Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Over and over again, it settles into a set of habits, you might say, and we adapt to them, but then it begins to slow, back off, and settle into a lull where the soldiers report that things almost seem too easy. Or if not that, in some way or another it seems to operate below its full potential. And then…bang.” She clapped her hands for emphasis. Fortunately, she wasn’t too loud about it. “Something changes and always for the worse, at least from humanity’s perspective.”

  “And you believe,” Jan surmised, “that we are about to see another of these changes?”

  “According to the latest reports—which I reviewed quite recently, I might add—the Zoo has expanded very slowly of late. Much too slowly for the amount of biomass it’s taken in. It’s been…aggressive and hostile, yes. We have, sadly enough, just witnessed that. But its rate of growth has been almost at the point of stagnation—about the same as it would be if it weren’t consuming anything at all, or at least very little. If there is a new creature that’s recently been spawned that appears to be extraordinarily powerful in some way, its presence might be tied into whatever the Zoo is planning for the next phase of its development.”

  He noticed that half the platoon seemed to be listening to her now. In German, he told them, “Keep your eyes on the jungle around us. The first priority is to locate any sign of Klaus’s team.” Most of them nodded and turned their attention to the surrounding vegetation. He was glad he didn’t have to tell them twice.

  “Oh, I’m sorry if I distracted them,” Curie said, having discerned what had happened despite her ignorance of the language. “I suppose I’m merely terribly interesting.” She laughed at herself and a few soldiers smiled slightly.

  The hauptmann merely said, “Continue, Doctor. How so? And by that, I mean how might this creature be involved in the next phase, not how is it possible that you think of yourself as interesting.”

  “Well, aren’t you clever at finding ways to kill the mood,” she quipped.

  “I do my best.”

  “Well, anyway…what was I saying? Yes—this new creature might have been produced specifically to push the process forward. For that reason, learning more about it might be tremendously important. For example, we have no way of knowing if specific creatures were mutated to prepare for the Surge. Sadly, that knowledge was lost when those in the Zoo at the time perished. The overwhelming impetus of it, however, suggests that this is very possible. Therefore—”

  “I see your point, Doctor,” Jan interrupted. “You are very observant and what you say might be relevant. When we return, I feel you should speak to Director Roden and the people in Research about these matters and urge them to give priority to them. However”—he paused and fixed her with a firm look—“you will now once again have the privilege of learning another of my rules—specifically, Rule Number Twenty-Eight. Stay on mission. We are here to rescue Hauptmann Grossman’s unit. That is all. Until we have fulfilled that duty, we must give lower priority to any other matter.”

  Dr. Curie nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  “And I realize the importance of understanding our enemy,” he said. “I will take into consideration everything you have said, and I mean it when I say that you should make the base aware of your ideas. I only emphasize the importance of Rule Twenty-Eight to remind you not to do anything stupid that will distract us from our primary objective.”

  “Me? Do something stupid?” she marveled.

  “You would not be the first scientist who tried to collect a live sample of a creature that can very easily kill a human being. Usually alone and without proper equipment, I might add. I am amazed by scientists. Their courage in the face of certain death and their eagerness to get themselves killed is sometimes beyond that of even the youngest and stupidest military recruit.”

  “Ohh,” she said, nodded in an exaggerated and dramatic fashion, and folded her arms over her chest. “So what you are saying is that you’re concerned about me.”

  Someone behind them laughed. Before he could decide whether to find the man who’d laughed and tell him to be quiet or to respond to the woman in an appropriately withering fashion, Wenzel, farther ahead, waved and shouted.

  “Hauptmann,” he yelled, his voice charged with the electricity of triumph and excitement, “we’ve found them.”

  “Well, then,” Dr. Curie remarked, “I suppose we’re free to distract ourselves now by doing something stupid.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” he said and actually considered the possibility that he might have to make that his newest rule.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Laura had been about to attempt a witty comeback, but she quickly forgot the temptation once the men they’d found came into clear sight.

  “Oh, bloody hell…” she muttered.

  The spectacle was not as horrible as she’d feared it might be—Unteroffizier Wenzel’s demeanor had seemed more positive than negative, she reminded herself, which suggested that they hadn’t stumbled onto a massacre. Rather, the scene before them was downright fucking bizarre.

  Soldiers of the German Heer were arranged on and around a huge, fat tree in a fashion that almost suggested flies stuck to flypaper or human-shaped cookies arranged randomly on a countertop. Some men were affixed mostly to the ground or to the roots of the giant tree. Others assumed seated positions near the base while a few of their comrades stood upright. Still others adhered to the trunk in any number of crazy and uncomfortable-looking positions, as if whatever had put them there had simply run out of room and had placed them wherever they could fit them. At first, their being attached made no sense, but as the rescuers moved closer, the explanation revealed itself.

  All the men and one or two women were covered, to a greater or lesser extent, with a thick, revolting substance that was obviously adhesive and clearly very strong. It almost looked like industrial-strength putty. In places, however, it had dried and hardened, and its texture had grown crusty, rather like human phlegm. The color was an odd brownish-orange that did nothing for its visual appeal.

