by Michael Todd
The soldiers released a barrage that filled the palace’s interior with a cacophonous roar of firepower. The wall of locusts that had risen to block the entrance disintegrated in a cloud of vapor and chunks.
Right behind it was another, even bigger wall.
“I’m going!” one man screamed and suddenly charged forward to leap off the side of the tree-ramp.
“No!” Wallace yelled, but the soldier was already airborne. Two locusts swooped on him and bore him to the ground while their jaws and talons tore into him.
“Hold them off,” Wallace ordered as his men reloaded and alternated to lay down covering fire. He tapped the mouthpiece of his headset. “Bokhari. Come in,” he said. If the Lieutenant and enough of his men still lived, the two groups might be able to fight their way to one another, combine their strength, and get the hell out of there. “Bokhari!”
A faint crackling sound was immediately followed by what sounded like a man moaning in fear and pain. Rifle and shotgun fire could be heard in the vicinity, and the loud reports of the recoilless Carl Gustavs blasted indiscriminately, seemingly in multiple directions. Men screamed and a locust screeched and chittered before the sound cut away to static.
“Goddammit,” Wallace grunted and turned to Del Toro. “Hit them with another burst of plasma, directly out into the air above the ramp,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” the soldier responded. He took his place front and center while the others momentarily held their fire.
A locust hurtled in at blinding speed, darted through the entrance, and sliced its knife-like claws across Del Toro’s chest and shoulders. The attack knocked the man over in a spray of his own blood as the creature swooped overhead.
“For fuck’s sake!” someone yelled. The creature landed amidst the men in the rear and near Hall and Chris. It snatched a man’s ankle in its jaws, tripped him and severed the foot in a single bite, and eviscerated him with its claws when he fell.
Five or six soldiers all opened fire simultaneously and the locust literally exploded. Blackish-green blood sprayed everywhere.
“There’s more where that one came from,” remarked Garpiel. He was correct. The group did have another plasma trooper, but he was back in the cluster of men toward the rear. By the time he pushed to the front, it would be too late
“We won’t be able to hold them off,” Hall said, and Wallace had to concede that he was right. A locust leapt past the front line and Hall shot it twice in midair. He maintained his firm stance even when the falling monster glanced off his side and shoulder. The man was an asshole, but he could hold his own in a fight.
“All right, fall back toward the tunnel,” Wallace ordered as he switched his rifle to full auto and sprayed lead at the advancing swarm. A sinking feeling hit him in the gut at the thought of having to resort to the tunnel, but they were on the verge of being completely overwhelmed. For every locust they killed, three more crawled through the entrance. Furthermore, the ones that attacked the upper reaches of the palace had managed to widen the window gaps and the creatures now streamed in from above in single-file.
Everyone ran but tried to maintain some sort of half-assed discipline and not stumble in their haste. They raced around the base of the spiral staircase and past the strange, now-dead plant-pit where human biomass had been fed to the Zoo. Their retreat was directed toward the rear of the structure and roughly where the man who’d found the tunnel had indicated.
Wallace was now in front. He was tall and long-legged, but his suit made him faster than anyone else present. He ran ahead of them, not to escape the onrushing locusts but to make damn sure they knew where they were going and wouldn’t run into another equally terrible ambush.
Directly ahead, a yawning black hole, about six by six feet, descended into the earth under the base of Kemp’s castle. The aperture was partially hidden by the foundation of the staircase.
Wallace stopped and turned in time to see the soldier in the rear of the group, a woman, seized by three locusts at the same time. The creatures proceeded to tear both her arms off as the third ripped her spine out. She collapsed, limp, bleeding, and glassy-eyed. Wallace raised his rifle and fired over the heads of his men. He targeted the wings of the attackers who’d killed the poor girl and covered his troops as they ducked and dashed past him toward the tunnel.
“Herbicide bomb!” Wallace yelled. “Anyone?”
