by Michael Todd
“That’s what I’ve heard,” Sal said with a smile.
“How much of this do you have to sell?” he asked.
“We’ve got…ten?” Sal confirmed with Kennedy—and to be sure that she hadn’t taken any personal tastes of the product herself—before he turned to the bar owner. “Ten cases of twenty bottles each.”
“Really?” Spencer asked.
“Yeah, they were cheaper if bought in bulk,” he said quickly.
“Oh…well, that makes sense,” Spencer said. “How much are you selling them for?”
“We thought somewhere along the lines of forty bucks a bottle,” Kennedy said before Sal could.
“The stuff is good,” he hedged, “but since it’s not a known brand, I don’t know that I’ll be able to sell it.”
“We all know that’s bullshit, Spence.” Kennedy folded her arms.
“Right, but it still won’t be as popular as the established brands,” he protested.
“What kind of price can you give us?” Sal asked.
“Well, considering that the two of you are my best customers, and if you promise to ask for a shot of this stuff each time you come in…” Spencer tilted his head and made some mental calculations. “I can take all ten cases off your hands for…let’s say thirty-five bucks a bottle?”
Sal glanced at his partner. They would net a little under a thousand bucks in profit, but since they were together in this, he would need her to sign off on it too. She shrugged and nodded.
“That sounds like a plan,” Sal said. “Do you want an invoice?”
“Not really,” Spencer said. “I think I have seven grand in the safe inside. Cash isn’t a problem for you guys, right?”
“I…don’t think so.” Kennedy shrugged and glanced at Sal, who shook his head.
“Does that mean no, no cash, or no, cash isn’t a problem?”
“Cash isn’t a problem,” Sal explained.
“Excellent.” The man smiled broadly. “I’ll go inside to get the cash and some guys to help carry this stuff in.”
About a half hour later, Sal and Kennedy drove away with a small pouch containing a stack of dollar bills.
“I guess we’re good at this whole booze-selling business,” she said with a grin.
He nodded. “I mean, we could probably work with a more established line of supply. Maybe undercut all of Spencer’s other vodka suppliers and—”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves.” She laughed. “This was a quick way to make some pocket money which turned out…really literally.”
Sal nodded. “Well…congrats on your first pocket money sale. And not drinking any of the vodka while it was at your place.”
“Again, it was an investment,” Kennedy retorted. “I don’t drink money, Sal, that’s not good business. Now, let’s get some sleep. We have to leave early tomorrow.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Some might call him crazy. Others might use the word wuss or coward, but he still didn’t like to head out into the jungle with only the two specialists. They could handle themselves, and with Kennedy to cover their backs, they were more likely to survive than most, but it was still a risk. This was a jungle full of plants and animals that wanted them as dead as possible and came up with new and inventive ways of making that happen all the time.
But company matters required that they run alone a couple of times. They’d hitched a ride with one of the teams that headed in to support the people on the research operation. There had been news that an entire squad had gone missing, so numbers needed to be bolstered with anyone they could get their hands on. Sal, Courtney, and Kennedy made the cut, and so they were out there again in less than two days after they’d returned from the last trip.
The squad they went in with didn’t much care that they broke away inside the Zoo once Sal pointed them in the direction of the largest Pita concentration in the quadrant. There was the usual warning that if they weren’t back in time, they would be left behind to walk all the way back to the Staging Area through the desert.
Kennedy didn’t like walking. Sal knew all her complaints by heart and was tired of hearing them, so he would make sure that their little expedition didn’t take too long. They were still on the payroll of the sponsors, so anything that they came across would only add to what others had already found. He maintained a wary watchfulness and kept his weapon primed. They hadn’t run into any trouble five hours in, and that made him decidedly nervous. He didn’t like trouble, but when it took a long time to arrive, it usually meant that what was coming was bad.
“Is it just me,” Courtney asked as she took bark samples from a new kind of tree, “or is this place getting creepier?”
“Define creepier,” Kennedy replied and held her weapon at the ready. All her motion sensors were set to the highest level.
“I don’t know how to say it, precisely,” Monroe continued as she bagged her samples. “It’s like the faster the Zoo expands, the less earthly it is. Like whatever makes it grow this fast also makes it more and more alien. With each transformation, it seems to become more industrious and determined to break down the DNA and recreate it into newer and more horrifying monsters.”
“It’s not only about monsters, you know,” Sal said. “There’ve been studies that show that the greenhouse gasses have taken a significant downturn across the globe, and the radiation levels in locations like Chernobyl and even in Japan are starting to drop to unprecedented levels.”
“Do you really think that this is causing that?” She packed up the samples that she had collected and turned to rejoin them.
“There’s nothing certain about it yet,” he said. “But the drops seem to correlate with the times of the sudden growth spurts in the Zoo. There is implied causation in that kind of correlation.”
“So what?” Kennedy asked as they set off once more. “Are you telling me that this goop is the answer to problems like global warming and radiation disasters or something? And the only price to pay is that this same goop still seems intent on killing all of us in the process?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Sal explained. “And we’d need access to the records of what they studied about the goop before it became the Zoo to arrive at any definitive theories.”
