“Please tell me you have something,” Roo said.
The Nigerian grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Short-notice. You want it? Heading out in seventy minutes.”
“Yes. We’ll do it,” Booker said without asking what the mission involved.
“Thought you might. Same gate. Be ready or we’re leaving without you.”
Chapter Nine
Gate 03FLC
The three arrived at the same time as the Angolan ex-communists. The two groups converged on the waiting Prince, who was bouncing with impatience.
He looked dramatically at his watch. Charles had seen it before when they first met him, but he hadn’t gotten a good look at it. Curious, he sidled closer and noted it was a Breitling Rattrapante 45 with a gold case. He gave a low whistle. The base Rattrapante cost a cool ten grand, so he had no idea what this one cost. It was overkill for missions into the Zoo, but it was a sweet chronograph all the same.
“Let’s talk over here,” the man said, leading them a bit away from the gate.
“This everyone?” Booker asked.
Prince nodded.
“What about the Chinese?” he asked. “Not much for talking, but they were good in a tight place.”
“We don’t want Chinese companies finding out about this mission.”
He laughed. “You think they were”—he paused, leaned in, and lowered his voice—“spies?”
He meant it as a joke, but the man nodded.
“Everyone’s a spy. You can’t trust anyone in this godforsaken place. You’ve got to watch your back. Look out for numero uno, as they say. Knowledge is power in the Zoo.”
Prince turned toward the other men, who were gathered loosely around. “Right. This is a snatch mission.”
Roo snorted. “Snatch mission? Haven’t seen much snatch around here.” He laughed at his own joke.
“Unfortunately, not that sort of snatch. There’s a new species out there. It was reported only this morning, and everyone is lusting after it. The mission: find it, capture it, and bring it back,” he said.
He passed out two box-like contraptions. Charles got one and Yander got the other. On closer inspection, the American noticed it was set up like a feral cat trap—easy to get in, impossible to get out of.
Roo and Cyrus got nets.
“You press this here,” Prince said, giving them both fobs, “and the whole thing goes electric.”
Booker and Desmond got expanding metal rods with thin loops of metal on the ends, with a way to pull it tight like dog catchers.
They went back to the gate. The sun was setting, lighting the sky a fiery red. Charles could already feel the cold desert night starting to creep in.
The gate Staging Area was crowded. Booker made out at least ten separate groups of men, each varying in degrees of decked out. Some seemed loaded for bear while others were prepared as if they were about to look for someone’s stray dog in the woods.
“What happens if we don’t get it?” he asked the Nigerian.
“Nothing happens. We go through a lot of hassle for nothing. So we don’t fuck up, and we each get paid.”
Prince pulled the group closer around him as the alarm signaled the gate was about to open. He passed around some night vision goggles. The Brit had never seen anything like them. They were slim and sleek, and he’d soon find out they worked better than anything he’d used previously—no static, no glowing eyes, and no brilliant green glow.
“Don’t fucking lose these,” their leader said. “You lose it, you pay for it—and you won’t want to.”
The gates swung open and there was a bottleneck as the men tried to pour forward into the Zoo to start the hunt for the creature. They rushed into the jungle, keen for the hunt and the promised reward. The groups all headed out in the same direction, confirming for Booker that they were hunting the same prey. It was awkward going, and none of the men seemed too eager to crash through the undergrowth. No one wanted to be the guy who stumbled upon the next flesh-eating plant. So, the men surged along the roughly hewn path, jostling and swearing as they went.
Charles, who still hated the lack of communication on Prince’s part, noticed there were white flags shoved into the earth every six or so meters, and they seemed to be following the trajectory of those flags. He didn’t know who put them there, but those around him seemed confident in the placement. It was getting harder to see them in the dimming light from the setting sun and the closing-in of the canopy of trees above, plus the ferns and other underbrush were quickly outgrowing the height of the flags. It seemed that whoever placed them hadn’t felt the need to vary his placement to combat the rising Zoo plant life.
Their leader had kept their team to the rear of the group, letting the others break the trail. He slowed even more, and a gap opened between their team and the rest. Then, he stopped completely, holding his tablet out in front, his brow furrowed in concentration. The last man from the opposing teams disappeared into the foliage.
“What the fuck, man? I thought this was a race,” Roo said. He bounced on the balls of his feet, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Prince looked up and grinned. “This way, gents.”
He led them in a different direction than where the other teams had disappeared to. While they had all gone off toward the right of the white flags, he purposely cut toward the left. He veered away so the flags were just on the periphery.
Charles didn’t like it. He wanted the mission to have more structure. He needed to know how they were going to proceed. Were they supposed to all search blindly through the underbrush in the hopes of tripping over whatever it was they were looking for? He frowned. He didn’t even know what the creature looked like.
“You look like you swallowed a lemon,” Booker muttered as he walked beside him.
That was another thing. Why were they walking? Prince had seemed to be in such a hurry at the gate and now, he was practically strolling. “We’re off snipe hunting.”
His companion raised an eyebrow. “What’s a snipe?”
