by Michael Todd
Neither detectives appeared to have anything else to say. They sighed and leaned back in their seats like they were the ones who were under interrogation.
“Now, you boys could still press charges for the five… Well, let’s see…oh, aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon, two weapons possession charges… Very nice. Five pending arrest warrants between Oregon, Florida, and New York,” Marie said as she scanned the files of the dead men. “You’d be able to push a manslaughter charge, at best, since California has no laws regarding the duty to retreat, but if you do that, I’ll have to bring up the fact that you interrogated my client before her Miranda rights were read and without waiting for her legal representative to arrive. I’m sure your commissioner would be very interested to hear about what you consider the proper and due course of the investigation.”
The two men gulped and the woman pushed to her feet. She brushed something disdainfully from her gray suit. “On the other hand, you might see these as a homicide committed in self-defense, press no charges, and make sure that the crime scene cleaners know that my client’s house is a priority. In either case, we’re done here. Have a nice evening.”
She gestured for the men to undo Courtney’s cuffs, and in under a minute, the two of them walked toward the exit of the precinct.
“Here’s my card,” Marie said and made no effort to slow her pace when Courtney struggled to keep up. “I’ll make sure to send my invoice for billable hours to your residence since I couldn’t find a work address on your file. Well, I did, but it was in the Sahara Desert and you know I won’t pay postage for that.”
Courtney smirked, took the card, and studied it. “Holy shit, you’re good.”
“I take pride in my work,” she said with a smirk. “Not as much as you do with yours. I don’t know what biology doctorates do out there in the Zoo, but that was some damn fine shooting out there.”
“Son of a bitch,” Monroe muttered.
Her companion turned to look at her with a small confused smile.
“My shooting has gotten a lot better,” she explained. “Sal and Madie won’t believe this when I tell them.”
The smile remained as they reached the revolving doors of the station.
“You’re not quite right in the head, are you Dr. Monroe?” the lawyer asked.
Courtney made no effort to hide her confusion at the question.
“Don’t worry, no judgments on my end,” Marie said as they walked across the parking lot to a Jaguar parked nearby. “I’ve dealt with far worse than you, I’m happy to say. And in this case, I actually like your style. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home. That’ll go into the billable hours too.”
Courtney smirked. If she was honest, she rather liked Marie’s style as well.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sal examined the power arm that carried his rifle. Their return to the Staging Area had left them with enough time to repair what had been broken and bruised on their last couple of trips. Unfortunately, having someone new in the operation meant additional expenditure for new equipment.
In her defense, Anja had come up with a fairly comprehensive list of what she would need to set up shop with them in their little compound. She was willing to work with them anyway since they had been there to help her get on her feet after she was hounded out of her own country. But they needed something from her too, and that meant she had to be properly equipped to do it.
The downside was that everything on her list was extremely expensive, and even more so to have it shipped all the way out to the compound. Their buffer had taken care of the buy problems, but for the shipping to come through, they needed more cash flow.
Which meant that Sal and Kennedy once again suited up and headed into the Zoo.
“I fucking hate this place,” he snarled. “I mean, I have literally started to loathe coming in here.”
“Give it a week,” Kennedy replied.
“What?”
“Give it a week,” she repeated. “One week spent lurking in the compound, playing video games, running lab tests or whatever, and you’ll be more than ready to come back here. You’re an action addict. You’ll always complain about things, but you’ll always come back for more. That’s who you are.”
“I…no, that’s not who I am at all,” he protested with a chuckle. “What are you even talking about?”
Kennedy raised her hand and Sal bit back his next words. After a few seconds, he also heard what had caught her attention.
“That’s a distress signal…bearing northwest of here,” she said. “Do you want to check it out?”
“Well, if we’ve picked the signal up, it can’t be that far away, right?” he asked and shrugged. “Let’s do it.”
They adjusted their direction and walked on with their weapons drawn and primed for a fight. Surprisingly, there was no sign of one. Usually, any fight included a horde of animals screeching and an equal amount of gunfire. Both were conspicuously absent, which meant that they were probably way too late to help anyone.
Their focus intensified as they tried to find the source.
“I don’t see anything around here,” Sal said, alert for any sign of danger while his gaze roved the underbrush. “Not even any signs that there might have been a fight large enough to warrant setting off an emergency beacon.”
“I do.” His partner’s tone seemed almost a growl and she raised her rifle. He mirrored her battle-ready stance even before he identified the source of her belligerence. No animals could be seen for miles but at least a dozen men, fully decked in military gear and all armed, stood with their rifles aimed directly at the duo.
“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice said as one of the men moved closer. “If it isn’t the famous and deadly Heavy Metal, out to score some cash that should go to some of the hard-working soldiers in the Staging Area.”
“Brandon?” Sal leaned in for a better look and to confirm why the man’s voice sounded familiar, although he knew that Kennedy had recognized him first. She was the one who had beaten him soundly outside the bar. He had only beaten him in a drinking competition.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?” she asked.
“Telling you two to drop your weapons and come quietly,” the corporal instructed as the other men moved shifted closer.
