Star Noir

by Paul Bishop

  “Do it,” Zeb said.

  Matt’s screen morphed into reticle as green surroundings rushed past in a Star Trek lunge before the screen went white.

  “Ain’t nothin’ gonna survive that,” he said smugly.

  “What was it?”

  He held his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart. “A little tiny nitro cartridge.”

  Zeb walked over to him. “You’re carrying nitro?”

  The man grinned. “Kidding! I knocked it out of the sky, that’s all.”

  The leader shook his head and walked away. Matt looked around with open palms.

  “What?”

  Shawn pulled out a tin of chewing tobacco. “You’re a stitch. Don’t we have any drone-mounted lasers?”

  “I do,” Toynbee said. “Let me know if you need one. Our boy’s on the move.”

  Screens switched to the view from the heffalump’s back. Toynbee had managed the landing at the highest point except for the head. When the creature raised its head, it blocked the forward view. Each of the drone’s four cameras could swivel through a thirty-degree range. The beast ambled southeast.

  “That’s not good,” Taki said.

  Zeb slid into the lead Hummer. “Let’s go.”

  They’d gone the length of a football field when a massive tree fell in their path, followed by a spiked tail the size of a sewer main. It came within a meter of the first vehicle. They paused, hoping it would go away. The tail swung from side to side, leveled everything in its path, and withdrew into the dense green brush. Still, they waited.

  With a roar, a sofa-sized head thrust from the undergrowth. Spiked jaws protruded at eighty degrees as it swung from side to side and its tiny red eyes flashed. Before it could erupt, the Montana brothers fell out of either side of the Caiman and rolled into kneeling positions with AT-4s.

  “Shawn!”

  “Yo!”

  “Hit it!”

  The monster emerged from the jungle, the size of a brontosaurus, and the Montana brothers fired their rockets. One struck at the base of the neck and the other on the hindquarters. The colossus exploded like a watermelon and hurled green and pink flesh into the sky. A wave of heat caught them in the face.

  Jean was out of the Humvee before Zeb could stop her. She stooped beside the head with its jaws agape, still connected to four meters of neck, and snapped pictures. The segment must have weighed three hundred and sixty kilograms.

  “Can we load this—”

  “No. Get back in the damn vehicle. They heard that blast in Addis Ababa! If Sewell’s in the neighborhood, we’ve got his attention.”

  10

  Bortz replayed the video of the seconds before their drone exploded. He froze the frame.

  “It’s another bleedin’ drone,” he said.

  Sewell, Zulu Ken, and Ndugu looked over his shoulder while Dardeniz and Wee watched from their vehicles.

  “They’re within five klicks. We’re gonna have to take them out before they take us out.”

  Zulu Ken hefted his AK. “I’m for that, captain. I say we do it Zulu style. I will take Ndugu and Wee, and we will approach them from the southwest. You take Dardeniz and Bortz and come up on them from the southeast. We will get them in a crossfire.”

  “The only problem with that,” Sewell said, “is Christ knows what we’ll run into between here and there. If we start shooting, they’ll know where we are.”

  The jungle whumped a warning.

  “Anti-tank rockets,” Bortz said.

  The leader nodded. “They’re shooting at something big. It had better not be our elephant.”

  “Dubious,” Bortz said. “They want to shoot us, not the elephant. It’s probably something else. There’s a shit load of ugly in this jungle. But they’re definitely close enough to hear us if we start shooting.”

  Zulu Ken smiled broadly and his white teeth gleamed like a beacon. “I have a solution to that, captain.”

  He placed his AK on the roof of the Hummer, went to the rear, removed a carbon-fiber case, and opened it. First, he held up a compound bow and a quiver of arrows. With his other hand, he withdrew a six-foot Zulu spear with a stainless-steel tip.

  “I bring plenty of these, you bet. Dardeniz, you know how to shoot an arrow.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Zulu Ken looked around. “Anyone else?”

  Chester Wee retrieved a compound bow. “I can arch.”

  “All right,” Sewell said and pointed at Zulu Ken. “You take Ndugu and Wee. Dardeniz and Bortz, you’re with me.”

