by Michael Todd
“No,” Courtney said. “Definitely not required.”
“Cool.” Amanda nodded. “I’ve wanted to strike out on my own for a while, and it would be nice to have some structure behind that. I’m in, but I need to close…shit, everything with the Staging Area first. I’d guess that with their amount of red tape, it’ll take at least a couple of days.”
“Good call.” Kennedy shook the woman’s hand once more. “It’ll be great to have you on board, chica.”
“No,” the armorer said and shook her head firmly. “Sorry, but you can’t pull off ‘chica.’”
“Right. I thought I’d try.” Madigan nodded “Drive safe now.”
“You know I won’t,” Amanda replied.
“Then what’s the point of not drinking?”
“Can you imagine me driving while drunk?” she asked in response.
“That’s a good point.” They shared a laugh.
Once Amanda had cleared the compound, Courtney turned to face Madigan.
“Are you serious?” she asked and shook her head. “What’s he doing, running around and hiring all the hottest women in the Staging Area? Is that it?”
“So you think I’m one of the hottest women in the Staging Area?” Kennedy asked. “That’s so sweet.”
“Oh, shut it, you know what I mean,” Monroe snapped. “I mean, you saw her, right? She wore baggy fatigues and she was still a jaw-dropper. Can you imagine if we put her in a dress?”
“She doesn’t like dresses,” Kennedy replied. “You won’t ever see her in one, I guarantee that. Besides, you have nothing to worry about. As hot as Sal is, there’s nothing about him that interests her.”
“Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but now, I’m starting to think that you’re blind,” Courtney hissed.
“I’m serious, Courtney,” Madigan said with a laugh. “She bats for our team.”
Monroe stared at her for a moment, not sure what she was talking about.
“Amanda Gutierrez is gay,” she said when she saw the need to spell it out as clearly as she could.
“Oh…oh!” her companion exclaimed as she finally understood what Madigan was talking about. “Well…that’s okay. Nice even. Heavy Metal should be an equal opportunity place for people of all genders and sexualities.”
“Now you’re getting it,” Madigan said with a grin.
Chapter Five
“Are you sure Courtney was okay with being left behind?” Sal asked as they trudged through the dense jungle. Even with power armor, it had become grueling. The goop seemed to draw water from deep underground, and it turned the jungle into more of a swamp in places. It was only a matter of time before massive crocodiles became a concern, Sal realized and shook his head. He really didn’t need that particular image in his head right now.
“Dr. Monroe?” Kennedy asked and slipped into the use of her professional name. He wasn’t sure if that was deliberate or not, but it niggled at him. “She seemed fine to me and said she had a batch of whitepapers to look at and write. I’d say she seemed happy as a clam. Besides, we didn’t need two specialists on this run. Why do you ask?”
“She seemed a little…snippy with me this morning before we left,” Sal explained and maintained as wide a line of sight as possible. He didn’t want any giant crocodiles to sneak up on him.
“Oh, that’s probably only some hostility left over from when she met SPC Gutierrez,” Kennedy said with a nod.
“She was mad about that?” he asked. “I mean, sure, I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t hot.”
“You know Gutierrez is gay, right?” Kennedy asked.
“Yep.” Sal nodded. “She made that perfectly clear when we first met. Courtney knows too, right?”
“Of course. I told her.”
“Oh, that’s good.”
“You were staring, weren’t you?” she queried with a grin.
“Did she tell you that?” Sal asked, tilting his head.
“Oh yeah,” she replied with a chuckle. “She wanted to make it perfectly clear that she wasn’t sleeping with you to get the job.”
“Shit,” he growled. “I mean, I know, I shouldn’t have stared at all and it was a trashy move on my part, but she was in yoga pants and doing squats. My eyes kind of gravitated. I apologized right after.”
“Hey, there’s no need to justify yourself to me, Jacobs,” Kennedy said with a laugh. “I’ve never had a taste for the ladies myself, but even I can see that she has an ass that would not quit under any circumstances.”
