by Michael Todd
Sal still felt iffy about it. As much as his confidence for the trips had grown, he didn’t want to live inside for too long a period. He wasn’t sure his nerves could take the constant bombardment. Besides, he hadn’t forgotten that the goop was capable of producing monsters that could crush the little prefab buildings with a single step.
He didn’t think he would sleep comfortably if something that big loomed over him.
Of course, loss of sleep wouldn’t be at the top of his to-worry-about list if the Zoo overtook the Staging Area. The more likely option was that they would have to set up somewhere else, a location hopefully already protected by the wall. It would be a massive pain, but so would having to fight monsters on the way out for dinner.
Sal found that his spirits plummeted every time he looked at the jungle that inched closer and closer to them, so he decided to simply not look. It would still be there, but at least it wouldn’t worry him so much. Out of sight, out of mind was still a valid technique for evasion.
The sun had begun its climb to transform the cool early morning air to the uncomfortably warm mid-morning air. It would be scorching by noon, but he hoped to be indoors by then. He was reluctant to call for a JLTV since he would now be charged for that. There were downsides to working freelance, but he’d made his choice. He could afford a few extra walks; he was used to it, and at least the paths were clearly marked.
The business that sold tools and weapons to freelancers was close to the center of the Staging Area, which meant that it was equally close no matter where you were.
When Sal reached his destination, it already buzzed with activity. A fair number of licensed freelancers worked in the area and didn’t have government-issued equipment. Those who did seemed to feel they could always be improved. Besides, they could keep everything bought there once they left the service. He had to wonder if a handful didn’t buy simply to take it back to the States, tax-free, and resell it.
It was good business.
Sal looked around. Kennedy had sent him a “Confirmed” message, and he had asked her to send that if she was interested in joining his company. He wasn’t sure if the ambiguity of her sending him only the one word in response was intentional, though. Had she simply told him what he wanted to hear so he wouldn’t bother her? Or maybe she wasn’t sold on the idea and had time to think it over and now had second thoughts?
He didn’t like his overactive mind. It included an overactive imagination which, as he looked around the business and didn’t see Kennedy, immediately clamored with all kinds of negative questions. Worst-case scenarios played in his head. Maybe she’d received a better offer and didn’t want an awkward conversation with him.
He would have done the same thing, in all honesty, or at least considered it. Awkward conversations should be avoided at all costs.
Which was why his mind thought it was possible, he decided. Human nature never thought someone was capable of something if you weren’t capable of the same thing.
“Hey.”
“Gah!” Sal jumped and turned when someone touched his shoulder from behind. Kennedy laughed at his reaction.
“A bit jumpy there, eh, Jacobs?” she asked as she tried to stifle fits of laughter.
“Very funny,” he growled but soon laughed with her. He’d read that it was an evolutionary response, a way to vocally tell the tribe or group that everything was okay.
It still felt awkward and weird.
“Are you ready for this?” she asked once they’d both regained seriousness.
“Ready for what?” Sal asked.
“Ready for wh—” She narrowed her eyes at him. “For the whole heading out on our own thing? Project Heavy Metal? Getting our act together and going on tour?”
“Oh, right!” Sal shook his head. “Ready for that. Yes, I’m definitely…ninety percent ready for that.”
Kennedy chuckled. “You know that you don’t exactly fill me with confidence.”
Sal nodded. “Yeah. I only made the decision myself yesterday. I finally finished my dissertation, and I didn’t want to share it with the corporations that owned my contract so they could edit the crap out of it before it reached the doctoral board. Who knows what kind of typos they’d make? You know the men in the ivory towers hate them some typos.”
She nodded. “I don’t know, but I’ll take your word for it. I’m happy that you finished your dissertation, though. Does that mean that we can officially call you Doctor without you getting all pissy about it?”
“I don’t get pissy,” he retorted. “But I don’t feel I’ve earned the title yet. It’s like calling someone by a higher rank than they’ve actually reached. I mean, how would you feel if I called you…Colonel Kennedy?”
She chuckled. “I’d be pretty flattered, though the problem would be if the actual colonels heard you call me that.”
“That’s how actual doctors feel about me getting called a doctor.”
Kennedy shrugged. “I don’t know. Dr. Monroe doesn’t seem to mind, and she’s one of those who’s been here the longest.”
“Yeah,” he agreed with a nod. “She’s one of the coolest doctors I’ve ever met.”
The sergeant smiled and winked at him.
“What?” he asked and narrowed his eyes as they walked toward the building.
“Nothing,” she replied with a chuckle. “Monroe is pretty…cool.”
“What was that?” Sal asked.
“What was what?” Kennedy asked as they stepped through the doors.
Sal rolled his eyes. “I’m not playing games. I made one of the biggest decisions of my life, and I won’t be distracted by your…wordplay.”
“We’ll see about that,” she replied, and he shook his head.
“So, what made you think about going solo?” Kennedy asked as they looked at the different equipment they’d need to set up shop for themselves.
