by Michael Todd
Holly inclined her head as she considered that. “With the way things constantly change out there, I have to be honest, I wouldn’t be shocked if we did roll up on something like that. That shit the guys said about that monster? Seriously, that thing is nuts. It had a body like a T-rex, visual acuity like a hawk, and movement like a gorilla. And crazy strength. The fucker knocked whole trees down.”
Amanda’s gaze focused on nothing in particular and she said thoughtfully, “It makes me glad I’m in here and not out there. That fucking place was crazy enough back then but it gets crazier by the day.”
“You got that right. Anyway, I gotta get upstairs and work on my research.”
The other woman gestured the suit. “And I gotta get to work on this bad boy—if I can.”
Holly laughed and headed upstairs and into the apartment. She put her food in the fridge and pulled on a pair of gloves before she returned to her experiments. Focused now, she studied the first one through the microscope for a few minutes. Excitement coursed through her and she jerked her head up quickly. “Holy shit, I might actually have had a breakthrough.”
Chapter Four
Hickok stood in a small hangar to the side of the military airport. She still wore her red wig but had trapped the hair beneath a Marine cover and changed into a military uniform to reach the arranged location. A small jet stood in front of her with a cockpit up front and a small area in the back. She could see the pilot and he gave her a nod as the door to the aircraft opened. A man in a black suit stood at the top of the steps. Wordlessly, he held a duffel out to her as she hurried aboard.
“Thanks.” She took the bag and stepped inside.
The man disembarked quickly and wheeled the steps away from the door. Billie opened the duffel and removed a special suit loose enough to fit over her clothing. She pulled it on, zipped it up the front, and grinned. This was a new look for her—much like an airman on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Another small pack contained her parachute, much smaller than a commercial one.
She strapped it around her stomach and climbed into the cockpit. As she slid into the seat next to the pilot, she put her hand out. She’d always found it best to be friendly with the person who flew her places. “Billie.”
He shook her hand and handed her an oxygen mask. She strapped it on and he spoke casually as he steered the plane through the hangar doors. “Have you ever flown in one of these before?”
Billie narrowed her eyes and glanced at the console. “It looks different than anything I’ve traveled in before, but I’ve been in almost every kind of plane out there.”
The pilot chuckled as they increased speed. “Well, this is an R&D jet. SCRAMjet technology.”
She thought about it for a second. “I thought NASA was still working on that kind of stuff.”
“Yeah, but the Australians got the pickup on this technology in 2002 when they successfully tested the first MACH-Seven flight. They’ve breezed through it ever since. In fact, they gave us this beauty. It’s able to get you to Australia in about two hours and slow down enough to allow you to ʼchute out without me having to eject you through the top.”
Billie raised her eyebrows. “Well, yeah. That’s way better than having my ass hoofed out at high speed. Extend my thanks.”
The pilot laughed. “You’d better hold on. The pressure will kick your butt.”
She clutched the sides of her seat as the jet took off and accelerated before she could even turn her head to look out. Her eyes widened as the force of takeoff shoved her back into the seat. The plane rocketed forward at such speed, she couldn’t see much of anything around her. After about thirty minutes, she acclimated to the feeling, but conversation was difficult.
When they reached Australian airspace, the plane slowed and Billie was able to raise her head from the back of the chair. The pilot drew in a deep breath and unsnapped his oxygen mask. “Are you still alive over there?”
She blinked wildly. “Yeah, but I think you left my fucking intestines back on the runway.”
They both laughed and they cruised toward Sydney and talked casually about the different places they had flown to. She looked out the plane and down at the countryside below. The pilot slowed a little more and flashed her a questioning look. “Are you ready for this?”
Hickok rolled her eyes as she removed her seatbelt. “How can anybody be ready to fling yourself out of a perfectly serviceable plane and hope to hell the latest damn technology built by the cheapest provider actually works?”
He chuckled and patted her on the shoulder as she scrambled back to the cabin. “You are still worth more to them alive. They wouldn’t do that to you until they had perfected the robots to take your place—well, androids, anyway. From what I hear, they are pretty far off from that.”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad one. It makes retirement a little difficult.”
The pilot grinned. “Wild Bill doesn’t retire. Wild Bill lives forever, doing business for the man.”
Billie chuckled awkwardly, tightened the straps of her chute, and confirmed that her special suit worked correctly. She grabbed the helmet from her bag and slipped it on, then attached the oxygen mask over her face. The visor lowered and the screen came on to display her altitude and temperature information.
The words of the pilot still lingered in her head, though. It made her think about being expendable all over again. How was she not supposed to feel that way? If she died, they would deny any knowledge of who she was. That thought left her more than a little unsettled, especially since she never used to feel that way. For some reason, all the ghost shit had really started to bother her lately. She knew part of it had to do with Holly becoming a friend and seeing what she had with the people of FUBAR. It was the first real relationship she’d had with anyone outside of Marcus since she was a kid.
