by Michael Todd
Rage went around placing the lights as usual, one out for every three inward. They weren’t trying to completely spotlight themselves, but Jack hated not being able to see out of the perimeter. Jack took the motion sensors and placed them around each tent and out around the perimeter, knowing they would help if something was creeping in from the ground. He couldn’t even keep track of how many times they picked up sneaky vines trying to slither their way into the campground, so he wasn’t fucking around.
When they were about done, the buzzing began again, echoing through the earpieces of their suits. All three guys ran into the center of the lights. Jack grabbed the remote from Rage and hit the switch, turning the lights off and leaving them standing in the dark. All three switched on their heat sensors and slowly looked at the sky. Above them was a spread of red, the locusts not yet sensing their presence.
Emmett shifted slightly. “What are they doing?”
Jack carefully pulled out his gun. “They are looking for us, I would presume, and I am not about to wait until they’ve found us. Rage, go to the right and do your monkey shit. Emmett, take the left. I’m going to let them know we are not fucking around. They had enough of a smell of our bodies. They need to go the fuck home.”
The guys moved swiftly, using their stealth skills to scamper off to their locations. Jack stood in the center, his head up and his guns in his hands. The aiming feature in his HUD only worked half the time, so Jack never connected it. He got tired of misfiring and drawing the entire group of animals down on his head.
He glanced around, seeing the guys’ signatures. “Are you ready?”
“Fuck, yes,” Emmett snarled.
“Got a hold, so let’s fuck them up,” Rage replied.
Jack pointed his gun back up, but the red in the sensors had begun to fade. The buzzing sound was slowing down and drifting into the distance. Apparently, they weren’t too engaged in finding the guys and were separating before the fight even began. “Hold back. They’re leaving.”
Rage shinnied back down the tree and came to a stop next to Jack. “Well, fuck.”
Emmett shrugged. ‘That’s okay with me. I didn’t feel like finding a new campsite.”
Jack looked at the two of them. “Put up your tents in the dark, but keep your eyes peeled. We’ll turn the lights back on when we’ve given them a chance to get out of the way.”
The guys walked off, Jack picking up his sack and heading to the middle site. He always slept in the middle if he slept out there at all. He had gotten pretty good at getting through several days with only a few hours of napping along the way. The Zoo was a dangerous place, and just like everywhere else in his life, he kept one eye on his surroundings at all time.
Jack set up his tent and rolled out his sleeping bag inside. He could hear the guys talking, waiting for Jack to be ready. He clicked the lights and sat down inside, opening his sack. “You guys can eat without me. I’m gonna go ahead and lay down. When you are ready for bed, Rage, you got the first watch.”
“You got it,” Rage replied.
Jack took off his helmet, severing the communication and tossing it on the ground. He pushed through his pack, finding a bag of jerky and some trail mix. He opened his canteen and sat there cross-legged, eating his food. His mind began to wander to the night before; to Ragwood and his big mouth. He was going to have one less thing to say now that he was missing a tooth.
Jack shook his head and unzipped a hidden compartment in his bag, then pulled out a folded picture and looked at it. The redheaded girl in the picture was young, only about seventeen or so, but tough as nails. It was Melanie, his daughter. She had wanted to go out in the field to earn money to go to college, and Jack hadn’t stopped her. He always tried to be with her on trips, but the one he hadn’t been able to make had been the last one Melanie ever went out on. She got separated from her group, and they left without her. Jack had spent days combing the Zoo, finally finding a piece of her pack, blood, and that picture right outside a large man-eating plant.
It was one of the last times that Jack would speak more than a few words to the people around him. The guys helping him track her had stood by and watched as Jack slashed the plant to pieces, hoping to find her inside. She was gone, though; there wasn’t even a shred of clothing left. That was what had triggered him the night before, and it would continue triggering him for the rest of his life. He felt responsible for her death, for making her believe she had to live up to some standard he only held for himself.
