by Michael Todd
Marcus chuckled. “You could also end up bunny meat.”
Billie shivered, remembering that beast. “It’s not a bunny, it’s an alien. It’s made to look like a bunny so that we will be more comfortable around it. It’s no different than if aliens with their regular bodies and brains came down and began hunting us. I don’t think I took it seriously enough the first time around.”
Marcus breathed deeply through his nose. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You weren’t the first to be curious, and you won’t be the last.”
Billie stood up. “I shouldn’t be reckless, though. I was, like a child. It was like my first job all over again. I was weak and frightened, and I let it go to my head. That will not happen this time around.”
Marcus cleared his throat. “Good. Then get out of here and meet me at the Staging Area in your HUD. There is a blacked-out NTV waiting for you downstairs. It will bring you over to the Zoo. It is getting late, so be careful out there. I will connect with you in your HUD and provide the coordinates of the assassin.”
Billie nodded. “All right. I should be on within the hour.”
Standing, she straightened her gray tank top and fatigue pants, tucking them into her combat boots. She walked over to the bathroom and rinsed her face, then stood staring at herself in the mirror. There were bags under her eyes, and her face was paler than normal. She hadn’t slept in days because of the sound of that bear-thing’s wail echoing continuously in her head, although she didn’t know why it was getting to her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t encountered worse on her various missions. She shook her head and wiped the water off with one of the towels, tossing it on the counter when she was done. Unplugging the phone, she shut off the lights, leaving the key on the table.
She took a right outside her door and headed to the emergency exit at the end, then went down the metal staircase between the buildings. She slipped on her coat and pulled the hood up over her head, keeping her face out of sight. She peeked around the corner, finding the blacked-out NTV parked out front just as Marcus had said. She hurried down the street and jumped into the back seat, shutting the door quickly behind her.
The driver was a large man in a black suit, wearing sunglasses. He looked into the rearview mirror and nodded before pulling out and heading toward the Zoo. It had been a bright day with no clouds in the sky, and it was still very warm, even though the sun was sinking. Billie pulled her coat off and shoved it in her bag. She stared out the window as the vibrant colors of the Zoo grew closer and closer. There would be no escape. It wasn’t fear or dislike, it was disgust. She had learned to be disgusted by the aliens’ creation. It took everything she had to focus on her task.
Nothing had prepared her for the first time she had gone into the place, and the second had been the same. There was something different each time, but this time it was she who was different. On this, like so many of her other jobs, she would move among the shadows, keep her focus tight, and ignore the distractions that could easily get her killed. She hadn’t become as sought after as she was by being flippant and playful on a dangerous mission. Marcus knew that better than anyone, although he had witnessed her slight departure from the norm.
But not anymore.
She’d hoped she wouldn’t find herself back in that place for a long time. That night, though, she would go in, kill the assassin, and get the hell out before the sun began rising. She had never been afraid of the dark, but this place could do it to you. She wasn’t going to give in to the fear, though. That had become her mantra in recent weeks—don’t give in to the fear. She repeated it over and over to herself, finding that it worked.
The NTV began to slow and she grabbed her bag, throwing it over her shoulder. When the vehicle came to a stop, she nodded at the driver and jumped out. He immediately took off, heading back toward town. Billie walked over to the platform and set her bag down, then pulled out her gear. She donned her suit and her armor, adjusting them, swinging her arms right and left and stretching her thighs to get them ready for the trek. She wasn’t sure what positions she would find herself in, and cramping wasn’t an option.
When she was done with all that, she grabbed her HUD and clamped it shut. The screen flickered and came up, the map already loaded for her. Marcus’s voice came out of the comm. “This is a silent mission. You are to infiltrate the team indicated on your map, kill the man pictured here, and return to the Staging Area. At that point, you will be given further instructions. When you return, come out and just keep walking. Someone will contact you shortly.”
Billie nodded. “Got it.”