Someone threw one past him at the advancing swarm. It erupted with a crack. Fortunately, the only explosive it contained was an M80 firework, but a cloud of transparent, yellowish gas seeped outward to stall, sicken, and even kill the insects near the front of the horde. Their bodies impeded the others and slowed the advance.
“Go!” Wallace ordered. The men pushed into the tunnel with the sergeant and two other men near the rear. “Whoever’s in front, turn a light on and look for a path that will take us the hell away from here. But remember, we want to go up to the surface once it’s safe,” he yelled. The column of troops, slowed now by the necessity to move in single file, worked its way down into the earth.
The locusts had already surmounted the slight obstacle of their dead or dying cousins. Some tried to press ahead through the already weakening gas cloud and stumbled drunkenly, but others had simply circumvented the herbicide and now converged near the mouth of the tunnel. Wallace fired half a magazine from his rifle on full auto to kill two in the front. Others simply clambered over the corpses, unperturbed by the carnage.
One, in particular, paused for a split second before it launched itself into the tunnel in a direct attack. Wallace braced himself, drew on the power of his suit, and slammed his gauntleted fist forward. The impact shuddered through his arm and shoulder, but the insectoid creature’s head caved in around his fist and its body went limp. He caught it and hurled it at another that came too close for comfort. Without even a quick glance to see how effective his throw had been, he turned and tried to catch up with the others.
“This oughta work better than fuckin’ weed killer,” Garpiel’s voice said, and Wallace recoiled as a small round object sailed past him.
“No!” he shouted, shocked at Garpiel’s stupidity. “Everyone, move! Move!” He urged them farther down the tunnel in the few seconds they had left before the grenade went off.
The earth around them shook to dislodge dirt and mud as the blast compromised the integrity of the passage. The blooming fireball near the tunnel’s mouth was mostly shielded as the ground around it collapsed. It buried the creatures that had crawled in after them but also cut off their only route back.
Silence set in and seemed to exacerbate the painful ringing in all their ears. Wallace listened to his men breathe in the near-total blackness.
“Well, Garpiel,” he said, “file that one under ‘things you are never fucking allowed to do again, but that might have been dumb enough to work.’”
“Yessir,” the soldier replied.
Chapter Nine
Half the troops had been half-buried in dirt and rubble and the others dug them out by the light of a few flashlights. No one was seriously injured, and a quick head count confirmed that they still had a total of twenty-four people. It was a large enough force to put up a good fight against whatever else they might still encounter. The men had fought well and proved their abilities against the ridiculous odds they’d just faced.
“They had to have been hiding in the canopy of the forest,” said a voice that Wallace recognized as Chris’s. “There’s no way that many locusts could have converged on us that quickly from all over the Zoo. The foliage up there is dense enough that we wouldn’t have been able to see them from the ground or the air. They were lying in wait in the trees around this clearing, and then when the moment was right—”
“Kemp outsmarted us again,” Wallace agreed and fought a mixture of cold rage and aching despair. He clenched his hands around his rifle in the dark. “But it’s not over yet.”
In a moment, he would force his thoughts to turn away from their f
ailure thus far and focus their still possible success. At this particular second, however, all he could think of was Lt. Bokhari’s suggestion that they flame-throw the trees that surrounded the palace clearing. That might well have spoiled the locusts’ ambush, kept the company together, and saved many lives. But Hall had ordered them not to bother to do so. He’d thought it might interfere with his purpose to claim his prize.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re alive. Awesome,” Garpiel said. “So, what do we do now?”
“Take your grenades away for starters and give you a box of crayons instead,” Wallace replied and a couple of the soldiers snorted and chuckled.
“Aww, but it worked out so well.”
“Shut up, Garpiel,” the sergeant said. Without fail, there was always someone he had to tell to shut up. Idly, he wondered if stupid comments from grunts were the work of some evil extradimensional spirit which leapt from host to host and demonically possessed different soldiers to ensure that no unit was ever without a loudmouthed dipshit.
