Jungle world, p.1
Jungle World, page 1
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JUNGLE WORLD
(Undying Mercenaries Series #19)
by
B. V. Larson
The Undying Mercenaries Series:
Steel World
Dust World
Tech World
Machine World
Death World
Home World
Rogue World
Blood World
Dark World
Storm World
Armor World
Clone World
Glass World
Edge World
Green World
Ice World
City World
Sky World
Jungle World
Illustration © Tom Edwards TomEdwardsDesign.com
Copyright © 2023 by Iron Tower Press, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
“Remember: you will die.”
—Roman proverb
-1-
When a man lives as long as I have and has suffered through many battles, wars, and outright deaths, he develops certain traditions. These traditions are designed to relieve stress, to reset one’s mind, to change modes from that of conflict and stress to relaxation and normal living. Accordingly, when I got back home to Waycross, Georgia, I immediately began a lengthy and utterly lazy vacation.
For several long months, the world cooperated. I haunted the various eateries, bars, and pool halls of Waycross. I pestered any young lady who gave me a smile and a nod, and I generally enjoyed myself.
Months went by, and I soon tuned out all the nonsense coming from the online news streams. There were plenty of dark reports about border skirmishes with Rigel and strange, giant rocks flying out of deep space to strike a planet here or there. In fact, I was so determined to maintain my ostrich-with-his-head-in-the-sand attitude that I soon tuned out of every newsfeed, even those on my own tapper. Insulated and armored, I had a glorious time without a care in the world.
Then, one fateful autumn day when the leaves were just beginning to turn yellow, I received a message that I just couldn’t ignore.
“This is Graves,” it read. “I’m on my way down to your place. See you in the a.m.”
I blinked at that, and a small amount of frothy bubbles from my shampooed head dribbled into my right eye due to my distraction. I was, in fact, taking a shower at that moment and just happened to be flicking through a few notices of interest on my tapper.
Squinting, I found I could hardly read the entire message. My forearm was just as covered in suds as the rest of me. But after spraying off the foam, I was able to see the truth. Graves had sent me a message indicating he was on his way down from Central.
My foggy mind leapt forward, and I realized this message must have come in last night. In fact, after checking the date and time, I figured out Graves had to be arriving soon. He’d said something about the a.m., which meant morning—and right now it was definitely morning.
My jaw sagged low in disbelief, and I muttered a multitude of curses. Spraying off the rest of my overly large person, I turned off the water, and that’s when I heard the thumping.
Heavy, deep hollow-sounding bangs were reverberating through my domicile. Having a keen sense for these things, I was able to identify the source of the offending sound within moments—someone was hammering on my front door.
Climbing out of the shower, I grabbed the towel but didn’t bother to dry myself off. The visitor seemed intent on invading my home in my most private moment. Being a man who wasn’t much concerned by things like nudity or embarrassment, I walked across my stained carpet and threw open the door.
Graves was standing there on my sagging porch. His fist was raised up for yet another hammering. The look on his face could only be described as a scowl.
“Well, hello there, Primus,” I said. “What can I do you for?”
Graves eyed me with a mixture of disapproval and disgust. “Get dressed, McGill,” he said. “Then come out here and take a walk with me. We need to talk.” With that, he turned around and marched out into the yard.
Grunting unhappily, I did as he asked. I had yet to have any breakfast, a proper shave or even finish relieving myself. I was annoyed to be accosted in this fashion by a superior officer when I was technically off-duty.
I had half a mind to make him wait until I was properly dressed and shined up. I considered pointing out to him I was demobilized, and that he would have to reactivate my contract to boss me around.
But I did none of these things. Graves wasn’t exactly a friend, but he was a long-term acquaintance of mine. We’d gone through a lot together over the past four or five decades, and I knew that no amount of complaints or jackassery was going to affect the outcome of this situation. Accordingly, I pulled some clothes over my sticky, wet body, pulled on some boots—without even bothering about socks—and walked outside.
I gave myself a vigorous shake, spraying water droplets everywhere on the porch like a hound dog. Graves watched this performance from a safe distance and still looked disgusted.
“Didn’t you get my message?” he asked.
“I surely did, sir. I just didn’t expect you to be here this early.”
Graves twisted up his face. “It’s ten o’clock in the morning, McGill. That’s not early.”
“Well sir, I don’t live by military time when I’m not on active duty. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have a contract approval in your back pocket, would you?”
“Hell, no. This visit is unofficial.”
“Huh?” I said, thinking that over. I didn’t like the sound of it. Sometimes, Graves was party to certain dark, unsafe activities. In fact, I’d gotten myself beaten to death multiple times and sentenced to a decade of nonexistence just last year. All that was just for the crime of having been associated with this man.
