by Michael Todd
Wallace had not, he now realized, trained as much as he should have in how to use the “gray area” of force while in his suit. So far, he’d only used it to crush, kill, and eliminate, and it made total destruction of the enemy that much easier. He would need to make a conscious effort to train himself to use minimal force when required.
As Glassner led the injured man away, one of the other grunts stared at the sergeant, slack-jawed.
“The hell is your problem, Private?” he inquired.
The younger man blinked. “What’s a spork?”
Chapter Two
After the ugly confrontation in the mess hall, Wallace needed to step out for a little fresh air. It also wouldn’t hurt to make another quick inspection of the perimeter. He might even stumble across the jackass who’d brought the moonshine in and be able to have a long, thoughtful talk with him.
The night had cooled somewhat, and it felt good after the stuffiness and booze-breath in the mess hall. Temperatures changed so quickly in the desert. Tomorrow, it would be back up to ninety-five or a hundred degrees Fahrenheit once the sun returned, and that was at least an improvement over the summer.
Wallace first patrolled by Wall Two. Everything seemed to be in order. Since he still wanted to enjoy the refreshment provided by the cool, clear air, he proceeded around the rear of the base—the north side which faced out into the desert away from the Zoo. He took his thoughts with him.
If the Zoo had indeed simply slowed down—failing and perhaps even dying—he might be able to go home. The Army was his career and he liked to stay busy, but he was getting tired. He had begun to grow old. It would be nice to visit his family back in the States again.
He walked on but his suit felt off, somehow. Something must have been dented or jostled during the tussle with the huge bruiser in the mess hall. It was unlikely to be anything too serious. When he returned to his room to call it a night, he would check the connections and make a cursory inspection of it before he slept.
Wall Two still wasn’t finished, and the American base had been built after the Day of the Locust. Its purpose and intention was Zoo-centric and the rear of the base was protected only by a chain-link fence. It was both high and sturdy, but nothing fancy. Wallace’s eyes scanned the simple barrier as he moved.
Abruptly, he stopped and narrowed his eyes. There was a hole in the fence.
“Goddammit,” he whispered and put a hand on his pistol as he approached the opening, his movements slower and quieter now. He scanned the area and looked mostly out of the corners of his eyes to better see in the dark. The mounted lights did little to illuminate this particular stretch.
There were no immediate signs of a trespasser, human or otherwise. As he stepped closer to the fence, he saw that the chains had been cut in a kind of looping arc that allowed the section of fence to be pushed in or pulled out but without completely removing it. A lazier eye than his might not have noticed the damage at all. This wasn’t the work of a Zoo creature. A person had done it.
The sand, dust, and gravel on the ground had already been disturbed by the strong breeze, and Wallace could not identify any obvious boot prints. What the hell?
He touched the headpiece attached to his suit and a small square component unfolded in front of his mouth.
“Lieutenant Danvers, come in, this is Sergeant Wallace,” he said and hoped his superior was still awake. The hope was not in vain.
“What is it, Wallace?” Danvers asked.
“We have a breach in the north fence behind the base.” He described all that he’d seen—and not seen—and suggested that all sentries be placed on higher alert. Before the lieutenant could respond, he added that they should avoid sounding a general alarm since if the intruder was still present, that might prompt them to flee or do something stupid like try to suicide-bomb the base. Two groups of vicious mercs had already penetrated the Zoo, and there was talk of espionage afoot. They had to be careful.
Wallace studied the surroundings intently. The nearest sentry looked familiar and he motioned the individual—small and apparently female—to join him. It turned out to be Private First-Class Monica Pérez, better known to the local personnel as Private Peppy for her uniquely uplifting commentary.
“Yes, Sergeant?” she asked in her flat, depressing monotone, her brown eyes heavily lidded.
“Peppy, we have a breach in the fence here. Danvers will put everyone on high alert. I haven’t seen anything yet, but I want you to make a full sweep of this area and let me or him know if you find anything. Don’t talk to the director unless you have to—at least not yet.”
“Why would anyone actually want to talk to the director?” Peppy mused. “Then again, I never particularly understood why people wanted much of anything, to begin with. Just think of how quickly we’ll all decompose unless we’ve been embalmed, and our—”
“Just follow my orders,” he interrupted. “I’ll go back inside to help search and then go to bed if all is well. Are you warm enough out here?”
“This place isn’t much different from back home in Yuma.” Peppy sighed. “God rolled a die and got a natural one. I should have known better than to waste mental energy hoping I’d be stationed somewhere with a stable, middling climate. That sort of condition is known as ‘heat death,’ by the way. Eventually, all heat energy in the universe will reach equilibrium, and then all activity will cease. The universe as we know it will end. After all the stupid bullshit we’ve been through so far, it will be a nice change of pace compared to—”
Wallace left her still talking and hoped that the cut fence was merely something a drunken soldier had done without thinking and tried to cover up. He wanted sleep. Even during this period of relative peace, he’d had an endless pile of papers and red tape to deal with and more than enough detail work to do.
