by Michael Todd
Sal nodded. “It was a stupid thing I did back there. I didn’t think it through at all. I mean, I could have fired at them instead or caused some other kind of distraction. I don’t know what I was thinking—” Addams stopped his rambling with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Crazy and stupid, but you saved our bacon, man.” He patted the side of Sal’s helmet. “Maybe think your plans through next time, but you did good.” He looked around, concerned now. “Where’s Kennedy? I thought she’d back you up if this plan of yours went south.”
Kennedy?
“Kennedy?” Sal echoed, and his eyes widened. “Oh, shit. Kennedy was shot in the leg and needs some medical attention. She said you’d know what to do.”
Addams nodded. “Show me where she is.”
“I’m over here, assholes!” she called irritably
“Right,” Sal said. “She’s over there.”
They jogged to where he had left her. He still felt bad about it, but what should he have done? Sit and hold her hand while her squad was decimated? He knew he’d made the right choice—the better choice, anyway—and she did too. He also knew that she would give him a hard time about it.
When they reached her, she looked pale. She’d removed her helmet and still pressed the gauze to her thigh. The blood had completely soaked through and seeped into her gloves.
Sal didn’t need a doctor to know her wound was serious. He knelt beside her but left enough room for Addams to examine her leg. The soldier peeled the armor away and studied the gunshot, his head tilted with concentration. Wordlessly, he drew another long strip of gauze from his own kit. He removed the first, blood-saturated piece and inspected the wound hastily before he pressed the fresh dressing to it.
“Jacobs,” he said. “I need you to keep pressure there for me.”
Sal nodded. He’d joked about knowing nothing about first aid, even though it was completely true, but he still wanted to do whatever he could to help. His courage to stand up against armed thugs had gone, but it had apparently drained him of his usual aversion to blood. He maintained the pressure, even when he felt the warm blood soak through.
Kennedy growled softly in pain but Addams persisted. He shone a flashlight into her eyes to see the pupil reaction and checked the pulse on her neck.
“Well, it’s your classic good news, bad news, situation,” he said finally in a tone doctors used when discussing a potentially desperate situation. “It looks like the bullet missed the artery in your thigh.”
“How do you know?” Kennedy asked. “There’s a lot of blood.”
Addams nodded. “That’s because the thigh muscles have the highest blood turnover of any muscle in the body. If it had so much as nicked the artery, you would have been unconscious by now.”
“Is the bullet still in there?” she asked.
Addams nodded. “No. I can see the exit wound.”
“I will need to close the wound for now, though.” Addams retrieved a needle and thread from his pouch. He lifted the gauze Sal had pressed into the wound and used another to wipe the blood. Thankfully, it seemed that the bleeding had slowed. The gunner wiped a sponge that smelled like alcohol over the wound a few times, making sure there wasn’t any foreign matter in the wound. He handed the dirty sponge to Sal.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Hold it,” Addams said, his voice surprisingly cool as he stitched the wound. Sal closed his eyes and looked away.
It took less time than he’d thought before the medic spoke again.
“Jacobs, I need you to reach into this pouch here for a pair of scissors.”
Sal nodded and forced his eyes open. Telling himself to be calm, he followed the instructions.
“Now cut here.” Addams indicated where the thread emerged from Kennedy’s skin. Sal did as he was told and resisted the gag reflex that had come back with a vengeance.
The gunner nodded and wiped the wound with antiseptic. “Thanks for your help,” he said, his voice even and calm.
“Give me my gun back before you hurt yourself,” Kennedy snapped. Sal’s eyebrows raised. He still held the weapon in his left hand with the flowers.
“I’m afraid I may have bruised these petals, Sarge,” Sal said in a voice that sounded oddly calm and removed.
“Don’t worry about it.” Kennedy snatched her weapon from Sal’s fingers. “We have a whole clump of these plants to harvest. We’ll have enough to go around.” She gave the gun a quick look and glanced away with a broad grin.
