by Michael Todd
“Hold your fire,” he commanded. As he issued this order, he ran into the jungle himself.
He could see the creatures now, although only two were visible. One clawed its way upward into and through the trees as it retreated, and the other scampered across the ground. He raised his rifle and fired one burst followed by the remaining single bullet in his forty-round magazine.
The four shots were enough to wound the grounded kangarat in the rear leg. It mewled pitifully as its retreat slowed to a crawl. A couple of quick, leaping steps brought Wallace to the monster’s side. He drew his pistol and fired it directly through the creature’s left eye and into its brain. The eye popped and blood and brain matter leaked from the wound as it slumped, instantly dead.
The sergeant ran back to his men. If the retreat had been intended to lead him into a trap—which he doubted—they would not have had time to spring it. He let the one remaining creature he had seen go. His personal preference was to eliminate every single one, and logic argued that the less of them they had to contend with later, the better. But contending with kangarats was not the objective of this mission.
“Is everyone all right?” Wallace asked the platoon as he reloaded his rifle.
They’d lost one man—the confused rookie private whose name, Wallace was disturbed to realize, he could not recall. More and more soldiers were now rotated into and out of this place and fewer and fewer of them returned home.
Fortunately, however, that man had been the only loss during an attack big enough that, in the past, might have claimed half or more of the unit. Otherwise, they hadn’t even sustained any serious injuries.
“Well, sir, we got about half of them,” said Private Falstaff, who’d been with Wallace on a previous mission to escort some foreign diplomats into and out of the Zoo. “You got the other half.”
Chapter Two
Following the battle against the kangarats, Wallace’s platoon took a few moments to rest, reload, and recover. It was necessary, but they would have to move out again very soon. After all that shooting, anything with ears would have an accurate idea of their position.
Then again, with another full platoon plus an extra squad under his command, not to mention three vehicles, it was essentially a given that they’d make noise the whole time. This time, they weren’t simply hunting animals but were prepared should they encounter any kind of massed attack.
It was mid-morning and the sun had been up for a couple of hours. Back home in the temperate zone, it would have been autumn now. The days would grow shorter and cooler and the trees would have begun to change color. But there in the southern Sahara on the border between Algeria and Niger, that seemed to make little difference, if any. The days remained more or less the same length, and they were still hot. Wallace was used to it by now. Some of his men, though, had been rotated in from the States only recently, and he had to keep reminding them to stay out of direct sunlight if possible and to constantly sip water from their CamelBak hydration packs whenever they could. The upside of the jungle, of course, was that it was easy to avoid direct sunlight for extended periods.
“Getting to throw a herbicide bomb isn’t the same, dammit,” Gunnar said and shook his head, his long face morose with disappointment. “I mean, yeah, it technically explodes, but it’s only a frickin’ Fourth of July firework, basically, and then some steam and shit comes up. There isn’t much of a boom or a fireball. It would have made the morning so much more satisfying to be able to use an actual grenade.”
“If there is one thing that is rarely satisfying,” Pérez replied in her drooping, affectless monotone, her brown eyes heavily lidded, “it’s morning. Morning is the beginning of the day, which means you still have to suffer through the rest. Every morning is bright with the promise of disappointment after disappointment.” Everyone referred to her as “Private Peppy,” for obvious reasons. “Although,” she went on, “if Gunnar wants satisfaction, he could always take one of his guns back in the bushes there along with some lotion and tissues.”
“Peppy could take a gun into the bushes and never come out,” Gunnar said. “Giving her a weapon, though, seems like being guilty of accessory to suicide. My concern is how many people she’ll take out with her when she goes.”
“Not you,” Peppy replied. “You deserve to live, Gunnar. To keep having to deal with all this kind of shit.”
“Quiet,” Wallace said. The two of them were, of course, the best of friends. Peppy had been distraught when they’d all thought Gunnar was dead on the last major expedition. Still, having them together on the same mission kept things interesting.
