by Michael Todd
Chapter Twelve
A scorpion dug free from the earth between a pale bush and a sagging luminescent tree. It emerged behind Garpiel, who had focused his fire on another pair of the creatures that had appeared on the opposite side of the group.
Without thought, Wallace used his suit to propel himself forward. It whirred loudly as he vaulted to clear the significant distance with a single leap. He landed almost directly on the emerging scorpion. One of his metal-shod feet stamped on the creature’s nearer claw and cracked it, and the other struck the at the point where the stinger began to push free. The arachnid froze and squeaked. Its many-tentacled head, the true face it kept hidden until it needed the attack advantage, blossomed out from beneath the carapace that usually covered it.
He punched downward with his left fist and used the suit and all his natural strength to generate maximum force behind his gauntlet. The attacker’s head shattered into a disgusting mass of slimy chunks and its body writhed before it stilled. No ammo had been wasted.
“Whoa, damn—thanks,” Garpiel muttered.
The sergeant’s gaze stilled and settled on a noticeable smudge that looked like the entrance of a tunnel about a hundred yards ahead. He could faintly discern its shadow between the trunks of the trees, which at least were not so tightly packed as those in the jungle above the surface. “That way,” he said. “Go.”
Garpiel hustled in that direction followed immediately by the other soldiers. They’d killed another of the attacking scorpions to leave only one, which seemed slightly wounded, near the rear. Wallace jogged toward it.
The arachnid didn’t seem to notice him until the last second, by which point it was too late. He kicked it in the side as hard as possible to break two of its hind-legs and crack its armor. The creature lurched away, albeit only a few feet since it was large and heavy. Its tail lashed out clumsily and he pivoted to dodge it. Fortuitously, the creature somehow tripped over a glowing root and fell backward to expose its underbelly.
“We have a real winner here,” he muttered, his rifle already raised, and fired. Three rounds tore into its central abdomen, severed another leg in the process, and scattered ichorous gray guts and blood across the alien foliage. It crumpled into the weeds as its squeak gradually died like a squeeze-toy from which all the air had been forced.
A quick glance confirmed that there were no more of them. Wallace hastened to join the fleeing column, glad that he was able to cover their rear but worried about what the hell might await them in the tunnel ahead. Probably more fucking scorpions, he decided morosely.
“Everyone stay in tight formation,” he ordered as he reached the group. Thanks to his exoskeleton, the uphill did not seem to slow him down as it did everyone else. “Try to have two men abreast in front—lights on, eyes open. There aren’t any more of them behind us for now.”
The earth, a strange mixture of rock, sand, and mud, yielded under his cybernetic boots. He eased in beside Garpiel in the rear and immediately behind Chris and two other men. Hall was another row or so ahead. He wasn’t sure who was on point since the first of the remaining soldiers had already entered the yawning darkness of the tunnel.
“Halt!” Wallace ordered when they had all passed through the mouth. Above him, the high ceiling of the vast cavern fell away and was replaced by a much lower shelf of rock. “Examine our surroundings. And we need a headcount.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Hall said in a low voice and his large hands worked systematically to reload his rifle.
“We do, sir,” Wallace replied, “and it’s not like any of us want to dawdle in this goddamn place any longer than necessary, anyway.”
He could practically feel the low, fuming anger that emanated from the director, but the man remained silent—again, for now.
Once it was clear that there were no immediate threats, Wallace counted the survivors. Fourteen. They had lost ten people since the scorpions had first attacked.
“Goddammit,” he said. It was bad enough that it had been impossible to preserve the lives of most of the men and women on this mission. It was even worse to think what would happen once the Zoo began its surge and literally consumed everyone on or near Wall One—hundreds of people and hundreds more at the second wall. And beyond that, the rest of Planet Earth.
“Move forward and up, slowly and carefully,” Wallace said once he ripped his thoughts from that frightening reality. The column moved out.
