He Was Not Prepared (Birth Of Heavy Metal Book 1)

by Michael Todd

  “Oh,” Sal pulled a horrified face. “That’s mildly disgusting.”

  She laughed. “You should see what the guys who end up out here for longer than a week have to do. When it comes to staying alive, disgust is very relative.”

  “I really don’t think I should see,” Sal said and shook his head. He could imagine, though. Even though there were certain standards that he thought he could hold himself to, he had never been in a position where he was literally dying of hunger or thirst. Sure, he’d complained about the crappy cheap food back in Cali, but he’d never actually had nothing to eat at all.

  For people who were out of regular options, creativity was generally rewarded with survival, like it had been for those rugby players stuck in the Andes in that movie. He’d seen that it was based on a true story, but he’d never thought it was likely to happen in a civilized world.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Wait…wait. All these trees and plants and even animals need water to live. I don’t care what this goop is, it can’t make living things able to live without it. So, unless they take from a source that we can’t like tree sap, we should probably be able to find a water source.”

  “You really don’t want to drink recycled water, do you?” she asked with a grin.

  “I really, really don’t,” Sal agreed, “but that’s not the point. Finding sources of water would be a good idea since it would reduce the carrying load of all future missions into the Zoo. They won’t need to carry sufficient water for days.”

  Kennedy looked thoughtful. “That’s a good point. We’ll look into it later, but for now, we’ve fallen behind. Let’s pick up the pace.”

  Sal nodded, but he studied the trees. The larger ones would have roots deep enough to reach reservoirs of water situated underground, and the vines would leech water from those trees. But none had started as massive trees with deep-reaching roots and, considering that it probably wouldn’t rain regularly for at least another decade, there had to be some source of sustenance for the smaller, weaker, and younger plants out there.

  She had been right. He really didn’t want to have to put the recycling system of his suit to use.

  They moved deeper and deeper into the Zoo. The sun had already dipped into the west when Sal looked up into the trees. A collection of monkeys sat there and chattered loudly. They were already in the database, and their numbers increased the deeper the team got. They looked similar to most simians, with prehensile tails but longer and more agile ears than Sal had seen on monkeys before. Spotted brown fur blended easily into the foliage, and bright yellow eyes watched the humans curiously.

  He liked them. They looked intelligent and seemed curious enough to watch the squad march through the jungle and smart enough to give them a wide berth.

  But it wasn’t the monkeys themselves that interested him. What intrigued him the most was the fact that a handful of them carried thick leaves through the branches, and from what he could see, they used the leaves to carry water.

  “Sarge,” he called.

  Kennedy paused and looked back. “We don’t have time for another trip into the wonderful world of scientific discovery, Jacobs. We have to get to safe ground before night falls.”

  “I understand that, but if you could spare me a moment.” He pointed at the simians. They seemed interested in the humans’ curiosity too and took long, slow sips from their leaf vessels.

  “Huh,” Cortez said as he used the zoom feature in his HUD to look closer. “That looks like fresh, clear water to me, boss. So, unless these guys learned how to recycle their piss…”

  “There’s a source of fresh water in the vicinity,” Kennedy finished for him. “Is there any way we can establish where they got it? I don’t want to have to spend hours scouring this area.”

  Sal nodded. “There are a few ways. We can follow the monkeys since they’ll have established their territory around the water source. Or we can follow the foliage and find where it is the densest.”

  Addams didn’t say anything but pointed at the jungle flora that surrounded them.

  “Right,” Sal agreed. “Follow the monkeys, then,” He assumed that if Lynch had been in a better mood, he would have made some joking innuendo about his monkey. The man was suspiciously silent and kept his weapon at the ready as they moved deeper into the area where they assumed the simians had made their home.

  Soon, Sal could hear the soft bubbling sound that could only indicate moving water. He followed it with help from his helmet to direct him through the thick overgrowth until he reached an indentation. Water surged from within. It looked clear enough to make him wonder if it was water at all, but as he fell to his knees beside the little pool and dipped his fingers in, he grinned.