  The Afrikaner spread his hands. “So what? We’re gonna abandon the trucks? What about sidearms?”

  “Bring your sidearms, but the point is to catch them by surprise. An arrow is silent. We can eliminate them before they realize what’s happening.”

  “Do you know this Zebulon?” Dardeniz said.

  Sewell’s face darkened. “We’ve met.”

  He had come to terms with the death of his oldest son, who had been experienced and made his own choices. It still hurt but he’d already released him to his own destiny in a way. Not so Ian who was on the threshold of manhood and who he’d encouraged to join the mission. He tried not to think about him but his son’s loss was inextricably linked to his last expedition during which he’d first encountered Zebulon. It wasn’t the man’s fault that the wall creature had shredded Ian but his adversary was emblematic of every rancid authority Sewell had fought all his life. His parents, teachers, and drill instructors all played their part in his resentful rebellion.

  Simply put, he stood to make millions off this deal. He already owned a house in Addis Ababa. He could have anything he wanted and go anywhere there wasn’t a price on his head, which was most of the world. But it all rang hollow since he’d lost his boy. Forget the mother. She’d walked out when she caught him with a Nigerian woman but he’d never liked her anyway. He thought about having another son, but how was he expected to raise a boy given his lifestyle? Where would he find a woman he could love and who would love him? He’d tried dating sites. In his heart, he knew he was meant to live a solitary existence and that the brief time he’d had with his boy had been an anomaly.

  He was only alive when he was hunting.

  “We were on opposite sides in the Gorilla Wars. We had two adult female gorillas penned and ready to ship. Zebulon freed them and killed two men.”

  Zulu Ken leaned against a Hummer. He retrieved a plastic squeeze bottle from the lead Hummer, uncapped it, squeezed green goo into his hands, and spread it over his neck and exposed arms. Quickly, he handed the bottle to Bortz, who did the same.

  “What is it?” Wee said.

  “It’s a lotion made from the kudzu. It masks your scent so we don’t attract any unwanted visitors.”

  He stuck a Peter Stuyvesant in his mouth and lit it with a yellow Bic. “So now it is personal. And now it is a question—if we see Zebulon before you, should we shoot him? Or should we call you?”

  “Shoot him. This is business, not a private feud.”

  Dardeniz cupped a cigarette and lit it with a Bic. “What does he look like?”

  Sewell tried to bring an image up on his laptop but there was obviously no Internet. “It doesn’t matter. If he’s not part of our team, shoot him. From now on, no radio.” He pointed. “We go that way. You go that way. Do we all have the same time? I have eleven-twenty.”

  Everyone checked their watches.

  “Meet me at the tusker at midnight. That should give us more than enough time.”

  “And if we don’t kill them all before then?” Dardeniz said.

  He shrugged. “We’ll all be in the same place and can end it one way or another.”

  Chester Wee tested his bow and drew the arrow to his chin. Carefully, he raised it and released it with a twang. Seconds later, something plummeted into the brush behind the Hummer. He jogged effortlessly into the jungle and returned with a struggling twenty-pound locust which he carried by the arrow through its middle.

&nbs
p; Wee put his foot on it and yanked the arrow through. The bug twitched, hopped about, and buzzed before it spread its wings and took off with an insectoid clatter like Venetian blinds in a strong wind.

  Bortz shuddered. “Those things give me the creeps.”

  “They cook up good,” Zulu Ken said.

  The other man stuck a finger in his mouth and made a gagging noise.

  Wee placed another arrow to the left of the bow, pulled back to his cheek, and tracked like radar. He loosed the arrow and seconds later, a fat locust spiraled toward the ground, humming and clicking, with the arrow through its thorax.

  “People would pay money to hunt locusts with an arrow,” he said. “I’m already thinking of chain restaurants.”

  “Finger-lickin' good,” Bortz said.

  Sewell held up the clacker he wore around his neck. Made of three pieces of wood, it made a distinctive rattle when shaken. “When you hear the rattle, pull back to the vehicles. Let’s go.”

