Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Of course, there was the necessity to maintain discipline and professional decorum. Besides, he was fairly sure that no one liked Roden. The poor, poor man.

  “I heard he’s coming to introduce our new scientist,” one of the men said.

  “Another escort mission with a civilian passenger. Why do scientists keep trying to kill themselves by stumbling into the worst of the shit? It’s like they intend to poke their heads into a devilcrow’s beak because they want to examine its fucking uvula or something.”

  “Come now, guys,” someone else interjected in a sarcastically chipper tone of voice, “We serve Germany. Aren’t you honored?”

  Their volume had increased. “Quiet,” Jan snapped and glared at the worst offenders. They swallowed what remained of their words and turned into statues, albeit statues that looked halfway between sheepish and mischievous. Once he indicated that he would take no further shit, however, the troops usually behaved.

  Quietly, The Bull spoke her own opinion. “I wonder what kind of pasty-assed old man the British are sending in with us this time,” she mused. “That guy from a few months ago who wore the adult diapers into the jungle probably has a place in the records of military history by now.”

  “Thank you, Leutnant, for reminding me of that,” he replied. Behind him, one of his hands inadvertently grasped the other more tightly than was comfortable. “I was concerned I might forget it and never have to summon the mental image again.”

  “What would you do without me?” she asked.

  Behind Director Roden, the door opened and in walked the new scientist. It was not, in point of fact, a pasty-assed old man.

  “Um…uh, hello there,” she said and smiled and waved even more awkwardly than the director had. She at least seemed genuine, though.

  “Oh, no.” Jan sighed.

  The scientist was none other than the woman in heels with the wandering hands and the severe lack of respect for authority whom he had earlier taken to task for her violation of Rule Number Forty-Two. At least now, she wore something more appropriate for the conditions. She looked the part in a scientist’s suit, and she held her helmet in her hand. They’d doubtless have to waste time teaching her how to use the HUD, he realized irritably. She was relatively young. He could not quite pinpoint her age, but it was probably somewhere in the vague territory between twenty-nine and thirty-nine. She had dark hair and an open, curious, bright-eyed expression that was pleasant to some degree but also bespoke a certain foolishness. Not stupidity, of course—she was a scientist, after all—but more in the sense of…well, maybe a lack of common sense was appropriate.

  “This is Dr. Laura Curie,” Roden said with a flourish of his hand. “She will replace our previous head researcher, whom I’m sure you’ll appreciate my not mentioning by name. Actually, she only arrived today. She’s highly qualified, so have no fear that she might botch things up during an experiment and subject us all to some kind of zombie gas or other nightmare.” He chuckled.

  “I…ah, will certainly try my best to avoid zombification,” the woman said quickly. “One can hardly get quality experiments done when one has to keep tripping and pushing down one’s slower co-workers to distract attention away from oneself.”

  The troops all stared. A few smiled weirdly when they realized it was a joke. Others merely looked confused or tried to evaluate her with little apparent success.

  “Most excellent.” Roden, speaking to the Germans again, continued his spiel. “She is a molecular biologist. Frankly, we’re amazed that someone of her experience has actually volunteered to join us in this magnificent locale.”

  Jan allowed one eyebrow—the right—to rise a fraction in what he assumed qualified as a gesture of appreciation. The woman’s curriculum vitae was indeed rather impressive in a civilian, intellectual kind of way.

  However, they had a mission to undertake.

  “That is very good to hear. I am sure she will make an excellent researcher. We must, however, prepare to leave as soon as possible as there is a team out there that needs to be found and brought back,” he said to Roden and this Laura person as he turned toward his men.

  “Mm, yes, quite,” the director conceded as he put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels.

  “Settle in, everyone, and be prepared to stay sharp and follow the rules,” the hauptmann continued. “Our mission is to locate and extract a team that previously went into the Zoo on a deep recovery mission. They missed their return time and are presumed to be in distress.”

