Ambassadors and Scorpions (Apocalypse Paused Book 4) Read online

  Ambassadors and Scorpions

  Apocalypse Paused™ Book 4

  Michael Todd

  Michael Anderle

  Ambassadors and Scorpions (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2019 Michael Todd, and Michael Anderle

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, January 2019

  The Zoo Universe (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are Copyright (c) 2018-19 by Michael Anderle and LMBPN Publishing.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  Connect with Michael Todd

  Other Zoo Books

  Books written as Michael Anderle

  Ambassadors and Scorpions Team

  JIT Readers

  Jeff Eaton

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Crystal Wren

  Paul Westman

  John Ashmore

  Peter Manis

  Editor

  The Skyhunter Editing Team

  Dedication

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  Prologue

  A man walked along a sidewalk that edged a park in a city. Double-decker buses drove past, signs advertised shops’ wares in multiple languages, and slim, fashionably-dressed men and women walked past. Migrant vendors hawked their wares and a mother played with her children. Eyes were everywhere, and the stranger knew he would have to be careful. At least he wore a hooded jacket against the cool, damp, and grey weather.

  According to a sign near a trail leading into the park, the section where a particular bench would be located was only about half a kilometer farther on. Good. The man did not want to spend too much time on this, even as important as it was. There was other work to be done.

  He looked around as he walked—nothing too obvious or suspicious, of course. Merely an individual taking in the sights on a stroll. A broad glance to the left and a sweep to the right with the perfect bemused facial expression. It was a lovely park, full of gently rolling green slopes and broad flowering trees and statues, some of which dated back to the sixteenth century. A significant number of people walked here, so no one would pay them any heed unless they had a specific reason to do so. The agent had experience at this sort of thing, after all. While no trouble was expected, it was good to be alert. One never knew what might happen.

  Soon, the bench came into sight and another individual sat on it as planned. The man even wore a big, heavy, dark-brown trench coat. That was a good sign. But of course, things could have been compromised. Anyone could put on a particular coat and sit on a park bench, after all.

  The man—it was definitely a man, as expected—looked intently at his cell phone as he plunked away at it. As the agent approached, he looked up and said, “Excuse me…”

  He stopped and turned partially toward his contact but without revealing his face just yet. “Yes? May I help you?”

  The man cleared his throat. “Something seems to be wrong with my phone. Do you have the time and the weather forecast?”

  So far, so good. The operative took two steps closer, pulled out his phone and brought it back to life, and tapped a few quick buttons. He reported the time and informed the man that temperatures were projected to remain decent although more rain was expected.

  “Ahh,” the man said. “I get a pain in my knee when it gets this damp. Not to mention I always seem to slip on my porch.”

  “That’s a shame,” he replied. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “Not at all.” Before he moved over to make room, the stranger in the coat rubbed his left ear with his left thumb.

  The agent nodded and took a seat. Although they both occupied the bench now, neither looked at the other. “It seems like no one comes to this park anymore…such a shame,” he said after a few minutes of silence.

  “True,” his companion responded, “but some people have far worse things to worry about.” He produced a manila envelope thick with papers of some sort from within his trench coat.

  The operative accepted the envelope without comment, opened it, and drew forth the documents within. He examined the contents quickly and nodded his head. Impressive. Most impressive. “This is manageable,” he said.

  “I do have to remind you…” the man in the coat said in a low voice and glanced around quickly to ensure, once again, that no one else was around. “This mission will be dangerous. You are going for more than simply a walk in the park, my friend.”

  “Oh,” he replied, “I am not worried in the least.” He returned the papers to the envelope and made it disappear as if it had never been there. “Is the intel good? You can confirm and verify its source?”

  “It comes from the very top,” the handler said.

  The agent leaned back a little on the bench for better comfort and smiled broadly. “Have no fear, then,” they said. “These American idiots will hardly know what’s hit them.”

  Chapter One

  In addition to the usual swarms of deadly mutated locusts, the Zoo had spawned another river. In the middle of the Sahara Desert. Someone had to deal with it according to entirely sensible orders which the people in charge, in their infinite wisdom, had issued.

  “All right.” Sergeant Erik Wallace sighed and tried not let even a trace of his tiredness and exasperation into his voice. “I know that the installation of a drawbridge over a magically-appearing moat isn’t exactly what most of you thought of doing when you signed the papers that made you soldiers in the United States Army. But as soldiers, we all have to do our duty.”

