by Michael Todd
And yet the Zoo had already sprouted new vegetation amidst all this destruction. It adapted frighteningly quickly. In another week or two, any human being who passed by might not be aware that explosive weaponry had ever been used there.
No one seemed to pursue him, at least not yet. He was reasonably certain there was at least one more enemy motorbike roving around somewhere, but they hadn’t come anywhere near his position. It was possible that the Zoo’s legion of monsters had finished them off, of course. Wallace could only hope. The more mercs who blundered into a killing orgy of kangarats, the better. He knew, however, that it was unwise to assume the best-case scenario. Once the fun began, there was a strong possibility that his targets would have reinforcements who, in all likelihood, would arrive from behind. He needed to keep that fact in mind.
The sergeant brought the motorbike to a stop within a circle of trees and out of immediate sight. He knew approximately where he was now—not far from the base camp. It was close enough for him to scout it on foot but far enough away that the mercs would most likely have assumed that the sound of his bike was merely one of their own.
After a deep breath, he dismounted and stood. He’d removed the splints but his legs held up surprisingly well given the extent of his disability. They seemed to have regained a little of their strength and he accepted that his body had been forced to re-adapt to the reality of needing to walk again. Still, he was far below peak functionality and he knew they wouldn’t provide anything more than basic support, and that not for very long. He still walked with the peculiar sidelong gait as he had with the splints and his legs continually hurt like a bitch.
Wallace first half-limped then dropped to crawl as he approached the undergrowth-screened ridge that overlooked the camp. Someone might well come to check on the sound of the bike soon, but he had a moment to scout.
The base looked much the same as it had three days before with the same city of tents and piles of supplies. One major difference, however, was in the number of personnel present. A few people might be in the tents, of course, but he counted only eleven mercs who were immediately visible. Seven of those appeared to be the poorly-trained and poorly-equipped local hires. That left four pros, one of whom Wallace recognized as Marcus, the tattooed Scandinavian.
Frankie was nowhere to be seen and he frowned. If she was back at the other, smaller camp on the mesa, he could deal with her later or send someone else to deal with her after he had eliminated his first target. With her whole force destroyed, she’d almost certainly try to flee, anyway. All he had to do was destroy the force in question without getting killed himself. Simple. Not easy, but simple.
He noted where the mercs were positioned, how many of them actively paid attention, and how they were armed. Marcus was probably in command, but the man seemed tired and distracted. They most likely assumed Wallace’s death was a foregone conclusion at this point and simply waited to be able to go home. That would definitely work in his favor, the sergeant acknowledged.
Something else of interest caught his attention as he studied the camp—a large stockpile of canisters, much like the one attached to the spray weapon he’d tested a short while before, was stacked in the center. The small pyramid of them seemed to suggest that Chris must have found a way to stretch the gas or replicate it in some way since it wasn’t like he could single-handedly manufacture it on an industrial level without the fruit itself. In any event, the canister attached to the hand-sprayer had been pressurized and that was a real bonus.
Better yet, Marcus shouted at his underlings, which drew most of them toward him in a cluster near the middle. He gestured vaguely in Wallace’s direction with a bare, black-flame-adorned arm. As it was unlikely that anyone was aware of his presence, the merc leader must have decided to organize another search party. The men would soon be on the move and the time to act was now.
Wallace braced himself on a tree and pushed to his feet, then hobbled back to his bike. His gut tightened with dread at the thought of what he was about to do. But, as long as he didn’t screw it up too badly, it should work.
It certainly helped that the mercenary force had suffered such high casualties. The Zoo itself had played a part, of course, but it had not been the main factor. As he readied his bike, the sergeant said a silent prayer of thanks to his men, who had died fighting and fought well. He followed with a silent vow that he would avenge them. These sons of bitches would be driven out or destroyed to leave the path ahead clearer for everyone, and his comrades would not have died in vain.
He made a few minor preparations which included a decision on which things he would leave in the bike and which he wanted to keep with him. It took only a moment to sort them accordingly. Satisfied, he took a deep breath and scramble-shuffled onto the vehicle.
“Balls to the wall, Erik,” he said and started the engine.
Full speed would have been best but was too damn risky, he decided as he deftly wound rope around the throttle and tied it off to maintain fixed acceleration. Moderate speed should suffice. The ridge would provide the bike plenty of lift—enough to get over the mercs’ temporary defenses and hopefully, enough to reach the cluster of canisters in the center. He kicked into gear and the bike roared forward. The woods whipped by on either side and the ridge loomed ahead.
His teeth gritted in both determination and anxiety, Wallace pulled the pin on a grenade and threw himself to the side. He had to yank on his own legs as he did so to ensure that they came free and managed to throw himself into a roll. Voices shouted down below.
The sergeant landed hard and his legs, in particular, screamed silent cries of agony in protest at this ridiculous action. Nothing seemed to break or sprain, though. Clearly, he was better at rolling than he was at driving a bike, to begin with. He came out of the tumble almost perfectly positioned exactly where he wanted to be—mostly hidden by foliage but with a nice clear view of the base.