Sal tried to keep his mind focused. He did remember that, but he didn’t think it was appropriate to even think about it, all things considered. She was a prospective employee and not interested in him in the slightest, so he really needed to let it go.
“Can we change the subject?” he asked and turned away so that his companion couldn’t see that his face was a bright red.
“Sure.” She chuckled.
“So you’re sure that Monroe’s okay?” Sal asked again.
“Yeah, she needs to work out some personal issues, is all,” Kennedy assured him. “She’ll be fine.”
“Good.” He dropped into a crouch. “Because I think I found something.”
Kennedy joined him and her bright gaze identified what he pointed at. With the ground now a clay-like mud, it was difficult to miss the footprints left behind despite the darkness.
Even better, the clay left a clear imprint of the boots.
“There has to be at least a dozen of them,” she estimated. “Maybe more. It looks like bounty hunters or poachers. That’s interesting. I thought there was a report about their camp being completely annihilated.”
“And it shows,” Sal pointed out. “Look at these boot prints. These are Mark-Twos, and scrapped Mark-Twos from the look of things. These guys have to be the worst equipped team that I’ve seen in the Zoo in a long time.”
“Hey, they’ve got numbers. I think they can make up for it,” she responded easily.
“Come on, we have some top-of-the-line equipment. We can totally handle these assholes,” he said with a grin. “I’ve never known you to back down from a fight.”
“Yeah, remember the last time I didn’t back down from a fight where we were outnumbered by bounty hunters?” Kennedy asked. “Remember how I was shot in the leg and you had to help drag me out of the Zoo’s version of a lynch mob?”
“Well, yeah,” he conceded. “But think about how much we’ve learned since then.”
“Like not attacking groups of bounty hunters that outnumber us?” she asked.
“Well, besides that,” he retorted. “Come on, we need to at least find out what they’re up to. They wouldn’t have come in here without something specific that they’re after. Besides, they have headed off in the direction that we’re going in anyway, so…yeah.”
She shook her head but sighed. “Fine. But if I get shot again, I will hold you personally responsible.”
“That’s…not fair at all,” Sal said but he shrugged. “Fine, hold me responsible all you like. Let’s go.”
They followed in the direction of the footsteps. The deeper they went, the more it seemed like the numbers of the men that they pursued had grown.
“I’m nervous here, Sal,” Kennedy said and peered at the prints. “We need backup. There have to be at least twenty guys in this team. It doesn’t matter how badly armed they are, they’ll be able to pin us down and eliminate us without too much trouble.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he agreed with a nod. “Let’s fall back and maybe coordinate with the guys who gave us the ride and then track these assholes—”
He blinked when the sound of a gunshot blasted his ears before his noise filters could kick in. Sal spun to see Kennedy’s smoking weapon.
“What the hell?” he asked, but his question was answered when a man dropped from behind a tree. He was dressed in a suit of armor that was mostly welded pieces of scrap.
“Oh, crap,” he muttered.
She nodde
d and swung her gun in an arc as they heard shouts and more gunshots from around them.
Sal raised his weapon. He was more used to fighting creatures that didn’t shoot back, which was a problem now that he had to adjust to the need to hide behind cover. Kennedy knew what she was doing, though, and pushed him behind a trunk before she ducked behind one herself.
“Do you have any idea as to how many assholes we have to deal with here?” she asked when she’d opened a secure comm line between them.
“You mean besides me?”
“Now is really not the time for a self-pity party, Jacobs!” she snarled and stepped out briefly to lay down some covering fire before she ducked back.
“I count twenty-three,” he replied as he slid to the other side and returned fire, then moved out of sight once more.
“Shit,” Kennedy exclaimed and reloaded her gun with a scowl. “This isn’t a defensible position, Jacobs.”
“Should we fall back?” Sal suggested.
“Sounds good.”