She focused on the map and watched the red dot as it moved back and forth, a few miles into the thick. That was where the camp had been set up, and the assassin was restless. Billie reached to her side and pulled her new, more modern pistol. She released the magazine and checked, making sure she was fully loaded. From her bag, she pulled a long suppressor and screwed it onto the end of the barrel. This was not a mission she could make noise on. She hoped not to use her gun since that would make it too obvious, but it was her protection from the other dangers in the Zoo, as well as her backup plan. She wasn’t going to leave the jungle until her mission had been completed.
Billie walked forward, disappearing into Zoo. Her guns, one with silenced, sat firmly on her hips as she crept through the darkness of the jungle. She kept her heat sensors on at all times, but her focus was making it to the camp. There weren’t many animals out, and the man-eating plants had closed their buds for the night. She walked several miles, using her training to move silently. As she approached the blinking dot on her map, she slowed down. She could hear a couple of soft voices near the camp, so she crouched outside the range of the HUD’s heat sensor and pulled out her night vision binoculars.
Standing at the front of the camp was the assassin. His M16 was in front of him, and his eyes were roving over the jungle. The other voice was the team member getting off duty. He slipped into a tent and switched the light off, leaving the assassin standing in a sea of artificial light.
Chapter Nine
Billie went wide, sneaking around the camp and up behind the assassin. He was still facing away from her as she moved quietly toward him. She bent down next to a bush and pulled the syringe from the box, then took the cap off and held the tube between her teeth. Reaching back into her bag, she slowly pulled out a piece of rope and wrapped an end around each of her hands. She pulled it tight and moved toward the assassin, tiptoeing up behind him.
She reached up to put the rope around his neck, but he ducked, grabbing it and spinning Billie around. He flipped her and pulled her back against him, wrapping the rope around her neck instead. “Do you think I didn’t know they would send someone for me? You are a professional, and so am I. I have killed more people than you would ever want to know. They could at least have spared me an amateur.”
Billie gasped for air, clawing at the rope. She forced her eyes closed and pretended to go limp. He pulled the rope tighter for a moment, then let up. That was his mistake. She dipped out of his grasp and spun, kicking him hard in the lower back. He groaned, and his knees buckled. She reached down, groping for the syringe, but she couldn’t find it anywhere. She turned right and left, trying to see if it had fallen into the bushes or something. Wherever it had gone, she knew she wasn’t going to find it in time.
The assassin was making his way back to his feet, anger on his face. Billie lowered her eyelids and smirked, running straight for him. As she ran, she pulled her gun and leapt on him, wrapping her legs around his waist. He stumbled back and hit the ground. She unwrapped herself and rammed the silencer of her gun into his mouth. He ripped his arm out from under her leg and grabbed her wrist, pulling the gun back out. Billie gritted her teeth and pushed harder with her other hand, trying to get the gun back into his mouth. Any other way would look suspicious.
Holding it there with one hand, she took the other and slammed it down on the back, pushing open his lips. The barrel hit his teeth har
d, knocking out the front two. He groaned and Billie sat up, looking down at him, disgusted. “You couldn’t just do this easy way, could you?”
She took a deep breath, watching as his eyes grew wide as saucers. She eased her finger back on the trigger, and the bullet took the back of his head off. There were chunks of brains and blood all over the vibrant green jungle floor. His body went limp beneath her and she left the gun there, reaching into his holster and pulling out the identical one that belonged to him. She wrapped it up and threw it in her bag, putting it over her shoulder and backing haphazardly up into the trees behind her.
She circled back around, her breathing getting heavier and heavier. Stumbling forward, she caught herself on a tree. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. It was a bad idea, but she couldn’t be in that HUD anymore. She unlatched it and overrode the alarms, then dropped the HUD on the ground and tried to remember which way she had come from. As she stumbled back through the dark jungle, her vision began to blur.