“What?” Sal asked as she tucked the pistol back into its holster.
“Well,” she said, “the next time you feel the urge to bluff to distract murderous looters with threats to shoot their payday, you might want to consider taking the safety off, dumbass.”
Addams chuckled and shook his head as he replaced his instruments.
“I—” Sal started, but paused and shook his head.
“You planned to say that’s what you meant to do, right?” Addams asked with a smirk.
“Yep,” Sal said with a nod. “And I realized that there’s no possible way to justify it.”
“Don’t sweat it, Jacobs.” Kennedy leaned against the tree with a small smile. “You did good work today. That was quick thinking back there.”
“I didn’t think it all the way through, though,” he said with a self-directed sneer.
The sergeant nodded. “Well, yeah. Of course.” She chuckled, but then winced as the gunner bandaged her thigh.
Chapter Fifteen
While Addams treated Kennedy, Sal decided he would collect the Pita flowers. Cortez and Lynch both seemed occupied with looting the bodies of the bounty hunters, so no one else had remembered the plants. He found that a little odd, but with the threat taken care of, perhaps they felt they had no need to hurry and could take their time.
Sal didn’t agree. The thought of the Zoo carrion creatures reminded him that they couldn’t be confident that they would be left alone for long. Besides, what they’d collected from the Pita so far had probably already taken a price dive due to bruising, and they wouldn’t be happy if they had to hunt down more plants.
Even if his experiment enabled them to locate them more efficiently, they still had to test it to make sure that this wasn’t a fluke. That was what scientists did when testing something new. No matter how clever or smart they were, or how much they knew the design was correct, they still had to test multiple times, and sometimes, even hand them over to other specialists.
The scientific method was a pain, sometimes.
Did he have to reveal the information once they got back, he wondered? Or could he keep it as his own little secret to make all the members of his squad rich without having to metaphorically dumpster-dive for the precious little flowers?
He had something else that could do that, but he wasn’t sure if he should share it yet.
Sal only collected one set of the flowers before Addams squatted beside him. He hadn’t come to help since he merely watched him work.
“She needs medical attention,” Addams said softly so that the others couldn’t hear. “It’s not a desperate situation yet, but it could be critical if it gets infected.”
Sal nodded and clipped a flower carefully from the stalk. “Will all of us have to head on back? I mean, if she can’t go herself—”
“Then someone has to take her.” Addams completed the sentence for him. “And that would only leave a couple of gunners for one specialist. It’s not ideal. Kennedy told me to take it up with the rest of the squad before we make a decision.”
Sal sighed. It was weird considering how angry he had been that they had yanked him from his crappy life, but there he was, living on the edge. He’d never have believed he’d look at a massive paycheck or deal with life or death situations. It wouldn’t be something he’d choose to do, and if it hadn’t been forced on him, he probably would have turned the job down. But in a way, Kennedy had become the face of the change he saw in himself. He didn’t
want her to leave.
“Yeah, we should take it up with the squad,” Sal said softly and focused his gaze ahead. Something had moved in the bushes in front of him, he was sure of it. “Not now, though, I think we need to move. The smell of blood and the noise will have attracted the attention of the local wildlife.”
Addams scanned the undergrowth quickly. “Are you sure? I think we would have heard something by now.”
“Carrion tend to avoid the predators that did the actual killing,” Sal said softly and sealed the flowers he’d collected. His head jerked as he caught movement out the corner of his eye. Something had definitely stirred.
“Are you sure you’re not a little jumpy, Jacobs?” Addams asked and narrowed his eyes. “That’s a common side effect of the adrenaline in your system after a firefight.”
“I…am not sure,” Sal said after a pause. He leaned in to collect more flowers. He expected animal attacks for another reason, of course. While he’d sealed the plant quickly enough, some of the pheromones had still released. He wasn’t sure how long it would take for the animals to react. He’d believed it would be instant, but the longer it took, the more he thought something bigger was coming for them. All he could do was wait, and that was exhausting. Maybe it had frayed his nerves.
