by Michael Todd
“Dammit.” Wallace hadn’t seen these things climb that high into the trees before, so this was a new danger. Then again, the ones the Zoo had spawned en masse were smaller and lighter than the original prototype, the huge bastard which Queen Kemp had kept as pet and bodyguard. That made them more agile, so tree-climbing wasn’t that much of a surprise.
As their medic headed over to check on the man in the turret, the other catsharks attacked.
“Fuck!” someone sputtered in total shock.
Eight or ten of the creatures hurtled into a combined assault. Guns blazed and the beasts hissed and snarled as they lunged or swooped from overhead branches. A man near the edge of the perimeter screamed, seemingly more in fear than pain, but a second later, he dropped his gun, doubled over, and clutched a bleeding arm.
Another catshark leapt onto the JLTV beside Wallace. It paused for a split-second as if surprised by the sight of him. His reflexes aided by the suit and its neural link, he instantly raised his rifle and fired. The creature fell back and spat red-tinged mucous as a cavity opened in its chest. Blood and bristly purplish-brown fur scattered into the air.
On the other side of the perimeter, two men managed to catch another of the catsharks in a crossfire and wounded it. The creature hobbled back into the jungle and vanished behind trees before they could finish the job.
“Do not pursue,” Wallace yelled. They obeyed. No one in their right mind would leave the relative safety of the group.
Another purple flash caught the sergeant’s attention a few seconds before the JLTV with the already wounded gunner rocked in place before it sagged to one side. Wallace moved quickly until he could see the outside of the vehicle. The cat had destroyed one of its tires and somehow yanked it right off. He grimaced and wondered if the beast had managed to damage the axle in the process.
Two of them thrust into a full-frontal assault, only to be repelled almost instantly by nearby shotguns and rifles. Bleeding but not dead, they sprang back into the woods.
Silence descended and stretched on. The skirmish was at an end.
“Aww, that was over so quickly,” Gunnar complained.
“Just like Gunnar,” said Peppy. “The pencil hole in the MRE pack must have been slightly too tight and well-lubricated.”
Wallace posted six men as guards to watch the jungle in case the catsharks or any other hostiles returned, then turned to survey and assess the damage.
The man in the turret had taken the full weight of the cat on the shoulder and probably had a broken clavicle. The man who’d screamed and clutched his arm had multiple deep lacerations through his bicep. And, although Wallace hadn’t noticed during the fight itself, Jimmy had been injured as well. One of the creatures, during its hit-and-run attack, had clawed her leg and smacked her with its powerful tail, which probably cracked a rib. No one was dead, thank God, but the three wounded would be out of commission for a while.
Worse, two of their three vehicles were now inoperable. The one, of course, had its tire ripped off, but it wasn’t the only problem.
“Sergeant, I’m sorry,” one of the pesticide men said and bristled with a mixture of self-directed anger and embarrassment. “We were attacked and—”
“It’s all right, Private,” Wallace said. The man hadn’t seen when a car-killer vine had snuck through a lightly-sprayed patch of earth and entwined itself around the vehicle’s undercarriage. In an ambush, it wasn’t always possible to take time out to check for vines.
“Everyone,” the sergeant announced after a long, deep breath, “take five. But stay frosty.” He needed a few minutes to think, anyway. The unit’s morale had taken a blow. They all knew that three wounded plus only one functional vehicle was not a good combination. Their medic, a PFC named Carrera, did a fine job, at least. Wallace had requested Corporal Glassner, whom he’d worked with several times before, but he was already on another assignment. Glassner was the best. Hall had probably wanted him on hand to attend to any politicians who happened to fly in.
“I’m okay, really,” Jimmy said as Carrera sighed and worked on her leg. “I mean walking might be a little hard, but—”
“You shouldn’t walk,” he replied.
The other two men who’d been hit wouldn’t be able to fire guns, either.
“All right,” Wallace said and raised his voice, “we’ll send the wounded back with the remaining JLTV. The damn things have slowed us down so much anyway that the rest of us will be better off without one.”