He pushed his way to Hall’s side. “Sir,” he began, “this mission, important though it may be, can’t be worth compromising the security of the walls. All kinds of blood and funding have already been sunk into building Wall One and holding it, and it’s the only thing that keeps the Zoo in check. All those people—military personnel and civilians, Americans and foreigners alike—are in danger if the Zoo makes a big push outward. We have to warn them about what’s happening here for the safety of—”
“This mission,” Hall replied sharply, “is the only thing that will guarantee the safety of the walls. You clearly do not understand. Our whole purpose here is to eliminate the threat posed by an uncontained, uncontrolled Zoo to begin with. Now, more than ever, is when we need to succeed at the task at hand.”
They reached a rougher stretch of rocky ground within the tunnel and had to climb it like a half-shattered staircase. At least it meant they still proceeded upward.
“What exactly do you mean by that, sir?” Wallace asked. “We’re deep into this mission as it stands and I think it would be helpful to know what we’re dealing with, and why.”
“I suppose you do, Sergeant,” Hall replied and breathed heavily, although he managed to keep up with the unit. “I will therefore tell you the full truth of the matter. I have reason to believe that Kemp is the key to controlling this place and everything within it. When she says ‘grow,’ the vines ask, ‘how high?’ Ever since the Zoo recruited her, its methods have been more effective and its strategy more intelligent. There is no reason to believe that it would even be able to function at the level it does without her. It needs Kemp. It needs her human brain and experience. She controls it, but she also acts as its ambassador here on Earth. She is the middleman between our world and whatever alien intelligence spawned the place, to begin with.”
So far, most of what Hall had said was similar to what Wallace had already heard from others—especially Chris—or what the base’s other scientists had surmised. It all correlated with what he himself essentially suspected based on his extensive field experience. And yet, there was an edge—an undertone—to what the director said that made Wallace uneasy. There were certain implications that, although unspoken, added a shadow that lurked ominously behind the logic.
“If we can bring her back, alive and functional,” Hall went on, “we can use the Zoo in any way we desire. We would be the ones in control. All the advantages that the scientists say the jungle could provide—all the weapons technology we could harvest from its poisons, its creatures, and its defenses, all the medicinal and scientific breakthroughs, and the lucrative R&D contracts and political clout that would come with that… We would have all the power with none of the risks. The Zoo would be entirely ours to administer. The man who was responsible for that would be a shoo-in for the White House. I will have presided over the most important scientific breakthrough of our time—if not of all time.”
He really believed that, the sergeant realized, and some small part of him went cold. Wallace had always assumed that the endgame goal was to harvest enough material from the Zoo to make the so-called elixir that Chris—and Kemp—had ranted about, the stuff that could supercharge agriculture and revolutionize medicine. He had somehow assumed that, once they had that, the place would be destroyed. They would firebomb it all and salt the earth to return it to desert and eliminate the threat. The Zoo itself existed because some strange and hostile species from God-knew-where in that vast black void out there wanted it to exist. It was never meant for the benefit of humankind.
“Kemp will n
ever willingly submit to your plan, you know,” Chris interjected. He’d obviously once again forgotten that he was supposed to play the part of the lowest rank in the army. “We already tried to convince her—” he seemed to cough then, as though he’d caught himself saying too much, and added, “Didn’t we? I heard about that—”
“There are always ways to convince someone, Private,” Hall said, and his voice had taken on an even harder and icier edge than usual. “I have friends, and those friends and I have methods. Very, very persuasive methods.”
The sergeant definitely didn’t like the sound of that. Before he could ask exactly what the hell that meant, however, someone shouted, “Sir! More of them up ahead.”
The soldiers froze and Wallace listened intently to the slither and chitter that heralded another wave of scorpions headed toward them.
“Any forks up there?” he called back after a moment of silence.
“One. Both go up.”
“Plasma the one the scorpions are coming from and take the other one,” he ordered.
Everyone squeezed aside to allow the remaining plasma-thrower operator to move to the front.
“A short burst,” Wallace ordered. “I don’t want too much smoke.”
