly, “wake the fuck up. I have something to show you.”
“I swear to God, Jacobs,” she mumbled and opened one eye to glare angrily at him. “If this isn’t a life or death emergency, it will soon be your life or death emergency.”
“It’s not…well, it’s an emergency, but not life or death,” he finally conceded.
The sergeant grumbled and pushed herself into an almost upright position. “What’s the emergency then?”
“I think I found a way to treat your wound a lot quicker,” he said and held up the syringe with the slightly glowing liquid.
Kennedy narrowed her eyes. “You think? You won’t inject me with that, will you? Why are you wearing your helmet?”
“All answers will come in time,” Sal said and lifted her blanket to reveal her bandaged leg. “And I won’t inject you with it. Not yet, anyway. I need to see what reaction it has on your torn skin.”
“So, if it’s actually poisonous—”
“It’ll be reversible,” he said and dabbed some of the liquid carefully onto a gauze pad. “You don’t mind losing your leg, right?”
“I’m not in the mood, Jacobs,” she growled, and he nodded. Maybe he should keep his brilliant sense of humor to himself. He spread the liquid over the gauze before he lifted the bandage and applied the liquid gently to the wound in a slow, circular motion. He hadn’t seen any reports that the goop might have adverse effects, and with the corporations paying what they did for it, he was reasonably certain it wouldn’t do any harm, even if it didn’t help.
“How do you feel?” Sal asked.
Kennedy frowned. “Nothing’s really changed. Oh…wait, it feels like you put some of that aloe vera shit on it…and now it stings a little.”
“Like…acid stinging?” Sal asked and zoomed the microscope into where he’d applied the serum.
“No, more like the kind of sting from an old spider bite, I guess,” Kennedy said, a little discomforted.
“That…that doesn’t really help unless I know the type of spider you were bitten by.”
Kennedy rolled her eyes. “You know, hairy, has eight legs.”
“All spiders have eight legs, Kennedy,” Sal reminded her and inspected her wound.
“I’m sure there are spiders out there that were involved in some sort of accident and only have seven legs. Or six.”
Sal shook his head. “What? Why are you talking about this?”
She chuckled. “You think you’re the only one who gets to be sarcastic in the middle of the night?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I’ll assume that you mean a spider bite that’s healing?”
“Yeah, what did you think I meant?” she asked. Sal ignored her and looked closer. The goop interacted with the cells it was on. From what he could see, it reacted with the wounded tissue and seeped under the skin to heal the light bruising. From there, it moved to the open edges and began to seal them together.
“What’s happening?” Kennedy asked.
“It’s healing your wound,” Sal answered.
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Sal looked at her and tried to keep his voice pitched low. “It’s healing the bruised and lesioned tissue. I mean, I’m not a doctor. You might want to get Addams to look at it—”
“Well, yeah, but what is it?” Kennedy asked.
“It’s a solution I put together.”
“With what?” she asked, looking at the wound in confusion.
“Um… Well, I used the bruised petals from the Pita plant.”
“Wait,” Kennedy growled. “You mean you wiped a bunch of alien goop all over my wound without telling me what it was?”
Sal nodded. “Yep, that sounds about right.”
For a moment, he thought she would be mad, but she looked impressed instead. “Huh, that’s pretty cool,” she said with an approving nod. “You think I’ll be able to walk by tomorrow?”
Sal shrugged. “There’s not much more left. And to make more, I’d have to ruin the good ones we’ve collected, and I’m pretty sure the guys will have something to say about that.”
“Fuck them,” Kennedy said but immediately regretted it and shook her head. “Okay, how many petals did you use for the stuff you put on me?”
“One whole set.”
“Yeesh.” She made a face and leaned back.