Courtney nodded. “They isolated all the different research projects, and once they were cut off, everything was heavily classified. It was bullshit, but I guess I wouldn’t want something like this to hit the open market just yet either.”
“Yeah, that might have been a good call,” Kennedy said and aimed her weapon at the admittedly creepy jungle all around them.
She realized that Sal had come to a stop, his weapon leveled at a shady spot among the trees. The three of them looked in that direction, and after a moment, they saw that the shadow moved. The black fur was barely visible in the tiny beams of light that filtered down from the leaf cover.
A few seconds later, the massive panther saw the three humans. The four stared at each other in a deer-in-headlights moment. Something long was clenched in the creature’s jaws. It resembled a chunk of an animal that it had possibly hunted.
The panther lowered its head and put its food down before it turned to face the three humans and moved forward slowly to study them intently. After a few steps, it crouched as if it was about to pounce. Its lips lifted to reveal the long fangs that dripped with venom.
The jaws snapped open. A powerful roar echoed through the jungle around them, but was suddenly cut off by the sound of a single gunshot. The round went through the creature’s open mouth and out the back of the skull. It dropped to the ground without a whimper.
Sal turned instinctively. A light trail of smoke drifted from the barrel of Kennedy’s gun.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Sorry.” She shook her head. “Pure instinct. I saw those big poison fangs and pulled the trigger.”
He wanted to berate her for killing an animal that hadn’t attacked them, but he couldn’t honestly
say that he wouldn’t have done the same. He remembered that his first kill in the Zoo had been one of those panthers. He’d saved Lynch’s life using a scalpel that had been in his pack. Instincts remained. He didn’t want to have to face one of those bastards one on one like that again.
“Do you want to go investigate?” Kennedy asked.
Sal shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
They moved to where the massive panther sprawled on the ground. She crouched beside the corpse and patted the fur gently.
“Sorry, big guy,” she said softly. Sal and Courtney both heard her, but neither wanted to give her any grief for showing a soft side.
Monroe moved to what the panther had dropped before it turned to face them. She had thought that it was the remnant of a meal that it was saving for later. Leopards and panthers were known to hide their food up in the trees so that they could return to it.
As she came closer, though, she realized that the chunk had a metallic sheen, and of all the animals that they’d run into, none had metal for armor. Some had exoskeletons, even when they weren’t even based on insects or arachnids, but never metallic.
This wasn’t a Zoo animal, she realized. It was a leg. A human leg still encased in armor.
“Holy shit,” she breathed and dropped to her knees. Sal, who had taken a defensive position while both his partners were engaged in investigation, hurried forward.
“Is that a leg?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.
“It is,” Courtney confirmed and pushed the leg in his direction. “The armor isn’t standard military, though.”
“It’s not Russian either,” Kennedy observed. “They don’t make them that sleek.”
“It looks light,” Sal added. “That should weigh a ton, but you pushed it easily.”
Courtney nodded, annoyed that she hadn’t noticed that herself. “I’ve looked at armor suits over the past couple of days, and I haven’t seen any of them designed like this.”
“A prototype, maybe?” he asked. “We weren’t informed about any field testing in this area.”
“It’s a leg,” Kennedy said and shook her head. “Whoever it belonged to could have been killed anytime, anywhere.”
“We’ll have to pull it out, won’t we?” Monroe asked in a disgusted tone. “Thank God that this new suit is fitted with air filters, otherwise I’d be gagging right now.”
Sal smirked, and Madigan scowled at him. He didn’t see her but thankfully refrained from any jokes for the moment, even without her warning.
Courtney retrieved a couple of tools from her pack and as she moved around the leg to try and tug the leg out, she suddenly saw something move and jumped out of the way.
“Oh, fuck!” she gasped as Sal and Kennedy both aimed their weapons at a patch of black that moved through the bushes. They relaxed marginally when something small and fuzzy with black fur leapt from the undergrowth and bared unformed fangs at the three of them.
“What…the fuck is that?” Kennedy asked. She held her weapon raised but removed her finger from the trigger.
“That…looks like a venomous panther cub,” Sal said. “I didn’t know they had cubs. We haven’t encountered any young creatures around here before, right?”
“There aren’t any on record,” Courtney said and shook her head in disbelief.
The tiny panther, which was the size of a beagle, circled the three of them and found the corpse. The little one nudged it, meowing pitifully.
“Well, crap,” Kennedy muttered. “Like I don’t feel shitty enough.”
Sal patted her gently on her armored shoulder.
Monroe, in the meantime, went back to work on the leg and tugged gently at the limb that was still stuck inside. She made a disgusted noise when what came out didn’t look much like a leg anymore. The basic skeletal structure remained, of course, but the meat had already begun to peel from the bones and disgusting red goo seeped from the flesh.
“There are signs of tearing,” Courtney said softly. “It looks like this limb was ripped off. I can’t really tell if it was pre or…post mortem. Guys?”
