by Michael Todd
At some point, during one of his half-lucid moments, he had what he supposed was some kind of daydream or fantasy. In it, Gunnar figured out that he’d tried to tell him to evacuate the first wall, but he’s misheard the rest of it. Somehow, he now thought that Wallace had reported an additional new order. Hall had finally cleared them to firebomb the Zoo. Helicopters tossed fragmentation and incendiary grenades, infantry launched RPGs and plasma flamethrowers, and the United States Air Force rode in, probably with “Ride of the Valkyries” playing for tradition’s sake. They covered the entire Zoo in napalm, burned it out of existence, and erased any notion that it had ever been there, to begin with. A million dead bugs and nothing of value was lost.
A man could dream.
Wallace was uncertain if he was indeed dreaming when he felt some kind of thick substance pushed in all around him. It enveloped him and he felt oddly warm. Wherever he was, it wasn’t totally dark, but it was dim—ominously, eerily dim. He was propped in what seemed to be an upright, vertical position but couldn’t move. Something soft and slightly moist settled around his back. At first, it felt rather pleasant, but after a few moments of semi-consciousness, it began to itch. Groaning, muttering, and probably drooling on himself, he came to.
Vague shapes amidst the dim illumination and deep black shadows grew clearer, and his vision expanded to encompass the proportions and dimensions of the space before him. Once again, he was in a vast cavern. This was not the same one they’d fallen into earlier, however. It was slightly smaller and somewhat more crowded.
“What the hell…” he croaked and his voice sounded weak and rusty. He blinked and shook his head. At least he still had freedom of movement from the shoulders upward.
Perhaps a hundred feet in front of him, a huge, twisted, sprawling tree had bizarre appendages growing from it. Other trees, similar but smaller and lacking the weird growths, sprouted all around. They stretched throughout the whole of the expanse within Wallace’s field of vision but weren’t as densely-packed as in the underground jungle the team had been in previously. There was much more undergrowth, though, comprised of shorter, smaller, and simpler bushes, weeds, shrubs, flowers, and grasses. All the plants shared the same dull, pale, translucent color that characterized this subterranean vegetation, and all were faintly luminescent, pulsing with the organic phosphorescence of alien life.
In the pale light, Wallace recognized, with mild shock, several of the flowers. Goop plants. The tall blossoms with petals of vibrant red and blue grew amidst the leafy foliage and sheltered tiny pools of the faintly-glowing Alien Goop, as the scientists had officially named it. Chris believed these were the key to unlocking the Zoo’s biggest mysteries. He had tried to gather a sample, but they’d had no luck. The first problem had been that plucking or damaging one of the goop plants sent out some kind of distress signal which summoned massive hordes of locusts. In order to take one back to the base, they’d have needed to find one near the edge of the jungle and then be prepared for serious combat as they fled. In addition, the goop plants had vanished from the Zoo altogether—or so it had seemed.
“So this is where they’ve been,” he muttered. It made sense. The Zoo had transferred all its assets to a more secure location. It was regrouping before it attacked.
By now, the sergeant had realized that he was almost completely buried in the ground. His entire lower half was below the surface of the cavern’s floor, and loose earth had been piled up and packed down around his upper left side as well to trap his arm. That meant that every part of him augmented by his exoskeleton was immobilized, or at least badly impeded until he could dig himself out. His right arm, though, had only a small amount of dirt pushed over it, and he pulled it free without much difficulty.
He craned his neck to try to look behind him and saw what looked like a spongy, blue-green moss wrapped around his side. That must have been the soft, moist stuff he’d felt on his back. It seemed to have worked through his uniform and now tugged gently at his flesh, which made it itch and sting although not severely. It occurred to him that the moss might, in fact, be eating him. A cold shudder of revulsion went through his body and he had to swallow the instinctive burn of bile in the back of his throat. He would have to put a stop to that—momentarily.
Before doing anything, though, he scanned again the area before him. He was not alone.