He entered the base’s main building via the nearest door, which also happened to be the one closest to his small personal room. As he headed down the hall, he looked carefully at everyone he passed—not too many people still bustled around at this hour—and studied the floor for any traces of extra sand, suspicious footprints, or anything else out of the ordinary.
The mercs Wallace had dealt with a few weeks before had been willing to kill American soldiers, and they had. The sergeant had lost an entire platoon. Whoever the intruder might be, however, there wouldn't be enough of them to attack the base. And they didn’t dare to blow the whole place up—he hoped. There were too many politicians and civilians around.
No, the real danger was mid-level sabotage or the theft of important research materials or tech samples. On that note, he turned his steps toward the research wing. Kessler had shut the place down for the night. It was locked and everything looked fine. He nodded, turned, and retraced his steps to his own room, although he continued his scrutiny for traces of suspicious activity.
So far, he’d seen nothing to indicate a problem. It probably wasn’t anything to worry about, after all. Lieutenant Danvers wasn’t the type to bust his ass excessively over the finer details of protocol and likely would not bother him with further inquiries unless they actually found something of concern.
No one else lingered in this part of the building when Wallace reached his room. His door was ajar and beyond it, in the far wall, his window was open. He had not opened it all day.
Instantly, his hand moved to his gun. He drew it as his stomach tightened with tension and raised it as he crept forward into the doorway. The voice in his head reminded him that he shouldn’t do it. It was almost impossible for one man to secure a room by himself and he ought to call for backup and sound the alarm. But something odd prevented him from following protocol. This wasn’t the work of a professional but a skilled amateur. Had some Tuareg nomad mistaken this place for a mere supply depot and decided to sneak in for plunder? Or could it be—
A muted sound severed the thought process—a faint riffle of movement. Someone stood around the corner beside the door. There wasn’t anywhere else in
the little room for them to go. They could either try to leave through the door or back out through the window, which was right in Wallace’s line of sight. And his line of fire.
“Come out with your hands up,” Wallace said in a low voice, gentle but firm. He wished he knew how to say that in some of the local languages.
“Okay, just a sec,” someone replied in perfect American English. The owner of the voice stepped around the corner directly in front of Wallace’s pistol, his hands raised.
It was Chris.
The sergeant stared in shock. Of all the people he hadn’t expected to see at this particular moment, the scientist was top of the list.
“Hi, Wallace,” Dr. Christopher Lin said with a nervous twitch of a smile as though he wanted to grin outright but was afraid he’d flinch if he tried. “I can’t believe they gave you a room with a window.”
Chapter Three
After he’d stood and gawked like an imbecile for a few seconds, Wallace found his voice again. “Chris,” he said, “by rights, I should arrest you and turn you over to be tried for treason against the United States of America. Are you aware of that?” He had relaxed slightly, but he had not lowered his gun.
“Uhh, well…yeah,” Chris replied. “Sorry.”
“You’ll need to say a lot more than simply ‘sorry,’” the sergeant continued. “For starters, are you here alone?”
“Yes. I no longer have a team. Those merc sons of bitches didn’t act on my orders. In fact, it is precisely because of that whole crock of shit that I’ve chosen to work alone this time.”
Wallace kept his pistol aimed at his friend—former friend?—with one hand as he used his free hand to close the door behind him. As he himself had said, he should treat Chris like the criminal he now was but somehow, he couldn’t. He had to at least hear his side of the story. The mercs had admitted under a certain amount of duress that they had in fact taken orders from someone else and had merely strung Chris along.
“Is that door soundproof?” the scientist asked. “Just, you know, in case you plan to shoot me.” His body language suggested that he considered this a real possibility.
“I won’t shoot you unless you give me a specific reason to do so,” he said. “But don’t insult me by pretending like the last couple months never happened. Explain your side of the story to me, and the end of it had better include something about what the hell you’re doing here right now. I told Danvers we had a breach in the fence. There’s been no general alarm yet, but even if I don’t turn you in, you might already be in deep shit.”
Chris’s nervous smile faded a little and he hung his head for a moment. After a deep breath, he raised it and looked Wallace square in the eye. “Do you believe me,” he asked, “when I say that I never, ever asked those…uh, private contractors to kill you or anyone else? You know what I want from the Zoo. Kemp. They were simply supposed to find her and bring her out alive. Frankie worked for someone else, all right? Seriously, why the hell would I have saved you last time we were in there together and then simply hire people to kill you?”
Wallace stared at the scientist, the man who had, in fact, saved his life several times and had come to visit him and talk to him when he lay in a hospital bed with every indication that he would never walk again.
“Yes,” he said. “I believe you’re a naive fucking idiot civilian who got in over your head. I don’t believe that you actually intended for all that to happen.” He lowered his pistol but did not holster it. Chris’s eyes looked somehow too large and shiny and black, and Wallace looked away. “I was, in any event, able to handle the situation.”