The bike sailed off the ridge, fully airborne now, and descended in a wide arc toward the flat, empty ground a few feet past the nearest ditch and barbed-wire fence. Below, mercs who’d clustered glanced up and scattered instinctively. Wallace raised his rifle. He had, of course, left the canteens and thermos filled with gasoline, as well as two of the six grenades, in the passenger cab.
Duval, the tall lanky man who’d helped Marcus and the Texan strip Wallace’s armor, stood frozen beside the pile of canisters, any immediate path of escape blocked by other obstacles or mercs. The idiot raised his rifle and fired stupidly at the motorcycle as it landed a few yards before the gas reserves. It careened directly toward him.
The man’s bullets struck the vehicle and the armed grenade in the cab blew. The explosion quickly ignited the gasoline and the other grenade. Clouds of flame and smoke, along with waves of heat, shrapnel, and sonic force, erupted at the center of the base and within seconds, the gas canisters began to explode as well. Men screamed and metal cracked and shattered amidst the dull roar of the growing inferno. A thick cloud of translucent vapor rose to mingle with the smoke and blanket the base in a greyish toxic fog as the fires spread.
Wallace crawled hastily to the side and repositioned himself. They’d seen where the bike had come from, and some of them might even remember after the blast—the few of them who were left, anyway. He could see only five men standing.
Duval and six others had been burned, blasted, and shredded by the payload detonation. The shrapnel of so much destroyed metal merely added to the destruction caused by fire and kinetic force.
Three mercs had spread out on the side of the base closer to Wallace. Marcus and one other man, barely visible through the thickening smog, seemed to be focused on some activity at the far end. A relatively small, thin figure crawled out of one of the tents which had been toppled by the force of the blast.
“It’s Wallace. Shoot—fucking kill him!” a female voice shrieked.
The three men closest to Wallace seemed both confused and scared but obediently sprayed gunfire toward
the ridge as they backed away and attempted to take cover behind a large crate. A couple of bullets came close to where he now crouched, but they obviously couldn’t see him and hadn’t aimed at anything in particular.
The sergeant focused on the man least-concealed by the crate, aimed calmly, and fired two bursts from his rifle. Two or three bullets struck home in the throat and collarbone area and knocked him off his feet and blood gushed in a red fountain around him. Ignoring the man now, the soldier fired another burst at the crate itself as suppressing fire.
It was time to move again. They might well have pinpointed his location. By now, he had become fairly adept at hunkering low while he shifted position and could move reasonably fast, even with his legs as fucked-up as they were. A few random shots struck the ridge below him or whizzed over his head but none were any real threat. Once he had settled into another good hideaway, he hefted the RPG launcher.
“Use the RPG!” Marcus’s voice screamed. “Destroy the ridge.”
Wallace grinned. He had already beaten them to this particular tactic. Calmly, he aimed the launcher toward the crate and fired. One of the two men hiding behind it tried to dive for cover, but he was too late. The rocket exploded on impact, not as impressively as the bike and its payload had but enough to get the job done. Both mercs were blown halfway across the camp, scorched and broken and very much dead.
With only three men left, the sergeant set his rifle to full auto and sprayed the rest of his magazine indiscriminately around the camp. He hoped that with the smog cloud as cover, they wouldn’t be able to ascertain where all the shots had come from and might even assume he wasn’t alone.
“Down,” the female voice said again.
“It’s not only Wallace,” Marcus replied. “He has come back with reinforcements.”
“Bullshit!” the woman protested. “He’s over there. You—RPG, now!”
This time, unfortunately, Wallace was fresh out of rocket-propelled grenades. In the time it took him to reload his rifle, not to mention the fact that he could barely see his remaining foes through the haze, one of the mercs had positioned the RPG and was able to fire it.
He saw it streak toward him and registered that the trajectory seemed a little below him. They attempted to collapse the ridge beneath him and perhaps burn him with the updraft while they were at it. He heaved himself to his feet and threw himself down the part of the ridge that sloped toward the narrow causeway of planks they’d used to cross their own ditch.
The explosion singed hairs on the back of his neck, drove him forward, and shifted the earth beneath his body even as he rolled downhill. He caught hold of a tree and, using the strength of his upper body to compensate for the lower part once again, swung himself behind it as the smoke cleared.
An intense silence settled in for a few moments and even the jungle seemed to hold its breath. Someone fired five or six single shots in roughly his direction to probe for him and try to get a reaction. Wallace decided that he should react but not in the way they probably hoped. He retrieved two grenades from his belt, pulled the pins on both, and tossed each of them behind him in high arcs, one to each side of the tree against which he leaned.
“Cover!” someone shouted.
More blasts shattered the temporary lull. Wallace’s ears were ringing mightily by now. He wondered briefly what the sentries on the walls—only a few miles away in any direction—must think, hearing all this. A moment later, he turned on his knees, his rifle loaded and ready, and crawled toward the camp itself.
