“Thank you, Sonny,” she said and smiled. “That looks splendid. I’m tempted to ask for coffee as well, but I probably ought to get some sleep at this point.”
He closed the door behind him and set the tray on a smaller shelf on the side wall, perpendicular to the larger shelf that served as her cot. “Coffee or tea might be possible as well if you’d like.”
“I’ll be sure to keep you informed.” Laura took the tray, set it in her lap, and immediately chose one of the biscuits. She took a bite and mopped the beans with the remainder. Until now, she hadn’t even realized how hungry she was.
“I’m sorry you’re stuck in this tiny room,” Sonny said, leaned against the wall, and patted his pockets. He was probably tempted to smoke a joint but thought better of it and put his arms behind his back instead. “You seemed like a nice lady and all.”
“Thanks,” she replied after she’d swallowed the food in her mouth. “I came here to carry on my sister’s legacy. She was a scientist like me and died when the Zoo appeared. I also wanted to finally accomplish something noteworthy that would be beneficial to the whole world while I was at it.” Alicia would’ve loved this opportunity as much as she did. The thought made her depressed. “I shouldn’t have hacked into the system in the name of science but quite honestly, it was for all the right reasons.” She assumed that on a base like this, word would get around about why she was there and decided to face it head-on.
“I’m sorry about your sister.” The man shrugged. “Anyway, I hope you manage to honor her memory here.”
“Thanks, Sonny.” Speaking to this man was something of a relief after having to deal with Roden.
“Really, once they get used to you and how good you are at your job, they’ll let up on you. I hear you did really well in there. They won’t treat you like a criminal forever.”
Laura nodded. She hoped he was right.
“May I ask,” she ventured, “if your employment here has anything to do with that kind of thing? I don’t mean to be rude, I’m only curious. It’s a trait we scientists tend to have.”
“No offense taken, miss. And aye, you’re right. I’m not a rapist or a cold-blooded murderer, I’ll say that much, but I’ve done bad things. I volunteered to cook here to get a reduced sentence. It won’t be much longer before I’ll be free to get back to enjoying life and not thinking no more on all the terrible things going on in this pit.” His gaze grew distant and he was clearly homesick for England.
She had now finished one of her biscuits and a couple of pieces of apple. With a grim smile, she noticed that the only utensil on the tray was one of the awful plastic sporks.
“Well, try to stay out of trouble when you do make it home, I suppose,” she said.
“That’s the plan, it is.” He shook his head. “You seem like a nice enough sort, but I don’t understand why you’d want to risk your life out there with all the monsters running around when there’s better and more fun things to do with our time on Earth. I’d rather be at a pub than in some death-trap in the middle of this wilderness. There’s nothing out there worth dying for, ma’am. Don’t you go getting yourself killed.”
“Well, you seem pleasant enough yourself,” she responded, “but I’m afraid I can’t fully agree. Some things are worth risking your life for.”
She looked at her tray, then at Sonny. “Also, I’m sorry, but is there any chance you could bring me real silverware? Don’t worry. I won’t commit suicide with it or any such nonsense. I merely hate these bloody spork things and I’m a little upset at the moment. A real fork would be a comfort, if only a small one.” She looked at him with wide, imploring eyes. “Oh, and coffee. I plan to stay up a while yet and think a few things over.”
He laughed. “Aye, I don’t much care for sporks myself either. That’s mostly what I have to work with, though. They said to only use the metal for special guests. In a manner of speaking, I’d say you’d qualify as one of those. Don’t go nowhere. I’ll be right back with a proper fork and a hot cup of java.” He turned and left. The door shut behind him, and the guard locked it.
Laura took a deep breath. While he was a nice man and good to talk to, he wasn’t the most ambitious or visionary of persons. He didn’t quite get it, and he was wrong. There were things out there worth dying for.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jan was in the foulest mood he’d been in for a long, long time. Of course, this was only fitting since it had been one of the worst days he’d had in years.
The mission was a failure. Not an outright catastrophe—he would likely be dead if that were the case—but he had returned from a rescue mission with fewer people than he had gone in with. Again, they grew weaker and the Zoo grew stronger.
And the woman was suspected of being a spy or terrorist at worst, a dishonest hacker at best. He wondered why he had to find out the truth about her after the mission. She hadn’t had much chance to hack into computers in the Zoo, he guessed belligerently. And this unwelcome news had come when he’d started to like her—at least slightly—and when he’d begun to appreciate how much help she might be to their cause.
When he’d started to trust her.
His inner romantic had begun to emerge from dormancy and its long-enforced hermitage, only to be smacked, scolded, and told to go back to its room. He felt like a fool. She was not as innocent as she made out, exactly like all the other women in his life.
He thought about his list of rules. It was long enough that he tried not to add more items to it unless they were necessary, but perhaps it was necessary to add a new one. Never trust women.
An exception might be made for The Bull, of course, but otherwise, it would probably be a useful addition. Dr. Laura Curie wasn’t there to help at all. There couldn’t be a good reason to hack into top-secret government files. For whatever reason, she had put the base at risk.
