The mosquito had once been a cotinga, its fat, round body still laden with orange feathers. Where its beak should be now protrudes a floppy proboscis that prods Anthem’s tunic, searching for a way in. When the creature realizes it won’t pierce the material, it turns one wet eye towards the sky and flutters off. Anthem, however, is faster. He grabs the thing, crumples its head like a squeezed fruit, and holds its remaining sac bulging with liquid.
With the cotinga in his grasp, Anthem produces a pump with a needle-nosed end from a waist quiver of oddly shaped instruments he collected from the provisioners, pierces the fist-sized mosquito’s sack, and fills the chamber. The coshtal fruit juice is exponentially more potent than the mortared peels, but no one else in the march knows that and never will.
When the Twin Pales rise to their height on the sixth day out of Lomlen, Anthem first discovers the cotinga mosquitoes of the archipelago enjoy extracting the juices of not just the coshtal but several other fruits, each a potential ingredient in a neutralizer agent. He has loaded ten one-liter bottles of the fluid by late afternoon, tucking them away in a haversack and padding the interior with his gear to dampen the clinking sounds.
He works at night when everyone is sleeping, on patrols he volunteers for, and turns his body to shield his experiments from prying eyes. He swipes ingredients, scrounges from trash piles and spent fire pits, walking as far from his squad as Sergeant Nedland will let him go.
Fletcher’s 2nd platoon, consisting of eight squads, including Nedland’s 3rd, marches ahead of several other platoons that all left RLZ 1 the morning after the attack. The men split the duties of carrying the heavier devices—the vesicle tanks, water tanks, boilers, air compressors, culture vats, and the remaining six-pound cannons. Fletcher has plucked Ox-infused from every squad to pull these apparatuses along, but the cost comes as extra calories, the Ox-infused demanding double rations, and sometimes triple.
At noon, the 2nd platoon comes upon a sheltered crater containing an abandoned outpost and a small, man-sized Gash. A canopy of leaves above creates ample shade and shelter. The men relish in the cool cover, the thirstiest waiting in line at the boiler taps, and the most hydrated carrying buckets. The provisioners have created a pile of trash a few meters away from the crater and have largely forgotten it. The heap consists mainly of ration containers, but it may as well be a feature of the jungle from how the men regard it. That is, except for Anthem.
He waits for the patrols to circle the crater before running to the trash heap. Discarded at its center is a crate of glass bottles with some alcohol still inside. He fits the unbroken ones into his haversack, the pack almost bulging now. He waits for a gap in the patrols and pushes through the overgrowth to find a stream running around a brook out of sight of the crater. Once there, he runs each bottle through, checking that most of the alcohol contaminants are gone. Water will dissolve, but everything else should go.
As he dunks the bottles in the stream, Anthem considers that Lieutenant Fletcher may have only been painting an authoritative ruse when he told Anthem he’d march him off a cliff if he created another neutralizer. Sergeants and a Thurmgeist surrounded them at the time, as well as messengers who could gossip and carry the story across the RLZ. The lieutenant could have just been saving face. But if he was serious, then he’s just as much of a meathead as Frine was. A neutralizer had saved Anthem already, and no way is he going to let another man or maligned get the better of him. Paulson, needless to say, has kept his equipment close. Without syringes, Anthem is forced to improvise.
Pouches holding coshtal powder, stokk root, and grinnem seeds fill the lining of his second haversack, all in imprecise increments and contaminated with other material. The march hasn’t been the best condition for his work, but Anthem doesn’t let this deter him. He plucks stray weeds from the roots and removes pebbles from the powder, away from the crater and the eyes of the men.
He rummages through the bag and finds a small pouch of clap cashews, which earn their name only by their resemblance to the nut. In reality, they are hardened larvae that, when boiled, release a protein that, by itself, is a prominent neutralizer of several hostile strands, including the Ape. The ‘cashews’ simmer instantly under the Twin Pales, peeking through the canopy above him as if the celestial bodies are privy to his secret.
A pouch once used to hold powdered milk is now Anthem’s closest approximation to a test tube, and within it, he waits for the cashew to finish bubbling. He pours the resulting dark brown slop into another pouch, sets that between two stones he’s pulled over, and burns the bottom. The final concoction fits into a third pouch, and he discards the other two in the stream, burying them deep at the bottom.
Rat scientist. Lord of trash and refuse ascended to a squirrel burying rubbish. Those sound better than ‘zoo man,’ a term he hasn’t acknowledged since leaving the RLZ.
The final mixture is a bright beige liquid, enough to flavor a dozen bottles, stream water making up the rest of the volume. He fills one of the bottles, shakes the mixture, and waits for a reaction. There is a bit of inconsistency with one, a slight congealing around the bottle’s interior, which could indicate the whole concoction is about to solidify. He dumps this one out, hides the bottle in the jungle, and returns to the haversack, where he has left a bottle beside the two rocks.