It was already shaping up to be interesting enough, though. They had entered the Zoo about twenty-four hours before. It was always a risky proposition to spend the night there, but the first had passed safely, thank God. Unfortunately, there was no way to know how many more would have to be spent there. They would remain in the jungle until the mission was complete.
It had been slow going, mostly thanks to their goddamn vehicles. The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Mark Two, was the current military standard and performed well in most situations. It was slightly smaller and nimbler than the earlier JLTV, more of a hybrid between an old Jeep or Humvee and a Hammerhead ATV. Its armor, speed, mobility, carrying capacity, and even fuel economy were all excellent.
The problem was the Zoo’s car-killers. Fast-growing, prehensile, seemingly sentient vines somehow tracked the progress of vehicles over the ground and, when they stopped, emerged from the earth to tangle themselves over wheels and axles and even penetrate engines. Wallace had personally seen no fewer than five JLTV2’s destroyed by car-killers. They’d since adopted a strategy to combat the creepers, but it was enough of a problem that he almost wished they’d brought no vehicles at all, to begin with.
“I still can’t believe that Hall wouldn’t let me make more of the Silver Stallions.” Jimmy sighed as she stepped beside Wallace. “He said it would be nothing but a ‘waste of money.’” She imitated Director Hall’s soft, deep, slightly gravelly voice as she quoted him. “I mean, what could be less of a waste of money than that? Having vehicles that actually frickin’ work in here, even with those vine-things around.” She tucked a lock of her red hair up under her mechanic’s cap.
“You know how he is, Jimmy,” Wallace replied and took a sip of water. “I vouched for the Stallions and I personally disagree, but he’s in charge, and we have to do as he says.” He returned to examining his cybernetic suit for damage or malfunction. Jimmy would no doubt try to assist him within the next few seconds. She had, after all, helped to design and tweak the current version.
“Here, let me,” she said and immediately dropped to her knees.
“I’m fine,” he replied, “but I suppose you’re the expert. We move out again in three minutes unless absolutely necessary, though, so be quick.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Audrey “Jimmy” James had only been assigned to the Zoo base for five or six weeks, but in that time, she’d made friends with virtually everyone—aside from Director Hall and the unpleasant Dr. Marla Kessler. They all tried to look out for her, and she wasn’t resented as a “civilian passenger” sometimes was. Jimmy was in her early twenties and something of a mechanical and technological prodigy. She had designed three quadrupedal vehicles, the Silver Stallions, which she declared idiot-proof and which took some getting used to—and really needed to be made safer. They had, however, performed well during the ill-fated diplomatic safari. The Zoo didn’t seem to recognize the mechanical legs as parts of a vehicle, and they were fast, strong, and reliable. Unfortunately, two were destroyed but they still had the third to use as a prototype. For some reason, however, Director Hall refused to greenlight the production of more.
“Well, you look fine,” Jimmy reported as she tapped and poked at Wallace’s exoskeleton. “And more importantly, so does your suit.” She smiled.
“It’s working even better than expected,” he replied. “The extra
armor over the heart was a good idea.” It still mostly only covered his half-useless legs, still-injured lower back, hips, and left arm, plus the wire that ran up his back to the headset at the base of his neck. But Jimmy had made a few additions and the whole system had been improved.
“That’s good. I still don’t like it, though—you out here on a mission this dangerous with the improvement still on the first test.” She frowned and the expression seemed out of place on her usually bright and beaming face. “It should have been tested more first. If something were to go wrong at just the worst possible moment—”
Wallace shook his head and cut that thought off. He really didn’t want to go down that possibly dark rabbit hole. “There was no time. And so far, like I said, it works great. Plus, the doctors and that physical therapist lady said I’m starting to heal, as well. Without the suit, I’d still be in sub-par shape, but I’m not totally helpless anymore. I won’t end up a complete cripple, after all.”
