One Crazy Machine (Apocalypse Paused Book 9)

by Michael Todd

  Ava laughed but there was an edge to it. She sounded almost maniacal, perhaps, but she couldn’t help it. The simple truth was that she was enjoying herself. She’d beaten the scorpion queen. Guns had done little and less, but she had figured it out with a touch of help from Manny. And now, the others were too squeamish to even step close enough to the corpse to investigate. There was something enormously appealing to a vision of her showered and maybe with a glass of wine, sitting around with friends back in the states as she told them about how she’d dissected the scorpion queen while covered in her guts. Now that was a story no one would believe.

  She felt inside the segment, almost her entire arm now buried in the corpse, and drew more groans from Peppy and Gunnar. Manny simply laughed, loving every minute of it.

  “Tell her to cough.” Manny giggled.

  Ava’s hand finally found what she had searched for and she pulled out a broken eggshell—or half of one anyway. If complete, it would likely fit a medium-sized dog inside.

  “That is the most disgusting damn thing you could’ve found in there,” Gunnar said.

  Ava ignored him and moved to the next segment. “Your guns aren’t jammed, right?”

  “Never,” Peppy replied.

  Gunnar simply shot the already shredded half of the scorpion queen to demonstrate that his wasn’t.

  “Okay, well, be ready. Hopefully, you’ll need them.”

  “Hopefully they will need them? Ava, you have transformed into a bonafide lunatic? Congratulations and welcome to the club.” Manny beamed.

  Ava ignored him and focused on the segment. It had bullet holes in it, and she jabbed her knife into one of the holes and sawed through it. When she shoved it open, it revealed a slimy interior filled with dozens of the broken eggs.

  “Well, she was definitely pregnant.”

  “Why don’t you sound more excited?” Gunnar said and finally took a step toward the splayed segment.

  “Because she’s not anymore,” Peppy said.

  “Exactly.” Ava nodded. “She was incubating her eggs inside her, but they must have hatched at some point. We could open all these segments, but the result will be the same. The babies aren’t here.”

  “How can you know that?” Gunnar asked.

  “Do you see thousands of baby scorpions crawling out of their mother’s corpse?” she asked pointedly.

  He shivered at the thought.

  “Only hundreds?” Peppy asked, cautiously optimistic.

  Ava shook her head. “Tens of thousands at least. I mean, look at how many damn segments she has. Each one is crammed full of these things.”

  “But why would she come all the way out here to push her little babies out?” Manny said. “I’ve delivered my share of babies in my day, and mothers-to-be normally make a nest. They don’t go out to some damn new place they’ve never been to before.”

  “She might have tried to secure a food source,” Peppy said, although she didn’t sound particularly sure of herself.

  “No. If that was the case, she wouldn’t have turned around. She’s smart—”

  “She was smart,” Gunnar said.

  “Right. She wouldn’t have turned back unless there was a reason. And I don’t think it was us.” Ava scratched her head and reminded herself she was still covered in slime. Then the truth struck her. “Wait a minute. We all assumed that she tried to escape or find a food source for her offspring, but we have to remember that this is the Zoo we’re talking about.”

  “Uh…yeah, Ava. A whale-sized scorpion climbed a damn wall and was practically impervious to bullets and apparently had a clown car for an egg sack. I don’t think any of us forgot the damn bitch was from the Zoo.”

  “We did, though. Think about it. Do any of you doubt that the chimesaurus attack was meant to be a distraction? It had to be, right? Why else would they have attacked the main gate?”

  “Right, they created a distraction so she could escape with her brood of freaky nightmare babies and attack the world.” Gunnar shrugged. “It’s elementary, really.”

  “Except the Zoo works together. It wouldn’t send only part of itself out into the world. It would Surge again and expand more than merely one species. That’s when it's most dangerous.”

  “I still don’t follow.” The pilot frowned and shook his head in confusion.

  “The chimesaurus weren’t trying to help her escape. They were running interference for a sneak attack.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Manny shouted something about imminent doom and scrambled into the Flying Bastard. Peppy followed with much less enthusiasm. Both vanished into the grounded helicopter and left Ava and Gunnar outside. She moved to follow, but the soldier put a hand on her shoulder.