She shook her head impatiently and forced her mind to the task at hand. The door to the craft slid open easily and she held on to the side of the yawning aperture as the wind whipped in and out of the plane. “Maybe this is what the Grinch went through when his heart grew three sizes that day.”
With that thought, she leapt from the plane. The wind buffeted hard and whistled sharply in her ears. She held her arms out to the side to maintain wind resistance as she fell until she cleared the clouds and the beauty of Sydney appeared below her. Lush greenery softened the hard edges of buildings and blue water splashed up on the shores. The Opera House grew larger and larger as she descended, and cars lined the Harbor Bridge.
Billie checked her altitude meter as a beep sounded in her ear, followed by the artificial voice. “Deploy chute. Attention. Deploy chute.”
She tugged on the string, but nothing happened. A second, harder yank was equally futile. “Motherfuckers. They can’t even get the fucking chute right.” She sighed dramatically.
With another muttered expletive, she reached around and slapped the pack, then pulled hard on the cord. The parachute finally opened and jerked her backward. She held the shoulder straps until it leveled out and then took hold of the controls. Hickok steered herself away from the main part of the city and to a stretch of open field. She maneuvered back and forth, still thoroughly pissed. “I can’t count on these assholes to get anything right. How do they fucking get up and breathe every day?”
She drifted steadily to the ground and landed on her feet. Working quickly, she clicked the belt around her waist, grabbed the ropes, and hauled the chute in toward her. She balled it up and set it down quickly with a hasty, furtive look around to make sure that no one had seen her. It took seconds to unzip her suit and remove it and her headgear before she pressed the button on the side of her helmet. A keypad opened and she entered her code before she set it down on her clothes.
The helmet sizzled and the material around it instantly disintegrated without smoke while she retrieved the matches from her pocket. She lit one and flicked it into the pile at her feet. The clothes ignited instantly
but once again, there was no smoke. She replaced the matches and folded her arms. “Well, that’s some fucking cool shit.”
She watched as the clothes turned to ash, then put her boot over them and swished the ashes around until they couldn’t be noticed in the tall grass. Satisfied that she’d left no trace, she retrieved her watch and put it on her wrist before she left the scene.
“Sometimes, I think disappearing is my best fucking option,” she muttered before she paused and looked at the sky.
With a sigh and an irritated shake of her head, she turned and walked the other way. “That was north, dumbass.”
Holly glanced at her experiment on the counter while she put the rest of her tools away. She was exhausted, but at the same time, muted excitement rippled through her veins. She was almost certain she had identified the cure, but now that she had it, worry spread through her like fire. “Great. This shit could be like Pet Sematary. The person comes back to life only to be an evil cat—fuck no, JB would definitely be something way more hard-core.”
She finally forced herself away from the counter and to her desk where she sat and tapped her fingers on the top. Now that she had a viable cure, she needed to figure out how to actually test it properly. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of any good way to do it in that moment. It wasn’t like she could simply hand it over to a human and hope for the best. And as far as she knew, animal subjects were hard to come by out there where any research was focused on the Zoo creatures themselves.
After a fruitless few moments of wrestling with what seemed insurmountable, she pursed her lips and grabbed her bag. Maybe it would help to talk to Amanda. The woman had been in the Zoo for a long time, and Holly knew she had some contacts that might be useful. She only hoped she could trust her. What she had possibly discovered was bigger than the both of them and that kind of thing could change a person really fast—and usually into something worse than any Pet Sematarynightmare monster.
She closed her door, headed down the steps, and paused in the doorway to the shop. Amanda had her back to Holly and talked on the phone.
Amanda sighed. “Salinger, you were my boss for years. Do you really think I’d screw you over? Whether I work for Heavy Metal anymore or not, I am loyal to the core. You know this shit.”
The armorer stood quietly for a minute and listened to him on the other end. Holly couldn’t hear what he was saying but she knew Amanda had work to do. The woman finally cleared her throat and nodded her head. “For sure. I’ll come to your location to work on a couple of advanced suits. I know you can’t let them out of your headquarters and to be honest, I don’t have the type of tools here to handle them anyway. I need to use your workshop.”
She turned and noticed the other woman. “Hey, boss, I’ll see you in a bit. I have a visitor.”
“Hey, chica. What’s up?” she asked as hung up the phone and smiled.
Holly walked inside with her palms pressed together. “I hoped you had a minute to talk.”
Amanda nodded and gestured cheerfully. “Sure, come on in. Lock the shop door.”
Grateful that her friend was able to make time, Holly shut the door and turned the heavy deadbolt. “So, you know what I’ve been working on, I guess. But with the aid of some equipment and new experiments I ran, I am reasonably sure I have found the cure for JB. The problem is, I can’t simply hand it over to him. I have to test it beforehand—or at least figure out if I am one hundred percent sure that this is what he needs. I don’t want to kill him with the cure.”
The armorer eyed her for a moment, her lips puckered. Finally, she nodded, took a deep breath, and snatched her bag up. “I think you need to come with me and talk to a friend.”
Holly raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms across her chest. “Not like that isn’t ominous or anything. You know how secret it is and now, you want me to talk to someone else about it? What kind of friend are you talking about here?”