The various explosions had effectively destroyed the mercenaries’ fortifications on that side and left little more than a jumbled and uneven, but more or less flat, mass of burnt debris for him to cross. The smoke-vapor mixture had thinned a little by now—a good thing, too, since it smelled terrible. It hadn’t killed the mercs, though, so it obviously wasn’t too toxic. Wallace fast-crawled toward a pile of mud and shrapnel but paused when he caught sight of three figures that emerged on the far side of the camp. Instinctively, he flattened himself and froze.
They seemed ready to spray gunfire at him at random once again, but he eased into a prone firing position and shot first on full auto. One of the dark forms came alive with spurts of bright red and screamed before it seemingly melted into the earth. The other two leapt and stumbled and ran in opposite directions.
Wallace noted, with a mixture of annoyance and vague satisfaction, that one of the two forms continued its flight—the bigger one careened headlong into the jungle.
“Marcus! Get back here you fucking cowardly piece of shit,” the female voice yelled.
He paused a moment to listen intently. The stray bikers still somewhere out in the Zoo—if they hadn’t fallen foul of the jungle creatures—were not on the way to reinforce the camp. For the time being, there was only one more person he needed to take care of.
It was always good to save the best for last.
Chapter Nineteen
Ready for the next phase of his mission, Wallace ejected the empty magazine from his rifle and jammed the last one in. Loudly, he announced, “Okay, hit her from both sides,” before he fired half the mag in the general direction from which he’d heard the voice cursing Marcus.
He received no response, at first. Then, a muzzle flashed and a handgun made four or five cracking reports. He rolled aside but burning pain streaked across his right arm—a graze, he realized, but still. His reflexes needed to be quicker.
“You stupid jarhead motherfucker,” said Frances Stoudt. “We were supposed to be done by now.”
“‘Jarhead’ is for the Marines,” the soldier replied. “I’m Army.”
“Fuck you. I had a date tonight. He was even taller than you are and a lot richer.”
Wallace tried to get a bead on her position, but it sounded like she moved in a slow pattern of advance and retreat. She may have been dumb enough to locate her base in a low-lying area beneath a ridge, but she wasn’t a total moron, at least.
“That’s okay,” Wallace said. “Most men are used to women flaking out on them at the last minute for no particular reason. I’m sure he’ll get over it.”
Frankie responded by firing once more. He again rolled aside and came to rest behind a few pieces of splintery firewood under a tarp that had somehow not been melted by the blaze nearby. After a moment or two, he decided to take another risk and rose onto his knees.
The smog was clearing. Frankie was quite visible about fifty feet away. She knelt and aimed at him, her black beret slouched over her blonde hair and nearly covering one eye.
Wallace ducked again as she fired. He returned the shots and kept his pattern precise, but she had already thrust into a somersault and avoided his fire.
He pushed hastily to his feet with an agonized groan and when his rifle clicked, he dropped it and drew his pistol. A quick step put him behind a tree, back near the edge of camp now and on the far side. It was a thin tree, but it was better than nothing.
“You know,” he said, “that Texan guy mentioned—before I finished him off, of course—that you aren’t acting on Chris’s orders to kill me. I’m sure Chris will be very interested to find that out, once I tell him. Even if you escape, you’re fucked. You killed a lot of American troops and Uncle Sam doesn’t take kindly to that. My guess is that whoever you’re working for won’t be very pleased that you simply ran away without killing me, either.”
He wanted to provoke her into coming after him. If she tried to flee, there would be no way he could catch up with her on foot. One on one, though, he might at least he have a decent shot at victory.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Frankie said before she attacked him in the one way he would never have expected—and probably the best way she could have, under the circumstances. She rolled a large, still-intact gas canister directly toward his feet.
Wallace’s eyes widened and he tried to force his legs to work at normal capacity. He failed and the impact of the metal cylinder knocked him off balance. His legs
tangled and as he fell, a lithe form suddenly appeared beside him. With shocking speed and accuracy, a foot kicked the pistol out of his hand.
Frankie was on him in an instant. A foot stomped on his left leg at the knee and it flared in agony. Her hand clawed at his eyes, and he turned his face in time to avoid her nails tearing into the eyeball itself but took the scratch on his cheek. In response, he snapped his hand up and grabbed her by the wrist while the other hand seized her belt. He threw her with all the strength he could muster in such an awkward position. She seemingly sensed what was happening and pushed into the throw to turn it into a somersault to prevent injury.
While Frankie tumbled, the sergeant used both hands on the trunk of the slim tree to haul himself up. The blow to his knee had been well-aimed. He trembled and sweated and hoped fervently that his leg hadn’t been rendered completely useless. While he didn’t think so, adrenaline masked some of the pain, which was bad for diagnosis.
Wallace raised himself to his feet at the same time that Frankie came out of her roll and onto her feet. They stood for a moment and faced one another, Wallace’s gray eyes locked onto her blues.
There was little doubt that Frankie was skilled in hand-to-hand combat. It was impossible to say exactly how skilled, but she definitely knew a few things—and she was in excellent physical condition, not to mention about twelve years younger than Wallace. Her obvious disadvantages lay in being almost a foot shorter than him, which gave her less reach, and in her much slimmer build without his brute strength.