  “How can you think that crazy damn scorpion actually planned a sneak attack? I get that it’s smart and knew a thing or two about our weapons, but it’s dead now. It can’t direct its troops on the battlefield from beyond the grave.” Some doubt slipped into the last thing he said. She remembered, yet again, that he had faced these things in a way she hadn’t. While she didn’t want to freak him out, he had to understand what they were up against.

  “It’s not that I think the Zoo has some central mind or something—”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” he said feelingly.

  “But it definitely has programming or whatever that makes it effective. I don’t know how it obtains its information, but it seems to take ideas from creatures outside the Zoo.”

  “Goddamnit, Ava, you really fucked the radio up,” Peppy yelled from the chopper.

  “You can’t find your favorite Soap Opera? Days of our Deaths?” Manny retorted between clanks and grunts. Ava had no idea what he was messing with.

  “I’ll try to fix this damn thing. We need to make contact,” Peppy said.

  “If it doesn’t have a central mind, how can you think the scorpion babies—” Gunnar shuddered at the mere thought of those. “What makes you think they will go back to Wall Two?”

  “Well, the creatures in the Zoo know about the wall. They’ve tested its defenses and even used tactics against it. Obviously, they see it as an obstacle,” Ava said.

  “Obviously,” he agreed but hesitantly and didn’t sound convinced.

  “I think it stands to reason that they’d try to get on the other side of it. Many animals try to use sneak tactics and attack their prey from behind.”

  “But Ava, we’re talking about babies. Even if the mama figured all this shit out—which I have difficulty believing, by the way—how the hell will the babies know to go back to Wall Two?”

  “That’s the genius of it. Innumerable animals instinctively know how to get back to their nesting grounds. Sea turtles and salmon, for example. Plus, the first thing most animals do is look for food. By doubling back and heading towards Wall Two, the scorpion queen made sure that the closest source of food was the wall. They’ll simply follow their instincts until lunchtime.”

  “We’re not talking about a sea turtle, though. We’re talking about damn scorpions.”

  A loud bang from inside the Flying Bastard caught their attention and the radio immediately tumbled out onto the desert sand. “Well, you did it, Ava. You completely and irrevocably broke the fucking thing.”

  Ava sighed. She’d known that. “I like it as little as you do, Gunnar, but I think we should assume those scorpions will return to Wall Two. Think about it. It matches basic animal instinct, and an attack on the wall will directly benefit the Zoo. If they can damage it and move past it, the Zoo won’t be contained any longer. That’s much more valuable to the creatures in there than a few people killed by scorpions.”

  “I thought you said there might be three hundred thousand of the damn things. They’ll kill more than a few people.”

  “I did. And there might be, but even that’s not that bad in the bigger scheme of things. Yes, thousands of people could die, but compared to the entire Zoo no longer contained? We’re talking about millions of lives—bill
ions. We just killed Queen Bitch, right? But do you think we would have been able to do half as much damage if we were worried about locusts, poisonous plants, cat-sharks, and everything else? Think back to the damn constrictadile. That thing used zomberries to help it. That’s the real danger of the Zoo. The whole damn ecosphere.”

  “Which makes you breaking the radio a serious inconvenience,” Peppy interjected.

  “I still don’t see why it didn’t hatch its babies in the Zoo, fatten them up, and dig under the wall and attack us.”

  “You’ve been to the Zoo. Food would be hard to come by in there. Everything is a predator. Three hundred thousand baby scorpions would probably be eaten. Give birth in the desert, though, and the human buffet awaits. Plus, I think it’s safe to say Zoo creatures prefer to eat things from outside the Zoo. If they attack Wall Two and break through it…well, there’s much more food for them.”

  “Ahh…whatever,” Gunnar said and turned away to rub his chin in a gesture that spoke both thought and discomfort.

  “Do you really think those things know there’s a difference between the two sides of the Wall?” Peppy asked. She’d given up on the radio, apparently.