Alone was the best he could do; that way he didn’t put anyone’s life in danger. To the rest of the world, he was a callous and cold-hearted bastard. Jack didn’t care that people thought that. In fact, it was probably safer that it was the first thing to come to their mind when they thought of Jumping Jack Flash. It was a stupid nickname given to him his first time in the field when he leapt on the backs of two locusts and saved another guy’s life. He wasn’t that man anymore, but he couldn’t shake the nickname.
Jack laid back on his sleeping bag and put his arms behind his head, closing his eyes. There wasn’t anything that he wanted more than a few hours of sleep. Something, anything, to get his mind off the past.
When the sun came up the next morning, Jack was surprised to find the guys hadn’t woken him up for his watch. He stumbled out of the tent and put his helmet on, prepared to find the guys dead or gone, but sitting there with a stack of lighting sticks and perimeter monitors, Rage and Emmett looked at him.
Rage waved. “Morning, boss. We let you sleep since you never do.”
Jack grunted, stomping back to his site and beginning to take down his tent. “Stupid. You could have been fucking killed, and now I have to travel with two tired assholes. Great.”
Emmett smirked and shook his head at Rage. “We’re okay, boss. Let’s just get the Pitas and get the fuck out of here.”
Jack shoved the stakes in his bag. “I’ll be going off without you afterward. You two morons think you’ll be able to get back on your own without getting killed?”
Rage scoffed. “Duh. I’ll machete whatever motherfucker even gets near me.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Good, then let’s gear up and move out. The Pita patch is only two miles from here. It’s the same one we hit two years ago, so it should be a solid lead now that the flowers have reformed and expanded. I’ll send my petals back for Emmett to split between us.”
The guys hurried through cleaning up the campsite and started deeper into the Zoo. Jack took the back this time, not wanting to have to talk to anyone. He just wanted to be on his own for a bit; collect more goop and come back when he was ready. The Zoo was starting to be too much for him, and he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it was time to disappear back to the real world and hide out in the house he had bought five years before. No one knew about it, and he liked it that way. He just wanted to be alone.
Chapter Six
Madigan Kennedy was stoked about her new suit. The last one had been good, but the stench of that guy’s dead body still lingered, even after wearing it for multiple trips into the Zoo. She fiddled with the display as she walked behind Salinger. The three people behind her were all new to Heavy Metal and going out for their first trip with the team. They always took the newbies out, although none of them were technically new to the Zoo.
Salinger swiped his machete through the growing vines and stopped. “You got the coordinates for the Pitas up yet? I feel like I’m wandering aimlessly, waiting for you.”
Madigan chuckled. “Calm down there, buddy. They are up…now.”
Salinger let out a sigh of relief. “Good, we are going in the right direction.”
Madigan shrugged, sending the map to the rest of the team. “Hey, even if we aren’t, we’re providing a valuable service to the newbs.”
Salinger snorted. “I still can’t believe we have surpassed seventy-five percent of the teams out here. Heavy Metal exploded.”
Madigan smiled. “You’d think by now you’d be used to wan
dering around blindly. Nothing about this business should surprise you.”
Salinger stepped into the clearing and clicked on the new headgear, looking for any signatures around them. “Yeah, but I had no idea what I was doing when I started this thing with you.”
Madigan wrinkled her nose. “That would have been good information for me from the start.”
Salinger chuckled. “But then you would have said no and I… Hold on, we’ve got heat.”
Immediately Madigan clicked to the open com. “Look alive, boys, we’ve got something. What are you seeing, Salinger?”
She watched as he took another step forward and paused. Suddenly he dropped his machete and raised his gun, immediately pulling the trigger. “The jags. We got the jags!”
The whole team spread out, ready for a fight. The beasts crept to the edge of the clearing and let out a low chorus of growls. Immediately they started to attack, jumping from every direction. Madigan pulled out her M16 and blasted an oncoming jag, taking it to the ground. She put a bullet in its head for good measure, then something slammed into her. She went down hard, rolling as she fell to find a jag crawling up her. His rows of teeth were dripping with saliva, and his antlers came to sharp points.
