“You know GPS doesn’t work in the Zoo,” the dispatcher said with a laugh.
“Still doesn’t make any fucking sense. And azimuths are essentially the same at plotting as GPS, so what’s the big deal?” he asked, getting angry, his hands in fists and the color rising up the back of his neck.
Franco frowned, beginning to look angry himself. “Look, I don’t make this purposefully difficult, asshole.”
Booker gripped the Aussie by the shoulder and hauled him back, shoving bore collection tubes at him to keep his hands busy. “Sorry about that. You know how redheads are,” he muttered to the other man.
The dispatcher shook it off, then disappeared inside the building with a terse “Good luck” thrown over his shoulder as he went.
Charles punched Roo in the arm as they headed toward the gate.
“Hey! What was that for?” he asked.
“For being a dick, you moron,” Booker answered for the other man.
“What are you doing, trying to start fights with the guy who hands out the missions, huh? Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” the American said.
Roo’s shoulders slumped a little, the anger draining out of him as fast as it had come up. “Sorry. Must be lack of sleep.” He scrubbed his hand over his face while his teammates exchanged a look.
“Also, azimuths aren’t the same as GPS coordinates, you dipwad,” Charles added, wanting to get the last word.
At the gate, several other groups of men were preparing to head out. One of the groups was led by Prince.
“If it isn’t the three musketeers! How have you been holding up? Heard you had a spot of bad luck with a three-headed monster,” the man said, grinning as broadly as ever. “You ready to come back to the fold?”
“No way in hell,” Roo said balefully, earning himself another punch in the arm, this one provided by Booker.
“We might consider it, but it isn’t looking likely at this point,” the Brit said.
Prince nodded. “Sure, sure. You guys don’t fuck around, huh? I had a feeling you’d be one of the successful few. But you know, now that you aren’t running missions for me, I’m going to need you to start paying up on that home of yours or you’ll have to move out.”
“How much you want for it?” Booker asked.
“For you guys? Let’s say a grand a week,” he said.
“Hell, it was abandoned in the first place,” Roo said. “Too much shit to bring in to set this place up, and no cargo getting shipped out—or at least cargo that needs a container.”
“Conversion costs, my friend.” He shrugged.
“Sounds good enough to me,” the Brit said.
Prince smiled. “Brilliant. I’ll have someone come around to collect your pay when I’m ready for it.” He turned and returned to his group of men.
“Why did you agree to the grand?” the Aussie asked as soon as Prince was out of earshot.
“Do you see any Premier Inns around here? I don’t want to go back to the tents and cots.”
“We still could have gotten it cheaper,” Roo muttered to Charles.
The American shrugged. “I’m with Booker on this one. Our options are limited, and Prince knows it. He wouldn’t have brought his price down.”
The signal for the gate blared to life and it swung open. They walked behind several of the groups to enter the Zoo.
The azimuth Franco had provided drew them away from the other teams. Booker led them up the cleared swath of sand alongside the wall itself.
“Do you think everyone got different azimuths?” Roo asked.
The Brit shrugged. “It’s possible. Franco made it seem like this would be easy, but I get the feeling finding these trees will be harder than we think. Maybe they’re spread out everywhere.”
“Like some sort of sadistic Easter egg hunt,” Roo said.
“Don’t think I’d go that far, but sure, sadistic Easter egg hunt.”
“I’m glad Prince didn’t seem upset about us cutting ties,” Charles said as they held a steady jog.
“Yes. Prince doesn’t strike me as someone you want to make an enemy of,” Booker agreed.
The team kept relatively silent as he marched them in for ten klicks. They kept scanning the area for silver-leafed trees, but they hadn’t spotted anything.
“We’re going to need to go deeper,” Roo said.
They cut into the jungle. After traveling for another klick into the interior, they came up to their first copse of the target trees. There were four of them and their tall and spindly forms looked ghostly against the vibrant green of the surrounding foliage. Their white bark was marred with oozing black sap. The leaves shimmered and made a faint rustling sound, even though there was no wind.
Roo plucked a silver leaf and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger while Booker took the first sample. The veins of the leaf were black, creating a strange spiderweb-like pattern. “What do you think this is?”
“A leaf,” Charles answered.
The Aussie punched him in the arm. “No shit. I’m asking, what do you think the significance is? Why this particular tree?”
The Brit found he had to press heavily on the bore chamber until the stainless steel had had a chance to bite into the hard trunk of the tree. “Do we look like scientists to you?” he asked, twisting to extract the core. It was glimmery and oozy, a marbled swirl of black and silver. He screwed the cap on tightly and deposited the full chamber in his knapsack.
“One down, nineteen to go.”
It was slow going. The ghost trees, as Roo had taken to calling them, should have been easy to spot amongst the saturated green and colorful backdrop of the rest of the Zoo, but they were few and far between. By the time they’d set up camp for the night, they had eleven bore chambers filled.
“You know what’s weird?” Roo asked, setting himself up for the first watch.
“What?” Booker asked.
“There haven’t been any attacks. It’s been quiet this whole time.”
“That is a little strange,” Charles said.
