The Wolf Keepers

by Elise Broach

  That was true, Lizzie thought, and it had probably been an advantage during the nights he was hiding out at the elephant house. Together they started up the moonlit driveway, heading into the zoo. The night air was crisp, thrumming with strange noises. Lizzie heard the trilling of insects, sometimes the distant snort or chirp of one of the zoo animals. The banks of flowers along the walk, so bright during the day, became ghostly shadows at night.

  Lizzie shone the flashlight in an arc in front of them, and they hurried down the walkway toward Wolf Woods. “We have to watch out for the security guard. Sometimes he leaves his booth and takes a walk around.”

  “Believe me, I know,” Tyler said.

  Lizzie thought of all the nights he’d spent here alone. “Weren’t you scared?” she asked. “Sleeping outside, all by yourself?”

  “Nah,” Tyler scoffed. “I like being on my own.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot!” Lizzie grabbed his arm. “I asked my dad about that old picture of the cabin. Turns out it’s John Muir’s lost cabin!”

  “Huh?” Tyler looked at her blankly. “Muir, like the guy the zoo is named for?”

  “Yes,” Lizzie said. With her words tumbling over each other, she quickly explained about John Muir, Yosemite, the cursed canyon, and the lost cabin.

  “And nobody’s been able to find it?” he asked when she was finished, his eyes bright with excitement.

  “Nope! It’s been lost for a hundred years. Maybe more. We should look up when John Muir died.”

  “So you think it’s still up in the mountains somewhere? In Yosemite?”

  “I don’t know. But it would be fun to try to find it. Except if it’s really in Tenaya Canyon, it sounds like nobody can get to it.”

  “Maybe that’s why it’s never been found,” Tyler said thoughtfully. “We should go there sometime.”

  Yosemite was an hour’s drive away. Lizzie wondered how they could ever do that. “My dad would take us,” she said. “But we’d have to tell him about you.”

  Tyler grimaced. “We can’t do that.”

  “Well, we could say you’re a friend of mine,” Lizzie suggested.

  He shook his head. “You know what would happen then. He’d be all, ‘Where do you live?’ and ‘I have to ask your parents.’”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Lizzie said. “But I don’t know how else we could get into the park. It’s pretty far away. Have you ever been?”

  Tyler shook his head. “No. But it sounds cool.”

  Lizzie had been to Yosemite many times with her father and twice with her grandmother, not usually in the summer, when it was crowded, but in the fall, when many of the trails were empty. The park was so vast, she’d only seen a fraction of it, but she thought it was one of the most beautiful, magical spots on earth, with its high rocky cliffs and rushing, misty waterfalls. She’d spotted a black bear once, lumbering idly through the woods, and it had made her never want to see a bear in a zoo cage again.

  “We should try to go,” Lizzie told him. “Because you would love it.”

  * * *

  When they got to Wolf Woods, there was no sign of the wolves in the dark enclosure.

  “They must be back there by the trees,” Lizzie said, sweeping the flashlight across the pen.

  Tyler started to climb over the guardrail. “Let’s walk on the side, along the fence.”

  Lizzie hesitated. “There isn’t a path. It’s all bushes. I’ve never gone all the way back there.”

  “Well, how else are we going to check on the wolves?” Tyler demanded. “They’re too far away. We can’t see anything from here.”

  Lizzie eyed the dark thicket of bushes crowding close to the fence. “I guess we can try.”

  Together, they scrambled over the guardrail into the brush. “Here, give me the flashlight,” Tyler ordered. “I’ll go first.”

  “I think I should go first,” Lizzie said. “I know the way.”

  “You just said you’d never been back here.” Tyler took the flashlight from her. “And anyway, I’m used to walking around this place after dark. You’re not.”

  Lizzie frowned at the back of his head as he pushed past her. “Don’t boss me around,” she said.

  “Come on, I can see them now.” He crashed through the bushes a few yards ahead of her.

  “Keep it down,” Lizzie warned. “You’ll scare them.”