“Well, good, but—”
“No complaints, Jimmy. It is what it is,” he insisted. “Orders are orders, and Hall’s orders were clear, firm, and ironclad.” He grimaced as he recalled the man’s words: Find and destroy the foreign mercenaries who have infiltrated the Zoo.
The jungle had originally emerged from an American experiment. NASA had intercepted a missile, launched apparently by extraterrestrials from Jupiter’s orbit before they returned, it was assumed, to somewhere in deep space. The U.S. government had first tested the bright blue AG—Alien Goop—in controlled lab environments. It was found to stimulate plant growth and accelerate mutations, and the idea emerged that it could be used as part of a global anti-hunger initiative. Accordingly, a top-secret experimental base was established in the depths of the Sahara. But things had, to put it mildly, gotten out of hand.
Over time, it increasingly became an international operation. There was no way to keep a lid on something this big and this dangerous for long. The United States’ allies—as well as most other major countries and coalitions—wanted in on the action. In simple terms, they wanted a piece of the pie they’d helped fund. Wallace’s last major mission had been to provide a guided tour of the jungle to a trio of politicians from Germany, France, and the UK. Even before that, some Saudi prince had sent in a team of bounty hunters to try to capture one of the Zoo’s creatures as a goddamn pet. It was inevitable that people with no particular moral or ethical standards would bribe their way in and try to conduct their own little operations in here.
Now, a new gang of mercs operated within the Zoo, although it wasn’t clear who they were.
“Weren’t we supposed to kill people?” Gunnar asked. “Instead of rodents and shit? I mean, either way, I still get to shoot the same guns at them, so that’s cool. But when will we get new guns? Even better, when will I get one of those plasma flamethrowers? Peppy got to shoot one last time, but I didn’t. That’s not only unfair, it’s insane.”
“The barrel of the plasma-thrower,” she retorted by way of reply, “is way too big for you, Gunnar. You’d get no stimulation at all and have to use a pencil to poke a hole in an MRE pack instead. That should be about big enough.”
“Peppy could use a pencil to write a novel about this place,” Gunnar suggested. “It would probably be super depressing so would, guaranteed, be made into a movie that would win a bunch of awards. Of course, no one would actually watch it and people on the Internet would say that the author should be institutionalized.”
“I am institutionalized,” Peppy said. “When I joined the Army, I thought it was a mental hospital. I’m still not entirely sure I see the difference. I mean, look at the people I have to interact with.”
“Quiet,” Wallace said. “We’re moving out.”
Everyone stood, secured their gear, and prepared themselves to march.
“Sergeant,” asked Private Falstaff, “do we even know how many of these assholes there are?”
“According to the intel that Director Hall received,” the sergeant answered, “twenty or twenty-five. Small arms only. We outnumber them by about two to one. Assuming the intel is accurate.” Assumption was, of course, the mother of all fuck-ups. And Hall’s mysterious intel had more often than not ended up inaccurate. “Still, this is not something to take lightly. It is, however, what our training was originally designed for. Man versus man—combat between human beings.”
“Yeah. I mean, the Zoo hasn’t figured out how to produce its own guns yet,” said Gunnar. “It’s kind of disappointing in a way. Think of all the fun those kangarats and their buddies are missing out on.”
“That’s fine with me,” Falstaff muttered. “This place is a dangerous shithole, but at least up until now, it doesn’t shoot back. That would literally be like walking into enemy territory.”
“It’s not the Zoo that will shoot back, Private,” Wallace pointed out. “It’s a group of trespassers who probably have only the vaguest idea of what they’re even dealing with. Myself and several of the people in this unit—including you, Falstaff—have experience in here. The Zoo isn’t the enemy’s territory. It’s ours. We are the ones who will hunt them.”
Chapter Three
“Halt!” Wallace called.
