by Michael Todd
At least, however, Chris had modified the name patch. It now read Park. Wallace remembered that Park was a fairly common Korean surname.
The other two soldiers looked at the Asian-American. Gunnar’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth.
“Everything’s fine,” Wallace said sharply. He pretended to wave his hand in an imperious motion and turned the movement into a single finger raised to his lips. “Somebody screwed up and sent Private Park the wrong size uniform, but it looks like he’s made do.”
Gunnar still looked mildly alarmed, so Wallace gestured him to step aside near some crates to talk.
Peppy, meanwhile, simply said, “Nice to, uh, meet you, Private…uh, Park.”
“From what I’ve heard,” Chris replied with a smile, “things here haven’t changed much.”
Wallace and Gunnar moved out of earshot of anyone nearby.
“What the hell are you doing, Sarge?” Gunnar asked. “It isn’t at all like you to break the rules to this extent. Is he even still on our side? What are you planning to—”
“I’m merely helping a friend out.” The sergeant sighed. “The mercs and whoever their real employer was simply used him. He’s after the same thing we’re after—Kemp. And he’s one of the only people I’d trust to advise us on what we might be dealing with. Besides, this way, I can keep an eye on him.”
“Well,” his companion demanded, “what will you do when you find Kemp? Who gets her—Chris, or Hall? It’s not like Hall will let a goddamn renegade scientist snatch his prize out from under him. With all due respect, sir, how will you resolve that?”
Wallace paused, unable to meet the man’s gaze, and shook his head. “I don’t know. But let me deal with it. It’s not your problem right now.”
“Okay. Be careful out there.”
He put a hand on the corporal’s shoulder. “You too. Watch out for those grass clippings.” Thankful that he’d averted what could have been a difficult situation, he returned to the gathered troops.
“Take care of yourself, Sergeant,” Peppy said. “Even if it is ultimately pointless to do so and we all end up catching leprosy or something because one of the Zoo creatures ejaculated into our water supply while we weren’t paying attention.” She and Gunnar nodded to them and left.
The sergeant turned to Chris. “Keep your head down and don’t do anything stupid. We’ve had a number of new people come and go, so as long as you don’t draw undue attention to yourself, we should be able to pull this off.”
“Yes, sir,” Chris said, a bit louder. “I will have the uniform taken care of as soon as we get back.” He moved to find a place among the other soldiers where he could avoid attention.
Wallace took his place beside a sergeant named Jozwiak to await the commander’s arrival. He remembered that Glassner had been on the chimera hunt some months before alongside Chris. When he found a moment, he would have to take the medic aside as well and ask him not to reveal Lin’s identity.
Two men exited the building and approached the group, and Wallace stood at attention.
The first of the two, out in front, was Second Lieutenant Bokhari. He was a small man but tough. English wasn’t his first language so he didn’t talk much, even though he was fairly fluent. From what Wallace knew of his activities as First Lieutenant Danvers’ right-hand man, he was a good officer although he had not led any major missions into the Zoo before.
“Attention!” Bokhari ordered. The troops obeyed and he briefed them on the mission—proceed in an orderly fashion to the coordinates, locate Kemp, bring her back, The End. He reminded them of procedures and protocols and warned them of some of the dangers they’d face. During this speech, Wallace stared at the other man who stood behind and to the side of Bokhari and effectively dwarfed him.
The director was dressed in paramilitary tactical gear like some private contractors or security forces wore, and as the lieutenant spoke, he loaded a magazine into a pistol and another into a high-powered, semi-automatic hunting rifle. He also donned sunglasses and sheathed a huge knife on his thigh. What the hell?
As Bokhari finished the briefing and the troops began to move out toward the gate through Wall Two that would lead them across the desert to Wall One, Hall sidled up to Wallace.
“You don’t need to look so shocked, Sergeant,” the man said. “I’ll go in with you. Of course, you and the lieutenant are still in charge of the details and I won’t interfere in your command unless necessary. I want to personally ensure the success of this mission. Is that a problem?”
