His face ashen with horror, he literally ran backward to put a good six meters between himself and the plant remains. “I hate germs,” he explained in strangled tones.
“Well, no one particularly likes them,” Laura observed. She walked toward him and limped a little with her left leg.
A little calmer now that he was a safe distance from any hostile microbes, he noticed this and asked, “Are you hurt?”
“My left leg seems a little off, but I don’t think it’s anything serious. We will find out soon, I suppose.” The prospect of being injured in the jungle filled her with dread, but she suspected it was the kind of minor bump or twist whose effects would go away within the hour.
“Good,” he replied. He paused for a moment and regarded her with a calm expression, but his eyes smiled—slightly, anyway. “That was…well done. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied and matched his neutral tone but inwardly, she was quite happy to hear something nice from him for a change. “Although it’s not as if I did you a special favor by saving both of us from being eaten.”
“Fair enough. And you handled a gun better than I would have expected,” he admitted. He took a moment to eject the magazine from his pistol and load spare bullets into it, then handed it back to her. “Keep it for now. I have a rifle. Leave the safety on unless I say to switch it off. And whatever you do, do not shoot me while tracking some other creature.”
“Well, of course not,” she retorted.
Jan nodded. “We actually might survive this. Come. We have to find the others and get back to the wall.”
He turned and strode off down the path the rest of the team had taken in their flight from the ambush.
She followed him, half-irritated and half-jubilant over the fact of their survival, and replied, “What was that you said about how I have a gift for stating the obvious?”
Chapter Twenty-One
As badly as things had gone, Jan could give thanks that at least he and Dr. Curie were not attacked again. The two of them made a less obvious target than the larger group of soldiers.
They spent ten minutes or so following the trail left by his unit, which was not terribly difficult even though full night had now fallen. He clicked the light on his rifle on occasionally and only for a few seconds to study one clue or another before he turned it off again and proceeded in the dark. He did not want his night vision impaired.
“Can’t we turn a light on?” Curie asked.
“Follow me,” he answered. “We see in the dark better this way, and a light can be easily seen by anything that might hunt us.”
“I suppose that’s true.” She sighed.
Less than a minute after this brief exchange, he heard the sounds of several forms moving through the jungle and what were almost certainly human voices conversing in low, hushed tones. Behind him, Laura had stopped and fallen silent. She must have heard them as well.
“Wait,” he said. “We will get a little closer before we hail them in case anything is waiting between us and them.” He kept his rifle poised against his shoulder as he said this, ready to fire should the Zoo’s denizens attack once more.
Fortunately, they did not. The two crept through a comparatively open space and made little sound. Still, it seemed that someone heard them disturbing the plants with their movement.
“Did you hear that?” a young man’s voice asked in German.
Now was the time, then. “Hauptmann Shalwar, and Dr. Curie,” he announced.
“Hauptmann!” Leutnant Ferris responded immediately. He had to admit he was happy to hear that she had survived the earlier assault.
Jan motioned the researcher forward and the two of them moved rapidly toward what remained of the troop. Soon, The Bull’s stout silhouette came into view.
“Are you injured?” she asked.
“No,” Jan replied. “How is your leg, Dr. Curie?”
“Better, actually,” she confirmed. “I don’t think it was anything serious.”
That was a relief. The Bull led them the short distance to where the rest of their team waited. It was difficult to make an exact headcount in the darkness, but his exultation at being reunited with them quickly turned grim. Only about half of those who had prepared to depart the giant tree were still alive.
“They pursued us down our own path,” Ferris explained. “There were too many of them at our rear to break through and return to you. We tried to go faster but another group attacked us from the front. Finally, we killed enough to drive the rest of them away. Our losses were…heavy.”
“You did well,” he said to the Leutnant, although his heart sank. “They laid traps within traps and are smarter than any creatures we have faced before.” He focused his attention on the men and women present. “You all fought well. And those of us who remain can still make it to the wall.”
Heads nodded in the shadows and they moved out. So far, it was quiet—for now, at least, they had purchased a measure of peace. Hopefully, those who remained might still escape with their lives.
Nonetheless, Jan was in low spirits. The mission might be considered half-successful at best. Many of his troops had been killed or snatched away, likely to be webbed and trapped and eaten later. They had only rescued a portion of Klaus’s team, definitely less than half. The rest were still missing. Now, night had fallen, and they were reduced to a fraction of their original strength, unable to continue the search without risking the loss of the entire platoon.
“I’m so sorry about all of this,” Dr. Curie said softly.
“It was not your fault,” he replied. “From now on, though, please don’t wander without permission—for your own safety if nothing else.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she acknowledged. “There might be more of those loathsome vine-creatures, besides the other dangers. I hadn’t heard of those before, either. That’s two new species here.”
That reminded him to warn his team to watch for thorny vines tangled near the ground or large masses of what looked like slime or fungus squatting amidst the branches of the understory. He did so, and a few men muttered or cursed. The Zoo had come up with yet another way to kill them that they would now have to avoid or fight against.