  “I think I found it over here, guys,” he said and splashed in the clear liquid like a little kid. The water came from an underground spring, clearly, and its flow had already formed the beginning of a little river. He wondered how many of these had popped up in the Zoo.

  He pulled his helmet off, slipped his hands into the water, and splashed it on his face. It was cool and clear and made him sputter and grin as he leaned down to scoop some into his hands to drink. The taste was exactly as water should taste. Sal gulped it down greedily and smacked his lips a few times before he felt the temptation to dip his head in.

  The impulse was cut short when he heard a low, throaty rumble that sounded close to a growl. Sal froze, almost too afraid to look up. He definitely hadn’t imagined it. It sounded again, along with the soft swish of leaves pushed to the side as something moved closer.

  He looked up, and his eyes widened as he saw the beast before him. At the shoulder it probably stood only as high as his stomach, but it was long, with a stocky, powerful build. Light filtering through the boughs above them illuminated its jet-black fur and lean muscles. It moved as a panther would, but through his fear, Sal noticed a definite difference. Of its four eyes, only two were trained on him. The other two, one on each side of its head, scanned the perimeter. The same number of small diamond-shaped ears flickered around like a bat using echolocation, and he was sure a ridge of spines arched over its back.

  It parted its lips again to expose longer than normal teeth that dribbled a milky liquid. If that wasn’t poison—like a snake’s—he would eat his own suit.

  “Guys?” Sal whispered. His voice suddenly refused to work. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the creature in front of him which was, he was sure, a unique species. Under any other circumstances, he would have been more than happy to study it in a natural habitat. Now, however, it seemed to have him on the menu, and he was open to violent solutions.

  He realized that he’d left his helmet on the ground beside him. Supremely conscious of the need to not to make any sudden moves, he picked it up. The creature seemed to assess him as if to decide whether he was a real threat or would make an easy meal. The black eyes sent chills racing down his spine. Sal pushed his rising panic down, pulled the helmet over his head, and latched it slowly into place.

  The HUD activated immediately. The creature had been seen before and was already documented, it told him.

  He keyed the comm to the open squad channel. “Hey, guys, I’m not sure if any of you can hear this, but if you can, please make your way to my location.” He tried to keep his voice steady as he continued his stare-down with the magnificently terrifying beast. “Because I think I could really use some help right now.”

  It was like it could hear him call for help. The growl suddenly became a roar as the panther-like creature leapt the pool in a single bound. The jaws snapped at Sal, who had the good sense to dive out of the way. He hit the ground and rolled to his left. His adrenaline rampant, he scrambled for purchase on the slippery earth around him and found his feet. Moss and roots made it difficult to keep his balance, but he managed. His life depended on it.

  The creature spat a wad of the milky liquid at him. It spattered against the reinforced glass of his visor. When he made no response to this attac
k, it roared again and slunk low to prowl toward him. Sal backed away and held his hands in front of him. He wasn’t sure what he could do if the thing came at him again except try to dodge.

  “Oh, come on,” Sal exclaimed as the creature prepared to pounce again, and he readied himself to jump out of the way. Powerful hind legs launched it forward and the beast arced perfectly towards him as Sal flung himself to the left. His shoulder hit the ground, and he heard the ear-splitting noise of gunfire. Three shots echoed, and when he scrambled to his feet again, the creature lay motionless with a trio of smoking holes in its abdomen. It had been dead before it even hit the ground.

  “See?” Lynch asked with a grin and gripped his massive rifle with both hands. “I told ya you’d need me to kill one of these beasties for you sooner or later.”

  Sal nodded, but his gaze tracked across the pool again. Lynch stood on the same side as him but hadn’t seen the flicker of movement from the opposite side—more black fur, more spines jutting from the back, and four more eyes reflecting the little light that filtered through.