“No, sir,” Wallace replied, although he was immediately uneasy. He might have been a National Guardsman but Hall could get in the way if combat broke out. And simply having him look constantly over their shoulders would be, at the very least, uncomfortable.
“Good,” Hall replied, smiling subtly. “Like I said, this time, we win.”
Chapter Six
The small army stood on the narrow stretch of desert that separated Wall One from the edge of the Zoo. Overhead, the Saharan sun blazed. The day was quiet, and so were they as everyone stared at the jungle.
Most of the assembled soldiers had never been into the Zoo before or even seen it up close. Even those who had been in—including Wallace—were momentarily struck dumb by the spectacle.
First and foremost was the simple fact that a dense green jungle rose directly out of the desert sands. There was no obvious body of water like the Nile River far to the east to account for how so much vegetation might be there naturally. No transitional zone existed through which one moved gradually into a climate with more rainfall, as with the Sahel savannah region to their south that separated the Sahara from the forests of central Africa. There was simply a point where a person could take two steps and suddenly find themselves no longer in the desert but in its complete antithesis.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” a rookie behind Wallace said and whistled.
Lt. Bokhari faced the troops. “Remain in formation,” he ordered. “Maintain trigger discipline and all other safety protocols. In the event of an attack, do not fire until ordered to do so. If instructed to deploy the Carl Gustafs or the plasma flamethrowers, observe all safety procedures.”
“You have all been drilled in these things,” Wallace added. “Now show us that you know what you’re doing.”
“Yes, sir,” they replied.
“Forward,” Bokhari said and they marched purposefully into the Zoo.
By now, a distinctive and relatively-clear path had been made which led directly into the jungle from outside the American gate to a point near the Zoo’s center. Regular patrols, whether on foot or in vehicles, had prevented the Zoo from regenerating all its vegetation in this area rapidly enough to be a problem. The army had used this path as a shortcut into the depths for months.
As they passed through the emerald gate and into the otherworld of dark-green shadows, Wallace felt a shudder run through him. Something was different. He had been in and out many times and was familiar with the jungle’s nature and appearance. Even he, though, felt compelled to stop and gawk from the threshold at the visual evidence of the recent changes.
While still composed of a dense mixture of tall trees and nearly-impenetrable foliage and undergrowth, the Zoo no longer looked as vibrant and lush as it once had. Now, it appeared rotten and dank. The greens were duller and the wood paler. There was a faint but unmistakable odor in the air that suggested mold and decay.
Perhaps Kessler was right and it was starting to die. It would be for the best, if so. Humanity would be spared the alien threat, but it was profoundly unsettling. Still, Wallace knew that the place would somehow have a few tricks up its sleeve.
The apparent rot wasn’t only in the areas that appeared to have been destroyed by the herbicide bombs, either.
“At least the chopper guys did good work for us,” said a beefy PFC named Garpiel. “I was in on a patrol once and it was way denser than this. Fuckin’ weed killer, man.”
“Keep your
voice down, Garpiel,” said Wallace. “Low-volume conversation is acceptable as long as you don’t get distracted. Too much noise can draw unwanted company.”
“Yessir,” Garpiel grumbled.
He was right, though. Various sections of the forest, around or alongside the rough path, had turned brownish-black and wilted, which provided more elbow room than would normally be the case. That definitely helped with a force this size—twice as big as the largest one Wallace had ever seen enter the Zoo.
And there didn’t seem to be any creatures around.
Glassner was positioned a little behind Wallace and to the right. “Have you seen it this quiet before, Sergeant?” he asked.
“I can’t say that I have,” Wallace replied quietly. “Sometimes, the place has been more aggressive than others, though. Dr. Kessler believes it may have gone into a kind of remission, but we can’t say for sure yet. One thing I do know is that it’s never smart to underestimate your enemy. And the Zoo is still our enemy.”
The medic nodded and said no more.