  “How many are there?” Hauptmann Shalwar asked as his men advanced ahead of him to examine the captives, “and how many are still alive?”

  Laura followed the men toward the big tree. She didn’t want to get in the way but did want to help.

  “Zwölf,” someone shouted. She made a quick count of her own and decided it was safe to assume that that meant twelve.

  Their medics pushed through the ranks and quickly assessed the condition of the prisoners. From what she could see, most of them were alive but unconscious, semi-conscious, or otherwise in rather poor condition. Klaus’s team had been gone for several days now. At least some of these unfortunate people might have been there almost for that entire period of time.

  Someone turned toward the hauptmann and said something and his voice sounded low and grim.

  Wenzel, who stood nearby, turned to Laura and said, “One man is dead. The rest are alive,” before he strode forward to help the others.

  “Cut them down if you can do so without injuring them,” Jan ordered. He moved forward to assist.

  “They’re suspended by a bizarre sticky substance,” she told him. “Like something wove a very thick web around them or spat something onto them that then hardened.”

  He nodded. She followed him and they approached the huge tree. Most of the troops in Jan’s platoon now aided in the attempt to free the captives. Knives had been drawn and the wielders tried to saw through the heavy brownish goop. Other soldiers, particularly some of the stronger-looking ones, simply pulled at it with their bare hands. She noticed that even the portions that had developed a fully rigid crust still seemed to contain a core of viscous, stretchy, glue-like material. Seeing it broken reminded her of seeing the cheese stretch within the bread-crumb exterior of a mozzarella stick.

  “Twelve,” Shalwar observed. “This is only a small number of those who went in. Still, it is far better than nothing and we will know more when some of them are able to tal
k. Get them all water and any medical attention we can provide. We have eight portable stretchers and can make more if we must.”

  Laura wanted to examine the sticky webbing or phlegm-crust or whatever it was but had to concede that helping the soldiers who’d been imprisoned by it took priority. She stepped to the edge of the crowd as Herzog and Schultz cut the bindings of a young man who’d been propped in a standing position. The newly released captive stumbled as he came loose and mostly regained consciousness, and she hastily positioned herself so one of his arms came down over her shoulder.

  “There you go,” she said, “nice and easy. Let me help you…” He was heavy but supported enough of his own weight that she could do the rest. She walked him over to a gentle, grassy slope where one of the medics had opened a first-aid kit. He muttered half-articulated gibberish through badly cracked lips as she laid him down. The man would need time to recover, but at least he didn’t seem to be severely hurt.

  She stood and returned to the tree. Someone handed another man down, a young fellow perhaps twenty years old who was already almost fully conscious. He had a few nasty bruises and lacerations but nothing too threatening to life or limb. She had the impression that he hadn’t been there very long when they found him. He was shaking and looked around constantly in a state of hypervigilant agitation.

  “There, there, you’re safe,” she told him and supported him on her shoulder as she had with the previous soldier. “Do you understand English? In any event, we’re from Fort Archway and we’ve rescued you. We’ll have a look at you and make you more comfortable.” She helped him over to the slope and laid him on a comfortable-looking patch of grass.

  “Thank you,” the man responded.

  Laura opened the top of his suit and examined his injuries. It appeared that something had bitten into him around the shoulder but not very deeply—only enough, she assumed, to take hold and drag him to this tree. Still, the wounds looked like they might be in danger of infection. She was about to ask for disinfectant when one of the medics came over and handed her a tube of antibiotic cream and a roll of gauze.

  “Well, then,” she said and went to work.

  “Where are they?” the young man asked in his thick accent.

  “Your comrades are safe,” Laura answered. “We’re getting them all taken care of right now, don’t you worry.”

  He shook his head. “The…monsters.”

  “Well,” she replied calmly, “there aren’t any around right now. We seem to be safe.”

  “Good,” he said, closed his eyes, and seemed to relax somewhat.

  She glanced at the patch on the side of his torn suit. The rank insignia was one of the lower ones, so Soldat or Gefreiter, she assumed—either seemed about equivalent to Private, as far as she could tell—and the name read, Grün.

  “Hauptmann Shalwar is here, ah, Soldat Grün, or Gefreiter Grün, whichever. When you feel better, he’ll want to ask you a few questions.”

  The man made a soft grunting sound, which she took as an acknowledgment. Finishing her basic but serviceable job of disinfecting and wrapping his wounds, she stood and looked around.

  By now, all the soldiers had been freed from their bondage to the large tree. She wondered what purpose the Zoo creatures could possibly have had in bringing them and leaving them there alive. From what she’d read, the beasts typically either simply ate people outright or dragged them underground to process their biomass into more raw material that the Zoo would use to expand. These people had not been fed upon at all. Had some predator merely stashed them as a snack for later? There were certainly animals that did that, but she hadn’t heard of such a thing happening in the Zoo.