The Brit double checked the seals on the bore chambers. “Well, hopefully, our luck holds. It sure makes collecting easier.”
“What do you think they’re all doing?” Roo asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe there was a community picnic they all went to? How the hell should I know?” Booker settled down for the night.
“Maybe it’s because we’re so close to the wall,” Charles suggested. “It seems like all the times before, the attacks tapered off the closer we got to the barrier.”
“Whatever the reason, I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing,” the Aussie said.
“Are you wanting to be attacked?” Booker asked.
“No. But it shouldn’t be so…I don’t know. Empty?”
“Well, shut up about it or you’ll bring all the animals over. We don’t want to ask for it,” the other man said. He flung an arm over his eyes and immediately started snoring.
Roo was about to say something else but Charles stopped him. “Listen, man, let’s just take this as a win. I’d rather not get in any firefights right now if it can be avoided. Let it go and we can wonder about it later.” He soon dropped into a heavy sleep.
Roo spent his watch scanning the Zoo for threats, but nothing happened all night.
The next morning, Booker pressed them harder. “We aren’t the only ones doing this. We’ve got to get back in time to have the payout be worth this much time.”
They double-timed it to get enough samples, and soon, all the chambers were filled. It was only mid-morning.
“We just cut straight in from the wall,” the Brit said, sealing the last of the chambers. “If we cut across it should bring travel time down by half. We’ll make it back long before dark that way.”
“Lead the way, boss,” Charles said.
Booker set a fast pace. Franco hadn’t mentioned anything about the samples losing their viability if they weren’t returned in time, so he wasn�
��t worried about that. He simply wanted to make sure they got paid what they were due. He was confident he could continue to secure them jobs, but he knew they’d need more equipment and it was a hefty bill to pay each time, even with Dan giving them “special” prices. Which Booker thought was purely bullshit to keep them coming back. It was working, so he couldn’t argue with the man’s methods.
“I’ve got a weird feeling,” Charles said, breaking him from his reverie. They were halfway back to the gate.
“What’s that?” Roo asked.
“Yesterday, nothing happened. Last night, nothing happened. And now today, there’s still nothing.”
“I thought you told me not to talk about this.”
“Well, yeah, but it’s still freaking weird, right?”
Booker shrugged. “I’m still not going to question this break.”
“Yeah, Charles, don’t be that guy,” Roo added.
Charles rolled his eyes.
They pressed through a tight grove of trees.
“Looks like there was quite a fight through here.” The Brit indicated a branch that had been ripped in half.
“How recent?” Charles asked.
“I’d guess not very,” Roo said, pointing at a finger bone near Charles’ foot.
They passed through more smashed trees. Some of the healing branches had the dark, telltale stains of old blood. They walked out into a clearing that had been made by the uprooting of several trees.
“Jesus, what do you think happened here?” Booker asked, kicking at a deep groove in the earth. It looked like it’d been made by the claw of a massive animal—something he didn’t have any desire to meet.
A battered M274 “Mule” was in the center of the destruction. It was on its side, the six wheels facing toward the three men. The two rearmost wheels were in tatters, the rubber hanging from the rims in strips. A large incisor was lodged in one of the tires.
They approached it, their weapons at the ready, but whatever had caused the damage was long gone. They circled the vehicle carefully. The ground around the mule was splattered with old blood.
“Hey, Booker, help me put the mule to rights,” Charles said. The two men put their shoulders to it and, with a scream of complaining metal and a deep groan, they pushed it over onto its wheels. It was standard with one bucket seat on the flatbed and one steering wheel. Charles began inspecting it closely, wondering if it was worth the trouble of salvaging.
He ripped the embedded tooth out of the tire. It was at least eight inches long.
His teammates kept watch while also inspecting the ground.
“Whatever happened here, it wasn’t pretty,” Booker muttered. “There must’ve been three of them. Or, at least, there are about three separate sets of shredded armor here.”
“Yeah, these poor sons of bitches didn’t stand a chance against whatever attacked them,” Roo said, picking through the tattered armor with a stick.
He moved aside what at one point had been part of a flak jacket and his eyes widened in surprise. He gave a low whistle and picked up the knife that was lying under the piece of armor. It was a Gerber Mark II, the blade shiny steel instead of the normal matte black he was used to seeing.
He tested the weight and parried it in the air a few times. Then drew his fingertip along the edge, a bead of blood gathering.
“Hot damn,” he said giving another whistle.
“Did you find something good?” Booker asked.
He held the knife up. “Look at this bad boy.”
“Is that a Gerber?”
“Sure is,” he said. “Looks like a collectible, too. Wonder how much it’d draw?”
Roo inspected the knife closely. A tattered pink ribbon was tied to the top of the hilt. He rubbed it between his fingers, exactly like the previous owner must’ve. The ends of it were nearly worn through and blackened with dirt and blood.
“I can’t decide if I want to keep this or sell it,” he said.
The other two men were only half-listening to him. They were trying to figure out a way to start the mule.
He turned the knife in his palm again, then noticed the two lines of swooping text that had been etched into the blade.
Harrison L. Cattaneo
Your Loving Wife
“Ah, shit,” he said. Roo brought the ribbon up to his nose and picked up the faintest trace of perfume. “She must’ve fucking soaked this in her perfume for him.”
