“His name is Thor.”
“All right. I’ll watch Thor.”
“How much you want?”
Dan tilted his head and then steepled his fingers. “How ʼbout this? You leave enough behind to get the little fleabag through you being gone, and then I’ll give you my demand when you return to collect him. This monster could be a lot of trouble.”
Thor yipped at the man, who raised an eyebrow like the puppy was just proving his point.
“Fine. But I won’t be paying more than fifty. Fifty bucks, not fifty thousand.”
“Don’t think you’re in the position to make demands, Charles.”
He shrugged. “He won’t be that much trouble. You’ll hardly realize he’s here.”
Dan didn’t look convinced.
They geared up and made for Gate 03FLC. Several people stopped them on the way there and asked about the mission. Charles blamed Dan for the word spreading so fast.
“You’re some crazy sons of bitches. Got any last wishes you want performed? I’d stop by and tell the bartender. He’d mail a letter for you,” one man said.
The team ignored the snide comments. They marched through the gate and into the Zoo.
Booker let Charles set the pace, a steady march that ate away the kilometers they needed to traverse. There was, of course, no guarantee that the animal would be in the exact area it had last been spotted in, but at least it had a known territory. They marched along one of the few roads that were used on a regular enough basis to combat the Zoo’s rapid expansion.
Hours in and they didn’t break their pace, traveling fast despite the heavy feeling that kept them in silence. They weren’t overconfident. Each man knew his capabilities and trusted the others and their abilities. But even they were rightfully nervous about facing a three-headed creature that looked like it would take great pleasure in ripping them limb from limb.
The Zoo was relatively quiet. The animals stayed on the periphery, content to let the men go on their way.
“Fuck, look out!” Roo, who was bringing up the rear, shouted and dove to the side. His teammates followed suit as an armored vehicle whipped past them.
They stood and watched it disappear.
“We’re using the road too, assholes!” the Aussie yelled at the rapidly disappearing vehicle, flipping it off for good measure.
“Don’t think they heard you. Maybe you should yell a little louder,” Booker said dryly, dusting himself off.
“We need one of those,” Roo said belligerently.
“We need to make more money first. So shut up and march,” the Brit retorted.
Darkness clamped down on them. The sound of the nocturnal creatures ramped up as the night-time denizens of the Zoo began to wake. Charles stopped in front of a particularly large tree. Its lower branches created a nice hollow beneath that would provide some protection from the night. They decided to camp there and finish the journey toward their objective in the morning.
Chapter Fifteen
The Zoo
Booker wiped savagely under his nose, calculated, and then recalculated. The problem was the information on where this creature’s territory was vague at best. He’d read cliff notes with more description than the scant file he was reading through for the tenth time. He could tell Roo’s patience was wearing thin, although that wasn’t anything new. The man’s rope was shorter and shorter by the day, but he hadn’t had the time to figure out why.
They should’ve started already, but he knew taking the extra time in the beginning to start the course off right would save their asses later.
“Right. By my calculations, we need to end up at Foxtrot-Lima…uh, eight-niner-four-six, zero-two-two-eight. I’ve got it at an azimuth of zero-four-two for fifteen-thousand, five-hundred, and forty meters.” Booker glanced up from his tablet, notebook, and compass.
Charles watched him, then stood from the crouching position he’d been in and swung his rucksack up. “You’re the man with the information,” he said.
He nodded and put away his things.
“Charles, you take point. I’ll start off with the pace count, with this as a backup,” he said, patting the pedometer on his belt. We’ll alternate between klicks. If the information we have is worth anything, we have about fifteen klicks to go.”
The American led them straight and true…he hoped. He’d always been good at azimuths, although it had been a little while since he’d needed to use them exclusively. He knew he was the youngest of the three men and therefore, basic wasn’t that distant a memory.
The landscape of the Zoo around them was subtly changing. The canopy above them opened further, the foliage spreading out more.