His quick scrutiny confirmed that most of his team was present. They, too, had been half-buried in the ground and mosses and vines were attached to the exposed parts of their bodies. Chris was there beside Wallace and a few feet farther on was Hall. He located Garpiel and a few of the other troops as well as a couple from Lt. Bokhari’s group. All were either unconscious or dead. Chris, at least, looked to still be alive. Many of the others were clearly past all help.
Beyond them, the cavern yielded another awful truth and he shuddered instinctively. It was not only a jungle but also a graveyard.
Half-buried in the ground as far as he could see were others. Men and women whom Wallace had lost on past missions or who had disappeared on patrols or during expeditions that he had not participated in during his injury time. Mercenaries and bounty hunters were buried alongside the soldiers, likely some of the team that had hunted him recently as well as those who had hunted the mother chimera months before. Some soldiers wore remnants of what looked like the uniforms of other countries’ militaries—members of the British, Russian, or Chinese patrols that had increasingly competed with Americans for the privilege of dying in the Zoo. All were in advanced states of decomposition and many were outright skeletal. Mosses and vines covered them partially but they had been picked clean and sucked dry.
Among this necropolis of human trespassers, Wallace was further shocked to see Zoo animals. Blue, birdlike chimeras that had died squawking, their wing-tentacles trapped or torn out before burial. Once fat, furry, drooling kangarats, their wide mouths stuffed with dirt and their wriggling, almost simian claws trapped below the earth. Sleek, predatory catsharks, at least one of which looked like it had been buried upside-down. They too were dead, having been grown-over with hungry moss and consumed.
“My God,” Wallace said in a low voice, his tone one of mingled awe and disgust. This was the Zoo’s biomass reserve. It wasn’t only a graveyard, it was a food pantry.
“Hello, soldier,” a voice hissed.
Wallace’s gaze snapped up to seek the source of the voice. It was soft, relatively high-pitched, and had a strange quality to it as if two or three voices, carried by a breeze in the woods, spoke simultaneously. Already, his spinal fluid had turned to ice.
He knew who that voice belonged to. But where the hell was she?
It had come from somewhere in front of him, but he couldn’t make out any humanoid form standing or even sitting or crouching amidst the trees. He blinked and refocused his eyes and he gasped as his vision settled on the bizarre apparition that had once been human.
The strange, twisted growths and appendages attached to the enormous tree in front of him were, in fact, the woman formerly known as Lieutenant Doctor Emma Kemp. Her arms, upraised in something halfway between a crucifixion pose and the flapping of a bat’s wings, had grown through and into the body of the tree. Her torso did not seem to possess any of its former exterior. The skin, breasts, and ribcage had rotted away, and it looked as though her spine was half-submerged in the wood. In front of it, her internal organs pulsed sickeningly, although they had turned green and were covered with moss. One of her lower legs and its foot stuck out near the tree’s base but had turned to wood. Only her head was both free and intact. Hundreds of tiny vines grew through it, as they had through the rest of her, like replacement veins and arteries.
When Wallace and Chris had encountered her previously, Kemp had still been identifiably human, or at least humanoid. She’d gone naked and wild-haired, her skin had taken on a greenish tinge, and something about her eyes was different, but she was still recognizable as a member of the same species. Despite the se
vere changes to her personality and sanity, she had still been fundamentally human.
Now, she was a…thing. She had finally been almost totally absorbed into the Zoo itself, and judging by her horrifying and yet pitiful state, he suspected that the Zoo was almost finished with her.
“Erik,” she said. The expression on her still-recognizable face did not indicate any fear, pain, or desire to escape her imprisonment in the tree that had been woven through her body. Instead, she smiled.
Chapter Eighteen
“Kemp,” Wallace said by way of response. “You’ve changed.”
She laughed, the sound surprisingly loud and powerful. The pulsating bushel of organs attached to the front of the tree like a giant slime mold still included her lungs and trachea. “I’ve changed for the better,” she replied. “Soon, you will too. Everyone and everything will change for the better.”