“What was that?” Charles asked, pausing in his ripping away of the shredded chunks of rubber with the plier tool on his Leatherman.
“One of the dead men left this behind. Looks like his wife gave it to him as a gift,” he said. “Or a good luck charm, I suppose. Too bad it didn’t work.”
“That’s a real shame,” Booker said.
The three were silent for a moment. They stood around the mule and looked at the knife.
Roo finally put the Gerber away in one of his pockets, wrapping the blade in a strip of cloth so it would be less likely to stab him in the thigh. “So,” he said, gesturing to the mule, “we going to just stand around here looking at this wreck, or are we going to move on?”
“It’s not going to start. The wiring’s all been either fried or chewed through,” Charles said. He folded his arms over his chest and glared at the vehicle. “But it really isn’t in that bad shape, all things considered.”
“Can you fix it?” Booker asked.
He nodded. “Sure. Shouldn’t be that difficult.”
“Then I say we take it with us. Remember what Jackson said about salvage.”
“Who the hell is Jackson and what’s this about salvage?” Roo asked.
“That’s right, you weren’t there,” the Brit said. “You were—”
“Dipping your wick,” Charles interjected.
“Yeah, that. We met Jackson at the Wateringhole. He told us that whatever we find out here is ours if we can get it back.”
The Aussie looked uncertainly at the mule as if he wondered if it would be worth the effort. He didn’t object, however.
They strapped their gear to the back of it. Then they looked at it as if the vehicle would supply the answer of how to haul it back to the camp.
Charles put a hand on the back bumper and gave an experimental shove. The half-ton vehicle barely rocked. “It’s too low to the ground,” he said, stretching. His spine cracked with a loud pop that made him wince. “It’d be too much work to push it out.”
“Got any better ideas than pushing it?” Roo asked.
“Whatever we come up with, we need to do it fast. It’s already getting dark, and we don’t want to spend too long in the Zoo,” Booker said. “Wouldn’t want the mission to be a waste if we get back and Franco’s already got all the samples he needs.”
“We can haul it,” the American suggested.
“How?”
“Tie a few ropes around the wheel wells, then pull it along. We can have two people pulling and the third helping it along from behind. Either pushing or moving debris out of the way so it doesn’t get snagged in the wheels and work against those who are pulling.”
“We don’t have any rope,” Roo pointed out.
“No, but there are all these vines everywhere. I’m sure we can find a few strong enough to do the job,” Charles said.
“That’ll work, but we’re just working against ourselves here if we drag the end like that with those two tires gone,” Booker said.
“We can detach one of the middle sets of tires and put it on the rear,” Charles said.
“How long will that take?” the Aussie asked. He glared at the silent Zoo, his weapon at the ready.
“Longer than it should. We don’t have the proper tools for a job like this to go smoothly. But it’s not impossible. Just time-consuming.”
“Let’s get going then,” Roo said.
Charles and Booker, each armed with a Leatherman, set about unscrewing the bolts that held the tires in place. Each was bolted in with six bolts, which had been
securely fastened, most likely with a machine. Getting them undone with only pliers was going to be a chore.
Night closed around them and they rotated with two working the bolts loose with the assistance of flashlights, and one standing guard as the Zoo pulsed around them. Nothing attacked and when the hazy blue light of dawn revealed the shapes of trees around them, they were ready to start.
Charles and Booker started the journey off, dragging the mule behind them using the long lengths of vines they’d cut. They wrapped their hands in strips of cloth, wary of getting another rash like the last encounter with vines. Roo helped give the mule a few pushes from behind, but mainly, he kept watch.
The wheels rolled slowly over the bumpy terrain, only powered by the men dragging it. Occasionally, whoever was keeping guard had to adjust the steering wheel to prevent the vehicle from turning itself and plowing nose-first into a tree. At several points, they had to backtrack to maneuver around deadfalls.
They came upon a little stream they hadn’t encountered before.
“How do we get it across?” Roo asked.
They’d already argued that it would take too much time trying to get around the stream and didn’t want to waste any more time on the salvage. If they got back and the samples had plummeted in price, it wouldn’t have been worth all the time and effort they had spent hauling a broken vehicle hanging on the hopes that Charles was capable enough to get it up and running again.
“Oregon Trail style,” the American said.
His teammates gave him blank looks.
“Wait. You guys don’t know what that is?”
“Um, the colonization of the western part of the United States?” Booker ventured.
“No. Well, yes, technically. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the computer game.”
“Computer game?” Roo asked.
“Yeah, it’s—you know what, never mind. I don’t need to explain it. The important thing is that the settlers had the covered wagons and when they came upon a stream they had to cross, they forded it,” Charles explained.
“So, we just float it across?” The Aussie didn’t seem convinced.
“Yeah. We’ll tie a vine across the width of the stream, then we can float the mule across,” Charles said. He waded out into the water. The stream was clear and shallow enough to see the bottom. He kept walking, and then made it all the way across. The water only reached to his knees the whole time.
Reprobates (The Bohica Chronicles Book 1) Page 21