She whimpered as she heard the wailing of the woman screaming with the bear’s mouth, then the red eyes of the bunny popped out at her. She stumbled right and left, then stopped and collapsed to her knees. She swallowed hard, feeling her throat go completely dry and tender, so she grabbed the canteen from her bag and downed the water. It dribbled down her chin as she gulped. When she was done, she dropped the canteen on the ground and pulled herself back up by gripping a tree.
Stumbling forward, she plowed her way through the Zoo, leaving all of her things behind her in the shadows. Her heart was beating too fast, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Marcus had noticed right away, but he couldn’t reach her. She had dislodged her HUD, but he knew it was out of desperation this time, not anger like before. All he could do was sit there and wait for her to live or die. There was nothing he could do from where he was.
“What is wrong with me?” she screamed, the words echoing around her.
Leaning against a tree, she looked up, seeing two bright eyes staring back at her. She shrieked and reached for her gun, pulling the trigger again and again. When she opened them again, there was nothing there, just a layer of vines growing up a white-barked tree. She breathed heavily and then bent over, heaving onto the ground. She wiped her mouth with her hand and looked down at it, feeling a lot of wetness. With her other hand, she grabbed a flashlight and clicked it on. Gasping, she realized her hand was covered in blood. She backed up, shining the light at the ground. Blood, and lots of it.
A bird’s call rang loudly through Billie’s head, and she covered her ears, screaming. She dropped her flashlight on the ground and fell to her knees, shaking her head. “Stop! God, please stop. What is wrong with me?”
She kept her hands over her ears and curled into a ball, rocking back and forth. Her whole body felt like it was on fire, and she couldn’t stop the hallucinations; they felt and sounded so real. She tried to calm her mind to allow herself to think, to use her survival skills, but she couldn’t. After what seemed like forever, Billie picked up her head, which wobbled. Everything was foggy, but the sounds had stopped. Her eyelids drooped as she attempted to focus on a light source coming from up ahead.
She flung her arm up, grabbing a low-hanging branch, and she pulled herself to her feet. One sloppy footstep at a time, she moved closer to the light. Her armor clanged around her and hung off to the side. She smacked her lips together, feeling completely dehydrated. She looked around, wondering if she had been on her knees for an entire day, but that seemed impossible. She was weak and confused, and she just wanted to get to the light.
As she approached, she reached out and grabbed the veil of vines in front of her. Screaming, she ripped at them until her fingers bled. She crept through and took a deep breath of cold desert night air. Her feet sank into sand, and she rushed as far as she could before collapsing to her knees and then onto her stomach. She could feel the cold sand against her cheek. It was night, but the sky was clear and the moon was full, which was the light she had seen from inside the Zoo.
She coughed up more blood and then turned over on her back, looking at the stars in the night sky shimmering overhead. She gasped and tried to point, but her throat was too dry and she was too weak. She had never seen anything like it before. It felt like the entirety of the Milky Way was surrounding her. She let her hands fall to her stomach and just lay there.
Her mind skipped around, going from her childhood to the jobs she’d taken. She thought about Marcus and how he must have been freaking out, and she wished she could call him. Her hand slipped off her stomach onto the sand and she grasped a fistful, feeling the softness of it flowing through her fingers. Suddenly a shadow fell over her, and her eyes shifted upward. She could see two people looking down at her, worry and curiosity on their faces. At that point she didn’t care who was there; she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. She let the darkness take her, envelope her like the cold sand all around her that threatened to pull her into the desert floor like the vines tried to pull their victims into the Zoo to create new life.
The night had been one of the more beautiful ones on the French side of the wall. The heat of the day gave way to a cool and inviting evening. The sky was clear as far as the eye could see, and the stars glimmered and flickered wildly. Gabrielle and JB had been sitting at the bar, having a few drinks, talking about the trip into the Zoo they were preparing for.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing JB’s hand.
JB, his skin younger and taut, his hair darker and his body a little quicker, chuckled. “Where exactly are we going?”
