by Michael Todd
“That sounds boring,” Sal grumbled.
“It would be,” Kennedy said with a nod. “Which is why I’ve avoided retirement. They prefer people with connections in the military since most of the money that goes into the security companies is from government contracts. They want their numbers of ex-military employees up to make it look good, but they also want those employees to help bring in the big bucks from the government however they can.”
“A lot of ass-kissing. Like you’d have to go to cocktail parties and make speeches for one politician or make another’s ego and campaign funds grow three sizes in one night. I don’t think I’d be able to do that. Certainly not well, anyway. I’m smart, but I suck at keeping my sarcasm in check.”
Kennedy smirked and nodded. “I think you’re right. And I think I’d be the same. That’s why I took this gig, you know. I needed a way to make some serious money while still in the service, so I don’t have to bow and scrape for a decent wage once I get out.”
Sal shook his head. “Why don’t you stay in the military? Get some promotions, become the kind of person the guys have to bow and scrape to?”
“You have to be more political than I tend to be to get a job like that.” Kennedy scratched at her thigh again. “Otherwise, NCO is as high on the ladder as I’ll get. Military pensions are going down the shitter, so I want mine out beforehand.”
Sal nodded, but he didn’t have anything to add. For all his genius, he didn’t know much about the problems she talked about. Military pensions and politicizing military positions seemed a foreign concept to him. He didn’t want to seem stupid by presenting his opinions on something that he knew nothing about.
He might as well work on something he did know about. Well, know more about, anyway. He still floundered around like the rest of them when it came to the mysteries of the Zoo.
“Well, I’ll get back to work.” He pushed to his feet and patted Kennedy lightly on the shoulder. “I hope you feel better.”
Cortez and Addams crouched at the edge of the clearing beside a massive footprint that led in Lynch’s direction. Sal wasn’t sure if the man had been able to get away, but the jungle had definitely quieted and the feeling of tension was gone. The animals hadn’t returned to watch them, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing. It could mean they were off hunting Lynch, or perhaps they’d simply lost interest in the humans.
Either way, Sal assumed it was advisable to complete their task before the animals returned. It was advisable to be well on the way back to the Jeeps before then. He knelt beside the plants at the center of the clearing and looked at the clear sky above him. The sun wasn’t visible from that vantage point, but the fact that the sky was still a pristine blue indicated that they were at least a few hours away from sunset. His HUD told him the same thing, so he set to work.
They’d collected most of the flowers already, but Lynch had taken everything. He needed to search deep within the bushes to find more flowers and worked with extra care not to damage the plants themselves. There was no telling whether the pheromones would be released if he did more than simply pick the easily accessible blooms, even though he didn’t actually remove the entire plant. While there was no information in the database for that scenario, there was also no sense in being reckless.
He found a smaller cluster of the flowers, clipped them cautiously, and slipped them into the bags. He worked slowly to collect the rest of the flowers from the plants until no more mature blooms remained. There weren’t that many, but he didn’t want to pick the young blossoms. He was fairly sure that they had little real value.
Sal sighed and moved from the plants to sit beside his personal experiment. A few of the flowers had been damaged in the fight. He’d picked those for himself and ran them through a couple of tests to isolate the healing factors. All he’d done thus far was to simply take the goop and dilute it. He wanted to identify the source, something that he could actually act on without fear of the side effects of untested medication.
Kennedy had said that she didn’t mind being a guinea pig to test the effects of the goop, but even so, he preferred to reduce the risk as much as possible. He wasn’t a qualified doctor so didn’t have the limitations of the medical oath, but he still believed it was his duty to ensure that Kennedy didn’t die from his experiment. Otherwise, how was he any different from Lynch?
He inspected the results. It wasn’t much, he supposed, but it was something. He’d mixed the juice pressed from the ruined petals with a light dehydrator. He didn’t want to alter the stuff chemically, only isolate the goop. With the plant’s water gone, it would be easier to identify the healing factor in what he gave Kennedy.
There it was. The goop was thicker now that the water had evaporated. A few other minerals were revealed in solid form, but it seemed the goop worked like the Pita plants did with the rest of the foliage in the jungle. It isolated itself. None of the minerals mixed with it. Sal peered at it through the microscope in his HUD which enabled him to see the mineral composition of the goop. It was only a droplet, but it told him that what he’d given Kennedy before had been heavily diluted even though it came directly from the plant.
This was the first time Sal had seen the actual goop itself. It glowed in the shadowed light but it was a clear radiance, and nothing else that might be responsible swirled in the liquid. The fluid itself gave off the luminescence.
Sal cleaned the dish to remove possible impurities and mixed the saline solution in slowly. The pure goop didn’t mix easily. The moment that he stopped stirring, it sank to the bottom of the dish.
Sal scowled and leaned back, unsure what to do with any of this information. He filled a clean syringe with the mixture and set it aside for later use. Cortez and Addams had abandoned their inspection of the massive creature’s tracks and had gone to talk to Kennedy. Sal still had not come to terms with what they had seen. In the current environment, it was theoretically impossible for any creature that size to survive in their world.