“Exactly,” he grunted. He was getting uncomfortable flashbacks to summers where his uncles made them run through the woods in the middle of the night with empty pillowcases looking for snipes—only to have the living daylights scared out of them by the same uncles.
“This is starting to feel like a bad joke we don’t want to be the butt of,” he said. His teammates muttered their agreement. Uneasiness was settling on them. They were too in the dark, and soon to be literally in the dark.
The Nigerian paused to look at his tablet. Yander tried to look, but Prince bared his teeth at him and pulled it closer to his chest.
“Hey, Achoo, what does this thing look like?” Roo asked. Booker elbowed him.
“I’ll tell you when we get to where it was spotted. It’s got a den around here somewhere. We’re close,” Prince said, ignoring the Achoo comment.
The trees around them began to vibrate with life as the sun sank completely below the horizon. Darkness bled through everything, shadows elongated, and it became hard to distinguish what movement was shadow or creature. Prince popped on his night vision goggles and kept walking. The others followed suit.
They could see everything around them as if they were walking in full daylight. A herd of something large and lumbering rumbled to their right, but neither the men nor the animals, whatever they were, seemed to have any interest in fighting.
The men followed the man for nearly half an hour in the growing darkness. He occasionally checked his tablet, walked back to make sure they were still following the general trajectory of the white flags, and then kept moving forward. Prince had a pedometer on his belt, and he kept checking the pace count along with whatever map he had on his tablet.
It seemed off to Booker. Coordinates weren’t reliable in the Zoo. The life within the jungle somehow scrambled signals. He’d never really excelled in school, but nothing in his science classes could explain why that was, so he simply had to accept it. The quick
glimpses he caught of the map on the tablet revealed it to be a hastily thrown-together, hand-drawn affair. It didn’t instill much confidence. It looked like a map you’d see in the back of a children’s book, all landmarks and dotted lines.
Prince stopped in front of a red ribbon hanging at eye-level from a tree branch. He smiled. “Right this way, gents. Look sharp.” He made a sharp left, farther away from the line of white flags, and led them forward for about fifty yards. The jungle opened into a grassy clearing.
He pointed out a small hill near the center of the clearing. “That’s where it’s burrow is. The thing’s nocturnal so it should be snuffling around here somewhere. Hopefully, close by. This is what we’re looking for.” He turned the tablet toward the men to show them the objective.
There was a blurry picture of a red and black creature. It had an elongated snout, ears longer than its face, and wide, thick toenails that looked made for digging. Its skin seemed to be armor-plated, but it was hard to tell. It was in motion in the picture, sneaking away through the grass, presumably back to its den. Beside the picture was a sketch someone had done. Various points on its body were given labels. Its claws were labeled sharp and nearly impossible to break. Its tail was labeled heavy and potentially bladed.
Booker didn’t like how many question marks there seemed to be about it, but then he supposed that was why they wanted to capture it. He found some consolation in the fact that the creature seemed to be small, maybe the size of a housecat. A large housecat, but a housecat nonetheless.
“Looks like an aardvark,” Yander muttered.
“Spread out and find it,” Prince said, putting the tablet away.
He produced a metal cylinder and gave the top a twist. A pungent odor—a mixture of mud and rotting flesh—wafted out.
“What the hell is that?” Roo asked.
“Bait. We want to draw it back into this area. It’s a lot smaller than the other animals in here, so it won’t have wandered very far,” their leader said. He looked around the large clearing and then back at the men. “Of course, this will also draw in some of the other Zoo creatures, but that can’t be avoided. This is the fastest way.”
The team spread out and began searching the grass. Charles didn’t think wading through was the best approach. It disturbed the earth too much. The sound of the men searching was too loud, too distinct from the rest of the normal night noises. He was aware of being watched. He kept an eye on the dark tree line and felt the menace of the other Zoo animals prowling and waiting.
The den itself was a mound about the same size as a VW Bug, the grass as thick on top as it was all around. Charles crept up to it and tried to see where the creature made its way in and out. There was a hole punched into the base of the mound. The earth around it had been disturbed and the grass tamped down in a way that indicated high traffic.
He crouched in front of the entrance and looked out into the tall grass. He could make out three separate trails the creature seemed to take. Charles stood and tried to see if he could tell where the trails were heading from above. He was tall, but he wasn’t tall enough for that.
Prince waded through the grass to where he stood. “Any luck?”
He shook his head. “No, but I don’t think it’s in there.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Listen,” he said, then crouched down again. The other man mirrored him.
They hovered at the entrance of the den until the swaying of the grass around them in the breeze was the only sound they could hear.
“There’s nothing in there,” Charles said, standing up again. “I do think it was here. But you said it was nocturnal? It’s out there somewhere.”
He looked around again. The smell from the bait container had worn off, and he wasn’t sure what else they could do.
“We need height,” he grumbled. He cut across the clearing toward the surrounding trees.
His teammates joined him as he reached the edge of the clearing. Something hissed off to the side.
“Oh, shut up,” the Aussie muttered into the darkness.
“What are you doing?” Booker asked.
Charles walked around the base of the tree with the lowest hanging branches. They were still above his head, but there seemed to be enough vines hanging down to assist him.