He moved to shoot at the men who now closed in on them and she retreated some thirty paces before he ran out.
“I’m out!” he called.
“I’ll cover you!” she yelled in response and Sal fell back. He let his suit reload his rifle automatically as he jogged to where his partner had taken cover. The bounty hunters moved relentlessly closer and Sal wasn’t sure if they had wounded any of them in the shooting.
“We need to do something,” she hissed as he dropped beside her.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
“Okay, we do have the smoke grenades that are standard issue these days,” Kennedy said.
“And if these guys have heat seekers like the missiles on your shoulder?” he asked.
“Come on. Their suits would have been considered old-fashioned during the Civil War,” she said with a smirk.
“Are you willing to risk your life on that assumption?”
“Good point. So, do you have a plan?”
“Kind of, but I don’t think you’ll like it.” Sal peeked over the fallen trunk that they hunkered behind. The bounty hunters now approached more cautiously. He estimated that there were fewer of them than before—maybe eighteen—but still too many to handle without help.
“Tell me and I’ll decide how I like it,” she said and directed a few shots at a couple of younger-looking men who had broken cover and tried to sprint forward to the duo’s position. They dropped to the ground, holes clearly visible in their haphazardly constructed suits.
“Well, my idea is that we use the jungle to our advantage,” he explained. “Since we’ve been here the most over the past couple of months, it only makes sense, right?” At her look of interest, he proceeded to lay his plan out for her.
“You’re right,” Kennedy agreed. “I don’t like it. But it’s the best plan we have right now. How many of them are still out there?”
Sal peered cautiously over the log and used the opportunity to take a couple of shots after he’d done a quick head-count.
“Sixteen,” he said as he ducked down again.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she snarked. “Cover me.”
He laid down a solid volley of slugs at their attackers as she crawled from behind the log, changed direction, and scuttled behind one of the massive trees. He could see her activate her heat-vision and the little missile launcher emerged from her shoulder pad. Instead of targeting the men who continued to fire on them, she aimed upward into one of the trees where a group of the simians watched the fight. They seemed to realize that they were in danger the moment the small missile launched and rocketed towards them. Most escaped, but some were caught in the blast that shredded a few branches. By sheer luck, one of the bounty hunters was caught under the falling branches. The scream they heard from him indicated that while the branch didn’t kill him, it did break something.
The monkeys, understandably angry that their haven was destroyed, attacked the man quickly and ripped into his armor and the flesh beneath.
“Fifteen,” Sal tallied and didn’t bother to waste any bullets on the wounded man as the sounds of angry roars and the yip and chatter of hyenas drew closer. Drawn by more than simply the sound of gunfire and explosions, these animals seemed to converge when any of their fellow Zoo creatures were attacked. That was what Sal had counted on.
The bounty hunters realized the danger they were in too late as a pair of panthers bounded out from between the trees. One dropped and three bullet holes appeared on its body, but the second pounced on one of the men. Its claws held him captive on the ground as the venom-tipped fangs sank into his neck. The man screamed, but it quickly turned into a bloody gurgle.
Fourteen.
Bullets riddled its corpse even after the panther collapsed, but the sounds of hyenas grew louder. The animals were close enough to draw attention to the rear of the group where a couple of the men were grabbed by the legs and dragged off. They yelled frantically for help that wouldn’t come.
Twelve.
Sal and Kennedy emerged from their cover as the bounty hunters now seemed less concerned to remain hidden and more worried about the animals that descended on them en masse.
The renegades were quickly reminded of their mistake when three of them fell to the bullets that punched easily through their armor. A call from the apparent leader—or the leader of the men who were left—was enough to push them back under cover, but not before some of the scorpion-tailed locusts dragged a couple more of the men away.
Seven.