  As he made this speech, he gathered a large box of rivets and a massive drill, intending to help with the task itself—troops resented these sorts of assignments slightly less when their commanding officers pitched in. “Ultimately, we have all surrendered our individual decision-making process to Uncle Sam. He might not always make a hell of a lot of sense, but his ends are just, and by following our orders and doing our jobs, we advance toward those ends.” As Wallace had been augmented by a cybernetic partial-exoskeleton, he had an easier time carrying the rivets than some of th
e others might have.

  Most of the team muttered and grumbled, nonetheless. They had received only the vaguest of briefings before all of them had been hustled down the path that led into the jungle, a little less than a mile in, where the new river had appeared overnight.

  “Wait a minute,” said Corporal Gunnar Åkerlund, “that almost reminds me of something. Hmm…wait, yeah, that’s it!” His long, morose face almost seemed to light up for a second as he continued. “‘The Lord works in mysterious ways.’ I knew that Uncle Sam was actually God Himself in disguise. Who else would be so great and wise and all-knowing? Or so merciful to send us out here at 1300? He sure does have a nice beard, though.”

  Several of the other soldiers reacted in barely-audible ways, although Wallace heard all of them. Some chuckled while others were offended.

  “Advancing toward ends…” chimed in Private First-Class Monica Pérez, better known throughout the base as Private Peppy. “Yes. All of us, one day at a time, advance toward the end. The days slip by uselessly, like lemmings that shuffle mindlessly toward a cliff, knowing that the final plunge will at last bring a reprieve from meaningless tasks.” She waved a hand vaguely toward Gunnar. “And useless comments.”

  “Peppy could take a plunge off this cliff,” Gunnar suggested and indicated the short drop into the brown waters of the river below. “Then she’ll be spared laughing herself to death from me being so fucking funny. Think of how much it would hurt to vomit up her own lungs—”

  “Shut up, Åkerlund,” said Wallace. “Everyone, get to work and we can have this done with plenty of time for supper. On the double.” He plugged the drill into their generator and started counting out the rivets.

  Months had passed now since Erik Wallace had first been assigned to the Zoo. Yesterday evening was the first anyone had seen or heard of a river flowing through this particular portion of it. Wallace wasn’t at all surprised. Once a man got past the initial shock of seeing a vibrant green jungle sprouting directly out of the sands of the Sahara, accepted that this jungle was the result of a failed experiment on some kind of alien fertilizer that had come to Planet Earth from deep space… Yes, after a man accepted those things, the rest got easier. Sort of.

  “Imagine all the bugs and spiders we’ll put out of their misery,” Peppy droned on in her flaccid monotone, “by destroying their habitats with all this construction material. Most of them probably had no chance to mate or perpetuate their DNA anyway.”

  “Hey, Peppy,” some guy shouted, “want to perpetuate some of our DNA?”

  “I don’t see the point.” She sighed.

  “Well, I for one am always happy to destroy some bug habitats,” Gunnar interjected and used the tone of voice he always used when it had been too long since the last time he’d been able to shoot anything. “Especially if it means the spiders also starve. Arachnids in general should all be rounded up and used as targets at a firing range.” He shuddered. “I’d even donate a few guns.”

  “Somebody gonna donate a scorpion to your pants if you don’t shut up, man,” another soldier said.

  Wallace looked up. “Åkerlund, this time, I order you to keep quiet.”

  “Darn,” Gunnar said and pantomimed a zipping motion across his mouth. He produced a cigarette from somewhere within his uniform. It seemed to be already lit, and he took a long puff of it and blew the smoke out with a look of great satisfaction. Wallace supposed that, if the man hadn’t been able to shoot things, he at least got off on provoking a reaction from his comrades. Sometimes, they thought it was funny. At other times, it merely annoyed the hell out of them. In any event, he was an NCO now and ought to behave more professionally.

  Wallace himself had been a sergeant for a long time. Terry Hall, the director of the base overseeing the Zoo, had temporarily granted him the powers of an “Acting Lieutenant,” but had then—officially—rescinded them after the failure of the last major operation Wallace had commanded. In practice, though, he continued to have more authority around there than his rank should technically allow.

  Not that he had the slightest interest in abusing it. He was a soldier, and soldiers followed orders. As the noise of their tools and the metal pieces of the would-be drawbridge filled the forest, Wallace nevertheless found himself wondering how wise these orders had actually been.

  Over the course of the months, the personnel at the base beyond the wall which surrounded the Zoo had gradually carved out a fairly reliable “main road” which went about two miles into the forest. This made it easier and safer for them to launch quick missions in and out.

