by Michael Todd
See? You’re calmer already. Use that big fucking brain for something other than how many ways this mission can go sideways. Stay focused, stay on target, and do what you came here to do. The rest of these motherfuckers all survived multiple trips into the Zoo. Even the scientist you replaced is still alive, although recovering from a non-lethal wound. People walk in and out of this place all the time.
Sal felt calmer. He’d had panic attacks often as a kid. While smarter than everybody around him, it had always come at a price. His brain worked far quicker, and he reached natural conclusions more easily. He tended to overthink, and that made him freeze up on occasion. There were side effects of being a genius. There always were. But he wouldn’t have traded his brain for an athletic build in high school. Hell, his brain was the reason he’d gotten out of it so quickly.
Then again, it would be nice to have both, right?
“Jacobs!” Kennedy snapped as the squad reached deeper cover and slowed considerably. “Pick up your damned pace. We don’t want to get caught in the outskirts when night comes. They come out to do their hunting, and they’re mostly nocturnal.”
Sal nodded and hurried to bring up the rear of the five-man squad. Lynch grinned and patted him on the back, while Cortez and Addams simply gave him an odd look. Sure, it was his first time, but didn’t that mean that he should move the fastest since he was so much more pants-shittingly scared?
“So, where are we supposed to find these Pita flower plants?” Sal asked Lynch once they’d pushed deeper into the jungle.
“Well, they don’t grow on the outskirts for some reason.” He hefted a heavy rifle in the mechanical arm of his suit. “The brains back at the Staging Area seem to think that it has something to do with how much of the goop is underground. It only grows where there’s a lot of it, and there’s much more of that closer to ground zero or the very center of the Zoo. Folk assume that there should be a heavy concentration in that area, but nobody’s been there since the locusts came and fucked the whole experiment up.
“Any teams that try to get there don’t come back, and any aircraft that try to come in low enough to drop boots on the ground are never heard from again either. Eventually, the brass tired of losing good troops and gave up on it. They let folk like us make hikes deeper and deeper into the Zoo until we get there eventually. Although I’d avoid the place, personally. Sure, they pay well, but they don’t care if we die in there. They simply want the pretty flowers.”
Sal nodded. The man droned on, the kind who assumed people wanted to hear what he had to say. But in all fairness, Sal could use the distraction. As the foliage thickened around him and they lost sight of the Hammerheads, it was hard not to think that the vehicles might be the last sight of civilization he would ever have.
Cortez took the lead as Kennedy fell back and moved closer to Sal.
He saw a message notification on his HUD and realized that she’d opened a private line between his suit and hers. He wondered how it would work since he assumed the suits couldn’t be soundproofed.
He looked at the message, selected it, and the channel opened.
“How are you holding up, Jacobs?” she asked, and he heard her voice through what he assumed were speakers inside his helmet. Apparently, the suits—or the helmets, at least—were indeed soundproof. Well, it made sense. There were a lot of tactical applications to that. It would allow members on a closed channel to communicate between themselves in a hostile environment when silence was of the utmost necessity.
He nodded. “It’s…pretty damn amazing,” he said, avoiding the topic of his mental state. He wasn’t lying. The deeper they got into the Zoo, the more fascinated he was with the novelty of the flora. There were times in his field where anything new or challenging seemed impossible to find. In the Zoo, though, everything was either something familiar that had transformed into something amazing, or something entirely new. It was what people like him lived for.
“That doesn’t answer the question, Doc,” she retorted.
Sal rolled his eyes. “Look, how do you think I’m holding up? You know my story and how I got here. I’m sick and tired of explaining it to everyone. I’m here, and I won’t get out until we get some flowers. I’ve come to terms with that.”
Kennedy nodded. “I’m not sure why it happened that way. I don’t agree with it, but while we’re here in the Zoo, you’re on my squad, Jacobs. That means getting you out of here alive is my number one priority. Once we get back, we can talk about whether you want to go home or if you want to and make money here. That’ll be your decision. But as of right now, in this jungle, I need your mind to be on the here and now. Can you do that for me?”
Sal sighed. Hadn’t he dreamed about an opportunity like this his entire life? Sure, why not? At the end of it, he might even be able to get someone to approve his dissertation and the piece of paper that actually made him a doctor. There had to be something there that would help him accomplish that goal.
But that wasn’t in the now. She needed him to keep his mind on the various dangers and opportunities right there. Not in the future. Not back home. Not in some lab. To stay alive, his mind needed to be in the Kudzu.
He finally nodded. “Yeah, I’m here. You can count on me, Kennedy.”
She chuckled. “Hey, let’s not move too fast, okay? I don’t trust you to get the job done until I know you can get the job done. But for now, it’s enough to know that you’ll give it your best effort.”
“You sound like my gym teacher.”
She made a face and studied him with a grin. “You don’t look like you’ve seen the inside of too many gyms.”
Fair enough, though it stung to hear it. “You’d be surprised. I take care of the temple that is my body.”
Kennedy laughed openly. “Okay, hold your horses there, Apollo. Let’s see you last the rest of the day, okay, rookie?”
“Will do, sir,” Sal said and gave a mock salute.
