by Michael Todd
She felt her foot catch on a root, stumbled forward, and almost fell on her face before an arm caught her around the chest.
“Stay focused,” Conway admonished and kept his eyes forward. He had used his free arm to prevent her fall, but his weapon remained aimed into the foliage.
“There’s nothing I’d like to see more than her face on the ground,” one of the other members of the squad said with a laugh. “That way, her more valuable assets are easier to access. What’s the point of having a female scientist anyways?”
“Shut it, Wayne,” Conway growled. The other man chuckled and proceeded without apparent concern at the rebuke. “Misogynistic bastard.”
“I have no idea what ‘misogynistic’ means,” Wayne retorted with a grin. “How the hell can I be something if I don’t know what it is?”
Conway flipped the man off as they continued to move forward.
“Where do they grow these assholes?” Courtney asked as she shook her head and gripped her rifle with both hands.
“On some tree somewhere,” he answered with a chuckle. “Ignore them. You’re doing more than what you’re actually paid for, so that’s definitely a win in my book.”
“Actually, they restructured my contract,” Courtney responded. It was hard to talk while on the move, since walking under this much weight meant that she would struggle to catch her breath without the added challenge of speech. “This kind of thing is apparently what I’m supposed to do out here. Well, technically, run support in any capacity as required by the squad leader. So, yeah.”
“Any capacity?” Wayne shouted from the front of the line. “Hey, I think I may need a couple of—”
“If you finish that sentence, I will feed you the butt of your rifle, I swear to God, Wayne,” Conway snapped at the man, who merely chuckled and pressed on.
“You don’t need to stand up for me, you know,” Courtney muttered and tried to focus on her breathing. “And it’s probably better if you don’t. I don’t want to be seen as a fragile female to guys like that, someone who needs a man to protect her. It only makes it worse when you have to be somewhere else to protect the rest of the squad, you know?”
He nodded. “I can’t help it. I hate bullies, and Wayne is the worst of the bunch. I’m not sure where they grew him, but he’s definitely a bad apple. I know he’s a crack shot, but I guess God had to balance out the bad with some good.”
She laughed but chose not to reply since she had already begun to lag behind the rest of the group and didn’t need any more evidence that she was out of her depth. Her inadequacies irked her because she put a lot of work into staying healthy and put in as much cardio as she could while not in the Zoo. But at the same time, she wasn’t used to this much exercise. She could do it, but probably not as well as the guys who did it all the time, and certainly not as well as some of the others could.
Despite everything, she disliked the fact that her lack of abilities only seemed to spur her detractors on. Even though Wayne was merely another meathead special-forces goon with delusions of grandeur thanks to his newly padded bank account, she couldn’t help but let his comments get to her.
It was the way she was. She couldn’t help it, and she shouldn’t have to.
Courtney stopped suddenly, and her eyes widened. Conway took a few steps ahead before he turned back to peer at her and tilted his head. He left the question unasked for a few long moments before he felt it too. The rest of the squad took a few seconds longer to register the disturbance, and by the time the rest of them realized what it was, Courtney already had her weapon hot and ready.
The ground shook with a decidedly familiar two-step quake. She knew it better than most and had been on the first team to document the massive creatures. Unfortunately, theirs hadn’t been the first team to realize what a gold mine they could be if you could take them down and survive the onslaught that came afterward and extract the goods located beside the medulla at the same time.
“Fuck, yes,” Wayne enthused as he made the stereotypical move and loaded a round into his assault rifle, even though there was already one loaded and all that achieved was to waste the round already in the chamber. Courtney gritted her teeth in an effort to bolster her courage. She didn’t want to have to deal with either the massive monster or the host of creatures that would inevitably come afterward.
But it looked like she would have to. She followed Wayne’s lead and chambered a round into her already chambered rifle. As she watched the perfectly usable round eject from the chamber, she wondered if, like her, he did it to fill the moment of waiting that seemed to stretch on forever.