  Jan’s platoon had now mostly turned their attention to setting up the portable stretchers. They were simple but ingenious devices made of thin but tough poly fibers that unfolded from something like a notebook into a serviceable sling on which a full-grown man might be carried. She helped unfold one of them and assisted one of the medics to move a couple of the less-healthy men onto them, slowly and carefully. At least a few of the prisoners they’d saved had begun to look like they’d be able to walk, so it didn’t seem like they’d need to make extra stretchers from roots and vines. She’d never attempted that. These soldiers probably knew how, but it still seemed like it would be a severe hassle.

  And it was definitely darker than before.

  “We will depart in five minutes,” the Hauptmann announced. “Those of you with the wounded will be in the center. Our goal is speed. We may still be out of the Zoo by a little past nightfall.”

  By now, it seemed his men had things well under control and Laura was glad to have made some small contribution. She stood off to the side and examined the small glade near the massive tree, and something caught her eye. She leaned forward and squinted. Gouged into the wood of a smaller tree at the glade’s edge was a rough, crude X.

  “So it wasn’t a fluke,” she said under her breath. She approached quickly and confirmed that it was very similar to the one she’d encountered earlier. Once again, it appeared to have been made with two quick, powerful slashes of a hook-like claw. She tapped a finger on her lips as she scanned the remainder of the area.

  There—another one stood out clearly a little deeper into the surrounding jungle.

  “It’s as though they’re marking some kind of path or trail,” she mused. She retrieved her phone and took a quick photo of the first one, then put it in her pocket and made her way toward the second, deeper one. The sounds of the platoon and the remainder of Klaus’s men seemed to grow faint. She probably shouldn’t wander off like this, but it could be something important. Besides, it would only take a moment.

  A few yards of struggling through tall, thick, crooked weeds and gnarled branches hung with shivering vines brought her face-to-face with the next marking. It was almost exactly like the first two. She was fairly sure she had read somewhere that three instances of the same thing were enough to rule out the possibility of coincidence. Excited, she spun toward the glade of the huge tree, looking forward to informing the hauptmann of her discovery.

  Staring her in the face was what could only be the creature responsible for that discovery.

  “Oh, sh—” she started to say but clamped her mouth shut. The mutant, however, opened its own slowly.

  It was taller than a man, lean and muscular, and clearly a monstrous hybrid. Its head was lizardlike and definitely reptilian, resembling the skull of a snake, with a hairy crest at the crown and cold round yellow eyes. The body structure was also that of some kind of bipedal lizard. Clashing with these features, however, were its almost simian hands with fingers and thumbs and its thick coating of fur. In the second she had to examine the beast, the fur changed color. It had been a deep green, no doubt aiding it to sneak up on her, but it quickly changed first to yellow and then to orange. Within its mouth were lines of short but jagged teeth, and the long tongue was almost like a snake’s.

  A sound almost like the metal component of a machine snapping into place made her gaze flick downward instinctively. On the creature’s two lizard-like and hairless feet, a pair of large, hook-shaped claws had sprung up.

  It looked at her and hissed.

  “Laura—move!” she whisper-yelled to herself and threw her body into a blind sprint. The creature lunged and its jaws opened and clicked together behind her. As she crashed through branches, one of them came loose in her hand and she kept hold of it, although it wouldn’t be much of a weapon. She bore left, back toward the glade.

  The furry lizard-mutant burst out of the foliage in front of her. She screamed and swatted at its face with the branch. It seemed to stop and rear its head and in the ensuing pause, she bolted past it. She dropped the stick so it wouldn’t hinder her plunge through the dense vegetation and glanced over her shoulder. The predatory abomination simply stood there and watched her flight.

  She emerged into the glade. Five or six people looked up at once, including Jan Shalwar, who did not
appear pleased that she’d gone exploring.

  As she sucked in the oxygen she’d need to warn them, it occurred to her that her escape had been far too easy. It could have killed her when it first confronted her or it could have run her down after she’d hit it in the face. It had chosen not to.

  The reason for this instantly became clear. All around the platoon, the jungle came alive with streaking forms, flashes of brightly colored fur, and reptilian hissing sounds. The men and women around her gaped in sudden terror. This had been a trap and she had led these monsters right back to them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the brief second before the slaughter began, Jan saw everything at once. It seemed his mind was overloaded with too many important pieces of information and too many things that all required immediate consideration. He tried to process them all.

  The British lady, Dr. Curie, returned from her absence and looked startled, as though she’d been pursued. That was bad.

  The plants and branches swayed and shifted around him, the obvious signs of animal life moving there. This being the Zoo, the animal life was not benign. That was also bad.

  His mind quickly registered the fact that the glimpses of fur he saw were in a multitude of bright colors, none of them the familiar black of devilcrows—the only furry creatures he’d seen so far. That, added to the unfamiliar hissing sound these creatures, whatever they might be, made definitely qualified as worse.

  And there were other details that merited consideration, such as the position and arrangement of their new visitors and the relative position of his troop—he had four men stationed around the perimeter of the group as sentries but suddenly, that seemed like far too few—and the fact that there many wounded and half-conscious individuals among them. Those would make easy pickings. He wondered if they had perhaps been left there originally for that exact purpose.