by Michael Todd
“We are approaching the coordinates,” Hall said.
“Everyone on high alert,” Bokhari ordered.
“Be ready for anything,” Wallace added.
After the ridge beyond the dry riverbed, the terrain had gradually sloped downward once more and finally flattened out. The path, by now, had disappeared. They had never been able to maintain it more than about two miles in at most, and it was a good three miles to the center of the Zoo. Wallace estimated that they’d covered at least three miles by now.
This was it, then. They would once again besiege Kemp’s citadel, her palace of twisted trees and vines with its banner-like leaves grown up around the piles of debris which the mother chimera had originally stolen for a nest. Now, it served as the foundation for a castle of plants which enclosed the throne room of the mad queen of the jungle. They would arrive at any moment.
Knowing that, even though they’d had not a single skirmish with the creatures of the Zoo thus far, Wallace felt he knew one thing with absolute certainty: They would go into battle, and soon.
Chris insinuated himself through the ranks once again to stand beside him. “This is weird,” he said softly. “Based on my research, this is where most of the Zoo’s creatures seemed to be headed and where most of the activity was concentrated toward. I did a little observation and noticed things moving toward the center—or near-center, at least. I hired a guy to hack the photos from one of your aerial cameras—sorry about that—and added them to what I’d already seen myself. I ran everything through a couple of algorithms that a few researchers developed to track the movements and habits of some of the base creatures—grasshoppers, rats, marsupials, great cats, and so forth. Of course, the animals here don’t behave exactly the same way Earth organisms would, but still. All the data suggested that this area should be teeming with the bastards.”
Wallace nodded. He had already begun the mental shift that moved him from on alert to actively ready for combat and desperate action if needed. He thought back to his mission to escort the diplomats. In that particular case, the main threat they’d faced had come from under the ground. That had been in another part of the Zoo, however—over to the east—whereas Kemp’s capital was a little southwest of the center. He hadn’t encountered any of those repulsive giant scorpions since the end of that little adventure. God willing, they never would again.
Ahead, the foliage looked less dense.
“Sir,” Wallace said, both to Bokhari and to Hall, “if we’re headed where I think we are, I’d like to request that I go first, along with two plasmas and half a dozen men with Zoo field experience. The rest of the company will still have some cover here in the jungle, and we’ll only go far enough to ascertain whether or not there’s an immediate threat.”
Bokhari agreed to the request. Hall said nothing but he seemed impatient.
The sergeant chose two men who wore the scuba-like outfits and goggles that were strongly recommended for anyone who operated a plasma flamethrower. The weapons were probably the most devastating small arms they’d yet deployed against the Zoo, but they were also damn near blinding and created incredibly high temperatures. In addition to these, he selected two other men he knew had been in and out of the jungle recently and accepted four volunteers who had at least been on patrols. Garpiel was among them.
“If there’s a goddamn ambush waiting for us,” Wallace told them, “we retreat and regroup so the sons of bitches have to fight all of us at once.”
“Yes, sir,” they agreed.
They pushed their way through the last screen of vegetation and stood in the clearing that surrounded Kemp’s home.
It was different this time. Wallace recalled that it had been surprisingly free of trees and other large plants when he’d been there before. Now, although still clearer than the dense jungle all around them, it had become overgrown with slimy vines and scraggly bushes.
Kemp’s palace, meanwhile, had the same dull, dark, sickly look as much of the rest of the jungle. Something about it reminded him of a large old farmhouse or mansion abandoned to decay, the kind that he and the other kids back in Kansas had always assumed were haunted.
Nevertheless, the sight of the structure was still incredible.
“Unbelievable, man,” Garpiel said. “How the hell did something like this hang out here and we didn’t even know about it?”
“Some of us did know,” Wallace pointed out.
From the base of jumbled metal and concrete, the palace was surrounded by thick vines that bristled with thorns, probably grown as an intentional defense measure. Trees grew up through it and around it and their canopies looked almost like gables or turrets. They were hung with what the imaginative might call banners of ivy and huge flower petals of brilliant red and deep blue. The trunk of one tree bent close to the ground and led upward like a ramp or staircase to the gaping and cavernous entrance, which was dark and silent.
They were alone. The castle had no defenders.
Wallace focused his senses and scanned the entire perimeter of the clearing. In absolute silence, he watched, listened, and waited. His men bristled with both nervousness and impatience but nothing moved in the eerie stillness.
“We’ll need to secure the area more thoroughly,” he said after a few moments. “So far, there’s nothing to indicate immediate danger, so we’ll do that together with the rest of the company.”
“That sounds like a good call, sir,” Garpiel said and looked unashamedly nervous.
They headed back and informed Hall, Bokhari, and the others of what they’d seen.
“All right, we’ll move forward,” the lieutenant said.
“That is disappointing,” Hall remarked sharply. “I hope your little advance scouting trip didn’t scare her off.”
Wallace bit back a snarky retort.
The entire company marched forward and their ranks almost filled the entire broad, semi-clear area between the edge of the jungle and the front of the palace. Many soldiers gasped or muttered comments upon seeing the bizarre, mostly organic structure.