Well, what do you know? That did feel good.
Chapter Four
The heavy footsteps drew relentlessly closer like the massive creature had homed in on them and began to increase its pace.
If she hadn’t been so utterly terrified for her life, she would have been fascinated. Well, she was fascinated despite the fear. The creature’s size defied physics in ways that she couldn’t really comprehend but which intrigued the scientist part of her brain. More than a few educated guesses floated around, but most of them revolved around the possibility that the alien goop somehow allowed the creature to walk around, eat, and breathe without the issues that would come with lower air pressure and heavier gravity than creatures that size would normally have had to live with.
The indisputable reality, in scientific terms, was that this monster should live underwater or be crushed by its own weight. But it existed there, larger than life and with an ear-splitting roar that sent all the other monsters that lived in the Zoo running for cover. Along with any sane human being as well, of course.
So yes, fascinated and terrified at the same time sounded about right.
“Keep your aim at the lower neck area,” the squad leader, a man named Roberts, said over the comms. “That’s where the critter’s armor is weakest, but the slugs miss the good stuff. Once it goes down, form a defensive perimeter and let the doc do her work, okay?”
A selection of affirmative pings showed up on her heads-up display as the monster finally appeared. Predictably, Wayne was the first to open fire, and his massive assault rifle spewed a lethal spray of lead. The creature roared angrily and charged the group as they formed into a pair of V’s that drew it into the center. Courtney wasn’t sure how they seemed to be able to do this without any obvious previous coordination, but she followed Conway’s lead as he drove her to the side. The monster charged into the center, which allowed the eight members of the team to part around it and maintain fire as the beast moved forward and crashed into one of the trees.
Its massive tail flicked to the side and caught Roberts across the chest. She didn’t need to hear the crunch to know that it was a fatal blow. It didn’t seem fair. They fired unceasingly at the animal from point blank range. The shots ripped into the weaker spots in its gray armor, and it still didn’t go down.
But with a single strike of its tail, one of their best was dead.
Fuck this place, she thought, not for the first time and definitely not for the last.
She gripped her gun more firmly and shot as best she could. Realistically, though, without any real frame of reference and with multiple shots striking home where she tried to aim and shoot, she couldn’t be sure if she actually connected with her target. Her arms slowly grew numb from the sustained action, and soon, she felt lucky to even still manage to hold her weapon as the creature hurtled past them. Conway was the team’s medic, and he rushed to where Roberts had been flung.
Courtney wished she could have gone to help too, but as her assault rifle went dead, she saw the massive reptile’s eyes flicker as it swept around. It was in pain and very angry at the sustained attack, and she could see the rage. Massive green eyes picked her out as a target as if it sensed that she was the weakest. Then, she looked around and realized that the rest of the squad, except for Conway, had taken cover behind trees. Again, this all seemed rehearsed, although perhaps years of
combat training was the real reason.
They were all in cover while she was out in the open with an empty gun. She moved toward one of the trees and tried to keep the massive beast in her sight and reload her weapon at the same time. Pushing back the panic, she reminded herself that she was used to multitasking and had learned to operate a gun. It wasn’t too difficult, considering that these were weapons designed to function and go wrong as seldom as possible. Even so, her hands shook uncontrollably, and all she could hear over the enraged roar of the monster was her own heartbeat. The empty mag dropped, but she fumbled the new one and it fell. Somehow, she managed to sweep it up again and stumbled to the nearest tree. She slipped behind it as the creature swung into the attack again.
More gunshots resounded. Courtney heard little over her thudding heart as she slapped the mag into the rifle and caught the bolt on the second try to draw it back and insert a round in the chamber.
The monster rushed past her and the massive tail whipped around the tree that she now hid behind. A flood of wood chips struck her face mask and she recoiled instinctively as the tree groaned, tipped, and slowly keeled over.
Away from her, thankfully, and off to the right.