In so doing, she had caused him to inadvertently break Rule Number One. He had committed the cardinal sin and had gone on a mission without the right people.
In an effort to take his mind off this bubbling witches’ brew of illogical emotions, he pulled his phone out. It had nothing for him—no text messages and no missed calls. His eldest son had not even tried to contact him.
“Michael is a young man now, more or less,” he told himself. “He has things to do. He might be busy and might not have even seen that I tried to call him.” Jan had himself failed to see a missed call on one or two occasions, although he tried to avoid such things happening and was generally good at it.
He thought back to the terrible ambush at the tree where Klaus’s men and women had been affixed with that strange organic adhesive. It was miraculous that he’d made it. Once again, death had come far too close for comfort. He was adept at dodging the Reaper’s scythe, but no one could dodge it forever.
And in his line of work, one needed to dodge it with great frequency.
“He will call back tomorrow,” he told himself, sent his phone to sleep, and put it away for now. For a moment he stood there in total silence, doing nothing and not really even thinking of anything in particular.
His work, as always, pulled him from his slump. There was still more for him to do. He had his duty and it was important, and he had his rules, which enabled him to fulfill his duty. That was all but it was enough. He focused on it to push back all the errant and somewhat dispiriting thoughts.
They faced a new threat and as dangerous as it seemed to be, there were some who had survived it and even seen more of it than he had. The remnants of Klaus’s unit were now safely ensconced in the base’s medical wing, recovering from their ordeal. Some of them might have useful information to add to the Bundeswehr’s limited pool of Zoo-knowledge.
Jan turned and left his office and carelessly allowed the door to fall shut behind him instead of closing it carefully. He strode across the floor at maximum walking speed and decided he needed a little air and perhaps to move around and enjoy a change of scenery. The few base personnel who w
ere still up at this hour nodded to him and he returned the gesture.
But more than the need to get out of his office, he needed to know more about what he’d have to face the next time he went into the Zoo. The lizard-monkey things—almost like something from the old dinosaur movies—were now his newest and perhaps greatest enemies. With more information, he might know how to classify them better—and then how to kill them.
Soon, he arrived at the medical wing. The troops he’d brought back who were seriously injured were in intensive care, separate from the other patients. The others lay on cots in the general area. Most of the men from Klaus’s unit were unconscious, either from sleep or drugs or perhaps even illness.
The hauptmann frowned and looked around hopefully. One man was awake and even appeared to be in decent condition. He walked to his cot and glanced at the sign at its foot. It said Soldat Gunter Grün.
“Hauptmann,” the young man said and nodded his acknowledgment of the officer’s presence. Despite the bite on his shoulder, he seemed barely the worse for wear.
“At ease, Soldat,” he told him. “I recognize you now. I reminded you several days ago of the importance of always carrying a weapon. Rule Number Thirteen.”
“Yes, sir,” the young man replied and coughed. “Unfortunately, they won’t let me keep one at my cot right now…” He shrugged and looked almost bashful.
“You may return to obeying that rule again when you recover,” he said. “For now, I have only come to talk to you about what you saw in the Zoo when you were with Hauptmann Grossman. I’m sure the memories are not pleasant ones, but we are dealing with a new creature and anything I can find out about it will help all of us survive and fight back next time. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Hauptmann,” the soldier answered. “It doesn’t bother me to talk about it. Especially knowing that we’ll have our revenge on those things soon.” His eyes blazed, full of righteous youthful wrath.
Jan nodded. “Tell me everything about them and everything you saw them do. Including why they stuck you all to that tree.”
Grün cleared his throat and began. “We had not been in there long when it started, although we did not realize it at first. But soon, it became clear that something was hunting us…”
Much of what the young soldier said consisted of things Jan already knew. He had seen how the creatures stalked humans, how they used speed, stealth, and deception to attack, and even what they looked like. He hurried the patient along in his narrative during these parts.
“I became separated from the platoon during an attack,” Grün went on. “I saw one of them hiding in the jungle with its back to me—I only saw some of its fur. While I crept up on it, another attacked me from the side. I think the first one used itself as bait while the second one struck.”
The hauptmann nodded. The mutants were diabolically clever and somehow, that even sounded familiar to him.
“I thought I was dead. It bit into my shoulder, slung me around, and banged me against a tree, but it did not kill me. Instead, it dragged me—and some of the others—to that huge tree. There were already four or five other men there, and the creatures brought more after me. They…spat or vomited something on us, which hardened and stuck us to the tree like that.”
Jan stared, a little startled. That was somewhat surprising. He’d have to keep it in mind as the beasts might use that ability as an attack to slow or disorient their prey.
“There was at least one man whom they took somewhere else after we got to the tree,” the soldier continued. “Somehow, it seemed like they might take all of us to a different place later as if that tree was only a temporary resting place. I don’t know why they kept us waiting there like that. I thought they might come back to eat us later, but…”
“I see,” the hauptmann commented. “Our scientist seems to think it was a trap—that they left you there as bait so they could attack us when we found you. I am inclined to agree with her.”