But there was something out there that seemed intent to prove all the laws of physics wrong. Sal knew that as a scientist, he should feel elated by this revelation and actively hunt this beastie down. His true feelings, however, ranged from run far away to kill it with fire.
“Lynch took most of the flowers,” Addams said. “There will be little payoff from this trip, but at this point, I’d say escaping with our lives would be an achievement.”
“I second that,” Cortez grunted. Sal realized that these men were as terrified of the massive creature as he was, but they were better at hiding it and finding viable solutions to their current predicament.
Kennedy sighed and shook her head. “How many of the flowers do we have?”
“Four sets,” Sal interjected. “Barely. Lynch took those that we’d picked, and the fighting ruined a few more. I used those for some testing. I hope nobody minds?”
Cortez shrugged, and Addams shook his head.
“Well, I don’t want to spend the night here,” the sergeant said after a long pause. “If there’s nothing more to collect, I say we head back to the Hammerheads. Collect your shit, and we’ll move in five.”
The other two men jumped into action, clearly eager to leave as soon as possible, but Sal moved closer to Kennedy and offered the solution to her.
“What’s this?” She asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“I isolated the goop from the ruined petals,” he explained. “It should be the most powerful dose I’ve seen so far. I’d like to have it to study when we get back, but if you need it…well, that’s why I’m giving it to you.”
Kennedy smiled and pushed to her feet. “I appreciate it, Jacobs. I’ll keep this baby safe.” She nodded and tucked the syringe into her pocket.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They were on the move again, and a feeling of relief washed over Sal when they left the damned clearing and put some distance between them and it. He couldn’t really deny the evidence of his own eyes, but he could
banish it from the fear center of his brain and store it where it could be more useful—like in the analytical or the trash bin part, assuming people had a place in their brains where they could simply discard what they didn’t want. He’d forgotten too much information for that not to be a possibility.
About five steps in, Sal noticed that they headed in the same direction Lynch had taken. Apparently, the man had a decent sense of direction along with his wild selection of insanities. Or he’d had taken time to check with his HUD first? Sal checked his to be sure that they were on the right route. In this case, right was a little subjective considering that it was the same path that a good few dozen creatures whipped into a pheromone frenzy had used to chase after their probably recently deceased squadmate.
Sal knew that he should probably think happy thoughts about how Lynch had survived his encounter with half the damn jungle and not feel relieved that he was no longer with them. But he refused to feel bad about it. Lynch was an ass who had gotten his own dumb ass killed by making a dumbass decision. Sal hadn’t done much to stop him, but in the end, he doubted that even his best effort would amount to much against a former SAS operative in power armor.
It didn’t seem like anybody else in the squad felt too bad about the man either, so he refused to allow himself to carry that burden alone. He was supposed to be the spoiled asshole of this field trip from hell, after all.
He could tell it was close to sunset because of his HUD, but nothing had changed much. With the heavy leaf cover, it might as well be night already. It was dark enough that they needed to have their night vision on, and even then, their progress in traversing the massive roots was as slow as hell.
Night was closing in and they didn’t want to spend it out there, so they kept moving. Kennedy, without her armor and HUD, had to rely on her squad mates to determine the way through. Despite this, she made good progress and even moved faster than Sal, although he put that down to him carrying more weight. She kept pace with Cortez and Addams too, though, so he could only assume her leg felt better.
He wished he could say the same. His body ached from their previous hike, and the fight hadn’t helped. The only rest hadn’t been restful, considering that he’d spent most of it working to collect flowers and run experiments. He knew that he had to pull his weight to be a part of the squad, but he hoped it wouldn’t be this hard the next time out.
Sal smiled. Despite all the pain and agony, he couldn’t see himself returning to California when they reached the Staging Area. He no longer experienced the dread he’d felt before. That had been replaced by a sense of wonderment. He wasn’t quite enjoying himself, but he felt more at home out there than he had working for Caltech. In the Zoo, he actually made a difference as opposed to the busywork that had filled his days. If they didn’t give him a doctorate after what he had to say about the Zoo, he’d call Kennedy to help him kick the asses of those responsible.
Of course, he would no doubt feel differently the moment bullets flew again, but that was how things worked. Once all the adrenaline had faded from his system, the whole situation didn’t seem too bad when compared to the boring existence he’d had to tolerate before.
“Hold up,” Addams warned quietly and yanked Sal from his thoughts. He hadn’t realized that their team had come to a halt, and he dragged himself to a stop inches before he crashed into Kennedy’s back.
“What gives?” he asked and peeked over her shoulder. All the fears he’d felt back in the clearing surged forward. The jungle seemed too quiet, he realized. Had they stumbled on the massive monster feeding on Lynch’s corpse? Were they next on the menu?
“It looks like a body,” Cortez said as he moved closer.
They shuffled forward, careful to remain alert for approaching beasts. It was hard to make out anything in the deepening darkness. Finally, Sal realized it was a body still in shredded power armor. His grasp tightened on the rifle as he glanced around, half expecting to see hundreds of eyes.