Kennedy had dropped down next to the cub and ran her armored hands gently across its neck. It snarled at her and turned to bite. The weak fangs sank into her armor but didn’t get very far, and there was no sign of the milky venom.
“I’m sorry, little buddy,” she said and raised her arm, but the cub already had vice-like jaws and lifted with her arm.
“That’s fucking adorable,” Sal said, unable to resist a broad grin.
“We have to take him back, right?” Kennedy asked. “Oh…her back, rather.”
“Why?” Courtney asked as she still tugged chunks of leg from inside the armor.
“Well, we killed the mother,” Madigan said in a tone that implied that she thought the question was beyond stupid. “She would die if we left her out here on her own. Besides, we haven’t seen any sign of young or reproduction. If we took her back, she would be the first live animal we were able to bring back from the Zoo.”
Sal nodded. “It sounds like a good call to me. As long as you feed, water, and potty train her—”
“Shut up, Jacobs,” Kennedy growled. She drew the small creature against her chest and rubbed her gently behind the ears. “I’ll call her Shuri.”
“Shuri?” Courtney asked.
Sal faked a tear on his helmet. “I’m so proud. You do listen.”
“I do not,” Madigan snarled. “Everyone and their mothers have seen those movies.”
He shrugged and turned back to Courtney. “What have you found out about that leg?”
She shook her head. “This metal isn’t like anything I’ve seen before. It’s light, it’s hard, and I haven’t been able to remove any of the plates.”
“Can’t we simply take the leg?” Kennedy asked.
“It’s light, but not that light—still in the two-hundred-kilogram region, so unless you want to lug it around and explain it to the guys at the Staging Area when we get back—”
“Just take a sample and tag it with a GPS marker,” Sal said impatiently. “We’ll see if we can’t come back and pick it up on a later run or send someone to do that for us.”
Courtney nodded. There were a couple of chunks that had been torn off by whatever it was that had severed the leg. It still took some work to free the pieces, but she bagged them and sealed them in her pack.
“Okay, let’s head back,” Sal said. “I’m sure that they’ll understand if we get back early again and if not…well, we’ll bring the first live specimen back from the Zoo.”
“The first?” Kennedy asked. “Really?”
“Yes, the first,” Sal said firmly, and she nodded quickly in understanding.
“Let’s get on out of here,” he announced. “You keep an eye on the tiny thing. She’s your responsibility.”
“Yes, boss.” Kennedy snapped a quick salute. “And her name is Shuri.”
“Whatever,” he said and shook his head.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It took most of the day to reach the JLTVs, and after a quick discussion, Kennedy said that they had enough space in one vehicle to carry the rest of their squad out, so Sal signed off to take the extra one to transport them back to the Staging Area. They had little resistance since they carried some very valuable cargo.
Sal had to listen during the whole ride back to what Kennedy thought of him for calling Shuri cargo.
When they arrived and had to declare what they had found, Shuri was the talk of the commandant’s office. A location to keep live animals had been set up when the Staging Area had first been built, but the problem with actually acquiring live animals had left the place to fall into disrepair over the year and a half since then. It took considerable time for them to register her since the company officials tried to make the argument that since Shuri had been recovered on their company’s time, she should belong to them.
Sal responded by advising them that Heavy Metal now waived the financial compensation for all te
ams sent in on the fact-recovering mission.
The lawyer left in a huff when he realized that he’d been out-lawyered by a twenty-two-year-old doctoral candidate.
In the meantime, they were told that it would take a few hours before the holding locations could be prepared to host any live animals, and Sal asked if he could break away early. They didn’t need three people to keep an eye on Shuri, who had been given a bottle of warm milk and a small cage to rest in. The furball had obviously had a long day and was fast asleep in fifteen minutes.
Kennedy agreed, and Sal headed on home. He’d told her that he would work on whitepapers, but the fact that he picked up the shards that Courtney had collected from the leg armor revealed that he had lied.
Neither Courtney nor Kennedy complained, though, as they sat in silence and waited for someone to come to tell them where they could take Shuri to spend the night.
“You know,” Monroe said softly, “Shuri doesn’t need two people to stick around with her either.”
Madigan looked up from where she performed some repairs of her own on a piece of her armor.
“What are you talking about?” she asked and set both the piece and her tools down.
“Well, I wanted to head over to talk to Sal about the piece of armor we recovered,” Courtney said. “Plus some…other things.”
Kennedy immediately grinned. “Hey now, I want to talk to him about Shuri…and other stuff too.”
“But you brought Shuri back,” Courtney argued. “She’s bonded to you and—yeah, I know, that’s bullshit. I couldn’t even finish that sentence.”
Kennedy grinned. “So how do we decide this? Rock, paper, scissors?”
Monroe thought about it for a few seconds and finally nodded. “Sure. Best two out of three?”
Madigan nodded, and they raised their hands. Courtney won the first one with paper beats rock, but the other woman quickly took the next two with a rock and scissors win in succession.
“Fuck,” the loser muttered.