They reached the mobile drawbridge which Wallace and various men and women under his command had installed shortly before the diplomatic-escort mission. Its various black and yellow metal components allowed them to cross one of the several small rivers the Zoo had spawned for its own strange purposes. Sometimes, the waterways shifted course. This one, however, had remained constant, which made their lives far easier.
“Sgt. Wallace, take three men and operate the bridge,” Lt. Bokhari said.
Wallace signaled PFC Garpiel and two others nearby to accompany him. The four of them moved ahead of the company to the control mechanism at the river.
It was definitely too quiet. The sergeant glanced down and saw that perhaps half as much water flowed through the riverbed as what he had grown accustomed to. Still, there was enough water and mud that using the bridge would be far more convenient than trying to ford it.
“Sarge, where exactly are we going?” Garpiel asked as Wallace activated the drawbridge. It hummed loudly and the platform lowered across the expanse toward the opposite bank.
“Near the center of the Zoo,” he replied. “That’s all I’ve been told so far. In my past experience, it gets thicker toward the middle.”
“‘It’ meaning the plant life?” Garpiel asked. “Or does the shit get thicker?”
“Both,” he responded calmly.
The drawbridge clanked heavily into place. Wallace and the three enlisted men with him returned to the column as the men began to file across. It took a couple of minutes for the entire force to clear the bridge.
“Leave it down,” Hall said to Wallace and Bokhari. “The wall is well defended and we’ll be back soon.”
The sergeant said nothing but hoped his boss was right.
As they proceeded deeper and deeper into the jungle, things remained quiet. In fact, Wallace noted that he could barely hear the faint sound of breathing which had always characterized the Zoo as a whole. This phenomenon tied into Chris’s theory that on some level, the whole forest was almost a single organism. Most of the plants still lived but many had noticeably dulled and a few had died, seemingly of their own accord.
He also had mixed feelings about the fact that they had another six plasma-throwers and four Carl Gustaf recoilless rifles with such a large, densely-packed group of men. They’d been trained to use these dangerous weapons safely and the troops had been thoroughly drilled in the necessary safety protocols, but it was easy to forget stuff like that in the heat of combat. If they were ambushed and the company thrown into confusion, friendly fire was a real and ugly possibility. At least, despite the inherent dangers, they had plenty of firepower to throw at the Zoo.
Not long after they crossed the mechanical drawbridge, they came to another riverbed which was now completely waterless.
“I’ve never seen that before,” someone remarked. Wallace hadn’t either.
The banks were dry where the mud had cracked to either side of an empty, recessed channel where a flowing torrent had once been. At the bottom, the earth was still moist and muddy, but there was no actual water. Around them, tall trees appeared to have taken on a gray hue and had acquired a fine coating of mold, but even the mold looked sickly.
“Proceed,” Lt. Bokhari said. “Everyone prepare to slow down at the middle. Be careful of that mud.”
Four enlisted men were on point as they descended into the empty riverbed, and Wallace and a few others were immediately behind them. The four ahead were bogged down almost as soon as they hit the central and lowest part of the channel.
“Ugh, the mud’s about ankle-deep,” one of them said.
A high-pitched cry that might have been a whine prevented further comment. Indisputably, the sound seemed to draw closer.
“What’s that?” a few men demanded and the troops froze with their guns at the ready. Wallace scanned their surroundings for the source of the threat and cursed. A tall tree toppled with shocking speed toward the center of the riverbed.
“Move!” he commanded, seized the nearest of the four men, and hauled him back.
Of the other three, only one saw the tree in time and managed to hurl himself forward to safety. The other two, immobilized by the mud and their confusion, wasted valuable seconds while they tried to make sense of the yells of warning around them. The trunk plummeted relentlessly to land on top of them. Men shouted and cursed as the tree buried the two men beneath it.
“Dammit,” Wallace bellowed as he hurtled forward. His suit whirred as he took hold of the trunk and heaved desperately. It was enormous, and even with his mechanically-augmented strength, he could budge it only a little. Other soldiers sloshed up and managed to drag the two men out from under it as he hoisted the tree fractionally once more and finally released it when they were clear.