Over the last two hours, they’d hiked deeper into the Zoo. Their first day had mostly comprised a back and forth sweep through the northern stretches. These lay closest to Wall One, which had so far contained the spread of the jungle and provided a link to civilization. The actual base was back at Wall Two, located several miles farther out, which also acted as a second line of defense should the proverbial hit the fan. They’d had a couple of skirmishes with groups of kangarats and small clusters of giant locusts but had annihilated them without casualties or any great difficulty. Now that they were deeper in, though, they could expect the jungle to deliver more intensive attacks.
The troop came to a stop and the three men assigned to vehicle preservation duty did their job. They immediately sprayed the ground beneath the JLTVs with herbicide and kept watch in case the car-killer vines tried to sprout. The reality was that the herbicide didn’t always completely stop them, but it at least slowed them down enough for the drivers to move to a new position before the vehicle was entangled.
Everyone was silent. For the moment, the only sounds heard in the surrounding jungle were those of the Zoo itself. Faint breathing defined the big, carnivorous vines and, seemingly, the very soil they grew from. A breeze rustled lazily through the leaves. The subtle sounds of native birds and insects of the desert could be identified alongside their alien counterparts. These creatures had obviously somehow made the Zoo their new home and not yet succumbed to it.
“What is it?” Private Falstaff asked.
“Quiet,” Wallace replied.
It was difficult to tie his unease—a sudden deep inner caution and alertness—to any specific or obvious factor. It was merely something he sensed, and the more experienced men among the troops seemed to have sensed it also. It was simply an intuition or gut instinct that they were being watched, followed, and very possibly set up for an ambush. Something with actual intelligence had them under surveillance.
A squad on a fairly routine patrol one week before had encountered the enemy mercs. The sergeant commanding them had sensed that someone was nearby seconds before a volley of gunfire erupted behind them. The shots had all been aimed over their heads, oddly enough, which seemed to indicate that the mercs simply tried to scare them off. It was assumed that they were there on another illegal poaching trip and possibly attempted to recover some Zoo critters for whoever their client was before they headed out to pick up their checks. The logic was that they didn’t want to engage the U.S. military in actual combat.
However, three days later, someone had detonated a claymore mine that had killed one soldier and wounded another. It had not been an accident, nor had it involved a tripwire. Instead, it had been remotely detonated. That was when Hall had called Wallace to his office to explain to him that another gr
oup of bounty hunters—a rival force of soldiers-of-fortune—could not be permitted in the Zoo. There were too many variables, he had explained. Their presence made it difficult to keep the place under control or prevent yet more unfavorable news from spreading to the outside world. The director had decreed that they would deal with these mercenaries once and for all.
Wallace raised his hand and made a quick motion. His men immediately drew inward to form a tight group partially shielded by the three JLTVs. They waited in absolute silence, all eyes trained on their surroundings as every man there strained to hear the smallest sound. In the greenish-black shadows of the nearby jungle, the sergeant saw something flash by. He recognized the long and lean form and faintly purple hue.
“Cats,” he said, barely loud enough for the troops to hear. He could actually feel them tense at the word. “Herbicide.”
The three men with weed-killer, who’d spread the toxic liquid beneath their vehicles only moments before, now sprayed their current perimeter while the others stood watch. Massive green leaves, drooping vines, fronds, and branches all darkened, withered, curled up, and finally disintegrated. The enemy would not ambush them from cover again.
Despite their precautions, the catsharks, as they’d been nicknamed, were the smartest and most dangerous of the Zoo’s denizens and Wallace knew he shouldn’t make assumptions. He was surprised that they’d allowed themselves to be sighted at all. That unusual occurrence made him even more uneasy.
A loud, terrifying yowl split the air and one of the animals suddenly pounced from a nearby branch onto one of the vehicles and felled the man who’d been posted in the JLTV’s turret. It spun and leapt back into the undergrowth before anyone could react, but three men opened fire as it retreated. The soldier in the vehicle clutched his arm. “It got me,” he exclaimed in disbelief.