“What?” Jimmy protested. “You can’t get rid of me, man. You’ll need me to fix you in case your suit—”
“Worry about yourself first, Audrey.” He cut her off and used her given name deliberately so she’d know he meant business. “You’ve done enough already as it is. And I’m sorry, but with incapacitating injuries, you’d only further endanger yourself and slow the rest of us down.”
“So,” Gunnar began, “will the three wounded drive themselves back?”
“No,” said Wallace, “you will.”
“What?” the man protested. “How do you expect anything to get properly shot around here without me on hand?”
“Oh, we’ve done well enough even without you gracing us with your trigger finger,” Wallace said. “Put it to good use instead and see that these three get back to base safely.”
“Sergeant,” Peppy asked, “will someone go to keep an eye on Gunnar, so he doesn’t get himself captured like an asshole the way he did last time? Not that his welfare actually concerns me given how pointless it is to worry about such things, but—”
“Yes,” Wallace replied, “you will have the honors.”
“What?” Peppy protested. “Me and Gunnar are the two most experienced soldiers you have, Zoo-wise. Wouldn’t it make more sense to—”
“Because you are the two most experienced,” Wallace interrupted, “I know I can count on the two of you, without support, to get the wounded and yourselves back in one piece.” He paused and frowned. “Let Gunnar drive, though.”
“Yeah, definitely,” the man replied and shuddered. Peppy was known to drive with a great deal of enthusiasm. If that was the right word.
“I guess,” Peppy sighed. “I mean, yes, sir. Hall won’t be happy about this, though. I mean, not that he’s ever happy. And not that he, or anyone else for that matter, has any real reason to be happy. Ever.”
“I agree,” Wallace muttered. “But that’s the way it is. Get to it.”
As the rest of the team, under PFC Carrera’s supervision, loaded Jimmy and the other two injured men into the one surviving JLTV, Wallace’s thoughts drifted to his current commanding “officer,” Terry Hall.
The man was an enigma, that much was certain. He was a United States Senator involved in overseeing the Department of Defense, and prior to his political career, he’d been a self-made multi-millionaire. He was a big, imposing man, overweight but surprisingly muscular nonetheless, with a shaved head and a calm, confident demeanor to go with his deep, smooth, powerful voice. Some of the men around the base had nicknamed him “the Kingpin” since he did closely resemble the old comic book villain.
His leadership style was bizarre. He seemed obsessed with controlling both budgetary costs and bad-PR incidents, yet he had authorized a number of missions that were highly expensive and, it seemed to Wallace, fairly stupid. He had a near-total disregard for body count. Loss of American lives had increased exponentially since he had taken over. As time wore on, the sergeant’s respect for both his judgment and his integrity had declined.
And where exactly did he get this “intel” of his from? It didn’t seem to come from any of the base’s personnel. Who could be closer to the Zoo than the people officially assigned to contain it? Hall had to have contacts in the CIA, or perhaps even with shady third parties.
But he was in command. Back there, at least, behind the safety of both walls.
Out in the Zoo, the sergeant was in command. He had his orders and he would follow them. But so long as
Hall couldn’t be bothered to enter the Zoo himself and peek over Wallace’s shoulder, he couldn’t micromanage all the specific details. That meant that he would run this mission as he saw fit.
The presence of catsharks actively on the offensive meant that they had moved closer to the center of the jungle—and that, approximately, was where the mercenaries had made their base camp. According to Hall’s intel, anyway. Despite the injuries, he would still have almost a full platoon. A slightly smaller force than they’d gone in with, obviously, but it would be enough.
Wallace raised his rifle. “Let’s go,” he ordered.
Chapter Four
“Sir.” Corporal Black returned from scouting ahead and immediately reported to his commander. “We found them.”
Wallace nodded. He knew they were close to the coordinates he’d gotten from Hall. As best he remembered, they were near the exact center of the Zoo and not far from the ruined old base where the original experiment had been conducted. In fact, it was very possible that the mercs might have set up camp right beside it or even made use of the abandoned buildings.