The ground shuddered as the tree finally impacted. Given the size of the trunk, Courtney wasn’t surprised that a blow from the monster’s tail had killed Roberts, even with his armor. Anything that had the power to fell a tree of that size would be both painful and lethal to an unfortunate human in its path.
Conway seemed to come to the same conclusion. Roberts wasn’t responsive, and there was nothing he could do. To linger there would simply increase the danger that he would meet the same tragic end. He snatched his rifle up and fired without bothering to move into cover. There was something almost hypnotic in the rhythmic thud of the rounds into the surprisingly tough skin of the massive creature, but the assault seemed to only enrage it, not do any real damage.
She gritted her teeth and aimed at the creature’s head and specifically for the massive eyes. They moved independently of each other, almost like a chameleon’s, as the beast tried to find a target. It seemed undecided like it couldn’t determine which of the squad members to attack now that they had all spread out.
Courtney raised the rifle slowly until she could look down the iron sights. That was how she had been taught by the man who ran the shooting range.
Before she could pull the trigger, someone else had obviously had the same idea that she had and acted on it much faster and more efficiently. Blue blood gushed from the wound as the monster emitted one last, blood-curdling roar before it dropped with a massive thud that brought two trees down with it.
Courtney turned to see who’d delivered the killing shot. Her heart sank to her stomach when she saw Wayne on his feet, his rifle posed in a cocky stance as he made a finger-gun gesture at the creature and mock-shot it again.
“Am I good?” he asked nobody in particular. “I’m good.”
She rolled her eyes as she pushed to her feet. It seemed Conway felt the same way as he jogged away from Roberts’ body.
“What are you, twelve?” he growled and made a quick visual inspection of his gun. “Quit gloating and form a defensive perimeter around the asset. Doc…” He turned to Courtney, who was on her feet by then. “It’s up to you to get what we need out of that body.”
“Who died and made you queen of the world?” Wayne snarled.
“Roberts died, moron,” Conway said and deliberately kept his voice even. “And unless you want to take a picture with your kill, I suggest you get a move on—unless you want your paycheck to be sent to your next of kin.”
It wasn’t a threat, but it wasn’t empty either. Courtney could already hear the cries from the jungle all around them. It seemed that the whole Zoo had suddenly gone from wild to savage in a split second. They had minutes before the monsters hurtled in to try to kill them. Maybe less.
“Get a move on, Doc,” Conway said. Courtney snapped out of her train of thought and let her rifle hang from the strap as she pulled some of the vacuum bags and a scalpel from her kit. She climbed quickly up the corpse of the monster.
It felt wrong. The gargantuan beast still twitched beneath her. It had been alive and full of all kinds of rage minutes before, and she felt she was desecrating a holy place. Maybe she should say some words and hope that it went somewhere where it could exist without the bother of men with guns. Maybe it did, and in that place, wherever it was, it would stand victorious.
She the thought aside and cringed as the creature’s forepaws and tail spasmed. This was the first time she’d been called upon to do something like this, but as bad as she felt about it, she knew that she needed to move fast.
“Sorry,” she whispered and pressed her scalpel to the soft, armor-less flesh where the neck met the head. She made the incision slowly and precisely and penetrated only the skin, careful not to cut anything that was underneath.
She knew it had to smell bad and thanked whatever deity was up there that she had turned her air filters on. Blue blood drenched her suit as she found the sacs that glowed even in the indirect sunlight.
With studied care, she drew them out and sealed them into the first bag. Still working as quickly as she could, she drew out a couple more. It would be more than enough to guarantee that the whole of the team got a fat payday. Assuming they all survived, of course.
“You done, Doc?” Conway asked. The sounds of the animals around them grew louder. She had the impression that they waited to gather in greater numbers before they launched an attack, although she didn’t remember them doing that before. Maybe with the Zoo spreading so quickly, the animals had all drifted farther and farther apart.