  Now she, too, could see the wolves. They must have been lying down, but at the burst of noise coming from outside the fence, they immediately rose to their feet … all except one, a pale silver wolf whose fur was almost white.

  “I think that’s Tamarack,” Lizzie whispered, pointing.

  Tyler directed his flashlight toward the pack, and the wolves began pacing in agitation, ears pricked, faces turned toward Lizzie and Tyler. She could see Lobo’s dim silhouette, larger than the rest. He walked toward them, his ghostly eyes glowing in the beam of light.

  “That’s Lobo,” she told Tyler.

  “Wow,” Tyler said. “He’s a big guy. I wouldn’t want to run into him in the woods.”

  “I know,” Lizzie agreed. “He’s the pack leader.”

  Lobo lifted his nose and sniffed the air. Lizzie thought she could see his hackles rise. Suddenly his head swung around in the opposite direction, and in unison, the other wolves stopped pacing and looked that way, too. They were gazing toward the back of the pen, away from Tyler and Lizzie.

  Lizzie heard something in the rear of the enclosure, noises that seemed to be coming from the building. Instinctively, she grabbed the flashlight and switched it off. “Shhhh,” she whispered to Tyler. “I think someone’s here.”

  “I told you,” Tyler said. “I’ve seen somebody here at night before.”

  “What would they be doing? It’s too dark to see anything.” Lobo trotted toward the back of the pen. All of the other wolves—except for the one lying down—followed him. Lizzie strained to hear anything over the night noises of the zoo. She thought she heard the click of something being unlatched.

  “What’s going on?” Tyler whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where did the wolves go?”

  Lizzie scanned the enclosure. Except for Tamarack, who was still lying on the ground, the wolves seemed to have disappeared. She didn’t see them anywhere.

  She turned to Tyler in bewilderment. “There’s a little fenced yard behind the pen. My dad uses that to separate the wolves sometimes, or to feed them. I think they went in there … but someone must have opened the gate.” She kept staring through the fence, across the dark field. It didn’t make sense. Who would have opened the back gate at night?

  “Wait,” she said suddenly. “Get down.”

  She dropped to her knees and pulled Tyler with her.

  “What’s the matter?” Tyler whispered.

  “Somebody’s in the pen. See?”

  Leaves scratched their faces and nearly blocked their view. They huddled silently, pressed against the wire mesh of the fence.

  A blurry human silhouette was walking across the pen toward Tamarack, who was still lying on the ground. The sick wolf began to move, struggling to get up, but her hind legs sagged uselessly. The human shape crouched quickly, and Lizzie saw a hand reach out toward the wolf’s flank. Then the wolf fell back down, and after a minute, the blurred silhouette stood and walked toward the back of the pen.

  A series of muffled noises drifted through the night air. Suddenly, the other wolves came trotting back into the field. There was no sign of Lobo.

  Lizzie tensed. “Where’s Lobo? He’s always in the lead.”

  They heard more rustling at the back of the pen, and then Lobo appeared, streaking across the dark enclosure. What had he been doing back there?

  “What’s happening?” Tyler asked, his voice hushed.

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie said.

  After a few minutes, a motor rumbled, and they could hear the crunch of gravel under tires.

  “That’s a car,” Tyler said
. “Somebody drove here.”

  Lizzie nodded. “They must have come on the access road and gotten into the pen from the back.” She listened for a minute. “They’re gone. Let’s walk down there and take a look.”

  Carefully, with the flashlight still turned off, they picked their way through the bushes toward the rear of the pen, where the wolves were gathered in a nervous cluster, looking alert. Lizzie could see that Lobo was standing over the wolf on the ground, sniffing her.

  As they approached, the other wolves scattered to the opposite side of the enclosure. Lobo stayed where he was, watching Lizzie and Tyler.

  Now they were next to the fence, only a few yards from the two wolves.

  Even in the darkness, Lizzie could see Lobo’s head lower slightly, and the fur on his shoulders stiffen.

  Tyler took the flashlight. “Can I turn it on?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  The area of the pen right in front of them was suddenly awash in light. Lobo began to pace back and forth only a few yards away, ears pricked, ruff raised. Lizzie could feel his silvery eyes boring through her.

