by Michael Todd
“Well,” her mother huffed with an attempt to adopt the face of a victim, “I suddenly remembered that he had sent me some intellectual property documents a few weeks before he died. He wanted me to sign them before he sold them off to provide a…well, an additional investment for me.”
“Ah,” Courtney grunted with a chuckle. “Of course. Only the scent of money could overcome your maternal revulsion enough to bring you to my door. But why in the name of everything that’s holy would Dad want to pay you off in—hell, what did you call it?—intellectual property sales? I assume it could only be an attempt to pay you off since he no doubt knew you’d do your damndest to get your claws into everything that wasn’t nailed down.”
Jasmine looked tense, like she wanted to argue, but she plastered a fake-pleasant on face. “I have no idea why your father would approach me about money. I’d certainly not expected this since he made it very clear that I’d have only the little he saw fit to leave me and not a penny more. Actually, in hindsight, I’d have been better off if I’d divorced him years ago.”
Monroe smirked. “Oh, yeah, like he would have rolled over. Dad didn’t give a shit about the potential scandal. He’d have let you go in a heartbeat and counted himself lucky.”
“Be that as it may,” her mother said and managed to somehow retain a firm hold on her calm, “the documents arrived without any warning for me either. We had little contact after you went off to that awful place and I finally moved into my own home. When I heard that he died, I assumed that he’d done it to...I don’t know, assuage a guilty conscience.”
“The only guilty conscience here is yours,” Courtney said. “But, whatever the reason, if you’re looking for a handout from me, you’ve severely overestimated how I feel about you. If you want a piece of Dad’s estate, you should have brought the documents he sent you and a lawyer. I don’t care where his money goes, but if I can do anything to make your life difficult, I will.”
Jasmine scowled and her pleasant façade slipped fractionally before she withdrew a couple of documents from her purse and handed them over. Courtney took them and with a quick, wary look at her mother, unfolded them and scanned the pages.
Sure enough, there was her father’s signature in his classic dark-blue felt pen. She would recognize it anywhere, and yet, as she turned to look at the date when the signature took place, she noted that it was three days before he died. For some reason—even though Jasmine had said as much—it niggled at her.
“Well, this all looks clean enough,” she said, although it physically hurt her to say it. “But I’m not great at all this legal jargon. You should talk to the lawyer who’s handling his estate.” She had regained a little of her calm but she really didn’t want her mother to stick around any longer.
“Right,” Jasmine said and looked relieved—like she had expected more resistance to her claim. “Honestly, I really have no idea why he would have done this. People rethink their life choices all the time, but you can’t plan for a home invasion.”
Courtney tried not to allow any surprise to show on her face but wasn’t sure how much she’d let slip. Her jaw clenched and her fingers almost snatched the papers back from Jasmine’s fingers, but she managed to hold back the instinctive response. Whoever had told her mother that her father had died had told her that it was in a home invasion, yet that had never been mentioned—not at the funeral or in any of the meetings related to the estate.
In all honesty, she herself had suspected this, but if someone else knew about it and had spread the information, it meant that someone—rather than cancer—was responsible for her father’s death.
It wasn’t confirmation, of course, but the more she learned about her father’s death, the more likely it seemed that the man didn’t have any kind of cancer at all. Or, if he did, it hadn’t been sufficiently advanced to take his life so suddenly.
“Okay,” she said and fumbled in her pocket for a card. “This is the contact information of the lawyer handling Dad’s estate. You are to direct all your business to him. If you try to contact me or come to this house again, I will make sure that anything Dad ever said or did to keep you in line looks like a slap on the wrist, do you understand me?”
Jasmine opened her mouth, but Courtney wasn’t in the mood to continue the discussion. She raised her hand and pointed at the door.
“Get out,” she ordered. “Now. Before I call the cops.”
Her mother nodded. There wasn’t a hint of regret in the woman’s features, not even the slightest show of remorse in the face of all her daughter’s accusations. She doubted that that woman was smart enough to be involved in whatever it was that had caused her father’s death, but she definitely had a part to play, even inadvertently. After all, she’d appeared out of the woodwork, her nose twitching like the rat she was with the scent of some kind of payout.
Jasmine nodded, shoved the documents and the card in her purse, and turned to the door. She hesitated once she’d crossed the threshold, her mouth open to say something, but Courtney didn’t give her the chance. Instead, she slammed the door in her face and wiped her hands in a gesture of satisfaction.
God, that felt good, she thought with a small smile as she turned the lock and headed to her study. Robinson emerged from the stairwell and looked around for any hints that he still wasn’t welcome.
“Just so you know,” she said while she struggled to keep her eyes from tearing up, “that woman is never welcome in this house again. I know you tried to send her away, and it’s not like you’ll hang out much at my house anyway. Still, it’s something to keep in mind if you ever are here that you have my full permission to call the cops and have her removed.”
Robinson didn’t reply but he smiled and squeezed her shoulder gently as she passed him. It was all right, she supposed. She wasn’t in the mood to talk much, anyway. Well, not to him. She retrieved her phone when he was out of earshot and quickly pressed the first quick-dial on the screen.
