“Sorry, Coop,” he said. The sergeant was bigger than he was, but he knew how to strike a man with both force and accuracy. He knelt and retrieved the man’s handgun. It wouldn’t hurt for him to have an extra one and it wouldn’t do for the sergeant to be able to threaten him with one if he regained consciousness before he could get clear of the wall.
“Scheisse.” Someone gasped behind him.
This was not good. Jan turned to face his new visitor, thankful that it at least could not possibly be the monolingual Director Roden.
It was none other than Soldat Gunter Grün, his shoulder still patched. He was mostly dressed, although his uniform had been improperly secured to accommodate his wound. He stared at the scene before him—Jan standing over the slumped body of the gatekeeper, tucking a pistol into his belt—as though he’d walked in on his parents having sex.
“This is not what it looks like,” the hauptmann said. “And furthermore, you should not be out of the medical bay yet. Go back and finish your recovery. That’s an order.”
“I’m fine,” the young man said. “And, well, ah… I don’t understand. To be honest, this looks like something I should report. I will obey that order if you insist, but I have to mention to someone that—”
“Fine,” he interrupted irritably. He paused and thought for a moment. “Actually, stay where you are. I know that what I am doing is against the rules but I must do it.” He straightened. “I cannot explain right now. There is a situation that I, and only I, must deal with.”
Soldat Grün stared, curious but not hostile.
“Stand here, Soldat, and guard the gate. Someone will have to do so while Sergeant Cooper is…ah, incapacitated.”
Grün snapped to attention. “Yes, sir,” he replied.
“I will be back.” With that, Jan turned and strode into Coop’s small office. Like any good officer, he had made sure to familiarize himself with every facet of the base’s construction, security, and entry and exit points. He was therefore able, without even the slightest hesitation, to ignore the broad, multifaceted console and the override switch and simply strode to the small door at the far end.
It really didn’t come as much of a surprise when he discovered the small key cupboard open and its contents missing. He had to give her at least a little credit for ingenuity, even though the entire situation could only be described as utter stupidity.
Thankfully, the key was in the keyhole and not her pocket, and at least the door was closed even though it was unlocked. Of course, to lock it, she’d have had to take the key. He decided to be grateful for small mercies.
“Well, then,” he said, opened it, and stepped through into the open desert. Before him, a line of tracks ascended the high dune directly ahead.
“Hah!” He laughed. “Oh, she thought she was so clever.” He would have her again in a manner of minutes and her foolish notion to single-handedly raid the Zoo for whatever purpose a whitecoat might have would fail before she even set foot in the jungle.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Laura estimated that she had entered the jungle almost an hour before. In that time—if not even sooner—she had gradually reached the conclusion that this was not, after all, such a good idea.
She took a step, pushed through a sagging latticework of thin, leafy vines, and gasped when the earth failed to meet her foot at the point she’d expected. The misstep pivoted her forward and downward while her arms snatched at the vines to support herself. Finally, she turned the fall into a roll once it became clear that she would not be able to keep her balance. She turned sideways and landed in softer, muddy ground a good half a meter below where she’d previously stood. The momentum tumbled her over her own shoulder, which allowed the rolling motion to dissipate the kinetic energy of her blunder, and she came to a stop quickly enough— fortunately before a nasty collision with a tree.
“Well,” she said, stood, and brushed herself off, glad she wasn’t dizzy, “at least I know how to roll.” A friend of hers at university who was a Judo enthusiast had taught her that. She’d always known it would come in handy someday.
Once she’d surveyed her surroundings, she decided that the sloping ridge she’d come to was as good a place as any other to resume her search for one of the monkey-lizards’ stashes. Or better yet, one of their nests. She was in too deep to turn back now, anyway.
Despite the lingering whispers of sheer stupidity, she was actually quite proud of herself for having made it this far without anyone’s aid. Still, the future looked less bright and less certain the longer she stayed out there.
She’d hoped to be a little farther along in her quest, though, and she thought back on the time she considered wasted with no small regret. It had taken longer than she’d expected to cross the several kilometers of dunes between the wall and the jungle and been more than a little taxing. Sand was not easy to walk across. However, the big hearty meal Sonny had brought her and the large amount of water she’d drunk in the bathroom immediately before her departure had definitely helped. She’d felt full of energy, in fact, and had made good progress at first.
During the last few kilometers, though, the wind had picked up very noticeably. Perhaps it was a sign of dawn approaching? The sun’s heat was a major driver of the planet’s air currents. Whatever the reason for this particular mini gale, it rapidly made her life far more difficult.
At first, it merely worked directly against her, howling in from the west but often changing directions to slow her pace to a plodding trudge while it swept sand into her face. After a while, the sand whipped into a stinging airborne assault, and she lost sight of exactly where the hell she was going. She had to proceed from that point mostly by guesswork.
How odd, she’d thought, that people thought of the desert as having no real weather besides its daytime heat. Sandstorms and dust storms were as bothersome as any blizzard. She covered her mouth and nose with the corner of her fatigues when she breathed but still, when she tried to swallow saliva, she felt particles of grit stuck between her teeth. Such a lovely and charming side-effect of mass erosion, she’d thought and desperately wished she’d managed to get her hands on a suit.