On my guard, I eyeballed him with suspicions of my own. My eyes narrowed, and I shook my head. “I don’t know, sir… If this is unofficial, I don’t think I want anything to do with it.”
Graves gave me a cold glance in return. “You’re involved with this McGill, whether you want to be or not. Now, I’m going to take a walk. If you don’t want to know what’s about to happen to you and your family, then you stay right here, finish your shower, have a beer and go back to bed. I don’t really care. But, if you’re interested in the nature of your fate, follow me.”
With that cryptic comment, Graves turned around and walked away. He didn’t stride out to the road where I suspected he’d parked a tram but instead headed across my weed-choked yard.
I didn’t follow him immediately. I stood there on my porch, grumbling with my hands on my hips.
Graves walked into my toolshed and rummaged around for a bit. Finally, he came out again and headed for the woods. Oddly, he looked like a man who knew where he was going. This concerned me, as not that long ago, I’d made certain unsavory discoveries out in those forested, bog-filled regions. Normally, no one ever went out there except me or members of my family.
Mumbling fresh curses, I decided I had to follow him. Just in case, I pocketed a pistol and a combat knife. Neither one bulged too much in my pockets, the pistol being small and slim-barreled. It was one of those cheap alien brands that were only good for burning a hole in an unarmed and unsuspecting man.
Being long of leg, my stride widened, and I was able to catch up to him.
“Hey Primus,” I called after him, “just where in the heck are we going?”
“You know where we’re going, McGill.”
I frowned at that. I knew of precisely two places in my parents’ back-forty that were of extreme interest. One was an old barn to which I had taken many a person that needed killing—leaving the bodies there to rot away in the slimy bog. The second was an old Unification War bunker that Etta had discovered, which I had plundered only the year before.
I didn’t want to see either one of these places again. I put up a good front and laughed heartily. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, “there’s nothing out here but woodpeckers and water moccasins. Anybody who’s told you different has been having you on.”
“I know about the bunker, McGill,” he said. “We talked about it. Remember?”
“Uh… oh yeah. Well, sir, there’s not much to see. It’s just a hole in the ground and a few rotten antiques. I did manage to get a pair of night vision goggles that work decently well. You want to see them? They’re back in my shack.”
“No,” Graves said. He never turned his head to look at me, and he never shortened his stride. He just kept on plowing through the forested land, pushing aside branches now and then, so they snapped back and slapped me one in the face. I couldn’t help but notice that he seemed to be well aware of the way. He definitely wasn’t heading for the barn, but rather toward the area in which the bunker had been discovered.
That brought all kinds of fresh questions to my mind. “Sir, what’s so important about my back property?”
Graves laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in the sound. “You’re finally interested, huh? Your lack of curiosity and the remoteness of this place is exactly why we decided to use it.”
“We? Which ‘we’ are we talking about, sir?”
“Never mind. You don’t want to know.”
Reflecting to myself that he was probably right that I didn’t want to know, I shut up about it, but I was still concerned. If Graves knew that the old bunker was out here, that meant he had to know what had been in it—which included some mighty strange things.
What was worse, I’d plundered the place and taken the sole item of interest—a disembodied talking brain in a jar. I’d removed this dubious trophy out to Dust World and left it there. I figured that when he learned about this… he might not be overjoyed.
Someone else might have confessed early, trying to mitigate the officer’s anger—but I’m not a man who likes to reveal information ahead of time to anyone. In my experience, warning people about inevitable upcoming surprises, especially ones that were certain to be received poorly, often led those individuals to mistakenly blame poor old McGill for those unhappy feelings.
Accordingly, I talked about nonsense, pointing out various plants and animals of interest. The whole slog out into the swamp saw me chattering in a pointless, friendly manner to make myself seem as innocent and harmless as possible.
“Did you know some of these trees out here in this swamp are a thousand years old? It’s true. I looked it up. Some of the oldest living plants on the entire North American continent are right here.”
“Shut up, McGill,” Graves said. “This is the spot, isn’t it?”
“Uh…” I said, looking around as if I was baffled.
Graves frowned at me. “Where is the mound? I don’t see it.”
I swung my big head around, looking as ignorant as possible. After this display, I threw my hands high, and I threw them wide. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, sir!”
Graves gave me a dark look. “You better not have come out here with a tractor and plowed the place over.”
“That’s just plain crazy-talk. I don’t even know what you mean. I don’t even…” While I was saying these nonsensical words and pretending that I was completely innocent and clueless, Graves beat about the bushes until he finally found the mound I’d hidden with a set of fresh bushes. I’d planted them here to disguise the hatch and keep unwanted eyes like his away.