  “What? No thank you?” Lynch asked and hefted his gun. “Did I offend your sensibilities by saving your life or something?”

  “Behind you!” Sal called. It was the only thing he could think to yell as the second panther leapt into the air.

  He was too late. Lynch managed a half turn before the creature landed heavily on him. Despite the stabilization units in the combat armor, he still hit the ground hard. The beast had knocked the massive rifle from his metal-covered hand which he now used to desperately keep the creature’s snapping jaws away from the more sensitive parts of his suit.

  It spat the same poison at Lynch’s eyes, which were thankfully still covered by his mask, but it wouldn’t take the creature long to overpower the man. Massive claws on its fore and hind paws dug into the suit, which began to rip.

  Sal seemed incapable of rational thought, and all he saw was the need to tear the monster off a fellow human. It didn’t matter that it was Lynch, one of the most despicable people that he’d ever had the displeasure of knowing. His adrenaline surged and galvanized him into action. He snatched the scalpel from his pouch and sprinted forward.

  With a low tackle, he crashed into the panther shoulder-first and shoved it clear of Lynch. He and the beast rolled a few times before they both managed to stop their momentum. Sal had rolled a little farther, but he regained his feet quickly and immediately lunged toward the panther, which tried to stand, still uncertain of this new threat.

  The scalpel wasn’t particularly long but it was as sharp as all hell, and it dug deep into the creature’s neck before it could retaliate. He yanked it out again and stabbed it into the other side of the neck. He told himself that he needed to find the carotid arteries, but he’d actually simply thrust at whatever he could reach first. The creature roared in pain and rage when he managed a third slash.

  It was larger than the one Lynch had killed, and it jerked to avoid the sharp weapon that inflicted such pain. The twist knocked Sal to the ground, and he scrambled instinctively to put a little distance between them. The dark-blue blood spurted from the final wound, and it crashed heavily into one of the nearby trees and drew panicked shrieks from the monkeys that had watched the battle below.

  The panther stumbled and shook its head. Blood dripped freely from its wounds. Sal scrambled to his feet, ready for another attack, but it sank to its stomach with a low, rumbling sound. All four eyes closed as its blood soaked into the moss-covered ground.

  “Shit.” Sal drew a ragged breath and brushed the blood from his gloves as he hurried to Lynch, who tried to stand.

  “Well,” the man said, “that wasn’t half bad, Jacobs.” He struggled to carry the full weight of the suit when the malfunctioning electronics failed to help.

  Sal barked a laugh as he moved to inspect the suit. “Are you all right?”

  “A bit bruised, but I’m okay.”.

  “No swelling or burning sensations where it tore through your suit?”

  “Who are ya, my proctologist?” Lynch poked at the metal hand of his suit, which had bent out of shape by the now dead panther-beast.

  “It spat what looked like poison, like a cobra?”

  Lynch examined where the claws had dug into his suit. “I don’t think so. It did spit at my face, though. Don’t spitting cobras only use the poison to blind you?”

  Sal shrugged. “Would you bet your life on that?”

  “Good point.”

  Sal used a syringe to collect the poison on his visor before he wiped the rest off with a quick swipe of gauze. He put both in sealed containers and ran a quick check of Lynch’s armor.

  The rest of their squad arrived a few seconds later.

  “What the hell happened?” Kennedy asked. She nudged the beast Sal had killed with the barrel of her gun.

  “We ran into some trouble,” Lynch said with a grin. “Me and the specialist took care of it. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Sal nodded and carefully sealed the scalpel he’d used in another bag.

  “You helped to kill these creatures?” Cortez asked. He squatted beside the second one.

  “Helped?” Lynch asked incredulously now that Sal had checked that he hadn’t suffered any wounds. “The man saved my life by killing that bugger with a scalpel. Of course, I saved his life first, so we’re even.”

  Sal smirked. “Yeah, well, they were trying to kill us. It seemed rude not to return the favor.”