Nothing moved, however. The motion detectors in his helmet didn’t identify any movement near them, so he followed the squad members cautiously. Only one person Sal knew had come this way in armor like that, and unless they’d accidentally crossed paths with the other squad, which he doubted…
It was Lynch, although that was difficult to confirm right away. Even in the murky blackness around them, Sal noticed the blood. Blue and black swirled in it, but most of it was red. He’d gone down fighting, but he’d gone down, and it had been an ugly end. Kennedy shook her head as she knelt beside the body.
“It looks like the critters didn’t bother to eat him.” She spoke softly. “They killed him and moved on like they weren’t interested.”
“What happened to the plant he took?” Cortez asked. Sal couldn’t help the feeling that there was at least a little avarice in the man’s question.
“I see broken plastic plus some of the container’s components, but no plant. It looks like they broke the plant out and took it.”
“What about the flowers Lynch took?” Sal asked as he moved closer to the body. Claw marks raked Lynch’s body where the animals had torn through the plate armor and into his body. But the killing blow, Sal assumed, was one that had shattered his helmet and crushed his skull. There was no sign that the animals had even tried feeding, almost as if they were sufficiently disgusted with him to let him rot.
A small shiver ran down his spine, and he tried to maintain his composure.
“The flowers…are here.” Kennedy lifted nine or so sealant bags. Most were torn and ruined, and the few that were still intact carried bruised flowers. She pocketed them quickly, studied Lynch’s body, and slid her hand beneath his shredded armor.
“What are you doing?” Sal asked.
The sergeant remained silent and let her actions speak for themselves. She fumbled a little and the man’s blood coated her hands, but she was undeterred. He felt a little sick by the time her hand finally withdrew holding a pair of tags connected by a sterling chain.
“His dog tags?” Addams asked. “Why?”
“Because he was a member of my squad,” she replied and tucked the bloody tags into her pocket. “He might have family out there who would rather know for sure that Lynch is dead.”
“I have a question,” Cortez interjected. “We saw the animals eat the dead bodies of the bounty hunters we killed. Why didn’t they try eating him? Why leave his body like this?”
“I’d say they left it here as a message or a warning to those who might try to take the plants,” Sal said quietly and tried to look anywhere but at Lynch. “Or I would if I thought that the animals were capable of that level of cognition. The more likely scenario is that the pheromones that riled them up might suppress the need to feed. But it’s simply a theory.”
Kennedy paused to find Lynch’s gun, which was still intact, and whatever ammo he had left. They set off again and pushed to cover as much distance as they could away from the clearing of death, which was what he called it now in his head.
They hadn’t gone far before they heard another earth-shattering roar. Sal froze at the sound. There wasn’t any mistaking it. It wasn’t something a man forgot—ever. Rather, it was the kind of sound he carried with him to the end of his days, and Sal assumed he’d do exactly that.
They waited, their nerves taut in the silence. Sal realized that something was different this time, but aside from it being a lot farther away, he couldn’t decide why it seemed dissimilar. He looked in the general direction, roughly east, and back at Kennedy, who shouldered Lynch’s rifle and checked her sat phone.
“That wasn’t far away,” she said quietly. “We could head over there without losing too much time. It’s only a slight detour from where we’re headed anyway.”
Sal knew that it came from the east and they were headed southeast. While it was only a little off course, it would take hours to get there and hours to get back on course. That wasn’t the real problem with what she had suggested, though. Cortez beat him to
the first word.
“It’s almost sunset,” he protested. “And it’s difficult to navigate around here as is. I think we should find somewhere to set up camp, spend the night, and move on in daylight.”
Sal nodded in agreement. “I don’t think I have to mention how bad an evolutionary response it is to head toward the roar of the massive monster, right? I mean, it’s not like we’ll go to investigate something harmless. It’s something that could have and probably was involved in killing Lynch. I thought I’d throw it out there.”
Addams looked pensive. “I don’t know. I’d rather be out there hunting it than the other way around. With something that size, it’ll be difficult for it to sneak up on us if we’re on the move. It’ll be a lot easier if we’re hunkered down for the night. Besides, Lynch took all the motion sensors with him, and I didn’t see them around the body. It could be the animals tore them up. The point is, without those, any night we spend out here will be potentially lethal.”
Kennedy nodded and grinned. “Besides, we’re explorers in this little slice of heaven. We should live up to the name and do some exploring, dammit!”
Sal was sold on Addams’ point that they had no security for any camp they might set up. Cortez, though, grinned and seemed persuaded by their leader’s words.
“Let’s do it,” he said and chambered a round in his rifle. “If we run into that big son of a bitch, I think it’s only fitting that we mount its head on a wall.”
Sal shook his head at the comment, but since the whole squad was going, he wouldn’t be outvoted like Lynch had been. He gritted his teeth and eased his grip on his rifle.
“It looks like somebody’s feeling better,” Sal said once they were on their way to the new heading.