“I want the whole company to circle that thing,” said Bokhari. “Remain alert to any threats from it or the surrounding vegetation.”
“She’s in there,” Hall said and gestured toward the palace. “We shouldn’t waste time—”
“It will only take a minute to secure our perimeter, sir,” Wallace said. “And doing so will greatly increase the probability that we survive long enough to complete the mission.”
Hall appeared to grind his teeth in evident frustration, but he consented—for now.
The whole force moved in a serpentine column at a fast trot counterclockwise around the perimeter of the bizarre structure. Despite the obviously hostile action, they saw and heard nothing to indicate any resistance nearby. They finally regrouped near where they had first emerged from the jungle and the entrance to the palace yawned before them. Wallace would have liked to launch a couple of grenades through the front door and be done with it, but he knew Hall would never allow it. They would have to go in.
“Now, then,” the director said, “Kemp has to be hiding in there. It’s time to go get her.”
Wallace swallowed uncomfortably. “Yes, sir.”
Bokhari rubbed his chin as he studied the bizarre structure. “I don’t like to divide my force,” he said, “but there isn’t room in there for a whole company.”
“It looks like the kind of place the army would want to install a dorm,” Garpiel quipped. “Or maybe a bunch of showers.”
“Shut up, Garpiel,” Wallace said. “Lieutenant, I’ve been in there before. Myself and the scouting party I just led, together with as many other men as we can fit into the place, can go inside while the rest of you wait out here and guard the perimeter. We’ll stay in close communication and notify you if we find anything.”
“Agreed, Sergeant,” Bokhari said. “I’ll have the plasmas burn the surrounding vegetation to give us more space in case we’re attacked.”
; “Negative,” Hall insisted. “That would announce our presence too loudly and clearly. We are on a mission of abduction, here, Lieutenant. And Wallace, I’m going in too.”
Bokhari frowned. “As you wish, Director,” he replied.
“Myself, Garpiel, and…uh, PFC Del Toro there,” Wallace said and indicated one of the plasma troopers, “will take point. Director Hall, it would be best if you stay in the middle.”
Hall nodded. The man wasn’t a complete moron, at least, even if he had missed the point that an entire company of soldiers marching around the Zoo capital had effectively already announced their presence. If Kemp was in there, she’d have gotten the message very loudly and clearly.
Wallace had Del Toro go first on the off chance that the man might fire his weapon unthinkingly. He remained directly behind him with his rifle poised and assured the man that he’d support and cover him. Garpiel followed immediately after, and Hall and two dozen other troops brought up the rear. A quick glance confirmed to Wallace that Private Park was among them. He wanted Chris in there with him so that was reassuring. They proceeded up the tree-ramp until they crossed the threshold of the entrance into the deep interior shadows of the Zoo’s seemingly defunct capital.
Inside were the same strange and incredible sights Wallace had seen before, if only briefly, when Kemp had taken them prisoner after the massacre. The tapestries of huge leaves. The cathedral-like windows where gaps had been left between the rising plant walls so dim rays of sunlight crisscrossed the air to partially illuminate a place that would otherwise have been pitch-dark. The massive staircase spiraled up the interior of the wall, although it ended halfway up. Originally, Kemp’s throne had been mounted at the end of this staircase atop a fat central tree, but Chris had tossed a grenade that had taken care of that. The strange green pit into which Kemp’s locusts had fed the bodies of their comrades was now dark and its writhing tendrils had ceased all movement.
“So where is she?” Hall asked as he looked around and tightened his grip on his rifle. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Wallace replied and made another careful survey of the interior. Other troops fanned out around the perimeter and Chris sidled up beside the sergeant.
“Wallace, you stupid fuck,” Hall rasped and his voice rose in volume for the first time since Wallace had met him. Soldiers between the two of them froze or moved aside and the tension, already acute with the expectation of attack, thickened further. “This is your fault. You screwed it up, Wallace. What the hell were you thinking?”
The sergeant stiffened. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t follow how you’ve reached that particular conclusion. We simply haven’t found her yet.”
“She should have been right here,” Hall said and his lips drew back from his teeth as he pointed emphatically at the ground. “You scared her off. Your idiotic suggestion that we send helicopters to gas-bomb the Zoo before going in alerted her that we were coming. And then your paranoid, cowardly insistence that you be allowed to scout ahead finished the job. We lost the element of surprise, and that is your fault. Now, she’s probably hiding in a bush a mile away from here in God-knows-which direction, and we’ll have to spend the next week combing every square foot of jungle. Which is exactly what I now order us to do. We will not leave this shithole until we have her.”
The sergeant actually trembled with a mixture of rage and shame. Hall may have been correct, actually. In his desire to protect his troops, it was indeed possible that he had simply broadcast their intention to their quarry.
Before he could reply, however, he heard something. They all heard it. A hum became a buzz that swallowed the silence and grew steadily louder.
“What the fuck is that?” Garpiel gasped.
“Locusts!” someone outside bellowed. “They’ve surrounded us! Get back—”
Gunfire erupted through the muffled stillness of the brooding jungle.