“Hey,” Cortez said from behind him, “how’s Kennedy doing?”
“She’s banged up,” Addams said and stood. “But she’ll live. We may need to get her proper medical attention before too long, though.”
“What do you mean, ‘proper medical attention?’” Lynch asked. Sal focused on his work.
“I mean,” Addams responded and kept his voice low, “that we may have to cut our visit short.”
“Well, that’s not happening,” Lynch growled. “We found a fucking gold mine out here, and you want us to drop it because Kennedy needs kisses to make her boo-boos go away? Nah, send her back, maybe with someone as an escort, and we keep moving. It’s not like they’ll attack someone leaving the Zoo, now is it?”
Sal finally looked up. The three gunners had moved closer for a quieter conversation.
“She still needs help to reach the Staging Area,” Addams said. “And you know how dangerous this job is. Two gunners to one specialist may not be enough.”
“Besides,” Cortez cut in, “how do we decide who goes back and who stays? We’ll split the profits between the folk who stay. She’ll get comp for getting wounded in the line of duty, but the person who escorts her won’t get the same.”
“Send her back by herself,” Lynch suggested. “She’s a big girl. She can do it without us to hold her hand.”
“That won’t happen,” Addams hissed. “She was shot in the leg and can barely walk on her own. Someone has to help her out.”
“Not mah problem,” Lynch said with a shrug. “She got herself wounded, so she gets herself out. Besides, if that means fewer people to split the pot with, I’m all for it. I’m in this business for the money, not the happy brownie points.”
“As you are so very fond of reminding us, Lynch,” Cortez growled.
Sal glanced at the undergrowth when he caught movement again. This time, it didn’t disappear the moment he turned to look at it. A pair of eyes lurked in the darkness of the jungle, and he narrowed his eyes to bring the head into focus.
“Uh, guys?” he said softly, afraid to turn away from the creature that now moved closer.
“She’s our squad leader,” Addams hissed. “We can’t let her die out here on her own.”
“Who will tell?” Lynch said with a shrug. “I won’t, so long as I get paid the right amount.”
“And what if you’re right about her,” Cortez cut in, “and she makes it to the transports on her own? And then she tells folk what we did to her? Don’t you think there’ll be serious repercussions for leaving our squad leader out here to die?”
Lynch looked pensive for a moment. “Maybe we could—”
“No,” Addams growled and pointed his finger at Lynch. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. That will not happen.”
“Guys!” Sal said a little more loudly. The creature took form. He couldn’t tell if camouflage was involved, but it became clearer with each step closer. It wasn’t massive, like the panthers they’d faced the day before, but in his eyes, it looked a lot like a hyena. The spots suggested that, though the pelt was black, and he noted a similar skull and jaw structure. He also remembered a biology professor discussing the animals. They were unique in the animal kingdom.
The females were the dominant sex, which wasn’t that common. They were hunters first and scavengers second, since they were more than capable of felling their own food in packs. A long time ago, people thought that they were hermaphroditic because of the way their genitals were shaped.
Their bite force had measured close to a thousand newtons, and they could chase prey for several miles at up to sixty kilometers per hour. They tended to hunt in packs. The Zoo version was half again as large as the hyenas that he’d studied. Who knew what the hell this one was capable of?
Sal saw that he had finally caught the attention of his bickering squad mates. They evidently also saw the new arrival as Cortez and Lynch both lifted their rifles to aim at it. Addams had left his with Kennedy.
“What the fuck is that?” Lynch asked.
Sal checked the database. It scanned the creature quickly but produced no results.
“I have no idea,” he said and backed slowly from the Pita bushes. “It has the general bone structure of a spotted hyena, also known as the laughing hyena, although it’s a lot bigger than the regular ones.”
“Everything’s bigger in this fucking place,” Cortez hissed.