  As he said this, he took note of The Bull’s appropriately grim expression from the corner of his eye. In his periphery, he could see Roden and the lady scientist, whose brows furrowed with vague concern but otherwise looked as though someone had asked what had happened to the rest of a jar of peanut butter.

  None of this surprised him. He had important and serious work to do and bureaucrats and civilians invariably found ways to interfere. They barely even understood but still, they meddled. At least they often provided some unintentional comedic value.

  He wondered if the woman would actually accompany his team. Roden hadn’t bothered to mention that rather important fact yet.

  Focused on the task at hand, Jan pushed these thoughts from his mind and continued his pleasant chat with the troops.

  “Everyone is to expect the worst. All of you have been drilled and trained and instructed in Zoo protocol and the Bundeswehr’s standards. Those of you who are new to my command will also learn some of my rules. For example, Rule Number One. Never go on a mission without the right people. I personally selected most of your NCOs because they do an excellent job. Listen to them, and we will all emerge from this mission in one piece—along with the men and women we are tasked with rescuing.”

  “Isn’t it Klaus’s group?” someone asked and his voice contained a subtle jeering tone and the suggestion that he might be on the verge of cracking up with laughter.

  His gaze snapped toward the voice but he couldn’t tell exactly who had spoken. “You are to refer to your superior officer as Hauptmann Grossman,” he said. “But yes, it is.”

  A few people chuckled. As they did so, Dr. Curie walked closer to Jan and The Bull and now showed signs of slight consternation. Her schoolgirl-like enthusiasm for studying the Zoo had begun to give way to a realistic assessment of the risks they all faced.

  Someone else among the team said in German, “Well, that explains a lot,” he said. “We all know what kinds of missions Klaus—I mean, Hauptmann Grossman—runs. They’re probably all sitting around in the jungle having a nice circle jerk.”

  Chapter Ten

  Soldat Gunter Grün fired another short burst into the trees. The knuckles of his hands were white and sweat rolled down his brow in fat, salty beads. His eyes bulged and his teeth ground together, while his hands, along with his entire body, shook constantly. All he had seen was a flash of color. That was all anyone had seen, even right up to the moment when they were snatched away. He was terribly certain, at that moment, that he would die and wished he was somewhere else—anywhere else.

  If this was a battle, it was a ridiculously lopsided one. Most of the men who’d survived until this point fired desperate volleys into the jungle. They pivoted toward ghosts of sounds and shadows of movement and tried in desperation to shoot anything that wasn’t obviously human, even trees and grasses, simply to stop the jungle from killing them all. Already, a couple more troops were gone.

  In the next moment, it seemed to be over. He continued to fire, unable to believe they were safe yet.

  “Hey. Hey! Stop wasting ammo,” Klaus commanded.

  Gunter eased his finger off the trigger. “But sir, I saw it,” he protested. “It dashed through the trees right there.” He gestured toward the place with his rifle.

  “We all saw them. But we’ve driven them off for now. Do not fire unless you know you have a clean shot or I give the order to lay down suppressing fire. Is that clear?” The hauptmann’s voice was ragged w
ith the demands of hunger and fatigue, not to mention the ravages of fear and stress.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, his voice softer now. The last of the monsters, whatever they were, had vanished into the jungle for the moment. He tried to tell himself to relax, to breathe a sigh of relief, and to focus on the main objective of their mission rather than dwelling on morbid thoughts of what might happen to him and the remainder of the team.

  Then, he saw it again.

  Instantly, he tensed. “Over there!” he shouted. It was on the other side of their column now, which meant either that the creature had gone around them to scout from the right rather than the left or there were more than one.

  “I saw it too,” someone agreed. “Hauptmann, they’re getting ready to attack us again. Can we—”

  “Not yet,” Klaus snapped in response. “We need to push farther ahead. We’ll never find the American team if we stop to fight every few minutes.”

  “It’s not as if the bastards have given us much choice,” someone ahead of Gunter muttered. “We should shred this whole section of the goddamn jungle.”