The soldier fired his weapon down the tunnel branch to the left, which had already come alive with dark, glistening, many-legged forms. Everyone shut their eyes tightly for a couple of seconds until the whoosh of the flamethrower ceased and the mixture of arachnoid shrieks and the fiery crackle died down. The group immediately moved into the right-hand tunnel.
“There are more behind us,” Garpiel announced.
Wallace looked over his shoulder. Another half dozen of the monstrosities advanced up the tunnel from the dimly-lit hole that led into the jungle cavern.
“Move faster,” he said brusquely. “We’re still going uphill. The surface can’t be far.”
A second later, the scorpions sprang their ambush.
Floor, walls, and ceiling all disintegrated in showers of dust and gravel as the giant arachnids erupted into the narrow space and chaos ensued.
“Shit! They’re everywhere,” someone wailed as the repeated explosions of gunfire reverberated through the tunnel above the frenzied voices and the resounding squeaks and chitters of their adversaries.
Something crashed into Wallace and knocked him back. He dared not fire until he could see in case any of his own men were in his line of fire. Instead, he lashed out with his left fist and kicked with his right foot. His gauntlet struck something hard, probably a scorpion’s tail, and thrust it back. He used the moment’s respite to scramble onto a pile of rubble. By the time he was able to bring his rifle’s light to bear, all he could see in one direction was a massive, writhing mass of dark, glossy forms. In the other direction, a small hole led upward and a single soldier stood frozen in near shock. Somewhere on the other side of the mass of arachnids, voices still shouted and guns blazed. Alone, the sergeant didn’t have the ammo to blast through so many of the creatures, and even with his suit, he couldn’t fight them all by hand.
He tapped the mouthpiece of his headset, unfolded it in front of his face, and activated the megaphone app. “Keep moving upward. Rendezvous on the surface,” he said, his voice magnified so loudly that it shook dust from the ceiling. Two scorpions turned toward him and opened their claws.
“Go!” he said and seized the lone man to urge him up into the small tunnel. The soldier crawled as Wallace backed up in that direction. He fired two bursts from his rifle to slow their pursuers and drew his pistol to fire a few more shots. One of the beasts took at least one good hit to the face and effectively stalled the others. That would at least buy them a little time.
He plunged into the hole and crawled frantically toward the daylight he now knew was close. “Keep going,” he said to the man in front of him.
“Well, yeah,” Chris retorted.
“Good to have you back, Dr. Lin,” he grunted.
Chapter Thirteen
Chris pulled himself up and out of a three-foot diameter opening framed by green roots and brown grass. Wallace, once he was sure the scientist was out of the way, used his exoskeleton to half-launch himself up the remainder of the distance and practically leapt out of the hole. He angled his body to the side once he saw that he would not crash into a tree by doing so. His suit’s whirring faded as he landed with both feet on the ground. The jungle seemed incredibly bright after their ordeal in the earth’s depths, and yet it was also eerily quiet.
“Fuck that place,” Chris said and gestured toward the hole. “I didn’t know there was a dungeon with scorpion monsters now. What the hell have you guys done in my absence?”
“You saw for yourself, more or less,” Wallace replied. “We need to…” He trailed off. In point of fact, he wasn’t sure exactly what to do. They needed to try to help the others, but how? And what about the mission? What about warning all the people at Wall One? By now, he had learned to make snap decisions, stick to them, and try not to regret what he had done. But, for a brief moment, he found himself utterly paralyzed with doubt and indecision. There was no clear course of action.
Nature abhorred a vacuum, and with Wallace now silent, Chris took the opportunity to speak. “What we need to do is find Kemp,” he said. “And it’s not only a personal thing, all right? I was there. I remember exactly what she had become. It’s because we cannot let her fall into the wrong hands. And don’t pretend you don’t know who I mean.” He stared pointedly at his friend, his black eyes as hard as stone.