“Why don’t we examine our surroundings, for starters?” Hall suggested.
“That is a good idea, sir,” Wallace agreed. He was in command now, with Bokhari at the very least hopelessly separated and more than likely dead. Based on what he’d seen so far, he had little doubt that the man would overrule him if he didn’t like the orders but for now, the director seemed at least to have the sense to respect Wallace’s much more substantial military experience and consider his judgment of their situation.
Hall did, however, seem impatient. That was worrying.
“Well, Sergeant, the tunnel goes down,” said a woman near the front as she shone a light mounted on her rifle into the depths. “I don’t see any forks but so far, it doesn’t look like a damn dead-end.”
“That simplifies matters,” said the director and the edge of urgency still hovered under his otherwise-calm voice.
“Not necessarily, sir,” said Wallace. “There are things in the Zoo that mostly lurk underground in massive labyrinths, although most of those seemed to be located in a different section. However, it’s possible they’ve spread all the way here.”
“That’s merely many more routes of potential escape,” said Hall, “and many more opportunities to locate our quarry and complete the mission.” He paused. “You weren’t thinking of writing this mission off as a failure and heading straight back home, were you, Sergeant?”
Wallace’s face flushed and burned and he was glad it was dark. He could feel the men look at him as they waited for his response. None of them particularly wanted to die to capture one woman—who, for all anyone knew, might already be dead anyway. But he couldn’t disobey his orders. Those orders were tied in, he knew, with matters that could affect the fate of all humankind.
“We will do all we can to complete the mission, sir,” said Wallace, “but in order to do that, we need to remain in one piece. Descending into God-knows-what carries extreme risks. This is not a large tunnel. I can’t even stand up all the way. Two men abreast will be a tight fit. Those aren’t good conditions to fight in if we’re attacked. And obviously, we can’t see much.”
Hall and everyone else waited in silence.
“If possible,” Wallace went on, “I think it would be better to wait for the worst of the locusts to leave and try to dig ourselves out. Not right here but farther along so we come out in the clearing rather than in Kemp’s former throne room.”
“Will the locusts clear out?” someone asked.
“Possibly,” was all he could say to that. “Furthermore, although we always get shit reception in the Zoo and probably even worse underground, it would be worth an attempt to radio the base for backup. This clearing is big enough to land a couple of choppers. They could provide support both to us and to any of Bokhari’s men who might still be embattled out there. We could airlift the wounded—”
“No,” Hall said. He didn’t raise his voice and simply spoke in a very sharp, firm tone—one that slashed through Wallace’s words. “That will take too long. Kemp could be two and a half miles away by now and on the edge of the jungle, plotting her next move to escape us. She can’t be far from this position. And this very tunnel explains where she slipped off to. Our coordinates were not wrong. She fled underground. And we, Sergeant, will pursue her.”
“Sir—”
“I told you not to question my orders, Wallace,” the director said. “We have two dozen heavily-armed men here. In that skirmish, we only lost four and killed far more of theirs. We are capable of blasting our way through whatever limited numbers the Zoo can funnel up this hole at us. And we must complete this mission. We will capture Kemp. Alive.”
The sergeant took a sip of water from his CamelBak and swallowed in the hope that the liquid would sooth the acidic feeling of dread that Hall’s words had created.
“Hey, now…uh, sir,” a voice said. It was Chris once again. “I agree with Wallace. He knows this place better than anyone, right? He’s practically the only survivor of half the missions that have gone into this place. We can’t underestimate the Zoo. It’s thrown something new at us every time we thought we had it under control. If we advance down this tunnel, we are both literally and figuratively stumbling blindly into the depths of hell.”
Wallace placed the palm of his hand to his face and shook his head in the dark. Civilians.
“Did you just question my authority?” Hall asked in a low, ice-cold tone. He stepped forward and towered over Chris, grabbed the sleeve of his too-baggy uniform, and looked at it. “Private?”