Charles felt a tension in his shoulders releasing as the vegetation around him thinned. He didn’t like the closed-in feeling of the jungle. It made him nervous, the way it all seemed to pulse with life.
“Is it all supposed to change like this?” Roo asked, ripping a leaf from an overhanging branch and twirling it in his fingers. “Aren’t things supposed to be denser closer to the center?”
No one answered him.
He dropped the leaf and elbowed Booker. “We aren’t in the jungle anymore, Toto.”
The Brit halted and glared at him. “Fuck, I lost my count, but we were right near the kilometer mark.” He looked at his pedometer, shook it, then said, “And this thing’s a piece of shit, too.”
“Here,” Charles said, passing him the compass. “I’ll count next.”
Booker could feel the earth sloping gently beneath them as they walked. He glanced again through the files Franco had sent him.
“According to this,” he said to Roo, trying not to break Charles’ train of thought as he counted, “we should stay in this triple canopy until we reach the creature’s territory. He didn’t say how old this map was, so hopefully, it’s fairly recent—and accurate.”
The Aussie grunted. Then, he grinned and elbowed him again. “We’re like knights errant, off to slay the dragon and win the fair maiden’s hand.”
Booker rolled his eyes. “Sure. Except we aren’t slaying this dragon, and you better hope this thing isn’t fire-breathing. It’s bad enough it has three heads. I wouldn’t want to fuck with it if it was a three-headed, fire-breathing monster. Also, it’s worth pointing out that the birds ʼround here are more likely to cut your balls off than let you call them a fair maiden and do any wooing. They don’t strike me as the swooning type.”
“Jesus, man, lighten up. We’re out here using this ancient-as-fuck way of getting around, at least let a guy operate under the delusion that he’s gonna enjoy a little victory pussy when he gets back.”
“Okay,” Charles huffed, “you two are the worst. I can’t concentrate with you jabbering on like that.”
“See, even ol’ red-white-and-blue here is a little bluer than is healthy,” Roo said.
His teammate flipped him off and he retaliated with a two-fingered-salute.
Booker ran a finger under his nose with a sniff, then pinched the bridge of his nose for good measure. “Have you always been like this, or is the alien air muddling your brain?”
Roo shrugged. “Haven’t heard your mum complaining about it.”
“That was elementary, even for you, Roo,” he scoffed. Charles grunted his agreement.
They continued until it was the Australian’s turn to keep pace count. The noises of the Zoo were growing louder again, although these sounded different from the sounds the men had grown accustomed to hearing. Roo couldn’t concentrate, his body too keyed up by the menacing hum of the jungle. He tried calming breaths and digging his fingernails into his palms, but nothing seemed to help.
“Here,” Booker said, handing the compass to Roo after the Aussie had lost count for the third time in fifteen minutes. “You’re on point. Charles and I will keep count.”
The Brit watched their surroundings as Roo tried, and failed, to keep from drifting and the American concentrated on counting.
“I don’t u
nderstand why this place has to be so goddamn difficult,” Roo muttered.
“What are you talking about?” Booker asked.
“No GPS or satellite anything? I mean, come on. This is the bloody twenty-first century, not the fucking Dark Ages. We have technology for shit like this. We shouldn’t have to calculate azimuths and count our fucking paces. Why haven’t those scientist cock-pockets figured this shit out yet? Don’t they get wet over stuff like this? You’d think there’d be some sort of race to have it figured out by now.”
“Stop complaining. You’re like an overgrown kid,” the Brit remonstrated. “Plus, you’ve fucked up again. Come on, Roo, where’s your head?”
“Up where the sun don’t shine,” Charles muttered.
Roo glared at him. “What did you just say?”
“I said your head is up your butt,” the American said with a defeated sigh.
Booker rolled his eyes. “Children, the both of you.”
“Okay, grandma.” The Aussie scoffed.