As she spoke, he moved his right arm slowly through the loose coating of dirt that barely impeded it. Even if the scorpions were directed by Kemp’s remaining intelligence, she could not micromanage their every movement or action. Ultimately, they were nothing but stupid bugs. They hadn’t buried his right side deeply enough. He reached, every so gradually, toward his own back, where the carnivorous moss still itched.
“I remember you,” Kemp went on. “You are one of the few humans who are interesting enough to not simply be lumped together and regarded as the contagion of parasites that you are. You and Chris, and a few others. So few…”
“Thanks,” Wallace replied. His fingers brushed the repulsive moss where it began on his side, slightly above his right hip.
“I know that I was one of you, once,” the tree creature continued. “No longer. I have evolved and I have ascended and become a superior form of life. I am the queen of this place, the enchanted garden which will transform this entire world. And then I will be Queen of the Earth itself. My children will sweep your kind away and this planet shall be reborn.”
In his time as a soldier, Wallace had heard a few religious fanatics speak like this. He was certain they actually believed it but it made him sick to hear such megalomania from someone he had served with and fought with. Then again, that person no longer existed. In her place was this abomination, the result of alien plant-tendrils reading the memories off the neurons of a dead woman. Or so he hoped. It was easier to think of it that way. Whatever the case, he had to focus on the task at hand. He took a handful of the spongy moss and ripped it free. His skin stung where it had been.
“You probably thought we were dying off, didn’t you?” Kemp said. “Humans think that if they try to do something, it automatically happens because they think they are superior in every way to all other life-forms. You were probably preparing to celebrate your ‘victory.’ Hah!
“The Zoo has only been lying dormant. Your species’ hopeless, desperate efforts did nothing but stall the inevitable. While you have contented yourselves with patrolling the edges, shooting down a few hapless creatures, and even killing each other on our soil, we have been preparing. We’ve stockpiled food and energy and resources. The next phase in our evolution is coming. Soon now, Wallace. Very soon.”
“How soon, exactly?” Wallace asked and ripped off the remainder of the moss. It felt like removing it actually stripped some of the skin off his back. He gritted his teeth in pain but tried not to let the expression show.
“Soon!” was all Kemp said and her voice rang louder and echoed through the caves. “Be quiet. Nothing you have to say is of any significance. Do you see these caverns? Some were already here, but most of the tunnels have been dug by the newest of my children, my fine armored warriors. They have already created a network of chambers and passages beneath the surface of the earth, one which stretches even beyond the boundaries of your first wall. And all throughout this network, new life has been scattered, planted, and is waiting to bloom. To rise.”
At some point during this spiel, perhaps right after she’d raised her voice to tell Wallace to shut up, Chris woke up. He moaned weakly and a shuffling sound indicated that he had tried to move and dislodged some of the dirt and sand piled around him. He breathed deeply and as his head angled upward toward Kemp, his breath caught harshly. It sounded for a moment as if he’d choked on something. Seeing the former Lieutenant Doctor in her current state, Wallace couldn’t exactly blame him.
“We will acquire new biomass from your wall,” Kemp went on. “With the extra boost provided by that, the coming burst of growth will seethe outward in a great, teeming mass of life. Life! And here in the constant sunlight of this desert, the nourishment will be greater still. We can produce our own water out of the air. It’s the perfect environment for growth. Growth! Not even the dead matter of your second wall will be able to stop it. Did you even finish it? Hah! It doesn’t matter. Nothing you do matters anymore. Your time is at an end.”
“Jesus,” Chris said. He looked at Wallace and back at Kemp. “I, uh, I guess I was wrong.”
“Chris,” Kemp hissed. “Yes. I remember you. You were right about many things, but for the wrong reasons. You wanted to serve humanity. Your perspective is…”
As she continued to ramble away, Wallace fumbled behind himself to dig at the earth around his waist and left arm. He did not have the reach or leverage to do much, but he was able to loosen his lower torso slightly and uncover the back of his left arm down to the elbow. That was better than nothing. It was enough for him to at least try to flex or twitch his augmented limbs to see if his suit was even still functional. If it was, he might be able to break free with a solid burst of effort. But when and if he did that, he would have to be fast. He had little doubt that Kemp would summon a veritable legion of her loathsome children to her aid as soon as she felt threatened.