  Then the river had appeared. Wallace’s former teammates, Lieutenant Doctor Emma Kemp and Doctor Christopher Lin, claimed they had run into another river themselves in the eastern part of the Zoo, but Wallace hadn’t seen it himself. He certainly saw this one, though.

  “Sergeant Wallace,” Hall, the Director, had said to him, in his weirdly soft yet deep and powerful voice, “that river hampers our entrance to the Zoo.”

  “Sir,” Wallace had replied, “by the same token, it might help keep some of the dangerous creatures in.”

  “Wall One has held,” was all Hall had said. This was true, although a fair number of men and women had died holding it. “We need to be able to continue to send teams in as needed. As it happens, we have a mobile drawbridge kit on the base here. It just arrived. Some assembly is required, of course. Now, I want you to take twenty men and set the bridge up over this new river of ours.”

  Hall, who seemed pretty savvy in using particular people for particular tasks, must have assigned the task to Wallace because he knew how he’d respond. “Yes, sir.”

  Now, as of mid-afternoon, Wallace had done all he could to do as he’d been commanded, but it hadn’t gone so well.

  “What’s the holdup on that end?” he asked Corporal Neaves, the NCO overseeing the assembly of the right-hand side of the bridge’s support structure.

  The corporal sighed in disgust. “The holes for the rivets don’t line up right,” he said. “We’ll have to brute-force them. It’ll still work, but it’ll take extra time.”

  Wallace frowned. “We have till sunset, and it will be done by then,” he said. Before the troops could complain, he added, “I’ll get us some help, however.”

  He called two young soldiers, one from each of the left and right groups. “Private Falstaff, Private First Class Akiwe,” he said.

  “Yes, sir?” they asked.

  “Take that vehicle over there back to base and find Miss Audrey James from the garage. Explain the situation to her—you heard what the problem is, right?— tell her to grab whatever she needs, and bring her back here.”

  “You mean Jimmy?” Falstaff said. “Yeah, I know her.”

  “I’m sure you do. Now go,” Wallace ordered.

  “Yes, sir.” Both young men did as they were instructed, but the JLTV didn’t start. When Wallace glanced their way, they gestured at the other vehicle and tried it, but to no avail.

  “Goddammit,” Wallace muttered under his breath. He already knew what had happened. Nevertheless, he went to check.

  The two soldiers leapt off of the second vehicle as the sergeant crouched to look under it. As he had suspected, a thick green vine had grown up out of the bare ground and into the undercarriage of the vehicle. By now, it had likely damaged the hell out of the engine. Car-killers again.

  “Uh, I made sure to park the vehicle over a bare patch of dirt, Sergeant,” Akiwe said.

  “I know you did, PFC,” Wallace replied. “It’s not your fault in this case. The damn things must have figured out how to burrow underground until they can find a vehicle to destroy.” He suddenly wanted to summon all the considerable power his mechanically-aided legs possessed and kick the JLTV over on its side, but he didn’t. That sort of crap would set a bad example for the men.

  “Sergeant!” someone else called. There was actual fear in the voice.

  Wallace’s head snapped up, but before he could even ask, he hea
rd it. They all heard it. A buzzing sound grew louder as it moved closer. It was punctuated by the sounds of things running through the woods.

  “Combat positions!” Wallace barked. He unslung his own M-92 automatic rifle from his back as the troops, meanwhile, armed themselves and prepared for the worst. Fourteen of his men crouched and formed a semicircle. The other six stood behind them to watch the skies and the rear and offer cover if necessary.

  Daylight marked the way behind them—back down the path where the overhanging branches were thinner toward the wall and human civilization. But the other three sides presented little but dark-green shadows. The men scanned their surroundings and Wallace grimaced as someone gasped. Two masses of black approached from their left—within the forest on this side of the river. He knew, without having to see details, that they were herds of the new-and-improved locusts. Directly ahead, weaving toward them mostly on wing, the iridescent blue of a small pack of chimeras glowed definitively.

  “There are a lot of them,” Corporal Neaves said. “Should we retreat, Sergeant? At least until reinforcements get here?”

  “No,” Wallace stated. Neaves wasn’t a coward, but he was the type who felt that the best strategy was only to fight in easy engagements and avoid risks if at all possible. “By the time we came back with more guns, they’ll have completely torn the bridge to pieces. That will indicate failure of the mission. Stand your ground. We will not fail.”