This had reminded her of something she’d read in the Zoo’s science files. Dr. Chris Lin, during his relatively brief stint at the American base in the early days, had mentioned that the alien substance that had spawned the jungle was originally being studied for its agricultural properties.
Desertification had increased in recent times as overdevelopment and excessive farming by the burgeoning human population had consumed the jungles. Without plant life to anchor the soil, the winds could attack it unopposed. The fertile topsoil was stripped away to rob the land of its ability to support the life it once had, and the barren wastes spread.
Dr. Lin, and some others before him, had believed that the Zoo’s Alien Goop—as one geek or another had named it—if tamed, distilled, and properly employed, could be used to rejuvenate dead soil far more quickly than would otherwise be the case. It was an enthralling idea, she had to admit.
Of course, she’d now seen firsthand how lethal the Zoo could be in its untamed state. Simply allowing it to proliferate unchecked would be as bad—at least for humankind and other preexisting species—as killing every last tree on the planet.
She had struggled through the sandstorm and escaped the proverbial frying pan to land firmly in the proverbial fire. Cool, moist vegetation suddenly closed around her. It sheltered her from the stinging, dusty wind but she knew it provided shelter for many other things—those that did not particularly want her there, except perhaps as an early breakfast.
That was something she could not allow herself to forget.
“Well, this has certainly been an adventure, at least,” she said to herself in a barely audible voice as she pulled herself from her mental distraction and continued down the slight ridge where she’d rolled. “It really is almost like visiting another planet.”
Thinking of it that way excited her
and made her almost happy in a childish kind of way. If she survived this, she would have—and cherish forever—the memory of having walked inside the most extraordinary place in the world, surrounded by life-forms most people could scarcely have imagined encountering on Earth only ten years before.
It would have been better if she’d also had some kind of futuristic weapon, though. That would have made her feel much more confident.
During her first half-hour, she’d had to stop and hide twice. The first had been when unidentified creatures ran past and jostled the vegetation aside in their pursuit of another hapless, hunted animal—devilcrows or snakecats, probably. The more insectoid and arachnoid denizens tended to only appear under fairly specific circumstances.
On the second occasion, maybe ten or fifteen minutes after the first, she had neither seen nor heard anything but had simply felt that something was watching her. This malign indication, which she only half-perceived through what people sometimes called their sixth sense, seemed to come from somewhere either behind or to the right of her, or perhaps slightly above.
Her heart thudding, she had quietly and carefully stepped around the base of a large tree to her left. The skin-tingling sensation lessened and finally faded. She had hidden from sight and removed herself from the creature’s consideration.
Shortly after that, she’d heard something swoop through the trees overhead and it seemed that a dark shadow fell over part of the jungle. In two or three seconds, it was gone. She’d reminded herself to breathe and pressed on.
Her caution and determination had brought her to where she was now, descending a slope toward God knew what. Water, perhaps? Sources of water were always a good place to look for signs of animal life.
“Now if only those bloody lizards would provide another tree-marking that would lead me to one of their caches.” She sighed when she recalled that she had hoped to retrace her steps to where they’d found the last one. The idea was good, but she’d turned herself around while trying to survive the jungle.
The odd swooping sound came again. She stopped, drew in her breath, and held it. It was definitely the same weird noise she’d heard not long before made by a creature moving quickly and smoothly through the jungle’s understory. It didn’t suggest that it was actually climbing or otherwise causing much disturbance, though. It almost sounded more like flying.
Without doing anything too visibly conspicuous, Laura craned her head and looked around her for any sign of what might be responsible for what she’d heard. Nothing stood out beyond the usual labyrinth of lush alien greenery.
What she did notice once again was the sense that something was staring at her, tracking her, and evaluating her. The skin on the back of her neck felt like it was crawling with refrigerated maggots.
She’d barely registered these sensations when the hunter swooped on its prey.
“Oh shiiiiit,” Laura shrieked and broke into a run as a dark shape appeared above and behind her. It spread its wings and descended.
Her senses sharpened and her terror converted itself into a kind of hyper-lucid focus, an understanding that she was potentially about to die and would need to do everything correctly if she wanted to avoid that outcome. A root appeared almost directly under her feet and without missing a beat, she hurdled it and continued to run.
“Good, Laura,” she mumbled.
She reached a narrow opening between two large and twisted trees, ahead and to the left. Almost instinctively, she measured her stride so she could adjust her course to pass through this gap without slowing or tripping on any of the jungle debris that littered the ground. This, too, she accomplished without a hitch.
“I’m on a roll,” she encouraged herself.
The creature behind her—she still hadn’t really seen it—swooped past beside her, around the two trees, and thrust through branches to perch itself on another a little behind her. Almost immediately, it took to the air again and glided down, right on top of her.
She could feel it about to land on her goddamn shoulders. While she had done everything right thus far, it wasn’t enough. The creature was too fearsome a predator.
