Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

  A short way ahead, the terrain seemed to rise slightly. Due to the density of foliage, though, it was difficult to determine if this indicated a gradual incline or a sudden small escarpment.

  The sounds of flight and pursuit came to a crescendo and suddenly stopped. He pinpointed them to his left and realized this was it. Somehow, he knew he had only seconds to get there, and he threw himself in that direction.

  Jan all but exploded out of the thick mass of plant matter as Laura, her shoulder bloodied, backed against a tree growing from a small vertical shelf of earth. She seemed momentarily frozen before a looming, green-brownish figure of death.

  Without hesitation, he fired. There was barely time to aim, only to project noise and force toward the creature—anything that would prevent its strike. A yellow starburst appeared at the end of his now-shuddering rifle and the passage of its three bullets shredded the expectant silence that had settled briefly before the mutant attacked.

  The primaraptor paused and its head jerked toward him. It thrashed suddenly with an impact and something squirted near the shoulder-joint of its right front forearm.

  “This way!” Jan yelled at Laura as he began to stalk toward her attacker.

  She seemed to hesitate but only for a split second. Her brain obviously needed that tiny span of time to register what had happened, but it caught up quickly enough. With a kind of energetic abandon, she threw herself toward him, her arms out, and tucked as she came down, rolled out of the way, and uttered a short, sharp cry of pain when her shoulder twisted against the earth.

  The monster had already begun its counterattack. Fortunately, the suddenness of his intrusion had surprised it as much as it had surprised its captive. Its reflexes were briefly paralyzed by both indecision and the bullet it had taken, but it recovered and tried to lash out toward her with one of its legs at the same time it pivoted toward him. It missed the woman and was not yet able to overwhelm the man.

  The hauptmann drew his lips back from his teeth as battle-rage set in. He took another heavy, trampling step toward the creature and fired again. This time, it was ready and dodged to the side, which meant he’d missed it.

  He could already sense its game plan and pivoted in the same direction it did, led the target, and fired ahead into the concealing foliage toward which it fled. It shrieked again and he saw another small squirt of blood amidst the greenery.

  Laura, by now, had tumbled to a stop at his feet and already struggled to stand. Her quick reaction had saved her life but also made it harder for her to do what came next. He took another step toward the primaraptor and put her safely behind him.

  Grimly, he fired once more at the vague, dark mass amidst the leaves. If the creature made a sound, it was inaudible under the roar of the gun, but suddenly, a shifting movement was followed by a thrashing sound that rapidly grew fainter. He had driven the beast off and it had turned and fled.

  “Gott sei Dank.” Jan gasped and released his breath out in a long sigh. He turned to Laura, who still struggled to stand fully, put his hand under her arm, and helped her the rest of the way to her feet.

  They had been separated for only a short while, but she already looked the worse for wear. While the mutant’s teeth didn’t seem to have done any serious damage to her shoulder, even minor wounds had a tendency to become worse without treatment, and she was badly frazzled.

  She looked at him with wide eyes, then burst out laughing.

  Jan, despite his residual tension, grinned. It was a natural reaction humans had when they’d survived a situation that, by rights, probably should have killed them.

  “It…ha, it’s almost unseemly,” she burst out, “how often you keep saving me. And embarrassing, at least a little. But thank you. I almost escaped myself, but…well, your help seems to…ah, you know, help.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh at that and was glad he’d arrived in time.

  But they still had to get out of this place. He returned his focus to business, stopped laughing, and imposed discipline not only on his thoughts but on his facial expression.

  “You are welcome,” he said, serious again, “but I would not need to keep saving you if you would simply follow my rules. Flexibility is one thing, but at least appreciate that they are designed to keep us alive. Now, no more wandering around.”

  Laura calmed herself and took a deep breath. Her demeanor suggested a degree of resignation on her part. “Yes, that’s a very good idea, I’d say. Let’s get back to the wall.”

  “Finally,” he replied, “something we can both agree on.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It occurred to Laura that her shoulder was getting worse and that they had no medical equipment with them, not even a basic disinfectant. It didn’t seem to be a problem, however, unless she actually had to do something strenuous with her left arm. They managed to move quickly and made good progress, so she somehow felt confident that they’d be out of the Zoo in no time and she’d have access to the medical care she needed.

  “Do you have any idea how close we are to the edge?” she asked Jan. “It seems like we can’t be that far.”

  “We are getting closer,” was all he said for now.

  She sensed that the man was tired and simply tried to focus on helping them to finally escape via the most direct route and without any further misadventures. She was relieved about that and she left him alone to keep doing his job.

  Idly, her hand drifted into her satchel and touched the smooth surface of the object she’d snatched while she attempted to escape the primaraptor. She had, she now realized, seen it while the creature had dragged her toward the tree intended to be her prison. It hadn’t really registered at the time since she had been focused on what her captor might do with and to her. But as she’d raced to freedom, the object had clicked into place in her mind so she’d been able to see it again and had spared a split-second, even with the risk of death at her back, to retrieve it.