“Oh, shit,” Chris muttered.
Wallace pushed his way through the others and stood at the entrance, where two locusts had already landed. Above them, the light dimmed and judging by the buzzing and scuttling sounds, this was the result of locusts that had landed on the windows of the palace itself and blocked out the sun.
The creatures had originally spawned from a natural, albeit rare, super-swarm of African insects which had been assimilated by the Alien Goop that Uncle Sam’s scientists had studied at this almost exact location. That was when the Zoo itself came into existence. The first generation of locusts were dog-sized, bright green, and deadly enough as it was. During the first mission to capture or kill Queen Kemp, she had introduced these bastards, the second generation—man-sized, darker, and even more savage. The two at the entrance chittered hideously as they opened their fanged and drooling mouths and snapped their blade-clawed forearms.
“No,” Wallace said and opened fire with his rifle. He gave a three-round burst to each of them and divided a third burst between the two. His keyed-up mental state and the superhuman function of his exoskeleton worked together to improve his aim, and both the locusts’ heads exploded in sparking showers of blackish fragments and greenish blood.
Behind them, there were more. Many, many more.
Chapter Eight
“Del Toro!” Wallace yelled. “Here! Now!” He aimed his rifle and fired two more bursts into the seething emerald-black mass of insectoid wings, limbs, and claws that advanced up the tree-ramp toward him. The two in front were stalled, either spooked or wounded, but definitely still alive.
The plasma trooper ran to his side as the other soldiers either gawked in horror or aimed their rifles and shotguns upward toward the windows of Kemp’s botanical cathedral. The locusts had already begun to force themselves in.
“I want you to—” Wallace’s instructions to the PFC were interrupted by a near-blinding flash of blue-white light. Someone outside had fired one of their own plasma flamers at the base of the tree-ramp. Brilliant blue-violet flames surrounded a core of shining white plasma that roared past, incinerated a mass of shrieking locusts, and ignited. That still left at least eight locusts on the upward section, however, and these were almost upon them.
“Angle downward,” Wallace ordered and clapped Del Toro on the shoulder.
“Okay,” the man responded and tried not to panic. “Plasma! Take cover!”
He fired.
Wallace turned away to shield his eyes as the plasma-thrower’s blazing beam rocketed forward and down. It streaked along the ramp to blast into the ground beneath it. The entire bent tree erupted into an inferno and transformed the last of the approaching locusts into nothing but a trilling conglomeration of foul-smelling charcoal. Their devastated carcasses crumbled and fell to earth around the burning tree and the flames faded from blue to a more normal orange as the plasma’s heat dissipated.
“Garpiel!” Wallace shouted over his shoulder. “Cover Del Toro.” He turned to the plasma trooper. “Extinguish that while I get everyone back here.” He gestured to the flames that blocked their exit.
“Yes, sir,” Del Toro replied and retrieved the small fire extinguisher he carried at his side. It wouldn’t be enough to put out the entire blaze they’d started, but it would suppress the flames and heat enough for them to dash out the doorway and leap aside to the ground. In the meantime, the flames would deter locusts which might come in to attack them.
Beyond the flames, the sky was darkened by the rapidly growing swarm of the winged creatures. The rest of the company outside was already being overrun. Wallace ran back to gather the members of his group.
“How could this have happened? How could you idiots have missed a whole armada of these things?” Hall rasped. He did not look at Wallace. Instead, he aimed his rifle upward and fired one or two rounds at a time. It looked like most of his shots actually struck their targets.
“We’ll go out the front,” Wallace announced and ignored Hall’s presumably rhetorical questions. “The ramp’s on fire but Del Toro will take care o
f the worst of it. We need to go—and now.” A locust forced its way through one of the window-gaps and fluttered toward the destroyed top portion of the spiral staircase. He aimed his rifle and squeezed off another three-round burst. His shots plus a blast from someone’s automatic shotgun caught the huge bug in a crossfire and tore it into four or five large, spurting pieces.
“There’s a tunnel back here,” someone else shouted between the crackle of gunfire. “It goes underground.”
“We are not getting trapped in an underground tunnel,” Wallace snapped back. “Follow me.”
He gestured with his arm and the troops fell in behind him. For a brief instant during the commotion, he saw that Chris had left his rifle hanging on his shoulder and instead, took potshots at the intruding locusts with his handgun. He’d become a good enough pistol marksman by now that this wasn’t a completely useless move—and they might end up needing all the rifle ammo they could spare.
Back at the entrance, Del Toro had emptied his extinguisher and mostly doused the fire that had consumed the upper part of the tree-ramp. Unfortunately, at least a dozen more locusts had already converged on their position. Garpiel finished off his current magazine and ejected it. “We have a slight problem here,” he said. Locusts climbed over the lower edge of the entrance, crawled down from above, or flapped their wings and hovered directly in front, all determined to get inside and kill.
Beyond them, the clearing was strewn with blood and bodies.
“Everyone in front, take position and fire,” Wallace commanded. “Those at the rear, fire upward.” He gestured toward the high windows, where a couple more locusts crawled in.