  With Dardeniz and Bortz behind him, he headed into the brush with his machete in hand. A compound bow rested over his shoulder. Each man carried a bow, a quiver, a machete, and a personal sidearm. The marshy ground was riddled with rivulets and alive with insects and small alien hybrids. There were no natural animals within the Biodome. Everything within had grown there and was goop-powered. Scientists had worked for three years to understand how the Biodome summoned DNA over an impossible landscape in order to create earth-alien mutants. Thus far, they’d cataloged creatures based on the Atlas bear, the taito falcon, the gazelle, hyena, jaguar, kangaroo, monitor lizard, locust, Doberman, wolf, rhino, monkey, and now, the elephant.

  Many of these had their counterparts in Africa. But what of the jaguar, kangaroo, monitor lizard, Doberman, and wolf? None of these were indigenous. If the Biodome had claimed their DNA, that had to travel for thousands of miles. How? The wind? It was possible. Every human being breathed the same molecules once breathed by Christopher Columbus.

  But how did snake DNA travel? Could the goop have extrapolated it from a snakeskin belt or boots? There were many theories.

  Then there were the creatures without precedent, like the wall monster and the chimera. It was almost as if there were some grand intelligence guiding the goop. If that were the case, where was it? The Biodome could not exist and yet it did.

  As a youth, Sewell had once entertained a career in astronomy. Instead, he’d enlisted during the Afghan conflict and found his calling. The mysteries of life still intrigued him but he kept his thoughts to himself. He subscribed to numerous scientific magazines including The Smithsonian, National Geographic, and Scientific American, and haunted science sites for the latest updates. Like many mercenaries, Sewell was a cynic and a conservative at heart who despaired over the loss of print media and the prevalence of the electronic teat. He secretly cherished excursions such as these when there was no Internet connection and he was not bombarded with faux outrage.

  He led his team along a meandering stream toward a dome-like phosphorescence, which could indicate an animal or a preponderance of kudzu.

  “Holy shit,” Dardeniz said softly.

  Sewell turned to see him use his machete to slice through a drooping green snake as thick as his thigh. Both halves twisted from the branch and sprayed blood. The man danced away but his boots were already covered.

  “Shit,” he said.

  The leader held a finger to his lips and motioned them forward. They had gone a hundred meters when a dense copse of trees ahead vibrated like wheat in a wind. He held his hand up and they hunkered down behind a spiky green shrub that looked like a succulent.

  An elephant cry reverberated through the jungle.

  The pink nostrils emerged first, followed by the gray trunk flanked by glowing blue tusks.

  11

  Toynbee was on his ninth drone when the image displayed three Hummers nestled among the green like a child’s playthings.

  “Five klicks,” he said and zoomed in for a close-up. There were no people near the vehicles. “They’re on the move on foot and heading this way.”

  “Can you track them with body heat?” Zeb asked.

  The man poked at the yoke and the screens turned crackly blue with dozens of red dots that seemed to dart about like flies. “No. The atmosphere’s playing with my feed. All those red dots you see? Man or beast and no way to tell which. Humans are supposed to show up as white dots, but the system is like Facebook. It changes every other second.”

  Zebulon deployed his men in a semicircle at ninety degrees so they wouldn’t shoot each other. Taki climbed a kind of mangrove like Jackie Chan at nine o’clock, his AR and machete strapped on his back. He disappeared into a tree crotch concealed by riotous growth. The Montana brothers built a duck blind with their machetes at ten. Zeb lay prone and peered through his rifle site between boulders that leaned together at the top. Jean squawked when he told her to wait in the vehicle.

  “I want to shoot a poacher!” She pouted.

  “Sorry. Mercs only.”

  She retreated to the lead Hummer, her hand on the holster of her Beretta nine.

  The gloom softened as the haboob moved on. The sky gradually brightened to an emerald-green. Toynbee and Jean remained behind. The man’s drone work was crucial to their success and each troop had the feed on wrist screens. They used short-range radios. Drone number nine hovered fifteen meters up and display a massive moving object.

  “Is that our heffalump?” Taki whispered into his headset.