“Goddammit, Emma,” Chris said and cut her monologue off. “This isn’t you. You don’t know what you’re saying or doing. You don’t have to do this. The Zoo has drugged you to make you do its bidding. You’re not really in charge, don’t you see that?” Wallace glanced at his face and saw that he was in almost complete shock at what the Zoo had done to her.
Beneath that expression was the subtle look of despair. Chris must finally have realized a very important fact that Wallace himself had long suspected, a fact that had been irrevocably confirmed since he’d regained consciousness. Kemp was totally gone, beyond all hope of restoration or salvation. The Zoo wore her as a costume and used her as a mouthpiece. What remained of her body would die instantly if they tried to separate it from its new host. Her consciousness had already been absorbed into the primitive intelligence underlying the jungle itself. And now, Emma Kemp’s obituary would report that she had died months before.
“Shut up,” the Kemp-monster rasped. “Don’t anger me. I have the power to put you to sleep and let you die slowly but peacefully. But you will feel your death if I will it.”
Someone coughed, and over to the side, beyond Chris, a large form stirred as Hall regained consciousness. He exhaled, and then said, “My God…she’s alive. Still alive…”
“No, she isn’t, sir,” Wallace said. He flexed his left arm. The soil suppressed the whirring sound, but he felt a definite vibration. It still worked. He twitched his feet and moved his hips slightly. He could do it. He could break his arm free, use it to both brace himself and push upward, and drag his body out of the ground.
“Shut up, Wallace,” Hall said. “Don’t give me this metaphorical humanist shit right now. She speaks and she can think. That’s all that matters.”
“Wallace is right, you idiot,” Chris snapped. He turned to Kemp. “You’re dead, Emma. The Zoo is merely prolonging your suffering. But we are still your friends. You obviously have some control over what the Zoo does, even now. You can call off the surge and save hundreds—maybe thousands or millions—of lives. And if we could get a goop flower sample, we can still bring some good out of all this violence. We can continue your actual legacy as a doctor and a soldier. We’ll even dedicate it in your name, fo
r fuck’s sake, and we’ll put you out of your current misery. Please, Kemp, listen to us this one last time—”
“Put her out of her misery?” Hall said, aghast. “That is not the mission.”
“But it’s the right thing to do,” the scientist shot back.
Kemp seemed to breathe in and out with a wheeze. She stared at Chris. “Did you just threaten me?”
A surge of tension rippled through the sergeant. This could be bad.
Chris screamed. Wallace’s head snapped toward him as the moss on the man’s back pulsed like a jellyfish. Thin, snake-like vines appeared and punctured the skin of his arms, chest, and shoulders. The Zoo was vampirizing him. Kemp intended to eat him immediately to neutralize the threat.
No.
Wallace’s left arm thrust out of the packed earth. He slammed his fist on the ground near his waist and boosted himself upward, and his exoskeleton hummed loudly as his legs surged through layers of dirt and rock and his body twisted from side to side. Finally, he hop-frogged out and up from the hole in a shower of particles and rose to his feet.
“What—” Kemp rasped.
“You know what, bitch,” Wallace replied and grinned. Her minions had taken his rifle, of course, but they seemed to have forgotten his sidearm. He drew it and pointed it at her face.
Chris still screamed but his wails of pain faded as shock and blood loss pushed him rapidly toward unconsciousness.
“No!” Hall bellowed so loudly it echoed against its own echoes as the protest traveled through the cavern. “Do not fire, Wallace! Do you fucking hear me?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Kemp said and stared at him with her flat, dead, bug-like eyes. “My children will rip you apart the second you fire on me.”
“Do not kill her, Sergeant!” Hall yelled. The man bared his teeth now, enraged by the frustration spawned by the proximity of his goal and his own inability to achieve it. “That’s an order. We take her alive. Whether we have to cut her down from there, or cut the tree down, or post someone to guard her while we come back with a goddamn steam shovel and dig her out, you will complete the mission!”