Gabrielle pulled him toward the door. “We are going to the Zoo.”
JB’s face went straight. “In the middle of the night? Are you crazy? I mean, I love you, but that’s just plain dumb.”
Gabrielle giggled. “No, fool. Out at the Staging Area with this moonlight, you’ll be able to see all the stars. Let’s go lay on the hood of the JLTV and just look up. Come tomorrow when we do that, all we’ll see is the canopy of the death trap.”
JB smiled and shook his head. “You sure do know how to freak a guy out. Come on, let’s go.”
They put their arms around each other and headed out of the bar. Parked on the corner was Gabrielle’s JLTV, so they jumped inside and sped out over the open desert. JB closed his eyes and put his arms in the air, feeling the wind whipping over them. Gabrielle laughed, reaching over and taking his hand and bringing it to her lips. “I wish we could just keep driving.”
JB chuckled. “Me too, but maybe not in this direction.”
He pointed, and Gabrielle looked back at the road. She gasped and slammed on the brakes, coming to a stop just an inch from one of the platforms. She sat back in the seat and brushed the hair from in front of her eyes. “Wow. I almost just Thelma and Louised us right into the fucking Zoo.”
Both of them started laughing as they climbed out of the JLTV and walked around to the front. JB picked Gabrielle up and set her down on the warm hood, then stood between her legs and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I can’t believe we are going back out there already. I was really starting to enjoy having nothing but you-time.”
Gabrielle smiled and kissed his nose. “How are we ever supposed to become billionaires if we don’t go out and work?”
JB chuckled. “By not spending all our money on booze.”
Gabrielle fake-gasped. “Shit, that would be no fun.”
JB laughed, leaning in to kiss her on the lips. As he got close, they heard a scream and then a woman came stumbling out of the Zoo, blood covering her chin and spilling down over her chest. She fell to her knees and then collapsed into the sand. JB furrowed his brow and looked at Gabrielle with concern. She jumped down, and they ran to see if they could help the woman. She coughed, blood trickling from her mouth and then rolled over on her back, staring at the sky. She wheezed, trying to lift her arm, but dropped it on her stomach.
Gabrielle squinted, scanning the orange and green bumps up and down her arms. A knowing
look came over her face and she ran to the JLTV, opening her bag. JB was completely confused. “What? What’s wrong with her?”
Gabrielle pulled out a syringe and a bottle and looked at JB. “She was stung by one of those bugs. Remember the one we saw that had the body of a bumblebee but eight creepy legs like a spider? She must have gotten bit by one of those. It causes that rash, as well as extreme dehydration, hallucinations—you name it.”
Gabrielle pulled blue liquid in through the needle and held it up in front of her eyes. JB stared at it, wondering exactly what it was even though it obviously contained at least a little goop. “What’s that?”
Gabrielle smiled. “It’s like a super antibiotic. It’s got illegal stuff in it, but it will save her life. She must have been in there for a few hours like this. She has to be one tough bitch.”
The two walked over, and JB shook his head. “She has state-of-the-art armor but no ID. Crazy.”
Gabrielle bent down next to her and pushed the needle into the vein in her arm. Almost immediately her breathing began to slow, and her body relaxed. JB scooped her up in his arms. “Where are we taking her?”
Gabrielle looked at her for a moment and sighed. “To our place. I have a feeling it wouldn’t be good to take her to the hospital. I don’t know who she is, and it’s obvious she wants it that way.”
JB shook his head, sitting back. “It was amazing that she survived that. We kept her hydrated, cool, and checked on her all night. By about six in the morning, her fever had broken, and the marks were disappearing off her arms. She wasn’t awake, but she was out of the jungle, and she was talking; mumbling about what she’d done in there. Not enough to tell us who she was, but enough to piece together part of her story, at least. Eventually, Gabrielle and I ran out to get some breakfast, and by the time we got back, she was gone.”
Holly frowned. “She didn’t even say thank you for saving her life?”