  “Stop,” Jan said from a few paces ahead of her. He came to a halt and was silent. She obeyed, stopped behind him, and made no sounds. He craned his neck and scanned the surrounding jungle while they both listened intently.

  A rushing susurration approached. While only faint, it reminded her of a breeze moving through the leaves in the jungle—a normal jungle, of course.

  “Locusts!” the hauptmann hissed. “Come.” He gestured sharply, and they hurried away from their current location and tried to cover ground as rapidly as possible without making much noise. She didn’t know how much ammo he still had, but it could not have been much. And with only the two of them, flight would be a much better survival option than fight if they actually had a choice.

  They reached a new area and he paused for a couple of seconds. To their right was a clearer space between a few trees on either side. To their left was a far denser patch, although with a low, open path-like a tunnel leading under interlocking shrub-growth. After a moment’s consideration, he gestured to the left. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled into the tunnel.

  Laura bit her tongue to keep from speaking. Of course he’d choose the more difficult option. But he probably had his reasons—they would be less visible there, for starters.

  She knelt and crawled forward. Her left shoulder hurt, but by favoring her right arm and mostly using her knees to push herself onward, she was able to keep pace behind the hauptmann.

  The rushing sound grew louder, and she strained to look over her shoulder. Although she could barely see through the dense screen around them, three or four locusts fluttered out of the understory and landed in the open space to their right—exactly where they would have been if they’d taken that path.

  Jan stopped and held a hand up for her to do likewise. She did and tried to not even breathe as she peered through a small gap in the encircling plant-tunnel.

  The locusts—four, she saw now—had arranged themselves in a ring facing inward and toward one another, and they made low, soft, chittering noises. They were, it
seemed, conferring or otherwise trading information. A couple of them paused to rub their clawed forelimbs together in front of them. Most also twitched their horned heads from side to side. She stared, rapt with fascination and curiosity, and wondered what subtle, sophisticated messages these otherwise primitive beings might convey to each other.

  Three of the four took flight, their wings flapping fast enough to become only a blackish-green blur, and their sleek, hideous forms vanished into the jungle. One of them flew almost directly overhead, and the humans forced themselves not to react when the plant life around them trembled with the creature’s passage.

  That left only one. This last, solitary mutant hopped a couple of meters ahead and simply waited. It seemed almost to stand guard near the point where their tunnel would end.

  Jan motioned for them to crawl forward. He advanced more slowly now and tried to be as quiet as possible, and she followed his lead. As they approached the end of their leafy refuge, he unslung his rifle.

  Would he, she marveled, actually try to shoot the creature? He must have thought it would be easier to kill it and hurry past than to try another much longer and more difficult means to circumvent it. She merely hoped he knew what he was doing.

  Her heart thudding, she looked past him over his shoulder. The locust was only fifteen or twenty meters ahead now. It looked like a clear shot to her. He aimed his weapon carefully and seemed to choose the rear of the creature’s abdomen, which faced them.

  The man squeezed the trigger at the same time that the locust hopped first sideways, then straight toward them. The near-deafening report of the weapon’s three-round burst faded and left only the sound of the enraged insect on a direct trajectory to their hiding place.

  “Scheisse!” he snapped. “Give me the knife.”

  “Knife? You plan to fight that monster with a knife while we’re trapped in here?”

  “Give it to me,” he ordered.

  She pulled the blade free and passed it to him. He snatched it from her and put it on the ground before him, then aimed his rifle again and fired once more. This time, his bullet struck home and blew one of its forelegs off in a spray of black blood and green armor fragments. It hissed, leapt aside, and now approached them from the opposite side of the bush-tunnel.

  “Verdammt nochmal,” he cursed. Laura could barely see the advancing mutant now that it was on the other side of the shrubs, but he tried to aim and fired again, this time on full auto. His rifle clicked empty as parts of the plant-wall fell away to expose the creature, which was wounded but still very much alive.

  It thrust its remaining foreclaw into the hole and swiped clumsily at them and she shrank back. Jan caught the creature’s limb and suddenly lunged toward it, the knife in his hand, and drove the blade into the center of the mutant’s head. Its high-pitched hisses faded in volume and then ceased as it slumped in place, dead. He withdrew the blade and wiped it clean.

  “Now, forward,” he said. “Hurry.”

  This, Laura thought, hardly needed to be said. The creature’s comrades were probably still close enough to have heard the gunfire. The man pushed himself along with surprising speed and she tried to keep up as best she could. In seconds, they emerged from the natural tunnel and were back in the jungle proper.

  Jan glanced over his shoulder once to make sure she was still right behind him, then set off, obviously to hurry away from this location before any visitors could arrive.

  They had barely moved beyond the small clearing where the locusts had landed when the relative stillness was rent asunder by a loud, ragged, high-pitched roar. She froze in place and chills rippled down her spine. He had also stopped in his tracks. For an animal sound, the roar was filled with all kinds of emotions, none of them pleasant.

  “That sounded horrible,” she said softly, her gaze fixed on him. “Was that normal?”