Amanda laughed and placed her bag on her shoulder. “He’s mostly harmless. Well, harmless if you don’t try to have a sex Olympics. Then you might walk wrong if you swing that way.”
She giggled despite her nagging concerns. “Promiscuous?”
Her companion shook her head. “No. If you believe a guy can’t outfuck a girl. I’ve never been a trisexual, so I’m not into that shit.”
Holly stared and her mouth gaped a little. “He believes in the golden penis?”
Amanda guffawed. “Salinger? Hell, no. He’s never hit on me, and the one time he did stare was partly because he thought he was looking for a guy. Then he finds this sweet sweaty body on parade in spandex. I can’t really blame him for his genital override given that he fixed it a few moments later.”
She smirked and shook her head at the other woman. “So, how old is Salinger Jacobs? I’ve heard about him but not very much. Only the story about how he got started. You know, before Heavy Metal. I’ve also learned enough to know that the group is large and heavily funded.”
The armorer smiled and looked off into the distance as if she were reminiscing. “The funding situation is because of one of their first partners, Courtney. But the three of them—including Madigan Kennedy—are all damned smart, damned lucky, and truly wonderful people. They aren’t your typical mercs with a hard outer shell and no soul. Once you get to know them, you can tell they actually give a shit about their people.”
Holly leaned against the table. “You obviously have a really good relationship with them. Why aren’t you still with them?” She looked around the shop. “I mean, this is great, but it seems logical that you would have stayed there with your skills.”
Amanda winked at her as they made their way to the door. “I had my eye on a blonde piece of ass so I moved over here to be closer. But who says I don’t still work for them?”
That seemed inarguable, so she simply followed Amanda out and waited while she locked the shop. They headed down the street to where Amanda’s ancient Jeep was parked. She could tell almost immediately that there was more to that story than the woman had revealed. Holly loved a good story—it was how she got into everything she was in—but this one seemed deeper than a good bar story. Still, she knew when to ask questions and when to roll and now wasn’t the time to push.
Once they were both in the vehicle, Holly pulled her hair back in a ponytail. She dropped the conversation and knew that Amanda could tell she did so on purpose. She still couldn’t quite figure the armorer out, but whatever it was, she couldn’t imagine that it was anything bad—at least not between her and Heavy Metal. At least she hoped that was the case, because she now headed to their lair with no idea at all what to expect.
Where the fuck are you, Billie? I shouldn’t have to do this fucking stuff on my own. It was your idea, after all.
Chapter Five
Hickok groaned as she pushed through the back door of the news station. Everyone else was out front, trapped there by the loud, insistent blare of the smoke alarm. It was the quickest way she knew to get everyone out of the station so she could sneak in to figure out where this guy had gone. There hadn’t been a whole lot of information on him inside, so she put a tracker in with her support to hunt down his last known address.
Marcus sighed. “I see I have to do everything for you now.”
She rolled her eyes. “Just put the ID number in. It was the only thing I could find when I accessed the computers. Apparently, whoever this idiot works for, they didn’t tell him not to use the company server to log in.”
He chuckled. “Those are things that make your job possible, though. You wouldn’t want to be given a mission to track someone like you down, would you?”
Billie scoffed as she walked down the street. “I would never find them because I’m pretty much the ultimate fucking ghost agent.”
“Only if they had a wizard behind the comms like me. And we both know there is no one else like me—wait. I have it. It seems he’s holed up in a small office building—and he’s there alone—about a block fr
om where you are. Building number 457. You’ll want to check for traps, though.”
“Duh. What, do you think I’m an amateur or something?” she snarked and he laughed.
She clicked the comm off before he could answer and picked up her pace along the street in what looked rather like a blue-collar area of Sydney. When she reached her destination, she crossed to the other side of the road and ducked into an alley that ran alongside the target building. She studied the residence and scratched her head. It wasn’t at all what she had expected and she wondered if she had done something wrong. No real spy would hide out in a shack like that one. It screamed hideout. Then again, she wasn’t even sure who this dude really was.
Billie pulled her ball cap down and shoved her hands in her pockets as she used her tech glasses to scan the area for any traps. There was no sign of any, so she proceeded into the shadows. She approached one of the windows on the side of the building and peeked inside. It revealed the main hallway where a camera was mounted on the wall facing the front door. Several tripwires were visible, and she identified one set of laser alarms at the foot of the steps. Fucking idiot. Does he honestly think that shit will cut it? They were anything but first-rate traps. It made her wonder if she had missed the good spy or if the man simply wasn’t A-level after all.
From the shoddy details she could see, Hickok guessed the latter, which made her job that much simpler.
She lingered in the alley and studied the rest of the bottom floor of the premises through the windows. Common sense told her she had to let the sun go down because this was definitely not something she could take care of in the daylight. Too many people were out and about in Sydney for her to be covert enough. She used the wait to confirm that there were no secret traps and that what she could see was what she had to work against. For her, though, this was a walk in the park.