  The wolf on the ground was clearly sick. It was Tamarack, the other young female—Lizzie recognized her white form immediately in the circle of light. She lay flat, her legs trembling. She did not lift her head or try to stand. Lizzie felt a hopeless pit expand in her stomach.

  “That one doesn’t look good,” Tyler said.

  Lobo, meanwhile, had stopped pacing. He stood frozen in the light, his head down, tail flat, lips curling over the glint of teeth.

  Lizzie had never seen him like that, but she knew instinctively what was coming. “Oh no,” she whispered. “He’s going to attack!”

  Chapter 11

  LOBO

  BEFORE THEY HAD time to react, the big wolf leapt through the air, teeth bared, his enormous form flying straight at them. He crashed into the fence, jaws snapping.

  For an instant, Lizzie could smell him and feel him, the wildness of him, the closeness of his gaping mouth.

  “Watch out!” Tyler cried. He stumbled backward, grabbing Lizzie’s arm. They fell into the brambles, and the flashlight rolled away from Tyler into the dark bushes. Inside the pen, they could see Lobo pacing next to the fence, his ruff still spiked, his ears pressed to his skull.

  Lizzie crawled on her hands and knees to the flashlight. Fingers trembling, she fumbled to turn off the beam. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Tyler answered. “If that fence wasn’t there, we’d be dead right now.”

  “I know.” Lizzie’s voice caught. “I’ve never seen him like that. Come on.”

  Without the help of the flashlight, they careened through the brush, tripping over roots and rocks, scratching their bare legs. It wasn’t until they’d hopped back over the guardrail that Lizzie felt able to take a breath. She collapsed on the big rock where she had sat so often to write in her notebook.

  “Man, what was that?” Tyler asked, pacing in front of her, as agitated as the wolves.

  Lizzie shook her head. “I guess we freaked him out, coming so close.”

  “But he didn’t even growl at us! He just jumped.”

  Lizzie nodded. “That’s what they do. My dad says you don’t have to worry when they’re making noise. It’s when they’re silent that they might attack you.”

  “Why would he attack us?” Tyler demanded. “We weren’t doing anything.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, breathing deeply and trying to still her quaking knees.

  “Maybe he was protecting the sick one,” Tyler suggested.

  “Tamarack? Yeah, maybe.” Lizzie bit her lip. “She looked really bad. She couldn’t stand.”

  The possibility that another of the wolves might be close to death was too much for her to contemplate. If it was a contagious illness, they were all at risk. Even Lobo.

  Tyler walked back and forth along the curb, shaking his head. “Who was that inside the pen?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”

  “But how did they get in? I mean, aren’t all the cages locked?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, who has the key to Wolf Woods?”

  Lizzie looked at him, stricken. “Only the zookeepers, I think. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe somebody broke in,” Tyler suggested.

  “Yeah,” Lizzie said. “But did you see them bend down by Tamarack? Whoever it was did something to her.”

  “Maybe someone was giving her medicine.”

  “Maybe,” Lizzie said doubtfully. “But why would anybody do that at night? My dad never goes into the cages with the dangerous animals alone. It’s against the rules. Even the ones you’ve known forever can turn on you. Look at Lobo tonight. My dad says, ‘You take the wolf out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the wolf.’”

  Tyler nodded. “He got scared. Or mad.”

  They looked at each other in the dark.

  “Something is going on,” Tyler said.

  Lizzie turned back to the wolves, shrouded in darkness under the pines. “I’m worried about them.”

  “We should get out of here,” Tyler told her.

  In silence, with the flashlight still off, they followed the path back to Lizzie’s house.

  * * *

  The next morning, Lizzie dragged her exhausted self down to the kitchen table and tried to pretend she’d gotten more than a few hours of sleep. Going to bed so late was bad enough, but she’d had tortured dreams in which she was lost in the woods, being chased by wolves. She’d been utterly alone.

  As Mike drank his coffee, Lizzie’s mind raced with questions from the night before. “Dad,” she said, “do the keepers ever go into the cages at night?”