“Now,” Sal growled. Kennedy retrieved two of the smoke grenades from her belt and tossed one to where the animals now ripped into the remainder of the bounty hunters. She dropped the second one where they stood. Thick, billowy gray clouds released into the jungle almost immediately. The duo switched to heat vision on their HUDs. While it wouldn’t tell them where the locusts were, the rest of the animals and bounty hunters were all easily visible.
Cover was no longer needed so they prioritized the need to remove the bounty hunters from the game. One by one, the men dropped until there were none left. The smoke had begun to dissipate, and the few creatures that didn’t detest the smoke enough to run away were quickly gunned down as well.
“Well, it was a shitty plan,” Kennedy said as she manually reloaded her rifle, “but hot damn, it actually worked.”
“If it worked, it wasn’t a shitty plan,” Sal argued. “Why are you reloading like that?”
“I have some mud in the mechanism,” she explained and attempted to shake the dirt clear. When she had no response from the reloading mechanism, she kept at it with her hands.
“Yeah, they’ll need to come up with something to help with all the mud,” he said.
“Well, unless you intend to spring for some new suits for all of us, I think we’ll have to improvise a solution on our own,” she responded, finally ready for combat again. “It’s a good thing we have a new mechanic on our team now, right?”
He nodded. It was a good point.
Chapter Six
Sal dropped into a crouch beside the man who had seemed to be in charge of the bounty hunters and tugged at his suit. Even the leaders of this team had shitty armor. It was amazing that they’d managed to convince so many people to join this ultimately doomed expedition. Then again, they were in a part of the world that was notorious for its extreme poverty, so there was no shortage of willing and desperate men who would put their lives on the line for some extra cash.
He actually felt bad that they’d gunned them down and even worse about his attempt to find out what they had been after. He looked beneath the man’s armor and eventually found an actual paper map that had been folded and hidden under his shirt.
It was a map of the Zoo, he realized, and was marked off in lines of latitude and longitude. That would have made it easier to navigate without a need to rely on the usual landmarks that constantly changed in the area. Sal studied it quickly and noted a couple of red x’s that marked spots in the area
.
“What do you think this is?” he asked and showed Kennedy the map.
“Huh….hold on,” she responded and brought up the imaging from her altered satellite phone that was able to detect the clusters of Pita plants. She directed it to his HUD and he compared it to the map.
“Well, that explains what the markings are,” he said after a moment, his head tilted in thought. “I mean, they only have three of the clusters, so it’s not a great map, but these three are only off by a couple of hundred meters. It would seem they had some good intel.”
She nodded. “Do you think someone else figured out that whole radio frequency resonance thing that we use to track the plants down?”
He nodded. “It would appear so. Either way, we should probably consider selling the tracking device to the highest bidder the next chance we get.”
“Agreed.” Kennedy scowled. “I’m not happy that we have to give up our little edge, though.”
“If we don’t act quickly, we still won’t have our edge and we won’t have a payout from selling it either,” he pointed out.
“Yep.” She nodded. “I say we bring it up with the rest of our team when we get back. You know, company decision and all that.”
“Good call,” Sal agreed. “In the meantime, it’s only a couple of hours until sunset. I think we should use what little daylight we have left to put as much distance between us and all these bodies and find a place to set up camp.”
“That’s also a good call,” she said with a grin.
They looted the bodies and took samples from the dead animals before they pressed forward and headed deeper into the Zoo. Thankfully, one of the Pita plants marked on the map was almost on top of the GPS marker that they’d placed on the leg. It wasn’t a great thing to do, but it was something they’d felt they had to do. Instinct told Sal that the armor held secrets he needed to unravel.
Sal gripped his gun tighter. He couldn’t help the feeling that they were being watched. It was a common sensation out there in the Zoo. Humans were intruders, and any animals that wouldn’t attack them on sight certainly had a good deal of hostility for the two-legged monsters in suits of armor. He could only expect that the monkeys up in the tree branches wouldn’t feel happy about their comrades being blown up—a good enough reason to call the wrath of the jungle down on them.