  “No,” Toynbee said. “That’s another one.”

  “Ain’t that something,” Matthew Montana drawled softly. “We got us a convoy.”

  “Gahh!” Taki spluttered followed by a flurry of motion visible as shaking fronds. A furred leg the size of a baseball bat fell to the ground, followed by a four-kilogram spider with a yellow-and-black striped body. It picked itself up on seven legs and skittered into the brush.

  “Shit,” Shawn Montana said.

  Sunrise wakened the Biodome. Reptilian birds took flight and the locusts were hungry. Strange cries issued from the forest along with the unmistakable bugle of an adult elephant.

  Zeb spoke softly into his throat mike. “Can you bring up the view from the heffalump?”

  Seconds later, they looked at the jungle from ten feet in the air and the vegetation swooshed past on either side. The gray dome of the creature’s head bobbed occasionally into view. The angle adjusted ninety degrees to look out at the wildly textured green forest that brushed past. It moved to the rear, a view through the tight tunnel left behind by the behemoth’s progress that closed in as they watched.

  To the left side, a black dot skimmed low over the treetops and grew exponentially larger until it almost filled the screen. The heffalump pivoted and lashed out using its trunk like a whip to hurl it to the ground.

  “What was that?” Shawn said.

  “Some kind of bird,” Toynbee said. “I have another drone up. Let’s take a look.”

  The view moved to an aerial point of view and zoomed in on a massive predator-like bird with a hooked beak and a six-meter wingspread that lay on the ground. Statistics appeared onscreen in red. The heffalump’s foot came down and turned the creature into jelly before it scooped it up with its trunk and stuffed it into its mouth. The beast lumbered on and chewed contentedly.

  “That’s new!” Jean exclaimed, her tone exultant.

  “Don’t worry,” Toynbee assured her. “It’s all on the video.”

  “Keep your voices down,” Zeb said. “Toynbee, can you get a visual of the other heffalump?”

  “Working on it.”

  They waited in silence as images of the vegetation flickered across the screen accompanied by red symbols and measurements—weight, wingspan, length, and phylum.

  The screens went blank.

  “Sending number eleven up,” Toynbee remarked calmly.

  Seconds later, the feed went live from a height of thirty meters and scanned the area. Red images ap
peared and vanished as the camera moved to catalog known and unknown animals with a tiny red avatar. The wall creature was a Godzilla. The locusts were too numerous to note individually and were simply indicated by a mass of yellow dots.

  Three white dots appeared and moved in their direction.

  “I’ve got ʼem,” Toynbee said softly. “We have three agents moving our way. I’ll try to sneak in closer.”

  The drone increased magnification, using lidar to peer beneath the leafy canopy. The trees parted momentarily to permit a visual of an unmistakable human wearing camo, digitally enhanced with a white outline. The man carried a bow and a quiver of arrows on his back.

  “Ho shit,” Matthew said.

  The man looked up, his face obscured by depth and shadow. He nocked an arrow, drew it to his cheek and fired at the drone. The screen went blank.

  “Sending up number twelve.”

  It took several minutes to reacquire the poachers, who had advanced. Toynbee zeroed in on a big black man with a shaved skull in jungle camo.

  “Watch this.”

  A bright red dot appeared on the poacher’s chest. For long seconds, he didn’t notice as he crept quietly forward and clutched an AK. When he finally looked down, he whirled quickly enough to almost give himself whiplash and threw himself into the thick brush.

  Toynbee laughed.

  “See if you can find him again and this time, lose the laser.”

  Zeb fed the coordinates into his computer and a real-time map appeared to identify every person within a klick. The poachers were at ninety meters. He shared the image with the others.

  “Toynbee,” he said softly into his throat mic. “Do you think if you flew one of your drones into their heads it would take them out?”

  “That’s doubtful. It might inflict a big gash but trying to take them out that way will simply cost us too many drones. The lasers aren’t powerful enough.”

  The screen went blank.

  “Locust. Sending up thirteen.”

  “I have one in my sights,” Taki whispered quietly.

  “Go ahead,” Zeb said.