“Shut up, Private Park,” Wallace snapped. He could only hope that if he interposed himself in the discipline process, Hall wouldn’t examine Park’s face too closely. “Clearly, your drill sergeant back in boot camp didn’t kick your ass enough in the process of informing you how things work in our institution. The army is not a social media poll where everyone gets to vote on a course of action. We have our orders and we will execute them.” He paused for a brief instant of uncomfortable silence. “However, Director Hall had previously said to me that he would leave the details up to me. Therefore, I will ensure, to the full extent of my abilities, that we explore this tunnel safely.”
Chris did his best to disappear back into the tightly-packed crowd of shadowed figures. Hall had given no indication that he had recognized the notorious Dr. Christopher Lin. At least something had gone right today.
“Safely,” Garpiel said, as Chris shook his head sadly. “If there’s one word-of-the-day that really defines everything that’s happened so far, it’s ‘safely.’”
“Sergeant Wallace,” Hall demanded, “tell this man to shut up.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. “Shut up, Garpiel.”
Chapter Ten
The tunnel was even rougher than expected, and nothing about its shape, size, course, direction, or texture made sense. Wallace decided, stupidly, that if it had a flavor, it would probably have leapt from orange juice to toothpaste, and from vanilla to garlic.
“Well, at least we have more fighting room now,” Garpiel observed. The tunnel had widened suddenly, enough for them to march four abreast instead of two. However, it looked like it narrowed again only a short way up ahead. It also seemed to veer uphill and toward the surface.
“Maintain formation,” said Wallace. He marched immediately ahead of Hall, who was in the center of the column. Chris, he was sure, was a rank or two behind the director. “It’s already changed size and shape fifteen times in twenty minutes. Keep an eye out for any holes or side-tunnels.” So far, they’d encountered a few of those but not many. All had seemed empty and barren and to lead nowhere. Not to mention that they appeared too small for any eight-legged hellspawn to crawl through.
At least, not any adult eight-legged hellspawn. The scorpion creatures that had inhabited the maze under the anthill-type colony had been able to burrow through semi-loose soil or solid earth. He didn’t even want to think about it and wanted to content himself with the false certainty th
at they hadn’t spread to this region of the Zoo. But thinking about it was his duty. They had to push on.
Worse, as they’d gone deeper and deeper into the earth, the character of the tunnel’s appearance had changed. Some of it—particularly the section closer to Kemp’s botanical castle—had looked natural, in the sense that it could be the result of the earth shifting beneath the surface or fast-acting erosion of some sort. However, it increasingly developed the look of a burrow or a passage that existed because mobile, sentient creatures had dug it for their own use. What sort of creatures, he couldn’t say.
“Private Park,” Wallace said and kept his voice low, “do you have any bright ideas as to where we’re headed or what kind of tunnel this is?”
“Well, it looks like a burrow,” Chris replied. “Which is disturbing and all, but it also seems more likely that Kemp would be surrounded by her pets. What it means is that if we choose to head toward danger, we might unfortunately be going in the right direction. Still, there’s no way to know what the hell we’ll encounter.”
“Whatever we do encounter, Private,” said Hall, “we will blow it to hell and proceed to acquire Ms. Kemp. She is the key to everything.”
They passed a couple of relatively small side branches that curved off into the darkness. The men shined lights into them as Wallace had instructed but nothing moved. They could see nothing suspicious or which might be cause for concern.
The entire column had very nearly passed one of these side tunnels when someone screamed.
“What was that? Halt!” Wallace ordered. The troops complied as he pushed back toward the rear, where he’d heard the scream. As he moved, he tried to do another headcount.
Someone was missing—a short man whose name he didn’t recall. Marks in the dirt near the side tunnel to the left seemed to indicate that something had been dragged away.
“I didn’t see what happened,” said the soldier at the rear of the column. “I heard him scream and then a kind of slithering sound.”