“Private?”
Anthem freezes in place, the contents of his lab mostly cleaned up, save for the open haversack with all the bottles arrayed inside.
Shit.
Nedland’s walked in at some point, no one following. He stoops over and picks up one of the bottles in the sack. “Thought we drank all this.”
The sergeant doesn’t know a damned thing, and he won’t start now. “It’s just wine, sir.”
“Oh, yeah, looks great.” He uncorks the bottle and brings it to his mouth.
“No!”
Nedland holds the bottle near his lips, the neutralizer liquid not trickling out. He shrugs and seals it again. “Come on, man. You’ve got about as much subtlety as a six-pounder. There’s a reason I kept us marching away from the other squads.”
Anthem had noticed that, thought it was a precaution, and never questioned it. He walks over to his exposed haversack, head down. “Show me the way.”
Nedland raises an eyebrow but does not move, inspecting the earlier bottle closely. “There’s one just beyond that treeline. It’s a gorge but high enough to kill a man.” He smirks. “We’ll miss you, zoo man, but if it has to be this way.”
The first part of that remark is almost lost on Anthem. He has spent months with these men and cannot lie that they have looked out for each other and counted their heads before settling each night. Where other squads have dissolved and dissipated, the 3rd has remained strong. He had already failed them once before, a fact which had only pushed him harder to create the neutralizers.
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Anthem looks down. All that subterfuge had been for nothing—all those days gone.
“How long do you plan to keep this stuff?” Nedland asks.
How long?
“Unwin!” Nedland calls, and the Ox-infused emerges from around the corner leading down to the stream. Hamill and Orey both follow, then Devitt and no one else. The sergeant shows them the bottle. “Zoo man’s been sneaky.”
Orey snatches the bottle from Nedland’s grip. “Not sneaky enough.” He winks and points to his temple. “I saw it the day we left the RLZ. Nothing escapes me.”
“You don’t see with the side of your head, idiot,” says Hamill, and sifts through Anthem’s haversack. “How many of these you got?”
Anthem frowns. “Maybe twenty? How long have you all known?”
“Quite a while,” says Ned. “This is the same stuff you used on Frine?”
Anthem’s still unsure where this conversation is going, as seconds ago, he thought he’d be herded off a cliff. That still seems a possibility. “Almost. It’s a lighter mixture, more general. Probably won’t burn as fast, but I haven’t tested them.”
“Why not?”
He pauses. “How can I?”
Nedland nods, a gesture he carries forth to the other men. “We’re going on patrol,” he says and leads them along a path away from the crater to a similar brook with a cave at its far side, a trench off to the right, and a few discarded vesicles buried in the dirt. Orey inspects the devices from afar while Anthem becomes skeptical about Nedland’s reasoning for leading them here unless that cave leads to a cliff.
The answer is a cow-size borer maligned curled up in a ball next to the cave. These things get their names from their circular layers of teeth, which they use to eat away at raw ground and dirt to form tunnels and other underground structures. This one’s host could have been the common cattle at one point, but a dozen jumps later, the thing now closely resembles a dog, though it has kept the utters. At least a dozen pups feast upon those, smaller maligned with the same anatomical structure as their mother.
“Saw her this morning,” says Nedland to the men. “Usually, we’d leave these alone, but they might be trouble later.” He flips the bottle of neutralizer he’s been carrying all this time. “So, just throw it?”
Anthem looks down at the bottle as the relief washes over him. “You want to aim it so-”
Nedland hurls the bottle at the maligned. It smashes into its stomach, right above where the young feed, and immediately sprays glass and neutralizer. The mother roars and convulses, hiccups echoing off the cave’s mouth. It stumbles when it tries to stand, one leg smoking as it melts.
Anthem holds his hands to keep them from shaking, delight and satisfaction overtaking him. It worked. The maligned can still crawl, but at least it’s weaker.
“Let me try!” Hamill throws his bottle before anyone says otherwise. It spins through the air and smashes into one of the borer pups. The maligned stumbles and begins to wither as if made of paper.
“Thought you said this stuff was weak!” Unwin bellows and searches Anthem’s haversack with implied permission. He finds a bottle. “How many do you think I can hit?”
“Less than me, fat ass.” Devitt snatches the bottle from Unwin’s hand and throws it, completely missing the maligned and hitting the ground, though not without effect. The leaking mixture creates a pool that a pup tries to run through. It trips and squirms as its face sticks to the ground.
“Works even if your aim is shit,” says Nedland and hands Anthem a bottle. “You may have just created the greatest weapon the Corps has ever seen, and I mean that.”
“What about a musket?” asks Hamill and throws another bottle. A pup stares up as it comes but is too slow. It absorbs the bottle right in the face.