Instead of freezing, she rolled again, this time intentionally and to the right toward another tree that might obstruct the beast and higher ground where she might attempt to fight it off if she could find a makeshift weapon. The earth spun as she somersaulted, came out of it, and heaved herself up behind the tree and looked for a big stick, a rock, or anything that might serve her purpose.
The creature neither leapt nor glided. Instead, it ran directly toward her. By the sound of its heavy movements and the tingling sensation of its approach, she knew it moved at considerable speed.
She grabbed a stick that was barely large enough to use against an angry dachshund and spun to face her pursuer. At least she would go out fighting, and if anyone came to look for her, she hoped they found something useful while they were at it.
“Oh, my God,” she said as her gaze finally settled on the monster.
What hunted her now was one of the Hounds of Hell. A gaping-mouthed bat’s head with grotesquely large ears was affixed to the body of a huge, monstrous wolf. But where were its wings?
She braced herself and held the stick in a position that might allow her to spear it. Her question, unfortunately, was answered. The bat-wolf lunged toward her and raised its forelegs to reveal membranes of skin between its limbs like those of a flying squirrel. Its eyes stared blankly ahead. The eerie sensation of it watching her was due to the creature being blind and pointing its face directly toward her so it could listen to her.
Its last leap placed it almost on top of her now.
“Hör zu!” someone exclaimed.
Both Laura and the bat-wolf glanced to the side. The muzzle of a rifle sprouted a yellow blossom of fire accompanied by the cacophonous racket of automatic gunfire. Howling in pain and fear, the mutant fell back, its ears and nose shredded, and bloody holes opened in its neck, shoulder, and side. It staggered, fell, and rolled, much like she had done a few minutes before but with less dignity.
She gaped, shook her head, and managed to reactivate the part of her brain responsible for automatic respiration. Next, she would have to find the part responsible for speech, but that might take a moment.
Hauptmann Jan T Shalwar stepped forward and a faint trace of smoke curled from the barrel of his gun. He glanced around to ensure there were no other hostiles before he fixed her with a stern gaze.
“Ah, hello,” she said. For once, she was almost happy to see him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jan took a deep breath and filed the experience in the cabinets of his brain. This was yet another monster he had to learn to overcome, another species the Zoo had produced to kill human beings and expand itself across the desert and eventually, the whole world. He thought he’d heard something about these particular creatures but he himself had not encountered one before. When he had a moment, he would parse through the information the battle had provided and transform it into plans and strategies.
Any creature he encountered that failed to kill him could expect to see its own habits turned against it. He could promise that much. It was his duty to his own species, and these bastards would have to kill him if they expected otherwise.
But first, he had another more pressing matter to deal with.
“What in the name of Almighty God in heaven above were you thinking?” he snapped as he fixed Dr. Laura Curie with a look that usually quashed any and all opposition. When he radiated anger like ultraviolet rays from the sun, people rarely argued with him.
Her mouth tightened as she returned his stare defiantly, and she planted her fists on her hips. “I was thinking about the same things I told you about yesterday,” she stated in a firm tone, “which are the same things I’ve thought about ever since I arrived. How to save you and your people from the disaster you’re in the process of stumbling into.”
He clenched his jaw. “And in so doing, you have
stumbled into one of the most dangerous places on Earth alone and unarmed.”
“Well, one person can slip through the jungle, unseen and unmolested, much more easily than a big, bloated, slow-moving mass of men and machines, can’t they? The teams you take in have considerable firepower, but they make themselves seen and heard quickly enough that they need all the guns simply to break even. That bat…mutant…was the first creature to have so much as noticed me. By the way, I’m fairly sure it hunts by sound, so try not to speak so loudly.”
The hauptmann sighed in frustrated exasperation. “You do not have the training to go on any kind of stealth mission by yourself. Are you an experienced wilderness survival expert now?”
“No,” she retorted, “but I’ve done well enough so far, all things considered. In any event, why have you come after me all on your own? Well, unless you have a team waiting half a kilometer back or something, but that doesn’t seem much like your style.”
“Do not question me,” he warned and waved his hand in an imperious gesture of dismissal. “There was no time to observe all the usual procedures. I tried to stop you before you even reached the Zoo. If it had not been for the wind picking up and turning into a sandstorm, I would have done so. It erased your tracks and I had to waste precious time regaining my sense of direction and estimating where you had gone.”
“Oh, suuuure,” she replied. “Blame the sandstorm. You simply can’t admit that I did a rather good job of crossing the desert and getting this far by myself.” She paused and her expression softened a little. “Although I certainly do appreciate the rescue. I suppose it’s…ah, debatable if I would have been able to get away from that monster.”
“Yes, yes,” said Jan. “And keep your voice down as well.”
“You were the one who raised your voice in the first place, I’m quite certain,” she pointed out. “Not to mention that you fired a gun a moment ago.”
He had to turn away from her for a moment as he tried to control both his trembling and his sudden urge to kick the nearest tree.
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