“How many of them are there?”
Black, a thin man of average height with squinty eyes, suddenly seemed to shrink, although his eyes widened. “A hell of a lot more than twenty,” he said. “Probably more like fifty. Maybe more.”
“Fifty?” Wallace winced. That was not good.
Behind him, the other men shifted in place and looked everywhere but at their leader, and most glowered silently. The news could hardly have improved their morale. Still, they would need to know the facts. They couldn’t be shielded from the truth of what they would deal with.
“They have established some defensive fortifications,” Black continued. “They’re basic but look effective enough. I don’t think they’re encamped in the old research base. It must be too decayed and overgrown by now.”
“How well armed?” Wallace asked.
“Much better than I expected, from what I could see,” the man responded. “About as well as we are, I would say. They have a fair number of the same weapons we do, plus some slightly older guns—some American, Russian, and Israeli, mostly. It looked like they had at least one big-ass truck as well as ATVs and motorbikes.”
The sergeant took a deep breath. “Corporal Black,” he said after a moment’s thought, “based on your recon, would I be able to sneak up there and take a look myself without attracting attention? Unfortunately, my suit makes slightly more noise than a standard-issue human body does.”
“I think so, sir. Just follow me and be careful.”
Wallace turned to his second-in-command for this mission, Sergeant Conyers, a relatively young, up-and-coming NCO. “You’re in command while I’m away, Conyers,” he said. “Keep everyone here but stay alert. We’ll be right back. And if we’re not, you know what to do.”
“Yes, sir,” Conyers replied. “How long?”
“It shouldn’t take more than six minutes,” Wallace said. Black had only taken three and a half to scout ahead and come back.
The corporal led the way up a gentle slope and past a small grove of weird flowers—not the flowers that produced the goop, Wallace noted, but some other, bigger, purplish variety. They looked familiar, but he couldn’t recall the memory and had other, more pressing issues. The younger man was alert and indicated where to walk, crawl, or keep especially silent. After about a minute and a half, sunlight and open space were visible beyond the now staggered trees. The two men dropped to a prone position and inched cautiously forward.
Wallace stopped and peered intently at the camp as soon as it came into view.
Clearly, the mercs had been there for a while. They had dug in well and their base had the look and vibe of a place that was temporary but firmly established. There wasn’t much activity, but a few low noises nevertheless drifted up and out. Wallace had heard some of it even before he’d sent Black forward, he realized now, although the sounds had been too faint to identify.
He counted twenty tents, all of them large, well-made, and sturdy. They appeared to be the kind that some foreign militaries, as well as serious big-game hunters, used. Each of those could fit three men. He hoped that that meant there was a maximum of sixty of the bastards.
As Black had said, a makeshift gauntlet of defenses surrounded the encampment. They’d dug ditches, about four feet deep, around most of the camp and set up crude barriers immediately beyond them. These mostly consisted of wooden stakes and construction markers that had been pounded into the earth and what looked like barbed wire was strung between them. All in all, it was old-fashioned and not expertly assembled but it would slow the hell out of any close-range attack on their position.
Wallace made a quick count of between forty and fifty men. The sentries weren’t terribly vigilant, but there were a lot of them. Others sat near the center of the camp or milled around the tents. As Black had said, they were well-armed. This was a respectable fighting force and definitely nothing to fuck around with. The men themselves were a motley crew. The team of bounty hunters that Chris had run into a few months before had consisted of men from many different countries, and it looked like this was also the case with the current group. The sergeant had only heard the details as he’d still been recovering from his injuries at the time and had not participated in that particular mission.
There was one thing, however, that was downright weird. Their whole camp—which was a good acre in size—was almost totally free of vegetation. They’d cleared it all. Aside from the bizarre miniature desert that housed the giant scorpion population in the eastern reaches, the Zoo tended to cover as much area as possible with dense vegetation. Nothing looked burnt, however, so the mercs hadn’t used flamethrowers. Herbicides might have worked in the short term, but they would have needed a ridiculous amount.