  Kennedy chuckled. “Well, nice work on not dying. And nice work on finding us some water too.”

  “We might want to move on quickly, though,” Sal said as he knelt beside the panther he’d killed to collect more samples of tissue, blood, and the poison from the fangs. “There’s no telling what kind of trouble the sound of the gunshots might bring our way. Besides, something will probably come to make sure there’s nothing left of these bodies.”

  Kennedy nodded. “Good point. Let’s refill our water. You collect whatever you need. We’ll move out in five minutes. Cortez, help Lynch strip out of his armor. You’ll have to walk in your civvies until we can get that suit fixed.”

  “I need a fresh breeze in my nethers anyway.” Lynch grinned.

  Sal stroked the panther’s fur idly and a little sadly. There was nothing like a little killing to improve Lynch’s mood again.

  Chapter Twelve

  It hadn’t been difficult to find a suitable camp. They’d agreed to be as close to the water source as they could without compromising their safety. By the time they’d set up, the sun had disappeared and been replaced by a bright red display they could barely make out between the heavy cover of leaves.

  The mood that evening was considerably better than it had been in the morning. Lynch repeated a few dramatic renditions of what had happened while he, Addams, and Cortez restored his armor to working condition. Kennedy prepped their rations and Sal used the time to prepare the tests for his new specimens and check the results of those he’d left to stew the night before. He’d decided to start on the dead locust’s armor.

  In truth, he didn’t expect to find anything more than brown juice swishing around in the petri dish. There wasn’t much organic matter in the world that could survive that long in a container full of sulfuric acid. Its primary purpose was to test the resilience of metals used for body armor. He felt a little guilty that he’d wasted even that small amount of a specimen that could have been used for something more productive.

  He retrieved the dish and stared at it for a few seconds. Well, it wasn’t full of ugly brown liquid, that was for sure. Sal scowled. The piece of armor had changed color slightly from blue to greenish-blue, but it was still there and in one piece.

  “Huh,” he muttered and pried the container open, careful to use rubber gloves as he lifted the piece of armor to eye level. When he’d dropped it into the dish the first time, it had smoked and sizzled like it would be organic mush in no time, so he knew that he had, in fact, put it
in the container with the acid. But that still didn’t answer the question of where the acid had gone.

  Sal put it back in the dish, pulled his helmet on, and accessed the microscope function to look closer. He had a frame of reference since he still had other pieces of the armor that he’d pried from the dead locust, and he compared them side by side.

  It was impossible to tell the differences at the molecular level, so he decided to run another experiment. He filled a dripper with the same acid that he’d put the piece into the night before and dribbled it over the untested armor. It sizzled and hissed and gave off an angry, foul-smelling smoke. He quickly quelled the reaction and tried the same test on the armor that had been soaked all night.

  There was no reaction at all. The armor absorbed the first drop, then the second, and finally the third like it simply soaked in.

  Sal put the two pieces together and tried the microscopic view again, hoping closer for a deeper comparison of the cells though it wouldn’t be anywhere near sufficient with his limited equipment. Annoyingly, aside from the change in color, they appeared identical.

  Oh, hello. What is that?

  He looked closer. The pieces seemed to connect of their own free will. It was as if when they were put in close proximity, they worked together to fix whatever damage had been done. And something more interesting happened. The color the acid-tested armor had taken on spread to the part that hadn’t been soaked.

  After a few minutes, they fused together. Sal picked up the now single piece and tested the resistance. It was like he hadn’t broken it, and both portions were the odd greenish-blue color.

  “Huh,” he said again and sealed them in the petri dish. He needed more instruments and more in-depth tests to work out what the fuck was going on. For the moment, all he could do was note what he’d seen. The HUD recorded it all, and he archived the footage before moving on to the blood testing.

  The chemical test had been a success, and the solution inside the vial successfully separated the various elements of the creature’s blood into neat little rows. Biology was rarely so neat, but sometimes, it was. This was one of those times.