  He shook his head. “Only in an emergency.”

  “What’s an emergency?”

  Mike thought for a minute. “Well, anything where the animals are at risk. Do you remember that big storm a few years ago? The tree that fell over in the African Savannah? It shorted out the fence, and Wesley and I had to go in there at night to fix it.”

  Lizzie did vaguely remember that … the loud, crashing storm, and being awakened in the middle of the night because her father was heading out to deal with a crisis. “So the custodians can go inside the cages, too?”

  “Well, yes, but that’s very rare.”

  “What about the keepers’ assistants?” Lizzie persisted. “People like Ed. Do they have keys?”

  Mike was looking at her over the rim of his mug. “Why are you asking?”

  Lizzie tried to act nonchalant. “I just wondered.” She poured cereal into a bowl and tried a different tack. “Are animals ever taken out of the zoo? If they’re sick?”

  “You mean like Athena? Not usually. We have an operating room in the clinic, and if we ever had a medical problem that Karen couldn’t handle, we’d call in another zoo vet, someone from San Diego. There are a bunch of permissions needed to transport zoo animals … even if it’s just to another zoo to breed them.”

  “But what if Tamarack has the same thing as Athena? Will you call in another vet?”

  “It depends on what’s wrong. If it’s a virus…” Mike was quiet, his brow furrowed. “Well, it’s unlikely anyone will be able to do anything. The most important thing is to contain it. We’re going to move Tamarack to the clinic today.”

  Lizzie’s heart sank. “Do you think she’s going to die?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Whatever it is, it’s serious. I’m just praying the rest of the pack stays healthy.”

  “Can I come? When you take her to the clinic? Please, Dad.”

  Mike hesitated.

  He never allowed her to have contact with animals that were sick or had behavior problems. But these were the wolves! She’d spent the whole summer getting to know them. She looked at him beseechingly. “I won’t get in the way, I promise. It’s just that…”

  He sighed and stoo
d up, ruffling her hair as he passed by. “I know. You’ve gotten attached to the wolves. I have, too. Okay, I guess you can come. But you’ll have to do what Karen says, and you can’t touch Tamarack. Understand?”

  “I won’t,” Lizzie promised.

  Chapter 12

  SICK WOLF

  LIZZIE WAS DYING to tell Tyler what she was doing, but there was no way to talk to him before she left the house. She would have to report back later. She glanced up at the blank face of the upper windows of the apartment as she and her father walked down the driveway. There was no sign of activity, thank goodness, and she was relieved they’d remembered to close the windows that were visible from the yard. Tyler appeared to be good at lying low—not surprising, Lizzie thought, given the time he’d spent in hiding. She wondered about his foster family. However bad it had been for him, they were probably crazy with worry now, not knowing where he was. And what about his real mother and father? She remembered what he’d said: “Everything that happened to them, they did to themselves.” What did that mean?

  She walked alongside her father through the morning stillness of the zoo. The gates wouldn’t open for another hour. They passed one of the custodians, Joe Walsh, emptying a trash bin. Lizzie waved at him.

  “Hey, Joe,” Mike called.

  “Hey, Mike. I see you brought reinforcements,” he said, gesturing at Lizzie.

  Mike grinned. “Always good to have backup.” He glanced down at her. “We’ll go to the clinic first,” he said as they walked. “I told Karen I’d meet her there. But remember not to touch anything, okay?”

  Lizzie nodded. She knew Karen was fussy about the clinic. Nobody was allowed in there except for her assistants and occasionally one of the keepers. Lizzie herself had only been in the front office, never inside the medical treatment area.

  They passed the crocodile moat. Both of the crocs lay in the morning sunlight, so still they might have been sleeping, except that their small, glittering eyes were open. Lizzie knew they needed to warm up before they were able to move.

  A chain-link fence bordered the crocodile moat, and behind it was the vet’s clinic, the one-story gray building where Karen worked. Mike fumbled with his ring of keys at the gate, but before he had time to fit one into the lock, Karen came down the steps of the clinic, in her usual beige coveralls, blond ponytail swinging.