  “I’d be willing to bet my life on it. If we don’t get back there, it’ll be a massacre.”

  “Well, then, Miss Master of the Zoo, how do you propose we do that?” Gunnar asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ava said. “But I’d be willing to try anything.”

  The trio fell into silence.

  Manny punctuated the stillness of the desert with grunts from inside the aircraft, then curses, and finally, a hearty cheer. His excitement, under different circumstances, might have been mistaken for that of an enthusiastic sports-watcher. He stepped out and brandished a box with a multitude of dangling wires in one hand and a wrench in the other. “I have one hell of a stupid idea.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  For all Manny’s bluster about how much he loved the Flying Bastard and it being the helicopter’s birthday, he didn’t seem to have any qualms about ripping its guts out.

  “It’s all about load versus energy, see. Load versus energy,” he repeated and resumed his efforts to tear the chopper apart. “It’s like that time I was lost in the Caribbean Sea, right? I mean obviously, a whale shark will get tired. There ain’t no ifs, ands, or buts about that, but dolphins? I mean a pod of them, all taking turns to catch fish and stay fresh. Same patch of ocean as the whale, right? Only the dolphins know a thing or two about energy, while the whale shark…well, it eats what it can.”

  “Breathe, buddy, breathe. You’re not making much sense, even for you.” Gunnar stood with his hands on his hips. There wasn’t much else to do but stand back and watch the pilot’s frenzied efforts. He worked as quickly as he spoke and steamrolled anyone who got in the way of either activity.

  “The ATV’s the dolphin! The Flying Bastard, he’s got the energy—are you dumbasses with me? But the dolphin don’t need so much.”

  “You mean the ATV?” Peppy said.

  “Precisely, mate, precisely!” He shot her a wink.

  “And for those who don’t speak crazy Australian, translate, please?” Ava said.

  “The Flying Bastard has more than enough fuel to get us back to base. A whole whale’s worth of fuel,” Manny said.

  “Yeah, dipshit, but he can’t fly,” Gunnar retorted.

  “That’s what I’ve explained for the last twenty damn minutes, Gunnar. Where have you been? The ATV doesn’t have the capacity to make it, not unless we strip the parts from the Flying Bastard and supe the sucker up. Let’s make us a little bastard from the big one.”

  “Wait, I’m still confused,” Ava said. “Are you saying you rode a whale shark in the Caribbean and sacrificed it to a school of dolphins and then rode them?”

  “Not my proudest moment, mate, not at all, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Even if that means a heart transplant from the Flying Bastard. It’s a good thing I half-assed all the welding. It should pop apart like Legos!”

  “Why does everything he says only stress me out further?” Peppy asked.

  “Because you’re a damn pessimist,” Manny responded and vanished into the back of the Flying Bastard. After more clanking and louder cursing, he drove the ATV out of the back of the helicopter. He bled a little from a gash on his head. Ava had no idea what had happened back there, but he didn’t seem worried. “I christen you Li’l Bastard.”

  “Little Bastard?” Gunnar sounded irritated.

  “No. Just Li’l. Like a rapper or a pony or whatever. It’ll make folks underestimate him.” He waggled his eyebrows. “This poor little thing with its tiny little engine. We gonna make you into a Mad Max car—filmed in Australia, you know.”

  “This will almost certainly fail. We all know that, right?” Peppy said.

  Ava and Gunnar nodded. Manny shrugged.

  “What other choice do we have?” Ava said after a brief pause. “Like you said, I…uh, broke the radio and we need to get back to the base before those scorpions.”

  “Which means we really gotta supe the shit out of this thing. I wanna crack one-twenty kilometers an hour. We gotta try, right? It can’t hurt.” Manny retrieved a few wrenches and held them up like he handed presents out.

  “It will almost certainly hurt,” Peppy said but she rolled her sleeves up and put her gun down. “But what can I do to help reanimate the Li’l Bastard?”

  He handed her a wrench. “Bring me the Bastards heart.”

  They set to work. Peppy and Gunnar stripped the Flying Bastard while Manny and Ava supposedly added to the Li’l Bastard.