“You know, I don’t see that happening,” she said quietly.
“Well, it’s either a quick death, or…well, yeah, a quick death, so it doesn’t really matter what happens,” the man said with a chuckle. “Although we might simply shoot you fuckers in the knees and let the creatures out here handle things. I hear they like taking their time with their kills.”
“You clearly don’t know a thing about animals,” Sal interjected. “Like, not even Zoo animals. Just regular, everyday animals. Otherwise, you’d know that there aren’t that many out there that kill for pleasure and even fewer that like to take their time with it.”
“Whatever. I’m not a scientist.” Brandon laughed.
“Obviously,” he muttered under his breath.
“That said, a lot of money has been paid to eliminate the two of you,” the corporal continued. He sounded aggravated by their noncompliance. “You’ve poked into stuff that some rich people outside the Zoo would rather remain unpoked. I don’t know the details, but the fact remains, they’re rich and they want your annoying asses gone. See, I would have done that sort of shit for free, but meeting the two of you out here, all on your lonesome… Hell, getting paid is simply the cherry on the very delicious cake that is my life.”
“Wow, you really like to hear the sound of your own voice, don’t you?” Kennedy asked and glanced quickly at her partner. His gaze, however, was pinned on something directly above the dozen or so men who stood in front of them.
“Don’t move a muscle,” he said softly.
“Now why wouldn’t I move?” Brandon demanded. “Are you the ones who have the drop on me, by any chance?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,
” Sal said, his voice low. His motion sensors had picked up activity in the tops of the trees. Something that looked vaguely familiar and that came closer in a rush.
She followed his gaze and froze as she recognized it too. Unlike Sal, she lacked the faith that not moving would keep it at bay. Instead, she turned and sprinted away in the same second that a clustered group of vine-like tentacles reached out from the darkness. They snatched three of the men and dragged them away while the hapless victims screamed and fired haphazardly.
Sal took advantage of their distraction. He followed Kennedy’s lead and raced after her as fast as his legs could carry him. Loud yells and gunfire followed him as the mercenaries involved seemed unsure about whether they were supposed to rescue their comrades or pursue their targets. Brandon bellowed at them to gather their scattered testicles and follow the escapees. The shooting immediately grew more intense toward their direction, even though it seemed like Sal was out of their visual range.
Finally, Kennedy grabbed him by the arm and dragged him behind a tree.
“What do we do?” she asked, out of breath.
“Even with the help of our little friend back there, I think they’re still too many for us to handle head-on,” Sal said.
“I agree, which is why I asked what we should do. Do you have any bright ideas that might get us out of this situation in an alive enough state to kick Brandon in his testicles once he gets back?”
He paused and listened to the shouts of the men behind them.
“I have an idea, but I don’t think you’ll like it,” he said finally.
“I’ll like it less than getting shot down by humans in a place where animals are supposed to be the only danger.” She sounded angrier than she ever had before. “Give it a whirl.”
“So,” he said, “have you ever heard about the two friends and the bear?”
Brandon and his squad rushed into a clearing where the sun poured in over the bushes that grew in the middle. They were all thick and, while less than a meter tall, filled most the space.
They looked around and a couple stared greedily at the plants. They knew the amount of money that could be made if they cleaned these bushes out. Not as much as they would make if they managed to find the two runners, but it was still a hefty bonus.
“We don’t have time for this,” the corporal reminded them. “We need to find them. They can’t have gotten too far.”
“Hey, Brandon!” Sal called from the other side of the clearing. “I think you might want to rethink that.”
The men circled the bushes and found him crouched beside one of the younger plants. It was still small enough to be tugged free but had five beautiful blue flowers already in bloom. That made it a very profitable but dangerous plant to play with.
“We both know that if I pull this plant out, it’s pretty much a death sentence,” he said casually. “Which is why I’m here playing truth or dare with you motherfuckers instead of running off like my friend Kennedy. And that means that it’s only you lot, me, and the bear. I really don’t need to outrun the bear, in this case. I simply need to outrun all of you, and honestly, I like my odds.”
Brandon stepped forward. “Don’t do it, buddy. If you pull that plant out, you’ll end up as dead as the rest of us.”
“The way I see it, if I don’t do it, you boys will simply shoot me down. So, in this case, I have the chance to see you assholes go down with me.” Sal tightened his grip. “Get ready to run—”
In that second, he yanked the plant out. There was no way to get used to what came next. A shift rippled through the jungle around them like the trees themselves were pissed off by what he’d done. Roars and screeches from all the animals in every direction erupted as a constant warning that they now came in numbers to reclaim what had been stolen.
“Like I said,” he said and stepped into the middle of the group, “I suggest we all run like maniacs.”
He paused to gun down the first animals to break into the clearing, a couple of locusts with scorpion tails. A crazy part of him supposed that they should count themselves lucky that these creatures hadn’t developed the same bullet-stopping carapaces that the centipede monster had, but that was a small mercy since a dozen or so more appeared in quick succession.