  It was true. They’d already seen their share of combat during the first two days and now, they had been beset more or less continuously by these strange new creatures. No one had a good look at them and had seen only flashes of color. It almost looked like brightly-hued fur, mostly in oranges, reds, and purples. Yet something about the way they moved and the faint hissing sounds they seemed to make, along with the subtle smell they gave off, suggested reptiles rather than mammals.

  There was no way to be sure, though. Most of the Zoo’s creatures either surged in for the kill or used stealth, strategy, and deception only briefly to disorient their prey before the assault. Gunter had heard most of this from the veterans. The devilcrows liked to encircle their victims before they struck and snakecats, in particular, could be dangerously subtle. But all those same veterans seemed to agree that these current beasts were neither of the above.

  “If the Americans wandered into the territory of these monsters,” someone else commented, “they’re already dead.”

  “Hey!” Klaus shouted belligerently. “Be quiet. We are not certain of that yet. These beasts might have moved into this area only an hour ago, for all we know.”

  Whenever it was that they had arrived, it hadn’t taken very long to inflict a shitload of damage. The first indication of their presence had been the death of eight men followed by old Feldwebel Schwartz. Multiple creatures had shrieked around them and they’d all opened fire, but the mutants had faded into the jungle after they’d claimed each victim.

  The second indication a little later had simply been a streak of reddish-orange that Gunter had seen for only a fraction of a second and out of the corner of his eye. He’d barely registered the movement when a big, tough-looking guy named Schlicker had uttered a short, sharp, choking sound, one which was cut off as quickly as it had begun. By the time everyone looked toward him, he was gone. Gunter and the others had run into the jungle to look for him but found only a small splash of blood on the big leaf of a fern. Something moved away from them at high speed with an odd rustle behind it—as if it dragged a burden—and all they caught was a crest of purplish fur.

  Klaus had told them to move on and stay sharp. More of the creatures had appeared, if only briefly and barely long enough for them to be seen in ominous flashes of color. It seemed almost as if they ventured out only long enough to plan their attack. Gunter wondered why, if they attempted to be so sneaky, they weren’t camouflaged. Then it had occurred to him—with the kind of horror that made the acid in his stomach seem to rise and fester—that maybe the mutants wanted to be seen. As if, he realized, they deliberately tried to terrorize and intimidate their prey.

  Without warning, they’d struck again. Two more men were dragged off into the dark-green depths of the jungle during the first real skirmish, one man near the front right of the column and another from near the rear on the left. Schwartz’s and Schlickers deaths had already spooked the men and this time, the screams of the two newest victims were quickly drowned out by the roar of gunfire. In sudden panic, the troops had begun to spray lead in the general direction of the attacks in the hope that they could eliminate their assailants through the brute-force application of superior firepower.

  They’d mowed down trees, leaves, and branches while Klaus had gone ballistic in his effort to get them to stop. He’d said they might hit their own men who’d been snatched or that it wasn’t the time to use so much ammunition.

  They found no further trace of the men who’d been taken, nor did there ever come a time when the predators, whatever they were, revealed themselves openly or provided clear targets. Instead, three more men had been snatched. The soldiers grew increasingly desperate in their attempts to fight back without simply strafing the entire jungle with every last round they possessed or burning it down around themselves.

  They were now at the mercy of a species that seemingly existed only to hunt. Worse, they also had apparently been bred specifically to hunt humans.

  “What if they’re trying to weaken us?” Gunter asked now in a hushed tone. They’d glimpsed the monsters again in brief flashes of color, which indicated that they must be preparing to attack once more. “We have less firepower now. What if they are preparing for a full-scale assault?”

  “Shut up, man,” someone snapped. “That’s the last thing we need to hear right now.”

  He gritted his teeth. Shouldn’t that be the first thing they ought to think of? How to prevent losses and how to fight back? In his opinion, they ought to go on the offensive against these monsters to stop them from gradually bleeding the whole unit dry. Converting his fear into anger made him feel better but only slightly.