Madigan pulled her legs up and grabbed a knife from her side. She jabbed the knife into the beast’s throat and cut through as much as she could, then put her feet on its chest and pushed hard, launching it into the air. Without a pause, she jumped to her feet and grabbed her gun, blasting it until its body went limp.
Across from her, Salinger faced his own barrage of jags swiping at him from the edge of the clearing. He shot into the edges, hearing the whimpering as two of them retreated. Another wasn’t as scared and leapt over a fallen tree, heading right for him. He jumped back, and its outstretched claw barely grazed his armor. He reached to his side and pulled out a grenade, yanking the pin. Holding the lever down, he waited for the beast to roar.
When it opened its jaws, he tossed the grenade down its throat and dove out of the way. The grenade blew, throwing bits and pieces of the animal all over the place. The third on the team, Trey, lifted his eyebrows. “Well, that one’s not regenerating.”
As he spoke, a vine grabbed his ankles and pulled him off his feet. He hit the ground hard and began to slide across the leaves toward a fat yellow plant with circular rows of teeth and venom dripping to the ground. He pulled out his knife and cut the vine holding him, then scooted back on the leaves, pulling the dead vine off him. The plant hissed and spat as he raised his handguns and pointed them at it. Swallowing hard, he pulled the triggers, blowing the petals off.
Ivory, his teammate and girlfriend, ran up and looked at the plant, tilting her head to the side. “You might want to aim for the fucking teeth.”
She sighed and shot the plant, blowing the entire blossom off the thick stem. It hit the ground, let out a shrill screech, and withered where it lay. She reached down and helped Trey to his feet. He brushed off his armor and looked at Ivory. “Thanks.”
Ivory smiled. “You’ll pay me back, I’m sure.”
Suddenly his gun came next to her helmet, and he blasted an oncoming jag right between the eyes. Ivory slowly turned and looked at the beast as it dropped just a couple of feet from her. “Okay, I retract what I said. You will pay me back instantly.”
Thomas, the final team member, huffed and puffed as he reloaded. “Hey, can you guys love on each other later? There are a shit-ton of fucking alien animals rushing us right now.”
As he said that, Ivory and Trey watched a glob of shit fly down from the trees and splash on Thomas’s helmet. He slowly looked up and narrowed his eyes. “Fucking monkeys. Those little motherfuckers. One day I am going to pay them back.”
Trey laughed. “That’s like the third time you’ve been hit by shit, bro.”
Thomas growled, “Watch your back!”
Trey turned to see another jag leaping toward them. Ivory put her hand on his chest and pushed him hard. She flipped backward and pulled out her guns, blasting at the beast. Before it could even hit the ground, a new line of jags approached the perimeter of the clearing. All five of the team backed into the center, pointing their weapons outward.
Madigan took a deep breath and reloaded. “All right, team, round two. The only good thing about this is I’ve never seen a round three.”
Thomas moaned. “That means nothing in this hell hole. There could be fifty-two rounds.”
Madigan slapped the new magazine into her gun. “Better not be. We don’t have enough ammo for that.”
The jags began to run toward them, coming from all directions. They shot as fast as they could, but the things just kept coming. Madigan kicked one hard in the chest and sent it to the ground, then put a bullet in the top of its head. As she did that she turned to her right, her gun clicking empty as some sort of animal she had never seen charged. It looked like a miniature rhino, but it had four eyes and scales down its back. Its tail was long like a dragon’s, with spikes that looked like a mohawk.
She began to back up when shots rang out, hitting the animal and taking it down. Madigan reloaded and looked up, unsure where that shot had come from. Her entire team was behind her, and this shot had come from in front of her. Without the time to stop and really look into it, she turned and fired into the group of jags to her left. They were hissing and roaring, swiping their claws but not pouncing anymore.
The team got into a line, Trey glancing at the scaled rhino. “What the fuck is that?”