“They’re smarter than we thought,” Grün agreed, hung his head, and glared darkly into space for a moment. “They kept taking more and more people away, though.”
Why, he wondered, would they do that? It went beyond the need for food. They could have eaten far more of their human victims than they had and still had leftovers. It seemed that they had a further purpose for their prey.
“Honestly,” Grün resumed in a low voice, “it seemed to me like the creatures were waiting for something. As if something big is coming and they were saving us for it.”
“We will find out,” he told the soldier, “and whatever it is they are planning, we will stop it. This is our world, not theirs, and we will win this war. Thank you, Soldat.” He placed a hand on the young man’s good shoulder for a moment before he turned and walked away.
Raptors, yes—that is what they remind me of, the velociraptor creatures from the movies. The thought had slid into his mind, seemingly from nowhere, but it gave him confidence to be able to assign an identity to the threat. As bizarre as it sounded, velociraptor certainly seemed appropriate. But those had been extinct for millions of years. How had the Zoo even accessed their DNA, to begin with? Was there still a primitive dinosaur strain in the genes of modern-day reptiles? He didn’t know. An evolutionary biologist might, however.
That led him to think of the British woman, Dr. Curie. As he walked down the halls, he thought of what she’d said to him before the big attack. She had found a marking on a tree. It hadn’t seemed very significant to him at the time but she mentioned something about it being a sign of changes on the horizon. She had predicted that the Zoo was preparing for something new, for another leap forward in its already rapid evolution.
Suddenly, Jan was almost overwhelmed by fear and dread and perhaps even terror. Most of the time, he experienced only the normal baseline of fear that any human being felt in a dangerous situation. The only people who didn’t feel that way were sociopaths and the suicidal. He, however, had learned to control his fear.
But this was something different—a dread that went beyond the possibility that his own life might come to an end as he knew it must, sooner or later. It was terror at the thought that the Zoo might soon evolve in ways that were entirely impossible for mere humans to adapt to and fight against.
It was the fear, he now knew, that they might not be able to win this war.
He tried to ignore the cold sweat and the hollow feeling in his gut as he walked past his office and toward the closet room, farther along toward the south side of the base, where Dr. Curie was held. Despite his anger at her dishonesty, he did hope she was all right and wanted to check on her.
More importantly, he wanted to ask her more about this theory of hers. Nothing frightened a man more than the unknown, and the cure for that was knowledge.
The sentry who’d guarded Laura’s makeshift cell seemed to have gone to bed or taken a break and his duty was now undertaken by the cook.
“Hello, Sonny,” he greeted the man. “Shouldn’t you be preparing breakfast?”
“The biscuits need to rise a little more yet, sir,” he replied as he stood and stretched. “Come to see Dr. Laura, have you?” His eyes were noticeably bloodshot. The hauptmann ignored this as he always did. Such minor issues as marijuana use among the civilian personnel were the things Roden could deal with if he were not too stupid to notice them.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “She had some ideas about what is going on in the Zoo that might be helpful to us.”
“Very well, then,” the man said. He produced the key and opened the door.
Jan almost stepped in immediately but out of habit, he scanned interior before he entered. His eyes widened.
In the center of the floor was a fork that had been badly bent out of shape as though someone had used it as a tool. The window was open, its latches sprung, and the desert breeze wafted in. Laura Curie was nowhere to be seen.
“She escaped.” He gasped with both outrage and astonishment. “Goddammit, the woman actually es
caped.” Why would she do that? She was a scientist and would get to study the Zoo, which seemed to be what she wanted. It could only have something to do with the monkey reptiles. Could she really be stupid enough to go in alone?
In the next moment, the power went out.
Chapter Twenty-Four
There weren’t too many people around the base in the wee hours of the morning, but Laura still had to do an awful amount of sneaking and hiding, combined with the occasional mad dash before someone saw her. It made far too much work out of the simple business of simply getting from one side of Forth Archway to the other.
Then again, if she was caught, she supposed the worst that would happen would be her thrown into a different room without a window and specifically forbidden from eating with anything other than plastic sporks.
Footsteps alerted her that someone was coming, and she froze. She was, at that moment, a short way inside the second section slightly farther down from the main one, and as far as she knew, no one had seen her yet. When she had seen a camera, she had tried to walk casually. She still wore the jungle fatigues she’d had under her suit in the Zoo so would probably resemble any other female soldier from a distance. As far as she knew, no one was aware she’d escaped yet.
Whoever approached certainly had heavy footsteps and spoke German in a low, phlegmy voice. She couldn’t tell if it was one man speaking to himself or two people, one speaking to the other. The voice came from around a corner a way ahead down the hall. Laura looked around. She might be able to simply walk past them without incident, but it would be better to not be seen at all.
On the right was a small, one-person, unisex bathroom, perfect for her predicament. She took a couple more steps and opened the door, stepped in, and pulled it shut behind her. Once she’d locked it, she breathed a sigh of relief. The footsteps came closer and moved past without slowing or stopping.
“Well, haven’t I been lucky?” she remarked. She used the facilities as she was a good hour overdue for a toilet break anyway, then washed her hands and face and looked at herself in the mirror.
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