Their leader threw his hands up and looked at Charles, who shrugged. “Kind of agree with Roo on that one, Booker. You did sound like my gammy just then.”
“Okay, well, do try and keep us going in the right direction, Roo,” he said and took the pace count over from Charles.
The American’s gaze roamed through the underbrush and trees around them. He could hear the animals creeping in. They’d been there for a while, but nothing had attacked so far. They seemed content to leave the men be. He hoped it would continue.
A blur of black caught his eye and he turned, the shotgun already up and ready. A large, black wolf-like beast sprang from the trees. Two twisting horns curved back from its skull and the points looked deadly. Its eyes glowed with red hellfire and its jaws opened wide, revealing a mouth full of sharp, yellow teeth. He sent a few twelve-gauge slugs into its wide chest. The impact knocked the leaping creature off its course, but not by much. It landed, wobbled slightly, but kept coming. Its claws ripped through the soft earth as it prowled forward and its growl promised pain.
It came up to about Charles’ elbow and the black fur was matted in a way that made it look like armor. Blue-black blood, with a sheen like an oil-slick, oozed from the wounds in its chest.
The monster gathered its ropy muscles, crouched further, then leapt upward and an eardrum-shattering howl ripped from its throat. Charles expected that. Its injuries made it predictable. The loss of blood had weakened it so subtle movements were replaced by jerky heaves.
He put a slug right between its eyes and the beast collapsed at their feet.
Answering howls ricocheted from the underbrush around them. The sound made the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. They heard the crash of large bodies through the underbrush, but the other creatures maintained a safe distance. He had a weird feeling of being herded as Roo plunged onward.
The landscape became a tangle of brambles and vines with snagging thorns. Booker and Charles cut and slipped their way through the wait-a-minute-vines. Roo, however, had run out of patience to be careful and hadn’t wanted to dull his knife, so he charged through the wait-a-minute vines. Thorns snagged his clothes and skin. He fought his way forward, snarling and cursing, his struggling only making the thorns dig deeper. Soon, his exposed skin was scored with cuts that oozed blood. The skin around the injuries swelled and became inflamed. A rash started from the abrasions and began spreading.
They broke through the last of the dense underbrush, the trail before them widening dramatically. They were facing a large swamp. Booker pulled out his tablet again to look at the maps of the Zoo he had stored there.
“This isn’t supposed to be here,” he said.
“No shit,” the Aussie said. “It’s a desert. None of this is supposed to be here. Where’s the water coming from? I don’t know shit about the Saharan aquifer, but it can’t be big enough to support all of this.”
“How do more people not know about this? There’s a huge jungle in the middle of the Sahara and not only that, but apparently, there’re also swamps in here,” Charles muttered.
“It’s not exactly a secret, Charles. You knew about it, just maybe not the details. I don’t understand how it exists, either, though.” Booker shook his head in bemusement. “But it’s here, and we’ve got to deal with it.”
His two teammates looked out over the swamp, but they couldn’t see far. It was a boggy mess full of low hummocks and swaths of vegetation. The stink of it hung over them like a cloud, and the Brit was surprised they hadn’t smelled it before. The smell reminded him of a time he’d discovered the decaying carcass of a chicken in a barrel of water and the combination of rot and algae had made him throw up.
“We’ve either gone way off course, or the landscape is shifting,” he said, folding his arms over his chest and tapping a finger in time to his pulse.
Roo scratched at his oozing cuts. “I’m not incompetent. I might not be the best at walking in a straight line, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have gotten us this lost, asshole. So, before you continue with that accusation, think again.”
Charles watched as his teammate rubbed harder at his exposed skin. He finally reached out a hand and stilled his movements.
“What the fuck, man?” The Aussie jerked away from him and continued his scratching.
He shook his head. “You’re going to make it worse.”