“Ha!” Chris said and his face broke into a smile. “I know. It doesn’t surprise me. You’re the toughest human I’ve ever met or even heard of. Like I said, Frankie’s team only used my orders as an excuse to go back into the Zoo anyway, and they only allowed me to live because they wanted my weed-killer recipe. I made some of the shit for them but never revealed how it was made. Which, by the way, was one of my best ideas ever. From that forbidden fruit thing, remember?” He turned and closed the window he’d crawled through.
“Yes,” Wallace replied. “And I know, Chris. They admitted to everything you just said. When Glassner brought me back, I told Hall that I didn’t know who they worked for. Frankie didn’t say, anyway, and I didn’t mention you. Hall did, though. That guy has to have friends in interesting places or something.” Wallace twisted and holstered his gun. As he did so, his suit seized up, and he struggled to turn his torso again.
“Let me have a look at that,” Chris said and knelt to examine the back of the exoskeleton. Wallace considered stopping him from getting that close, but it didn’t seem important.
“I was bumped earlier during an internal peacekeeping mission,” he explained.
“Well, it looks like the wiring is loose. Of course, it’s right near the small of your back so you wouldn’t have been able to reach it by yourself.”
He vaguely registered the truth that he probably should not have allowed Chris to poke and prod his exoskeleton like that. There was always the chance that the scientist would pull the plug and leave him trapped and half-crippled in a suit made of dead weight. But somehow, he didn’t think he would do that. Not to him, not now.
“Tell me exactly why you came back,” Wallace said. “You being here is as dangerous as all hell, in more ways than one. You could have gone back home to North Carolina.”
“Oh, you know, I missed the scenery and shit.” Chris adjusted something near the center of Wallace’s back, and a slight electric tremor rippled through the suit. “I think I got it. But seriously, something big is about to happen.” He finished what he was doing and moved to the front of the sergeant as he wiped his hands off on each other.
The soldier frowned. “What do you mean, ‘big?’”
“Well, I’ve studied the Zoo on my own recently. I have my own equipment and obviously, I know a thing or two about how the place operates. It doesn’t seem that the Zoo has really done much lately, but I almost think this is simply the calm before the storm or something. And based on the movements of the creatures, and on the united purpose that the whole place seems to operate on, I think I know where Kemp is. But, of course, she’s in there way, way deep. It’s too dangerous for someone like me to go alone.” He shrugged. “I could use some backup.”
“I have my orders, Chris,” Wallace replied. “I can’t abandon my post or my duties. Even with things being quieter lately, it simply means there’s more time to get caught up on securing our base, finishing Wall Two, and things like that. Last time I followed someone on an unauthorized mission, I ended up with two broken legs and an injured spine. And I was one of the lucky ones.”
Wallace thought back to that early mission—the illegal, off-the-books one organized by Lieutenant Doctor Emma Kemp. He’d served as her right-hand man for some time before that. She’d been a good soldier but prone to stubbornness and rash decisions which culminated in the expedition in question. And when they’d been swarmed by locusts, she had left her entire team, including Wallace, to die. He alone had survived while she had pushed on with Chris Lin toward the old research base at the heart of the Zoo, obsessed with her desire to locate the research documents that she believed would unlock the Zoo’s potential for medicine and agriculture. Ever since then, it seemed every major excursion into the alien jungle had been an exercise in death.
Chris frowned and conceded the point. “You know I wasn’t responsible for that mess. At the time, I was merely along for the ride. I probably knew even less about what was going on than you did. I landed at the base the evening before departure and I hadn’t even spoken to Kemp before then.”
“The point still stands. It’s not likely that anyone would even be able to enter the Zoo in the first place now. Those mercs probably only got in by bribing someone at one of the other gates, and since then, they’ve tightened security and rotate the staff more often to minimize corruption. And,” Wallace pointed out
, “you’re not exactly welcome at this base. Especially not by the leadership.”
No sooner had he said this than someone knocked at the door.
Both men tensed. This could be bad and they both knew it. The sergeant wondered who the hell it could be. If Lt. Danvers wanted to update him on the situation regarding the intruder, he probably would have simply messaged him on his headset.
“Just a second,” Wallace said. He motioned with a wave of his hand for Chris to hide. The scientist immediately squeezed himself in around the corner, out of sight from the doorway. He wouldn’t be detected if he stayed where he was and provided their guest didn’t cross the threshold. If the person demanded entrance, the scientist was screwed.
Wallace turned and opened the door. Dr. Kessler stood there with a bored-looking young sentry who hovered behind her elbow.
“Yes, Doctor?” Wallace greeted her.
“Director Hall wants to see you,” said Kessler. The woman barely looked at him, her face locked in Irritated Frown mode. She must have been severely offended that she was sent on an errand to fetch a mere sergeant. “Now.”
“Okay.” He leaned forward to indicate that he would step out immediately. Kessler caught the motion and stepped back, and he moved out and closed the door behind him.
She spun on her heel and strode down the hallway, away from the room, while the sentry blinked, apparently confused as to whether he should remain with Kessler or wait and bring up the rear.
The sergeant followed where the doctor led. The other soldier seemed to resolve his mental dilemma and fell in beside Wallace, although he was on the short side and had to hurry to keep up.