“Well…” Sal scratched idly at his chin. “I saved up a fair amount of money thanks to the little—” He coughed, and she grinned. “Uh…alterations I made to the sat phones. I’m sure you did too, but I realized that I don’t like being afraid my edge will be stolen by the corporations when they find out about it. If they get the improvements, I want to be fairly compensated for them. And by fairly, I mean at a price that I decide is right, not whatever the military wants to give me minus a tax that would make Prince John get a raging boner.”
“Prince John?” Kennedy asked and raised an eyebrow.
“You know—Prince John from the Robin Hood stories?” When she shrugged, his eyes widened. “You’ve never heard of the Robin Hood stories? Not even the Disney Cartoon classic?”
Kennedy smirked. “Well, have you ever heard of Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper?”
“I…” Sal rolled his eyes. “Fine, that’s a fair point, but not my original point. Anyways, I feel like I’ve done some impressive stuff in my own right and I’d like to have more to show for it than the odd pat on the back.”
Kennedy nodded. “I get that. So, second question, the Brain, how about you tell me why you chose me out of the rest of the troops to join your company?”
“Wait,” Sal said and raised a finger. “If I’m the Brain, does that make you Pinky?”
She opened her mouth, and when nothing came out, closed it again and made a sour face. “Dammit.”
“Yeah,” he said with a grin.
“But you know there are a lot of theories on the datanet that say Pinky is—”
Sal raised his hand again. “Don’t. Don’t do that, it’s a little pathetic. You win some, you lose some. Own up to the fact that you lost that one and we can move on.”
Kennedy shook her head. “Yeah, okay, whatever. Anyway, you didn’t answer the question. Why me? I mean, Addams would be more versatile in the field with his medical knowledge. Cortez is a better shot than I am. Why me?”
Sal shrugged. “It’s pretty insulting that you have to ask. We work well together, and the fact that you haven’t sold my secret to the
military tells me you’ve got my back, even when it means you get less on the hauls you make without me.”
“It’s not like I could even replicate it without you there,” she grumbled and looked faintly flushed.
“You could have told your superiors that I found a more efficient way to find stuff out there in the Zoo,” Sal interjected. “My point stands. I trust you and I think you trust me too, or you wouldn’t be here. We’ll make some money, tax-free, and after we’ve tested our ideas in the field, we can sell them at the corporate level, make a mint, and walk away from this damn well off.
“My contract was tied up neatly with the government, so I had to do a bit of digging. With some help from Dr. Monroe, I figured out that all I had to do to get free was to ask for cut-away and they’d let me stay on. I’ll have to pay for my own amenities like rent and medical costs and whatever. It would be illegal to do in the States, but so would the shit that they pulled to get me here in the first place. If they want to come at me, my brother’s a specialist in international law, and I’m certain we could walk away from this even richer if they tried.”
Kennedy nodded. “It sounds like you put a lot of thought into this.”
“I needed something for my brain to multi-task with while I worked on my dissertation.” Sal managed to keep a straight face until she punched him lightly on the shoulder.
“Quit being a showoff and tell me what it is we’d need for this to work,” she demanded.
“Well, we’d probably need to bring our own supplies,” he said. “There’d be some charge to use the government’s suits and weapons, along with food and other stuff. I thought that we could probably start there, right?”
“This is the part where I step in, yeah?”
“Yep.” He touched a couple of the smoke grenades they’d produced en masse after their squad had field tested it. “If I were working alone, I’d still have to rely on government-sponsored missions into the Zoo to pay the rent, so it’s great to have you to help me with this. It’s my first time owning my own company and first time doing inventory, so I’m completely lost, of course.”
Kennedy laughed. “Is it weird that your self-deprecating style of charm doesn’t really fill me with confidence about this whole endeavor?”
“I could tell you that I know everything will work out and we’ll be millionaires in a couple of months, but while that is the idea, I’m not sure if I can pull it off. So, in the immortal words of that one wrestling guy, ‘I’m all out of gum.’”
“See,” she said, “that’s a reference I understand.”
Sal nodded. “Of course it is.”
“Moving on. I’ve owned a business before, and if you ever had, you’d know that the first thing you should do is talk to the supplier. They generally want you to know what you’re buying.”
“Yeah, but won’t they overprice stuff?” Sal asked.
“Yeah, if they’re con-men who look for a single score.” Kennedy made a face at him. “But if we talk about an actual business that relies on reputation to stay in business, they’ll want to make sure of two things: A, they’re the only ones to supply you, and B, that they’re not over-supplying you since they don’t want you to go out of business. Most of their money comes from repeat customers, so they want you to repeat your purchases for as long as possible. That means you stay in business for as long as possible.”
Sal nodded. “That’s…actually some good points.”
“Yeah, I interned in the purchasing department of a clothing retail store,” Kennedy said.
“Huh,” Sal grunted. “I did not know that.”
“There’s a whole lot about me you don’t know, sailor,” she said with a grin and a wink. “You can’t open the book of my life and start in the middle.”
Sal nodded, but before he could answer, they reached the man in charge of the store.
“Mr. Jacobs!” He greeted him with a massive grin. “How’s that pistol working out for you?”