The sergeant frowned. “I don’t know who you mean,” he said, “unless you’re talking about whoever sent all those mercs and bounty hunters in here. Now come on. We need to search this area for another opening to the cave system so we can aid in the extraction of our comrades, and then we need to figure out how to signal the base to evacuate Wall One. I’ll try my headset, but we all know how pathetic the reception in this place usually is.”
He turned and strode off through the undergrowth in the rough direction in which the other tunnel had led. Or, at least, he thought it had led that way. The rough and tumble of battle and headlong flight underground had thrown his sense of direction off a little.
“Yes, I do mean the person who sent the mercs,” Chris said and hurried along behind him, “which is to say, I mean Hall.”
Wallace stopped in absolute shock.
“That man is pure, concentrated evil, all right? I can prove it, more or less. And we cannot—cannot—let him get ahold of Kemp. You heard that crazy shit he was saying. He wants to turn her into his right-hand plant-succubus or something and use her as leverage in power games and money politics so he can fucking run for President. He doesn’t care how many people die. He’s already responsible for multiple bloodbaths, and he’ll start even more if he thinks it will strengthen his position by another three percent.”
The sergeant turned. He did not have time to waste, but the magnitude of his friend’s accusations couldn’t be avoided.
“Those are serious allegations, Chris,” he stated.
“I was reasonably certain he was working with the mercenaries—like maybe he was a middle-man in the process. But more and more, I think he’s the one who hired them all to begin with. The ones who went after the chimera and the ones who went after you. Frankie was probably his chief minion the whole time.” He exhaled a deep, regretful breath as Wallace started walking again, but it was obvious that the man still listened to what the scientist had to say.
“There were definitely some suspicious things going on,” Wallace acquiesced after a moment. An unpleasant sensation gnawed at his gut. He thought back to the desperate fight against the mercs a few weeks before in which almost all his men were killed and he barely survived to return the favor.
“What Hall said about Kemp,” Chris continued, “essentially came directly from my research. Not to mention all the intel he seemed to have on Kemp’s movements, where things were in the jungle, what your team was doin
g last time… Frankie and her henchmen fed him their findings. It’s the only way he could have obtained some of this information. Which means he’s played both sides the whole time. He’s trying to exacerbate the crisis so that he can be the one to solve it and come out looking like a great and heroic leader. He probably even tried to get you and your guys killed so that he could use the higher casualty figures to argue for a bigger budget. Half the shit he’s done doesn’t even make sense unless you look at it from that perspective.”
Wallace thought back to everything that had happened since Terry Hall took over as director. He drew a ragged breath. “It fits,” he said flatly. “Even Aade Graf tried to warn me—the German Ambassador. It…it all fits.”
He stopped abruptly once more. Suddenly, his entire body shook, his vision almost turned red, and he wanted to put his fist through the biggest tree he could find.
No. There’s no time for that. He still had a job to do and he could not let anger or despair push him off balance and render him unfit for duty. When they got out of this, Chris could present his findings and Hall could face formal justice.
“If we can regroup with the others,” he said finally once he’d regained a measure of composure, “we can try to find Kemp. But we also need to warn the base.” He unfolded his headset’s mouthpiece again and tried the radio app. As usual, it offered nothing but static.
“Okay, but we can’t delay,” Chris agreed. “It sounded like they still had a fighting chance to get clear, at least.”
“Unless they took a dead end,” Wallace added. He changed the subject. “Regarding your research, and what Hall said…can Kemp actually control the Zoo? Could we completely change its behavior if we could control her?” If that were the case, then finding Kemp again might mean they could stop the surge before it happened.
The scientist shook his head. “No,” he said in a morose tone. “Kemp might think she’s controlling it, and Hall might think he can control it through her, but there’s no way that’s accurate. The Zoo doesn’t have a mind, at least not as we would define it. Its creatures have their instincts, though, and they are bound to a simple, ironclad imperative—grow, grow, grow. Human logic won’t magically alter that. It’s more likely that the Zoo is manipulating Kemp than the other way around.”