  Except add didn’t seem right at all because the first thing the pilot did was remove the two front wheels from the ATV.

  “I thought we would take this to Wall Two,” Gunnar protested.

  “And we will,” Manny confirmed. “But we can’t all balance on this little guy. We gotta stretch him, counterbalance here and there, and add a sled for fuel. Oh, and remove this entire engine. Ava, you used to be a nurse. Can you please explain the finer points of organ donation to Gunnar over there? You’d think we were in the damn Dark Ages.”

  “Yeah, but we never cut people apart to give other people extra body parts.”

  “Oh. You didn’t? Really?” He shook his head. “I honestly don’t understand doctors.”

  He resumed his efforts. With a blow torch in hand, he chopped and reassembled. Ava’s job was to line the pieces up as best as she could. First, they stretched the frame of the vehicle so it resembled a drag racer more than an all-terrain vehicle, then added a single runner to the nose. Manny added two long arms with runners, one to each side—like a catamaran, Ava thought. Except there was nothing remotely sleek about this craft. It was an amalgam of too many varied scrap metals, ugly welds, and an engine so big it didn’t look like the ATV would be able to support its weight. When asked about the catamaran arms, he said they were for turns and left it at that.

  To the rear of the Li’l Bastard, they added a helicopter door attached by another arm and a chain. This was a trailer for their weapons and extra fuel tank, he explained sagely as if all this was standard protocol.

  Gunnar and Peppy finally stripped the last parts from the Flying Bastard that could be removed and came to attach weapons to the Li’l Bastard. Gunnar mounted his rotary cannon at the very front of the ATV despite the fact that Ava distinctly recalled that it had been smashed the last time she’d seen it.

  “It is broken, technically,” the soldier said and looked sheepish. “But only the barrel as it turns out. We sawed that off so it will be shit for accuracy, but…well, sometimes, you merely want to hurl a shitload of bullets at a bunch of tiny scorpions.”

  “Speaking of which, how soon until we can head out?” Ava asked. “The sun’s getting lower, and although I’m sure those scorpions aren’t as fast as their mother, I doubt they’re sitting around either.”

  “There are various fail-safes to install—a series of acc
outerments to ensure that we minimize our danger. Seatbelts, airbags, floatation devices, oxygen masks uh…helmets?”

  Everyone looked at him like he’d told them he intended to apply for graduate school.

  Manny grinned. “I’m kidding. If you’re ready to go, I’m ready to drive. All that safety shit simply slows us down.”

  “Are you sure?” Peppy asked. “I mean, the Flying Bastard looked unfinished, but compared to this thing… Well, compared to this thing, the Flying Bastard looks like Michelangelo’s David.”

  “I have no idea what a Michelangelo is,” Manny said with his hands on his hips as he scrutinized his work.

  It vaguely resembled a drag racer at its core with two long arms ending in runners. He had affixed seats to the tops of these arms. Ava didn’t know how the other runner at the strange vehicle’s front was supposed to help, but it seemed a better addition than the sled that would be dragged behind the Li’l Bastard. A little forward from the middle of this strange, cobbled-together contraption sat the massive engine, directly ahead of the what she assumed was the driver’s seat. They’d positioned it onto the Lil’ Bastard by ripping apart the underside of the helicopter, driving the smaller vehicle into place, and lowering it onto the ATV with chains Manny admitted guiltily that he should have removed when he’d finished building the Flying Bastard. To Ava, the entire contraption resembled a spider in that it had a fat body and long, spindly legs. Of course, she’d never seen a spider made of different scraps of sheet metal scrounged from a franken-copter.

  “I gotta say, if it holds together, it's damn impressive. And it only took us what—an hour?” Gunnar nodded reluctant approval.

  “If it holds together. If it holds together?” Manny sounded offended and took a step toward their new ride. “Why, this puppy is as solid as it comes.” He slapped it near the steering wheel and knocked a panel loose. “I meant for that to happen,” he said quickly and glanced at Peppy. “Did you find any duct tape in the Flying Bastard? It wouldn’t hurt to bring some along.”