“Why do they call it the laughing hyena?” Lynch asked.
The creature seemed to understand the question and responded with a series of loud yelps that echoed clearly into the jungle. Sal suddenly realized that he was the closest to the creature and was unarmed. He really wished he’d kept Kennedy’s gun.
A similar yelping sound issued from deeper in the forest in response to the first. Sal tried to count how many individuals there might be in the pack, but they quieted again by the time he’d reached ten. That was already too many.
“That’s why,” Sal whispered and continued his retreat until he reached his companions. “Don’t you think we should bring Kennedy to join us right now?”
Addams nodded and broke from the group. A few seconds later, he appeared and half-dragged, half-carried the sergeant. She had her arm over his shoulder and limped awkwardly. Sal assumed that the suits should have something to help her walk if one of her legs was damaged. If they didn’t, it sounded like a serious design flaw that needed to be addressed. He would bring it up with whoever was in charge of upgrading the suits when they got back. Instead, it seemed like Kennedy had entirely cut off the section that had covered her leg to lessen the dead weight.
When they got back. It was important to maintain that line of thinking.
Kennedy joined their group, and Cortez, Lynch, and Addams—now with his weapon—quickly formed a defensive perimeter around her and Sal. He helped Kennedy stay on her feet, even though he struggled under the weight of her suit.
“What’s the situation, Jacobs?” she asked. The creature had still not stepped fully into the clearing.
“It looks like a spotted hyena,” Sal replied quietly. “They are basically incredibly smart creatures and eat pretty much anything. They hunt as well as scavenge, have a powerful bite and—”
“That’s regular hyenas,” Kennedy said. “What do we know about the creatures here now?”
Sal shrugged. “Not a lot. They’re not in the database. It looks like we’ll have much to add when we get back. One thing we do know is that there are quite a few of them still hidden in the jungle.”
“How many?” she asked.
“Lots,” Cortez answered for Sal.
As the squad retreated cautiously, the beast that had revealed itself vanished into the tree
s again. Five stepped out in its place but closer to the bounty hunters’ bodies. They approached the corpses on four legs rather than six, unlike the predatory animals they’d encountered thus far. The hind legs were short but looked powerful, while the forelimbs were tipped with what looked like very sharp claws. They kept the squad in view while they nosed the bodies, and a couple clawed and bit the armor suits away and tore into the flesh.
“That’s…nasty,” Cortez exclaimed in a strangled tone.
As soon as the first few began to feed, the rest gained enough boldness to venture out. A handful focused on the bodies while the rest, roughly about two dozen, turned their attention to the squad.
“Please tell me that you grabbed some ammo from the dead guys,” Kennedy said as the group continued their slow retreat.
“Not a lot of what they carried was compatible,” Lynch explained. “They all had weapons from Eastern Russia and cheap shit like that.”
“I suggest we keep moving,” Sal said softly. The pack hadn’t circled them yet, but those approaching sidled into a crescent.
“Why aren’t we shooting yet?” Lynch asked as they exited the clearing with the hyenas close behind.
“We’re in the middle of the God damn Zoo, Lynch, that’s why.” Cortez seemed as if he might lose his nerve. “If we shoot, who knows what else will turn up to investigate the commotion?”
A hyena closed and nipped at them. Lynch pulled his rifle trigger twice, punched two holes into the creature, and it dropped. A couple lurched forward, and Cortez shot them.
“We need to move,” Addams growled. He supported Kennedy’s other side with one hand while he fired at the creatures with the other. The pack had grown noticeably bolder.
Chapter Sixteen
The squad assumed a new formation as the hyena-like creatures circled. They needed to adjust as the animals now attacked from different directions.
The creatures hunted like a pack. A couple would rush forward at a time and retreat to be replaced by others. The constant harassment pushed the humans and allowed no opportunity for them to choose their own route. The squad realized almost as one that they were effectively herded slowly deeper and deeper into the forest.