As she held the phone to her cheek, she scowled at the machine that registered her call and played her Sal’s quick message before it beeped for her to leave a message. She didn’t bother. He would see that she’d called and respond when it was convenient. She wasn’t even sure what time it was in the Sahara.
“Of course he’s not available right now,” she muttered to herself. “But I hope he’s giving Madigan some respite between their regular sessions of the horizontal tango.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sal assessed the small group he now held the line with. Most wore the military-issued suits, which made them only slightly better suited for combat than the hybrid design he used. This meant that in the kind of mess that they were in, he was expected to fulfill the responsibility of a gunner.
Two teams were locked in battle against the Zoo. Neither had their specialists with them, so there were already casualties to account for. He needed to show that he was capable of getting this done, no matter what.
At least the mechanism to reload his rifle still worked, he thought with a grin as the beasts massed for another attack. A massive wave of them swept forward. As always, the smaller, weaker animals were pressed into the front and soaked up most of the gunfire. It still fascinated him how these animals were able to coordinate their attacks like that. There were no sacrificial qualities in animals by nature, and even humans seldom easily adapted to the kind of mindset required to sacrifice yourself for what could be called the greater good.
The goop was one hell of a thing.
The beasts continued their surge with no hesitation. The first line of hyenas fell to be replaced by the larger locusts with heavier armor. These were able to soak up one or two rounds before they dropped, and even the self-loading mechanism couldn’t move fast enough. He drew the sidearm from his hip and fired without making sure that the heavy pistol had a round in the chamber before opening fire. He’d finally developed the habit of checking his weapons in advance, he realized with satisfaction as the kick shocked a trail all th
e way to his shoulder. The pistol fired rounds as large as those in the rifle but from a shorter barrel, which made accuracy more difficult .
Still, in this kind of mayhem, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to actually hit something. The creatures were less than ten paces away and the tide slowed as something that might be a self-preservation instinct began to kick in. Perhaps there were some limits to what the goop could force the creatures under its spell to do.
That said, sufficient numbers remained to continue the fight and now, the panthers in the branches tried to launch onto the team below. A dozen or so of them growled and roared as they searched for weak spots in the formation to attack.
Kennedy make a quick call and drew a couple of the gunners a few steps back to join her. They picked the creatures off their perches and left it up to Sal and the dozen or so remaining team members to hold the front line. It made sense. It required precision to eliminate the panthers, which meant that they needed their best shots out there. Besides, they could still help to hold the line from the back if need be.
“We need to keep moving!” he called as he once again used his sidearm to cover the second or so it took for his rifle to reload. The rounds punched through the armor of one of the scorpion-tailed locusts. By now, the ground was probably soaked in the red and blue blood of the creatures. For some reason, the fact that there wasn’t enough light in the jungle to enable them to see any colors was extremely annoying. All they had was a combination of motion sensors and night vision, which gave everything a gray-green tint. It was unsettling for anyone who wasn’t used to it. Hell, Sal was used to it, and it still unsettled him.
The line pushed steadily backward but remained intact as Kennedy led them into the jungle and away from the direction most of the monsters came from. A few were still canny enough to try to circle them. This made for a somewhat cumbersome and awkward escape in that they had to maintain a protective perimeter to ensure that nothing could break into their circle. This formation surrounded a couple of the better marksmen who clustered in the center and aimed their rifles at the treetops to preempt the panther attacks but who also kept a watchful eye on the ground battle in case the defenders needed backup.
Sal turned for a second to check their direction, but a second was all that was needed for everything to go to shit. At a powerful tug behind him, he whirled and ducked to avoid a couple of pincers that attached themselves to his pack. He doubted that the animals knew what was inside, but as the pack was torn from his suit, time seemed to slow and almost freeze for a second. The locust dragged it’s bounty away—thankfully, it hadn’t torn it open—and scuttled toward the horde.
“Sal!” Kennedy barked as he broke suddenly from the formation. “Hold the fucking line. Sal!”
A part of him that knew she was right. He had to remain in position to save lives. If he broke the line, it would leave a gap for the creatures to flood into once he was down. No matter what was in his pack, he needed to stay with the team,.
On the other hand, there was a Pita plant in there. If they managed to tear through the containment and released the pheromones that had surely built up inside, things would get bad very quickly.
Besides, he’d gone through too much to get that little plant out of the ground. There was no way that he could leave it behind for the creatures to—well, he wasn’t quite sure it was that they would do. Every time someone who tried to get out plants was found, it was always minus the plants. The question of where the animals took them after killing the humans remained unanswered.
Sal was curious about that but not curious enough. Quite simply, he wanted his plant back.
He waited until his rifle was fully reloaded before he charged. The thirty-five rounds in the mag would take him a long way through the beasts if he rushed in close. The thief was the first to drop and hadn’t quite made it back to the mob. That made it easier to see where his pack was since he was lucky enough that he didn’t have to dig into a pile of angry and hostile animals to find it again. Still, the point remained that if he actually could retrieve the pack, now was the time to do it.