“That’s Sergeant,” Kennedy said good-naturedly. “Unlike a bunch of lazy fucks sitting in air-conditioned offices, I actually work for a living.”
Chapter Seven
Sal had always felt that something held him back. Something that he never really thought about but which was still a part of his whole personality. He didn’t particularly condone it, but he’d never considered it a real flaw.
He was lazy.
Not in the traditional sense, but many things in life required effort. Most of the time, he simply avoided them. He could kiss ass with the best of them, but he couldn’t be bothered. Sure, he could be a personal assistant to the brightest minds in the field. He could be the best grad assistant who ever lived.
But he simply couldn’t be bothered.
And for the first time in his life, Sal felt like he had messed up.
As he looked around during his first walk through the Zoo, he realized that half-assing his way through life had been a colossal mistake. What he saw was people who were not only giants and geniuses in their respective fields but also diligent in their work. In short, they could be bothered to make a difference in the world, even if it meant having to dig in and do some dirty work.
Sure, it had all backfired spectacularly, but that really wasn’t their fault. For all their genius, nobody could have predicted that the elements would have conspired against them so thoroughly.
Even so, Sal wondered if he couldn’t have helped. If he had buckled down and done his work with due diligence instead of simply relying on his brains, he could have perhaps prevented this by his involvement in the project.
Well, that was a little arrogant, he realized. Even he wasn’t powerful enough to keep a swarm of locusts from descending on the goop’s ground zero and fucking everything sideways.
Still, he couldn’t help but see the potential. There were hundreds of new varieties of plants. As they moved in deeper, he caught glimpses of the animals too. They seemed afraid of the squad and fled or hid out of sight before Sal’s HUD could properly lock onto them.
Well, who wouldn’t be afraid of a bunch of two-legged beasts in half-metal, half-rubber suits?
Sal’s HUD captured the abnormal plants, all with the same vibrancy. The reds were redder, the browns were darker, and all looked exceptionally healthy. Almost too healthy like mammals that had been injected with steroids. It looked natural but almost too natural. This goop stuff must be some sort of plant steroid.
Except it wasn’t, he reasoned. It consumed things and spat them out changed and altered. Some of the growth looked like they had once been regular earth plants which had gone through some severe alterations. Others didn’t look like they were from Earth at all. They could have been at some point, but they were too heavily altered to recognize.
Scientific names ranging from the regular Greco-Latin to absurd attempts to shoehorn some scientist’s name in flickered across the HUD of his helmet as he made mental notes on each one. It wasn’t easy to do since he also had to keep up with the hectic pace Kennedy set for the squad. He still managed to capture a few new pictures, though.
When they paused for a quick breather and a drink of water after moving for three straight hours, Kennedy came to talk to him.
“All good, Jacobs?” she asked and kept the comms open this time.
“All good, Sergeant,” Sal responded and pulled the visor of his helmet up to breathe in the fresh air. “I noticed the average sizes of the plants that we’ve come across. The last data collection was from a week ago, but already, they are up by about eleven percent. I know we have to account for changes in location and alterations caused by the goop, but this is already off the scale observed by the scientists in the controlled tests.”
She shrugged. “Is that important?”
“I mean…” He pulled his visor down to look at the data again “It’s worth noting, at least. I’ll keep track of it during the rest of our trip, but if the plants grow this much faster, it might mean that the goop will expand faster too.”
Kennedy narrowed her eyes. “So what are you saying?”
“The wall under construction is supposed to keep the goop from acquiring any more significant biomasses for conversion,” Sal responded and lifted his visor again to wipe a bead of sweat from his forehead. “But it might not seal the Zoo off in time.”
“That is a pretty significant problem, yeah.”
“Agreed,” Sal responded. “We’ll need more data to be certain, but—”
“Keep an eye out anyway,” Kennedy finished for him and drank a little water. She offered her canteen to him, but Sal shook his head as he’d already pulled his visor down to look for more specimens.
Turning over a new leaf would be a bitch, but he had enough to keep him occupied for the transition period.
“Ya know,” Lynch said as he studied the tree Sal was busy measuring, “I’m sure that the goop is causing all this. It makes all the plants bigger and badder. It’s doing the same to the animals, but the bigger ones stick close to ground zero.”
Sal stopped and looked at him, a little perplexed. “Why would they do that? If they were larger, they would require more food. That would require them to move around a lot more, right?”
“Yer guess is as good as mine, mate.” Lynch shrugged and tapped lightly at the tree with the steel arm of his suit. “Though it makes sense that if more of the creatures are nearer to ground zero, the predators will stick to the center. That means the herbivores and prey will have to come and go.”
“With the larger predators holding closer—” Sal flipped quickly through the database for the various predator animals. “We have no frame of reference for any of this. If it is based on some sort of alien life form, it could mean that the growth is simply a sign of the goop, whatever it is, adapting to our climate. There’s no reason to believe that it originated on a planet with carbon-based life-forms. This could only be the start. Once it has more biomass to appropriate, we could see another burst of growth that we might not be able to recover from.”
“And yet it has flowers that give us youth juice,” Lynch said almost as a protest. “How does that add up?”