Salinger walked forward with his gun pointed toward the jags. “Don’t know. We’ll check it out when it’s clear. Looks like they are starting to retreat. We need to push them into a run. Everyone, on the count of three, start firing. One…two…three.”
The five team members sent a hail of bullets toward the jags, blowing right through the group. One or two dropped and the others took off into the Zoo, trying to get away from the rain of death coming their way. The last of them paused on the edge of the clearing, and Salinger stopped shooting. The rest followed suit, and they stood there staring at the beast. It hissed and sniffed the air before turning and galloping after the others.
Ivory put her gun in the holster. “That looked like the king. Did you see the moss growing on those enormous antlers and the way the others listened to it? It’s like they’ve developed a hierarchy inside their groups.”
Salinger let out a deep breath. “That happens in wildlife. Look at lions. One rules them all.”
He walked to the scaled rhino, flipping through the list of animals in his HUD. There didn’t seem to be anything matching its description, so he started snapping pictures to send back to the government. He would get paid for them, but more important, the rest of the mercs would know something like that was out there.
Madigan stepped forward. “So? Is it new?”
Salinger nodded as he took a sample with a swab and put it in his bag. “I don’t know about new to the Zoo, but new to humans, yes.”
Madigan shook her head. “But who killed it?”
Trey stepped up. “I was wondering that too. I had three beasts stalking me and two went down, but everyone else was facing the other direction.”
Ivory nodded. “Me too. Same thing.”
Thomas walked to the edge of the clearing and picked up a morphed monkey by the tail, its head blown off. “Someone took down this little sonofabitch as well.”
They all looked at each other, stunned. Ivory turned on her wide-area com. “This is HM Team One, is anyone out there?”
No one answered. She looked at Madigan and shook her head. Madigan knelt next to the rhino and looked at the entry wound. “This is a shotgun blast. None of us brought a shotgun.”
Thomas tossed the monkey into the jungle. “That looked like one too, although I can’t really tell too well with it missing its entire head.”
Madigan was perplexed. She straddled the beast, then flipped through her HUD and found the tracking device, pointing it at the hole in the b
east’s head. It was made to track people, but she wanted to know where the shots had come from. She turned and looked at the path leading backward from where they had come.
Salinger put his hand on her shoulder. “Maybe we should let it be.”
Madigan shook her head. “No way. They could be dead or hurt, and they saved our asses out here. I just want to know who they were.”
She held her gun at the ready and began carefully walking the path indicated on her HUD. She pushed through the low branches and stepped over a log, stopping and tilting her head to the side. “I got someone, but it looks like they are gone.”
She walked carefully toward the body and opened her com. “I’m Madigan Kennedy, Heavy Metal. Are you alive?”
No reply. She bent over the body and looked at the deep lacerations on his chest. He had to have bled out almost instantly. Her eyes scanned to his hands, and she pulled on a piece of paper he was clutching. It was a picture of him and a young red-haired girl smiling in the town. The girl looked familiar, but she couldn’t place her. She saw so many faces every day that they got lost in her memory. She set the picture back in his hands undogged the latch of his HUD.
Slowly she pulled the helmet off and unclipped the memory card from inside, then flipped open the outer slot on her helmet and pushed it in. The information from the guy’s HUD flashed up on her screen and her eyes went wide. “I’ll be damned. It’s Jumping Jack Flash.”
Salinger walked up behind her. “No way. He didn’t give a fuck about anyone else.”
Madigan flipped to the video archive. “Well, let’s see what he saw before he died. That will tell us the truth.”
She started the video and rewound about fifteen minutes. She watched through Jack’s eyes as he walked along alone, scanning the horizon. The sound of the jags in the distance caused him to stop, then he crept forward. She saw her team and her crouching and readying themselves for the fight. Jack turned and began walking the other way, but paused and pulled the picture of the girl from his pocket. “Goddamn motherfuckers,” he muttered. “Fine. Fine.”