“What I don’t understand, though,” she went on, “is that the vine-mutant seemed like a blend of plant and fungus. That’s two completely different kingdoms. It’s comparable to an animal crossed with a bacteria.”
“Fascinating,” Jan said. He had intended to be sarcastic, but his tone of voice did not entirely cooperate with this goal since admittedly, that was rather interesting. And the woman was knowledgeable.
“Do you actually mean that or are you trying to outdo me in the dry wit department out of some misplaced sense of national rivalry? I had heard the Germans were sardonic but ultimately, you have no chance against the British. We have entire genres of comedy devoted to this kind of thing, you know.”
“Hah!” He scoffed, although he smiled despite himself. Obviously, some of the sarcasm had still come through in his comment. “The British may have wit but they shy away from the darkest types of comedy. We Germans are still your superiors in that regard. Although even we cannot match the Russians. They are able to find anything funny.”
“They would have to,” Curie responded cheerfully, “or they’d all be insane by now, I imagine. All of Europe is really rather grim in a way. Did you know we get less sunlight than any other continent?”
“I did not,” he replied, “but that does not surprise me. You seem to know many interesting facts.”
“Sarcasm again? Or do I fail to grasp the nuances that your accent disguises? German enunciation seems better suited to giving military orders than to those kinds of subtleties. So I’m afraid you’ll have to admit defeat and tell me outright if something I say actually does interest you.”
“Very well then. Some of what you say does interest me.” Inwardly, he had to admit defeat in another way. He no longer disliked the woman.
/>
While he was unsure of exactly how he felt about her, his opinion had evolved beyond regarding her as merely a burden to be dragged along. He had at first assumed her to be naive and foolish and in some ways, perhaps she still was, but she was also quite brilliant. Her ideas on the Zoo’s evolutionary processes might be a legitimate help to their war effort.
And she was more capable than he’d expected and even fierce, in her own way. For a whitecoat with no military experience, she had done a respectable job of handling a firearm and had shown courage and initiative when put to the test. There might be hope for her yet.
At the same time, her independent streak and lack of training made her a wild card, a chaos element introduced into his carefully maintained plan to assert order. The Zoo itself already threw too many chaos elements at him. To the extent that she was another, she was still something of a liability.
But he had begun to warm up to her.
“Hauptmann, does this mean you are also a fan of Doctor Who?” someone asked from a little farther up the column.
“Nein, he is more like a Dalek in human form,” said another guy.
“Hey! Shut up!” The Bull snapped.
“Nonsense,” said Dr. Curie. “If Hauptmann Shalwar were a Dalek, instead of ‘Exterminate!’ he would say something like ‘Rule Number Eleven Thousand, Four Hundred and Seventy-Two. Corners of the toilet paper are to be folded over when one is done using the loo.’”
A few of the men chuckled and Jan frowned. “I do not have that many rules.”
They were able to cover distance surprisingly quickly, even with the necessity to drag the stretchers holding the wounded. It had been a long day, arduous, terrifying, and full of peril, but they were almost done. The prospect of escaping the Zoo in one piece had instilled in them all a driving excitement that overcame their near exhaustion.
Not long after Jan and Curie rejoined the main group, however, they heard a few ominous rustlings from the surrounding jungle.
“Halt,” he called, and the soldiers immediately complied. “Everyone, switch to single-shot and form a tight circle. Each man is to fire one or two rounds in a different direction. That way, we will spread noise all around us and make us seem like a larger and stronger force but without wasting much ammo.”
Obviously, this would alert the Zoo’s creatures to their presence, but any group of more than three or four stealthy soldiers wouldn’t remain undetected for very long, anyway. And as Ferris had reported, they’d killed many of the hideous lizard-simians who’d attacked them. A large and powerful group of creatures might launch a massive assault, but smaller groups or individual stragglers were more likely to be scared off, at this point, by a loud show of force.
The troops obeyed, and various gunshots shattered the deceptive peace of the night and hopefully convinced any nearby predators that they were not desperate and easy prey.
As the echoes faded, only relative silence replaced them.
“Good. Move out,” Jan commanded.
Even in the darkness, some of the territory they moved through began to look familiar. They were back on the main trail and close to freedom.
“Hauptmann,” someone called, “I can see the edge of the jungle up ahead.”
The clear dark-blue sky peeked through the black silhouettes of the jungle here and there up ahead. Several men and women laughed softly or sighed with relief.
“We are not out yet,” he reminded them. “Continue to watch and listen and keep your guard up.”
They reached the edge of the Zoo without incident and soon, the entire team emerged into the drier air of the desert night. Their wet boots turned the sand to sludge where they trudged through it.
Their trucks were still waiting for them. Jan allowed himself a brief second in which he closed his eyes and gave thanks. The drivers were good men and had waited diligently for them all this time.
One of the men got out to greet them. “Thank God you made it,” he said. “We would have reported your team missing in another hour or two.”