The other pups look at their fallen brother with crooked heads and relaxed bodies, too confused to see what’s happening. The Minds are focused elsewhere, and the things’ hunting instincts haven’t developed like their mother’s, barely comprehending the threat of the men they share the clearing with. An entire squad of bayoneted soldiers could have run the things down in less than a minute, but the men here relish the chance to test new hopes.
“Muskets need loading,” says Ned, and throws another.
“So do these,” Hamill says, hurling a third.
“Yeah, but we also aren’t making any more ammunition.” Nedland holds up a bottle. “These are from common ingredients, right Anthem?”
“Right.” Anthem’s barely taken his eyes off his bottle. With most of the pups lying in ashes below, the myriad of military applications in the Hyrnlak Archipelago starts to make themselves known. There’s only one problem. “What will Fletcher think?”
For a moment, all the men hold their bottles still.
“He won’t,” says Nedland, mid-swing but reeling back. He addresses the group. “Look at it this way. If the battalion finds out, they march Private Anthem here off a cliff. If they find out from any of us, however, I’ll march all of you off a fucking cliff. How’s that?” He takes a bottle and misses a borer pup, smacking into a tree. The shrapnel is soaked with neutralizers and may as well be fragments from an exploded cannonball in the face of the small maligned. A second later, the closet one keels over and writhes.
The men nod at Nedland’s proposal, seeing the effectiveness of the bottles and choosing to err on the side of advantage against the maligned. What have they got to lose anyway? Anthem can see the fatality appearing on their faces, the same they’ve known since leaving the RLZ; they’ll all be dead by Jubilee, so they might as well employ whatever tactics they can.
Unwin searches Anthem’s haversack again and finds it empty. A collective sigh runs through the group. “Can you make a hundred more?” the Ox-infused asks.
“Making isn’t the problem,” says Anthem, bolstered by his men’s backing. “Storing is.”
“Got space in my sack,” says Devitt.
“And concealing,” adds Orey. “Padding the sacks won’t always work. What if this stuff leaks? You’re going to wear neutralizer on your clothes?”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” says Anthem.
“Where did you even find all these bottles?” asks Devitt. “Are there going to be enough?”
“So long as you guys keep drinking your faces off. The men like to hoard this stuff.” Anthem has never been a fan of alcohol.
“So do the other platoons,” says Unwin. “Glass is easy to come by with the furnaces connected to the Gashes, the same way they power the boilers.” He gestures to the east, the closest edge of the archipelago. “And we’ve got sand for miles.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever have to make our own,” says Nedland, sitting on a rock and surveying the clearing where the piles of ashes that were once maligned carcasses are strewn. One pup crawls away, squealing as it drags its innards along.
“Speaking of drinks.” Devitt pulls out a bottle of a deep black liquid, dark as the ink that squids shoot out when they’re cornered and have nothing else to live for. “A gulp of this won’t kill you.”
Unwin gets his revenge and swipes the bottle out of Devitt’s hand. He uncorks it. “How about five gulps?”
“Maybe not for a fat ass.” Devitt shoots his leg out to trip Unwin, but the Ox-infused is faster. He kneels, grabs Devitt by the boot, and turns him upside down. “Alright, alright!” Unwin sets him down.
They pass the bottle around, taking sips. The drink sticks to the sides of Anthem’s throat like the worst candy he’s ever tasted, and after the last swig, he empties the bottle in a nearby stream and prepares for the men one final neutralizer. These borers have some Ape in them, as Anthem can see from their dissipating fur in some places. Just like the night before the first attack on the RLZ, before he had applied the agent to Frine, he tailors the following mixture to the Ape, adjusting the ingredients and letting it boil a little longer while waiting for the resulting deep orange. The men watch him as if he’s been pulling the concoctions out of a hat up to this point.
Anthem offers the finished bottle to everyone but they turn away.
“The leader of the zoo men gets it,” Devitt proposes and hands the bottle to Nedland.
Anthem frowns. “For Hells sake do not let that catch on.”
“It works!” Devitt counters and turns to the men. “More so, these things need a name. Something iconic. Something they’ll remember us by when we’re one with the raw ground.”
The mention stings a little, but the sentiment quickly washes it over.
“I got something,” says Hamill, looking down. “Carafes. Fancy things, right? The kind they serve wine in. Well, I’d say these things are pretty fancy.”
“Me too,” says Unwin.
Nedland nods, and so does Orey.
“The zoo man’s carafes!” Devitt proclaims. “Sounds like a carnival treat.”
Nedland doesn’t take up the words, instead laughing and handing the bottle—now carafe—back to Anthem. “Show us what you can do.”
Anthem throws the bottle, the men watching it sail through the air, their futures bound together by fate, stronger than any chain or manacle. They may all die here, but they’ll go down hurling carafes, the maligned burning at their feet.