Glassner and another medic, PFC Sansom, rushed to examine the victims.
“They’re both gone,” Glassner reported after only a moment. The men’s heads and upper spines had been crushed.
“That’s too bad,” Hall said as he worked his way gradually closer to the front of the column. “Leave them here. We’ll pick their bodies up on the way back.”
Wallace wanted to remind Hall that he had promised not to interfere in the command of the mission. He grimaced instead and examined the fallen tree. It was dead, black, and rotten inside despite its weight and the force of its momentum that had killed the two soldiers.
Morale flagged and tension rose as the company forded the muddy riverbed and struggled up steep and rugged terrain on the other side. The sergeant did not recall the landscape being as difficult on this part of the path previously, but the Zoo did have an astonishing ability to change the landscape in only a short period of time.
He fell back slightly in the column and found Private Park, AKA Chris.
“Trees rotting from within and falling over is a new development,” he said in a low voice and attempted to make it seem that he simply made casual conversation with one of the troops. “Have you seen anything like this before?”
“No, I haven’t,” the scientist replied quietly. “Some of the plant life will die off occasionally but usually, the Zoo would grow new stuff around it and essentially recycle the decayed material. The Zoo is going through some kind of change but I don’t know exactly what. I honestly can’t define it in absolutes but it almost seems to me like a reptile shedding its skin or something like that.”
“You don’t think the Zoo is merely dying off?”
“I don’t think so,” Chris responded as they sweated their way up the rugged slope. The top was in sight, fortunately, and it looked mostly flat after that. “This peacefulness—this lull—won’t last. There’s always been a kind of intelligent purpose to everything the Zoo does. Seeing it this quiet makes me as nervous as hell, honestly. When an organism sheds a dead skin it’s because it’s getting bigger.”
A tall man nearby looked curiously at Chris.
“Hey, I studied Enviro Sci
ence before I joined the Army, all right?” the scientist said with a pretense at defensiveness. “It’s interesting stuff. It would have paid shit, though.”
“Okay, man.” The soldier shrugged and seemed to lose interest.
Chris leaned in closer to Wallace and said in a near-whisper. “If something big is coming, it’s now or never to save Kemp.”
Both men looked up and saw Hall move through the formation toward them, his hulking form in its dark tactical outfit an obvious contrast to the enlisted men and NCOs. Chris melted in amongst the other troops once more.
“I reminded Lt. Bokhari of something very important,” Hall stated, “and I want to remind you of the same thing. I want Kemp taken alive. Alive. No matter what.”
“Orders understood, sir,” Wallace said. “May I ask why, though? I only inquire for the sake of the mission.”
“She’s a valuable asset,” was all the director said. “We need her.”
The sergeant thought back to their last confrontation with Kemp and the way her skin had taken on a greenish hue to signal her communion with the jungle. He vividly recalled her haughty and insane defiance of a heavily-armed platoon that could have destroyed her, and most importantly, the way she had lured them into a trap and allowed her locusts to slaughter everyone but himself and Chris. And all of this after they had tried to talk to her and gave her multiple chances to come peacefully.
“Taking her alive won’t be easy, sir,” he stated quietly.
Hall glared at him, the expression obvious even from behind the man’s sunglasses. “Kemp. Alive. No matter what.” He raised his rifle. “She is worth any cost.”
Chapter Seven
The Zoo had changed enough over the previous weeks that Wallace did not always recognize the terrain. Nevertheless, as they drew closer and closer to their destination, an unpleasant sense of familiarity began to overtake him. They were near the center. He began to suspect that the location toward which they marched was the same place Kemp had been previously, or very close to it. That mission was not something he wanted to experience deja vu about. It did, however, explain why the director had been less than forthcoming about where they were headed. He knew exactly how the sergeant felt about the site. Not, of course, that he could have done anything to dissuade the man.