“Mr. Boulos,” Sal replied, “it’s really good. I mean, I still can’t shoot for shit, but that’s probably more on me than the gun.” Boulos was a massive, dark-skinned man with a British accent. His parents were Lebanese and had emigrated to the UK when he was five years old. He ended up in the military to pay for his business degree and worked his way from there to sell weapons back to the military in other places like this around the world.
It was actually ingenious, Sal realized after he’d had a moment to think about it.
“Well, you keep on practicing,” he said with a massive smile.
“What, so I have to keep coming back to you to buy bullets?” he asked and raised an eyebrow.
“Well, a man has to eat, right?” Boulos said with a laugh. “Are you here for something bigger, maybe? Something with a bit more kick?”
Kennedy cut in. “Actually, the two of us have gone into business for ourselves, so we’d like to get new equipment. We don’t want to have to rent it from the military.”
“Oh, wow,” Boulos said with a nod. “That’s a substantial investment.” He turned to the computer. “So what will you two need?”
“Standard equipment,” she said. “Armor suits, weapons, fully functioning HUD equipment, and the extra scientist package for this one.” She inclined her head toward Sal. “Plus shelter tents, food rations, the whole supply megillah.”
“Huh.” Boulos grunted and clicked a few buttons. “You know, to get all this stuff off the shelf, just out of the factory, will be pretty expensive. For the both of you, it’ll come out to over fifty grand.”
“Ouch,” Kennedy said with a horrified look at Sal.
“That would sap everything I’ve saved,” he muttered. “We’ll probably have to get the secondhand stuff and work our way up to the full investment.”
Boulos nodded. “Well, rations and shelter tents are standard, so there’s no point in buying them second-hand. They’re not the biggest dents in the budget anyways—less than five grand to set you both up for two dozen trips.”
Kennedy nodded. “You can put us down for that then. How about the weapons?”
“They recently launched new assault rifles, so they’re selling the old ones cheap. They’re still about ten grand for MARs and sidearms if I set you up with the new stuff. I can bump that down to five if you can take second-hand, plus the ammo’s cheaper for those too.”
“That sounds great, too, Boulos,” she confirmed. “What you’re saying is that the really expensive stuff is the suits.”
“Yeah,” the large man said. “Even second-hand, they will set you back about fifteen thousand each. Besides, you don’t want the older suits. Even armor from about six months ago won’t offer much protection. Folks still weren’t sure about the real dangers that explorers would face back then, and the critters in there get better and better at it. You don’t want to skimp on armor, let me tell ya.”
Sal nodded, made a face, and looked at Kennedy.
“Look, Boulos, you have to meet us halfway here,” she said. “I know you have to keep a profit margin, but we can’t run off into the jungle in our civilian clothes. We need something from you first. Is there no way you can give us a payment plan on this stuff?”
“Sorry.” Boulos looked apologetic. “You have to have a government contract to get payment plans, and from what I see here, the two of you just broke off. But that does give me an idea.” He scanned through a couple of different armor products and turned the screen for them to see.
“It’s a Mark Seventeen,” he said proudly. “Top of the line, best of the best of everything, from the HUD combat systems to the stabilizers. They had a video online of an APC trying to knock one of these babies over. No dice.”
“How is it this cheap?” Kennedy asked. “Five grand for a suit like this? What’s the catch?”
“I don’t have it in stock, exactly,” Boulos explained. “A dude working out of the Fifth Regiment put in for one of these and was doing the payment system. I had to put in a systems checker and
a GPS tracker to make sure he kept up the payments. If he tried to walk away without paying, I could shut it down and send someone to bring him back.”
“Oh, come on, Boulos,” Kennedy protested. “Please tell me you didn’t turn his suit off while he was in the middle of the Zoo?”
“What do you think I am, a monster?” he asked, looking genuinely offended. “Nah, the medical systems tell me that he had a catastrophic system failure due to internal trauma. He probably fell from a good height, and while the suit is made to take hits like that, the human body isn’t. I still have a lock on the system, and outside of some minor sensor damage, it’s in working condition.”
“So, you want us to pay you to go and get a suit back?” Sal asked.
“Well, the dude still owed me five grand on his payment when he bit it, so if you get it back, you’ll have top-of-the-line armor,” Boulos explained. “I’ll even repair it to factory conditions when you get back free of charge.”
“It still sounds like we have to pay you to retrieve it from the Zoo for you.”
“Well…” Boulos shrugged. “I know where it is. Think of it like you’re paying me for the coordinates, since without them, you’d comb through the Zoo forever.”
“That’s a good point,” Sal admitted grudgingly.
“It’s still not worth five grand, Boulos, and you know it,” Kennedy said. “We still do the dirty work, and if the guy only owed five, that’s already way into your profit margin. So, for going in and picking up for you, we’ll pay twenty-five hundred.”
“I’m still in the hole for that much,” Boulos complained.
“You’re in the hole whichever way you cut it, the way I see it,” she pointed out. “You might as well make some of it back. You know you won’t find anyone as desperate to go in and get that suit as us, and we won’t pay full price for it.”
Boulos shrugged. “Look, I can bring it down to thirty-five hundred, but that’s it.”