“Ah, I get it,” he said. “You camouflaged the entrance… Not bad—you covered the whole thing with soil, even the hatch. All right, here we go.” He threw me a shovel he’d taken from our toolshed. “Start digging.”
With a sheer lack of enthusiasm, I helped him dig up the bunker hatch. Soon he had it exposed, and he flung it wide open.
Dark earth crumbled and dribbled down into the black hole. The interior had that musty smell—the same rusted-out, old-fashioned hole-in-the ground smell that it had the last time I’d been out here.
Graves looked at me, and he smiled with half his mouth. “You’ve been out here hiding this place, haven’t you?”
“What? I had no earthly idea, sir. No idea at all.”
Graves gestured toward the yawning hole. “You first.”
I heaved a sigh, tossed the shovel aside and climbed down the rusty steel rungs into the darkness. I flicked on a flashlight and looked around at the interior. It was pretty much the same as the last time I’d left it. Maybe a little wetter, a little colder, but essentially untouched.
Graves followed me down the ladder and stood on the wire deck at the bottom, looking around. “Where did the… oh, I get it. You stacked junk on top of the hatch to the second level, didn’t you?”
“What sir? That’s outright insane. I don’t even know what the hell we’re doing down here, and I’m damned sure I don’t know what this place is. I think Etta used to play out here, though. She called it a hideout when she was little, but you know, I thought it was too dangerous, so…”
“Shut up,” Graves said. He was tired of my lies, and next to my father, he was the hardest man I knew to fool with a line of horseshit. That was probably because he’d been listening to my particular brand for so many long years.
Graves began heaving and straining, pushing aside the various barrels and cartons I’d stacked on top of the hatch that led down to the second deck below us.
I acted as surprised and befuddled as I was able when he found the hatch to the second floor and heaved it open. It creaked, and the metal groaned. The hinges were unoiled and loud in the dark, confined space.
Graves led the way, and he soon disappeared down into the dark interior of the lower level.
I stood there at the top of the hatch, and I have to confess, certain unpleasant thoughts crossed my mind. For instance, if I simply threw that hatch closed, latched it, locked it, and chained it up—then maybe piled a few crates and cartons on top… Well, a man like me might be able to scuttle up that ladder, slam the hatch, and bury the whole bunker again.
The idea was captivating once it had crossed my devious mind. I would feel guilty, of course, but I knew myself. I knew I would fret for a while then soon forget about the whole thing.
That was a gift of mine, see. A power. Some people call it compartmentalization. It was a psychological advantage that gave me a third option in moments like this, one that ordinary people might never perceive.
For a more conventional soldier in the legions, when a superior officer gave you a direct order, you had two straightforward options. Number one, you obeyed immediately and without hesitation. Or two, you disobeyed and refused to follow the commands of your rightful superior.
The second option obviously had consequences. One could expect a flogging at the very least and possibly a demotion. All that was normal—the sort of thing that I’d experienced on any number of occasions in the past.
But, for a man such as myself—a personality type I’ve come to believe is rather rare and almost unique in this universe of ours—there was always a third option. That was to engineer the demise of the person giving you the command in the first place.
In short, I would be scot-free if I chose to trap Graves down here and let him rot in the dark. This bunker was in a dead spot, with no wireless connection to the grid. There were no communications, no electricity, water, food—nothing whatsoever to support life long-term. He would surely die within the span of a week, tops.
Then, I would have various choices to make. Since Graves and I were off the grid now, that meant that our minds weren’t being recorded by our tappers and relayed to the data core. There was some short-term memory in the tapper units themselves, of course, but that could be erased by a little bit of unsubtle work with a sharp knife on your victim’s forearm.
Essentially, I was in the position to either perm Graves by leaving him down there until he was nothing but a skeleton in a suit, or optionally, I could stage a shocking rediscovery of his body elsewhere.
On that happy day, he might turn up with a damaged tapper, an unrecorded mind, and essentially no memories of what had transpired. Best of all, I could do this hat trick at my leisure. It could come a week from now, a month from now—or maybe a decade on…
Now, any sane and normal person might be wondering to themselves why in the hell would I take it upon myself to abuse a good man such as Graves—one who definitely deserved better. It would be a callous and unforgivable act, that is for certain.
Well sir, the way I saw it Graves had brought this upon himself. He had come out here unofficially, without even the courtesy of activating my contract. He’d come to my home where my beloved family resided, and now he had involved me in the nefarious business of reviving ancient rebel ties to the distant past.