“Losses were heavy,” he responded with a grimace, “but we located some of Hauptmann Grossman’s team, and our scientist has some insight into new threats we are facing.”
The driver nodded. “Come aboard and we will get you to safety.”
They loaded up the wounded in the truck with a small mobile infirmary first, then the others distributed themselves between the vehicles. Jan ended up seated beside Dr. Curie near the front of the lead truck.
He noticed that she had fallen mostly silent in contrast to her usual talkative state. She was probably merely tired, but it occurred to him that something might be bothering her—besides the obvious fact of the horrors they’d survived, that is. As they drove across the desert toward Wall Two, she remained silent and he did not prod her.
The gate came into view and when the trucks stopped and their roaring engines cut off, he allowed himself to relax for the first time. There was still much to do and he stood quickly, ready to manage the wounded. Those of his men who were relatively unscathed hurried to help with their injured comrades. Even Curie surprised him by lending a helping hand.
Maybe the woman would be a good addition to the base, after all.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Given the circumstances surrounding her transfer to the Zoo, Laura hadn’t expected plush quarters, but the room she was given to sleep in was not particularly spacious. She reminded herself that her presence there was punishment and that the allotted space was surely better than an actual cell in a real prison. She had the small space to herself, at least.
“Someone will bring your dinner soon,” an officer said and shut the door behind her. No footsteps moved away from her location, which meant the man had remained there and kept watch as if she were some dangerous criminal. It seemed that while she was free to move around the base, they would keep a close eye on her.
She stood motionless, facing the wall of this glorified closet, and ground her teeth together. The anger in her had increased, now, and even threatened to overtake the fear and shame she had felt when she’d first been caught in her clandestine activities.
“Laura, why did you let this happen?” she asked herself and clenched her hands into trembling fists. “You could have applied for a job as a scientist in the Zoo easily enough. Oh, for God’s sake, why am I only thinking of this now?” She thought about that for a moment and realized that she hadn’t actually considered the fact that scientists wouldn’t line up for a position in the most dangerous place on Earth.
At least she was there. She could remain and focus on work that would contribute to the greater good of their threatened planet.
Dwelling on the what-if scenarios was useless. What was done was done. Now, she would have to deal with things as they were.
Footsteps approached her room and she heard someone speak to the guard outside before the door clicked and opened. Director Roden walked in, accompanied by Sergeant Wendell, the military policeman who’d first greeted her when she’d arrived.
“So, then,” he began. He put his hands in his pockets. “Jan tells me you contributed good insight into the behavior of a new Zoo hybrid and that your observations helped him to rescue our lost men. Maybe you will prove to be useful despite your regretful history.”
“I am sorry for what I did,” she replied and rolled her eyes. “I can explain why I hacked—”
“As long as you do nothing to jeopardize security, I’m willing to overlook past indiscretions,” the man stated.
“I hacked into the system because I am driven to continue my sister’s work. She died in the Zoo.” She folded her arms over her chest. “You can check. Her name is—was—Alicia Curie and she was a research scientist. I want to honor her memory by advancing science. All I wanted was access to the Zoo. I can’t wait to get back out there.”
“In case you forgot, your stay here in the Zoo is meant to be a punishment. As such, I think it might be best for you to be confined to laboratory wo
rk. We don’t want you to enjoy yourself too much.”
“What? No way. I haven’t come all this way to be stuck in a lab. I must be permitted into the jungle where I can be of most use.”
“You must be? Is that so? I don’t think so, Miss Curie. If anything, your attitude has convinced me you belong in a lab until further notice. In the meantime, be sure to keep out of trouble,” he said. “And I’ve come to tell you that your supper will arrive shortly. Now, do enjoy the rest of your night.”
He nodded, smiled thinly, and turned to leave. Sergeant Wendell glared at her as if he suspected she might try to force her way out of the room before he closed the door.
“Damn,” Laura muttered. She looked around. The room might actually have been a closet that was converted into a simple bedroom-cell. The bed almost looked like a shelf that had been cleared, braced with empty crates beneath it, and had a foam pad, sheet, and pillow tossed on top. There was a small window but when she tried it, she found it locked—of course.
She should never have protested the director’s statement. He was the type of man who liked to deny people in order to make himself feel bigger. She should have pandered to his ego rather than tell him how it would be.
Thoroughly dispirited, she sat on the edge of the makeshift bed and put her face in her hands. A yawning gulf seemed to open within her stomach. Months or years of being stuck in a lab stretched before her, all while the Zoo grew more dangerous.
Some moments later, another person approached the door. This one was polite enough to knock, and a Cockney-accented voice said, “I brought your food, miss.”
“Oh, come in,” she replied.
The door clicked again and opened. Sonny, the cook she’d spoken to previously, held a tray piled with biscuits, sausage, beans, and fruit. “I decided you needed a proper supper,” he said. “You were out in the Zoo too long and probably had nothing to eat but those bloody MRE things washed down with filtered water.”
Galaxia Page 104