“We’ll kill each other later,” Brandon growled. “Let’s get out of here!”
They sprinted away from the clearing and fired as well as they could while they ran. The ten men left of the mercenaries that Brandon had brought clearly weren’t experienced Zoo runners, which meant that one by one, they went down. One was dragged away screaming as the vine tentacles, even more aggressively than before, whipped out to snag him in mid-stride. Sal pushed his pace and proved his promise that he was able to outrun them all when he remained ahead. He forced himself not to look back with each successive shriek that indicated that another man had fallen.
As a panther launched onto one of the men and sank its venomous fangs into him while a pack of hyenas ripped at his legs, Brandon realized that the only men left standing were himself and Sal.
“I’m going to fucking kill you, Jacobs!” the corporal bellowed as he paused to reload his rifle.
“That’s the thing about the Zoo, Brandon,” he responded calmly. “These monsters don’t care about who pulled the plant. Only who has it last.”
He raised his hand—the one that had plucked the plant out of the ground—and waved goodbye. The man didn’t see the sarcastic gesture, though, since his gaze was drawn to the animal that moved slowly out of the tree cover. The monster was enormous with four eyes, a jaw with dozens of teeth as long as knives in its mouth, and an agile tail.
“Fuck!” he shouted as he slapped a new magazine into place and tried to take aim. He was too late. The reptile cleared the distance between them in a single leap and rapier-like claws dug into his chest as it pushed him to the ground.
“See you later, asshole,” Sal said, talking to the reptile. It looked at him for a moment and seemed to incline its head in confusion before it turned back to its meal, which screamed in pain.
As Sal sprinted away, he winced when the shriek was abruptly cut short.
Resolute, he pushed the thoughts from his head and maintained his pace until he eventually found Kennedy on the trail they’d agreed to follow. She had paused to catch her breath.
“See what I mean?” Sal asked with a cocky grin. “There’s no need to outrun the bear, only your friend.”
“And have a shot of blue goop in your medical bag. It was still too fucking dangerous,” she remonstrated as they threaded their way through the jungle to where they’d left their Hammerhead.
“Does this mean I get thank-you sex when we get back?” he asked as they jogged together at a slow pace.
“Is that why you were so gallant, willing to take the fall like that?” Kennedy asked.
“Well, I manage to run better since I’m not so bow-legged—ow!” he exclaimed as she punched him in the chest. “If you break a rib, you’ll carry my sorry ass out of here. Again.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I’m a little busy here, Jacobs,” Amanda said, not looking up from the weld that she applied to Kennedy’s suit of armor. “Say what you have to say and get the fuck out of my shop.”
“Our shop,” he reminded her as he slid from the counter he’d perched on to watch her work. “We all work for the same team here, right? That makes it our shop.”
“My shop,” she said but finally dragged herself away and switched the welder off.
“But if it’s in my compound…”
“Our compound,” she replied with a grin. “My shop. What can I help you with, boss?”
“When Kennedy and I snooped around in San Francisco, we found some very interesting armor designs.” Sal had made a couple of printouts of what he’d seen there and now placed them on the counter for her to look at. “They’re a little advanced and probably won’t see market sales for another couple of years—which both of us know might as we
ll be decades out here in the Zoo, right?”
“Right.” Amanda narrowed her eyes as she looked at the designs. “Well, I can tell you one thing about the designers of these suits or the guys who are supposed to work on them. They watch a lot of anime. Of the big-titted girls and tentacles variety.”
“I— What?” Sal asked, confused.
“Well, technically, the Japanese label anything considered pornographic as hentai,” she continued, “and the tentacle stuff was invented to get past their puritanical censorship laws there, so…yeah.”
He stared her down for a long moment.
“What? I’m not allowed to have interests?” she asked and shrugged. “My point is, you’re driving this shit around. Did you design this?”
“Well, I based it off of some designs, but yeah,” Sal admitted.
“It won’t work,” she said with another shrug. “It’s too heavy. The more weight you add to fit bigger hydraulic pumps to move the heavy armor makes more weight, et cetera. It’ll end up that anything in that design would be crushed under its own weight.”
“Well,” he said with a small twinkle in his eye, “what if it weighed about a third of even the lightest titanium alloy?”
She grinned and tilted her head with avid curiosity as she leaned in closer. “I’m listening.”
Andressa Covington scowled when her alarm went off. She hated that she actually dreaded what the morning would bring but it wasn’t like she could do anything about it. There was no other option but to get up, drink some coffee, and deal with it all like a normal person. While her attempt to eliminate another doctor of the Monroe line hadn’t gone according to plan, it wasn’t like this was the end of the world. She could fix this.
Still, it wasn’t like she would go into work with a smile on her face. People would call for her head on the board of directors. That was inevitable, even though it wasn’t that they really wanted her gone. She had enough dirt on all of them and the company besides to make sure they wouldn’t send her packing unless they provided a hefty severance package to ensure that she didn’t have to work another day in her life. After how hard she’d worked to come this far in the world, she didn’t intend to lose a grip on that now.