Still, his mission wasn’t to figure out how they’d trimmed the lawn. Killing them was.
The problem was that there were twice as many of them as Hall’s almighty intel had suggested, and they were armed and equipped like a goddamn pro army. Who could have hired a force like that? It had to be the work of someone extremely wealthy or even a hostile foreign government.
Wallace spent a few more moments in intense scrutiny of the camp and memorized the positions of their fortifications and patrols. When he was satisfied, he and Black crawled away and out of sight.
“What do you think, Sergeant?” Black asked in a barely audible voice.
“It won’t be easy,” Wallace replied. With the element of surprise, they might have a good chance, but the odds definitely weren’t in their favor. “Let’s get back,” he said. They returned silently to the rest of the platoon.
“Welcome back, Sergeant,” said Conyers. “I counted about six minutes exactly.”
“Nicely done,” he replied. “The bad news is that Black is an excellent scout, and everything he said is true and correct. We have a war on our hands here.”
Conyers and several of the others nodded grimly.
“That’s fucking great,” growled Falstaff. “It fucking figures.”
“Keep your voice down,” Wallace snapped.
“All right, so what do we do?” Corporal Black asked.
The sergeant breathed in, then out, conscious of the fact that everyone was looking at him. Weeks before, during the hunt to capture or kill Queen Kemp, he’d lost an entire platoon to an ambush by Kemp’s new squadron of bigger, nastier locusts. Then, at least, they hadn’t known they were walking directly into a deadly trap.
This time, however, they did know.
“We will not attack,” Wallace said. Several people blinked, confused, but they held the questions and simply waited to hear more. “We might be able to get the drop on them, but there are still fifty to sixty men with a lot of hardware. Their setup also suggests that they know what they’re doing well enough to rally from a surprise attack fairly rapidly.”
“We could surround the camp and toss grenades in,” someone said. “
Or call in an airstrike—”
“Hall won’t allow us to use aircraft,” the sergeant replied, “for various reasons. And trying to surround them would split us up at a time when we’re already outnumbered. Too many things can go wrong—with even one dud grenade, we’d be in a world of shit. No…it’s a tough call.” He shook his head. “But we can’t fulfill our orders if we’re all dead. We now have good and accurate recon on the size and strength of the enemy force. We return to base and gather proper reinforcements. A hundred men would be a hell of a lot better than forty, especially if we could drive them toward another force waiting on the wall. The Director will be doubly pissed, but that’s too bad. I will take responsibility.”
Everyone nodded. A few looked disappointed, but most looked relieved.
“You heard the man,” Sergeant Conyers said. “Everyone get your—”
Something cracked and Conyers’ eye exploded in a red fountain of blood. The man tottered and fell.
“Holy fuck!” someone gasped.
Everyone hit the ground. More gunfire rang out and loud, booted footsteps and shouted orders drifted toward their position. Wallace motioned for everyone to crawl back behind the nearest large trees and return fire from cover.
“They down here!” someone barked in a thick accent and limited English. The voice accompanied a set of footsteps that seemed to have moved ahead of the others on the incline above them. The sergeant pushed hastily upward, his rifle raised, and fired almost immediately. A man, probably a local North African, stood there, and surprise showed on his face in the split second before the slugs ripped into his stomach and lower chest. Wallace stretched and grabbed the man’s belt to yank him down the slope. He wound an arm around the dying man’s head and snapped his neck to be safe, then stuffed the corpse into a slight recess in the ridge and out of sight.
His men had used the opportunity to move and had repositioned themselves only about a hundred feet deeper into the jungle. Two of them motioned him over and held their guns at the ready to indicate that they would cover him. He ducked low and ran. Their rifles cracked and more voices shouted behind him. Wallace cast a quick glance over his shoulder as another man toppled and screamed before he rolled down the slope.