His teeth gritted, he fired into the surging line of creatures that thought they could take advantage of his break from the line. In fairness, it was as much of a weakness as they would get with Kennedy in command. He was aware that she would tear him a new one for doing this but it was still worth it. Or it would be if he actually managed to get to the pack in time.
A panther vaulted down from the trees and landed on Sal’s prize just as his gun clicked empty. With his sidearm currently needed for the creatures behind him, no loaded weapon protected him from the beast. The fangs extended and dripped with venom as a paw lashed out to strike at him. He sidestepped and used the power arm to punch his rifle forward into the animal. It managed to dodge and avoid the strike to the head, but as he thrust forward, the barrel dug into the creature’s ribcage. As a spurt of blood caught on his visor and he swiped at it with his arm.
The new mag loaded and a round chambered, and Sal pulled the trigger. The barrel buried into the panther’s torso and slugs ripped through its body and plowed into the creatures behind it.
His sidearm clicked and showed no new mags available. He flipped it quickly to grip the barrel and tried to shake the corpse off his rifle with his other hand. A hyena darted forward and tried to latch its teeth around his rifle and drag it away. Sal did as Kennedy had taught him and used the sidearm as a hammer to strike the reinforced grip into the creature’s jaw and quickly against the temple. It wasn’t a kill, but as the beast yelped and staggered, his rifle jerked free and the hyena’s head decompressed when a bullet tore through the bone and soft tissue.
Other animals pressed forward and Sal backed away rapidly to snatch his pack from the ground and attach it to his suit. He dropped his pistol in the process but whipped the combat knife from his pocket as one panther after another dropped and blocked his path back to the line that had formed up again and closed the hole he’d left behind.
“Jacobs, if you don’t get your skinny ass back in the line, I will kill you myself,” Kennedy shouted through a comm link. He grinned, avoided a leap from a panther, and turned to use its body as a shield as he plunged his knife deep into the creature’s ribcage. With his rifle positioned over its back, he drove it forward and fired with quick and sharp single shots at any other beasts that attacked. Some tried to flank him but were quickly gunned down by the men still in the line. The animals seemed thoroughly distracted by his shenanigans, which gave the men some respite and an opportunity to thin the numbers of the animals massed against them.
Sal clenched his teeth. He was committed now and well aware that heading back into the line wasn’t an option anymore, no matter how much Kennedy told him to do it. He gripped his rifle and screamed obscenities. His momentum shoved the panther corpse ahead of him and he continued to use it as a shield as he hurtled into the creatures. They crowded around and eventually dragged him to a halt. The corpse was yanked away and took his knife with it before two panthers hauled him down. The first succumbed to a couple of rounds from the rifle. The second absorbed a bullet but its jaws snapped around the barrel and dragged the weapon from the power armor’s fingers. The creature backed away, but a nearby hyenas landed on his chest to pin him down as their massive jaws locked around his helmet and tried to drag it clear. Something tapped at his legs. One creature tried to tear one off and another simply poked at it—a locust with a tail, he realized, trying to poison him.
Power poured into his arm and it lurched forward into the hyena on his right. Its jaw remained clamped but bones snapped and broke on impact. The beast pulled away and whimpered, the back half of its body non-responsive. The other attacker immobilized his arm with it’s massive weight and bit down on his helmet. A hairline crack appeared on his visor.
Well, so this was how he would go. Fuck.
The hyena suddenly fell away and blood poured over his suit as the creature tried to defend itself against a steady
barrage of fire. Sal shoved up to lean on his arm as the line of men and women in suits released another volley of death as they charged. One of the men dropped when something struck him in the neck with enough force to cut through the heavy armor and almost lop his head off. Kennedy stepped quickly into the breach.
“Get off your ass and do something!” she yelled at him through the comms, and he didn’t need much in the way of encouragement. He scrambled to his feet and paused only to pluck his rifle from the jaws of the dead panther before he opened fire and joined the line as best as he could given that he had to avoid being shot himself. He stooped and yanked his combat knife from the corpse and used it to fend off the animals that got too close.
“Jacobs!” his partner called and gestured at something in the trees. Sal looked up and immediately saw one of the massive lizards he was all too familiar with. She made a quick motion with her hands, and he nodded quickly as the beast’s impossibly long tail flashed out again to hammer one of the men in the line and launch him forward. Sal couldn’t tell if he was dead or if the armor had taken most of the damage, and at this point, he didn’t have the time to investigate.
He aimed his rifle at the reptile and waited a second as his suit clicked yet another mag into the slot before he squeezed the trigger. It was set on full auto this time and he focused on a spot on the tree immediately below the creature. It didn’t seem to notice his specific plan, but the tail flickered again and he was barely able to duck in time. He rolled on his shoulder and pushed onto his feet. Kennedy had fired a sustained burst and, in a few seconds, the tree gave way beneath the weight of the beast. It tried to escape, but the limb dropped and gravity pulled it beneath the tree that crashed with a massive thud.
Sal jogged over to the debris and avoided the tail that still lashed dangerously as he peered at the creature’s bloody head.