“It’s not relevant,” Sal replied with a scowl. “The oil acquired by squeezing the Pita flowers is a heavily condensed version of the goop that has gone through significant chemical alterations. The resulting get-well juice could simply be a result of it adapting to our planet.”
“If it’s an accident, how come all the animals go berserk when we try to pluck the Pitas?”
“A defense mechanism stored in its DNA?” Sal shrugged. “I’d say that it’s probably a result of the plant’s evolution. There are plants around the world that release pheromones when they’re attacked by ants to attract bugs and animals that eat the ants. It could be stored somewhere in the DNA, and the goop merely draws that part out.”
Lynch chuckled. “I guess we’ll have to call those aliens on their mobiles and ask them about it.”
“We might want to ask them what was up with launching a missile at us in the first place. But yeah, that’s one of the questions we’ll want to ask.” Sal grinned.
“All right, boys,” Kennedy called. She lowered her visor and lifted her rifle. “Enough shooting the breeze. We need to move.”
“Ya know,” Lynch said loudly enough for Kennedy to hear him, “I have me a goop launcher that gets all sorts of big when the time comes.” He made a gesture toward his groin, and Sal rolled his eyes. “Might be that them aliens based all this stuff on me all along.”
The sergeant, on the other hand, grinned and took the man’s comment as something of a challenge. “I have got to say, Lynch, if your goop-launcher fires blue stuff, you might want to see a doctor about it. It could mean it’s all kinds of broken. Then again, with the new drug-resistant form of VD you got, I wouldn’t be surprised if you shot blue swimmers.”
Cortez and Addams both joined Sal in a laugh at Lynch’s expense. The man looked angry, but he didn’t have a worthy retort, so he snarled something about Kennedy keeping her trap shut. She responded by raising her suit’s metal arm with only one finger extended.
“Let’s move it, ladies,” the sergeant growled. “I won’t ask you again.”
The group grumbled but obeyed their squad leader. Sal noted that one of the trees had moss growing on it that wasn’t on the records. He retrieved a piece and put it in a sealed bag for later study before he jogged after the others.
He caught up with Kennedy, who checked her map to make sure that they were on schedule.
“Hey,” he called to catch her attention.
She nodded. “What’s up, Jacobs? Find a new kind of squirrel that you want us to shoot for you to look at?”
Sal shook his head. “That’s not even remotely funny. No, I simply wondered… I mean, you’re pretty badass. I looked at the records, and you’ve been on almost two dozen missions like this over the past ten months. That’s pretty impressive by anybody’s standards.”
“Do you have a point, Jacobs?” she asked. “Or do you think I need a pick-me-up? An ego stroke, if you will.”
“My point,” Sal continued, “is that you don’t have to take shit like that from Lynch. I don’t know the guy well. Or you, for that matter. But if you’re his superior, why do you let him talk to you like that?”
She shrugged. “They know that when it matters, we all have each other’s backs. Shooting the breeze isn’t serious, and since we’ve all been on many missions, it’s okay to give each other a hard time now and then. It keeps morale in check, and it’s really not worth it to haul out my twelve inches to embarrass the boys in a dick-measuring contest, if you know what I’m saying.”
Sal narrowed his eyes and his gaze trailed down to the area she’d mentioned. “In this day and age, I really can’t be sure if you’re speaking metaphorically or not. Are you—”
“None of your business, Jacobs,” she responded easily and patted him on the shoulder with her unarmored hand.
“Heads up,” Addams called and indicated movement in
the bushes to their left with his hand. Kennedy moved into action, raised her weapon, and aimed it at the movement. Cortez and Lynch immediately stopped whatever they bickered about and mirrored her. Sal, for his part, had no idea what to do, so he remained behind the quartet of space-marine types. If there were any trouble, he’d be more than happy to let them handle it.
“Motion sensors say it’s not that big,” Cortex growled through the comms.
“It could still be one of those snake things with acid in their fangs,” Kennedy barked. “Stay frosty.”
The closer they came, the more movement there was until it emerged slowly from the cover of the foliage and into the light. Rifles raised and safeties were lifted.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Sal called and slipped in front of them before they could shoot. The creature was small. From the frailty of its six legs, he guessed it was only a couple of days old. It looked—apart from the six legs, of course—like a gazelle. There were other differences too. The fur was a greenish blue that almost disappeared into the background of the jungle with light spots of white on its back. There were no antlers, but he could see a pair of small fangs jutting from under its upper lip.
“It’s got fangs,” Lynch muttered and tried to find a shot around Sal.
“There are gazelle with fangs in the world too,” Sal snapped. “Don’t fucking shoot.”
“Stand down, Lynch,” Kennedy finally ordered. “Let the specialist do his thing.”
“Bloody bullshit,” the man growled, but he followed her orders. Sal had to restrain a sigh of relief as he turned to the small creature.
He moved closer, and it stood its ground and looked curiously at him. The six legs didn’t seem out of place. In fact, it appeared that the whole body had been developed to accommodate them. The hind and front legs were sturdy and powerful, and the middle two were smaller to maintain the creature’s balance as it ran. He looked through the database and found no sign of any creature even remotely similar to this one.