“I’m going to climb up there and get a better view.”
“I can do it,” Roo said, elbowing Charles out of the way.
He clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder and drew him back, shoving the trap he’d been holding into his arms. “Right, short stuff, I don’t think so.” He leapt upward, snagged a vine, and pushed against the thick trunk of the tree. He hooked an arm around the lowest branch and swung himself up.
Charles glanced down at Prince, Booker, and Roo’s upturned faces. He flashed them a smile and climbed a little higher.
“We need to find this thing. It shouldn’t have gone far,” the Nigerian grumbled.
Booker sniffed and looked out over the clearing. “That’s what you keep saying. But aren’t we here to learn more about it, so why would you be so certain it didn’t go far?”
The man answered with silence.
Charles climbed half-way up the tree before it started creaking ominously. It should’ve been sturdy enough to hold his weight considering he could barely wrap his arms around the trunk and touch fingertips, but the bark seemed strangely pliable under his palms, the surface going suddenly slick in places. It was almost like the tree knew he was climbing it and wanted him to fall off. He supposed that was a good possibility, considering it wasn’t a normal tree but one that had grown tall in the accelerated gene pool of the Zoo.
From his position, he could see the clearing in its entirety. He wasn’t high enough to see over the trees beyond it, but that wasn’t what he was there for. He glanced down at Booker, Prince, and Roo who stood around the base of the tree.
The Angolan ex-communists were sweeping through the clearing in large circles, tightening in on the den that was positioned at the center of the clearing. The exact center of the clearing, Charles noted. He frowned as the grass behind the Angolans closed in and rose up, bouncing back completely from the passing men with unnatural speed. Charles had been hoping the grass would’ve parted in a way that would’ve made spotting the creature easy. In his mind, it’d been like that scene in that one dinosaur movie, where the velociraptors cut through the tall grass, leaving a path behind them.
He stared at the field, letting his eyes go unfocused. He’d spent enough time hunting things to know he needed to take everything in at once and not simply focus on the specific shape of the animal. And that’s when he saw movement. It was small and could’ve been anything, but he had the feeling it was what they were seeking. The grass was swaying in a way that was different than the way it had been moving before. He stared at the spot and there was movement again, a little farther off, a swelling of the grass like the earth was being tunneled just below the surface.
Charles clambered down the tree and grabbed the trap back from Roo. “It’s on the far left side of the clearing. Or, at least, something is.”
Prince opened his mouth to say something, but Booker was already speaking. “Okay. Spread out, stay low. We need to flank it and cut off its escape as much as possible. Where are the Commies? Were they close?”
Charles shook his head. “Opposite side.”
The Brit nodded. “Let’s move.”
The men spread out and moved forward. Charles forged his way through the trees to cut off the creature’s retreat that way. Prince made his way toward the Angolans. Booker and Roo moved forward so the Aussie was roughly in front of the creature’s position and the other man was to the left.
Roo wasn’t big on animals. The closest thing to a pet he’d had growing up was a goldfish named Gator who died when he was seven. Committed suicide—jumped right out of the bowl onto the kitchen counter.
He looked through the waist-high grass, the net Prince had given him gri
pped loosely in one hand. He had the fob around his neck for safekeeping, but he wasn’t too keen on accidentally electrocuting himself.
He stilled to listen to the Zoo night noises around him. That’s when he heard it. Off to his right, there was a low snuffling noise like a bloodhound sniffing a trail. He watched as the grass swayed in the opposite direction to the wind.
Roo shifted the net in his hand so it was spread out more. He unholstered his SW, just to be sure, then crept forward in a half-crouch.
And there it was. The creature they were looking for. It was slightly larger than the average house cat and its skin seemed to glimmer in the darkness. The hide looked thick, like armor. Its long tail ended in a sharp point and it was grooved. He suspected the grooves were really spines that lay flat against its tail when it wasn’t feeling threatened.
The animal’s ears swiveled on top of its head, reminding Roo of bunny ears on a tv set. Its thick nails sliced through the grass as it started to dig a hole. It pulled a wriggling grub from the earth and slurped it down, sharp teeth squishing the bug with a sound that made him want to gag.
Its head whipped in the human’s direction and beady red eyes fixed on the Australian. Then it reared back on its hind legs, the spines on its tail sticking up. It bared its mouth full of sharp teeth, its long tongue lolling around, dripping saliva down its scaly chin.
“Ugly bastard,” Roo declared.
He didn’t like the way the grass seemed to bend around the animal’s body like it was in a bubble. He also didn’t like that the grass around him seemed to move in closer, tangling around his legs and impeding his movements.
The animal screamed at him, then lunged forward, going for Roo’s ankles. Its jaws opened wide, seeming to split the creature’s face in half from the tip of its snout to just under its eyes.
“Jesus. Fuck,” he screeched as it nearly reached him. He tried to step back to brace himself, but the grass was knotted around his ankles and he couldn’t seem to be able to rip his leg free. The creature kept coming, its jaws wide in its alligator-like bite. Roo grimaced, imagining the sharp teeth digging into the flesh of his calf.
Reprobates (The Bohica Chronicles Book 1) Page 9