Booker looked up from his tablet and watched his wounded companion. “You should’ve been more careful going through those. Dan told us that some of the vines were poison-tipped or something when he was trying to get us to buy those expedition suits. Hopefully, it’s just an irritant and you can get through it. Let us know if your skin starts falling off or something.”
Roo glared. “Fuck both of you.” He continued to scratch.
Charles looked out over the swamp again. What water he could see moved occasionally, but in a way that made him think it was animals swimming around and not currents. If the land animals were bad enough in the Zoo, he couldn’t imagine what the amphibious and water creatures were like. He didn’t particularly want to find out.
“We have two options,” Booker said, “we go around, or we go through.”
“So, we have to offset? What’s the new course?” he asked.
“We’re at zero-four-two right now. Offset by ninety, and we’re at three-one-two. We march until we reach the edge and can get back to our original azimuth.”
“And if we march five bloody klicks, then we’ll be five klicks off when we’ve gone the distance,” Roo said.
“What do they teach you in the Aussie Army?” the Brit asked impatiently. “We only go until we clear this swamp, then we perform a sharp right face and march back the same distance at one-three-two. Voila, we end up right on this course, but on the other side of the swamp.”
“How long would that take?” the man asked.
“Unfortunately, I left my crystal ball behind today.”
“It depends on how big this swamp is. And that could take too long,” Charles said.
Booker nodded. “Right. Option two is we navigate our way through this swamp to stay on course and hopefully end up near our target’s territory—or in it—on the other side.”
The three were silent as they weighed the options. The swamp ahead of them buzzed like a bucket full of mosquitoes. A deep croaking broke up the buzz. It sounded like a bullfrog—if it had access to megaphones.
“We don’t have time,” Booker said finally.
His teammates nodded.
“We have to go right through. How bad can it be, right?” he asked.
Charles adjusted his equipment, tightening the straps of his rucksack.
Roo tried slapping at his skin to calm the itching.
Their leader looked out over the swamp again, then back the way they’d come. He glanced at the other men. “Can’t be that bad,” he muttered to himself and stepped carefully into the black water. His feet sank deep into the mud.
�
��This is the fucking worst,” Roo hissed. He had his Ari B’Lilah out and was in the process of skewering a giant leech as it tried to latch onto his ankle.
The team stood on a small spit of land. They had been in the swamp for maybe an hour and it had been nothing but hell. The leeches were bad, but once they’d figured out the tells of their hiding places, they’d been able to mostly avoid them. Strange shapes lurked in the water and the deep reeds. Charles thought he’d seen an alligator or two, but he wasn’t sure. It had looked like an alligator, but he thought that was wishful thinking. Luckily, whatever it was had been too far away. He didn’t have any desire to see it up close.
At least on the hummock, they could see the leeches approach. In the water, they could attack unseen, only known when they latched onto tender flesh.
The Aussie plunged the knife into the thick, black creature and it writhed, a putrid yellow puss bubbling up from the cut. He gagged and flung it away into the distance where it landed with a quiet plop. Then there was the sound of thrashing water as it was torn to bits by some other unseen predator.
“Not going to see me contradicting you,” Booker grumbled. He grimaced as he tied a strip of cloth off on his thigh. A leech had caught him by surprise and latched on, tearing through his clothing to get at his flesh. He had yelped and jumped onto the piece of soggy land, pulling at it, but he couldn’t yank it loose. Roo had cut it in half in an attempt to get it off, but that hadn’t been the right approach. It had burrowed itself deeper into his thigh and they’d had to cut a chunk out of him to remove it.
“We probably should’ve burned it off like you do with normal leeches and ticks,” Charles said.
“I blame you for this, Charles,” Roo said.
“What? What do I have to do with giant leeches?” he snapped.
“Everything! You were the one complaining about them and we didn’t even know they were here! I swear you brought these fuckers into existence.” He kicked a leech away as it scrunched toward them.
“You’re out of your mind,” his teammate said.
Reprobates (The Bohica Chronicles Book 1) Page 15