  The hauptmann shook his head. “Nothing in this place is normal,” he responded, “but I have never heard that sound before. Come, we should be close to the desert. Hurry.”

  He plunged into the jungle again, and she tried once more to stay close behind him.

  Again, she slipped her hand into her satchel, a little worried, now. There was something she was hiding from him and that perhaps she should tell him about. But if she did, she was afraid he’d tell her to relinquish it and leave it on the ground, and she simply couldn’t do that.

  Her hand felt the smooth, hard surface. The object she’d snatched from the clearing where the primaraptor had taken her was a large egg. Undoubtedly, Jan was now held captive by a rage-filled female that was now minus an egg. She honestly didn’t want to imagine what that might mean for his chances of survival.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jan increasingly felt that, against all odds, they would make it. They were almost there and so far, there was no immediate sign that they would be attacked again. Given that he was entirely out of ammo, this was encouraging indeed. The incident with the locust in the brush-corridor had been his first experience of killing one of these creatures with a knife. In all honesty, he was amazed that he’d succeeded.

  He was fairly sure that he could see the jungle begin to thin up ahead. The desert was not far off. He felt on the verge of exhaustion but hadn’t yet gotten his second wind. If he had to push himself still harder and farther, he could.

  It was the same with Dr. Curie, he suspected—she did not have his training or experience, but he knew well that any human being could display reserves of strength, speed, focus, and energy that seemed to go beyond their normal capabilities. If they were properly motivated, anyway. And being pursued almost nonstop by slavering monstrosities from the bowels of this green hell provided fairly strong motivation.

  “We’ve almost made it, haven’t we?” she said behind him. She had continued to impress him in some regards, but she still had a gift for stating the obvious.

  “Yes, we have,” he confirmed. “But we are not quite there yet. Do not relax too much or lose focus. The last part of the journey is, in many ways, the most important.”

  “Quite right,” she quipped. “I’ll relax once we’re safely out of this bloody jungle. Or better yet, back at Fort Archway.”

  The hauptmann nodded and continued to blaze a trail through the increasingly sparser vegetation. While he took his own advice and kept an eye on the jungle for further dangers, he nevertheless found himself half-lost in thought.

  They might be almost out of the Zoo, but the ordeal was far from over for either of them. First of all, there was the matter of the twenty or so kilometers of desert they’d have to cross to reach the wall. By now, everyone at the base likely knew where he and Laura had gone, so perhaps they’d have posted trucks. There was a good probability of this.

  But he knew better than to trust to chance to deliver the best outcome. They would have to consider the possibility of a long, hot, dry trek on foot. Already, he felt drained from the day’s heat, which in turn made him angry at himself for rushing after the woman so hastily. He could have spared five minutes to load a vehicle and perhaps even driven it through the gate after he’d sent Coop into his unscheduled sleep-break.

  Thinking of his own rare stupidity in pursuing this little adventure, he then thought ahead in time—to what would happen when they returned to base.

  Laura would be, as the Americans might say, in deep shit, but that was her own doing. He didn’t like the thought of what might happen to her, but at least her physical safety would be seen to. After she had served her time and swallowed whatever bitter pill they forced on her, she might have the opportunity to resume her career or make some kind of productive life for herself.

  And what about himself? He was scarcely less guilty than she was, at this point. He had broken even his own rules, to say nothing of the rules of Director Roden or their absentee CO, Major Reisenegger. He had assaulted a fellow soldier—albeit a Brit—and run off on an impromptu mission without authorization.

  He shook his head. Ultimately, h
e did not care much about the consequences. He was too valuable to this base’s operations for them to court-martial him out of the Bundeswehr. Even Roden was not that stupid. He would be reprimanded and a couple of new policies might be implemented, but that was all.

  Besides, he had done his job for now. Dr. Laura Curie was safe. He had, with a little help from her here and there, seen to it that they had both survived. Now, some semblance of normalcy would return.

  Ahead, he glimpsed sand dunes between the trees. “Aha,” he said.

  “Brilliant! I knew we’d make it,” Laura added. “Well, there were a couple of times I wasn’t so sure, but only a couple.”

  “But do not break out of your cell again,” Jan suggested.

  She sighed. “Well, I suppose I could try to heed that advice.”

  Finally, they emerged from the Zoo into the Sahara. It was late afternoon, and bronze-golden sunlight glimmered over the wastes and the clear sky took on a burnished quality. The humidity lifted almost instantly.

  Jan looked from side to side. He did not recognize exactly where they’d come out, but about three-quarters of a kilometer to their left, he saw, to his immense relief, a truck. To the right was another about two kilometers down. The vehicles must have been arranged in a line along this entire portion of the jungle’s edge, waiting for any sign of escaping humans.

  “This way, then,” he ordered and motioned her to follow him to the left. “I had feared we would have to cross the desert on foot.”

  “I could definitely use the chance to take the weight off my feet.”

  “That,” he agreed, “is an excellent idea.”

  They had taken only a single step when the primaraptor that had trailed them all the way from its territory burst out of the jungle directly in front of them.

  “Oh, bloody hell.” Laura gasped.