  There was no time to dwell on it, though, as all around them, the vegetation came alive with scattered impressions of red-orange, purple, and blue.

  “Oh, shit!” someone screamed.

  “Fire!” Klaus barked.

  A fusillade erupted in response and the troops aimed at the vivid hues of the creatures surrounding them. Unfortunately, they rarely hit much of anything although the foliage quivered with violent motion. They backed toward one another in an attempt to gradually form a tight ring with their guns aimed outward to shoot in any direction as needed. Some of the colored streaks they glimpsed seemed to be low and near the ground. Others seemed far too high in the understory, almost into the trees. Hissing and trilling sounds crept into the sonic atmosphere between the roar and crack of their automatic rifles and shotguns.

  Gunter tried to lead the target on one of them as it streaked past him, ahead and to his left, only for it to vanish into the underbrush. The monsters were so fast and moved so erratically that he could not even plot an approximate course of where they were headed. His rifle clicked. He could actually feel himself breathe—pant, really—and he moved as if in an agonizingly intense slow-motion state. Grimly, he forced himself to think of what he had to do, to focus and perform. He systematically ejected the empty magazine, retrieved a fresh new one, and slid it into the gun. Yes, he’d done everything right. His rifle was loaded again. He wasn’t dead yet and was able to fight again. The process of reloading took seconds but felt as though it had unfolded over the space of five minutes or more.

  He raised his weapon. Something brown and red-orange streaked past his shoulder and through the ranks. Behind him, someone screamed.

  The young soldat spun toward the attacker that had darted past him but didn’t dare to shoot yet for fear of hitting his comrades. The guy who’d been next to him was gone. All that remained was a bloodstain, a torn strip of uniform, and the man’s rifle, which had clattered to the jungle floor. Beyond lay the Zoo that shuddered with movement as both beast and man disappeared into its depths. All around him, more gunfire and more screams filled his world.

  A sound came from behind him and Gunter jerked in that direction and fired. This time, he caught another flash of something brownish with
bright, seemingly multi-colored fur and when he fired, his bullets struck true. The wounded creature retreated hastily behind a sheet of overlapping leaves and left a squirt of blackish blood behind it. It thrashed wildly as it fled and uttered an abrasive and horrible squawk, a sound that seemed equal parts avian and reptilian.

  “Ha!” He gasped and his blood warmed with the sudden rush of victory. It was only a small and temporary one, but at least it fixed the fact that they could fight back in his mind. These mutants were not invulnerable.

  There were more of them, however.

  Multiple forms became fast blurs of color that lunged with violence. All burst out of the jungle at once—four or five at least. He pivoted toward them. Already, he could hear the others yell and curse between the near-deafening report of their guns. Another of the mysterious creatures rushed half-toward and half-past him. It might have tried to attack, although he didn’t register it. Still, something in his deep and primitive instincts that still held control of his reflexes forced him to throw himself aside. He fell, rolled, and felt a rush of air as though it had taken a swipe at him and barely missed.

  As he came out of his roll, he rose to his knees, then his feet in one semi-smooth motion, strode ahead two paces, and put his back against a tree. In what felt like a more secure position, he raised his weapon and turned in the direction he’d retreated from. He couldn’t see much of anything, though, as the foliage was too dense.

  “Hey!” he shouted, suddenly paralyzed by the thought that he might be doing something wrong. He wished Klaus would hear him and give him clear orders. “Fuck…” he muttered and began to push his way toward the relatively clear area where the rest of the team continued to fight. Guns still blazed while monsters from the leafy shadows hissed and squawked.

  He took a deep breath and prepared to burst through the leaves and rejoin them. The idea in his mind was to assess the situation, whatever it might be, and deal with it to the best of his ability as a soldier, even though he was a rookie. Before he could move, the creatures launched their assault.