She hopped down from the carcass and nodded. “All done here,” she said and tried to ignore the blood on her gloves as she stored the sealed sacs carefully in her kit.
“Wayne, drop the grenades,” Conway ordered. The rest of the squad seemed to accept the medic’s taking charge of the situation, and the other man did as he was told without complaint.
“Switch to motion sensors,” Wayne said as he dropped a couple of the grenades. A second ticked by before they released the odorless smoke. After months of testing, they’d finally found a way to make the smoke mask the pheromones that filled the air when the big monsters died, making it easier to get in and out with valuable sacs of blue goop. It didn’t help much when they tried to get the Pita plants out, though, since the animals seemed to react with a lot more violence and intensity when those were plucked. In addition, the plants gave the pheromones off constantly, while the monsters only discharged them once.
They cleared the area, and the animals seemed to have no interest in pursuing. Even so, Wayne dropped another one of the smoke bombs to cover their trail as they made a beeline back to the Hammerheads. It was a rapid march, but their spirits were higher now that the prospect of a decent paycheck was in sight. A few creatures crossed their paths, but they quickly moved away into the jungle before the team could open fire.
Not everyone’s spirits were high, though.
Once they reached the vehicles after hours of moving quickly through the Zoo, Conway looked in the direction from which they’d come.
“It’s shitty that we left Roberts out there,” he lamented as the teams mounted up. Courtney saw Wayne open his mouth to say something, and from the small grin on his face, she could tell that it would be less than tasteful.
To her surprise, though, the man shut his mouth again. She would have thought he was unable to keep his mouth shut, even in honor of the dead, but then again, as much as these guys had their jokes about the specialists on their teams—and women in general—they had to respect the men who had been given command over their own squads. Usually non-commissioned officers, or NCOs, these were men and women who led by example and knew how to kick ass and take names and still keep a full squad under control.
People like Sergeant Madigan Kennedy, Courtney thought with a small twist of her mouth
as she scrambled into the Hammerhead. Once everyone was in, they began the slow return journey to the Staging Area.
“Look,” Conway said once they were moving, “you need to adjust your situation. Whatever contract you were pressured into signing clearly isn’t working for you and has obviously been structured to totally screw you. Since you’re a freelancer, there’s not much I can do, but if I were, you, I’d find someone you trust to go over your contract and initiate some changes. No offense.”
She laughed. “None taken. I’m not sure I have anyone in the whole of the Staging Area that I’d really trust, though.”
Well, that wasn’t true. There was one person she knew she could trust. Despite everything about him, she knew that he was honest enough. More so than anybody else she could talk to anyway, although she wondered if she allowed her personal feelings to cloud her judgment.
She did, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t right. Whether he liked her or not, she wanted him for his body. Maybe he would want her for her mind. The thought made her smile as she massaged her sore muscles absently, relieved that the run was finally over.
Chapter Five
It had been an exceptionally long day, but thankfully, it had almost drawn to a successful conclusion.
He hated being out there. Born and raised in Arizona, he’d always managed to convince himself while growing up that he’d gotten used to the dry heat of the place. But once he’d left and enjoyed the cooler climates of the Northwest, he simply couldn’t adjust to it again. The heat stuck to you like a wet blanket and wouldn’t let go. It made him feel sick and exhausted.
But there he was, out in the middle of the second largest desert in the fucking world. Well, not anymore. A jungle had begun to cover it now, but that fact hadn’t changed the weather very much. It was still hot, and it was still dry—like blow-drying your entire body at the same time.
The men guarding the helicopter caught sight of him. At first glance, he didn’t make an impressive figure at barely a hair above five feet, eleven inches, and while he put a lot of work into keeping himself fit, he was always lean rather than bulky. His red hair was cut short to the standard two inches and fully covered by the black beret he wore that adhered to the color code of his combat uniform. The black eagle on his chest did catch their eye, though, and they saluted sharply.